I’ve been working with a client recently whose been through some very choppy waters in the last 6 months with significant health problems which have resulted in acute anxiety. She is also a therapist herself and even though she’s in this business, her mind plays the same tricks on her as anybody else’s and how does her inner critic respond to this? It uses it yet as another stick to beat her up with – nice!!

So I stole this question from a very good friend and colleague of mind, and asked her to consider it  – she couldn’t answer it. She’d been feeling helpless and hopeless. She truly felt dependant on her partner, her family, her friends and this troubled her. If your wellbeing is in the hands of others, that means you not in control and that your innate health is a bit like British weather, very unpredictable!

I got an email this week as my client started to have  better conversations with herself as she’d changed the wording in the question from ‘dependant on’ to ‘affected by’. This made a huge difference and she is now looking more and more for an inside out view of her own wellbeing which is nourished by others but not created by them.

When we find ourselves struggling with life stuff, we can look to an external source to get us out of it. It’s a trick the mind plays on us and to be fair , it’s good to look for support from others when we are feeling stressed or low. But what if the wellbeing that you experience when times are good or when you are on your annual holiday was always there, just sometimes you’d overlooked it.

Wellbeing is our natural reset button. You know that when you go on that holiday, it will come back easily with a bit of time. But so often in the heat of difficulties, we can forget this.  True wellbeing resides at your own front door;  so make sure you visit it regularly in whatever way works best for you rather than staggering from one holiday to the next hoping that that’s enough.

So innate wellbeing is a bit like the robin that appears in my garden every morning. If I wait long enough, it eats the bread right out of my hand!