Cherish the moment
OK, what are you doing right now? Well, you are reading this. What else? Thinking about the day ahead, reliving mistakes from yesterday, grudges from the past, fears of tomorrow? STOP right there. You have this one perfect moment in time that you will never have...
Pollyanna Or Eeyore?
Being happy isn’t always about giggling or having ‘blue birds on your shoulder’. Pollyanna’s relentless happiness could get irritating. Goldie Hawn’s bubbliness isn’t everyone’s style. Old Eeyore in the Pooh Bear stories specialises in gloom but he still has a set of...
How self-censorship can prevent us from being engaging leaders
Here is a frequent conundrum: you have an important message to communicate. It may be a big change; or a need for action; or fostering collaboration between old enemies. Most of us will use a mix of logic and statistics, perhaps outside expert reports. We rapidly...
Why a book about Happiness?
People tend to think happiness is a big and complicated topic. In fact, science shows that it is often the seemingly little things that make a huge difference to people’s well-being and sense of contentment. So, lots of money and possessions don’t actually help much....
100 years on and still no equality
100 years ago this month, leading suffragette Emily Wilding Davis ran out in front of the King’s Horse, at the Epsom Derby as a protest at women’s lack of the vote in the UK. She died 4 days later. And while things have moved on for women – fortunately they got the...
Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909-2012)
“The future of the world relies on the education of women, and by appointing them as leaders”. Born in Turin in 1909, Rita Levi-Montalcini was an Italian neurologist of Jewish origins who received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1986. After finishing her studies, she...
Passing the baton
Passing the baton: doughnuts and delegation The last couple of weeks have illustrated three different styles of passing the baton: first Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands abdicated. Her son’s turn, as expected. Then Queen Elizabeth II asked her own son to represent...
But how do you really feel?
It has been a week of strongly held, fiercely expressed and often diametrically opposed emotions. Long repressed fury and grudges have kept pace with eulogies. Whatever your intellectual or political stance one thing has been clear. People have an enormous capacity...