Neroli's Counselling Blog

New Year, New Me?

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So, it’s a New Year…. “New Year” “New Me”

You can’t help but be aware of talk of diets, fitness regimes (the gyms will be insanely busy for about 2-3 weeks), smoking cessation kits, resolutions, "dryathlons"… its all going on, its all very optimistic, positive and full of motivation: Great stuff! Or is it?

704a2229539bbe94e63ea98a56743191The PMA squad worries me: on the surface Positive Mental Attitude seems like a good idea right? You choose your attitude, your path in life, you can alter events with your superpower: your Positive Mental Attitude What’s not to like? You see to me, if we apply the Positive Mental Attitude to its extreme then when good things occur, you made it happen… Fabulous! But what scares me is the flipside: when bad things happen, guess what, you made it happen… so tough! Harsh! So just when you are at your lowest and struggling you go on to blame yourself too.

I think that as with everything in this crazy life, reality is somewhere between the two extremes…

There is a reason why the serenity prayer or wish has been in circulation for a long time:

May I find Serenity to accept the things I cannot change Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference

This is where I hope I can lend a hand. I try to work with individuals and enable them to look at all the things that are going on for them and sort through them together as my client chooses. I hope that with time and patience we can see which things can be changed, and whether the client wishes to change them and conversely the things that cannot be changed (for whatever reason) and then we work out how to keep my client safe whilst in contact with the unchangeable.

A major part of my work comes from my wish that people (including myself) would be kinder, more considerate to themselves. So I suppose I would apply all this “New Year”, “New Me” energy gently and kindly… listening to yourself… is this what you really want? What do you think? What do you want? If you're not sure then maybe you could think about getting some help.

Images: Fireworks by Magnus Johansson CC BY-SA 2.0 The problem is not the problem from bigquote.co Do what you can, source unknown, found on Pinterest