Goodness me. Look at the time. It's only time for a new episode of Therapy Natters with Richard Nicholls and Fiona Biddle. Therapy Natters is the podcast series where two psychotherapists pick a topic, usually suggested by your good selves and natter away for half an hour or so on the off chance you find it helpful. Hello there, Fiona. Hey, it's not just a new episode. It's a new year. It's 2023 now. Not currently at time of recording, but when this comes out, it's New Year.
New Year everybody. Yeah. Gosh, didn't 22 go quickly? Well, it did for me.
What a binfire.
just whoosh, and that disappeared.
I'm hoping 2023 is better than the absolute cow pat that 2022 felt like. Sorry 2022. You were not my best friend.
Had its moments. I think, well, my 2022 had its moments, but a lot of it generally globally, nationally yes, there was a lot of cowpats falling on the head moments. Weren't there, or falling into cowpats, whichever analogy you prefer.
I don't like any of them because I want the world to be a happy place and everybody to have sunshine and rainbows. But am I naive? I'm an optimistic realist and I can be as grumpy as anybody else, even on mic sometimes. But, there are some people that have had some very hard times. They really, really have, I don't wanna come across as incongruent. I mean, I'm quite a cheery guy, but actually there's a lot of frustrations and, and upset about.
And I don't want this podcast series to feel jarring to people. I want it to dilute it all down. I want to try and be a, a, a happy, smiley character in a sea of cow pats
A sea of Cowpats that. Yeah,
it's getting worse, isn't it? This analogy.
But maybe it helps to see that things are light and shade and there have been some awful things this year. The economy The death of the Queen. England losing in the football. The war in ukraine. We're talking about the sort of things of equal proportion, the war in Ukraine and England losing in the quarter final. No, seriously, there have been some real negatives, but you know, the queen sadly died, but we also had her jubilee, which was lovely. Wasn't it?
And there have been some nice things as well. Like England won a few matches before they lost one. You know, everybody in the tournament loses except one, so, and we came second in Eurovision and Ukraine won it,
Oh yeah. So maybe 2022 wasn't all a complete bin fire.
Not all of it, but, but yeah, the, we need to, we need to seriously recognize that there was an awful lot of bad stuff as well. And it's still continuing. Of course, you know, the, the economy, the cost of living crisis. We don't really know where on earth we are with our government. Well, I don't certainly, I dunno if anybody does. And the war continues in Ukraine.
Sad as all this is. These things have happened before. We have had interest rates like this before and mortgage payments this high before. I mean, you, you don't wanna know my mortgage. Geez. I mean, what the heck? I'm waving a letter in the air now, listeners, because I a letter from my bank to go, oh, by the way, we're adding all this extra money on every month. Wow. No. Oh, no. But this happened before this has happened. This happened in the nineties. It's happened in the eighties.
It's happened before. And it, it's, there are swings and roundabouts as with wars. They start, they end, and some of them have been going on for a long time and we just forget about them. There's been wars all over the shop. Well, Ukraine because they're so close geographically, just seemed close to us emotionally as well. Well, actually, these things have been going on forever.
There's nothing new or different, I guess, about the state of the world now than that was a decade ago, or five years ago or three years ago. These things just happen and they stop happening and things change. But the new year often is a bit of a, a line in the sand and a a time to reflect and go, okay, so let's look at what we want to do. Let's look at the past and let's look at the future. People do that every January, I
A lot of people do. Yes, I, I know that I will tend to have a little look back and think. Did I do the things that I wanted to do? Did I live the life I wanted to live in the last year? And of course it's never absolutely, yes, that was perfect. But then what can I do better? What do I want to be thinking at the end of the next year? And that will vary from person to person to, you know, the, the stage of life that you are at, what's going on in your world.
So I remember a few years ago when I sort of started to think actually, you know, I want to be only taking on projects that I want to do. Now I've got myself into the position where I can do that and I couldn't do it before you know, it was the same as everybody else. I had to take the jobs and do the things to pay the mortgage and so on.
But I have got to the point where I can say no to projects if I'm not interested in them, and I don't just do them for the money, which is a great place to have got to. But it's those sorts of things that each of us can think about. Do we want to keep battling away at this particular friendship or do we want to finally take control of such and such a habit, or do we want to do more of this or less of that? And it's, seems to me a good time to reflect.
Not that there aren't other good times to reflect, but it's one of them.
Yeah, absolutely. And I sit on the fence about New Year's resolutions. I've been making a podcast for 12 years now, and every January there tends to be this urge to start talking about the good and bad of New Year's resolutions. There have been times in the distant past when my very first podcast project was called Motivate Yourself, and it was just all about motivation. It was just me being overly cheery, trying to jeer people along. And it was quite sweet and it was very popular.
I would be all for it. Right, it's the new year. So come on, let's make a goal. If. You're not setting goals, then you haven't got a plan. If you haven't got a plan, you're just aimlessly wandering around. Come on, make a plan. What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? And after a couple of years of that, and a couple of years extra of being a therapist as well, I realized some people. it doesn't have to be January. don't need to do it then.
It could have been December, could have been November, could have been any time, could have been a week Next Wednesday, doesn't matter. But if there's one thing that New Year's resolutions are quite famous for, it's failing. So I I, I think it's something to bear in mind. Hey, we had a question that prompted this. Do you wanna read it out, Fiona?
Sure This is from Lee, from Darlington and his question is, hi Richard and Fiona Loving Therapy Natters. Please keep up the good work. Thank you, Lee. My question is about New Year's resolutions. I listen to a lot of podcasts and many people seem to contradict each other. With some people saying the new year is the perfect time to make changes. And others saying it's not helpful. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you, Lee.
Yeah, well I fed into that immediately by sitting on the fence and, and, and saying both of those things are true and that is contradictory, but
I've said before that I'd like sitting on fences. I find them comfortable places to be. But this is, you may have noticed that I stopped at the point of reflecting. I personally, if I'm starting a new plan or a new goal or something like that, I like to start somewhere that's sort of makes sense. So a week next Wednesday, that makes me feel a little uncomfortable. It makes my diary look a mess.
I like to start at least on a Monday, but a first of a month makes me feel secure in, in my diary-ness. It is a personal choice which side of the fence you want to come down on. And it doesn't have to be the same every year. You might want to do something this year and not next. And the thing about New Year's resolutions are famous for failing is because people only really talk about the ones that fail.
Good point.
It's like a therapist. I, I know that some therapists listen. And a lot of our therapy listeners will be hypnotherapist because that's the world that we occupy mostly. And I will hear hypnotherapists being a little bit disparaging about C B T and I regularly have to say We only see the people for whom C B T has not worked. There are lots of people going to IAPT services within the NHS and doing absolutely fine from it, but they don't then go, oh, well that didn't work.
I need to go to a hypnotherapist and see if that works, because they've got what they need and it's a little bit the same when you make a resolution or you make a goal and you meet it. You usually just move on to the next thing. And it's not a big deal. It's, it's when the resolutions crash and burn, like you decide to not eat chocolate. I'm, I'm gonna stop eating chocolate.
And then on the third you find the remnants of your box of Quality Street and the, oh, well, I need to just finish these off because otherwise I'll be tempted to eat them. That's a great one, isn't it? But people do that. I've done that myself. I've got to eat this because otherwise I'll eat it. So things like that. And then you go, oh, well that was useless. I am useless because I can't even stop eating chocolate for four days. It's that sort of thing.
I think just let's throw that into the equation.
Yeah. I think it's worth, if you are making a New Year's resolution, it's worth asking the question why now? Why the 1st of January? Why haven't I already started this. Cause if it's important, it might have been on your mind in November. Was there a reason why you didn't then? Because if, you answer the question honestly, it gives you some insight as to what to do to make it work. Cuz it might be that you go, well, it wasn't really my idea, it's not my goal, it's society's goal.
Or it's my friend or my spouse or my partner or whoever that said, oh, you need to do that. It came from external rather than internal. And that's worth checking out cuz it might be that you do want the goal but because it was somebody else that pressured you into doing it. We sometimes stubbornly dig our heels and go, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, will do, will do will do. That's my New Year's resolution to do that. And then not just to spite them at an unconscious level.
Get to know yourself, examine all of that. I think that's useful cuz it could be this is something you really do want, but you're frightened of it. Frightened of the hard work, frightened of failing, frightened of what's on the other side of that, whatever it is, especially if it's a biggie. Now, a real biggie. Like people will say, I've got a New Year's resolution. You know, 2023 is gonna be my year because I'm going to leave my partner, hand in my notice at work, move house.
But whatever it is, it might be scary and it's worth thinking. What's on the other side of this goal? Let me have a peek into that. And do I need to then practice some emotional regulation skills to help me with this? You just gotta get to know it.
I'm just thinking about all these goals that society, our society anyway, is sort of currently setting us like dry January, veganuary.
Oh.
Sober October, things like that. Goes Back to your point, Richard, about whether it's your choice or not. cuz it, it really needs to be. Let's take alcohol as a an example. There can be times when a doctor might say, you really need to stop. And if that happens, then you really need to stop. But a lot of the time their choices and just as an aside Greg was involved in some research last year on Active Advent as an intervention.
Oh, I remember that.
Oh. It was published this week in the BMJ and they even got talked about in the Daily Mail.
Oh, of all the places, but, oh, hey,
website. But yeah, the Daily Mail, they didn't name Greg, but he's first author on the BMJ article. On the effects of that intervention and, but that didn't get published until about the 20th of December. So whilst it does exist this year it didn't get much publicity, but hopefully by next year, and, you know, I, I did it last year and then I forgot to do it this year. Cuz I didn't have him reminding me, I was one of the ones which had the activity monitor on my wrist.
So I properly took part last year, but that was a really good one because that was something you could really do. Cuz you know, as you're coming up to Christmas, that at Christmas you are likely to eat more and drink more. I mean, I, I don't eat lots. I might drink a lot, but I don't eat a lot. So that's not really a big, big thing. But still, you know that there's going to be a box of Quality Street and there's mince pies and all of these things.
And so just to put in little extra bits of activity each day. And were Christmas themed and things that you could do easily within your ordinary life, wasn't sort of going out for a five mile walk But you do need to get to the why. Why are you doing it?
Yeah. Because if you're doing it just because it's January and this is what you're supposed to do, then it's probably not gonna last very long. The first hint of problems, and they're always problems. But it's not a problem. Somebody's trying to eat. I'm gonna eat healthier now. Okay, well healthy people do eat chocolate, you know? So the first bit of chocolate you have, you're not back to square one. It's fine.
One thing to add, you mentioned veganuary earlier and it reminded me of something that uh, somebody said to me once this was a, this was a friend, so I can talk about this. It wasn't a client? But they'd been to therapy in the past and they'd said to their therapist, I'm gonna become vegan. And that was from nowhere. They've never tried vegetarian. They've gone from just eating meat, eating normally to going vegan. And the therapist said, I'm interested as to why.
And they explored it and they, they discovered that it was probably a type of self-harm, that it was a way of punishing themselves. How can they make their life difficult, deliberately putting problems in their life. Now that might be you. I'd just check yourself if you are trying to harm yourself in some way with some New Year's resolution, cuz it's clearly not an impossibility.
Just check whether you are deliberately trying to sabotage your life and make things hard for yourself out of some sort of self-harm, sabotage, habit. Possibly.
It's a good point, and just little aside there, I'd been meaning to say this for a couple of episodes and I kept forgetting when we do talk about clients, do rest assured dear listeners, that we have either changed things so that they are unrecognizable, but still the same sort of issue, or we have permission
or it is 12 clients all rolled
Yes. Or we have permission, so we don't just talk randomly about clients without that. So.
No.
it might, sometimes
But you'd
It might seem it if we haven't said it at that particular point in time. So that's why I just wanted to mention it. So let's presume then, shall we, that somebody is wanting to set a resolution, shall we do that?
Mm-hmm.
And we look at the reason why. Now most people listening to this will have come across the idea of smart goals. If you haven't. I think you're probably quite lucky. This is one of those things that gets rolled out all over the place, but I will just say basically is a smart goal is something that is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time oriented. I actually prefer the A to change from attainable to adjustable, but in this standard it would be attainable.
I don't really know what the difference between attainable and realistic is. So adjust.
Well, it'd be a SMAT goal. So it's purely for the acronym
So, but adjustable works because whatever your, whatever goal it is that you've set, let's say you're setting up new online business and your goal is to make 10,000 pounds in your first month, 20 in the second 30 in third month, et cetera. You might need to adjust that somewhat. You might even adjust it up. Adjusting doesn't necessarily mean downwards, but adjustable. You might be selling I dunno what you might be selling. What might you be selling?
Golf ball.
Golf balls. You might decide that you don't want to be selling golf balls. You want to be selling golf clubs instead. So it's a pretty poor example, but those sorts of adjustable factors need to be put into goal. So that's, that's the idea. Most coaches and so on would, would be saying, I'm sure they would be more elaborate than this, but the general thing is that your goal needs to be specific, measurable, attainable, or adjustable, realistic and time orientated.
Cause if you don't have all those factors, then. It's too wishy washy.
Yeah, and maybe there's a middle ground between the wishy-washy pie in the sky. Ah, I wanna do something, but I have no plan for it. And, Something that's too regimented, too strict, which falls into the realistic side of it. Cause it might not be realistic to run 5K every day or to lose a pound a week in weight or get a personal best every time you go on to go to the gym with something. if you aim for that and then you don't get it.
Then you failed, but you still did more than you did sitting on the, sofa,
Talking of slightly adjusted client stories. This is slightly adjusted, but I had a client once who was intending next week to quit her job and go and live in Las Vegas as a professional poker player. Because she'd heard that that was something that people do. And she was quite good at poker, so she thought that's what she, that was her plan. Now
Oh.
is one of those ones where I'm sitting there thinking that's not realistic. but's a little bit difficult to work with because I can't say to a client that's not realistic. But it's something you could then work through as to what her beliefs are. And we did to an extent, but she didn't keep coming for therapy and I dunno what happened to her. Maybe she's done that. Maybe it's all working out fine. This,
Somebody, somebody needs two for every. For everybody that loses and people lose a, lose a lot of money. At Las Vegas. There's somebody who wins.
But it's something not to go into with any degree of naivety, which is what I felt she was doing. What I like to encourage people to do before they set their smart goals is to think really, really, really, really, really big. And to do almost the opposite of smart. So not specific, not measurable, not realistic, not attainable, maybe time orientated to a degree, and any of them can be to a degree.
But basically just to let yourself go to a place where there are no restrictions, there are no rules. No rules of physics, so you could fly to the moon if you wanted to. No limits in terms of money, no restraints, as in other people. No fear, nothing. Nothing at all to get in the way of your goals and then to think, what would you like?
mm.
This is where the time comes in because it's sort of what would you like soonish? Not what would you like the world to be like in 5,364 years time? That sort of doesn't quite work, but sort of what if all restrictions were taken away? What do you want
So a little bit like the the miracle question that we ask clients sometimes, that if you woke up tomorrow morning and overnight a miracle had taken place and all the things that you wanted to achieve had happened to you, what would you notice? How would you know that sort of thing. Because then you can pick things apart and go, look, let's figure out what you really want. I go, well, I want a million pounds. Okay, imagine you get the million pounds. What are you gonna do with it?
And then you can, with those answers, figure out your values, your, your actual goals, what it is that you want, the things that will fulfill you, the things that will help you sleep at night. And it might not be that it's having a million quid in the bank. It might be that, oh, I'm gonna, I'll be able to spend more time with my family. Oh, it's the family then. Okay. They're your priorities
I would, guarantee it's not that you want a million pounds, it's, you want what the million pounds gives you. And that's, that's the next step is when you've got your ideas of what you want. If you want to fly to the moon if you want to set up a home on the floor of the Pacific Ocean and live with all the sea creatures at the bottom of the ocean.
If you want to be the next big thing in Hollywood, if you want to score the winning goal in the World Cup final whatever it might be, that can then tell you as you step it downwards to a specific, to a measurable, to a realistic. It can get you to finding out what you actually really do want in life.
Yeah, because it might be, you wanna be the next big thing in Hollywood, or you wanna score that goal in the World Cup final. Why? What's that gonna give you? Well, I'll be proud. So it's pride you want It's not the goal. It's not the goal in the World Cup.
pride or recognition to be seen.
Recognition. I wanna be loved, I wanna be seen. Yeah.
I've been, I've been thinking about whether I can say this one. I'm, I can because it'll be very, not at all recognizable, but somebody I did this with once wanted to be a sumo wrestler. And anybody less like sumo wrestler, you could not imagine. And that was about not being discounted. had somebody else who wanted to run a bar in the Maldives that was about escape from current situations.
And when you bring these things back, you start to then bring in the barriers that there are to these things. So, if you, for example, Richard if you did this exercise and you thought, oh, I really want to go and run a bar in the Maldives, well that doesn't work because of your family. So you need to then find a way to do that within the structure that you've got. So it's always about finding Yeah. The values, the feeling, the feeling that you get within and.
to, to anybody who's listening to this, just really let yourself go. Some people, when I've done it, they've come up with things that I would think were not really very huge. I mean, a word I often use is make it ridiculous. So flying to the moon is ridiculous because you can't do it. You know, even Jeff Bezos hasn't gone to the moon, so that's, that's ridiculous. But, That's, so that's a good thing in this exercise. Make it ridiculous.
And then you step back to the, okay, well how do I get what that would represent and how do I do that within my current structure? And if I can't do it within my current structure, which is gonna give? So, it's a great exercise and not least because you get all the nice feelings that you can from, from imagining. It's like a sort of adult style daydream. It's a sort of grown up daydream of letting yourself think, what if?
A lot of people do that with things like, Imagining winning the lottery or scoring the goal in the World Cup final or whatever, but actually use those daydreams to inform you. And so then set, set your goals. And going back to one thing you said earlier, which is if you don't have a plan, you just wander around. If you don't have a goal if you were taking two weeks off work and you had no plan and no goal, well, you're probably not gonna go anywhere.
I guess what we're saying here is figure out what works for you. You do what works for you, and everybody is gonna need or want something different, and not everybody is gonna do well with their New Year's resolutions. Hey, guess what? Doesn't matter. It's fine. Forgive yourself. It doesn't matter. Some will do really, really well. Well done Still doesn't matter. Doesn't make you a better person. Sorry, You're still lovable. Whether you, whether you fail or succeed, it's fine. It doesn't matter.
But isn't there always a middle ground between not trying hard enough and, and trying too hard? Absolutely. You, you work out what's right for you. And with it being a new year and these sort of things are gonna be on people's minds, it would be good to follow up on this, I think next week, and we'll look at how to keep going with all of this. Help with the motivation side of it.
When I first started in practice as hypnotherapist, I thought that January will be the really, really busy time. Because that's when people are
Ah.
to make changes. What I've discovered is no, February. January, people think that they can do it themselves. And as going back to what I said before about we only see the ones who don't. A lot of people do manage to do things on their own, but no, it's. Later. It's when they've discovered that they can't do it on their own. So yeah. Next week let's talk about some motivational ideas to help people keep going, get back on track or just start from a week next Wednesday, that sort of idea.
It doesn't have to be the first and then not succeeding, whatever. So there'll be some ideas we can share with our lovely listeners then.
Absolutely. And do feel free to get in touch about your goals, your ideas and things that you might be struggling with. And we'll see if we can include it in the episode. We'll talk about it, we'll natter about it. Absolutely fine. Hey, leave us a rating or review on whatever app you use. If you use Apple Podcasts or whichever app that you listen to this on. Find us in the podcast store that you've listened to this on. Give us a five star review.
If you think we are worth five stars, give us a nice review cause people do tend to look at that. Most people only need reviews for things if they're angry or emotional, which is usually negative. I saw a review once for gardener's question time, that said, who do you wanna listen to? Gardener's question time. One star. Well, you didn't, and you still reviewed you weirdo what's going on there?
Oh, people are weird. But whilst we are talking about this, can I give a plug please to your Patreon site and suggest that anybody who's listening to this, who's not one of Richard's patrons that you might like to consider being one, because you get a lot for it. You get. Content, speedier delivery of things and more contact, I guess. So
Yeah, I,
and I, can say that because I, don't benefit, so I'm, I'm just saying that, that you will benefit if you are one of Richard's patrons.
Yeah, and, and, and it does keep all the work that I do advert free and sponsor free cuz I don't wanna put adverts on my podcast projects so I have a sponsor or something like that that doesn't feel right, that doesn't fit right for me. If you like what I do and you want to contribute, then yeah, join me on Patreon. Where for, I think works out about six pound a month, something like that.
And you get an episode from me every Monday along with a hypnotherapy track, and we get, there's a community side of it. You get to chat with me that I, cause I can't chat to everybody on social media. I get a lot of direct messages. I can't, I can't, there isn't, there aren't enough hours in the day. but on Patreon and I can whittle it down to just you lovely people so we can chat and that, that's really, really sweet. So yeah, feel free.
there's a lot of content there and it's cheaper than face-to-face therapy or one-to-one therapy, although it's not gonna completely replace therapy. That's what I say about my content. But if you're on a waiting list, which is not a bad place to be sometimes This is a good help along the way as well. So yeah, do come on board on Patreon and help support what I do. In the meantime, enjoy your week and we will be back next week. Absolutely indeed. Happy New Year. See you next time folks. Bye.