Earlier this year I used Google Analytics to identify the most read pages on this website and I wrote the post "Update on website traffic: the ten most popular blog posts". I then wondered - "What are my own personal favourites?" and I quickly realised that the posts that I've written that have had the most impact on me and my practice as a therapist are nearly always made up of sequences of blog posts rather than just individual items. I said that glancing back over the last year or so, themes that stood out included mindfulness, therapist feedback, self-control, conflict, embodied cognition and positive psychology. Going further back still there are the posts about interpersonal groupwork, relationships, therapeutic writing, walking in nature, compassion, exercise, healthy lifestyle, attachment and goal setting.

In June I wrote a series of five posts reporting on a pre-conference workshop (about treating chronic fatigue) and the first day of the British Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) main annual conference, held this year in Leeds.  Then last month I wrote a further couple of posts.  Now here is the eighth and final report in the sequence:

The last day of the BABCP main annual conference in Leeds was the usual mix of presentations & conversations.  I had breakfast with a couple of delightful researchers earnestly discussing the technicalities of a proposed new questionnaire about genital dissatisfaction.  Mm ... not a very appetising topic over the tea & toast. 

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work"   Thomas Edison

In yesterday's post - "Power objects, power postures, power clothes, power prayers: all ways to facilitate change (1st post)" - I introduced recent research highlighting how we can use physical objects and the way we position our bodies to significantly improve our chances of following through on new ways of thinking, feeling & behaving.  In today's post I extend this discussion of ways to help ourselves change to what we wear and what we say to ourselves.

(This post on purpose in life: clarifying future goals & the challenges we will face in achieving them, and yesterday's on purpose in life: reconnecting to meaning & values, have been combined into a handout that is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file)

"Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find it was vanity,
but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible."  
T. E. Lawrence