I posted yesterday on the first, "Needs" section of the "Needs, beliefs, behaviours" diagram (below).  Today I want to say a little about the second section of the diagram - "Beliefs".

This diagram is downloadable both as a Powerpoint slide and as a PDF file. 

If you want others to be happy, practise compassion.  If you want to be happy, practise compassion.    Dalai Lama 

Yesterday was the ninth evening of this "Life skills" training.  I wrote about the eighth session last week.  The sequence of regular weekly classes now moves on to increasing gaps between sessions - so it's three weeks until the tenth, a further five weeks until the eleventh, and then an additional eleven weeks until the final twelfth session.  My hope is that we will be able to arrange occasional follow-up meetings even after that.

"Better together: Scotland's patient experience programme" works to use the public's experience of NHS Scotland to improve health services.  At the end of April they published provisional results for GP Practices throughout Scotland, and pilot results for a few initial hospitals are beginning to come through as well.  I find this fascinating, sobering, helpful stuff. 

Nearly every year for the last twenty years I've come down to a four day Spring residential "Mixed Group" in Cumbria.  I wrote about this group last year and the year before, and I'm also involved with a similar pattern of autumn "Men's Groups".

(this short form of the self-compassion scale is downloadable both as a PDF file and as a Word doc)