‘It’s only human to find other people annoying. It happens to all of us….. I’m happy to tell you there’s a solution to the problem. If you want someone to be easy to deal with, to behave in a way you find tolerable, there’s really only one way: learn to like them exactly as they are. Because, when has anyone…ever become more like someone else thought they ought to be, simply because that person walked around judging them?’ Bjorn Natthiko Lindeblad
Category: Thought for the month
Thought for February 2023
‘Forgiveness…..is giving up the hope of a better past’ Richard Holloway
Thought for January 2023
‘“Don’t believe your every thought.” Few things have helped me more in life. Unfortunately, that superpower, which we all possess, is often overlooked. But the fact is that approaching our own thoughts with a measure of scepticism and humour makes it infinitely easier to be you and me.
What do you gain from not unquestioningly believing every thought that flashes through your mind? Something as invaluable as a true and genuine inner confidant. Someone who is always on your side…….Where’s the dignity, where’s the freedom, in a life where you believe everything you think?’ Björn Natthiko Lindeblad
Thought for December 2023
‘we sense that something is missing in our lives and search the world for it, not understanding that what is missing is us.’ Parker J Palmer
Thought for November 2022
’Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.’ Rollo May
Thought for October 2022
’The compassion you have for yourself is the greatest gift you can give to others’ Judith Lasater
Thought for August 2022
’The more you try to manage your time with the goal of achieving a feeling of total control, and freedom from the inevitable constraints of being human, the more stressful, empty and frustrating life gets.’ Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks.
Thought for July 2022
On Friendship
‘When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that is is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.’
Henri Nouwen
Thought for June 2022
‘If only it were so simple. If only there were evil people somewhere in cities committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, and who is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?’ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Thought for May 2022
‘Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it‘ Rumi
Susannah Izzard Psychotherapy 