My darkest moments came within my second week of university. I was hardly sleeping a wink, not washing myself, nor eating properly. Shortly after I was prescribed anti-depressants but it was the books and online resources that paved the way for my return to functionality.

Life Management
Your Pocket Life Coach, by Carole Gaskell

The principle being to “spend 10 minutes per day spring cleaning your life.” It's centred around the ‘Wheel of Life’ structure to leading a better life. It looks at ways of firstly rating the eight segments of the wheel (listed below) and then improving each aspect separately. You start by attributing a score to each segment and the tackling the lowest score or segment you deem the most important at the time.

1.Friends & Family
2.Relationship (i.e. partner)
3.Finance
4.Career
5.Hobbies & Interests
6.Health & Fitness
7.Physical Environment (i.e. home and at work)
8.Personal Development

If you are single, I would personally recommend working segments first before seeking out a partner since you'll have more to offer and as a result feel better about yourself going into a relationship.


Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Feeling Good Handbook by David D. Burns

Or as I like to call it, The Bible! It's fundamentally based on the fact that how we behave is determined by how we feel and how we feel is determined by what we are thinking. This is the sequence in order. So, if we tackle the problem at the source i.e. the “10 forms of twisted thinking” then we will feel better and hence act in more beneficial and self-protecting ways. It’s worth re-iterating: negative thoughts lead to negative feelings which lead to negative behaviour such as withdrawal and self-harm. Conversely, positive thoughts lead to positive feelings which lead to enriching behaviour patterns.

A well coined phrase is to “Swat those NATs!” (negative automatic thoughts). When such a thought enters your head, question it first before accepting it. Does it have any of the distortions outlined below? What evidence is there to support such a thought being true? When you get good at this it can actually be quite fun to cast aside such nonsensical thoughts so effortlessly.

There is much, much more to this book but here are the “10 forms of twisted thinking”:

1.All-or-nothing thinking
2.Overgeneralisation
3.Mental filter
4.Discounting the positive
5.Jumping to conclusions
6.Magnification
7.Emotional reasoning
8.“Should” statements
9.Labelling
10.Personalisation and blame


Mood Gym, website, click here...
An excellent interactive and free CBT re source. You will need to invest some time in order for you to understand your personality and identify the ‘thinking traps’ you regularly fall into but it will definitely be worth it.


Goals and Values
NLP: The New Technology of Achievement by NLP Comprehensive, Steve Andreas and Charles Faulkner

NEURO: Our "Nervous System" through which experience is received and processed via the five senses.

LINGUISTIC: Our language and non-verbal communication systems through which neural representations are coded, ordered, and given meaning.

PROGRAMMING: The ability to organise our communication and neurological systems to achieve specific desired goals and results.

This approach examines the importance of having goals and living by your values. It provides you with a comprehensive list of values for you to evaluate. For example, my personal values are challenge, excitement, fairness, freedom, fulfilment, fun, happiness, health, helping, honesty, humour, learning, love, mastery, order, solving problems, using my abilities. If you are spending your time on things that neither contribute towards your goals nor represent any of your values then you are wasting your time and your mind will be in conflict. Secondly, spend time with people who have talents that you wish to emulate.

(i) The “NLP presuppositions” are:

1.The map is not the territory
2.Experience has a structure
3.The meaning of the communication is the response you get
4.There is a positive intention motivating every behaviour and a context in which every behaviour has value
5.The resources an individual needs in order to effect a change are already within them
6.We cannot NOT communicate
7.If one person can do something, anyone can learn to do it
8.The mind and body are the parts of the same system
9.There is no Failure only Feedback
10. People are always making the best choice available to them
11. If what you are doing is not working, do something else, anything else

(ii) With respect to goal-setting, the “Well-Formedness Conditions for an Outcome” are:

1. Positive: What do you want?

2. Sensory Specific: How will I recognise when you have this? / How will you know when you have this?

3. Contextualised: Where and when do you want to have this resource?/Where and when do you not want this resource?

4. Self achievable: It is very important that the outcome must be within their own realm of influence i.e. is something over which the person has control; What resources do you need to be able to achieve this? / What do you need to do to achieve this? / Is this something which you, yourself, can achieve? / Or does it require that OTHER people behave in a certain way?

5. Ecological: The advantages and the disadvantages. There are always disadvantages in making a change - being alert to these keeps the person `at cause' by making it their choice; What are the advantages of making this change? / What are the disadvantages of making this change? /What will achieving this lose you? Become?

6. Worthwhile: The motivation question - which of your values will be fulfilled by achieving this outcome? /What's important to you about getting this? / What will this outcome help you avoid feeling? / What is the benefit of this outcome?

Bookworm