Written

When thinking about whatever goal we want to reach in any area of our lives, Oettingen suggests we use a process called ‘mental contrasting’ – have your dream but then visualise some of the personal barriers and impediments that might stop you from achieving that dream. This mental contrasting approach, or as we call it ‘obstacle thinking’, is some

Shonda Rhimes.20 She says that a lot of people dream and ‘while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, powerful, engaged people? Are busy doing.’

‘when we realize that the best among us in various areas do not occupy that perch because they were born with some innate talent but rather because they have developed their abilities through years of practice.’9

‘I write when I want to,’ Italian novelist Elena Ferrante is reported as saying.8 She claims not to have any kind of routine and has no fixed schedule either, saying, ‘I write continuously and everywhere and at every hour of the day and night.’ But she does know that she needs some pressure: ‘If I don’t feel the urgency to write, there is no propri

Write your goal as a simple sentence. You are aiming for a stretch, so push beyond what you are capable of right now. Next, get specific in order to create a plan. Using SMART, make your goal specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timed.

What is a suitable timeline for you? If you have a long-term ambition, set a final date (even if it’s a rough estimate) and then add in milestones along the way to break the goal down.

It would be an understatement to say that many of us have a tricky relationship with writing. Often, it’s the thing that we desperately want to do, but it’s also the thing that we stop doing – or indeed, never start.

Rather than discovering that resilient individuals were possessed of extraordinary talents and skills, the evidence showed that resilience is common. Masten’s thesis is a simple one: ‘Resilience arises from “ordinary magic” and it is possible to understand where it comes from and how to foster it.’

‘Telling myself to sit down to write for two hours and write 1,000 words feels intimidating because I feel obligated about the end result,’ said Harrison Moore. ‘So now, I take the approach of taking a word and playing around with it, perhaps doing some freewriting, taking a quote from an archive and exploring what it means.’ Instead of giving hers