The Richard Nicholls Podcast

Why can seemingly intelligent people believe myths that have no evidence to support them? Put on your tin foil hat and let's find out shall we.

Confidence can be a tricky subject to talk about because its so big and ambiguous. What is confidence to one person is arrogance to someone else. Also, someone can be confident but still be anxious in certain situations, so it's even hard to define it really.

I've had a lot of messages from listeners asking for mental health advice during all this Coronavirus craziness. It's on every website, every news channel. Every conversation you overhear in a shop. It's on everyones minds and so it should be...to a degree.

Question: When is an Eagle not an Eagle? Answer: When it thinks it's a Chicken. Despite being an Eagle, if you think you're a Chicken can you really fly above everyone?

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. Or as Albert Einstein once said "He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed." Today is all about my 5 tips on a more enthusiastic life! That and a massive rant at the end about mental health priorities in government policy making, sorry!

Despite New Year being a time associated with making changes, today I want to talk about what seems at first like the opposite of change. Although it might still be a change, and might even be the best one you could ever make. Because there are surprising benefits that come from accepting yourself as you are, in making the decision to not changing and instead enjoying being you in the first place.

Today is all about having meaning and purpose to your life, something that crops up a lot in emails from listeners and definitely comes up in the therapy room.

Today is all about having meaning and purpose to your life, something that crops up a lot in emails from listeners and definitely comes up in the therapy room.

Over the last couple of years I've had a few messages from listeners about their fear of an uncertain future, and it's cropped up in the consulting room quite a lot too. One thing that has been a big cause of it has been Brexit. Not knowing whether something about your future is going to be easier, more difficult, or exactly the same isn't helpful. We like routines, our brain loves the idea that tomorrow is going to be the same as yesterday. If we're alive today then yesterday must have been safe and so our instincts want tomorrow to be the same. And life just isn't like that.

October 10th is World Mental Health Day, and this years focus is on suicide prevention. Suicide is twice as common as Homicide and is the second biggest cause of death in people under 30. In todays episode I hope to provide some insight into how to spot suicidal ideation in friends and family, and hopefully open up some conversations so as to prevent the worst happening.

One question that I get asked quite often is "What's the difference between a fear and a phobia?" In short, a fear of something is fairly rational, even if we might think that there's no need for us to fear it, the fear still makes some sense. If someone has a fear of public speaking that makes sense, although what there probably fearing is rejection from their peers but it still makes sense. Whereas a phobia...

Ever heard of The looking-glass self? The looking-glass self is a concept created by sociologist Charles Horton Cooley back in 1902. It states that rather than a person's sense of self growing out of their own internal perceptions it instead grows out of the interactions with and the perceptions of other people. In a nutshell it can be summed up with the following phrase “I am not what I think I am and I am not what you think I am; I am what I think that you think I am.”

Nudging and avoiding a nudge is quite important. If you've never heard that phrase outside of a Monty Python sketch you will do now. Because to nudge, in psychology, means to subtly influence someones behaviour, often without them being aware of it, by altering the environment slightly and is surprisingly successful.

Introversion has been on my mind a lot lately as I've had quite a few clients who are introverts but don't fully understand it and think that there's something wrong with them. So today I want to go into a bit of detail about introversion to help you understand yourself better if you are one, and help you to understand others better if you're not.

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week and because of that I have an extra episode this month for you! I met up with Bobby Temps today of The Mental Podcast to talk about what we can all do to begin the process of destigmatising mental health. He's a great guy, have a listen.