Sayings can be very useful ways of briefly capturing important elements of wisdom. For example, the idea of ‘better safe than sorry’ has no doubt helped many people to avoid making rash decisions or launching into situations unprepared. So, they clearly have an important role to play as elements of whatever culture we are brought up in (different cultures will have different sayings, but there will, of course, be many common themes).

But, it isn’t all good news. This is because, for one thing, sayings can be contradictory. Compare ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ with ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’. Sayings therefore have limitations, and so we need to be careful and critical in how we use them. They are simplified representations of complex realities, so they can easily mislead us if we are not careful.

What can be particularly problematic is when a saying is used to justify unwise or unethical behaviour, and that is what I mean by ‘getting trapped’ in a saying – limiting ourselves to a very simplified understanding. For example, I have come across many occasions where people have used ‘Charity begins at home’ as an excuse for not supporting a worthy cause. Now, of course, we can’t support all the worthy causes out there, so people obviously have the right to choose which charities they support and which they don’t. However, charity begins at home can be used as an excuse not to support any humanitarian efforts at all.

Another example would be ‘Boys will be boys’ being used as an excuse for unacceptable behaviour. It also has sexist implications, of course, in implying that there are, or should be, different standards of behaviour between boys and girls. So, we have to be careful to make sure that we don’t allow the very familiarity of certain assumptions to mislead us into thinking that they are therefore valid assumptions.

A further idea expressed in a saying that can be problematic is that of: ‘The grass is always greener on the other side’. This warns us that we should be wary about making changes on the assumption that what we are changing to is better than what we already have. Of course, it is very wise not to get too excited about something until you know more about it and have had chance to weigh up carefully whether it is indeed better than what you already have. But, there is also the danger that adhering too strongly to this saying can make us unduly cautious and conservative, not willing to make changes or try new things. In other words, it can hold us back unnecessarily.

So, what I am definitely not saying is that we should never use sayings, that we should banish them or anything quite so extreme. But, what I am saying is that we have to be careful not to be seduced by the simplicity and familiarity of these adages or allow them to relax our critical faculties and be taken in by ideas that, in certain circumstances at least, can lead us into difficulties. So, when you come across a saying or you find yourself using one, just give a little bit of thought to what assumptions go with that saying and consider whether you are happy to be making those assumptions.

Sayings can be useful as quick summaries of established wisdom, and so they can be very helpful at times. But, we need to be cautious and not give them more credence than they deserve. We have to do our own thinking and not allow a saying to do our thinking for us.

As human beings we are very effective information processors. Our senses are exposed to a huge amount of data every minute we are awake. If you don’t believe me, just look around the room that you are in. Look at the colours, the shapes, the textures. Add to that what you can hear, what you can smell and what you can touch. And, of course, the raw data is just the surface – we also need to look below that surface to take account of the meanings we attach to each of those bits of sense data (and how those bits fit together to make a coherent whole).

So, on a daily basis we are processing and filtering a huge amount of information. In order to remain sane we need to be able to work out which bits of information are important to us and discard the rest, or at least put it to one side for now. We do that by processing the information through two sets of filters, rational and emotional. The rational filter tells us which bits of information matter to us in terms of what we are trying to do, whatever activity we are involved in. For example, if we are reading, as you are doing right now, we focus on the text in order to make sense of it and filter out other information – the keyboard if you are reading on a computer, and so on.

The emotional filter will focus on what matters to us in terms of our feelings, giving attention to those things that appeal to us (at one extreme) and those things that threaten us (at the other). For example, as someone who gets great pleasure from music, I will tend to ‘tune in’ to any music I come across, whereas others who are not great music lovers may not even notice there is music in the background.

One of the implications of all this is that we are perpetually simplifying the complex world around us, constantly finding ways of making hugely complex situations intelligible. This is a necessary part of dealing with the information overload we face on a daily basis. So, this is a good thing. However, there is a danger associated with it – namely, we can try to explain very complex situations in very simple ways. This is where single cause explanations (or monocausal explanations, to use the technical term). It is very rare that that things happen for a single reason. It is usually a combination of factors.

The key term here is ‘confluence’. It refers to how different forces come together to produce a single result. For example, imagine a conflict developing between two people. It could easily be explained monocausally by saying simply: ‘Here are two people who don’t get on’. But, if you look at it more closely, that leaves a number of causal factors out of the picture (not least why they do not get on with each other). Consider the timing. If they don’t get on, why did the conflict arise today, rather than yesterday or tomorrow? Why has it arisen at all? Many people who do not get on simply bypass one another and avoid conflict. And so on.

The notion of confluence means that we need to think holistically – that is, to look at the big picture (what is sometimes called helicopter vision – the ability to rise above a situation). Without this, a reliance on monocausal explanations can lead us into all sorts of difficulties because it involves oversimplifying – and therefore distorting – whatever situation we are involved in.

Perhaps in an ideal world things would never go wrong. But, of course, we don’t live in an ideal world, and things will inevitably go wrong from time to time for each and every one of us. We can do our best before we reach that point to try to make sure that any such problems are avoided or, if they do happen, that their impact is kept to a minimum. But, we can never guarantee that something will not go wrong somewhere along the line. Rising to the challenges of things going wrong is an important part of life, of course, and also offers us a significant source of learning.

So, where does that leave us? Well, this is where the idea of ‘recovery strategies’ comes in. A recovery strategy is a means of trying to rectify a situation that has gone awry, a way of putting things right or at least get as close to that as possible. In many situations, sadly, there cannot be a recovery strategy – that is, the situation is irrecoverable (for example, when someone dies).

There is no limit to the number of potential recovery strategies that we could come up with. Examples of such strategies would include:

• A decision is made that has an adverse effect on you. Can the decision be appealed or blocked in some other way? If not, can you get round it somehow?
• You have unwittingly annoyed, upset or offended someone. Can you resolve the situation by apologising or otherwise undoing the harm done – for example, by clearing up any misunderstandings?
• You have failed to achieve something in the way you had planned to – for example, trying to impress someone. Is there another way in which you can achieve it, another way of impressing that person?
• You have lost someone’s email address and you need to send them a message. Can you get the address from a third party or perhaps phone the person to give them the message instead?

These are fairly straightforward examples, but recovery strategies can also be quite complex at times, depending on the circumstances. None the less, the logic remains the same. It is basically a process of saying to yourself: Something has gone wrong here; what are my options for putting it right as far as possible?

Note that I say options, plural. It is often the case that there will be more than one recovery strategy option available to us. So, this means that, at times, we will need to weigh up carefully the options available to make sure that we are putting ourselves into the strongest position for putting things right. Jumping in to the first one that comes to mind could prove to be very unwise.

A common obstacle to the use of recovery strategies is defeatism, the tendency for people to respond to something going wrong in a negative way, to moan about it and rail against it, rather than to seek to rectify the situation. This reaction will often prove problematic, as it means wrongs that could have been put right remain untouched.

Much of my work in various capacities over the years has involved helping people to recognise, develop and make full use of recovery strategies. Often, the possibility of drawing on one or more recovery strategies was being hampered by a sense of shock (ranging from mild to severe) as a result of whatever it was that had gone wrong. So, it is a valuable lesson to bear in mind that, whenever something does go wrong, we need to include a consideration of recovery strategies in our response to the situation we face.

Throughout my career I have come across people time and time again who are unhappy about one or more aspects of their lives who, when I ask them what they are doing to address those issues, respond with a shrug of the shoulders or the verbal equivalent. It is as if they feel overwhelmed by the situation and therefore adopt a passive approach to it.

I have sometimes felt a bit of a fraud because it has often been the case that my saying: ‘So, what are you going to do about it?’ and helping them to formulate some meaningful answers to that question have been enough to free them up to take some positive steps. The ensuing progress – often very significant progress once they shook off that passivity – would then lead them to tell me how I had worked miracles for them and inspired them. Of course, I may have inspired them to a certain extent, but there were certainly no miracles involved – just a straightforward process of being proactive, of making happen the things that needed to happen.

A key part of what leads to that passivity is that, when people are feeling low, under pressure or otherwise feeling at well below their best, they can feel anxious and unconfident – as if taking the risk of any further pressure leads them to settle for their current unhappy situation (better to be unhappy but coping than to risk trying to improve things and end up not able to cope).

Another factor can be that, when we are under pressure, and especially if we are feeling anxious, it can be difficult to think clearly; we can easily get muddled and feel unsure of ourselves. This can lead to a vicious circle in which anxiety leads to a lack of clear thinking and then struggling to think clearly can make us feel more anxious – and round and round it goes.

But, life does not have to be like this. We can break out of this circle by asking ourselves: So, what are we going to do about it? As I have found myself saying time and time again throughout my career, there are no situations where we have complete control and none where we have no control – there is always something we can do to affect the circumstances we find ourselves in.

First of all, we need to make it clear: What exactly is it that is causing us to feel unhappy? This may seem like an obvious thing to say, but in reality it is very commonly the case that we are not sure what it is that ails us, especially if it is a combination of factors working in tandem.

It can then be helpful to think in terms of three levels of reaction to each of these problems:

1. Solving the problem Is there any way we can solve the problem, whether in the short, middle or long term, with or without support? Is there anyone who can help us with this or support us through the process?
2. Alleviating the problem If we can’t solve the problem and thereby remove it altogether, what can we do to minimise it, reduce its impact and/or steer clear of it as much as possible? Some problems cannot be solved but they can be effectively managed.
3. Accommodating to the problem If you cannot solve the problem, and how far you can alleviate it is fairly limited, what can you do to try to stop the problem from, in effect, ruining your happiness? How can you be reasonably happy despite the problem?

But, remember that we can’t do any of this if we are not clear what the problem(s) are, so get thinking carefully about what exactly the source of the malaise is.

If life never changed, if everything was the same over and over again, we would be very unhappy, bored and far from contented. Same old same old is not a recipe for a life well lived. However, if everything was constantly changing, we would feel very insecure. Imagine getting up each morning and there is little or nothing you can count on to be the same as it was yesterday. We would no doubt feel disorientated.

People often say that the only thing that remains constant is change, as I have argued many times, that is not true. Life is a mixture of changes and constants, but we tend to focus mainly on the changes. This is for three reasons. First, as biological organisms we tend to respond to changes in our environment and will soon learn to take for granted those aspects that remain the same. This is partly a defence mechanism, in the sense that tuning in to changes in our environment helps to alert us to potential threats. In this respect, it is s survival mechanism. Second, changes in our environment bring not only threats, but also opportunities, situations that we can enjoy and benefit from. Third, the mass media, such a powerful influence on behaviour and feelings in this day and age, tend to focus on changes (it is no coincidence that we have the ‘new’ in news and newspapers (oldspapers would not have the same appeal).

So, what we are encountering once again is a need for balance. Too much change will overwhelm us, but too little change will underwhelm us. Of course, when it comes to change, much is beyond our control, but we should not underestimate how much control we do have, in terms of both what changes (or does not) and our reaction to any such changes.

What can be helpful is to think about what we would want to change and what we would want not to change (what we would want to safeguard or preserve). If you are happy with the (relatively)  stable situation you are in, is it safe to do nothing or do you need to take steps to make sure it stays that way (by anticipating what could change the situation in a direction you do not want to go in and ‘heading them off at the pass’)? If you are not happy with a (relatively) stable situation, what can you do to change it? What steps can you take? Who do you need to enlist to support you?

Similarly, if you are happy with the changes you are going through, is there anything you need to do to keep those changes on track and to get maximum benefit from them? And, if you are not happy with changes you are going through, what can you do to either prevent the changes or lessen the impact?

The key to this is what the textbooks call ‘self-efficacy’. It relates to how good (or not so good) we are at managing our lives and achieving what we need to. One of the major obstacles to self-efficacy is underestimating how much control we have over certain circumstances. Of course, there are many things we have no control over and a lot more that we can control only to a limited extent, but that should not prevent us from realising just how much we do have control over. The framework I have presented here can be summarised as:

• if you are happy with the degree of stability you have, safeguard it; if you aren’t, make some changes.
• If you are happy with the degree of change, keep any such changes on track. If you aren’t, do what you can to ameliorate the situation.

The framework is not a panacea, but it is a useful tool for working towards a helpful balance between stability and change.

What I mean by hassle is anything that causes annoyance, slows us down or in any way reduces our quality of life. And, by an audit, I mean a means of weighing up the hassles we face, considering the impact they have on us and trying to do something about them. I am not proposing any sort of formal measurement system, just a listing of those things that give you hassle, a consideration of how significant each of these is and then some thought given to what, if anything, you can do about them.

My career has involved me in helping people address problems and concerns that they are up against. This has often led to situations in which people describe to me what ails them and what is bothering them, and I respond by saying words to the effect of: ‘So, what are you going to do about it?’. The reactions to that question can be very interesting. Often it would be a look of surprise, as if to say: ‘Why didn’t I think of that? – as if it had not occurred to them that there might be a solution to their problem. This would usually be from people who are so bogged down in their problems that they have lost sight of any possible solutions; they survive by adapting to their circumstances, rather than trying to tackle them. Defeatism and cynicism can quickly set in when people are under a great deal of pressure, particularly if they had a generally negative outlook on life to begin with.

Another common reaction would be to simply say: ‘There’s nothing I can do’. When, in response to that, I would propose various steps they could potentially take, there was almost always a reason why they could not do any of them; each of them seemed to be more hassle than it was worth. This would then lead into a discussion about which hassles were worse and what could be done about each of them. In effect, it was a process of choosing your hassles – which are you prepared to put up with and which are you not (something we do very frequently, of course, even if we don’t realise that we are doing it). It comes back to the basic idea that there are always choices, and choices have consequences. A hassle audit can help to make any such choices informed choices.

But it isn’t just problems that can benefit from a hassle audit. Sometimes we can be enthused about a particular project or opportunity and sign ourselves up for it without considering the downside, the actual or potential hassles involved. Is what you are hoping or trying to do worth the hassles involved? It is so very easy for the excitement in some situations to blinker us to the hassle costs involved. So, before you let your enthusiasm get the better of you, think through what hassles you might be letting yourself in for. Of course, there will be many times when the benefits outweigh even a whole host of hassles, but it is better if we are aware of what we are letting ourselves in for, as it is certainly not the case that positives will outweigh the negatives.

Life is not, of course, a hassle-free zone and never will be, but, with a thoughtful approach to hassles, we are better equipped to keep them to a minimum.

For as long as I can remember, people have been saying that there is so much change <em>these days</em>, but ‘these days’ of change have been going on for a long time now for them to be seen as something new. Perhaps a better way to look at it is to acknowledge that there has always been a lot of change, but when we look back over earlier days, it is often the things that stayed constant that we now remember most. And there always will be much that stay constant. You will often hear people say that ‘change is the only constant’, but that simply isn’t true. Think about your own life now. For every thing that is in the process of change, there is much, much more that is staying the same (for now). Our attention in the present is drawn to what is changing (understandably so, because change presents elements of both threat and opportunity), and we tend to lose sight of what is staying the same. But, when we look back over the past, it is often what persisted over time that is to the fore, thereby giving us a slightly distorted picture of the role of change and constancy.

The more complex reality, of course, is that, wherever we look – past, present or future, there will be elements of change and elements of constancy, and the two will be interacting in complex ways. For a long time now there has been a tendency to adopt an oversimplified view of change and not see the fuller picture.

Eastern philosophy can help us make better sense of change, especially in terms of the concept of ‘impermanence’ which refers to the idea that we should not assume everything will stay the same – we should be more tuned in to the fact that change is part and parcel of being alive. If we adopt the expectation that everything should remain constant, then we will be disappointed and possibly even fearful when things do change. This can then create a sense that change is some sort of enemy.

I am certainly not suggesting that we should go to the opposite extreme and adopt the position of some in the management field who seem to think that change is by definition a good thing and something to be promoted uncritically. I remember running a leadership course once from which one of the participants benefited very little. This was because he arrived with the idea that leadership is basically about change management, and he left with exactly the same idea, having filtered out everything I and the other participants said to the contrary over the two days.

Change can be positive, but it can also be negative, catastrophic even, and so we are right to be wary of change. This brings us back to the idea of realism. Optimists like to focus on the positives and are thus likely to see change in positive terms. Pessimists tend to focus on the negatives, and are thus likely to see change in terms of threat. Realists are the people who acknowledge both, who are realistic about the positive potential of change, but are also tuned in to the negative potential too – not fearful, but alert to the possibilities, and thus better placed to take advantage of any opportunities presented by change, but also to guard against any harm that change may bring.

So, when the question of change comes up, beware the danger of oversimplifying it and recognise that approaching it in a spirit of realism will work much better than automatically fearing it or uncritically embracing it.