What's been good?

Hang on a second. Last month was a scone. Today she's posting a picture of crumpets. 'How on earth are crumpets related to mental health?' I hear you asking!

Listen folks - my physical world is as small as anyone's at the moment, so I have to work with what I've got.

But actually the crumpets do have specific significance.

In the sessions with my clients, as part of the work we do with their thought processes and how they use their minds, I ask them to reflect on what's been good about their week.

I do this because you have to engage your intellectual mind, the left prefrontal cortex, to come up with positive thoughts.

So asking 'what's been good?' is a useful way to get people out of their primitive minds and into their intellectual minds - the mind that can come up with solutions. That's the mind we want to engage with in solution focused hypnotherapy.

So now when I talk to my friends and family I tend also to ask them 'What's been good?' since I last caught up with them, because I know I am helping them towards a more positive place mentally.

I was chatting with a friend recently and one of her positives on this particular day was that that morning she'd opened up the bread bin and found there was a crumpet left that she didn't know about. She was able to have it for breakfast.

My friend loves crumpets, so that was notched up as a positive as far as she was concerned: A bonus crumpet for breakfast.

I too am a fan of crumpets and had them for breakfast this morning - hence this photo - and crumpets make me smile even more now because I remember the smile on my friend's face as she told me about her bonus crumpet!

So this is just another illustration of how small a positive thought can be, but how powerful it can be.

A positive thought can allow you to 'step away' from the primitive part of your brain that can play an anxious, worried, negative narrative on a loop.

A positive thought can plonk you into your intellectual mind and this is the mind that makes logical and rational assessments of situations - the mind that tends to get things right in life. And isn't the mind we'd like to be operating from throughout our day?

So let me ask you: What's been good today? What's your bonus crumpet?