The importance of being playful

When it comes to managing our lives, and especially our careers, we can be so terribly, and stiflingly earnest. It’s like it’s this serious weighty problem we have to solve, and that the only way to solve it is to spend all our time making To Do lists and five year plans, and screwing up our foreheads and trying to come up with the most effective, efficient, sensible, pragmatic, responsible life choices. In other words, we feel like we have to be an ‘adult’ – and that this means leaving behind the playful, exploratory, intuitive way we went about our lives as children.

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How to embrace failure (and let it lead to success)

It’s weird but I feel kind of nervous sitting down to write about this topic… I have a sick, heavy feeling in my stomach right now and a thudding heart. And yet, I know that I can’t allow myself to run away from the prospect of failure yet again. Not this time.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have grown up believing that failure is something to be avoided at all costs.

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How to cope when life chucks you a curveball

As the great man, Bowie, said: "Turn and face the strange, Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes" and this feels particularly resonant to me as I prepare, this week, for a major change in my working life, leaving London to work remotely in Asia as a ‘Digital Nomad’. As I left my office at the university on Wednesday, I was a bit sad to leave lovely colleagues behind but the overwhelming feeling was of excitement at the uncertainty and sense of possibility this new life brings.

Which got me thinking about change, and the very different emotions it can bring up in you. 

 And more specifically about the difference between big life changes you’ve chosen and ones you haven’t...

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