Posts by Esther Wane
A Meaningful Life
“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’”. Victor Frankl was a survivor of several concentration camps and the father of logotherapy, a branch of therapy that looks to help people by focusing on the meaning of their lives. The creation of this was his why. He survived years…
Read MoreSpark Joy
Over a year ago I was browsing in a bookshop and picked up Marie Kondo’s book “Spark Joy” to have a look at it. I flicked through the pages on the neat tidying of clothes and ordered folding of things and put it back down again, certain that was all a bit…
Read MoreMindset – Where we start is not where we end.
What if talent didn’t determine where your life would take you? What if there was no such thing as failure? What if those who believed they were brilliant actually struggled more than those for whom learning was a challenge? According to Dr Carol S. Dweck in her book ” Mindset” that is quite possibly the…
Read MoreThe Path
We live in an age of incredible freedom. We know how to determine the direction our lives will take. The truth of who we are lies within us. These statements are false. Instead we are living in a state of constant flux, we don’t have full control of the reaction to our actions and who…
Read MoreThe Chimp Paradox
“How are you?” “Fine,” meaning fucked up, insecure, neurotic and emotional. It’s at these moments that I guess Prof Steve Peters would say we are being controlled by our chimp, our chimp being our emotional brain that can either drive us to succeed and be happy or dive under the duvet in the hope that…
Read MoreThe Noise of Time
“Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time.” This is the central theme of the novel by Julian Barnes exploring Shostakovich’s experience as a composer living in Soviet Russia. He starts the novel waiting by the elevator with his suitcase, ready to be taken by Power to the Big House, from…
Read MoreWhen Breath Becomes Air
“You seek what life is in death, Now find it air that once was breath.” Baron Brooke Fulke Greville Thus starts Paul Kalanithi’s memoir where he questions what is the purpose of life in the face of death. It is a human question. We are blessed and cursed with a consciousness that leaves us at once…
Read MoreA Room of My Own
Virginia Woolf asserted that for a woman to create fiction she needed a room of her own and an income of £500 per year. This would allow her the freedom to write what she wanted, what lived in her heart and her mind, in spite of society’s consideration that the products of these were largely…
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