My friend, I have a confession. For the last few months, most evenings after my "real" job finished and the house had gone quiet, I have been back at my desk with a notebook, a cup of tea gone cold, and my brain absolutely fizzing. I went back to school. Not in the terrifying, uniform and homework sense. But properly studying, late into the night, rewinding videos, taking notes, practising on anyone who would sit still long enough. I have been training with Paul McKenna's excellent School of...

Growth gets talked about like it’s a big, dramatic makeover. New year, new you. Reinvent yourself. Become a completely different human by next Tuesday. But real growth? The kind that actually sticks? It’s usually quieter than that. It’s the tiny choices you make when nobody’s clapping. It’s the boring, unsexy stuff you do on a random Wednesday evening because you’ve decided your life is worth building. And honestly, giving up alcohol cracked growth wide open for me. Alcohol-free life didn’t...

If you’ve found yourself repeatedly searching things like “am I an alcoholic?”, “signs of alcoholism”, “is my liver damaged?” or “how much is too much alcohol?” - you’re not alone. And you’re not “dramatic” or “attention-seeking” for checking. That late-night Googling is usually a sign of something deeper: your brain is trying to reduce uncertainty and soothe anxiety… while also trying to keep alcohol in the picture. That tug-of-war has a name. It’s called cognitive dissonance, and it’s...