Wiser Ways

25/12/2025

One of the most powerful and wholesome ways of feeling personally fulfilled is by practicing gratitude.

Practicing gratitude doesn’t require anything other than the opportunity to reflect on what you appreciate about your life. All you have to do is make the effort to notice what you're glad to have and be grateful.

Even those who have challenging lives can find reasons to be grateful. There are almost certainly at least some things in your life that bring you joy, and these can be even more meaningful if you take the time to recognise and appreciate them.

You can also use the things you wish you had to be grateful for to motivate yourself to bring them into your life – if you wish you had more friends to be grateful for, you can give yourself the resolution to meet more people.

Practicing gratitude is very powerful and has the potential to improve your mental health and how you feel about your life while motivating you to find even more ways to be grateful. The holidays can be a good time to start the habit, and you can continue to practice gratitude all year.

24/12/2025

Comparison can be healthy and motivating in certain contexts, but too frequently people are left feeling that they aren’t enough based on what they see online.

Comparison has the best chance of being positive when it’s between people who are similar, especially the amount of time and money they have to spend bettering themselves.

Basing whether you’re happy or not with how you spend your free time against what people show themselves doing online, especially people who create content for a living, has a high chance of causing you to be disappointed with yourself.

When you compare yourself to what you see online, you can easily be made to feel that you aren’t doing enough and feel compelled to take on more to feel better about yourself: buying the products they have, planning a trip abroad, or signing up for a course.

But a great deal of what you see online is staged and the creators aren’t being authentic. They often aren’t as fulfilled as they claim. And even if they were, there’s no guarantee that you would get the same rewards from copying someone else.

Finding motivation online can be highly useful, but you don’t need to have lives like the ones portrayed on social media to be satisfied.

23/12/2025

During this time of year, people can easily become more consumeristic.

Consumerism is the belief that the products and services you buy shape your identity and have the potential to make you a better person. This is an alluring concept: instead of having to invest the energy that’s required to build a distinct identity and discovering how you can express this, you can buy the associated items instead.

Consumerism can be fun, especially during the holidays: seeing seasonal products for sale and finding ways to indulge yourself and the people you care about has the potential to be an enjoyable way to feel festive and generous.

But consumerism rarely provides lasting joy and is more likely to harm your mental health; high levels of consumerism often cause increased stress, depression and guilt.

People get used to new things very quickly, so it’s impossible to stay impressed with purchases long-term, leading to feeling unsatisfied again and buying more, which becomes a cycle. Those who buy beyond what they can afford have the added stressors of financial strain caused by their purchases.

But by being aware of the nature of consumerism: what it asks you to believe about yourself and the harms it can do, you can be less likely to be influenced by these messages.

18/12/2025

17/12/2025