And hello to you and welcome to the Richard Nichols podcast, the Personal Development

podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate and motivate you to be the best you can

be. I'm psychotherapist Richard Nichols and this episode is titled Getting to Know Yourself.

And if you're ready, we'll start the show.

All right there, folks, how are you doing?

I often start these episodes by saying something like, how are you doing?

Sometimes start therapy sessions like that as well, actually. And therapy is a great place to be able to actually answer it properly.

And not just say, oh, fine, how are you? I mean, clients will say that out of habit, but you know,

we're not sitting in a pub having a chin wag. I'm genuinely

interested in how they've been feeling. And after a few sessions, they've hopefully got a bit more

emotional awareness and can answer a bit more honestly, or rather with a bit more understanding

because they've been getting to know themselves a bit more through the therapy.

And this is something that we can all benefit from. It really is actually asking yourself each day,

how am I doing? And not just saying crap and leaving it at that. Now, it might start with just crap or bad,

but by spending a bit more time thinking about it, you might be able to identify more important

feelings. Because if you don't really know how you feel, then you don't know what you want.

And if you don't know what you want, then you don't know what to want. And if you don't know what you want,

then you don't know what to do. And if you don't know what to do, then you'll just play along

with old habits and routines that don't make you feel any better and may have even been the

reason for feeling a bit crappy in the first place. So, ask yourself, how am I doing? Maybe your body feels a bit tight.

Maybe your back is painful or your stomach feels a bit queasy. What does that mean for you?

Is that a stressed feeling? An overwhelm, a lonely feeling? What is it to you? Emotions are called feelings for a reason,

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