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 is episode 155. It's titled Options and Decisions. And if you're ready, we'll start the show.

It's March. So it must be springtime. Well, it stopped snowing anyway.

And this Siberian beast from the east weird weather is on its last days, I think though, so I hope it is anyway.

So we'd better stockpile sun cream folks, because things are going to be changing.

And not just with the weather.

Changes in the seasons seem to correlate

with changes in life. If things feel different on our outside, it reminds us that we can change

on the inside too, I find, especially as that bit of extra sunlight in the mornings and evenings

wakes up some primal instincts that reminds us that we're not hibernating after all.

And if there are changes that you want to make in your life, now is as good a time as any.

But to be fair, so was last week. There's always a now, but if a fear of change was holding you back in some way in any previous nows, then that needs to be addressed. The thing is, when it comes to making changes, it's easier to not. The emotion attached to staying as you are might only be six out of ten on the pain scale.

But the emotion that comes with changing jobs, ending a relationship, moving house or whatever,

might be seven out of ten. So it's less painful to stay as you are, but there are some things

in life that force us to make choices and we literally cannot

stay where we are. If your landlord is selling your house, you have no choice but to find a new one.

If you're being made redundant and you don't have a stack of cash in a savings account,

then you have no choice but to find a new job. Sometimes these decisions are out of our

hands and it can be scary because

you're forced to stretch your comfort zone, forced to make decisions or choose between options and

that's not easy. I mentioned it before, but it's worth talking about briefly again, but as humans

...