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 today you'll learn all about phenomenology.

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

How do, folks? Have you had a good month? If you have, I wonder how you knew.

What was it that you've experienced that made it good?

Because it's quite possible that you've had exactly the same week as someone else,

and they might have felt that they'd had a bad week. It's all a matter of perspective, isn't it?

But the thing is, if it felt like a bad week, then it was a bad week, even if in hindsight

there was nothing bad about it if you were to compare it to someone else's.

You see, it's really common for someone to either say to me in their therapy session or to

write to me in an email, something like, I shouldn't feel this bad,

other people have a worse life than me. And you know what? They're probably right, aren't there?

Let's be fair. It's true to say that all of us right now are in a better position than someone,

somewhere else, on this planet. But to be honest, that's irrelevant,

actually. Knowing that somebody somewhere is having a worse time than you doesn't mean that you're

wrong to be hurting. It shouldn't mean that you can't feel pain or grief or rejection.

One person's experience is going to be completely different to someone else's, and it's

worth being aware of that for many reasons.

Some of you listening might remember the ITN news presenter, Alistair Stewart.

He had to resign from presenting the news on ITV a couple of years ago now,

because in a Twitter spat with a politician, he quoted Shakespeare,

...