The picture was of playing cards, carefully stacked and balanced, about six cards tall and I thought ‘wow! What an achievement!’ I realised that as I had observed the image, I had been holding my breath so as not to destroy this work of art.

It set me thinking.

What if something in life felt like that house of cards?

Think about it. We spend so much time, energy, determination, persistence and patience building it all up. It takes bravery, resilience, courage, stamina and faith to keep the progress going knowing that one false move could mean it all comes crashing down around us. A catastrophe, a disaster!

Or would it be?

Yes, definitely, initially. Despair, anger, upset, you name it, it would probably be there. However, just for a moment, maybe relief also?

Let me explain; how much anxiety, stress, worry, tension and fear could be attributed to maintaining this fragile structure? Has it left you feeling exhausted, overwhelmed just thinking about it?

So, what does the tower represent?

Possibly something in your life. For example, a relationship, a role, a situation.

It will be something that you can recognise as not being entirely stable, taking more than its fair share of work to keep going and feeling like a bit of a drain.

It might be something that we willingly signed up for a while ago, but now has become burdensome. It just doesn’t seem to ‘fit’ anymore.

When I speak to clients about this, I often refer to the “Wheel of Life” which categorises the 8 sections of what usually makes up a life and asks for a rating. The higher the rating, the happier or more satisfied the person is with that section. And the opposite is an indicator of which sections may need a little care and attention or, indeed, some radical pruning to become better.

Its main benefit is that it helps to distil the all-encompassing statements, such as, my life is rubbish to something more manageable as well as highlighting what is already going well or is ok at least. This is really important, as we often totally ignore the good parts in favour of focusing on the negative elements. This is due to our natural negative bias. For more info on this, please click this link.

When we realise that there are areas or situations where change could be useful, the next step is to acknowledge it and be curious about what can be done. You will have lots of ideas on how to handle the various changes and will probably make a plan. It’s a great help to actually write all this down as opposed to just thinking it in your head. Writing about things, brainstorming or just employing a brain dump exercise can all be seen as journal writing. If you are interested in finding out more about this effective method, please click this link.

If, however, you feel that talking it over would be helpful to gain clarity and support with making some changes, please contact me for a free, no obligation chat.