Words such as "depressed" and "anxious" don’t exist in some American Indian and Alaska Native languages. Quite a contrast from modern society, where The World Health Organization names depression as the single leading cause of disability globally.

If you were born after 1945, you’re 10 times more likely to experience depression. From 2005-15, cases of depressive illness increased by nearly a fifth. Around 1 in 5 people won’t make it through the year without having a battle with mental illness.

In the past, forests had fewer but larger, healthier trees. With fewer fires, trees have to compete with undergrowth for nutrients and space. Fire takes away weaker trees and debris, which brings greater health to a forest.

Change is essential to maintain a healthy forest. There are species of trees, which are entirely fire-dependent. Others have fire resistant cones that require heat to open and release seeds for regeneration. They actually encourage fire by having leaves that are covered with flammable resins. Without fire, many trees would succumb to old age with no new generations to carry on their legacy.

Unlike the natural world, we tend to resist change and settle for stagnancy over discomfort and growth.

Why go through the struggle of metamorphosis? Try reading the stories of Robyn Davidson, Clare Dunn and Elizabeth Gilbert and you can’t help but feel compelled to.

This urging to individuate resides in us all. Suffering and becoming authentic is the ultimate alchemy.

Embrace it.

Welcome it.

And remember what Janet Fitch said:

“The Phoenix must burn to emerge.”

Archetypes help us feel rooted in history and eternity, transcending the rootless and emptier elements of contemporary life.

They help us avoid what Jung called the participation mystique, where our individuality is dissolved by our need for group approval and belonging. Mythologist Joseph Campbell reflected on the enduring power of story to stir the human spirit, labelling it as the song of the universe.

Laurence Boldt suggested that the key to tapping into the power of story is being able to identify with the characters we read about:

The heroic life lives in dormancy in all and in active expression in the great men and women. What does it take to transfer that beauty into an active force in our own lives? IDENTIFICATION. We must be able to identify with the hero as being fundamentally like ourselves.

How many relationships do you know of that you would regard as high functioning and responsible for bringing out the best in each person?

Neuroscientist Bianca Acevedo and her colleagues took brain scans of people in long-term relationships and discovered that only 10% were fulfilling and happy.

Most people struggle to nurture the conditions necessary for a flourishing relationship and maintain interactions that result in passionate coupledom, which the researchers dubbed as ‘swans’.

The midlife passage (ages 35-55) is the most treacherous of our lives according to life phases expert, Gail Sheehy.

Midlife calm is not a phrase in the lexicon but midlife crisis certainly is.

Dictionaries define it as: a loss of self-confidence and feeling of anxiety or disappointment that can occur in early middle age.

Midlife cycles involve major mood shifts and physiological changes. Menopause for women and men. Most men notice a steep decline in sex drive while many woman experience a letting go of identities forged on appearances. Roles based on people pleasing and gaining societal approval wear thin. A crises of authenticity is just one of many that emerge.

The dancer and musician Gabrielle Roth shared some potent wisdom when she said:

“In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions:

When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? Especially the stories of your own life?”

Indigenous cultures also held the view that the only thing we truly own in life is our stories.

An outlier is defined as Something that lies outside the main body or group that it is a part of, such as a distant island belonging to a cluster of islands.

The term was popularised recently when Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book on the subject of what leads to success. In researching successful people he found that “the biggest misconception about success is that we do it solely on our smarts, ambition, hustle and hard work.”

Gladwell argued that all successful people experienced various strokes of luck. Carl Jung and others would prefer replacing the word luck with synchronicity, the idea that when you go after something in life; the universe tends to meet you half way. Gladwell also spoke of timing.

In order to understand the popularity of plant medicine, shamanism and alternative approaches to health and self-improvement a great resource one can explore is the 2020 documentary “AWARE – Glimpses of Consciousness.”

It looks at the science behind consciousness. A brain scientist, a plant behaviorist, a healer, a philosophy professor, a psychedelics scientist, and a Buddhist monk each offer their perspectives on the big questions such as:

What is consciousness? Is it in all living beings? Why are we predisposed for mystical experience? And what happens when we die?

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer tended to be a rather grim and stoic character. With the benefit of age and having lived quite a self-reflect life, he was able to eventually find a sense of interconnection with the cosmos.

Schopenhauer had this to see about how empowering it can be to see yourself as the hero of your own story:

“When you reach a certain age and look back over your life, it seems to have had an order. It seems to have had been composed by someone. And those events that when they occurred seemed merely accidental and occasional and just something that happened, turn out to be the main elements in a consistent plot. Who composed this plot?

Of all the myths causing heartache, few compare to the one which says that once we track down our elusory soulmate, everything will fall into place for us.

Anaïs Nin put it succinctly when she said: “Where the myth fails, human love begins.”

The philosopher Alain de Botton put the challenge of relationships in a different way, suggesting that love is a skill we have to learn more than it is an enthusiasm to enjoy.

“Our feeblest contemplations of the cosmos stir us, there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.” - Carl Sagan.

If the celestial beauty of the universe evokes such a response in rationally minded scientists, consider what it awakens in those with an openness to the transpersonal.

A radical rethink of our relationship to money is needed if we are to readdress the imbalances behind climate change, poverty, unhappiness and so many other social issues.

Some years ago Ken Robinson made waves in the realm of education by arguing that we need to move away from the archaic manufacturing model of education to take an approach more like organic farming. Instead of squeezing people into narrow moulds and creating compliant consumers, Robinson suggested we cultivate the uniqueness of individuals and help them find a fit in a society where they can best offer their gifts.

Life Review Therapy involves combing through the chapters of your life to look for patterns and behaviours that are serving or hindering. Our End of Year Exploration program can help you with this process of growth and self-discovery.

What better way to see out one year and welcome in the next.

As T.S Eliot pointed out:

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.