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CNHC Registered Practitioner.
Registration number CNHC09774
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Hypnotherapy Mindfulness Performance
Emotional Fitness
Welcome to the Blog
Thanks for stopping by! This little corner of the internet is where I share my thoughts, lessons, and the occasional brainwave on performance, mindset, behaviour, coaching and all the curious human stuff in between.
Everything you read here is my opinion—unless you spot a quote. If I know the source, I’ll always make sure it’s credited. I may share why I have that particular opinion or I may not. It’s my blog so I can suit myself. I also take full responsibility for spelling and grammatical errors. Well, we can’t all be perfect.
As time marches on, you’ll find a mix of short, snack-sized reads (perfect with a coffee) and the occasional longer in-depth piece (best paired with a whole pot). My aim? To entertain, educate, and hopefully give you something to chew on long after you’ve gone back to whatever you were meant to be doing. Any form of emotional response is entirely your own.
If you’ve got an idea you’d love me to explore, feel free to get in touch. I’m always open to inspiration. Just a quick note: while I love sharing insights, a blog isn’t the place for personalised advice—so I can’t give that here.
Most importantly, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy writing it.
Let’s see where the journey takes us.
All Posts
The Quiet Art of Politely Falling Apart
The National Sport of Pretending We’re Fine Mental health in Britain occupies an odd place in public life. We talk about it far more than we used to, which is broadly a good thing, but we also manage to misunderstand it with impressive consistency. Somewhere between NHS awareness campaigns, LinkedIn posts about “wellbeing”, and older relatives insisting that everyone in 1974 simply got on with things, the conversation has become both more open and more confused. One of the mo
Tony Skehan
7 days ago4 min read
Emotional Fitness: Less Reacting, More Control
A practical, no-nonsense way to handle pressure, think clearly, and respond better when it counts Emotional Fitness: Less Reacting, More Control Emotional fitness is one of those phrases that sounds faintly suspicious at first. A bit like “mindfulness” did before it was printed on tea bags and corporate posters. You can almost hear the inner sceptic: is this just feelings dressed up in gym kit? Not quite. If physical fitness is your capacity to move, recover, and cope wit
Tony Skehan
Apr 274 min read
Most Self-Help Advice Sounds Good. That’s the Problem.
Is it any good? Here’s the issue: A lot of self-help content isn’t failing because it’s wrong. It’s failing because it’s too neat . Too polished. Too certain. Too easy to agree with. And if you’re not careful, you can devote a colossal amount of time and effort to it… without it actually helping you think, feel, or behave any differently. It can actually make you feel worse. The Advice That Sounds Right (But Falls Apart Quickly) Take something like: “Just let it go.” It sou
Tony Skehan
Apr 203 min read
No Time for Patience
(Or So You Think) A slightly uncomfortable truth to start: Most people don’t think they’re impatient. They think the world is slow, inefficient, and mildly irritating. It’s not them. It’s everything else . We now live in a world where you can order something in the morning and feel put out if it hasn’t arrived by the afternoon. Three seconds for a webpage to load? Practically a personal attack. So, patience starts to look like a design flaw. An outdated setting that needs upd
Tony Skehan
Apr 133 min read
You’re Not Seeing Reality
You’re Not Seeing Reality You’re Not Seeing Reality (Which Is Slightly Awkward) Let’s start with something mildly inconvenient: You are not seeing the world as it is. You’re seeing what your brain thinks is there… and then treating that as fact. Your brain is basically that person who half-hears something and answers anyway. With Confidence. Your Brain: Fast, Efficient… and Occasionally Making It Up You might imagine your eyes work like a camera: Light goes in. Image gets
Tony Skehan
Apr 73 min read
I’m not accepting that.
The Power of Acceptance “Just accept it and move on.” Not the most helpful sentence in the English language. Because what do you actually hear when someone says that? “Put up with it. ” “Stop complaining.” “ Do nothing.” So, it’s no surprise that when I mention acceptance to sports people or business professionals, I get a look. Somewhere between sceptical and mildly irritated. Fair enough. Because what most people think acceptance means…isn’t what it means. In mindfulness
Tony Skehan
Mar 302 min read
Nice Building. Shame About the Environment.
When standards live inside the group rather than being handed down from above, things tend to run considerably more smoothly. Largely because the group stops waiting to be told.
Tony Skehan
Mar 164 min read
The Managers AI Will Replace First
If your leadership style involves mostly meetings, updates and PowerPoint, this may feel uncomfortably familiar. Most of the people I work with on job related problems are not struggling because they lack ability. They are struggling because they work in environments that quietly drain it out of them. Often the issue is not the workload. It is the way the work is organised, communicated and managed. Endless meetings, unclear decisions, vague feedback and a steady stream of me
Tony Skehan
Mar 94 min read
Insomnia: When counting sheep just isn’t working
Insomnia isn’t just “a bad night’s sleep.” It’s a slow erosion of how you think, feel, and perform. Insomnia is an equal opportunities problem. It doesn’t care what you are doing, it will affect it. Most people talk about tiredness. That’s the smallest part of the problem. The real cost of insomnia shows up in decision-making, emotional control, confidence, and resilience—often long before someone realises sleep is the issue. The Brain Wasn’t Designed to Run Tired Sleep is no
Tony Skehan
Mar 22 min read
Why Habit Change Is Hard
(And Why That's Actually Normal) A mental performance perspective on why your brain is actively working against your wish to change— and what that tells you about how change actually works. Here's the uncomfortable truth about habit change from a mental performance point of view: If it were as simple as the diagrams suggest, everyone would be doing it already . Exhibit A: A social media version of habit change. A thing of beauty. A perfectly balanced Venn diagram with p
Tony Skehan
Feb 233 min read
When Being Brilliant Isn’t Enough
How not to manage There’s a long-held assumption that if you’re naturally very good at something, you’ll automatically be good at teaching it, managing it, or coaching others to do it too. This assumption is… optimistic. From a mental performance point of view, natural ability can be both a gift and a limitation. The Problem With “It Just Happens” When something comes easily, a lot of the process runs on autopilot. Skills are executed without conscious thought. Decisions are
Tony Skehan
Feb 164 min read
How can we make something more difficult?
Ah yes. The yips. That charming moment when your body decides to ignore your brain in public. At their simplest, the yips are a sudden, involuntary loss of fine motor control in a well-learned skill. Most often seen in sports that rely on precision rather than brute force: golf, darts, snooker, archery, serving in tennis, throwing in cricket or baseball. At it’s worst, it develops into an extreme fear reaction with phobia like responses to a particular situation or even equip
Tony Skehan
Feb 94 min read
The Power of Your Autopilot
There’s good news and bad news. First, a quick clarification. I’m talking about autopilot in the context of mindfulness, not aviation. No flight simulators required. Now for the nuts and bolts. In neurological terms, “autopilot” isn’t just a metaphor for being distracted. It’s a sophisticated efficiency hack your brain uses to save energy and processing power. By offloading familiar tasks, it frees up resources for all the important stuff: informed decision-making, observati
Tony Skehan
Feb 23 min read
The mental skills socket set: because one tool would be far too simple.
Do You Own a Socket Set? I do. My one lives in the garage, and it’s an impressive-looking beast—packed with sockets, handles (I still don’t know what they’re properly called), odd attachments with bits on the end, and even a bendy piece that I assume is for “socketing” round corners. There’s also a screwdriver that looks like it’s been accidentally bent in half (apparently, it’s meant to be like that—thanks to my neighbour for clearing that up) and a couple of tools so strang
Tony Skehan
Jan 263 min read
Blue Monday
Book a Holiday Ever heard of the worst day of the year? No not that one, the one that is supposed to apply to everyone in the Northern Hemisphere. The third Monday in January. It was “discovered” in 2005 by a British travel company during a very quiet January. Coincidence? I don’t think so. They released a press report claiming they’d identified the most depressing day of the year (later nicknamed Blue Monday), using a neat little formula involving weather, debt, broken N
Tony Skehan
Jan 193 min read
The Power of Gratitude
(and Why It’s Not Just Feel‑Good Fluff) Gratitude has a bit of an image problem. For some people, it conjures up visions of forced positivity, inspirational quotes on beige backgrounds, or being told to “just be grateful” when things are clearly going to kack. Not overly helpful. It tends to get lumped in with scented candles, vague affirmations and advice delivered by people who appear to have never been properly stressed. Right then, first up. Gratitude is not about p
Tony Skehan
Jan 125 min read
Motivation vs. Willpower (Not the same, not twins, barely cousins).
How hard can it be? Welcome to the inside of your own head. It’s a bit of a tip in here, isn't it? There are half-finished projects littering the floor, an exercise bike in the corner being used as a clothes horse, and a frantic monkey at a control panel pressing buttons at random. Here’s the uncomfortable truth we don’t like to admit: Motivation and willpower are not the same thing. And treating them like they are is one of the fastest ways to sabotage performance. If you
Tony Skehan
Jan 54 min read
New Year’s Resolutions: A Masterclass in Under planning, and Seasonal Self-Delusion.
New Year Resolutions may be hazardous to your health Welcome to New Year’s Resolutions — the time of year when you confidently announce goals you have absolutely no intention of executing, all because the calendar flipped and you got motivated, inspired or confused after seeing a “New Year, New You” social media post. You know the one, it told you just how easy it would be. Not like last year... Let’s break it down from a mental performance point of view. I'm going to use "
Tony Skehan
Dec 29, 20258 min read
We all talk to ourselves, a lot. And we are very persuasive.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could just click our fingers and change some aspect of our lives? Would it be great? Where would the fun be in that? Okay, so there would be a load of fun to be had (not all of it legal or even condonable). The problem is that, well you can’t really do that. Especially when it comes to managing those intrusive thoughts. The things that we let unsettle and distract us. So, what do we change? If only it was that easy This is the tricky bit. We are ge
Tony Skehan
Dec 18, 20252 min read
Effective Coaching Strategies for Performance Enhancement …because most of the magic is already inside you.
I thought I would make my first blog post on here a window into my own views on what coaching is and isn’t. I don’t just mean sports coaching. I include the role of the Business Team Manager as a coach. Coaching is a bit like holding a torch for someone who’s actually carrying the map. The answers are usually tucked away inside the individual — the coach just helps shine a light so they can spot them without tripping over their own boots. Whether we’re talking sports, busines
Tony Skehan
Dec 11, 20254 min read
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