Wiser Ways

Wiser Ways Wiser Ways offers individual & relationship counselling, & executive coaching. Please visit the website or contact us to book an appointment.

I help people realise their goals & strengths, providing them with the tools to reach their full potential. Andrew’s professional journey has been rich and diverse, shaped by experiences in private enterprise, government, coaching, and more. As a counsellor, he draws from these varied roles to support individuals in navigating personal growth and life challenges. Andrew believes that meaningful change comes from within, and his approach focuses on tapping into clients’ internal resources to help them transform their circumstances in positive ways. Having worked as a senior manager in multiple organisations, Andrew eventually felt drawn to a role that allowed him to give back to his community. His passion for helping others comes from a deep-rooted understanding of the power of self-discovery and the value of investing in personal development. Whether you’re feeling stuck, unsure of your next steps, or simply seeking clarity, Andrew provides a compassionate and respectful space for you to explore your thoughts and goals. Andrew’s extensive experience in various sectors, combined with his strength-based approach, allows him to be flexible and adaptive to each client’s unique needs. His belief in the capacity for individuals to make meaningful change is at the heart of his practice, and he takes great delight in supporting people through their journey of overcoming adversity and achieving their goals. If you’re looking to make a positive difference in your life, Andrew’s empathetic and client-centred approach may be just what you need to spark that change.

19/03/2026

If you’re trying to accomplish something ambitious and are frustrated that you aren’t making as much progress as you expected despite your best efforts, it’s possible that your timeline is unrealistic.

When making plans for how you’ll accomplish something, it can be difficult to estimate how long it should take. You can easily overestimate how much time you’ll be able to consistently commit, face unexpected obstacles and setbacks, or just not realise how hard the work would be.

These challenges can put you behind schedule and make you feel like you won’t be able to succeed. But it’s often possible that you can accomplish your goal, just not as soon as you thought. Rather than thinking you should give up, you can still complete your goal and feel less pressure if you adjust your timeline.

It can be disappointing to realise your goals are going to take longer than you thought they would, but recognising that you made a mistake when forecasting your timeline is much less discouraging than believing you aren’t capable of accomplishing your goal.

18/03/2026

Although a number of people think poorly of second-guessing yourself, I believe that it’s often a valuable quality and an indication of a willingness to learn.

Whenever you come to a conclusion, it’s almost certain that you don’t yet have all of the information – knowing everything before deciding or forming an opinion is often impossible because there’s always more that you can learn and new perspectives to consider.

Second-guessing yourself and potentially changing your mind when you discover new information can help you to have beliefs and opinions that most accurately reflect facts. Otherwise, you can be resistant to new and potentially valuable information.

By being willing to reconsider your opinions and being supportive of others when they do the same, you can be and surround yourself with people who are generally better informed and more flexible in their beliefs.

17/03/2026

Whenever you see someone successful, whether it’s online or in real life, remember that they almost certainly worked very hard to get where they are.

The success stories we encounter, especially the ones shared through social media, typically only show results; what isn’t shown is the challenges they experienced, mistakes they made, and days they struggled with finding motivation.

This can make what they accomplished appear effortless, so if you compare yourself to them, which is difficult not to do, you can wonder why you're struggling and believe you can’t achieve the same.

But almost all success that was earned required a great deal of work and making mistakes along the way. These journeys aren’t shared as publicly nearly as often, which is unfortunate because you can learn the most from seeing the challenges people face – both those they’ve overcome and the ones that are ongoing so they’ll always have to deal with them.

Comparing yourself to successful people is more realistic if you remind yourself that they too had to overcome challenges and made mistakes.

12/03/2026

When you feel unable to make a decision, taking action is almost always more rewarding than doing nothing.

It’s common to need time to make a decision, especially if the outcome is important to you and can be impactful on your life, such as relocating to pursue an opportunity or making a significant financial commitment. But spending a great deal of time considering your options, especially for things that aren’t important, can be exhausting.

Generally speaking, people tend to be happier when they take a chance and choose to act, especially if the stakes aren’t too high. This could be applying for a promotion even if you’re under-qualified, reaching out to someone you aren’t sure will respond, or deciding to get a tattoo.

Spending too long feeling unable to make a decision can impact your mental health because you’re stuck analysing all the different possibilities, questioning what you should do and what you're capable of, while worrying that you could be about to miss a valuable opportunity or make a terrible mistake. These are all potentially stressful and highly distracting thoughts that can undermine your self-esteem.

Even if you don’t get the results you were hoping for, the confidence that was required to try is often rewarding enough to overshadow most regret. Taking action can also be evidence that the consequences of your decisions aren’t always as high as you imagine so you can make future choices with less debating and hesitancy.

When you feel capable of taking action in the face of indecision, you can spend less time worrying about what you should do because you’re not as concerned with getting the best outcome, which can make you more confident in your ability to take chances and flourish no matter the outcome.

11/03/2026

A number of people worry that unless they’re exceeding workplace expectations and doing more than what is required, or even requested of them, then they aren’t doing enough, which could reflect poorly on them and impact their future prospects.

In healthy organisations, meeting expectations and fulfilling your job requirements should be enough to be considered a good worker. There are often periods when doing more than usual is necessary, but these times should be the exception rather than the standard for expectations.

Workers shouldn’t have to guess what is expected of them – requirements should be communicated. If your workplace isn’t clear in their expectations or willing to let their employees know how well they’re meeting them, this is a sign of an unhealthy work environment.

Worrying that you aren’t doing enough shouldn’t be necessary to feeling like a good worker, and more importantly, being satisfied with your work-life. And healthy workplaces are those that communicate what is expected from you. You shouldn’t need to be excelling or pushing yourself to be a valuable worker.

10/03/2026

When attempting something new, many people will stop if they feel nervous or afraid. But these uncomfortable feelings are evidence that you’re about to attempt something with high potential for growth.

Doing something that scares or intimidates you is rarely easy. You can be more focused on thinking about all the ways it could go wrong and how difficult it will be. These are often unpleasant experiences because you think these emotions are evidence that what you’re attempting will require a great deal of effort and you’re not capable of succeeding.

But you can change how you feel about challenges by considering their potential to help you grow. For most people, these types of experiences aren’t common, so if you adopt the mindset that intimidating experiences are valuable and potentially rare learning opportunities, they can take on a very different meaning.

Instead of feeling threatened by the potential for struggling and potentially failure, intimidating experiences can take on a significantly more encouraging context if you view them as challenges to be overcome, which can make them more positive.

By thinking about things you find intimidating can help you to learn and grow, you change how you experience them.

05/03/2026

A growing number of people are noticing that they have shorter attention spans and struggle to focus. One of the more enjoyable ways to improve your attention and focus is to take in long-form content.

Many people go on social media for entertainment where the content is almost always very short. It’s also common for people to skim the articles they read to pick out the highlights before moving on to another page.

When you take in content in this manner, you don’t give yourself the opportunity to become invested in the material. Instead of taking the time to become immersed in the story, you remain at a surface-level, often already thinking about what you’ll switch to next.

But when you adopt a slower pace and choose longer content, you can build a relationship with the material and be able to pay more attention. This includes watching thought-provoking movies and television series and reading books and other long-form writing.

As you progress, you can ask yourself what you think and feel about what you're taking in. This type of engagement isn’t possible with short-form content, which undermines your ability to pay attention of remain invested.

04/03/2026

When you start something new, it’s important to remember that you won’t begin as an expert.

It’s common for people to try something, such as a hobby, and without realising assume they’ll be able to begin at an expert level. This misplaced confidence – or more often a lack of awareness about how challenging what they’re attempting will be – can make them give up because they feel that they aren’t talented enough and the effort it will take to improve isn’t worth it.

Playing children’s songs on a guitar or making paintings that are unrecognisable isn’t anywhere nearly as rewarding as being able to do the same as people who have been playing or painting for years. But this perspective overlooks the potential to feel rewarded from your growth.

When you’re a beginner, you can advance far more quickly than someone who has been doing something for a long time. You might not be happy with what you’re able to produce, but you can take great pride in persevering and recognising how you’re advancing. Noticing your growth can even change how you feel about what you’re capable of as you learn how difficult it is to get the results you want.

Slowly progressing isn’t as immediately gratifying as already being highly talented, but if you appreciate the rewards, you can better enjoy progress and feel proud of yourself without considering the quality of your results.

03/03/2026

Learning from a challenging and/or upsetting experience often requires paying attention to painful emotions, although not all people are willing to do this.

A common automatic response to painful experiences is often trying to distance yourself from your emotions. It's also common for people to tell themselves things like 'I should have known better', 'of course this would happen', and 'what did you expect'. These are all pessimistic perspectives that downplay your capabilities while largely overlooking the influence you often have in your ability to succeed.

A characteristic of pessimism is believing that challenges are inevitable, there's little you can do to overcome them, and the best defence against disappointment is to avoid situations where success isn't guaranteed. So when pessimists experience setbacks, challenges and failures, typically the only way to interpret what happened is telling themselves that they shouldn’t have tried.

However, this perspective is limiting and potentially unhealthy because it overlooks the influence you have to either adopt a different approach to what you're attempting and eventually succeed, or view it as a learning opportunity (even if you don't try again). Making mistakes and experiencing failures, even though they're painful, are often excellent learning opportunities, although the discomfort they cause can make it difficult to be receptive.

But if you can think of these experiences like an optimist, you're much more likely to benefit from them. Optimists believe that they usually have a chance of succeeding, even if what they attempted was ambitious, that can change their circumstances, and that even difficult experiences can be valuable.

Making mistakes and experiencing failure is largely unavoidable, but these can be more than painful setbacks. Being optimistic about yourself, your abilities, and how you can benefit, can learn and be less negatively impacted.

26/02/2026

A common reason that people struggle to feel accomplished and/or advance goals is because they aren’t effectively focusing their time, energy, and attention where it can have the greatest impact.

To be able to focus on accomplishing a goal, it’s important to identify what may seem related but is actually a distraction. This could be continually researching the best approach, telling yourself you should try different techniques or take on more, or making yourself feel short on time by maintaining a full schedule while trying to add to your routine.

Additionally, make following through on what you need to do to advance your goal as frictionless as possible: set up your environment so making the decisions that bring you closer to your goal are automatic, remove the barriers that could prevent you from doing the work that is needed, and avoid distractions that take your time and energy without providing rewards.

However, focusing on your goal doesn’t mean that you always have to be productive; rest and relaxation is incredibly important to mental health, especially when you’re attempting growth.

When your attention and internal resources are focused, you can accomplish more while spending less time and energy in ways that may seem productive but are often distractions.

25/02/2026

Do you want to be as successful as possible and are often hard on yourself for not meeting your own high expectations?

While it’s possible that this approach could enable you to be more successful, it’s very unlikely to make you happier.

For the vast majority of things in life – when and how you reach personal milestones, how you approach hobbies, what your talents are – it’s much healthier to accept good enough instead of trying to be perfect or the best. This doesn’t mean having low standards or not trying to reach your full potential, especially in areas where you excel, but recognising when you’ve done something well enough to be happy with the results.

Yet some people believe that if they don’t consistently push themselves, they’ll regret underperforming. While this can be true for things that are important to you, you’re more likely to regret the time you lost and the opportunities to be satisfied that you missed out on.

There are certainly times when it’s worth pushing yourself to get the best results, but if it’s important to you, then it should require much less energy than spending longer than necessary perfecting something with very little meaning.

To avoid spending too much time trying to get overly-ambitious results when it isn’t necessary, ask yourself what is important to you to do your best on so you can devote your energy to the things that have the best chances of making you happy.

24/02/2026

When you’re working towards a goal, it can be difficult to stay motivated if you feel like you aren’t making any progress. But much of the gains you make while accomplishing goals isn’t what you set out to achieve.

While attempting to accomplish a goal, even one with a very specific outcome, you’ll inevitably improve various skills. Wanting to lose weight involves adopting many healthy habits. Attempting to get a promotion could lead you to learning and developing many useful skills.

But these types of progress aren’t always obvious so you could fail to recognise them. Or if you're only focused on achieving your goal then you can underappreciate everything else you gain during the process.

It’s valuable to recognise the different ways you benefit from working on goals to make the process more rewarding, especially if the goal you’re attempting will take a long time. It can also be motivating to realise that you’re improving before you’ve finished.

When you’re working on a goal you might not always get the results you’re aiming for right away, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t making progress.

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