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 ch

ange 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.

05/05/2026

Is there anything in your life, such as your job, a relationship, or a situation you’re in, that you’re somewhat happy with but you still have important ways you wish it would change?

Most people have at least one thing in their life they get value from, but they also have important ways they wish it were different. They could like their job but wish there were opportunities to advance despite making their ambitious clear. Or have a friend they like spending time with but find them unresponsive, even though they’ve brought this up.

If you’re only partially happy with something, you can feel better about it if you determine if you’re willing to accept it as it is.

When you wish something could be different, you’re engaging in magical thinking by imagining an ideal future where you get what you want. But if these improvements are unlikely, it’s often more useful to ask yourself if you’re happy enough with things as they are or if you should change them.

To do this, state or write down the facts of your situation. Try to avoid including how it makes you feel: instead of stating ‘I wish my company would give me more opportunities for advancement’ you could write ‘there are limited opportunities for advancing with this company’.

By doing this, you can be more objective about what you have and how this may or may not be good enough. Instead of wishing for differences, you’re choosing to accept things as they are or recognise that they don’t meet your needs and choosing to make changes.

Even if you decide not to change anything, you can try to get these needs met elsewhere. If you aren’t getting training opportunities with your job, you could decide to build the skills you want in your free time so you’re better prepared for a career change or a promotion if you later determine to leave.

When you accept your situation as it is, even if there are things about it you would like to change, you can recognise how you could make improvement instead of only wishing things were different.

30/04/2026

What is your favourite story about yourself to tell to other people? What stories, including books and movies, do you enjoy and have recommended to others?

Everyone has values they think are important to follow to live a healthy life, although they’re not always aware of what they are or how to share their beliefs with others. But values can be explored and shared through stories.

Your favourite stories often reveal your greatest values. When the story is about yourself, it’s likely about a time when you feel you were living up to them so you’re proud to share this experience; you can share your story instead of stating that you have and honour your values.

The entertainment you recommend to people, such as offering to loan them a favourite book or making an enthusiastic suggestion for their next movie night, can also reflect values you find important, while being a less direct way to share your values with others.

Knowing what you value and what is important to you isn’t always easy, and sharing these can be even more challenging. But when you have a story that illustrates them, then understanding core concepts can be easier as well as more relatable and enjoyable.

You can use stories to explain things to others, and they can help you discover what really matters to you so you're more capable of living a life aligned with your beliefs, values and who you want to be.

29/04/2026

A major driver of burnout, especially for non-managerial roles, is the invisible labour of trying to discover and interpret expectations.

When employees aren’t sure what is expected of them, they can feel that the vast majority of their time is divided between figuring out what their bosses want them to do, then finding out how not to get it wrong. The work itself could be relatively undemanding, making it surprising if the employee becomes burnt out, but the tasks themselves were only small part of their job.

Not knowing what you need to do or if you’re doing it right can create anxiety that you’re underperforming and disappointing your managers. This can make you feel replaceable, which is also a contributor to burnout.

Because burnout is often considered laziness or incompetence, it’s valuable to understand its different causes. If you're experiencing a lack of clarity in your workplace, knowing how exhausting this often is can be validating and potentially motivate you to ask for changes, such as more training or better communication to feel more confident that you can do your job and fulfill expectations.

Even if you don’t feel comfortable asking for changes in your workplace, recognising the additional labour you have to do because of a lack of clarity can help you be more compassionate with yourself for feeling exhausted and potentially burnt out.

Understanding what is contributing to burnout in the workplace is very valuable, especially when the causes are potentially subtle and could be blamed on the individual, which can be the case when experiencing a lack of clarity and communication.

28/04/2026

If your ambitions and your identity become intertwined, pursuing your dreams and goals can become much less enjoyable.

It’s natural for the things you want to achieve to shape how you think of yourself. You could enjoy introducing yourself by your job title or feel that your hobby is an integral part of your personality because these areas of your life are important to you and provide you with a great deal of meaning.

However, when you feel the need to be accomplished in an area of your life to not only feel successful but to avoid feeling like a failure, then this can become a source of tension, anxiety, exhaustion, stress, and potentially contribute to burnout.

Your ambitions are the most enjoyable when you view them as helping you grow, yet you don’t feel the need to be successful in order to have a sense of accomplishment or fulfillment. You recognise that you can struggle, make mistakes, and even lose interest in pursuing them for a while without feeling that you’re neglecting an important part of who you are.

Some people may think that this in an uncommitted approach to possibly life-changing ambitions, but it has the potential to make it not only far more enjoyable to work towards meaningful goals, but to make the process healthier and more sustainable as well.

23/04/2026

Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of being too proud of themselves because of pride’s negative connotations, but there are often healthy and potentially valuable ways to feel proud of yourself.

A common image of a pride is someone overly boastful of their accomplishments, which they’re often overstating. This is an arrogant form of pride, which is based on getting admiration from others, even if it hasn’t been earned.

When people are arrogantly proud, they’re more likely to mistreat others because they think that their status and accomplishments give them this right. This type of behaviour can be very damaging to relationship, especially in the workplace as arrogant leaders can create a toxic environment.

Arrogant pride can also harm the individual since it requires external validation. Instead of recognising and appreciating their own accomplishments, they must rely on others to give them positive feedback to feel successful.

But genuine pride doesn’t require praise or convincing yourself that you’re better than others. It comes from recognising when you act in alignment with your beliefs and values and feeling proud of yourself for honouring what is important to you, even if no one else is aware.

While arrogant pride can lead to unhealthy behaviours, especially towards others, pride in yourself can be a rewarding emotion.

22/04/2026

How often do you make mistakes that others don’t think of as mistakes?

Frequently believing you’ve made mistakes when others think you’ve done a good job could be a sign that you would benefit from lowering your standards.

Having high standards, especially when the situation demands it, can be valuable. But having consistently higher standards than is necessary can be overly demanding since you’re always pushing yourself to produce potentially unrealistic results.

Telling the difference between excessively high standards and motivated ambition can be challenging, but one of the potentially more noticeable signs is how others react when you share your disappointments. If they genuinely can’t find any faults, disagree with your critiques, or think that you’ve done a good job, it’s likely that you’ve done better than you’re giving yourself credit for.

Trying to get others to appreciate your perceived mistakes can even add to your frustration. But if you find yourself struggling to explain the mistakes you make, it’s possible that you’re being harder on yourself than necessary.

21/04/2026

Even when you’re working on a goal that has the potential to improve your life, it’s also valuable to be happy in the present.

When they’re working on accomplishing goals, many people make the painful decision not to let themselves be happy until their goal is complete, potentially without realising they’re doing this.

But many ambitious goals – advancing in your career, having healthy relationships or improving your health – can take years, and it’s possible you’ll never accomplish some goals. So if you don’t let yourself feel fulfilled or accomplished because you’re still working on a goal, you can make yourself needlessly unhappy.

You can be more satisfied in the present, even though you have important and meaningful changes that you want to make, by appreciating what you’ve accomplished so far. Even if you still have a great deal of progress left to make, it’s likely that you’ve already made change that have improved your life and are worth being proud of.

If you don’t give yourself permission to feel proud of yourself for your efforts or happy until you’ve completed an ambitious goal, you could spend years preventing yourself from feeling accomplished despite working hard to be happier.

16/04/2026

Most people have needed to get something done but felt stuck. This can be frustrating and cause you to try harder to find a solution. But this can make it even harder to accomplish anything.

When you relax, however, you can have new ideas and discover solutions to problems that previously felt impossible to resolve. But trying to relax is a paradox, especially when you know that it’s meant to serve a purpose.

So instead of trying to relax, you can instead let yourself get bored since this is often much easier. You don’t intentionally think about what you need to accomplish and let your thoughts wander.

You can engineer boredom by going for a walk without distractions – leaving your phone behind or keeping it on flight mode – so your thoughts can wander and ideally find solutions. Even taking a few minutes to stare into space when you’re feeling stuck can help your mind disconnect enough for inspiration to flow in.

You won’t always be able to find a solution, but taking a break to be bored can also help you regain perspective and realise that what you’re attempting isn’t as consequential as you’re imagining, that you’re more capable than you’re telling yourself, and you’ve likely been in similar situations before.

Trying too hard to find solutions can cause you to unintentionally focus on all the challenges you're facing, making them seem more daunting than they have to be. But taking a few minutes to disconnect without distractions – relaxing or being bored – can help you find solutions you didn’t realise existed through giving your brain the space it needs to discover them.

15/04/2026

I’ve found that a useful way to learn from my experiences, whether they work out or don’t go as I hoped they would, is to ask myself what were two things I could have done differently.

Taking accountability when things go wrong can be difficult, but if you always ask yourself how you could have done things differently, it can feel less accusatory so you can be more receptive to reviewing your mistakes.

Even if something goes exactly to plan, it’s rare that there won’t be anything you could have modified for improvements. You might have gotten the results you wanted but could you have approached it in a way that was less stressful? Were you overprepared and could do less the next time you're in a similar situation?

When you’re willing to ask yourself about changes and improvements you can make, you’re able to learn from your mistakes as well as recognise that there’s no such thing as perfect success because you always have room to grow.

14/04/2026

What would you quickly learn about a topic or area of your life that’s important to you if you were suddenly a beginner?

The more that you care about a topic and research it – your job, parenting, a hobby – the more likely you are to come across potentially misleading information that is often highly specific and can make it difficult to preform naturally.

You can also stop focusing on the basics that have the greatest potential to be positively impactful: because they’re obvious and well-established they often get less attention than niche and new approaches with potentially questionable results.

There can be valuable information and useful facts in new studies and data, but these shouldn’t entirely replace foundational material. Scientific explanations that appear sound even though they counter traditional wisdom, such as claiming you can only eat at certain times of the day to lose weight.

There are times when changing your approach, even though it’s old and tried can help you. But with the ever-growing number of ‘experts’ on all topics, it’s more likely that much of the new information you come across isn’t necessary to success, or even guaranteed to be applicable, especially if it’s asking you to give up core beliefs.

A commitment to learning is incredibly valuable, as is a willingness to change your beliefs if they’re challenged. But not all information is as useful as those promoting it tend to claim, so it’s useful to be able to identify the types of ‘professional advice’ that aren’t helpful.

09/04/2026

If you often impulsively do things you later regret – speak to others sharply, eat unhealthy foods, go on your phone whenever you feel even a little bored – you can reduce these behaviours by building the habit of pausing before you act.

Many unhealthy behaviours are caused by immediate reactions; as soon as you feel the urge do something you automatically respond without considering the outcomes. Because these behaviours are largely automatic, getting yourself to stop can feel impossible.

But if you ask yourself to pause, you create the time and space to reflect.

Pausing before doing something you know will have consequences you want to avoid gives you the opportunity to think about the results and ask yourself if this is aligned with the type of person you want to be. This can make avoiding them easier since you can remind yourself that the rewards are only short-term and you’ll soon regret your actions.

Changing your automatic reactions so you can choose healthier behaviours often takes longer and is more difficult than you would like it to be, but through asking yourself to pause before acting in ways you want to avoid, you can give yourself to opportunity to make better decisions more often.

08/04/2026

Having goals you’re working towards is motivating and a commitment to self-improvement can have many positive effects on your life. But knowing what goals you would benefit from can be challenging.

To have a better idea of what goals are most likely to be rewarding, consider what you would like to change about your life. Do you feel isolated? Do you wish you had more energy? Are you feeling bored with your job?

Once you’ve identified something you aren’t happy about, ask yourself how you could change it. Someone who feels tired most of the time because they stay up late scrolling on their phone would need to set different goals than someone who is tired because they’re overcommitted and don’t get many opportunities to relax.

Also consider what you want to add to your life that aligns with your values and the type of person you want to become. What tends to cause regret and when do you feel the proudest of yourself? Who do you admire and why? Who do you want to be one, five and ten years from now?

By answering these questions, you can then identify goals that have the potential to require less motivation to stay committed because you're personally invested in the outcome while being rewarding to progress because they’re personally significant.

When you choose goals that reflect what is important to you, they can be enjoyable to work and meaningful to advance.

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