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.

11/09/2025

Many people understand that resilience is built through overcoming challenges, but not all people realise that this also includes navigating the challenges of failures.

Resilience is an often-celebrated quality because it allows people to learn from their mistakes and hardships and become stronger from the experiences. By its nature, it's impossible to build resilience without having difficult, often unpleasant experiences. These might not be your fault, such as being laid off, losing someone you care about, or needing to make a sacrifice.

But you can learn a great deal and build resilience through hardships you're responsible for; often even more. In these types of situations, you can become more resilient by asking yourself what went wrong, what went well, and how you can change your approach and try again, all while navigating the difficult emotions failure often causes.

This builds resilience because you're proving to yourself that failures are painful and challenging, but they don't have to stop you from trying again so you can eventually succeed.

Resilience is incredibly useful as it can help you be less affected by challenges and learn from difficult experiences, including your personal failures, but only if you recognise them as resilience-building opportunities.

10/09/2025

Sometimes when people ask for advice, what they actually want is for someone else to confirm that they're right.

It's natural to want others to support your ideas, especially if you feel quite committed to them. But if you want to truly benefit from advice and have the best chances of improving, it's valuable to recognise if you're being receptive to input or only accepting feedback that aligns with what you already believe.

Being open to criticism and suggestions to make changes can be challenging, and it's natural to resist what can feel like unnecessary comments. Some feedback is best ignored, especially if it's from someone with different beliefs and priorities. But when someone who shares your goals and has useful insight suggests changes, it’s often valuable to consider if there's truth to what they're saying and remind yourself of the potential value of their opinion.

Approval from others is encouraging and rewarding, while constructively critical feedback can be difficult to receive. But being receptive to thoughts and ideas that are different from yours can help you improve.

09/09/2025

The more attention you give your problems and challenges, the more impactful they’re likely to feel.

The areas of your life that you give the most attention to will seem the most significant. So if you're often worrying, stressing, or feeling upset about struggles you're experiencing, you can come to believe that they dominate your life.

Ignoring challenges isn't helpful, as this can prevent you from attempting to find a solution while giving you the additional job of trying not to think about something that's causing you concern. But you can change how they impact you by shifting what you believe about them.

When you think of the challenges you're facing, you can ask yourself what possible solutions are available, as well as reminding yourself of the positives in your life, including other challenges you’ve overcome. This can help you to feel both empowered to resolve your challenges and realise that they're not as insurmountable as you initially believed.

Over-identifying with your problems is likely to magnify them while sending you the message that they're an unchangeable part of your life. But believing you can address them while intentionally reminding yourself there's more in your life than your problems can give you a much more realistic and more enjoyable outlook.

04/09/2025

When you try to fit as much as possible into each day and do it quickly, you can think that you're being highly productive and having plenty of experiences, but often the opposite is true.

When you rush, try to take in a great deal of information quickly, or multitask, there’s often at least some things you’re overlooking or missing out on. Instead of becoming absorbed by what you're doing and learning as much as possible, you're likely to have a largely surface-level experience where you’re more focused on finishing quickly rather than learning or enjoying yourself. This can turn even what are meant to be enjoyable tasks, such as hobbies or going to a museum, into jobs to be crossed off your to-do list.

This approach places you at risk of becoming burnt out. When all time is meant to be filled with as much as possible and you rush through tasks so you can get to the next one, you leave yourself with very little time for self-care - and even if you do take time to care for yourself, this is also likely another task on your to-do list that must be accomplished quickly.

But if you give yourself permission to slow down, focus on what you're doing in the moment, and stop expecting so much from yourself, you can not only feel more calm and content, but you'll likely be surprised by how much you accomplish, since racing through things is rarely an effective way to get them done. Multitasking can create the illusion of greater productivity, but it actually makes you slower since you're regularly having to mentally adjust to the shift in tasks. Trying to take into new information too quickly means you’ll likely need to re-review a great deal of the material. And experiences you rush through are rarely restorative or satisfying.

Burnout comes in part from feeling that you have more to accomplish than what you're capable of, and since fast living tells you that there's always more to finish and you should do it quickly, you're setting yourself up for strained mental health. But a slow approach can protect your mental health and encourage you to take a sustainable but effective approach to productivity.

03/09/2025

Perfectionism is often the enemy of resilience.

Resilience is developed through overcoming challenges and learning from your mistakes, while perfectionism is based on the belief that mistakes are to be avoided at all cost because they're unacceptable.

Perfectionists typically avoid situations where there’s the risk that they could make mistakes and produce less than perfect results. When they do make mistakes, they’re likely to focus on covering them up while being highly critical of themselves, which makes it difficult to learn from the experience. Often the only lesson they learn is that their inadequacy is to blame and they were wrong to have challenged themselves.

People who have high levels of resilience, however, have much different interpretations of mistakes. Resilience emboldens them to seek out challenges because they’re confident that if they don’t have the ability to succeed, they have the strength to recover from the disappointment.

You can’t build resiliency without challenging yourself to prove what you’re capable of and learning how to cope with failures, so perfectionists rarely give themselves the opportunity to develop resilience, making them fearful of challenges and even more so of failures.

There are almost no benefits to perfectionism and far more drawbacks; one of them is that it prevents you from developing resiliency.

02/09/2025

Losing interest in a goal, including making a personal change, can be a sign that what you chose lacks personal meaning, or you haven't identified what this meaning is.

Staying motivated can be challenging, especially if you're unclear about what you would like to accomplish and why. Improvement or growth that doesn't help you develop ways that have personal significance are rarely satisfying, especially long-term. You can enjoy your initial progress and successes, but without a vision of what you're working to accomplish and why it matters to you, it’s unlikely you’ll stay engaged.

As your motivation decreases you can run out of reasons to keep trying and abandon your plans. But if you ask yourself what a goal or personal change will mean before you begin, you can avoid this often-frustrating and discouraging experience.

Some goals seem like unquestioningly worthwhile pursuits, such as improving your physical or mental health, strengthening relationships, and exploring your interests. They could have the potential to improve your life, but without clarifying how they can make your life better and why this is important to you, they can still come to feel pointless.

You can also choose goals that seem to make others happy and assume they'll do the same for you. But what satisfies someone else won't necessarily give you the same benefits, especially if you have different ambitions.

Asking yourself why you should want to achieve something can help you choose meaningful goals and stay committed once you begin. You'll know why you should persevere, what you're hoping to accomplish, and how this has the potential to improve your life and help you develop and grow.

28/08/2025

Competition can be healthy, motivating, and even make what would be otherwise uninteresting tasks more enjoyable. But competition can also turn what could be fun or interesting tasks into strict and demanding challenges.

Succeeding in competitions requires being the same as others but better, so they often discourage authenticity. It’s difficult to compare different types of people or performances, so being in competition with someone often requires working in a way that’s not your own. And instead of using your own standards as a benchmark for success and progress, you’re instead considering how you measure up to others who could be at a much different experience level.

You can also feel pressured to push yourself harder than what is sustainable. In competitive environments this pressure can come from others, but for competitive individuals the drive to win is often internal. In the short-term this isn’t inherently negative and can be motivating when you have something urgent to finish, but pushing yourself too hard too often so you can out-preform others is likely to have consequences for your health.

Competition can be fun and healthy, but not if you don’t feel free to adopt your own approach, you’re pushing yourself harder than what is pleasant or sustainable, and the idea of not outperforming others makes the task unenjoyable.

27/08/2025

How often do you feel fulfilled?

Many people experience a lack of fulfillment. They don't know what gives them passion and meaning, so they default to spending much their time in ways that are unrewarding. But what you do most frequently informs and shapes your sense of self and purpose, so if you spend a great deal of time doing things that are unengaging and don’t reflect what you care about, you can feel disconnected and uninspired.

But if you choose activities that make you feel accomplished and enriched, you can be more satisfied and proud of yourself for investing your time and energy in meaningful ways, instead of too often choosing what is likely easier but unrewarding.

The most enriching ways to spend your time are often those that reflect your values. If personal development is important to you, taking a course could be highly rewarding, or even choosing to watch a documentary can be satisfying, especially if you do this intentionally.

How you spend your time plays a very significant role in personal fulfillment. Choosing to honour your values and follow your passions can help meet this need.

26/08/2025

If you struggle to follow through on things you say you’ll do, you could benefit from having a plan for how you’ll turn your intentions into actions.

When you decide to do something, even if it’s simple, you plan what you’ll do, carry it out, and – if you want to make it a habit – work on maintaining your new practice.

For the vast majority of people, the first step is by far the easiest. It’s undemanding and enjoyable to consider new and rewarding ways to spend your time. But getting yourself to follow through can be challenging. Motivation can quickly fade even before you begin and doing something less demanding, like watching TV, can be far more appealing.

If you’ve done this, you may have wondered why you went from feeling motivated and inspired to giving up on your plan, potentially within a few hours.

The most common reasons why people don’t follow through on their intended behaviour is because they weren’t specific enough with their plan so it was too easy to put it off until later and/or get distracted and forget, or they convince themselves they’re not capable of what they imagined.

But these obstacles can be overcome. Plans are the easiest to abandon or put off when they only exist as vague ideas, so pick a time and add it to your calendar or set a reminder on your phone. If you don’t feel capable of your original idea, consider a more beginner-friendly approach to build your skills and confidence.

Motivating yourself to try something new, especially if it’s challenging, will often be difficult, but if you plan how to stay committed, you have a much better chance of following through.

21/08/2025

With the enormous volume of information that is shared and consumed on a daily basis, it can be difficult not to worry or feel overwhelmed by some of what you learn. One of the ways you can reduce how much you're impacted is asking yourself if you're the target audience.

While there is plenty of misinformation circulating online, there is also a great deal that is true and potentially useful, but not for everyone. All but the vaguest advice is designed to apply only to specific groups of people - those with certain problems, personality traits that have the potential to cause challenges, people in a certain stage of life, etc.

Therefore, when you learn something new, especially if it worries you, consider if it was written with someone like you in mind. Warnings about being warry of financial scams are to get the attention of people who are often careless and/or don't know a great deal about how to keep their accounts safe; if you've already taken safety measures and are cautious, then you likely don't have to be concerned by what you learned.

Recognising when you aren't the target audience can save you a great deal of stress, worry, and distraction because instead of thinking that there is more you need to be concerned about, you can reassure yourself that the advice was intended for different types of people.

20/08/2025

How often do you regret and speak harshly to yourself for decisions you made in the past? Plenty of people ruminate on their pasts, wishing they had acted differently.

While you can learn from your past mistakes by asking yourself what went wrong and why, too often people will think of the same incidents over and over while reprimanding themselves for what they did. This is often harmful because they aren't learning anything - they've either already learned what they can or they believe the only lesson is that they're to blame for what happened so they have to keep reminding themselves of their mistakes and/or poor judgements to avoid repeating them.

When you have these types of thoughts, you're hurting yourself for no reason while tricking yourself into believing that it serves a purpose. It can even become a deeply rooted habit that's difficult to break. But you can move away from these harmful thoughts by acknowledging your mistakes, how you wish you had acted differently, and considering the tools and information you had available at the time.

It can be difficult to stop thinking about mistakes and decisions you made in the past, especially if they're still shaping your future. But if you can remind yourself that you're only distracting yourself from the present, instead of believing that thinking about the past can somehow change it, you're less likely to be affected by these types of thoughts.

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Wishart

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