Resources and Serendipity
This section brings together books, talks, exercises, recordings, and practical tools such as KDE Connect that may support clearer self-understanding and more thoughtful responses to life. The broad theme is calibration: seeing yourself and the world with less distortion, less confusion, and more accuracy.
In hypnotherapy and CBT, that matters. Change tends to work better when perception is clearer and responses are less automatic.
What follows is a mixture of practical and reflective material selected because it seems genuinely useful. It is not a substitute for therapy, but it may support reflection, learning, and meaningful change. Take what is useful and leave the rest.
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Audio Downloads
Breathwork recordings, inductions, and short taster practices created by Ian Robertson. These downloads are intended for personal practice and reflection, not as a substitute for therapy, medical care, or crisis support.
Change Your Mind
To sites which educate as to the world
A Little Trouble
What to do with trouble
Confidence
ABSENT DRIVER - Short Film
Gapminder
Gapminder is a public education project that uses data, visualisation, and short interactive tools to challenge common misconceptions about the world. It is useful for personal he…
Gapminder is a public education project that uses data, visualisation, and short interactive tools to challenge common misconceptions about the world. It is useful for personal healing and adjustment because distress is often amplified by distorted assumptions such as “everything is getting worse,” “nothing ever changes,” or “people everywhere are doing badly.” By confronting those assumptions with evidence, Gapminder can help loosen catastrophic thinking, reduce needless pessimism, and support a more accurate sense of proportion. That does not make pain unreal, but it can help restore balance, perspective, and trust in the possibility of change.
The TAO of Pooh
The Tao of Pooh uses Winnie-the-Pooh to explain simple Taoist ideas about change. It’s not about passivity or forced positivity, but about easing off strain so change happens more…
The Tao of Pooh uses Winnie-the-Pooh to explain simple Taoist ideas about change. It’s not about passivity or forced positivity, but about easing off strain so change happens more naturally.
Zen flesh Zen Bones
A compact and accessible collection of Zen stories, koans, and short reflections that can interrupt rigid thinking and invite a quieter, less defensive kind of attention. People o…
A compact and accessible collection of Zen stories, koans, and short reflections that can interrupt rigid thinking and invite a quieter, less defensive kind of attention. People often value it not because it offers step-by-step instruction, but because it loosens habitual patterns of thought and opens space for insight, humour, and perspective. It is especially useful for those drawn to reflection, paradox, contemplative practice, or the possibility that understanding sometimes arrives sideways rather than through force.
Music
Mood adjustment all share that “this is ridiculous and I’m choosing to enjoy it anyway” energy . Stuck in traffic try "yackety sax"
Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive - Johnny Mercer & The Pied Pipers
Old-school positive reframing before everyone started putting it on laminated handouts. Light, direct, and still oddly practical.
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life - Monty Python
Cheerfulness with a raised eyebrow. Useful because it refuses both misery and fake positivity, which is a surprisingly civilised compromise.
Baby Elephant Walk
Playful, lopsided, and gently comic. A reminder that lightness does not have to be elegant to be effective.
Here Comes The Sun - 2019 Mix
A quiet return of warmth after a long grey spell. Useful for transition points, recovery, and remembering that heaviness is not permanent.
Mr. Blue Sky - Electric Light Orchestra
Bright, exuberant, and almost offensively optimistic. Good for deliberately changing the emotional weather before the brain files another complaint.
Nellie the Elephant
Childlike, absurd, and brisk. Useful when seriousness has become a badly run committee meeting in the head.
Nellie The Elephant - Toy Dolls
The same elephant, now at unsafe speed. Punk silliness with momentum: sometimes the way out of stuckness is not refinement, it is movement.
On the Sunny Side of the Street
A classic mood-shifter. Not denial, not forced cheerfulness, just the old human trick of turning attention toward the better-lit side.
Positive Vibration - Bob Marley & The Wailers
A rhythmic reminder that mood is not just thought; it is breath, posture, movement, timing, and company.
Put On A Happy Face - Dick Van Dyke
A theatrical nudge toward expression and state change. Not a cure-all, obviously, because reality remains badly designed, but a useful lift.
Sing, Sing, Sing - Benny Goodman
Big-band energy with a pulse. A useful reminder that rhythm can lift the body before the mind has finished arguing with itself.
Spanish Flea
Bright, absurd, and cheerfully unburdened by dignity. Useful when the day needs a small injection of ridiculousness.
Tequila
Simple, silly, instantly recognisable, and almost impossible to overthink. Sometimes the nervous system needs less analysis and more brass.
The Typewriter - Leroy Anderson
Precision, timing, and mechanical comedy. A miniature celebration of order becoming music, because even office equipment occasionally deserves redemption.
This Is the Day - The The
A sharper, more adult kind of uplift. Hope with an edge, which is often more believable than polished motivational wallpaper.
Three Little Birds - Bob Marley & The Wailers
Warm reassurance without much fuss. A simple settling track for when the mind has started inventing weather systems indoors.
What A Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong
Gentle, humane, and spacious. A song for widening attention beyond the problem of the moment without pretending the problem is not real.
When The Saints Go Marching In - Louis Armstrong
A joyful standard with communal lift. It has that rare quality of sounding like people moving forward together rather than merely enduring.
Yakety Sax - Boots Randolph
The soundtrack of things going wrong quickly. A musical permission slip to laugh at the chase scene rather than become it.
Yakety Yak - 2007 Remaster
Comic rhythm, domestic nagging, and teenage impatience turned into a bounce. Useful for remembering that not every irritation deserves solemnity.
Software and Internet
Security and privacy oriented software and internet services
Bandcamp
A more artist-friendly alternative to major streaming platforms. Bandcamp says around 82% of each purchase goes to the artist or label, usually within 24–48 hours, with clear reve…
A more artist-friendly alternative to major streaming platforms. Bandcamp says around 82% of each purchase goes to the artist or label, usually within 24–48 hours, with clear revenue shares of 15% on digital music and 10% on physical goods. Its privacy stance is not flawless, as it still uses cookies and may work with advertising/analytics partners, but it is generally less bound up with behavioural profiling than Spotify or Google/YouTube. Best used with optional cookies refused.
kdeconnect
KDE Connect is a practical tool that links your phone and desktop into a single working environment without relying on external cloud services. It allows you to share files and li…
KDE Connect is a practical tool that links your phone and desktop into a single working environment without relying on external cloud services. It allows you to share files and links instantly, sync clipboard contents, read and reply to messages from your desktop, use your phone as a remote input device, and monitor device status such as battery level. Its real value is in reducing friction: instead of emailing yourself links or connecting cables, your devices communicate directly over the local network. It fits well with a privacy-focused approach, as data stays within your own environment rather than being routed through third-party services. When set up properly, it provides a simple, reliable way to make everyday interactions between devices faster and more seamless.
Password Safe
A password safe is a good idea because it allows you to use long, unique passwords for every site without relying on memory or reusing the same credentials across multiple service…
A password safe is a good idea because it allows you to use long, unique passwords for every site without relying on memory or reusing the same credentials across multiple services. Instead of protecting many accounts weakly, you protect a single encrypted vault, ideally secured with a strong passphrase and, where possible, multi-factor authentication. When used alongside encrypted cloud storage, the password database can be safely synced and backed up across devices while remaining unreadable to the storage provider. KeePass is a strong option in this space, as it is open source, based on a widely supported standard, and available through multiple compatible implementations, avoiding reliance on a single vendor while maintaining control over your data.
A gentle breathwork practice, for calming and centering, duration 14 mins approx