Writing the biog for my book last week, it was impossible to not review my past But while doing that I recognised a trait I see in many of my clients was staring me back in the face.

As I reviewed the points where I had made right or wrong turns in my life and reflected upon why the only answer I could come up with was that when something became easy, I felt that I was no longer good at it or it wasn’t serving me anymore.

And the real nutcracker came the other day as I was coaching a client who said: “If it’s easy I am not working hard enough and then I am being lazy. And we only deserve good things if we work hard for them.”

Hmmm, I thought. Although logically and professionally I did not and could not agree, there was that little wriggly feeling inside telling me that deep down some part of me DID agree. The voice in my head had serenaded me with quotes like “No one ever said it was going to be easy” and “Do you know how hard we have had to work for this”?

Of course, upbringing plays a huge part in how we shape our beliefs. Be they religious or environmental influences, I see the struggle in clients, who have been told for 50 years that nothing was worth having that came easy, trying to digest the concept that that was not indeed always the case.

I know that is a complete nonsense. But we seem to have a faulty link when it comes to the relationship between easy and lazy. Anything we learn to do is fundamentally easy when we have mastered the art of it. But takes effort, skill time and patience to get there.

Society as whole used to have to deal with major change every 100 years and that gradually decreased to every decade. But now the terrifying fact is that major changes impact on us almost every year. Nothing stays stagnant. We don’t master our jobs and stay doing the same job with the same security year in year out.

The divorce rate proves the same can be said about home life. We are constantly under pressure to advance, be it by doing increased hours for the same pay while completing an incredible amount of extra paperwork and facing increased scrutiny of everything you do.

Even as I type this, my various devices are all telling me I need the most recent IOS update which I will diligently do, as I did the last time they told me only a week ago, even though I don’t actually know what IOS is. And I will almost certainly never fathom out what this cloud thing is that seems to sneakily steal all my information to keep it so safe that I can never work out how to access it. But I still pay for it!

A decade ago, just before the launch of the first smart phone I may add, It was normal and acceptable to gain a certain level of security and stay there until it was time to wind down a little. However, nowadays that safe and comfortable plateau has gone. If we are not in the period of growth and expansion then we believe we are in a state of decline. And it’s our mental health that suffers more than anything else.

Some change is good and can be the best decision and something which we should cheerfully embrace. Some change, on the other hand, is enforced and we have no power over it other than how we choose to let it affect us.

But some change is unnecessary and simply places us under even more pressure than our demanding lives already place us under.

That is the change we need to evaluate and here’s how we do it.

1. Before you act on making a change, ask yourself WHY you are REALLY making it and give yourself 48 hours to come up with the answer 2. Make a list of the top 10 things you feel you do best.

3. Make a list of the tasks you do that you find most easy and compare.

4. Feel proud of the things you have learned and take comfort in the fact you find them easy. It means you have learned them well.

5. Remember the easy route is not always the best route … but it can be a lot of the time so embrace it.

6. Sometimes doing nothing is MORE effective than doing something just because you think you should be.

Sandie Robertson is a respected lifestyle coach and #1 bestselling author of “I Believe I Can” An expert on anxiety and stress management, she has helped hundreds of clients with problems from weight loss to sports performance, from trauma to grief. If you want Sandie to help you, contact her on www.sandierobertson.com