Forgiving imperfections: Embrace mistakes as opportunities for growth and practice self-forgiveness. Psychology underpins everything we do, determining the decisions we make, the relationships we build, the roles we play and the places we live, and our behaviour is further influenced by the changing seasons, encouraging many of us to fall into unhelpful patterns again and again each year.

Learn about mental health: Read books, articles, or attend workshops that provide insights into mental health, its importance, and its impact on overall wellbeing. Compassionate and easy to read, this book can lead us to better ways of living. It is filled with unpretentious wisdom’– Henry ManceConsistent sleep schedule: Establish a regular sleep-wake cycle by going to bed and waking up at the same time each day. Meaningful goals: Set specific, achievable goals that align with your values and contribute to your sense of purpose. Flexibility exercises: Practice adapting to changes in your daily routine to enhance cognitive flexibility. Perhaps the smartest thing about How to Change Your Mind, however, is the restraint with which Pollan inserts himself into the narrative. His own story with psychedelics is fascinating – he ignored them for most of his life, only starting to experiment with them in his mid-60s – but that isn’t what this show is about. Instead, the bulk of the advocacy here comes in the form of compassionate case studies, featuring people with anxiety or OCD, who try these drugs (often in clinical settings) and are, if not always cured, then helped considerably.

Mindfulness and meditation: Practice mindfulness exercises and meditation regularly to reduce stress and improve emotional regulation. Positive affirmations: Create a list of affirmations that focus on your strengths and repeat them daily to reinforce a positive self-image.Based on his 2018 book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, the series offers a God’s eye view of the creation, prohibition and resurgence of four different psychedelic drugs: LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and mescaline. Taken alone the book was an absolute gamechanger, correcting some of the more virulent myths about psychedelics and opening the door to their potential ability to treat everything from depression to PTSD. Pollan’s book has already gained so much influence that this newspaper alone covers the new wave of psychedelics on a near monthly basis. Having said that, sometimes it’s extremely helpful to be reminded what a “sensible person” might make of any given question. Overthinking is one of the more common symptoms of everyday unhappiness. We keep niggling over mildly aggravating thoughts as if trying to solve a maths problem whose solution seems slightly beyond reach. If someone steps in and says: “Don’t worry – the big mathematicians have basically decided that this one’s impossible, so they just fudge it like this …” it can be really helpful. For me, the chapter on friendship was genuinely useful. Fluctuations in intensity are OK, apparently. Don’t overthink it. Phew!