Your personality, the Ego, your self-image... the term used in cognitive psychology sums it up neatly: the Conceptual Self - how you conceive yourself. In other words, what you think about yourself is a conception, a perception, a construct of the mind. It is not real but it feels real and its impact in your daily life is all too real. This Conceptual Self of yours niggles at you, answers back, badgers you... it is always with you. Of course, it plays an incredibly important role in your life - or it did in evolutionary times. It gave you a "quick and dirty" pen picture of yourself - it stopped you worrying about your ability to achieve your key goal of making it through the day.

Life today is different. Whether you like it or not, It is more complicated - you have many more and diverse goals than simply surviving. Not only is your personality not up to the task - it actively gets in the way of the achievement of your goals. If this were not the case, nobody would fear speaking in public, nobody would suffer from low self-esteem, nobody would worry about whether or not they were making the right impression and nobody would suffer from all the associated, needless and imaginary stress. If this were not the case, everydbody would achieve their goals - small, medium and grand - effortlessly.

Your personality is the product of your upbringing, your Conceptual Self the product of the mental gymnastics that we all put ourselves through in playing host to the kind of inner dialogue or mental noise that doesn't just distance us from the here and now - it disables us from doing our very best here and now. You may not always be aware of this inner circus - because it is often played out at a subconscious level - but its effects are felt in the stresses, strains, cares and worries of ordinary everyday life.

You need stop this circular, repetitive, runimative, self-defeating thought. Today's Quick Tip asks you to consider how you feel - not so that you end up analysing yourself and your thoughts further but so that you discard those useless thoughts that distance you from the reality of the moment and start doing just what you need to do in the moment, to get what you want out of the moment, free from that obstructive inner dialogue.

Funny - once you stop the noise in your head, you can actually appreciate what's going on and how best to get what you want out of it... effortlessly.

France is renowned for its labour laws... for all the wrong reasons: the 35hr. week and the complex rules around employment contracts has hamstrung the economy to the extent that, six years after the global economic meltdown, France's evening news still talks about "La Crise" and the continuing rise in unemployment.

Yet, it seems difficult to satisfy those with jobs: no doubt some of you had your travel disrupted last week as French air traffic controllers downed tools because their retirement age is rising from 57 to 59. And, whilst half of Europe ground to a halt, half of Paris's parents dropped their children to closed schools: teachers took the day off to protest against an imaginary austerity - imaginary because, not only are an additional 4,000 teachers being recruited, unions have ensured that Summer Holidays will never finish before 2nd September!

But we do need to spare a thought for the striking workers at Radio France - the state station with two orchestras, five news rooms, a HQ that is costing €0.5bn to renovate and average annual holidays of 63 days - that's almost 13 weeks! Someone - on behalf of the State in Crisis - has had the audacity to suggest that spending at the station is a little on the extravagant side!