Originally Posted by PompeyPaul
That is what I'm really starting to struggle with right now, where are my minima? How do I find them?
There are many ways to discover/set your minima. One is by simply saying for example that you won't go flying in less than 8 km visibility or divert if the destination is reporting less than 8 km visibility - and stick to that no matter what. Then, as time goes by when you have couple of VFR approaches with 8 km visibility (you can go flying intentionally when the weather is at the limit, to see how your limit looks like, but be prepared to divert if the wx goes below) under your belt and you will get used to it, you can lower your minima to 6 km and again - just stick to it. Same can go for crosswind, cloud ceiling, DA/MDA, visibility for IFR approach, currency, etc.
The other way is to scare yourself, which is most of us have done one time or the other. It usually looks like that - you depart in severe CAVOK only to find out an hour later that reported visibility is 8 km and decreasing. And by the time you get some distance to the airport it drops to 5 km, but you say to yourself that it's still VFR and that you can see enough far ahead to stay clear of obstacles and traffic. Then as you reach few miles out, it drops to 3 km, but you're still legal (at least in most Europe), you just ask for SVFR, because it will be night soon and you have that important family dinner tonight and you have to go home - plus the weather is still above legal minima so has to be safe, right? Then at some point, without even realising it, you find yourself crawling, possibly without ground contact in 2km or even less visibility and suddenly you see some part of ground you didn't expect... And then you get scared and see that VFR at SVFR minima is no picnic and if you don't run out of luck at that moment, you end up safely on the ground with a very valuable experience of scaring yourself (to death) and it'll be probably quite some time before you even think of trying that again. It's just one possible scenario of what could happen.
It all comes down to personality, if you are very strict with yourself no matter what, the first method is very good, although you will always keep wondering what the situation outside the envelope looks like. With the second method - again, if you're lucky - you see the outside part of the envelope and you know that it's best to stay inside your personal limits - knowing how close to incident/accident/death you were the last time you pushed those limits beyond your ability/currency/experience.