TSHP056: Addiction & Habits Take 2!

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Some addictions are unconscious habits while others are avoidance habits. It can be easy to slip into habits of behaviour through family and friends etc. You may even have a genetic propensity towards certain behaviours.

What are you addicted to?

It’s The Self Help Podcast! Enjoy the show 🙂

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Addiction and Happiness

Some addictions are unconscious habits while others are avoidance habits. It can be easy to slip into habits of behaviour through family and friends etc. You may even have a genetic propensity towards certain behaviours. However, some habits are the results of displacing your energy so that you avoid solving your problems in favour of enacting the addiction. This could be as simple as having another cup of coffee or a cigarette. Either which way you avoid attending to the task that you ought to.

With the birth of neuropsychology, a magical science that returns western psychology to its older Ayurvedic roots, we can begin to make the connection between chemical markers in the brain and emotional states of feeling and motivation. The one chemical or endorphin that we all know about is serotonin. This is described as the “happy endorphin” and is concerned with mood. Anti-depressants work by, maintaining a useful level of serotonin in the brain. Depression is either caused by, or causes, a drop in serotonin.

The carb habit

With our increased understanding we now know that the levels of serotonin are promoted by eating carbohydrates. That means that biscuits, crisps, pasta, chips, and so on really are comfort foods. When we eat carbs the increase in serotonin production makes us feel good. This can become an addiction.

In psychology we now talk about the ‘carbohydrate cycle’. If someone is feeling down or depressed they will often eat carbs to make them-selves feel better. This is really a form of self-medication. The cycle works like this. I feel down so I eat the carbs to make me feel better. As I put on weight I see my body in the mirror and feel bad. So, I then go and eat the carbs again to make me feel better.

We are told that the population, in the affluent west, is getting progressively fatter. We are told that this is the fault of food companies and fast food outlets. However, the attraction that the population has developed to carbs just might be an indication of a more generalised depressive malaise that leads us all to self medicate on comfort foods in an attempt to feel better.

When I was kid I was told that fat people were always jolly. Well, I guess that if your system is awash with serotonin, after over indulging on carbs, you might well come over as pretty jolly. The point is that if we are getting bigger it might just be a mask hiding an incipient depressive malaise. It stands to reason that such a depressive state is destructive to both family and society, not good at all.

I am reminded that agricultural, village based societies, have very low levels of psychiatric and emotional disorders and that we only see the development of significant emotional disorders when societies industrialise and urbanise.

It leads me suspect that our generalised increase in weight is not so much an expression of affluence, more an indication of dissatisfaction and low mood. If we are to repair the emotional fractures in ourselves and society at large, we need to focus mindfully on creating a happy world to live in. Essentially in mindfulness we do not turn away from what is in front of us, rather we deal with whatever life throws at us acknowledging the lessons that we each need to learn. It can be too easy to turn away from our life path into alcohol, nicotine, caffeine and carbs etc rather than dealing ‘with’ and ‘living life’.

So what is an addiction?

When we are born we have a basic internal chemical environment. This is partly genetic, partly due to what our mother has been eating, or imbibing throughout pregnancy, plus what we have eaten or inhaled from the moment of birth. This is our baseline internal chemistry. As we grow and develop a liking for food this environment changes. It will also be effected by experiences and our moods and so on. In the end we have a sense of self, a sense of what feels right or normal, we have created our own addiction.

What is your poison?

We are all addicted to something. So, what is your addiction? Let’s say that you have taught your body to tolerate nicotine, or sugar or caffeine, or heroine, then you have created an internal chemical environment that is now your normal. If the level of these chemicals drops you will not feel right and go into withdrawal. The natural behaviour is to seek out the substance that will make you feel normal again.

Some substances that we are addicted to maybe more subtle. If we focus on being miserable or angry and that becomes our normal chemical environment and we have nothing to be miserable or angry about then, we will seek out situations that will return us to normality. The same is true of happy chemical states, of anxiety, depression and so on. Once the habit is established and is accepted as normal we will do what we can to maintain that chemical environment.

Some habitual addictive behaviours become displacements. Do you use it to avoid something, if so what? For example, someone who smokes may opt to nip out for a cigarette as a response to things that are emotionally difficult rather than face and deal with the problem. The same might be true of alcohol or just having another cup of coffee.

The magic is that if we do not like the way that we are, the habits that we have developed, we have the capacity to change them. Within 90 days anyone can change any habit.

What would you like to change?

Take care and develop happy habits,

Sean x

TSHP055: Critics, Opinions & Feedback

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Feedback is either a blessing or a curse depending on whether you want it or, the intention of the person giving it to you. Feedback can be positive or negative, useful or critical. However, even critical feedback is useful when it is well intended and given from the point of care or love.

Anyway, what is feedback? Should we do it and is it useful?

It’s The Self Help Podcast! Enjoy the show 🙂

Show Notes and Links

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To see ourselves as others see us

Feedback is either a blessing or a curse depending on whether you want it or, the intention of the person giving it to you. Feedback can be positive or negative, useful or critical. However, even critical feedback is useful when it is well intended and given from the point of care or love.

Since Ed and I started and developed the self-help podcast the feedback has been constant, for which we both thank you, please keep it coming. We take all feedback seriously and attempt, wherever possible, to adapt and change and take your concerns on board.

Overall the feedback has been extremely positive and it would seem from the download figures, as well as the email feedback, that we are getting it about right, though two themes have cropped up, that I think we will need to address in this weeks podcast. Ed’s apparent flippancy and my apparent arrogance!

Anyway, what is feedback? Should we do it and is it useful?

The unseen function of feedback

Well, actually we are all doing it all the time both seeking it and giving it. That’s is, we each present things and ourselves consciously or unconsciously, that we expect other people to respond to. When we dress to go out we are presenting ourselves to the world. Some of us will be happy to dress in scruffs while others may dress to impress. If the latter is the case a compliment, ‘wow, you look good to day’ or, ‘that colour really suits you’, can make all the effort worthwhile.

Social stroking

Often positive feedback will make us feel good and increase our sense of self worth and that is a powerful function. This sort of social acceptance feedback greases and oils the wheels of society, be it in the office or in more informal settings allowing it all to run smoothly. Sometimes such feedback has a frisson of flirtatiousness that can make us feel good about ourselves. Though the line between a frisson and perceived inappropriateness may be in the eye of the beholder, it depends on your PC threshold.

Deliberate feedback

Sometimes feedback can be used as a communication tool especially by management, certainly if they are awake to the emotional needs of the workforce. Simply thanking your team at the end of the day, or the end of the project, can raise esteem and morale and increase productivity, reduce absence and staff turnover, we all need to feel that we have a value. The same is true in the home or in relationships.

Giving or receiving positive feedback is essential to our wellbeing. When did you last thank your partner, kids or parents for doing the simple tasks that can be assumed as ‘it’s just your job’ (Alain de Botton has written an article on this topic alone). Being thankful for food, washing, ironing or, cutting the grass makes it all that much more worthwhile and makes us feel happier about doing it again.

Negative feedback

I need to distinguish between feedback that may be critical and positive and straight negative feedback. Once there was an experiment where two classes of children from different schools, though matched for age, gender and ability were treated in two opposite ways. In one class the feedback was always positive whatever the children did in the other it was reversed so that all the feedback the children ever got was negative. At the end of the experiment the class that had been praised had increased in marks and results with increased enthusiasm and motivation. The class that had been continually criticised had got progressively worse and demotivated.

There are a lot of lessons in this for management, for parents and partners. It runs with the idea that ‘what you feed grows and what you starve dies’. When we accentuate the positive with good feedback that is what we get in return.

Self-feedback

The same is true within each of us. We all have an inner voice, the bit that can be parental, that we can use to be self-critical or self-supportive. It can be hard to feel good if you are continually beating yourself up. We all make mistakes; if we learn and grow from them they become challenges and not problems. In that sense, everything that you experience will give you feedback and teach you. To the ‘awake’ mind everything and everybody is a Guru.

Giving critical feedback

We all have to do it at some point and when it is given with love and care it can be the most powerful gift that you can ever give to anyone. Before you do, there is something that you should ask yourself, how much of what you are experiencing or feeling is your stiff and how much belongs to the person who you are feeding back to?

My teacher explained to me, when I was angry with a fellow monk, that it might just be my problem and not his. The way he described it was that it was as though we were connected by a piece of elastic that was taught and full of tension. The more that energy belonged to me the greater would be my sense of arousal. It is the difference between being able to be objective about an issue when we are being subjectively angry or aroused by something. The difference being when we are calm and objective about something we are likely to be more accurate and appropriate in our feedback. Equally the more aroused we become the more we are likely to be clouded by our own unresolved emotional issues and be less objective in our experience. That does not mean that our feedback is not valid just that we also need to look at our self.

Projection

When we give feedback subjectively, as above, we are often projecting an experience from one person onto another person. Perhaps someone talks with the same accent, looks similar or, does similar things to someone from our past that we have net yet got over, we are likely to project this unresolved emotion onto them. When this happens they get the full force of our emotions they may, in reality, have nothing to do with them at all.

Receiving negative feedback

The same is true when we are told something that makes us angry. Perhaps someone tells us that we are mean, or negative or whatever, and we feel our self beginning to react, well they have probably just stepped on our emotional corns, they have hit on something within us that is real and unresolved that perhaps we are denying. When this happens a reaction can feel like a sudden intake of breath, heart rate goes up, and the reaction begins. When this happens the ideal is not to react but to stop and consider what is being said, think, process and analyse and, perhaps get feedback from other people.

The balance or probabilities

My experience of me is biased. I see myself from my own point of view. Your view of me may be more accurate than my own view of me.

On our Self Discovery Course there is a feedback session every ten weeks. This involves every person on the course giving every other member of the course a piece of paper that starts with “[name]…the way I experience you is…” plus one for my own experience of myself. The first sheets are usually superficial and get deeper over the year of the course.

What happens if the experience of the other twenty people on the program agree with each other, yet are very different to my own experience of myself? The chances are that they are right and I am wrong, or they are more objective and my subjective view is blurred.

I am about five foot six and small build. I use the example on the course that if I see myself as six fort six bronzed and muscular does that equate to other people’s experience of me? Well, the answer is no. In the balance of probabilities people see me as small build, they are probably right and I am wrong.

So for me all feedback is good, it is a useful tool and can be life changing and enlightening. However, you need to remain aware of your own subjectivity and the subjectivity of the person giving you the feedback.

If you are game for a laugh get twenty pieces of paper write your name followed by ‘the way I experience you is…. and give them to people who know you fairly well. You should also write one for yourself. You may learn a lot about yourself.

Take care,
Sean x

TSHP054: Why Retire?

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What’s Coming This Episode?

At what point do we stand back from life, do we retire?

For some people this begins at fifty and for others it never happens. Our definition of success and happiness is waking with a smile on your face feeling that you have something that you truly want to get out of bed for something to go and do that if both meaningful and fulfilling. For many this is called work, though many do not realise it until they retire.

Whether you do it for money, or the love of it, don’t stand back, remain involved and engaged in the process of life and living. We promise you that you will be happier.

It’s The Self Help Podcast! Enjoy the show 🙂

Show Notes and Links

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Stay in Touch

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Leave us an Honest Review on iTunes

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Why you should forget about retirement

Why Retirement? Forget it!

When I was a child, we had fireworks every November 5th. On the box were written the instruction “light the blue touch paper and retire”. Later this was developed to “stand well back”. Now, I think that is what people do when they embrace the idea of retirement, they stand well back from life and for many this is the beginning of the end. Life is about learning; learning is living and for most of us living and learning is working. It is engagement.

The other day the children laughed at me when I referred to a spider as a person. The spider, female in this case, from my point of view, had rights just like you and I. Some people become spider phobic but all she was doing was living her life and doing her work.

All beings on the planet from ants to elephants do work they are all productive. However there are two types of work. Primary work, that is getting up in the morning and going about the business of finding food, creating shelter and safety and raising the next generation and, secondary work, that is when we allow, or expect other people to do the primary work for us. To allow this to happen human beings invented money.

With money we no longer all need to undertake primary work like all the other species do. We are able to do abstract things with our time and collect tokens (money) for doing it. We can then exchange money for food and shelter and safety.

There are less and less people undertaking primary work. The majority of people undertake secondary work and use the money they earn to pay other people to do the primary work for them. This means that we can be unproductive all our lives, paying other people to do the production for us. This makes us unlike any other species on earth. In any other species, when an individual ceases to undertake primary work they die. They have no food or shelter and no money to get others to do it for them.

Question: When did you last undertake anything that could be considered primary work? By that I mean that you actively created shelter, food or safety? It would seem to me that when we lose touch with primary work, and the majority of us have, we have already retired from the primary work of life. It is as though we become detached from the essential energy of life.

There is a strong case for not retiring at all at any point in life. I suspect that true primary workers never really do, they remain physically active throughout their lives. When secondary workers officially retire many of them go into decline. I see many clients who retired early at 55 or 60 who, by the time they are 75 have lost the meaning of life and are slipping into depression.

If you are a primary worker the evidence is that you will live a longer and happier life if you carry on working for as long as possible. If you are a secondary worker I strongly recommend that when you officially retire that you undertake some primary or, better still, consider not retiring at all.

Reason not to retire

  1. We know that it is in the process of engagement and life long learning that creates new brain cells and that people remain younger.
  2. When people become physically less active and more sedentary they develop more diseases.
  3. Those that maintain a working function maintain and develop social relationships and maintain a sense of belonging.
  4. Most productive people have a stronger sense of self and self-esteem.

I could go on, and on. I guess one big one that has hit the western industrial world is that supporting retired people costs much more money than anyone ever expected and we can’t afford it. This is where the money token idea begins to breakdown.

At what point do we stand back from life, do we retire? For some people this begins at fifty and for others it never happens. My definition of success and happiness is waking up with a smile on your face, feeling that you have something that you truly want to get out of bed for something to go and do that is both meaningful and fulfilling. For many this is called primary work.

Whether you do it for money, or for the love of it, don’t stand back, remain involved and engaged in the process of life and living. I promise you that you will be happier.

Take care

Sean x

TSHP053: Forgive and Forget

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What’s Coming This Episode?

First up, apologies for the sound quality on Sean’s side of the microphone this week. The test run was fine I swear! We’ll make sure all is as it should be next week once more. ^Ed

Forgiveness may be difficult but it’s not impossible.

Again and again I work with people who are weighed down and disabled by their past experiences or from their negative attachment to what is happening to them right ‘now’. They can get angry with me when I talk about forgiving and letting go. They will often shout and tell me that I don’t understand when I tell them that if they become grateful for what they have ‘now’ they will be able to let go of their negative thoughts and feelings of the past and create a happier, healthier future.

It’s The Self Help Podcast! Enjoy the show 🙂

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

Stay in Touch

We’re all over the web, so feel free to stay in touch:

Leave us an Honest Review on iTunes

We’d be amazingly grateful if you could leave us a review on iTunes. It will really help us to build our audience. So, if your like what you hear (and would like to hear more great free content) then visit our iTunes page and leave us an honest review (all feedback gratefully received!).

Forgive, let go and live

Forgiveness may be difficult but it’s not impossible.

Again and again I work with people who are weighed down and disabled by their past experiences or from their negative attachment to what is happening to them right ‘now’. They can get angry with me when I talk about forgiving and letting go. They will often shout and tell me that I don’t understand when I tell them that if they become grateful for what they have ‘now’ they will be able to let go of their negative thoughts and feelings of the past and create a happier, healthier future.

To let go and forgive requires a good dollop of gratitude in the present. It requires that we each learn to love and grow from those things that we currently dislike or hate and seek to avoid. When someone says to me…

…”I try to see the good and be grateful for the good things that happen – but it doesn’t make sense to me to be grateful for the crap.”…

They have completely missed the mark. It is in being grateful for the crap that it does begin to make sense and then life really does begin to change and it changes fast. This takes a step up in consciousness, in awareness. To see the things that were previously experienced as bad and horrible, as good and positive is counterintuitive. But it is the breakthrough point to awakeness when you become the creator of your experience rather then the reactor to events.

Is the universe out to get you?

This is an important question and lays the foundation for how you experience your world. For me all the things that have happened to me have taught me lessons. Some of these have been easy good lessons and some have been hard lessons. When I now look back I would rather not have needed to learn some of those lessons but they were there and I dealt with them. Sometimes the same lessons would come back and back until I got the point. This process is on going. It is life long learning. The main thing they have taught me is this…

When I experience something, or someone, who makes me angry, upset, hurt or whatever, I have a choice I can either assume victim mode and be weighed down by it or, I can observe, learn and grow from the experience. It may be that others see this process as me withdrawing; some might see it as sulking (that is their stuff) for me it is the mindful observation of self, situation and of others so that I can learn and in learning I can grow.

Over all I see the universe of experience as a set of lessons and I see us human beings as points of consciousness, or our sense of self, surrounded by a set of physical and intuitive senses that enable us to learn from our experiences. We are always facing new lessons if we choose to see our experience that way. Of course, if we choose to see life as a problem in various states of fairness or unfairness then we never grow, or we grow slowly.

On a moment-by-moment basis we exercise our choice. Will we learn, grow and develop from what we experience or will we use it as ammunition to reinforce our problems and our negative view of a universe that is out to get us.

The confusion of forgiveness and gratitude

In attempting to forgive we can become confused with the idea that we are condoning behaviours that we know are wrong. We might feel that we are, in some way, saying that what people did, however bad, is ok. This is never the case. To forgive means to forgo your retribution or let go of your hatred and in, letting go of what was in the past enables us to focus on the gratitude of what is in the present. If you hold onto negative thoughts they will, in the end hurt you. You cannot live a happy now, or create a positive future if you believe that the past has done you wrong. It is never what happens it is how we deal with it that makes the difference.

The only person that hatred will ever harm is the hater.

When you hate, or have any negative thoughts about others or any situation, your body creates all the negative chemistry that will ultimately damage your body. It raises your blood pressure, hardens your arteries and leads to strokes, heart attacks, ulcers, back ache, neck ache, head ache and, dementia. Then come the nausea, irritable bowel, eczema, asthma and so on. The list really is endless.

In hatred it is as though you have taken the poison expecting it to kill someone else
Sadly the only person your hatred damages is you. Even worse is that these things that we hold on to, in our negative attachments to the past, stop us moving forward.

All the emotions of the negativity that we hold about other people, or events, are like elastic bands that keep pulling us back and stop us moving forward. The trick is learning to love adversity, love your enemies, love the difficult situation, love the crap and use them all as learning points so that you can grow.

In forgiveness, forgoing or letting go, choose the word that works best for you, you will be able to get into your present. In your present you are then able to create the life of gratitude that you really want for your self. When you are bound to the past you will never create a future that you desire.

Just a thought. If the science of karma, the law of cause and effect, is right, I suspect that it is, then everyone gets theirs in the end. There are no free lunches all debts need to be paid in full. It would seem that it is not my role in life to punish people for what they have done. It is equally true that I do not need to punish myself either. In letting it go I step out of the cycle of karma and move forward unencumbered by the past in to a happy and fulfilling future.

Let go, 
be happy
 and live in your present

Take care,
Sean x