TSHP104: Live in the Present Step 3 – Gratitude

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What’s life without a little appreciation hey? We all say thank you but have you ever stopped and realise what gratitude can really bring you? It’s a hard truth to swallow but, with a little practice, we can learn to appreciate everything that happens to us – the good, the bad and the ugly.

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Reasons to be Grateful

Step 3 Gratitude

In this step we are looking at Gratitude which is “The Secret”. When we live with gratitude we create a happy way of looking at the world and therefore a happy and fulfilling life. This is not some kind of naive hippy philosophy it is embedded in science and psychology. Happiness is where psychology and science meet.

You have a mind and you have a brain but are they the same thing? Your brain is a piece of meat. It may be a clever piece of meat full of electrical connections and powerful endorphins but without your mind, it is simply meat. The question is does your brain create and generate this experience of who you are, so that at the point of your death your mind ceases to be? Or, is the brain a clever switching station through which your mind expresses itself? This would mean that your mind would carryon after the meat of your brain has ceased to function.

For some this thing called mind may also be termed ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ for others it is ‘personality’ or ‘psychology’ or the psyche. Whatever you call it your mind is the essence of who you are, of what you think and all that you feel. Perhaps most importantly it is the driver of all that you do. What interests me is this relationship between mind and brain and how we can influence it to achieve the experiences that we really want. This, in my terms as a psychotherapist, is the fulfilment that we all deserve and can achieve.

So how does it work?
We know that if we change our brain chemistry, with alcohol, legal or recreational drugs, we change the way our mind feels, thinks and responds. We also know that if we change the way that we think, feel and respond, by positive mindful interventions, or repetitious negative thought processes and rumination, we then change the chemistry that is in our brain.

It as though there is a tube that has the brain at one end and the mind at the other. Which ever end we move, effect or change, the other must follow with an equal response. Now, it would seem to me that using positivity, mindfulness and positive rumination to change the way that our mind works is a far better way of effecting the brain than taking drugs prescribed or otherwise.

Learning to be emotionally articulate
If you want your brain to produce the chemistry that will make your mind feel happy and fulfilled then, you need to change the way that you feel. This requires that you become emotionally articulate. This involves developing Mindful skills learning to listen and respond to what we are feeling. Then deciding which new feelings might serve us better.

Most of us can accept that we can control what we do with our body and our actions. Many would accept that we can also change the way that we think. However, fewer people realise that we can also change the way that we feel…

…a happy mind equals a happy brain…

…this also flows back the other way…

…a happy brain equals a happy mind…

The quickest and most powerful way the develop a happy brain is to fill your mind full of gratitude. The key to happiness is gratitude.

Whatever you are doing, wherever you are doing it, look around you. You may be in the Paris Hilton or a down town gutter. If you see the things around you with gratitude you will begin to effect your brain chemistry and create a happy brain. When you have a happy brain and mindset you can begin to see the potentials that lead to positive change. You see opportunities previously hidden or ignored.

What can you be grateful for right now this minute?

It may simply be that you are alive.

Buddha:
Let us rise up and be thankful,
for if we didn’t learn a lot today,
at least we learned a little,
and if we didn’t learn a little,
at least we didn’t get sick,
and if we got sick,
at least we didn’t die;
so,
let us all be thankful.

When you learn to be grateful for what you have, even when it is a little, you create the positive brain chemistry that allows you to move forward with hope and expectation. It is then that you will develop the ability to create a world of experience that you really, really, really want.

Be happy, be grateful and, live in the present

Sean x

TSHP103: Live in the Present Step 2 – Self Forgiveness

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Step Two of our audio course is another tricky one but overcome this one and the good life awaits…

Letting go and forgiving others is tough, but once you feel confident that you’ve tackled this it’s time to focus on yourself. You deserve to be forgiven as much as anyone else, and the power to do so is in your grasp.

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

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It’s Time You Forgave Yourself

Time to apologise?

In Step one you looked at how you feel about other people and the negative things that they did to you, but what about you? What about those people that you have let down? Do you blame them or yourself? Is it time to acknowledge those negative things that you have done? Is it time to apologise? Let go and move on.

It is so easy to blame other people for your own problems, angers and frustration. Or you can become irritated with people who do not do things the way that you want them to. You may see them as stupid, rude, incompetent, inconsiderate, and so on. But, is the problem theirs or yours?

You can never change other people
The only thing in life that you will ever be able to change is yourself. What other people do, or did, and the reasons why they did it, may only make sense to them but never to you. The outcome of their actions are their responsibility not yours. This is what we call karma, the result of their actions, is their karma.

You have karma as well
Equally, you are, and always will be, responsible for your actions, responses and, also your reactions. This is your karma. Being responsible for yourself means that you are able to let go of your expectations of others, and that you are not hanging onto the outcomes and hopes that you want or desire.

Attachments are fixed connections to past expectations
Cravings are attachments to future expectations

Being attached to, or craving for a desired outcome is a recipe for disappointment that can leave you feeling angry, offended, hurt or, disappointed. The simple truth is that in all of your interactions with others, if you had not had an expectation in the first place you would not have been disappointed.

The other side of the same coin is what did you do to others? I wonder what expectations other people had of you? Did you get it wrong, fail to get it right; were you a disappointment to yourself or to other people?

If you are honest with yourself who is it that you let down or disappointed by your behaviour. Perhaps their expectation of you were that wrong.

If you want to feel different and let go of the past then, perhaps it is time to own up and let go of your negativity.

Blaming yourself may not be that helpful
I don’t like the concepts of fault and blame; they do not really help us very much. I prefer the concept of responsibility that suggests the ability to respond -respondability. If you are responsible for the way that you think, feel, and do, without the need to blame others, you cease to be a victim. Acknowledging the part that you have played of other peoples problems and become the author of your own destiny.

In step two we seek forgiveness for all the negative things that we have done, and did, to other people. None of us are squeaky clean we have all done things that we would need to acknowledge and seek forgiveness.

Complete step two, enjoy your life in the present and be happy

Take care

Sean x

TSHP102: Live in the Present Step 1 – Letting Go

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What’s Coming This Episode?

And so begins our Live in the Present audio course. Step One is a tough one but a very important step.

Letting go and forgiving others can feel like an impossible obstacle but it’s so important to take this step. It may takes days, weeks or even months but start the job now and you’ll be on your way to a happier, healthier life.

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

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Step 1 is Letting Go

Forgive and let go of your negative past

In the first three steps of this programme we move from negative to positive by letting go of the past and becoming grateful for what is happening right now. Forgiveness may seem to be difficult but it’s sure not impossible. If you have problems with the word forgiveness then try using “Letting go”.

Again and again I work with people who are weighed down and disabled by their attachment to past experiences. Their negative attachment to what has happened to them stops them living ‘now’, it stops them living in the present.

Sometimes people can get angry with me when I talk about forgiving and letting go of these negative attachments. They will often shout and tell me that I don’t understand. Then I explain, 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 seems counterintuitive. But it is the breakthrough point to awakeness. when you become the creator of your experience rather than 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 again and again 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 this process is seen by others 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 unfairness then we never grow, or we grow very slowly.

On a moment by moment basis we exercise our choice. Will we learn, grow and develop from what we experience or we will 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, was 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 you 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 life now, or create a positive future if you believe that the past has done you wrong. You need to take responsibility for how you have responded to the difficult situations in your life.

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, dementia and so on. Then come the symptoms 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 bonds that keep pulling us back and stop us from 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.

Read this weeks Chapter (1) on the website and attempt the exercise at the end and begin you journey of letting go of negativity. In the podcast this week Ed and I talk through the chapter so that you can get a feeling of the work to be done.

Let go
Be happy and
Live in your present

Take care

Sean x

Why Live in the Present?

Live in the present

Well, we have done it. This is the introduction to the course “Live In the present” that I have run for many years with my lovely wife Rie, my amazing business partner Ed and some lovely helpers, David, Sharon and Dafydd. Happy times and good sessions.

The course grew out of my experience working with clients who were attempting to change their live to find the fulfilment that the they really wanted but were hitting the emotional blocks, that we all have, and stop us growing as people.

If you come on this journey with us and complete the ten steps, that will be available over the next ten weeks, you will change your life forever and you may actually achieve all that you want from your life. The thing is that we need to get on with it now! But as the warning in the book says to change you actually have to do and complete the tasks suggested. If you continue too do the same things in the same ways nothing will ever be any different.

Procrastination
For most of us change is something that is seen as happening in the future. It can seem easier to put off changing, ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’, rather than actually doing it today. Even the idea that I will change in the New Year, or after my next birthday, or when we get back from our holiday, is simply another way of putting off doing something. The reality is that if I want to change I need to do so now.

The power of now
Change can only ever take place in the present. The magic of the present, of the now, is that it is all that ever really exists. And, if we are going to make changes we have to do them now, we cannot change in the past and we cannot change in the future, we can only change NOW!

We avoid living in our present by focussing on the past or the future

Depression
Many of us are stuck in the past ruminating on unresolved emotional events, reliving them in the present just as though they were still taking place. This habitual way of thinking is the basis of (non-clinical) depression. People that live in the past cannot move forward because the past holds them back like an anchor.

Anxiety
Many of us will be worrying about the future and things that may never happen, but will be feeling all the worry as though those things are happening right now. This is the basis of anxiety. People that are anxious can never move forward because they are scared of what will happen next. Those of us that have learned to worry about both the past and the future at the same time are suffering from anxious depression.

Ninety days to change
The good news is that we can all change and achieve what we want if we go about in a certain way. And, the second bit of good news is that most people, in most situations, can achieve lasting change in just ninety days, and that includes getting beyond both depression and anxiety.

The thirty day rule
We know from research that everything that we think, feel and do is encoded in our brain as circuits in the neurone and dendrite cells. When we learn a new habit a new circuit is created. This might be from learning to tie a shoe lace, to learning how to moan all the time, or learning to be happy.

Persistence and consistence
We now know that the new circuit will only become established when we practise the new habit consistently and persistently for thirty days. This is crucial. It is like snakes and ladders. If during these first thirty days we missed a day we can slide right back down the snake to step one and need to begin all over again. Most people seeking to change will fail because people will give up on their intent within the thirty day rule and the new habit will never become established in their brain cells and, inevitably they will revert back to their previous habits and behaviours.

The ninety day rule
Research also shows us that if we can remain consistent and persistent about in our new habit it will become embedded in the higher cortex of the brain as long term memory.

If you learned to ride a bike when you were a child, maybe thirty years ago but have not ridden since, once you get on a bike now, you may wobble down the road and then the magic happens as it all comes back to you and off you go.

A learned habit lasts forever

If you complete the ten steps of live in the present and if you apply the ninety day rule change is inevitable and that includes overcoming (non-clinical) depression and anxiety.

In this work that I do with my good friend Ed and my wonderful wife Rie, we have created Live in The Present as a focal point for those seeking to create and maintain real change in their lives. We are putting the course up online together with free access to the book, ‘Live In The Present’, as a manual for those attempting to create lasting change.

Make sure you have signed up for regular updates and together we can make this the year that you changed.

Take care

Sean x

TSHP101: Live in the Present Audio Course. Introduction.

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Well that’s episode 100 out of the way so on with some serious business. Over the next 11 weeks we’re going to be taking you step by step through our book, Live in the Present.

We’ll start with a bit of an introduction in this episode. Why Live in the Present? Well, if you’re serious about your self development then you’ll want to tune in…

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

Show Notes and Links

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Stay in Touch

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