TSHP199: How to keep smiling

[button link=”https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-self-help-podcast/id663490789″ bg_color=”#2d7ec4″]Subscribe to The Self Help Podcast in iTunes[/button]

What’s Coming This Episode?

The World Happiness Report was recently published and it made for interesting reading as ever. There are plenty of clues within that can guide us on a path to ‘happiness’ (whatever that may be). Let’s dive in…

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

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!).

 

How To Keep Smiling

This week an article, ‘How the happiest people on the planet keep smiling‘, made me laugh, especially as Ed has been trying to become a meditator. The article reported research that pinpointed what it is that makes some people happy while others are not. So what does science tell us.

Money. Many people consider higher per capita income is a precursor to happiness. Having sufficient resources to survive with comfort and to feel that there is no stress is certainly a part of happiness. However having more money that you need does not actually make you happy. We joke that at least with money ‘you can be miserable in comfort’ but it proves that money will never make you happy.

Health plays a good part in happiness. Health creates greater life expectancy, less time off work and more time being happy. Autonomy is important. People’s freedom to make life decisions is a part of creating their individual happiness. Generosity in both giving and receiving raises spirit. And friends, family and social support creates a sense of belonging and overcomes loneliness. Happiness does not need to come from big events, but often small ones.

“Happiness consists more in small conveniences of pleasures that occur every day than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom”. Benjamin Franklin

Scandinavians are not dancing in the street, their happiness is more to do with well being and contentment. So what is the secret?

Genetics, in Scandinavians are shown to have an effect. There are three genes that, when activated, create increased levels of serotonin which is the natural precursor of wellbeing. Now, any country that, in history, was near to or invaded by the Vikings have this genetic structure, Guess what? British people have a genetic structure that is very close to that of the vikings. So why are us Brits not showing our happiness, rather than moaning about our lives? Or are us Brits happier than we let on?

All these issues, beyond that of genetics, are considered by scientists to be too subjective, too emotional. Associate professor Wataru Sato and his team at Japan’s Kyoto University went one step further into trying to understand the basis of happiness. The researchers used scans to determine which areas of the brain are involved in people feeling happy. The results showed that volunteers who rated highly on happiness surveys had more grey matter (cells) in their brains.

MEDITATION/MINDFULNESS
Now, this is the magic part of this research. We know how we can increase the grey matter in our brains, we meditate. Brains scans have shown, for years, that mindful meditation increases the grey matter in the brain, especially around the areas that control our emotional experience in the limbic system. The bottom line is:

It does not matter how good your life is materially,
if you do not have enough grey brain cells
it will never be good enough in side your emotions

So, what we have learned is that if we do have a genetic predisposition to happiness we might be ahead of the game, and that the nearer we are to Scandinavia the more likely we are to have a positive genetic makeup. But that is not the end of it. We now know, from the scientific research, built around brain scans, shows that if you regularly meditate you will create more grey matter in your brain, (it takes about two years of daily practice) and we know that more grey matter equals more positive control of our emotional self. In short it creates happiness.

Ed began this weeks podcast by telling us about his new meditation experience over the last two weeks. Well done Ed. The bottom line is that we all need to meditate and that we need to practise meditation persistently and consistently on a daily basis over time. If you know an experienced meditator you will be aware of their calmness and lack of stress. You may also be aware of their general efficiency in their work and their happiness in their life generally.

Devote some time to yourself, be happy and if you can, try some meditation.

Take care

Sean x

TSHP198: Dealing with abandonment

[button link=”https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-self-help-podcast/id663490789″ bg_color=”#2d7ec4″]Subscribe to The Self Help Podcast in iTunes[/button]

What’s Coming This Episode?

When we make a change in our lives it can feel great. Progress! But what about those that are left behind, the abandoned? Let’s take a look at the other side…

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

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

  • Sean, er, forgot to find a resource. For shame!
  • Ed insists you watch There Will Be Blood (“I’VE ABANDONED MY BOY!”)

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!).

 

Abandonment

This is an interesting blog. We were contacted by a listener who wanted us to talk about abandonment in terms of being excluded from a group. In her case this was religious group. Having grown up in a Jehovah Witness family she decided that it did not work for her and she decided to leave the church. The result for her, as often happens is that once you leave the faith you are also then abandoned and often ostracised by the entire group or faith.

Years ago I had my own brush with the Moonies, or Unification Church. Their claim was that their leader, the reverend Sung Young Moon, was the second Messiah. They had written their own book of the word that was inspired by God that they saw as the New, New Testament called The Divine Principle. The punch line was that Mr Moon was the second coming predicted in the old New Testament. Having met Mr Moon in the flesh I felt that anyone less like a Messiah I had yet to meet. Saying that I have never met a messiah so who am I to judge.

Anyway, I decided that it was time to go, not such an easy thing to do. I was told by those that I had arrived with that it was the Devil in my soul that stopped me seeing the divinity of Mr Moon. They stayed and I left. In leaving I was no longer one of ‘Us’ and was now one of ‘Them’, the heathen non believers. Like our listener I was then abandoned.

Why have we been abandoned?
It is all down to core beliefs. People gather together in groups that are similar. The groups may be sport, racial, sexual, religious, political, socio-economic, academic, ethnic, the list goes on. When we create a culture of ‘us and them’ we loose the magic variety that is creation. We limit our experience and our knowledge, we become confined and inward looking. Most negatively we create prejudice in our unfounded beliefs in what ‘they’ are like because they are different to ‘us’.

When all is one there is nothing to abandon
What attracted me to Ayurvedic and Sankhya philosophy is that there is no ‘us and them’ because all of creation is one thing. It is as though the entire universe of creation is a gigantic jigsaw and that every idea or philosophy that there ever is, is simply just another piece in the jigsaw, another part of the picture.

If you are truly my family and if I see strangers as family that we have yet to get to know then we are approaching the one-ness that is creation. The divisions of ‘us and them and need to build walls, actual or metaphorical to keep them out leads to never ending conflict, pain and suffering. If the whole picture is of the oneness of creation do we also include all sentient beings as ‘us’.”

Peter Singer, author of ‘Animal Liberation’ said, If I could make everyone in the world see one film,
I’d make them see EARTHLINGS.”

EARTHLINGS is a 2005 American documentary film about humankind’s total dependence on animals for economic purposes. Presented in five chapters (pets, food, clothing, entertainment and scientific research) the film is narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, featuring music by Moby, and was written, produced and directed by Shaun Monson.
http://www.nationearth.com/earthlings-1/

If you can bear to watch Earthlings it might expand your ideas about abandonment.

Be happy and look after each other

Sean x

TSHP197: Meditation will change your life

[button link=”https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-self-help-podcast/id663490789″ bg_color=”#2d7ec4″]Subscribe to The Self Help Podcast in iTunes[/button]

What’s Coming This Episode?

You’re a self help junkie so you know about meditation, but is it a regular part of your daily routine? The benefits are clear and we go through a lot of them in this episode. Welcome along Chris from Clearmind who brings his expert knowledge and unique new product.

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

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

  • Sean recommends the Clearmind Cushion, of course! (don’t forget to use discount code selfhelp)
  • Ed demands that you and everyone you know watch I, Daniel Blake

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!).

 

Metta – the prayer of loving kindness

Mettā (Pali) or Maitrī (Sanskrit)

Metta or loving kindness meditation often comes at the end of meditation practice, though it can used as a full meditation of loving kindness. In Metta we are expressing caring and empathy for all sentient, feeling, beings. Traditionally this begins with yourself and the, like ripples from a pond spreads in ever increasing circles to encompass all of creation.

In this blog I am partly quoting from Bodhipaksa who is a Buddhist practitioner and teacher, and founder of Wildmind in 2001. Well worth a visit.

What is Metta?

Metta is recognising that all sentient beings can feel good or feel bad, and that all, given the choice, will choose the former over the latter. Such contact with feeling imply that there can be suffering. This is the point where I become a vegetarian. The bottom line is that another animal does not have to die in order for me to live and that other animals do not need to suffer so that I can live.

Metta is the solidarity that we have with others, this sharing of a common aspiration to find fulfilment and escape suffering. In this we are all one if we realise that in looking after each other we will all be OK, we create heaven on Earth, but only if we want to.

Metta is empathy. It’s the willingness to see the world from another’s point of view: to walk a mile in another person’s shoes. When we are awake and aware we can learn from the experience of others. When we are asleep we have to suffer in order to learn.

Metta is the desire that all sentient beings be well, or at least the ones we’re currently thinking about or in contact with. It’s wishing others well. When we look after others the chances are that they will look after us and wish us well. Creating the positive and peaceful family of creation.

Metta is friendliness, consideration, kindness, generosity.
Charity is when we offer friendliness and support to others.

Metta is an attitude rather than just a feeling.
It’s an attitude of friendliness.

Metta is compassion.
When our loving kindness meets another’s suffering, then our Metta transforms into compassion.

Metta is shared joy.
When our Metta meets with another’s happiness or good fortune, then it transmutes into an empathetic joyfulness.

Metta is boundless. We can feel Metta for any sentient being, regardless of gender, race, nationality species.

Metta is the most fulfilling emotional state that we can know. It’s the fulfilment of the emotional development of every being. It’s our inherent potential. To wish another well is to wish that they be in a state of experiencing Metta.

Metta is the answer to almost every problem the world faces today. Money won’t do it. Technology won’t do it. Metta will.

That last point is so simple. All the world problems could be solved right now with a little loving kindness.

Too often politics and the media go out of their way to reinforce the differences between people. Metta shows how similar we all are, and not just human beings all animals, all of creation.

Have a go at the meditation of loving kindness on the Palouse site and enjoy the other great links, knowledge and facilities offered there.
Here is a link to a full metta loving kindness meditation…

Be happy and share the love

Take care

Sean x

TSHP196: Can depression be good for you?

[button link=”https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-self-help-podcast/id663490789″ bg_color=”#2d7ec4″]Subscribe to The Self Help Podcast in iTunes[/button]

What’s Coming This Episode?

 

Depression ain’t no walk in the park, that’s for sure. It’s a debilitating condition that can wreak havoc on a persons life. But is there light in amongst the darkness? Can some good come from depression?

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

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!).

 

Depression might actually be a good thing

According to Kevin Loria in the Business Insider Thursday 16 February 2017 Depression may be our brain’s way of telling us to stop and solve a problem

There is a theory that suggests that rather than being a problem depression might be a specific behavioural strategy that we have evolved as a biological adaptation that serves a purpose. As Matthew Hutson explains in a Nautilus feature on the potential evolutionary roots of depression and suicidal behaviour , that the purpose of depressions might be to make us…

…stop, understand, and deal with an important problem.

Figures for the USA, which are probably reflected in Europe, suggest that at any given time, about 5% of people report symptoms of moderate or severe depression. Major depressive disorder is now so common that at some point in life, one in six people will suffer from it.

So why does such a debilitating condition strike so many people?

The traditional understanding is that depression is just a breakdown in the normally working of the brain. This is seen as a chemical imbalance that is treated by chemical medication designed to balance chemistry, change mood and create shifts in behaviours.

Could depression have developed to help us?

Evolutionary psychologist Paul Andrews and psychiatrist J. Anderson Thomson first elaborated on this idea, called the “analytical rumination hypothesis,” in an article published in Psychological Review in 2009.

Their idea is that what we think of as a disorder is actually a way for our brains to analyse and dwell on a problem in the hopes of coming up with a way to deal with it. The researchers suggest it’s possible that a difficult or complex problem triggers a “depressive” reaction in some people that sends them into a sort of analytical mode.

This intrigues me greatly because in the Ayurevedic model, my original training, depression was seen as a gift, as a way of our system telling us that something was wrong and giving us the chance to sort it out. This would explain the increased rumination that arises in depressive episodes. Along side this is an increase in dream sleep. The two phases of sleep are deep sleep (NREM) and dream sleep (REM). It is assumed that deep sleep is the resting phase concerned with repair of the body and dream sleep is an active phase concerned with processing experience and emotion. In depression the dream sleep eats into the deep sleep so that despite sleeping for long periods of time the person does not experience rest and may become progressively more tired.

The concept that depression might be an evolutionary adaptation rather than a mental disorder is not the main consensus of the mental health community. In reality it cannot be true for all depression. It would be true for those who suffered with reactive depression in response to a trauma or traumatic stimulus. Even so this could still account for around 80% of depressive episodes.

The problem is that in most cases depression is not the cause it is the symptomatic response to the cause. In western medicine we tend to treat the symptom and pay little or no attention to the cause.

It could be that if we accepted depression as a gift and took the opportunity to undertake a self-audit to enable us to get our lives back on track. Instead we treat depression negatively as a problem and medicate the symptoms and fail to deal with the cause. It would make sense that if alongside medication we engaged in mindful therapy so we could speed up treatment and help to dissolve depressive episodes.

MBCT
Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy is designed to deal with and overcome issues of reactive or repetitive depression. MBCT, is recommended by the United Kingdom’s National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) for the prevention of recurrent and reactive depression and has also been shown to be effective in treating the symptoms of anxiety.

Take care and be happy

Sean x

TSHP195: Explaining the rise of fascism

[button link=”https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-self-help-podcast/id663490789″ bg_color=”#2d7ec4″]Subscribe to The Self Help Podcast in iTunes[/button]

What’s Coming This Episode?

300x250_1

If you’ve seen the news of late you may have noticed the wall to wall politics. The UK withdrawing in on it’s self, and the US now doing similar. Both are still functioning democracies but, for a small percentage of each population, 2016 marked a turning of the tide towards a very different world. Where does fascism arise and what is it’s appeal? What are the warning size and how can we combat it?

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

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!).

728x90_2

Degrees of consciousness and the rise of fascism

This is a tough blog and very much embedded in our time and the very things that are happening around us. Across the world there is a political lurch to the right that, in many cases, is becoming fascistic. The last world war happened because, at that time, the fascist, totalitarian, dictators in Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan and eventually Russia all came out to play. The war lasted six years and encompassed the world. The estimates vary between a death toll of 60 to 80 million people during the war, including the 6 million in the holocaust.

Are we about to do it again? And, if we are why?

We did have a fascist who was coming to talk on the podcast and defend right wing xenophobic philosophy but he became scared that he could be identified and decided to withdraw.

We have a very human problem and it is the lack of awareness or lack of awareness in the vast majority of people. This allows for headless chicken syndrome where short-term objectives override the long-term effects of our decisions.

I have worked for many years with thousands of people and my work would suggest that what I was taught in my Ayurvedic training about human awareness, when I was novice, is true. This understanding was as follows. In my awareness pyramid the percentages are arbitrary but I think you will get the point.

Deep asleep – about 50% of the population
In the darkest state, the human consciousness is only aware of its limited self, only aware of the importance of the individual ego. Here it is too dark to see anything or anyone else, this is isolated aloneness. Therefore the deep asleep person treats everyone and everything around them with total insensitivity, oblivious to the damage that they are causing, they simply cannot see it or feel it and do not understand. It is only when things become lighter and brighter that we begin to see what is around us. In the darkness, we are all blind and alone.

If as I suggest that half of all humanity are deep asleep then levels of social and political awareness will be low and the decisions made only have a small chance of serving us well.

Dream sleep – about 20% of the population
In this stage the level of awareness is the realisation that there is strength in numbers, the individual realises the benefits of co-operation with other individuals. This may be the simple realisation that sleeping with another person is warmer than sleeping alone. Or there may be a benefit from mutual security and support or help with hunting bigger animals and so on. The problem is that once we have a group based on common interest we have those inside the group and those outside the group. We have ‘us’ and ‘them’ and all the prejudice and bigotry that comes with not, not understanding or being fearful of ‘them’. This is what is currently playing out with the migrant issues across Europe and the USA and the fears of other religions.

The Waking State – about 12% of the population
In this state people want to be different, they no longer want to comply with the norms of the group they have new ways of looking at things that threaten the group rules. When we close down and confine our support to only those of our group, say on the immigration issue, it is these people in the waking state that question and fight for the rights of those not in ‘our’ group. But these people are not yet truly awake and their demands may be made in ignorance and be unrealistic. It is only when human consciousness awakes that we see the ability to make things different, because the currency of awareness is power.

Awake-ness – about 8% of the population
Power is often seen as a dirty word. In reality those that are awake exercise power over those that remain asleep. The asleep people are referred to in politics as ‘the silent majority’. The sleeping people hold the ability to dictate the outcomes in human evolution but they do not realise it so those that have the power manipulate them to achieve desired outcomes.

Power is like a knife, it is neutral. A knife can be used to create a work of art, a wonderful meal or death and destruction. The knife is neutral. It is the holder of the knife who dictates what it will do. It is exactly the same with power. Often, money or influence and power go together. In the case of politics it is power, influence and money that get people elected.

It is easier for a rich person to wreck the world
than it is…
For a poor person to become president

People that use power negatively use those that are asleep as the cannon fodder in the market place and in wars.

Objective Consciousness – about 5% of the population
Those that can see the effects of the power brokers can see things objectively and will work to control a restrain the unfettered use of power. These may be parents attempting to moderate the behaviours of their adolescent children or it may be the judiciary attempting to hold back the power of the despot or dictator as we now see in the battles between the president and the courts in the USA. Objectivity is often the only control that can have an effect on the excesses of power, However, sometimes objectivity can easily become a set of rules and dogma that become fixed and immutable laws that do not bend, this is when “the law is an ass’.

Intuitive Consciousness – about 3% of the population
This level of awareness is above thought and above word. The currency of intuition is meaning. This is direct knowledge without knowing. Those that have a deep intuitive function have long sight that realises outcomes that those who are less awake fail to see. Those that are in deep sleep see everything in terms of the immediate effect. Those in intuitive consciousness do not focus the effect of things today, next month or next year, they are seeing ten, twenty and a hundred years ahead.

Creative Consciousness – about 2% of the population
The currency of creativity is in images. Advertisers spend their lives attempting to manipulate those in asleep-ness to buy into ever changing images of what they now definitely need. But this is at a low level of awareness the truly creative image makers give humanity inspirational images that last for decades or entire eras. The images shared but Moses, Jesus and Mohamed have inspired millions of people and many hundred of years after the events are still active and alive.

There is also a negative side of imaginative inspiration. Hitler’s managed to persuade hundreds of thousands of people to go around the world, to kill and to die, all for this cause that he managed to inspire other people to enact. At all levels of consciousness we have a choice to act positively or negatively.

Current Social Cycle
The goodwill and drive for co-operation that developed after the Second World War is now coming to a close. Right wing xenophobia is in the ascendant. It is happening at all levels in all countries and in most cases it is being driven by fear. The fear that is felt by the majority who are, in my estimation, are asleep. I suspect that we are collectively blundering into future crisis that is not yet in focus. The effects of Brexit will not become truly apparent for five to ten years and if other countries in the EU follow suit the effects will be greater. We do not know what will happen in the USA and whether or not President Trump will survive without impeachment. If he is impeached then the lurch to the right might be held back. If not, and more so if he were to get a second term, the closing down of co-operation and the breakdown of the existing world order is probably assured.

I say these things from my position…

If we all look after each other we will all be ok

My concern is that we blunder into another global war and turn the cycle again before we return to a more caring and sharing world order.

If you are voting for social, economic and political change please take some time and consider the long-term consequences of what ever you decide.

Take care

Sean x