Archive for month: March, 2018

Ed came into the recording studio to do this weeks podcast in a state of shock, he had seen the eighty four life-sized sculptures of male suicide victims have been installed on ITV’s central London studios in the Evening Standard news paper. The realistic statues that do look just like men ready to jump from the roof, appeared on the Southbank to raise awareness of the 84 men who die through suicide each week. Project 84 saw bereaved families work with suicide prevention charity CALM to get people talking about the biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK.

It highlights to me that all of us, and the government, need to take more action to improve suicide prevention by talking more and also in increasing our awareness of those around us. We also need to consider that if the worst does happen that we provide adequate bereavement support and project 84 is doing it’s best to deal with this, but most importantly to get us all involved.

In the time that I woke this morning, made a coffee, thought about this blog, write it and uploaded it, another two men will have killed themselves. That is astonishing. Project 84 has been focussed around male deaths under the age of forty-five. The death of Robin Williams struck a chord and raised the issue that had, up to now, been mainly hidden. Middle aged suicides in both males over the age of fifty five. It has, until now, remained largely unaddressed.

We do not always respond sensitively to suicide often seeing it as a weakness

Robin apparently suffered depression after the onset of Parkinson’s Disease and had financial worries. Whatever it was that took him to the edge I guess there came a point where he could no longer see or feel the desire to carry on. At the time I was both saddened and ashamed by my fellow human beings who felt the need to put him down via Tweets and Facebook. The idea that suicide is cowardice, is held by those with little understanding or empathy. Actually killing yourself is quite difficult, and in most cases requires determination and indeed courage.

What value do you give your life?

Prior to recording Ed and I spent a while discussing our own experiences and suicidal ideation. We were both shocked by the massive rate of suicide in the UK but were even more shocked to realise that the UK does not even appear in the top twenty five countries when comparing suicide rates. For example New Zealand has a rate five times higher than the UK.

The value of life
Have you ever considered ending it? I know, from my work as a psychotherapist, that many people do seriously consider it. Has it ever been a realistic option for you? If you are reading this then you didn’t follow through with the idea. What happened to stop you? The decision to stay alive means that you had a reason, what was it, or is it?

Whatever reason you had, it represented the value that you gave to your life. It is the meaning that you give to living and I guess it would follow that it is the value that you might give to the lives of others. So, as you read this perhaps you might consider that if life does have a value what are we/you doing to help other people value their’s? This is, in many ways the issue that is being addressed by Project 84.

There is so much that we can each do to help and support each other everyday in every way. It may simply be being mindful and thoughtful towards others. I do not know the individual circumstances of Robin Williams but I do know that their are many people around us right now that would benefit from a kind act, word or deed that may keep them from falling into the black pit of suicide.

I have, in my life, stood on the edge of the black pit in life and I made the choice to move back into the light. In doing the podcast with Ed and considering why this was I came to the conclusion that I do have a belief that as human beings we have the creative potential to solve problems, any problem. Also I realised that I am too nosey to kill myself. I have a need to know what happens next, even in the worst of times.

Imagine going to a library or a bookshop and buying a book only to find that someone had ripped out the last few pages so that you will never know how the story ends? For me life is like that. It has, sometimes, been tough, and sometimes very hard to keep going, but it has also been amazing, it has been a blast and the one thing that it has taught me is that by staying positive, being grateful for all that I have and, by being consistent and persistent in all my endeavours and my attempt to ‘get it right’ my life and my happiness grows. I want to know how my story ends. For many years now I am enjoying my story.

You can become the author of your own story
I guess the other good lesson that I have learned is this. If you really don’t like the story line of your life, if it is boring, depressing, despairing, anxiety provoking, meaningless or just not what you want, then, pick up your pen and write a story line in your life that does meet your needs. And, if you have trouble finding your pen or thinking up a story line go and see someone like me. Talk it through play with ideas and then with persistence and consistence live a life you can love.

For me a successful life is simply waking with a smile on your face feeling good about the day you are about to live and, at the end of the day having a smile on your face feeling good about the day you have just lived. At that point your life has a value way beyond money and yet you will be the richest person alive.

Keep smiling be happy and enjoy the gift of life.
Take care

Sean x

I have come to the clear conclusion that when we feel both happiness or unhappiness it is a matter of choice. Many people have become angry with me when I suggest this. They will tell me that I don’t know what I am talking about, that if I had to deal with their problems or live their life I would realise that it is different for them. They will say that they are not unhappy by choice and that it is due to the bad hand that life has dealt them or, the negative behaviour of other people in their life.

Well, in my work and my life I know this to be untrue…

…no one is ever effected by what happens to them…they are effected by how they respond to what happens to them.

In life we will always face difficult situations and difficult people. It might be that these people maybe colleagues, friends, family or even parents. They might be partners or siblings. Yet the same principle holds true.

No one can make us unhappy without our permission. No one can make us happy without our permission.

We do not have to stay with people, to remain in difficult situations, jobs, or social groups. You can do and be whatever you choose to be, and that is the rub.

Most people are not happy because they do not know what they want

When I ask people what they want, what they really, really want, they will normally say “I just want to be happy”. Sadly, that is not good enough. To create happiness you need to be specific about what happiness means to you. This often takes a great deal of thought and honesty with yourself. For many of us the concept that we can choose happiness is a concept too far.

The English language is full of phrases that are designed to get us to put up with what we have rather than go for what we truly want. Behind each phrase is a concept that tends to dictate behaviour.

“Better the devil you know”
“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”
“A Leopard can’t change it’s spots”…and so on.

When we use these types of phrases it often means that we are settling for second best and maybe even unhappiness.

The bottom line is that each of us, moment by moment, make decisions, not just about what we do and what we think but also about how we feel. When we become emotionally literate we are able to decide how we will feel about the events that we experience. When we choose to see problems as challenges, and challenges as learning points, we can choose to change unhappiness into happiness.

Take care and choose to be happy

Sean x

Well, I think that we are all liars. I do not know anyone who does not vary what they experience and how they respond to be both sensitive and respectful. The truth after all is the way that I see it.

In his book ‘Sapiens’ Yuval Noah Harari explains how human language developed through the drive to gossip about other members of the tribe. Most gossip is conjecture, spurious and often straight lies.

Lying falls into different categories but they have one thing in common. All lying, like most communication is about us getting our needs met. This is the basis of survival and we have been doing it all of our lives. It begins when we are children. A child needs to be fed and so it tries to signal to the mother that it needs food. If the mother does not respond the child will develop louder and more effective ways of getting the attention of the mother so that it can be fed, or have its needs met.

In the same way if a child need sympathy after a fall they cry to get the attention that they need to make them well or to be attended too. At what point does the child learn that the more elaborate the show the greater and the quicker will come the attention. In effect the child is making out that things are worse than they are to get what they want. This could work later in pretending to be sick to get time off school to be able to stay at home. All these things are lies in that they are untrue.

Once we move from the simple act of crying for attention, and elaborating what we are doing and get into verbal language the world of lying opens up from simple exaggeration to the con man. Yet, still all these acts have the commonality of the person is using lying or exaggerating to get what they want.

If a lie is to present something in a way that is different to what it actually is then many things that we do and experience can be seen as lies. Every time we open FaceBook and watch what people are presenting as representing their lives are we seeing a truth or a lie. The need to be seen as successful, happy, fulfilled or rich may lead us to present our self and our situation in a way that simply is not true.

Once you get into the idea that lying is presenting something in a false way we might consider make up, botox, cosmetic surgery as different forms of lying. When a product is advertised as being the leading brand and that can do wonderful things is this the truth or a lie? There was a time when cigarettes were sold as a positive way of clearing the lungs and calming the nerves!!!

I guess that in an everyday sense this sharing of falsehoods can be seen in three ways. The first is what I do to get me needs met. The second would be that I do it to smooth society and not to offend people. For example you ask me if you look fat in this dress and I say ‘no’ when I really mean ‘yes’. The third and this is the bad side of the common lie is when I lie to meet my own needs when at the same time I will damage or hurt you.

When someone cons another person out of their hard earned cash, cons them into being or doing something that causes them harm, is continually unfaithful and lie that they are not, it becomes a hugely damaging thing.

So for me, I see lying as a normal part of human communication that people engage in to get their needs met. They may be needs of food and shelter, the needs to have greater esteem, power, influence or control, or the need to dominate and diminish others.

Only we can know if are really a truth speaker and that is a case of honest self reflection.

The last thing I would say is that there are those that are delusional and belief what they are saying is the truth when others around them know that it is not.

When we meet a liar we either have to use the law of allowing so that we don’t let them get to us or we need to move away from them. As I said on the podcast I see myself as six foot six, bronzed and muscular. You may not see me that way. Am I lying?

Take care be happy and observe those people around from the exaggerators to the bar faced liars and ask your self what is the need that they are attempting to get met by their lying?

Sean x

This week Ed and I have been talking about repetitious behaviour and concentration. The ability to habitually focus may be the basis of Obsessive Compulsive Behaviour (OCD), though may also be a great asset. We all do things repetitively. The issue is are we addicted to the behavior, do we have to do it to feel normal?

We are all an accumulation of habits
One of the biggest revelations in life for me was realising that no one is ever born miserable. They have learned to be miserable from the moment of their birth. We are all simply what we have learned to be. We are all an accumulation of the behaviours that we have repeated since the moment of our birth. These are our habits.

As a child I thought that people were only happy because they had things. The families around me seemed happy and they also had warm friendly homes full of people and stuff. My house was one of relative financial and emotional poverty that people rarely visited and happiness was quite thin on the ground.

Like all children I accepted my lot, though I did not like my lot, and spent my childhood very unhappy. When at fifteen I left home I began to find happiness mainly in visiting and staying with other families. It was then that I felt the joy that is in the freedom of a happy house. However, it was a great lesson to find that rich people could be as miserable as my own family. I was even more surprised to discover that poor people can be so happy they could burst.

It took me a bit longer to understand that happiness and love go together not, as I had thought, happiness and things. Love is the most wonderful thing that changes sorrow into laughter and darkness into light. Where as things often become a burden and a worry.

Then I began to question what was the difference between those people who were happy and those people who were sad? Over the years, working with thousands of people, I now understand that all that we feel, every state of mind that we have, are simply the habits that we have learned since that moment of our birth.

The person who is miserable learned to be miserable from those people around them and then practised it until unhappiness simply became a habit. Their learning was so gradual that they didn’t realise why they were miserable, they just assumed that was the way that they are. The same is true of all emotional states such as anxiety, lack of confidence or self esteem. But, it is also true positive feelings such a optimism, positive expectation and, of course, happiness.

Happiness like every emotion is a habit. A habit may be an idea, thought, feeling or behaviour that we have practised long enough for it simply to be the way that we are. When people say to me now, “it is ok for you, you are always happy” they do not realise that I was once one of the most miserable people on the planet. Yes I am happy. It is because I consciously choose to practise the habit of happiness and it has become just the way that I am.

The other part of happiness is gratitude. Being thankful for what we have, however little, connects us with the emotion of love and leads to happiness. I love the American expression ‘an attitude of gratitude’.

Anyone, at anytime, can decide to learn to be happy right now. There are always things to be happy about. The fact that you have the eyes to read this, or the ears so that someone else can read this too you, that fact that you have a chair to sit on, a floor to lie on and so on are all things that are positive if we see them that way.

Your life is a collection of habits in what you think, feel and do.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Mahatma Gandhi

So, have you got the happiness habit. If not you could start right now with deciding what it is that you are grateful for.

Take care

Sean x