TSHP035 – Living With Cancer

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Cancer. The ‘C’ word. To be told that you or a close relative has been diagnosed can come as a huge shock, where as more dangerous (statistically) conditions such as heart disease don’t have the same fear-factor. That said, a huge percentage of people will develop cancer at some point of their lives, so it’s best to be prepared.

This is a special episode as Sean and Ed have a special guest – it’s Rie! Finally! Rie is a psycho-oncology counsellor (nice title!) who works at Clatterbridge Cancer Centre helping folks out. The majority of people Rie deals with have, interestingly, are at the end of their treatment, others maybe expecting them to be celebrating, but this a common time for people to struggle to deal with what has happened to them – depression and anxiety are both real issues. Living with cancer, whether it’s there or not, is a hugely important issue.

Enjoy the show!

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

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TSHP034 – What’s Stopping You From Living in the Now?

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:50 — 30.1MB)

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What’s Coming This Episode?

We’re 34 episodes in to this little adventure of ours and it’s time to take stock of where we’re all up to. Do you live your life in the present? Are you ‘living in the now’? This episode is designed to focus your minds on everything that is important.

Astonishingly, Sean also uses todays episode to admit that he doesn’t have all of the answers to life and that, occasionally, he might be wrong about things. Incredible!

Enjoy the show!

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

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TSHP033 – How to Deal with Difficult People

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Ah, difficult people! Sometimes there’s just no escaping them, either at home in our family life or at work. Is blood really thicker than water? This can be a tough point to take on board but remember that for the difficult person in your life it’s you who is being difficult.

There’s some advice in this from Sean that you might not expect…

Enjoy the show!

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

  • Sean had the audacity to recommend his own book! The Frog Snoggers Guide was Sean’s first book but is very relevant to this weeks discussion – enter the code LITPNOW at the checkout for a nice little surprise 🙂
  • Ed has found (via Stephen Fry) a free eBook called ‘How to Achieve Less‘ by Life Squared

Stay in Touch

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Leave us an Honest Review on iTunes

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TSHP032 – Release Your Inner Child

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What’s Coming This Episode?

When do we stop being children and become ‘adults’? When we turn 13? After leaving school or home? How about when we stop learning in general? We often look at young children as beings that need to be taught, but another reality is focusing on what they can teach us.

As we grow older we learn prejudice, fear and anxiety. Once you realise that this has been learned then you’re free to make the change and release your inner child.

Enjoy the show!

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week

Stay in Touch

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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!).

TSHP031 – New Year, New You

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:15 — 24.2MB)

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What’s Coming This Episode?

New year, new you? A new year can mean new beginnings. This time of year is a great time to do a ‘self audit’. Reflect on how your life has been and dictate to yourself how you are going to be going forward.

Resolutions are funny things though, and can be quite superficial. There are plenty of statistics that show us how many will fail at resolutions just weeks or even days into their new habits. Not seeing these new habits through can be quite damaging to a person so think it through and make sure you’re ready to take it on before you set the goal.

This one’s a heartfelt chat with Sean and Ed but it’s chock full of tips to kick start your 2014. Happy New Year everyone!

Enjoy the show!

Show Notes and Links

Resource of the Week (!)

  • Sean’s resource is to write that letter
  • Ed recommends a book by Michael Palin called Himalaya. Remember, ‘travel is the only thing that you can buy that makes you richer.’

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!).

New Year 2014 – Choices

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Ok, so it is New Year! Standing at the beginning of 2014 you, and I, will be making choices about how this year will be. Looking forward with hope, love, fear, anxiety, joy…whatever. The point is that what you see ahead, and how – you create what happens for you – this year in 2014 is all a matter of your choice.

If you follow our work at live in the present you will already know that Rie, Ed and I always attempt to live in our present, in our ‘Now’ and actively create our world through our choices – thoughts becomes things- so we individually and collectively are choosing what will happen for us in 2014. So are you, though you may not realise it.

Focus for a moment on the choices before you for this coming year. Do you have any? What are they? Most importantly what is the basis of these choices?

It is important to own that deciding not to make a decision is actually a decision. The action of stillness is equally as powerful as the action of motion. However, when you choose to do nothing you are likely to be vulnerable to the choices everyone else makes around you. In having your own clarity of purpose you are in the flow of your life. And as I said, stillness is a decision as much as an action.

Choice and fear
For many the choice for action this year will be limited by fear. Fear of pain, failure, fear of looking stupid, ridiculed, loss, rejection, abandonment and so on. Fear is the biggest limiting factor for any of us. Fear and anxiety are the destroyers of happiness and fulfilment – those who dare win – step beyond fear, as Susan Jeffers put it – feel the fear and do it anyway – ( a book worth reading).

If you can get hold of the idea that your thoughts become your experience, you are the author of your life, then you will realise that fear is actually a choice and so is joy

Choice and duty
Generally in psychotherapy the words “ought, should, must and can’t” are banned. Each of these words are the limiters of self expression. The call of duty may be laid upon us by our culture, religion, beliefs, as parents, children, employees, employers and so on. The trick is that if in 2014 there are things that you feel you ‘must’ do then, – act with a smile on your face – this is known as Bhakti or to give service without expecting anything in return. We all need a bit of Bhakti in our lives but it is wrong to allow a sense of duty to stunt our own self development – we all deserve happiness.

There are many reason that we can find to maintain and justify our own lack of development or fulfilment our feelings of victimisation or misery and moaning about our life and other people, though there are alternatives.

Choice and joy
In making your decisions for 2014 avoid the ought, should, must and can’t and think about the lightness of joy – focus on what makes you feel happy – and do more of it. Doing things that make you feel good is never work and at the end of it you feel happiness. How many of the things that you do in your life lead to you feeling flat, bored or unhappy. If you do more of what makes you feel good your life will get better and better – happiness is a learned response – sometime we have to practise being happy.

Choice and responsibility
The word responsibility comes from the word to respond “respondability”. By being responsible or “responsable” for what we experience makes us the master of our own destiny. It does not matter from where you begin your journey, whatever your age or state of health, being responsible for your life and taking ownership of yourself – responsibility is the key-. If I am responsible for me no one else can ever be responsible for what I think or feel and ultimately what I do. There are many examples of people who, against the odd chose to respond positively. Nelson Mandela was once such person.

This year some of you will be facing very difficult and tough stuff, emotionally, mentally and physically. These may be things that you cannot avoid and we have no choice other than to face them and deal with them. However, we do have a choice as to how we respond to them – Epictetus said:

‘It is not events themselves that cause distress, but the way in which we think about them, our interpretation of their significance. It is our attitudes and reactions that give us trouble. We can choose how we respond to them’

Living in the present and being positive about our future allows us to create a year in 2014 that we will look back on positively and perhaps with joy.Decide to create your own experience this year. Treat your problems as challenges so whatever 2014 presents you with, smile be positive and enjoy it.

Take care

Sean x

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