Pause for thought!

Our collective psyche is filled with the idea that one thing follows another; when someone dies and then a baby is born, we see it as an ending and a beginning. We say things like, “when one door closes, another one opens”. The magical idea of endings and beginnings is with us throughout life. In the past, I feel that we were better at marking these rites of passage as we moved from one stage to another in life.

When I am working with people, I see it as so very important that they are able to let go of what has been, to enable them to move on to their desired present. Too many of us drag our baggage around year after year, long after we should have just let it all go. The bottom line is that baggage wears us down and stops us moving forward, and creates states of depression.

So my suggestion to you is that, before you step into the New Year, you review all that has happened in this last year, acknowledge it all, the good and the bad, do not question it or worry it, just let it go with as much love as you can muster. Even the worst possible disasters and traumas teach us things if we have ears to hear and eyes to see, and things that we learn are never bad. In that sense, nothing bad can ever happen to us, unless we allow it to.

So before you even think about New Year resolutions and what you will do in the future, how about you make a decision to let go of the past. Time to put it down and Live in the Present.

Happy New Year. Let’s make it a belter.

Take care,

Sean x

TSHP082: The True Meaning of Christmas

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What’s Coming This Episode?

It’s Christmas! Deck the halls, etc., etc. It has a unique meaning to all of us who celebrate at this time of year and can be a tremendous force for good. But what does it really mean?

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast! And Happy Christmas from Ed, Sean & Rie!

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The True Meaning of Christmas

Christmas is here – bring on the light

What will it be like for you this year?

Is it a religious commemoration, a coming together of family and friends, a joyful time for children and young people, a time for giving and receiving, time to let your hair down and have a jolly? Office parties, champagne and chestnuts roasting on an open fire?

For some it may not be such a good time. Perhaps we have the awareness that there are those who are no longer with us. Christmas can be a time of loss and bereavement. It may be that there is really no one left and that you have no choice but to spend the day alone. Christmas can be an unhappy time.

For Christians Christmas is the festival that commemorates the birth of Christ, hence the mass for Christ. However, the previous belief systems had festivals that were celebrated at this time of year and existed long before the birth of Jesus. The festivals at this time of year were acknowledging the end of the longest night and the start of the lengthening day. It is the concept, often referred to is both religious, and psychological texts, as a time when we are coming out of the darkness into the light.

These celebrations of the darkness of winter turning toward the light of spring was the solstice for the Druids and Yule for the pagans. Though the timings are slightly different the same concept is there for Hindus in Diwali, the festival of light, and in Islam there is Ramadan and Eid.

Christianity piggy backed on the Solstice festivals to create the celebration of Christmas. Most authorities suggest that the birth of Jesus was actually later than December 25th.

But, whatever you are celebrating at this time of year, it may be a religious or pagan or simply the celebration of the coming together of family and friends, not unlike the gypsy horse fair, it is a time for the connection of people and the acknowledgement of society, community and, humanity.

Getting into the spirit of good will

At this time of year in the run up to Christmas people tell me how they will be required to spend the day, perhaps sitting around the dinner table, with people that the don’t like. This is where the good will comes in. It may take all your powers of forgiveness and your ability to live the law of allowing. That is, allowing people to be what they are and not needing them to be different or what you want them to be.

If you haven’t already go onto YouTube and listen to “Dominique the Donkey”. It might make you laugh or get stuck rattling around your head like a pea in a tin. When you are with someone who is driving you round the bend just sing it to yourself in your head and smile.

If you can, have a good one.

Take care

Sean x

TSHP081: Dealing With Betrayal

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What’s Coming This Episode?

People can be wonderful. People can be kind. People can be mean and nasty and, occasionally, betray our trust in them. So how do we deal with that? A listener request this week…

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

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What to do when you’ve been betrayed

The concepts of betrayal come from the idea of trust, which we have spoken about before. Trust is, at least for me, a concept that cannot be maintained. Trusting people shackles them to a set of behaviours and the assumption that they will never change and be forever constant in what we want them to be, this is seldom possible. People change, develop and grow with time and are never the same from one day to the next. The people that we trust the most, and therefore assume that they will not let us down are family and friends.

If you have been following our work at Live In the Present you will understand our emphasis on the need for forgiveness to minimise the negative effects of when trust breaks and people let us down. Though, for many, it can be hard to let go of negative attachments especially when the person has been close or is family.

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend”
(William Blake)

Betrayal is loss of trust with knobs on. Betrayal seems one whole size bigger than trust, in that, the word betrayal suggest, to me, that someone has deliberately gone out of their way to do something to me that is injurious to either me or my reputation.

Betrayal can be totally destructive and is something that we might expect from our enemies but not from our family or friends. When the betrayer is close to us the effect is all the much greater. Many people that I work with, often when going through a relationship break up, would say that the only true betrayal is from someone that has been loved, cherished, respected and trusted.

“The saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies”
(daily quote)

Betrayal, in the sense of being let down, or letting down, comes in a few varieties. (thefreedictionary.com)

1. Treason is to aid an enemy of one’s nation, friend, family, company and so on or to be a traitor or to betray one’s country. In many countries treason remains a capital offence. The phrase “My enemies enemy is my friend” suggests to me that treason is in the eye of the beholder in the same way that “one persons terrorist is another persons freedom fighter”. It depends which side you are on as to whether you feel that the person is either a traitor or a hero.

2. The role of the spy is always that of betrayal, depending on which side you are on they will be hero or foe. The spies role is in discovering or handing over information or, to expose, a nation, company, or a friend, treacherously to an enemy. This sounds very grand and a bit 007, but treachery can be equally true of the gossip network in any group. Back biting and “stabbing people in the back” can be found in many social settings and are often the negative reactions of opposing group as ‘us’ and ‘them’. Do you belong or don’t you? Are you in or out? Once social groupings are established “Those who are not for us are against us”. Gossip often includes sharing secrets and confidences behind someone’s back which is often seen as betrayal and treachery.

3. To have an affair, or to engage in other infidelities, is to break a promise that has been agreed between us. It is to be disloyal to the trust that has been placed in us by our partner. Those relationships that are “solemnised” in Church or Registry Office are recorded contracts accompanied by verbal declarations and promises of intent. To break the terms of such contracts is a legal matter, marriage is, after all, a legal business, but the betrayal that is so painful is emotional and may never be resolved. Perhaps our partner strays or leaves us for another unintentionally, it just happened like in the song “Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa”. Deliberate seduction is a different matter.

4. To seduce someone and then forsake them is more common than we think. Seduction is not just a sexual event. It is what happens to us when we visit the car showroom and walk out with the car that we never intended to buy. The sales person made us feel, if only for a while, that we were so important and had the knack of making us feel so good that we fell in the heat of the moment and was consumed by their passion. Of course once we re-enter the showroom and they have had their wicked way with us and have nothing more to gain, we are treated completely differently we have ceased to be their love object we have been rejected in their betrayal.

5. The “let down” is when someone has disappointed our expectations. Perhaps they promised us that they would do something for us, complete a task, look after us in some way and then we find that they have not done it. What they said, what they promised was all hot air and, worst of all we discover that they never intended to do it in the first place. Just like the perfect conman they looked us in the eye and with total narcissism they lied and we believed them. Where I came from this was described as “being taken up the cleaners”.

I could go on and on but I think you get the point. For me betrayal is distrust with intent. The person meant it to happen it was a deliberate act that was designed for either their gain or our loss. Betrayal is the ultimate act of hurt and hatred, (is “hurtred” a word? If not it should be).

Anyway, if you go back to step one in the Live In the Present book it begins with forgiveness. The only way out of hate and hurt and the after effects of betrayal is forgiveness. It is then that you can let it go.

Take care and be happy

Sean x

TSHP080: Does Retail Therapy Work?

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What’s Coming This Episode?

It’s Christmas which can mean only one thing – it’s time to SHOP. That’s a bit harsh really as Christmas has many meanings, but for many the joy (and addiction?) of shopping reaches fever pitch. Let’s explore that shall we?

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

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The Ups and Downs of Retail Therapy

Money, money, money

Spend, spend, spend

Money makes the world go round! Or so they say.

Money is a fantasy. It doesn’t actually exist. The piece of paper, the token, that we call a note, is just that. It is a piece of paper. Every bank note, in every country, has some kind of statement that implies that the token has a value, “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of…” yet if you go to the Bank of England and ask for your pounds they will probably think that you are mad. The basis of money is that we, as society, agree that the token, the note, has a value that we all agree to maintain.

The need to use money tokens to get beyond the problems of barter became an essential. After all if I am buying your chicken and I want to trade my cow how will you give me my change? Anyway, we all use money, often in the form of credit, to create a pool of energy that we can exchange for goods and services, and Christmas means spend, spend, spend.

If you follow our blogs and the podcasts you will realise the importance of the relationship between various addictive issues/substances and the production of dopamine in the brain and, guess what, money is the same. The need to spend money is a dopamine addiction.

Dopamine is known as ‘the love drug’. It is produced by the pleasure centres in the brain and creates a feeling of happiness, euphoria. It is these feelings that we crave and become addicted to.

When we crave a ‘love object’ that we just need to buy, our brain is telling us that it needs a squirt of dopamine. But dopamine is a fickle friend. As soon as we achieve our love object, as soon as we buy what we were craving, the drive for dopamine ceases and the love object becomes yesterday’s news.

Have you ever craved to buy something, perhaps spending many weeks or months saving the money, and then at last you buy it. It may be your flavour of the month for a little while but soon these feelings wear off. The problem is that because of you addictive habit your brain now craves more dopamine you will now need a new love object to get it going again. More spend, spend, spend.

Advertisers know this and, like Apple, will change their designs and specifications to keep the dopamine needs of their followers flowing. No one really needs to continually update devices at the rate that the market dictates and yet the majority buy into it. Sales people and teams understand this and their sales techniques are designed to get our juices flowing, to increase the flow of dopamine.

In big stores the lighting, the music and the displays all are designed to create more dopamine and, to create the need to have, to own and, to buy.

When your expenditure exceeds your income, on a regular basis, and you are not living in poverty, then you are probably addicted to retail therapy. What that means is, that like all addicts, you have trained your brain to connect an activity, in this case spending money, to the production of dopamine in your brain’s pleasure centres.

Just as there is nothing wrong with having the occasional blowout on booze there is nothing wrong with having the occasional spend fest. It is all a matter of proportion. It is when it is out of proportion that it becomes a problem and that means therapy. When you have a problem do something about it, see someone, talk, seek help.

Overall when it comes to money the deal is…

Love people and use money, do not, love money and use people…

Be happy and spend responsibly with joy.

Sean x

TDHP079: How to be Happy

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Ask most people what they really want from life and the answer will come back loud and clear – I want to be happy! It’s about time we really focussed on this issue then isn’t it?

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

Show Notes and Links

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Where Art Though, Happiness?

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.

My experience in my work and my life leads me to believe 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 are 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.

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