Archive for year: 2014

This is one of those topics that gets me energised. So at the outset I will own that my attitude comes from someone who was brought up in poverty where there was never really enough and because of that everything was used to the full. If a chicken were there for Sunday lunch it would still be being used on Monday and Tuesday. So that it eventually became soup and even after that what was left would be boiled down again as stock for next Sunday’s gravy. It was a world of make do and mend and nothing was ever allowed to go to waste.

What really lit my fire, and got me writing this, was reading that up to one third of all the food that we buy, in Britain, ends up in the bin. At the same time we have food banks because other people can’t afford to eat, not to mention the starving in other countries.

When I was a kid food was served like school dinners, you were given what the server decided you needed to eat. Because we were always hungry whatever was on the plate was eaten. As I got older and could provide food for myself and for other people it seemed reasonable to allow people to serve themselves. Using terrines people could now take what they would like to eat not what I thought that they should eat. So, why is it that, given the choice, people take more food than they want to eat and then leave the residue on their plate, now contaminated so that no one else can eat it?

This idea of waste gets me wondering as to what kind of mindset takes more than it needs and then puts it in the bin? Well, I guess it has to be people who were brought up with more than they need so that the idea of dumping and re-buying was acceptable and became the default habit. So if you are a waster, and you fill your bowl with more than you want or need and then throw what’s left away, what else do you waste?

Do you waste time?
I work with so many people who get to the point of retirement at age 60 or 65 in a state of shock, “where did that go?”, ‘what was that all about?’, ‘feels like yesterday that I was 18’, “I feel like I have just wasted my life”.

Doing things can be wasting time
Some people just can’t stop; they always have to be doing something. Under analysis the ‘something’ turns out to be meaningless other than it is just something to do. Ok, we all need to do things but when the doing is really avoiding facing our self or our emotions, or is driven by guilt embedded from a critical parent or grandparent it is actually a waste of time. When the need to be active is driven by avoidance it is termed OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Genuine business can make you happy
Genuine business is an activity that is aimed at a goal, not avoidance. The difference between this and OCD is that in OCD once one task is completed there is no sense of achievement or satisfaction and the drive is ‘what must I do next’. In genuine business there is satisfaction and achievement and an accompanying sense of well-being and happiness that goes with it.

Chilling is not always being
‘Being’ is to be really present in the moment, it is to be ‘Mindful’. Meditation may seem like doing nothing. However, meditation is an active process of intensely ‘being’. The same, or similar effect can be achieved through yoga, running, or any exercise, often repetitive, that requires the concentration of ‘being’. TV, on the other hand can be hard work.

Couch potatoes
Most people in the western world watch around four hours of TV everyday. Though to some this may be seen as relaxation or chilling it is actually hard on your system. There does seem to be a correlation between those that watch too much TV and the same physical state seen in people who are so stressed that they are heading for strokes and heart attacks, and of course there is increased weight, diabetes and other related illnesses.

I could go on all-day, you will have guessed I have just climbed astride a hobby horse of mine, so think of it like this, when you fail to act mindfully in the moment you can waste your:

• Time
• Health/happiness
• Friends/family/relationships/love
• Education/fun/interests/new experiences
• Life potential and self fulfilment
• Money/resources
• Mind/intelligence
• Intuition/empathy/understanding
• Creative imagination/problem solving/genius
• Life

And if I ever meet the person who created the sell by/use by notifications on foods I will have a few words to say to them. Evolution gave us a nose so that we could tell what was good to eat and was not and a brain to know the difference. The fact that we put a third of all the food we buy in the bin is an outrage and a crime against all the starving in the world.

Hey ho, be happy

Take care
Sean x

Mindfulness and long-term illness

Mindfulness is a conscious state of living, or being, in the present moment. That is to be ruminating on past unresolved events or fearing futures that may never happen. This state of mind is reached through the practise of specific techniques normally associated with meditation. Though to the practitioner of mindfulness the approach to life is to be present in every moment of everyday whether we are working, eating, sleeping and so on. This includes being mindful when we are ill and also when we are dying.

Illness comes in different forms. There are those coughs and colds, the sort of short-term infection that may lay us low for a short while but we bounce back from them. Then, we may be the subject of an accident with broken bones to mend or psychological scars of trauma to be healed, these will take us longer. The bones several weeks, sometimes months but trauma can be with us for years and even a lifetime. Then there are the general operations from which we need to recover, but these are mainly short term issues that may be awkward but we get over them within a reasonable period of time.

For some people illness becomes long, or longer term. We may develop ulcerative bowel issues and become the subject of a stoma, there may autoimmune problems perhaps rheumatoid arthritic issues or it may be an emotional or mental issue such as depression, extreme anxiety or the longer-term post traumatic stress. We may also develop cancer and become terminal over a long or short time.

Long-term illness requires much from both the sufferer and the carer. The carers of course are often family members, partners or close friends. Just as if the family has an alcoholic member then all the family has an alcohol problem, it is also the case that if someone in the family has a long-term illness, then all the family has a long-term illness to deal with.

Illness always has been and, always will be with us
Life, it self, is a terminal disease. For everyone in every walk of life, there is only ever one ending. You and I will both get there when our time, and our turn, comes. But, maybe that is not the point, true we are all going to die, perhaps it is how we get there that concerns us most.

Some people will add other categories to this but for me we will all die from either:

1: a cardio vascular problem
2: a dementing or alzheimer’s issue
2: a degenerative nerve or brain disease,
4: a cancer of one sort or another
5: or an accident

I just ran the list by a colleague physician in the next office and he thinks we should add in respiratory problems like COPD, Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema and also gastric ulcerative issues. The point is that however we look at it we will all die, though it is how we do it that counts. For some the ending will be swift and sudden but for others it will become drawn out and long. So whilst accepting that not all long term illness will lead directly to death I want, in this blog, to focus on dealing with death and long-term illness from the two points of the sufferer and the carer.

Living or dying?
Over the years I have worked with many people suffering long-term illness. Attitudes vary from the amazingly positive to the completely negative. It comes down to this…

…are we living with ‘it’ or are we dying from our illness?

Illness, like death, is something that few people consider until it is upon them. We need to come to terms with the idea that we are likely to become ill, and perhaps long-term, before we die. Ideally most of us would like to die in our sleep or suddenly doing something that we enjoy.

Living in the now – living with illness
My teacher once said to me,

“you are not ready to live until you are ready to die”.

He was saying that to effectively live in the present, and not to be suffering from the forward projection (that leads to anxiety). We need to become aware of death and illness and accept it as an inevitable part of being a human being. We all have a body and bodies become damaged and eventually wear out and stop working. Along with having a body to deal with and the problems of illness, accident and old age there comes, for us all, pain and suffering. Pain and suffering are the natural human condition, but we do have a choice as to how we deal with and, respond to them.

In long-term illness for both the sufferer and the carer there will come levels of pain, anguish, frustration, anger, depression, anxiety, fear and so on. Though these are also set against such things as love and fortitude, endurance and resilience, wonder and understanding, security and comfort.

Mindful Moments
The use and development of the skills of mindfulness gives us a choice to either follow the positive path of living with illness, even when we know we are terminal, rather than taking the negative path and fearing every step of the future. Mindfulness allows us to face, come to terms with and deal with whatever is presented to us.

In Mindfulness and meditation we can learn to allow the river of life, as thoughts, feelings and physical sensations, to flow by us without the need to get into the water and swim with them. When we learn the mindful skills of being able to sit on the bank while watching the river of life flow by we learn to observe all of life, all it’s wonders and pitfalls.

Mindful practise teaches us that however uncertain the future is, we can be present in the moment. The ability to be and remain in the moment frees us from the depression of looking backwards to what was and the fear and anxiety that comes from looking forward to what might never be.

S.N. Goenka the famous teacher in the Vipassana tradition of Mindful Meditations makes the point that to the mindful practitioner all experience can be observed without attachment. So that the mindful meditator may, in peace and serenity have an experience, as in… “oh this is a new experience what is this?” or in the extreme “are so, this is what death feels like”

As a sufferer of long term or terminal illness, mindfulness allows us to live in each moment without projecting forward in fear as to what may happen next. It allows us to get the best from every minute that is available to us, with compassion for our self and for those that are caring for us.

As a carer for someone with long term or terminal illness, mindfulness allows us to act compassionately, with patience and fortitude allowing the person in our care to undergo their own journey with our support.

As either patient or carer the most powerful tool available to us is love and compassion.

Take care

Sean x

We live in a world of opposites that are totally dependent on each other, one cannot exist without the other. Hot and cold, high and low, rough and smooth, light and dark, happy and sad, positive and negative, rich and poor, good and evil, the list is endless. Yet each of these symbiotic twins are relative to each other.

For example something will only seem cold if it is at a lower temperature of what we have labelled hot. Just as something will only seem hot if it is a higher temperature then what we have labelled cold. The difference between these twins is never an ‘actual’ measurement it is a ‘relative’ measurement.

Compared to the ceiling the floor is low. Compared to the sky the ceiling is low. Compared to the moon the sky is low. Compared to the Sun the moon is low. Compared to Alpha Centauri the Sun is low. It is all just the way that we look at it. Which takes me to the symbiotic twin that I want to look at, it is ‘Success and Failure’. This has such a profound effect on our self-esteem and our ability to function happily in our life.

Like all of these twins this is a matter of opposites. We could not have a concept of success without a concept of failure. Yet, because it is a relative relationship our experience and beliefs will vary.

My concept of success might be your concept of failure.

Let’s say your success is to have one million and for me five hundred would be my success, if you were experiencing my success you would be feeling your failure. I have often said that I see competition as a senseless waste of time. My example is that if nine people embark on the 100 metre dash only one person will experience success while eight people will experience failure.

Ed, and other competitive types tell me this is the wrong way to look at it because the eight that didn’t win the race may have succeeded in other ways. Perhaps the person who continually comes fourth managed to come third so this is a success. Or one runner improved their time and felt success. I guess that even to have competed at a high level meeting at all and to come last might be experienced as success.

Failure could be the mother of invention

I am reminded of Edison and his quest to invent the light bulb. His problem was finding the right element that would glow without burning out that would create light. He tried over 2000 different elements before he found tungsten that worked. That is over 200 experiences of failure, or was it. I have often thought about his tenacity. At what point would I have conceded failure and given up. Was it that each element that failed spurred him on to try the next in his determination to succeed?

I suspect that it is this concept of failure that is vitally important to achieving our success. Just as there is no up without down, and there is no success without failure. The point from which we start anything is the down point and the goal that we are aiming for is the up point. When we look up to where we want to be we are setting our goal. Achieving our goal is our success and this is often tied up with our self-esteem just as not achieving our goal is our failure and leads to a loss of self-esteem.

Learning from our failures

My experience, both personally and working with others, is that that the pain of failure is the spur that creates the energy that drives us towards success. A business person can learn from a bankruptcy so that it never happens again, we come out of a failed relationship with the knowledge that allows us to succeed next time, the injuries that we experience in training enable us to adapt to succeed in the race.

When failures become learning points we learn and grow

I want to challenge the concept of failure and the idea of success. In this world of twinned opposites we need to continually learn from one to achieve the other. So, I prefer to think of “failure” as an opportunity. We don’t have failures we have learning points that, if used consciously and creatively enable us to move towards our success. In that sense there are never problems only opportunities.

Planning our success

Ok, so if we have a starting point and we have a goal we need to make the journey from one to the other. Most people set the goal too high and then don’t reach it. This is then labelled failure. To make the journey it needs to be broken down into achievable steps that create the path to success.

Forward Base you success

Forward basing is an exercise that I use with individuals; couples and teams who need to achieve a goal. You can do this right now in your kitchen; if it is a team I am using a gym hall. On one wall I stick a big sheet of flip chart paper. On this I write where we are up to in the NOW. On the opposite wall I put another sheet of paper. On this I write where we want to get to, this is the GOAL.

The next job is to put sheets of paper on the floor that become the stepping-stone from now to the goal. This is the plan. Each step is set at an achievable distance so that with each step there is the feeling of success. Once the steps have been set out we create a timeline along the wall so that we have set steps to take in a time frame.

None of this is set in stone. The time frame can vary and the steps can move. If one step is not completed we go back to the previous step and either try again or adapt or change it. The point of forward basing is to create a flow on continued success that build self-esteem and drives us on to our goal. When we forward base we are able to use success rather than failure as the drive towards our goal.

1: What do you consider to be your failures?
2: How can you turn these into useful learning points?
3: If you were to forward base what would you write on the NOW sheet and what would be on the goal sheet.
4: From this you can create your steps and your timeline.

Failure, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder only you can define your failures and acknowledge your successes. In my own life I have had many learning points. The only failure that I would identify is when I didn’t attend to the learning points and needed to repeat the lesson. I also acknowledge that I have had many successes, which makes me a happy person who feels successful.

Take care, be happy

Sean x

What is Abuse?

Abuse, like many things, can be in the eye of the beholder. What I see as physical or sexual abuse you may see as affection. What I see as violence you may see as passion. What I see as a totally put down you might see as banter or talking dirty.

Abuse takes place on many levels. It may be physical, emotional or mental but also it might be more obscure and be intellectual or social and there is also financial or legal abuse. If you are a physical person and your method of greeting is to punch me in the arm, I may see that as a form of assault. If you naturally use sarcasm as a form of wit I may see that as an insult.

So what is abuse?

For me abuse is when we mistreat, misuse, mis… whatever. Or it might be disrespect, discount, distain, dis… whatever. I think it is in the little prefixes of “Mis” or “Dis” that suggest that the behaviour is abusive. When I Mis/Dis you I am doing something to you that does not serve you well. If I don’t realise what I am doing this is unconscious abuse. If, on the other hand, I know exactly what I am doing I am a conscious abuser and a perpetrator.

You may not even realise that you are being Mis-ed or Dis-ed this makes you an unconscious victim. If, on the other hand, you are aware of what is going on then you are a conscious victim. Many people stay in abusive situations forever, “better the Devil you know”. Some people will tolerate abusive behaviour from another person as though it is normal “a leopard can’t change its spots”, and they will accept someone’s abusive behaviour as fixed and unchangeable, “you can’t teach an old dog new trick”.

Abuse in any form can never be tolerated and always confronted

Abuse is when we are made to feel ‘less than’ or that we deserve what is being done to us. Often abuse is when we have no voice, or have no choice in what is taking place. This is a state of powerlessness in which we have no option other than to tolerate, cope with or survive the situation.

Abuse is often addictive to both the victim and the perpetrator and will remain so until it is challenged. If someone has beaten us every Friday night for many years and then they suddenly stop doing it, we may well seek out another perpetrator to beat us so that we once again feel normal.

It is easy to be judgemental of a victim, ‘why don’t they just leave’? From the outside such behaviours may seem strange or even ridiculous. From within they may seem normal and just, as it should be, business as usual.

When someone is attempting to break an abuse cycle, as with all other addictions, it often takes on average five to seven attempts before they succeed. This is because as far as the brain is concerned being a victim or a perpetrator is a learned habit. Anyone working in the area of abuse, addiction or self-harm will know the process of change takes time. In each case the old habits need to be desensitised and the new habit formed and embedded in long term memory for it to take effect.

What to do if you are a perpetrator
I have never worked with a perpetrator of abuse who did not start out as a victim. As a victim they learned the behaviours that led to become a perpetrator. I am sure there are perpetrators that were never victim but I have never met them.

If you are a perpetrator you are an addict, you are damaged and you need help. This starts with being honest with yourself followed by a visit to either a physician or a psychotherapist. Referral to specialist practitioners will normally follow.

When people started out as a victim this may be the reason that they now abuse, however this is not an excuse. There are no excuses for being an abuser.

What to do if you are a victim
Just as with perpetrators, victims, as adolescence or adults, were often victims as children. Or they are children who were brought up within abusive relationships and have developed and internal working model of the family or a relationship. If a child observes their mother being physically abused by their father this may become a learned habit. The person, as an adult may now seek out a partner who will do the same thing to them. This is, normally, unconscious and can only be addressed when it is brought into conscious awareness and seen as unacceptable behaviour. There will always be those who had wonderful childhoods and only discovered abuse later in life.

Whatever the case the victim may well need to begin their journey with a physician or a psychotherapist. If the perpetrator is controlling, or the victim fears disclosure the journey may need to begin in a more hidden way. This may begin with contacting a local or national help line, or finding a service on the internet.

Just as I said for perpetrators – There is no excuse for being a victim

That may seem a tough statement. Wherever you are in the abuse cycle the chances are that your situation will only get worse, it seldom gets better. It is always easier to do something now than it will be in the future.

If you recognise abuse in your life, if you are involved in it as either victim or perpetrator do something about it.

Take care and be happy, it is your basic human right

Sean x