TSHP113: Immigration & First World Problems

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Immigration seems to be in the news a lot of late so Sean and Ed decided to cast their eyes over the morning papers and weigh in with an opinion or two.

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

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Empathy For The Immigrants

In this weeks podcast Ed and I were talking about the wave of immigrants that are attempting to come through the Chunnel and join us in Britain. As we speak there is talk of the French army being lined up to deal with crowds of up to 2000 people attempting to rush the tunnel. The reality is that most of us that call our-selves British are really the antecedence of those that have invaded over the millennia in one way or another. The question that the immigration issue raises is, who is allowed to live in the UK and who do we identify as British? Belonging is emotional it is all to do with if people “feel” that they are one of us? Do we really understand what it is like for these people? What does it feel like to be stateless and in need of a country to settle in and belong to?

There are three emotional states that exist when we connect with other people in a way where we can, or we think we can, feel what they are experiencing. Different people will define these word, feelings, or emotions, differently so let me begin with my own definitions so that it is clear what I am talking about.

Sympathy
This is the weakest of three emotions and probably the most common. It is that part of us that resonates with what we experience. For example when we watch a movie we may become emotional or tearful through either the joy or hurt by what we are seeing. What is happening is that unresolved emotions within us are vibrating in sympathy to what we see. Other people who do not have the same sympathetic emotions within them will not resonate in the same way. Equally someone else may become upset by something that has no effect on any of us whatsoever.

Often people will attempt to stop their sympathetic emotion because it is too painful. An example of this would be when someone is upset or crying and we cannot cope with it so we make them a cup of tea and attempt to shut them up. Our need to shut down their emotion is because we cannot deal with it within our-self.

Empathy
This is when we have also experienced the same or a similar situation so the feeling we can feel is another’s hurt or emotion. We have no need to close it down because it is not unresolved within us. If anything our empathy and empathic responses will allow the person to get more upset so that they are able to release and resolve their inner emotions. Empathy and empathic interventions are often employed in psychotherapy as interventions to enable the person to get better.

When a self-help group gets together it is empathy at work. The individual members begin to see that they are not alone and that other people actually know and understand their situation and how they feel.

It is often said that to be empathic you need to have walked in someone else’s shoes for a while to know exactly how they feel.

Intuition
This is a completely different kettle of fish because intuition is something that is way beyond cognitive understanding. It is knowing without knowing. When you know something but have no logical knowledge to base your intuitive emotional knowledge on.

Perhaps you are moved to contact a friend living on the other side of the world who, it turns out, is ill or unhappy and yet for some reason beyond logic you were aware of the need to get in touch. Or, you simply walk into a room and know that something is wrong. You are the one who goes up to some one to inquire how they are, if they are ok, while others have been oblivious to the fact that something is wrong.

Ok, so, these three forms of emotional connection are at play all the time but not within everyone. Most people can use sympathy, some people can use empathy but only a few people have intuitive awareness. But, this blog is about empathy and the question that it raises is can empathy be learned?

Can Empathy Be Learned?
The short answer is ‘yes’ however, you need a good imagination. When you have not experienced exactly, or even remotely, what another person has, it is still possible to feel their emotion through having a fluid imagination that can replicate their situation within your mind and your emotions.

Imagined Empathy
If you have ever hit your thumb with a hammer or stubbed your toe, then you can understand the feeling of pain. If you can use your imagination to increase that to the feeling of being hit by a truck you are using imagined empathy. If you have experienced the bereavement or loss of anything, person, animal or favoured possession you can use imagined empathy to feel the loss of a parent or a child. If you have ever felt prolonged hunger you can use imagined empathy to feel the effects of starvation.

Listening Empathy
The key to developing imagined empathy is the ability to listen well, this is known in psychotherapy as ‘active listening’. When we are able to actively listen we can hear what the other person is saying, experiencing or feeling, without allowing the noise from our own feelings to get in the way. When we are actively listening we know that what we are feeling is ‘their’ stuff and not ‘ours’.

Empathy for immigrants
As you watch the news broadcasts of the immigrants attempting to get through the Chunnel do you experience it with sympathy, empathy or intuitive understanding?

Empathy Killers
So what kills empathy?

Diminishing, discounting or demeaning other people or their experience just about sums it up. We do this by not listening or by devaluing what other people are saying or feeling.

The real killer is when we assume that we know what someone is talking about without listening to them. When this happens we start telling them our story rather than listening to theirs. Or we say things like “you think that is bad just listen to what happened to me”.

So the punch line is if you want to be empathic, listen and use your imagination. And if you are not sure check out if what you are feeling is correct. You can do this by simply saying “was it like this…?” or “it sounds like you were feeling…?”

Last point
Creativity and empathy are close bed fellows. If you have empathy then you will probably have a good imagination, and if you have a good imagination you will probably be able to be empathic. In true empathy you can think, feel and, react just like the other person would. You are walking in their shoes.

Take care be happy and keep listening and if you can be empathic

Sean x

TSHP112: Fear & Doubt (plus a little about anxiety)

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Well our audio course has come to an end so it’s back to listener requests in the show this week. One such listener emailed in asking us to help with his issues of fear and doubt so Sean and Ed have duly obliged.

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

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Fear & Doubt

Doubt and Fear

Doubt and fear are both forms of anxiety and worry. Worrying is a habit. Being happy is a habit. If you are a worrier, or if you are happy, where did you learn it? These, like all habits are the result of consistent persistent practice over time. Most habits are learned at an early age through observation. We observe behaviours, usually from our parents or siblings and then we practise.

What you feed grows and what you starve dies

Habits can be either cognitive or affective; they are what we think or what we feel. Some psychology suggests that we learn the thinking part first and that leads to the negative feelings of worry. Others would suggest that the feelings lead to the negative thoughts. For me it can be either, though it is usually a mixture of both.

Sometimes we just feel lousy, anxious or concerned but we don’t know what about. Carl Jung described this as ‘something within us yet outside of our control’. When we just feel bad we can search for a reason and attach a negative thought process to make sense of it. Once we have attached the thought to the feeling, they are forever connected to that feeling, so that when we feel it we think it and when we think it we feel it.

Mindfulness allows us to observe doubt and worry, not take it on board

Odd as it may seem we can make anxious associations with the strangest of things it may be a banana or the colour blue, a sound, smell or the tone of someone’s voice. Once we have linked thought and feeling together they have a symbiotic relationship that is there forever until we wake up to what we are doing and uncouple them.

Mindful practise helps us disconnect our negative links

The first step in developing mindfulness is to overcome worrying, is to become the observer of yourself, so that ‘I’ can observe ‘me’ thinking, feeling or doing. When we observe we can begin to see the distortions of thinking feeling and doing that create anxiety, worry, and stress. Often these are unconscious distortions that, through mindfulness become conscious and then we can deal with them.

So, first step is learn to observe your distortions…

Common Distortions
ref: (Thanks for the site guys, a great resource)

All-or-nothing thinking – black-or-white – Life or death. Where are the shades of grey? Life is never black and white, there will always be a compromise, a third point of view, another way of doing it. It is only by standing back and observing our thinking and feeling that we can move beyond this fixation.

Over-generalisation – “it will always be like this…I’ll never be able to…it always happens to me…” I call this scripting. The habit of thinking this way leads to repeated behaviours. Life becomes a done deal. As soon as I make these statements I am ensuring that they will come true and that my life will be forever blighted.

Negative focus – The magic of perception is that we tune it so that we only see what we expect to see. This can be the glass half full or half empty. A clean car, with a patch of dirt, can be seen as filthy, a good person who makes a simple mistake can be seen as bad and so on. When you tread in a cow pat do you see that as a good opportunity to grow or do you get angry and beat yourself up? When we focus positively all and every experience teaches us about ourself and life. When life is faced positively there is no negative focus.

Discount the positive – This is magical because when we discount the positive we ensure that nothing will ever be any good. We either come up with reasons why positive events don’t count. “I did well, but that was just dumb luck.” or ” I hate it when good things happen because that means that something negative is just around the corner”. Stand back, reframe your thoughts and feeling create a new script for the situation and say it out loud so that your ears can hear it.

Jumping to conclusions – Even when what is happening is plainly positive we can make negative interpretations without any actual evidence. We can act like a mind reader, “I can tell she secretly hates me.” Or like a fortune teller, “I just know something terrible is going to happen.” “I just know we are going to miss the plane.” Ask yourself the question why? Why should these bad things happen to you and not other people? Most importantly what evidence do you have of things working well?

Catastrophising – It is easy to make a drama out of a crisis. Expecting the worst-case scenario to happen. “The pilot said we’re in for some turbulence. The plane’s going to crash!” A classic is a medical diagnosis when we convince ourself of the worst outcome. In life difficult things will always happen. However, evolution has equipped us with some pretty good creative skills that enable us to solve problems.

Emotional reasoning – This is when the feeling clearly comes before the thought and we seek to make a connection and association between the feeling and the thought. Just like believing that the way we feel reflects reality. “I feel frightened right now. That must mean I’m in real physical danger.” It might even be “she just told I am a bad person therefore it must be true.” Just because you feel something or someone says something it does not mean that it is true. Being able to observe your feelings and thought association and questioning them rather than accepting them can lead to new levels of understanding.

Should’s and should-nots’ – In my consulting room there are certain words that are banned. These are ‘ought, should, must and can’t, together with ought not, should not, must not’. Holding yourself to a strict list of what you should and shouldn’t do is beating yourself up. Often these things are related to what other people want or need and may have little to do with meeting our own needs. It’s good to look at why you believe these things, what is going on? This is a good time to look at reframing your thoughts and feelings, update them so that they serve you better.

Labelling – I hate giving people a diagnoses. A diagnosis is a label and once we become labelled we become limited by that label, both in our owns eyes and in the eyes of others. My father labelled me as an ‘idiot’ and for many years I believed him. Later, in therapy, I realised that is was his issue and not mine and I relabelled myself to positive ones. Labelling yourself based on mistakes and perceived shortcomings. “I’m a failure; an idiot; a loser,” just creates negative scripts that you will play out in everyday life.

Personalisation – This may also be described as taking other people’s stuff on-board so that it becomes ‘my’ issue when it is not. It is when we assume responsibility for things that are outside your control. “It’s my fault my son got in an accident. I should have warned him to drive carefully in the rain.” “it’s my fault he got lung cancer I should have stopped him smoking.”

Worry and Doubt
Worry and doubt come in many shapes and sizes. Importantly all of the versions described above are all habitual behaviours and like all habits they can be changed.

If you follow the Live In the Present course as set out in our blogs and podcasts you will soon realise that to change a habit permanently normally involves a ninety-day programme of consistent and persistent determination. All habits can be changed.

When you suffer from worry or doubt it is a form of obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD. Rumination on anything will make it bigger and bigger. It follows that rumination on positive things will lead to positive feelings and happiness. So…

Don’t worry, don’t doubt, be positive and be happy

Take care

Sean x

TSHP111: Live in the Present Step 10 – The Work

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What’s Coming This Episode?

It’s the tenth and final step in our course and your journey is coming to an end. Or is it?! Yeah right, now the real work begins…

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

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The Work

Doing The Work

Over the last ten podcasts Ed and I have taken you through the steps that make up the Live In The Present course and book. These steps are focussed around how we can free ourselves from those things that hold us back and make us fearful of moving forward. When you have completed the steps, which may take a lot longer than ten weeks, you may need to revisit some steps several times, you will then be at a point where you are becoming free to get on with your life and create what you really, really want.

One thing that I hope you have gained from the podcasts and the book is that the key to success is almost always based in serving others. When we do things that are of benefit to other people we are in a state of service or, what is known as Bhakti. To be in business and to work honestly and fairly so that what we do is of service to others means the business grows. The money that we create is the by-product of the service that we offer and deliver.

Working positively with each other fulfils my fundamental belief that…

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

The knowledge that there is enough resources for all of us, be it love, money, energy, waters, and so on, works if we share what we have.

The one thing that we can all share, in an easy way, all day and every day is love and well-being. We make minute by minute choices as to where we will put our energy, either positive or negative?

Those people that seek to make things as positive as possible I call the “workers”.

A worker is someone who does the best that they can in each situation for the good of us all. This might be that you are able to bring food to the starving or water to the thirsty or it might simply be that when you go to a shop or meet someone at work that you do your best to make it as positive an interaction as you can.

If you leave any situation better than when you found it, or if you focus on the positive despite the odds, if you attend to and look after the needs of people (including yourself) then you are a “worker”. When a worker has passed you, you will feel it. You may not understand it. But you will feel happier, lighter and more positive knowing that you have been with or met a “worker”.

If you want to be a worker, on whatever scale, nothing is too big or too small, then shine some light into the dark, bring some happiness into the gloom, create laughter and not tears. Be happy and live your life to the full

Take care

Sean x

TSHP110: Live in the Present Step 9 – Relativity

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Throughout your journey, you will be blown off course. Issues will develop. Problems will occur. There will be storms and crises. The further you go, the more you will develop your self-understanding and the clearer your path will become. We’re coming to the conclusion of our course…

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

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Relativity

Your dreams are just the right size for you

…that is if you are prepared to live them. Whatever you decide to do with this magical thing called life, it may be to create something as large as a mountain or, it may simply be to create happiness and wellbeing. No task that we take on is too big or too small it is simply us playing out our own version of life, of being who and what we really, really want to be.

Step nine is all about self-fulfilment, it concerns your decision as to what you choose to do with this magic energy called life. In this blog I want you to consider the issues of ‘work’ and ‘life’. Are they the same or different? Do you separate your work from your life? Is it possible for both to be the same thing?

Stop looking for the perfect work-life balance

Phrases about needing to create or maintain a work life balance seem to be everywhere. Every organisation that I visit has a new policy. I am told that it is all about looking after the workers. As levels of stress and anxiety have risen in western society the idea that we should look after our self, becomes the buzz idea of the moment. It is certainly true that most people in most organisations are now working longer hours than ever before and many of us will now be doing the same amount of work that two or, even three people were doing a generation ago. Sure, the pressure is on and we do need to be looking after ourselves.

However there is an odd contradiction in this concept of work and life. Are we saying that when we are at work we are not living? Is it the case that we cannot have real life when we are in the workplace? To me this is all bonkers. If we are living a truly fulfilled life then the demarcation between work and life or work and play is not there.

When I came back into the UK, having been living and studying in various communities around the world, I had to decide what I would do with this wonderful gift of life. In my decision making about what to do was included the idea that I would need to survive financially. When I looked long and hard at myself I began to realise that if I was to be happy in life it would be because I was using this gift of life in ways that made me happy. My decision was that working with other people and playing music were the two things that made me happiest. And so, that is what I have done ever since. I do not go to work I simply live my life. I have no work and life to balance; I simply just live and enjoy my life.

I am not unique. I have met many people who live in the same way. I cannot go along with the concept of going to work as something that has to be endured. The idea of hating Mondays and the opposite joy of loving Fridays is never there in my world. I love my life and I love what I do every day of the week.

Most people, actually about 94% of the population, are wage slaves. That is, they are working for an employer who pays a set hourly rate for the amount of hours they are prepared to employ someone for each week. This leaves most people stuck in a place of relative routine. The bottom line is that if you do not like going to your work, to the point where there is drastic difference between work and play then, you are in the wrong job and not doing what you should be doing with your life.

Harv Ekker in his book and course ‘The Millionaire Mind’ explains how we each use our inner template or paradigm to create the world of our experience and that includes our financial world. For many people the idea of running your own business can be scary but for many it is the answer. It allows each self employed person to live a life that they would wish to. Dave Woods in his book ‘Get Paid For Who You Are’ explains that we all have a business within us once we take the time to realise it.

There is a clever phrase that someone said, “do you live to work or, work to live?’ Perhaps the alternative is that you simply live and earn your daily crust by doing what makes you happy. Now, here at Live In The Present we have been running courses for many years enabling people to discover what it is that they really want from live and then looking at how they might achieve it. These courses led to the book ‘Live In the Present’.

The journey of discovering who you are and finding your own fulfilment begins with the answer to that simple, but at the same time difficult question.

‘What do you really, really, really, really want from your life’?

Once you answer this question you will be well on your way to living a balanced life and no longing needing to consider a work life balance.

Take care and live in your present

Sean x

TSHP109: Live in the Present Step 8 – Money

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Love it? Hate it? Either way, you need it! Step 8 of our audio course discusses harnessing the power of money in order to carry out and see through your goals and dreams.

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

Show Notes and Links

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Money, Money, Money

Your Money Is Your Energy Of Life

In this episode of Live In the Present Ed and I are looking at the value of money. Is it a dirty filthy thing that corrupts all that touch it, a force for good, or just simply energy? Perhaps, just like beauty the value of money is in the eye of the beholder.

Why do you go to work? Do you jump out of bed shouting ‘hooray’? If not, why not? A few people will be doing what they do each day because they simply love it and would carry on doing it whatever happened. Sadly many people will be going to work simply for the money and hating everyday of their life.

What are you doing?
Ask yourself this simple question if you did not need to earn the money, perhaps you had won the lotto, would you still do what you do, would you still go into work?

Maybe, if you were very conscientious and had a very responsible job or, if you felt that people relied upon things that you had to do, then maybe you would feel the need to go into work to tie up those lose ends. But would that be it, would you then do a runner and do something else with your life?

What is the relationship between your life and your work?

Do you work for money or happiness?
Most people would say that they want money and that it will make them happy, however they do not really understand what money is. Often people see money as the route to their fulfilment, they are generally wrong. There are many examples where money has created great unhappiness. Yet, when we understand the true nature of money it can make us happier.

You see, money does not actually exist, it is not tangible stuff. On a British bank note it states “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of X”. Now, this is a nonsense. If you took you £20 note to the Bank of England and asked for your twenty pounds they would look at you like you were mad. A bank note is a token of good faith. At best it is a share certificate that entitles you to a share in reserves of the banking system. In the current bank led recession it is easy to assume that this share is not worth very much if anything at all. A bank note is really only potential energy.

There is both good energy and bad energy
Money works at a much deeper level than simply bits of paper. Your twenty-pound note is like a seed full of energy that, if planted in one way will grow and bear the fruit of other £20 notes. If planted on barren soil, or frittered away, it becomes nothing.

There is both good money and bad money
There is a relationship between money and emotion but it is the reverse of what we expect it to be. Just as there are positive emotions of happiness and wellbeing there are also negative emotions of sadness and negativity. In the same way there is positive money and negative money. That is money that makes us feel good and money that makes us feel bad.

Money is a magnifying glass
Money tends to make things bigger just like a magnifying glass. When we are feeling happy we will use money to create more happiness. But, if we are unhappy, we will use money to create more unhappiness. This is simply the nature of energy so that…

Your money flows where your consciousness goes
You see money, like all forms of energy, is neutral, it is neither good nor bad. All energy does is enable us to act out what we are feeling.

The person who is happy with money is the person who is also happy without money. The feeling comes before the money.

However it is important to realise that if you want to create money it is easier to do so if you are feeling positive. It is happiness that makes it easier to create money, not money that creates happiness.

Money is the energy of life
If you are a giver, money will allow you to give more. If you are a hoarder money will allow you to hoard more. If you are a happy person money will allow you to be more happy. If you are an unhappy person money will allow you to be more unhappy.

The common word is ‘more’

All that money allows you to do or be is ‘more’ of what you already are. Because money is just energy, and when you use it you are expressing your life energy.

Be happy, live in the present and allow your self to positively create your financial wealth and in doing so, you will also find your financial health.

Sean x