TSHP160: How to be Happy

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Happiness is a journey, not a destination – or so goes the saying. It’s a strangely elusive this but we often don’t help ourselves by surrounding ourselves with miserable people or constantly digesting bad news. But Why??!

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How to be Happy

Is happy news good?

As a psychotherapist I have worked with thousands and thousands of people as individuals, couples and, groups. There have been those that are naturally happy and positive and those who see the world from a negative point of view. Over the years I have learned what it is that makes happy people happy and unhappy people unhappy. Happy people do certain things in certain ways. It is all in how they focus their thoughts and feelings.

It would seem obvious that we would, or should, be attracted to good news. Yet what we see is that “bad news becomes good news” because that is what sells newspapers. Good newspapers commonly only last for about three episodes.

Today in the podcast we were celebrating the third episode of The Happy News Paper,. Both Ed and I hope that it will keep going for many more episodes. We hope to have its founder and inspiration designer Emily Coxhead on the podcast. We highly recommend that you check out Emily and her work with the happy newspaper.

What makes you happy? It is good to review what it is that makes us happy. The Live In The Present book seeks to change the negative into the positive, like an alchemist turning lead into gold. It explains how happiness is a choice. Here are some ideas about happiness.

Positive body image
Happy people move their bodies. Exercise is not necessarily formal, you don’t have to go to the gym or play an organised sport. Taking a walk around the block, taking the stairs and not the lift, having a run or jog rather than walking and walking short distances rather than taking the car or the bus, are all forms of exercise. There are two important benefits that come from exercise. The first is that you don’t build up weight and that keeps your heart, lungs, muscles and joints healthy. The second is that people who move their bodies have higher levels of happy hormones, endorphins, in their brains that make them feel happier. If you are really game for a laugh you can attend a gym, go for more formal cycle rides and runs, walks and rambles, Zumba, Salsa and so on. Moving your body makes you happier.

Who are your friends?
Happy people build powerful social relationships. Human beings are group animals. Just like monkeys and chimpanzees we identify with being part of a group, tribe or family. Having mates and friends gives us a sense of belonging, value and support. We have people to talk to, people to share our problems with, people who will support and care for us. As the world has industrialised and the large extended families have broken into smaller nuclear family units the rate of depression and anxiety have dramatically increased. The W.H.O. is predicting that by 2020 depression could be the second most common cause of death. We know that people living alone, especially men, die younger. Having friends and strong social relationships makes you happier.

When did you last have a challenge?
Happy people do things that challenge who they are. Your brain and your mind are designed to be creative. It is this part of human consciousness that has powered all of evolution. Having a challenge keeps your brain awake.

Gratitude does your body and mind good.
It helps you cope with trauma and stress. Being grateful can increases your sense of self-worth and self-esteem and helps dissolve negative emotions and strengthens the immune system. An attitude of gratitude leads to happy people that overcome pessimistic thinking in three ways, focusing their time on positive energy and thinking in the knowledge that all things pass and no situation however difficult lasts for ever.
Gratitude creates happiness

Mindfulness leads to positive attitudes.
Mindful people develop healthy coping strategies, encounter stressful issues positively. Happy people become skilled at seeing the good that might come from challenging times. Mindful people take care of their mind and body and manage their stress. Mindfulness helps you focus on what you really want.

Most importantly, what you feed grows and what you starve dies. If you read bad news papers your focus will be on the negative. If you choose to read good news your focus will be on the positive.

Thoughts become things, what you think about you bring about.

Many people who wake up to the negativity that is in regular news stop listening to news broadcasts and reading newspapers altogether. My stance is that I need to be informed but not inundated with negative messages. And, I like to tune into some good news because it makes me happy.

What do you choose to focus on? Positivity is a choice.

Take care and be happy

Sean X

TSHP159: How to Deal with (EU) Disappointment

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What’s Coming This Episode?

Odds are that by the time you read this the EU debate will be over and done with and the results will be in. Hallelujah! Still, the fallout will hit hard. If the polls are to be believed then almost 50% of people are going to be majorly disappointed at the result. So how do we deal with disappointment? Ed and Sean are here to help…

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This is not about ‘us’ and ‘them’!

In the EU debate are you an ‘innie’ or an ‘outie’?

I will own up to my own position at the outset, I am an ‘innie’.

I don’t think that we Brits are that good at inclusion. We will tell ourselves what good chaps we are and can list or recite all the good things that we have done in the world and for the world. Yet, as an island community we do tend to see ourselves as separate from the rest of the world and also, as we wrestle with the idea that we are no longer an empire and that Brittania no longer rules the waves, we see ourselves as being able to punch above our weight. Perhaps now is a time for a little readjustment.

The countries that form mainland Europe do not have a sea between them to protect them from one and other, subsequently they have had to learn to co-operate in ways that we on the Island have not needed to. That cooperation has, at times, broken down and led to major conflicts such as the First and Second World Wars. That is why the idea of a European community was formed.

The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organisation founded on 10 January 1920 as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first international organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals, as stated in its covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament. (Wikipedia)

This first attempt to create peace in Europe failed and the world fell into the Second World War which began when Germany made an unprovoked attack on Poland. Britain and France declared war on Germany after Hitler had refused to abort his invasion of Poland. The Second World War was, it seems, to do with the clashing ideologies of fascism and dictatorship versus democracy. The fascist countries of Germany, Italy and Japan banded together in an attempt to dominate and rule the world.

The big idea behind the EU (and ultimately the Euro) is a simple one. If you get nations to trade and share their institutions, then they are less likely to go to war. Co-operation rather than confrontation was the order of the day. It seems to be a valid principle, as Western Europe has been at peace for nearly seventy years and counting. (http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/why-the-euro-was-created.html:)

The principle of collective self interest makes sense to me. It feeds into my basic life philosophy that if we all look after each other then we will all be okay. The problem with all groups is that either you are in or out of the group which creates ‘us’ and ‘them’. We see this with all groups, black vs white, gay vs straight, men vs women. This sense of separation is the human problem. Religion has, and continues to, create move division in the world. I wonder how many people have been killed over time for religious reasons and how many wars have been waged because “God is on our side”.

The myth of us and them

For the last few months I have been listening to people around me talking about the EU as “them” when “they” are actually “us”. The way the systems works is that there is an agreed democratic forum that we belong to, it is a parliament. We, like all other member countries appoint european MPs through our voting system. These MPs represent us and vote on all the laws that effect us and every other member of the European community.

We pay our taxes into the system, as does every other country, and we get money back, as does every other country. The xenophobic element in each member country wants the autonomy of not being subject to the group and wants out, they want to leave. That seems to leave us with two fundamental choices.

1: we return to the pre war situation of individual countries vying for their own self interest and potentially recreate the same issues that caused the world wars.

2: we work together within the European Community and beyond to bring people together and avoid the conflict of ‘us’ and ‘them’.

Staying in the EU will involve communication, argument and debate. It might not be easy but as members within the group we retain the ability to change it. Leaving the group leaves us isolated and we become on of ‘them’ being outside of the group with little or no influence to effect or change the evolution or Europe.

Nightmare Brexit Scenario

How about this, we leave Europe, Scotland decides to leave us and rejoin Europe. Wales could easily follow as the Welsh assembly is now recognised as the Welsh parliament. Northern Ireland could also choose to join Europe. Even Cornwall, that has its own flag and its own status with Europe could rejoin Europe. The Channel Islands would also, probably, join Europe. The USA have made it clear that they would seek other areas of influence if we are not in the EU. That would leave England as a small country off the coast of Europe with the 14 protectorate communities around the world.

I keep hearing that we are the fifth largest economy, though some statistic say that we are the ninth, but that includes all of the United Kingdom. If what is left is simply England it becomes quite small.

Of course I could be completely wrong and leaving maybe the best option. We will only know after today’s vote.

In or out be happy and take care

Sean x

TSHP158: Steve Shotton and Finding Your Rhythm

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What’s Coming This Episode?

 

1C7F55AE-49F2-4325-AEA6-F59BDD1875DC Back to back Live in the Present case studies? You bet! This week we’re joined by Steve Shotton who completed our course back in 2010. He’s worked hard at it and is on the cusp of spending 100% of his time doing what he loves. The energy and excitement in this lovely chap is hard to contain…

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

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The Rhythm of Life

In this weeks podcast we had Steve with us, the master drummer who spends his time helping people find their beat, lovely guy doing amazing work!

The universe has a beat, it has a rhythm. The whole of creation moves at a pace. This is the rhythm of life. Are you living in time or out of time?

If you stop, become still and listen you will hear your own heart beating. Some people, when they are learning to meditate, find this eerie or disturbing. Every time that your heart beats it gives off a little electrical signal that goes off into the universe just like the ripples flowing from a stone that has been dropped into a pond. This is your call sign that states to the universe that you exist, that you are alive. This is you individual rhythm.

When a group of people or animals come together they begin to harmonise their rhythm. Heart rate, blood pressures and hormonal excretions become more alike. We all know the story of a house full of female students, or a nunnery when, over time, the menstrual cycles of the women begin to fall in line and they develop periods in unison.

The same is true of all groups. When I run a course I have the three week rule, no new members after week three. This is because within three sessions the group bond has been formed. What that really means is that the group has begun to harmonise together so that when they enter each session their heart rates, respiration and many hormones will be matching and harmonising.

Once any group has formed the emotional experience is that we are now an ‘us’ and anyone new that joins feels odd, they are one of ‘them’. Groups even begin to smell the same and we may experience that other groups, nationalities or ethnicities smell different to ‘us’. I have an image hear of dogs smelling each other’s bottoms and what they know from doing so. I know that if you dropped me anywhere in France I would know that I am there because France has a smell that is peculiar to itself. It is not a bad smell, quite the opposite, it is just that it smells of France. The same is true in the spices of the east, or the tannery in Kidderminster.

There are ever smaller rhythms within all matter that go right down to the cells, organelles, atoms, particles, quarks and the source energy. The other way the rhythms are ever bigger as the Earth turns and the moon marks the months increasing and decreasing the tides, the earth moves around the sun and the sun around the galaxy and the Galaxy around the universe.

All that happens, on every level happens in time, in beat, it has its own rhythm.

Your individual rhythm is individual and peculiar to you. Those around are either in the same or similar rhythm so that you feel that sense of belonging or it is the other way you feel out of step with those around you they are working in a different rhythm and you feel the odd one out as though you don’t belong.

When you begin a new job it feels odd, you are not yet in rhythm. After a period of induction you feel that you suddenly belong, you have harmonised. In group dynamics psychology gives the process of harmonising the rhythm of groups names – forming, storming and norming. The important word in that is the ‘norming’ or normalising. When we have normalised to the group we have adopted their behaviours ether good or bad. The people that controlled the concentration camps of the Second World War began as normal everyday people who normalised to the brutality and killing of extermination. The monks in an ashram arrived as regular normal people and normalised into mediation, prayer and good deeds.

Often we normalise to what is happening around us below our awareness. The group or heard instinct can be negative as in a riot or positive as the collective response to the giving following a disaster.

Once we understand that the universe at all levels is in beat and time the next question is am I in beat with where I am? That might be mentally, emotionally, physically, sexually, financially and so on. If not, then it is time for change and that will normally mean action, same behaviours will always lead to the same outcomes. When we want a different out come we have to change the behaviours. To do this may simply be the decision to act. Sometimes it will require some mindful meditation and for deeper issues psychotherapy.

Question: how do you know if you are in, or out, of rhythm?

Well, that is what your emotions are for. They tell you if you are in tune or not. In tune equals happiness, fulfilment, contentment and so on. Out of tune equals unhappiness, anxiety, depression and so on.

As King Louis said in the jungle book ‘you gotta get in the beat’.

Finding your rhythm and living it, is the only life lesson that any of us really need to learn. Listen to the beat around you and if it doesn’t make you feel good play a different one.

Take care and be happy

Sean X

TSHP157: A Live in the Present Case Study with David O’Brien

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What’s Coming This Episode?

There was a time when Live in the Present was an actual course with real people in a real room. One of those people was David O’Brien who we’re delighted to have on the show this week. David works within the NHS. He’s a committed father, keen photographer and generally a darn good guy. This is his story…

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How to Live in the Present

Choice

This weeks podcast included our good friend David who came on the LITP course as a student and then joined the team and led all of the practical exercises. We were talking about how doing the course had changed his life. The issue that it raised for me is that of choice.

Many of us see our lives as simply the way that it is. In mindfulness everything is a choice.

The way you feel, what you think, the way you act is all a choice.

The issues of the mirror exercise was raised. This is the idea that when you get out of bed the first thing that you do is go to the bathroom mirror, look yourself in the eyes and say “I love you”. Many people will say that they find it difficult if not impossible. When this happens we can find many reasons why we can’t do it.

The bottom line is that we choose all that we experience in life. Thoughts become things. We have decided what we will see in the mirror before we get there. This, in my mindfulness courses, I describe as composure.

Composure
Before someone sits down to meditate they have to prepare. This includes preparing their environment. Where will you practice, how it is lit, how it will smell, what to sit on, what to wear, will there be sounds. We are preparing by getting our attitude right letting go of any negative thought, feeling or resistance to the practice. When we do not get the composure right the practice is not so good.

Below our awareness we compose ourselves before we do anything. Before we eat, before we go to the theatre, before we watch a TV programme and so on. You did it before you read this blog.

The point is that we are making choices all the time whether or not we realise it.

In awareness, we realise that we have choice. Every moment of every day, in all events, all the time, we have a choice. Either we make decisions that serve us well or those that serve us badly. And, we can decide to change at anytime to make life better.

You may want to go back to the episodes on the podcast where you can do the LITP course and use it to audit where you are in life.

Be happy and remember that life is always a choice.

Take care

Sean X

TSHP156: Why Do We Fear Outsiders?

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What’s Coming This Episode?

The EU debate and upcoming referendum is about many things but one of the key issues is around immigration. Ed & Sean felt it was time to talk about outsiders and why we seem to have an almost inbuilt distrust of people from the other side of the hill, river, sea or ocean…

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

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Fear of the unknown – the EU debate

This week Ed and I were talking about the EU referendum and the Brexit campaign and the fear that we hear around us about the fear of change and the unknown.

Are you a ‘innie’ or an ‘outie’? Most of the people around me are talking about our relationship with Europe from the fear of immigration.

It would seem that xenophobia is alive and well as we decide about whether or not we leave the EU. Dislike of, or prejudice against, people from other countries is what I hear from those around me is, in my opinion, the most destructive emotion that humanity can have. Many of us seem to be currently obsessed with keeping our borders shut to outsiders as though we own this country, yet we are all outsider.

The original peoples of Britain as far as I can understand it were the Celts, Gaels and the Picts. The Gaels and Picts were collectively known as the Gaels, or Gauls. These people inhabited Gaeland, which later became Scotts and Scotland. These other Gaelic people that lived across the British Isles were collectively known as Celts.

If we assume that these Gaelic speaking people were the original inhabitants of the British Isles what happened to them? Why are they now only in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany?

Well, from just before the first century, successive arrivals or invasions from other countries gradually pushed these Celtic people from their homeland of England into Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and Scotland. The Romans invaded Britain in 55bc and remained here until 410 AD. Following their departure Germanic invasions in the form of Jutes, Angles and Saxons began and the nation of Angle-land or Eng-land began with a developing identity and language.

Around 790 the Vikings started invading and controlled vast areas of the country known as the Dane Geld. The Normans appeared in 1066 with Willian the Conquerer who defeated Harold the Anglo-Saxon King, at the battle of Hasting. Following the Norman invasion of 1066 another Danish invasion in 1069.

These great influxes of new people to these Islands were violent and involved war and occupation. However these were followed by further influxes of people from all over the world that were encouraged and enjoyed.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were waves of Jewish immigration from the Pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. In 1951 there was the first phase of encouraged immigration from the West Indies. Followed by waves of Asian immigration as people were expelled from Kenya and Uganda in 1972.

It becomes clear that Britain, like most countries in Europe, is a melting pot, of nationalities and that no one here can truly call them-selves a native Britain. My own ancestral line includes Chinese, Negro, Irish/Celt, Jewish and Viking, yet I see myself as British.

I get it that the resources of any country are limited and that the rate of immigration needs to be regulated but I don’t see that as a reason to leave Europe.

It seems to me that the human family in all its shapes, colours and sizes with all its religions, philosophies and theories, it’s arguments and disagreements is, in the end, the same family. We are all brothers and sisters and strangers are only family that we have yet to meet. The wellbeing of humanity is served best by people coming together not separating.

Staying in Europe may be difficult and maybe a challenge, it may require communication, negotiation and frustration but that is the human story. If Europe returns to the self interested countries that existed before the First World War we are simply recreating the very conditions that led to war in the first place and look where that got us, first the depression followed by the Second World War.

My nightmare scenario would be that we succeed from Europe, Scotland succeeds from the UK followed by Wales and maybe even Cornwall that has been given special status by the EU. That would leave England alone, a small island off the coast of Europe.

We assume that we have a special relationship with the USA. Well, all relationship are conditional and if we are outside of Europe I suspect that the relationship would be a little less special that it is now. If you follow that with the possibility that Trump in the White House perhaps there is no relationship at all.

Whether we remain in or out of Europe the need for human beings to look after each other and to work towards a common unity will be the only thing that will save humanity from destruction and extinction. War and the illusion that self-interest is a good idea has to be the most outmoded thought process on the planet. Yet, many of us hang on to it learning nothing at all from history.

Whether or not you vote in or out share your love with those around you. We might just be able to create heaven on Earth.

Take care and be happy

Sean X