Archive for year: 2016

Uncertainty is a form of anxiety. Anxiety is living an imagined future right now. To be anxious is to not live in the present.

Anxiety and uncertainty are bed fellows. Even the most focused and determined of people can never be 100% sure of the outcome of life or their endeavours. Yet, we are not all anxious why is this?

I recall reading a study about men being kept on death row somewhere in the states. The research showed that while under the threat of execution the inmates would produce high levels of stress hormones and feel high levels of anxiety. Once they had been given a death date, even if it was a while in advance, their production of stress hormone would drop. The conclusion of the study was that uncertainty creates stress and anxiety but knowledge, knowing what will be happening, takes away the stress. It would seem that certainty, even if we are certain of difficult outcomes is less stressful that simply not knowing.

Whatever will be, will be
There is another way of approaching the future and that is in accepting that what ever will be, will be. There are things that we can change and things that we can’t. It is helpful to know the difference.

Serenity
Is the state of calmness where there is peace and untroubled thoughts or feeling.

According to Wikipedia the Serenity Prayer was authored by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr 1892–1971 The best-known form is:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

In the 1930s and 1940s the above prayer was adopted and popularised by Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step programs. The original prayer looked more like this…

God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

The Law of Allowing
In our, live in the present, work we use the law of allowing to avoid engaging in thankless tasks that will only wear us down or wear us out. Allowing the mad people to be mad without joining them or needing change them leads to serenity. When we can accept the world, and others, as they are the uncertainty, stress and anxiety fall away.

This is not fatalistic
To be fatalistic assumes a lack of control. In the law of allowing being the observer of events does not make use powerless or inactive. It is more that when we choose to engage we do so mindfully with clarity of vision and purpose. We do not engage in headless chicken syndrome running around in panic and worrying about things that we cannot effect, or that we cannot effect ‘yet’.

Become a positive script writer
We know that we are each writing our experience before it happens, we are choosing how we respond to life.

We are not effected by events
We are effected by our response to events

We have choices and anxiety, to be anxious, is a choice. It may not feel like that at the outset and in extreme cases we may need medication to help us reset our system. Anxiety is never the way that we are, it is the way that we have learned to be and we can learn to be different, to not be anxious.

We don’t have problems we have opportunities
When we realise and embrace the amazing creativity of human consciousness and our ability to solve problems, whatever they are, anxiety and uncertainty does not exist. When I know that whatever happens I will be able to deal with it there is no fear. It is only when we loose that perspective that uncertainty and entirety take hold.

Catastrophisation
Often the things that we do become anxious about are neither here nor there. It is simply that by focusing on them they have got bigger.

What you feed grows and what you starve dies

OCD is the result of focusing exclusively on something and allowing it to grow so large that it takes over the now so that we cease to be present in the moment but live in the fear of uncertainty and anxiety.

My friends, uncertainty and anxiety
Uncertainty and anxiety, not anxiety disorder, have been with us through out evolution. They have kept us safe in our quest to survive by not being eaten by predators or falling from trees. The awareness that comes with normal anxiety is good, not scaring and does not create uncertainty. When appropriate anxiety gives us the awareness that we need to stay safe.

Be serene and be happy

Sean X

This week, as I write this blog I have been for a run with my trainer Conrad. As we ran down the lane I notice a brown dog ahead of us. She saw us coming and stopped to allow us to catch up with her. As we passed Conrad and I both naturally greeted her and she fell into step running between us. She seemed a perfectly nice and happy dog very comfortably joining in with us and it led to me wondering what was it that was going on in her mind. Did she feel that she had joined the pack? Was this the natural instinct of a pack animal off for the hunt? Perhaps she thought ‘two mad humans here running around, I wonder where they are going? I’ll go with them and see’, perhaps she thought, or didn’t, think of anything that I, as a human could conceive or understand.

We often treat animals anthropomorphically, just as I did with the dog, and -project our own feelings onto them and assume that we know what they are feeling or thinking. The worst thing that I ever hear is when a human projects a lack of feeling and emotion onto an animal. In an assumption that animal have no feelings at all. Fishermen tell me that when they stick a hook through the mouth of a fish, and pull them by the line from the water into the air, something that is suffocating for the fish, that the fish doesn’t feel a thing ‘because they are cold blooded’, interesting thinks I.

I find it strange that we divide up the animal kingdom into different emotional categories to suit our human selfishness.

Nature
There are those animals that live in the wild. These might include primates, the large cats, lizards, birds, elephants, rhinos, zebras and so on. We humans make documentaries about them and wonder at their life styles and antics, their social connections and disputes and their various mating rituals and habits.

Vermin
Vermin are those animals that we as humans have decided have no use for us, not even as objects in documentaries. Those that we decide should be removed from the planet. So we trap them, poison them and kill them in any way that we can. For householders these include rats, mice, spiders, ants and so on. Non householders might include the coypu, mink, snakes, foxes, badgers, crows, magpies and so on.

Food
The animal group that we have defined as food varies from one country to the next and we can share our disgust at each other’s habits. When a country eats frogs, dogs, or horses Brits can become very angry or disgusted. A while ago horse meat was found in British mincemeat which upset a lot of people, yet the French will happily take our horses for their dinner table while we will take their cows for ours. The staple meat diets of the western world has been cattle, sheep and pigs plus the occasional goat. We will eat chicken and ducks but will be disgusted by those that eat song birds. We make the distinction between Kentucky Fried Chicken and Kentucky Fried Rat, though they would probably taste and feel very similar once the spices had been added to the coating. For some rabbits are simply four legged chickens while for others they are cuddly bunnies and venison may be seen as strong beef or the murder of Bambi.

Fashion
If you wear a leather pair of shoes or a leather belt you are wearing an animal for fashion. The reality is that there are many alternatives to leather but if you eat the meat I guess that you might as well wear the skin. However, this does not seem to hold true in the case of fur. Would a fur coat be more acceptable if we ate the meat as well as wearing the skin? The British army has spent generations wearing bear skin hats, I doubt if they ate the meat.

Pets
Pets are animals that we assume like to be with us. We use animals without really understanding what it is that they want or need. Before a horse allows a rider to sit on it’s back it has to be ‘broken’. This means that it’s will to resist, and simply be a horse, is stripped away from it until it will tolerate the rider and respond to being directed by a piece of metal in their mouth, often kicked in the sides and being beaten with a whip. We put birds in cages to prevent them from doing what is natural for them, flying. We take the doggie-ness away from a dog until it believes that is a part of a human pack.

The symbiotic connections
We hear stories of the dolphin who appeared in the sea and held a human up in the water until help arrived or they had taken them to the shallows so that they could then stand. There are those moments when an animal and a human just connect. Many dogs do have a symbiotic relationship with a human being. Their intuitive connection allows them to know and understand the humans feelings and to respond in a sensitive manner. This may also include bereavement at the loss or death of a human that they are close to. We see this as a wonderful example of how a dog can have deep feelings for a human. Perhaps we should realise that this is how dogs live in their normal situation and that the deep emotion that we see, and assume is for us, is really the emotional power that keeps the pack together. Just as dogs belong in packs horses belong in herds and were never designed to live on their own or with just a few other horses or human beings.

Unless an animal comes to you willingly, just like the dog who chose to run with Conrad and I for a while, we are interfering in it’s naturalness to make it be what we want it to be.

I often see pets who are not experiencing joy, the joy of pets is all on the part of the human who ‘owns’ and ‘controls’ them. As I sit in my studio I often hear two dogs in the gardens around me. One is very unhappy and cries a lot at being abandoned by its human owners. The other howls in a desperate attempt to call to other dogs as though it is playing out some strange memory of the pack. As it howls other dogs, even distantly, respond and on the air they have a conversation that I will never understand but I keep hearing the plaintive cry of ‘tell me I am not alone’.

If you have pets, eat meat or wear skins have a think about the joy of pets and other animals. Is the joy one sided? Is it all played out for the good of human beings? Do the animals have feelings and if they do are we responding to them?

Food for thought!

Take care and be happy

Sean X

Conscientiousness

This week a listener wrote in asking about the importance of being conscientious and should we be developing this trait, does it serve us well.

To be ‘scient’ is to be knowing, aware, knowledgeable or awake. Con means ‘with’. So to be conscientious is to act with awareness or awakeness, in short to be mindful.

“Conscientiousness is the state of being thorough, careful, or vigilant; it implies a desire to do a task well. Conscientiousness is also one trait of the five-factor model of personality, and is manifested in characteristic behaviours such as being efficient, organised, neat, and systematic. It includes such elements as self-discipline, carefulness, thoroughness, self-organisation, deliberation (the tendency to think carefully before acting), and need for achievement.”

Ramji, my teacher, once said to me that a good person is someone who is getting better at ‘it’. The ‘it’ could be anything or any aspect of your personal development. The key ingredient to getting better at whatever is conscientiousness.

For my resource of week I suggested Erkart Toille’s book ‘The Power Of Now‘. Living in the present, living in the now is the mindful manifestation of conscientiousness. To develop the ability to be mindful requires the application of conscientiousness. In doing this it creates a constant and persistent habit.

Remember that a habit is something that you do without the need for willpower or effort. It is something that you just do. To be conscientious, to be mindful, is the ultimate habit, it is the one trait that rules all that you do. When you have developed this habit whatever you do will always be the best it could possibly be, and by definition, every time that you revisit it you will get better and better at it.

If you are conscientious about being a good person in the end you will be pretty amazing.

Be mindful, be conscientious, be happy

Sean x

This idea was passed to us by Lee a long term listener. He told us that he had been forced into retirement for medical reasons at 42 and is left with the question “now what?” He now finds himself struggling with motivation trying to check job listings and get going again.

Ed and I see ourselves as long term unemployed, that is, we don’t work for people we work for ourselves. We do that on the basis that we have the freedom to do what we want when we want and are not tied to the whims of an employer. In reality I spend half my time as a consultant in the NHS and the rest of the time I am in companies or seeing people privately. I know that both Ed and I probably work many more hours, and many of them unsociable hours, than we would if we were employed. Yet, we both hold the concept of ‘chosen unemployment’ and perhaps, in many ways, that is the point, it is not what we do it is how we see what we do that counts.

In our hours of employment there are times when we both do what would be termed ‘work’ for little or no money. I see people, who need it and are unable to pay in the normal manner, for free and Ed is a committed charity worker with the blind.

How do we define work and not work?
Every species on the planet wakes up in the morning and gets on with it’s life. The activities of survival, food and water, building a home, creating a relationship and raising the young are common to all of us. We as human beings, have broken away from all other species with the invention of money and our developed acquisitive drive to own stuff.

Money has put us in the position where we no longer have to kill our own meat, make our own milk and cheese, weave our own cloth, cobble our own shoes. We have become the specialist in ‘non-productive’ work that we do in exchange for tokens that we then exchange for the things that we need, or for the stuff that fill our houses. Society has become not about who we are, the skills that we have to offer, or the contribution that we can make for the good of us all, it is now about how many tokens can we gather and keep for our self? People with lots of tokens are called ‘rich’ and those with only a few, or no, tokens are called ‘poor’.

Money, money, money
When in general people describe themselves as ‘unemployed’ they are not saying that there is nothing to be done they usually mean that they are not in a position to exchange their time for token, for money.

When this happens to us we have become poor and we have to rely on others to give us tokens as benefits or charity. These concepts sway who we are, how we see ourselves, how we are seen by others and how we act. Often we will give a rich bad person with money status and poor good person without money little or no status at all.

When we value people by their ability to get tokens we down grade some of the most important jobs in life. At the dinner party, when strangers meet, the first thing they ask each other is “and what do you do?” The answer to this question is given status usually related to the amount of tokens an individuals role in life is worth. The worst praise ever uttered at a dinner party is “I’m only a house wife”. Strange as this is probably one of the most important jobs on the planet yet it attracts no tokens at all.

We need to, ‘love people and use money’, not the other way around and we need to remember that ‘it is the love of money that is the root of all evil’.

In many ways unemployment is not a state of fact it is a state of mind. There are always things that need to be done, or that we enjoy, that employ our time but will not give us tokens or money for doing them. At the end of the day one has money and the other has not yet, that have both been employed for the same amount of time.

In that sense we are all employed. Cows, fish, apes, birds, humans we are all employing our time. Sometimes it will be for profit as food, shelter, money or stuff and sometimes it will be hobbies, pleasure and fun, and I guess I should include illness and recovery, it is all employment, it is all using our time.

In a money economy we are often driven to do things that we don’t really want to do to get the money. This can often be at the root of our lack of motivation to get going once we have been out of a money producing role due to illness, retirement, redundancy and so on. I have worked with many women who have been employed raising a family and running a home who, when the last child leaves home, feels the need to return to earning again, yet the roles and options open to them do not excite them and make them want to go out and do them.

I guess this is why Ed and I describe ourselves as ‘unemployed’ because we both do what we want to do and we both enjoy what we do, so for us we are just living not working. Some of our life is paid and some is given for free.

In this episode my resource was one of my favourite books by Joe Vitale called ‘The Attractor Factor’. This is a good work book that asks you questions that require that you look at what you are and what you are doing now and then gets you to hone down your ideas until your are really clear about what it is that you ‘really’ want to do.

When you know the answer to that question you are at that point when you join us in the ranks of the paid unemployed because you are now no longer working you are living. It is just that you get paid for it.

So often getting motivated is not about ‘pull yourself together’, or ‘get a crack on’, it is about actually wanting to do it. We just need to decide what the ‘it’ really is. Then life begins to make sense and you can work towards becoming the version of you that you really want to be.

So, ask yourself the question:
“What do you really, really, really want from your life?” Your happiness and fulfilment just might be in your answer.

Take care and be happy

Sean X