Archive for year: 2018

I have come to the clear conclusion that when we feel both happiness or unhappiness it is a matter of choice. Many people have become angry with me when I suggest this. They will tell me that I don’t know what I am talking about, that if I had to deal with their problems or live their life I would realise that it is different for them. They will say that they are not unhappy by choice and that it is due to the bad hand that life has dealt them or, the negative behaviour of other people in their life.

Well, in my work and my life I know this to be untrue…

…no one is ever effected by what happens to them…they are effected by how they respond to what happens to them.

In life we will always face difficult situations and difficult people. It might be that these people maybe colleagues, friends, family or even parents. They might be partners or siblings. Yet the same principle holds true.

No one can make us unhappy without our permission. No one can make us happy without our permission.

We do not have to stay with people, to remain in difficult situations, jobs, or social groups. You can do and be whatever you choose to be, and that is the rub.

Most people are not happy because they do not know what they want

When I ask people what they want, what they really, really want, they will normally say “I just want to be happy”. Sadly, that is not good enough. To create happiness you need to be specific about what happiness means to you. This often takes a great deal of thought and honesty with yourself. For many of us the concept that we can choose happiness is a concept too far.

The English language is full of phrases that are designed to get us to put up with what we have rather than go for what we truly want. Behind each phrase is a concept that tends to dictate behaviour.

“Better the devil you know”
“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”
“A Leopard can’t change it’s spots”…and so on.

When we use these types of phrases it often means that we are settling for second best and maybe even unhappiness.

The bottom line is that each of us, moment by moment, make decisions, not just about what we do and what we think but also about how we feel. When we become emotionally literate we are able to decide how we will feel about the events that we experience. When we choose to see problems as challenges, and challenges as learning points, we can choose to change unhappiness into happiness.

Take care and choose to be happy

Sean x

Well, I think that we are all liars. I do not know anyone who does not vary what they experience and how they respond to be both sensitive and respectful. The truth after all is the way that I see it.

In his book ‘Sapiens’ Yuval Noah Harari explains how human language developed through the drive to gossip about other members of the tribe. Most gossip is conjecture, spurious and often straight lies.

Lying falls into different categories but they have one thing in common. All lying, like most communication is about us getting our needs met. This is the basis of survival and we have been doing it all of our lives. It begins when we are children. A child needs to be fed and so it tries to signal to the mother that it needs food. If the mother does not respond the child will develop louder and more effective ways of getting the attention of the mother so that it can be fed, or have its needs met.

In the same way if a child need sympathy after a fall they cry to get the attention that they need to make them well or to be attended too. At what point does the child learn that the more elaborate the show the greater and the quicker will come the attention. In effect the child is making out that things are worse than they are to get what they want. This could work later in pretending to be sick to get time off school to be able to stay at home. All these things are lies in that they are untrue.

Once we move from the simple act of crying for attention, and elaborating what we are doing and get into verbal language the world of lying opens up from simple exaggeration to the con man. Yet, still all these acts have the commonality of the person is using lying or exaggerating to get what they want.

If a lie is to present something in a way that is different to what it actually is then many things that we do and experience can be seen as lies. Every time we open FaceBook and watch what people are presenting as representing their lives are we seeing a truth or a lie. The need to be seen as successful, happy, fulfilled or rich may lead us to present our self and our situation in a way that simply is not true.

Once you get into the idea that lying is presenting something in a false way we might consider make up, botox, cosmetic surgery as different forms of lying. When a product is advertised as being the leading brand and that can do wonderful things is this the truth or a lie? There was a time when cigarettes were sold as a positive way of clearing the lungs and calming the nerves!!!

I guess that in an everyday sense this sharing of falsehoods can be seen in three ways. The first is what I do to get me needs met. The second would be that I do it to smooth society and not to offend people. For example you ask me if you look fat in this dress and I say ‘no’ when I really mean ‘yes’. The third and this is the bad side of the common lie is when I lie to meet my own needs when at the same time I will damage or hurt you.

When someone cons another person out of their hard earned cash, cons them into being or doing something that causes them harm, is continually unfaithful and lie that they are not, it becomes a hugely damaging thing.

So for me, I see lying as a normal part of human communication that people engage in to get their needs met. They may be needs of food and shelter, the needs to have greater esteem, power, influence or control, or the need to dominate and diminish others.

Only we can know if are really a truth speaker and that is a case of honest self reflection.

The last thing I would say is that there are those that are delusional and belief what they are saying is the truth when others around them know that it is not.

When we meet a liar we either have to use the law of allowing so that we don’t let them get to us or we need to move away from them. As I said on the podcast I see myself as six foot six, bronzed and muscular. You may not see me that way. Am I lying?

Take care be happy and observe those people around from the exaggerators to the bar faced liars and ask your self what is the need that they are attempting to get met by their lying?

Sean x

This week Ed and I have been talking about repetitious behaviour and concentration. The ability to habitually focus may be the basis of Obsessive Compulsive Behaviour (OCD), though may also be a great asset. We all do things repetitively. The issue is are we addicted to the behavior, do we have to do it to feel normal?

We are all an accumulation of habits
One of the biggest revelations in life for me was realising that no one is ever born miserable. They have learned to be miserable from the moment of their birth. We are all simply what we have learned to be. We are all an accumulation of the behaviours that we have repeated since the moment of our birth. These are our habits.

As a child I thought that people were only happy because they had things. The families around me seemed happy and they also had warm friendly homes full of people and stuff. My house was one of relative financial and emotional poverty that people rarely visited and happiness was quite thin on the ground.

Like all children I accepted my lot, though I did not like my lot, and spent my childhood very unhappy. When at fifteen I left home I began to find happiness mainly in visiting and staying with other families. It was then that I felt the joy that is in the freedom of a happy house. However, it was a great lesson to find that rich people could be as miserable as my own family. I was even more surprised to discover that poor people can be so happy they could burst.

It took me a bit longer to understand that happiness and love go together not, as I had thought, happiness and things. Love is the most wonderful thing that changes sorrow into laughter and darkness into light. Where as things often become a burden and a worry.

Then I began to question what was the difference between those people who were happy and those people who were sad? Over the years, working with thousands of people, I now understand that all that we feel, every state of mind that we have, are simply the habits that we have learned since that moment of our birth.

The person who is miserable learned to be miserable from those people around them and then practised it until unhappiness simply became a habit. Their learning was so gradual that they didn’t realise why they were miserable, they just assumed that was the way that they are. The same is true of all emotional states such as anxiety, lack of confidence or self esteem. But, it is also true positive feelings such a optimism, positive expectation and, of course, happiness.

Happiness like every emotion is a habit. A habit may be an idea, thought, feeling or behaviour that we have practised long enough for it simply to be the way that we are. When people say to me now, “it is ok for you, you are always happy” they do not realise that I was once one of the most miserable people on the planet. Yes I am happy. It is because I consciously choose to practise the habit of happiness and it has become just the way that I am.

The other part of happiness is gratitude. Being thankful for what we have, however little, connects us with the emotion of love and leads to happiness. I love the American expression ‘an attitude of gratitude’.

Anyone, at anytime, can decide to learn to be happy right now. There are always things to be happy about. The fact that you have the eyes to read this, or the ears so that someone else can read this too you, that fact that you have a chair to sit on, a floor to lie on and so on are all things that are positive if we see them that way.

Your life is a collection of habits in what you think, feel and do.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Mahatma Gandhi

So, have you got the happiness habit. If not you could start right now with deciding what it is that you are grateful for.

Take care

Sean x

Ever since the 1980s I have enjoyed driving around Europe and beyond. Back in those days every country had a different currency and every border that was crossed required a changing of currency. Because you could only change notes our pockets were full of coinage that we called ‘shrapnel’. The only way to shift the shrapnel was to give it to charities once we got back to the UK. We didn’t need a Visa at that time but at each border crossing there was passport control with army and police in abundance. It seemed strange to us to see so many people with guns and bullets. The police in the UK were only armed with a truncheon and a whistle.

Flying has never bothered me, apart from my first flight in a plane no bigger than a mini bus. However Rie prefers not to fly and so we agreed to enjoy the open roads of Europe, this experience is so different to the congested car parks that pass for motorways in the UK.

I am a European. I love Europe and I love it that we, in the UK, are a part of Europe. I don’t think that it is perfect or idealistic. I see it as a work in progress, a progression that I want us to be a part of. I believe in human beings working and living together. In people sharing and caring. I believe in getting rid of borders and countries, of eliminating different currencies. I believe in an equality where we are all one, where there is no ‘us’ and ‘them’. Where we, the human race, are all one. I say this over and over, but it is so simple, we can solve all the worlds problems in a instant, right now…

…if we all look after each other we will all be alright.

I was shocked and deeply upset by the decision of fifty percent of my fellow Brits to leave Europe. I was not shocked but upset by the underhanded lying propaganda that was employed by the Brexiteers to scare the silent majority into leaving Europe.

On a daily basis there is report after report on the damage that leaving the EU will do to Britain financial, industrially, socially, artistically, scientifically, educationally, and so on. I see us like Lemmings wandering towards the end of the cliff, walking blindly into disaster. The saddest thing of all is that it is not the people who are making these decisions that will have to pay the price, it is our children and our grandchildren.

Yesterday it was reported on the news that the EU has suggested that once we leave they will no longer recognise our driving licences. Effectively we will no longer be able to drive in Europe. That might mean that this, 2018, is the last year that we will be able to drive to Italy.

It is not too late
It is a year before the madness begins and the split happens. There is time to reverse it. If enough people, those of the nearly 50% who voted to remain, and all those that voted to leave who have now seen the error of the decision, now come together we could reverse this process.

Another referendum
If we voted again do you think that the decision would be the same?

Watching the amount of European nurses and other medical professionals leaving the NHS and the lack of European nurses medical professional being prepared to come to the NHS it is easy to see our reliance on our fellow Europeans, just as they rely on us. We have had the pleasure of our fellow Europeans working in our farms, in our hospitality industry, the health care sector and many more industries. We also contribute to the European community in many different ways. Many of us chose to live in Europe.

We need Europe and Europe needs us.

A second referendum would be triggered by enough people writing to their MPs demanding one.

Take care, be happy and enjoy Europe while we are still a part of it and hopefully we will always be a part of it.

Sean x

Ed requested this podcast that was inspired by things that he has been reading. I regularly have clients that are struggling with eating issues though in most cases these are to do with obesity. When people talk about eating disorder they normally are thinking about weight loss not weight gain. According to the Priory Group statistics for eating disorders are…

• 1.6 million people in the UK are affected by an eating disorder
• 11% of the 1.6 million are male
• 14-25 year olds are most affected by an eating disorder
• There are up to 18 new cases of bulimia per 100,000 people, per year
• 1 in 100 women aged between 15 and 30, are affected by anorexia
• 10% of people affected by an eating disorder suffer from anorexia
• 40% of people affected by an eating disorder suffer from bulimia
• The rest of sufferers fall into the eating disorders not otherwise specified (EDNOS) category including those with binge eating disorder (BED)
• Research suggests that the earlier treatment is sought, the better the sufferer’s chance of recovery

There are several ways of looking at eating disorders. We might say that to regularly eat more or less calories than you need would suggest something is wrong. In my work I find that in both cases the apparent eating disorder is a symptom of an inner cause. This creates a dilemma for therapy. Do we great the symptom or do we attempt to understand and resolve the inner cause? Many eating clinics and services are based around treating the symptoms and using behavioural techniques to change eating habits. This can help but if the underlying or originating cause is not dealt with and desensitised repetition or relapse is common.

Over weight and obesity
This is the most common eating disorder in the west, we are all getting bigger. Statistics are more easily available for women though they apply equally to men. Over the last forty years the average size uk female has gone from a size 12 to a size 16. One comment I hear is that if the average woman is size 16 why are the models on the catwalk not that size as well? We now have a comparison with the under weight model compared to the over weight public.

According to the Office of National Statistic, ONS, the average man in England is 5ft 9in (175.3cm) tall and weighs 13.16 stone (83.6kg). The average woman in England weighs 11 stone (70.2kg) and is 5ft 3in tall (161.6cm).
A woman of five feet three inches at size sixteen is in the obese range and is probably damaging her body and inner organs with increase potential for diabetes, heart attack, stroke and cancer. So why is this happening?

Vitamin D
Over 70% of UK residents are currently expected to be vitamin D deficient. Vitamin D, produced in the skin in response to sunlight, is the precursor of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is the endorphin that creates our sense of wellbeing and is what we enhance through prescribed antidepressants.

Comfort food
We now know that when we eat carbohydrates our brain secrets serotonin. Therefore comfort foods are real. We feel down due to lack of vitamin D and low serotonin and self medicate by eating carbs as comfort food. The byproduct of this is that we gain weight. So, when we are told that Britain is now the heaviest country in Europe we probably mean that Britain is the most depressed country in Europe.

It is good to be happy
It would follow from this that resolving the over weight issues in the UK would mean increasing the wellbeing of people in the the UK. Getting our vitamin D levels right in the first place would be a great help. If you do not know your own Vitamin D status you might be advised to visit your GP and get a blood test, especially if you are having problems with trying to lose weight.

Anorexia Nervosa
This is an emotional disorder. It is on the obsessive compulsive spectrum with a obsessive desire to lose weight. This behaviour is, in my experience, the symptom of an inner cause that may be hidden or repressed. Often it is a response to a traumatic event. The symptom of anorexia is often the sufferers way of having control over their life. Often anorexics see themselves as over weight even when they are not.

Belimia Nervosa
known as simply bulimia, is an eating disorder characterised by binge eating followed by purging. Binge eating refers to eating a large amount of food in a short amount of time. Purging refers to the attempts to get rid of the food consumed. This may be done by vomiting or taking laxatives.

Orthorexia
This is the term used to describe a condition that includes symptoms of obsessive compulsive behaviour in pursuit of a healthy diet. It may also include an almost addictive relationship with food supplements and vitamins. Orthorexia sufferers often display signs and symptoms of anxiety disorders that frequently co-occur with anorexia nervosa or other eating disorders

Purging disorder
This is an eating disorder characterised by recurrent purging (self-induced vomiting, misuse of laxatives, diuretics, or enemas) to control weight or shape in the absence of binge eating episodes. It differs from Belimia in that it may not include binging.

Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID)
This was previously known as selective eating disorder (SED), is a type of eating disorder, as well as feeding disorder, where the consumption of certain foods is limited based on the food’s appearance, smell, taste, texture, brand, presentation. This maybe seen in a variety of conditions and syndromes such as Asperger and Autism. It may also be a phobic reaction that often has a traumatic basis.

Food and mood
Our relationship with food works both ways. Our mood is effected by the foods that we eat and our mood will lead to us craving certain foods. For me food disorders are not a behavioural problem in most cases they are an emotional expression of unresolved inner issues. This means that in my eyes Psychotherapy is the appropriate intervention. This may support or work alongside a behavioural programme but is essentially psychological therapy.

If you find that you have a strange or oddly changing relationship with food talk about it, check it out.

Take care and be happy

Sean x