Archive for month: July, 2019

You spend years developing your family. Your kids have good bits and bad bits. There are times when you could happily strangle them all and times when you love their bones. Then when you have learned to live with the madness that is called family hey, they go and leave home. The fact that they have been leaving their junk all around the house, just like a tree wedding leaves in autumn, means nothing, you just want them back. The bird has flown and the nest is empty. Suddenly your role have changed, or maybe even come to an end. This is the time when the answer to the question ‘who are you?’ suddenly changes.

The rites of passage

The sense of the changing role of self happens to us all though it is more so for women. When a woman marries she changes her name and as she normally takes the part as of head of the house, often without the man even realising it, she has changed her role. Then the first child comes along and another set of changes begin and each time the answer to that question ‘who am I?’ changes. As the last child is born, as the last child goes to school, as the last child leaves school, as the last child moves on to university, as the last child leaves home. Each stage presents us with a different sense of who we are. For full-time mums the impact of these changes are much greater.  

We live in an odd world. As primates we would be living in extended family groups. When change happened there would have been a natural stress management from the various relatives supporting each other. Even when your own children had grown up there would be new young ones coming through. In our odd little nuclear units of mum, dad and the kids aloneness and isolation can become common place as evidenced in the general rise of depression, stress and anxiety in western society.

Some of our stress comes from the fact that we do not really understand how to act in this new family situation. There is a confusing shift in the roles that we now play. When you have been a full on parent and your child goes off to uni what contact do we now have with our distanced child? Questions arise..

• Who contacts who?
• How often do I phone, text, skype?
• Do I wait for them to contact me?
• Do I offer the money, resources or wait until I am asked?
• What do I do with their room?
• Do I keep it as a shrine, redecorate it, let other people stay in it….?

What about the family dynamic?

One child moving out can upset the dynamic of the entire family. In some cases this can create feelings of bereavement and loss. Some families will even go though a period of mourning. Siblings may become withdrawn or upset. It may effect their performance at school. I am not being dramatic I am simply stating that changes effect us all.

Often both parent and child do not fully comprehend the importance of the family unit until it is no longer there. ‘We don’t know what we’ve got ‘til it’s gone’.

But hold on, we always knew that this would happen, that this day would come it was just that we have chosen to ignore it. Maybe pretend that it will never happen. The awake mindful parent is preparing them self, the family and the child for their departure. Talking obviously helps but it’s the practical issues and skills that effect a child most. These might include…

• How to manage money
• Knowing how to budget and pay bills
• Making a shopping list
• Basic cookery skills
• How to use a washing machine 
• The art of ironing

The rules of engagement

Agreeing all the rules of contact and money and doing their washing should all have been discussed prior to the event. As long as they know that they can get you when they need to they will be okay. So what about you?

So who are you now?

If you have been a full on parent the chances are that you have lost the sense of who you are, what your own real needs are and what it is that you want to do with your life from now onwards.

Many couples caught up in the rush and business of raising a family lose contact with each other. Often in the silence of the empty nest two people stare across the void at each other thinking ‘Who are you?’ For it may have been along time since they really had any ‘us’ time. For many this is the chance to get back in touch. Talking, sharing and date nights can help. The question ‘who am I’ extends to ‘who are we’ and ‘where are we going from here?’

I guess that after all empty nest syndrome, just like bereavement is not an illness it is a process and the better prepared for it the better we process it when the time comes.

My resource for the podcast was to look at John Bowlby’s attachment theory. Our ability to deal with endings is dependent on what happened to us when we were young and how we learned to attach and detach in our relationships. What we learned as children is played out in adulthood. The good news is that even if you do not like your current attachment styles you can re learn and re frame them so that they can serve you better.

The biggest gift that we can give our children is independence and confidence and to do that we have to learn to let go and allow them to live and make mistakes.

Take care and be happy

Sean x

I have brought in a few resources on this one so have a look at the links below.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-we-all-racists-deep-inside/

BBC News: Implicit bias: Is everyone racist?

I am not sure if any of us are not racist. By racist I mean that we prejudge other people by where they come from not who they are. Many of us would deny that we are racist but I suspect that in the back of our mind, at a subconscious level, there are beliefs about others that we all need to get out of the way so that we can interact directly with the people that we meet and not pre judge them by transferring our beliefs onto them.

Most group and pack animals exist through mutual support. From Wildebeest to chimpanzees the members give the whole group at least the same importance as the individual. This is how they have survived. Chimpanzees have a territory that is their food supply area. It is their larder and contains all the food that is needed to support the group. The chimpanzees in the adjoining territories are doing the same with their groups in their larder. 

In any particular group the members are identified as ‘us’ while the members of the other groups are identified as ‘them’. The object of our group is to defend ‘us’ and what is ours including defending our territory from invaders. If a members of another group strays into our territory then we fight ‘them’ off. These groups are the same as tribes, cultures, nationalities, races and so on. This is often the basis of wars and conflict. As soon as a group is seen as ‘them’ they will lose ‘our’ support. Sometimes we will offer our support and we term it ‘charity’ or something like that. Often we will reject other people and exclude them from our group.

We have just seen the marvel of Trump telling elected members of the US parliament that they should go back to their own countries. In one sentence he was demonstrating that he does not see each of these women as being one of ‘us’ they are definitely ‘them’ and they should leave us and go back to ‘them’. This demonstrates the basis of prejudice and racism.

In reality the land of America was first inhabited by the North American Indians. If we get honest it is their country that was stolen from them by the Europeans. After all Trumps family are immigrants from Germany. Perhaps we should suggest that he goes back to where he came from. 

We see the same behaviour in Australia with the aborigines, in New Zealand with the maoris. The Celtic races that inhabited Northern Europe and the British Isles were pushed back by invading Angles into Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Leading to racist prejudice between these different groups.

I know that these things are also true in other countries because. As I travel the world people tell me about it, and I listen to, their ideas and attitudes about ‘us’ and ‘them’. We racially assume ideas about other people without even realising it. Some of the common myths in the UK that I hear are that Southern English people are cold and stuck up,  Northern English people are warm and friendly, Scottish people are mean, Irish people are thick, Welsh people are thieves. We even get to the point where the different groups have made up rhymes about other groups such as…

…Devon born Devon bred strong in the arm and weak in the head…

…Taffy was a Welsh man, Taffy was a thief, Taffy came to our house 

and stole a shin of beef… and so on…

It doesn’t have to be like this. We can start to see people as people and not as races that we have prejudices about. I will say it again…

If we all look after each then we will al be okay

The different races and cultural groups need to get better at communicating. However, our situation is likely to get more difficult. With global warming the central regions around the equator of the Earth will become less inhabitable and the occupants of those regions will have no option other than to move either north or south in order to survive. That means that there will be a lot of people attempting to move into countries that are currently occupied. The new comers will be seen as ‘them’ and not ‘us’. Unless we become great enough to open our hearts and allow ‘them’ to become ‘us’ there will only be more conflict war and strife.

It would seem that we are moving near to the edge on many fronts. The world economy is unstable. Medically we have lost control of drug resistant bugs. Global warming is on the increase. Sea levels are rising. Pollution is now epidemic. Plastics are taking over the seas. Psychopaths are taking positions of power…

Unless we learn to become ‘us’ as a whole human race could well be looking at the last chapter of humanity on planet Earth. We can change the course of our destiny if we want to. The key words here are ‘we’ and ‘want’.

My suggestion to you is, if you have not done it already, get your DNA decoded and enjoy the many races from all over the planet that are your ancestry. In the end we are well one.

Be happy and love your fellow human beings.

Sean x  

Someone once said to me that “Networking” is what fishermen did when the weather was bad. They would repair their nets so that when the weather improved they could be out there catching fish with good tackle. Thinking about it when we go networking we are preparing for when we can do our work, same thing really.

We all network. We have all always networked, creating friends, family and society. This is how we have survived throughout evolution. Getting to know other people to our mutual advantage has kept us safe, warm, fed and clothed. If you think about it a family is a network of individuals working together but is also a business, a school or a hospital. We might even consider the same to be true of a village, town or a city. If we really got our act together we might even consider all of humanity or even all of creation as one huge network. 

We know that all of nature functions on the basis of symbiotic mutuality. All the bugs in our gut help us survive by digesting our food. We are helping them survive and reproduce as well by providing the ideal environment. The bee collects the honey to feed its young and in so doing pollinates the plant as does the humming bird with the flower. Even predator and prey live in a mutually cooperative balance. If the prey are over predated then predators all die out. Equally if the predators all died out the prey would run riot and destroy the environment that supports them. The systems in which all of creation exists are a maintained in symbiotic balance of mutuality.

Networking, in the modern sense, is actually no different. However some people forget the mutuality bit. When we consciously seek to network to promote ourself, our business or an idea we are seeking a mutual symbiosis which other people or organisations that will help us achieve what it is that we are wanting to do. Most people enter the networking scenario with the attitude of ‘what can I get?’ In reality networks only ever truly work when the attitude is one of ‘what can I give?’ If everyone in a network gives, it doesn’t matter if it is a family business or a country, then everyone’s needs will be met. If everyone in the network takes then in the end no-one’s needs will be met.

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

The failure of all systems comes about when there is more taking than giving. This is true in nature, biology, physics, chemistry, electricity, psychology and so on. All systems comply with the same laws.

The natural form of a network is where we all give and we all receive. In face to face networks this can be easier to achieve. When networks operate online this can be a little more difficult. Anyone who has attempted to develop networks through FaceBook and other social media will appreciate this. What people tend to towards online is influencing or building a tribe of followers who will give them more of what they want. What they are giving is either product information or life style advice.

What is your network?

Who is in your group, your family, your team, your network? What do you give to your network? What do you get from your network? Do you need to give more? How could you change it to get more of what you need?

Be happy and keep networking

Sean x