Archive for year: 2019

I watched in horror at the footage of Notre Dame in flames and the terrible scenes of hundreds of people turning out onto the streets to witness it. It made me consider the immense power that fire has to destroy and also to cleanse. I remember the news footage  of Windsor Castle with flames pouring from its roof and those terrible scenes of the planes flying into the Twin Towers. I read that when Dresden was bombed by the allies in the Second World War the air became so hot that things were spontaneously catching fire, including people and animals.

Yet fire has another side. When humans first began to understand and use fire it enabled them to keep warm and to eat foods that previously would have been indigestible. In my own house we love our log fire, it becomes the focal point of the house and the family in the cold winter months, and there is the Pizza Oven in the garden that becomes the focal point of family gatherings in the summer.

Even in farming, when the land was covered with forests humans developed the Slash and Burn method of agriculture, used when trees, vegetation and even whole forests were burned down to allow new seeds to be sown. This had two functions in that it cleared the land but also the ashes that were left behind created fertiliser to ensure the health and growth of the new crops.

Fire was also used to smelt iron and created the Iron Age and eventually the industrial revolution through the invention of steam engines and steam power. From coal mines and steel works to railways and steam engines, fire and steam have shaped our society, culture and our lives. 

These days when we turn up the thermostat to make the house a bit warmer I wonder how many of us realise that we are benefitting from the controlled gas fire that is going inside our boiler. Or that when we drive our car that we are enjoying the controlled fire of petrol, diesel or gas that is powering our engines. The same it true on planes or ships they are all powered by fire. Even if we get to the point of driving and flying electric vehicles then the vehicle itself will need to be created by a system that includes fire.

The big down side of fire and our need and desire for it and the things that it produces is the CO2 emissions. As I write this the Extinction Rebellion protesters are trying to close down London demanding that CO2 emissions are reduced or illuminated. Like all protesters, if they put their energy into creating alternatives rather than complaining about what is actually happening then things might change a bit quicker.

As I think about this I begin to see that fire is neutral. It is neither good more bad, it just is. It is what we do with it that has the value of being positive our negative.

Notre Dame will be rebuilt, probably identical to the past. In many cases the destruction of fire allows us to get rid of the old and start afresh, to start anew. The emotional fire that destroys relationships or communities often creates a new beginning. When we run the Live In the present courses and write letters of forgiveness the suggestion is that we burn them, that we commit them to the flame and so doing creating an ending that allows for a new beginning.

Fire can the a catalyst. An energy for change. If we are positive the change will be constructive. If we are negative the change will be destructive. Either way the fire is neutral.

Take care, be happy and light a candle with love, thankful that no-one was hurt.

Sean x

Impatience is all about not being able to relax into the present moment, not being able to live in the now. Impatience is about wanting the future in the present. It could be that we are in a queue and feel ourself getting angry with those people that we see as holding the queue up. We want to do it now and just can’t wait for the process, whatever it is, to complete. Impatience also becomes the mother of intolerance as we develop a short fuse in our frustration.

The one thing that we know from mindfulness is that when we become focussed on the future and cease to be in the present we develop anxiety. Whereas some people may be looking to the future with fear. Maybe they do not like flying and a holiday is coming ever closer and the closer it gets the more anxious they become. It could be that someone is due to have an operation or have a serious illness and they fear what will happen next. When we become impatient we are using exactly the same part of our system. It all comes down to wanting or needing the future in the present. And, guess what? You can’t have it. It does not matter how much you jump up and down, shout, scream or have a hissy fit, the future will only get to you when it is ready. The queue will not magically disappear.

We also know that when we begin to focus on time it goes very slowly. We say that…

…a watched pot never boils.

The more that we want it now, the more that we demand it now, the longer it seems to take. The massive explosion of fast feed diners and delivery services is because we have lost the patience to wait for our food to be cooked, we want it now.

People get fed up when a website will not open immediately and they shout at the computer, failing to realise how much faster their current computer is compared to their previous one. The whole computer process that delivers everything at the touch of a button can make us lazy. Why spend the time to look something up in a dictionary when you can use google. Why bother waste your time pressing the buttons to access Google when Alexa or Siri will find it for you without you moving nothing more than your tongue.

As a society it would seem that we are becoming more demanding, less tolerant, more critical and less patient year on year. This is ultimately to out detriment.

We are hunter gathers. Each day, throughout evolution, we had to learn new skills to grow and evolve. We know that people that stop using their. brains and stop learning lose brain cells and that new brain cells only come about in response to new learning. 

As we move towards driverless cars, automated farming and food production, and endless free time we find that the human brain is becoming more and more Autistic. As we hunker down in our flats and houses allowing the machine to do everything for us we become diminished. There must come a point, that when we no longer do things for ourselves, that the meaning of our very existence has to be called into question? I think that negative, critical, selfish, intolerant, impatience will lead to our downfall.

I vote for getting off our backsides and re-engaging in the world and with other people. Coming out of our silos and keeping automation at a point where it is helpful and not destructive. 

If we could just become a little more mindful, less intolerant and more patient the world would be a much happier place to live in.

Take care and be happy

Sean x

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 results 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, 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, unless 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 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.

Overgeneralisation – “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?

Catastrophizing – 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 me 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 associations 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 onboard so that it becomes ‘my’ issue when it is not. It is when we assume responsibility for things that are outside of your control. “It’s my fault my son got in an accident. I should have warned him to drive carefully in the rain.” “its 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 book, 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

This week Ed and I were looking at the issues that are emanating from Parliament related to our good friend Brexit! We were looking at the idea that whatever happens there will be a lot of unhappy people. Situation such as this polarise the population very clearly into them and us, if you are not one of us you are one of them. This is the stuff of civil wars, terrorism and general insurrection. To resolve this split in attitudes and ideas involves movement on both sides. True compromise is when both sides give a little and move towards each other’s points of view. This involves tolerance and letting go. So I thought that it is time again to revisit the Law of Allowing. This is week six of the Live In The Present course/book and it is my resource for this week. 

In this Law we begin to understand that if we focus on the negative we only make things worse. However if we can allow the mad people to be mad without joining them we can, in time make things better. For most of us allowing is the choice between love and hate. In the end love wins through.

Step six: The Law of allowing 

 This is one of the hardest steps in the Live in the Present course/book.

“The only thing you should be intolerant of is intolerance” Plato

If you feel angry or disgruntled when someone with beliefs opposed to yours gets their way, if you become upset because you can’t have your way, then you are not living within the Law of allowing. 

When we can allow others to be who they are, we stand a better chance of changing their behaviour. When we oppose peoples behaviour it will normally make it worse and we get more of what we don’t want.

According to Emile Coue when you feel or express anger at the behaviour of others you will create more of what you would seek to eliminate. 

Emile Coue’s law of reversed effort – 

The more we try to consciously struggle with a dominant idea the more powerful its effects become.  “When an idea imposes itself on the mind to such an extent as to give rise to a suggestion, all the conscious efforts which the subject makes in order to counteract this suggestion are not merely without the desired effect, but they actually run counter to the subject’s conscious wishes and tend to intensify the suggestion.” 

(Baudouin, 1920: 116).  

He elaborates by describing the law of reversed effect as exemplified by the self-antagonistic attitude of mind that says, “I would like to… but I cannot.”  This notion might be seen as similar to the modern technique of “reverse psychology”, a persuasion technique which aims, paradoxically, to persuade someone to accept an idea by suggesting the opposite to them

Is it ok to be completely tolerant of any behaviours?

Karl Popper

“The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato.

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive,and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.” 

Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies 

Of all the Universal Laws, the Law of Allowing is often the most difficult one to get our heads around. The truth is, there is freedom in allowing circumstances to be what they are and people to be who they are, whether you agree with them or not . Really. Even when it comes to poverty or war or disease.

Mother Theresa famously said that she would not attend an anti war rally, but she would attend a pro peace rally. She understood the Law of Allowing and the Law of Reversed Effort. She realised that the effect of an anti war rally would simply focus attention on ‘War’. A pro peace rally will focus attention on ‘Peace’.

This is also an internal process. When we have an internal dialogue that is self punishing when we get something wrong all we do is create more of what we don’t want.

Example

If I am using hypnosis to stop someone smoking and use the phrase “you must stop this filthy, disgusting habit right now!” the person will smoke even more. However, if I use the phrase “you will get a lot of pride and pleasure from no longer needing to smoke”, the person will stop.

To change yourself and change others you need to evoke the Law of Allowing.

Take care of yourself and treat yourself with love

Sean x

We often see anger as a negative force. Though it can be a very creative and useful force. When our anger is stuck out the front of us it is in the way. It becomes a battering ram that bashes into other people and becomes destructive. When it is behind us it can be used as a power pack that can positively be a dynamic force, that drives us forward and gets things done.

This week after Ed and I did an anger podcast. Afterwards I was thinking a lot about how anger can effect each of us. Anger is really just another emotion, it is an energy. However anger is either a productive energy or a destructive energy. Anger can be described with other words such a passion, determination, assertion, drive, irritation, exasperation, vexation, indignation, displeasure, chagrin, aggravation and so on. Though in the extreme anger can sometimes tip over into aggression or even violence. 

When we have an anger response to a situation or event we are usually just reacting. Generally reactions are mindless. When we respond rather than react we think about what we are doing before we do it. Reactions are mindless where as responses are mindful. 

When we are mindful we realise that it is not what happens to us but it is how we deal with it that makes the difference. It will make it either good or bad. Simply, it is the way that we see it. As Epicticus put it…

…we are not in the least effected by events, 

we are effected by our response to those events…

Each day through out life we are surrounded by difficult news and experiences. As I write this there has been a terrible shooting in a mosque in New Zealand. For many people there will be a reaction to these events that will be anger. The world can seem to be a troubled place. I guess that we could say that the world is always a troubled place but somehow it can seem to be getting a bit worse. Anger and angry reactions seem to be all around us.

For me the reality of Brexit is coming to pass and I don’t like that. We have Trump spreading his wings and spreading his own brand of destabilisation across the globe and I don’t like that. Then we have North Korea off again producing missiles and winding up the anger of the USA, I don’t like that. I could go on. It seems like there might be quite a lot to let go of over the coming months

The New Zealand bombing brought back a lot of really big negative reactions with many of my clients. This was about different issues but mainly about the Manchester bombing in 2017. At that time I had two families that were caught up in the bombings. Luckily none of them were physically hurt though they had both seen people who were killed and they were showing high levels of post traumatic stress disorder. That scar of these events will remain with many people for such a long time. Yet after this event, amongst all the potential for hatred and retribution there came the love and forgiveness of a collective acceptance and forgiveness in a concert of those refusing to be cowed by the terrorism. In a deeply emotional experience Oasis sang…

…don’t look back in anger…  

There are no words more appropriate to this event and to our lives.  We all look back on life, we have a choice of looking at it positively or negatively. We have a mindful choice, do we feed the negative events of life with our anger and allow the negativities to grow in our mind and our emotions. The other option is to feed the positive events of life with our love and allow them to grow positively in our mind and our emotions.

Just after I started doing this podcast and blog there has been another terrorist shooting in the Netherlands. On top of that is the apparent growing knife crime here in the UK with several people being killed each week. If we are to move on from our anger about any events whatever they are we need to let them go. In general this is termed forgiveness and that idea makes many people feel angry. “Why should I forgive those people after what they did?”

Forgiveness and letting go

We need to let go of whatever is holding us back, of those things that keep us stuck in the past. These negative emotional attachments to unresolved events limit our ability to move forward, they stunt our creativity and weigh us down. To let go, to forgo, to forgive allows us to move forward unencumbered into the rest of our lives. 

Just as in Step One, from the Live In The Present course and book, we need to let go of all our negative attachments right back to the moment of our birth. Holding onto negative past is a choice, though we may not realise it. In mindfulness we can choose to be different, to let go and enjoy this wonderful thing called life. That mindful journey begins right here, right now. the option is to let go of your negative emotions and attachments and embrace your positive future.

Whatever your faith, religion, ethnicity, nationality, orientation, or beliefs enjoy this moment. As we move into this strange post Brexit world we all need to be as positive as we can possibly be with each other. We will be tested and we will need to let go and look after each other.

Take care 

Sean X