Archive for year: 2022

And, here we are again! The season of goodwill is upon us. Why do we need to wait for Christmas to offer our fellow human beings goodwill? What is the matter with 364 other days of the years that you don’t offer goodwill then? It gives a lot of meaning to the song “I wish it could be Christmas everyday”.

A friend of mine will hold his mother’s funeral on the 23^rd. The idea of saying have a happy Christmas seems completely wrong. For so many people Christmas is not a good time. It is a time when people revisit losses and bereavements. Some will be completely alone with not even a Christmas dinner to enjoy and there will be many in the cold on the street with nowhere to be.

Giving

Christmas should, for me, be a time of giving. I see the over consumerism that we have developed leading to demands and critical disappointments. We cease to see the love behind the gift and only the gift itself.

But, how is it for you?

Happy time

Is it that Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus? Or is it that you recognise the winter solstice and acknowledge the end of the darkness and the change to shorter nights and longer day as the light increases. Is it that you simply see this as time of sharing, perhaps with family and friends. A time of warmth and social connection. Is it that you see this as a time when you get wonderful presents and maybe that you also give wonderful presents, a time of giving and receiving.

Not so good a time

Perhaps this is not such a good time. It might be the first Christmas without someone. Maybe it reminds you of of bad times in the past or negative childhood memories. Some people just want to be on their own at Christmas and get accused of being miserable if they are.

A really bad time

Someone who is homeless is unlikely to be reading this and maybe having the worst time of their lives. There are children in war zones such as the Ukraine, old people living alone, the poor, deprived and the needy. For people who are terminal or coming to the end of their life Christmas might no be a very good time at all. Children in hospitals. Families with nothing or very little money.

Dark depression and suicide

At this time of year there is often an increase in suicide or suicide attempts.

For many people this is not the most wonderful time of the year

Getting the best that you can from Christmas

Whatever Christmas means for you, and whatever your stating point, what is the very best that you can get from it?

All the evidence would point to the physiological and psychological benefits that come from the act of giving. Giving may be to those that are immediately around you. It may be that you are able to contribute in some way to those around you that have so much less. Who in your street or vicinity is living alone and may really appreciate a Christmas dinner, a visit or a little present. It may be too much for you to invite people into your home but you can contribute to the homeless and those that have nothing with food, money, presents or time. If people are coming to you or you have a family to cater for creating a loving and welcome ambiance is a real act of love at this time. 

If you have nothing material to give you always have love and time. The most precious gifts of all.

What about you?

It is important when you look at the ideas of giving and loving this Christmas to look after yourself as well. What are you going to give yourself this Christmas? What are you doing for you this Christmas? The phrase ‘Charity begins at home’ starts with you. None of us can look after other people, whoever they are, if we do not look after ourselves first. 

Time to consider what you want and what you need this Christmas as well as what everyone else wants and what everybody else needs.

Be happy and enjoy it

Take care

Sean 

Each year families, especially mothers, go through the issue of letting go of their children as they go off to university or to work and each year I get people coming to talk about it and make sense of their changing role. Coping with the effects of children leaving the home going off to university or off to work or even a new relationship means that the role of the parent is changed forever. 

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 senses 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 changes 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 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 won 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’s other people stay in it….?

What about the family dynamic?

One child moving out can upset the dynamic of the entire family. In some case 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 its 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 the practical issues and skills that effect a child most. These might include…

Using 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 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 now.

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 will have been along time since they really had ‘us’ time and 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 over 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 ate 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 you current attachment styles you can re learned and re frame them so that they serve you better.

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

Take care and be happy

Sean x

It always seems amazing when a dramatic situation develops somewhere in the world and, what seems to be, the whole of humanity come together in a spirit of good will with the desire to get something right. Do you remember when the Wild Boars football team became trapped in a cave system alongside their coach. Luckily the coach was an ex Buddhist monk, of ten years standing, who taught the team to be mindful, meditate and await a rescue that non of them knew would come.

In the ‘Intention Experiment’ quantum physicists tell us that it is now possible to measure energy leaving one person and measure it arriving at another person. You might call this energy good will, love, prayer, absent healing and so on but I suspect that a lot of positive energy was raining down on these guys in the cave and, amazingly, they all got out. Though we do have to offer our prayers and thanks to the Thai Navy Seal, and his family, who lost his own life in helping those trapped children.

The fact that the coach was trained in Mindfulness and meditation was probably the deciding factor in their survival. That had a limited oxygen supply and they were on the edge on hypoxia when they finally got out. In calmness the respiration would have been slower and they would have used less of their vital resource of oxygen. When people are anxious they breath shallow and fast.

Considering that all beings on planet Earth can count their breaths in an average life time at around 700 million breaths each breath has a value that should not be wasted. This amount of breaths is as true for an elephant as for a mouse. Mice have short fast breaths and get through their allotted amount much quicker than an elephant who has deep slow breaths. Those of us who are anxious and suffer from a raised heart rate and a raised respiration will die sooner than those of us who are calmer with a slower heart and respiration rate.

Unless we learn to be mindful and observe our breath we will never be truly aware of what is going on in or system. Using mindfulness, relaxation, exercise and meditation we can slow both our heart rate and respiration and increase our chances of living a longer and happier life.

Being in your own cave
The cave metaphor is often used to describe that inner space that we all retreat to when we are under threat. We would say that a man goes to his man cave, well so do women but in a different way to men.
Sometimes when life feels like it is too much the only place we can go is within. Our computer inboxes maybe full to bursting, our emotional inbox may be full to bursting and our mental inbox likewise. Our systems are in overload, colleagues and family are now too much, and all too often deliverables seem, well, undeliverable.
However hard we work hard, we don’t always meet our goals for the day or the week or the month. New urgent tasks come to us before old ones are done. Sometimes we react by behaving badly, or perhaps we agree to everything, even knowing that we cannot do it all, and the pressure builds inside us. Sometimes we blame ourselves for not being good enough, or our colleagues, family and friends, and we forget we are all in this thing called life together.
Could this be positive?
Seen another way pressure could just be a positive force; it can help us to be better at our jobs, relationships and lives. Pressure can motivate us to be a better person. It can trigger incredible creativity, and boost our productivity. The trick is to mindfully manage what we are thinking, feeling and doing. We need to re-examine how we deal with it, and we can be there for each other. In mindfulness we are gathering tools that work best for each and all of us.
If we all look after each other we will all be okay
There are massive changes coming to the Uk with the war in Ukraine and the financial crisis. The whole world is changes in the focus of economic power and global warming. There is a great deal to do, especially in the coming months. However, if we are mindful of the responsibility we have for ourselves, and if we support each other, we will, in the end, all be alright.
The basic premise of mindfulness is that being present with what is happening now, in this moment, stops us from ruminating about the past or future, and brings about clarity and focus. This does not mean that we deliberately allow ourselves to stay focused on how overwhelmed we feel at this moment. In fact, by stopping the flow of ruminating thoughts and being mindful, we are able to change the way we experience what is going on right now in the moment, and turn the negative aspects of pressure into the positive ones.
We don’t have problems we have learning opportunities
When we feel pressured, for example, if we are working under a tight deadline at work or at home, our concern can become the belief that we won’t meet the deadline, that we will fail and because we believe we can’t, we don’t.
Thoughts become things.
Rumination and disbelief is the way that thoughts become things.
However, we have a choice. Rather than reacting to a feeling of being under pressure by assuring ourselves of our failure, we can for a second or two, notice ourselves breathing in and out, and give ourselves a moment to observe what is really going on. This way we are able to change our reaction, which is mindless, into a thoughtful response, which is mindful.
Stop. Breathe. Respond.
Observe the pressure; don’t become it
Having a positive self-perception is a key component in transforming our ability to manage pressure. This is called self compassion. We need to like ourselves and to know we are worthy as human beings. However, we should also have compassion for others. One person should never think that they are better than another person. It is only when we can recognise the positive aspects of ourselves that we are then able recognise them also in others.
Reflecting on the football team in the cave, it is when we find ourselves in a negative internal cave, in the darkness and unable to see the light, that we need to remain calm, relax, meditate and await our own rescue. In this case it is the rescue that comes from mindful practices and the insight that allows the light to penetrate our darkness. So often that light will be self compassion.

Take care, be happy and be calm

Sean x