TSHP485: State of the Nation, with Sean & Ed

What’s Coming This Episode?

A bit of a ‘shoot from the hip’ episode from Sean and Ed today, where they decided to just shoot the breeze and talk politics, the world and a few things in between. Enjoy!

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

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TSHP484: How to be lucky

What’s Coming This Episode?

Why is it that some people seem to get all of the luck and others always seem to have none? It is just chance or are there deeper issues at play? Let’s chat!

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

Show Notes and Links

Stay in Touch

We’re all over the web, so feel free to stay in touch:

Leave us an Honest Review on iTunes

We’d be amazingly grateful if you could leave us a review on iTunes. It will really help us to build our audience. So, if your like what you hear (and would like to hear more great free content) then visit our iTunes page and leave us an honest review (all feedback gratefully received!).

Does Luck Exist? 

Have you noticed, when you look around, that there are some people who always seem to have good luck. They always win the lotto or win the competition on the TV. At the same time there are those that, whatever they do, never seem to get it right, they never win.

I hear people say “It is their Karma”. So what is karma or ‘What goes around come around’ or ‘Everyone gets theirs in the end’. For me the concept of Karma is that of the consequences of our action. Karma acknowledges that the things that we do have an effect, this is the consequence. Attached to that is our responsibility for what we do and the effect that it has. 

Often karma is mistaken as a law of retribution. But like most laws in the universe karma is neutral it is not concerned whether or not the effects of what we do lead to good things or bad things. Just like gravity, which has a universal effect on all things, karma is always in operation. It is true that if we treat other well then the likelihood is that they will treat us well in turn, this is good karma. If we are treated badly it may be because we have treated others badly, this is bad karma.

So where does luck come into this. It is true that some people do have more success in life while others have more failure. Often this is to do with their attitude and responses. To hear a patient say…

…’you know what? Cancer is the best thing that ever happened to me’…

…is a bit of a shock to hear. However the person who said it was describing how the and the process of their experience had change the way that they looked at their life and the changes made their life so much better.

Gratitude, experience and luck.

The Law Of Attraction, see The Secret, explains that we each have a magnetic effect on the universe of physical, meant and emotional energies. It is saying that we get or experience what we expect to happen. the Secrete suggest that if each night we make entires into a gratitude journal recording all the positive things that happened today we will tune our mind into the positive so that we see more and more positive events around us.

But we have choice. We can focus on the negative to allow to grow or we let the negativity of others to flow by us so that we do not become attached to it. This is letting go of emotional negative attachments. It is the forgiveness that I describe in step one of the Live In The Present book. We have a choice as to whether or not we become involved in other people’s negative karma’s. In this way we are responsible for how we feel bout all that happens to us, even the most horrible and dreadful things.

When  things happen to us rather than seeing them as hurtful or bad things, perhaps we should just view these things as neutral. Or might even see them as useful things from which we might grow.

We don’t have problems we have learning opportunities

Often, when I work with people who are in difficult circumstances, the therapy is about them realising their own responsibility that they have for their situation. Many of us want to blame others for how we are. It will always be true that the things that we experience will have an effect on us, but we do have a responsibility as to what that effect is.

We are never effected by events, it is our response to those events that is the effect

Because of this we are intimately tied up in our own karma and can never really blame others for how we feel or for what has happened. However we can choose to get our own back, get involved in retribution and vendetta. By doing this we feed and build our negative attachments or karmas.

What you feed grows and what you starve dies

We are all the sum total of the habits that we have accumulated since our birth. This is our karma and magically we can change it in the blink of an eye by changing our habits and our responses.

Perhaps you should experiment with this concept of luck just as in the law of attraction in your gratitude journal. The practice is to be grateful for having achieved what ever it is that you want. Let’s say you want to win the lotto. You should not write in your journal ‘I am so happy and grateful now that I will win the Lotto on Saturday’. You should write ‘I am so happy and glad that I won the Lotto on Saturday, thank you, thank you. The point of the law of attraction is that the energy of the universe will respond to the underlying message. So that if I say ‘I will’ I am stating that I have not got it and if I say ‘I have’ than I am confirming to universe that is is mine to have.

Some people that I know have tried using the Law of Attraction and had no results whilst other have had amazing success. 

I suspect that the Law does work. Often the energies in us that it is responding to may be our true inner feelings and not what we are just saying or writing. However all the evidence it that when we repeat something for long enough our thought and feeling will change. For example if I say ‘I love and approve of myself’ even if I don’t, if I say it enough times for long enough I will become it. Just as a child who is continually told that they are a useless idiot will eventually take it on board and become it.

My advice would be to get a gratitude journal and play with what you or what you want to be and see if you can attract it to yourself.

Take care, be happy and let go

Sean x

TSHP483: It’s Time To Talk

What’s Coming This Episode?

It’s good to talk. We all know that! Don’t we? Well, yeah probably. But best to have a chat about it hey? Let’s go…

Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast!

Show Notes and Links

Stay in Touch

We’re all over the web, so feel free to stay in touch:

Leave us an Honest Review on iTunes

We’d be amazingly grateful if you could leave us a review on iTunes. It will really help us to build our audience. So, if your like what you hear (and would like to hear more great free content) then visit our iTunes page and leave us an honest review (all feedback gratefully received!).

Time To Talk

Ed and I are recording this podcast on 2nd February which is international Time To Talk Day. I have no problem with the idea and the aim of the need to talk. What I wonder about is why do we need to have a day to encourage us to talk? Why aren’t we doing it anyway?

Everyday now seems be a nation or international day of …., something that we need to be doing for each other. It feeds back into my favourite phrase…

…If we all look after each other we will al be okay!

Time to talk is aimed mainly at men and we could probably accept that men talk about personal and emotional stuff a lot less than women and that even in the current climate males are still brought up in a ‘big boys don’t cry’ culture. There have been some movement. When we describe a male as being in touch with his feminine side we usually mean that he has a higher level of sensitivity and empathy. 

I think that, socially, we the victims of history and advances in technology. Historically we have had two world wars and a depression that put men in a situation where they had to be tough to survive and do what needed to be done. Men coming back from the frontline, even now, do not share or talk about their feelings about what they have just been through. It is true that the sisterhood has been more supportive and able to share than the brotherhood. The detached nature created by dealing with violence and hardship created a society where male violence towards partners and children was an accepted norm. As I write this the song Delilah, sung by Tom Jones, has been band from the rugby terraces because it describes domestic violence leading to a man murdering his partner. 

“Quick before they come to breakdown the door, forgive me Delilah 

I just couldn’t take any more”.  

 

The second big issue is culture change. We have moved from a social culture of extended families to small nuclear units. In the farming culture we lived in extended groups and families. Either extended families lived in the same house, so that there were different generation all under the same roof or, they lived in close proximity. What that meant was that there was always someone, aunt, uncle, cousin, grandparent, parent or sibling, to talk to. This created an informal stress management system that offered support and did allow people to talk. In the industrial age we no longer live in extended units. Families can now be spread all over the country our all over the world and our natural support mechanisms have gone. Statistically there has been a correlation with the increase in mental illness.

The third issues is technilogicalisation, if such a word exists. Computers and digital technology rather than bringing us together has aa great potential for pushing us further apart. The image that people present on social media often bears little in common with what is taking place. The need that we have to be seen in certain ways can mean that we share even less ands when we do it has been airbrushed to look better than it really is.

So, while I am bemused at why we should need such days and not just talk to each other I so accept that raising the issues does create the opportunity for us to think about what we are and do something about it.

How about everyday we either share, or encourage others to share, something that is meaningful. By the way, it does note have to be a bad thing. There are plenty of good positive things that happen that are never shared.

Remember it is always time to talk. If you need to talk to me you know where I am.

Take care

Sean x