Get (and Stay) Motivated

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Motivation – is about having fun

In this weeks podcast Ed and I have been talking about motivation and how you keep going when you feel like you are running out of energy. The trick is that you need to be living your dream and not other people’s. Motivation is about the life energy that either comes from within you not from without you.

Why do you do what you do?

Many of us do what we do because our parents, friends, teachers, religion, culture, and so on, demand it of us. I work with so many people that get to the point of retirement and question why on earth they did all the things that that have done with their life. They are left with the feeling that they have wasted time; they have wasted their life. From here they often fall into retirement in a state of depression.

Mindfulness is about living in the present, in awareness of what you are doing and why you are doing it. Mindfulness is about being responsible for who you are and what you do. This should not be confused with blame. Fault and blame are not to do with responsibility. Responsibility implies the ability or need to respond.

There is a trick in getting motivated in doing what you want to do with your life. If you wake up feeling the energy to jump out of bed and get on with what you enjoy doing you are living a happy and mindful life. If you wake up feeling like you don’t want to get out of bed and do what you have to do then you are living the mindless life.

This is not a criticism of anyone living an unfulfilling life. But if you are unhappy with your lot this is your chance to change. Wherever you are is your starting point and we are all starting from different places. It is not where you start but where you will finish and more importantly life is about enjoying the journey from start to finish.

To be positively motivated you need to be engaged and connected in your life and living your own dream. To be negatively motivated you will be living someone else’s dream and feeling obliged to.

If you are at a point in life when you need to get focussed and motivated I suggest you get on Amazon and get your self a copy of ‘The Attractor Factor’ by Joe Vitale. Joe takes you through a series of questions that enable you to connect with your inner feelings and discard bits of your life that are de-motivating and create a life goal that will begin your journey.

What ever you do choose to do with your life, live it mindfully and enjoy your journey and you might just get to the end of your life with a smile on your face.

Take care

Sean x

Does what we own make us happy?

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Over the last few weeks Ed and I have been looking at issues from migration to happiness. It seems to me that the movements of people that we see as populations from the war torn middle east moving north are people seeking happiness. We have been talking about whether or not the things that we have, our possession can make us happy.

Is what you have now enough? Is what you have to be shared? Are others allowed to have the same that you have?

Topically does where you live make you happy? People have always moved around the world seeking happiness and fulfilment.

Do we own the countries in which we live?
Having just returned from Italy through the Channel Tunnel led me to think about the idea of ownership of land and the idea of who owns the world. Who are we Brits? Where do we come from? Do we own the land that is described as Britain or the United Kingdom?

“Imagine there’s no countries it isn’t hard to do”
(John Lennon)

When humans moved out from the Eden of the African plains to populate the world we took possession of territories, which in turn became tribal domains, kingdoms and countries. As we did this we created a sense of belonging. We began to own our territory that belongs to “us” and no one else.

When we identify with a group of human beings we see them as ‘us’. Those people that we do not identify as ‘Us’ who exist outside of our group we identify as ‘them’. ‘Us’ equals inclusion acceptance and support. ‘Them’, equals denial and rejection. When ‘They’ seek to take what ‘We’ have or what we feel that we own we fight to defend it.

And so in 2015 the ‘Us’ that is the UK has an army of migrants massing on the borders attempting entry. The ‘Us’ that is the UK says you cannot come in becomes you are not ‘Us’ so they are ‘Them’ and you do not belong here.

And yet Britain is, and always has been, a melting pot of many people that has been mixed for thousands of years by people from all over the world.

1968, Kenyan Asians flee to Britain
1951, people from the colonies mainly the West Indians were encouraged to work here
1881, Jews flee to Britain from the Russian pogroms
1066, it was the French and William the Conqueror who populated the UK.
793, it was the Vikings
410, it was the Angles and the Saxons.
43, it was the Romans
500 BC, the Celts invaded Britain

I am only picking out a few of the events that I am aware of. I am sure that there are many, many more as people, that have, for a variety of reasons moved around the world, and will continue to do so. On the basis of what I have written above should we concede the domain of the UK to the Celts? That would be the people of Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Cornwall.

I do not know anyone who is pure British or who could even claim to be Celt. With the wonders of the Internet we can now do amazing research and discover all sorts about our own ancestry. In my own case on my mother’s side there is Irish, Negro and Chinese and on my father’s eastern European Jew and Viking. Yet I would say that we are as British as you can get. My lot all fought in the last two World Wars and I guess we all fight again if we feel threatened.

Human beings are all one people. We choose the divisions of colour, race, religion and ethnicity. What would solve the world’s problems, our problems, would be inclusion, tolerance and the law of allowing.

Perhaps we should be asking ourselves why are these migrants wanting to be here with us and not staying where they come from? Perhaps our energy should be focussed around helping heal and develop their places of origin and in so doing, help to expand the concept of humanity rather than developing our bunker mentality and reinforcing that sense of “Us” and “Them” because in the end surely we are all one.

The big question is do we own the territories that we deny other people?

The coming years will test our concepts of who owns what.

Take care and be happy

Sean x

Should Drugs Be legal?

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They already are!!!!

Alcohol, nicotine, tannin, caffeine, legal highs, all easily available on the high street. What about exercise, chocolate, carbs? They all create a chemical dependence in our brain chemistry. But would we think of religion, education, reading or knitting as addiction?

We all have an internal and individual chemical normal. Your internal chemistry is different to mine, but when yours is in balance you feel that all is as it should be. If you had my chemistry you would feel horrible, like wise if I had yours.

The nearest we get to normal is at the moment of birth, yet even then our individual internal chemistry is set by the genetics from our parents and from the things that we ingest like our mothers milk. As we grow and move on in life different experiences create different internal chemical states that, when repeated, we experience as normal. In the end we say, “that’s just the way I am”, no it is not, it’s the way we have taught our system to be. What it comes down to is that you normal chemical balance is your addiction and you will do things to maintain your normal. That is called ‘your addictive behaviour’. So what is yours? Remember the person who needs to go to mass everyday is as addicted as the cocaine user, it is us that see it as good or bad.

A class drugs are those substances that we, collectively as a society, have decided are so bad they should be made illegal and people, our population, should be (are) banned from using them. The popular image of a Class A addict is of a spotty no-good living in the gutter. Yet, functional addicts are everywhere.

Functional alcoholics famously run governments, functional cocaine addicts run the financial sectors and functional heroine addicts run businesses. I am not saying that we should all go around ‘off our cake’ and ‘out of our tree’ but being stoned is more common than we realise.

Does drug addiction damage people? Yes! Should we do something about it? Yes!

Human beings have used drugs throughout their evolution. The chances of this stopping are remote. Making drugs legal enables us to take control of them and it stops the negative associations such as people trafficking, violent crime, robbery, prostitution, and so on.

There is another issue of balance. The government creates income from the tax on cigarettes. There is also a cost in the health costs of the diseases caused by smoking. Is the income greater than the health costs? I do not know the answer. However, if all drugs were legal and subject to tax, we would create income to deal with rehab and recovery. At the same time we would reduce violent crime and maybe make the world a little safer.

Whatever your addiction is, be happy and live in the present.

Take care

Sean x

The Book of Face – Good or Bad?

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I have just checked my facebook and twitter, I attempt to check it when I go to bed. What did I do before facebook? well, I went to sleep or, maybe, read a book.

I once heard a wonderful talk given by Stephen Fry. He read out a quote about a new invention that suggests it was, and would, ruin the world. It was destined to destroy society, break up families and relationships, turn children against their parents and people against their governments it would be the end of society as we know it. The invention he was talking about was, the book.

The book, at that time, was a creation that followed on from the invention of the printing press. The book was not seen as a good thing. Thinkers and philosophers of that time thought that if someone was sat alone, or in a corner of the family room, having an exclusive experience in their own mind that was not shared with their friends and family, that this would destroy the fabric and foundation of what a family is. Of course, prior, to the book on a winter’s evening in front of the fire, people talked, told stories, shared the day’s news. Would or could the book stop this?

Now we are in the position where people fear that the book will now be lost to the Kindle book reader, the computer, the tablet and the mobile phone. Seems to me that as each new invention of social distraction comes along what we fear most of all is change.

So what about social media?

Facebook allows people to share in a digital electronic way. It allows people to share at anytime with anyone anywhere in the world. It opens up the world and creates an awareness of other people in other situations and other countries. But what it does is creates change. It is a new form of communications. Those people that grow up with modern technology will see it as normal and the way that it is. They will not feel bereavement for the loss of the paper book when they can hold 200 books on their Kindle.

Just as the book was a feared when it was first developed so too is social media now. For many it is a threat. Some governments are so scared by its existence that it is blocked from the servers in that country. Why would a government or an interest group be sacred of people openly expressing their thoughts and feelings in a public forum? It is probably that they have things that they would rather keep hidden.

I think, that like most things, social media is neutral. Think of a knife! The knife is neutral; it is neither good nor bad. It is what we do with it that makes it good or bad. There are good books and bad books. There is good social media and bad social media. It is not what it is, it is what we do with it that counts.

Be happy, live in the present, and use your social media positively.

Take care

Sean x

Bereavement

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Bereavement goes way beyond death and the loss of a loved one. We may experience many losses in life before we experience our first death. When we experience any loss it is the emotional bond between us and that person, thing, event or object that we feel as they are stretched and sometimes, snapped. So, in this blog I want to look at the sense of loss beyond that of death.

Loss assumes that we own something. We cannot lose what we do not have or own. This may seem obvious when we are talking about losing a watch or having a wallet stolen, if our house is burgled or the contents of car taken. Yet, there are many levels of loss that are not material. They may be to do with love or emotion, though with all things we may also feel some ownership.

Status and our sense of self
The loss of face, position or status can leave us feeling diminished or that we have lost something. This is because we tend to define ourselves by what we ‘do’ rather than by who we ‘are’. At the dinner party we turn to the person next to us and ask “what do you do?” This sense of ‘doing’ is often regarded above ‘being’. We tend to value our-self and others by what we do. In your value system is a surgeon of higher status than a dustman?

They way that we see ourselves as list of what we do tends to come out when we answer the question “Who am I?” In most cases the answer will comprise of a list of the things that we do or the roles that we play. When what we do is seen as more important than who we are things like retirement becomes big issues of loss because we no longer have a place and a role in society, we have lost our label.

The loss in change
This is why there is often a sense of loss when life changes. The rites of passage as we move through life from, school to, university, Job, relationship, children, grandchildren, retirement and so on all describe the loss that is the past and may, to the awake mind, embraced the potential gains of the future that can only come with change.

Change by choice
When we choose to change we may move joyfully towards a new situation. Perhaps the past has not served us well and we are happy or even eager to leave it behind. However, even during the most positive of changes, it likely that there will still be a sense of loss from the broken connections to the past

Imposed change
To have change enforced on us through redundancy, dismissal, divorce, accident, illness and so on will often leave us feeling anger and resentment to those people or circumstances that have brought about the change. Imposed change may effect what we do or what can do. If we have an accident or a stroke we may lose the physical or mental ability to function as we have done in the past. Such losses change how we see or describe our-self.

Consider this
If you were to write a description of yourself from ten years ago how different would it be from your description of how you see your self today? You would doubtless see some change that may even be positive. What are the losses that you can see? You might also try projecting forward ten years and consider what changes you would like to see.

Preparing for change
Being aware that change is the only constant, knowing it will always happen, allows us to prepare in advance. Preparing for the loss of loved ones and close family members eases the passing when it happens. A pre-retirement course can minimise the loss of identity that come with the loss of role. Parenting courses can prepare us for the huge impact that children will have on our lives and our relationships.

Preparation for material loss
For most people this means insurance policies that are there to compensate us when we suffer material loss. That may include critical illness cover, redundancy cover, car insurance, house insurance, travel insurance all of which compensate us for loss. In these cases insurance seems like a waste of money unless or until you need to call on the policy after a loss.

Preparation for emotional or spiritual loss
In this I mean loss of relationship though estrangement, divorce, death and so on. The only way to prepare for these is to live in the present. Not to be attached to the past and what was or to crave what might be in the future. To live in the now is to be Mindful.

Mindfulness
Because loss is related to change the experience spans the line from past, through the present to the future. The bereavement of loss is the attachment that we have to the past. Many losses will always have a connection to past either through nostalgia or sometimes anger and hurt. In Mindfulness we encourage the ability to live in the present to be here now. Dealing with loss is about dealing with our attachment to the past. To live in the present we need to let go of the emotional attachments that we have to what was, enjoy what is and embrace what is yet to be.

When considering how you deal with loss I highly recommend Step one in our book, Live In the Present.

Be happy, be lucky and enjoy your life

Sean x

Dealing with PTSD

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What is a trauma?

Trauma, is a Greek word meaning “wound”. A wound can be physical, mental, emotional, financial and so on. The concept of trauma comes from the idea that the wound, or event that is being experienced, is greater than our resources to deal with it. In that sense we have been overwhelmed. However there is a difference between experiencing trauma and being traumatised.

Traumatised, or traumatisation is when the overwhelming experience/trauma creates an amount of stress that is so great that it exceeds our ability to deal the emotions aroused. This is clearly an emotional issue. Trauma or traumatic disorders are always emotional.

Post trauma is the emotional fall out that stays with us after the experience has ended. It is our time to process the emotions and this may take days or weeks. In most cases the emotional effects of a trauma will be normalised in eight to ten weeks.

Repressed trauma can happen when an event is too difficult for us to deal with and we hide it in the recesses of the mind. When this happens we may have no direct memory of the event that caused the trauma, though it may still effect who we are, how we experience the world and, our behaviour.

Recovered memory may be delayed by weeks, years, or even decades. Though when it does emerge the original repressed emotions are released as though they have just happened. Therapeutically this release of emotion and memory is termed an abreaction and involves the re-experiencing of the trauma physically, emotionally and mentally.

Emotional responses Although in repression the memory is lost to the consciousness of the mind it has a constant effect on everyday life and experience and may appear as irrational fears, anxiety, depression, phobia etc. This is described as something within us but outside of our control.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is when the emotional responses are not repressed but are also not processed. When the effects of the event remain active after six weeks it is given the PTSD diagnosis.

PTSD Symptoms will vary but will include finding it difficult to forget the incident or event that happened. There may be flashbacks, daymares or nightmares about it. Unstable and irrational emotional responses such as anger, tears, anxiety, depression, phobias, disturbed sleep/eating patterns, and so on.

Rumination is the symptom builder. We know that what we think about we bring about that thoughts become things. When we continually go over traumatic events and are unable to let them go they become more intensely embedded in our unconscious and conscious mind because we keep thinking about, and reinforcing them in our mind/brain.

The MindBrain This is where the software of the psychological mind and the hardware of the brain interface. The main aspect of the brain that effects our emotional self is the limbic system in the centre of the brain. Within the limbic system is a little organ called the amygdala. In this organ are templates of cells that relate to out emotional responses. Let say that when I am young I watch my mother reacting phobic-ally to spiders, I then build a template of cells in my amygdala so that when I see a spider the cells release chemistry and so I also react to the spiders as a phobia. Over time my spider template will become hotter and more embedded the more I visit it.

All emotional responses are like this, even the positive ones. So, that if I see the object of my love the love template of cells become hot and releases the chemistry that make me feel loving.

It normally takes about five repetitions of emotional experience to set up a template unless it is punched traumatically and then it is created immediately. Once a traumatic template has been established it will remain hot and active and become more embedded over time unless, or until, it is treated.

Treatment for trauma is a variable feast and will depend on where you live and the therapy that is fashionable at the time. Cognitive therapies such as CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) given over a few sessions are not that good at dealing with trauma in the long-term. They do have a short- term effectiveness by putting in place cognitive tools, sometimes if the emotion was repressed it can reappear at a later date.

EMDR or Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing is a therapy that mimics the rapid eye movements that happen during the dream cycle in the sleep pattern. As the emotional trauma is encoded into the MindBrain using the same part of the system EMDR is surprisingly effective in the majority of cases.

Rewinding is by far my best option, as it uses the very same process to desensitise a template in the amygdala as was used to put it there in the first place, this is visualisation. When we revisit a trauma it is through the senses of sight, smell, taste and touch, none of which are cognitive. During rewind therapy the emotional memories are address directly and desensitised.

Mindful meditation is becoming mainstream psychology. Mindfulness is the best prevention for all forms of stress and provides the resources needed at the point of trauma. The process of mindfulness is relaxation, contemplation, concentration and meditation a process that is in itself therapeutic. Consistent meditators become their own therapists and counsellors and are able to overcome many things that overwhelm others.

Medication has to be the last on my list. I am not against medication on this basis, if I have a headache I will do all that I can to get rid of it, as a last resort I will take an aspirin. There are medications that can help with anxiety, depression, panic, high blood pressure and so on. There are also natural alternatives that maybe gentler on the system both psychologically and physiologically.

If you do suffer trauma never suffer alone psychotherapy is a good and powerful thing.

Take care and be happy

Sean x

Empathy For The Immigrants

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In this weeks podcast Ed and I were talking about the wave of immigrants that are attempting to come through the Chunnel and join us in Britain. As we speak there is talk of the French army being lined up to deal with crowds of up to 2000 people attempting to rush the tunnel. The reality is that most of us that call our-selves British are really the antecedence of those that have invaded over the millennia in one way or another. The question that the immigration issue raises is, who is allowed to live in the UK and who do we identify as British? Belonging is emotional it is all to do with if people “feel” that they are one of us? Do we really understand what it is like for these people? What does it feel like to be stateless and in need of a country to settle in and belong to?

There are three emotional states that exist when we connect with other people in a way where we can, or we think we can, feel what they are experiencing. Different people will define these word, feelings, or emotions, differently so let me begin with my own definitions so that it is clear what I am talking about.

Sympathy
This is the weakest of three emotions and probably the most common. It is that part of us that resonates with what we experience. For example when we watch a movie we may become emotional or tearful through either the joy or hurt by what we are seeing. What is happening is that unresolved emotions within us are vibrating in sympathy to what we see. Other people who do not have the same sympathetic emotions within them will not resonate in the same way. Equally someone else may become upset by something that has no effect on any of us whatsoever.

Often people will attempt to stop their sympathetic emotion because it is too painful. An example of this would be when someone is upset or crying and we cannot cope with it so we make them a cup of tea and attempt to shut them up. Our need to shut down their emotion is because we cannot deal with it within our-self.

Empathy
This is when we have also experienced the same or a similar situation so the feeling we can feel is another’s hurt or emotion. We have no need to close it down because it is not unresolved within us. If anything our empathy and empathic responses will allow the person to get more upset so that they are able to release and resolve their inner emotions. Empathy and empathic interventions are often employed in psychotherapy as interventions to enable the person to get better.

When a self-help group gets together it is empathy at work. The individual members begin to see that they are not alone and that other people actually know and understand their situation and how they feel.

It is often said that to be empathic you need to have walked in someone else’s shoes for a while to know exactly how they feel.

Intuition
This is a completely different kettle of fish because intuition is something that is way beyond cognitive understanding. It is knowing without knowing. When you know something but have no logical knowledge to base your intuitive emotional knowledge on.

Perhaps you are moved to contact a friend living on the other side of the world who, it turns out, is ill or unhappy and yet for some reason beyond logic you were aware of the need to get in touch. Or, you simply walk into a room and know that something is wrong. You are the one who goes up to some one to inquire how they are, if they are ok, while others have been oblivious to the fact that something is wrong.

Ok, so, these three forms of emotional connection are at play all the time but not within everyone. Most people can use sympathy, some people can use empathy but only a few people have intuitive awareness. But, this blog is about empathy and the question that it raises is can empathy be learned?

Can Empathy Be Learned?
The short answer is ‘yes’ however, you need a good imagination. When you have not experienced exactly, or even remotely, what another person has, it is still possible to feel their emotion through having a fluid imagination that can replicate their situation within your mind and your emotions.

Imagined Empathy
If you have ever hit your thumb with a hammer or stubbed your toe, then you can understand the feeling of pain. If you can use your imagination to increase that to the feeling of being hit by a truck you are using imagined empathy. If you have experienced the bereavement or loss of anything, person, animal or favoured possession you can use imagined empathy to feel the loss of a parent or a child. If you have ever felt prolonged hunger you can use imagined empathy to feel the effects of starvation.

Listening Empathy
The key to developing imagined empathy is the ability to listen well, this is known in psychotherapy as ‘active listening’. When we are able to actively listen we can hear what the other person is saying, experiencing or feeling, without allowing the noise from our own feelings to get in the way. When we are actively listening we know that what we are feeling is ‘their’ stuff and not ‘ours’.

Empathy for immigrants
As you watch the news broadcasts of the immigrants attempting to get through the Chunnel do you experience it with sympathy, empathy or intuitive understanding?

Empathy Killers
So what kills empathy?

Diminishing, discounting or demeaning other people or their experience just about sums it up. We do this by not listening or by devaluing what other people are saying or feeling.

The real killer is when we assume that we know what someone is talking about without listening to them. When this happens we start telling them our story rather than listening to theirs. Or we say things like “you think that is bad just listen to what happened to me”.

So the punch line is if you want to be empathic, listen and use your imagination. And if you are not sure check out if what you are feeling is correct. You can do this by simply saying “was it like this…?” or “it sounds like you were feeling…?”

Last point
Creativity and empathy are close bed fellows. If you have empathy then you will probably have a good imagination, and if you have a good imagination you will probably be able to be empathic. In true empathy you can think, feel and, react just like the other person would. You are walking in their shoes.

Take care be happy and keep listening and if you can be empathic

Sean x

Fear & Doubt

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Doubt and Fear

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 result 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 to that feeling, 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 until 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 is 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.

Over-generalisation – “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?

Catastrophising – 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 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 association 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 on-board so that it becomes ‘my’ issue when it is not. It is when we assume responsibility for things that are outside your control. “It’s my fault my son got in an accident. I should have warned him to drive carefully in the rain.” “it’s 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 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

The Work

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Doing The Work

Over the last ten podcasts Ed and I have taken you through the steps that make up the Live In The Present course and book. These steps are focussed around how we can free ourselves from those things that hold us back and make us fearful of moving forward. When you have completed the steps, which may take a lot longer than ten weeks, you may need to revisit some steps several times, you will then be at a point where you are becoming free to get on with your life and create what you really, really want.

One thing that I hope you have gained from the podcasts and the book is that the key to success is almost always based in serving others. When we do things that are of benefit to other people we are in a state of service or, what is known as Bhakti. To be in business and to work honestly and fairly so that what we do is of service to others means the business grows. The money that we create is the by-product of the service that we offer and deliver.

Working positively with each other fulfils my fundamental belief that…

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

The knowledge that there is enough resources for all of us, be it love, money, energy, waters, and so on, works if we share what we have.

The one thing that we can all share, in an easy way, all day and every day is love and well-being. We make minute by minute choices as to where we will put our energy, either positive or negative?

Those people that seek to make things as positive as possible I call the “workers”.

A worker is someone who does the best that they can in each situation for the good of us all. This might be that you are able to bring food to the starving or water to the thirsty or it might simply be that when you go to a shop or meet someone at work that you do your best to make it as positive an interaction as you can.

If you leave any situation better than when you found it, or if you focus on the positive despite the odds, if you attend to and look after the needs of people (including yourself) then you are a “worker”. When a worker has passed you, you will feel it. You may not understand it. But you will feel happier, lighter and more positive knowing that you have been with or met a “worker”.

If you want to be a worker, on whatever scale, nothing is too big or too small, then shine some light into the dark, bring some happiness into the gloom, create laughter and not tears. Be happy and live your life to the full

Take care

Sean x

Relativity

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Your dreams are just the right size for you

…that is if you are prepared to live them. Whatever you decide to do with this magical thing called life, it may be to create something as large as a mountain or, it may simply be to create happiness and wellbeing. No task that we take on is too big or too small it is simply us playing out our own version of life, of being who and what we really, really want to be.

Step nine is all about self-fulfilment, it concerns your decision as to what you choose to do with this magic energy called life. In this blog I want you to consider the issues of ‘work’ and ‘life’. Are they the same or different? Do you separate your work from your life? Is it possible for both to be the same thing?

Stop looking for the perfect work-life balance

Phrases about needing to create or maintain a work life balance seem to be everywhere. Every organisation that I visit has a new policy. I am told that it is all about looking after the workers. As levels of stress and anxiety have risen in western society the idea that we should look after our self, becomes the buzz idea of the moment. It is certainly true that most people in most organisations are now working longer hours than ever before and many of us will now be doing the same amount of work that two or, even three people were doing a generation ago. Sure, the pressure is on and we do need to be looking after ourselves.

However there is an odd contradiction in this concept of work and life. Are we saying that when we are at work we are not living? Is it the case that we cannot have real life when we are in the workplace? To me this is all bonkers. If we are living a truly fulfilled life then the demarcation between work and life or work and play is not there.

When I came back into the UK, having been living and studying in various communities around the world, I had to decide what I would do with this wonderful gift of life. In my decision making about what to do was included the idea that I would need to survive financially. When I looked long and hard at myself I began to realise that if I was to be happy in life it would be because I was using this gift of life in ways that made me happy. My decision was that working with other people and playing music were the two things that made me happiest. And so, that is what I have done ever since. I do not go to work I simply live my life. I have no work and life to balance; I simply just live and enjoy my life.

I am not unique. I have met many people who live in the same way. I cannot go along with the concept of going to work as something that has to be endured. The idea of hating Mondays and the opposite joy of loving Fridays is never there in my world. I love my life and I love what I do every day of the week.

Most people, actually about 94% of the population, are wage slaves. That is, they are working for an employer who pays a set hourly rate for the amount of hours they are prepared to employ someone for each week. This leaves most people stuck in a place of relative routine. The bottom line is that if you do not like going to your work, to the point where there is drastic difference between work and play then, you are in the wrong job and not doing what you should be doing with your life.

Harv Ekker in his book and course ‘The Millionaire Mind’ explains how we each use our inner template or paradigm to create the world of our experience and that includes our financial world. For many people the idea of running your own business can be scary but for many it is the answer. It allows each self employed person to live a life that they would wish to. Dave Woods in his book ‘Get Paid For Who You Are’ explains that we all have a business within us once we take the time to realise it.

There is a clever phrase that someone said, “do you live to work or, work to live?’ Perhaps the alternative is that you simply live and earn your daily crust by doing what makes you happy. Now, here at Live In The Present we have been running courses for many years enabling people to discover what it is that they really want from live and then looking at how they might achieve it. These courses led to the book ‘Live In the Present’.

The journey of discovering who you are and finding your own fulfilment begins with the answer to that simple, but at the same time difficult question.

‘What do you really, really, really, really want from your life’?

Once you answer this question you will be well on your way to living a balanced life and no longing needing to consider a work life balance.

Take care and live in your present

Sean x