The Ups and Downs of Retail Therapy

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Money, money, money

Spend, spend, spend

Money makes the world go round! Or so they say.

Money is a fantasy. It doesn’t actually exist. The piece of paper, the token, that we call a note, is just that. It is a piece of paper. Every bank note, in every country, has some kind of statement that implies that the token has a value, “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of…” yet if you go to the Bank of England and ask for your pounds they will probably think that you are mad. The basis of money is that we, as society, agree that the token, the note, has a value that we all agree to maintain.

The need to use money tokens to get beyond the problems of barter became an essential. After all if I am buying your chicken and I want to trade my cow how will you give me my change? Anyway, we all use money, often in the form of credit, to create a pool of energy that we can exchange for goods and services, and Christmas means spend, spend, spend.

If you follow our blogs and the podcasts you will realise the importance of the relationship between various addictive issues/substances and the production of dopamine in the brain and, guess what, money is the same. The need to spend money is a dopamine addiction.

Dopamine is known as ‘the love drug’. It is produced by the pleasure centres in the brain and creates a feeling of happiness, euphoria. It is these feelings that we crave and become addicted to.

When we crave a ‘love object’ that we just need to buy, our brain is telling us that it needs a squirt of dopamine. But dopamine is a fickle friend. As soon as we achieve our love object, as soon as we buy what we were craving, the drive for dopamine ceases and the love object becomes yesterday’s news.

Have you ever craved to buy something, perhaps spending many weeks or months saving the money, and then at last you buy it. It may be your flavour of the month for a little while but soon these feelings wear off. The problem is that because of you addictive habit your brain now craves more dopamine you will now need a new love object to get it going again. More spend, spend, spend.

Advertisers know this and, like Apple, will change their designs and specifications to keep the dopamine needs of their followers flowing. No one really needs to continually update devices at the rate that the market dictates and yet the majority buy into it. Sales people and teams understand this and their sales techniques are designed to get our juices flowing, to increase the flow of dopamine.

In big stores the lighting, the music and the displays all are designed to create more dopamine and, to create the need to have, to own and, to buy.

When your expenditure exceeds your income, on a regular basis, and you are not living in poverty, then you are probably addicted to retail therapy. What that means is, that like all addicts, you have trained your brain to connect an activity, in this case spending money, to the production of dopamine in your brain’s pleasure centres.

Just as there is nothing wrong with having the occasional blowout on booze there is nothing wrong with having the occasional spend fest. It is all a matter of proportion. It is when it is out of proportion that it becomes a problem and that means therapy. When you have a problem do something about it, see someone, talk, seek help.

Overall when it comes to money the deal is…

Love people and use money, do not, love money and use people…

Be happy and spend responsibly with joy.

Sean x

Where Art Though, Happiness?

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I have come to the clear conclusion that when we feel both happiness or unhappiness it is a matter of choice. Many people have become angry with me when I suggest this. They will tell me that I don’t know what I am talking about, that if I had to deal with their problems or live their life I would realise that it is different for them. They will say that they are not unhappy by choice and that it is due to the bad hand that life has dealt them or, the negative behaviour of other people in their life.

My experience in my work and my life leads me to believe this to be untrue…

…no one is ever effected by what happens to them…they are effected by how they respond to what happens to them.

In life we will always face difficult situations and difficult people. It might be that these people are family or even parents. They might be partners or siblings. Yet the same principle holds true.

No one can make us unhappy without our permission.

We do not have to stay with people, to remain in difficult situations, jobs, or social groups. You can do and be whatever you choose to be, and that is the rub.

Most people are not happy because they do not know what they want

When I ask people what they want, what they really, really want, they will normally say “I just want to be happy”. Sadly, that is not good enough. To create happiness you need to be specific about what happiness means to you. This often takes a great deal of thought and honesty with yourself. For many of us the concept that we can choose happiness is a concept too far.

The English language is full of phrases that are designed to get us to put up with what we have rather than go for what we truly want. Behind each phrase is a concept that tends to dictate behaviour.

“Better the devil you know”

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”

“A Leopard can’t change it’s spots”…and so on.

When we use these types of phrases it often means that we are settling for second best and maybe even unhappiness.

The bottom line is that each of us, moment by moment, make decisions, not just about what we do and what we think but also about how we feel. When we become emotionally literate we are able to decide how we will feel about the events that we experience. When we choose to see problems as challenges, and challenges as learning points, we can choose to change unhappiness into happiness.

Take care and choose to be happy

Sean x

Can Empathy be (Re)Learned?

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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 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 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 him or her a cup of tea and attempt to shut them up. Our need to shut down their emotion is because we cannot deal with it in ourself.

Empathy
This is when we have also experienced the same or a similar situation so that we can feel another’s hurt or the 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 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 feeling to get in they way. When we are actively, listening we know that what we are feeling ‘their’ stuff and not ‘ours’.

Empathy Killers
So what kills empathy? Diminishing, discounting or demeaning other peoples experience about sums it up. We do this by not listening or by devaluing what other people are saying or feeling. But 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.

Take care, be happy and keep listening

Sean x

Change, Loss and Moving On

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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 these 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 ourself and others by what we do. In your value system is a surgeon of higher status than a dustman?

The way that we see ourselves as a list of what we do tends to come out of when we answer the question “Who am I?” In most cases the answer will comprise this 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 become 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, embrace the potential gains of the future that can only come with change.

Change by choice
When we chose 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 we 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 ourselve.

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, 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 in 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 the 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

How Important is Goal Setting?

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Is setting goals worth it?

When we were doing the podcast for this week Ed asked me what my goal was. My response was that to arrive at the end of my life with a smile on my face would be a good goal. I reckon to be smiling at the end would suggest that the journey had been pretty good, and that is the point. Goals are all ok but if we only focus on the end point we miss the journey.

A goal is, by definition, the end of a journey. It could be that from this ending there will come other beginnings. But, any goal that we are aiming is an end point, a conclusion. And yet the goal itself may represent only the smallest part of the journey. It is the journey that is the bulk of the experience that is what really counts.

So, why have a goal at all?

For me a goal gives purpose to my experience of being alive. So I will have a goal for the day. It may that my goal is to do nothing, but then to actively do nothing is actually doing something (if you see what I mean). Goal setting does not mean that we have to engage in endless activity. It may be that we are aiming at doing less, chilling out more and learning to relax.

Often I will see my day as this blank cheque of time, 1440 minutes in the next 24 hours all to be spent however I wish – wonderful. I split my day into segments there is the small pre breakfast segment that is a good time to go running, do yoga or meditate. The morning segment takes me through to lunch time, the afternoon segment through to tea time, the evening segment and then the night at bed time. I often set myself mini goals to achieve in the different segments of the day.

Goals can be bigger events. I have week goals, month goals, year goals and so on. These are not things written in stone, they are things I would like to achieve or get done. If I miss the deadlines or decide to dump or change a goal that is fine.

Often a goal, once set, happens in a time line. The time line defines the process and the sequence of achievements that lead to the ultimate goal. If you think of a goal as a chain that is spread from the present moment to where you wish to get to, then the chain is composed of links. Each link is a step in the journey to the goal. If the goal is the top of the mountain then the journey is the chain. Each step that we take is a link in the chain. If we achieve all the links then we have completed the chain.

Why set goals?

Human beings are energised and motivated by having something to achieve. There is enough evidence in medicine and neuropsychology to confirm that those of us that carryon learning throughout life, however old we get, stay younger and fitter for longer. Those that do not have goals and become static go into decline and they get older quicker. Goals create purpose direction and meaning in life, without goals life can become meaningless.

Be happy, set goals. Remember that New Year will soon be here. Now, there’s a good time to set some new goals.

Take care

Sean x

Never Say “No”

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“No” is such a negative word. It is short, sharp and creates an ending. When I was trained in the science of Mantra it was suggested that M and N were directly in the middle of the alphabet and that the ‘M’ sound involved closing the mouth and gathering energy in hence the mantric sounds of Om, Aum, Amin and Amen. The “N” sound involves opening the mouth and pushing energy away as in, Negative, Never, Not and NO.

No is the “N” word that should never be used

No, completely shuts down whatever is going on. As soon as we say ‘no’ there is nothing left, no way to move forward, it is a done deal, over and finished. The word ‘No’ ruins relationships, create animosity, starts wars, fights and conflicts.

It could be that the easiest way to say ‘No’ is by saying ‘Yes”

So how do we avoid doing those things that we do not want to do while never saying no?

I would really love to do that for you…

If you ask me to do something for you and I either don’t want to do it or simply don’t have time, I could just say ‘No’, which might lead you to see me as being negative or awkward. If I change that to…

“I would really love to do that for you, I just don’t have the time’

Perhaps it is your manager or employer, who is working you too hard and has unrealistic expectations of just how much you can do…

“I would love to do that for you, which one of these current tasks would you like me to leave so that I can do that one?”

When we do not use the word ‘No’ we are showing willing, remaining positive, always being open, never closing down.

“Which bit of ‘No’ don’t you understand?”

I guess there will be times, in the extreme, when there is ‘No’ option and you may have to follow it with two words of which the second one is ‘off’.

But it is a choice. I have a challenge for you. For the next week listen to what comes out of your mouth and try not to us the word ‘No’. Try and find a positive alternative…

” I’m sure a date with you would be really fun but I don’t think it would really work”
” I know you will find the partner of your dreams, sadly it is not me”
” Thank you for offering me the position, on this occasion I feel I need to decline”

You can have a lot of fun working out ways to not say “No”.

One of the greatest challenges is for parents, especially when a younger child is in the “Why?” phase, or when the children enter adolescents. “No” simply creates conflict. Creatively saying “No” without using the word is an art form.

Take care, be happy and, never say “No”

Sean x

Relationship Advice: Where Did the ‘Spark’ Go?

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Professor Stephanie Ortigue in October 2010 found that the quick release of a cocktail of chemicals such as dopamine, oxytocin, adrenalin and vasopressin, some of which act in tandem, is what creates the high that could be called falling in love.

Across a crowded room our eyes lock, love at first sight…

The emotional elastic of love is connected to the love object and the magical energy of attraction and love begin. We repeatedly glance between each other’s eyes and lips. We begin to laugh at things that are not even funny. Unconsciously we begin to touch and stroke each other. Our bodies face each other in an open posture and we begin to mirror each other’s movements and gestures and we smile. As we do all this the cocktail of love chemicals begin to flow through our system and we are hooked, we feel the love?

The dominant hormone is dopamine that is known as the love drug. However it is also the hormone of excitement and addiction. As our relationship develops the dopamine subsides and the oxytocin takes over. Dopamine is excitement and often erotic love that can be short lived, while oxytocin is bonding and friendship that is the love that lasts a lifetime.

The first flush of love can keep us up all night talking. We may become so excited that we stop eating. Dopamine is hard work and is not sustainable in the long term unless we become dopamine junkies.

The honeymoon period of dopamine will often fade into the friendship of oxytocin after two years or so. But, dopamine is an important stimulator and driver of everyday life and people will seek ways to get dopamine. This is usually through fun and new experiences. Dopamine and adrenaline often run together and when we see someone as an adrenaline junkie they will also be getting big hits of dopamine.

When dopamine gets out of control people will seek new, exciting and sometimes dangerous behaviours to feed their dopamine habit. One of these is to have affairs. In the extreme this becomes the serial philanderer. The question that couples often ask is can we keep the levels of dopamine high and working in our relationship. The answer is, of course, yes, though it depends on the nature of your relationship as to what constitutes excitement.

Because many people associate dopamine with sex and love the focus of creating more dopamine in a relationship is often based around sexuality, hence the issue of affairs. Many opt for spicing up their relationship with role-play, sex toys, multiple partners and so on. However if you think of dopamine and being a response to fun, newness and challenge there are many ways to get a dopamine hit. It is based around the things that we do together as a couple and that they both find fun and stimulating.

Top of the list always is fun laughter exacerbates dopamine production. New experiences. Doing things and going places that you have never been before and, that often means travel and holiday. Doing the same things in the same way can be great from an oxytocin point of view but to get dopamine it needs to be new and novel.

Date nights for many couples will reintroduce dopamine. Going to the theatre, concerts, self development groups. Having something new to talk about. Allowing your partner to challenge you. Maybe doing something that they would like to do, so that you are doing their thing with them.

Go back and re-read the second paragraph. Re-enacting some of those behaviours can reignite the dopamine in a relationship. That is where the spark is. That is where it started and that is where is still is.

Take care, stay happy and keep sparking!

Sean x

What do you Waste?

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This is one of those topics that gets me energised. So at the outset I will own that my attitude comes from someone who was brought up in poverty where there was never really enough and because of that everything was used to the full. If a chicken were there for Sunday lunch it would still be being used on Monday and Tuesday. So that it eventually became soup and even after that what was left would be boiled down again as stock for next Sunday’s gravy. It was a world of make do and mend and nothing was ever allowed to go to waste.

What really lit my fire, and got me writing this, was reading that up to one third of all the food that we buy, in Britain, ends up in the bin. At the same time we have food banks because other people can’t afford to eat, not to mention the starving in other countries.

When I was a kid food was served like school dinners, you were given what the server decided you needed to eat. Because we were always hungry whatever was on the plate was eaten. As I got older and could provide food for myself and for other people it seemed reasonable to allow people to serve themselves. Using terrines people could now take what they would like to eat not what I thought that they should eat. So, why is it that, given the choice, people take more food than they want to eat and then leave the residue on their plate, now contaminated so that no one else can eat it?

This idea of waste gets me wondering as to what kind of mindset takes more than it needs and then puts it in the bin? Well, I guess it has to be people who were brought up with more than they need so that the idea of dumping and re-buying was acceptable and became the default habit. So if you are a waster, and you fill your bowl with more than you want or need and then throw what’s left away, what else do you waste?

Do you waste time?
I work with so many people who get to the point of retirement at age 60 or 65 in a state of shock, “where did that go?”, ‘what was that all about?’, ‘feels like yesterday that I was 18’, “I feel like I have just wasted my life”.

Doing things can be wasting time
Some people just can’t stop; they always have to be doing something. Under analysis the ‘something’ turns out to be meaningless other than it is just something to do. Ok, we all need to do things but when the doing is really avoiding facing our self or our emotions, or is driven by guilt embedded from a critical parent or grandparent it is actually a waste of time. When the need to be active is driven by avoidance it is termed OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Genuine business can make you happy
Genuine business is an activity that is aimed at a goal, not avoidance. The difference between this and OCD is that in OCD once one task is completed there is no sense of achievement or satisfaction and the drive is ‘what must I do next’. In genuine business there is satisfaction and achievement and an accompanying sense of well-being and happiness that goes with it.

Chilling is not always being
‘Being’ is to be really present in the moment, it is to be ‘Mindful’. Meditation may seem like doing nothing. However, meditation is an active process of intensely ‘being’. The same, or similar effect can be achieved through yoga, running, or any exercise, often repetitive, that requires the concentration of ‘being’. TV, on the other hand can be hard work.

Couch potatoes
Most people in the western world watch around four hours of TV everyday. Though to some this may be seen as relaxation or chilling it is actually hard on your system. There does seem to be a correlation between those that watch too much TV and the same physical state seen in people who are so stressed that they are heading for strokes and heart attacks, and of course there is increased weight, diabetes and other related illnesses.

I could go on all-day, you will have guessed I have just climbed astride a hobby horse of mine, so think of it like this, when you fail to act mindfully in the moment you can waste your:

  • Time
  • Health/happiness
  • Friends/family/relationships/love
  • Education/fun/interests/new experiences
  • Life potential and self fulfilment
  • Money/resources
  • Mind/intelligence
  • Intuition/empathy/understanding
  • Creative imagination/problem solving/genius
  • Life

And if I ever meet the person who created the sell by/use by notifications on foods I will have a few words to say to them. Evolution gave us a nose so that we could tell what was good to eat and was not and a brain to know the difference. The fact that we put a third of all the food we buy in the bin is an outrage and a crime against all the starving in the world.

Hey ho, be happy

Take care
Sean x

Dealing with Long Term Illness

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Mindfulness and long-term illness

Mindfulness is a conscious state of living, or being, in the present moment. That is to be ruminating on past unresolved events or fearing futures that may never happen. This state of mind is reached through the practise of specific techniques normally associated with meditation. Though to the practitioner of mindfulness the approach to life is to be present in every moment of everyday whether we are working, eating, sleeping and so on. This includes being mindful when we are ill and also when we are dying.

Illness comes in different forms. There are those coughs and colds, the sort of short-term infection that may lay us low for a short while but we bounce back from them. Then, we may be the subject of an accident with broken bones to mend or psychological scars of trauma to be healed, these will take us longer. The bones several weeks, sometimes months but trauma can be with us for years and even a lifetime. Then there are the general operations from which we need to recover, but these are mainly short term issues that may be awkward but we get over them within a reasonable period of time.

For some people illness becomes long, or longer term. We may develop ulcerative bowel issues and become the subject of a stoma, there may autoimmune problems perhaps rheumatoid arthritic issues or it may be an emotional or mental issue such as depression, extreme anxiety or the longer-term post traumatic stress. We may also develop cancer and become terminal over a long or short time.

Long-term illness requires much from both the sufferer and the carer. The carers of course are often family members, partners or close friends. Just as if the family has an alcoholic member then all the family has an alcohol problem, it is also the case that if someone in the family has a long-term illness, then all the family has a long-term illness to deal with.

Illness always has been and, always will be with us
Life, it self, is a terminal disease. For everyone in every walk of life, there is only ever one ending. You and I will both get there when our time, and our turn, comes. But, maybe that is not the point, true we are all going to die, perhaps it is how we get there that concerns us most.

Some people will add other categories to this but for me we will all die from either:

1: a cardio vascular problem
2: a dementing or alzheimer’s issue
2: a degenerative nerve or brain disease,
4: a cancer of one sort or another
5: or an accident

I just ran the list by a colleague physician in the next office and he thinks we should add in respiratory problems like COPD, Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema and also gastric ulcerative issues. The point is that however we look at it we will all die, though it is how we do it that counts. For some the ending will be swift and sudden but for others it will become drawn out and long. So whilst accepting that not all long term illness will lead directly to death I want, in this blog, to focus on dealing with death and long-term illness from the two points of the sufferer and the carer.

Living or dying?
Over the years I have worked with many people suffering long-term illness. Attitudes vary from the amazingly positive to the completely negative. It comes down to this…

…are we living with ‘it’ or are we dying from our illness?

Illness, like death, is something that few people consider until it is upon them. We need to come to terms with the idea that we are likely to become ill, and perhaps long-term, before we die. Ideally most of us would like to die in our sleep or suddenly doing something that we enjoy.

Living in the now – living with illness
My teacher once said to me,

“you are not ready to live until you are ready to die”.

He was saying that to effectively live in the present, and not to be suffering from the forward projection (that leads to anxiety). We need to become aware of death and illness and accept it as an inevitable part of being a human being. We all have a body and bodies become damaged and eventually wear out and stop working. Along with having a body to deal with and the problems of illness, accident and old age there comes, for us all, pain and suffering. Pain and suffering are the natural human condition, but we do have a choice as to how we deal with and, respond to them.

In long-term illness for both the sufferer and the carer there will come levels of pain, anguish, frustration, anger, depression, anxiety, fear and so on. Though these are also set against such things as love and fortitude, endurance and resilience, wonder and understanding, security and comfort.

Mindful Moments
The use and development of the skills of mindfulness gives us a choice to either follow the positive path of living with illness, even when we know we are terminal, rather than taking the negative path and fearing every step of the future. Mindfulness allows us to face, come to terms with and deal with whatever is presented to us.

In Mindfulness and meditation we can learn to allow the river of life, as thoughts, feelings and physical sensations, to flow by us without the need to get into the water and swim with them. When we learn the mindful skills of being able to sit on the bank while watching the river of life flow by we learn to observe all of life, all it’s wonders and pitfalls.

Mindful practise teaches us that however uncertain the future is, we can be present in the moment. The ability to be and remain in the moment frees us from the depression of looking backwards to what was and the fear and anxiety that comes from looking forward to what might never be.

S.N. Goenka the famous teacher in the Vipassana tradition of Mindful Meditations makes the point that to the mindful practitioner all experience can be observed without attachment. So that the mindful meditator may, in peace and serenity have an experience, as in… “oh this is a new experience what is this?” or in the extreme “are so, this is what death feels like”

As a sufferer of long term or terminal illness, mindfulness allows us to live in each moment without projecting forward in fear as to what may happen next. It allows us to get the best from every minute that is available to us, with compassion for our self and for those that are caring for us.

As a carer for someone with long term or terminal illness, mindfulness allows us to act compassionately, with patience and fortitude allowing the person in our care to undergo their own journey with our support.

As either patient or carer the most powerful tool available to us is love and compassion.

Take care

Sean x

The Importance of Failure

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We live in a world of opposites that are totally dependent on each other, one cannot exist without the other. Hot and cold, high and low, rough and smooth, light and dark, happy and sad, positive and negative, rich and poor, good and evil, the list is endless. Yet each of these symbiotic twins are relative to each other.

For example something will only seem cold if it is at a lower temperature of what we have labelled hot. Just as something will only seem hot if it is a higher temperature then what we have labelled cold. The difference between these twins is never an ‘actual’ measurement it is a ‘relative’ measurement.

Compared to the ceiling the floor is low. Compared to the sky the ceiling is low. Compared to the moon the sky is low. Compared to the Sun the moon is low. Compared to Alpha Centauri the Sun is low. It is all just the way that we look at it. Which takes me to the symbiotic twin that I want to look at, it is ‘Success and Failure’. This has such a profound effect on our self-esteem and our ability to function happily in our life.

Like all of these twins this is a matter of opposites. We could not have a concept of success without a concept of failure. Yet, because it is a relative relationship our experience and beliefs will vary.

My concept of success might be your concept of failure.

Let’s say your success is to have one million and for me five hundred would be my success, if you were experiencing my success you would be feeling your failure. I have often said that I see competition as a senseless waste of time. My example is that if nine people embark on the 100 metre dash only one person will experience success while eight people will experience failure.

Ed, and other competitive types tell me this is the wrong way to look at it because the eight that didn’t win the race may have succeeded in other ways. Perhaps the person who continually comes fourth managed to come third so this is a success. Or one runner improved their time and felt success. I guess that even to have competed at a high level meeting at all and to come last might be experienced as success.

Failure could be the mother of invention

I am reminded of Edison and his quest to invent the light bulb. His problem was finding the right element that would glow without burning out that would create light. He tried over 2000 different elements before he found tungsten that worked. That is over 200 experiences of failure, or was it. I have often thought about his tenacity. At what point would I have conceded failure and given up. Was it that each element that failed spurred him on to try the next in his determination to succeed?

I suspect that it is this concept of failure that is vitally important to achieving our success. Just as there is no up without down, and there is no success without failure. The point from which we start anything is the down point and the goal that we are aiming for is the up point. When we look up to where we want to be we are setting our goal. Achieving our goal is our success and this is often tied up with our self-esteem just as not achieving our goal is our failure and leads to a loss of self-esteem.

Learning from our failures

My experience, both personally and working with others, is that that the pain of failure is the spur that creates the energy that drives us towards success. A business person can learn from a bankruptcy so that it never happens again, we come out of a failed relationship with the knowledge that allows us to succeed next time, the injuries that we experience in training enable us to adapt to succeed in the race.

When failures become learning points we learn and grow

I want to challenge the concept of failure and the idea of success. In this world of twinned opposites we need to continually learn from one to achieve the other. So, I prefer to think of “failure” as an opportunity. We don’t have failures we have learning points that, if used consciously and creatively enable us to move towards our success. In that sense there are never problems only opportunities.

Planning our success

Ok, so if we have a starting point and we have a goal we need to make the journey from one to the other. Most people set the goal too high and then don’t reach it. This is then labelled failure. To make the journey it needs to be broken down into achievable steps that create the path to success.

Forward Base you success

Forward basing is an exercise that I use with individuals; couples and teams who need to achieve a goal. You can do this right now in your kitchen; if it is a team I am using a gym hall. On one wall I stick a big sheet of flip chart paper. On this I write where we are up to in the NOW. On the opposite wall I put another sheet of paper. On this I write where we want to get to, this is the GOAL.

The next job is to put sheets of paper on the floor that become the stepping-stone from now to the goal. This is the plan. Each step is set at an achievable distance so that with each step there is the feeling of success. Once the steps have been set out we create a timeline along the wall so that we have set steps to take in a time frame.

None of this is set in stone. The time frame can vary and the steps can move. If one step is not completed we go back to the previous step and either try again or adapt or change it. The point of forward basing is to create a flow on continued success that build self-esteem and drives us on to our goal. When we forward base we are able to use success rather than failure as the drive towards our goal.

1: What do you consider to be your failures?
2: How can you turn these into useful learning points?
3: If you were to forward base what would you write on the NOW sheet and what would be on the goal sheet.
4: From this you can create your steps and your timeline.

Failure, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder only you can define your failures and acknowledge your successes. In my own life I have had many learning points. The only failure that I would identify is when I didn’t attend to the learning points and needed to repeat the lesson. I also acknowledge that I have had many successes, which makes me a happy person who feels successful.

Take care, be happy

Sean x