Live in the Present

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What’s Coming This Episode?Sean has some news – a grandchild has arrived for him and his family! Very exciting news… but it’s an important job with important responsibilities. Let’s have a chat about how to make the most of this potentially fantastic period of our lives.

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

Links* Tips and advice for grandparents

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

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What’s Coming This Episode?Today we’re talking about getting out of your comfort zone and meeting people! We were inspired by a story on The Good News Network. Have a listen and let us know your thoughts.

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

Links* The Good News Network – lady in Warrington challenges herself! * Here’s a video of the story as well * Bald & Bankrupt is a great YouTube channel – explore!

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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What’s Coming This Episode?We have just seen the attempted assassination of Donald Trump followed by an appeal by President Biden for the population to come together and accept disagreement with out seeing it as a threat. It is okay to disagree with other people. It does not need to lead to violence, war and death. Now we see violence on the streets of the UK!

We often see anger as a negative force. Though it can be a very creative and useful force.

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

Links* Sean’s blog post here

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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We have just seen the attempted assassination of Donald Trump followed by an appeal by President Biden for the population to come together and accept disagreement with out seeing it as a threat. It is okay to disagree with other people. It does not need to lead to violence, war and death.

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

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

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

Reactions are mindless where as responses are mindful.

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

…we are not in the least effected by events,

we are effected by our response to those events…

Each day throughout life we are surrounded by difficult news and experiences. As I write this there are huge flood and deaths across Europe. For many people there will be a reaction to these events that will be anger. The same is true for Covid and it’s effects. The world can sometimes seem to be a troubled place. I guess that we could say that the world is always a troubled place but somehow it can seem to be getting a bit worse. Anger and angry reactions seem to be all around us.

For me the reality of Brexit is coming to pass and I don’t like that and it could get more difficult yet. We have destabilisation across the globe and I don’t like that. Then we have North Korea off again producing missiles and winding up the anger of the USA, I don’t like that. Putin…I could go on. It seems like there might be quite a lot to let go of over in the coming months and years

Difficult events in the world can bring back a lot of really big negative reactions with many people. Thinking about this took me back to the Manchester bombing in 2017. At that time I had two families that were caught up in the incident. Luckily none of them were physically hurt though they had all seen people who were killed and they were showing high levels of post traumatic stress disorder PTSD. That scar of these events will remain with many people for such a long time. Yet after this event, amongst all the potential for hatred and retribution there came the love and forgiveness of a collective acceptance and forgiveness in concert of those refusing to be cowed by the terrorism. In a deeply emotional experience Oasis sang…

…don’t look back in anger…

There are no words more appropriate to this event and to our lives.

We all look back on life, we have a choice of looking at it positively or negatively. We have a mindful choice, do we ruminate and feed the negative events of life with our anger and allow the negativities to grow in our mind and our emotions? There is another option in life that is to feed the positive events of life with our love, ruminate on those and allow them to grow positively in our mind and our emotions.

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

Forgiveness and letting go

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

Just as in the Step One, from the Live In The Present course and book, we need to let go of all our negative attachments right back to the moment of our birth. Holding onto negative past is a choice, though we may not realise it. In mindfulness we can choose to be different, to let go and enjoy this wonderful thing called life. If you haven’t already done so then visit step one on the website and complete the exercise focussing on any negativity that you are holding and let it go. That mindful journey begins right here, right now. the option is to let go of your negative emotions and attachments and embrace your positive future.

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

Take care and have a fabulous life and look after each other.

Sean X

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What’s Coming This Episode?George Orwell, author of Animal Farm, described a political landscape that I am starting to see developing all around me. I see laws and rules being created only then to see them not being followed or totally ignored by those people who created them in the first place. The obvious was the fiasco of Dominic Cummings and the Barnard Castle affair and the Party Gate nonsense.

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

Links* Sean’s blog post here

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable”

George Orwell

George Orwell, author of Animal Farm, described a political landscape that I am starting to see developing all around me. I see laws and rules being created only then to see them not being followed or totally ignored by those people who created them in the first place. The obvious was the fiasco of Dominic Cummings and the Barnard Castle affair and the Part Gate nonsense.

‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’

In the Orwell story the pigs are the political leaders of the farm community, a bit unfair to pigs but I get her point. The leaders start off by staying that all the animals on the farm are equal. Over time, as the leaders fail to uphold the very rules that they had created they decided to change it slightly. So now, ‘some’, being them, were more equal than others.

Today I have been listening to a business person who is incandescent with rage with our leaders. This is because the restriction rules, that have not ever applied to any of them, are now to be further extended. This is now seen as their intention all along and that they are all a ‘bunch of lying bleep bleeps’. This person who I have previously seen as a mild mannered person is now on the edge of direct action and sounding almost mutinous. Then they quoted Harv Eker at me. Harv Eker is the author of the millionaire mind which is both a course and a book enabling people to reach their desired potential.

‘No one ever changed the world by watching X Factor’

Harv Eker, famously said this quote. In reality I suspect that no one ever did anything while watching X Factor. Marx once said that religion was the opiate of the people, the thing that kept them quiet and in their place. I suspect that religion has now been overtaken by the various forms of media that fill our lives and often have the effect of stopping us doing things and being creative.

How many hours do we spend each week doing nothing other that being intoxicated by the media on our phones, tablets and televisions? Often we watch other people, that the media present to us as icons of success, many of us watch and wish that we were famous or as rich as them. Yet when we are watching them on the media we are not doing the things that would give us the very things that we desire. If religion once served to keep us, the people, quiet acquiescent and in order then has television and the media now have taken the place of religion as the social drug that numbs the senses of the public so that most of us do very little and just accept our lot?

The business person that I was talking to was saying that most people have become an apathetic bunch of yes people who now just do what we are told and never question anything. Least of all the team of politicians left or right. Are we just changing one version of apathy for another?

In a very real way the world is changing. The climate is changing. Economically and politically things are changing. With another new variant of Covid things continue to changing.

The only constant thing in life is change

Heraclitus

The universe that we inhabit is subject to constant the change. We can call it evolution or decay but nothing ever stays the same. However, most change is gradual. Occasionally change is sudden abrupt and intense.

The person who has been sharing their frustrations with me is talking about a need to actively do something about the situation. This quite shocked me because they would be seen as a pillar of the community and a part of the constant unchanging landscape of life supporting the status quo come what may. If they are getting in the mood for rebellion, then, I see society in trouble and at a much deeper level that people can imagine. Then he begins to talk about Nigel Farage as a potential saviour and I see the free world slipping further to the right and a potentially fascist mindset.

We seem to be at a point where there is big change coming. The problem is that it only works when change happens creatively and productively and we move forward together. When change happens without a coherent plan and is imposed on us it can be destructive, devastating and difficult.

Maybe it is not quite the time to man (person) the barricades but it might not be that far off. As I keep saying…

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

If we don’t we maybe in a third world war. Whatever happens the issue will always be the same. We all need to survive this thing called ‘life’. Success at any level of life takes commitment and time and consistent and persistent action. If we can fine the time to be persistently and consistently kind and we might just make it. Fingers crossed.

Take care

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode?The election is here (in the UK)!!! Sean and Ed recorded a quick episode before the big day… but in the knowledge that it would likely be published after the results had been announced. Will it hold up? Will it be of any use??! Let’s find out…

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

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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What’s Coming This Episode?How do we know what we are belong told is true?

How do we know if what we believe is real?

We are all told things from the day we are born about life, other people, history and events. Politicians, teachers, religious leaders, advertisers, propagandists, to the covid doom sayers and conspiracy theorists and even our loved ones all want us to share their point of view and to believe what they tell us.

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

Show Notes and Links* Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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How do we know what we are belong told is true?

How do we know if what we believe is real?

Currently with wars and the climate changing we are facing so many decisions both individually and collectively that will effect the future of planet Earth. How do we know any of it is real? The story below, that I was told many years ago, makes me think about how easy it is for us to believe what we want to hear and not question it’s reality.

The Story Of Two Men

Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room.

One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs.

His bed was next to the room’s only window

The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back.

The men talked for hours on end.

They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on vacation..

Every afternoon, when the man in the bed by the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window.

The man in the other bed began to live for those one hour periods where his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and colour of the world outside.

The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake.

Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats.. Young lovers walked arm in arm amidst flowers of every colour and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance.

As the man by the window described all this in exquisite details, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine this picturesque scene.

One warm afternoon, the man by the window described a parade passing by.

Although the other man could not hear the band – he could see it in his mind’s eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words.

Days, weeks and months passed.

One morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths only to find the lifeless body of the man by the window, who had died peacefully in his sleep.

She was saddened and called the hospital attendants to take the body away.

As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch, and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone. Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look at the real world outside.He strained to slowly turn to look out the window besides the bed. It faced a blank wall.

The man asked the nurse what could have compelled his deceased roommate who had described such wonderful things outside this window.

The nurse responded that the man was blind and could not even see the wall. She said, ‘Perhaps he just wanted to encourage you.’

The bottom line is that you don’t have to believe what you are told. Keep an open mind and consider what is it the is behind the words? Why are they being said? Don’t believe everything that you are told unless you have some evidential truth to go on.

Positive discrimination is a powerful skill.

And, by the way, it is okay to enjoy fantasy and fiction. It can be fun.

Take care

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode?This week we are revisiting our relationship with nature and the effect that it has on our mental health and wellbeing. Finally the rain seems to have stopped and we are enjoying some sunshine. I was reminded of when I was looking out of the window of my apartment in Doha Qatar when I was working at Sidra Hospital. Below me the City was a busy place and I could see at least a thousand houses. Each house full of people, thousands of people. The roads full, sometimes gridlocked, as all these people rushed from somewhere to somewhere else. All in a frenzied dash that is, for many human beings throughout the world, normal everyday life. I was struck by the overwhelming concept of ‘just how many of us human beings are there living on this planet?’

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

Show Notes and Links* Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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This week we are revisiting our relationship with nature and the effect that it has on our mental health and wellbeing. Finally the rain seems to have stopped and we are enjoying some sunshine. I was reminded of when I was looking out of the window of my apartment in Doha Qatar when I was working at Sidra Hospital. Below me the City was a busy place and I could see at least a thousand houses. Each house full of people, thousands of people. The roads full, sometimes gridlocked, as all these people rushed from somewhere to somewhere else. All in a frenzied dash that is, for many human beings throughout the world, normal everyday life. I was struck by the overwhelming concept of ‘just how many of us human beings are there living on this planet?’

Ed and I were talking about nature, being in nature and living with nature. He had just arranged a family cycling day which attracted over 300 people who took their cycles on private tracks through a private estate. The families were riding through the woods in touch with nature. Also that day it rained, heavy reason, so a lot of what the day was in a mud bath. This just added to the fun and the sense of being free and in the woods with nature.

It can be hard in a desert, that is distinctly beige, to feel connected to nature. I am used to the European landscapes of rolling green hills and mellow fruitfulness. The sandy colours seem so flat. I also realise that people living in hot countries do not go out side very much. If I walked from here to the store, exactly one kilometre, which would be no big deal in the UK but in 45 degrees at 6pm with 80% humidity it can feel quite a task.

Talking to Ed and looking out of the window now makes me realise how easy it is to lose touch with nature. We seem to have become pretty clever at creating artificial environments to be in. In the Middle East we go from the air conditioned apartment to the air conditioned car. On work days we then go from the air conditioned car to air conditioned office. At the weekends we go from the air conditioned car to the air conditioned shopping mall and all the time we hardly touch nature at all.

This is also becoming true in Europe. We have created our artificial living environments with double glazing and central heating. In one part of the world we have created a way of living where we go inside to get out of the heat while in another part of the world we go inside to get away from the cold. Either way we have ceased to live with nature. And when we do go out we sit in our cars a bubble outside of the nature around us.

I am struck by the idea that should the electricity fail so that we could no long cool or heat our living spaces or run our EVs we would all shortly die out. I suspect that we have become so removed from nature that we would no longer know how to live and survive without the technology that surrounds us.

Technology is really great. It created the iPad that I am typing this on and the recording facilities that we record the podcast on. It will also have created whatever device you read this or listen to the podcast on but, without electricity all of this, all of our lives and our well being would come to an immediate end. With global warming if we all retreated to the woods and lit fires to survive we would just make the situation worse. I agree that we need to get back to nature but we need to get back on her terms not ours. My fear is that we have become to disassociated from nature that we no longer really understand what our relationship should be. The only people left on the planet who would understand this are the Amazonian Indians and other hunter gatherers that live in and with nature very day. Sadly these poor souls, who may have the key to our survival, are being displaced and having their environment degraded and destroyed by the mad rush to clear what is left of the rain forests.

I have a feeling that decisions about our future on this planet will, if they have not already, be taken out of our hands. Mother Nature is a nice girl unless you cross and then she gets her own back. The loss of the dinosaurs or any of the other mass extinctions that have happened throughout the life of this planet are Mother Nature simply re-establishing a balance. It just might the same thing is about to happen again.

So my message to all of humanity is, do what you can to stop the destruction and enjoy it while you can.

Take care

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode?Currently the world seems a not very safe place, the news is full of war reports and stabbings in schools. Alongside this are all the reports of violent shop lifting and assaults on care staff in the NHS. More and more counselling clients are sharing their anxious concerns for themselves and their families especially their children. There is an increase in trauma both direct and vicariously experienced.

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

Show Notes and Links* Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week * David Bowie talking sense

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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What is trauma and what is it that we can do about it?

Currently the world seems a not very safe place, the news is full of war reports and stabbings in schools. Alongside this are all the reports of violent shop lifting and assaults on care staff in the NHS. More and more counselling clients are sharing their anxious concerns for themselves and their families especially their children. There is an increase in trauma both direct and vicariously experienced.

Trauma, is a Greek word meaning “wound”. Originally this was related physical injury. With the development of psychology a wound can now be considered to be physical, mental, emotional, financial and so on. The concept ot 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 even if they come from physical damage.

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 hours, days or weeks. In most cases the emotional effects of a trauma will be normalised within four weeks and sometimes extends to eight or ten weeks. The important thing is that is does subside as the emotional arousal is desensitised.

Repressed trauma can happen when an event is too difficult for us to deal with in the present 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. It is assumed that repression developed to protect us from that which was too difficult to contemplate. In repression the victim will often sleep after the incident. In the the post incident sleeping process the R.E.M. (rapid eye movement) part of the sleep cycle, similar to dreaming, allows the memory to be hidden or repressed.

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. This may occur many years after the original incident.

Emotional responses Although in repression the memory is lost to the consciousness mind it has a constant effect on everyday life and experience and may appear as irrational fears, anxiety, depression, phobia etc. This is described and ‘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 incident remain active after six weeks it is given the PTSD diagnosis. As acknowledged above trauma may take eight to ten weeks to process. This means that definitions and diagnosis of PTSD can be difficult in the first instance. When we are looking at symptoms continuing after months or years we are definitely talking about PTSD.

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 the incident. 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 and that thoughts become things. When we continually go over the traumatic incident we are unable to let them go. The more we ruminate on them the more they become 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 call 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 template 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 in the amygdala 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) are not that good at dealing with trauma in the longterm. They do have a short term effectiveness by putting in place cognitive tools that often repressed the emotion that creates a feeling of relief and the expectation of cure. However, when this happens the emotions are nor process but held in check leaving them to 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 a 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, tastes and touch, none of which are cognitive. During rewind therapy the emotional memories are address directly and desensitised.

Mindful meditation is becoming main stream 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

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What’s Coming This Episode?This week Ed and I were talking about the effects of persuasion and how people can seem to gullibly just believe anything. I was explaining about the Barnum effect. Barnum was the great circus master who was into the concepts of illusion and fooling the audience into believing that what they were seeing was real.

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

Show Notes and Links* Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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We have been here before. A time when we are being sold many ideas and philosophies emotional and political. The loonies and psychopaths are in the ascendant with the situations in Ukraine and Palestine. In the UK we are facing elections and across the world economic and climate crises. Around all of these issues, and many more, different power blocks and influential groups are attempting to persuade us to support their point of view. I Russia we have Putin strutting his stuff and in America Trumpy is winding up for another go at the White House and ultimate power. Unless we stay aware and awake it is so easy for us to be hood winked and conned.

This week Ed and I were talking about the effects of persuasion and how people can seem to gullibly just believe anything. I was explaining about the Barnum effect. Barnum was the great circus master who was into the concepts of illusion and fooling the audience into believing that what they were seeing was real.

The Barnum effect, as it is known, can be seen in sales, marketing, politics and propaganda. My favourite are the horoscopes read by millions across the world. The magic is that because our imagination creates a filter that limits our perception to whatever it is that we expect to experience we will see whatever we want to in a horoscope prediction. Two different people looking at the same horoscope with exactly the same words will both get completely different meanings and understanding from it. This is because we, as observers, dictate what we experience, we create our experience. So that someone who wakes up in the morning expecting to have a bad day will, inevitable, have a bad day because they will pay attention to the bad things and miss the good things. The same is true the other way around with someone expecting the positive and to have a good day.

When we read the horoscope we see what we expect to see. We create the meaning that is relevant to us. We have decided what this is before we read it. The Barnum effect is neutral. We see what we expect to see.

While it might be said that we tend to accept statements about ourself that resonate with how we feel, it is also true that some Barnum statements are 99% likely to hit the spot. “You like people to accept and like you.” Well unless you set out to create bad impression this is probably true for most people.

We can all feel the martyrdom of self imposed stress and feel that we are the only person who is really doing the job. “Sometimes you give too much of yourself.”

We like to be popular, we like people to like us, “Sometimes you can be more outgoing and a good people person, but there are times when you prefer be more quiet.”

Very few people really look after themselves properly. “You can be your own worst critic/enemy.”

These Barnum phrases are everywhere. When the car sales says “Well I can see that you are a discerning person, you will really appreciate ….” they are playing to the Barnum effect. With this they seek to manipulate us and use such phrases, often flattery, so that we let out guard down.

But it not all bad. It can be enjoyable to be complimented even when it is not strictly true. My advice is read your horoscope and get what you want from it. At the same time enjoy it when some one is playing to your vanity, just stay awake to what it is that they are really doing and don’t be conned.

Take care

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode?An episode recorded near Easter which enabled us to chat about new beginnings.

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

Show Notes and Links* Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week * The ‘new’ oldest man in the world

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
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I enjoy Easter, the indulgence, the family meal and the egg hunt. Though Easter means much more to me than that. For me is is a time of newness and renewal. I had a strong Christian childhood and the passion of Christ dominated this time of year. The amount of people aligned to the Christian faith is currently in decline.

In the 2001 census 71% of the British population claim to be Christian though as little as 5% attended a Church each week and around 15% attend once a month.

“Almost 80 per cent of children do not know the true meaning of Easter, with a quarter thinking it is to celebrate the Easter bunny’s birthday, a poll has found.”

Quarter of kids think Easter marks Easter bunny’s birth

I even heard of a child who thought Easter was the celebration of the invention of chocolate and, in many ways I guess it is. Children will indulge in an average of more than two-and-a-half kilograms of chocolate over the Easter holiday – taking in nearly 13,000 calories and 650 grams of fat, a survey found and that is a lot of weight on. That is also true for adults as the indulgence begins.

A poll, by mystery shopping company Retail Active, found a typical 200g Easter egg has 990 calories and 50 grams of fat, with youngsters aged 10-14 eating an average of 13 eggs, many of those first thing on Easter Sunday.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/easter/7544878/Easter-2010-Children-gorge-on-2.5kg-of-chocolate.html

So ok, what are we doing here? Where does it all come from?

Before the Christians hijacked the Pagan Anglo Saxon festival of ‘Eostre’ spring time was all about renewal. Some sources suggest Eostre originated in Greece where Eos was a God. In the Germanic cultures the festival at this time of year was known as ‘Ostara’.

http://www.englatheod.org/eostre.htm

The image of the Bunny and the Egg are both representative of the newness of life and the celebration of spring and the new life to come. The Christian story of Jesus and his rebirth from the tomb is representative of the same concept, accepting the Christian message of Jesus suggests that he died to save us all, which is also the idea of new life and renewal.

We seem to currently be in a time of strife on planet Earth. At all levels socially, economically, politically, environmentally, we are facing, potentially, huge changes and in many ways life may never be the same again. As I keep saying whatever happens…

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

Whoever you are and whatever you believe, be you Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Agnostic, Atheist, Humanist, Spiritualist or none of these, enjoy the spring. Look out the window and see the green shoots of spring and the new life to come, be happy and enjoy the summer ahead. Life is to be lived and enjoyed.

Take care and remember to live in the present and look after your self and each other.

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode?Social media is full of conspiracy theories. Currently those about Katherine Princess of Wales are rife. There is great interest, in certain groups, as to whether the stories about her abdominal surgery and public appearance and photograph are real or fake. The thing that interests Ed and I is why is it so important? What is it about gossip and rumour that we all get so hooked up in?

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

Show Notes and Links* Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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Social media is full of conspiracy theories. Currently those about Katherine Princess of Wales are rife. There is great interest, in certain groups, as to whether the stories about her abdominal surgery and public appearance and photograph are real or fake. The thing that interests Ed and I is why is it so important? What is it about gossip and rumour that we all get so hooked up in?

In evolutionary psychology it is suggested that the development of language and the depth of language across the world was developed by women. The men were out either hunting or fighting or the like. Such activities require simple language to convey action such as ‘forward’, ‘back’ or ‘go that way’ and so on. While the men were out the women were back at the home, or the cave, and were conversing in a more nuanced way. There conversation were about what was going on between the different groups in the tribe on the basis of ‘us’ and ‘them’. The women needed to know what was going on. It is assumed that this talking, sharing or gossiping required and greater depth of language that was more descriptive than the make simple commands to action. It is also likely that the process of gossiping and considering rumours kept groups or even whole tribes safe. The women knew what was going on or at least what was suspected was to be going on and could pay attention to and respond to it.

Historically when a pregnant lady went for her ‘lying in’ as she was in or coming up to labour she would invite a group of women to accompany her and help her through the experience. The profession of midwife came from this sort of process. However, so did gossip. The women invited to the lying in were known as the ‘gossips’ and attending a labour was known as ‘gossiping’. It was one of the few instances when women were able to be truly alone together without the men and could say and discuss whatever they wanted or needed to. It was from this that the word gossip moved from the simple title given to the participants of this lying in to the concept of people sharing things behind someone’s back.

The people most effected by this gossip were the men who were excluded from the birthing event and therefore the women were able to talk about them without feeling restrained or the men knowing. Eventually the word gossip was taken to describe this talking behind someone’s back and was seen by men as an exclusively female thing. If you listen to the podcast you will hear Ed admitting to gossiping with his friends. The reality is that all people, men and women, gossip. That is they talk about other people without that person knowing what is being said about them. It is maybe good to mention at this point that gossip, in the sense of what is spoken about someone without their knowledge, behind their back, may not be negative. It could be true or false, positive or negative. People might be talking about someone’s good points and their good qualities.

So why do we gossip? The assumption by evolutionary psychology is that creating a small gossiping group was a way of bonding the group together. The gossip would normally concern people outside of this small group who would be open to criticism. Yet, we can also be a part of the group and still be the subject of gossip by the group when we are not there. Have you ever walked into a room and suddenly it goes quiet and the question in your mind is ‘what were you all talking about before I came in?’ With the advent of social media the scope for gossip becomes huge and extends beyond a small group in a tribe to include a global or international community.

Is gossip a good thing?

Over all I would say ‘yes’ but with some caveats. The first being that you need to be aware of is the source. A good source provides us with real and true information. A dodgy source can create negative and untrue conspiracy theories that may cause greater levels of disquiet, conflict and strife.

Gossip can also be an informal stress management.

If in the workplace we have a colleague or a manager who’s behaviour is difficult, but because of their position we feel unable to challenge their behaviour, then gossiping with colleagues can be active informal stress management. This enables us to let off steam, to off load and deal with the stress and frustration that we are experiencing.

Yes, it would always be better if we could talk to the manager/colleague directly and give them feedback about their behaviour. This would give them the opportunity to change and that would be a good thing for the entire organisation. Being honest to someone’s face about their behaviour is feedback and doing it behind their back is gossip. It would seem obvious that the feedback route is the more positive but not always possible in which case the informal stress management of gossip does have a valid and useful role. Often it is the positive ethos of the organisation that encourages feedback and a negative ethos that creates gossip.

A couple of years ago during my cardiac illness and hospitalisation Rie and I were the subject of gossip both positive and negative. The problem for those gossipers sharing negatively was that the people that they gossiped to came to us and told us what had been shared about us. This is the one big problem with gossip. It only works as a stress release and informal stress management function when it is kept within the gossiping group. As soon as it leaks out of the group it can become destructive and can even wreck families, relationships, organisation and even governments.

Social media can be an even greater problem in this regard. We had what was termed The ‘Wagatha Christie’ trial all based around who said what on social media which eventually led to a very public court case. Both in workplaces and in family relationship I am dealing with more and more cases to do with damage caused by what has been said or implied on social media.

In an online world that has become so immediate it is important that we learn to be more aware of what we are saying and what we are sharing both verbally and on social media. I would include all forms of trolling and accusations or innuendo in this as well. These posts can be the start of an untrue trail of gossip or lies that is shared and then re-shared until it is believed to be the truth and then lives can be completely ruined.

My resource for this podcast is that you re-visit the first three steps of the live in the present course and consider how you see yourself and other people and decide if you need to adjust your behaviour. Remember:

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

It may also be a useful exercise to review and examine your own current relationships both personal and professional. Which of these relationships are conditional? Do you have to act in certain ways for them to be maintained? Such as agreeing with the other person’s views? That may mean that you may need to be seen to agree with gossip about people that you know to be untrue? However, you may need to agree anyway in order to maintain the relationship. In so doing the rumour mill is powered up and the information that you have shared is then shared again and again until it grows into a conspiracy that is then believed as being the truth.

Perhaps the only counter that we have for negative gossip is to call it out. Now on X you are able to post ‘community notes’ that …

… “aim to create a better informed world by empowering people on X to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading posts. Contributors can leave notes on any post and if enough contributors from different points of view rate that note as helpful, the note will be publicly shown on a post” …

I guess that we could all respond in the same way to posts on any app that we know to be incorrect. We do have a choice as to how much we are controlled by gossip if we call it out.

Going back to where we started I don’t really see what right we have to know anything about Kate’s abdominal surgery or need to know why she was playing Photoshop with her own photograph. And, in the unlikely event that she was using a body double this would say more about us than her! Why would she need to use a body double, not that I think she did, other than to avoid the negative speculation of a negatively gossiping public and press.

Let’s all just play and live nicely.

Take care

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode?The idea of needing to get away would suggest that where we are is never really good enough. I get it that the act of taking a break, of doing something different, is stimulating and often relaxing but the question got me thinking about do we appreciate where we are and what we have? Are we able to enjoy the space that we live in.

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

Show Notes and Links* Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week * Bald & Bankrupt video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U0wQPMwvVc * Dubai is a joke video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJuqe6sre2I

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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Nanny Pam has just come back from Dubai having had a wonderful time. Now every one is talking about going there. The idea of needing to get away would suggest that where we are is never really good enough. I get it that the act of taking a break, of doing something different, is stimulating and often relaxing but the question got me thinking about do we appreciate where we are and what we have? Are we able to enjoy the space that we live in.

I am reminded of the amount of time when Rie and I have been driving around europe and have been spellbound by views and vistas. Yet there are many time when we have noted that we have views like this where we live. There is a beach on an island in the Florida Quays that people go to every evening to watch and marvel at the sunset. It was a lovely sunset. But, when I watch the sun going down over Hilbre Island and the Welsh coast I am stunned on a daily basis.

We live on a peninsula named Wirral. It is known as the insular peninsula mainly because people, once they arrive, never leave. I know many people people born on the Wirral that have never travelled anywhere else, not even for holiday. I note that those that do manage to leave often return after a few years as though they have been drawn back by some invisible elastic umbilicus that will not them truly leave.

Wirral sticks out into the sea with estuaries either side. There is the river Mersey between Wirral and Liverpool and the river Dee between Wirral and Wales. Both estuaries empty into the sea so that the top end of Wirral there are beaches, and all the fun of the holiday trade. There seems to be a balance here of industry, residential and holiday occupation and accommodation.

Where do you live?

How well do you know your own area? What do you know about it’s history? Maybe it is a good time to get to know where you live?

I have lived all over the world and only came to Wirral with work and stayed because of Rie, and now I cant think of a better place to live. Like most of the British I feel that the weather could be warmer and that the sun could shine some more but taken over all I live in heaven. In ten minutes I can stroll down to the beach. In twenty minutes I can be in the centre of Liverpool. In twenty five minutes I can be in Chester and in forty minutes into the mountains of Wales. The motorway system that runs through the middle of Wirral connects us to the rest of the UK and through to Europe.

Once I became interested in the Wirral and began to look around it I found places that are gems. There are areas of richness and poverty, areas of beauty and the not so beautiful. I discovered that Paul Hollywood’s dad has a bakers not far away, that Lillie Savage was brought up here and Wirral has been home to Ian Astbury, Ian Botham, Fiona Bruce, Ellis Costello, Daniel Craig, Chris Farrell, Austin Healey, Paul Hollywood, Eric Idle, Paul O’Grady, John Peel, Patricia Routledge, Harold Wilson, the list goes on forever. And there was a Viking parliament in a place called Thingwall apparently a corruption on Ing meaning assembly and Voll meaning field- Amazing.

Anyway, I digress. My advice to you is to get to know where you are. Don’t become blind to what is around you and certainly enjoy your holidays in foreign parts but maybe begin to understand why people from other parts of the world might like to come to where you live for their annual holiday.

Take care and be happy

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode?Well Valentine’s has been and gone, the day of love, how was it for you? we often have talked about mood boosts and love, feeing loved, being loved and sharing love they are right at the top of positive mood, self esteem, raised energy and wellbeing. The magic is in ‘feeling’ loved.

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

Show Notes and Links* Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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Well this week it is Valentine’s again, the day of love, how is it for you? we often have talked about mood boosts and love, feeing loved, being loved and sharing love they are right at the top of positive mood, self esteem, raised energy and wellbeing. The magic is in ‘feeling’ loved. Someone may love you desperately but unless they love you in a way that works for you the you simply will not feel it.

In eastern approaches to personality, psychology and the person the various and individual drives of both giving and receiving love are seen to be described as personality types often termed the chakra types. When we share love or use the word love we all mean different things. What do you actually mean when you say love? To use the word ‘love’ in say, “I love you” or “I’d love a cream bun” have very different meanings.

How do you know that you are loved?

What do you want your partner, or lover to mean when they say “I love you”?

Is love for you a simple one stranded thing or is it multi-faceted?

How many strands does it have?

What are they?

It is so strange that someone can love you truly, madly, deeply but unless it is expressed in just the right way so that you are able to receive it then you will simply not feel it, you will not feel loved.

I sit down with many couples in relationship therapy and commonly at some point in their past they both shared their love for each other. The problem, that only came to light later, was that they did not understand what each other meant when they used the word love. They both felt that their partner meant the same as they did. Later they discovered that they were wrong.

Love, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

It is not being loved that is important

It is feeling loved that counts

Example: A common problem

Woman: “I feel unloved and hurt when you fail to put a X on the end of a text”

Man: “That just feels like you are trying to control my emotions. I only put an ‘X’ there when I am really feeling it. It is meaningless if I always put it there because in the end it just means nothing.”

Therapist: “How about if it is important to your partner to see an ‘X’ and if you do love her and care about her would the act of simply adding an ‘X’ be something that you know would make her feel happy and good. Is it therefore not worth doing?”

Sometimes showing your partner that they are loved isn’t egocentrically based around your need to be honest it is about ensuring that the person that you love feels it. To go out of your way, to put yourself out, to get something or do something that you know will make your partner happy is an expression of love.

If your response to the above is something like, “Well, my needs are as important as their’s and if I need not to put a ‘X’ at the end of a text and they love me then they will respect that”, then you are either emotionally immature or need to be in another relationship.

Once you get into relationships it often happens that love becomes a demand and not an act of giving. Success in relationships come from both people giving it is and that both feeling that they receive it. If both people expect love without giving then neither of their needs will be met.

Who is right?

If it becomes a battle it ceases to be love and becomes acts of possession. Think about your relationship and how you both share your love.

Do you need to be told that you are loved?

Do you tell your partner?

Do you feel that by saying it too often that you will wear it out and that it becomes meaningless?

Do you feel that by saying you are re-affirming your connection and positive feeling?

Do you do things, that may seem silly or meaningless to you, because you know that it will make your partner happy?

Do you feel that you should only act in love when you feel the love?

In relationships we sometimes need to fake it to make it. Maybe your partner has really cheesed you off for some reason but you still arrange their birthday party and rise above the difficulties. If your partner loves you in the same way they will do the same for you. It is to do with whether or not your love is conditional and demanding or unconditional and giving. In a world where there really is no right or wrong, where there is only a consequence to your action, you need to take responsibility for who you are, for what you do and how you show your love.

I guess I should add that if you pour your love, time and energy into someone who does not love you back is like standing in an ice cold shower tearing up twenty pound notes. Not to be recommended.

Suggestion:

How about you ask your partner “How do you know that I love you?”. Or you could get more direct and ask them if there are things that they would like you to do so that they would feel more loved.

There are two sides of this coin. You might also share with them that when they do certain things they make you feel loved, unless you tell them already.

Think about this for a while. How do you express your love? Not just for your partner but to the other people close to you. Do your parents, brothers, sisters children, friends, community, country, humanity feel your love?

Love is the magic glue that holds the whole world together just as hate forces it apart. It may be expressed as the law of attraction, as gravity, in the relationship between particles and atoms, it might be in the caring for the sick and needy or it might simply be in a bunch of flowers.

However you share you love, I hope that Valentines Day confirmed the love that others have for you.

Take care

Sean X

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What’s Coming This Episode?Following on from last weeks look at the potential of global conflict. A listener reminded me of this and asked ‘why don’t we just encourage everybody to smile at each other?’ An excellent question! Let’s discuss…

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

Show Notes and Links* Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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Following on from last weeks look at the potential of global conflict. A listener reminded me of this and asked

‘why don’t we just encourage everybody to smile at each other?’

I love research but when it matches the Ayurvedic theories that I studied in my early training it does make me smile. How is it the the Rishis (scientific researchers) thousands of years ago knew things that we can only now verify with brain scanners. The ancient Ayurvedic science of Mudra explains how the structure of our bodies expresses who we are and the nature of our personality. It also explains the emotional and cognitive relationship between stance, expression and gesture.

Their research explained that when you are in a good frame of mind your brain responds by releasing positive endorphins. This process initiates a neural muscular response that results in you smiling. The muscles in your face around your mouth and eyes respond automatically. Smiling is common to all human beings of all races in every country across the world. Smiling is a universal response.

Smiling also has a social function in that it tells others that we are friendly and not aggressive or that we are going to kill them. As a social signal smiling bonds groups on two levels. The first is cognitive recognition that things are alright and the second is the collective out poring of positive endorphins in the group brain and the corresponding warm emotional feelings that are produced.

Smiling it would seem has been with us throughout evolution as both an expression of inner feeling and as a social signal of group bonding.

The importance here is in the realisation of the synchronicity between brain and face muscles. The relationships is based in that when the brain produces positive hormones the muscles of the face smile. What we now know is that if the muscles of the face force a smile the brain responds by releasing positive endorphins which can make us feel better.
Fake it to make it

Even if you are feeling really down, sad and blue your face looks sad. When you force a smile the nerves and muscles in your face send a message to your brain telling it that things are good. Your brain then begins to responds by initiating the secretion of happy endorphins.

Your brain is unable to tell the difference between whether something is actually happening or if you are only imagining it or, in this case, forcing it.

One physical aspect of a smile, that is so important, are the eyes and the forehead. When someone only smiles with their mouth and not their eyes and forehead it is not a real smile and often feels insincere. For a smile to be real and have the required effect the eyes open wide producing laughter lines in the corners and the fore head crinkles creating lines.

Enter Botox
Consider this relationship between the muscles of the face and the endorphins in the brain. The way it works is as though they are either end of a tube, you can’t have one without the other. Positive brain smiley muscles, smiley muscles positive brain.

Now, what happens if the brain wants to smile but the muscles of the face are damaged or paralysed? The system breaks down. As much as the brain want to create a smile the feedback from the muscles is that the is no smile to be had. When people use Botox they are paralysing their muscles so that there is limited feedback between the muscles and the brain either way. Positive endorphins in the brain cannot create a smile and a responsive smile in the muscles cannot tell the brain that there is something going on to make it worth releasing some positive endorphins.

So now we have Botox induced depression.

As with any addictive type behaviour the problem addiction tends to increase as the effectiveness of the substance diminishes. With Botox the drive is towards creating more positive endorphins, the just person wants to feel good about who they. So perhaps, someone is feeling a bit down about how they look and decide to have some Botox to make them feel better. The drive to feel better is the common emotion behind all addictions.

Because of the muscular paralysis there can be no positive feedback to the brain, the desired effect fails to be achieved. There can be no feedback between the muscles of the face and the brain. In fact it ends up having the reverse effect making the person feel worse not better. They have invested time and money in this procedure to improve the way that they see themselves and their mood.

The standard response in addictive behaviour in such a situation is to try more of the addictive substance because that is what we belief will make us feel better. This is called chasing the dragon in opium dens. The reality is that the more if the addictive substance we use the less is its effect and more we need, or think that we need. This is why all addictions get worse over time. With botox the more that is used the more the problem increases. If the Botox is the very thing that is stopping the positive feedback between muscle and brain we now have what might viewed as Botox induced depression.

For me the self induced disfigurement of Botox, fillers, lifts, piercings and tattoos is a huge sadness. The human form has a natural beauty that emanates the positive feelings and attitudes from deep within us. To mask this natural beauty with what is seen as adornments is so sad and represents yet another way that we use to avoid facing who we are in the drive to make shortcuts to our happiness. But, then as someone who has never been able to get my head around why people need to wear makeup I must own to being out of step with modern social thinking, I have an anachronistic point of view.

Whoever you are and however you choose to present yourself ensure that the end result is increasing your own happiness.

Resource has to be go to the mirror and smile. It will make your feel better.

Take care

Sean X

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What’s Coming This Episode? Here we are again. It is the end of the summer, winter is on the horizon and as they say “it won’t be long and then it will be Christmas”. With the loss of light comes a reduction the available vitamins D in our bodies that direct effects the levels of serotonin in […]

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Here we are again. It is the end of the summer, winter is on the horizon and as they say, “it won’t be long and then it will be Christmas” With the loss of light comes a reduction the available vitamins D in our bodies that direct effects the levels of serotonin in our brains […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? Animals and pets can give us so much – from companionship to direct nutrition. Ed & Sean are joined by Cooper the dog to have a chat about how we have used and continue to use animals in our lives each day… Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast! Show […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? Since Covid and lockdown more and more people have developed the symptoms of post trauma. This can be difficult and debilitating. However the mechanism that leads to our repression of difficult experiences is our memory. The issue with post traumatic stress disorder is not memory it is recall. Enjoy the show, […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? Following Covid I have spoken with so many people who, even now, are having problems getting going again. For some there is a frustration with their life for others it is that feeling of they simply can’t be bothered. For many trying to get their work life balance back is proving […]

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Following Covid I have spoken with so many people who, even now, are having problems getting going again. For some their is a frustration with their life for others it is that feeling of they simply can’t be bothered. For many trying to get their work life balance back is proving difficult. Working from home […]

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Since Covid and lockdown more and more people have developed the symptoms of post trauma. This can be difficult and debilitating. However the mechanism that leads to our repression of difficult experiences is our memory. The issue with post traumatic stress disorder is not memory it is recall. It is important to realise that our […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? In this episode we are revisiting an old topic – MONEY. With the current economic crisis and the ongoing effects of Russias war in the Ukraine things ate tight. Interest rates are on the rise and available income is diminishing. The people in the know say that it will get worse […]

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In this episode we are revisiting an old topic – MONEY. With the current economic crisis and the ongoing effects of Russias war in the Ukraine things ate tight. Interest rates are on the rise and available income is diminishing. The people in the know say that it will get worse before it gets better. […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? What happens when friendships turn sour? Do we grin and bear it or find a way out? Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast! Show Notes and Links Sean’s blog post (written by AI!) https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/toxic-friends https://www.headspace.com/articles/toxic-friendships https://www.wikihow.com/End-a-Toxic-Friendship The Asshole Pandemic Stay in Touch We’re all over the web, so feel […]

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This weeks blog is an experiment in that I have not directly written it. We used an AI Chat Bot to create it and see what it comes up with and it is very interesting. Perhaps this is what we can all expect in the future in many of the things that we read. I […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? Being rational is easy, right?! Well, yeah. Maybe not. Sometimes our minds want to do their own thing and we can discover other sides to our personalities. Can we control it? Should we always seek to? Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast! Show Notes and Links https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-risks-being-rational-sensible-distant-man-snsw/ https://psychcentral.com/lib/humor-as-weapon-shield-and-psychological-salve https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/LSRP.php […]

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What’s Coming This Episode?Ed has been elected as a local councillor! Wow. The fun starts now. We thought an episode about democracy was in order. What does it mean? How did we end up where we are? Can Ed navigate the ups and downs of local politics?

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

Show Notes and Links* Sean’s blog post for the week

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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The reality of Democracy

The word democracy comes from the Greek words “demos”, meaning people, and “kratos” meaning power; so democracy can be thought of as…

…The Power Of People

We can think of this as a way of governing which depends on…

…The Will Of The People

In Britain we could say that it is…

…The Will Of The Majority Of The People

So what does that mean for the minority? Every minority in any system is subject to the will of the majority of the people unless it is an enlightened society. This is as true for human beings as it is for a troop of monkeys or a herd of sheep. The majority will always hold sway unless the minority arm themselves and scare the crap out of the majority to get their own way. This appears in many human societies as terrorism, jihad, revolution etc. It can also materialise in smaller groups as protesters and demonstrators. These may be an affront to the majority who will do their best to suppress them to maintain their position.

One of the most obvious domination by a minority was when the Nazis in Germany, which was a minority, took control of the majority and then attempted to take over the entire world. Although the majority was very powerful it took then six years of the Second World War to finally defeat the minority. There are lots of parallels in many countries where similar things have taken place.

It seems that we now have a majority that are mistreating the planet in terms of pollution and exhaustion of resources. The minority are taking to the streets to protest about oil, fossil fuels and the animal abuse in farming etc.

In a democracy, through the ballot box, we assume that the will of the majority of people will be enacted in their best interest. Is this so? There have been many cases when the best interests of our representatives and/or big business have dominated the majority point of view.

When we, as a country, chose to join the EU the majority voted for it. Then we have a section of society that begins as a minority who are able to use the tricks of the trade in persuasion through social media, general media, advertising etc to change the minds of the majority and dominate them and then the vote is to leave the EU.

It would seem that we are in external conflict between vested self interest, the needs of the individual, the power of the majority and the striving of the minority to be heard. These things are something that you would assume that democracy was meant to overcome. Yet here we are in the thick of it.

Just as an aside, I wonder how many Russian people were, or are, actually in favour of being at war with Ukraine. Was this an act by the powerful minority in power, not dissimilar to the Nazis, to vilify an entire population to justify their act of going to war?

I have seen the same power politics in many of the organisations that I have covered over the years. I certainly saw it in the NHS and I see it on a regular basis in families.

There seems to be a dilemma how can we ensure that we are all heard that a fairness pervades in the way that we do out business politically, economically and socially? I keep saying it but…

…If we all ,look after each other we will all be okay

The problem as I see it is that whereas in the past descent was expressed through bows and arrows and throwing stones now we have weapons of mass destruction and the ability to destroy each others systems at a cyber level. We are probably more vulnerable now than we have ever been.

It is real that one wrong move from a egotistical individual or group could destroy or severely damage life on this planet and even bring it to an end.

We have an interesting time ahead when it will be down to those that are awake enough to assist our brothers and sisters who remain deep asleep into the light of increased awareness and then hopefully we will all survive.

This is what would happen as we made the move from the age of Pisces to the age of Aquarius. Fingers crossed. We all need to stay positive and do as much as we can to assist each other or the next thing will be AI taking over….

Hey Ho!

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode?In the world of religion beliefs will often clash. This God, that God, the other God… while religion and spirituality has the ability to lift us up and fill us with purpose and wonder, it can also leave a negative mark. What’s your perspective?

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

Show Notes and Links* Sean’s blog post for the week * Ed recommended the movie ‘Spotlight’ * Sean linked to The Textbook of Yoga Psychology by R. S. Mishra

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
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Occurs when an individual struggles with leaving a religious set of beliefs that has led to their indoctrination. (Could be any set of beliefs, does not have to be religious).

The problem comes about when the person attempts to leave a group or develops a set of ideas or beliefs that are different or desperate from the group. This occurs in any system built around control. It could a religions, a philosophy, a political party, or even a family. Often there is a controlling figure that could be the party leader, a parent or a religious leader. Many leaders, in any situation, often develop Guru-itis and believe in their own wonderment and special-ness. This happens in most cults.

My God Is Better Than Your God

In the world of religion beliefs will often clash together. In Christianity it was taboo for inter marriages between Protestants and Catholics or between Jews and Gentiles. In most cases one person will have to abandon their beliefs and take on the beliefs of their partner for the situation to work. It can be the same in any company or organisation that has two unions that seek to represent the entire workforce. In national situations it’s might be between two nationalities coming together. In the Second World War many women fell in love and decided to marry a German Soldier, the enemy, and were then exclused from their own families.

The same is true of interracial marriages. It is now more common to see mixed race families though in many cultures it is seen as wrong and in some cultures it is not allowed at all.

It is easy to see that the induction into religious groups is a form of shared hypnosis yet we are all hypnotised by the beliefs that we grew up with and unless something occurs to make us question and re-evaluate them they will guide our entire life. Mor importantly we are likely to look down on anyone who decides to move away from our beliefs and change their lives.

Our group is seen as right and important. We have the truth which is often seen as the only truth. We are ‘us’ and anyone outside of our group is one of ‘them’. If ‘we’ are exclusive the ‘we’ will have nothing to do with ‘them’.

The whole of humanity, some would say the whole of creation, is one whole. In that sense we are all one and there is no ‘them’. However, humanity has man aged to breakdown into ever smaller groups to that now there are lots of ‘us’ and ‘them’.

If human being are to grow or even survive it will be because we have come together and become an entire us so that we learn to look after each other.

If We All Look After Each Other We Will All Be Okay!

Take care, be happy and help those around you

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode?There has been a wedding in the family, so Sean is thinking about relationships again! Let’s have a chat…

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

Show Notes and Links* Sean’s blog post for the week

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
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This week our son got married. It was a deeply powerful ceremony packed with meaning and emotion. He and his partner made a life long commitment to be together, to look after each other and to remain honest and true to each other. They exchanged rings symbolically expressing the commitment they had just entered into. In their coming together there was the greater union of two entire families coming together. It was as though the two tribes, with their individual identities had, or were in the process of, becoming one.

It can be easy to assume that relationships are all the same. That all relationships are just like our own. Yet every relationship is different and individual. How would you describe your relationship?

I know from working psychologically and therapeutically with many couples that often what people have and what people want or desire can be a very different thing. I detect that the social norms that have underpinned our society maybe on the move or at least being questioned and challenged.

My son and his partner have made an agreement to be exclusive to each other as a part of our society that generally has settled on a model of monogamy as our social norm. Though most research suggests that a high percentage of people, perhaps as high as 60%, do have affairs though these are, in the main, hidden.

Where did monogamy come from?
‘Gamy’ comes from the Greek gamous meaning marriage. Monogamous means one marriage. In modern terms this would mean one partner. Monogamy in modern relationships also means to be faithful to that one partner. Which in turn means not to have sexual relationships or to be intimate with other people out side of the monogamous relationship.

Monogamy probably has it’s roots in the Abrahamic religions and was probably a socio-economic structure that enabled social organisation and often control. Monogamy, as a social structure, creates social organisation and the development of laws, property rites and inheritance and therefore has a financial element. Once there is a firm social structure the lineage of a family can be traced back to prehistory following either the maternal or paternal line. The fact that we know in the UK who the next monarch will be is because there is a rule of law and a succession of family rites. However, all of the laws based in property and people all have their origin in the monogamous structure of society.

Serial Monogamy is when someone is faithful to an individual relationships while they are in it yet they may choose to end a relationship and begin another one which they will also be faithful to. In our society the I ssues of separation and divorce have raised another whole set of laws and rules to deal with changing rites of all those involved. It is probable that without monogamy and the subsequent social structure there would be no need for solicitors, lawyers and many of our courts.

Polygamy is a marriage with more than one person. Poly being the Greek word for ‘many’. Across the world polygamy is usually one man with several female wives. It is rare to find one woman with several husbands. John Smith of the Mormon faith reputedly had up to 40 wives. In Islam, under both Shia and Sunni law, a man can have up to four wives. A woman having more than one husband is not allowed.

Polyamory, which is described as ‘consensual’ is to have loving, and often sexual relationships, with several people at the same time. This does not mean acting sexually all at once but is having more than one ongoing relationship. In many Polyamorous relationships the various participants my never all meet. However, what occurs is all open and transparent so that all those involved understand what is happening. Those practising polyamory are often in one main relationship and have other relationships within, or around this.

Throuples
The throuple has three participants whereas a couple has two. Again all the throuples that I have known are one man and two women I not yet come across one woman wit two men.

Open relationship is when members of a main relationship have sexual relationships with other people though it may not have the same transparency as in a clearly polyamorous relationship or a throuple. However it may include sex between three people all at the same time often described as troilism. Some throuples will be troilist. Or in the extreme case in the open relationship there maybe multiple people involved, up to as many as are in an orgy.

Most animal species are polygamous excepting birds who often mate for life. As birds are directly descended from dinosaurs it may be that they were also monogamous and mated for life with the same partner.

Marriage
Throughput human evolution the commitment of couples has been both a social and political function that has held the fabric of society together. Of then the joining of two people would join two groups of people as one. Feuding families came to peace by joining together. Land disputes and empires were often resolved and built on through mutually beneficial marriages.

Monogamy and reality
Research results vary a little but they indicate that fifty to sixty over cent of people are unfaithful at sometime in their marriage or main relationship. Some genome/ DNA research suggests that up to 30% of children may not belong to the father who is raising them as his own.

The selfish gene was described by Richard Dawkins as the need of the individual to carryon their own genetic line and therefore taking any opportunity on offer to reproduce. As we know that continuous breeding within a population, known as inbreeding, leads to a dilution of the available gene pool that can results in various genetic mutations. This happens in closed communities who for cultural or religious reason only allow for breeding with the limited group. As the strength of a species is dependent on cross fertilisation it would suggest that the selfish gene idea would support what we do know about the process of evolution. We can see in the breeding of dogs that the mongrel is stronger with higher immunity than the thorough bred.

Single sex relationships
Society is more accepting of single sex relationships that, between two men, were illegal only a few years ago. Many churches will now perform single sex marriages and give them the church’s blessing.

Non Binary
To identify as non binary, neither make nor female, gives rise to whole new set of relationships that may manifest as straight, homosexual, lesbian or bisexual. Whatever we call it and however we sexually identify in most cases the relationships remain the joining of two people into a committed relationship. We must also acknowledge that the various forms of more open relationships are faithful to the mutual agreement made between the various participants.

Living alone in a committed relationship
I guess that in looking at relationships we need to also shout our for the singletons. I am aware that there is growing trend for people who do not want to be married but do want to be in a faithful, monogamous relationship with another person who they do not live with. These people, usually termed singletons, maintain their serious ongoing relationship with a permanent partner but choose to have their own house, accommodation or space. As a committed couple they may spend time together in each other’s houses but also choose to be alone in their own place. Also, singletons can, and often do, have children that they parent between them.
Celibacy
If are to take into account the whole gamut of relationships, many of which would have a sexual component, we should acknowledge the world of celibacy. The celibate is the person who chooses not to share themselves sexually with others. Celibates may have all kinds and varieties of relationships with all kinds of people. However they have, at some point, decided that these relationships will be non sexual and platonic. A platonic relationship is purely spiritual and not physical. The celibate person may have a sexual relationship but it would be considered as ‘sex for one’ that does involve orgasmic experiences but alone.

I guess there are many other sorts of relationships that could be added to this lists such as cyber sex and Teledildonics. The issues is that what every type of relationship you might engage in can mostly all be monogamous other than the poly relationships. Over all there is no rule and no book of words that will tell the right from the wrong. It will always come back to ‘does it work for you?’ As long as each person involved agrees to and is happily engaged in what takes place what is the problem?

So, however it works for you enjoy your life and enjoy your relationship and whoever you are with just be caring and be kind. That way we can all be happy.

Take care

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode?Boris Johnson has been up to some of his old tricks again – bending the truth. Yet, is he being truthful? We’ve seen the photos and videos, yet he seems to be speaking the truth… so what is the truth??

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

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

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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!

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

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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* Sean’s blog post for the week * International Women’s Day * The harder I work, the luckier I get * World’s most unlucky people * 10 proven ways to make your own luck

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

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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

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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* Sean’s blog post for the week * Time to Talk Day * Why it’s not always good to talk * Ed linked to the great folks at Create Streets

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
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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

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What’s Coming This Episode?Blue Monday has been and gone, but how much should we worry about it? The seasons affect our mood, but how can we set ourselves up for the best chance of keeping a level head through the winter months and beyond?

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

Show Notes and Links* Credit card borrowing is very high. Yikes * What is Blue Monday?

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

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What’s Coming This Episode?The Royal Family are in the news – airing their dirty washing in public as we see from time to time. Families are complex things so there’s plenty we can learn about how we interact with our nearest and dearest…

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

Show Notes and Links* Life lessons from the Royal family * More lessons we can learn from the Windsors, etc.

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

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What’s Coming This Episode?New year, new you! Hit the gym! No booze! Well, probably, but maybe not. Goals don’t have to be big or small… you don’t even have to set any! Sean and Ed talk it through. All the best for 2023.

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

Show Notes and Links* Sean’s blog post for the week * Are new years resolutions effective? * Resolution ideas from the NYT

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
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Ok, so it is New Year!

Standing here at the beginning of 2023 you, and I, will now be making choices about how and what this year will be. 2022 was certainly be a year to remember and for many perhaps a year to forget. From Covid, through the Ukrainian war, cost of livening crisis and the NHS backlogs and various strikes, it has been on hell of a year.

For me there was the added issues my endocarditis and open heart surgery which was a near death experience that effected both me and my darling wife, Rie.

As we ride on into 2023 we continue the joint joys of Covid and subsequent infections, ongoing War, financial crisis and inflation and we still Brexit issues that are not yet resolved. Looking forward into 2023 will create feelings of hope, love, fear, anxiety, joy…whatever it is for you. The point is that what you see ahead, and how you see it will create your experience of 2023…

… you create what happens for you …

… is all a matter of your choices. it may not feel like it but your world is full of choice. In your present moment in your ‘Now’ you are actively creating the world of your experience through the choices that you make…

…thoughts becomes things…

…all of us, individually and collectively, are choosing what will happen for us in 2023 and how we will respond to it and feel ab out it. We are all doing it though we may not realise it. One thing that I learned in 2022 has been…

…we don’t have problems, we have learning opportunities.

Focus for a moment on the choices before you in this coming year. Do you have any? What are they? Most importantly what is the basis of your choices? When deciding what to do, or what not to do, something It is important to own that deciding not to make a decision is actually a decision. The action of stillness is equally as powerful as the action of motion. However, when you choose to do nothing you are likely to be vulnerable to the choices that everyone else makes around you. In having your own clarity of purpose you are in the flow of your life and, as I said, stillness is a decision as much as an action.

Choice and fear

For many of us the choice for action this year will be limited by fear. Fear of disease, debt, pain, failure, fear itself, the fear of looking stupid, ridiculed, of loss, rejection, abandonment and so on. Fear is the biggest limiting factor for any of us. Fear and anxiety are the destroyers of our happiness and to create fulfilment

those who dare win
We all need to step beyond our fears, as Susan Jeffers put it
– feel the fear and do it anyway –
This is a book worth reading.

If you can get hold of that idea that your thoughts become your experience, you are becoming the author of your own life. It is then you will realise that fear is actually a choice. Once you understand that you will realise that the experience of joy is the same thing. Personal joy and duty are often at odds.

Do you do what you want to do or what you think you should or ought to do?

Choice and duty

Generally in psychotherapy the words “ought, should, must and can’t” are banned. Each of these words are limiters of self expression. The call for duty may be laid upon us by our culture, religion, beliefs, as parents, children, employees, employers and so on. The trick is that if in 2023 there are things that you feel you ‘must’ do then…

…act with a smile on your face.

This is known as Bhakti or, to give service without expecting anything in return. We all need a bit of Bhakti in our lives but it is always damaging when we allow a sense of duty to stunt our own self development after all…

…we all deserve happiness

Well we all do in my life script. Yet many of us chose to create negative life scripts.

There are many reason that we can find to maintain and justify our own lack of development or fulfilment our feelings of victimisation or misery, unhappiness and moaning about our life and other people that we meet, though there are alternatives. The classic is that we blame other people for how we feel. Common targets are our parents, family, friends, and most commonly partners and so on.

There are alternatives…

Choice and joy

In making your decisions for 2023 you might chose to avoid the ought, should, must and can’t and, think about the lightness of joy in life…

…focus on what makes you feel happy…

and do more of it. Doing things that make you feel good is never a difficulty and it never feels like work. When you do things that make you feel good, in the end it is you that feels happiness. How many of the things that you do in your life lead to you feeling flat, bored or unhappy. If you do more of what makes you feel good in your life you will feel happier and get better and better…

…happiness is a learned response…

…sometime we have to practise the art of being happy.

Choice and responsibility

The word responsibility comes from the word to respond “respond-ability”. Being responsible or “respond-able” for what you experience makes you the master of our own destiny. It does not matter from where you begin your journey, whatever your age or state of health. By being responsible for your life and taking ownership of yourself – responsibility is the key-. If I decide to be responsible for myself no one else can ever be responsible for what I think or feel and, ultimately, what I do. There are many examples of people who, against the odds, chose to respond to things positively.

This year some of you will be facing very difficult and tough stuff, emotionally, mentally, financially, physically, socially and so on. These may be things that you cannot avoid and you have no choice other than to face them and deal with them. However, you do have a choice as to how you respond to them…

…none of us are effected by events,

we are only effected by our response to those events…

…living in the present and being positive about your future allows you to create the year in 2023 that you will look back on positively and perhaps with joy. Decide to create your own experience this year. Treat your problems as challenges so whatever 2023 presents you with, smile at it and be positive and, most of all, enjoy it.

Take care and happy New Year

Sean x

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

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

Show Notes and Links* Sean’s blog post for the week * The true meaning of Christmas * The history of Christmas

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
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And, here we are again! The season of goodwill is upon us. Why do we need to wait for Christmas to offer our fellow human beings goodwill? What is the matter with 364 other days of the years that you don’t offer goodwill then? It gives a lot of meaning to the song “I wish it could be Christmas everyday”.

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

Giving

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

But, how is it for you?

Happy time

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

Not so good a time

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

A really bad time

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

Dark depression and suicide

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

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

Getting the best that you can from Christmas

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

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

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

What about you?

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

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

Be happy and enjoy it

Take care

Sean

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What’s Coming This Episode?When children fly the nest it can leave quite a hole – not just in the home itself but also in the lives of the people that live there. How can you prepare for the changes and how can you embrace your new life? Let’s talk!

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

Show Notes and Links* Sean’s blog post for the week * Advice for kids when moving out * Tips for parents when kids move out

Resource of the week* Sean linked to this blog post * Ed reminded folks of this great move – The Bucket List

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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

You spend years developing your family. Your kids have good bits and bad bits. There are times when you could happily strangle them all and times when you love their bones. Then when you have learned to live with the madness that is called ‘family’ hey, they go and leave home. The fact that they have been leaving their junk all around the house, just like a tree wedding leaves in autumn, means nothing, you just want them back. The bird has flown and the nest is empty. Suddenly your role have changed, or maybe even come to an end. This is the time when the answer to the question ‘who are you?’ suddenly changes.

The rites of passage

The senses of the changing role of self happens to us all though it is more so for women. When a woman marries she changes her name and as she normally takes the part as of head of the house, often without the man even realising it, she has changes her role. Then the first child comes along and another set of changes begin and each time the answer to that question ‘who am I?’ changes. As the last child is born, as the last child goes to school, as the last child leaves school, as the last child moves on to university, as the last child leaves home. Each stage presents us with a different sense of who we are. For full-time mums the impact of these changes are much greater.

We live in odd world. As primates we would be living in extended family groups. When change happened there would have been a natural stress management from the various relatives supporting each other. Even when your won children had grown up there would be new young ones coming through. In our odd little nuclear units of mum, dad and the kids aloneness and isolation can become common place as evidenced in the general rise of depression, stress and anxiety in western society.

Some of our stress comes from the fact that we do not really understand how to act in this new family situation. There is a confusing shift in the roles that we now play. When you have been a full on parent and your child goes off to uni. What contact do we now have with our distanced child? Questions arise..

Who contacts who?

How often do I phone, text, skype?

Do I wait for them to contact me?

Do I offer the money, resources or wait until I am asked?

What do I do with their room?

Do I keep it as a shrine, redecorate it, let’s other people stay in it….?

What about the family dynamic?

One child moving out can upset the dynamic of the entire family. In some case this can create feelings of bereavement and loss. Some families will even go though a period of mourning. Siblings may become withdrawn or upset. It may effect their performance at school. I am not being dramatic I am simply stating that changes effect us all.

Often both parent and child do not fully comprehend the importance of the family unit until it is no longer there. ‘We don’t know what we’ve got ‘til its gone’.

But hold on, we always knew that this would happen, that this day would come it was just that we have chosen to ignore it. Maybe pretend that it will never happen. The awake mindful parent is preparing them self, the family and the child for their departure. Talking obviously helps but it the practical issues and skills that effect a child most. These might include…

Using money

Knowing how to budget and pay bills

Making a shopping list

Basic cookery skills

How to use a washing machine

The art of ironing

The rules of engagement

Agreeing all the rules of contact and money and doing their washing should all have been discussed prior to the event. As long as they know that they can get you when they need to they will be okay. So what about you?

So who are you now?

If have been a full on parent the chances are that you have lost the sense of who you are, what your own real needs are and what it is that you want to do with your life now.

Many couples caught up in the rush and business of raising a family lose contact with each other. Often in the silence of the empty nest two people stare across the void at each other thinking ‘Who are you?’ For it will have been along time since they really had ‘us’ time and for many this is the chance to get back in touch. Talking, sharing and date nights can help. The question ‘who am I’ extends to ‘who are we’ and ‘where are we going from here?’

I guess that over all empty nest syndrome just like bereavement is not an illness it is a process and the better prepared for it the better we process it when the time comes.

My resource for the podcast was to look ate John Bowlby’s attachment theory. Our ability to deal with endings is dependent on what happened to us when we were young and how we learned to attach and detach in our relationships. What we learned as children is played out in adulthood. The good news is that even if you do not like you current attachment styles you can re learned and re frame them so that they serve you better.

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

Take care and be happy

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode?Winter is setting in and this year is a bit different thanks to a serious cost of living crisis that has hit the UK and many other nations across the world. Sean and Ed are keen to talk about their tips for staying warm and conserving energy as best we can.

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

Show Notes and Links* Heating spaces not people * The history of the Qatar World Cup * Hip scarves for Christmas?

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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What’s Coming This Episode? We’ve been quiet… again! This is just a quick episode to say what’s been occurring and how we’re all doing. We also chat about the current predicament facing the good folks of the UK and Planet Earth. Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast! Show Notes and Links It’s the […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? It always seems amazing when a dramatic situation develops somewhere in the world and, what seems to be, the whole of humanity come together in a spirit of good will with the desire to get something right. Do you remember when the Wild Boars football team became trapped in a cave […]

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It always seems amazing when a dramatic situation develops somewhere in the world and, what seems to be, the whole of humanity come together in a spirit of good will with the desire to get something right. Do you remember when the Wild Boars football team became trapped in a cave system alongside their coach. […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? Is it right to give part of your body to another person? Some people who become donors donate their body once they are dead while others do so while they are still alive giving away a kidney, bone marrow, eggs and semen, blood and so on. The whole issues raises so […]

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Somebody reminded me this week that we had previously done a podcast and blog in which I stated tat as a vegetarian that I would never accept a body donation from a pig and yet twelve weeks ago which undergoing heart surgery I agreed to have a pigs valve fitted in my heart. At the […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? The Queen is dead. A big moment for a nation and not something us Brits have experienced for a very long time. Death ain’t easy but what happens when a nation mourns? Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast! Show Notes and Links A Twitter thread discussing the idea of […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? Why do we gossip? The assumption by evolutionary psychology is that creating a small gossiping group was a way of bonding the group together. The gossip would normally concern people outside of this small group that would be open to criticism. Yet, we can be a part of the group and […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? ‘My current experience of family is mind blowing. I recently had ten weeks in hospital and the family were in daily contact, wishing me well, enquiries, food and gifts. What a difference. Back in my childhood home I could have felt abandoned. Though it is true that in extreme emergencies they […]

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Ok, so what is a family? Well, it all begins with the individual as the basic building block. Then we get into sexual mathematics. One individual meet another individual and we have gone from onto two people and we have a couple. In most cases the sexual mathematic means reproduction and then we have three […]

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A very special edition of The Self Help Podcast today as we explain why the show has been off air for so long. It turns out Sean has been quite unwell (to put it mildly). Enjoy the show. Welcome back Sean!

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What’s Coming This Episode? All around us people enact their power in order to win. It might be that we are at a crowded bar trying to get a drink so that we and a whole group of other people are trying to gain the attention of the bartender to get their order met. Who […]

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All around us people enact their power in order to win. It might be that we are at a crowded bar trying to get a drink so that we and a whole group of other people are trying to gain the attention of the bartender to get their order met. Who gets to the til […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? Is it better to be polite and to say what you know, or think you know the other person wants to hear. Or to be honest and say what you actually think or feel? Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast! Show Notes and Links Read Sean’s blog post for […]

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Have you ever heard those words? ‘To be honest….’ Normally they are the precursor to someone saying something bad about something or someone. It could be about you… ‘To be honest (usually a pause) your bum looks huge in that dress’ It could be about how you present yourself… ‘To be honest you were rubbish…’ […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? Kindness is a fundamental aspect of all successful human communications and relationships. In many ways we can’t talk about kindness enough. You would expect me to say this because I always do… …If we all look after each other we will all be okay… We all have such great potential for love, care […]

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I have been watching the Jubilee celebrations and it struck me how many people when interviewed described the Queen’s kindness. Many where describing how they had used her example as a way they had gone on to act in their own lives. They made me think about our relationships between our leaders and our own […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? Ed & Sean are back from 4 days in the city of Amsterdam. It’s a funny place to come back from – most friends and family have made quips about getting stoned, drunk or hanging out with strippers. However, we were there on a mission to see how a functioning city […]

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Ed and I have just come back from a conference and exhibition in Amsterdam, ‘Fully Charged Live 2022’. This had everything from electric cars to electric cargo bikes that became a boats and also a caravanette. We tried pedal assist bikes, GoCycle, and Ed test drove the electric equivalent of a motorbike. They had iconic […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? There is a time in the madness of the world when I guess all that you can do is laugh. At this time it can be easy to feel that there is nothing good happening in the world. We have covid and the ongoing effects of covid, real wars and not […]

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I was working with someone this week who told me that we should do a podcast on humour…”for Gods sake why is everyone so miserable?” There is a time in the madness of the world when I guess all that you can do is laugh. At this time it can be easy to feel that […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? Keep smiling. It’s Sean’s favourite sign off for each episode! Easy to say, and for some it’s easy to do. But do we know the science of smiling? Can smiling be ‘learned’ or is it instinctive for some and not for others? Enjoy the show, it’s The Self Help Podcast! Show […]

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This week I am revisited the effects of smiling because it is happening for real right in-front of my eyes. I have a series of team building exercises to do as people who are finally returning to the workplace after the Covid distanced working. That means people are, in most cases, looking each other directly […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? With covid, food banks and the Ukrainian war the concept of generosity and giving comes, for many of us, clearly into focus. Often we feel helpless in the face of all the trauma and the need to give something can ease our emotional burden and make us feel better. How much […]

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With covid, food banks and the Ukrainian war the concept of generosity and giving comes, for many of us, clearly into focus. Often we feel helpless in the face of all the trauma and the need to give something can ease our emotional burden and make us feel better. When I talk to people about […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? Between the 1950s and the 1970s Britains favourite holiday destination was Britain. The West Country was heaving with people, not only from the UK but, from all over the world. COVID taught us to appreciate our local environment more and now a fuel and energy crisis looks to do similar. Can […]

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As Ed and family enjoy the joys of spring in the UK is it better that we all have a staycation? With global warming and fuel shortages and the pandemic… …is it selfish to go on holiday abroad? Between the 1950s and the 1970s Britains favourite holiday destination was Britain. The West Country was heaving […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? Everywhere I am looking I am seeing the expanding crisis with Putin in Ukraine. As I look across the world it all seems so much like an action replay of the 1930s prior to the Second World War. This is a tough blog and very much embedded in our time and the […]

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Well, I have got Covid 19 for the second time. This has meant that I have needed to cancel a lot of this week and will have lots to catch up on next week. The one thing that Covid does give is time to think. Everywhere I am looking I am seeing the expanding crisis […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? We live in a strange world where physical violence is seen as bad and verbal violence becomes acceptable. Is it okay for someone to make a joke about your partner on national TV? Do we sit back and say nothing? To be kind is so easy and creates so much positivity. […]

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Will Smith: “Violence in all of its forms is poisonous and destructive. My behaviour at last night’s Academy Awards was unacceptable and inexcusable. Jokes at my expense are part of the job, but a joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear and I reacted emotionally,” Smith wrote. “I would like […]

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What’s Coming This Episode? If happiness is infectious… could we create a pandemic of laughter? Why not??? Let’s raise the mood a bit.

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

Show Notes and Links * Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week * What’s with Bhutan? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-14243512 * Check out Headspace https://www.headspace.com

Resource of the Week * Sean – https://www.happiness.com/magazine/inspiration-spirituality/why-happiness-is-a-state-of-mind/ * Ed – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAYEQP8gx3w

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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!).

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Let’s make a pandemic (of happiness)!

As the various disruptions have happened in society over the last few years psychologist tell us that happiness is really a state on mind. I guess most of us would agree that this is in most ways true but I would think it takes a lot of strength and belief to keep cracking jokes when the bombs are going off outside. (https://www.happiness.com/magazine/inspiration-spirituality/why-happiness-is-a-state-of-mind/)

Over the last few years leaders from across the world are also now deciding to tell his that happiness is a state of mind. Bhutan is held up as a world where happiness is described as their “gross domestic product” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-14243512). This seems a level of enlightenment that the rest of us can only observe with envy or discount as nonsense. It may be something that we all need to tap into right now.

All that we now know about brains and neuroscience tells us that this idea is really on the money, and that we all do create our own experience, in the sense that we do have choices as to how we respond to any event in life, even the worst. It is hard to decide whether the political drive behind publishing such an idea as happiness for all is real concern for our welfare or a way of making the difficult decisions about economic cuts in mental health support more palatable.

Many apps now offer us ways to step over our negative thoughts and feeling. Our friend Andy Puddicombe at http://www.getsomeheadspace.com/, is actively attempting to change that way that we all think and feel with his headspace meditation programmes.

My own area of work with mangers in both the private and public sector to develop a coaching style of management that improves the moral of staff because, surprise, surprise, a happy workforce is more productive. Check out this article (http://m.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/jul/15/happiness-work-why-counts?cat=money&type=article), it explains why a positive work force might actually save money and even make money.

In my own work I know that when an organisation decides that their customers are more important that their staff, they have lost the point. The principle is simple, if you look after your staff they will always look after your customers because it is in the ethos. Just go into an Apple Store, or a branch of John Lewis and you will realise what I mean.

When I first started my training in psychotherapy my teacher said very clearly “what you hold in your bindi will come to pass”. In western psycho speak we would say “thoughts become things”. Now neuropsychology tells us the same thing. Once we understand that we are in control of what we do and think, we do have choice. The biggest realisation is that we are also in control of what we feel. Mindful managers, politicians and leaders who understand this encourage others to feel positive and good. This has never been more important. In the likely troubles ahead as things get tighter we need to stay positive.

If we take the politics, the news and Covid out of the idea then it is exactly and completely true. The only reason that anyone is not happy is that they have learned to be that way. When you are in a miserable or unhappy state it can feel that the task of being happy is impossible and that the idea of having a choice is ridiculous or even demeaning. It may be hard but the one thing that I have to tell you is that if you are not living a happy life then you have learned that way of being, thinking and feeling, probably from the moment of birth. These habits do not serve you well, and, whatever your situation you can change it to create the life that you want. It may sound far fetched, it may sound ridiculous, but over the years I have worked with thousands and thousands of people who have down exactly that, including me.

So, how about for a little while we forget the politicians, health and wars and concentrate on ourselves, how do you feel today? If your response is anything other than “I’m doing ok” or at a pinch “it’s tough, but i’m getting there” you need some help to the get your head on the right way around. There are plenty of books and ideas that will help you in your task including the resources on the liveinthepresent.co.uk website.

Marharishi Mahesh Yogi, the inventor of transcendental meditation had one simple aim. If he could get six million people meditating a the same time then the bioenergetic mindbank would be great enough to affect the course of human destiny for the good. I wonder how powerful the mindbank would need to be to change the course of Russias aggression.

Have you meditated today? When you do meditate you add a bit more positive energy to the collective consciousness.

Take care and be happy

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode? We all have that inner voice that tells us if we are doing right or wrong. I say we all have it – even a full blown psychopath has an inner voice it is just that it is never heard or listened to. Your inner voice is your conscience. Let’s discuss how much it can be trusted and when to question it…

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

Show Notes and Links * Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week

Resource of the Week * Sean – https://thriveglobal.com/stories/why-you-should-listen-to-your-inner-voice/ * Ed – https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/internal-monologue

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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!).

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We all have that inner voice that tells us if we are doing right or wrong. I say we all have it even a full blown psychopath has an inner voice it is just that it is never heard or listened to. Your inner voice is your conscience.

When we look at our friend Vladimir we can see that he is unable to hear or listen to his inner voice. He is able act in ways that cause others pain, distress and death or worse to many thousands of people. What does it take for us to listen to our inner voice? Well like all aspects of human consciousness it is the same, either pain or awareness. Either we are aware and awake enough to listen to it or we need some pain to make us wake up enough to listen. We could say that Vladimir, who is probably the product of a highly dysfunctional childhood, has no consciousness, though he does. What we do not know is how deeply it is buried within him and if there will come a point when he will be able to hear it.

Do you ever wonder why you have a conscience? Could it be that your conscience is actually a very important part of your life process? If you think about it, you would be in big trouble without it. Without some kind of internal voice you would never question what you were doing or why you were doing it. This leads to real narcissistic and totally self centred behaviour that allows us to do whatever we want and take whatever we want without any consideration for the effect that it might have on other people. Psychopaths are unable to hear their conscience and sociopaths have learned to ignore their conscience.

Your conscience is your positive inner voice that is giving you sound advice though It can create internal arguments that may lead you to suspect that you are going mad…

‘why are you doing that?’

‘I don’t know’

‘But you know you shouldn’t be doing it’

‘I know’

‘So why are you doing it?’

‘I don’t know’

and so on….

It can feel like your conscience is a pain and a problem. Many people attempt to quiet their inner voice with intoxication or use their intellect to create rationalisations and justifications to avoid facing up to the demands of their inner voice. Yet to the awake mind the inner voice is very positive thing. Could it be that…

your conscience is really your very good friend!

You inner voice isn’t the enemy, it is a friend who’s delivering the positive criticism to enable you consider your feelings, the feelings of others and the outcome of your actions. You probably have friends or family who do that for you from time to time. Well, your inner voice is doing it all the time if you listen to it.

The trick is to understand that your inner voice is on your side delivering genuinely constructive criticism. It is the inspiring coach who urges you to do your best. Your inner voice and your happiness are not mutually exclusive they are, in the end, the same thing. The easiest way to get to know your inner voice is to still your outer voice. This is meditation – the silence in which you are able to hear the answer to your problems.

When we have an issue, a question or a problem we tend to turn outwards ask for advice or reach for Google. While there is nothing wrong with seeking feedback and advice from other the answer often lie within. We just need to be still for long enough to listen to it.

Most people will start with five or ten minutes a day. This can build to twenty and then thirty. The best effects come from a daily one hour. I won’t the word meditation. It is enough just to sit in silence, allow your mind to do what it want and be still. Ideally in a quiet room with your eyes closed. There are plenty of recording on the LITP site.

Gradually, over time, your mind will become still and your inner voice will become clearer.

Be still and listen.

Take care

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode? We use the word ‘addiction’ to indicate an illness which is based on the behaviour of a person who is compulsively or habitually ‘addicted’ to a substance or a set of behaviours. Most behaviours that are described as addictions are seen as negative. When we hear the word addiction we tend to think of drugs or alcohol. We might even consider the workaholic. Which ever way we view it addiction is seen negative. Are we all addicts?

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

Show Notes and Links * Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week * https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/alcohol-support * https://drinkcoach.org.uk/where-can-i-get-help

Resource of the Week * Sean – https://ascpjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13722-018-0115-3 * Ed – https://www.ted.com/talks/rod_phillips_a_brief_history_of_alcohol

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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!).

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We have been asked in this episode to look at addiction with particular attention to alcohol.

We use the word ‘addiction’ to indicate an illness which is based on the behaviour of a person who is compulsively or habitually ‘addicted’ to a substance or a set of behaviours. Most behaviours that are described as addictions are seen as negative. When we hear the word addiction we tend to think of drugs or alcohol. We might even consider the workaholic. Which ever way we view it addiction is seen negative.

I will get onto alcohol in a minute but first consider this…

Perhaps we are all addicts

I would like to suggest another way of looking at it, we are all addicted, we are all addicts, it is just that we are often unaware of what we are addicted to. So my question is…

What is your addiction?

An addiction is simply a chemical state, that is in both our brain and our body. We become addicted when we have learned to accept this chemistry as our ‘normal’ state of being. The chemistry comes from the habits that we have practiced from the moment of our both. We know that when someone exercises regularly their brain responds by releasing powerful endorphins. We also know that once this chemistry has been established as their normal they can become addicted to this exercise. Once this habit has been established we find that if they are unable to exercise, perhaps because of an injury, they go into withdrawal just like any drug addict. All the symptoms of drug withdrawal are played out through their brain and body until either they restore the exercise and the chemistry or undergo the ‘cold turkey’ of drug withdrawal and re establish a new chemical norm.

Any behaviour from meditation to sex, from knitting to hill walking, from laughing to crying, will have a chemical effect on our mind body system. Once these are established in our mind brian they become our habit and our chemical normal. The issues of anxiety, anger, depression, love and happiness may also be our addictions.

As an ex drug addict, mainly opium and having had an interesting relationship with alcohol, I know quite a lot about alcohol and drugs as a therapist but also as a practitioner.

Let’s have a look at alcohol

Alcohol

Alcohol is probably one of the most natural substances we can become addicted to. I have seen horses in very strange states after eating fermenting apples that had fallen from the trees in an orchard. Human beings probably slipped quite easily into using alcohol as the vegetables and fruits around them fermented and the relationship was made between the alcohol and the pleasurable feeling of being tipsy or drunk.

The way that alcohol works is that it turns off the frontal lobe of the brain which takes away our worries, concerns and feelings. Alcohol is an emotional anaesthetic. We stop feeling. Then we get the rebound of the depressant effect as the frontal lobes attempts to fire up again. When the depressant effect is on us the easiest thing to do is to have another drink, known as the ‘hair of the dog’, and anaesthetise the depression. Once the cycle is established it is the normal behaviour of addiction. However the cycle will vary. Some people can drink a lot of alcohol before their frontal lobe switches off. For others it may be half a glass of wine. The thing is that once the frontal lobe switches off resistance to more alcohol and normally unacceptable behaviours diminishes. Plus all reason and cognitive thinking is lost.

Controlled drinking/drug programmes

My experience is that for the vast majority of people controlled programmes do not work. For most of us you are either in or out. One of the main problems with alcohol is that, outside of Muslim countries, there is an alcohol pusher on every street corner, in every super market and in television adverts. It is the wests acceptable addiction.

Therapy

Therapy is usually the only answer. That often means rehab and some supportive medication as the addictive cycle quietens down in the system. In our society in the UK I do still commonly deal with alcohol, nicotine, skunk and anger addictions. Though I experience that we are all addicted to something even if that means being addicted to having a completely clean system.

So what is your addiction?

Your chemical normal is the one that makes you feel just right. It comes from the habits that you have established throughout your life. If something happens to alter your ‘normal’ you will adopt behaviours that will return your chemistry to recreate your normal. My normal involves meditation, cooking, often running, definitely playing music, mainly guitar, certainly working with other people and always my lovely Rie and holidays away. When I am deprived of my addictions I feel withdrawal and need to act to bring my chemistry back to my normal.

Some addictions are good, as in they do not harm us or others. Bad addictions do harm us or other people. We have a choice. Once we mindfully examine our behaviours we can decide which addictions we will feed and allow to grow and which once we will starve and allow to wither.

We may decide that allowing our children to develop the habit of internet gaming is a good or a bad addiction. Current evidence would suggest this is a bad addiction.

Be happy and check your addictions.

Take care

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode? In modern psychology we talk a lot about living in the present, letting go of what has been and c relating the future that we want to live. The reality for us all is that you cannot get into you or present and create a new future if you are weighed down and hampered by unresolved past. In order that we are able to move on into a new future, that is not hampered by the weight of the unresolved past, we often need to do an internal audit of stock take at this time. Even that sounds easier than it is. Let’s have quick review of what we mean by past, present and future…

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

Show Notes and Links * Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week * Watch Enes Yilmazer gives amazing tours of the huge, empty homes of the rich

Resource of the Week * Sean linked to the LITP book * Ed linked to our free podcast version of the LITP course starting at episode 398

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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!).

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In modern psychology we talk a lot about living in the present, letting go of what has been and c relating the future that we want to live. The reality for us all is that you cannot get into you or present and create a new future if you are weighed down and hampered by unresolved past. In order that we are able to move on into a new future, that is not hampered by the weight of the unresolved past, we often need to do an internal audit of stock take at this time. Even that sounds easier than it is. Let’s have quick review of what we mean by past, present and future.

The Past

The past can seem solid. It is what has happened and we hold it in our memory to explain who we are and what we are like we are. You could say that we are all the sum total of what we have learned from all the things that we have experienced in our life. In this life time it would be from the moment that we drew our first breath. I guess we would need to add in some genetic and social information from the family that we have been born into.

Karmas

The word karma simply means the consequence of action. Everything that we do has an effect, we are that effect. Karma is simply the consequence it neither good nor bad.

Samskars

For those the believe in reincarnation a samskar is a karma that has been carried over from a previous life time. If this is true and we have had many life time we may be carrying unresolved issues from the past.

The Present

We talk about the present as being something solid. ‘Be in the present we say’, ‘Be here now’. Actually the present is so transitory that it hardly exists. As soon as you read the previous sentence it became the past. The present lasts a millionth of a nano second then it becomes part of the past.

Becoming

Quantum physics suggests that we should view the present as a state of becoming. That is what we are doing now is creating a consequence or karma that is our future. It is perfectly possible to live in the present and many people do but they see it as a fluid state in motion not as a fixed event.

The Future

From our point of view the future does not exist until we create it. We are also at becoming what we will be. Just as I am the result of all that I have done in the past, I will

become the sum total of all that I am doing now. I am creating my future.

The Anatomy Of The Past

Memory has three components that need to be processed for us to move beyond the ties that bind us to the past. These are thinking, doing, and feeling.

Thinking

Thought and cognition are structural concepts. When it comes to memory these are the bones that support the memory. They are factual and descriptive and very black and white. They are the description of what took place.

Doing

This the physical effect of the memory. It may appear as pain in the body or feelings of discomfort. It could be in muscle memory in a skill or set of actions. Or it could simply be a habit. When we have a habit we often say ‘that’s just the way that I am’. It is never that, it is a case of that is how I learned to be and the magic is we can relearn and change if we want to.

Feeling

This is the real issue. Both thinking and doing have no side. They are simply the descriptive and physical response to events. The glue that keeps us trapped in our past is our emotions. Emotions are the glue and the energy that keeps a karma in place. We do not realise it but we have control over our emotions. We can hold onto them or we can let them go, we can change them.

Unlike thinking and doing the key to emotion is the pictures. If I ask you to think about your last holiday what appears in your consciousness are the images, either as stills or as movies of the events that took place. With those images comes emotional connections. This is the glue that keeps us attached to the past either positive or negative. If we have unresolved emotions about a person or an event and we review them all the feeling come porting back as we review the pictures.

A picture tells a thousand words

Dissolving emotional bonds

We are all processing and dissolving negative emotional bonds all the time, we do it every day. It is the big ones that we get stuck on. There are several processes that can enhance our ability to dissolve these bonds.

Mindfulness

In practising mindfulness we focus on becoming what will happen next and not on

regurgitating unresolved past. It is alway true with the mind that…

…thoughts become things. What we think about we bring about.

Forgiveness

This is the LITP step one. It involves visualising this things that you have problems with and processing the emotions so that they gradually become desensitised. When emotions are desensitised you are able to review the memory without becoming emotionally aroused. You can never change the structural cognitive memory or the body memory but you can change how you feel about it.

Psychotherapy

When we get stuck we sometimes need another voice or point of view. We need to see a new perspective. In good psychotherapy this is what happens. In collective therapeutic relations we find effective way to move on.

Rewinding

This is an analytical hypnotherapy technique. It is very powerful when working with trauma, deep trauma, abuse, PTSD and CPTSD.

We only carry the past with us through our own choice. Once we decide to put it down we are lighter, happier and able to move forward.

Take care and be happy

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode? Science tells us that it takes seventeen muscles to smile and as many as forty three to frown. That means it takes a lot more effort to be miserable than it does to be happy. So, what it is that makes some people happy while others are not. So what does the science tell us?

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

Show Notes and Links * Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week * Watch Enes Yilmazer gives amazing tours of the huge, empty homes of the rich

Resource of the Week * Sean is still loving The Happy Newspaper * Ed loved A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD with Tom Hanks

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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!).

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Someone said to me ‘do a blog to make me smile’. I went away and though about it. Science tells us that it takes seventeen muscles to smile and as many as forty three to frown. That means it takes a lot more effort to be miserable than it does to be happy. So, what it is that makes some people happy while others are not. So what does the science tell us.

Money. Many people consider higher per capita income is a precursor to happiness. Having sufficient resources to survive with comfort and to feel that there is no stress can certainly a part of happiness. However having more money than you need does not actually make you happy. We joke that at least with money ‘you can be miserable in comfort’ but it proves that money will never make you happy. It is said to say that I have worked with so many people who are very rich and very miserable. I guess we need enough money so that we don’t have to worry about it but so much that we do have to worry about it. For many people too much money is a burden.

Health plays an enormous part in happiness. Health creates greater life expectancy, less time off work and more time to be happy. When we exercise we have higher levels of happy hormones in our brain. We know that raising your heart rate for just twenty minutes a day can really support your mental health.

Autonomy is important. People’s freedom to make life decisions is a part of creating their individual happiness. So many people do what they do because they feel that they should or to please other people. This approach to life seldom leads to happiness. It is so important to do things that make you feel good.

Generosity in both giving and receiving raises the spirit. I can remember when I was training reading the research about how the effect of giving could create more positive endorphins in the giver than those in the receiver. It seems that giving makes us feel good.

Belonging. We all need friends, family and social support that creates a sense of belonging and overcomes loneliness. Happiness does not need to come from big social events. Often it is the small ones, the family gatherings, Sunday lunches and so on that make us feel like we belong.

“Happiness consists more in small conveniences of pleasures that occur every day than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom”. Benjamin Franklin

The Vikings left us with happiness. So what is the secret?

Genetics, in Scandinavians are shown to have a particular effect. There are three genes that, when activated, create increased levels of serotonin which is the natural precursor of wellbeing. Now, any country that, in history, was near to or invaded by the Vikings have this genetic structure, Guess what? British people have a genetic structure that is very close to that of the vikings. So why are us Brits not showing our happiness, rather than moaning about our lives? Or Are us Brits happier than we let on?

All these issues, beyond that of genetics, are considered by scientists to be too subjective, too emotional. Associate professor Wataru Sato and his team at Japan’s Kyoto University went one step further into trying to understand the basis of happiness. The researchers used scans to determine which areas of the brain are involved in people feeling happy. The results showed that volunteers who rated highly on happiness surveys had more grey matter (cells) in their brains.

MEDITATION/MINDFULNESS

Now, this is the magic part of this research. We know how we can increase the grey matter in our brains, we meditate. Brains scans have shown, for years, that mindful meditation increases the grey matter in the brain, especially around the areas that control our emotional experience in the limbic system. the bottom line is:

It does not matter how good your life is materially,

if you do not have enough grey brain cells

it will never feel good enough inside your emotions

So, what we have learned is that if we do have a genetic predisposition to happiness we might be ahead of the game, and that the nearer we are to Scandinavia the more likely we are to have a positive genetic makeup. But that is not the end of it. We now know, from the scientific research, built around brain scans, shows that if you regularly meditate you will create more grey matter in your brain, ( it takes about two years of daily practice) and we know that more grey matter equal more positive control of our emotional self. In short it creates happiness.

The bottom line is that we all need to meditate and that we need to practise meditation persistently and consistently on a daily basis over time. If you know an experienced meditator you will be aware of their calmness and lack of stress. You may also be aware of their general efficiency is their work and their happiness in their life generally.

Devote some time to yourself, be happy and, if you can, try some meditation.

Take care

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode? Following on from the last episode Sean had a conversation with a group of workers who have decided to do something different. The group discussion got into the fear of staying where they are as opposed to the fear of change and owing something different. Are you ready to make the change? What are the ups and downs?

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

Show Notes and Links * Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week

Resource of the Week * Sean linked to the classic ‘The Attractor Factor’ by Joe Vitale * Ed enjoyed this ‘10 Steps to a successful Career Change‘ article

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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!).

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Following on from the last episode I had a conversation with a group of workers who have decided to do something different. The group discussion got into the fear of staying where they are as opposed to the fear of change and owing something different. It would seem that one of the lessons gained from Covid over the last two years is that life is short and we need to get the best out of it that we can. This raised a lot of conversation about fears and inhibition. In the end of the twelve that were there about a third who decided that it was too scary to change, a third who were scared to stay as they are and a third who couldn’t decide. It was the younger ones who were more open to the idea of change and chancing a new way of life.

What would be your dream job?

If you could do what ever job you wanted what would it be?

Ed and I both feel like we are doing our dream jobs. We both love what we do and really enjoy the process of being alive. I always say that if you can wake up with a smile on your face and go to bed with a smile on your face then you have cracked it, you have got your life right.

The thing is that most of us do what we do because we feel that we have little and that we have no choice. At school most people are pushed to go in a certain way that the education system believes they will be good at. Or maybe it is security. When I was a kid I was told that if you worked in a bank, for the police, in health or as a teacher you will have a job for life. Well, that might be so true these days but back then people grabbed the jobs that was seen as safe and secure and hung onto them until retirement. That was true even if they hated the job, and they often did.

I have worked with so many people who not only hate their work life but don’t like their home life that much either. We can becomes trapped by those wonderful British attitudes…

‘Better the devil you know’

‘Leopard can’t change it’s spots’

‘Old dogs can’t learn new tricks’

‘Don’t throw away dirty water until you have clean’

‘Won’t be long it will be Friday’

‘It could be worse’

‘Why change, no one cares anyway’

‘The grass isn’t always greener’

…..this list goes ever on.

It has always been surprising to me how many people are not happy with their lives as they have been living them and yet they continue to do so year after year. Covid seems to have brought this into focus for a lot of people and the desire to change seems to be growing and turning into action. I have more people telling me that they are changing their jobs and I have teams struggling because their main experience base has left.

I believe that we can all find a way of living that works for us. And, if we are prepared to work at it we can find our dream life and our dream job.

For me it was the decision that whatever I would do with me life I would only do it if it made me happy. When I was honest with myself the two things that made me really happy was working with people and playing music and since the beginning of the 1980s that is exactly what I have done.

I couldn’t say that I have a dream job because I don’t feel like I go to work. I simply wake up with a smile on my face and get on with my life and I love it. The pleasure of working with people and watching them flower and discover who they really is a joy beyond words. That is even true of those that are the slow burners and take a very long time to change.

We all deserve to be happy and fulfilled. First, if you need to decide what would make you feel happy and fulfilled. Second, you need to gather the resources around you that you enable that change to take place. Third, you need the courage to dare yourself to be different and become what you would like.

As they say, ‘who dares wins’.

Be happy and live your dream

Take care

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode? A listener contacted us and told their recent story of disappointment after they didn’t get their dream job. Do we need to be disappointed? Can it be avoided, or is there a lesson in there for us to take forward?

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

Show Notes and Links * Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week

Resource of the Week * Sean liked this Tiny Buddha post * Ed found this article on Positivity Blog

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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!).

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A listener asked us to look at the effects of personal disappointments. Coming out of Covid they have trying to get a new job. They were asking what to do when the job interview doesn’t go so well or when they feel let down in other areas of their life? This raises the issues of competition and the idea of winners and losers. At the moment it can be easy to feel like a loser. In tough competition we often see it as the survival of the fittest. Then we can feel like we are the weak one. The reality is that in a competitive world disappointment is just a fact of life. You can’t have one without the other. Currently there may be two hundred people going for one job. That means there will be a lot of disappointed people.

But there are alternatives to feeling bad and disappointed about it

To be disappointed you first have to buy into the concept of wining and losing, of gain and loss. These concepts involve the separation of ‘us’ and ‘them’ or ‘you’ and ‘me’. For ‘me’ to win or succeed ‘you’ have to lose or fail’. If ‘we’ win ‘they’ lose. These tribal separations are the seed of all conflicts and wars be it religious, sexual, ideological, sectarian, ethnic or whatever. Just look at the Russia Ukraine stand off. Who will win? Who will lose? Is it possible that they can both win? Or, is it possible that they both lose?

You can’t be disappointed without your permission.

In the personal sense for ‘me’ to succeed at the interview and get the job ‘you’ will be disappointed. On the other hand you ‘you’ get the job then ‘I’ will be disappointed. Unless we begin to see this process of winning and losing in a different way. Perhaps these things that I identify as disappointments are actually good things.

We don’t have problems we just have learning opportunities

My own assumption is that the universe is not out to get me ( I don’t think that it is) and that the things that I am presented with are for my own growth and development then I can learn and grow. I am not a fatalist I believe in free will but I do get the law of attraction and see that the things that happen to me do so because they are meaningful to me and my own level of development. I see the same things as true for you also. In this way nothing is ever bad. It is my response to what happens that labels it as either good or bad.

What if I didn’t get the job because, in the greater scheme of things, it would have been damaging to me or the wrong direction for me, maybe it would have held me back and not allowed me to develop to do even greater things? If this were the case the fact that I didn’t get the job should be a focus of celebration and thanks not one of disappointment and loss.

To be disappointed assumes…

1: Expectation. This is craving, my demand for the outcome that my ego seeks. When we project forward in expectation of outcomes, be they good or bad, we are firing up our anxiety circuits. Learning to see the things that happen in life not as problems but as learning opportunities then our anxiety dissolve. If you consider that the human race has survived because we each have this amazing problem solving ability that, should we need it, will come to our aid and solve whatever the issues is that we are faced with. If we see it this was it is true that…

…we don’t have problems we have learning opportunities.

2: Loss. This is attachment, my inability to let go of my feelings of possession for things, people, events or the belief of what I saw as ‘mine’. It could be that I saw the job as ‘mine’ before I went to the interview. This attachment to the past creates depression. When we feel the loss or bereavment for what was, or for what might have been we often ruminate. When this happens the rumination keeps it negatively alive, so that many years after an event it can still feel like it is live action, as though it has just happened.

When we learn to let go we overcome depression and and stop projecting into the future we can then live in the present. In the present, in the now there can never be any disappointment because there is no attachment to the past and there is no carving for the future. The trick to living in the present is gratitude. The following is attributed to Buddha.

Let us rise up and be thankful,

for if we didn’t learn a lot today,

at least we learned a little,

and if we didn’t learn a little,

at least we didn’t get sick,

and if we got sick,

at least we didn’t die;

so, let us be thankful.

At the end of each line of the above the option is to be disappointed or grateful. It is not what happens it is the way that we see it. We are not effected by events but by our response to those events.

In a very real sense being disappointed is a choice. What do you choose?

Take care

Sean X

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What’s Coming This Episode? Doubt and fear are both forms of anxiety and worry. We know that worrying is a habit as is being happy. If you are a worrier, or if you are happy, then you were not born like it, where did you learn it?

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

Show Notes and Links * Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week

Resource of the Week * Sean * Ed

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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!).

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I have an Auntie who at the age of 94 remains so amazingly positive. She has a natural habit of positivity that will not allow anything to get her down. She genuinely sees the things that happen to her as lessons for her to learn and listening to her she has certainly been tested in her life. She has a very strong faith that certainly underpins her attitudes in life. She has the positive habit.

Doubt and fear are both forms of anxiety and worry. We know that worrying is a habit as is being happy. If you are a worrier, or if you are happy, then you were not born like it, where did you learn it? These like all habits are the results of consistent persistent practice over time. Most habits are learned at an early age through observation. We observe behaviours, usually from our parents or siblings and then we practise them and make them our own.

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 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 it that makes sense of it. Once we have attached the thought to that feeling they are forever connected so that when we feel it we think it and when we think it we feel it.

Mindfulness allows you to observe doubt and worry and 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 thoughts and feelings together they have a symbiotic relationship that is there forever unless 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 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 our thinking feeling and doing that are creating our anxiety, worry, and stress. Often these are unconscious distortions that, through mindfulness, can become conscious and then we can deal with them.

So, first step is learn to observe your distortions…

Common Distortions

ref: http://www.helpguide.org/mental/anxiety_self_help.htm (Thanks for the site guys, a great resource)

All-or-nothing thinking – black-or-white – Life or death. Where are always 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. Or we can ask other people for their perspective and gain further insight.

Overgeneralisation – “it will always be like this…I’ll never be able to…it always happens to me…” I call this scripting. The habit of thinking this way leads to repeated behaviours. Life becomes a done deal. As soon as I make these statements I am ensuring that they will come true and that my life will be forever blighted. If I wake in the morning with the idea “Oh no not again”, guess what kind of day I am about to have.

Negative focus – The magic of our perception is that we finely 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 make a simple mistake can be seen as bad and so on. When you tread in a soggy 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.

We don’t have problems we have learning opportunities

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”. This is the time to 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. “I love when good things happen. It means there is more good coming my way”.

Jumping to conclusions – Even when what is happening is plainly positive we can make negative interpretations without any actual evidence and without even realising that we are doing it. We can act like a mind reader, “I can tell she/he 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? Observe the positive and repeat it to yourself as positive reinforcement.

Catastrophizing – It is easy to make a drama out of a crisis. Expecting the worst-case scenario to happen. “The pilot said we’re in for some turbulence. The plane’s going to crash!” A classic is a medical diagnosis when we convince ourself of the worst outcome. In life difficult things will always happen. However, evolution and equipped us with some pretty good creative skills that enable us to solve problems. If you can make a cup of tea you are a creative genius and, if you make a cup of tea you can solve a problem.

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 associations that you have made and questioning them rather than accepting them can lead to new levels of understanding and self development.

‘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 like 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 is good to look at why you believe these things, what is going on? Where did you learn to think that way? Could have been a parent or sibling? This is a good time to look at reframing your thoughts and feelings, update them so that they can now serve you better.

Labelling – I resist 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 this was his issue and not mine and I relabelled myself positively, “I am clever and can do things”. Labelling yourself based on mistakes and perceived shortcomings such as “I’m a failure; an idiot; a loser,” just creates negative scripts that you will play out in everyday life.

Personalisation – This may also be described as taking other people’s stuff onboard so that it becomes ‘my’ issue when it is not. It is when we assume responsibility for things that are outside of our control. “It’s my fault my son had an accident. I should have warned him to drive carefully in the rain.” “its my fault he got lung cancer I should have stopped him smoking.” We can not live other people’s lives like they are our own.

Worry and Doubt

Worry and doubt comes 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

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What’s Coming This Episode? Winter is here. Sort of. I mean, it’s quite cold and definitely dark. Anyway, it can have an impact on us (as discussed last week) so how do we make the most of it and keep our chins up?

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

Show Notes and Links * Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week

Resource of the Week * Sean linked to this book about the Danish art of Hygge * Ed showed his love of hot water bottles

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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!).

Hygge: The Danish Secrets of Happiness: How to be Happy and Healthy in Your Daily Life. (Hygge and Lagom)

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Well, it is cold. Winter is upon us once again. With Covid it seems to have been a long time coming. Last year the warm weather stretched out into November that got us all talking about global warming. Then, suddenly with ferocity the weather has changed and we are in the grip of floods, tsunamis and even winter forrest fires. With global warming we were promised warm dry summers and cool wet winters and that is exactly that is what we have.

Many of the people I talk with are feeling a flat fatigue. This is true of those who have had and who have not had Covid. It is as though our battery is flat and needs charging. Our energy always changes between the seasons just feel that this year covid has made it so much bigger. There is a stark contrast between the world in the warmth of the summer and that in the cold of the winter. One of the main things that we don’t realise is the effect that we feel from the ionisation of the air around us. Each atom has an electrical charge on it. When the charge is negative then we feel bright and light and energised. When the charge is positive we feel flat, oppressed and out of steam. In the winter the air is often filled with positive irons that can make us feel negative. It is those days that are grey and over cast with the damp chill that reaches into you bones the air is filled with positive ions. When you are on a side of a mountain with clear blue sky’s watching the sun glint on the snow the air is filled with negative ions. It seems back to front but…

Positive ions make you feel bad

Negative ions make you feel good

As water meet the air ions are released. In an energetic splashing there are streams of negative ions given off. These make us feel brighter and awake. The effect happens by rivers, the sea, fountains and most commonly the shower that wakes us up in the morning. A bath, on the other hand, where the water is hot and still there are lots of positive ions given off that may make us feel relaxed but also can make us sleepy.

The other winter effect is the lack of sun light. This leads to the inevitable drop in our level of Vitamin D. This leads to a change in our brain chemistry. A drop in our level of vitamin D leads to a drop in the level or serotonin, the happy hormone. This normally, leads to feelings of down-ness and flatness often described as SAD syndrome. Sometimes I wonder why, in evolution, we bothered to move away from the equator where levels of vitamin D are high and SAD syndrome never heard of.

When it gets cold, damp and dark we seek the comfort that through evolution has been supplied by carbohydrates. Carbs make the brain secrete serotonin. In the winter we self medicate with carbs and tend to put weight on. The best form of carbs is in cake, bread, pastas, puddings, biscuits, and so on. Carbs kick your brain into producing endorphins that make you feel good which is why they are called comfort food.

Carbs = comfort

Take a holiday

I know we have all the restrictions of covid but why do we take our main holiday in the summer? Would it not make more sense to enjoy the British summer, even if it is a bit wet, and then, when it is dark and cold, jump on a plane and go somewhere hot and sunny. If we did that we would boost our Vitamin D and keep our mood raised up.

Exercise

Another way to counteract the effect of the darkness is to move more. When it is cold the idea of huddling around a coal/log fire and staying in becomes very attractive and comforting. Yet this can increase our intake of comfort food and maybe the odd drink. We can become lazy. However, if we make the effort to move our body we can raise our mood and feel better. Twenty minutes of raised heart rate will make your brain secrete happy hormones and endorphins that will make you feel happier. The drive from the health authorities is to get everyone walking for at least half an hour a day or the classic 10,000 step. If we all did this we would reduce our levels of illness, improve our mental health, loose some weight and get happier. Of course it goes without needing to say it that it would also save the health authorities a lot of money. Maybe with covid it would also lessen the demand on NHS services.

Time to get social

Don’t be a hermit, Covid permitting, get out and meet people or invite people into your home. Socialise, have parties, cook meals and enjoy the company of others. Being with others, sharing the feeling of belonging and sharing fun and laughter all increase our levels of happy hormones. We are naturally hunter gatherers who live and interact in social groups. They do not live alone in small family units in little boxes they are a natural social community.

Get social and get some exercise

As Ed would tell us we all need to get out more walking and cycling. Apart from any direct physical health benefits this might bring it also helps us recreate our communities as we can directly interact with our neighbours and community members. This is something that is impossible when we are stuck in the car.

Make love

Did you know that when we have a particularly dark and cold winter the birth rates can rise by up to 18%. The joke always was that a couple go to bed early to save candles and money and end up having more children. However, we do know that good positive love making does increase our endorphins and increases our happiness. It also helps us to keep warm on a cold night and save on the heating.

Slow down and enjoy

It is natural to slow down and sleep more in the winter. Most of nature takes a break in the winter. The birds fly south, all of the plants go to sleep and many animals go into hibernation. The one species that does not slow down that carries on in a mad dash is us, human beings. We have stopped living in the natural rhythm of nature and life. As hunter gatherers we would have gone to sleep when it got dark and woken up when it got light. We now go to work in the dark come home in the dark, work crazy shifts for excessive hours and for many day never see the sun and then we wonder why our vitamin D level is low. This maybe a good time to get a vitamin test from your GP and perhaps take a supplement if you need it.

If we were living in the natural rhythms of nature winter would be our chance to rest and relax and restore ourselves for the hard work in the spring ahead. A time to gather around log fires and get Hyyge. A time to enjoy the joy of story telling, socialisation, and developing family relationships and friendships. A time to mend nets, repair the tools, learn to sew and knit and chat about life and sharing experiences, learn our own history and teach and learn new skills. A time to enjoy winter foods, puddings custard and cake.

The more I think about it the more I see why the Nordic countries developed their various versions of Hyyge to live enjoy and survive their short winter days.

Be happy and do what you need to ensure you enjoy your winter and make it a winter wonderland for you and those around you.

Take care

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode? Blink and you may have missed it… but ‘Blue Monday’ has been and gone – the (apparently) bleakest day of the year. Should we believe the hype? Can we avoid it completely??! Of course we can! Let’s dive in…

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

Show Notes and Links * Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week * What is Blue Monday? * A bit more from Wikipedia * Blue Monday creator apologises!

Resource of the Week * Sean just said ‘Google it!’ * Ed wants you to watch The Matrix. What a film!

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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!).

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Every January we have what is described a Blue Monday that’s is said to be the saddest day of the year. A questionable claim. But why would we get depressed at this time of year? Well we have just been through the joy of Christmas and New Year, probably have credit card debt to clear, have given up the booze for dry January and are trying to get back into work/school mode. Plus it is dark and cold and the summer holiday can feel a long way off. But hey ho this year we have even or weight on the blue shoulders because we have the ongoing Covid as well and we could throw in the BoJo nonsense for good measure. But it is not all bad. There is a good side to depression we just have to realise it.

Depression may be our brain’s way of telling us to stop,

slow down and solve problems

There is a theory that suggests that rather than being a problem depression might be a specific behavioural strategy that we have evolved as a biological adaptation that serves a purpose. As Matthew Hutson agrees and explains in a Nautilus feature on the potential evolutionary roots of depression and suicidal behaviour , that the purpose of depressions might be to make us…

…stop, understand, and deal with an important problem.

Figures for the USA, which are probably reflected in Europe, suggest that at any given time, about 5% of people report symptoms of moderate or severe depression. Major depressive disorder is now so common that at some point in life, one in six people will suffer from it.

So why does such a debilitating condition strike so many people?

The traditional understanding is that depression is just a breakdown in the normally working of the brain. This is seen as a chemical imbalance that is treated by chemical medication designed to balance chemistry, change mood and create shifts in behaviours.

Could depression have developed to help us?

Evolutionary psychologist Paul Andrews and psychiatrist J. Anderson Thomson first elaborated on this idea, called the “analytical rumination hypothesis,” in an article published in Psychological Review in 2009.

Their idea is that what we think of as a disorder is actually a way for our brains to analyse and dwell on a problem in the hopes of coming up with a way to deal with it. The researchers suggest it’s possible that a difficult or complex problem triggers a “depressive” reaction in some people that sends them into a sort of analytical mode.

This intrigues me greatly because in the Ayurvedic model, my original training, depression was seen as a gift, as a way of our system telling us that something was wrong and giving us the chance to sort it out. This would explain the increased rumination that arising in depressive episodes. Along side this in and increase in dream sleep. The two phases of sleep are deep sleep (NREM) and dream sleep (REM). It is assumed that deep sleep is the resting phase concerned with repair of the body and dream sleep is an active phase concerned with processing experience and emotion. In depression the dream sleep eats into the deep sleep so that despite sleeping for long periods of time the person does not experience rest and may become progressively more tired.

The concept that depression might be and evolutionary adaptation rather than a mental disorder is not the main consensus of the mental health community. in reality it cannot be true for all depression. It would be true for those suffered get reactive depression in response to a trauma or traumatic stimulus. Even so this could still account for around 80% of depressive episodes.

The problem is that in most cases depression is not the cause it is the symptomatic response to the cause. In western medicine we tend to treat the symptom and pay little ot no attention to the cause.

It could be that if we accepted depression asa gift and took the opportunity to undertake a self audit to enable us to get our lives back on track. Instead we treat depression negatively as a problem and medicate the symptoms and fail to deal with the cause. It would make sense that if alongside medication we engaged in mindful therapy we could speed up treatment and help to dissolve depressive episodes.

MBCT

Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy is designed to deal with and overcome issue of reactive or repetitive depression. MBCT, is recommended by the United Kingdom’s National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) for the prevention of recurrent and reactive depression and has also been shown to be effective in treating the symptoms of anxiety.

Take care and be happy

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode? Sean and Ed (OK, mainly Sean) are always dishing out advice. Sean does it for a living. Could you? A career in therapy can be hugely rewarding. Obviously it’s not without a certain amount of risk – you’re letting yourself in for a lot of sensitive information that can weigh heavily on you – but what career doesn’t? Let’s have a chat about it…

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

Show Notes and Links * Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week * A Guardian article on becoming a therapist or counsellor

Resrouce of the Week

Sean recommended completing an Advanced Driving Test
Ed linked to the official advice on the Gov.uk website
More advice from the BACP

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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!).

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The question is are therapist born or are they trained? Well, reality is that some people are naturally caring, empathic but also objective enough to be n atrial therapists. Therapy, support has been around throughout evolution it did not begin just because someone create a training course. Many people train as therapist though the value of the training will vary greatly. This maybe to do with the quality of the training program itself or the quality of the people delivering it.

Personal therapy, especially since Covid, has to the the growth industry of the next fifty years. That is both good and bad. Yes we need more therapist just as we need a more caring nurturing attitude to each other in life. However, many therapist that are trained become booked learned theorists who understand the cognitive bit but do not have the empathic, sensitivity needed to be a good therapist. Actually sensitivity can be learned. The problem is that the courses do not do that. Their interest is in the academic process.

I have completed four degrees and a plethora of diplomas and certificates. In doing so I have met so many therapists and trainee therapists. Sadly some lacked the necessary sensitivity and empathy to enable them to be, in my terms, ‘a good’ therapist. This is often true of cognitive behavioural therapists, not all but many, that are trained in a logical technical method of attempting to get people to understand themselves. However, CBT is often only truly effective for cognitive issues but has little lasting longterm effect on emotional issues.

The point I am getting to is that just because some has a degree or a diploma in therapy it does not mean that they are any good. There are many lay therapists out there helping people. They may have no qualifications at all and yet they are doing phenomenal and truly life changing work. The thing that is really is the true training needed to create a good therapist is not taught on a course. the real training comes from living that thing called ‘life’. Those people that have worked through their own difficulties and issues, have faced and overcome their own problems have a natural empathy for others that are in emotional pain. Unless someone has an exceptional imagination the only way to true understanding is through life experience.

So why train?

They way I see it is that a good training programme will make a natural therapist even better. It will explain mental, emotional and psychological processes in a coherent way that will enhance the naturally ability and understanding of the practitioner. If we are to practise professionally we all need a coherent theoretical model to relate back to. We need to understand developmental processes, defence mechanisms and so on. So, yes all therapist need to be trained. Though we have to realise that a training program will enhance the abilities of the natural therapist allowing them to put what they already know in a system and of course they will learn new things and skills. Training will only make a purely cognitive mind and full living manual of theoretical knowledge to be shared as therapy. I am not saying that you can’t learn from courses or that you have to experience everything in human experience yourself before you can help other people with it. I am saying that when you have, or are developing, insight and empathy you can empathise with another person’s emotional experience and be a useful therapist.

Yes get trained.

Finding a therapist

When it come to finding a therapist the best way is by word of mouth, recommendation. Good therapists rarely advertise as they have little need to as they normally have a full diary and may even have a waiting list.

Becoming a therapist

If your are considering becoming a therapist, as I suggested you may be doing it anyway, a good thing to try are the ten week introduction courses that are run by colleges that also run certificate and diploma courses. This will give you a good insight in both the counselling process and the techniques required. You will them be able to make a choice as to what direction you would take from there.

If you would like to ask anything or chat anything through drop me a message and I will get back to you.

Take care and be happy

Sean x

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What’s Coming This Episode? Look left, look right. The Green Cross Code. Road safety is drilled into us from a very early age… and rightly so! With an increasing number of weapons grade vehicles swooshing around our streets we’d be wise to take care. Right? Well… yes, but as Ed has found out in recent years, it’s far more complicated than that. Time for a new approach to road safety?

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

Show Notes and Links * Here’s Sean’s blog post for the week * It’s Indian Road Safety Week(!!!) * Here’s a link to UK road safety charity, Brake * Info on the changes to the UK Highway Code * Sustainable Safety * Feisty name but amazing podcast – join The War on Cars

Resrouce of the Week

Sean recommended completing an Advanced Driving Test
Ed linked to the amazing YouTube channel, Not Just Bikes

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

Follow Live in the Present on Twitter and Facebook for daily doses of inspiration
Follow presenter Edward Lamb on Twitter
Follow therapist Sean Orford on Facebook and Twitter
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on iTunes

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!).

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I know this is a subject that is very close to Ed’s heart. As we enter this new year let us do it safely.

Raising awareness of road safety seems so obvious and so necessary. There was a time when children were taught to ride bikes at school. This led to the Cycling Proficiency Test that was a test given by Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. This training served as a minimum recommended standard for cycling on British roads. We even got a shiny badge once we had passed.

It was superseded by the National Standards for Cycle Training, branded “Bikeability”, in England in 2007.

I am not sure at how successful it has been as an announced was mad in 2020.

“The government has today (7 February 2020) announced all children in England will be taught the skills for a lifetime of cycling, as its Bikeability training programme is significantly expanded.”

If this was to be expanded in 2020 I wonder, with Covid, how many schools have actually managed to reintroduce cycling classes for their pupils?

From my own experience I have found that car drivers who stared off as bike riders when they were kids are generally safer and have a greater awareness of other road users when they get older. Awareness and awakeness is the key to reducing the risk to people using the road network of being killed or seriously injured. The users on the road include pedestrians, cyclists, motor cyclists, motorists, their passengers, and passengers of on-road public transport, mainly buses and trams.

Important Traffic Rules To Follow To Ensure Safety While Driving

Always wear a seatbelt.
Avoid distractions.
Do not cross the speed limits.
Service your car regularly.
Follow traffic signals.
Maintain lane discipline.
Be careful during bad weather.
Maintain a safe distance.

The bottom line to all this is that we need to get out of cars and walk and cycle. It is then that we become in touch with the real environment rather than the metal bubble that we live in when we are driving a car. The research on the benefits of walking and cycling are legion. There is a measurable increase in wellbeing from feel good endorphins to cardiac function, cognition and being happy.

As a kid on the council estate us kids would all tip out in the morning and thousands of us would walk to various schools. I guess that we were all street wise and new the rules of the road and that kept us safe. I am not sure at what point we decided that it was unsafe out there and that we had to take our kids everywhere in our cars but what we have created is generations of people who have never interacted in a simple way on the road and have only ever really seen it through the windscreen of a car.

I think that in the end road safety comes from education and in this case it is learning from doing. We need to walk our kids to school, cycle to them to the shops so that they can see what it is like to be a road user – not just a car driver or passenger.

So, maybe our collective New Years resolution should be to get out of the cars always and cycle and educate our kids to become good a responsible road users.

Happy new year and travel safely

Sean x

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