Positive Psychology

How people change (New series)

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I have been a student of personal change ever since I was a depressed teenager reading Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (although that book never worked for me, as I never could work out where to start living). Before and after I trained as a psychotherapist I studied the Upanishads, Gurdjieff, Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Stoicism, Psychoanalysis, Transactional Analysis, Hypnosis, Ericksonian therapy, Cognitive-Behaviour therapy, NLP, EST, Brief Solution-focused therapy, and Acceptance & Commitment therapy. All of which later on filtered through the lens of working with my clients over the past 32 years.

This series of articles summarises my conclusions of what works best in therapy, as well as what doesn’t. And I aim to share these insights with you over the coming months.

Here is the planned list of articles (the list may change as the series unfolds)

Normalising problems

Change through doing nothing at all

Changing consciousness

Accepting what is (and what is not)

Downsizing the ego

Changing expectations

Changing thought

Breaking the rules

Changing the pictures in your head

The Crystal ball method

Focusing on possibilities rather than problems

Separating intentions from outcomes

Replacing bad habits with new ones

Taking one (small) change at a time

Changing feelings and internal states

Exposing to scary environments

Changing personal strategies

Pursuing your passion

Changing behaviour

Building resilience

Please do let me have your suggestions or requests for further articles in this series. As well as your own stories about personal change.

9 Habits of Resilient People (No. 8)

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This is the eighth in a series of articles on resilience.

The eighth habit is: Resilient people take ownership.

What this means is that resilient people take total responsibility for what happens to them. Another way of putting this is that resilient people do not become victims or succumb to self-pity.

This does not mean that ownership for what happens means that you are always the cause of what happened. It may be (partly) your fault if you lost your job, or your relationship, or got into debt. But you aren’t the reason for an airplane crash, a terroristic attack, or the cancer that killed your mother. But in either case you can decide how you are going to respond.

Let us also make a distinction between a reaction and a response. A reaction is usually automatic and predictable and woeful. A response is something that is planned, thoughtful and focused. Reactions may take any of the following courses:

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9 Habits of Resilient People (No. 6)

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This is the sixth in a series of articles on resilience.

The sixth habit is:

Resilient people practice self-renewal.

By self-renewal I mean that resilient people are never satisfied with the status quo; they are always looking for new horizons. Another way of putting this is that resilient people are continually re-inventing themselves.

Many of you reading this article may recall someone you know who mysteriously gave up their lucrative job in banking, or law, or in industry and went on a trip round the world (or went on a retreat in India, or built a house, or started a charity, or retrained as a teacher, etc.). I can guarantee you that that person is well-equipped to handle life’s disasters. For one thing they have shown already is that they are able to give up their attachments and start over again.

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9 Habits of Resilient People

John Eaton3 Comments

This is a new series on resilience.

I have been fortunate in meeting hundreds of resilient people in my time, some of them very humble people who were not obvious heroes and who yet overcame some terrible personal tragedies.

The nine habits are the stand-out, most commonly recurring traits I have noticed. In my work – whether in coaching or psychotherapy – I am always on the watch for resilience in my clients and will do whatever I can to turn their attention back to their strengths.

By ‘resilience’ I mean the ability to manage adversity. Adverse events can range from parenting out-of-control children to rescuing 70+ wounded soldiers while under intense Japanese sniper fire, as Desmond Doss (pictured) did on Hacksaw Ridge. It can show in the way you handle an argument at the office or in the way you help your friends. Or in your approach to disability, deprivation, abuse, poverty, unemployment, relationship breakdown, illness and death.

Here are the 9 habits:

  1. Resilient people tell it the way it is
  2. Resilient people have solid boundaries
  3. Resilient people exercise mind control
  4. Resilient people know what to do with their emotions
  5. Resilient people are hard realists
  6. Resilient people practice self-renewal
  7. Resilient people spend time with resilient people
  8. Resilient people take ownership
  9. Resilient people are (mostly) spiritual people

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The truth about stress and resilience

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This post follows on from my earlier article Why Stress Does Not Exist.

It was Hans Selye who first coined the word ‘Stress’ in relation to non-specific illnesses. Contrary to popular myth, Selye did not say that ‘Stress’ caused illness. What he meant was that if the individual fails to adapt to adverse Life Events then a breakdown in body functions could occur. Examples of ‘bad’ life events include job loss, relationship breakdown, financial disaster, overwork and illness.

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The Buddha and Psychotherapy

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After Siddhartha Gautama was enlightened he became the Buddha. Before that time he had been first a great prince and then, after his renunciation, a wandering monk. His aim was to uncover the secret of suffering and find enlightenment. He tried several teachers, starved himself close to death, practised self-torture and meditation, but none of these worked. In despair he decided to sit under a Bo tree, not leaving until he had found either enlightenment or death. Four weeks later it came to him in the night. He ‘saw’ into the ultimate nature of reality: that it was without names, time or permanence. He realised that he was it and it he.

A few weeks after that he gave his first sermon in the Deer Park at Sarnath to five disciples. He told them that he had discovered that everything that arises is subject to cessation, including suffering. The path to enlightenment lay in the Four Noble Truths:

1.   Know that there is dukkha

2.   Understand the origin of dukkha in attachment

3.   Let go of attachment and dukkha

4.   Follow the Eight-fold path

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Resilience and stress

John Eaton1 Comment

 I wrote in my last article my that ‘stress’ is a meaningless term.

When we say we are ‘ill with stress’ we mean that we have anxiety, depression, or something like chronic fatigue syndrome, all of which have solutions and on all of which I have written elsewhere.

When we say ‘I am stressed’ what we mean is that we are overwhelmed with life-problems. Which means that we lack resilience.

Resilience is what survivors and other successful people have. You won’t hear resilient  people say ‘I am stressed‘. Instead they will say something like: ‘Life’s tough at the moment but I’m dealing with it’. That’s because these people know about the power of words – telling yourself that you are stressed can make you ill, while telling others that you are working on resilience will keep you well.

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Can feeling grumpy be good for you?

John Eaton3 Comments

Moods1 I receive a mischievous communication from my very good friend Mark McGuinness who wants me to comment on a research article he has looked into, written by some ‘Australian psychologists’, which claims that being in a ‘bad mood’ can be ‘good’ for you.

Now, some of my best experiences in life have been prompted by my ‘bad’ moods. With the aid of those I have got rid of countless annoying relationships, irritating jobs and pointless activities. So my first thought was that – yet again – a bunch of overpaid academics were being subsidised to announce discoveries most of us learned in primary school. And that Mark had forgotten our many rambling midnight conversations about emotions and the meaning of life.

Yet I realised immediately that these gorgeous, Bondi-beach seeking academics have made yet another category mistake: While bad moods can, indeed, be ‘good’, those are not the same as ‘bad emotions’.

To remind you: there is no such thing as a bad emotion. Emotions are an expression of Bodymind
intelligence. A mood is different. It is a  Headmind attitude. It expresses a relationship between our attitudes and the world as we find it. You can read more about moods here.

A grumpy mood, for me, is a relationship based on suspicion. It means that I no longer trust that experiences, situations, people, or the Lord God himself are doing me any favours. And that, in turn, is a cue that I need to revise my trusting attitude towards these entities. I need to retreat, stand-off, complain, and have a moan. I may even need to disengage – permanently.

So yes – a grumpy mood can be good for you if it helps you get rid of your intellectual garbage.

The funny thing is that I actually find grumpy moods enjoyable. Entraining my suspicion and pessimism on the planet gives me a god-like sense of detachment and playfulness. It also gives me a playground for wit.

Rather like one of my favourite philosophers – Arthur Schopenhauer – who once wrote:

“If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.”

Come to think of it, Schopenhauer deserves an article all to himself, so I will write that next.