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My son has been through quite a lot in his young life (I mean he emigrated when he was still in nappies – talk about getting an early start!) but he is still a very well adjusted and down to earth kid. I make no claims to be being some kind of “wonder-parent” but one thing I think I have done well is talk to him and let him know what’s going on – even during difficult circumstances like separation and divorce.

When my first marriage had run its course and I was going to move out, one thing that was really tearing me up inside was the prospect of telling him that it was going to happen (he was 5 at the time). Even though me and his Mum had already worked out the custody arrangements and a lot of the practicalities had been taken care of, I was dreading having to tell him that I was leaving. Just thinking about it made me feel sick and I was torturing myself with emotional phrases like:

Broken home

Single Dad

Failed marriage

Poor start in life

Etc.

On the day I was going to start moving out I steeled myself to tell him that I was going and that he would be living half the time with his Mum and half the time with me. I did so but this really didn’t seem to phase him so, thinking that he wasn’t really grasping it, I told him again, wording things a little differently. He still didn’t freak out the way I expected him to.  His Mum was also explaining things to him but he remained quite calm. The thing that did provoke a reaction was telling him that I was moving into a house a few streets away – because he wanted to go and have a look! Within ten minutes he was walking around the house and had picked out what was going to be his bedroom….

Although the big anticipated meltdown never happened, myself and his Mum braced ourselves in case there was a backlash a few days later when the reality had sunk in a bit more. It never really arrived. The only real difficulty was when a kid at school told him that “divorce is when you have to choose between living with your Mum or Dad and you don’t see the other again”. It’s sad that some children are put into that situation and that is their understanding of the process.

Obviously not all children will react the same way but I would like my experience to offer a ray of hope that, if you are in this situation, your kids might handle the news better than you think. To sum up some lessons learnt on communicating with your children during separation and divorce:

Tell the truth when it’s appropriate to do so. I think that kids have pretty good radar for sensing when things aren’t right and they stress if they KNOW things aren’t right but no-one will talk to them about it. That’s as frustrating for kids as it is for us. Obviously you don’t need to hold a conference with your children over every emotional up and down you have in your life but if something big is happening then you should explain it to them carefully in words they will understand.

Reassure them that they aren’t the problem. Kids need to know that they aren’t to blame for their parents getting divorced. Reassure them that although things might have gone wrong with the grown-up’s marriage this has no effect on how much they are loved and it wasn’t their fault. Give them a reason as to why the divorce is happening, something easy to understand like “Mum and Dad aren’t making each other happy any more”.

Do not involve kids in any battles with your ex-partner. No matter how justified you may feel, don’t bad mouth your ex in front of your children. This sort of conflict is very harmful to kids and, besides, why would you want to take away the good feelings that THEY have towards their Mum, Dad, Step-parent?

Be around and available to talk. When I had just moved into “my” new home I made sure that I was around as much as possible and that a lot of familiar routines got established straight away. That seemed to help – so did involving him in things like kitting out his new bedroom. I’m sure kids will deal with this differently as they try to make sense of what is happening so be available if they need to talk.

Your emotions. This is just my opinion here but I don’t think that kids need to see their parents crying and grieving all the time – divorce or no divorce. Young children often think that parents are some kind of super-beings who always know what to do so it must be alarming for them to see us sobbing away. If you are going through divorce and separation you will doubtless be feeling some emotional pain but I would certainly limit how much you let your children see of this. It’s alright for them to see that you are sad but they still need to know that everything is “normal”.

As life has gone on, communicating with my son has become a habitual thing and it has certainly helped out with our family life. Before my wife moved in with us I had a talk with him and asked him how he felt about it and he was fine – such a relief compared to some of the difficulties I’ve heard about with the whole “family-blending” thing. I’m not saying that communication alone allows you avoid any of life’s difficulties but it has certainly helped us three muddle through!

I can’t begin to estimate how many hours I have spent sitting side by side with him on the couch, in the car or on a plane just chatting and passing the time of day (or singing along to the radio). He is good company and, like all kids, his conversational skills improved the more he practised them and I really enjoy talking with him. Making a genuine effort to communicate with your kids no matter what the circumstances is an investment that really pays off for everyone.

Hope this helps.

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I read this article on Derren Brown’s Blog but I am posting the link to the source article here for your convenience. Basically the article describes how scientists have found that asking yourself questions via your “self talk” motivates you more effectively than telling yourself you can do it. Basically its a case of “will I?” being a lot more effective than “I will”.

There are a heap of similar articles on self help themes but from a scientific / academic point of view.

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When you think of Clint Eastwood – who turns 80 tomorrow – it’s unlikely you associate him with self-help. It would be difficult to imagine Dirty Harry cultivating an “attitude of gratitude” or the anti-hero “man with no name” working on a list of well thought-out goals (unless it was a list of people to kill) but there are some recurring  themes in his life and works that are very familiar to people who are into self help and personal development. So, as a salute to Clint Eastwood good self help stuff offers you these thoughts on the world’s coolest 80 year old.

Managing your own career on your own terms

Even the quickest look at Clint’s career shows that he has not allowed other people to dictate what he can and cannot do. His first break was to become a regular in the TV series “Rawhide” but was criticized as being a good-looking lightweight who would not progress, however, he proved the doubters wrong when he made the switch to starring in Western movies. When they said that westerns are all he would ever do he made the switch to modern day action hero in the “Dirty Harry” movies and when he was typecast as a brooding tough guy he turned up in comedies like “Every Which Way But Loose” (co-starring with an orangutan, an inspired move!). As a director, Clint has made a remarkably broad range of movies – who would ever have thought he could come up “The Bridges of Madison County”? – and he has never let others decide what kind of movies he should make.

Dealing with setbacks

Clint Eastwood has made many hugely successful movies but he’s made some real flops too. You would have thought that movies like “Pink Cadillac”, “FireFox” and “Paint Your Wagon” are enough to have dented anyone’s self-belief but the great things about Clint Eastwood’s approach is that he always bounces back from a setback with another good movie. He quickly moves on from “failed” projects and comes up with something new. It’s as if his approach is “if you’re going to make great movies – make a LOT of movies”.

Take calculated risks

It would have been very easy for Clint to have stayed in the western genre and pumped out cowboy movies for the rest of his career but instead of taking the safe & easy option he has consistently taken risks. Sometimes they don’t come off but he has never been cowed into being typecast.

Be true to yourself

Whilst many of his movies have been panned by the critics and others  you strongly get the feeling that he has always made the movies that personally interest him and damn what anyone else thinks about it. The great thing about Clint Eastwood is that he has persevered and out-worked the people who have criticized him and he has remained “who he is” regardless of whether it is popular at that time or not.

It’s cool to be a man

OK this one doesn’t turn up very often in the literature but it should do! And Clint is a walking object lesson in masculinity.

One last remark – I find it hard to come up with just one favourite Clint Eastwood movie but, if pushed, I would have to say “The Outlaw Josey Wales” – what’s yours?

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I recently reviewed Joe Navarro’s excellent book “What Everybody is Saying” and I have been viewing some of his “Art of Influence” videos here on YouTube.

Having read the book, its interesting to see him in person and see what HIS body language is like!

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Earlier this year I posted blogs about giving up caffeine and also giving up reading  & watching the news. After trialling this for a few months I can’t really say that it has brought any real benefits and, if anything, it just deprived me of a couple of life’s simple pleasures so I’ve decided to go back to how I was before.

I’ve started drinking tea & coffee again (although a lot less than before) and it’s good to be back! I can’t see any harm in having a cuppa and there are probably some benefits to drinking it in moderation so I decided that giving it up wasn’t worth the aggravation.

In my blog about the news in all honesty I didn’t even really convince myself that avoiding the news would actually do you that much good. I also mentioned my on-again-off-again interest in politics and current affairs and I started to find it irritating that I didn’t know what was going on in the world. Unless you develop an obsessive interest in particularly depressing news I can’t really see the harm in having an interest in what’s going on in the wider world.

Even though I don’t think either of these “self denials” was worth carrying on with I am pleased that I had the self discipline to trial doing without them. Now it’s time to put the kettle on and wade through the Sunday paper!

goodselfhelpstuff.com – giving things up so you don’t have to….

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Wouldn’t it be great if you could receive a postcard from a future version of yourself assuring you that everything turned out fine and you were in for a great time?  How would you feel if you somehow got some unexpected good news from your own future? I can certainly remember times in my life when I could have used some encouragement and a bit of reassurance that things were going to get better! If you were able to send a “postcard to your past” what would you send?

Firstly, I’d like you to identify a time in your past when you were feeling down. This could be a time following a particularly sad incident or a period when things weren’t going too well for you in general terms. When we are feeling really miserable it becomes difficult to visualize things ever changing for the better. Pick one of those times.

Now take some time to identify three really good, positive events or experiences that you have had since then. Spend a bit of time doing this and really bring these to mind, reliving all the happy memories that these arouse. These three happy events are your “postcards” that you can mail to the “you” that was going through the sad time (you can use “video-diary” entries instead if you prefer). Now put them into the cosmic postal delivery system (!)

Imagine the past version of yourself, struggling with crappy circumstances, how would receiving these happy postcards make you feel? How would your outlook on life change?

I thought back to the time when I was newly separated and had just moved into a rented house (with about six items of furniture!). I was about ten thousand miles away from home and I could feel every one of those miles. Back then I was struggling with life and I felt pretty sure that I would be on my own for a long, long time. Divorced and unhappy. How nice it would have been to receive a picture of my wedding day and know that I would be happily married in three years time! What a relief it would have been to receive a note saying “Don’t worry – it all works out fine!”

I find this exercise of mapping your happy experiences onto times when you were feeling miserable is a great way to encourage the habit of looking for the good in life and reminding you that bad times don’t last. It also make you wonder if there aren’t some more great “postcards to the past” that are going to come your way.

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Several years ago I had a health assessment done which gave me quite a shock. The results told me that I had very high cholesterol levels, my diet wasn’t great and I wasn’t at all fit – this is not good news for men heading towards their 40’s. Statistically, it’s actually very bad news (as anyone selling life insurance knows). So, feeling a bit panicked by it all, I resolved to do something about it and flung myself into a dieting and exercising regime. I remember throwing out a lot of food from the refrigerator (goodbye ice-cream!), buying a bike and planning a lifestyle that would help me to turn the results around and secure my health. I had visions of a few months hard work and self-denial and then getting a new set of test results which showed I had returned to a state of “being healthy”. Job done.

This approach – a big overreaction and a belief that I could “get back” my healthiness – wasn’t particularly successful. On the plus side, it was better than doing nothing but the lingering belief that I could take action, return to “health” and then maybe drift back into my old habits wasn’t a good one. What I was shying away from was committing to making healthy choices regularly, most of the time on an ongoing basis.

For me, good health is not a question of reaching a future goal like running a marathon or having a good health assessment, it’s more about making the small but correct choices “now”. And it’s always “now”, in case you hadn’t guessed! Much better to focus on the process of being healthy rather than some imagined end result.

With happiness too – there is a common misconception that it is something that we can “own”, “achieve” or “reach” in some way. As if we can put a final tick on our happiness to-do list and say “right, I’ve done it all so now I can be happy!” Of course, this is misguided thinking because there is no end-point you can reach where, after your long years of struggle, you will be transformed into a happy person.

There is a lot in my life that I feel great about already but, like most people, I’ve got a shopping list of things I’d like out of life and it includes:

Having enough money so I don’t have to work 9-5 in a “traditional” job anymore.
Owning a cottage by the sea in Whitby on the Yorkshire Coast.
Driving a VW Golf R32 car
Having a book of photography published
Driving around Australia
Having a long holiday in the USA

If someone were to wave a magic wand and give me all these things I have no doubt that I would be happy for a while. Very happy in fact! But, after a while, the novelty would wear off and I know that I would return to whatever “base level” of happiness I was at before I got all these new things and experiences. Chances are I would probably start working on a NEW list of things to want so I could continue to postpone happiness until I got THOSE things too!!!

So if there is no end-point – no relationship or house or dream holiday that is going to guarantee of happiness – what will? Basically, choosing to be happy – or ALLOWING yourself to be happy now. Being grateful for what you already have, counting your blessings, noticing the small things that go right or add something of value to your life.

Both health and happiness are what you do; they are how you’re travelling not  some far off destination.

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I firmly believe that we are capable of more than we think we are. I believe that most people have more resources than they are aware of – that they are stronger, kinder, more innovative and more talented than they perceive themselves to be. So what stops this potential being realized? What gets in the way of these talents and stops them flowing from the inside to the outside world?

Unfortunately, a lot of the time the answer is that “we do”.

1) A variety of fear-based beliefs prevent us from realizing our potential and doing what we need to do. These can take the form of:

2) Lack of self-belief – maybe we don’t even RECOGNIZE the abilities we have within us.

3) Fear of failure – by not trying and staying in our comfortable rut will be kept safe and free from ridicule.

4) Too busy – we are simply too busy and pulled in so many different directions that we just can’t give anymore.

5) Panic – the fear of not achieving something sends us into a tailspin and makes us even less effective.

I remember being at the gym sometimes last year, labouring away on the treadmill and watching the bank of three TV’s at the front of the room. Most of the time they show re-runs of M*A*S*H  but on this day we were treated to rather extensive coverage of an Australian TV celebrities’ fall from grace. This guy was that kind of “radio shock-jock” cum serial TV show guest that you get a lot of these days – anyway he had made some particularly ill-judged remarks on air and was now being fired from shows and losing sponsors left, right and centre. I forget the actual figure but it was costing him well over a million dollars. The consensus of opinion on the treadmills was “how can an oaf like that be earning so much money?” I guess the answer is that at some point in his life he decided he SHOULD be earning so much money and that then devoted his time to doing so. He probably didn’t spend too much time doing all the same old things that guaranteed he would only be pulling in $50,000 dollars a year instead.

So, belief and confidence can be pre-requisites for getting more out of yourself but for people struggling with a lack of self-belief it’s not quite that simple. It’s unlikely that someone who has being struggling with a lack of confidence for thirty years will say “hey, thanks for pointing out things would be better if I just had more confidence – I’ll go and do that then”. And the next time you run into them they are starring in a West End musical…

Self belief can be hard won and for some people it is a lifelong battle. A short-cut to confidence that I have found useful is this:

“If you CAN’T do it then be someone who CAN.”

This means that you can “borrow” the approach of someone else to a particular task or challenge and deal with it in the way that they would. By doing this you can approach things more laterally and access the resources that you already possess. Let me share a personal example, not an earth-shaking one but it demonstrates the point.

Recently at work I was going through a particularly busy patch; I had budgets, audits and staff review to complete all to short timescales. Then I caught a cold and tried to muddle through this work when it felt that my head was full of cotton wool. This all got a bit overwhelming and I was starting to feel some low-grade panic when I thought about it all! I was definitely not in what they call “a resourceful state”. The next morning, before  I went to work, I sat down and thought about how different people would approach my situation and how they would find a way through it. I imagined a highly paid and respected business consultant coming into my work just to address my situation. This is what I came up with…

A) Their approach would be calm, confident and methodical. It was obvious that they were in charge of the situation and there was no doubt that they would see this process through to the end.

B) The first thing they did, even before they turned on their PC, was to make a simple list of everything that needed doing. Once it was all down on paper they then numbered the tasks in order of priority.

C) They then rang around the people who were expecting the work to be done to confirm what the deadlines were and whether they could be extended. They didn’t do his from a position of weakness; they weren’t pleading for more time, just confirming the requirements and assessing whether that amount of work would fit into the schedule. If it wouldn’t then the dates would have to change and people were likely to respond to this because they were dealing with somebody who was obviously in charge of what was going on.

D) They then took their list and made a schedule of what they would work on and for how long. Rather than hopping from task to task and wasting time worrying about how time was running out they calmly worked on one thing at a time for a set period.

E) To reduce the amount of interruptions they closed the office door, put the phone on divert, STILL didn’t read those disruptive emails (they could be addressed later).When people did interrupt they were dealt with politely and firmly.

F) Throughout the day they worked methodically, making steady progress on each of the tasks. They were aware that some would not be complete by the end of the day but that was expected as they had scheduled some of them to carry over into the next day.

So when I arrived at work that day I already had a blueprint of what to do. The panic and frustration just evaporated because I had a plan in place and I could visualize how the whole day was going to go. The point I am making here is that I already KNEW what to do and how to do it – I had the resources but I couldn’t get to them because the anxiety was getting in the way. By just stopping, drawing breath and imagining how someone ELSE would approach the same problem I was able to hack into those resources and solve my own difficulties. Clearly being the “me” that was paralyzed through too many jobs wasn’t doing the business so I “became” someone who COULD do it.

Have you any “hacks” that you use to get yourself into a confident state or to overcome problems? Please comment below if you have a tip that you would like to share.

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I recently read something by Michael Neill which I long suspected to be true. He said that, once in a while, there is a lot of value in taking a break from “self-development” and just taking time out to enjoy yourself without wondering what it all means. This has great intuitive appeal: after all you can physically overtrain and end up retarding your progress so why not acknowledge that you can “overdevelop” yourself in other ways?

Depending on how central self-help is to your life you might be doing one, more or all of the following:

Working towards clear, well thought-out goals.
Watching what you eat so you can get down to a target weight.
Watching what you drink or stopping smoking.
Exercising (more) regularly
Monitoring and improving your internal dialogue
Asking yourself some empowering questions every morning
Giving thanks for five things every night
And so on.

So, in the spirit of taking a break, me and my wife went up to the Burswood Hotel Casino last weekend to get away from it all. We actually became members of the casino (for free), mostly to get discounts on meals and rooms and, as a little bonus; we received a free $5 bet each. After an all-you-can-eat buffet meal we wandered (or should that read “waddled”) around the casino for a while and then, remembering the free bet, my wife decided to put a $5 bet on at roulette. Having never played the game before she placed her solitary red $5 chip on number 21 and promptly won $175 dollars! Now we have all heard tiresome and far-fetched stories from people who claim to have come out ahead at the casino but, I swear, this one is true. Her one (free) bet netted us $175 (notice how I start saying “us” when it comes to the money?)

I am sure that some people will attribute this to the “law of attraction” or a cosmic reward whilst others, of a more practical mindset, will say that 35 to 1 bet coming up in casino is really not that big a deal and by no means unlikely. It doesn’t matter. We were on our break and didn’t care why it happened but it did pay for a rather nice dinner and breakfast!

When we arrived home on Monday it was back to the gym, the books and the goals but, I’ll tell you what, the break worked. Try it for yourself.

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Hiroo Onoda was a Japanese soldier who was sent to conduct guerilla warfare on Lubang Island towards the end of World War II. Onoda left Japan (aged 23) under strict instructions to never surrender, never commit suicide and to fight on for as long as it took to overcome the enemy. As instructed, he lived in the jungles of Lubang and conducted an ongoing campaign but, such was his total commitment to the cause, when the war ended in October 1945 Onoda refused to believe it. Reasoning that it must all be a hoax he continued to live rough and carry on his personal war, despite all of his colleagues dying and numerous attempts to convince him that it was all over. Finally, after his original commanding officer was flown over to convince him in person, Onoda surrendered in 1974, some 29 years after the war had ended. He was 52 years old.

I mention this because a lot of us have some of Onoda’s mindset inasmuch as we continue to fight wars that ended a long time ago (often persevering in the face of all the evidence). For instance, there are people who overeat compulsively because they went hungry as children, there are people who hoard money, fearful that there will never be “enough”, people who have a suspicious and fearful outlook on life because they were hurt many years ago etc. Often a particular set of circumstances or an unpleasant experience at some point in life can generate a particular belief that tries to keep you “safe” in the future. If you have grown up poor you may have unhelpful beliefs about money because you know what the lack of money can feel like. This can drive people to accumulate and save money to keep them safe from the lack of it BUT the “enough” switch never gets tripped so that they feel satisfied. Despite having pots of money, the war goes on.

The thing about beliefs is that they want to endure. Whereas an opinion can be modified by new or better information a belief is more deeply held and more resistant to change – it KNOWS it is right and will carry on to the end. Another common characteristic of beliefs is that they become so deeply embedded and automatic that you scarcely know you have them! They act like a filter through which we see the world and, of course, we see the world we are looking at, not the filter itself (which we ignore).

Take a good look at an area of your life that you are not comfortable with and start to examine what your beliefs are and whether they are helping or hindering you. Questioning these beliefs and discarding them if necessary can be the first step to adopting a more positive mindset and changing life for the better. After all, you wouldn’t want to emerge blinking from the jungle to find out that you have been fighting the wrong war for half your life…

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