Dreams and how to interpret them

Most people are intrigued by the dreams they have in their sleeping hours. They seem to provide a glimpse into that subconscious self that drives our actions.

Just recently my own dreams have become vibrant, technicolour masterpieces of outlandish events and situations.

Some are clearly driven by the anxieties of the everyday life, whilst other seems to be carrying a deeper message if I can only just grasp what that message is. This prompted me to go to the bookshelf and pull out a book that I bought second-hand in California some years ago.

The book seems to provide some insights into the situations perceived in the dreams and has in the past been a useful tool for me to uncover the kind of personal blocks that hinder personal development and progress.

The book in question is called Dreams - Your Magic Mirror by Elsie Sechrist. My edition was published by Cowles in 1968 and since it has been useful for me I wondered if it was still in print; it is and is available from Amazon through the graphic link below.

The book contains dream interpretations from the American psychic Edgar Cayce. Now I have a reasonable degree of skepticism about most things psychic but this particular book does seem to be a very considerable cut above the average 'Dream' book you'll find. The Amazon reviews seem to indicate that other people have found it useful too. (It gets 4 out of 5 stars from the reviews).

There are both lists of dream elements and what they my symbolize and short stories where dreams are interpreted by Cayce. One thing I have noted in the past, is that is sometimes easier to interpret the dreams of another person than it is your own. My guess is that the other person is more dispassionate and possibly more truthful (don't we always lie to our self first?) than the dreamer would be.

So if your own dream life is intriguing you and you would like to find out more, I recommend this book very highly.

An off topic post

I am just gob smacked (good British term) by what is going on at present.

I don't mean the bank bailouts or the stupendous pension for a failed banker, no this is much closer to home.

Just like lots of other people my personal finances are being squeezed right now. The bill are going up (in spite of what the inflation numbers say) and income is going down.

So keeping enough money in the bank to keep the wolf from the door is a challenge. So last month the Credit card company changed its rules about how much it would take as as direct debit (it is now a higher % of the balance) with the result that my payment increased by £45 per month...result, I breach my overdraft.

The bank immediately withdrew the whole overdraft facilty.

Outcome = 3 bounced direct debits until I managed to get the overdraft reinstated.

OK. This month bank hits me 3 X £30 charges plus interest for breaching the overdraft. That's bad enough but then to add insult to injury they take away the overdraft facility AGAIN.

Why? Because their bank charges (not my spending) took me over my overdraft limit.

Still with me? The bank broke my overdraft limit!

It gets worse.

Because they again withdrew my facility, another 3 payments (so far) were bounced. These of course will be charged to me at another 3 X £30 plus interest. Not to mention the embarrassment I feel to those I wrote cheques to.

The way it looks to me is that a £45 error caused in part by a change by a credit card company, will cost me over £200. Most of that is going to my bank for their charges. By the way, that is about a 10% tax on the regular money that goes in. 10% in 2 months or about 60% if it is annualised! This feels like theft.

Moral of the story 1: Banks are still money grubbing parasitic fiefdoms no matter how cosy their adverts seem on the TV.

Moral of the story 2: The minute that you have a loan or overdraft at a bank (or building society) you are a debt slave. I guess that means most of us, but there has to be a much better way than this to trade goods and services. Bartering anyone?

Does hypnosis help you stop smoking?

I was called by a local newspaper recently to ask if I wanted to take part in their National No Smoking Day advertising campaign. No Smoking Day is on the 11th of March and in the past this would have been an easy choice to make; just say yes and sort out the advert. But I didn't do this and in a moment I'll explain why.

Many people are aware that hypnosis is by far the most effective way to become a non-smoker...as long as it is done well. Part of the problem with any quit smoking method is effectively measuring the results. With so many variables to work with it is difficult to know how effective each method is.

Typically hypnosis is believed to have about a 30% effectiveness when it has been measured in the past. This compares with a 3-5% success rate by going cold turkey. In my own practice I believe my success rate is around 70-75%, though admittedly this is not a scientific measurement.

Some time ago I was taken to task by an NHS quit smoking adviser for promoting hypnosis as an aid to stopping smoking. She explained that in her NHS work she had seen a number of people for whom hypnosis had not been successful. And yet if a drug was useful 30% of the time it would be hailed as a success. The conversation was interesting (and rather testy at times), Smoking advisers are paid per client by the NHS regardless of outcome so you might say we were competitors in the market.

During this exchange of views (that happened by email) I explained that hypnosis forms one part of what I do in a quit smoking session, I also use counseling, audio CDs and EFT. The effect was magical when I mentioned EFT; "Oh that's a wonderful method...but they won't let me use it in NHS sessions".

So in the end I had an admission from an NHS quit smoking adviser that there were better methods than she used to help a person become a non-smoker than those used by the NHS.

So back to the story of the advert; did I spend money and book it? No. Because there is simply no way a single therapist can compete with an NHS budget in millions. Trying to fight that battle is the road to ruin.

But if you do want to become a non-smoker, a combination of hypnosis and EFT is just about the most effective way to go.

Is emotional need driving diabetes surge?

Once again we are hearing news reports about how type 2 diabetes is surging in the UK becoming more like the USA and Canada.

According to the BBC

From 1997 to 2003 there was a 74% rise in new cases of diabetes.

And by 2005, more than 4% of the population was classed as having diabetes - nearly double the rate of 10 years earlier.

This growing problem is driven by the increasing number of people who are overweight or obese. Our love of fast foods that are often fatty and fried together with a much less active lifestyle have led to us piling on the pounds and so driving the increase in type 2 diabetes. (Type 1 diabetes is a heredity condition that affects insulin production in the body.)

But is there another story here? I think so.

In my one to one work with clients who wanted to lose weight the most common theme was that of emotions driving eating patterns. Often I have found that low self esteem and low level depression lead to changes in eating patterns. It seems that in a strange way we are trying to feed our positive emotions by snacking and eating sweet or fatty foods.

These types of foods are exactly the ones we find most satisfying to eat. The satisfaction is partly down to our hunter gatherer history, in our cave man/woman past, fatty and sweet foods were hard to come by but very necessary for our survival through the cold winter months. So we developed a strong appreciation for foods like these that survives until the modern day. The difference now is that fatty and sweet foods are very easy and cheap to find, meaning that we are more likely to eat them more often.

So in a way we get an emotional boost from eating these foods and given the stress and anxiety that many people suffer with today it's no surprise that this feels good to do. Until we get on the scales that is and discover that it is easier to gain weight than it is to let it go.

So are we destined to be type 2 diabetes victims? No, not if we recognize that there are better ways to deal with negative emotions than eating.

So if you have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes it is not just your diet that will need to change but also the way in which you deal with your emotions. By finding more effective ways to deal with our emotions it will be much easier to deal with our increasing waistlines.

David Walliams on depression

BBC Radio 4 carries a long running program called Desert Islands Discs. The program invites the guest to take away their favourite recordings to an imaginary desert island.

Comedian David Walliams recently featured on the show and as well as talking about the music he spoke candidly about is struggles with depression and self esteem.

The depression has been a feature of his life since childhood and comedy was one way of attempting to deal with it. Perhaps what is even more interesting is that in spite of sometimes severe depression he has been spectacularly successful in his career with the hit show Little Britain which also stars Matt Lucas.

Depression and its compatibility with the workplace is a hot topic at the moment with TV adverts in the UK reminding viewers that nursing legend Florence Nightingale suffered with depression; and still made huge changes to the practice of nursing.

Although depression may be compatible with a sucessful career it seems that many employers would prefer not to take the risk. On the Desert Island Discs show Walliams was asked what luxury item he would take with him, he replied he would take a gun to shoot himself in case he got too lonely. Perhaps it's easy to understand why employers are reluctant to take the chance when each job opening has so many applicants; but that still does not necessarily make it the right decision.

Have you updated your emotional CV recently?

You may, like many other people, have recently updated your work CV (Resume) just in case changing employment patterns make your job redundant. You will of course highlight all the achievements in your career and minimise those events and jobs that look less than ideal.

At the end of your update you will have a document that reflects the best aspects of your work career and the achievements you have been responsible for. When sending this out to prospective employers you are presenting the best possible aspect of yourself to maximise the opportunity to secure a new job role.

But have you ever thought about the state of your emotional CV? Have you ever applied the refining techniques from your CV to your emotional life? Old traumas often hang around as emotionally draining memories that decrease our ability to deal with new situations.

So those old emotional events that we still carry with us can be real blocks to our progress in both our work life and our personal life.

Perhaps now is the time to reflect on the emotional barriers that have blocked you in the past from achieving all that can. The techniques that you can adopt to deal with old emotional traumas can be as simple as writing out a mini biography and deciding what to keep and what to let go of. Taking time to reflect on each event can enable you to decide whether a particular situation is helping you or blocking your progress.

If you feel that a particular event is stuck, that you are unable to let go of it through reflection and the mini biography, then an alternative is called for. A self hypnosis recording can help, The Symbol is one that was specifically developed for those mental blocks. Click here for more information. Change techniques such as hypnosis and NLP can also help you let go of the barriers to progress.

Now how are those CVs looking? Work one OK emotional one needs work? Now is the time to start!

Can you really change your life with Auto-suggestion?

This was originally posted as an on-line article but I thought that it would be useful to repeat here as a follow on to my previous blog on stress and anxiety.

Affirmations or auto suggestions are simple positive statements that can be repeated each day to strengthen your resolve and make positive personal change. They are (or should be!) healing, positive self-scripts you give to yourself to counter your negative self-programming (or the programming of others). They are vehicles by which you can free yourself from the over-dependence on other's opinions, attitudes, or feelings about you and so lead to you feeling great about yourself.

Émile Coué (pictured above left) was the French Psychologist and Pharmacist who came up with the expression "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better". Coué began by noticing that in certain cases he could improve the efficacy of a medicine simply by praising its effectiveness to the patient.

He realised that those patients to whom he praised the medicine had a marked improvement over those patients to whom he said nothing. This began Coué’s exploration of the use of hypnosis and the power of the imagination in the earliest decades of the 20th century.

The use of Auto-suggestion or Affirmations is a way for you to take personal responsibility for your health and emotional stability. Affirmations provide you with a way to let go of negative emotional baggage you have been carrying. Affirmations are a way to give you permission to grow, to change, to take risks, to really create a better life for yourself.

An affirmation is always a positive statement of what you want to happen. It is a “success prophecy”. (The use of negative words like won’t, don’t and can’t in your affirmation tend to lead to weak changes or no change at all; phrase the affirmation only in the positive for the very best effect.)

Some books suggest always using the term “I am …” when starting with an affirmation but I have found this can be counter productive. Saying “I am getting thinner each day” whilst staying the same size tends to lead to disillusionment.

I have found it more helpful to begin for the first few days or even longer with “I will…”.

“I will” examples might include:

• I will like myself better each day.
• I will gain emotional strength each day.
• I will lose half a pound in weight each day.
• I will choose to be a natural non-smoker.
• I will avoid spending time around smokers
• I will control my temper today.
• I will grow emotionally stronger each day.
• I will praise my children today.
• I will feel good things about me today.
• I will sleep easily tonight.
• I will feel less guilt each day.
• I will face my fears with courage today.
• I will take on only what I can handle today.

When you actually start doing that new thing, being a non-smoker for example, you can use the “I am” version as in the examples below.

• I am a natural non smoker
• I am living a healthier and happier life.
• I am choosing to eat more healthily.
• I am choosing to exercise regularly.
• I am dealing easily with the stress in my life.

When should I say them?
Use the quiet times in your life to say the affirmation. Take an extra couple of minutes in the bathroom in the morning to look at yourself in the mirror and say your affirmation. If mornings are too busy, make some time for yourself in the early evening when you will not be interrupted. Unplug the phone, turn off the mobile and make some time for you!

Yes, it might feel silly the first time you do this, but no one is looking or listening so go right ahead and say the affirmation. Say each affirmation ten times. In the beginning, you will probably struggle to say it with meaning, but that’s still OK. It will impress the idea on your subconscious where through the repetition the idea will be absorbed and acted upon.

Choose simple statements like:

• I feel calm and confident at work
• I am free of smoking forever
• I have all the confidence I need

You can create your own affirmation to suit your individual needs. Affirmations work best when you give yourself the time to integrate changes into your life. Three weeks often seems to be the magical length of time needed to really make the changes you want.

Repetition has a power to carry a positive message deep into your unconscious part of mind. Stick with it and make affirmations part of your daily routine, you'll find that the changes you want will happen.

This really shouldn't be a surprise

The recession is causing anxiety and stress.
The ongoing recession is causing a rise in the number of people going to their family doctor to deal with stress and anxiety.

Reports from many different parts of the media essentially all confirm the same story, that a recession is bad for our mental well being. The worry about whether we will be the next victim of redundancy and the concern about how one might pay the bills lead to a feeling of being permanently stressed. All this on top of actually trying to perform a job in the worst market conditions for many for decades.
A medical response?
For many people this will prompt a visit to the family doctor to help deal with the issue. Those visits to the GP (family doctor) are likely to lead to a chemical approach to deal with the symptoms of the problem. Beta Blockers and anti-depressants are often the first response to this stress and yet this will not solve the underlying problem, to a greater or lessor degree it will only relieve the symptoms.

Is there an alternative?
When faced with overwhelming pressure or anxiety there a few ways to deal with it effectively:
Ask yourself
1) Can you change the situation?
if not, can you...
2) Move away from the problem?
if not can you...
3) Change the way you think about the situation?

In the current financial climate it is often only option 3 that is open to us but without some tools to help, this approach can feel daunting.

A useful start can be made by learning a useful way to relax in spite of the difficulties. A self hypnosis recording is one way to achieve this and I have put one of my recordings online for you to download. Visit my www.gift4life.com website and enter your email address to get the MP3 relaxation download.

A useful start
Listening to the recording once or even twice a day can allow you to find a more resourceful state to begin the next phase of dealing with pressure . More on this approach tomorrow when I'll talk about a practical approach to the use of affirmations.

Can a pill erase bad memories

The Daily Mail newspaper yesterday carried as its main story an item that discussed the possibilities of erasing bad memories by using beta-blocker drugs.

Researchers in Holland exposed two groups of volunteers to a painful experience of seeing a spider whilst being subjected to mild electric shocks. When subjected to the same image a second time the group who had taken the beta blockers showed a reduced startle response.

This test is a long way off from the memory erasing techniques of the film "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" (see the picture above) but it does prompt some interesting questions.

If we remove old memories does that make us less of a person? Do we risk losing our ability to learn from negative experiences if we have them erased?

Is this simply a new way to sell drugs?
It may be that some would see this as a market to sell drugs into, drug companies seem to do there best to medicalise everyday life experiences. There are effective alternatives though, even for difficult problems like PTSD (Post traumatic stress disorder). Thought Field Therapy or the related Emotional Freedom Technique can both be used to remove the negative emotional aspect of a memory without attempting to remove the memory itself.

If emotional trauma is still affecting your life following a difficult event then do give one of these techniques a try. They often provide very effective results in a relatively short period of time.

Do you have aviatophobia?

A phobic response to flying
The recent crash of an airliner in suburban Buffalo, New York may have sparked underlying anxiety from those with a fear of flying.

Although this fear is very common most people manage to make their flight without too many difficulties. In other words they have a fear of flying (or more usually a fear of crashing) rather than a phobic response. A flying phobic would not fly not matter what inducement was given.

Actually that's a useful (non-medical) way to determine is a person is phobic about a situation or simply has a strong fear; would you do X for a £1Million? If a person says yes then it's a strong fear, if they say no regardless of the amount of money then you have a phobia.

In the CNN article linked here, mention is made of using hypnosis to reduce the anxiety and even remove the phobia. The article seems to suggest that even seeing stories on the news about aircraft crashing can trigger off the extreme fear response.

It's worth noting that a fear of flying can also be a disguised form of claustrophobia or even fear of loss of control.

Anyone tempted to try hypnosis for a phobia would do well to find a practitioner who has been trained in Tom Silver's Emotion Replacement Therapy. This hypnosis based technique links the fear to physical body movements whilst in a hypnotic session to effectively let go of the phobic response.

I have found that with the right client ERT has an astounding ability to allow the client to let go of the negative emotion and replace it with feelings of calmness and event comfort.

I'll post a link to a video if I can find it for you. Tom Silver is based in California but he has trained students from around the world in the ERT method .

Why are 'Misery Memoirs' so popular?

My wife returned from a shopping trip yesterday that included looking through the book section at the local supermarket. They carry a wide range of the current best sellers and she was looking for some escapist fiction to brighten her day.

But on reviewing the back covers of the books on sale, she found that many of them were sorry tales of an abusive childhood or deeply depressing stories of personal pain and loss. Hardly what one might describe as light reading.

So why are these books in the best seller lists? What is so compelling about witnessing another's pain through reading their life story?

I can understand how writing about a personal experience can lead to healing. Follow this link to the BBC web site for a commentary on the same subject in which Toni Maguire puts her view.

Toni Maguire, author of the top-selling paperback Don't Tell Mummy, in which she writes of her abuse at the hands of her father, said in a recent interview it was "difficult going back over the past, but writing helped me deal with the past. If readers take one thing away from reading the book I'd like it to be that they normalise the victim. People have got to realise that it is not shameful to be a victim", said Maguire.

So it's easy to understand the upside for the writer but it still doesn't fully explain the popularity for the reader. Is it because the reader compares the book with their own life and realises that maybe things are not so bad after all? Or is that we all look at other people's disasters like car accidents because we are strangely fascinated by the grotesque?

"It's not shameful to be a victim"
I agree with Toni Maguire that it's not shameful to be a victim, but whilst you are still in a victim mindset you are unlikely to ever find your true path in life. Being a permanent victim is time consuming and it puts the responsibility for your happiness in the hands of someone else, the perpetrator.

Recovery is about taking back the control of your life and that means no longer wearing the status of victim.

You become what you think about
So where is the problem with these misery memoirs if they help the writer and possibly help the reader?

There is an old adage that says you become what you think about and I believe there is a lot of truth in that saying. If you read about misery then you will think about misery, if you think about it you will start to live it.

And in case you think I have overlooked the redemption that normally occurs at the end of these books you may wish to consider this; does reading about redemption for 5 pages outweigh the time spent reading about misery and suffering for 295 pages? I tend to think not.

Misery memoirs? Leave them on the shelf and find yourself something uplifting from start to finish. What about that old favourite Chicken Soup For The Soul.

Do you keep a diary?

Keeping a diary is something that many people do in their teen years as they transition through those turbulent and emotional times.

In adult years however, few keep a diary and it can be so useful as a way of understanding our own growth and personal development. Often the diary is a repository of unresolved feelings but what if you use it for your work or business life.

This post comes from the 4N business networking site:

As a resolution for 2009 I decided to keep a diary but instead of chatting to myself about life I decided to use it as a business diary.

So now I get out the fabbo pad I chose and my fountain pen and 'talk' through how i am feeling about business stuff - things i need to do, things that have gone well etc

It has lead to a lot more getting done, even sometimes putting down the pen and going and doing them right away as well as ideas germinating or getting thoughly pulled apart.

Won't work for everyone but my be worth a try especially if you are a sole trader.

Would be interested in hearing what happens if anyone else gives it a go

You can read the full post by following this link.

What a great idea, use a diary to reflect on your work life as a way of understanding where your personal and business barriers are. It will give you the perspective to deal more effectively with the challenging times that we live in at present.

Are we pushing too hard?

In recent times more children than ever before are being directed to my practice door. Normally the isssue is some form of anxiety and I can't help wondering if today we simply push children too hard.

Continuous testing for exams, peer pressure to conform as well as the expectations of parents all seem to come together to form a toxic blend that generates this anxiety.

It's unlikely that anyone of us will have the capability to change the way that our society is pushing children but we can give them a coping stategy.

I have found that for children of 9 to 14 years, teaching the child a simplified form of Gary Craig's Emotional Freedom Technique can be incredibly helpful. It provides a way to reduce fear and anxiety very quickly and easily at the point where the anxiety is experienced, for example as the child is about to sit an exam.

Or, just perhaps, we parents should learn to be more relaxed and less pushy with our children, it would certainly help.

Follow this link for much information direct from the EFT website. Why not give it a try, the resources are free.

Why do we dream?

"Why do we dream?" was the question posed by the BBC Horizon TV program last night. It was a fascinating program that investigated this most hidden of mysteries.

Many people are now aware that Rapid Eye Movement or REM periods during sleep indicate that a person is dreaming but now studies have shown that we also dream between these REM episodes. What was most interesting though was that the nature of the dreams in REM sleep appears to be different to the dreams in non-REM sleep.

When test subjects in REM sleep were woken up, their dreams seemed to be of a negative or doubting nature whilst when woken in the non-REM dream periods, the sleepers reported a greater number of positive emotions.

One researcher postulated that this may help explain some forms of depression. The idea being that a person with depression would be entering the REM stage of sleep more often and therefore staying in the negative mood for longer periods during sleep. Whether this is a cause of depression or a side effect of it was at least to this viewer unclear.

It was a fascinating program though, you can watch it again using the BBC iPlayer service (this may not work outside the UK). Follow this link for the program's iPlayer page.

Health and the harmonica

I talked about harmonicas yesterday and I found a snippet about how playing the instrument can help improve breathing for those with pulmonary conditions. It seems that playing the harmonica exercises all the right chest muscles to improve breathing.

Follow this link to check out the video story from a medical centre in the USA.

The power of music to heal

I have a love of music and especially the harmonica. It's not that I'm a great player (I'm not), but I enjoy the creativity of playing and the joy of listening to others play.

So I take an interest in other players and teachers on the web and one of those is Adam Gussow. He sells teaching products on line and has a testimonial page for those who have used his products. This testimonial really caught my attention

Hello Adam,

My name is Yohan and I live in Quebec, Canada, in a small city calles Ste-Sophie not to far from Montreal. I am writing this e-mail to say thank you for all the time you are taking and all the videos you are making for Youtube. I have a little story for you if you have the time to read it because my harmonica maybe saved a man’s life.

I am a paramedic here in Quebec and have been for 4 year now. I love my job and love to help people the best I can. Once in a while I even save a life. A few months ago I was looking an instrument to play. I’m not rich so I thought the harp would be nice and not to expensive. Not only that I can prictice on the job when I’m not on a call. I bought a C harp and started to listen to your videos on Youtube. The minute I started I loved playing and now the harp is always on me whereever I go. After a few months of playing I can say that I am an ADVANCED BEGINNER to INTERMEDIATE player. Now here is the story. A few weeks ago I was on the job and it was a boring day. It was raining and we had no calls. Me and my partner are just sitting in the ambulance on the verge of falling asleep. Finally the dispatch calls us for a man wanting to end his life and we are called to help the police who are already there. We get to the man’s house and all we hear is yelling. The police and man are almost fighting. The man who is in his late 50's does not want to go to the hospital and all he wants to do is die. As the man sees me and my partner walk in he is even more pissed off. The man is not armed he is just sitting in his couch and he dose not want to leave his house but he said he want to commit suicide. (I don’t know how it works in the states but here in Canada it is illegal do commit suicide and I can’t leave the man there knowing what he will do when I leave.) After 10 minutes of yelling between the police and the man, I reach in my pocket and pull out my harp. I look at it, bring it to my mouth and start playing... I started with Oh Suzanna and then other song that I learned by ear. When I started playing everyone stopped yelling. My partner was looking at me with this big question mark on his face saying what the hell are you doing? After a minute or so the police and the man had big smiles on their faces. Then I stopped playing put the harp away and everyone was looking at me. The man looks up at me and said that he had not smiled like that in years. I then tell him that music always dose that to me too and if he wants to talk about it on our way to the hospital I would love too. I did not think i would work but the man got up took his jacket kissed his wife and told her he would be back later. Everyone had the same question on their mind including me, what in the world just happed. All this yelling just few minutes ago, a little harp, and now everything is calm and the man is coming without a fight. As I sat with the man in the back of the Ambulance the man told me he use to play in a small band years back and me playing brought back lots of memories. We talk about other things for we had 45 minutes ride to the closed hospital. I told him he was not alone and dieing was not the only way out. When we got to the hospital the man thanked me. It was probably the most sincere thank you I ever got in my life. I will never forget the way that man looked and smiled at me. Did i really save his life? I dont know. Did he get help? I dont know. The only thing I know is that he did not do it on that day.

Well that is pretty much the story. I am not much of a storyteller so I told it the best that I could. From what I learned from you helped another man. I want to thank you again and keep up the good work!

--Yohan, Quebec

I could discuss how the music was a trigger that took him into a more resourceful state or talk about the power of music to heal, but I think the story itself is eloquent enough.

Can you repair and re-use your experience?

This morning I finally got around to looking at my HiFi CD player to see why it was not working correctly. It didn't take long to realise that one of the children had helpfully posted a 5p coin through the cooling slots of the case. I guess it looked just like a money box.

Coin extracted and dust removed, the CD played correctly and a big bill was avoided.

Today I also made the weekly visit top the local recycling facility (otherwise know as the 'dump') to drop off the cardboard and plastic containers that the local council will not take away on the recycling collection.

Whilst I was there I noticed the amount of electronic goods, some of them apparently quite new being tossed into the dumpster.

I'm sure that just as in my own case, some of this equipment could of have been repaired and re-used but we seem to have become the throw away society.

All this set me to thinking about how we use our experiences and how perhaps we dismiss past experience as being now longer of relevance. Just maybe though, instead of tossing that old experience into a virtual dumpster, it might pay you to dust it off and see if it can be reused in a new way.

Perhaps something you did for charity or fun in the past could be the basis of a new career. Perhaps a skill that you no longer use but still have could be taught to someone else?

Can you repair and reuse your experience in new and more profitable ways?

Do you really want to treat children this way?

I came across a quite horrific piece of reporting today when I discovered that Electro Convulsive Therapy is still being used and worse it is being used on children as young as 4 years old.

This brutal treatment has been in place since the 1930s and although it has been refined a little over the decades (with sedation to prevent the pain) it still seems analogous sticking a long needle into the brain, stirring it around and hoping for the best.

It is used by psychiatrists as a last resort when all other drug and talk based therapies have been exhausted, at least that's what I thought. This blog post seems to indicate that far from being a last resort it is being used routinely in Australia on young children.

ECT causes permanent brain damage, it destroys memory and cognition skills, are they really saying that this is the best way of dealing with a child?

It may be useful; to remember that doctors are fallible too and it's not that long ago they would recommend certain brands of cigarettes as being 'good for the chest'. In other words they get things wrong.

I struggle to believe that drugs or ECT are the only treatment options open to these children; what is their diet like, what is their family life like who is caring for them in the fullest sense of the word?

There really has to be a much better way than this.

Who needs to destress?

A while ago I produced a 7 minute de-stress video and launched it on both YouTube and Google video. You can see it here.

What is interesting is that YouTube has the ability to show the demographics of those who watch the videos (assuming people don't lie about their age and gender of course). Of those watching the video, 76% were male and 24% female, the vast majority of those watching were in the 45 to 54 year old age range.

I had assumed that the male / female ratio would have been flipped around the other way if I went by the ratio of clients in personal therapy.

I could theorize for hours on why this might be so but perhaps it is as simple as guys wanting to fix their problem for themselves and ladies being willing to work things out with the help of someone else.

I would welcome any insights into this from the blog readers.

Even more reasons to celebrate the sun

It has been recognized for some time that low light levels in the winter months can be responsible for lowered mood and even depression.

This syndrome even has a name SAD or Seasonal Affective Disorder and special lights can be bought that mimic the effect of natural sunlight.

Natural sunlight is also responsible for the production of vitamin D. This vitamin is responsible for strong bone growth and a lack of it can cause rickets. Recent research though also shows a very strong correlation between a lack of vitamin D and the onset of Multiple Sclerosis.

MS is a chronic, disabling neurodegenerative disease. It strikes most often during early adulthood and seems to affect women more than men.

According to the Times newspaper, there is now hard evidence to link the “sunshine vitamin” and a gene that increases the risk of MS, raising the possibility that the debilitating auto-immune disease could be eradicated.

George Ebers, Professor of Clinical Neurology at the University of Oxford, claimed that there was hard evidence directly relating both genes and the environment to the origins of MS.

It seems that Vitamin D may be especially important in pregnancy for those who have a genetic vulnerability to MS.

What are the potential solutions?

• Get more sunshine, especially in winter so the body can create more vitamin D.
• Eat more fish or fish oil supplements that are natural sources of vitamin D
• Ensure that your diet is also mineral rich (calcium and magnesium) so that the vitamin can be used by the body
• Understand that eating more grains tends to reduce vitamin D in the body

It seems that today we have yet another reason to worship the sun.

2 Hours of play speeded up

This will remind you that life should be about more than making money to pay the bills (although that's important too).

This is two hours of play from a 9 month old baby speeded up into just 2 minutes. The adult interventions have been edited out.



Now, didn't that make you smile?

Deadlines, actions, activities...

Sometimes one's thought are a jumble of impending actions, must meet deadlines and 'tick the box' activities.

That's the time for a 'time out' moment.

I am having one of those this morning, my normally structured schedule is taking a 'time out' so that I can sort the wheat from the chaff.

I feel an urge to tidy up the desk, throw out redundant paperwork and generally regroup. I also feel the need to do this slowly.

Now I have given myself permission to do this, please excuse me while I go and rip up some old paperwork.

Snow and how it makes you feel

Here in the UK snow is something of a rarity except in the north or over high ground. But this morning snow is falling in London, buses are not running and in my home town there is light dusting of snow with more promised later today.

The adult in me is concerned; travel arrangements will have to be changed, people will struggle to get to work and economic activity will be hit.

But the kid in me is secretly delighted! Nothing looks more wonderful than a landscape draped in pristine, shining white snow. Even sounds are damped so that the world sounds different. The kid in me is waiting for the big flakes to fall so that we can build a snow man.

I know that the snow will cause all kinds of problems but just for today I'm going to celebrate that child like joy again that only a snowfall can bring.