Printer Friendlier Version

Introduction
Focus
Perception of Time and the Human Mind
Who are we really?
The Conscious Mind vs The Unconscious Mind
Phobias
Stress in Extreme Situations & the Power of Decision and Planning
Violence and Aggression
Focus Interruption/Maintenance Techniques
Addiction and Compulsions





Introduction:

How you feel day to day is largely dependent on three factors: how you Focus on things, what your core Beliefs are, about yourself and the world around you and situations in it (and any Spiritual Beliefs, if any), and how you use your Physiology. In addition, how you respond to external events is determined by a split second Choice. You are responsible for the way you feel, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Many people consider mental illness a binary condition, and you are either psychologically healthy or mentally ill, with little in between. People often also assume, when it comes to medical health, that one is either healthy or sick, in an equivalent binary manner, with 'ill health' suddenly striking, seemingly out of 'nowhere'. Ill health, psychological and medical, therefore often has a stigma attached to it, especially mental health, with few wanting to be labelling as 'mentally ill' or 'mad'. The reality in both cases is that there is a large grey area in between both extremes. Most people who do not actively manage their health or their mind/beliefs will usually be average or mediocre but far from the pinnacle of fitness, mental health and physical health. Everyone has some area or areas where they can improve. Few achieve genuine heights of perfect health, but it is not unattainable if one makes a little effort. It ultimately depends on what you want and to what extent you are prepared to be honest with yourself and 'open the lid and look inside'. Whilst dwelling excessively on one's perceived faults is not doubt unhealthy, blissfully ignoring them in the belief that if you don't know about them then they don't exist or won't affect you (often an attitude to both health and psychological problems) is unfortunately a flawed philosophy too. We are here concerned with healthy and positive tools for change (for the better!) This is really what this Psychology section (and indeed the Health section) is about.

Many people spend much of their lives trying to change the outside, their place in the world and their appearance and projected image amongst peers - but often do not consciously make much effort to change the inside. To grow the inside. This usually happens through 'life experience' and by 'accident'. By being at the mercy of one's own mind rather than working with the mind. Why is this? We spend a great deal of time examining the outside world and acquiring status, goods and possessions and identifying with the outside. But we may spend very little time being totally honest with ourselves and studying the inside and looking to improve it. We are often however ruled by the inside and our time spent there is usually not that great or enjoyable or inspiring for a significant part of each day, if not most of it. We are trapped inside our minds and bodies, yet we do not use much of our brain for the large part, do not understand how it works and why we find ourselves in the patterns we re in, and we do not understand our bodies either and how to get the best out of them and to be live in harmony with them, rather than at war with them.

Why do we spent a fraction of our time focussing on what is great about a moment and appreciating it, and the vast majority of our time on what is wrong with each situation or moment? Why do we rely on photographs to make us smile once a year, when we feel bad about painful past events on a regular basis? This is partly because we don't control our focus, but also down to our beliefs. Now you might say that "I don't need all this psychobabble. I know this. I can focus on whatever I want, I don't all this patronising rubbish to tell me how to be happy. I can be happy whenever I want." But you don't do it! Or if you do, when someone reminds you, you only do it for a few minutes and then forget about it? The reason is that you are not in control of your focus, and you are plagued by conflicting beliefs that you have no control over.

Focus is examined on this page, and the other topics are examined on subsequent pages in this section.

back to top

 
Focus:



Any of us can really wind ourselves up if we focus on something that happened to us that we found really annoying. We can sit here right now and get really annoyed about it. Or we can recount a moment where we felt really happy or when something was really funny, pleasurable or incredible, and sit here and smile for a few moments. This is what focus is about. Focus determines how we feel from minute to minute, and we should try to control our focus so we don't just focus on the one little blemish on the otherwise clean white sheet. It requires conscious effort. Why do we focus on the pain of a unsatisfactory relationship or a death, or loss of respect or money, but we don't focus on a really unpleasant episode of diarrhea? Your thoughts and your focus dictate how you feel. Your focus shapes who you are, where you are going and your future.

Whatever you focus on, you will instinctively move towards. If you are trying to gain control of a skidding car, and you keep looking at that tree, you are most likely to hit it! If you look at the empty grass run off, you are more likely to land your car. Your brain cannot tell the difference between 'Crash into the tree!' or 'Don't crash into the tree!' In martial arts, if you do not look directly at the centre line of the opponent, then your strikes and moves will not land on the centre line. They will land off target, wherever you are focussing. When you drive your car, you have to look where you are going or you won't get where you want to go, and more importantly, you will crash!

If someone tells you to focus on the colour red, the colour red will no doubt pop into your mind, into your focus. If someone tells you not to focus on the colour red, the colour red will no doubt pop into your mind! Your mind is not as sophisticated as a spam filter in an email program, which you can select subjects and senders you don't want to hear from. Think of the brain more as a waiter at a restaurant who does not speak very good English. If you order a dish, for example, a rack of lamb, and tell him what you DON'T want with it, for example, onions, the chances are that the waiter will walk away from your table thinking 'onions' and come back with the rack of lamb, with extra onions. And he might say 'You said onions, I brought you EXTRA onions, just how you like it!' and with a big smile on his face, thinking he has been really kind and given you exactly what you wanted! The mind works in the same way, and doesn't differentiate between want and don't want, it just hears the subject or object. Tell yourself you don't want to feel depressed or angry or hurt or jealous, and it's not likely to work! It is likely to have the reverse effect. You need to be positive with your visualisations, about what you actually want, and not about what you don't want. Anyone can say what they don't like or want. But it is more difficult to be positive and have the guts to say what you really want instead!

Here is an exercise. Don't think of the word chocolate...Now what did you just think of?

Don't think about how long the pages on this web site are! Now what did you just think of? ;-)

If someone was to tell you look around a crowded room and notice how many people are wearing brown shoes, you would suddenly focus your attention on brown shoes. You may not have noticed the brown shoes before this, and now that you are focussing on brown shoes, you may not notice what coloured jackets people are wearing or what style of ties they are wearing.

Whenever there are supply problems at one of the UK oil refineries, the television and radio news coverage focuses on it every day for a prolonged period, even though it only affects a very small (tiny) proportion of all UK petrol stations. By focusing on this one tiny blotch on an other clean piece of paper, the UK public become agitated and worried about being able to get fuel for their cars. The government seems to issue a statement every time to discourage panic buying of fuel at petrol stations by informing the public 'not to panic buy'. An already paranoid public see the words 'panic buy' and it encourages them to try to 'beat the crowds' by buying their petrol first, and thus actually encourages the panic buying behaviour the government is trying to avoid. The public do not see the word 'not' but focus on the words 'panic buy'. If the government never used the words 'panic buy' and either ignored the dispute or issued a positive statement that 95% or petrol stations (or whatever the exact figure) are unaffected and it is business as usual, then it would be much more likely to achieve the result they wanted and to calm the public. The media should perhaps only report the story on one occasion, but they are desperate for news and exclusives and send their reporters to the depots and spend many hours talking rubbish and speculating to get the most ratings and to make it out to be more exciting than it actually is. A similar situation happened with the building society Northern Rock in 2007, when BBC news coverage about Northern Rock caused most customers to queue up at the branches to withdraw their savings, causing a run on the bank, and causing it to go bust. The queuing made others think, gosh it must be bad, I must queue as well. The media tends to publish or report on stories that are negative or sensationalised, that appeal to people's baser instincts, which over time conditions people into certain ways of focussing on negative news and their perception of society itself.

Filters apply to many areas of our daily experience. For example, we are not able to observe everything around us all at once. We would probably go insane. It would be too tiring. So our mind narrows down our focus to enable us to function on a day to day basis. However, there is a tendency for the mind to focus too narrowly and to get into what we would term 'routines', i.e. go around on 'auto-pilot' and not observe our surroundings. There is much to be gained from mental exercises that widen one's habitual pattern of focus, to notice more and to keep the excitement about our environment within us. However, talking about filters specifically, some Personality Types are perhaps more pre-disposed to developing filters than others. Some dysfunctional and one-sided personality types that do not grow (in particular, dysfunctional 'blue'), have a tendency not to create or develop filters in certain areas and as a result can become hypersensitive to their environments. i.e. they have less control of their focus. A typical example is being easily distracted by external noise, such as a conversation, phone call, or other type of random noise. One may focus in on that noise, even if faint, rather than what one is actually trying to concentrate on doing - be it studying, writing something, thinking or trying to sleep or relax. It is an addictive pattern of focus without the necessary filters in place. Filters are our servants, our tools, to serve us rather than enslave us in a state of not noticing anything. For example, dysfunctional white personality types are prone to excessive filtering, or being 'spaced out' and not noticing anything around them. So what is a filter? It is hard to define, but on some level it is a rule that your nervous system uses to prevent certain types of information reaching the brain as it does not want to bother the brain with it. On some level it is a belief. Or rather, a belief can reinforce that filter. But more fundamentally, it is an entrained nervous system response, a neuro-association, that triggers a response when a certain input is heard. The way to break the power of that trigger, so that one does not always react to that external event (i.e. start creating a working and useful filter) is to interrupt the moment when the trigger occurs and tell ourselves that we do not wish to be engaged by it. Or to gradually introduce higher and higher intensities of that external source of noise or stimulus, whilst all the time working to keep one's focus away from it; i.e. starting from a manageable level and only increasing when one feels comfortable at that previous level of intensity. This can be backed up with brainstorming one's beliefs and any core beliefs that reinforce one's addiction to responding to the event. And equally, using various other NLP or EFT techniques, which are explored on this page and subsequent pages. If you make no effort to create filters or do not try hard enough or consistently long enough, then you may well end up a slave to stress or decreased efficiency in certain tasks or ability to focus and concentration at your own will. Which isn't so great or clever really.

The result of your thoughts and focus is your emotional state. If you are regularly experiencing negative emotions, such as anger, stress, worry, paranoia, fear, guilt, jealousy, hatred, sadness, boredom, then these are a reflect that your focus and thoughts need realigning and changing. If you are regularly experiencing positive emotions, such as happiness, joy, beauty, peace and other creative states, then you are on the right track with your focus and thoughts. Your focus not only shapes where you are going and what you do for yourself and what you think, and therefore your emotional state, but also has an effect on other people around you. People often give you the response you ask for. Or what you are expecting. If someone expects lousy service from you, you are more likely to give it. And if someone expects excellent service and accurate information from you, you are more likely to make an effort to meet the person's expectations. If you think negative or worried thoughts about a situation, then that bad outcome is more likely to happen. It will be revealed in your thoughts, your body language and emotions, which other people will pick up on. If you are confident then you are much less likely to be mugged than if you are timid and showing sign of weakness, regardless of the fact that the same person is underneath. The chances of being mugged are extremely slim and the perceived likelihood of crime is grossly distorted by the newspapers, television and movies, which changes our thoughts and focus in this area.

Have you ever cut yourself or injured yourself but not noticed it? You didn't feel any pain until you realised that you had indeed been injured, you focussed on it, and then it really hurt! And then you shouted out in pain or starting crying (of course, we are talking about crying when you were a kid, not as an adult! ;-). When people are stabbed they do not notice it at first, they think they have just been punched with a fist. Shark attack victims who cannot see what is going on in the water when they are swimming sometimes report feeling like they have stubbed their toe or foot on a rock or feeling like they have an itch when they have actually had their foot or leg bitten off. They only felt the pain afterwards when their mind discovered the extent of their injuries through sight. Of course these types of injuries are typically clean cuts and do not hurt as much as other types of injury, but the principle is still applicable.

Often we notice that when we are dating some, we become more sexually confident and open, we often meet other potential 'prospects'. But when we have no boyfriend or girlfriend, we close up emotionally and become less open, and mysteriously don't meet as many potential prospects. Have you noticed that when you make an error or clumsy mistake in some way and curse and scold yourself, you can inadvertently put yourself in a grumpy frame of mind, thinking 'why me?' or 'that's typical' and be more reckless, and most likely incur a number of other accidents? And when you don't make an error, you don't put yourself in that grumpy, feeling sorry for yourself, ego state of mind? Often we don't see how we are going to get the results we want, and therefore don't visualise or focus on getting them, and thereby shooting ourselves in the foot. We may let our focus go whichever way it wants and be prompted by negative thoughts and focus and what we want to avoid. And close off the world of amazing possibility and potential. Just by our focus.

Using the same principles, of focus and belief, many patients diagnosed by medical professionals with terminal illness like cancer or irreversible spinal cord damage resulting in paralysis, have overcome their medical conditions just by using their minds, through focus and belief, and positive rather than negative thoughts (and have been diagnosed as cured afterwards). Unfortunately the vast majority of people diagnosed with such conditions and told (negatively) by doctors that they are incurable remain so, probably because they believe what they are told, and not what they want to believe. Just to put it in perspective, the average person only uses 5-10% of the brain capacity and capability during his lifetime. The average brain has enough potential energy to run an entire town's electric grid for several days. The average person loses 20 grams in mass when he dies. This was stated by Donald Gilbert Carpenter in 1998 to be the weight of the 'soul'. Mass is interchangeable with energy on a quantum level. Each thought has its own frequency, it's own energy. Whatever conclusion you want to derive from all this is yours to make! What we are saying here is just that using focus and belief we can achieve excellent results, much greater than most people think possible.

When we want to drive from one city to the next at night, we can only see ahead of us as far as our headlights. But we know that if we continue for a certain amount of time that we will reach our destination, even if we can't physically see it in front of us now. We are certain that if we continue on this strip of tarmac it will eventually lead to the chosen place. We know the road will not suddenly end with a big cliff that we will drive off. We know it will be simple and we know what we need to do, we are certain about our destination, and we just get on with it. We are FOCUSSED however primarily on the next 100 yards and getting them right. The goal will come when its time is right and it will indeed be ours. So don't be scared off or put off just because you can't see the goal right in front of you! Be certain! Have faith and belief in yourself and what you are doing.

We often view the past behind us, the future ahead of us, but who drives a car looking behind them (in the read view mirror) all the time - usually people who crash! What happens to people who drive their cars looking into the far distance but not seeing what is right in front of them? This usually ends with an insurance claim and/or visit to the local hospital or mortuary. So why do we manage our existence in such foolhardy ways? Ironically, our very perception and existence on a day to day basis is that which we notice the least. We may have pockets of awareness but we often operate within these in a learned and conditioned manner. There is very little sponteneity and awareness of sitting outside the box. We are often in a sense in the box all the time and not aware we are inside it or that there even is a box.

If you are trying to achieve a goal, if you focus on succeeding and visualise what that feels like and have some fun with it, then you are likely to engage more of your faculties and be in a better frame of mind to actually achieve that goal than if you are doubting your ability to do it, nervous, shy, afraid of failure or rejection or stressed; if your brain is entertaining thoughts of failure and doubt...then guess what, it will try to deliver you what you have asked for! We routinely doubt ourselves, foresee failure, and lack confidence. This is easy. Everyone does this! What requires some mental effort initially is to focus on success! It follows that prior to any major engagement or undertaking it is a good idea to do some visualisation beforehand, even if just for a minute or so. Your brain engages the same physiology whether you are actually doing it or are just imagining it. And the more times you have run it through your mind as a success, the easier it becomes, much like winning your 4th race is easier than your first as you have done it before and know it is no big deal.

It is true that there is a great deal of suffering, cruelty, bad situations, corruption, misinformation, poor relationships, victimisation, poverty, starvation, murder, war, illness, poor health and so on in the world. We may feel bad about these issues on occasion or regularly. However, one can never really feel bad enough about them, can one? If you watch the news and see a starving child, you may feel bad. Shouldn't you feel WORSE to show you care more? Surely you can feel even worse than that? If you do that, then it shows you are 'real' and you 'care' and your ego somehow feels it is helping or empathising with that person. The problem is that you can NEVER feel bad enough! You can never feel guilty enough and you can never feel negative enough about a bad situation to make it good. It won't help. The best thing you can do is to feel good and to positively influence everyone in your life to feel good as well and act with generosity, spirit, heart and kindness, and by visualising what you really want for yourself and everyone around you, and tapping into the infinite resources and abundance that flow from this manifesting into your life, and not through negative impulses, resistance and through a sense of lacking, or focussing on what they don't want. To change something you have to visualise the outcome you want. Mother Teresa refused to join anti-war marches against the Vietnam war, even though she disagreed with the war, because it was 'against' something and ultimately pointless. She said instead that she would attend a march for peace! It is likely that a positive march will be more effective than a protest march rallying against something, which does not often convince anyone but gets people's backs up and a generally defensive response and reaction. The best thing you can do for the poor is to appreciate what you actually have, and not sit around being borgeois and feeling guilty about it. And not making sure you are poor so you don't have to feel guilty about it, in the illusion that you are somehow helping the poor by pretending to be poor yourself.

Those of you who pray, you may find it better to pray about what you want, rather than about overcoming scarcity or a lack of something, or to avoid or overcome a situation you don't want. The Bible, for example, is very clear in its teachings on abundance. Ask and you shall receive! If you don't ask, you won't receive. And equally, if you ask for avoiding what you don't want, you will likely get more of it and not less of it! How does God know what you want if you just tell him what you don't want? You have to be in tune with the infinite source of goodness, love and abundance to receive anything from it. You have to be positive! It is clear that the principles of attraction, focus and positive visualisation can be adopted by anyone of any belief system. It is not inconceivable that certain aspects can potentially conflict with a person's religious or spiritual ideas. However, it is in the application of these principles that is the important thing. There are many ways to apply the principles and many areas in which one chooses to apply them. Some are self or ego serving. Some are focussed on the greater good. Some are God serving (if you believe in God). Exactly how one chooses to do so depends on one's own personal spiritual or ethical beliefs and is up to the individual. Clearly a significant amount of self-love is healthy and required for good emotional health. But how much you materially wish for yourself is your choice. To focus on this area and neglect other areas such as health, wellbeing, helping others etc. would be excessive ego serving and disconnect one somewhat from God. One can choose to apply the principles with God in mind, or without God. If one chooses 'God', then one can clearly have any number of different concepts of God in one's belief system through which one uses the principles of focus and belief. It is not inconceivable therefore that two persons of complete polar opposite spiritual beliefs (I think you know what BlackSpy is talking about!) cannot be applying the same principles but in different ways and in different areas (perhaps with some overlap).

It is often true that if you do not follow your own path, i.e. do not live your life on purpose, but let life happen to you, or let situations guide your overall paths and goals in life, or follow the suggestions or wishes of others, then you may never tap into your creative potential or into abundance. Creativity must come from independence and carving out one's own path in life, and making one's own decisions. Without being truly independent and in charge of one's own destiny, one will find it very difficult to create. Living in abundance is about living in a constant state of creativity in one's everyday experience. If you are filling a role or behaving in such a way that you are been conditioned to accept, through society, parents, teachers, peer pressure, fear or the media, putting various limitations on yourself, then you will never be truly in charge in control of your destiny. That is not to say that one should dispense completely with social etiquette or respect for oneself and others, or act according to guilt or bad feelings about society. But it pays to think for oneself and make up one's own mind, and not to follow the crowd. No one is going to thank you or respect you for following the crowd! If you look at people who are respected, approved of, acknowledged or appreciated, they are those that do not care what others think about them andd those who do what they feel is right for them, not what is right for others. Those who constantly seek affirmation or approval from others, or those who seek to look good in front of others, often find that the very thing they want is the thing they don't get. People don't like clingy people who do everything everyone else wants to get approval. People like people with their own spirit, their own personality, who are not afraid to say what they think or to walk their own path, bring in new ideas or perspectives or to step out of their comfort zone. Someone who is their own person. A unique individual. It can be said that he who does not create, who does not break his own conditioning and make independent decisions, is not truly alive. Creativity does not always happen by itself, one has to be the architect of one's life, constantly creating and shaping oneself and the world around one, being responsible for oneself and one's actions, to be truly alive. Animals interact with their environment, and grasp their destiny and purpose, and so must we. It is really the purpose of existence. To live in conditioned states where you aren't really living your life but according to a set of programmed rules that you have developed from inside and outside influence is a waste of a life. The human brain exists in order to achieve great heights of clarity and not to tie itself into knots and create false illusions that hold it back.

Studies have shown that acts of kindness to others actually raises the serotonin levels of the recipient and also strengthens the immune system of the recipient. Not only this, but the giver of the act of kindness also receives these benefits! And lastly, even a person observing an act of kindness being given receives these benefits! So whether you give or receive or watch an act of kindness being given, you will feel better! And what is more, you are more likely to then go on and perform an act of kindness to someone else. Thus when you visualise what you want, try to also visualise the same benefits for other people you know too. The converse follows in that acts of hostility often result in one 'kicking someone else' (often someone who cannot do anything about it - e.g. people beneath one at work or other road users etc) to make oneself feel better or empowered, which causes a chain reaction of negativity.

It can often be hard not to focus on what is wrong in your life, your circle of friends, with your work colleagues, school friends, or with the environment, world poverty, economics, politics or current affairs, from attaching a certain meaning to our experiences or from what we read about or see on the news. Sometimes it is hard to not let our focus and thoughts be inundated with negativity rather than appreciating what is good. It is of course up to the individual, but there is a fine line between between being informed and aware and being obsessed! Negatively obsessive minds look for faults and problems, and they will always find them, which further reinforce negative beliefs that are not empowering or useful to have. This is particularly applicable to the 'conspiracy theorists' or 'conspirazoids' who may well be right about certain (or many) points, but their focus seeks out further links and connections that may sometimes be incorrect (and at best speculation), to reinforce their beliefs. It is an addictive negative pattern of focus that leaves the person feels disempowered and not empowered. In a sense it is a search for certainty, so one can pigeon hole things so one feels one knows where one is with them. Rarely is anything so simple in real life. This is why the conspiracy scene tends to attract those that have too much uncertainty in their lives and whom have confidence issues. The conspiracy scene, whilst intending to do good, may well be nurturing mental illness, paranoia and depression, and providing negative addictive patterns of focus. Perhaps the truth about current affairs should come with a public health warning! Perhaps it is a reflection on society that in western industrialised countries, death is hidden away and is something that happens to people in far off lands, and not on your home soil. Official statements by politicians rarely reflect what is actually happening on the ground. Perhaps it is a desire to introduce 'reality' or a raw edge in one's sanitised life. It is possible to see patterns in anything, just look at the Da Vinci Code! Whilst in many cases conspiracy theorists may indeed be correct, it is clear the movement is not united - theorists come in a variety of flavours and degrees of being grounded, and in many cases their ideas totally contradict each other. It is by no means a united movement. It is therefore prudent to keep an open mind, but to not put too much credence into speculation, coincidence, symobolism and conjecture, but to deal with the facts as much as possible.

You may take it for granted that you can appreciate the good and funny things in life, but you may not actually do it, or make any effort to do so unless they strike you on the nose, but you may well make a huge conscious effort to find things to get annoyed about. Let us use a metaphor for a moment. If you think of walking along a pavement and seeing some dog's business [or use alternative terminology!] on the pavement, you'd be a fool to step on it and not notice it. But equally, you'd be equally foolish to become an expert in dogs' business and know the exact chemical composition of dogs' business just because you happen to come across one on the pavement once a week. If nothing else it would be psychologically unhealthy and anally retentive to do so. You want to notice the dog's business, avoid the dog's business, but also notice the nice flowers by the pavement and the beautiful sky and enjoy them and not let thoughts of the dog's business stay in your brain more than momentarily. The thought of the dog's business that momentarily flashes through your brain could be one of amusement or it could be one of annoyance, it which case it will linger for much longer and be hard to get rid of. To think of dog's business the whole time you are walking along the pavement (thinking this is the entirety of the experience of walking) would be rather odd and you'd miss the bigger picture. In a sense one is simply engaging one's ego in a massive way and nurturing it by focussing on, obsessing, and reacting (often negatively) to current affairs news and ideas about them. The ego is what is behind stress, rebelliousness and reaction. It ultimately results in unhappiness. Such states of ego-derived stress lower one's energy levels. The ego clearly has a place in one's daily existence, but it should be restricted only to where it is useful and productive in a given situation; as opposed to occupying 99.5% of your conscious waking experience (and dreams!)

It follows therefore that one should strive to focus on what one wants and not focus on what one doesn't want. Whatever you focus on, you will attract on some level into your life, sometimes immediately, sometimes over a long period of time. You can apply this to small things, like driving around looking for a car parking space and visualise getting the space immediately, to large things in your life like visualising and focussing on making a business successful or getting the relationship you want. Your emotions and the results you are getting in your life are clues as to how well you are in control of your focus and how positive they are. Remember that a positive thought is many thousand times more powerful than a negative thought. When you are in a peak state of mind (e.g. excited, empowered, passionate, determined, motivated, confident, positive, honest - maybe triggered by a 'power move', your favourite music, getting up and moving around, dancing around, shouting or any activity or trigger that gets you GOING!), learning and self-conditioning is speeded up many, many times. Use this to your advantage.

Using your peak state of mind, it is important to use absolute and brutal honesty with yourself. It should be noted that NLP or Neuro-Associative Conditioning (NAC) does not work very well if you are not addressing or recognising the core issue that is troubling you or holding you back. You have to be working with your core and inner nature, Your Authentic Self, not working around Your Negative Self Image or Your Pretend Self (more about this on the Personality Types page.)

Your peak state of mind MUST be one where you are 100% passionate and genuine in your intentions. If you are trying to effect a change in yourself or influence someone else because of a whim or vanity or selfishness, your body and subconscious mind simply won't play ball as much as they would if you were coming from a place of sincerety. NLP/NAC requires total passion, commitment and belief in it. If you are in a bummed out frame of mind, depression, too serious, too anxious, too sceptical, too defensive, unconvinced, too uptight, too embarrassed, too closed up, then your conscious mind/ego is actively resisted what you are trying to do and will not allow you to effectively change your focus or allow you to access the subconscious mind in the same way that you could if you were in a peak state of mind (when performing NLP or NAC) or totally relaxed as when having hypnotherapy.

When you are trying to relive a situation or memory that you find difficult, and that you are trying to change your association with or trying to alter your memory (to make it less significant/important), you HAVE to be intense, you have to be vividly experiencing it as if it were real. This includes all the physical sensations, sweat, touch, smells, sounds, emotions, the whole lot! If you don't, and you are too embarrassed or half hearted about it, then your mind doesn't believe it and the technique will likely not work. The technique has to work on all of the data of that memory which is filed in different parts of your mind. When you are really experiencing it, then you can start to play around with it, change the volume, brightness, proximity, the way it is played (forwards or backwards), play around with the voices (maybe using comic voices), have some people having their trousers fall down or perhaps simply someone frightening you or pouring a bucket of water over your head to interrupt it.

Asking yourself the right question and the brain will respond with the right answer, a positive and empowering answer, that will be congruent with what you want and will help to keep your focus on a positive note. If you ask the wrong question, such as 'why me?', then the brain will respond with a negative and disempowering answer. The brain only puts out what you ask of it. The brain doesn't always second guess what you want, but responds to the conscious mind's attempts to control focus, most of the time. Use this principle to control your focus and put it on the right track when it veers off the rails into negative thinking and perception. For example, ask yourself:

How can I do [xyz] and enjoy it?

If you know you couldn't fail, what would you do/be?

Why not use every tool you can? Change the wallpaper on your PC every day or every week to something you really want. Be it a big smile. A fit body. That car you want. A lovely beach. A beautiful forest. Your ideal woman or man. Anything you want!

back to top

 
Perception of time and the human mind:

Remember that your experience of here and now, your current health, your current relationships, happiness, wealth, job etc. are not who you are. They are a cumulative effect of your thoughts and actions up until this moment. They are not what defines you. What defines you is what you think here and now. This will shape your future. Your present circumstances do not shape your future. Your past circumstances do not shape your future. It is your continuation of the thought processes based on your past experiences and the meaning you have associated with that past experience that shape your future in that direction. But this does not have to be the case! If you change the way you focus and what thoughts you have, and change the meaning you associate with events that guide your thoughts, then you will get the outcome and the future you want. If you can break out of the auto-pilot mode and live in the moment, then your life can become much more fulfilling. If you do not take things so seriously too, it may also help. Try to nurture your sense of humour. And your tolerance. Try to avoid getting caught up in the rollercoaster of stress.

In life, each moment brings infinite possiblities, if we open our minds to them, and don't shut possibilities out and actually observe what is going on around us. Clearly there are an infinite number of negative and bad possibilities and an infinite number of positive possibilities, and both are 'infinite'. However one is more productive than the other. In a sense, one could relate this to theories in physics about parallel universes and parallel realities. It is as if we can taste these, we can sense the other possibilities that exist for us out there, and how each decision can result in dramatically different and also excellent results or different terrible results. Live your dream! Or someone else will and you will only be jealous or resentful!

Often the brain feels we have to focus on the same things and focus in the same way that we have done in the past for a sense of continuity and security. The brain seeks consistency. However this results in a loss of control over how we feel and how we use our focus. It results in a life run on auto-pilot. Invariably we allow negative addictive patterns of focus and what we don't want guide and shape our lives. If we are lucky we achieve mediocre results. If we are unlucky our lives go down the toilet. Living a life on auto-pilot is not enjoyable, fulfilling or meaningful. It is in a sense a waste of a life. However, whatever you do and how you choose to let yourself feel is entirely up to you and no one is judging you for the choices you make for yourself.

And equally, the past and future do not exist, they are an illusion. The present is the only thing that exists. Our minds are preoccupied with the past. Thoughts based on the past. Attaching meaning to things around us based on past experience and arbitrary past attachment of meaning. We rarely perceive something as it is here and now. This may be why we feel we enjoyed things more when we were children than when we are adults, and that adult life is devoid of adventure and a sense of fun and discovery. We may feel we have had most types of experience and interaction and have ascribed meaning and technique to them, so that we don't see things as they really are anymore. We just see the past in everything. This however has its purpose, and if we had to learn how to walk or open a door each time, we would never achieve anything. However, this has no purpose when we ignore most things we see as we've 'seen them before'. Just because an experience or object or person has been ascribed a painful or neutral meaning in the past does not mean that that meaning is relevant here and now. When you taste some food, are you really tasting it, or is the initial sensation just jogging memories of how it should taste, and you are really tasting the memories? We often rush through many sensory experiences in a reckless, rushed manner without really taking anything in. We have to use our focus to focus on the here and now.

The future in a sense, or the imagined future, helps to form who we are today and to guide what that future will actually be. It movitates us in the present. We often look back at our youth and think, wouldn't it be good if I could go back in time and tell myself what the 'score' is and what is really important? Well now you can! But just using the future rather than the present. As discussed above, the mind will naturally gravitate towards that which one focusses on. Whatever future self image you hold, believe in, and meditate on, and vividly visualise, that is the self you will gravitate towards. Your mind requires goals. This process is in fact occurring all the time. So make sure you choose the kind of future self you would like to be and make that a positive choice. Try to visualise a positive, empowered, relaxed and healthy future self. For those that find this extremely difficult, who have lost perspective, this is all the more reason why this is extremely important, as the mind is visualising a very negative future self, much like the present self, or perhaps worse through pessimism. Try visualising a future self in front of you, then swap places with that future self, vividly imagining what this feels like and looking back on your 'old' self (was present self), and tell yourself how easy it is to get from there to where you are now, and how it can be done. This is another form of dissocation. In the absence of a conscious future goal, the mind will create them based on your current values and beliefs, which are usually conditioned into you rather than those which you choose, i.e. reflective of the true or authentic self. If you are not aware of or visualising that positive future self, then a more negative future self-image is working on you. If you are not focussing on a positive future self, then you probably have a negative view of the future (whether you realise it or not - created by yourself or by negative suggestion by others) and that negative future self image will 'come back in time' to keep you where you are, reinforce current negative patterns or to keep you from achieving your goals. Don't just let your negative thinking and beliefs create your future self image and thus mould your future.

If we can understand time, and its relative nature, then we may have a better understanding of our own existence and experience, and be better able to see things as they are and to control our focus in the way that it allows us to be ourselves rather than feel like we are sitting back and watching a program being run, wondering what it would have been like if we could have paused it at a certain point and taken a different and more adventurous or fulfilling direction. If we think about the passage of time, even if we use the atomic clock as a measure of absolute time, then time moves at a different rate for different people. It depends on age, it can depend on one's own metabolism, hormonal system, conditioning, beliefs, perception and state of mind. Time moves very slowly for young children, runs at a reasonable rate for late teens, and speeds up with a veangence when one approaches middle age and even more so at old age. Our language is extremely temporal in nature, in that everything is framed in terms of tense. Past tense, present tense, future tense etc. We look at the past as memories and the future as possibility, destiny or our' doom'. Many of us do not notice the present as discussed above as we are fixated on either the past or the future. When we set goals, we are working with them and managing them in terms of the nitty gritty in the present, but with a view to an end point in the future where we want to end up. Do we appreciate where we are now? When we remove ourselves from a given situation to gain perspective, part of this benefit derives from a different perception of time as well as appreciation of where we were by removing ourselves from it and breaking the sensation of 'being used to something', so we see it with fresh eyes, perhaps as if for the first time again. This is discussed more on the Gratitude page. The most effective methods for gaining this perspective and feeling refreshed is to blow away our rigid perception of time and routine, and by doing something where time is experienced in a different manner. This could be going out and having a great time with friends, it could be playing or listening to music, enjoying a piece of art or cinema, meditation (a very powerful tool), taking off your watch, maybe going out into 'nature' and observing how a certain tree (your 'friend') is still there, growing at a slow rate and changing gradually with the seasons, watching animals whose perception/experience of time and life span is different to our own, watching and observing the natural environment and seasons rather than being disconnected from it, going out into the wild - perhaps the mountains, woods, open ocean, or even going caving, pot holing, diving or hang gliding or skydiving. Exploring any frontier away from your usual routine environment, experiencing life in a different manner. Existentialism, reflection and philosophy in general can also be a great tool in terms of changing one's point of reference, as are disciplines such as physics, astonomy and biology etc. Of course one could add drugs to the list but they also have a number of insidious negative effects on the mind and also body and for that reason BlackSpy regards them as a total waste of time - much like sticking a fork into one's arm repeatedly.

Einstein's Law of Relativity holds that time is a continuuum, that has always existed (after the big bang) and always will exist, but that both past and future are part of a 4th dimension of time/space...time; i.e. points on an axis, and that the past and future are already plotted and exist all at once, much like different points on a graph exist and can be seen by one outside this dimension of the paper. We are deemed to travel through this time dimension at the speed of light. Like we are driving along a road, the road behind us and in front of us are there and do not come into existence when we are directly on top of them in our car. The faster we move, the more of this 'speed through time' we 'use up' in terms of forward motion, and the slower our time clocks run. This is why time appears to stand still for objects that move closer and closer to the speed of light. Yet those objects themselves experience time or reality in their normal manner, it is just that everything else seems to have speeded up, not just in terms of flashing past very fast physically, but temporally also. Although light travels only at the speed of light and in straight lines, it appears to bend and speed up and slow down, as the matter in the universe bends space time itself rather than just occupying it in a quiet and polite manner. The closer one is to a large object, the slower times passes. Your feet are experiencing time at a imperceptibly slower rate than your head. In the universe, there is no fixed point as such, and everything is moving relative to everything else, creating and warping space/time by it's presence/relative motion. Thus there is no absolute time for any of us, it just depends how we move relative to everything else and what objects/masses are close and far away from us; amongst other things.

However, Quantum Physics seems to suggest that time is not like this, not a continuum, but more granular in nature, i.e. grains of time, one grain influencing how the next grain is formed and what is contained there in and its nature. In other words, the past, present and future are not already points of a graph that we simply pass through, and that we are creators of our own reality and existence, right here and now as you are reading this. It is a matter of cause and effect, but with infinite possibilities in the moment, depending on personal decision and ability to follow through with these decisions against outside and internal resistance. Thus there is a continuum of time in a sense but it is also perhaps granular and can be broken down into absolutes (locally). It is perhaps a little like arguing whether light is a particle or a wave. Both are true and both are false. To understand time space is to understand the nature of existence and reality itself. We are however still struggling with it on the most crude level in physics in aboslute terms, but it is an interesting area indeed and worthy of further research and theorisation.

An examination of present, past and future visualisation and meaning attachment can be found on the Stress Management page. We can use our knowledge of the future, or the ideal future we want for ourselves to motivate ourselves in the present. In other words, we can see our future self now, motivating us and telling us that it really wasn't that hard to achieve, to help us actually achieve that future. Otherwise, that future may never existence and be just one possible unfulfilled future in a multiverse. People often say if they could travel back in time, they would live their life in a more positive and fuller way. If you could travel back in time, would you not live your life more fully and decisively? What don't you do that now? Are you waiting for your future self to come back in time and have more backbone and motivation than you do right now? In addition, if you could see the future, and know what will happen if you carry on doing what you are doing now, and see a mediocre, boring and miserable existence, would this not motivate you into action now to try that bit harder to achieve your desired goals and dreams? Rather than let a load of 'crap' get the better of you and put you off your true path? We often settle for second best in the present and do not think about the future, but the future becomes the present, and because of past actions and persistent modalities, our present experience may not be what we really want or are capable of.

We often consider time in terms of years, months, days and hours, even seconds. We consider that not much happens in a second unless we are in a plane or vehicle, or engaging in a sport etc. However, on the Quantum level, a split second is like an entire lifetime. If we consider the movement of electrons and their constituent parts, an infathomable amount of motion takes places in a fraction of a second. We can experience just one part of this through photography (with very short aperture lengths) and specialised movie cameras that can take 50 frames or more per second. If we consider the amount of movement we make in that time, it is quite astonishing, and we may not be aware of the amount of 'wobbling' or elastic movement of our skin and body for example when we make a simple movement. Slowing down time in this way can open up a whole new world that was 'unseen' before or hidden by the passing of time at the rate we experience it at.

Animals, including humans, experience time in different ways, depending on their rate of metabolism and lifespan, and also at different rates at different times of their lives. What is uneventful by our sense of time and ability to actually see what is happening, is hugely eventful, chaotic and beautiful if one slows down time or if one were able to see it from another creature's perspective. The human brain is only able to process so much visual information, so the faster things move around us, the more blurred and less detail we are able to take in. Animals that operate on a faster time line are able to process much more visual and sensory information and see in great detail at high speeds and for fast moving objects. Equally if one reduces the world in scale and zooms in with a high strength lens, then what is calm and still is very chaotic indeed. Order on the high level always has chaos on the low level. We only see the world for the large part in the visible spectrum also, but many animals see other parts of the spectrum, that enable them to hunt more effectively, e.g. see heat or infrared, and also to spot flowers (in UV). Some of the great painters who have had eye operations were able to see into the other visual world and mode of perception. Of course, it is in general only those animals with short life spans that see in UV, because it destroys the retina if exposed for many years. Thus animals with long life spans tend not to see UV or Infra Red in the interests of eye longeivity.

back to top

 
Who are we really?

People often confuse their possessions and things with who they are. For example, as Jerry Seinfeld joked about on his TV show, if someone gives you a compliment about your new car, watch or jacket, we often say 'thank you!' as if they are complimenting us! We are taking credit for the car! When in fact it is the car that is really getting the compliment! We happen to have found/bought/received the said item, and happen to be enjoying it, but so what? Does wearing or driving the said item make it part of you? Clothes that suit you well can be said to compliment your form well, but they are not actually part of you. They are more like the garnishing on a the side of a plate of food. A watch or clothes are worn by us, and are seen on us, in conjunction with our own bodies, but we may wear different things on different days, so in what sense are they really 'us'? If we are taking the compliment that one was especially clever, shrewd or cunning in finding the item or being able to afford the item, is it really that clever? Any 'idiot' can walk into an Emporio Armani store or a BMW retailer if they have enough money or even like to be in debt. How hard is it really to buy something? It is said that many people judge a person by appearances, and when seeking a mate or partner, we may seek someone who is not only compatible but also who displays 'fittness'. This could be in terms of appearing to be shrewd and independent, or perhaps wealthy, or whatever you personal criteria are for 'fitness'. We still have that animal instinct which judges a person on their suitability to look after us in hard times or to help us propagate our genes. If someone doesn't look like they make an effort with themselves or their own personality, then we may be concerned that they will not be able to 'grow' as a person with us, or that they won't bother looking after us either.

Does an attractive or stylish item of clothing make a person 'cool'? The whole concept of being 'cool' is really rather ridiculous. One may indeed buy fashionable clothes but to see this as part of one's identity is only conducive to pandering to the ego, which inevitably results in more disconnection from who we really are. Our exact relationship to our possessions is our own business, but it may be helpful to regard our clothes, car, watch as functional items, and if we happen to own luxury versions of such items, then we should appreciate the fact that they are luxury items, but not be defined by them or obsessed by them, and be just as happy to wear/drive them as we would wearing cheap, scruffy clothes or driving an old, cheap or 'ugly' car. One can argue that one should have self-respect and not let oneself go, so it is clearly a balance between external material objects not mattering and being able to express one's sense of self, sexuality and personality. Whilst presentation may be a 'sell' of oneself to the audience, we ourselves do make our impressions of a person in the first 10 seconds of meeting them. We are continually selling ourselves and our ideas to others, in conversation, to influence, so one could argue that it is important not to turn the other person off, either by being too scruffy or by being too 'bling' or 'show off'. Some people respect conservatism and understatedness whereas others find it boring and lacking in personality and conformist. If everyone has the same tastes, then things do become boring. If you see several people driving the same car or wearing the exact same leather jacket, then one doesn't feel as unique anymore. How important is it to have a unique combination of clothes and tastes?

Do you own your possessions or do your possessions own you? Do you feel more 'owned' by your possessions when you have more? And feel freer somehow when you have less, like you are less tied down? Conversely though perhaps a reluctance to tie oneself down and commit to a place could be seen as a lack of self-knowledge or belief, but this is slightly different, as one is 'not worth it now' and that one will 'do it properly later' - and tomorrow never comes. Do you notice that the more you have, the less you really appreciate your individual possessions and the more they lose their meaning? Do you remember how much more you appreciated your possessions when you had less when you were younger than when you have more when you were older? It is often said by some that if you have clutter in your affairs, office or house, you cannot think clearly - one aspect of Feng Shui. If you strip out the unnecessary, you feel freer. This is true for possessions, one may want to consider what is the value of keeping things that one has not thought about or touched/seen/used in say 2 years. Do we feel better knowing that they are there and that we 'could' enjoy them if we wanted, but that we never actually have done or would? At what point are we fooling ourselves into believing that we are free to pursue unlimited possibilities without actually ever pursuing them? Do we keep a certain buffer of such 'possibilities' to fool ourselves into thinking we are free to live our lives in many different ways but always tread the same path again and again? Although we may leave things out in order to 'process' or use them at some point in the future, often we never do, and it is only at first that we notice them, and after this we simply filter their presence out, or at least the trigger that instigates interaction with them. What remains is a cluttered environment that subconsciously exerts a stressful influence on the psyche (in many cases). By removing clutter from your working or living space, it allows you to focus on the few things that are there, to feel freer etc. Ever noticed how things feel different when you are out of your own self-imposed, restrictive living area, and area staying in a hotel that is not full of your possessions impinging on the useable space? You may want to strive towards minimalism in your living area, and try to create as many open areas as possible to create an atmosphere and freedom, clarity and of not feeling boxed in. When it comes to our possessions, many of our feelings towards them come down to perception and gratitude. Less is more! We are just our bodies, minds and spirits, everything else is just a distraction and 'not us'.

Anti-fashion fashions are just as guilty of their 'crimes' of superficiality as fashion fashion is. For example, rigidly dressing in one manner in order to dress differently from 'most people' often results in dressing the same as others who are like minded. And this creates a restrictive uniform that people see as part of their identity. Anyone who adheres too much to the fashion without embodying the general stance and attitude of that counter culture group, e.g. punk or goth etc. is seen as a 'plastic'. However, anyone who restricts their modes of self, emotional and artistic expression within certain confines of 'punk', 'goth' or whatever, are by definition not completely being themselves and being free and are inevitably 'plastic' or a slave to some extent. Of course, it is more common for children in their teens who are desperately searching for a sense of identity and who they are to cling onto anything that comes by, like clothes, a certain look, certain bands, certain lifestyle or certain political/moral ideas. Equally, making a big fuss about not wearing a certain style of dress as it goes against our identity, for example, wearing a suit at a formal function, points to a superficial and materialistic obsession and insecurity about who we are. These things are the ego working overtime, based on a lack of positive, empowering beliefs. One can see the many negative characteristics and tendencies of each personality type and how they pander to the ego on the personality types page. Clearly, each colour personality type has its ego inclinations, with red dominating and winning; blue trying to maintain control, obsessing with details, having to complete things and being right; white disconnecting from others and focussing on himself; and yellow being vain and selfish.

So who are we? What we own? Our job? Our car? Our friends? Our house? Our clothes? Our hairstyle? Our bling? Our money? Our status? What other people perceive us to be? What other people think of us? What we used to do? What we are currently thinking? People often confuse these things with who they are. If you go down to the lowest base building block, we are a mainly carbon and water based organism, comprised of molecules, comprised of atoms, comprised of quarks, but which is ultimately just comprised of energy. We are basically on the quantum level just a mass of energy vibrating at different frequencies. Thoughts too can be measured electromagnetically and create different energy vibrations within our bodies. And affect how others around us feel, how the energy inside them vibrates. Normally the highest energetic state of energy brings lower energetic levels to the same state. For example, when we bring a candle into a dark room, it illuminates the room. The darkness doesn't snuff out the candle. In the same way, positive vibration conquers negative vibration, if the positive vibration is grounded well enough. Thoughts are energy. Matter is energy. Are they interchangeable? Can you think your way out of illness or physical impairment? It does happen. On a quantum level we are just energy. But in many ways, we are spirit, or a sentient essence created as a result of our physical bodies, depending on how you wish to look at it.

Often if we have been experiencing what we consider a bad situation for a long time, our ability to see beyond it and to avoid just focussing on it may become severely impaired. All we see is the bad situation. If we honestly ask ourselves if we want change or want to feel better or be healthy, we may think 'of course I do! It goes without saying', but if we don't think it and feel it with any intensity, we will stop believing it. Eventually we may lose our focus of what we really want and forget what we have been striving for for all these months or years. We accept the situation as normal or eternal. Clearly if you think of something so much, you must subconsciously want it, so you can feel significant or righteous about feeling injustice. Or on some level your ego must get a kick out of it, so it can feel injured, the victim, injustice or sad or any other related emotions. If you didn't want it, you wouldn't focus on it. Some part of you that you may not admit to wants the bad situation so it can react to it. Often we walk around just waiting to pounce on something to react to or react against. Like we are looking for it. If you are looking for it, you must want it on some level to give you a sense of certainty and familiarity. So although rationally we may dismiss this as nonsense and assume that we of course want the situation to be good, part of our psyche still wants it as it fulfills certain ego-driven wants and needs. If in our core beliefs we are not consistent and are conflicted, even if we don't rationally acknowledge this, then we are unlikely to be totally focussed on our goal and our actions are not likely to be totally consistent with achieving this goal. These negative ways of achieving significance and certainty, although they meet some of our human needs, will never fulfill all our human needs and involve an degree of sacrifice of many of our other needs, are not conducive to getting what we want or being happy. They serve the ego. The self-destructive part of our ego. They are driven by negative belief patterns and negative habitual psychological patterns (or 'software'). This is where focus and belief are critical!

back to top

 
The Conscious Mind vs The Unconscious Mind:



Most sports people perform at their best when they are not thinking about what they are doing, but when they have 'no mind' and let their subconscious really take hold of their game. It is the same for everyone else, if you try to overanalyse what you are doing, under pressure, you will not perform at your best. One's conscious mind often does not trust one's natural innate abilities. It is based on a belief system that you don't believe that you are really do it unless your rational, conscious mind railroads the proceedings and controls and monitors everything. If you really believe you can do it, you just get on with it and don't think about it. This is why people often over analyse what they are doing when they are learning something, but do it without thinking when they are confident, i.e. when they believe they can do it. Positive visualisation helps greatly in getting into this zone and not relying solely on one's conscious mind to try to do it, which is invariably not as effective or fluid. So getting into the 'zone' of peaceful mind is not only where we have the greatest/unlimited creativity, but also where the power of unlimited abundance can flow into our lives.



Let us take motorsport as an example. Professional racing and rally drivers not only visualise their race prior to stepping into the car, but also have a firm belief that they can do it easily and that they will win. And when they are racing, they are not worrying about their performance or trying to 'make up' for a few poor laps. They are not overanalysing what they are doing, nor are they beating themselves up about a mistake that they did several corners ago. They are totally relaxed and driving as fast as is possible in an effortless manner. They have a clear mind and utilising their not linguistic faculties. They are aware when their car hits the same square centimetre of tarmac on each lap on a particular part of a corner. They are aware of their optimal corner entry speed and of the exact optimum amount of braking required and when to do it. Their driving style uses the minimum of inputs and is effortless and smooth and they appear to glide around the track. They are in a relaxed state of no mind. They do not feel fear when reaching their braking point at their maximum velocity. They are not going in too fast into the corners, having to break heavily, coming on the throttle too soon and too hard on the exit of a corner and breaking traction and fishtailing, they are not wrestling with the steering wheel. They are not being overly aggressive.



The same goes for rally driving. The fastest drivers are often those who use the minimum of steering input, steer with the throttle, are totally relaxed and 'in the zone'; who don't drive in an overly aggressive manner, don't try to cut corners too much (as sooner or later as Colin McCrae could have testified, you will hit a 'bump' and flip the car over - a pic of Colin McCrae overcooking it below).



The fastest drivers are those who cannot 'make up time' as they are driving at the limit all the time anyway; who use just the right amount of angle and turn in just at the right time, carrying their cars at seemingly impossible speeds on loose surfaces. Yet it is all so effortless. There is no wrestling with the steering wheel going on; no turning one way and another to keep the car on the track. It just looks too easy.





Many lesser drivers work much harder behind the wheel, but lack the smoothless and the speed of great drivers. Most of the skill in track racing and rally driving is about emotional management and basic psychology. Those who reach their real potential in life usually do so with the minimum of fuss and effort, doing what is required and when in a relaxed manner and not trying too hard. Do not try, do.

Rationalisation, verbalisation and abstraction clearly has its place but our society's obsession and imbalance in this area is clearly not healthy. Balance is clearly required. We need to have some periods of silence in our minds and not just a constant stream of thoughts and rubbish without a pause. In the natural world, instinct is more effective than relying on abstraction. Animals don't rationalise their actions, they act on instinct. They tap into their senses and utilise their non-tangible, non-rational faculties. Clearly developing man relied on his instincts as well as rationalisation, but somewhere along the line, we have lost touch with our instincts and calmness of mind. Do animals worry about where their next meal is coming from? Or whether they will be eaten? So why should we? We are supposed to be 'more intelligent' than that! Our rational mind is our ego, and often it is obsessed with lack, what it doesn't want and negative thoughts. But even a constant noise of positive thoughts isn't so helpful either. Too much reliance on the ego and not enough of our instincts and our 'soul' and getting into the 'zone' or in touch with the infinite creative abundance of the universe (which could be interpreted as God) is not good! Visualising is however not the same as rational thought, which is worth remembering and you can never positively visualise enough. Remember that not all forms of expression of emotion are positive, and not all come from that positive creative place. There are many negative 'creative' and emotional outlets which are not conducive to connecting with this positive force of abundance and positive visualisation. Some of us however choose such forms of expression in our media/movie/music viewing/listening for various ego reasons. It is a personal choice. Ultimately we are all subject to cause and effect, whatever that may be.

back to top

 
Phobias:

The newspapers and television news reports often contain mainly negative news, such as violent crime or murder. Readers may believe that levels of crime are much worse than they actually are, or that anyone swimming in tropical waters will likely be attacked by a large shark! However the truth is often very different, but such focus on negative news means that people are often more fearful than they need to be (real versus perceived danger). For example, the movie Jaws created widespread panic and fear of the ocean amongst many millions of people for several decades, and the perception of sharks even today is excessively negative and out of proportion to the actual probability of attack compared with other causes. For example, more people are killed by falling coconuts each year than shark attacks. But are people scared of coconuts when they walk on a white sandy beach? The perception in the UK is that child abductions and murders have increased dramatically over the last 30 years, on account of excessive media coverage of such issues and events (treating people like idiots, assuming that is what they want to see), whereas the reality is that levels have not increased in real terms at all. Certain abduction cases receive media coverage for several years, with the parents courting the media and taking every opportunity to appear on television in an undignified manner. Making serial killers anti-heros and giving them so much media attention actually gives them significance and ironically encourages more serial killers to kill as they want a few minutes of fame, or more school shootings as depressed and insecure teenagers seek a few minutes of glory and infamy in exchange for their own lives and the lives of others. They know this is one guaranteed way to feel signficant and get attention, which is what they often crave. They want their expression of protest and anger to be seen by the world. Consider the amount of media time and space in the UK dedicated to road accidents, cancer deaths, deaths of British soldiers or even fatal accidents in the shower. Then compare the amount of media coverage of the deaths of British children, particularly those with a pretty smile. Of course, non-UK nationals are not considered as important, and the status of on-going civil wars, starvation and malnutrition deaths are often not reported, and even acts of genocide only receive limited coverage, unless that geographic region is in vogue. The news and media can condition our perception of our environment, both locally, nationally and internationally; and indeed of ourselves. It is prudent to be aware of this and get some perspective!

A phobia is often defined as a fear being out of proportion to the actual danger and results in a repeated and conditioned behavioural response to a given situation or perception of the possibility of that situation arising. The perception of danger can lead to genuine panic in sufferers. The various degrees of fear (mild fear to outright panic) often result in a person trying to avoid the object, situation or conditions which are perceived as potentially resulting in that situation.

Mind, the mental health charity, defines a phobia as 'an intense fear of a situation or an object that wouldn't normally worry other people'. There are estimated to be 10 million suffers in the UK (in 2006, according to the National Phobics Society), which is approximately 17% of the population! It is the 3rd most common psychiatric disorder, after depression and alcoholism. Some of the most common phobias in the UK (in 2006) were Social phobia (17%), Agoraphobia (9.9%), Vomit phobia (2.6%), Blushing phobia (1.2%), Driving phobia (11%).

Phobias usually develop in two main ways. After a negative experience, for example, an accident, mistake, unpleasant situation or crime, but they can also be learnt from peers, siblings and parents etc. e.g. if children see that their parents are afraid of heights, spiders, losing keys, getting wet, being seen to be wrong or making a mistake, afraid of next alcoholic binge, being mugged, etc. (this is why fears tend to run in families, and also within social groups); or by watching television or reading the tabloids.

Phobias in a sense act like a bully - if you give in to your phobia, it becomes reinforced and much worse the next time it is experienced; much like many other addictive, negative patterns of behaviour. It becomes a conditioned response that after time we may perceive as part of our identity and impossible to break. Breaking the cycle of the phobia requires addressing the flawed thinking that created it, addressing those core beliefs and reference points (the legs of a table) that keep those beliefs solid and stable. We need to work on questioning and breaking down these references or table legs, to bring the table crashing down! Most sufferers of phobias use the strategy of avoidance, as it seems like the best idea, i.e. avoiding those situations entirely, so that one does not have to experience the fear in the first place. However, this is hardly a 'cure', and it psychologically reinforces the phobia's belief that there is danger. Actively avoiding such situations is not the same as not having happened to have come across such a situation, and if it did occur, it would not be a big deal. It is important not to kid yourself here.

Clearly any phobia you have that is not a real physical danger is something that we as people must try to work on and remove, so that our minds can be free of their bullying and terror. To become calmer, more relaxed and rounded people and to allow for more full psychological and spiritual growth. Fears in one area tend to spread onto other areas, and even when the trigger for the fear is not present, one can in a sense 'feel' that restriction in one's personality/subconscious in the background constantly. A fear in one area is likely to reinforce fears in other unrelated areas, the overall effect being greater than the sum of the parts.

Examples of phobias or fear could include giving a presentation, complaining, being assertive with a certain person, e.g. a family member or colleague (the belief that you simply CANNOT say what you think with them, when in reality it is no big deal, and once they are used to it, they won't 'freak out' - if they expect you to be scared of being assertive, they will cement their position with you, until you change your position with them, when the balance simply readjusts). More information on the levels of thinking, often associated with fear, can be found on the Personality Types page.

Those with phobias or specific fears tend to inhabit a world where they avoid situations that mean they have to confront their fears, and often adapt their lifestyle accordingly. They may make rational excuses for avoiding certain activities that would involve this confrontation. They may hope in the back of their minds that they do not meet anyone who encourages them or pushes them into confronting this phobia. They may well choose friends who have similar phobias and similar areas that they allow themselves to express themselves in. Where there is mismatch, as long as it is not too severe, the person in question may feel uncomfortable at times but tolerate it.

It is likely that most sufferers of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, whether it be stress induced from warfare (being in a fight or flight state of mind 24 hours a day for months on end) or from a traumatic criminal event such as rape, that a significant if not total recovery can result on regaining control of one's focus, rather than letting it replay traumatic events over and over again, and also delving into one's negative beliefs that help to reinforce that negative pattern of addictive focus.

Phobias and other anxiety related disorders are discussed at the end of the Stress page. The disempowering beliefs that we create that fuel phobias are examined in more detail on the Belief page.

back to top

 
Stress in Extreme Situations and the Power of Decision and Planning:

It is generally noted that those persons experiencing increasing levels of stress, be they psychological or physical in origin, tend to cope better when they are able to keep their focus, and also when they are confident in their own abilities or in achieving the desired outcome in the situation. However, in certain very rare situations, extreme situations, such as in a truly life threatening situation, one may become overloaded with stimuli and be experiencing a new type of situation, new sensations, sounds and physical forces. Such things might include a car crash, a plane crash, an overturned boat, a fire, a natural disaster or similar. One would assume that the survival instinct would ensure that one would always do the right thing in such situations. However, this is quite frequently not the case. We shall examine some of reasons for this below, and how they relate to focus.

One type of behaviour, known as 'Friendly Fire Syndrome' is where a group of people do not take the imminent danger seriously enough, and are often caught by surprise and lose their lives as a result. An example might include an incident in the UK where a fire broke out in a cafeteria, which was plainly visible to those in the dining area. The fire alarm was sounded, but very few people actually left their seats and headed for the fire exit. Most just sat there and continued with their meals, until they were overpowered with smoke and perished. It is thought that these people were reluctant to leave their seats and their meals as they had paid for them, and did not want to waste their money. BlackSpy himself has observed such behaviour, when sat in a pub one evening eating a meal with a friend, when the fire alarm went off. No one in the crowded pub got up to leave. Not a single one. A few people laughed and looked at each other, as if they were waiting for others to make the decision to stay or go for them. People clearly did not want ot lose their tables or drinks or could not be bothered. BlackSpy himself at the time discussed how odd this was with his friend, and after some debate decided to stay, but were ready to rush to the exit which was close by. Other examples include plane crashes, where the occupants instead of escaping, go to the overhead lockers to fetch their luggage, despite the fact that the plane is engulfed in flames. In the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York, after the order had been given to evacuate, most people took between 5 and 8 minutes to leave their desks, as they were keen to finish off an email, fetch their handbags, go to the toilet first, or finish an important phone call. Some even took 40 minutes to evacuate. Instead of evacuating, some sat around and discussed what they should be doing.

Psychological experiments have demonstrated this, whereby a volunteer for a psychological experiment will sit in a room and be given a form to fill out. Staged smoke will start to appear from one of the closed doors in the room. The volunteers did not realise this was part of the experiment. When alone, the vast majority of the volunteers vacated the room, not always quickly, but eventually, when the smoke started to fill up the room, did so. However, when put together with a group of other people, who were in fact actors, who were instructed to ignore the smoke and carry on filling out their forms and sitting as normal, 90% of the volunteers did not get up until smoke had filled the entire room and they could not see their hand in front of their faces. When interviewed afterwards, they could not explain their behaviour.

So what are the psychological mechanisms behind Friendly Fire Syndrome? Part of it is thought to be peer pressure and reliance on others to validate what one is experiencing. For example, one may feel that there are often so many fire drills, and that participating and taking it seriously is 'nerdy' or 'neurotic' and that acting casual about it is 'cool' or a behaviour that will not be punished by one's peer group. It also belies the tendency of people to rely on the judgement of others, often against their own instincts. For example, many people assume that someone else will have taken responsibility for the situation, contacted the EMS or Fire Department, or have initiated emergency action; and that if no one else is saying or doing anything, then it cannot be that serious. Someone else must have called the fire department or police. They must know something I don't. Right? They may think you know something they don't. In other words, if everyone thinks this way, then no one will actually do anything or take the situation seriously. This is particularly the case in work environments, where people are used to managers taking charge, and just doing their little bit and not really being concerned with or taking responsibility for the bigger picture or for the collective. People are in a sense used to not taking responsilibity for themselves or anything else in a work environment. People are used to having their immediate physical requirements looked after for them in an office or work place, and do not expect to have to make an effort in this department. People act like babies in work places in many respects or when in someone else's environment (on a plane etc.) and expect others to take charge and responsibility and are not used to thinking on their feet and taking responsiblity for the entirety of their own selves. When something unusual happens, we often assume it is intented to be happening and override our instincts, where it is a survival or criminal situation. People have regular fire drills in offices, so whenever the fire alarm does go off, their immediate reaction is one of assuming it is a bell test rather than the real thing, even if the alarm does not go off. BlackSpy has observed this himself with colleagues and when he has stated it is not a drill, but it is a real alarm, people are still slow to leave, and tend to want to pick up their things, so they can be comfortable when standing outside the building at the fire evacuation spot in the carpark - even when BlackSpy is having a go at them for being so sluggish and apathetic - and nearly needs to physically grab them and push them out of the door. People almost refuse to leave quickly out of principle, for many of the above reasons. It is not very clever. There is also the issue that most people are so programmed as to what to expect from our 'safe' environment, that when something does go wrong in it, people cannot take it seriously, as it is the type of thing that happens on television and not in reality. They are simply not used to seeing it. People go about their business on auto-pilot and switch off to the actual potential threats of their environment in many cases, e.g. electricity, domestic hazards, slippery surfaces etc. There is also the issue of being 'brainwashed' into one's normal routine, a form of neurosis, that one's normal routine, tasks and possessions are all important, and overrule any perception of real danger, and either the person is addicted to these and is unable to break this addiciton even if it means a good chance of being killed, or they are totally oblivious to the reality of theat. People don't want to be inconvenienced if there is a possibility that they might survive afterwards (!) People often assume that fire is not a real danger, and are often caught out by how quickly it spreads, and how quickly they can be overcome by smoke. In seconds a small fire can become a raging, uncontrollable blaze. People underestimate the power of gravity and the weight and force of water.

There are also self-confidence issues, that people may tend to not trust their own instincts, not have enough confidence in their own instincts, and do not want to stand out. They must be wrong and others must be right. Their opinion or instincts are not worth much. People are scared of standing out and want to be invisible in the crowd, like everyone else, as they are used to anyone who stands out getting stick from others, which they may well do themselves to make themselves feel better. Similar to how children behave at school. People often prefer to go along with a bad situation in the hope that it will go away rather than create a 'fuss', and if it gets worse, will still ride it out and not speak up, hoping that it can't get any worse etc. Some people do not have the self-confidence or the self-belief to stand up and be assertive and do something different from the crowd, even if there is a possibility they might die if they don't. The fear of making a 'fuss' is greater than the fear of possible death. For many people, being 'normal' and fitting into the crowd, and not sticking out is one of their main motivators in life - to do what is expected of them and no more, never mave waves as it requires confidence and 'balls'. Do you want to live your life like this? Too scared to ever be yourself or assert yourself? Does that even count as being alive?

What happens in these situations is that the person at each point in the scenario, makes a decision or belief decision, and shifts their rules. The brain feels a need for congruency and once a line has been drawn at one point, it is very hard to go back and say 'hold on, this really was dangerous'. At each step, having made one decision to do nothing, it is harder and harder to actually do anything, requiring an extreme escalation of the situation to actually instigate any action at all. If one had aske the person at the outset if they would have done nothing, they would have said no, but because the situation may build up slowly, then it is easy to fool oneself. This happens in other situations also, where a person does not wish for a particular outcome, but through external pressure ends up in a situation that totally conflicts with his values. One can look to the rise of totalitarian regimes and the actions of terrorists to verify this.

Clearly, in this types of situations, every second counts, and for every second one is inactive, the greater the chance is that one may die. Those who take responsibility and use their instincts and do not care what others are doing, are usually those who survive.

Let us use a metaphor for a moment. If you are in a survival situation, trying to escape from a remote location, for example, at the mercy of the elements, with little equipment, then to survive you need to keep making decisions. If you make a few decisions, and then stop, and stick to what you are doing arbitrarily, in spite of the fact that you will likely die if you continue to do so, as it isn't working or the situation is worsening and a line need to be drawn and a different course of action taken (e.g. is not producing you food, water, shelter or getting you in the right direction or closer to being rescued), then that is not a sensible attitude to take. Survival depends on the ability to keep making decisions. Leaving certain decisions until you are totally desperate may mean you are leaving it too late. Be proactive and use your best judgement. To never rest on your laurels or to stop questioning what you are doing. Survival situations require the ability to not get caught up emotionally in the situation too much, to be able to take a step back and use your ingenuity and analytical qualities to figure out what you need to do to survive (from a simple plan to the more complex) - to not just fight everything with brute strength but use the resources around you to your advantage; and it requires a little bravery, to be prepared to go outside your comfort zone and do what it takes to survive - to leave the known, when necessary and take a leap of faith, and trusting your instincts and yourself that you can survive and succeed. This applies in life generally, the ability to keep making decisions and to look with open eyes at what is around you and to observe any signs or feedback from your actions, and to keep perspective, is important to live a meaningful and fulfilling existence. Making decisions is one of the signs of life, of being alive. Those who have been conditioned to be indecisive or though low self-esteem or self-trust issues, find making decisions hard or impossible sometimes, but we have to accept that sometimes we have to draw a line in the sand somewhere and use that to move forwards rather than paralysed, ignorant, or not moving towards what we want. The more you make decisions, the easier it becomes, and the more naturally it comes. It is a process of learning about yourself and the world around you, and developing confidence with it. When you stop making decisions, it is easy to get into a mindset where you have 'decided' not to make more decisions, and it can be very difficult to start making decisions again after that. It is as if we have gone into some kind of 'auto-pilot' and lost our sense of cause and effect. We may observe changing circumstances around us but kind of hide from them psychologically and pretend they aren't there, hoping that just around the corner things will mysteriously work in our favour, despite our perhaps now highly flawed approach. Sometimes we fear not making the right decision, but to not act or to not decide is in a sense a decision, a negative one. You may like to think that you will give that choice point you are at at the present moment due attention at any time in the future of your choosing, but it rarely works out like that, and once the moment is gone, it is easy to park the decision or file it, often to be forgotten. Often one may actually procrastinate and put off a task or decision until a later date, knowing full well that one will never actually make it. It is fooling oneself. Part of you knows this, but part of you still believes the rational justification and 'process'. You may put the decision off to later, file away whatever paperwork it is that you were to consider, and you are half hoping that once a certain amount of time has passed, then in a sense, the urgency of whatever it was may have disappeared or it may no longer be relevant - so in a sense now you have relieved yourself of the need to make a decision on it and can discard it. You can routinely do this, whereas it would be quicker and more honest to immediately decide, 'NO, I'm never going to do that', rather than fool yourself. The more you do this, the more hopeless a decision maker you will become. To retreat from decisions is to retreat away from life itself. To stop making decisions and to stop evaluating what you are doing, and treading on blindly in spite of signs telling you that where you are going is not transpiring as you had originally envisaged, is in a sense not taking sufficient responsibility for yourself. When we give up responsibility for ourselves, we assume someone else will pick it up and we rely on others to guide us. But if we are alone in certain areas or respects, then you are in effect walking with your eyes shut and hoping you won't fall off that cliff.

As stated above, if people are not used to seeing something, like a disaster, then their ability to act will be impaired if the situation does arise. In addition, even if they have never seen the entirety of the situation before, they may not be able to act quickly or at all if they have not practised or visualised the corrective action. This is why we have fire drills in work places, to get people used to performing the actions required to escape with one's life, in controlled conditions. It is then that one can do one's thinking and planning, as in the real situation, one has no time to think, and in all likelihood is in such an extreme emotional state that one cannot think at all. During the Twin Towers disaster, nearly every single employee of Morgan Stanley made it out alive. This was because the fire warden there had been meticulous about fire evacuation drills, so the staff were trained and physiologically used to escaping the building, so when the disaster did happen, they did not need to think, they just acted on instinct. Whilst, in times of normal activity, such drills are regarded as 'boring', and those that organise them are considered 'jumped up little [insert expletive]s who get a power trip by being the boss of the fire drill, with an overinflated sense of importance' etc., they do actually have your best interests at heart. People are reluctant to step out of their usual routine, and use their imaginations or role play. By training the body to see how it looks like to escape a building, to feel intuitively where the fire exits are, it will be in a better position to respond should that situation arise. The plan for survival has been stored in one's brain and nervous system. Conversely, if one participates in a fire drill in a half-hearted manner, as one is embarrassed about it or thinks it is silly, one is training the body to not take a fire seriously, and to ingrain a slow response and then a slow and half-hearted exit. Whatever you train, you will do 'in anger'. This is why those martial artists who do not train what they actually intend to use in a life threatening situation will never amount to very much. Without bothering to note where the fire exits are, or by ignoring the safety drill at the start of a flight, one is doing oneself no service at all, as one is still wasting one's time by not listening, and all it requires is mental effort. When you are in a new environemtn, it is useful to size it up - not only for safety sake, but also to actually be 'there', so you are really in your body and in that place, rather than hidden away inside your head, semi-oblivious to the outside world and the arbitrary situations that you are focussing on and regarding as all important, which are in reality only a tiny part of what is going on around you. This is not to say that one should be paranoid about disaster continuously, but have a healthy respect for one's physical environment. People are often under the illusion that modern western societies are inherently physically safe, with no predators or physical threats.

There is clearly an issue or real threats versus perceived threats, and often people are fearful of threats that are highly unlikely to happen, e.g. muggings, knife crime, air travel and terrorism, i.e. those that are more dramatic and focussed on by the media, but are less fearful of more likely dangers like slipping over (followed by a heavy fall), electrocution with kitchen devices, car accidents, and slower deaths by eating junk food, alcohol abuse, drugs etc.

When a disaster situation does occur, as described above, most are not mentally prepared, do not have a plan stored. The body in general tends to respond best to stress inputs, up to a certain point, such as deadlines, for increasing one's personal performance (whilst remaining calm and collected, but focussed). However, beyond a certain point, increasing psychological stress does nothing to help one's performance, but merely reduces it. In extreme situations, where there are new stimuli, extreme fear etc. many people simply freeze. They are unable to physically move and do not respond to verbal cues. This is a condition known as tunnel vision. It works positively for those that can focus, i.e. it blots out all unnecessary stimuli, like the sounds of people screaming or dieing around them, and focusses the person on survival and escaping. In such states, time seems to slow down, as the brain is working at a higher level, using more of its faculties, to ensure the body's preservation. Reports and testimonies from survivors of extreme incidents are often highly inaccurate or completely unusable because of this. Conversely, those who are frozen to the spot also have tunnel vision, but in a negative sense, so they are unresponsive to verbal commands, and in the case of the sinking of the car ferry MS Estonia in 1994, people had life jackets thrown at them, but did not put them on, and just sat there until they were drowned. Those who survive are focussed on escape and see people around them doing nothing, and cannot understand why they did not act. This paralysis through fear in many ways comes down to negative beliefs. The person that acts best in these situations is the person who has a sense of certainty, who does not even consider the possibility of not making it out. The person who lacks confidence and certainty in that moment, is much less likely to make it out. Clearly, having a plan ingrained into one's brain before, be it through visualisation, can be executed, albeit with some difficulty, even if one is partially paralysed through fear, as no thinking is required. Those with no plan, who are also not able to think, often cannot act. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Self-Confidence allows one to deal with greater levels of stress successfully and still perform. Clearly those who are able to rely on their instincts more and are more used to relying on their instincts, rather than solely on thinking, are in a better position to deal with unknown and chaotic situations that life sometimes brings.

BlackSpy has himself trained in various 'extreme' sports, such as skydiving, and when training with professionals, safety drills are taken extremely seriously. Sure one has a joke and a laugh, but drills are always performed. For example, cave diving training is nearly purely consisting of instructor simulated emergencies, and every training dive sees a simulated emergency exit, be it one diver out of gas, losing one's mask, losing the main line in the cave (i.e. lost), light failure etc. Every cave dive starts with an 'S-Drill', which is an out of air simulation, where who donates one's regulator to one's 'out of air' buddy, testing the ease of procedure for each dive time member, both ways around. BlackSpy, in his skydiving training, was taught to perform a simulated 'cut away' procedure, which is where you cut away your main parachute when it is not open or deployed properly, and deploy one's reserve parachute. Few skydivers bother to practice this drill before each skydive, but BlackSpy always did. On more than one occasion, BlackSpy has to perform this in a real situation, where thinking was very difficult. The first time, the handle for the main parachute was stuck fast, and on the second occasion his parachut did not deploy properly. He was pleased he had gone through the drills before getting on the plane, and it had made him feel more relaxed and at ease, as he knew he could handle any outcome. The same applies to virtually any situation. He did discuss the both incidents with instuctors after the event, when safely on the ground, and possible explanations were offered, or alternative solutions, which were noted, but at the time, there was little time to think. Next time, hopefully there won't be one, then BlackSpy was even better prepared to deal with it. We are not talking about being paranoid, or fearful, but just having a healthy respect for what one is doing, and being real rather than living in cuckoo land. Being better able to handle one's focus in all situations.

back to top

 
Violence and Aggression:

Let us examine some of the underlying causes or drivers towards aggressive or violent behaviour. This will of course not be a comprehensive examination or list, but is intended to touch upon a few high level factors. Violence is not just something that affects others and people of a different disposition to ourselves, but is something that lies within the human psyche and can be leveraged or brought out in certain circumstances. Some of us think of ourselves as deeply socialised and that we could never be capable of certain acts of violence. But is this really the case? To tackle violence means tackling the causes rather than simply writing certain segments of the population off as 'violent' and assuming the rest of us will be on best behaviour all of the time. So what causes violence or aggression?

• Pressure

This could be in the form of external sources of stress, i.e. stress triggers, which over time may wear down at our core values or sensibilities. They may be external events that cause us to feel fearful or stressful, painful memories, based on associations we have formed in the past, whether correctly or incorrectly (if there is indeed such a thing as 'correct') - and if we feel we have lost control or these triggers have built up to a significant extent, we may lose control or 'explode'. They could be social or economic pressures, and it has been observed at various times in recent history that economic pressures result in increased social tensions, racism, prejudice, domestic violence, street crime, rioting, violent protests, clashes between different groups and/or the police, and indeed war. To some degree, this can be a mechanism for social change (e.g. economic reforms or changes in government) or artistic expression (e.g. punk or other youth movements). Other stress triggers could include a stressful or highly demanding and high pace work environment. There can be other psychological reasons, including disempowering beliefs (being challenged by the environment) or repression or denial (see the Jungian Shadow page for more information). Most people have a breaking point, where they will diverge from their normal pattern of behaviour or personality, and may be seen to express their shadow or become slightly more aggressive or defensive in their behaviour. In such an aggressive or stressed state, one may interpret other people's behaviour or expressions as more aggressive than they really are (i.e. loss of clarify or attaching a false meaning to something). They may become aggressive towards the source of the stress, or may experience an aggression shift, and target others who have nothing to do with the original source of stress and take it out on them instead (given a moderate or no stress trigger from them at all). They may be subject to moodiness or other unpleasant emotional behaviour, or depending on how solid the person's boundaries are, how extensive their level of socialisation, and the solidity of their beliefs and self-control, may actually become violent in a specific situation or more types of situation than normal. The tolerance threshold is lowered. There are a small number of individuals who do not lose their composure no matter what physical or emotional stressors they are subjected to.

There can be physical stressors, or factors that affect our behaviour and render us more likely to be short tempered or aggressive, such as muscle tension, lack of sleep (e.g. looking after a newborn child, long shifts at work etc.), long term illness, hormonal problems, drug or alcohol abuse, too much caffeine and other endocrine disrupting drugs, certain medications, too much sugar or preservatives in food, a painful injury, lack of relaxation time, or even a car accident (including a shock to the pre-frontal cortex). Some victims of car crashes, who were previously non-violent and very caring individuals can undergo profound personality changes and even commit murder. It is rare but it has occurred. Such events act to 'undo' the socialising that controls violent impulses that we learn as a child, as discussed below.

Some people are able to manage their emotions in a better way than others and not form delusional or unhelpful psychological associations; to release tension in various ways, through sports, sex, music, artistic expression, through sharing and communication, through sharing love, intimate physical contact or bonding, through philsophical thought and debate, through being proactive in one's life to change it for the better and remove gratuitous sources of pain etc. Some people however bottle up their pain, rarely express it or share it with anyone, and nurture it like a little child; perhaps even going over and over it in their minds, to make the pain bigger; either to motivate them to change something or because the ego likes to feel significant or important (albeit through extremely flawed means). Those who are under pressure, from whatever source, and seek to take 'revenge', either on the perceived source of the trigger, or anyone who remotely gets in their way in any way, feel some temporary sense of relief or satisfaction whilst executing this 'punishment', although after the event, when things have calmed down, they may be highly embarrassed or even deny or repress the memory of the experience, saying that it is not them, so their core identity and sense of superiority or righteousness is not affected. Revenge, punishing others or being cruel or destructive is a very low-level source of self-empowerment, and reflects an inability to self-actualise on much higher levels.

It should be noted that venting 'steam' and aggressive or defensive behaviour (whether to the source of the perceived stress or aggressiong shifting) is not the same as being confident or assertive. Those who cannot express themselves and assert themselves with ease and confidence in daily life or in certain situations are those that tend to build up the most pressure or tension and are most likely to 'blow off steam' on someone in an inappropriate manner. Aggression is not really a sign of relaxed confidence and positive beliefs about the self. It is a very low-level form of expression, used as a last resort when other strategies have failed (e.g. being passive, doing or saying nothing and letting one get increasingly wound up - yes, this is a choice and a strategy, albeit a rather unhelpful one). Confidence may be possessed in pockets, i.e. compartmentalised, in certain situations, and maybe absent in others. Aggression is the poor cousin of confidence. Learning and nurturing assertiveness rather than aggression more healthy for being who one wants to be and minimising the amount of frustration that builds up; and is more conducive to a happy and relaxed existence.


• Socialisation

The extent that a person is socialised from an early age is extremely important in how violent they become in later life. Although the extent and severity of violence is much less as a small child, most violent behaviour and fighting actually occurs up to the age of 3. Most parents can attest to this! Before the age of 3, most children have not developed the relevant connections to their emotional centre, the pre-frontal cortex, and have little control over their impulses. They lack emotional-management and self-control, especially regarding the impulse to fight. As children grow older, they usually learn to control their violent urges, but of course, if a child has missed out on this socialisation process and built up their neurological pathways and connections, i.e. violent or abusive domestic/other environments, little guidance or control in infant schools and/or poor parenting, then a child may retain a large element of this lack of self-control with regards to violent urges and impulses into teens and beyond. The irony is that most teenagers are much less violent than young children, although they are physically stronger and have learnt to fight better or how to express violent urges through books, gaming or media. There is the element of teenage insecurity (the uncomfortable middleground between being a child and an adult) and hormones to consider also.

We should consider that the meaning of violence is engrained into our respective cultures. For example, in certain cultures, children are taught violence as a form of social expression, in certain specific circumstances and traditions. Historically, our societies have been extremely violent throughout history, and it is only in recent times that death (through violence or disease) has not been an everyday experience on our streets and in everyday life. We need only look to Totalitarian states for unadulterated brutality and how it affects daily life. This is more 'typical' of humanity throughout history. In other societies, we are taught that it is wrong, unless of course one is referring to the police or soldiers where lethal force may be dished out without thinking about it, because of the perception of righteousness or 'need'. These are highly compartmentalised forms of expression that are not tolerated elsewhere in the society. Modern consumer culture has a rather contradictory view of violence, as it is regarded as sexy or cool in certain circumstances, in games, movies etc. but then our politically correct culture looks down upon actual expressions of violence or embracing some of the things we have been shown in the media. The same applies to sex. Soldiers are trained to kill, then when they come home they are not appreciated and cannot act in the same manner as they did whilst on duty (e.g. using force to protect the innocent). Post-enlightenment society has done much to try to rise about humanity's baser instincts towards fighting or violence, but it is probably hard-coded into people in a primal sense, that animalistic instinct, this comes to the surface in certain situations or under extreme stress, or when societal restrictions are removed (i.e socialisation is 'undone').

In a similar sense, when modern democratic and middle class values and social restrictions are removed from one's living environments, many people are seen to degenerate into more violent or primitive/primeval behaviour. This is something Darwin himself noticed in South American natives. He brought two back to England, brought them up as English gents (albeit being treated as novel acts) and when returned to their home villages, they did not socialise the other inhabitants but returned to their former state and the local priest was brutally murdered. This is not to say that this tendency to slip down the cultural curve towards violence was a good thing, but it was a natural state for those cultures with less inhibitions and that adoped a somewhat more 'animal' state. We cannot escape our animal origins, but we can exercise self-control when appropriate. Most people acknowlege that minimal force is acceptable in extreme situations, but most people do not feel good afterwards about having taken a life, even if it meant protecting their own or those of others. This may result in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.


• Brainwashing or Conditioning

We can observe in certain situations that people with some level of pain can be conditioned into becoming soldiers who can commit acts of genocide or ethnic cleansing. Or indeed in the Balkans, where civilians would kill their neighours because of a perceived ideal, political proganda and manipulation of past historical tensions or national/ethnic identity insecurity. For some, acts of violence by another group against one's community or a perception of a threat to one's community or country is enough to motivate a person to enlist in a type of activity that involves indiscriminate killing. This is not to say that all armed forces are involved in indiscriminate killing, but certain elements of soldiers overseas do engage in indiscriminate or sadistic killing or torture. This occurs often as a consequence of de-humanisation (as discussed on the Psychology of Difference page. Japanese soldiers in WW2 were not inferior human beings but had simply been brought up and conditioned to regard those who surrendered as less than human, and their violent treatment of them usually just reflected this. Of course, some were more sadistic and violent than others. People are conditioned to varying degrees, but members of militias or vigilante groups or even certain gangs, are conditioned into being more violent than they otherwise would be if they had not signed up to these groups. Such acts of cruelty of violence are often geared around tranferring one's own pain onto a group of people and making them suffer, to exact one's 'revenge' for whatever injustices one perceives one has been subjected to (due to brainwashing; or the environment and circumstances of the conflict one is engaged in - e.g. lack of appreciation by some of the locals, which comes back to pressure above).

When it comes to 'regular' forces in the US and European armies, then it is true that soldiers are conditioned to kill their targets without thought. Thinking about it too much would cost lives - their own. He who hesitates in battle will generally not live very long. Conversely, many soldiers or snipers actively enjoy hitting their 'targets'. They are trained to do so. It is the same sense of elation that a software engineer feels when he has completed a program/routine or fixed a bug and got a system working again. If one sniper for example hits a target with precision (e.g. a head shot), then other members of his unit may well be jealous. Soldiers are generally not trained to 'kill' from day one, they are groomed, first to endure extreme physical hardships, to succeed, and to look out for members of their own team. They are with time trained to fire at targets that resemble the shape of people over many months, which fall down when fired at, so that when a soldier comes to shoot at a target, he is not shocked when they just collapse like a sack of potatoes. Over time, they come to train to kill more and more realistically, for example stabbing sacks filled with animal guts with their bayonets, so that entrails leak out when they stab them. Problems arise when they go back home and their aggressive way of dealing with threats are not welcomed in civilian life, nor is the fact that they may have actually killed people in a gruesome manner in combat, as people see that if they are capable of killing in one situation, they are in another. However, this is not generally the way soldiers look at it, they were putting their lives on the line to do a job no one else wants to do. They follow orders. It is the politicians that the 'civilised' nation votes in that are responsible for making the decisions about who to go to war with, so in a sense the voting public is as responsible as the person who actually pulls the trigger. A soldier is trained to fight and achieve a target, and that is what they do in the field, like clockwork, having been trained to do so hundreds of times in practice drills. Similarly, crack teams like the Special Forces, e.g. SAS, go in with surgical precision, often compared to the undisciplined soldiers/terrorists they come up against, who often don't stand much of a chance. They kill efficiently and aim to get the job done and with minimum civilian casualties. They do not often lose sleep at night over their killings, but more often it is civilians who were in the vicinity or negotiators who feel bad about death tolls of terrorists etc. Of course, some soldiers are indeed traumatised by their experiences, and a constant state of stress and fearing for one's life for months on end can burn people out and cause severe psychological damage and health problems, let alone any toxic exposure whilst in the field and the garbage that is often served up as 'food'. It depends on the individual of course. Some soldiers in the heat of battle do get 'bloodlust', i.e. the desire to kill, and under extreme stress or trauma associated with dead comrades, sometimes atrocities and war crimes do occur, soldiers wanting to literally kill anything that moves, or commiting gross acts of torture and sexual abuse on prisoners. Afterwards, they may well realise the error of their ways and the extent of what they have really done, i.e. the unprofessionalism and tainting of their unit's name. An intense hatred of the opposition does contribute to bloodlust, egged on by racism or bigotry. In the First World War, troops were trained to hate the enemy, but this often resulted in tally ho, cavalier and irresponsible attitudes to fighting (solo heroic actions) and often resulted in early burn out or premature death. One might question this however, as on Christmas Day in 1914, the Germans and British had a football match on no man's land, and had a great time together, only to resume the slaughter the next day. Perhaps it was compartmentalised in some manner. During the Second World War, the training focussed on tactical precision, in a non-emotional manner, but there was never really any training to 'kill' any targets that resembled people, so when it came to the actual combat, about 70% of the troops, when firing at the enemy, aimed to actually miss as they could not face killing other human beings!


• Shifting Responsibility; Respect for Authority; Conformism; Consistency

In our modern industralised or service oriented societies, we are conditioned to operate as part of a big system or collective. We rely on others for many essential services and for expertise. Often, we blindly accept what someone tells us because of their social standing, professional qualifications or position of power. On many levels we associate many roles or professions with higher ideals. For example, scientists or doctors are associated with a benevolent ideal that they are working to make our society a better place, to make us healthier, and that people tend to accept their directions and word unquestioningly, even if what they are telling us is misguided or has been shown over a period of time to be flawed or completely erroneous in certain cases. We learn to trust a policeman, doctor, civil servant, our superior, or a customer services representative (to a lesser extent these days!) We often assume the smartly dressed business person, embodying our society's middle class and consumerist values, is more trustworthy and less likely to be a criminal than a scruffy individual or one wearing baggy sports gear. However, in many ways, this sense of trust is a double edged sword. It also requires a shift in responsibility. If we trust others to fulfil their role, then we are giving them our trust and are assuming they are responsible. As discussed above, many people fail to act in emergency situations because they assume someone else 'must know' or is taking responsiblity. We rely on the 'fair' systems in our society and work with them to get ahead and function, and we rarely think on the spot in all areas or are aware of what we are physically actually doing. People like to assume others take the responsiblity for a situation, and that if one hands something over to a superior or other department, or reports it, that one can then forget about it as it is no longer one's responsiblity. People often have an aversion to taking responsibility for a situation. This is partly why customer service in many large companies is so appalling, as people like to pass a problem or a case from one to another, like a game of 'Pass the Parcel' or a hot potato; and rarely checking with the person they handed it to to find out if the customer was actually helped or not; or if they do, it is only superficial and they don't want much detail, and as long as it takes no more than a few seconds. People similarly don't like to take responsibility for themselves and their own actions, and like to blame their misfortunes on others (e.g. the culture of litigation in the USA, e.g. people not wanting to check whether a cup of coffee is piping hot before placing the cup in their lap whilst driving or something equally irresponsible, placing the responsibility on the fast food outlet). Some people expect any product they purchase to be 'idiot proof' and not harm them if they swallow it, stab themselves with it or abuse it in any unfathomable manner; as they don't like to pay too much attention to what they are actually doing. People like to think anything they see on television is actually true, including commercials, which are there to sell you a product and NOT to educate you (usually quite the opposite), and assume anything a supermarket sells you cannot be that bad for you, espeically if it is by a trusted Brand or household name. Trusting a brand is an act of deferral of responsibility. People prefer to go around on autopilot, being far too busy, liking convenience (someone else taking part responsibilty for 'speeding up tasks' etc.)

The pinnacle of experiments in people shirking responsility and trusting an authority figure more than they should be must surely be the famous Milgram experiment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

In the Milgram experiment of 1961, volunteers were invited to partake in an experiment on memory and memory training. Upon arrival they were informed that it would involve the application of electric shocks to a person in the next room if they got an answer wrong, to see if it helped them remember. The voltage would be increased for every wrong answer. The other person was an actor, and the responses to the shocks were pre-recorded. The 'trainer' applying the shocks from a console was not in reality giving anyone any shocks, but they did not know this. There was an instructor/scientist present in the room with the trainer the whole time. As the experiment continued, many looked to the scientist for guidance and for reassurance, as the voltages became higher and more shouts and screams were heard next door, but because they believed it was of scientific value, a higher ideal (much like participants in Nazi Germany atrocities believed their cause was a higher ideal or calling), and that they were told that they must continue, that they were obligated to do so, most carried on, to the maximum voltage of 450V which is deadly. 65% (26 of 40) of participants, picked from a variety of backgrounds and occupations, went on to 'kill' the learner or actor.

These were people who were not in pain, angry or violent. Nor with what would be considered to be stressed or unsocialised backgrounds. However, they went on with a small amount of coercion to what they thought was killing someone, building up to it over a short period of time. Clearly if they had been asked to apply 'deadly' force from the start, they would most likely have refused, but because it was build up over time, each previous action reassured them, as it was only 'a little higher' than the last shock, and that if they had been ok about the previous level, then this wasn't much different. This is probably a reflection of the desire of the brain for continuity, and the pressure from oneself to appear consistent, even if it means doing something one really doesn't want to be doing, in the hope it will go away or stop soon and one can get back to normal. In many cases, people tend to compartmentalise their experience, and don't pay much attention to what else is going on (context of one's work or the consequences an what it means) and just want to focus on their job; i.e. tunnel vision, and a lack of interest in the consequences of their actions. In this case it resulted in ignoring or not thinking about the screams or lack of screams or sound as the voltages increased. Or perhaps a plain lack of thinking about what was going on, smoothed over by the step-by-step nature of the experiment. So the net result of the experiment is that most of us have the potential to kill an innocent person if it fits in with a higher goal or ideal, or involves authority figures that tell us to perform our duty and whose presence seemingly shares or delivers us of any responsibility. It is the way one feels one is not performing the action personally on another, but is merely the instrument of another's will, and any moral or ethical consequences of one's actions are the fault of one's superior or the culture as a whole, not you the individual who actually performs them. Many people recognise this tendency to excuse inhuman or unfair treatment of an individual as 'one is just doing one's job', but clearly it can be taken to the extreme with little push at all, in the right situation. Some people will naturally question authority more and refuse to do certain jobs that are demanded of them if they consider them to conflict with their moral values. Others will continue to perform inhuman acts with some reassurance along the way from someone they look up to or trust; or assume must know what they are doing. The same patterns seem to occur also when a group of individuals get together - often resulting in a worse standard of behaviour than would otherwise be engaged in, through peer pressure and appealing to the group's more powerful social pressures and fears, and baser instincts, where the pressure to conform to the group mentality is too great for most -those who do not are often picked on by other members of the group. Many people just want to be accepted by the group and succumb to conformist pressures. The tendency towards poor behaviour in groups is noted by anthropologists as a phenomenon known as Tragedy of the Commons, where a group of people sharing resources will tend to abuse that resource as they think someone else will do if they don't, whereas they wouldn't do it if it was their own or they felt it was their own. You may have noticed something similar when people rent a hire-car and treat it worse than their own car as they don't feel th responsibility towards it.

The Milgram experiment was recently repeated in 2008/9 for a television programme featuring the ex-Conservative Party UK MP Michael Portillo. In this experiment, 75% of participants (9 out of 12) went on to use the 'deadly voltage', although the number of test subjects was only 12 as opposed to 40 in the original Milgram experiment. Whether this is because the sample was smaller or whether it reflects a higher degree of predisposition to be coerced by authority figures or a general tendency towards a lack of concern for others or to use one's brain is a matter of debate.

back to top

 
Focus Interruption/Maintenance Techniques:

We can break our focus if we are focussing negatively, by just saying STOP to ourselves, or by slapping ourselves in the face several times! BlackSpy tried the latter approach as he kept thinking about a colleague who wound him up immensely. Every time he thought of him he became really annoyed. So when BlackSpy found himself getting annoyed, he would disappear away from anyone and slap myself around the face a dozen times. Putting on a stupid voice whilst mocking the person (to oneself!!) and making anger at this ridiculous person seem ludicrous, can also help. This way, every time BlackSpy thought of him, he would think of the slapping and the stupid voice and it would make him smile. The pattern was broken! After much slapping it might added. This is a great NLP technique.

An excellent example of the power of pattern interrupts and changing focus is the technique used by the United Kingdom's armed forces. When presented with a hostile atmosphere amongst local people whom may not speak a great deal of English (for example a particular situation in post-war Iraq), the soldiers ensure they are not wearing sunglasses to maintain eye contact with the angry crowd and simply say 'Manchester United' or 'Arsenal'. Whilst this may not work every time, it tends to instantly relax a hostile crowd and make them smile, as they have a powerful emotional association with international football teams. The tension is broken and the crowd now feel a common bond with the soldiers and share in the pleasure of thinking about the football team. It is something that people of all backgrounds can instantly relate to all over Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and it changes our state immediately. The same applies to pop stars, who have the power to make people feel instantly good by just having their picture shown, speaking or singing. This is why celebrities are often used in television adverts, because the sensation of feeling good when hearing the person's voice is associated with a particular product, especially if repeated again and again. Of course, you personally may not support these teams or like a particular celebrity, and if someone mentioned their name to you, you might feel an immediate negative reaction! More concepts about influence through controlling focus can be found on the The Power of Influence page.

You can use the principle of pattern interrupts both on yourself or on another person to interrupt their negative behaviour. Often stress or anger is a result of momentum, i.e. of nurturing and winding yourself up more and more with perceived meanings of a situation. One is 'doing' that emotion. In order to remove that momentum so as to effectively take all the wind out of the sails of that emotion, one can simply interrupt the flow of the situation. To interrupt another person, one can try to confuse them or ask them a question that makes them stop and think for a moment. Anything that gets them to stop what they are doing. Perhaps you could compliment them or ask them if you know them or similar. Or do something really odd or wierd to freak them out or confuse them. Often an argument or confrontation situation requires the recipient of the hostility to play along. If you don't play along, the situation cannot unfold as the aggressor wants. You do not HAVE to play the part the other person wants you to, although the general response is usually just that. You could try throwing a bucket of water in their face if the situation allows (and if you know them well)! Or make them laugh. Similarly, you could make yourself laugh if that it is you getting wound up.

A great way to turn around a negative state of mind (a pattern interrupt) is to simply say to yourself 'I intend to feel good' or 'I want to feel good'. Simply repeat this a number of times aloud with intensity, and you will no doubt feel a whole lot better! Another variation of this is 'I intend to attract abundance into my life' or be specific, for example 'I intend to attract healing and vitality into my life' or 'I give myself permission to attract an abundance of health and healing into my life.' Anything that thought that focuses on what you don't want or what you lack will create negative results and will not make you feel good. Nor will it set up the conditions necessary to get you want you feel you lack. It is useful to completely dispose of the 'lack' or 'don't want' mindset, and to merely focus on what you do want and to perceive yourself surrounded with the conditions that you actually want to attract into your life. Any focus on 'lack' or what you don't want will kill off this unlimited source of abundance and your ability to become what you actually want.

Another thing to remember is that a calm mind is very important in manifesting what you want in your life. If you have a constant background noise of thoughts in your mind, you are clearly not in control of your focus, but in addition, this addictive pattern of continuous thought will prevent you from tapping into the 'zone' for abundance and finding that creative zone where there is no thought but maximum performance.

Some of the ideas presented above are found in the Tony Robbins' seminar programme 'Unleash The Power Within' (UPW), the movie 'The Secret' (on visualising your goal and what you want, and concepts of abundance) and in Wayne W. Dyer's 'The Secret of the Power of Intention' (concepts of ego and abundance). These sources, as well as a brief examination of the history of 'The Secret', can be found on the Psychology Bibliography page.

back to top

 
Addiction and Compulsions:



Any addiction can be detrimental to your personal and spiritual development, your sense of clarity, your time, your health and energy levels, your stress levels, your emotional freedom, your happiness and your wallet. Whilst a large number of pages in this Psychology Section relate to addiction and how to break free from it, a few are particularly pertinent. In particular, the Focus page you are reading, the Belief page, the Physiology page, the References page and the Fundamental Human Needs page. An explanation of how a conditioned pattern of behaviour, for example, an addiction or stressed psychological state, can offer certain choice points, which if you ignore and do not leave your comfort zone to take up, result in following the roller coaster ride of that addition, can be found on the Stress page, under the section 'Stress as a Choice'. You may find it beneficial to return to this Addiction section once you have read through the other pages in the Psychology section, as the points below are pertinent to the experience of working through those choice points and indeed avoiding the psychological pitfalls that may await you. This Addiction section shall confine itself to examining certain aspects of psychological addiction, and the path to recovery, and the mechanisms of the human mind that pull us back to our addictions again, and continue to fool us, hence making the process potentially very difficult if one does not use the right tools.

As discussed on the Belief and Motivation pages, if you associate enough pain with a habit or pattern of behaviour, and enough pleasure with quitting that pattern and adopting a new and more empowering pattern, then quitting becomes essentially relatively effortless, rather than a struggle with one's will power of how long you can hold out for, which is usually an unsuccessful and exhausting strategy. We can use the same principle to attach enough negative emotion with failed results of quitting, once you have actually quit but are resisting any urges or thoughts that are tempting you back again, to reduce the amount of distraction and temptation back to the old, disempowering habit.

The first step in eliminating your compulsions and addictions is becoming aware of them. Not just the overall nature of the compulsion or urge, but the actual choice points you go through and the nature of the psychological processes that you go through when you successfully resist the temptation, and also what is going on in your brain when you give in to the urge at that choice point. Some of these processes are described below. You may only become aware of certain urges or addictions in fleetin moments, or unless someone else informs you of them. Try to be aware of the nature of the addiction and your role and part in fuelling it. It is a bad piece of programming but it doesn't just happen to you and come 'out of nowhere'. It is something you have allowed to become consciously conditioned and allowed the hooks and anchors to be placed in you over time. Don't put them out of your mind or deny these addictive patterns of thoughts of behaviours exist, but write it down and perhaps even the conditions when the urge crops up. Try to think about how you are reinforcing these negative patterns and what you need to do to proactively release their hold over you. And the exact moments when the urges come. If you are so used to giving into them, e.g. stress, then you may not even be aware of what is going on until you are very deeply into the behaviour. Still, it is not too late to try to stop yourself, interrupt the flow of the negative pattern of behaviour, and start affresh. Depending on the addiction, of course this may not be physically possible. But often it is a series of ever decreasing choice points. It is helpful to develop that self-consciousness where you can analyse your own behaviour, as then you are in a position to fine tune it to be congruent to how you actually want to be.

As a psychological exercise, you may find it useful to resist your everyday compulsions as and when they crop up. If you are unable to do so, then essentially you are a slave to your compulsions, many of which are detrimental to your wellbeing or health. A compulsion is just an urge. Once a compulsion pops into our head, instead of staying outside the comfort zone and not giving it any time and forgetting about it, and feeling the pull of that compulsion slip away, if we entertain it and chew it over, we are in effect making things ten times worse. We are allowing that compulsion to put additional hooks or anchors into us, so it is much harder to shake off. If we are serious about finally resisting the compulsion, then what we are essentially doing is torturing ourselves and using up a large amount of energy in the process, all for nothing. If you suffer from a variety of different compulsions on a daily basis, some softer compulsions and some harder compulsions, and routinely give in to nearly all of them, then why not try to pick one, a soft compulsion (an easier one) and try to at least resist that one compulsion. Set yourself that one goal and put all thought of resisting other compulsions out of your mind. Don't worry about them now. If it makes you feel better, tell yourself you will allow yourself all these other compulsions today. But this one you must NOT give in to. You can always 'change your mind' later and tackle another compulsion if you are up for it. But the main thing is to succeed with one, rather than stretching yourself too thin and failing at all. In that way, once your brain is used to how it feels like to break a compulsion, breaking a compulsion in another area will be slightly easier. You will also be training your mind to know that you can actually do it if you want to, that you can succeed. If you do manage to resist that compulsion, then congratulate yourself and feel good about it, and if it returns it, which it may, it will be slightly weaker. Keep focussing on resisting that same compulsion, and be consistent. Consistency creates leverage and power, and also confidence. If you are finding it very wierd and uncomfortable when you are resisting it, stick with it, as you are outside your 'auto-pilot' or routine and you are creating new neurological pathways. This sensation is good!

There are several ways to resist a compulsion. One is to distract yourself. Basically a compulsion acts on the idle or empty mind. If you are busy in some other activity, you might not give it a second thought. You are at your most vulnerable when the compulsion can push all other thoughts out of your mind (if any are present!) Another is the pattern interrupt. This could be in the form of telling yourself 'STOP! STOP! STOP!' and stepping back from the situation for a moment, deep breathing, then communicating with your future self to motivate you in your postive choice and to tell you what happens if you give in, and then going back to that choice point and choose the positive and empowering choice with the minimum of fuss or effort. Distracting yourself after that can be extremely useful too, as often if you feel you've accomplished what you set out to do, the mind can immediately go back to the compulsion again. A compulsion or addictive urge for a negative pattern of behaviour is essentially a loss of mental clarity and control. What you want is to return to clarity and mental calm, and make your choices through emotional honesty and intelligent thought and consideration. A compulsion is neither of these things. It is far from honest and is an example of short term satiation which usually has negative consequences that we do not desire. The above techniques are discussed on the Stress page. As mentioned previously, the importance of brainstorming one's negative beliefs and replacing them with positive beliefs cannot be stated enough.

If you resist it a couple of times and then give in to it after that, repeating the cycle perhaps endlessly, then it is of course unsuccessful; but more than that, you may only be resisting it on one occasion as you know you are going to give into it the next time. For some people, they may like small steps, but knowing you are going to give into it later is not very clever as a strategy. If you are inconsistent and repeatedly backslide, then you are essentially making things worse. Everytime you give in to a complusion you are basically reinforcing it. The more you reinforce a compulsion and pattern of behaviour of giving in to it, the more ingrained the 'auto-pilot negative behaviour choice' becomes and the harder it will be scrub that neurological association in your mind and to create a new neurological pathway. Essentially the choice point becomes less and less easy to grasp.

If you fail to resist the chosen mild urge, then you are likely to fail at resisting any and all others. Simply use the disappointment as leverage, create real pain associated with failure, and try again next time with more conviction. Now is the moment after which you will never succumb to that compulsion or urge again. Feel good about that. Draw a line under the past.

Each time you feel a compulsion to give in to a certain behaviour, you are essentially entering a choice point. If you entertain the behaviour long enough, you are actually leaving that choice point and walking down the path towards that addictive behaviour. To drag yourself back to the choice point and then walk down the path of ignoring the compulsion will be that much harder work if you succeed at all.

Be aware that the mind likes congruency. If you have made a decision or a choice, then be aware that you can stop and change track at any time. However, the mind doesn't normally like to do this, and once a choice has been made, the ego prefers to stick to it and often defends it to the death, even if we know deep down it probably wasn't such a clever choice. Of course, the further down the road we are of having given in to that negative pattern, the harder it is to stop that desire for congruency and that rollercoaster ride. The choice points become harder and harder to grasp, but they are still there.

The mind also likes to prove it can do something, that it has the power of self-actualisation. In the case of compulsions, these are in a sense a demonstration by the mind that it can go with a choice because it is there. The mind chooses it because it can. It is a form of lowest level self-actualisation, the most negative and self-destructive choice being the easiest to follow, in the absence of more positive choices for the mind to present itself with or to make the effort to really see. The mind is programmed to focus on the negative rather than positive by default, probably an ancient survival mechanism to avoid danger or trouble.

So start small, and build up your confidence at resisting compulsions. A compulsion will eventually go away once it has been resisted enough times and you may walk past the chocolate isle at the supermarket, or whatever your compulsion is, and not give it a second thought. If you do catch yourself reminding yourself, then try to clear your mind and carry on, as if you don't, as mentioned above, you are just causing yourself unnecessary aggravation.

Mild compulsions may present themselves as being 'innocuous', despite you having trodden that path many times and you knowing full well what it entails. However, the nature of compulsions is that major or strong compulsions are communicated to your conscious mind as being options or free choices (that you happen to always give into) and also being mild compulsions, when deep down you know full well they are not. Your mind turns into a slick sales person, tempting you with 'carrots' and a feel good factor about giving in to that compulsion, but suppressing those memories of pain you have that are associated with the aftermath of having given in to that compulsion. Be it 'pigging out uncontrollably' on chocolate until you have eaten the entire packet or bar, or supply, and feeling rather ill or having stomach pains all night; or getting totally wasted on alcohol or drugs and the upset afterwards about having been so weak psychologically or physical discomfort for days afterwards. It is only often when you have given in to the compulsion and followed whatever rollercoaster ride it led to that you suddenly and vividly realise the downside of that compulsion/behaviour/addiction and what you hate it so much. Try to remember this next time you feel that urge.

Try to exercise particular restraint when in a stressed or pannicked state of mind. In such mind states, the mind may seek comfort behaviours or behaviours it is used to, to distract it, so one may unconsciously feel more of an urge to indulge in some of one's addictive behaviour patterns. If you are in such a frame of mind - STOP! Try to avoid eating in such frames of mind as you may feel the urge for comfort eating and may eat and eat, not really noticing what is going on in the body or the taste, until one feels totally bloated, for example. Get a grip and try to reassert control over your mind and the situation.

Distraction can be useful to focus the mind on other things, but equally, distraction in the wrong context or too much distraction can mean one uses distraction as a means to avoid tackling or thinking about one's addictive patterns or negative behaviours that need addressing. Use distraction in a positive way, to implement a change, then distract the mind so it is not obsessing with the change; rather than using distraction to hide from oneself, stop oneself stopping/relaxing/contemplating objectively/acknowledging one's addictive patterns or the effects of one's addictive patterns etc. Distraction can thus be used to create a 'safe' zone away from the awareness of one's addictions. The mind believes often that by ignoring something, it will mysteriously vanish! That is often why people have negative behaviours for decades that they fail to address. One may be used to distracting oneself around the clock as one is unable to relax or gain control over one's frame of mind, or perhaps because one is stuck in a fight or flight frame of mind (see the Stress page for more information). Reflection is a necessary tool for personal growth, with self-honesty, rather than negative self-reflection, i.e. beating oneself up about things or missing the point of a situation, or applying negative meanings to a situation or event. Contemplation in the negative sense can also be an addictive negative behaviour in itself when one cannot stop thinking about a particular thing or meaning, causing round the clock stress.

When tackling an addiction, and we have quit, often the mind as with the above will try to do a sales pitch on giving in to that urge, positioning it as an intelligent and educated choice, that we can resist if we want, but that our minds have conveniently overlooked how we actually never have managed to do so before. It is sold to us as an innocuous idea, a small indulgence, even a treat. Our mind tells us that yes we know that we've quit this behaviour or activity, and we feel very good and proud of that, but now that we've quit, the activity now has slightly less hold over us psychologically, and has now been mysteriously downgraded from an addiction/problem into something controllable. This is of course not true, but we try to convince ourselves of this. The dopamine pathway of the brain that is associated with pleasure reinforces the brain memory of pleasure with 'itching that scratch'. However, itching a scratch is only pleasurable for a short fleeting moment and after that we wish we hadn't 'scratched it' as it's too late. So save yourself the bother and don't go down that path! As stated above, the next time we get the urge, if we gave into the previous time, it will be much stronger and reinforced now.

One may have gone to a large amount of trouble and effort to get as far as one has in breaking an addiction, so it is a big waste to blow all work and essentially throw it away by going with the thought of just engaging in that activity one last time, as one has to essentially start from scratch again after that.

Alcoholics are frequently heard to say 'I'll just have the one drink' or drug addicts (whether psychologically addicted to marijuana or physically addicted to heroin or methyl-amphetamine) want to get high just one more time. This temptation to indulge in that old harmful behaviour, whilst often presented to us as just a 'treat', and no longer an addiction, is as you know rationally not a 'treat' at all, that you can enjoy without all the problems of the past, nor is it a 'small treat' and you'll only have one. Dont' kid yourself. It is still that painful, ugly and all consuming habit that drags you around like it's slave or 'bitch'.

Stop looking for excuses to give in. Stop purposely seeking out situations where you are exposed to that temptation with the intention of indulging in that addiction (whilst innocently pretenting to yourself that it was under control or 'an accident'). You know what happens when you give in to it. Make a positive choice and observe the tricks the mind tries to play with you. Use whatever techniques you find empowering and useful. You can do it. It's just a logical, methodical and consistent sequence that you have to go through. All the effort put in is temporary and all the enjoyment and freedom is just around the corner!

Try to avoid using your addictions as a way of replacing the pursuit for your true vocation in life. Addictive behaviours such as shopaholicism often point to deep rooted desires to own, buy or hold on to everything you've ever done, seen, listened to, worn or experienced. Life is full of experiences and to try to collect or hold on to them, rather than merely enjoying an experience at the time or appreciating something without having to feel like you need it to be complete is more healthy. Life is ever changing and one must be able to let go, move on and trust oneself rather than living in the past or for the shopping high of the moment. Some people collect books, but rarely actually read them, or if they do, they only read them once, then they go on the shelf. If they never actually read them again, there is clearly no real benefit in owning them. The idea is probably to enjoy the possibility that you could read it if you wanted to, or fool yourself into thinking that you will read it again soon, but that time never comes. To fool oneself is never really useful. If you can't remember something, keeping piles of books and articles on the subject you never look at again will not help! This web site is in major need of streamlining and rewriting, and one could argue that it reflects the author's desire to record and 'hold on to' every opinion or piece of information he comes across or thinks about. Unless you can remember it, it is not really very useful! Unless other's are benefitting from it in some way.

Other techniques to help with overcoming compulsions can be found in this Psychology section. Of particular importance are the pages on Human Needs, to figure out what psychological needs are driving these destructive behaviours and compulsions and finding other ways of truly satisfying these needs that your current compulsions aren't really doing, but is why they are there; and also the Movitation page, to understand how pain and pleasure are the core drivers of most of our behaviours.

Resisting compulsions is the start of your personal growth, of regaining your own mind and psyche back (which is there for your benefit and not for the benefit of your conditioning, programming and addictions which are not part of who you are), your freedom, your independence, your fully developed adult personality. The ability to make moment to moment decisions free from the pull of compulsions is what constitutes your freedom of thought and clarity of mind. It is YOU. If you are not doing this, you are not really YOU!

Please continue to the Belief page.

back to top


back to home