Procrastination Ooooo, one of my favourites, I am nearly a certified expert at this one. How one can fill time with so much activity and achieve so little? A true master is born. Obviuosly we are not placing blame when doing these exercises, but more so looking for the reasons why certain behaviours were adopted and intergrated into our daily lives, molding our characters. Remember we run on about 95% subconcious programming and until we step back and reprogram ourselves we will rerun these loops of behaviour until death do us part. When I look back as to why I don't just get shit done I strongly believe it comes from school and to some extent home life as well as later in certain work environments. I was always a fairly bright student and enjoyed completing the tasks, assignments in most subjects. I was a particularly strong mathmatician and I loved science. I just had a knack for understanding subjects and being able to explain them back to the class. It's probably why I was a primary school teacher for 7 years. The problem though, came when I was in class and finished an exercise. Rather than being told well done, now go and do something you want to do, I was given an extra assignment as a reward. Ohhh grrrrrreat. Thank you so much. Are you sure? I really don't deserve such a kind gift. (Note: I tend to use sarcasm to fully express myself if you hadn't picked up on that) So how does the child's mind interpret such a response. Don't finish your work or you'll just get more. It's better to piss about and do the bare minimum. Heck, why not just leave the thing unitl the last minute and do what you want until then? Do a rush job at the end and still pass. This became my programming for a very long time. And to some extent it still is. I get a rush doing the highly-focused, high-intense task which despite having had 3 months to do it, is due in a few days! If I have a long time to do something, there's that niggle “They'll just give you more if you do it too quickly or too well.” And in 99% of cases you won't be compenstated for it.

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People pleasing Everyone must like me! Why is it not OK that people are not OK with me? I don't know exactly where it comes from but I was always one to make sure that people approved of my behaviour. This most likely stems from the conditional love I received as a child and later on. I remember leaving my classroom at the age of 6 or 7 and heading to the school office where my mum worked part-time excited to show her my artwork that I had gotten an A+ for. I also had a maths test on which I hadn't done so well. I think I had a D+ or something. I couldn't wait for her to see the “masterpiece” I had created and praise me for my A+. She barely noticed it and honed in on my maths paper. “What happened here!? Why did you do so badly?” etc etc. I tried to point out my artwork and was ignored. This was a running theme in my upbringing. Getting good grades wasn't a good thing per se. It was expected and anything else meant I was berated. I also, moved about as a kid from the UK to the USA where I was laughed at for using words like trousers and tap instead of pants and faucet. The reverse happened when I moved back to the UK. I was teased for my American accent, mullet and earring. I learned to adapt like a chameleon. I quickly lost my southern Cali surfer dude accent and spoke proper British-like. I cut my long curls off within a month of starting the last year of primary school and 2 years later I finally caved into bullying at secondary school and removed my earring. I have been an open person as a result able to see past the masks of most people to see their inner beauty which would result in me acting, in part, the same way as them. Almost like a mirror to their behaviour so they would relate to me. This would cause me to have many personas. To the point where I wouldn't invite some people from seperate groups to the same event, as I felt I couldn't maintain the 2 personas at the same time. I was worried that my friends would see this other side of me which they didn't know and think that's not Ben when in reality neither were really who I was.

As recent major life events have been happening in my world recently, new home, surprise big bills, second baby on the way, I had a bit of a shift internally. It was subtle enough over a few days or maybe a week... my inner dialogue became destructive. It was effecting meditations, and being projected onto others. Genuine classic "this isn't working, am I doing this right? I'm not good at this. What's the point tonight?" It goes on, and on, and on... The way I show up for my actual son was turning into how I was showing up for my inner child during meditation. Getting impatient, I could be more kind, probably not comforting or mindful at times. And I have experienced this before, I'll always be transparent and open with you men here because it's the truth! Showing up for yourself, your inner dialogue plays a very important roll. So what shows up for me tonight? Anger and scared. I spent a long time traveling the US to follow a career path that I thought I wanted, ended up with my dream job in San Francisco, to be washed out by a few men that destroyed all self confidence that I had and bullied me on a personal level. I fought through that for as long as I could until I simply couldn't handle it anymore, so tonight during meditation I came face to face with those men, I DID NOT WANT TO BE IN THAT MOMENT the feelings were so uncomfortable. So I stayed for as long as I could until the emotions felt they had calmed down 5-7 minutes? And made my intentions known to younger me which ended with "I'll be back tomorrow". * Join the calls gents *

I will break the answers down into seperate posts as not to overwelm the reader. How I Feel 1. Anxious - I used to get a strong feeling of anxiety when I would project my current situation into the future. I would assume that because something wasn't right now then it would be like that forever and would never work out. My outlook was so limited I was unable to see all of the possible routes, assuming that there was only one guarenteed outcome. When I think back to my past I think a lot of this came from society, parents and school. We were taught that you went to school, then Uni and after that you got a job for 40+ years and then you could enjoy life. It felt like a long prison sentence for a crime I hadn't comitted had been placed on me from an early age. I felt that when I would finally be "free" I'd be too old and frail to anything with my time anyway. Queue the booze and drugs. 2.Depressed - Obviously such a bleak outlook on what my life had to be like led to depression. Especially in my first years of University. I was doing a degree (Aeronautical Engineering) everyone else wanted me to do and because I was "good at maths and physics." I'd let my mum talk me out of doing Psychology because apparently "I didn't like writing" and all I could see was that I was going to be an engineer stuck in an office for the next 40 years. I couldn't get a girlfriend and I was drinking, like most uni students, way too much. I finally seeked help and saw the psychologist who immediately put me on anti-depressants. Something wasn't right. We'd only chatted for 15 minutes and no other solution was offered. When I took the first one I felt like I was coming up on a pill (ectasy) and knew I couldn't take these daily. I had to find another way. The following summer was a huge change for me when I had a huge epiphany, an almost religious experience. I was at friends house and we had all dropped pills (ironically) and were dancing away. There was a small china statue on the way to the toilet holding a small sign, although I can't rememeber what it said exactly, it grabbed my attention and as I was reading it Pablo Gargano - Everyone's Future came on and as I listened to the repetitive lyrics I knew that I was in charge of my life and I could choose my own future. It would take years to intergrate that knowledge into my being, however I have never really been depressed since that day as I only have to think back to that magical moment of divine intervention.