C'MON GET HAPPY

 “C'MON, GET HAPPY”

For many of us, the ‘Merry’ Christmas is well and truly over and the New Year doesn’t seem so snazzy now that the fireworks have fizzled out, at least until Australia Day. Maybe we were just expecting Santa to bring us too much, like something to prevent that Christmas afternoon traditional bubble-up of long repressed family niggles.

In a world constantly telling us we should be masters of our own happiness, it can be hard to discern the truth about happiness from the well-intentioned hopes and mantras prescribed by self-proclaimed fixit gurus.

What, do you think, it would take for you to be happy?

What would have to happen?

What would you have to possess?

What are your precursors to happiness, or can you be happy without prior conditions?

What does it mean to be happy? What's your definition of it?

Is happiness a goal for you, a destination, a journey; or is it “something else”?

How will you recognise happiness if you come across it?

How do you differentiate Happiness from, say, contentment, quietness, stagnation, satisfaction, gratification, or gratitude?

And, come to think of it, how do we think we know if or when we are happy? 

Many's the time when I've been focused on some activity for quite a while when a realisation has dawned out of my peripheral vision – Hey, I'm happy! It’s that kind of nothing space that happens when unhappiness leaves the building. And sometimes that mini-epiphany has blossomed out of preoccupations that were quite troublesome. Yes, I've caught myself being unreasonably happy about being not-happy.

What does happiness feel like? Or is it even a feeling? Are there times when Happiness is something more than just a feeling? Then what is it?

Be very wary of “wave of happiness” promises offered by gurus and self-proclaimed ‘experts’ in exchange for their secrets to a happy life, for a (not so) small fee. You won’t find any patented “secrets” here; just un-commonsense suggestions for you to try for yourself. And they’re free.

If they work for you too, you’ll be happy. And so will I.

One thing occurs to me at the outset, and I think it's important. Happiness is a subjective thing. If, or when, I'm in a solely objective frame of mind, I’m  neither happy nor unhappy. So every time I'm tempted to claim “I'm being purely objective about this”, I've learned to check if I have any feelings about the situation floating around in the vicinity. If there are traces, then I know I'm not being as objective as I'd like to think.

SUBJECTIVE WELLBEING

Researchers who study subjective wellbeing, a scientific term for happiness, draw on a rich, evidence-based history. Decades of academic research reveal that happiness has a set-point that varies from person to person, but never reaches 100 per cent, not even some of the time.

One dominant theory, termed the ‘homeostasis theory of wellbeing’, describes how our happiness is regulated similarly to the way our body temperature is kept close to a set point. Our body temperature has an optimal point of 37 degrees Celsius, and though it can change in response to external and internal circumstances, our body engages in automatic physiological and psychological strategies to recover that set-point: when we’re warm we sweat, when we’re cold we shiver. When we're upset, we look for Mum.

Having a higher or lower body temperature than the set-point serves its purpose, but is stressful for the body to maintain over time. The set-point reflects the optimum level at which our body seems to function most efficiently and effectively --- happily.

Does a set-point context add to our understanding of Happiness?

It surely does. Our happiness has a set-point too, with research suggesting that, at best, it’s around 80 per cent. For a lot of people, though, 80% seems way out of their reach – “I wish!”.

Although our mood fluctuates in response to changing life circumstances, we engage in conscious and unconscious biological, psychological and, for some, spiritual strategies to recover our particular optimal level each time. By the time we reach adulthood, those setpoint recovery strategies have become automatic habits. We don’t think about them, much less monitor whether they’re still effective or healthy.

Higher or lower levels of happiness are appropriate in response to changing situations, but without the intervention of a life-changing context and a subsequent transforming wake-up that permanently raises the person's median setpoint, casual overs and unders are difficult to sustain over time.

The homeostasis theory of wellbeing extended the idea that we operate on a ‘hedonic treadmill’ – a term introduced back in the 1970s to describe how we’re constantly seeking greater happiness but. like a gym junkie on a treadmill,  getting hot and sweaty but not actually going anywhere much.

We know that when something perturbing happens we engage in regulatory strategies to reduce the negative intensity. We tell ourselves it’s only temporary, we tell ourselves we’re not really like this at all, we tell ourselves we’re good at other things that make us OK, we tell ourselves we knew it would happen because we’re creatures of fate. We distract ourselves with other activities, or pop pills, or smoke/drink substances to numb down the discomforting symptoms……. or another alternative ---- we sometimes actively problem-solve to try and change the situation.

These strategies help to restore our set-point following a departure below its normal state but they belong at a basic, primitive, limited, particle-style level of consciousness and therefore have a diminishing effectiveness over time. We never seem to rise to heights of happiness we think we see in certain other individuals. Our defence is to label such people, perhaps as “lucky”, “gifted”, “flaky”, “cosmic farts”, or “fakers”.

But why can’t more of us wilfully raise our set-point? Apart from short bursts of “inspiration”, why do our best attempts to generically increase our happiness fail? Why can’t we achieve at least a raised median level of contentment or, better still, what we really want – lasting happiness? Do we really have to wait until we die and hope that we've been good enough to get the nod from God;  “Yep, you're upstairs”?

It feels good to be happy. We can all look back on “the happiest times of our lives” and remember how it felt. We long to get that feeling back. But hedonic adaptation describes how we quickly get used to an elevated mood, while the stimulus that caused it diminishes in intensity and becomes less effective at generating additional happiness over time. That sends us on a hunt for new and more powerful stimuli, a hunt that can become an addiction in itself.

It takes effort and energy to maintain an elevated mood over time. We get tired, listless, then exhausted and eventually succumb to despair and chronic fatigue. Just as holding your arms out in front of you becomes painful and exhausting after a while, so does trying to hold up our flagging spirits. I know. I got ulcers, chronic fatigue, the shakes, and depression as consequences for my flagging efforts to keep my spirits up.

This explains why changes to our happiness, in either direction, are usually short-term. We’ve missed a vital, stabilising “something” along the way.

Why can’t we be 100 per cent happy?

Well, maybe we can, but we don't, and I've a sneaking suspicion that there's not much point because we didn't come here to be 100% happy. It strikes me that there's an evolutionary imperative going on somewhere in the background, fuelled by what I call a “divine dissatisfaction” – I can be better. As human beings we're teased to join in this universal game of Making Progress.

It's also my observation that, while everything is going swimmingly and we're quite comfy, we don't seem to possess much motivation and energy for radical change. Maybe Unhappiness has an evolutionary purpose after all, a kind of cosmic kick up the arse.

Whatever level of consciousness in which we currently function dictates a set-point that reflects the default level at which we've decided that we function best. The area a few degrees above and below that set point we call our Comfort Zone. When we sink below that, we turn to comforts, strategies, pills and therapies to quickly return us to the Land of Nod. A higher level of happiness (Hope) we usually consign to a bin secretly labelled “Things that can't last”. That keeps us stringing along but saves us from actually having to do anything creative about making it more durable. No matter how hard or long we may wish for “better”, the actual acts of wishing and hoping stifle the likelihood of lasting happiness ever becoming a permanent fixture. Wishing and Hoping act like condoms, preventing creation of anything new or viable. Walt Disney has not always been our best friend.

Despite the general belief that greater happiness is worth pursuing, any emotional highs that come during the pursuit come at a price. Firstly we have to leave our Comfort Zone. We have to sacrifice some outdated, unhealthy physiological and cognitive operating habits to be able to function at a happier level. And just to make the game even more interesting, any clues that point us how to escalate to something higher make the next step look much less attractive than remaining parked where we are. That's why so few people recognise or take the opportunities life provides because they seem to be pointing in the “wrong” direction. We baulk at paying the price of freedom and stay stuck, trapped by our own misconceptions of what happiness is and how and where to find it.

You’ve probably heard that happier people think, feel and see things differently. That’s true, but probably not in the way you assume. Yes, positive attitudes, higher set-points of optimism, greater insights and creative confidence are beneficial, but only when they come as an act of grace, as a natural result of tapping into wider, lower and higher levels of well-being. I found out the hard way that manufacturing and imposing regimens of positive thinking and thinking only “good” thoughts upon yourself, as recommended by the “fake-it-until-you-make-it” school, are not effective tools for getting happier. If anything, they create the reverse effect by beating up on your self and goading your inner rebel to blow his/her cover, and you have to be constantly on your guard to keep that little shit out of sight. I'm sure you've met someone who's so inflated by loud, aggressive positive thinking and bloated self-image that he/she makes you instinctively cringe. Phoney as a Bangkok watch. And such an apparently one-sided person is not to be trusted because, sooner or later the flip side of that person will turn on you. They cannot help it because their hidden inner saboteur takes over their life at sub-conscious levels, just as yours will. Anything you do not acknowledge will return to bite you on the bum. Seriously.

Research shows that people who have an artificially induced positive mood make all sorts of mistakes when it comes to focusing attention, solving difficult problems, spending money, and trusting others. They're out of their actual comfort zone. Watch someone who's just won the lottery blow it all within a year or two.

Being generally comfortable is usually OK, but being too chilled-out for too long can be dangerous. It can blind you to the reality that your real set-points have not moved one bit. And your set points, especially the ones you don't yet know about, will bring things back to their comfort zone. Always.

We are all ruled by what we don’t, or won’t know. Ignorance is bliss, but the white ants will win.

You can not change what you don't acknowledge. And a plea of ignorance does not excuse you from either the obligations or the consequences of the Ruthless Rules of Reality.

But there’s so much advice on how to be happy!

There is indeed – whole sections of bookshops and libraries. For every seeker there's an army of charlatans (some of them dreadfully sincere) to suck energy out of you, either in the form of time, effort, money, or all three. A number of best-selling authors (including Barbara Ehrenreich, Oliver Burkeman, and Ruth Whippman) have demonstrated how those prophets of success are part of the problem.

Making people feel that they can achieve a higher level of happiness than is actually possible without commensurately raising one's “consciousness thermostat” contributes to a growing sense of lack, failure and anxiety. You then develop a creeping sense that other people are feeling something that seems to be perpetually just beyond your reach. Well, you've just discovered that while the possibilities of mind gymnastics and their relatives can lead you to some amazing places for a while, eventually you'll find yourself in some kind of a dead end – a bit like a side trip I did once coming back from Monkey Mia in the Shark Bay region of Western Australia. For a moment or three I thought I'd blundered into an Australian remake of “Deliverance”, with my young family nervously peering from inside the 4WD.

Self-help of the pentecostal kind is self-delusion. Self-delusion is health and safety hazard – to others as well as yourself.

The real secret to happiness is that there is no secret. The research shows that no matter how grateful, mindful, or hopeful you are, it is not possible to permanently raise your happiness set-points by logical technologies or quasi-religious rites. So don’t fall for the myths, the lies or the secrets. Don’t fall for the so-called ‘inspirational’ quotes you hear or read. By all means accept and relish any lifts you get from them, but don’t be naïve enough to think that you can learn to ride a bike by simply reading a book about it. It's never going to come from anything outside of yourself, or anything you do, or anything you think. Not real Happiness. No. You discover it by being.

Here are some common myths about happiness, and why they won’t help you except as markers that “There's more to learn yet, but you're on track, keep going”.

“Happiness lies within”

Actually this is partly true, but not the way you're thinking at the moment. And part truths blind us to the whole shazzam.

We live in a society that's now encouraging us to find happiness from within our selves, but which aspects of which “selves” they don't seem clear about. And it does not help that, deeply rooted within all that comprises each of us, there is a fundamentally primitive wiring for us to find happiness in the comfort of others. 

Despite our relatively lately acquired sophistications, we are still very much tribal animals. It's why we gather physically and online in families, common-interest fraternities, clubs and social groups. And since we've been doing it for aeons, that urge to cuddle together for warmth, protection, support and comfort isn't going to evaporate any time soon.

Nowhere is this lone-wolf -v- social animal paradox more evident than what's emerging in the digital universe. On the one hand, mobiles and the internet tend to trap us into bubbles of isolation; on the other hand the technology has allowed us to gather in “tribes” that transcend all traditional boundaries, and even enable cross-party movements like Get Up and Mums For Refugees to actively involve individuals in having a real say, and some influence in Government policies and actions. By and large, politicians divorced from the real worlds of their voters have been the cause of these movements arising, and only now are they bewildered and threatened enough to try to join in, and at the same time depower and remove them from the main landscape by grouping them with trade unions and Chinese spies. They have no deep understanding of what’s really going on socially, and no strong strategies for engaging with them. They didn't see it coming. Extremist overseas governments are being lined up next; soon large multinational conglomerates may well be targeted as “threats to our democracy”, and they should worry because the politicians on their payroll who have enabled them up until now are losing traction so quickly that the whole political system, and the class that nestles under its feathers, are heading for a very deep ditch.

If we try to rise aloof and ignore our social tendencies, then our pursuit of Happiness is doomed to come up as selfish elitism or smug conceit. While it’s nice to believe and behave as if we’re in control of our own happiness, the truth is that most of us are also needily dependent on other people, either to “make us happy” or to give us permission to be happy. We even make them completely to blame if we descend into “Not happy, Jan!”  – What you just said/did has made me deeply unhappy! Apologise and debase yourself before me until I'm happy again!!

Acknowledging and allowing for this long-inbred Social Imperative as one of the givens of being human, is an early step toward your evolution to higher levels of personal happiness.

Social support in the form of close relationships is the No.1 predictor of general Happiness #101. Happiness is most prolifically released by experiences of  Connection and Sharing, and for that we need “others”. Until we get comfortable with this as part of our starting point, pushing further is futile.

In an over-reaction to the prevailing pandemic of insisting that circumstances and other people must live up to “my” expectations so that “I” can be happy, a large slice of the self-help culture urges people to focus exclusively inward. Unfortunately the resulting exclusivity is keeping them from one significant thing that still really matters most for happiness: sharing with other people.

The present push toward externally self-driven happiness is nurturing a culture of separation and loneliness. It's producing the opposite effect.

Some more Inclusivity is needed.

There is an implicate order in evolving into a Happiness being-state. Yes, it's true that the Source is within you, but it's equally true that the Source is also in everything and everyone “without” you. When you're feeling “unhappy”, it's easier to see Happiness in others. Go there first. Play-fully in relationship. Find common ground to connect in, and share. Getting to know others is actually the fastest, cheapest (no therapist needed) and most reliable way of getting around your self-delusions, of getting to know what you really are, of finding out you’re far from alone, and of getting happy with that.

Don’t ever be tempted, though, to skip any part of Step One – Know Yourself. Until all that you are is out on the table and you are content with all of it, your connections will lack the clarity of candid integrity and you'll never manage to be truly happy with anyone or anything else. No short-cuts. Like me coming home late one night in alpine Austria, I decided to take a short cut across the smoothly snow-covered field between me and my ski lodge – I fell into more hidden holes than Coober Pedy. A bit like how I was living my life at the time. Funny about that.

“You decide to be happy”

Again, it’s true...and... it's not that simple. A feeling of unexplainable happiness can serendipitously hit you at any time. The mistake we make is believing our minds which insist that “this burst of happiness means something”. It often doesn't – no more or less so than a lightning strike. And it doesn't mean anything that it doesn't mean anything. OK? 

Why spoil a moment or three of being happy by trying to figure an explanation for it?

It's entirely possible that Happiness is a universal Choice. But deciding “I'm gonna be happy from now on; I refuse to be unhappy – that's for losers” isn't going to do it for you. I know; I've tried that. It didn't work for me because the positive mind-generated declarations were positional, so things that make me un-happy had to crop up, even if only to balance the ledger. Same applies to you. Guaranteed, thanks to a Ruthless Rule of Reality that “we attract what we resist.”

Another problem with “You decide to be happy” is that it implies that people who aren’t happy just don’t want to be. (If they wanted to be happy they would be, and their world would change). Most unhelpful. Again, it's another attempt at a shortcut. There are steps to be taken before “deciding to be happy” can become a reality for you.

Happiness is a Context, a way of being that happily holds and allows the whole repertoire of possible human experience and feelings, including feelings that are the opposite of happy. We can easily be happy, happily. No prizes for that. But it is also possible to feel worried, happily. You can be fearful, happily. You can be happily unhappy. The easiest way I've found is to remember that whenever a feeling arises that takes me out of happiness, I simply ask myself – “I'm feeling (whatever) at the moment. Can I be happy to go on feeling this until it's done?” Suddenly and gently, space opens up for the shitty feeling, the discomfort or pain of tightening against it abates, and it's now OK to have the feeling for as long as it lasts. (It's just a feeling – something I have; it's not what I am). When the disturbance is over and the insights gained, it is usually replaced by a kind of gratitude.

Insisting on being happy 24/7 implies that there’s something wrong with being not-happy; eg. sad, angry, or anxious. How so? What could possibly be “wrong” about any god-given human feeling? The more of our feelings we can give space to, the more human we become.

Suppose for a moment –

What if there are no “downers” in Heaven? Maybe it got boring! What if we came here, as humans, to feel, and think and sense everything that comes with the experience of “being human”? Everything – not just selected bits. All that this life delivers us.

All of our emotions serve important functions, especially the feelings we don’t particularly enjoy. It's my experience that any titbits of wisdom and empathy I've ever gained have been from moments I was decidedly NOT enjoying at the time. And since I've learned to be happy, and sometimes even grateful, about being unhappy, I've grown and got happier in ways that are very different from mere pleasure. Don't get me wrong, when things are cruising along, I enjoy it! But when things get rockier, I celebrate the chance to move on through. Suddenly I'm naturally feeling optimistic, without browbeating myself with “Thou shalt think positive!!” If I can get to this place, you surely can.

Sadness focuses our attention inwards, creating space and time to process loss. And there's a sweetness in sadness. Anger reminds us of things that have hurt us. And there's a whiff of exhilarating energy in anger. Anxiety keeps us safe from harm, and it gets the adrenaline flowing. Negative emotions are critical for our survival and, further, they fuel the challenge to learn how to engage with life's prac. exams.. How we constructively handle tests marks our growth to maturity and the evolution of our soul.

Opting to pass up on difficulty and find a happy blanket to crawl under implies that there is only one right way to be and that, interestingly, leads to the escapism of Addiction.

When perturbation next crawls up your leg, a different strategy could be to check the appropriateness of whatever reaction you’re experiencing, and look for the thought it's connected to. The timing and duration of an emotion are more critical to your overall wellbeing than whether it is positive or negative. In fact, anywhere else but the judging human mind, no emotion is either positive or negative; it's just a feeling. It’s our judgments that make us either welcome or resist an experience; and it’s our resistances that cause pain. Feelings are impermanent, they come and they go. But our judgment labels of positive/negative, good/bad etc prevent us from fully experiencing what's been presented to us as the next step in our journey. Those evaluations and judgments we think are so critical to our wellbeing are one of the ways we block our own progress. Want to prove me wrong? Go ahead, find me a critic who's actually happy while he/she is in full fault-finding flight.

Playwright Anton Chekov wrote, “People don’t notice whether it’s summer or winter when they’re happy.” Our journey is not to get to Happiness. Happy is one way of doing the journey. Un-happy is another way. And there are more sub-flavours between those two extremes than an ice cream parlour. Choose your flavour, and then be happy about your choice. OK?

“Think positive”

Thinking “positive” is a hallmark of many psychological therapies, but the instruction to just “think positive thoughts” is a naïve attempt to oversimplify a complicated process. It's also, as it happens, psychologically unsound because it totally ignores the ruthless phenomenon of Duality – No judgment, evaluation or qualified position. characteristic or quality can exist without its polar opposite.

In the Content realm of human living, the Law of Duality dictates that whenever we create a position, its opposite is automatically created at one and the same time. As soon as we call “heads”, “tails” is created. In this realm there can be no “up” without “down”; no “good” without “bad”; no “in” without “out”; no “positive” without “negative”; no “happy” without “unhappy” Whenever we take a Position on anything, Opposition is automatically created and attracted to us. This isn't something worth getting bent out of shape about – it's one of the Rules of the Game when we live life at the level of Rational Mind (Content). We know this Law is ruthlessly so. We even base the workings of our parliamentary, legal and religious doings on adversarial Position and Opposition. The Government and the Opposition. Prosecution and Defence, Heaven and Hell. It's how our minds work – separate and oppose.

[Living life in Context is a different matter, but I'll come to that in due course.]

When we look at the content of human dramas, notice how we go through a succession of peaks and valleys. A continuum of ups and downs. If that were not so, and life was an even flatline, it would probably be boring, except that we'd be dead. Who wants a heartbeat that looks like a flatline? Not me, that's for sure.

Both Happiness and Unhappiness are feelings that follow un-thought parent thoughts. A parent thought is an embedded conclusion we once upon a time reached about life and ourselves in it, so long ago that we are no longer aware of it; we no longer think it – it thinks us and sets our Set Points. So, imposing positive thinking may paper over a contrary parent thought and appear to work for a while, but then after time we find that it no longer works out so well. The reason is that the “positive thought” just pushes its negative counterparts into the background; it does not make the negative parent thought go away. On the contrary it actually reinforces the negative it is suppressing and sets up internal friction and contradiction, which in time leads us to make choices and decisions that eventually “make” us do contrary things we struggle to justify, that sabotage our best efforts and cause life to come back and bite us on the bum in a serious way. Ever heard of a mid-life crisis? That's our hidden negative stuff coming home to roost with a strong message - “You missed something back there. You’ve been ignoring me, but now it’s my turn”

Crisis is also an open invitation to step into the shade, sit down, figure out where you are off course, postulate why, plot a new track from where you now are to where you want to go, and deal with your inner saboteurs. You may need some expert help with that.

The admonition to “think positive” reflects a misappropriation of a research finding that showed happy people are more optimistic than those less happy. It follows, then, that if we give the unhappy people an inoculation of positive and optimistic thoughts and fiddle around with the biochemistry that has resulted from years of stinkin' thinkin', they’ll become happy. Pharma companies and drug dealers love and peddle this lie in all sorts of guises that sound like “Take this and you'll feel better.”

Let me counter this at the same level at which it was created – particle thinking. This logic could only apply if optimism and positivity are causing the difference between the Happies and the Unhappies. Well, they're not. For example – consider the way iron levels in our body work. If everything is working well, our body will automatically absorb and store just the right amount of iron. When a person lacks iron and can't get enough from the diet, they may be prescribed iron supplements and their iron levels return to normal.

For many, the process is as simple as identifying a deficiency, and providing the appropriate replacement. But sometimes taking tablets or altering diet does not work. Why? No amount of iron supplements will work unless the body knows what to do with them, and the treatment will not be effective in the long-term until the body learns to store the iron on its own.

Similarly, an injection of positive thinking for a person who is chronically unhappy can be easily rejected if the unhappy person's mind either refuses to allow it in (highly likely), or doesn’t know what to do with it.

The human mind has one overriding principle – it will reject by every means in its armoury any idea that runs counter to anything it has decided is “the truth”.

Mind is cunning. It may appear to go along with your reforms for a while, but sooner or later it will turn on your reforming efforts with a vengeance, often showing up as physical and/or mental illness and breakdown. If your mind has decided, for example, “You're a fat, hopeless lump and everyone is laughing at you”, no amount of reasoning or “proof to the contrary is ever going to have any lasting effect until you first de-programme the criticising parent thought. And your mind is not going to let that happen – not without the help of professional mind-changers who know inside-out how minds operate and how to get them onside.

Some serious bottom-up and top-down reprogramming has to happen before the person is going to be able to entertain greater median levels of happiness, and that isn't going to happen in the same level of consciousness at which the deficiency settings were created. We have to get ourselves to another level of awareness. Some out-of-mind experiences are called for – BUT – experiences that don't carry the health risks of chemical substances that may become addictive. They entrap you even more hopelessly, and make your predicament much worse.

If the mind hasn't been trained to acquire and apply the appropriate resources or understanding to process a constructive thought, it will never learn to produce it automatically.

Though some might claim that thinking positive is based on therapeutic techniques, any therapist worth a pinch of salt would never apply positive thinking in isolation. That would be like taking Vitamin C to cope with a cold and not bothering to rest or re-hydrate, or even blow your nose.

In therapy, an effective psychologist seeking to get a client off the Positve/Negative Shuttle would work with their client to identify, firstly, something in their life already that he/she can get enthusiastic about. Then the therapist might invite the client to explore, with that growing Enthusiasm and her half-sister, Curiosity, for unhelpful recurring thought patterns and cultural and family assumptions. By then, it will be easier for the “sufferer” to acknowledge existing undesired feelings and, together in partnership with the therapist, develop reframing strategies to facilitate behaviour change. An enlightened therapist would at the same time also introduce you to methods of healing that raise your levels of curiosity about, and awareness of your inner workings, your surroundings, of other people, other levels of consciousness and lead to you to feel the connections that exist across all levels of the world within and around you. It wouldn’t be a haphazard free-for-all, but a well-organised, and supervised, plan for improvement and healing (wholing).

SO WHAT COULD WE (HAPPILY) DO?

At an individual level, we’re pretty good at knowing the things that make us feel better when we’re occasionally sad, and we know that if we’re too excited we need to relax before we can get to sleep. We’re generally pretty good at episodically regulating our emotions and recovering our set-point, wherever that might be. But what we’re addressing now is how to move the set-points to a level that is more functional for you. Very few of us have any idea at all how to dig ourselves out of a chronic low, or permanently raise our default set-points.

In the face of prolonged, chronic stress, our best efforts to recover a healthier state can fail. While the temptation may be to withdraw and either hide until it passes or try to cope alone, by far the most effective thing we can do is to open up about our troubles. 

Whether it’s a friend, family member, or therapist, talking helps. Give that someone the gift of your openness. Give them the gift of allowing them to support you by hearing you, without any expectation on them that they have to “fix” your unhappiness. 

Sharing is the gift that nourishes both. As long as the person you're talking to asks good questions, listens without judging you, and does not buy into your stuff, you've found a friend who's worth your while.

Feeling unhappy for a prolonged period of time may occasionally be a determined, conscious decision on the part of the individual, perhaps for example, to pay someone back for a perceived hurt in the past (See how I'm suffering? You did this to me! I insist that you feel bad about that!).

Whatever the present payoff for suffering is supposed to be though, I find that chronic unhappiness, historically, is also a consequence of stinkin' thinkin' and choices made at an earlier time when we were too young and naïve to possess the benefit of either deep insight or foresight. The result is clear – system failure. And that system extends beyond the individual and their inner psychological workings to the family and social network around them.

Happiness is both an individual and a group responsibility.

How can that be so? Let us suppose, just for a moment, that you and I and everyone else involved with us got together one day a long time ago and decided Let's liven thing up a bit and workshop a semi-improvised play.. Some bits would be funny, some sad, some exciting, some scary, some epic, some personal, some parts easy, some parts challenging. We wrote the storyline, agreed on who would play what characters, and then launched into it, with no rehearsal. To add to the excitement we also agreed, by the way, that when we entered the drama we would forget it's just pretending-as-if, and think it's actually real. Oh, and we also agreed that, since ups and downs, peaks and valleys are the shape of all really fruity drama, we'd be very happy to be unhappy for a while, just to see what it feels like and what we might learn from it............

Now of course this is just a fanciful supposition on my part. It could not possibly be true.

Could it?

That's the kind of Happiness I'm talking about. Happiness as a Context for living, allowing unhappinesses to be our teachers and our agents of realisation and growth. Have you not met people who seem to live contented, happy lives despite the direst of circumstances? Do they never feel unhappy? Of course they do; they know unhappiness! But for them, unhappiness is something temporary that they have; they don't fall into the trap of assuming it is what they are.. They don't go around moaning “I am unhappy”, If pressed they will tell you “I'm feeling unhappy today, but this will pass, because it’s not a natural way to be”. Let such people be your exemplars.

Meanwhile, when you are feeling low, let the words of psychologist Dan Gilbert prompt you to step into an updraft: “If someone offers you a pill that would make you permanently happy, you would be well advised to run fast and run far. Emotion is a compass that gives us some information on where we are, and a compass perpetually stuck on north is worthless.”

When you look at the world with the eyes of your soul, you will see that all of creation, including you, is just as it should be right now. Amid and surrounding all that you judged a moment ago as “imperfect”, notice that something perfect is unfolding and moving through.

See if you can helicopter yourself above the snarl for a moment and sense what that is.

Once you do, you will at last know where you're going – happily surfing the implicate order of everything purely for the thrills of adventure.

EXCELLENCE -- WHY BOTHER?

EXCELLENCE – WHY BOTHER?

American film critic, Roger Ebert, once commented about Dustin Hoffman that from the very beginning of his career with such diverse characters as gormless Benjamin Braddock in “The Graduate”, street-creep Ratso Rizzo in “Midnight Cowboy”, nonagenarian Jack Crabb in “Little Big Man”, and the savant Raymond Babbitt in “Rain Man”, he managed to noodle out “exactly the right note and hold it”.

The right note.

Ebert's choice of words echoed a phrase I once heard from the man himself. Dustin Hoffman was telling a story about what happened for him one afternoon while he was watching TV in his hotel room, resting up before a round of engagements that night to promote the movie he'd just completed – his first -- “The Graduate”.

I was watching an interview being given by the Russian composer, Dmitri Shostakovich, and the interviewer asked him to name the highlight of his career, and he suggested some of the grand openings and major awards he had won. Shostakovich conceded that they were all great moments, but “the highlights of my career are those when I am working in my study, I have a progression of notes and chords, but I cannot find the next note. I experiment, I play around until I find it; when I finally find the right note – that for me is the greatest moment of my work.”

Dustin Hoffman went on to say, “In that moment I realised that I had been working with a bunch of people – Mike Nicholls, Anne Bancroft, Murray Hamilton, Katherine Ross and Buck Henry, the writer – people who had all striven to find the right note. That's when I realised what I had in common with them, and why I belonged in that movie.”

The search for the right note, the quest for a moment of excellence has occupied most of my life, particularly since I began to practice and study acting. That hasn't been any great secret: a dear friend whom I'd met and worked with in an amateur theatre company said to me one day, “For God's sake. Barrie! Either give acting away or go professional; as an amateur you're a pain in the arse!”. I turned professional.

What drives this pursuit of excellence? What gives writers like Bryce Courtenay or Leon Uris the inescapable determination to research for years, and relentlessly pound the keyboards, drafting, discarding, revising and re-writing until they get it “just so”. What sustains athletes like Herb Elliot or Ian Thorpe, and dancers like Lucinda Dunn and Madeline Eastoe through years of gruelling discipline and pain? What drives people like Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman and Harry Belafonte to wait tables and move furniture and sell trinkets in Macy's for years on end while they work unnoticed for years on end in backstreet theatre groups, digging ever deeper to find that resonance? There is something much, much more than just a hankering to be recognised, or even bone-headed determination, that drives them to return to the threshing-floor of work, pain, study, research, classes and rehearsal day in, day out, reaching for that golden ring -- that one fleeting moment, not of fame, but of divine illumination and goosebumps when you suddenly, quite out of the blue, break free of your bounds and hit the “right note”. 

Well, it sounds trite when a say this, but the truth is there isn't another moment like it. It's better than the best sex you've ever had. That moment of resonance, of pure, sublime excellence is the greatest feeling available to human beings. It's worth all the grit, the focus, the sacrifices and the discipline to continuously improve upon yourself and break your own boundaries to “find IT”.

At a reception given for classical pianist Eileen Joyce after a recital in Melbourne, one of the invited guests, a blue-rinse lady from Toorak confided to Eileen, “I would give anything to be able to play like you.” Eileen summed her up quietly, then gently said to her, “No you wouldn't. You would have had to give up your social life, your desire to get married and have children. You would have had to give away your home life and live out of suitcases from one hotel to the next, and the next. You would have to be willing for every day of your life to be dominated by at least 6 hours of practicing, then resting up and preparing for the performance at night. Thank you for your kind compliment, but there's a bit more to give up than you imagine.”

One thing I do know: if you commit your life to pursue excellence in whatever you undertake, you're likely to spend a lot of your life on your own. Very few people will pay the price, opting instead to amble along with also-rans. And for some reason, they sometimes choose to feel and express their discomfort in the presence of your dedication. Don't get me wrong, I see nothing wrong with that life course, but I do say to you, if that's your choice – “Don't kid yourself and put it about that your life lacks lustre because you're an “undiscovered talent”.

So, what is the upside for Excellence? I've covered the trade-off; the price you have to pay. What's the first prize?

Simply this – and it's related as much to the hours you spend doing the imagining, the creating, the exercises, the scales, the rehearsals, as it is to the actual performance. 

Through the entire journey, as lonely, difficult and painful as it may be, pursuers of Excellence find out things about themselves that they never dreamed of or thought possible, and get to enjoy overwhelming experiences that will never be available to those who settle for just “getting along”. As with most worthy pursuits the major rewards reside in the journey. The destination is just a time to pause and enjoy that moment of weightlessness before they plunge into..... next!

There it is. Nothing about trophies, fanfares, dais ceremonies, fame, rave reviews, accolades and such. There's no guarantee ever that the pursuit of Excellence will ever get those things for you. Look at singer Eva Cassidy, for instance. Worked her arse off in clubs, doing her own bump-ins and -outs, her own mixing, negotiating with venue managers, writing and rehearsing, only to die almost unknown. Only after her death did someone notice “Hey, she's good”, and start searching her belongings for tapes.

Is it worth it? Well only you can answer that, only after you've tried it for a few years, and you can only answer it for yourself. But it would be worth remembering that you might not get medals, position, power or wealth for it. And for everything you really want there is always something you're going to have to be without.

In 1977, Herbert Ross made quite a gritty movie about precisely this life choice. It was called “The Turning Point” and starred Anne Bancroft, Shirley MacLaine, Tom Skerrit, Leslie Browne and Mikhail Baryshnikov. (Your husband will go with it just to see the all-out, eye-gouging cat fight between former friends played by Anne and Shirley.) 

If you choose to make your answer to “excellence?” “Yes”, you immediately have to start saying “Yes” to a whole raft of others things, and “No” to even more others. That's just the way it is when you choose to live your life deliberately.

Firstly, it helps to realise that ephemeral not-things like “success” and “excellence” require an extra-ordinary degree of Personal Integrity and of Grace. So it helps to give an unequivocal “yes” to the unknowns and apparent cruelties of life, with Gratitude. Lying hidden behind the mystery of greatness and gratitude for talent is a context of Mastery. If you're after Excellence, none of the short-games are going to work for you; you have to rise fully to the occasion. The much-vaunted goal of “Getting results” usually demands exercising manipulation, coercion, control and do-or-die competitiveness. Those econo-yogic short-cuts are polar opposites of Masterliness – the essential inclination you need every time you go for Excellence. 

When you're ready and intentionally willing to live a life more nourishing than what you're generally experiencing right now, let go of trying to understand life: risk it instead.

What you get in return is light-years above mere understanding (do you want to understand an orgasm, or have one?) Say “yes”, and that includes saying “yes” to the many “No's” you are going to have to say rather than settle for less. Excellence, and its opposites, are the consequences of conscious, deliberate choices that you make and renew, over and over, day in – day out.

Excellence is also the product of clear, conscious intention. As Yoda In "The Empire Strikes Back" retorts to Luke's “I'll try” – "Try not. Either do, or do not-do." Mastery is as simple as that. Let yourself be available in all your yes-ness. Life is for living, embracing the unknowable, playing with a vision, preferably without too-rigidly fixed agendas or expectations of outcome. Say “yes” to your experiences unconditionally, without judgments, classifications, separations or comparisons. It clears the decks of most inhibitors.

I cannot overestimate the importance of the role of Intention in achieving excellence – whatever you have now, whatever you have done – that was a result of your Intention. For most people, their real intentions remain hidden behind screens of self-delusion and downright ignorance of what's making them tick, which is why so many lives fizzle out into a pasty puddle of passivity, enlivened only by occasional outbursts of impotent frustration. Life, you'll find, has this habit of delivering what you put out for. 

At first it can be really challenging to take on this kind of accountability. The possibility that “I am the sole creator of my reality” flies in the face of all “common sense”, and you'll find it nigh impossible to get agreement on it around the tea trolley. But do some digging around in autobiographies of people who've actually achieved something worthwhile for humanity. Prepare to be bowled over by the growing realisation that no-one has ever attained excellence without a level of commitment to be response-able that is out of the ordinary. 

I got lucky. After a very unspectacular beginning to life, I washed up in Canberra as a lowly Grade-1 clerk at the CSIRO Admin, and a bed in Reid House, Commonwealth Hostel's entry-level accommodation for public service “untouchables”. But my new-found freedom away from home gave me the space to take acting classes at Canberra Repertory Theatre from Alton Harvey. I finally found something I was actually good at, started to get roles in productions by The Rep and the Children's Theatre at Riverside. My fellow actors and our audiences were mostly high-level public servants and staff of embassies, so I started to move socially in circles of high-achievers.

The first thing I noticed about Excellent people is that they do life deliberately. Whatever their current situation, they choose it to be exactly as it is, and they choose their next action and take it from where they actually are, not where they dream they'd like to be. It was a huge and serendipitous leap for me. And no-one seemed to mind that I was sorting octuplicate order forms for a living – I was a good actor, polite and respectful, and that was enough of an entrée in a town that was still so small that nearly everyone felt that, for the duration of most people's 2-year assignment, “we're all in this together in this artificial God-forsaken place planted in the middle of nowhere”. I'm so grateful that the combination of training in acting (accomplishing deliberate actions) and the example of true achievers landed in my lap at a time when I was ripe to try anything.

The first trick, if there is such s thing, is to find your magic. There is something worthy, some gift in you that the world needs and that your life to this point has developed. Find out what that is. You may have to experiment with a few things before you find it – that's OK. Grab every opportunity that comes your way to learn and develop you as a whole person. Some roads you explore may lead only a short way. Some may seem a bit pointless at the time. But trust this – if you apply yourself to whatever presents itself to you with awareness, intention and eagerness for real experience, nothing will ever be wasted.

Oddly enough, your life is designed to work. Mine is, too; I've actually had to work bloody hard to stuff it up. So do you. Drop your preconceptions for a while, get out of your own way, and see what shows up for you. It won't be a blue ribbon; it will show up as an opportunity to do something different, work clothes provided.

Whatever you do is important, but the way that you do it is even more so. A short story by way of illustration ---- During a lean period as a professional actor before I went to NIDA, I took a job for 6 weeks as driver, road manager and lighting tech. for a tour through Tasmania of a one-man show of the works of Dylan Thomas by John Llewellyn. Due to a last-minute strike by ship stewards, the ferry from Sydney to Hobart did not sail, so I drove all night and the next day to Melbourne in a station wagon loaded with all our gear and scenery on the roof rack. I caught the ferry from Williamstown to Devonport. There was a horrendous storm in Bass Strait that night, so I got little sleep. Disembarking in Devonport. I then had to drive straight to Hobart – the first performance was that night in the Theatre Royal. I was knackered.

Somewhere across the Central Plateau the roadside architecture changed. Small shrubs, spaced at even intervals appeared along the verge, and each shrub was “sculpted” into the shape of an animal or bird. I can't tell you what a lift the phenomenon gave my jaded, anxious spirit! I found myself looking for the next one; the kilometres flew by. I learned in Hobart that that particular stretch of road was the responsibility of one man who'd been a permanent member of the road gang for years. His job was to keep the spoon ditches clear and the aggregate swept up to the edge of the bitumen. But he had taken it upon himself to plant and nurture shrubs, clipping and training them into works of art. I learned that day that, no matter what you're given to do in life, you have the power to make it excellent and make a difference to people you probably will never meet. Whoever he is, or was, I've never forgotten him, and how he helped me feel that day. No matter what you do in life, make it memorable for its excellence.

When you can see the learning and tangible results that a creative attitude and deliberate actions lead to, you take a giant step into responsibility, mastery, reclaiming your life as your own, and a standard and style that marks you amongst the top 20% of Australians who are actually interesting and worth our while to be around. With more practice at delving deeper into your inherent capacity for excellence you will soon become a go-to person for collaboration. Eventually you'll become a source of inspiration for some, and maybe even empowering for a few.

Candidates for Excellence are practitioners of conscious choosing. Even if there's only one possible path, they choose that way. The act of choosing puts them in charge of the situation. I cannot overstress the importance of this first step.

If there's an alternative short cut or easier option, they take the path more overgrown, if for no other reason than it's less crowded. Excellers embrace challenge and live deliberately – they're hungry for inward adventure. In situations where there seems no choice, they CHOOSE the inevitable. They embrace it, because they know that it's the narrow gateway that leads to the King's treasure. That is the secret of Mastery.

Resistance to what-is marks a slide into Victimhood. Resistance or Acceptance is a simple matter of choosing. Simple. Not easy, maybe, but simple. And while the great majority choose the ways that look more popular, those “in the know” realise that the Great Experimenter, the Unmoved Mover is always hiding the real goodies where most don't go – along the road less travelled.

Even when you appear to have little choice you still have the freedom to either avoid the seemingly inevitable, or to creatively engage with it. Either way will get you to where you're going to. So perhaps the real question should be - ”Where are you headed? What is your true intention?”, and the answer will lie in your actions. Are you choosing or avoiding?

I've never discovered any chance of Excellence down any path of avoiding, resisting or denying. Never, in my own living or in anyone else's. 

Acknowledging the is-ness of what's going on opens up possibilities of other choices that you cannot see when and while you're saying “No”. While you resist, you stay blind and stuck. Resistance locks you onto what you DON'T want and shuts you out of the infinite library of possibilities. And it's not very pleasant either for you, or those who feel they have to tolerate you, usually out of some misplaced sense of duty.

Accepting is, at first, more daunting and challenging. But before long you'll find it opens up opportunities to excel, and that you've selected the much more enjoyable – even exhilarating – and less debilitating journey.

Create moments of right notes: you'll look back each day upon a succession  of excellent mini-lives.

Is that worth the extra bother?

BULLYING #101

BULLYING #101

CONFESSIONS OF A DOMINANT VICTIM

Broadcast 21^st June, 2015

Good morning, and welcome once again to Pause a Moment.

[He's Got the Power – Dinah Lee (A) – 4:17]

Tonight we're contemplating one of the key issues of the moment, a product of Self-Disempowerment = Domestic Violence and Workplace Bullying.

[La Raya – Eric Serra]

Q. How do you create a Bully?

A. Abuse/Disempower the child.

Q. How do you create a victim for bullies?

A. Abuse/Disempower the child.

Pause a Moment.

Bullying is all about power – an attempt to control a universe that is NOT about control. Situations, people, ideas, thoughts, beliefs and opinions that get out of hand are met by bullying from people who’ve never learned another way. Bullies are up to their eyeballs in a dead-end of futility.

I met my first, and most powerful bully, when I was just a few hours old. Yes, he was my father. I learned that, in order to survive him, I would have to make myself as small as possible, not move a muscle, disappear as much as possible, and be transparently meek and mild in the company of others. That spelled trouble, because I have never been capable of any of those qualities. They just were not in my nature. Hello…. I decided around 11am on Sunday June 27^th, 1943, to be born lickety-split because I’d run out of room in the womb! I could not be contained. But Dad had other ideas. The Biblical tradition of swaddling has a lot to answer for.

The irony is that bullies apply all kinds of force, not because they are powerful people, but because they dread they’re not. In hindsight, I see now that my father didn't have power. All he had was advantages like seniority, hierarchy, control over my biological and economic survival, enormous bulk and weight, strength, superior position, bigger vocal range and volume, bigger vocabulary, and awesome allies (including God). But even those advantages would not last forever. Inevitably I grew up frustrated enough to take him on, albeit ineffectually.

Bullies generate very little creative energy of their own; they have to steal it..... off their victims and from those who enable them. By “enablers” I refer not only to people in positions of influence who licence bullies to act “within the law”, but also to those spectators who sit on the sidelines and allow bullies to get away with it. Spectators and apologists bear a personal responsibility for the excesses of the bully. Life does not have an “abstain” option; that’s a human intervention. Whatever you allow, you support. Standing on the sidelines (I don’t agree with this but I have no choice but to go along if I want to get along) is no escape from culpability. And if I sound angry at this point – I am. One of the spectators in my life was my Aunt – a professor of social work, who did nothing to protect either her sister (my mother) or me. So much for my father, for the time being, but my story now becomes typical for many young lads growing up. By example we were raised to believe that this is how real men behave.

I met my next bunch of bullies at school and, like most boys, I can still name every one of them 65 years later. I was mercilessly teased and bashed up at least once a week. There was just no escape, at home or at school, from a terror for which I had no defence except a facade of meekness. But meek politeness was a necessary veneer that just wasn't going to work. I was seething inside and now, in my 70's, traces of the long-repressed hot turmoil still bubble up occasionally.

My problem was that being an invisible, immobile nonentity ran entirely counter to my nature. I am, by birth and by design, an insatiably curious, gregarious, playful, adventurous, open, innocent, gentle explorer. You can only suppress your true nature for so long before your body begins to tell you something is seriously mis-functioning. By the age of seven I was a nervous wreck and well along the highway to later chronic conditions of anxiety, depression, heart disease and diabetes.

My first “got-it” on the subject of bullies came at the age of 17. Having denied and suppressed my true nature from almost Day One, I finally rebelled and stood up to He Who Must Be Obeyed. It was Jack facing the Giant. David -v- Goliath. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader (that's the one), with everything shaking from the knees up. I will never forget the look on his face, and I wish I could, because that was the moment he and I simultaneously saw not only his powerlessness but also a sense of my own resentment in the moment. It shocked me profoundly. In hindsight, it's hard to judge which scared me more – the look on his face, or the glimpse of my future as a “better bully”. It wasn't terrifying, it was terrible, and I spent the next 30 years in WA -- as far away from him as I could get without my actually leaving the country. When I next saw him, he was in his death chair.

Back to the confrontation…… Dad realised he was a hair's breadth from killing me. He told me to walk away, and turned for help to our family doctor, who ran all the tests and found I was riddled with stomach ulcers and a permanent case of the shakes. He said to me “You've been spoiled.” I exploded “What??!!” He said “There are two ways to spoil children – give them too much of what's not important, or give them too little of what is important.” It was a revelatory moment in my life, and one of the guiding principles of my later responsibilities as a father. From that time onward, nothing would ever be the same.

I had graduated from school and now was leaving home. But the damage had already been done. Thanks to the ruthless rule of duality, this insatiably curious, gregarious, playful, adventurous, open, innocent, gentle explorer had also become – inside and out of sight -- a bone-headed, selfish, cowardly, intolerant, bigoted, phoney, arrogant, controlling, dogmatic hermit. I spent the next 35 years trying to keep this bastard at bay and out of sight (only letting bits of him out as required on stage). Suppressing my dark side didn't do anything useful for my health, and I collapsed years later in a howling heap from chronic frustration, resentment, exhaustion, anxiety and depression.

Out of that I finally learned that maybe the Playful Adventurer should meet the Bad-tempered Bully. If they could stop judging one another and become friends and allies, that could be a powerful marriage of useful traits and skills! And so it has proved to be... But it didn't happen overnight, or without a lot of diligent work on myself. I have to warn you it hasn't been easy and it requires a prodigious amount of commitment, courage and ruthless honesty. The question is – are you up for it? Are you ready to befriend your tyrant?

[Friends With You – John Denver – 3:25]

I consider myself a bit of an expert on violence and bullying because I've been bullied by experts and I’m still here. Bullies take me on at their peril, because I recognise them very early on and know them from the inside out. I know that inside the false front of superiority and entitlement there's a bewildered little midget.

I live with being both bully and victim. While both of them are a part of me, neither of them are all that I am, any more than my nose is an expression of a few of my genes. And knowing where they reside in me means I’m no longer at the mercy of their dictates. They’re something I have, but not what I am.

I know who/what I am. Others don't. Others find me as they see me – a reflection of bits of themselves. This is true of everyone on Earth. If you come to my door looking for a playmate, I will soon recognise you and you'll be greeted by a curious, playful adventurer. If you come to do me harm, you'll quickly find a malamute who smelled you coming a mile off. You don't want to take him on, because he has a decided advantage over you – he's got nothing to lose. You'd be very stupid to cross anyone who's got nothing to lose. But then -- stupidity knows no bounds...... especially when it comes to bullies.

[Nothing To Lose – Claudine Longet – 0:25 (-1:55)

Fade under.....

Bottom line, bullies are stupid. They just don't get how much damage and hell they're amassing for their own declining years. Bullies are deeply unhappy, because they've sold out on contentment to settle for false promises offered in the name of Control. Out of resentment for something/someone in their past. they unconsciously fear their present victims (Get them before they get me, just in case). They also secretly despise their “friends” and allies, all the while pretending this is not so. Some bullies, especially the privately educated ones, are arrogant and feel entitled; others barely make it above the level of troglodyte.

Whatever their level on the social scale, bullies rule, and at the same time feel they have licence to break any rules, including their own.

Bullies lack empathy – they don't care how you feel. Really. If you have an ounce of empathy in your makeup, don’t think of taking up bullying. Another’s possible feelings don’t ever get a bully’s second thought. And if you arc up at their assaults, they blithely tell you to “get over it.” 

Bullies don't care what they leave behind them. If they think about consequences at all, they’ll assume any aftermath can also be manipulated or beaten into submission. Bullies view others from a vertical perspective and are - in their own minds – faster, stronger, smarter, better, and on a superior position in the social pecking order.

Bullies do not get that “Gaolers become Gaoled”. Back in the late 1990s I was doing a counselling session with inmates of the Broome Gaol. I had introduced the idea of them having empathy for the jailers. Smirks all 'round. On a flash of inspiration I went around the room, one by one, asking “How long are you in for?” “Three years”. “Five years”. “Six months”. Then I pointed to the Warden standing behind me. “How long do you think Ben's in for?” They looked at me blankly. Then one of them got it. “Ben's stuck here until he retires.” I looked at Ben. He nodded, “25 years to go,” he said ruefully.” Something shifted in the room in that moment. The person stuck longest in Broome Gaol, was the gaoler. Controllers are the ones Controlled, by the limitations of their own habits.

A Bully is also a Victim – but a Dominant Victim. Let me illustrate –

Jack loved going out nights, drinking and playing cards with his mates. Then he married Mrs. Truck, who lay down the law – “No more boozing with your mates, buster. You stick around and keep me happy!” Eventually Mrs. Truck died – of obesity and a stroke. Jack went back with the boys. Then he met sickly Miss Peep. Miss Peep couldn't do anything for herself around the house, couldn't manage anything technical, and had this unidentified infection ranging through her body. Guess who had to give up his card nights again to look after Miss Peep? Jack had just swapped one kind of bully for another. A bully exchanged for a meek Victim.

Opposite types -- same end result. Incredible, huh?

Welcome to the oppressive domain of the Dominant Victim.

Bullies dispense trepidation in order to rule; Dominant Victims use a subtler form of fear - Guilt.

[Gulag – Margins (A)]

Bullies don't have friends – they have sycophants and enablers –agreeable nodders who won't stand up to them. Bullies define “a friend”, as “someone who'll let me do my thing as long as I butter them up enough.” Bullies mete out rewards to their disciples as a means of getting compliance: Anything you get from me, I can take away again. Bullies love bossing but they're rarely much good at managing change – they lack the insight and empathy for anything possibly evolutionary. So they're surrounded by chaos, inertia, disrespect and resentment, but they get away with it while they are feared. Bullies foster a mob mentality.

Bullies bullshit. They're good at it, and they're full of it. But if you call them on it, you bring the Wrath of Ages down around your ears. If you're going to call a bully, prepare to be in for a fight, because you'll be taking them on at their own game on their own terms! If you haven't got the street smarts and Commitment, walk away. Get an education first.

What fires the furnaces of bullies? Jealousy and Competition. Jealousy of relationships particularly, and their perception that they’ve been excluded from either the Club or the Auxiliary. There's a hostile envy of talents, abilities, circumstances or possessions. Bullies specialise in “spoiling” – throwing spanners in anything that's working in order to take control. They will try anything and everything to trip up anyone who won't kowtow to them - anyone they see as a threat to their supremacy. Their idea of being the tallest building in town is to tear down everyone else.

Bullies are like sharks – predatory and opportunistic. It's not personal – not for them. They don't give a shit about you personally. You just happen to be there now. You weren't the first, and you sure won't be the last.

So what is it about you that draws bullies into your life? What attracts them? How come they pick on you? What are the signs?

·        Are you good at doing your job? Are you efficient? They're not. That’s why they expend so much time and energy keeping their position.

·        Are you genuinely respected and naturally popular with people – colleagues, customers, clients, pupils, parents, patients, friends.. They're not

·        Are you the expert and the person to whom others come for advice. They're not. That's why the bully is always scheming to organise things so that people HAVE to come through them. Bullies are particularly attracted to so-called Public Service positions.

·        Do you have a well-defined set of values which you are unwilling to compromise? They don't.

·        Do you have a strong sense of personal togetherness – Integrity. Bullies don't, and are compelled to annihilate anyone who does. And I mean “annihilate”. I choose my words most carefully.

·        Do you have at least one vulnerability that can be exploited. If you try to hide any of your vulnerabilities, you become utterly vulnerable to both con artists and bullies (close relatives, by the way).

·        Are you too old or expensive? Bullies will go to work on you just for practice.

·        Have you refused to join an established clique? Do you ignore them? God, they hate that!

·        Do you think and act independently of others? Bullies don't. They can't; they need accomplices. And no-one can control you if you take responsibility for what you think and feel. They've always got their eyes on the wing mirrors.

·        Do you refuse to become a corporate clone or drone? Bullies hate that. They can't oversee you.

·        Do you have something to lose – something the bully can take away from you? Do you have a secret? Hooks, strings and secrets are the Sterling Currency of bullies. They thrive on obfuscation, confusion and secrecy.

More than anything, the bully fears exposure of something he/she simply cannot live with, and the inadequacy and incompetence that flow on from that. Find what that is in yourself – you do have it, and it makes you vulnerable. What is it about you that you can't even tell your best friend? A bully will sense it and use it to erode your influence, popularity and competence. Just by being there you unknowingly get right up their nostrils and unwittingly fuel their worst fears.

Now you know what you're dealing with. The Topdog -v- the Underdog?

Which are you?

Tell the truth... which are you?

I'll be back in a moment with some questions for both the Bully and the Victim in you.

CARTS

Welcome back to Pause a Moment. This is Bullying #101.

In every form of bullying, the issue is Control through the abuse of power.

Abuse is a deliberate choice. The perpetrator is always totally responsible for his/her actions. Abuse of power is not caused by a lousy childhood, ill-health, stress, alcohol, drugs, or someone else's behaviour: these are excuses for, not causes of a choice to indulge in destructive behaviour. Abuse happens because the abuser has an addictive need to control, dominate or manipulate the communication, the situation and you. The sought-after payoff for abuse is control – now.

So I have some questions for you to ponder now.

[Relaxation – Tibetan Meditation]

Hold under >>>>>>

Firstly, let me speak to the Victim –

·        Who do you think has the power in this situation?

·        Who is making the bulk of the decisions in this situation?

·        Whose needs are being met foremost in this situation?

·        What needs do you think those might be?

·        Whose needs are NOT being met in this situation?

·        What needs might those be, do you think?

·        How do you think the bully's behaviour has affected you?

·        How do you feel about that?

·        Is this how you want to feel about yourself?

·        Is this how you want to feel about your abuser?

·        What kind of person would you rather be in this situation?

·        What could YOU do to bring that about?

·        What do you think you should do?

·        What can you do tonight to get that started?

OK. Good.

Now let me talk to the bully in you. And if you don't know who the bully is in this situation, then it's probably you. Let's assume, for the sake of curiosity, that it might be.....

·        When do you find yourself getting aggressive?

·        Do you get aggressive when you're feeling angry? I'm talking here about how you feel inside, not how you show yourself to others.

·        Do you get aggressive when you don't get your own way?

·        Are some people fearful of you, do you think? Who?

·        Why might that be?

·        Is there anyone close to you who might be feeling hurt, fearful, humiliated or insulted by the way you have treated them, either directly or indirectly by someone you confided in?

·        Do you blame others for the hurt that someone feels about you?

·        What do you tell yourself that justifies what you're doing? [Any answers that occur while you stand in this question I suggest you put into a tray labelled “Dangerous Ideas” Put aside time to spend with them later.]

·        Who else bears at least some of the blame for you being the way that you are? [These are the ideas that set you off bullying. These are the ideas that get in the way of you taking full responsibility for what you do. Unless and until you take sole responsibility for yourself, you're screwed.]

·        What will it mean if you can't bully, dominate, manipulate or control?

·        What will it mean if you continue to do it?

·        What effect is all this having on your health and well-being?

·        What effect is all this having on those close to your heart?

·        What is it going to take, do you think, to turn this around for them?

·        What is it about you that does not think this is OK?

·        What can you do now, do you think, to turn the ship away from the rocks?

Every person is more than just one kind of behaviour.

·        What things are important to you?

·        What is so special about that which is so important to you?

·        How is that important to you?

·        Who else knows this about you?

·        How do you want to feel about yourself?

·        OK. There seems to be a bit of a riddle there – there is how you want be, and on another hand there is how you are to other people. Given that you can't change another person, how do you think you might reconcile these two contradictions for yourself?

Bullying is all about a bunch of mistaken ideas about Power. You didn't make them up. You adopted them to see how they'd work out for you.

Well????????

Well??

Well........

[All Is Well – Minnesota Boys' Choir – 3:51]