Belief & Emotion: The Power to Be Happy

Confucius)

The Worst Time of My Life

Anything that does not kill you makes you stronger

About twenty years ago I became ill and it was four or five years before I felt totally well again. Looking back it was the worst time if my life. My problem was what is today classed as anxiety. A dreadful illness brought on, I believe by stress, poor nutrition, grief and the type of hectic life-style we all tend to subject ourselves to, in today’s society.

It is difficult to describe anxiety to someone who has never suffered it. A sort of dreadful depression with feelings of panic that last for hours. With the illness sometimes lasting for years. Your heart palpitates, you feel ill, you sweat, and you imagine you are contracting, or already have, all sorts of other illnesses.

It started when I was about 35 years old, I had for some months been renovating an old Victorian property out in the country. It was a difficult job all the usual pressures: time, money, tiredness, overwork, and overload. On top of this I was self employed as a Designer, ran a local Martial Arts club and a Property Business in the North of England. On moving into our new house we had to acquire a bridging loan until our other house was sold. It was an enormous sum and the weekly interest alone was three times an average person’s salary.

Although we had a buyer for our former house there were problems on the day of moving and the sale looked in jeopardy. We had no choice but to move into our new home, I had managed to install a bath and toilet but the rest was plaster off the walls, doors off, wires hanging, a cement mixer in the dining room and a constant trail of mud from the surrounding garden. As well as trying to sort out our domestic situation I was also trying to set up my studio so that I could continue to earn some money to try and finance my enormous undertaking.

I was obviously pressing the stress button big time.

On the very night we moved into the property. I had a phone call from my brother in law informing me that my father had died that evening. I was about 35 years old at the time. My father meant a great deal to me, although at the time, I like every son since time began, did not realise it. Nor did I appreciate him enough. It has been a lesson I learned the hard way and these day I always advise my younger Martial Arts students to make the most of their Dad. I realise that not every one has a good relationship with their father but if you ask yourself the rather morbid question ‘How would I feel if he died tomorrow?’ or ‘What should I do before he dies? Then you may take some action that will help you resolve your feelings in the future. The same applies to your Mother and everyone else you care about.

Burt had always been a good Dad, I loved and respected him and had tremendous admiration for what he and his generation had been through. Born 1910 and died in 1987 he had been brought up during the First World War, fought in the Second World War - D-Day, Juno Beach and the hell that preceded and followed it. He drove an Army truck and was wounded in action by enemy aircraft.

We all worry today about our circumstances but compared to his generation we have had a very easy time of it. For several weeks after my Fathers death I experienced a nagging tooth ache and I now believe it was a physical manifestation of the mental pain I felt at his loss. It is interesting that mental anguish can and does create actual physical symptoms.

It was shortly after my Fathers death that I felt my resolve snap like a dry twig. It happened while working on a particularly difficult and frustrating job trying to get my studio ready for work. It was an interesting feeling looking back on it. It was obviously a feeling or a mental thought but it felt physical, as if something had snapped inside. The break took a long time to mend.

Much later I began to realize that your beliefs and your emotions are the two most powerful influences in anyone’s life. I also realized that emotion or feeling was the stronger.

Your beliefs could be classed as strongly held thoughts. Possibly based on religion but perhaps based on no particular religious creed. You can have for instance a cultural belief: that it is a good thing to work hard. You may have various beliefs about sex, about right and wrong about race, about the law, about politics, about almost any subject you consider. Your beliefs are not set in stone they can be changed, they can be modified. There may be no need to change them if you feel good and they cause you no undue problems. But they are the motivators that make you what you are. If you wish to change, then you must first take a long analytical look at your personal belief system.

It is worth some time to deeply consider your strongest beliefs and try to remember how you picked them up. Was it from your parents your teacher someone you respected. Were they passed on with knowledge and sympathy or drilled into you. It can be great for your self understanding to spend time considering how you acquired your beliefs and whether they are worth keeping or modifying. Do they empower you or disrupt you. Do they make you feel good about yourself or fearful and miserable?

Your emotions are a little more mysterious and are generally harder to understand. While your beliefs mainly occupy your conscious mind, your emotions dwell in your subconscious. While your beliefs can appear reasonable, sometimes your feelings can appear unreasonable. Problems arise when your feelings conflict with your beliefs.

To me this became apparent when I was easily able to reason out my problems of the time. I was fine I could work out all my problems in a perfectly reasonable and logical manner. There was nothing wrong with my rational reasoning powers. I would sell our first house, reduce the bridging loan. I would finish the work on the house. I could come to terms with my Fathers death; it would just take time and so on and so forth. I could resolve all my problems with a little thought and logic. So why was I worrying?

The problem was I didn’t feel good, I was having panic attacks, I was depressed, and I was exhausted at the slightest effort. I told myself to stop worrying - that everything would be OK! Telling yourself or anyone else for that matter to stop worrying is probably one of the most pointless statements anyone can utter. If I could have stopped worrying, believe me, I would have. It was causing me some immense problems.

In some ways the feelings I was suffering were not helped by my family’s history. My mother had endured many years of mental illness and had been hospitalised several times. Beginning in and throughout my teenage years I had seen my Mothers mental health deteriorate. There were many visits to the Psychiatric Wards of the local hospital. It was a very difficult time and put my Father and sister and myself under the most enormous emotional strain. My Mother even underwent the Frankenstein procedure of Electro Convulsive Therapy several times. This is a therapy were an electric current is sent through the brain in the hope of shocking the patient out of their morose mental state and although a horrific procedure – it did seem to work. Although she never fully recovered to the mother I remembered. Those years were another testament to my Fathers enormous strength in that he managed to keep himself and the family together.

My Father had just died but my Mother was still alive and still unwell she was just about coping with a lot of help from my sister. I lived 200 miles away from them both and could not offer much help. I was worried that I may be starting to suffer the same problems.

My wife was also suffering. Along with a share of our mutual stress she was obviously worried about me. She started to loose the hair on her head and had bald patches about the size of a large coin underneath her normally thick dark hair. This gave me some more to worry about and I was descending into a vicious circle of concern. I was worrying about the smallest and most insignificant of things and worrying about things that did not need worrying about. I was even worrying about worrying.

My emotions were not listening to reason, they seldom do, they were operating on auto pilot and the override was impossible to find. I had awoken the sleeping giant who resides in the sub conscious, he who only feels, he who does not understand reason and logic, he who operates all the background systems of the body, he who communicates via pictures and visualizations and dreams, manifesting physically and mentally. The simple yet powerful giant of the sub conscious – he who must be obeyed or suffer the consequences!

How an Armed Robber Helped Me

The Giant Within - He Who Must Be Obeyed!

Many people have been through far worse experiences. Yet it is the interaction between these two states of belief and emotion that make the difference. How deeply you feel and how intensely you believe is what makes the difference. That is why some people would cope easily with the circumstances described in Chapter 1 and some would crumble at far less.

Mikes childhood trauma

On a recent holiday to Thailand I met Mike a lovable rogue hiding from British justice. He was well into his sixties but looked quite distinguished and very spritely. He owned as a sort of silent partner a small bar and restaurant and was married to a beautiful Thai girl and to be fair the rest of her family.

They ran the place and Mike was the guy on the side table smoking like a trouper and drinking a beer and chatting to the customers, but only if he liked the look of them and he did not like the look of many. My wife and I visited the place on a regular basis and on a two week holiday we had lots of time to chat. He told me a whole range of fascinating stories about his early life and how he became an armed robber. The sort of guy who caused a lot of violent problems for society in the sixties and seventies. He had a whole bunch of problems but seemed a really nice guy, odd considering his violent background, but he had his reasons and more importantly his beliefs. He seemed a very honourable man with a very strict code of ethics; they were just not the accepted ethics of a civilised society.

Thinking back on the experience I learned a lot. One of my usual questions when I meet someone new and start to get to know them is to ask a simple question: ‘What is the worst experience of your life?’ After a few diversions and laughs, he told me a story of his youth and how he ended up in a grim London Borstal for a series of petty crimes. In those days, the nineteen fifties, the regime was very tough and like the resilient and rebellious character he was, he tried to buck the system. He ended up being beaten by the Warders and forced to scrub the cobbles of the court yard with a tooth brush. His story in full was quite horrific. The cruelty, his youth, the bullying, the cells, the regime.

He fired back the same question I had asked him at me and I replied that ‘nothing like as bad as that, had ever happened to me’. He said he would like me to answer his question any way and that I had started on this one. I told him about an experience at primary school when I was at a similar age to him when he had this traumatic experience, we would both have been about 9 years old.

My childhood trauma

When I was about 9 years old my parents moved to a new area and I was enrolled into a new junior school. The curriculum was very different all the subjects were new to me and I was soon branded as a dunce and made to stand in the corner. I know it sounds Victorian but this was the early 1960’s and they still did things like that. The only thing that was missing was the Dunces Hat and I am quite sure if they had had one they would have used it. Along with a range of other mental tortures I was required by the teacher who was taking the class to stand in front of my fellow class mates in mathematics and recite my times tables.

If I got anything wrong I had to write out the times table 250 times that night. The next math lesson meant I had to recite the table in question again in front of the class - much to everyone’s amusement except mine.

If I got it right, then I was asked to recite it backwards. If I got it wrong I had to write out the times table 500 times yet again that night. I had to do this with all twelve tables. You may think the teacher should have been reported to the headmaster. Well the teacher was the Headmaster! I did not talk to my parents - first mistake.

I suppressed the fear and apprehension second mistake. I felt like I was having a nervous breakdown I felt like crying or screaming but I didn’t cry and I didn’t scream - third mistake. I never talked about it for 35 years - fourth mistake. I did not until later reassess my beliefs about abuse of power and education and the value of math and the correct way to teach and deal with children - fifth mistake.

That was my trauma! I told Mike that I thought it is always especially bad for a child - for a start they have to live with it longer.

Mike was quiet for quite a time then came out with a series of expletives that almost cleared the small restaurant and you could see the simmering violence ready to erupt. He went very red and brooded, for quite a time. I thought he was going to loose it and that I might have pressed the wrong buttons. He lit another fag and took a long swig of his beer and then slowly calmed down. Telling me what sort of violent torture and retribution he would have put my Headmaster through.

He asked me how I got my own back, in other words what revenge did I take. I told him that for a lot of years I wanted to do the things to my headmaster, he had just described in lurid detail but that in the end I forgave him. He was amused at this. ‘How could you forgive him?’ he asked. I told him that in the end it was the only way I could feel good again, it was the only way to remove the bitterness and that I believed it was the right thing to do.

He said he thought my story was one of the most horrific things he had heard. I was surprised at this, after all Mike was a very tough character who had been through some incredibly difficult experiences. I though he was going to think my story was laughable and that I was some sort of softie for even mentioning it but Mike was intelligent and quite a deep thinker and philosopher in his own way.

I even said to Mike that it was nothing like as bad as what happened to him. He said he thought it was far, far worse. He said it was mental torture of the worse kind the kind done by people who should be protectors and be responsible.