Mark Kahn

I have pondered long and hard for many years about the questions of anger, violence and the human longing for world peace.

Last week I came upon the most extraordinary piece of research that added something really spectacular to my understanding. Before I get to that I want to share with you my conclusions developed over time as to why we get angry and violent and why we live in a world so prone to starting wars.

• People get angry in order to protect themselves. It’s a biological imperative called survival! If someone comes at you with a knife, aggression is useful as a protective mechanism. If someone attacks you with hostile words and you attack them back, the potential to subdue them with your aggressive words, body language and tone of voice, is increased.

[Read more…] about Aggression and the Google Robots.

The sinister and dark emergence of Donald Trump upon the world scene has been frightening, fascinating, intriguing, amusing and all-consuming to many people, not least of all myself, over the last 9 months.

I have seen world-renowned psychology professors denounce him as a malignant narcissist, as paranoid and delusional. Others claim that these labels are inaccurate and that you cannot diagnose someone without interviewing them extensively – which is complete nonsense.

I have seen him supported and vilified.

I do not intend to spend this entire blog discussing the pros and cons of this terrifying human being but I’d you just want to say one thing about him.

Through all of my 35 years of working on myself and trying to grow myself as a human and spiritual being and all of my years of working with clients, it is very clear to me that this man has utterly trashed the notion that treating other people with respect and dignity is key to our evolution and development as a species.

This is not to say we are respectful all the time.

I could line up many people who would tell you of the times in which I have treated them with disrespect. [Read more…] about Judgements in the Age of Trumpism!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog about Valentine’s Day and the fantasies associated with it.

What I so love about writing these blogs is that the writing seems to drive me deeper into these issues and some amazing new insights emerge.

Today I want to share two such fabulous insights.

They came after I asked myself the simple question, “Is it just that fantasies are not aligned with reality that creates all of our pain?”

The answer was “No!”

There is more. [Read more…] about Tunnel Vision Thinking.

“If you live to satisfy others, you will be left…empty.”

Mark Peter Kahn

I have run hundreds of corporate workshops and one of the favourite games that I used to play was that I would walk into the room before the delegates had arrived and on the back of the flipchart I would write, “Who did this?” and “The blame culture.”

About an hour into the workshop I would say to the group, “A mother walks into the kitchen and a jug of milk is broken, on the floor, what does she say?” In all but one of hundreds of groups somebody in the group would say, “Who did this?”

I would then flip over to the back of the flipchart and show them what I had already written. I would then tell them that every group but one that I had done this in answered in the same way. I would ask, “What is going on in our culture that we always know that this is what the mother says?”

Somebody would then reply, “Blame!”

I then would flip over to the back of the flipchart again and reveal the word blame culture written there.

I would say to them, “I’m not psychic it’s just what happens over and over and over again in our culture. I’ve asked thousands of people this question and they all come up with the same answer.”

Under pressure, when anything goes wrong we resort to blaming others. [Read more…] about Social Perfectionism