Love Your Self For No Reason

Psychologist - Fresnaye Cape Town

Mark Kahn

World Kindness Day

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Our first world culture imprisons children with conditioned rules and beliefs, the vast proportion of which are just not true. We become slaves to these rules and live outside of our authentic selves, outside of freedom to choose and act in our unique and special ways.

One of the deepest forms of conditioning lies in the ways in which we are trained to be kind to others. And hence on this “World Kindness Day” I want to take a slightly different angle on the issue.

For most people World Kindness Day is about how to be more kind and generous and giving to others, probably particularly in relation to those who are not as fortunate as you might be. Of course this is wonderful and has the potential to make the world a better place.

I think there is another way to activate kindness that can make the world a much better place too! [Read more…] about World Kindness Day

Great Leadership

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You could fill an aircraft hangar with all of the books written about leadership. They talk about vision, innovation, mission, responsibility, enabling others and so on.

Get Out of The Victim Position First!

I want to talk about just one quality – it has three elements to it – which for me is the foundation of great leadership. It is about getting yourself as a leader, out of the victim position and into mastery before you do anything else.

In the victim position we get emotional and critical and angry and authoritarian, particularly under pressure. In this position, people make a lot of statements as opposed to asking questions and they don’t listen. People in the mastery position remain relaxed and cool and they are not victims of their emotions. [Read more…] about Great Leadership

Jim Carrey & “I’m Not Good Enough.”

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Are you looking for fulfilment? Are you looking for happiness? Are you searching for that final key, the ultimate thing, that will give you the Self-Esteem that has eluded you all of your life?

These are the questions raised by the magnificent speech given by Jim Carey at the 2016 Golden Globe awards. This is how he is introduced as he comes on stage and these are his first few lines.

Announcer: “From the upcoming film True Crimes, please welcome 2 time Golden Globe award winner, Jim Carrey.”

Jim Carrey: “Thank you. I am two time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey. You know when I go to sleep at night, I’m not just a guy going to sleep. I’m two-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carey going to get some well needed shut eye. And when I dream, I don’t just dream any old dream, no sir. I dream about being 3 time Golden Globe winning actor Jim Carrey, because then I would be enough, it would finally be true and I could stop this terrible search, for what I know ultimately won’t fulfil me.”

When I first saw this clip on television I was spellbound, knocked out by the insight and depth of clarity around these few sentences. [Read more…] about Jim Carrey & “I’m Not Good Enough.”

Stress Management Techniques.

“Do you want to run smoothly or do you want your life to run smoothly?”

Mark Peter Kahn

 

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It’s well documented how useful exercise and yoga and eating properly are beneficial for stress reduction and yes they are. I’m not going to talk about that here now because you can read up about that anywhere, anytime. Long term, if you don’t eat well and don’t exercise, it’s likely to impact your health and your stress levels.

Bad health is stressful!

The problem with all of these things is that they are an important foundation to dissolving stress but most of us need much more than this. They are just the foundation but not the rest of the house.

The Victim Position.

If you fight reality, you lose, but only every time. This is the Victim Position. Mostly we want the world to be different so we can feel better. It’s not going to happen very often. The more you learn to ‘run smoothly’ the better you will navigate the ups and downs of life. [Read more…] about Stress Management Techniques.

The Law of Conservation of Stress.

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Sitting here right now as you are reading these words, how much are you wishing that you could get rid of the stress in your life?

You know how it goes, you come across a friend whom you haven’t seen for a while and they ask how you are and you tell them about your work stress, people stress, family stress and there’s the underlying wish or maybe longing, for the stress to go away.

But does it ever go away?

I talked some weeks ago about the law of conservation of pain, how when two people have differing needs, one of them has to experience pain. The pain is conserved in the system and we have a fantasy that it will go away and it doesn’t.

Out of this concept came the law of conservation of stress. [Read more…] about The Law of Conservation of Stress.