I’ve been working in the space of personal development for the last 18 years and I’ve found how simple truths actually activate learning for people. One of these wise sayings, “You have the power to Choose” is a simple yet unmistakably impactful one.

Now, I know some people feel it’s just a motherhood statement. If you’ve always been left with no choice in your life, you will find that it’s not just a motherhood statement, it contradicts your experience.

In either case, I find that it’s telling when people say that “know” it but don’t apply it, or find that it’s not true and it doesn’t apply to them!

My job in personal development is to open up new possibilities in the lives of people. I’ve always affirmed this for myself as well as for the people who work with me. I know that creating choices is the first step toward true freedom.

Recently, I encountered a group of very talented and pleasant group of people, but were lacking in results. They had enough money. They had enough training. But they did not have enough results. The reason was simple – they did not create the right choices. There was a lack of strategy, a lack of practice and a lack of community.

They wanted to succeed. But this did not give them a clear direction at all. Instead of telling yourself to succeed, you need to first educate yourself on the choices to execute, then liberate yourself from the choices and focus on just one. So in a sense it’s ironic, but you create choices so that you know which ones to choose. Hence, even if you have “no choice”, hopefully it’s because you decided to put yourself there.

Make a stand to know yourself better, keep learning and avoid stagnation. Whether it’s the bad economy or bad health, things happen to us without us being in control. The worst thing is to let stagnation get to your head and then you just need to remain complacent for a moment, and opportunities would have passed you by.
Without “choice”, you will find that you’ll be forced into the choices of other people or circumstances. Once you’ve made that choice, you’ll need to stick to your plan and find as many ways to make it real as you can. Even if you fail, you can have a choice to learn and move forward. Even if you succeed, you won’t stay complacent.

It’s been some time since I had the chance to sit down and actively put my thoughts out there since I’d suddenly become swamped with work and studies. There are basically three things I learnt this week I’d like to focus on, and hopefully it will help you on your journey.

Procrastination Sucks.

If we earned a dollar for every minute of procrastination we experienced, we would be multimillionaires. I’m no exception. The issue comes when you’re pressured to get things done in the midst of so many additional things. On one hand, you know for a fact it’s good to do it. On the other hand, you give in to the temptation of lazing around.

In the midst of so many things happening, I realize how important a scheduled life is. While it’s a restriction, it can help organize one’s life. I’ve never been one to be bound by structure but I can see the incredible benefits it has. Over the last week, I’ve organized business development meetings, built a couple of business proposals, crafted my training material, worked on teleseminar transcriptions, replied to emails, helped a few friends, watched a movie, did some research, handled my accounts, planned for my next week’s worth of seminars and training sessions… and I still don’t have enough time for “me time”.

I’m not suggesting to ignore “me time”, but it is something I’ve grown to realize to be extremely important to schedule in and maintain awareness of that schedule. Instead of procrastination, then, you are focusing on you. That’s the point behind schedules – you are forced to know what you are doing, rather than whiling time away.

Conversely when time is used doing something that you have no clue why you are engaging in, then it becomes procrastination. Some of you even spend 10 minutes refreshing your screen to see status updates on FB!! If it’s autopilot and unpurposeful, perhaps it is time to relook how you are spending time.

Interests And Passion Rules!

Perhaps you saw one of the questionnaires I set up earlier last month. It’s about whether people know what they are doing in their life. The trouble is I’ve realized that 50% of people not being sure about their life purpose and direction is 50% too much.

Of course, there are times I wonder if I’m doing some things right. But I’ve never questioned my liking for speaking, training and education. It’s been a part of me so much that I gain absolute satisfaction of seeing someone grow and develop. If you’re any less passionate, you’d be stuck in a loop of unfulfillment.

How does one find this passion and purpose? I guess, putting your ear to the ground and really listening to what’s going on between you and the world. Are you fulfilling a purpose? Are people feeling you have helped them? That’s another reason why I am constantly connecting with people and hoping to see them grow. It’s what keeps me going, and revitalizes my soul.

Earnings Per Hour (EPH), Time Spent Per Mundane Activity (TSPMA) [hereby my own pet copyright phrase hahaha]

Talk about metrics, here are two of my own special ones.

I recently completed an NLP Teleseminar that answered questions about what NLP really is and I’m appalled to hear feedback from people that they had been told otherwise. Fortunately for me, NLP has been part of my education and success for the last 25 years of my life, and I had been teaching it since 1997. So I kinda understand why those who have any less experience will misrepresent it unknowingly.

Anyway, I realized I clocked 2.5 hours just preparing for the teleseminar transcription and that time gone was time that could have been spent doing other things. Fortunately, I’m not the one doing the actual transcription. So I had to calculate this time cost into a project that was meaningful for me, but not really a money spinner. This is a short term measure.

Conversely, I worked out a contract to run a training that topped my EPH to about $346. Not bad, considering the fact that I spent nothing on marketing.

Then, I realized something. Actually, I had done marketing, but in a sense it was credibility built up in the past: it’s just that the TSPMA was done earlier when I did not calculate this. It would have included carrying myself well in public so that others noticed me and were willing to recommend me. These things were activities that built my credibility over time. Now, I spend less on TSPMA and my EPH increases. This is a longer term measure.

A personal development plan helps you to target higher EPH by investing in some TSPMA and planning to reduce it through leverage in various ways. Increasing skills increases your EPH and reduces your TSPMA. Leveraging creativity helps you reduce TSPMA too.

Conclusion

We need to know where we are going but we need to apply the right devices in achieving what we want and knowing for a fact that we have arrived there. If you’re keen on seeking your direction by understanding more about yourself, do join me in one of my events and learn to develop practical and psychological skills so that you will be far more effective and productive in your quest for your dreams

Some students recently asked me about whether I enjoyed my work.

I love my work!

As I thought about this, I started to wonder what made my work great and satisfying. After all, there are so many people I know who do not enjoy their work at all, or want to leave their jobs because it’s drab work or the culture/boss/colleagues of the organization weren’t as expected.

The world isn’t drab. It’s beautiful in many ways. The world becomes drab when we look through drab psychological lenses. I’m like an optometrist – I open up your psychological (in)sight so that you have the capacity to do more.

I strongly believe that the first step to understanding your passion is to become skilled in one area. The first dilemma you will face is, of course, “what kind of skill”. There’s a gazilion skills out there! Yet, when you stop and think about what you enjoy, particularly if there are opportunities to challenge your skill level, there’s a prety good answer there.

Think of computer games, for example. Many gamers are drawn by the challenge and excitement. The more you play, the better you get. The better you get the greater the sense of satisfaction upon completing each stage of the game. Eventually it can really get addictive.

Whether it is singing, drawing, dancing, writing, or, speaking, entertaining, marketing, leading, socializing… each of these are skills you can develop. As you take a look at the world forward, I encourage you to learn the skills that have to do with interpersonal contact. As long as you work in a career next time, you will be with people. So why not build that muscle now? Eventually, you want to be multi-talented by putting in an effort to keep on learning.

The more you know, the more it will connect with you as a person — and that’s what I find eventually brings you back to the question of *who you are*. You see, people can speak or dance or write but they will always do it for different reasons. Personally, I speak because I know that after a session, there will be a renewed energy in my participants. I literally live for that! It’s that magical feeling when you know you have helped someone discover something about themselves and transform their experience of the world.

So…What is passion really about?
It’s about the connection with the thing that you do skillfully such that you and that thing you do become one and the same. Time disappears and you go into the flow. After you’re done, you chase perfection in that flow, benefiting others from your state of peak performance, and gaining immense satisfaction after that.

It’s amazing how much I can learn from my clients and people I meet with. The strangely familiar struggle with work is an ongoing theme in many of their lives, and the whole idea of ‘work-life balance’ is nothing but a myth. I think I know the reason why. Work-life balance is about our ability to switch from one mode to another. It’s about balancing almost anything. For instance, when I run personality profiles for people, they realize that they really need personal development because their profile report reveals more about where their blind spots are.

I remember looking through the MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) in preparation for my executive coaching client, as well as a life coaching client. On one hand, one profile indicated a preference for meeting people. The other profile indicated a stark preference for privacy. When I met them and asked why, it never dawned upon them that this was a limited view of the world. I have met clients who are very well adapted to flexiblty change from behaving in an extraverted fashion to being a good introverted listener. Both sides have their merits and it is really about developing the appropriate style. In both cases, they never thought of the merits of the opposite type; these turned out to be major blind spots in their lives.

Sure, people may be happy sticking to what they are comfortable with. I think we tend to be happier and more satisfied pursuing and meeting challenges. By doing so, I have a suspicion that we expand our capacity to live.

In this case, the most important thing to do is gain perspective and expand our view of our own world, something that I am challenged to do with my coaching clients as they continue on their journey of personal development, honing leadership and learning from that elusive journey into oneself.

Whether you’re a student or adult, I’m quite certain you might feel, like me, moments of tiredness that you can’t control especially when you have a tough week. It seems like during your regular meetings, you are just dozing off and lethargic.

I know how damaging this can be. In fact, I used to have a colleague who would fall asleep at meetings… with clients (key word being “used to”). You really need to know how to handle your energy levels. Here are a few things that determine your energy levels:

1. Sleep.

This is a no-brainer. But, some people get all the sleep they want, but don’t sleep very well. You should have at least 3 cycles of rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep at night, which takes place approximately once every 60-90 minutes of sleep. Deprivation of REM causes loss of memory and mood swings.

2. Breathing.

If you have shallow breathing, you are going to put yourself into a theta brain-wave state (drowsiness). Change your breathing, and focus on shifting your posture so that your lungs aren’t collapsed.

3. Hydration.

You know you need something like 8 glasses of water a day. While it has benefits for your kidney, it also is hard to stay awake if you are dehydrated. Your body starts to shut down when that happens. Drink water throughout the day.

4. Power Naps.

If you haven’t already, you can get a copy of my audio program that helps you get power naps, called Soothing Solace. It is only US$15, and you can get it from me online. Pop it in your iPod/phone and have some shut eye for 30-minutes, lying flat on the floor or bed and focusing on your breathing. If you are worried that you will slip into a sleep, set your alarm at the end of the CD. After you wake, you will typically find yourself feeling more rested.

5. Exercise.

Yes, you will need this. Generally a bigger lung capacity can help.

6. Aromas.

It is commonly known that peppermint, eucalyptus and citrus smells tend to help your brain pick up the momentum. Don’t breathe this directly – diffuse it with a non-fire diffuser (using candles uses oxygen in your room and releases carbon dioxide, in case you didn’t know the basic science).

7. Stretching.

After 30-45 minutes of work, do a bit of stretching.

Test these out and let me know how you fare. You will find that integrating all these with the right doses often leads you to a much better sense of energy over time.

It’s always amazed me that there are people who waste their time, even when learning something useful in school. As you may know, I run training programs for a very wide range of audiences, starting from as young as 9 years and as “young” as 76. The difference between those who actually apply their skills versus those who are in the “in one ear and out the other” mentality are very stark. In one group, there’s a lot of slacking. They don’t really take to heart anything that is mentioned by the teacher, trainer or instructor. They use everything as an excuse not to get started. It’s the cold airconditioning. It’s the bad weather. The teacher/instructor is boring. I don’t see any need for me to learn this. Blah blah blah, and the list goes on.

In the other group, I can see energy and emotion targeted in one direction: to accomplish their goals. It doesn’t matter whether they understand the entire course. In fact, they might actually be confused about 50% of the things that are learnt. They only need one thing they understand, to be able to use and apply immediately. Then they use it. They ACT on it. They take simple steps to reach their goals and when they reach their goals, they end up being much more confident of achieving the next step. Then they ACT again.

I remember one time when I was acquiring my accelerated learning skills. It was really difficult at first because I never was given the best way to apply those skills. After all, it was a generic training on how to use memory/mindmaps. It was easy to just give up. I remember moments where I literally forced myself to “just do it” (Nike should pay a commission here, ha). It became a discipline that I am proud of, because I’m quite certain that in most contexts, I learn far faster than most other people.

When I first learnt NLP (neurolinguistic programming), I discovered that it was a powerful skill. Yet, I also know that most of the people who learnt NLP with me in that class no longer use the skill. For me, I incisively looked at each skill component and started to practice. I analyzed my own situation and asked myself what was the most effective way to create the outcome that I wanted. I remember I had a period of my life where training was literally non-stop, and I was on the verge of being fatigued. One day I asked myself “what if I could believe that 4.5 hours of sleep was more than enough, so that I could last through these long days?” I applied a technique that was never meant for such a purpose, so that I could temporarily shift my beliefs and I managed to enjoy the tough period, before enjoying a much needed rest. It was a time where my NLP skill was useful for the context that posed a challenge to me.

Once I had confidence that one small area worked for me, I became more confident of my skills and continued to apply them. Sure, there’s a lot of talk about setting exciting goals and going out there to achieve greatness. But it won’t last long unless you start doing something. Anything to build your skill.

Remember the progression of the alphabet? You had to start with ABC. Before the number “12″, you had to learn the number “1″ and “2″. You needed basic building blocks. So, rather than rejecting everything you learn when you ask “why should I learn this”, change the question you have in your mind. Ask instead, “where can I use this, and how can I achieve mastery over this”. You will find a tremendous difference in your achievements.

We’ve heard the expression “knowledge is power”. In reality, knowledge, when not applied is nothing. Knowledge, when applied, gives you ultimate power.

I often get curious about how people lead their lives. One thing that really gets me interested is the way they use Facebook (or other social networking tool) to get affirmation about what they do and even attention with respect to the decisions they make.

I think in recent months, especially since it has been rather dark, cloudy and wet in Singapore, and given the fact that it is coming to the close of 2010, I’ve discovered that more people are looking for a new challenge in 2011, or seeking some purpose in what they do. I suppose it’s part of the “let’s do our New Year’s Resolution” deal.

There have been days where I’ve woken up and wondered about what I do and why  I do it. Similar to many people out there, I’ve definitely had days where I didn’t want to wake up. On certain other days, I’m charged and pumped. But this is not just because of the roll of a dice. I’m certain that the difference that I experienced in these two categories of situations was that in the former, I wasn’t focused on my life purpose whereas when I’m charged, my purpose and direction is really clear.

In recent readings in leadership literature, I’ve been somewhat half-surprised that leaders who are task oriented tend to perform better. Of course, it makes perfect sense: the task-oriented person will reach their results faster. However, what was somewhat half-surprising for me was that person-oriented leadership tends to bring up more conflict. And yes, it makes sense that the person oriented leader has to handle more conflict and negotiate through them. Frankly, I think we use them when we need.

In a sense, it tells me that there are two halves of us. One half is focused on achieving our goals. In the short run, that’s fantastic. In the long run, I’m not sure if we can gauge our success by the things we have and done. The second half of us is in nurturing relationships. Yes, you will have conflict, disagreement and argument, but you will also have love,  appreciation and connection.

The essence of purpose comes from not just looking at things that you like to do. That’s a piece of cake. What you’ve done, you’ll be happy doing only if it has a wee bit more challenge. Comparatively, what is it that you loathe (okay, I’m talking about ethical and legal things here) and dislike doing? Why is it that you dislike it? Is it merely because of a feeling? Have you challenged yourself to dislike something but do it anyway?

For those who don’t really know me well, I prefer the quiet of a room (even a Starbucks outlet is considered quiet when it’s crowded because everyone’s noise just drowns out each other into the background buzz) anytime to the hustle and bustle of the Christmas crowd. Yet, just because I don’t like the Christmas crowd doesn’t mean I won’t go out there once in a while. I’ll bet I can find one of my readers who prefers to sleep all day and not go out and exercise, just like me on a lazy Sunday morning (when there’s no training). But what if you just got up and did something you didn’t like? I don’t always like running, but I know it’s important for my general health, and when there’s a clear goal, I get it done and I have what I call “small-s” satisfaction.

Challenges in small bits and chunks helps us develop this broadening sense of satisfaction. However, I believe that it’s about the “big-s” satisfaction most people are worried about. Here’ the thing: fulfillment in life cannot be measured by things you do alone. It’s also got to do with the things you know. By that, I don’t mean that you just study textbooks. Wisdom is a function of your ability to apply your knowledge into practical realities of life. It’s a different kind of knowing. When you go through, or help others go through, a tough patch in life, you activate resources that move yourself (or others) through to a better place. It may take time, but you move.

It is this movement that you seek.

Most of the time, staying in one place at a time retains safety and security of the environment. There may even be fear to wander outside the comfort zone. However, things happen. Whether it be the 1997 financial crisis, 9/11, dot com bubble, SARS, H1N1, sub-prime mortgage crisis… these things can shift where you stand. You just need to adapt. How?

• Wisdom networks. You need to be surrounded with people who are collectively going to increase your wisdom. That’s why I like hanging out with people who foster the growth of my experience of life, not just talking business all the time. This is the group that allows you to prepare for challenges that you might face through the sharing of tough moments. It’s easier to recall: “I’m facing a problem today, but so-and-so did it before, and I think I can handle it too” in order to take a step into a challenge.
• Life challenges. I began to wonder why some people do the marathon. Or any crazy thing that comes along. Sometimes, we just want to test ourselves and see how we stack up against the rest. It improves our sense of self and the desire to achieve more. If you know you came in 4000 out of 8000 runners, you’re going to up the scale the next time around. Seems like simple goal setting, but now it’s not just a statement: it’s an aspiration.
• Emotion networks. Similar to Wisdom networks, I believe that what makes us feel satisfied is the ability to feel emotion. As a counselor, I know a lot of people who aren’t able to experience emotion or hide them because of past traumas. Personally, a group of emotionally supportive people can help you to process these emotions. They could be family or a coach or a simple bunch of friends. To be human is to feel and to ignore feeling is to de-humanize. When you are bouncing back from difficult life challenges, you need this network to propel you. Also, you need your emotions to guide you to what you feel passionate about.

Purpose isn’t a “thing”. I believe this is summed up in the belief that life is not a destination, but the processes as you move toward that destination, wherever it may be.

For the longest time, I’d been studying human behavior and psychology because of the fascination of how we think. It’s dynamic, infinite and always changing. When someone is upset, it’s hard to tell what kind of reaction we will get, simply because people are different. They respond differently to the same stimuli. Yet in all the literature I’ve studied about emotions, psychological management, one thing is clear: human beings are like tangled yarn.

Research about the brain suggests that when we experience an onset of emotion such as sadness, the brain begins to process that as a pattern of behavior from a neurological standpoint. It becomes easier for your brain to pass information to the neurons that make you experience sadness.

Research in psychotherapy also suggests that a generalization effect can take place. In other words, if you start off experiencing sensations of sadness in one context, sooner or later, you may begin to experience such sadness in other areas of your life.

When you put two of these together, you get a couple of frightening consequences. It means that as you generalize, your brain learns to feel sad, and extends it like a virus to other parts of the brain. It’s like taking two completely unrelated strands of yarn, messing them up together and realizing you can’t pull them apart. In life, however, we have more than just one strand of yarn. We probably have hundreds. When we don’t keep our life in order, the yarn gets entangled and for many, there’s no point keeping anything in order.

The result: depression, suicide, anger outbursts, emotional withdrawal, anxiety, terror and fear, improper social relations, work neglect, jadedness and workplace disengagement. Each of these alone cost companies millions of dollars of productivity loss. But it is not seen as something the company can do in order to change the individual. Apparently, it’s the individual’s problem. I’m quite sure this is true to a certain extent, but organizations are now beginning to place emphasis on workplace health, starting with a healthy body. They haven’t gone so far as to extend it to creating a healthy mind (as far as Singapore and most of Asia goes).

A healthy mind begins with the ability to build resourcefulness. Being mindful of your tangled yarn is one thing. Being able to use your supply of untangled yarn is another. That untangled, well-organized yarn represents the resourceful moments you have in your life. Most of us have this because we haven’t thrown this in with the junk.

However, individuals who are unable to find their resources will feel lost. There’s no passion in what they do, and the day-to-day activities that they carry out in their lives are nothing more than repetitive procedures. Their lives are nothing more than robotic actions. Unresourceful people have a problem. They let the environment control them. They are like a boat, tossed around in the ocean during a violent storm, and they break and sink. The question here is: how did they get into such deep waters at such a bad time?

The answer is simple. They worked toward it everyday.

As a child, when you experience withdrawal of love, distancing from friends or family, abuse (real or imagined), witness violence or fights, there’s only so few of us who can really say that we are resilient enough not to be affected. Many of them grow up as adults who do not experience emotions are actually suffering from a habitual pattern of dissociation as a means of protecting a vulnerable themselves. There’s no more trust.

Parents who do not realize that simple things can be traumatic to a child will include:-

• family violence
• ineffective communication
• anxiety in school
• a withdrawal of love and affection
• bullying
• perception of failure or being a failure

There’s a much longer list but I want to confine this so you get what I’m saying. An egocentric child points the blame of such things to themselves, sparking the likelihood of depression, low self-esteem and therefore react in ways that you might find familiar – rebelliousness, ease of irritability, physical violence.

As adults who may have experienced these, the memories are repressed. In fact a lot of such memories can be easily repressed these days because of the internet, the heavy load of work and the kinds of escape you can find in games, your iPhone or iPad. Simple escape… at the touch of a button. It becomes easier to deny emotions, and that’s why when I was in a few restaurants and organizations recently, I saw people who had no passion. There was a zombie standing in front of me serving me with a blatant tone of “I don’t care who you are” saying “How may I help you?”

Life is not all dark, of course. But many people, a significant number go into darkness at least a few times in their life but cannot find help. These moments of darkness are not the ones where you can simply talk to someone and feel better about it. These are the moments where multiple problems happen to you. You get affected also because it brings up hurtful past memories. You flounder.

Professional help will be required in order to reach to where you want to go. Healing can only take place when the tangles are unraveled. Depending on how old and how sustained your traumatic situations have been, it could take a long time. Imagine, someone with 24 years with his first onset of trauma at 25, could utilize 24 years of resourcefulness. Therapy could be so easy, straightforward and strengthening. On the other hand, consider someone at the age of 30 who has had 24 years of trauma swept under the carpet, including feelings of unworthiness, fear of performing at the workplace, insecurity and anxiety. Do you seriously think that such a person would come forth for help? No, because firstly, the entanglement prevents the person from seeing the case logically (until it gets so bad there’s no turning back… usually that case is out of the hands of even the above average therapist). He’s afraid and anxious! Secondly, even if he comes in, the sad news is that to unravel this bad knot, he has to go back to the knot with the therapist to do it. Revisiting traumatic incidences are not easy. They need strength and courage and 6 years of ‘forgotten childhood’ may not cut it for such a patient. Third, society has its unscientific view that such cases are easy to snap out of. Unfortunately, that’s not true if you look at the statistics. Suicide rates have definitely increased in Singapore – up to 9.35 per 100,000. Anti-depression medication has turned into a multi billion dollar industry.

Let’s go back to the analogy of exercise. If you stop exercising for a long time, how does it feel when you first exercise? Terrible! Muscle aches will reign. But these are signs that your muscles are growing, and you are developing better strength. After some time of exercising, you won’t feel this way. It becomes natural, you activate natural neurochemicals that make you feel healthy and feel good. The trouble is people tend to wait too long. It’s harder (not impossible) for a 65 year old who hasn’t exercised in 45 years to pick up health and healthy habits compared with someone who has not exercised for 4 years but has been through tough training as a Commando.

It’s not so different in therapy. If you haven’t sought help for painful experiences, remember that it is important to get help to entangle the yarn. Those knots literally keep you going around in circles in life. You don’t like being angry but everything seems to set you off. You hate feeling sad, but that’s the only thing that you seem to feel even though you have a great job or family. Those are already extreme warning signs.

To begin, learn to be resourceful. Learn to eliminate negative thinking from your mind. Learn to develop positive feelings and act with positivity. While this may sound like new age mumbo jumbo. But research in clinical psychology bears this out. Even from the field of business management, it is clear that depressed employees are usually the most disengaged. From a mental health standpoint, don’t wait to develop your inner resourcefulness and resilience. Start now. It could be as simple as reading a blog you like (hopefully you like this one). Something that enriches you, keeps you focused. It could be more than that, like really fighting with your natural urge to solve problems the easy way. Maybe it would require seeking professional help. If you’re committed to making your life better, that would be at least one of many small steps in the right direction.

Psychotherapy is one of the most misunderstood processes for the developed world. When someone says you need to go for psychotherapy, it is often saying that there’s something seriously wrong with you mentally and of course, it could be insulting for someone. There’s a lot of face saving involved in not going for psychotherapy. Instead, the person who is focused on such avoidance behavior probably has a lot of misconceived beliefs about what psychotherapy can do and cannot do for them.

In the United States, like many other countries, psychotherapy is often associated with health plans and medical insurance. Sometimes, a judge may mandate that an individual goes for therapy depending on the nature of the offence. In Singapore, there is no such thing because the main focus on mental health is ceded to the Institute of Mental Health and other social service organizations.

Counseling is on the rise in Singapore. However, many people are still not familiar with the process of working with a counselor, expecting immediate results. While I’m sure that working within the Singapore environment causes us to think that things go forward quickly, emotional processing may not be that easy.

I have had the good fortune of doing various different things in my life, and the biggest discovery I have had is conducting counseling for individuals and groups. The recent and rapid advances of science and research have opened up a whole new set of works related to the brain and how we process information. This has had an important bearing on our brain and the way our interventions work. Increasingly, psychotherapy is no longer for just people with psychopathologies. The average person who wants to maintain decent mental health will also need to seek psychological assistance.

Why?

Simple! When you were in school, nobody taught you about diseases related to health and how to maintain fitness. Today, it is imperative for you to know what you eat. In spite of that, when you are unwell you still visit the doctor. In many cases, a physical symptom gets worse if you don’t seek appropriate treatment for it.

Likewise, counseling and psychotherapy is something that you need to gain access to because you’ve never learnt anything about the way the brain functions. As society becomes more complex, the younger generation gets more access to knowledge and information. Their brains develop at a different speed and level than how we did in the past. This can be troubling. Even up till now, we are discovering the way our brain operates and how emotions, analysis and the activation of neuro-chemicals leads to experience. What implications will there be since there is rampant information flow today on the internet?

In addition, the changes in society have forced us to focus on affluence as a measure of success. People value their work more and more. Yet, there is little evidence on the emphasis in organizations about mental health issues.

Emotions activate neural pathways. Some of them are activated due to our perceptions. Without the right kinds of skills to receive and communicate our emotions, it is likely to cause emotional upheavals. What’s worse is that processing these emotions do require some kind of skill. It’s not just about ‘facing’ the emotions or not ‘running away‘. Worse, confiding in someone who does not have a skillful approach to handling bad emotional spots can cause more problems and aggravate current ones. I’m not saying you should stop having friends. They are still nice to have for social support. I’m suggesting that your friends don’t know what they are doing if they are “helping you” by giving you advice, even if they are friends.

It’s knowing who you are, understanding the impact of these emotions and acknowledging the triggers that are present in your life, the patterns you exhibit that lead you to a greater understanding of  how to manage yourself, your thoughts and your feelings. By not addressing emotional issues, it can accumulate and blur your perspective when encountering more challenging aspects of your life.

What adds to the complexity of taking on counseling or therapy is that there are so many different patterns of therapy. Which ones do you select of the following?

• cognitive behavioral therapy
• reality therapy
• rational emotive therapy
• hypnotherapy
• ego state therapy
• psychodynamic therapy
• gestalt therapy
• narrative therapy
• systems therapy

Sigh. So the list seems to go on, and there’s plenty of suggestion that the mode of therapy may depend on the nature of the issue. For instance, traumatic episodes are better handled by cognitive therapies that others; systems therapy helps better with couples and families. It seems that unless you came into contact with this menu, you might not even have considered looking into their differences and different efficacies (incidentally, I use a combination of the above approaches and primarily work with anxiety, phobia, depression).

One of the best indicators of success in therapy though, is a positive therapeutic alliance. It means you need to somehow be able to work with your therapist well. This takes time to develop. Coupled with a suitable form of therapy, you will find yourself being in greater control of your life.

I’m encouraging you to read more and learn more because in developed countries, we can take care of our livelihood but seldom know how to take care of our relationships and our emotions. Professional counseling and effective therapy can make a tremendous difference.

The interesting thing about being involved in psychology is that we start learning more patterns when we meet more clients, and when new research comes up that tightens our understanding, it becomes so apparent what was the cause of our client’s discomfort. The ability to explain and solve a client’s emotional problem is tremendous.

The issue, I believe, is that there is insufficient education about counseling. Most people still think that counseling is a method to solve a problem. In reality, sometimes emotional issues simply require a positive therapeutic relationship with a client. Also, one man’s problem is another man’s solution. As an analogy, married couples are everywhere. But they react differently to each other. Some are able to connect with each other and live a very fulfilling life together, but some others aren’t and constantly hurt each other, going into fights. It doesn’t mean that marriage itself is a problem. The problem occurs in the perception of marriage and the expectations that the couple holds.

So, yes, everyone has problems, right? Few people are encouraged to see a therapist because it means that they can’t solve their own problem. This is a very unfortunate misconception because not every problem can be solved on one’s own insight. For example, I get emotionally tense sometimes. This does not present a problem, but if it gets slightly pathological, for instance, emotionally tense such that I constantly avoid people, then I know something’s not right. I can at least get some advice before I actually meet with  therapist.

When the problem gets more severe, for instance, over a period of months or even years, the urgency level definitely increases. Sometimes, a client is presented to a counselor at a stage of pathology where it is really difficult to unravel. Sadly, this is the state that a client will find himself if help is not sought early.

Is this simply some kind of fear based persuasion? Absolutely not.

When a person learns something through a traumatic experience or a depressive incident, neural pathways in the brain are created. A lot of the time, resources can be activated to deal with that problem. But sometimes, and according to research over 50% of any given population, we don’t have the resources to handle things that happen to us. It could be when we are children. It could be a strong pressure or expectation to perform. This neural pathway happens in your brain, and generates meaning.

When you keep the neural pathway operational, it has the opportunity to get stronger and become associated with other sub-pathways. This information processing approach to understanding traumatic situations is at the heart of many of the world’s core therapies (cognitive behavioral therapy, EMDR, RET). By getting help early, you can shift these learned patterns and activate resources. If the mental illness pervades at an advanced level, help must be rendered over a longer period of time.

If you are not sure about what’s going on in your head such a sa lack of awareness of your emotions, constant blanking out, not feeling emotions, avoidance behaviors, lots of sadness… these may be signs to talk to a professional about these symptoms. It could be a simple runny nose waiting to mutate into pneumonia!