Stop apologising for things you've never done

Have you had the experience where someone apologises to you when they’ve done nothing wrong? Or maybe you do it yourself? You’re walking along and someone is coming towards you. You move left to avoid them and they move to their right. You move right and they instinctively move to their left. Sorry! You’re absentmindedly walking to the queue in the supermarket at the same split second as someone else. Who should go ahead? Sorry, you go first. No, you go first. You’re having a conversation with someone. They’re talking. You sneeze. Sorry! 

None of these situations need an apology. In none of them is something deliberately done wrong. So why do we do it? Is it some sense of guilt? Or just a social convention? Does it do any harm? 

I think we should be saying sorry when we have deliberately done something wrong. That should be clear and obvious. But what about unintentional wrongs? Political Correctness has created a minefield. You can say something which is inoffensive in your mind but someone slams you because you used a word they don’t like. Should you apologise in this situation? If it was unintentional, I would say you don’t have to, but it’s your call. Is the other person just trying to make you feel guilty when you have no need to? I remember somebody was in this situation and he basically said “I’m sorry that you took what I said like that”. This is a reasonable compromise. You’re not accepting guilt and are allowing the other person to see you didn’t intend to offend. 

Guilt is a funny old thing. Some people say we shouldn’t feel guilty about anything. This just seems wrong to me. It says you’re always right – you’re your own judge and jury and are always found innocent. It’s anarchy. Some people say we should feel guilty about everything. This is usually in the context of religious belief. This is also wrong. It treats the act of being human as a sin and doesn’t allow God to forgive you. I don’t see how either of these are conducive to happiness.  They deny reality in their own way.

There’s a way to be free from guilt and that’s to acknowledge when we’ve done something deliberately wrong, admit it and, where necessary and possible, make amends. In a Christian context, this would also involve confessing the wrong to God, asking forgiveness, determining not to do it again, then getting on with life. 

We can unintentionally do wrong things. In the eyes of the Law of the land, you would be guilty of a crime whether or not you knew it was an offence. It can be the same in the eyes of God. It’s possible to use a general confession, asking blanket forgiveness for such things. This doesn’t imply that everything you’ve done is wrong. I don’t think God wants us to feel guilty for the sake of it. After all, Jesus died to remove our guilt, so why would He want us to wallow in it?

Galatians 5:22-23 gives us a blueprint for guilt-free Christian living. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” And when we fail, “if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father--Jesus Christ, the Righteous One” (1 John 2:1).

Alas and Alack!

“Alas and alack! Woe is me!” In the mouth of a comedian this can be wailed to amusing effect, but really these words are not at all funny. Now a bit archaic, they do express a modern malady – self-pity. And what an awful thing it is to be in the grip of that monster! Alas, nothing ever works out for me! Alack, the whole world is against me! Woe is me, everything is conspiring against me!

Most of us don’t experience self-pity in quite so dramatic a form, but someone in the grips of depression can easily believe these statements are true. Of course, they are nonsense. A lot of things do work out for us. The whole world isn’t against us (most of it doesn’t even know we exist). There is no great conspiracy against you and you alone. Depression filters out the good things that happen in our lives as if they either don’t happen, are somehow not real, or are an aberration – a temporary positive blip to be discounted as a glitch in the system. All we are left with is our thoughts and feelings which interpret everything negatively.

It’s as if we are holding a party and, when the guests knock at the door, we only welcome in the miserable ones, or the ones dressed in grey or black. If someone turns up with a smile on their face and wearing bright clothes we slam the door in their face and tell them to go away. And so there we sit with doom, gloom and despair, commiserating with ourselves that no one likes us and we hold a little pity party telling ourselves how awful everything is. Self-pity is a comfort blanket but it is one which will smother and suffocate you. You may use it to get sympathy out of other people, but then you just become dependent on that and cannot properly function as an individual.

I have been there and it is not only an unpleasant place to be, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We dwell only on the negative so can only interpret what happens to us negatively. It poisons life.

If we are stuck in a loop of self-pity, we need to get out. And it is possible. There are different ways to get out. Make a conscious decision not to dwell on negative thoughts. You have to want to do this and, let’s face it, this means commitment and taking responsibility for yourself. Acknowledge in principle that there are good things in your life. Be on the lookout for them and don’t dismiss them. Challenge the negative thoughts. When they come, think of them in a different, more positive light. See opportunities instead of challenges. Physical exercise is said to help. Choose to be grateful for what you have instead of bemoaning what you don’t. Recognise what is making you unhappy and, if it is within your capability, change it. One thing at a time.

(If it’s very bad and you just can’t break out on your own, seek professional help. Just do whatever it takes. Depression doesn’t come out of nowhere. There may well be deep and dark abuses in a person’s past which need to be discussed with a professional.)

Crumbs From Your Table

 If someone offered you this choice, what would you do? You could have £50,000 a year for the next ten years, or a £5,000,000 lump sum in ten years’ time? Tough choice? Would you grab the money while you could or wait ten years to get ten times as much?

Now let’s apply the same principle to happiness. If you were offered the choice of a reasonable degree of happiness now or maximum happiness at some future point, which would you take?

Now, these are somehow trick questions. And rather unlikely to happen in real life. The concept behind them is whether we are willing to accept instant gratification, or are prepared to wait for something better. And this is where the trick lies – the answer to the questions is BOTH! We can experience happiness in both the short and the long term! It’s not either/or. And if someone insisted you could only have one or the other, tell them you don’t accept the premise of the question. 

I want to relate this specifically to the Christian life now. It has often been said that Christianity is all pie in the sky when you die. That is, a miserable life on earth with the promise of a future glory and joy in Heaven. But this is a false premise. The Christian life is not meant to be a miserable one. It’s meant to be a joyful one – even in the midst of suffering. Yes, there is pie in the sky when you die, but there are crumbs from the table while you live. Tasty crumbs. 

Things we associate with the Christian life are not meant to be a chore. Praying is talking with our Father, not trying to twist the arm of a grumpy skinflint. Reading the Bible is discovering more about God, not wading through a confusing old book. Going to church is communally worshipping the God we say we love, not a Sunday morning borefest with a bunch of people we don’t like. And so on… 

And yet, we can easily approach the Christian life as if it’s something we do begrudgingly. It is intended to be a little bit of Heaven on Earth; a taster of the future to come, not some sort of penance. The Christian life samples the crumbs from a heavenly table which awaits us. If it is anything else in our experience, we need a rethink. 

Sure, it’s not always an easy life – anything but! However, with the right motivation, the sacred moments and the secular moments in the life of the believer can be happy ones – a happiness based not on circumstance but on the promises of God. He will never leave us nor forsake us. He is always with us. He is always Good and His intentions toward us are always good. A knowledge of His character will transform us.

Remind me of this if I start moaning…

Mind wandering

It’s something we all do. We can’t help ourselves. Really, we can’t! We don’t even know we’re doing it most of the time. Suddenly we become aware of it and have the chance to come back into the room. Mind wandering. It’s what minds do. No activity is immune – eating, having a shower, washing up, watching TV, reading, writing, gardening. Nothing is off limits. The mind will wander.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing. It depends a lot on when and where it wanders. It can be quite pleasant if you’re doing something boring to drift off into a daydream. Or it can be annoying if you suddenly realise you’ve missed something important because you lost focus for a while. It can be embarrassing if you suddenly find yourself staring at someone! And it can be devastating if it wanders off to worries or problems. Have you got stuck in a loop where your mind brings up the same thoughts, worries and fears over and over? This is the mind wandering we need to tackle most of all. It can destroy happiness. It can ruin our day if we let it.

If we can’t stop the mind wandering, how are we supposed to stop it worrying about the future or dredging up the past? How do we stop it whirling the same old thoughts around and around?

When you notice your mind is wandering to worries or fears, you can stop it. You don’t have to allow the thoughts to play out to a conclusion. Just be aware it’s happening and gently drop the thought in mid-sentence, so to speak. No need to be angry with yourself or shout at your brain to be quiet. Be gentle and kind. You can even thank your mind for bringing it to your attention but tell it you don’t need to be thinking about that right now. Then go back to what you were doing. Of course, the mind doesn’t always get the message and off it goes again. So you just have to keep bringing it back. You may have to do this a lot. With patience and practice, you’ll find you’re able to reduce the amount of worrying which spoils life.

You’ll need to remind yourself that the thing you’re worrying about won’t change just because you keep worrying about it. Worry steals happiness and doesn’t solve the problem. And it tends to make you feel worse. So you end up miserable and get yourself worked up while the problem remains.

If your mind keeps wandering to past events, remind yourself you can’t go back and change the past. You may be able to do something in the present to put it right, in which case do so as and when you’re able. But you can’t change the past by thinking about it over and over.

Another thing that can happen if our minds wander off to worries is that we lose perspective. The worry seems to increase in size as we keep thinking about it. It seems like a mountain when it really is a molehill. We need to calmly, rationally consider how big this problem actually is. If you conclude that it really is a genuine, big problem, then take steps to resolve it. But if you conclude it’s easily dealt with, don’t spend time getting worked up about it.

Break the vicious spiral of worry. Take deep breaths. Be calm. Be rational. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to others.

Close Up

One thing depression and/or anxiety can do is make us withdraw from things. This may be due to a real root like rejection, fear, uncertainty, exaggeration of risk, poor self-esteem or apathy. Feel free to add to this list.

I’ve spent a long while hiding in my shell. It’s a miserable existence. Not wanting to meet new people as they won’t like me. Not wanting to go out because I feel tired and will keep wishing I could go back home to rest. Not being bothered to do things because there doesn’t seem to be any point to them. Afraid of making a mistake and messing things up. All very negative and mostly nonsense that only existed in my head. So everything becomes a big risk and not worth trying as there seems no benefit, only disadvantages. This is what depression does to a soul.

Hiding yourself away seems like a comfort blanket, but it can be toxic. If you interact with these kinds of thoughts you end up in a vicious spiral, dragged further away from a normal existence. Keeping your distance from things for any of the above reasons means you’ll fail to live a life abundant and will miss out on joy. But we can learn to live life up close and personal rather than from a distance; in the thick of it rather than hidden away in a self-piteous hole.

Maybe you need to take “baby steps”. If you’re the kind of person I describe you’ll need to work towards overcoming. I know it’s easier to find reasons not to do things, but depression and anxiety won’t cure themselves and we need to choose to act against them.

I suggest making a list of things you’d really like to do and of people you’d really like to spend time with. (Yeah, I know, lists are a drag.) Then write for each one why you are holding back. Then write whether you believe this is reasonable or not, and why. Then write what you’d have to gain by doing each thing. (Let’s say this is a risk assessment.) Then finally choose one and arrange it.

In spite of encouraging you to work out positive reasons why you could do x, y or z, I would then suggest you do the thing for its own sake. Put aside expectations because if they’re not met you’ll be disappointed and want to give up. Do it for the sheer sake of it. Then the fact you did it will be a victory in itself! Here’s an example. I decided after a lot of procrastination to sign up to the app Periscope, through which people broadcast whatever they want - live. What could little old me do? I know, I could sing and play the ukulele. It’s quite nerve-wracking at first. What if I make mistakes, what if I mess it up, what if my voice isn’t up to scratch, what if nobody watches… Well, I did it and somehow wondered what the point was. But the point is I like playing the ukulele. I like it when people listen to what I do and show their appreciation but, at the end of the day, I have to enjoy doing it for the sake of it.

So whatever you’re holding back from doing, give it a try. Then try something else new. Live life close up. What’s the worst that can happen? And if there’s a setback – don’t retreat into a shell. Try, try, try again!

Deadhead

I’ve recently gotten into gardening. I didn’t think I’d like it, but I do. Our last house had no garden or yard, only a pathway. I didn’t mind. Gardening! Yawn! Hassle! But when we moved we gained a small garden; small and manageable. I wasn’t going to like it anyway, so the less to do the better. I don’t have “green fingers” so all the plants would die anyway. But I’ve found it’s so much fun to see things you’ve planted grow up. It’s interesting to watch the rhythm of the seasons, the rhythm of life. There are so many different plants and flowers, and they (theoretically) need to be looked after differently.  

One thing that scared me was deadheading and pruning. I didn’t like the idea of removing dying flowers because I wanted to see their colour for as long as possible. What I didn’t realise was that removing dead flowers allows new ones to replace them! And pruning – but I might kill the plant! Pruning does many things like removing dead wood, shaping, encouraging growth. And I suppose if I did kill a plant I could just buy a new one….

You might think this post is about gardening making you happy. Well no, it’s not. It’s about deadheading and pruning in our lives. There are things which make us unhappy, yet strangely we don’t always want to get rid of them. I suggest we need to take a look at them and decide if we can deadhead or prune them out of our lives in order to encourage new growth or to give us time to replace them with something else we’d rather do. Hence – the happiness audit! This will seem to be a chore, but for one week only take a pen and some sheets of paper (if you still use such things) and each HOUR (yes, hour!) write down the MAIN thing you did in that hour; then on a scale of 1 to 10, rate how much sense of achievement you got and also how much you enjoyed it. This will be a good way to assess what you do and don’t like doing as you do it. It’ll give you a template to deadhead activities you don’t like to allow more time for things you do. A word of caution – be sensible. If you discover you hate washing up, you shouldn’t decide you’ll never do it again. Either find a way to enjoy it or buy a dishwasher! If you don’t like your job, don’t just walk away. Some things we just have to do. So see if there’s anything you don’t like doing that you don’t HAVE to do. Ditch it and try replacing it with something you’ve always wanted to try.

It may seem hard to give up things which don’t make us happy. It can hurt and create a feeling of emptiness. But allow something else to grow in its place and it will seem very worthwhile.

For example, I’ve stopped avidly watching news and political programmes (all doom, gloom and negativity) and now I do other things like writing poetry, playing my ukulele more often, writing blogs! Let’s sensibly prune off dead wood from our lives to allow fresh, new growth to come through.

Fifty Shades Of Green

Not so long ago we were driving through the countryside (I say, “we” – my wife was driving) and I took the opportunity to observe the scenery. One thing that struck me was how green everything was. Trees, fields, hills… Except it wasn’t green! It was greens! Not just one colour, green, but lots of shades of green! I must’ve noticed this before but it struck me like something new. Darker greens, lighter greens, in-between greens. Consciously observing, rather than casually observing, gave me a greater appreciation for what was right in front of my eyes and what should, really, have been blindingly obvious!

I wonder how much we miss out on in life. We look, but do we see? We taste, but do we savour? We touch, but do we feel? We hear, but do we listen? We smell, but do we…  um, smell?

If I’d been driving, I’d have been unable to appreciate the scenery. Even as a passenger, I may’ve been staring out of the window, lost in thoughts. But this time, for just part of the journey, I observed and appreciated, like a child grasping something as if for the first time and sensing a flash of joy at the discovery.

This is how life is. Sometimes we’re so preoccupied with something we lose the ability to appreciate anything else. We can be so focussed that we become blinkered. We’re so concentrating on what we’re doing it’s like there is nothing else.

Sometimes we’re living so much in our heads with our thoughts and our worries that we just don’t appreciate life anymore. We’re aware that life is happening to us but the trials of life (perceived or real) so dominate our thoughts that we live a kind of shadow life – one of our imagination rather than the real world. We’re in the passenger seat and being driven around by the spectre of fear and anxiety.

Sometimes we’re able to live mindfully, aware of what’s happening in us and around us. This will never happen by accident. We have to make ourselves do it. We have to decide to pay attention. We have to choose to live in the moment, seeing what’s there, being curious, observing, open to discovery. That’s what I chose to do that day while my wife was driving.

I’ve spent so much of my life in fear, worry and anxiety, which is like a grey fog, obscuring life, making me unable to see good things, afraid of what might be around the next corner, shrouding life in a monotonous haze. To see one shade of green is an achievement. To become aware of “fifty” is a bonus.

I’d encourage everyone to take time out each day to be aware. Become aware of what’s happening in your body, of the taste of food, of the feel of objects, of the sounds around you, of the sight in front of you. Become aware of the breath of life within you. Settle down and observe. When thoughts come to drag your mind away, just be aware of that and return to what you were observing. And every time your mind wanders, notice that and come back to what you were observing. You’ll gain a wider appreciation of things, noticing the different shades of life.