Tag: Philip Dodson

Peace – who wants that?

Posted on by philipdodson

Peace, who wants that?

There are many people all over world who campaign for peace.

What does peace mean? Does it mean a world without physical conflict, does it mean a world without anger, without hate, a world that is harmonious, where we all just get along?

I’m not sure what the answer is to be honest, as it will mean different things to different people and life has taught me there isn’t a right or wrong for most things.

Since the dawn of time there has been terrible conflict and there has been horrific events, where humans have done the most destructive and often evil things to each other.

So today’s world is no different to any other point in history, we have conflicts where people are killing each other for some cause or another. Where people hide under a banner, an agenda, often an excuse to attack one another.

Although, in the perspective of the last 100 years, the world is relatively ‘peaceful’, as just a 100 years ago one of the most futile conflicts took place in Europe, where millions were slaughtered in a pointless war. Then just 21 years after that had ended, yet another war started, that bought slaughter and misery across much of the planet.

However, if you are in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan or any other conflict, the fact that it isn’t one the scale of Stalingrad or Hiroshima, is not really of any comfort to you. It’s real and it’s you and your families that are under threat and are affected.

So surely by now, you would have thought the human being would have worked out that these conflicts are nearly always completely futile and in fact they could all be avoided.

So why hasn’t the penny dropped? Why hasn’t the millions that were slaughtered in two world wars in the last century not stopped us still killing each other?

Well for me, there are three very clear reasons why the penny hasn’t dropped.

Firstly, the people that often create, start and even engineer the wars, actually want to have them. Often these people are immune from the unpleasant side effects, such as dying. They are not taking up arms directly in the front line, where the bullets fly and where the bombs blow up them and their families.

They sit in the seats of power and play the war games with other peoples lives.

The governments in the West, in some developing countries too, need the distraction that war often brings. No surprise that the 2nd World War followed the great depression.

War is also very profitable for large companies and for the general economies of countries that manufacture weapons. These large companies will no doubt make contributions to political campaigns, so guess what? politicians need to keep having wars.

The second reason that wars still continue is, that we all have two ‘brains’ inside our heads that are running the world. We all have a limbic (chimp) brain, which is where all inputs go first and this chimp brain is not a logical, peace loving brain and is 5x stronger that our human one. It is our animal brain, that runs on emotion and doesn’t have any conscience, after all lions on the plains of Africa don’t look at the baby gazelle and say ‘ahhh poor thing, may be will eat tomorrow’. No they just eat it to survive.

The chimp inside us is very dominant and we all know how chimps act towards other chimps in the wild – it’s very aggressively, territorially and is brutal.

You don’t need to visit the cinema to experience Planet of the Apes, as we live in it on a day-to-day basis. Most of are allowing our chimp brains to dominate, instead of allowing the compassionate, logical and compromise seeking human (frontal) brain decide. Animals don’t have this human/frontal brain.

The chimp brain is all about win at all costs, to look strong in front of the troop, so wars are an inevitability.

Lastly, the ones who campaign for peace, often do so in the wrong way. Their message is often shrouded in mystic and rituals, things that the everyday person, who’s working hard to pay the bills and feed his family, does not relate to.

In fact in true chimp mode, they will ridicule a lot of it and poke fun, as they can’t relate to the message that the peace campaigners are putting out.

So what is the solution? As essentially I believe that most of the 7 billion souls on this planet want peace.

It’s two straight-forward things to be honest.

Firstly, change the way we educate the current and future generations. Start to teach people about how their brains work, how they can change and manage their chimp brain. Teach people about their values and how important they are and how we shouldn’t compromise them. Teach them the importance of collaboration, people, communities and helping others.

Secondly, the message from the peace campaigners needs to be delivered in terms of what is important to the masses, the message needs to be delivered with passion and put in simple, plain terms, that people can easily relate to and a message that they can see will benefit them.

This for me is the only way to reach peace and with technology that connects all 7 billion of us (well not if you live in N Korea) such as social media, the message can be spread easily if done in the right way.

Educate and make the message understandable and mainstream.

(If you want to read more about the chimp brain then check out The Chimp Paradox by Prof Steve Peters.)

My mind gym

Posted on by philipdodson

This is my mind gym, 750Words.com, I love this 20-25 minutes each day, sometimes it’s good enough to release on the world via my blog and sometimes it is just private thoughts and ramblings, which would only make interesting reading to me or disturbed people.

So these 20 minutes that I write my 750 words each day is firstly a great discipline and more importantly, it is a place that I can exercise my brain.

This is an area that very few, me included until very recently, focus on. We all think about what we eat and what exercise we could be doing or are actually doing.

There is a lot of focus on physical exercise and that is very important to our health. However, the exercising of the mind is important to our mental and physical well being.

Our minds control everything that happens in our lives and it determines whether we are healthy or not physically.

Many illnesses, some of the most chronic, are result of stresses in our lives. These stresses are caused by a number of factors, however, it is our mind that determines how we deal with these stresses and determines what effect these stresses have on our physically health.

For me it is important to put down in writing a review of what happened during the day and to put down what my thoughts were. To write about my reactions to events that happened.

It’s important, as it allows me to think about the situations and learn where I could have dealt with situations to get a better outcome in the future.

Often, our lives just go by without us realising and certainly without pausing to take stock of things that have occurred.

So doing this writing everyday allows me to press the pause button in my head and to scan back over the day to take stock and think about things.

The other thing that this writing is good for, is to celebrate my successes for the day and to think about my goals and what I could do the next day to get closer to them.

Some people have no goals and certainly none that are ever put in writing. Others spend so much time planning and writing goals and targets, that they actually forget the doing part.

A review of my progress is important to me and it allows me to continue the focus. It is important to feel that you are moving forward to towards your goals. It is important to recognise progress and give yourself a pat on the back for your achievements.

I never use this to beat myself up, although I do use this sometimes to deal with things that are preying on my mind.

I pick a particular worry/concern and write down what it is. I then think of all the worst possible outcomes, then say ‘so if that happens…then what next?’. I repeat this for each outcome and keep going ‘so if x happens, then this will be next and then this’. Eventually the process leads to the fact that you can deal with every outcome, however bad you can imagine it to be.

Then you realise, having actually put them down in writing, when you read them back through, nearly all of the outcomes lead to nothing that you can’t handle and I often laugh at how silly 99% of them seem on reflection.

The other exercise I do at my mind gym, is to write down the things that I am grateful for and the positive thoughts that I have had that day.

So it is not all about exercising the gremlins, demons and worries. It is also about writing and reminding myself of the good things that are going on each day.

So this mind gym that I do each day has a number of exercises that I do and that enables me to keep my mind super fit and healthy. So if you don’t have a membership to a mind gym, I strongly recommend getting one.

I go for a family walk nearly every evening for 3 miles or so, which gives me a chance to spend family time combined with physical exercise. After that it’s off to the mind gym.

Since the 1st September, this has become the most important thing to me on a daily basis, it clears my head, recharges my brain, helps me to express my thoughts more precisely, helps me reduce worry, helps relieve stress and gives me a real confidence boost.