Wednesday, July 29, 2015

I am on holiday this week and it goes like this ...........



I am on holiday this week.
What that means in reality -
We have daughter + 5 year old + 5 week old and me and Mrs Beautiful squashed into our little flat -
AND loving it.
It is such a busy life - far different than planned lived working normal stuff.
A privilege to have the guys around.

Been out today at the movies watching #PIXARInsideOut with Conniepops and MrsBeautiful.
I will be reviewing through the eyes of a 5 year old and myself.



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FEELINGS POSTER above - this part of a larger version.
Go on - have a go - which one is you right now?
Touch the one - it makes the connection with your feelings increase.


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Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Best ever Quote re GROUP WORK



This is the best quote EVER  - especially relating to group work but also powerful in terms of building authentic relationships. 
Love it! 

**************

"We become fully conscious only of what are able to express to someone else. 
We may already have had a certain inner intuition about it, but it must remain vague so long as it is unformulated" 

Paul Tournier 
from 
"The Meaning of Persons


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Monday, July 27, 2015

Who am I ? - I give myself permission .........




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WORK OR PLEASURE - The life of Riley



Well ......... life is good 

So life is always re-creation and that is my yearn. 
I have never worked to live ..... always lived to work. 
Work and recreation are one and the balance a life long mission. 
The truth is, I have the passion to work with people and I don't want to seek pleasure ..... just use it for refreshment. 

My mission is to live to love. 
Make my life an act of love. 
That is being honest and it is not sacrificial and 'burn out' tactics. 
Passion for people. 
Being with them, wanting to learn together about the life journey, all so real. 

At one time I was a driven man to convert people to the Christian faith. 
That was it. 
NOW .......I still want for them to freely chose a walk with God, to love because they are loved
loved by some major creator beyond understanding. 
Now it is more like letting the light shine than forcing their jaws open so that God will get in. 
She has to get close if we are open to the beyond ……...
That was me. 
A driven human. 
This is me  still becoming ……..

I ony became an adult when I was around 40. 
Until then I never accepted myself and always wanted to be ......"if only I could ......" 
I was once a person who 'couldn't' and I became a person who 'could'. 
I love to see that happen in others in anyway. 
I wil love the summer. 
Love the joys of beauty in so many things. 
I will then love to get back and be useful and not a taker (only) in this world ....... but a 'maker' too. 

God loves. 
In my own experience it is a life of finding that love and journeying constantly, 
constantly excitingly to experience more, 
and give more, like a never filled drinking jug. 

hey …..I am excited and I am dribblig down my chin ......... see you soon …… 
I plan to blog all summer ......is that wotk or pleasure ........I never know!! 


BHP



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Learning LIFE



Feelings are signals not a judgement on you and certainly not instructions for you to follow.
We all have feelings. 
They are information.
We can learn to read them.
Welcome them.
Receive the messages and NOT be reactive but receive the feeling and then decide what to do with that signal.


We do this automatically usually.

But, like staying in our comfort zones automatically, - we can have unthought out responses and be a REACTOR rather than an ACT -or.


The big feelings need to be managed most of all.

(NOT controlled - I don't like the word control because it seems to me it is suppression and blunt.) 
Where-as 'management' means we are learning awareness and skills about our inner workings - learning life !


There is nothing more important inside us than our human emotional signals = we alive

ALIVE


Just love them you beautiful human.





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Sunday, July 26, 2015

#MUSIC for you = Great mix 3o minutes of beautiful

 GREAT MIX LIVE
 Great mix 3o minutes of beautiful




#Bilal & Adrian Younge // I Really Don't Care // Brownswood Basement Session #VIDEO #MUSIC





so show me show me SHOW ME .........




so show/me/how to feel/about being me/so that I can leave my shell/
and shout and jump and kick/until something gets changed/
because the future is mine/and I don't want it to be like/the past/
and I hate/ seeing people starve/in order to give me/cheap trainers.

Friday, July 24, 2015

15-year-old, isolated and marginalised after moving home & planning a beheading.


I try to blog every day.
Some days I have to spill more than one reflection/story/experience.
One story in the newspaper stood out to me today.
About a 15 year old boy - and I am interested in all things ‘YOUTH’.

What grabbed by attention was this line.
“…. the 15-year-old may have felt isolated and marginalised after they moved home in 2013."


He had set fires locally resulting in the intervention of the fire services. 
“He was interested to test explosives soon,” the Prosecutor said.
"He has also researched materials in relation to Syria, Isis and jihad and he has communicatedwith people about an intent or desire to go to Syria. He's communicated with a number of people across the country who share that plan “ 

The main issue however was his admission that he was planning a ‘Rigby style’ attack. 
A beheading.

I am always striving to understand teenager lives.
It’s not good enough to say “He is evil” about any behaviour because that attitude never strives to understand a motivation.

“…. the 15-year-old may have felt isolated and marginalised after they moved home in 2013.”
The movie ‘Inside - Out’ , by PIXAR, released today in the UK is about a child who moves home and is disturbed by that life event.
I have not seen the movie yet - I plan to take 5 year old Conniepops as soon as we can.
We al need to see it especially males - perhaps something will get transposed into daily lives?

Life events such as moving home are big in an adult life.
One of the major stress experiences along with a family death.

I guess the major impact is the loss of the home environment, the loss of friends, school, community and generally a resulting insecurity.
Somehow we need to work on our culture which somehow leaves many boys and men with an inability to communicate their feelings.

12 men will commit suicide in the UK today.
So tragically so. TRAGIC.
Seems to me there is an inability to share emotional, inner activity, leaving suicide as a fatal last option.

I didn’t know anything about emotions until I was 40 years old.
I didn’t know in my head that I had them - yet I was full f them.
Full of anger and aggression with a terrible temper.
None had introduced me to the inner life in the education system, in my home or anywhere else.
I was brought up totally emotionally unintelligent.

I did a Gestalt course  in my 40’s which introduced me to my own feelings and then on to being in empathy with the feelings of others.
My 1979 study of Gangs and Deprivation Factors resulted in me coming up with ‘Emotional Deprivation’ as the most damaging deprivation.

15 or 40 we still are responsible for our own behaviour.
BUT, it seems to me, that we need not to just be reactors to behaviour but need to put a lot more into the inner human education rather depending on the justice and prison service to ‘put them away’.

Educate 
not only for exams
BUT
Education for life.


We can see a persons behaviour but can’t see their journey - or their emotional, spiritual, inner life unless we get close. 


Thursday, July 23, 2015

JOBS VACANCIES ALL OVER ENGLAND - Please share


LATEST VACANCIES

LOVE WINS


Group work example in Youth Work using Blob Tree Materials



Feelings 

why touch?  


I found that when
I got to grips with my feelings, 
or started to, 
I began to grow as a human person. 



I often I say
I became an adult at the age of (about)
forty years old.



That was part of my journey inward. 
The opening and the owning 
of those vivid things
which seem to influence life 
so powerfully ...
... negative or positive.



"The unreflected life is not worth living" Socrates 


I am with a group of young humans.
I am using this Blob Tool, 
other similar ones
are in books with links below.



I have just led a group
through a process
into this stage.
ALL to facilitate opportunities
for all of us
to step outside
our comfort zones
where growth resides.



I launched in ........ 
'Which Blob is you
right now in terms of feelings?'(on your LEFT)



I start by revealing something of myself.
Taking the risky road
sharing a vulnerability,
I have plenty to chose from.
Then I opened the question up
for others
and ........
......... fantastic level of sharing burst forth.
One young human spoke first.
He was a fiery ball of emotion
and presented unpredictable behaviour daily.



As he spoke,
the silence was deep and intense.
He said what his life was currently,
and moved on to say,
how he wanted it to become.
All by using the Blob Tool.



His large step
was for himself
and for others,
because he knew that,
he had heard me,
that it was good for the group
if the first one to speak
set the benchmark high,
- or in this case low low low. 



What grabbed my soul was
his honesty in terms of sharing feelings. 



Each human in the group
was taking a risks for their own development. 
Raw and to the bone. 
Because it is not only about, 
which Blob describes your feelings,
....... but why these feelings exist? 



Then it came out.
When you work with humans 
who have had massive disasters
in their childhoods,followed by later crippling blows, 
it is something extra special
to hear their stories.
'We can see a persons behaviour,
but we cannot see their experience'



And when they hear the stories of others
it comforts their souls.  



We end by picking a future positive Blob. 
I encourage all to end with a positive, 
healing sharing.
'What/where do they want to be?' 
and I join in all the way through.  



Beautifully so, 
I can see people moving forward. 
I see them progressing in their emotional life. 
Some of them building on their self knowledge, 
self esteem and growing in stature. 
The wholeness of Shalom.



I love it love it 
and it means I am reaching out 
and being touched myself 
by a Shalom finger tip,
being blessed,
being shaken,
being changed
in the presence
of these beautiful humans.

I experience
beauty 
and
pain 
and
refuse
neither.



Now what are you thinking of doing with this Blob Tool?
The best way would be to download
here and print off,
and get others talking and sharing too.
Just thinking about it
hasn't got the same impact.
It needs interaction to enable it to live.
Over to you - the challenge I leave with you
No oppression - just a challenge.


Links to further Blob Tools::


MAIN CONTACT  IS HERE





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Wednesday, July 22, 2015

My Mother weeping smacked to the floor - Just not for eating.





Nobody Nos...

Nobody knew the sorrow and pain when my life began.
The screaming and shouting that went on.
We had done wrong everyday, so scared to move just in case my Mum got the boot.
12 pints of Newcastle, then he had turned into a nasty bastard.
Shouting and belting everyone, even when we had done nothing wrong.
My brother was given a beating that really left my mother weeping smacked to the floor
Just not for eating.

Nobody knew the sorrow and pain.

By:  Steph

Mandela - a human can be becoming as this man .........


Blob Tree AND in many differing situations - here they are in multiple forms


Blob Tree
AND here they are in multiple forms
for multiple occasions/humans/situations.

You can get this as a paperback or a download instantly.

Blob Theme Trees PAPERBACK

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The Blob Tree is used to help discussions throughout the world. It is used in over 100 countries to promote effective discussions on emotional intelligence. It is used with children as young as 4 and with all abilities of adults. There are no words, hence it is used across the world! This edition includes a set of new images that are based on themes. Look in the preview for the full list of what is on offer.

eBook PDF download

Blob Themed Trees

eBook (PDF), 35 Pages 
 
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Price: £20.00
Download immediately.
The Blob Tree is used to help discussions throughout the world. It is used in over 100 countries to promote effective discussions on emotional intelligence. It is used with children as young as 4 and with all abilities of adults. There are no words, hence it is used across the world! This edition includes a set of new images that are based on themes. Look in the preview for the full list of what is on offer.
Available in PDF Format