Flex_ Do Something Different - Ben [6]
Many people find change difficult. In my personal and professional life I have seen countless examples of people honestly saying one thing yet doing another. An example might be the man who says he wishes to lose weight but reaches for a second helping of dessert. The girl who orders a giant-sized hamburger and a ‘diet’ cola. The woman who wants to take up jogging but says she can’t give up smoking. People struggle, it seems, even to make the changes that they know would transform their lives. Then there are people who repeat the same mistakes and appear not to notice, driven as they are by their habitual behaviour patterns. The man who pays his wife no attention, yet complains that she ‘nags’. The woman who constantly breaks arrangements and wonders why her friends avoid her.
Some people have enormous energy but it is wrongly channelled; others have intentions that are good but behaviours that do them harm. Everywhere there are people who stress themselves, people stuck in a rut, people who fail to spot the mistakes in what they do and say (yet they would notice them in others), people who do not learn from their mistakes, and people bound by habits of thinking and behaviour. We all do these things to a greater or lesser degree. We can all benefit from being able to make small changes, if we only knew where and how. Later in this book we’ll describe the techniques we’ve used to help those who want to overcome life’s challenges, to become more coherent, and to have better relationships and altogether more fulfilling lives. At the very core of these techniques lies the ability to flex.
7. Shaping a life
I am a product of my past. My genes from my parents were perhaps of dubious quality. They both died young. My dad was a taciturn bricklayer who worked seven days most weeks. Mum was a bit of a nervous wreck who had to undergo electro-convulsive therapy when I was about five years old. She went through enormous struggles to manage money and as a young boy I lived in constant fear of the bailiff or debt collector who made a point of calling when my dad got home from work. Mum’s life was unrelentingly hard and she wasn’t as good as she thought at keeping a lid on the mess. When I had just started school I became very ill. I had to stay at home in bed for a considerable period of time. Mum told me I had contracted – and finally overcome – polio. It wasn’t until I was in my fifties and had cause to look at my medical records that I learnt the ‘polio’ was in fact ‘dysentery’, a disease frequently associated with poor sanitation. She had to make the story up to protect herself, I guess. It stuck!
My upbringing was fine but pretty basic in many ways and compared to many it did have shortcomings. Being in a large family meant I had enough brothers to play football, without having to rely on finding other kids. That was good. But it wasn’t a loving family environment, although neither was it abusive. My parents simply did what they knew. OK, so my childhood had some negatives for me but that can be the nature of growing up. Good things have bad sides and bad things have good. I vividly remember the sinking feeling and fear I had once when I was about ten years old. I received a letter saying I was going to be taken to court because I had not paid for stamps I had sent for ‘on approval’. I knew I had to deal with that myself and so I wrote them a letter saying I would pay for them soon. I couldn’t impose more worries on mum, even though she had told me I could have the stamps – probably in a moment of weakness. From a very young age I was acutely aware that she had a raw deal and that her daily life was full of suffering. So I just learned to