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By ELAINE SIHERA
Emotional Health Adviser, Diversity Management Consultant
& Public Speaker
Creator of the SAVI© Self-Enrichment Concept
Two Interesting Conundrums for You
Read both questions first before seeing the answers which are at the end.
Question 1:
If you knew a woman who had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind and one mentally retarded, she also has syphilis and was now pregnant, would you recommend that she had an abortion?
Question 2:
It is time to elect a new world leader, and only YOUR vote counts. Here are the brief facts about the three candidates.
Candidate A
He associates with crooked politicians, and consults with an astrologist. He's had two mistresses. He also chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day. Very full of his own vision and ideas. An action man who can be cynical of others.
Candidate B
He is a decorated war hero. He's a vegetarian, doesn't smoke, drinks an occasional beer, is passionate about his beliefs, and never cheated on his wife. Cares deeply for his country but tends to be dictatorial. Likes running the show and can be ruthless.
Candidate C
He was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used opium in college and drinks a quart of whiskey every evening. He is regarded as arrogant, irritable and uncharitable. Peers used to regard him as more bravado than brawn.
Which of these candidates would be your choice?
Decide first....NO peeking.
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Your two selections would have been based on your particular VALUES. But where do those values come from?
We all like to think that our values are individual and independent of anyone else; carefully thought-out as adults, and carefully chosen, to reflect our origins, present life and aspirations; culturally referenced, yes, but distinctly us. That we judge impartially according to those values. But nothing could be further from the truth. Values are beliefs and beliefs are second-hand emotions. In fact, everything in our life is second-hand or even fourth-hand, passed down from our parents and their parents, our friends and relatives, our neighbourhood, our environment and our world, hugely influencing every decision. They gradually cloak us in comfortable ways which we keep and expand, within specific boundaries, hanging on to them for dear life as part of our identity; making sure that they do not change until we begin to examine our true selves to find out what we really believe about our unique personalities and our world.
Self-Discovery
I am going through one of those questioning sea-changing moments in my life just now and boy, do I see the world differently from even 2 years ago. First of all, in 2002, I blamed my husband for breaking up our marriage, for a variety of reasons. He did not want the break but I felt his actions precipitated it. Three years on, self-education and a revision of long held values and beliefs mean I now realise that no one is to be blamed for anyone's actions except one's self. This has taught me that he wasn't to be blamed for anything at all because we all have patterns from our childhood which draw certain types to us to put those second-hand beliefs in motion and to repeat those second-hand actions which then elicit the same kinds of reaction!!
The truth is, though I didn't know it, I had to leave the home for my own self-development and contentment. My Universe decreed it in its own subtle way and my husband was chosen as the catalyst to get me on my way. Painful, yes, but necessary in the scheme of life. Since then I have read 64 books, and still going, the kind I would not have even looked at a few years ago; the kind I repeatedly heard of but prevented myself exploring through fear and my limited values. I preferred ignorance, fear and comfort to self-enlightenment. Now I know my purpose in life and what a liberation and learning it has been. I am voracious in both my appetite for such books and in my compassion and understanding of others.
I also realise that, had I been at home, I would not have been the softer, gentler, more caring and loving person I have rapidly become. My self-love now goes off the scale. I would still be stuck back there in unproductive negativity, in what Dr Wayne Dyer calls the 'suffering victim' mode, blaming everyone else for my life instead of looking at myself impartially and seeing that MY thoughts, MY choices and MY actions have brought me to this stage. No matter what anyone else is supposed to be guilty of, as an adult, MY actions and reactions alone decided my fate. So, it is useless blaming others for anything in our lives, if we are not underage, overpowered or coerced. Blame merely prevents us from seeing the bigger picture of our lives and the dire necessity for change within it.
Who are you blaming now? And for what reason?
Are you missing out on a better quality of life and service because of it?
What are those personal values really telling you?
ANSWERS
Candidate A is.... Franklin D. Roosevelt
Candidate B is.... Adolph Hitler
Candidate C is.... Winston Churchill
Regarding your answer to the abortion question: If you said YES, you would have just killed Ludwig Van Beethoven!
Personally, I would have left the decision about the abortion to the woman in question. Whatever suited her best, I would have gone along with it, despite how I felt (being a former Catholic). However, I selected clean-cut Candidate B (Adolph) as my ideal!!
Just shows that pretty boxes always appeal to us than the gifts inside!!!
How Your EMOTIONAL HEALTH
Affects the Quality of Your Life
For 12 years, from 1993, I was a very successful diversity consultant and trainer, advising all kinds of organisations in the UK - from huge companies like British Telecom, with 100,000 staff, and the Royal Navy, to small minnows like Coulsdon School - to encourage greater diversity and cultural understanding in the workplace. Being a pioneer in the field, it was easy for me to make a difference in corporate Britain by promoting effective personnel management as a business priority which impacted positively on the bottom line. I must have trained hundreds of staff across Britain during those years, primarily on the concept of diversity and appreciating its benefits and pitfalls. Through our magazine, New IMPACT, we also raised awareness of diversity, a relatively new import from America, and I also introduced the British Diversity Awards to recognise and reward good corporate practice. In that public way, winners could be useful champions to promote good management even further.
I thoroughly enjoyed what I did, and undertook a 5 year research stint into the topic, which led to the only definitive book on diversity in the UK (Managing the Diversity Maze). Throughout those years, though many people were very comfortable with difference and could understand the need to be tolerant, a growing number really felt threatened and this affected the personal perception of their lives. I found myself fielding questions, that appeared to relate to diversity, from very fearful, insecure people who worried about the effect of a multicultural society on what they held dear and how such cultural issues affected them personally. They wondered why they had to change to accommodate anyone else who was different when it was their country, especially when they did not share their values; they fretted about losing their traditions and history, blamed 'foreigners' for everything and complained of even losing their rights. Many of them came across as racist and intolerant – and were accused as such by others – despite their denials to the contrary and their deep ignorance of other cultures. However, I felt they were reasonable concerns cloaked under the label of diversity.
But I pondered frequently on what caused the main difference between those two groups of people.
Quality of life
Then it hit me five years ago, with my own marriage break-up, during one of those Eureka moments I seem to have often. I discovered that everyone of us, without exception, desired four main things to complete our life and find happiness. Each of us wishes to be significant (hence the obsession with celebrities), appreciated, valued and included,what I called my SAVI Self-Enrichment concept. The degree to which we desire each item depends on what we place as priority in our life. A minority member, feeling excluded from mainsteam action, would value being included most, while an ambitious executive would yearn to be significant. A housewife or carer, toiling away unnoticed, is likely to put being appreciated and valued as tops in their needs.
The main difference between the two groups was one of emotional wellbeing- to what extent they possessed those four attributes, the quality of their life and their feeling of comfort with it. Those who felt good about their life, who felt successful, wanted and valued in their relationships, who were dating successfully too and felt confident in themselves, had no time to fret and worry about others. They felt at peace with their world and did not see others as a threat. They did not seek scapegoats because they felt more responsible about their lives. They enjoyed being empowered to decide their own future and could understand the personal need for self-fulfilment, regardless of culture, creed, gender or race. Others not so fortunate, who lived alone and felt lonely, who were not advancing in their jobs, who had a lot of hurt and disappointment in their lives through failed relationships, perceived things very differently. They genuinely did not know how to interact with others effectively, to get the necessary boost and reinforcement to their emotional wellbeing. The end result is that they felt limited in their aspirations, victim-like in their interactions with potential partners and afraid for the progression of their careers. This encouraged them to see anyone different, younger or older, male or female, etc., as a real threat; appearing as 'racist', 'ageist' or 'sexist' when that was perhaps not their intention.
For minority communities who had emigrated to Britain, the insecure ones among them displayed a different kind of fear in the new country. Low in emotional empowerment and value, they deliberately cling to the past, to the cherished 'home' they left behind long after it has lost its meaning. Many tend to be stagnant in their ambitions, fearful in their thoughts and fossilised in their actions, seeking scapegoats at every turn to compensate for their lack of self-belief. Having a sense of continuing frustration, yet not sure how to deal with it, they gradually find it easier to look towards another utopia, to see it as the answer, even when it is alien to them and is merely just a dream. Thus the place they left decades ago, like Bangladesh, Africa, Jamaica or India, is still 'home' even forty years afterwards. This view stops them facing their new reality, keeping them exposed as very obvious, vulnerable minorities, forever on the periphery in their new country, while they abdicate responsibility for their future and blame the past (like slavery) for any present predicament.
The notion of a home far away also harms their children's present and future. As their parents are always telling them how they will be 'going home' at some time, and how this society is not suitable for them, it implants a constant reminder of instability and impermanence and is one of the biggest causes of insecurity and underachievement among minority children. If their parents are going 'home' sometime in the never never, why should they bother to work here? Why bother with making real friends? Why buckle down to school work if you are going to be uprooted suddenly to 'go home'? And why mix with others who are 'inferior' to you? Sadly, 15 or 20 years down the line, when the parents are still in Britain clinging to their outdated memory of 'home', the children would have completely lost theirs through apathy and alienation. In the meantime, the 'home' they fondly hang on to has changed beyond recognition. Trapped in time and fossilised in their brain, the cherished perfect past is a far cry from the actual reality: one which is a vibrant, moving form of constantly changing mores, that would be almost as alien to them as to anyone else.
Lack of emotional health priority
Both groups of fearful, insecure people adopt different coping mechanisms in the absence of good emotional health. Our society makes provisions for improving physical health and mental health, but the most important part of that wellbeing triangle, emotional health, is completely ignored. One is usually expected to cope with with a relationship breakdown - an essential aspect of our lives - at any time, while carrying on with our work as if nothing has happened. Yet, every crisis affects our perception of ourselves and when it involves rejection, it strikes at the heart of our esteem and robs us of our value. We would have been feeling very crappy, and incapacitated, with things falling apart around us. Only robots can ignore the fallout, long or short term, of a relationship crisis or loss of a loved one. Those two items cause the greatest distress for us but often lack the attention they require from others.
Emotional health and empowerment is thus at the heart of our existence and diversity management. The way we feel emotionally can attract or repel diseases. If we feel vibrant, happy and alive, we are more likely to remain healthy than someone steeped in unhappiness, depression, victimhood and regret. It is a simple equation. When we feel good, nurtured and valued, and we love and appreciate ourselves, we seldom feel threatened because we find it easier to empathise with others and their situation. It gives us the confidence to get out of our comfort zones, to experiment with the unknown and to share our lives and perspectives with others. With the quality of our life being dictated by personal feelings, if someone is unhappy in their personal life, feeling excluded and invisible, whatever is going on at work is going to suffer in a major way, hence why many people who are hurting emotionally vote with their feet.
The key question is: How can you appreciate someone else, value someone else, celebrate their difference and diversity if your own personal life is falling apart, if you feel emotionally caustic or barren, culturally ignorant of others and a victim of life? That's a very difficult thing to do in those negative circumstances. It's like asking someone to give away what they haven't got!
You cannot appreciate something if you feel vulnerable and unappreciated yourself. Charity has to start from within us. Only when we feel emotionally at peace with ourselves, enjoying greater self-confidence and high esteem, do we feel inclined to spread that joy outwards and value others, to really appreciate the empowering strengths of living in a diverse, multicultural community.
The SAVI Self-Enrichment Process
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