A Lesson in Affection: So You Say You Want it -- But Do You Feel Worthy? - The Huffington Post. You say you want "it" -- now the question is, do you feel worthy? Whether it is a loving relationship or the house of your dreams, we can only attract and manifest what we believe we deserve. Relationships are like mirrors; they reflect back to us aspects of ourselves. When our partner has good qualities, we sometimes put them on a pedestal of admiration, thinking, "Wow, they are so generous or smart or beautiful!
" When a person has worthiness issues, they cannot see how these positive traits exist inside themselves as well. While they may be hidden deep inside them and not often expressed, they too are generous and smart and beautiful, if they would only do the work to discover it. What is a worthiness issue? For the purpose of this discussion, it is when a person either consciously or unconsciously feels they are not deserving of love, understanding, ease, financial abundance, good health or any other of the many beneficial gifts that are available to us by virtue of being born. 1. 2. Mark Hyman, MD: Relationships, Menopause, and Health. Who you spend time with and the quality of your relationships not only says a lot about who you are as a person, but it has a tremendous impact on your health.
A now classic study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that -- even after controlling for risk factors like smoking, poverty low socio-economic status, alcohol consumption, lack of exercise and obesity -- lack of social relationships, personality dispositions, and acute stress, including the stress of racism were better predictors for increased risk of death and disease. (i) Other studies have shown that you are more likely to be overweight (and suffer from all of the resulting health consequences) if your friends are overweight than if your parents are overweight. And we are now learning that when you join together in community to lose weight and heal you are far more likely to succeed. We get better together. The community is the cure. So what happens when our relationships suffer?
Mark Hyman, MD. Dr. Fran Cohen Praver: How To Get Your Needs Met In Marriage. "I'm so angry with Sam. He still doesn't think about my needs, only his. " Laurie's fists clenched and tears welled up in her eyes. I asked, "What happened? " "He went to his womanizing cousin's wake and left me here alone all day with my sick mother.
I've been her care-taker day and night for the last month and I needed a break. I would have liked to go out for a bit. " Laura pouted. "What did you say to Sam? " Raising her voice, Laura explained, "After he got home, I yelled at him and told him he's never thought about my needs in the past and he never will. "I know he was a married bachelor, left you home alone with the kids, and neglected you emotionally and sexually. " I commented. Tears streamed down her cheeks, as she said, "I realize the wake wasn't a bachelor's night out, but it brought back all the pain of the past. " "I can understand the association and your pain. Looking down, Laura said, "I was afraid he'd get angry. " "And if he did? " "It doesn't make sense. " A. B. C. D. E. Elisa Taub: The Tortoise and the Hair: One Mother's Attempt to Loosen the Reins.
As I drove toward the salon I started to panic. What had I agreed to? Why had I suddenly had a change of heart? What message did this send? For the love of g-d, what was I thinking? I had just dropped my daughter off at the hair salon to get low-lights in her hair. My almost-15-year-old daughter. You see, before today I was a mother who drew the line in the sand when it came to letting my daughter alter her image. I was adamant in my stance that letting her dabble in the world of altered states would send her the wrong message: That she wasn't good enough the way she was.
But as she soon as she saw that first glimmer of makeup in my drawer, my daughter fell in love with all things beauty. And to my surprise, the girl actually had talent. Not a mother's worst nightmare I know, but still I worry. It was as if that first lip gloss was a gateway drug that led her to this moment of dying her hair, and then whatever else comes after that... which I know is the attention of male admirers. Dr. Louis A. Tenaglia: Moving Children Into Mindful Living. How do we become people who live mindful lives? So much of our society today appears to be mindless.
We see evidence everyday of mindless name-calling and divisions, mindless killing, mindless suffering and pain that we cause for one another and ourselves. Is there another way to live together? More importantly, is there an approach to raising our children so that we move them, consciously, into a more mindful way to living? Mindfulness is defined as being aware, attentive or careful in how we treat others and ourselves. Imagine families and schools filled with children who are routinely aware and considerate of themselves and others in an attentive and careful way!
The effects of adult modeling on the lives of children are enormous and cannot be overstated. What this means for us as parents, teachers and a larger society focused on raising mindful children is that we must be careful and mindful ourselves about how we live in the presence of our children. Lou For more by Dr. Wendy Strgar: Top 10 Tips for Healing Your Love.
Recognizing that our relationships are our most gentle teachers in life is a great way to approach the work involved in staying with them. We too often don't value and trust the huge amounts of resources that we have invested into them and are too willing to dispose of them before really digging into the work before us. While some relationships were a bad idea from the day they started, the majority are actually perfectly designed to help us grow into the best people we can be. I have been sharing these love tips for years and consistently hear back from our friends and customers that doing the work of love rewards them in ways they couldn't have imagined. Remember that often the feeling of hitting the wall in love lives in us only moments before a breakthrough that gives meaning to our promises. Make this new year full of love. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
For more by Wendy Strgar, click here. For more on conscious relationships, click here. New Year, Shining You: 10 Ways to Polish Your Personal Brand. Dr. Irene S. Levine: Rachel Bertsche Talks 'MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search For A New Best Friend' You might call Rachel Bertsche a serial dater. But that doesn't quite capture her unique adventure. After relocating to Chicago, bereft of the strong network of friends, colleagues and familial supports she had in New York, the author spent 52 weeks prospecting for girlfriends in her search for a bestie. She's written a highly praised book, MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend (Ballantine Trade Paperback, 2011) distilling her experience into practical lessons for women hoping to make new friends. This must-read memoir couples humor, honesty, and humility with the latest research on friendship.
I was pleased to be able to interview my friend, colleague, and fellow HuffPost blogger and ask her about her new book: What do you find was the most difficult aspect of prospecting for friends? The hardest part, for me, was really breaking out of my comfort zone to "ask girls out. " What did you learn about "technique" in terms of starting a conversation with a new friend? How to be the life of the party. John Tsilimparis: Creating a Healthier YOU: The Power of Separateness. The kind of separateness we are discussing here does not mean indifference or isolation from others, and it does not mean avoiding intimate relationships either. The power of separateness comes in the form of a human connectedness that values the treasured spaces that exist between us and others. When we are not striving for this identity, we are allowing for that "space" to be compromised, and we begin to lose ourselves.
In other words, the power in the separateness lies in our ability to stay intellectually differentiated from others regarding ideas, thoughts and feelings and in our ability to stand alone amidst the chaos that surrounds us. And, when things get a little heated and there is conflict that puts that "space" in jeopardy, to learn how to hold that centeredness and stick to our guns without having to fire them. To assist in harnessing this power of separateness, we must learn how to communicate this respectfully to others.
Aggressive Communication Passive Communication. Www.huffingtonpost.com/drs-ron-and-mary-hulnick/relationship-advice_b_1134490.html?ref=healthy-living. In this, our third article about relationships, we'll once again begin by sharing the single greatest relationship myth in recorded history. And why do we keep repeating ourselves? Well, as one of our USM students remarked in a large group sharing, "My boyfriend says I don't listen to him. That's so hard to hear. " This myth is contained in the following message to your partner: "If only you would change, everything would be so much better. Further, we suggested that trying to fix or change your partner never works since much as you think you might like to, you have absolutely no control over the thoughts, beliefs, feelings and attitudes, which underlie your partner's behavior.
We've also been suggesting the outrageous possibility that you consider working with the one person you can greatly influence, which, of course, is you! So far, we have shared eight keys or ways you can build a more intimate and mutually fulfilling heart-to-heart relationship: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 1. 2. OK! 3. 4. How to raise a grateful child. You can raise your children to be grateful for what they have. Life won't always gift your child with exactly his heart's desireTeach your child that showing appreciation for gifts is importantCreate excitement surrounding gift purchases for other family members (Parenting.com) -- I was 7 years old when I received a tiny Christmas present -- about the size of an eraser -- awkwardly wrapped and covered in tape.
My sister's boyfriend, Jeff, was visiting and had considerately brought gifts for his girlfriend's three younger siblings. Mine, though, was by far the smallest. I remember opening it up to reveal a miniature ceramic dog -- a cold, hard nothing that fit in the palm of my hand -- and thinking how unlucky I was. I gave Jeff my best cold shoulder the rest of the day. And I've felt guilty about it ever since. In this, experts say, I wasn't an unusual kid: For distractible, still-developing children (and that's pretty much all of them), gratitude can be hard-won. CRInfo - The Conflict Resolution Information Source.
Add variety of love to your life. Author encourages people not to limit their definitions of love or families. Amy Bloom describes the many looks that real love can have The Ozzie and Harriet model suits some families, but the anglerfish and tamarin way works too"There is no kind of love and no kind of family we should ever turn our back on," Bloom says (Oprah.com) -- Every biologist, botanist, and zoologist will tell you the same thing: Nature loves variety. People may fear it, and some religious or political groups may hate it -- but Nature loves it. The desert grassland whiptail (Aspidoscelis uniparens) forms female pairs. And these female couples reproduce ... successfully. The anglerfish female is spiny, ugly, and so much bigger than the male that most humans don't even see him: the tiny little glob attached to the lady anglerfish by his teeth. She feeds him and after a while, he loses his eyeballs and she takes his sperm.
It may be that people are finally getting the idea. ... Which alters when it alteration finds, Want to love more? Care less! It's easy to care so much about people that you forget to love them. Martha Beck explains how to love without caring"You can achieve a given emotional state even if a loved one doesn't conform to your wishes," Beck saysAdvice: Stop controlling your loved one's behavior and start creating your own happiness (Oprah.com) -- "Now my whole family is abusing me! " said Loretta, a client at a women's resource center where I volunteered back in the '90s. "If I leave my husband, it'll just be out of the frying pan and into the fire.
" "Are you -- " I cut myself off before finishing my thought, which was, "Are you crazy? " Just the week before, I'd participated in an intervention where Loretta's family had urged her to leave her battering husband, Rex. Each person had expressed enormous love for and protectiveness toward Loretta. "They're just like Rex," she said. I opened my mouth, then closed it. It killed me that Loretta was interpreting her family's desire to rescue her as criticism and judgment. Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks: How to Create a Conscious Relationship: 7 Principles, 7 Practices. As we write this blog we are celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary. Early in our relationship, we set some big intentions: We wanted to get free of the old patterns that had plagued us in past relationships, such as criticism, blame and secret-keeping.
We wanted to create a relationship that ran on positive energy instead of up-and-down fluctuations of negative and positive. We'd found it taxing and tedious in earlier relationships to go through repetitive cycles of get close/get into conflict/get close/get into conflict. It took us quite a few years of diligent practice to make those intentions real, but gradually everything fell into place. If that kind of relationship magic appeals to you, here are the operating instructions, as clearly and simply as we can make them. Ready? The First Principle Relationships thrive when each partner commits to total union with the other person and total creative expression as an individual.
The First Practice The Second Principle The Second Practice. MeiMei Fox: The Secret to Turning Your Relationship Into a Romance. I never was a romantic. That doesn't mean I wasn't sentimental; I cried at the expected moments during chick flicks and even the occasional TV commercial. I enjoyed celebrating anniversaries of first dates and bringing unexpected gifts home to my partner for no reason. But I didn't believe in such fantasies as "true love" and "love at first sight. " Until I met the Love of My Life, Kiran, I was hopelessly pragmatic. "Look," I'd say, assuming a newscaster tone of voice, "There are 7 billion people on this planet. But my worldview got turned upside-down this year.
When we did make the decision to give our romance a chance to blossom this past spring, it flourished like Jack's beanstalk. Suddenly, I find that I am no longer "Miss Practicality," as my college friends nicknamed me decades ago. During our short time together as a couple, Kiran and I have navigated our share of scratchy patches. Let's be honest here: Kiran gets most of the credit. 1. Relationships are work. 2. 3. 4. 5.