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Being An Optimist — Part 1

by discount designer bedding on December 15, 2009

OK, so maybe you hate opti­mists. You have this pic­ture in your mind of some­one mind­lessly watch­ing Pollyanna on the late show until three o’clock in the morn­ing, then ris­ing at 5:00 A.M. and singing “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” in the shower until the entire house­hold is awake, caus­ing a bad start to an oth­er­wise per­fectly OK day. A far more dis­cern­ing look at opti­mists shows that they are life’s big win­ners. They are richer, more suc­cess­ful, health­ier, do bet­ter in school, and have both bet­ter rela­tion­ships and mar­riages. Linda S. Wil­son, Pres­i­dent Emerita of Rad­cliffe, says: “I’m an opti­mist. Opti­mism is the expec­ta­tion that we can make things bet­ter. For exam­ple, in the face of pend­ing ill­ness, assume that it has the prob­a­bil­ity of com­ing out OK. It’s impor­tant not to have a defeatist atti­tude.” What’s dif­fer­ent about opti­mists is that they are tough-minded and cre­ative when faced with adver­sity. Opti­mism is high men­tal energy. Fran Shea, Pres­i­dent of E! Enter­tain­ment, says: “I think opti­mism is some­thing you have to put effort into. I’m opti­mistic by nature, but soci­ety is so sped up, and that con­tributes to the over­whelm mode. Not hav­ing time to pri­or­i­tize works against optimism.”

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: Opti­mists can’t han­dle real­ity.

THE REALITY OF SUCCESS: Opti­mists are the most skill­ful manip­u­la­tors of reality.

The Real­ity of Optimism

Indi­vid­u­als who are more opti­mistic report them­selves to be more alert, more proud, more enthu­si­as­tic, active, and engaged. These indi­vid­u­als are less likely to get depressed. Dr. Richard J. David­son, Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­ogy and Psy­chi­a­try at the Uni­ver­sity of Wisconsin-Madium, has stud­ied the biol­ogy of opti­mism and found opti­mists have higher lev­els of nat­ural killer-cell activ­ity with a smaller decline under stress, so they are more capa­ble of fight­ing dis­ease. Opti­mists also have lower lev­els of the stress hor­mone cor­ti­sol. All these obser­va­tions add up to solid bio­log­i­cal advan­tages that may help explain why opti­mists are gen­er­ally so much more suc­cess­ful than pessimists.

Cre­at­ing the Real­ity of Optimism

Much of what fol­lows in this sec­tion is born of con­ver­sa­tions with Pro­fes­sor Mar­tin Selig­man, Ph.D., author of the acclaimed best­seller Learned Opti­mism and the world’s lead­ing author­ity on opti­mism, help­less­ness, and explana­tory styles.

Over­com­ing helplessness

The num­ber one stum­bling block to reach­ing suc­cess for most peo­ple is that they do not gen­uinely believe that they can suc­ceed. They have learned, over time, how to become help­less. This con­di­tion, which Dr. Selig­man calls “learned help­less­ness,” is at the very heart of pes­simism. We invent a mil­lion dif­fer­ent excuses as to why we can’t do some­thing — and you know what … as a result we can’t. The sad truth is that we are cre­at­ing our own flawed des­tiny through pes­simism. Dr. Selig­man says pes­simism is a self-fulfilling prophecy: “Twenty-five years of study have con­vinced me that if we habit­u­ally believe that mis­for­tune is our fault, is endur­ing, and will under­mine every­thing we do, more of it will befall us than if we believe oth­er­wise.… If we are in the grip of this view, we will get depressed eas­ily, we will accom­plish less than our poten­tial, and we will even get phys­i­cally sick more often. Pes­simistic prophe­cies are self-fulfilling.” Pes­simists are more pas­sive and less likely to take steps to avoid bad events and less likely to do any­thing to stop them once they start.

Who are you? Are you an opti­mist or a pes­simist? Which cat­e­gory do you fall into? The typ­i­cal pes­simist believes that when some­thing bad hap­pens, it will last a long time, that the event has under­mined every­thing he’s ever done, that it’s entirely Ills fault. The pes­simist imag­ines the worst, is prone to depres­sion, and gen­er­ally feels help­less. The opti­mist believes that a bad event is tem­po­rary and sur­mount­able, that it’s a cause of bad luck or other peo­ple. The opti­mist is unfazed by defeat and feels the bad event is a chal­lenge to over­come. He or she eas­ily regains energy and above all feels in con­trol.

How you explain life’s events to your­self deter­mines if you are an opti­mist or pes­simist. For pes­simists, those events are explained by Pro­fes­sor Seligman’s three “p’s” of pessimism.

PERMANENCE

Pes­simists give up eas­ily because they believe the sit­u­a­tion is per­ma­nent. The bad events will con­tinue and always be a part of their lives. An opti­mist believes the causes of bad events are tem­po­rary. Here’s an exam­ple you may find in your own relationships:

PESSIMIST: “You never talk to me:” OPTIMIST: “You haven’t talked to me lately.”

When things go wrong, every­one expe­ri­ences a momen­tary sense of fail­ure. How quickly you bounce back is reflec­tive of this dimen­sion of permanence.

PERVASIVENESS

Some peo­ple let fail­ure per­vade every aspect of their lives. If you lose your job, your role as a wife or a daugh­ter or a vol­un­teer has not dimin­ished one bit. Dr. Selig­man says it comes down to this: uni­ver­sal ver­sus spe­cific expla­na­tions. “Peo­ple who make uni­ver­sal expla­na­tions for their fail­ures give up on every­thing when a fail­ure strikes in one area. Peo­ple who make spe­cific expla­na­tions may become help­less in that one part of their lives yet march stal­wartly on in the others.”

PERSONALIZATION

Whom do you blame when some­thing goes wrong? Those who inter­nal­ize blame tend to have low self-esteem, feel­ing unloved or unwor­thy, while the oppo­site is true for those who place the blame out­side themselves.

Becom­ing an optimist

This sec­tion will take you, step by step, toward being an opti­mist. The more opti­mistic you become, the more your mood will lift.

Becom­ing an opti­mist means learn­ing a set of skills that help you to talk to your­self when you con­front fail­ure, a set­back, or a tragedy. You’ll do that by chang­ing the way you explain events to your­self. Tech­ni­cally, Dr. Selig­man calls it the ABCDE (Adver­sity, Belief, Con­se­quence, Dis­pu­ta­tion, Ener­giza­tion) method. Here’s an exam­ple of how to fight pes­simistic thoughts by chang­ing the way you explain bad events.

ADVERSITY

You’ve got­ten up at the crack of dawn, made the beds, called two new clients, and are about to leave for work when your four-yearold flips his break­fast onto the floor. You totally lose it and scream at the lit­tle tyke, who gives you a look of bewilderment.

BELIEF

“I’m a lousy mother. I just can’t do it all. I’m pro­vid­ing a mis­er­able exam­ple of how to behave and can’t even be nice to my own chil­dren. My chil­dren will grow up to be hos­tile peo­ple who deal with the world through the prism of anger and frus­tra­tion. They’ll never amount to much of anything:”

CONSEQUENCE “I’m depressed.”

DISPUTATION

A good way to dis­pute any charge is to imag­ine that your worst enemy said that to you. You wouldn’t believe that you were a lousy mother and would argue the point SO, ARGUE! Like a lawyer launch­ing an attack on a hos­tile wit­ness, pre­pare the fol­low­ing argu­ments to counter your pes­simistic thought.
— Make your belief fac­tu­ally incor­rect with evi­dence. Look at all the evi­dence show­ing you that in fact you’re not a lousy mother — you take good care of your chil­dren, get them to school on time, read to them … you just had a bad moment.
— Decat­a­strophise the impli­ca­tions of the sit­u­a­tion. OK, You yelled. Just how bad is that? Does that mean your child won’t grad­u­ate from Har­vard or will become an ax mur­derer? Yelling once is just not a cat­a­stro­phe.
— Search for alter­na­tive expla­na­tions for your behav­ior. Focus on the causes that are change­able, spe­cific, and non­per­sonal. For instance, you were up all night with a new baby and just felt a lit­tle cranky. That’s a long way from being a bad mother.
— Look at the use­ful­ness of your belief. How use­ful or pro­duc­tive is it for you to think you’re a lousy mother? Does that really help you be a bet­ter mother? Often, it’s sim­ply bet­ter to get on with what you have to do, to dis­tract your­self, than to dwell on destruc­tive beliefs.

We will con­tinue the road on, Being an Opti­mist, next when we look at Ener­giza­tion and Immunization.

Dr Leo Kady

Dr Leo Kady is a retired physi­cian and researcher and rel­ishes infor­ma­tion in a vari­ety of fields. Dr Kady is an edi­tor for uPublish.info … http://www.upublish.info . Please feel free to peruse more free psy­cho­log­i­cal arti­cles at uPublish.info


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Can People Really Change?

by discount designer bedding on December 15, 2009

CAN PEOPLE REALLY CHANGE?

CREATING SOMETHING FROM NOTHING

MOST PEOPLE NEVER REALLY CHANGE

Sad, but true.

Some peo­ple never even try.

But those of us who do – and I assume that you are in that group – often expe­ri­ence great frus­tra­tion and dis­ap­point­ment as we encounter the same lim­i­ta­tions over and over again.

Life can start to seem down­right repetitive.

CREATING SOMETHING FROM NOTHING

Why is it that in most cases your life keeps look­ing like some vari­a­tion of what­ever you’ve expe­ri­enced before?

The answer is: because you are cre­at­ing some­thing from some­thing. You’re attempt­ing to cre­ate a new and dif­fer­ent future based on the lim­i­ta­tions of your past.

Imag­ine that you are a pot­ter and you have a piece of clay. You can study your craft and make pots that are smoother, stur­dier, or more beau­ti­ful than before. But when all is said and done, they’re still just clay pots.

Who says you have to be a pot­ter? And who says you can only make things out of clay?

G-D CREATES SOMETHING FROM NOTHING

There is a fun­da­men­tal kab­bal­is­tic prin­ci­ple of Cre­ation known as ‘yesh m’ayin’ – some­thing from nothing.

This prin­ci­ple explains that G-d is bring­ing the entire world, includ­ing you, into exis­tence from absolute noth­ing­ness at every moment.

G-d didn’t cre­ate this world once and with­draw back into Heaven, where He super­vises from a dis­tance and inter­venes when appro­pri­ate. Rather, He is actively and inten­tion­ally speak­ing the world into exis­tence from noth­ing in the present moment, again and again and again. In fact, if G-d would stop cre­at­ing this world – with all of its myr­iad details – at any moment, the world and every­thing in it would dis­ap­pear as if it had never been.

Based on this, two things are clear:

1. The world has no exis­tence out­side of G-d. Every­thing we expe­ri­ence in life is part of G-d and His inten­tion and pur­pose for Cre­ation.

2. G-d desires the world – and you – with an intense and per­sonal desire. Every­thing you do has great mean­ing and sig­nif­i­cance to Him. That’s why He keeps on cre­at­ing you.

Remem­ber those old com­mer­cials where a lit­tle kid said some­thing like: “I must be good because G-d made me, and G-d doesn’t make junk”?

Actu­ally, the truth is much more pow­er­ful than that. G-d doesn’t make any­thing or any­one with­out a pro­found pur­pose. He pas­sion­ately desires you and just as pas­sion­ately wants you to desire Him. And He is wait­ing — with bated breath — for you to embrace the Divine pur­pose for which you have been cre­ated. To make your life, your rela­tion­ships and your cir­cum­stances a “dwelling place” for the Divine.

WHAT’S NOTHINGNESS?

G-d cre­ates from Noth­ing because Noth­ing­ness, ayin, actu­ally means absolute, infi­nite pos­si­bil­ity. No lim­i­ta­tions. No restric­tions. None at all.

When you don’t need to be any par­tic­u­lar some­thing, you’re free to be any­thing. Kab­balah calls this infi­nite poten­tial noth­ing­ness – not because there’s noth­ing there, but because there are absolutely no lim­i­ta­tions that define or restrict this infi­nite pos­si­bil­ity in any way.

YOU’RE ALREADY CREATING SOMETHING FROM NOTHING

As a human beings cre­ated in the image of G-d, you are also empow­ered to cre­ate some­thing from noth­ing. And you do, all the time.

Unfor­tu­nately, most of the time what we cre­ate from noth­ing are the sto­ries about what we can’t do, aren’t capa­ble of, will never have – together with all the rea­sons why.

These sto­ries are con­tin­u­ously being recre­ated from noth­ing in each of our lives. But unlike G-d, who cre­ates con­sciously, we cre­ate this real­ity uncon­sciously. It’s a sort of default pro­gram­ming. Yes, I under­stand that you have rea­sons for what you believe, but those rea­sons, while they may help to explain your past, do not have the power to limit your future. Unless you think they do, and act accordingly.

Most of us don’t wake up in the morn­ing in awe of our own poten­tial, in touch with our Divine pur­pose, filled with the joy of life, ready to cre­ate. More often we wake up all-too-conscious of our lim­i­ta­tions, our dis­ap­point­ments, our frus­tra­tions, our unful­filled needs, and the bur­den­some prob­lems we need to solve. No won­der so many of us are worn out before we even get out of bed.

HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON

You might have read a cute lit­tle children’s book called “Harold and the Pur­ple Crayon”. In this book, Harold, a baby, draws things with his pur­ple crayon on his bed­room walls. He draws things like cas­tles, moun­tains, roads and tigers. The inter­est­ing part is that then Harold climbs the moun­tains, runs down the roads, explores the cas­tles and runs away from the tigers. Some­times he gets so far into the pic­ture that he can’t fig­ure out how to get home again – but then, he just takes his pur­ple crayon and draws the road back.

Harold is always cre­at­ing some­thing from nothing.

YOU CAN CREATE SOMETHING FROM NOTHING TOO

Your life, your present and future, is actu­ally an ayin – noth­ing. Yes, as a soul in a spe­cific phys­i­cal body, there are some lim­its to what you can create.

But you have no idea what they are.

- — Do you want to expe­ri­ence uncon­di­tional love? How would you behave if you were com­mit­ted to love oth­ers uncon­di­tion­ally, espe­cially those peo­ple who long for your love? Your par­ents. Your chil­dren. Your spouse. Your friends. What if you noticed, accepted and appre­ci­ated the way they love you – even if it doesn’t yet look exactly the way you want it to look?

What might hap­pen today if you behaved that way? What if you stayed com­mit­ted to that expe­ri­ence over time – what might hap­pen to your most inti­mate rela­tion­ships, your fam­ily, your com­mu­nity, your world? Don’t short­change your­self by skip­ping over this ques­tion. Really think about it.

- — Do you want to expe­ri­ence your power to live as a cre­ator rather than a vic­tim in your life? How would you behave if you refused to let your fears and past fail­ures put any lim­its on what you do right now?

What would you do that you’ve been putting off? What else? What might you actu­ally cre­ate or achieve over time if you do those things? And per­haps even more impor­tant, what would life be like for you right now if you choose to be a per­son who isn’t stopped by fear?

Do you want to be more inti­mately in touch with your Cre­ator and your Divine pur­pose? How would you behave if you were a per­son com­mit­ted to see­ing G-d’s inti­mate, infi­nite and lov­ing pres­ence in all aspects of your life? What if every action you take was based on the assump­tion that noth­ing is wrong – because G-d is inten­tion­ally, cre­at­ing your world right now on behalf of your ulti­mate pur­pose and fulfillment?

What might your life be like – today – if you behaved that way? How about your rela­tion­ships? Your energy? Your hap­pi­ness? Your peace of mind?

HOW TO CREATE MIRACLES

Like a farmer who tills his field, plants seeds, waters and tends them, some­times it can take time to see the results of your efforts. But if you are will­ing to cre­ate some­thing from noth­ing, you don’t have to twid­dle your thumbs while you wait for things to grow. The very deci­sion to be a cre­ator in your own life brings with it some pow­er­ful, intrin­sic rewards; rewards like joy, ful­fill­ment — and miracles.

© Shifra Hen­drie, Kab­balah of Trans­for­ma­tion / www.kabbalahoftransformation.com.

*Since the Torah for­bids the eras­ing of G-d’s name, it’s cus­tom­ary to avoid writ­ing it out in full.

Shifra Hen­drie spe­cial­izes in help­ing tal­ented, spiritually-minded peo­ple cre­ate break­through results in their lives, busi­nesses and rela­tion­ships through a unique com­bi­na­tion of deep spir­i­tual wis­dom and cutting-edge coach­ing tools.


To read more of her arti­cles, lis­ten to audio classes or down­load her fas­ci­nat­ing f*ree ecourse, ?Seven Kab­balah Secrets that Can Change Your Life?, visit http://www.KabbalahOfTransformation.com.

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“nanny Mcphee” — an Excellent Movie With Magic and a Message for Children">“nanny Mcphee” — an Excellent Movie With Magic and a Message for Children

by discount designer bedding on December 15, 2009

Copy­right © 2007 Ed Bagley

Nanny McPhee — 4 Stars (Excellent

Bless your­self by rent­ing “Nanny McPhee” and shar­ing it with your chil­dren at home, not in the movie the­ater. Do this because this film is all about home and your chil­dren might relate bet­ter in the com­fort of their own home. Nanny McPhee is an excel­lent film with a won­der­ful mes­sage for all chil­dren to rec­og­nize and understand.

In an enter­tain­ment world full of trashy and vio­lent video games with movies to match that dwell on mur­der, rape, sex, drugs, alco­hol, filthy lan­guage, bro­ken rela­tion­ships and crummy morals, Nanny McPhee is every­thing good about movies for chil­dren. You and your chil­dren can watch this film with­out fear of unpleas­ant and unwanted garbage rooted in sen­sa­tion­al­ism for rat­ings and greed.

When fin­ished watch­ing, you can thank the uncom­pro­mis­ing excel­lence of British actress Emma Thomp­son and British direc­tor Kirk Jones for the incred­i­ble excel­lence of Nanny McPhee. I watched this film and went to bed won­der­ing if it was as good as I thought it was. I watched it again the next night and did not won­der again.

Thompson-who has won 2 Acad­emy Awards for Best Actress (Howards End in 1992) and Best Adapted Screen­play (Sense and Sen­si­bil­ity in 1995), and 2 BAF­TAs for Best Actress (Howards End and Sense and Sensibility)-wrote the screen­play for Nanny McPhee. BAFTA is the equiv­a­lent of the Amer­i­can Oscars, the British Acad­emy of Film and Tele­vi­sion Arts.

Kirk Jones (not to be con­fused with the Amer­i­can rap­per and actor Kirk Jones) is a gifted writer and direc­tor with great work that has not been prop­erly rec­og­nized. Com­bine Emma Thomp­son with Kirk Jones and you have the for­mula for a win­ning production.

In 1998 Jones wrote and directed his first fea­ture film “Wak­ing Ned Devine” with a bud­get of $3 mil­lion that grossed $90 mil­lion world­wide. I believe Jones should have two Oscars and prob­a­bly would if it were not for the fact that Hollywood’s vot­ers are too busy paw­ing each other and pos­ing for pic­tures to cor­rect their near-sightedness.

Until a com­edy is made that is bet­ter than Wak­ing Ned Devine it shall remain my favorite com­edy of all time.

If it sounds like I am gush­ing over Nanny McPhee, I am. There are so many good lines in this script I would not dare to recount them here. Watch the movie and enjoy the expe­ri­ence of lis­ten­ing carefully.

Nanny McPhee the movie is named for a gov­erness (Emma Thomp­son) who uses magic to rein in the behav­ior of 7 out-of-control chil­dren of recently wid­owed Mr. Brown (Colin Firth).

Mr. Brown must answer to his Aunt Ade­laide (Angela Lans­bury) who has been financ­ing his family’s liveli­hood and now com­mands him to marry within the month or she will cut off his sus­te­nance. His bratty chil­dren have a gen­uine fear of los­ing their father should he marry the wid­owed Mrs. Quickly (Celia Imrie).

The chil­dren, who col­lec­tively have dri­ven away 17 con­sec­u­tive nan­nies, are led by their older brother Simon (Thomas Sang­ster). All 6 of the younger children-Tora (Eliza Ben­nett), Lily (Jen­nifer Rae Daykin), Eric (Raphael Cole­man), Sebas­t­ian (Samuel Hony­wood), Chris­tianna (Holly Gibbs) and Baby Agatha (Hebe Barnes and Zin­nia Barnes)-face the same fate as Simon.

Enter Nanny McPhee with her magic and old-fashioned dis­ci­pline that makes the chil­dren aware of their behav­ior, and soon the chil­dren become mod­els of what to do and when to do it.

Beyond the obvi­ous endear­ments, what makes this film excel­lent is two huge but sub­tle elements.

One is the guts of the writer and actress Emma Thomp­son who cre­ates a char­ac­ter for her­self that is repug­nant upon first sight. She has two huge warts on her face and an enor­mous tooth cas­cad­ing down over her lower lip. Nanny McPhee will repel you upon first look. Thompson’s act­ing skills allow her to be per­fectly relaxed and con­fi­dent despite her appear­ance. Her make-up was done by designer Peter King.

The other ele­ment is the dis­cov­ery by the chil­dren that when they learn a major les­son, one of the warts dis­ap­pears, and even­tu­ally through model behav­ior by the chil­dren, Nanny McPhee becomes bet­ter and bet­ter looking.

In many such films as this-the “Sound of Music” with Julie Andrews comes to mind-the nanny only influ­ences the chil­dren. In Nanny McPhee, the chil­dren also become pow­er­ful agents for pos­i­tive change, empow­er­ing them in the process. Never under­es­ti­mate the insight and bril­liance of Emma Thomp­son, the writer or actress.

A tip of the hat to Angela Lans­bury in her role as well. Lans­bury is a liv­ing leg­end who never goes out of char­ac­ter as Aunt Ade­laide. From Broad­way to Hol­ly­wood to tele­vi­sion and back, Angela Lans­bury is a British national treasure.

Nanny McPhee is based on the “Nurse Matilda” books by Chris­tianna Brand. Emma Thomp­son said it took her 9 years to write the screen­play; it took her 5 years to write her Oscar-winning Sense and Sensibility.

Trust me when I say that Nanny McPhee was worth the wait and then some. Watch Nanny McPhee and learn with your chil­dren some impor­tant lessons in human nature.

Ed Bagley’s Blog Pub­lishes Orig­i­nal Arti­cles with Analy­sis and Com­men­tary on 5 Sub­jects: Sports, Movie Reviews, Lessons in Life, Jobs and Careers, and Inter­net Mar­ket­ing. Read my 3-part series on “Secrets Men Don’t Want Women to Know” and reviews on the Broad­way musi­cals “Camelot”, “Chicago” and “The Phan­tom of the Opera”. These are all excel­lent films. Find my Blog at:
http://www.edbagleyblog.com
http://www.edbagleyblog.com/MovieReviews.html

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Guilt-free Mindfulness

by discount designer bedding on December 15, 2009

Mind­ful­ness is being aware of your­self, oth­ers, and your sur­round­ings in the moment. Well-known mind­ful­ness teacher, Jon Kabat-Zinn, defines it this way Mind­ful­ness means pay­ing atten­tion in a par­tic­u­lar way; on pur­pose, in the present moment, and non­judg­men­tally. I also like to think of mind­ful­ness as the art of inhab­it­ing your own life with kind­ness and acceptance.

When first enter­tain­ing the idea of prac­tic­ing mind­ful­ness in a con­scious, com­mit­ted way, I had mixed feel­ings. On the one hand, I absolutely believed that I would love the peace of mind and sense of bal­ance that those who prac­ticed mind­ful­ness seemed to enjoy. On the other hand, I groaned inwardly at the thought of adding yet another guilt-inducing “should” to an already full sched­ule. Two dif­fer­ent things tem­pered my con­cerns and helped me make a whole­hearted com­mit­ment to the prac­tice of mind­ful­ness. One was notic­ing how calm, accept­ing, and humor­ous peo­ple were whom I knew prac­ticed mind­ful­ness reg­u­larly. I wanted more of that appeal­ing equa­nim­ity and joy. The other real­iza­tion was a semi-embarrassing “Duh!” Instead of mak­ing mind­ful­ness a guilt-inducing chore, I could sim­ply choose to make prac­tic­ing mind­ful­ness a joy and cel­e­brate each small step taken.

Because my goal in per­sonal prac­tice is to cre­ate a guilt-free and sup­port­ive atmos­phere, I’ve adopted the adage A few mind­ful moments make a world of dif­fer­ence as my motto. And a few mind­ful moments do make a world of dif­fer­ence. Prob­a­bly, we can all sum­mon mem­o­ries of expe­ri­ences that are branded indeli­bly in our minds and hearts. They may be as sim­ple as watch­ing the moon rise or as mirac­u­lous as being at a baby’s birth. Remem­ber­ing such things can feel as if we’re hav­ing the expe­ri­ence all over again. We can actu­ally embody the same phys­i­cal feel­ings, or the deep sense of awe and mys­tery, that were present at the actual event. But why do these par­tic­u­lar mem­o­ries stick with us in such vivid detail while so many oth­ers fade into obliv­ion? What do these indeli­ble mem­o­ries have in com­mon? We paid atten­tion when the orig­i­nal events were hap­pen­ing. Our brains, hearts, and minds where present dur­ing the expe­ri­ence, not pro­jected into the future or rumi­nat­ing in the past. We were there, alive and recep­tive, fully inhab­it­ing our lives in that moment.

As par­ents, any­one who has been in an inti­mate rela­tion­ship, and even ani­mal train­ers know, you get more coop­er­a­tion and a bet­ter response from oth­ers by accen­tu­at­ing and appre­ci­at­ing accept­able behav­iors than you do by empha­siz­ing and berat­ing unde­sir­able ones. In other words, we catch more bees by using the honey of kind­ness and approval than we do by wield­ing the blud­geon of guilt. The same is true of your rela­tion­ship with your­self. Energy and enthu­si­asm flow where your atten­tion goes. There­fore, in keep­ing with my guilt-free motto, I try not to dwell on how few mind­ful min­utes I may have had so far today; but, rather, gen­tly remind myself to become more mind­ful right now. It can also be help­ful to revisit mind­ful moments at the end of the day and con­grat­u­late your­self on your expand­ing aware­ness. Affirm­ing even what may seem the small­est of suc­cesses encour­ages you to con­tinue prac­tic­ing mind­ful­ness one tiny lit­tle moment at a time.

The fol­low­ing prac­tice helps me begin and end the day with a few mind­ful moments.

Prac­tice …

Wake up to breath …

Before get­ting out of bed in the morn­ing, tune into your breath and sim­ply be aware of it with­out try­ing to change it. Do this for five or six breaths.

Express grat­i­tude for at least two things. For instance, wak­ing up to another day, sleep­ing as well as you did, or for a dream you remember.

Set an inten­tion for the day. For exam­ple, “Today I will prac­tice kind­ness.” “Today, I will eat in a healthy way.” or “I will give each of the kids five min­utes of undi­vided atten­tion today.”

Rest in breath …

Before going to sleep at night, turn your atten­tion to your breath. Rest in it qui­etly for sev­eral effort­less inhala­tions and exhalations.

Review and relive mind­ful moments expe­ri­enced dur­ing the day. Thank your­self for being aware and present. Think about con­struc­tive choices you made and con­grat­u­late your­self for mak­ing them.

Ask to be pro­tected as you sleep.

Each mind­ful moment remem­bered and cel­e­brated makes a world of dif­fer­ence in our will­ing­ness to con­tinue practicing.

Well-known mind­ful­ness teacher, Pema Chodron says, Com­pas­sion for oth­ers begins with kind­ness to our­selves. One of the won­der­ful things about adopt­ing a guilt– free atti­tude toward our mind­ful­ness prac­tices in par­tic­u­lar, and our­selves in gen­eral, is that our per­sonal out­looks are effected. When not car­ry­ing a self-induced bur­den of guilt, our hearts can open more fully and, as a result, shower com­pas­sion and kind­ness on both our­selves and others.

Prac­tice mindfulness

With com­mit­ment, not pressure

Feel heart opening.

Copy­right © 2008 Sue Pat­ton Thoele

Author

Sue Pat­ton Thoele is a psy­chother­a­pist, for­mer hos­pice chap­lain, and bereave­ment group leader. She is author of The Mind­ful Woman: Gen­tle Prac­tices for Restor­ing Calm, Find­ing Bal­ance & Open­ing Your Heart and eleven other books, includ­ing The Courage To Be Your­self, The Woman’s Book of Soul, Grow­ing Hope, Free­doms After 50, and The Woman’s Book of Courage. Sue and her hus­band, Gene, live in Col­orado near their adult chil­dren and grandchildren.

For more infor­ma­tion, please visit www.suepattonthoele.com

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Wake Up, America!

by discount designer bedding on December 14, 2009

Let’s get real. For­get all the Gob­blede­gook about for­eign oil fields peak­ing and the rapid increase in world­wide consumption…

1. Oil pro­duc­tion in Saudi Ara­bia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Mex­ico, Rus­sia, HAS either peaked, or it has NOT peaked. (Con­sider that each of those coun­tries have poor records in the benev­o­lent treat­ment of their own peo­ple — so why should their atti­tude toward any­one else be dif­fer­ent? I’m say­ing that you are not going to get the truth about how much oil any or them have left in the ground, or how much oil they are capa­ble of pro­duc­ing over any given period of time. Nor do these pro­duc­ing coun­tries give a hoot about your crea­ture com­forts or the harm­ful effects to your pocketbook)

2. Indone­sian oil has undoubt­edly peaked. OPEC has just kicked them out of its orga­ni­za­tion as a “pro­ducer.” They are now a net importer — a once stel­lar pro­ducer, reduced to beg­gar­ing for their oil…a bit like you and me.

3. Brazil, in addi­tion to refin­ing ethanol from sugar-cane, has a major off-shore dis­cov­ery called Tupi. It’s huge (50 bil­lion bar­rels of crude). It’s deep, 2 miles down and locked in rock. With oil at $138 a bar­rel, the 100 bil­lion dol­lar financ­ing to extract it will be forth­com­ing. It won’t come cheap.

4. Russ­ian Oil and gas, plenty of it at the moment, but they don’t love us any more than the Arabs do. And the Russ­ian record for loy­alty, truth, and fair play is about as dim as anyone’s. For­get them as a depend­able sup­ply source.

5. It’s a given that India and China import nearly all their oil needs and cur­rently have an increas­ing demand spurred on by a 2 bil­lion+ citizenry.

6. Bakken, on U.S. soil in South Dakota, is 2 miles deep and locked in thin lay­ers of dolomite. At 413 bil­lion bar­rels, it is poten­tially larger than the Saudi Ghawar field. Hor­i­zon­tal frack­ing of the com­plex lay­ers of rock to release the petro­leum will def­i­nitely make it expen­sive. Soar­ing oil prices are push­ing this field toward a devel­op­ment con­sid­er­a­tion. Again, this oil won’t be cheap.

7. How much faith do you have in U.S. oil com­pa­nies giv­ing you the hon­est truth about any­thing, yet oil pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion sta­tis­tics? If you are any­thing like men — ZILCH!

Now let’s turn over, in our numbed minds, a few sim­ple thoughts regard­ing oil and our daily lives here in these great United States of America.

1. Why are pump prices, state to state, pump to pump, vary­ing only a penny or so — one from the other? (Can you remem­ber a time when there was a free mar­ket in gasoline…when there were gas wars and bar­gains to behold, gas sta­tion to gas sta­tion? Believe it or not, when I was a kid, that was a fact.)

The U.S. Con­gress will solve the problem.

2. Did you watch the recent Con­gres­sional cha­rade, wherein oil com­pany execs were inter­ro­gated, pre­sumedly, by their own loyal sub­jects? (You will be par­doned for the sus­pi­cion that nearly every Con­gress­man prof­its from gifts dis­pensed by oil indus­try lob­by­ists and/or con­tri­bu­tions to their PACs.)

3. Did you hear Con­gress raise a hue and cry about SUING SAUDI ARABIA for with­hold­ing oil pro­duc­tion? Yes? And last week, Con­gress was going to get to the bot­tom of Oil Speculation…those hor­rid “spec­u­la­tors” who have been dri­ving oil prices higher…

Isn’t it won­der­ful that oil prices promptly dropped — dig­ni­fy­ing Con­gress. I retired to my bed, pleased and eased. At last, lower oil prices! Hmm…just give the oil boys a day or two.…

Okay, while we are indi­vid­u­ally suf­fer­ing a col­lapse of hous­ing prices, along with our fam­ily bud­gets, the big oil com­pa­nies are mak­ing BILLIONS and BILLIONS in obscene (reportable) prof­its. How much more are they hiding?

Hunnh?..

1. Where is Con­gress on that one? Why are we accu­mu­lat­ing hor­ren­dous per­sonal and national debts, while big oil com­pa­nies are allowed to pile up uncon­scionable profits?

(Oh, yes… Now I recall — it’s the NIMBY tree hug­gers. They’ve stopped all the new refiner­ies from being built, all the off­shore drilling from going ahead.)

How about a national energy policy?

1. Hunnh?… We have one — ethanol. It’s a dandy…costing more in fuel to cook up a gal­lon of ethanol than it saves by burn­ing in your car’s engine. It throws car­bon into the atmos­phere dur­ing its man­u­fac­ture and pro­vides less mileage per gal­lon than a gal­lon of diesel or gaso­line. Worst of all, it has thrown many square miles of Mid­west ag. land out of soy­bean and grain pro­duc­tion (in favor of corn for ethanol pro­duc­tion) thus cre­at­ing a mon­u­men­tal short­age of corn for ani­mal feed, rais­ing chicken and beef prices. And the lost acreage shrinks grain pro­duc­tion, rais­ing bread and cereal prices in the gro­cery store.

And just to make sure none of that cheap Brazil­ian ($40/barrel) sugar-cane ethanol gets to our shores, Con­gress slapped a 54 cent/a/gallon tar­iff on it some time ago in a U.S. farm bill…note that the cast-off sugar cane stalks feed Brazil­ian elec­tric power plants.

Dwell with me a bit longer on our (invis­i­ble) national energy pol­icy. And for­get about drilling up more oil. (Let’s assume the oil indus­try is has­ten­ing its own demise.)

2. Nuclear fuel (Ura­nium) is cheap and mine­able in the USA and Canada. Con­sider that 80% of French elec­tric pro­duc­tion is nuclear, and, so far, no acci­dents. Why haven’t we moved ahead with more nuclear (no atmos­pheric pol­lu­tion) elec­tric pro­duc­tion? It’s tree hug­gers and Green­peace, they tell us…

3. Why have we neglected pub­lic Bus, Trol­ley, and Train transportation?

.(See Japan for coun­try­wide 200 mph trains.)

4. The other night on TV, I observed a $27,000 bug-like car that prov­ably car­ried two peo­ple 300 miles on ONE gal­lon of gas, at speeds up to 90 miles an hour and had amaz­ing accel­er­a­tion from a stand­ing start.

DETROIT, WHERE CAN YOU BE?
(Too busy build­ing Hummers…)

5. Hats off to those busy Detroi­ters who, over the years, bought up patents that would advance more fuel-efficient car­bu­ra­tion and develop super-storage bat­ter­ies for elec­tric cars — then sat on those patents.

6. How about con­vert­ing nat­ural gas to fuel — why is that indus­try invisible?

7. Coal gasi­fi­ca­tion and coal-to-fuel? The Chi­nese are into it. The Ger­mans fueled their WWII effort with petro­leum extracted from coal.

On nightly TV, you can observe a major indus­try dis­ap­pear­ing before your very eyes:

THE AIRLINES…

1. Loose reg­u­la­tion paves the way for chaotic con­di­tions at under­staffed flight con­trol cen­ters and air­port con­trol tow­ers. Too many new car­ri­ers; too many sched­uled flights; ramp acci­dents and mid-air near misses.

2. Free food is reduced to snacks; seat­ing jammed to the max. Nonethe­less, pub­lic rushes to book cheap flights — bound for every spot on the globe.

3. Loose reg­u­la­tion of main­te­nance pro­ce­dures raises few ques­tions. Air­craft and air­frame safety qui­etly, but steadily, nosedives.

4. Annual fuel costs jump to an industry-wide $65 bil­lion, squeez­ing prof­its and tripling fares; pas­sen­gers hes­i­tate. Air­lines fight back, cut­ting out snacks, charg­ing for bag­gage, on-the-spot can­cel­ing of flights not filled. Pas­sen­gers search web for last minute price cuts as lines try to fill seats 100%; arrive at air­port to find seat and flight can­celed — line just declared bank­ruptcy. No one wants to hear about the wheel that fell off your baby stroller…customer rage. Sour counter peo­ple. Smol­der­ing pilots and crews…

At the risk of run­ning you off the far end of the run­way — a final blast… Have we, in Amer­ica, been put totally to sleep by the huck­sters of Madi­son Avenue?

In the 1950’s, Madi­son Avenue was held in the kind of awe later directed toward Sil­i­con Val­ley and our var­i­ous bub­bles — tech­nol­ogy, hous­ing, and, most recently, com­modi­ties. Lust­ing for finan­cial gain, we’ve ignored the trans­fer­ence of adver­tis­ing indus­try wiles to cor­po­ra­tions, Wash­ing­ton think tanks, lob­by­ist groups, Con­gress — per­me­at­ing even the inner cir­cles of White House admin­is­tra­tions… absorbed so beau­ti­fully that we’ve been totally rocked to sleep in com­fort­able cra­dles of SPIN.

Is it pos­si­ble our lead­ers have blinded them­selves with their own spin? Twin emer­gen­cies now upon us — energy and credit. Busy cod­dling one indus­try after another, our lead­ers have bla­tantly ignored prepa­ra­tions to com­bat these crises.

“Indus­try will gov­ern itself per­fectly,” has been the cry of the reg­u­la­tors, let­ting foxes guard the chicken house. And the results: Bear Stearns; the mess at the gas pump; the air­line chaos; the sub-prime hous­ing and credit col­lapse, with its ugly off­shoot — the yet-to-be felt tril­lion dol­lar, deriv­a­tive phantasia.

Why don’t we, ALL OF US, take TWO weeks off from work? Stop dri­ving! Stop fly­ing! Stop shop­ping! Live on what you have in the cupboard…take a walk around your com­mu­nity… shake hands with the neigh­bors… go to your church or tem­ple and vol­un­teer for three days of some­thing that will ben­e­fit any­one but your­self. HOW BAD COULD THAT BE, IF WE ALL DECLARE ALLEGIANCE TO ONE ANOTHER, OUR FLAG, AND OUR COUNTRY? (Don’t for­get, we have boys and girls in Iraq doing that very thing…)

Richard Ide is a writer of real­is­tic, action-adventure and romantic-suspense fic­tion. On May 26th, 2008, But­ton Top Books released 3 ACES, his first pub­lished work. Now avail­able on Amazon.com or by spe­cial order (ISBN: 978–0-615–15821-1) in book­stores. For more infor­ma­tion on Richard and 3 Aces, visit: 3 Aces.

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History of Natural Childbirth

December 14, 2009

Before they’re preg­nant, many women think they’ll take ‘the soft option’ and have a cae­sarean.  Then they become preg­nant and their hor­mones do som­er­saults.  They read some more about cae­sare­ans and real­ize that maybe they aren’t the soft option they’d thought, either for them­selves or their babies, and it dawns on them that there’s only […]

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For Men Who are Physically or Intimately Estranged From Their Wife.

December 14, 2009

I recently received the fol­low­ing in an email from a man seek­ing help in his mar­riage…
“Hi Calle,
Can you help me put my mar­riage back together?  Here are the details of my sit­u­a­tion:
·         We’ve been mar­ried for 11 years but we have now been sep­a­rated for about 4.5 months, liv­ing in sep­a­rate houses about 30 minutes […]

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Managing Motivation in a Recession

December 14, 2009

For A Bal­anced Lifestyle
“When the going gets tough, the tough get going”
Write this old, but still very true, quote down on a 3” x 4” file card and stick it on your bath­room mir­ror, fridge or some­place in your home that forces you to see it every­day.  Read it when you get up in the morning […]

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Only in Holiday Inn Killarney….a Lesser Amount of Cash for a Deluxe Vacation in Killarney

December 13, 2009

Hol­i­day Inn Kil­lar­ney is one of the most famous hotel and one of the best Three Star hotels world­wide. It is the iden­ti­cal hotel of most Hol­i­day Inn branched-out around the world that sus­tains best facil­i­ties and accom­mo­da­tion. Its exper­tise of a good hotel and cus­tomer ser­vice makes Hol­i­day Inn to be rec­og­nized for its […]

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& Dislikes of people with cancer Rashi">Likes & Dislikes of people with cancer Rashi

December 13, 2009

Crab like Karka ( Can­cer ) rashi lives in water and rep­re­sents the chest of Kaal Purusha (Ursha major). It moves in Agri­cul­tural lands, water­bod­ies, river­sides and pic­turesque places.]
The fourth sign in the Rashichakra, Karka ( Can­cer ) love their home — their roots. Falling in the fourth house of the Kaalpu­rusha (Ursha Major), which […]

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HARVEST BLESSING">A HARVEST BLESSING

December 13, 2009

K RAMANUJAM –“How many Ramayana’s? Three hun­dred? Three thou­sand? At the end of some ver­sions, a ques­tion is asked: How many Ramayana’s have there been? And there are sto­ries that answer this ques­tion.”
K TSIOLKOVSKY –“The earth is the cra­dle of humankind, but one can­not live in the cra­dle for­ever.”       
K.BLANCHARD –“Peo­ple who feel good about themselves […]

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BC Communities">Cohousing Community and Cohousing BC Communities

December 13, 2009

Do you ever wish that you had some­body to watch your baby while you were busy­ing clean­ing the house or wash­ing the dog? Have you ever wished that you have some­one to go to the gym with you? Or maybe you wished that you didn’t have to drive a gas guz­zling car to the gym. […]

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Diet and Regimen in Homeopathy

December 12, 2009

For More Infor­ma­tion Click Here : PhoenixBKN
Impor­tance of diet and reg­i­men dur­ing the treat­ment and for the main­te­nance of health is not new to the world. Infact its impor­tance is known to the world since 500BC. Great Greek physi­cian and father of med­i­cine Hip­pocrates who went far ahead to say ‘”Let your food be your […]

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Hello From Cuba — Part 3 — Hiking Vinales And Exploring Nature

December 12, 2009

Hotel Havana Libre, Tues­day, April 5, 2005, 6:54 pm

On Sun­day it was gor­geous. The cold front had finally passed through, the rain was gone and we had a beau­ti­ful warm sunny day with­out any humidity.

My host­ess is also a guide for the National Park Sys­tem and Vinales is a nation­ally pro­tected nat­ural habi­tat. She had a […]

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Are you Acoa or Acoa+

December 12, 2009

My dad and mom owned a bar so at a very early age it became very easy for me to be around peo­ple who drank all the time. From the time I was a kid I thought that the whole world drank and got drunk. My dad was a binge drinker and he would go […]

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Conservative Poet Tom Zart’s 50 America at War Poems

December 11, 2009

CONSERVATIVE POET TOM ZARTâ??S 50
AMERICA AT WAR POEMS
The White House Wash­ing­ton
 
March 16, 2007
 
Ms. Lil­lian Cauld­well Pres­i­dent and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Pas­sion­ate Inter­net Voices Radio Ann Arbor Michi­gan
 
Dear Lil­lian:
 
Num­ber 41 passed on the CDs from Tom Zart. Thank you for think­ing of me. I am thank­ful for your efforts to honor our brave mil­i­tary per­son­nel and […]

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The Nest

December 11, 2009

Chap­ter 1, The Nest
I have been watch­ing her for days. Ever since that day at the lagoon just west of town. We were there on a whim, an idea that occurred to her last minute in our quest to find some­where peace­ful to have our nature walk. The area around the lagoon is marshy and […]

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Whispering Moon

December 11, 2009

Whis­per­ing Moon
  
“The first peace, which is the most impor­tant, is that which comes within the souls of peo­ple when they real­ize their rela­tion­ship, their one­ness with the uni­verse and all its pow­ers, and when they real­ize that at the cen­ter of the uni­verse dwells the Great Spirit, and that this cen­ter is really every­where, it is […]

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Tea herb garden delight

December 10, 2009

The fit­ness advan­tages of med­i­c­i­nal teas have grown to be well rec­og­nized in the recent his­tory. Addi­tional and more folks around the planet are eager to ben­e­fit from the advan­tages of herbal teas. Although, pur­chas­ing herbs for med­i­c­i­nal teas in the gro­cery store could be con­sid­er­ably expen­sive. So, now is the pleas­ant news. You could […]

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Sleep Support Supplement

December 10, 2009

Sleep is a basic human need. It is not optional. It’s as nec­es­sary as food and water for sur­vival. Of course, every­one has expe­ri­enced an occa­sional night when they have trou­ble falling asleep. It may be annoy­ing, but it isn’t really harm­ful. But usu­ally, these episodes are brief and your sleep pat­tern returns to normal […]

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