The spiritual and emotional side of stress

The amount of stress that you experience in a certain situation and your ability to process and relieve that stress is determined mostly by your attitude. It is in your attitude toward facing your circumstances and whether you feel isolated, out of control, or at the mercy of fate.

Studies have shown that people who strongly believe in faith are more likely to be able to manage stress better than those who have no belief system. In addition, those who feel a strong spiritual bond to their world find a source of relief and comfort in that relationship as well.

Families who enjoy each other’s company, who enjoy spending their time together, who support each other and provide a secure and safe haven for their members are known to deal with stress???????? ????? ???????? better than those who are distant from their families and go their own way. Those who have a least one good and reliable friend to confide in has more shield against stress that the loner misses out on.

Popularity: 44% [?]

How We Lose Attraction For The Ones We Love

Many people are scared to get involved in a relationship for fear that it will not work out. And some people enter a relationship with bringing with them the negativity and fear of losing that other person, which invariably causes strife, because constantly being scared of having it all disappear tends to attract that very outcome. The trouble is though, that if you do not risk anything, you risk even more.

One very common problem between all couples that have been together during any period of time is loosing that attraction for one another. But this tends not so much to be due to physical reasons, but rather stem from other problems within the relationship. When partners do not respect and appreciate their complimentary differences they lose their electricity. In other words they are no longer turned on by each other. Without the polarity, they lose the attraction.

This loss of attraction can occur in two ways: We either suppress our true inner self in an attempt to please our partner, or we try to mold them into our own image. Either strategy, whether repressing ourselves or trying to change our partners, will sabotage the relationship.

Do some individuals actually succeed in “changing” their partners? Yes they do, but the needs of that individual is met for only a short period of time. It’s a very short term strategy. Ultimately there will be no passion within that relationship. For example, David says to Lynn, “Don’t be so emotional, you’re getting upset over nothing.” If she represses her feeling-side in order to please and accommodate David, he feels less friction with her and she wins his love. The short term result appears to be a good and harmonious relationship, but now Jane and Tom will be a few degrees less interested, excited, or attracted to each other.

As this process of gradually suppressing their true selves continues, and more degrees of passion and interest will be lost until they feel almost nothing for each other. They will be friends but experience no passion. The good news is that this process can be reversed; we can learn to find ourselves again without always having to change partners.

Every time you suppress, repress, or deny yourself in order to be loved, you are not loving yourself. You are essentially telling yourself that you are not good enough the way you are. And every time you try to change, alter, or fix your partner, you are sending him the message that he does not deserve to be loved for who he is. These are the conditions under which love dies.

Popularity: 66% [?]

Larry Crane Interview on Stress Release

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For more stress relief information.

Popularity: 42% [?]

Try Forgiving Yourself If You Are Angry At Someone Else

When we feel hurt or angry, it’s easy to fault someone else. “You’re to blame,” we insist. “You made me feel this way.” But the fact that we feel upset at someone doesn’t necessarily mean he or she is guilty.

Sometimes our rage is our own, forged in our own hearts and minds, fed by our personalities, our provocations, our exaggerated response to conflict. Yes, this other person may have done something to offend us, but perhaps not to the degree that our intense response would suggest. Our reaction may be entirely inappropriate or even dangerously misguided.

Owning up to your issues - tearing down your defenses and looking honestly at yourself—can be painful work. The process may teach you that you were more than just a victim, and that, perhaps, there is no one to forgive but yourself.

The same factors that influenced the way the offender treated you may have influenced the way you treated him. Again, some of these factors may be external. You might ask yourself, “What was going on in my world at the time of the injury that may have affected me emotionally, making me feel more vulnerable, less in control, less resilient, so that I reacted inappropriately? Did these life events throw me off-balance and lead me to act in ways that were callous or otherwise offensive?”

Internal factors may also shape your response. It helps to ask such questions as, “How did my personality affect my reaction? How did it influence the way I was treated?” If you’re innately shy, say, and the offender took this personally and assumed you didn’t like him, that was his mistake, not yours. You didn’t hurt him; his mistaken assumptions about you hurt him.

But if you’re shy and didn’t speak up and then felt offended that someone didn’t show interest in you or respect your position, you need to confront how you contributed to your own pain. It may be that your own silence - not his behavior - set a trap for you.

What about your dysfunctional ideas about yourself and the world, ideas that may have been based on damaging early life experiences? Did they play a role in your mistreatment? These fixed ideas often pre-date the offense and even your relationship with the offender, and create what are called “channels” of psychological vulnerability. What happens is that your heightened sensitivity - to being abandoned or ridiculed, for example 0 leads you to misperceive or mis-react to events today.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Sleep Your Way to Better Sex

Remember having sex when it was so all-consuming and thrilling it was all you could think about for days? Days of anticipation, mind-blowing, body-shaking sex, then remembering it for days or even years afterwards…

Either that was a long time ago for you and you’d like to have that kind of sex in your life again. Or you’re having that kind of sex at this point in your life. Whichever description you identify with, you could be making a mistake that is reducing the quantity and quality of your sex life. You might not be getting enough good sleep.

First, a technical term. Getting an adequate amount of sound sleep on a regular schedule is called good sleep hygiene. Hygiene is about maintaining health. So “sleep hygiene,” rather than being something sterile and clinical as the phrase sounds, is what you need for better sex.

Picture an upwardly mobile couple with three children. Both parents work and the children are in school, which means they have activities: homework, science projects, things they need for school that they forgot to tell their parents till the night before. We’ve all known families like that. How much great sex do you think the parents have? They probably schedule love-making. Nothing wrong with scheduling it, just so long as both parties feel up to it when the time comes. That is, sadly, rarely the case these days.

While there are numerous websites offering hilarious lists of calories burned during sex (for example: 12 calories taking her clothes off with her consent, but without it…), sexual play can be vigorous exercise, potentially equal to a half-hour walk. There are too many variables to make an accurate generalization for all parties, but if you’ve ever felt completely drained afterwards, you had a great workout!

You can’t do that without adequate sleep. At least not consistently. In new relationships, partners often are so sleep-deprived, they say, “We’re living on love.” But if the newly-in-love continue at that pace for a long period of time, libido will start waning. Both will eventually “just want to get some sleep.”

Besides inadequate sleep from too few hours in bed, enough hours in bed but not enough sleep also reduces sexual performance. One of the most common disturbances is snoring. If the snoring is not too loud, many lovers learn to live with it, or put a pillow over their ears so their partner can snore on. The problem is not only that snoring can anger the lighter-sleeping partner and build resentment, however subtle. The major problem is that while a person is snoring, he or she is not sleeping and—worse yet—not getting enough oxygen to the brain.

Snoring usually represents a condition known as sleep apnea. Sleep apnea can be fatal. If the non-snoring partner considers this for a few minutes the next time her husband or boyfriend shakes the timbers with his snore, she’ll be wide awake for hours thinking about how she will survive (or thrive) without him!

The snorer has problems, too. He (or she) is sleepy during the day and may also be irritable. Irritability and romance do not go hand in hand. Who wants to make love to someone who’s been grouchy all day?

Sleep apnea also reduces hormone levels essential to sex drive. If your lover has lost his or her libido, lack of sleep could be the cause.

Medications can also reduce libido. And the ability to sleep well. On the other hand, adequate rest--including mental rest—can reduce the need for medication or reduce dosage requirements. Wherever medication is involved, checking with a physician is critical.

Everyone has a sleep issue from time to time and I’ve found a surprising solution that helps – it’s called “Digital Sandman” by a company called Holothink (http://www.digitalsandman.com). You listen to an audio program that helps your mind calm down into a “sleep ready state”. Works great and they probably have no idea how much it’s improved my own sex life!

Many factors affect sleep quality, and therefore sex frequency and quality. Proper diet, enough exercise, mental stimulation, adequate fluid intake—basically all the things we know make us healthy make us sexually potent as well. Healthy bodies are sexy bodies.

But in today’s society, attention to exercise, diet and all the rest, don’t always provide complete support for sound, refreshing sleep. Stress and worry can keep us tossing and turning even though we’re otherwise super-healthy. All these factors are involved. Sex is a built-in, god-given desire, the realization of which floods the body with feel-good hormones that improve our quality of life and ability to cope with what’s coming next. Deep sound sleep is similarly hard-wired into us. It is the setting for regeneration of cells and electro-chemical resetting for the next day of awakeness.

Anything that makes it easier to get good quality sleep has equal potential to improve your sex life.

Holothink offers many products designed to help you improve your mental functioning. Their Digital Sandman package (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) covers the full range of sleep issues with tracks including Power Napper, Sleep Support, Overcoming Insomnia and Digital Sandman to help you sleep better (and improve your sex life!).

Visit http://www.Holothink.com to try a free demo.

Popularity: 34% [?]

Self-Assessment & Support: The Road to Recovery

We all know the many familiar problems that are caused by low self-esteem. Now what is the solution? How do we a obtain a positive self-image? It is by no means simple, but it can be accomplished.

The first step is accepting the possibility that our self-concept is invalid. Otherwise there is no possibility of any change. We have no motivation to make a self-assessment if we already know ourselves. Furthermore, why would we bother to search through a pile of rubble if we are convinced it contains nothing of value? We must have reason to believe that there is something of value to be found in order to make the effort. It is not easy to shed convictions about one’s self-image. If it is correct that the negative self-image begins in childhood, then a person who begins a self-assessment in middle age must be ready to let go of ideas that he or she has harbored for forty or more years. There is great resistance in relinquishing ideas that have been deeply entrenched for so long.

The second step is to make lifestyle changes that promote a more positive self-image, and there may be fierce resistance to this. We are creatures of habit, and most of us are reluctant to change established patterns. It can be extremely distressful to alter significant behaviors. The tendency to return to a familiar, well-established pattern because it is more comfortable often inhibits the drive to develop an altered self-image.

The third step is to be extremely patient. A self-image that has prevailed for the greater part of our life is not going to be replaced quickly. Changes in self concept are gradual and come in small increments. Relapses into the old self concept are frequent. It may take years before there are substantive changes in self-image. If these three conditions are satisfied, we can begin a self-assessment. Doing this alone may be of limited value. We have been looking at ourselves through distorting lenses and are not likely to see anything different if we look again. Nevertheless, some progress may be made, and there is no harm in trying to do it on our own.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Financial goals must be set early

There are no goals that are more important than financial goals. They can be set at any time of life but the best time to set them is when you are young. This gives you a long enough horizon to achieve them.

Your first aim should be to set short-term goals. These should focus on the money you need to save every month, and the financial instruments in which you need to invest this money. You should also define the credit card spends so that your debts do not go out of hand.

Your long term goals should include the kind of wealth that you plan to generate over the next ten years or so. You must write out the methods by which you plan to do so. This will keep your goals realistic, and achievable. Maybe, you can even consult a financial expert to help your plan your long-term expenditure and savings.

Also remember that no one can work indefinitely. There comes a time in every man’s life when he becomes too old to work. There must be a financial plan for such a stage in your life. This should take into account leakages like tax payments and inflation.

If you want to be successful then your goals must be specific. You can’t say that your goal is to be rich. It is much better to say that I want to be able to spend $5,000 on travel every three years. The latter gives an idea of how much you need to earn during the course of three years to generate this kind of disposable income.

After that you have to prioritize your expenditures. You will have to divert a part of income into your travel kitty. You can’t hope the travel bank to become full on it own. There has to be some sacrifice, and some discipline to achieve the goal.

So get out a pen and paper and start listing your goals. You will feel better right away!

Popularity: 24% [?]

Ways to help enhance the quality of your family life

Building and maintaining strong and loving relationships in your life, especially within your family life, is one of the great hallmarks of successful living. No amount of money, wealth, or fame can replace the value in raising a nurturing family life.

Anyone can make a lot of money, anyone can work harder and attain more success within their career, but it takes someone special to create and hold on to the trust born from a loving and deep meaningful relationship.

Regardless if it is your wife, your husband, or perhaps your children, even your friends… having the ability to be open and honest with people in a relationship is the key hallmark of a truly successful man or women.

There are literally hundreds and hundreds of books and courses on the shelves to day that can help with advice in this area. Today we have put together a few tips that can help you better enhance the quality of the relationships within the scope of your family life:

1. Always keep in mind what is most important in your life by making the needs of your loved ones a top priority. Strive to put your relationships, especially your family, ahead of everything else. Of course there may be times when sacrifices have to be made, but never at the expense of diminishing the quality of your family closeness.

2. All too often we tend to bring our work home with us. Although this practice may be good for business, it can be detrimental to the attention of our spouse and our children. The best way to overcome this obstacle is to work harder at work by doing the most important tasks possible that bring the best returns, so that we do not have to ignore our family by taking our work home from the office.

3. The next time you are trying to decide how much time to spend at work verses your time at home with your family, keep this in mind: It is the quality of time at work that counts but it is the quality of time spent at home that matters. In other words, the time you spend at work is measured by results and productivity and the time spent at home with your loved ones is measured in terms of contentment and love.

4. Watching television, browsing the Internet, or reading a book does not constitute spending time with your family, even if they are in the same room with you. It is easy to fall into the idea that it is, but remember that while you may be occupied, you are missing out on precious time to interact with your loved ones. This is not to say that you should not have time to yourself by doing the leisure activities that you enjoy, just keep it balanced.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Crossword Puzzles Are Great Mental Exercises

I love doing crossword puzzles. Every morning I rush outside to get my newspapers anticipating those puzzles. As I read through the local and national news, the business, lifestyle and theater sections, I look forward to those puzzles - saving them for the very end, like some great reward or delicious, tempting dessert. What? You don’t do that?

Most newspaper crossword fans know that the difficulty level of a particular puzzle is distinctly related to the day of the week - as we get closer to the weekend, the puzzles steadily become more challenging. Crossword puzzles are a good example of mental aerobics, tasks or exercises that involve mental effort.

The goal of these exercises is to “shake up” our usual mental assumptions and force us to think of novel solutions. A successful brainteaser or puzzle often gives us a moment of pleasure and satisfaction when we stumble upon the solution - at that moment a “light bulb” of understanding and insight turns on in our brain. Some experts believe this process correlates with the actual “stretching and toning” workout we are aiming to achieve for our brain cells.

Popularity: 27% [?]