The Power of The Positive
June 30, 2009
The Power of The Positive
by: Neil Millar - CommunitySoul
You and me… we can choose to be happy or not. We can choose to succeed or fail, scald, frown on or blame others. We can choose to complicate life or simplify it. There is no doubt the responsibility is ours.
Abraham Lincoln once said, ‘A man is just about as happy as he makes up his mind to be’ and Dr Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra appear to agree.
Both Dyer and Chopra say that we have, on average 60,000 to 62,000 thoughts each day. Around 4,000 of these are positive, the remainder are negative. This means that, if we want to advance ourselves or enhance our well-being, the balance between positive and negative in our lives is most likely tipped in the wrong direction. In other words we are making up our minds to be unhappy.
To be happy we have to begin to reverse the cycle. To begin this we have to look at what we’re doing.
Ghandi once said, ‘Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.’ It is simple wisdom from a wise man, but what will taking his words on board mean?
Three Tips for Forgiveness: A Key Factor in Anger Management
June 29, 2009
Elizabeth, 32, cried during anger management class as she told how one year ago - her 19-month-old girl was permanently brain-damaged as the result of a medical error at the hospital in which she was delivered.
Elizabeth had a legitimate grievance toward the hospital and medical staff, and felt that she could never forgive them for what she saw as their incompetence. She clearly was not yet ready to forgive. She felt she needed her simmering anger to motivate her to do what she felt she needed to do legally and otherwise to deal with this horrific situation.
Yet, at some point in the future - when she is ready - Elizabeth might decide to find a way to forgive. To be able to do this, she will have to take the step of separating two things in her mind: (1) blaming the hospital for what they did and (2) blaming them for her resulting feelings about the situation.
Reasons to forgive
Elizabeth cannot change what was done to her daughter, but she can change how she lives the rest of her life. If she continues to hold an intense grievance, she is giving what happened in the past the power to determine her present emotional well being. Until she forgives, Elizabeth will be victimized over and over again, trapped in an emotional prison.
Loving Yourself
June 28, 2009
Loving Yourself
by: Rebbie Straubing
I love Myself so much
That I can love You so much,
That You can love You so much,
That You can start loving Me
– Chant From The Sound of Agape Chant; Collection 1 Rickie Byars
Loving yourself allows you to see the beauty in others. It opens your senses to the brilliance of divine light, to the sweetness of your own life experience and to the power of your focused incarnation. Loving yourself allows your consciousness to assume the shape of love, which makes you at once loving and lovable. But most of us are very stingy with the love we offer ourselves.
We tend to block the flow of love that would be continuously wafting through our awareness, freshening the air and cleansing our energetic field. We block it in innumerable ways. Shame, guilt, anger and depression offer the standard forms of obstruction. In fact, the more talented and creative you are, the more you probably have come up with extraordinary ways to prevent yourself from loving yourself.
Schoolchildren on South Beach diet
June 28, 2009
As a part of a children’s diet and health study, conducted by Dr. Agatston, six elementary schools from Osceola County, Florida were included in a diet program from September through May 2005.
The program mainly focusses mainly on replacing foods with healthier variants. While it remains the South Beach Diet and is based on its main principles, the study is especially adapted to the needs of growing children. The general diet characteristics are as follows:
- it focusses on fiber, making sure children have an appropriate vitamin intake
- no restrictions are imposed â?"– processed carbs replaced by complex ones, which children need
- it reduces fat, sugar and calories
- it replaces saturated fat with unsaturated or monosatured fats, and use lean rathan than fatty meat
- it stresses the importance of exercise
The study is aimed at the following:
- to help reduce youngsters’ health problems generated by an unhealthy diet; the tendency towards obesity is a national problem, and results in diseases such as diabetes and coronary disease
- its long-term aim is to create healthy eating habits, by replacing foods based on saturated fats, trans fats and processed carbohydrates with foods based on whole grains, vegetables, fruit and lean meat
The Sound of Silence
June 27, 2009
The Sound of Silence
by: Roy E. Klienwachter
In the silence of the space that holds my body in physical existence, echoes the inaudible voice of the master that is my eternal soul.
God does not exist in this world, more over; God as we know him exists only as an illusion, painted by creatures of a physical world in their likeness.
That which we call God is really nothing at all, and just as equally, everything that is. In his/her likeness I am sitting at my computer creating a senseless article about nothing. It is only a random thought echoing through the silence of this space, finding physical expression on a two dimensional screen and finally edged onto a peace of paper. These three dimensional symbols of my thoughts have some kind of vague meaning that is not even comprehensible to my physical mind. It is an exercise of futility with no meaning and no logical conclusion.
My illusive soul bears the burden of my weighted body and grows impatient for it to catch up. While I remain grounded with one foot firmly anchored traveling endlessly in incessant circles demanding to find where I started and where I will end up.
Anam Chara - The Flow of Life
June 26, 2009
I am deeply drawn to the above Irish Blessing.
This blessing works for me on very many levels. It includes many words I love. These are the words "listen, "river" and "trout." Two of these words, "listen" and "river" bring me into the present. The other evokes memories of the past. This blessing helps me become a presence and an evoker. I am able to evoke memory.
I have called this blessing "The Blessing of Flow." This is the nearest metaphor I have to explaining the essence of what it means to live in being and to be fully alive. This symbol of a river is a great image to represent the flow of life. It is a metaphor I evoke often in order to remind me that "I am" is flow.
I live close to a river.
This is the river Shannon in Ireland. I live close to the source of this river. I live close to where she rises up from deep underground at a place called "The Shannon Pot." This is a deep still place. At this place the water is dark peaty brown. It is a barren place. It is a place of silence. It is a place where one comes to listen. It is a place of rising up and a place where one might be lifted up.
Heel Pain and Obesity: The Chicken or the Egg?
June 25, 2009
A new survey has found that heel pain caused by plantar fasciitis, a problem affecting almost a third of people who are overweight, often limits exercise and therefore makes it difficult for people to lose weight. The survey of 381 adult Americans, conducted by Heeling Solutions LLC, (www.heelingsolutions.com) found that 90% of people with heel pain who exercise at least 1 to 2 times per week report that heel pain limits their physical activity. The survey also found that 69% of people reporting heel pain were interested in losing weight, as compared to 58% of the general public.
Plantar fasciitis is the most common type of heel pain and is an example of a physical condition that can prevent or derail a weight loss program. It usually strikes people when they are increasing the amount of physical activity that they do. Be it a runner training for a marathon, a weekend warrior at a weekend tennis game, or an obese person starting to exercise. The change in the amount of stress put on the heel and foot can lead to plantar fasciitis. This can be especially devastating for overweight people who often develop plantar fasciitis as they begin to see progress in their attempt to lose weight.
Do Not Let Your Anxieties Overcome Your Self-Confidence
June 24, 2009
Do Not Let Your Anxieties Overcome Your Self-Confidence
by: Stan Popovich
Some people who struggle with anxiety may sometimes lose their self esteem and self-confidence during the process. As a result, here is a list of techniques a person can use to help manage their anxieties, fears, and self esteem.
Remember that practice makes perfect. Whenever it comes to dealing with your anxieties or any other task; practice, patience, and persistence is the name of the game. If you don’t get the desired results the first time around, then keep trying until you do get the results. Through practice, you will become better at the task at hand and your self-confidence will increase. This also applies to managing your anxieties.
In every anxiety-related situation you experience, begin to learn what works, what doesn’t work, and what you need to improve on in managing your fears and anxieties. For instance, you have a lot of anxiety and you decide to take a walk to help you feel better. The next time you feel anxious you can remind yourself that you got through it the last time by taking a walk. This will give you the confidence to manage your anxiety the next time around.
Mastering the Secret Language of Love
June 23, 2009
Mastering the Secret Language of Love
by: Ada Porat
What is it that attracts us to certain individuals, while we find others unappealing?
In some circles, this force of attraction has been attributed to fate, destiny or even karma. Beyond the romantic dream of soul mates, there is a very real scientific cause at work here: the secret language of love that is hard-wired into your physicality.
Each one of us consists of 6,000 miles of neurons wired through the body. These neurons affect every area of our lives, including our complex behaviors in love - a process that is totally subjective and illogical.
If you’ve ever fallen in love, you know that it sometimes has nothing to do with whether the person is “right” for you or not. Why does this happen? This happens simply because what we describe in our society as “falling in love” is the formation of a subjective neural pathway inside our brains.
What does it mean? It simply means that in response to previous emotional experiences, your brain has become wired to interpret love in a very particular way. And this way is shaped by what you have interpreted love to be in the past.
The Dark Side of Spirituality
June 23, 2009
On reading Susan Cato’s Time Magazine Canada piece titled, "In Search of the Spiritual," I became increasingly annoyed at the realization that many people keep making the erroneous split between religion and spirituality, when they are one and the same. For example, in the Time Canada piece, Rabbi Leigh Lerner, who leads the Temple Emanu-El?Beth Sholom, a Reform congregation in Montreal, states, "Religiosity may not be increasing, but spirituality is," confirming the notion that ’spirituality is separate and preferable to religion.’
I would have to disagree with this notion. Why do people keep insisting that the ritual and setting of worship is religion? It clearly is not. Religion comes from the Latin root re-ligare which means to re-connect. Re-connect with what? To re-connect with the inner Hero, the Divine, the Sacred. It is the ultimate Grail Quest, the hero’s journey, the spiritual journey, that we are all on: the Quest for Truth. Ask any Christian with a true understanding of the teachings of Christ about ‘going to church’ and they will tell you that the church, the physical church where people go to sing hymns and listen to sermons, is NOT the real Church. The real Church is the spiritual body of Christ where people fellowship in love. And where ritual is concerned, it clearly states in the Bible, "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love” (Galatians 5:4, NASB).
