Advanced Life Skills

For married couples, finding moments to be together free of financial, family or other stresses is not an indulgence, according to new research from the University of Denver.
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“The more you invest in fun and friendship and being there for your partner, the happier the relationship will get over time,” says Howard Markman, a psychologist who co-directs the university’s Center for Marital and Family Studies.
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“The correlation between fun and marital happiness is high, and significant.”
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Other studies, too, have found that having fun together — especially while doing “new and exciting activities” — is the secret to a happy marriage.
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Having a joyful marriage is unfortunately the exception rather than the rule in the United States. This is tragic as your happiness and ability to be optimally productive in your life is severely limited when you are not in a happy relationship with your spouse.
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Taking some free time to really engage yourselves in something fun (without the kids and without any worries) is something we all can do more of, but there are other ways to support your relationship as well.
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Four Tips to a Happy Marriage 
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Research shows that happily married couples live longer and heal faster than those in unhappy relationships. With that in mind, here are some practical ways to increase the happiness in your relationship:
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1. Fight fair. “The way you interact during marital arguments is as important a heart risk factor as whether you smoke or have high cholesterol,” says Timothy W. Smith, a psychology professor at the University of Utah. Verbal aggression, such as yelling at or insulting your partner, leads to decreased intimacy and “self-silencing” - keeping quiet during a fight - has been linked to depression, eating disorders and heart disease in women.
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2. Keep positive feelings alive. Couples most likely to be married for the long-term are those who maintain their positive feelings for their spouse and actively clear any emotional baggage that may be sabotaging your relationship.
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3. Read the book Fighting for Your Marriage. I generally give this book to all the couples I know who are planning to get married. It is a valuable source of information for positively handling disagreements between you and your spouse, which will increase the success of your relationship.
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4. Support your partner’s goals and dreams. People feel happiest in relationships where they feel the other person helps them achieve their own personal goals.
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Sources: ABC News July 26, 2008

There are few things more maddening than running into obstacles and blockages while you’re working toward your goals!  You’ll be moving along nicely, feeling great about the progress you’re making, when all of a sudden – boom; you’re stuck.  You’ve encountered an obstacle that you have no idea how to get around.

What you do next will often determine whether you achieve your goals or give up on them forever.  Your first impulse will probably be to try to figure out a way to work through the obstacle or sidestep around it – or even force it to move out of your way.

But what if that doesn’t work?  Does that mean your goals are toast?  No!

Today you’re going to learn another powerful technique for dealing with obstacles: surrender.

You may think that surrendering to obstacles means that you’ll be giving up on your goals, but keep in mind that surrender is not the same thing as defeat.

When you surrender to obstacles, it means that you refuse to waste your energy fighting them.  It means that instead of resisting and struggling, you’re going to step back and see the obstacle in a new light.

Here’s how to do it:

1)     Step back and gain some emotional distance.  When most of us encounter obstacles, we tend to take them personally and draw conclusions about what they mean.  We throw our hands up and declare that our goals are finished, we’re finished, and we’ve failed.  Nothing could be further from the truth!

Instead of drawing conclusions about the obstacle you’re facing, step back and observe it.  Why has it appeared in your life?  What lessons can you learn from it?  Is it possibly an opportunity to stretch yourself more than you’ve been willing to in the past?

2)     Open to your creative inspiration.  Just asking those questions can get your creative inspiration flowing like crazy!  When you detach from any need to push through the obstacle, you suddenly see that there are many other options available to you.  During this time, be sure to jot down any insights and possibilities that may occur to you.

3)     Give it time.  Even if you see some great possibilities for working through or around the obstacle, don’t take action on them right away.  Give it a few days.  Keep your distance, and you’ll probably notice that your fear and frustration will begin to dwindle.  Before long you’ll feel stronger and more capable about moving forward again, at which time you can put some of your new ideas into motion.

When you enter into this process of surrender, don’t be surprised if the obstacle dissolves spontaneously on its own!  It happens frequently, simply because you’ve stopped trying to force things to happen and are instead willing to just go with the flow – which creates space for movement and progress to occur again.

 
PS. If you found this article to be of value or have something to add please leave a comment or use the share this button below.

This is a guest post from Dr. Annette Colby. I highly recommend that you visit he blog and benefit from her insight.

Is it possible to overcome fears and reach your highest potential? If you are like most people, you have a goal or a dream that is meaningful and that you want to achieve. That goal may be related to personal growth issues such as weight loss, gaining self-esteem, finding inner peace, increasing your energy levels, or overcoming depression.

Or, your goal may include going back to school, entering a new career, or bringing your creative talents into a greater public light. Having a goal is the easy part. Attempting to move through your own inner obstacles can literally leave you terrified, completely paralyzed by your own fear.

If you have tried to reach your goal and stopped because you encountered a seemingly insurmountable obstacle, don’t give up. That is the nature of goals. They take you into new territory and bring you face-to-face with your own fears and doubts. The issue is not about how to avoid fear, but how to make positive decisions that boost your confidence while fear is present.

Every day, many people give up on their dreams due to self-doubt and fear. But it doesn’t have to be that way! Here are six steps to overcoming doubt and fear and bringing your own goals to life.

1. Make a Decision
Once you define your dream or goal, decide that you want to live this kind of happy and satisfied life. This may seem basic but many people never decide and commit fully to their dream. They simply keep “thinking” about it. Or, when the first obstacle appears and they give up. Make a commitment to yourself. Right now is not the time to worry about how to make it happen, or how you are going to move through your challenges. Instead, plant the seed of your dream inside of you and you commit to loving this seed until the day you can harvest the fruits of your efforts.

Honor your commitment to self. No one can let you down more than you can. Make a commitment about what you want and stand strong in your commitment. No matter how challenging, how fearful, or overwhelming it may seem, decide you are going for it! Why? For no other reason than because you want it. There are no should’s, have to’s, or weak choices. This is something you want for yourself and a choice you have made.

2. You Are Not Your Fear
As you move forward on your dream, doubt and fear are going to show up sooner than you might have expected. To move beyond fear, it is helpful to learn to separate yourself from your fear. For example, instead of thinking an all encompassing statement such as, “I am fearful,” learn instead to say, “There is a part of me that is fearful and doesn’t want to move forward. But somewhere inside of me there is also a desire to continue moving forward.” Fear is not all of who you are, rather it is an emotion that you are experiencing. The key is to recognize your fear, avoid becoming identified with your fear, and keep breathing. Breathing keeps energy moving and prevents you from being consumed in fear’s heavy embrace.

No matter how scary it seems, decide to sit with your emotion of fear for the purpose of accepting its presence, but not necessarily agreeing with it’s point of view. Acceptance helps because avoiding it doesn’t make it go away, looking the other way doesn’t make it disappear, and ignoring it does not make it any less painful. So, breathe. Then tell yourself that even though you are feeling intense fear, you can still take action. Look fear in the eye and let it know, “You are not the boss of me!” Then take the necessary steps to gain new tools and strategies to move forward on your dream once again.

3. Change your attitude about failure.
Long ago, a quote arrived in my email that read, “You try things, some work, some don’t, and you do more of what works.” These simple words suggest that the formula for success is that if you want to grow and succeed, you also have to be willing to fail. Certainly, no one actually wants to experience failure. However, if you want to succeed at something new, you will most likely experience setbacks, obstacles, and failures along the way. To be successful, redefine failure in a manner allowing yourself to see failure as “information.”

Failure is really just feedback telling you to evaluate your experience, utilize the information gained to adjust your plan, and then try a new approach. When you experience a failure – get up, dust yourself off, access the information gained, revise your course, and begin again.

4. Build Your Confidence Muscle
Although achieving your dream will bring up stress, fear, doubt, this experience is precisely what is necessary for a confidence breakthrough to occur. It is not enough to make self-supporting choices when your journey is easy, you have to do it when it’s hardest to do so. That’s because to break through what is holding you back, you have to go through the doubt. You can’t dance around it, wish it away, or analyze how to avoid the experience.

Making self-empowering decisions under stress is what leads you authentic personal growth and solidifies inner change. It’s the challenges of your journey that offer hundreds of opportunities to develop your confidence muscle and gain mastery over your experiences. Every obstacle, setback, or failure offers you a new chance to believe in yourself instead of falling into doubt and fear.

5. Decide You Don’t Have To Do Anything
Here is an experiment. For the next 48 hours, eliminate the words “I have to” from your vocabulary and substitute the words “I choose to.” Instead of saying, “I have to move forward on my goal” say, “I choose to take this specific action step today.” Or, you could just as effectively say, “I choose not to take any action step today.” Either choice allows you to understand that you are the person in control of your choices. You set the priorities. You are responsible. You have control. Feel how empowering this simple change of words can be.

6. Ask Yourself Empowering Questions
Certain types of questions can lead you to gain new insights and new motivation. Ask yourself the following questions, allow yourself to answer them from your heart, and see where your truths take you:

• Are your dreams important enough to change your daily lifestyle?
• Do you want to be responsible for your own life decisions?
• Do you have the courage to go after what you want with tenacity and see it through to the end?
• Can you accept that fear is part of the journey and move forward anyway?
• Can you recognize that fear is only your leader if you allow it to be?

Being able to overcome your doubt and fears so you can bring into reality the life of your dreams is one of the best experiences in the world! Take control of your life by practicing these five simple steps and learn how to tame your fear and create a happier, more successful life.

What do you think? Agree or Disagree?
Did I miss an important point?

Let’s talk about it.

Are you happy with your life the way it is?  Overall, can you say you’re truly happy?  If not, do you know why? Could it possibably be because you haven’t made the choice to be happy? 
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When we think of being successful, we imagine that happiness is an inevitable side effect.  We may envision ourselves with the perfect job, the perfect mate, the perfect children, the perfect level of income, the perfect home, the perfect car, etc.  And we believe that all of that stuff will make us happy. 
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However, that view is skewed.  Material objects and other people cannot make us happy – only we can make ourselves happy.  And it all begins with a choice to be happy. 
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Maybe you have a hard time believing that, especially if you are experiencing challenges or lack in your life right now.  But think about this:  why do rich people still experience unhappiness?  Why do successful people still experience unhappiness?  Because money and success do not automatically create happiness! 
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Neither do power, status, romance, or material objects.  We simply believe they do because we are looking outside of ourselves for the solution to our problems.
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Intellectually, we may know that money can’t buy happiness, but some part of us still believes that we’d feel better if we were rich.  Yet when we really look at wealthy people, we must wonder if they are any happier than the average person.
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Do wealthy people laugh more, experience more joy, or have greater fulfillment in their lives?  Perhaps some do – but how much of it is a direct result of their wealth?
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Believe it or not some people seem to become less satisfied the wealthier they become!  Perhaps they were under the misconception that money would solve all their problems and now they are finding out it doesn’t work that way.
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Having a large amount of money can create a whole new set of challenges.  I’m sure you’ve heard the horror stories about people who win the lottery or come into a large sum of money through an inheritance or other means.  Many of them experience a few years of heartache and struggle, and end up flat broke again.  Money didn’t solve their problems – it only made them worse!
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Another reason why wealth can make us miserable is that it distracts us from what is truly important for a happy and fulfilling life.  We find ourselves focusing more and more on material objects and end up feeling disconnected from our inner selves.
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If you are feeling unhappy in your life right now and you’re thinking that money will solve your problems, it’s time for a reality check! 
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Don’t get me wrong. I like money as much as the next guy and having a material abundance can make our lives a little easier. 
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But money is not the key to happiness and lack of it is not a reason to feel unhappy. Being happy is a choice you can make right now and it doesn’t cost you a dime. You are the key to your own happiness and no amount of money will change that!
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So, what do you think? Agree? Disagree? 
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Am I missing something?
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Let’s talk about it… 

1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
2. Don’t worry about what people think, they don’t do it very often. 
3. Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian anymore than standing in a garage makes you a car. 
4. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity. 
5. If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you’ve never tried before.
6. My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.
7. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.
8. A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.
9. For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program. 
10. If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.
11. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
12. A conscience is what hurts when all of your other parts feel so good.
13. Eat well, stay fit, die anyway. 
14. Men are from earth. Women are from earth.. Deal with it.
15. No man has ever been shot while doing the dishes.
16. A balanced diet is a muffin in each hand.
17. Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.
18. Opportunities always look bigger going than coming. 
19. Junk is something you’ve kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it. 
20. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.  
21. Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. 
22. By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.  
23. Thou shalt not weigh more than thy refrigerator.  
24. Someone who thinks logically provides nice contrast to the real world.  
25. It isn’t the jeans that make your butt look fat. 
26. If you had to identify in one word the reason why the human race has not achieved its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.’  
27. There is a very fine line between ‘hobby’ and ‘mental illness.’ 
28. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.  
29. You should not confuse your career with your life. 
30. Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. 
31. Never lick a steak knife. 
32. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.  
33. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.  
34. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she’s pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment. 
35. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that deep down inside, we ALL believe we are good drivers.
36. Your friends love you anyway.  
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PS. Don’t you feel better now? I know I sure do!

Secret Garden - Silent Wings 3:36

Beautiful Music, Beautiful Pictures.

Before you got into bed last night, you probably had a pretty good idea of what you were going to do when you woke up.  Most of us have some kind of schedule that we try to keep. Certain activities that we need to attend to. 
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But did you have a good idea of how you’re going to feel when you woke up this morning?  It’s one thing to consider what we’re going to do but it’s quite another to consider how we’re going to feel.
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The reason you knew what you were going to do when you woke up this morning is that you gave it some thought. You considered how your day was going to go beforehand.

It really doesn’t matter whether you were planning on going shopping, going to work, or taking the kids to school. Whatever it was you planned to do today, you gave it some consideration yesterday. 
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We can do the same thing with our feeling.  Before we go to bed we can take a few minutes to consider and plan how we’re going to feel when we wake up tomorrow.
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When you take the time to visualize yourself waking up in the morning feeling great after a wonderful nights sleep, fully energized and ready to go, you are actually planning for tomorrow. 
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Your not planning your activities, you’re planning your emotions! First visualize a pleasant morning experience. Then indulge yourself in those good feelings, actually allow yourself to get all wrapped up in how wonderful it is to wake up feeling really good.
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When you go to bed with an idea in your mind, guess what? The chances that you will actually wake up feeling good will go up considerably because you’ve already experienced it in your mind. You’ve already been there once and your mind doesn’t know the difference between the actual experience and the imagined experience. 
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Tomorrow when you wake up your mind is going to recall what you already programmed into it.  As far as your mind is concerned, you’ve already had this experience once and it felt great.
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Why not give some preliminary consideration to how you’re going to feel, not just tomorrow morning at every morning?  In fact why not take it a step further?
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If you’re going to work tomorrow, why not stop and imagine yourself going to work and feeling absolutely wonderful about it? See yourself in an unexplainably good mood all day long.  Consider any activity that’s going to affect your day and feel yourself enjoying it! When you actually have that experience, you will be preprogrammed to enjoy it. Again, because your mind thinks you’ve already done it before and it remembers that it was enjoyable.
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We have much more control over our feelings and moods than most people think possible.  I invite you to start exercising that control immediately. I invite you to start planning ahead. Make an emotional schedule for a great day - no matter what activities you will be involved in.
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You already know to some degree what you’ll be doing. Why not choose to also know ahead of time how you’re going to feel about it?

Negative talk, conversation and leans in a negative direction, it’s like poison to us emotionally.  It seeps into our consciousness and changes the direction of our thought patterns. 
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When we get around negative people and their conversation is judgmental or harsh it can draw us right in like quicksand. The next thing you know, you’re saying and feeling the same things they are.
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If we want to be happy, have a positive attitude, feel grateful for our lives, it’s absolutely vital that we avoid those kinds of situations. 
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If you picture negative speech as a scorpion, when someone tries to hand it to you what are you going to do?  You’re going to avoid it right? You’re not going to have anything to do with it. You’re going to move back quickly and stay completely away from it. 
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So think of negative talk as poison, as a poisonous scorpion.  Avoid it, don’t go near it, learn to stay completely away from it. And what will happen?  It will be much easier to focus on the positive. It’ll be much easier to maintain a positive frame of mind and a positive tone in your speech. 
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We’re so susceptible to the influence of those around us, whether positive or negative.  Why not put yourself in the company of those who have only positive things to say? 
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Have you ever met somebody who never has a bad word to say about anybody else?  How do you feel about that person, do you like being around them?  I think it’s refreshing. It’s also contagious.
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On the other hand, have you ever been around people who like to put down others and constantly focus on negative things? The next thing you know, you find yourself right in the middle of their conversation. Later on, you look back on the whole experience and wonder how you let yourself slip into that. 
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So learn to protect yourself, protect your attitude. Avoid those bad influences and it’ll go a long way towards helping you to be a more positive person. Being in the company of those who have a positive outlook will help you to recognize your own blessings and appreciate them more.
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Don’t keep company with people who dwell on negative things, don’t let them hand you a scorpion. If you associate mostly with those who are positive and up building, you’ll find that your whole world takes on a completely different feeling. 
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It’s really a matter of training. If you can train yourself to be offended by negative speech then your instant reaction will be to move away from it, to avoid it. I’m not just talking about live speech here. This also applies to entertainment including the music you listen to, television programs you watch, and the movies you go to see.
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All of these things should be considered association. It’s all input and your mind doesn’t know the difference between a conversation on the television and a conversation with a live person.
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We talked yesterday about the power of association and how we can benefit ourselves by wise choices in that direction. So in the same vein, it’s important that we avoid those who have a negative bent, those who use their speech in a defamatory or judgmental way. Hang around with people who are happy, positive upbeat, and grateful - you’ll find yourself feeling like they do and you’ll be glad you did.