Spirituality and Self Help » judging

How Writing Can Save Your Life

shimon — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:45:55 +0000

This is a guest post by B. Lynn Goodwin. Lynn is a freelance writer, editor, teacher, former caregiver, and the author of You Want Me To Do WHAT? – Journaling for Caregivers (Tate Publishing), which can be purchased at Amazon, through Writer Advice, or from your local bookstore. She is published in numerous anthologies, magazines, newspapers, e-zines, and blogs, and she owns Writer Advice . When you visit the website, be sure to click on Journaling for Caregivers. Lynn is participating in the WOW! Women On Writing Blog Tour.
Have you ever been a caregiver for a spouse, parent, child, special needs child, or yourself?

If so, you know that you spend every spare minute driving to medical appointments, stopping at the pharmacy, cooking, answering questions,

paying bills, giving medicine, adjusting machines, returning phone calls, and helping with matters that used to be private.

Why write about it?

Writing gives perspective and restores sanity. Writing is a lifeline as well as a record. Writing will improve your life and could even save it. Do not underestimate the power of journaling.
It allows you to vent, delve into issues, and untangle messes. It lets you analyze or celebrate. It allows you to finish a thought without interruption. Journaling releases mental toxins and deepens awareness.

What do you do if you don’t know what to write about?

One way to avoid facing a blank page is to use sentence starts. There are over 200 of them in You Want Me to Do WHAT? Journaling for Caregivers, and they will trigger all kinds of memories, plans, and ideas.

Want to try it right now? Pick one of the sentence starts listed here:
Today, I want…
Sometimes I wonder…
I lust after…
It’s hard to admit…
What if…
I will always love…
Finish the sentence and keep going. You are journaling. Explore your hopes and fears. Vent. Analyze. Process. Reflect. Make discoveries and find the hope that can hide when you are overwhelmed by your daily routine.

Are judgment gremlins nagging at you as you write? Ask them to go outside or tell them to play on the freeway. Your journal is yours. It does not need their approval.

Journaling helps you see yourself and your loved one from a new perspective. Journals never interrupt or argue. They let you evaluate, interpret, and rediscover your love.
Use the prompts in You Want Me to Do WHAT? to ease the stress of caring for a patient with dementia, stroke, cancer or any degenerative disease.

Use them if you care for someone with special needs or a mental illness.
Use them if you are a primary caregiver, spouse of a primary caregiver, or a long distance caregiver.
Use these prompts if you are in any kind of dependent relationship. Use them to process the end of a relationship. They will help you understand what happened.
Writing is therapeutic. It saves lives. Your truths are eager to come out. Let them spill onto the page, and see what doors writing opens for you.

Spirit and Psychology: Ego and the Greater Self

shimon — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:30:44 +0000

This is a guest post by Paul Maurice Martin. Paul is the author of Original Faith: What Your Life Is Trying to Tell You. He has master’s degrees in religious studies and counseling and blogs at www.originalfaith.com. Paul is participating in the WOW! Women On Writing Blog Tour.

How can you tell the spiritual you from the psychological you? Both concepts refer to inner life and there’s certainly some overlap. However, recognizing these four major differences can be important to your personal development.

Egoism vs. the Greater Self – Egoism has myriad manifestations, but is basically a distorted view of self that produces negative effects on self and others. For example, it may lead us to place a higher priority on personal convenience or luxury than on the real needs of other people – or, in a self-deprecating mode, to judge ourselves more harshly than we would ever judge others.

Psychology works primarily with the ego and how it becomes elaborated as we defend and justify it. In contrast, the spiritual self is a greater self that’s as much a part of being human as egoism. It’s the self that keeps us in perspective and places our desires in the context of the greater good.

Past vs. Present – Psychology is about how our past lives on in our present. Included are old wounds from childhood that add energy to our egoistic desires and anxieties, and long established patterns of thought that are self defeating and harmful to others. Spirituality is about finding out what we’re like when we leave the past behind.

Complicated vs. Simple – Psychological work is complicated. It involves insight into past events, how they affected us, how this is reflected in our current patterns of thought and behavior, and unlearning those patterns. In contrast, spiritual techniques such as meditation and mindfulness are simple. The greater self to which they lead us is also simple in the best sense of the word.

Others vs. Life Itself or God – Psychology focuses primarily on how we experience ourselves in relation to other individuals. Although spirituality has profound implications for how we relate to others, its focus is on how we experience ourselves in relation to life as a whole, or, according to our beliefs, God.

Spiritual practices like sitting meditation and mindfulness techniques aren’t remedies for levels of anxiety, depression, or neurosis that seriously impact our day-to-day functioning and satisfaction with life. Whether we are able to do it on our own or with professional help, we need to do the heavy lifting of addressing any seriously self-limiting psychological issues that we face before spiritual experiences and practices can transform us into the person of our best intentions and our highest aspirations.

How To Win Friends And Keep Them

shimon — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:54:06 +0000

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost — Charles Caleb Colton

I’ve really struggled with relationships when I was growing up. Only after high school I started to understand what people like, what works and who I wanted to become. In this post I want to share some of the key principles I believe are important to maintain your friendships and to make new friends.

1Be honest. There is only one reason to lie when you meet people and that is the fear that they won’t like you the way you’re. of course lying won’t help you because even if they like the character you created it’s not you and sooner or later they’ll know it. Furthermore there is no such thing as brutally honest there is only brutal or honest.

2Don’t judge. When you judge someone you instantly change your relationship, it’s as if he can feel it. Moreover if something really bothers you then it’s a sign of an unresolved issue. Maybe you acted the way he did in the past or maybe you believe that you’re not allowed to act the way he did. Whatever it is it’s not related to the other person.

3Don’t gossip. There is only one exception to this rule, you can only gossip if it’s funny. If it’s not funny then it’s probably mean. You probably think that the people you’re telling are enjoying it, well maybe they do but they also think that if you gossip about other people you probably gossip about them too and they’ll be reluctant to open up to you.

4Don’t criticize. If something bothers you it’s best to talk about it instead of keeping it inside until you explode, but unless you’re someones boss criticizing won’t help. People tend to remember compliments because it makes them feel good. For instance if your wife has made you an omelet with onion and you don’t like onion instead of telling her how much you hate onion try telling her how much you love her omelets and that you prefer them without onion. It’s simple and it works.

5Make people feel good. Half the time people aren’t going to remember your words but they’ll always remember how you make them feel. With time they will associate your face with the feelings you make them feel, In NLP it’s called an anchor. This is the reason you smile when you see someone you like, you remember the feelings.

6Be genuinely interested in other people. Can you guess what interest people the most? That’s right themselves. If you’ll ask people about themselves they will be happy to answer and they will become interested in you, after all you must be interesting if you’re interested in them right? There is something you can learn from everyone you meet, often it’s things that you can’t learn from books.

7The world doesn’t revolve around you. Unless they want revenge for something you did, people usually don’t try to hurt you on purpose. Most of the time people just act the way they do because of their childhood programing. Remember that It’s not personal and they probably act this way to everyone they meet.

8You teach people how to treat you. When people first meet you they don’t know what to expect, so they assume that everything they’ll do is ok. They assume that until you tell them differently. It’s your job to tell people how you want to be treated.

9Learn to be a good listener. We all want to feel important and by really listening to someone you can help them feel it. A good technique to show people that you listened is to wait until they’ve finished talking and then repeat their general idea with your own words. For example they say something and then you say: ” so you mean that…”

10Relationships are a two way street. Think about relationships like a bank account, if you want to withdraw you have to deposit. In other words if you want to ask for favors you have to invest in the relationship first. The investment doesn’t have to be a favor, it can be a compliment or anything that makes the other feel good about himself.

The following video explains about rapport and the next video explains how to establish it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvp-cVz_ANM

www.youtube.com/watch?v=beXd_e39Uqc

Judgment Versus Discernment

shimon — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 15:09:59 +0000

This is a guest post by Natheya. Natheya uses the Language of Light to heal.

Being a conscious human, I notice and am aware of what is happening in the world around me.

I am the world and I embrace all of it. Similarly, my internal condition — my moods, the running dialogue in my head, as well as the feelings I experience: like anger, joy, frustration etc. — is an observable state.

Our discernment of our external and internal world is not something that we actively have to manage. It does not require our vigilance. We do not have to make ’selections’, we don’t have to shut down what our senses show us, and we don’t have to separate ourselves. We are every thing and every one. In freedom.

On the other hand, I believe that we can guide our judgment of our experiences. Let’s say a fly has entered the room. I notice it. This is discernment. If I criticize myself for having created the situation by leaving the window open that allowed the fly in, I have entered into judgment. Discernment is a natural act that we engage in without planning or conscious thought. It is part of life and our willingness to be the life that is moving in and out of us and every one and every thing around us, in oneness.

Judgment is optional. Because our behavior is influenced not only by our conscious awareness but also by our habits, releasing our judgment is a committed choice. In much the same way that it requires effort to not look up when someone says my name, if I am accustomed to cursing like a maniac when I see a fly, changing this pattern of behavior will be an active decision from the heart. That said, the first step of changing a habit is, of course, discernment — noticing that I am doing it.

Discernment — what I notice — awareness. Judgment — what I do with what I notice — a choice.To discern the world as it is — with me, my emotions, my feelings, and my mood as a part of that world — this is something I do automatically as part of being and allowing all of it.

On the other hand, judgment — something that I still do frequently enough, something that I occasionally get a little rush from doing, and something that I can sometimes discern that I am doing while I’m doing it (but yes, that ’sometimes’ is changing now into ‘most of the time’) — is optional. Let’s gently show our mind this while we hold it in our heart. Heart is where the mind is to be, and it does listen! It is a time of action not re-action.

Here is a great video that makes you think more about discernment and life.