Why We Are Attracted to People Who Are Wrong For Us

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-15390/why-were-attracted-to-people-who-are-wrong-for-us.html

This Far, No Further

People with loving and helpful spirits often cause their own destruction due to their self-sacrifice. Takers will ALWAYS be takers...so now matter how much you love them, give to them, or do for them, it will never be enough.

Guarding yourself from selfish, immature, disrespectful people is not "being mean" or Un - Christ like. Guard your heart, mind and body as the temple of the Holy Spirit, and test EVERYTHING. Only do what you know God is leading you to do for others, and remember you belong to Him.

Do not be a slave to people trying to make you feel guilty, like a failure, or unloved if you don't do what they want! People that manipulate you for their own gain are liars and thieves. They will steal your time, your money, your opportunities, your freedom, your gifts and abilities, and even your body.

Learn to recognize when this is happening to you, and love and respect yourself enough to draw the line in the sand and say "this far, no further!"

40 Things I Believe In My 40s

by Joe Boyd

1. Real friends are people who know your middle name, biggest flaws and hidden talents.

2. Having a job is a good thing, but it is never really the ultimate thing.

3. You can’t be happy if you aren’t submitting to the right person.

4. Some people you know will never ask the big questions of life.

5. The key to a happy marriage is being a servant.

6. Being a parent of a toddler is exhausting … and you will miss it when it is over.

7. You can’t be spiritually fit while being a glutton or a drunk.

8. You can be spiritually fit while enjoying a hamburger and a stiff drink now and again.

9. Some people deeply know God but would never say it that way.

10. Embrace the geekiest and/or nerdiest things about you.

11. When you don’t know what else to do, tell a story. If that doesn’t work, be silent.

12. You will be embarrassed in ten years by some of the things you believe today.

13. Winter, for all its flaws, makes the other three seasons better.

14. God lives in the mountains and the beaches, but he is even more visible in the city.

15. Jesus is misrepresented about 90% of the time both inside and outside of the church.

16. If both your religious and irreligious friends think you are crazy, congratulations.

17. A loving dog is worth the pain of having a dog … but just barely.

18. If you want to be a Christian, study what Jesus meant by the “Kingdom of God.”

19. It is ok to not have answers about God. You aren’t his PR department.

20. Real success is about giving up on some things and not giving up on other things.

21. If you are going to waste money on something, let it be a family vacation.

22. Don’t partner with anyone in business you wouldn’t want your spouse and kids to live with.

23. Unrestrained cynicism will make you and everyone you love miserable.

24. When you look back, your hobbies will have shaped your life. Pick good ones.

25. Every new friend will end up hurting you. Then they might become a great friend.

26. If you fancy yourself an artist and don’t do art, you will never feel complete.

27. History is not boring. Some historians are. Know the difference.

28. Sometimes good ideas and organizations need to die. Euthanize and eulogize them.

29. If a friend loses a loved one, go and be in the same room with them. That’s all they need.

30. Be alone with your husband or wife for at least one week every year.

31. Take a massive career risk every five years.

32. If you can walk somewhere on a nice day instead of driving, do it.

33. Learn to love the things your kids love.

34. Sometimes a pen and paper is still the best option.

35. Failure is the secret to success.

36. Find an exciting author smarter than you and read everything they have ever written.

37. Re-read your favorite books from each decade of your life.

38. The mature person knows they are wrong about something that they think they are right about, but they don’t know what it is yet.

39. Helping someone get what you could never achieve yourself is actually better than getting it in the first place.

40. You can’t love without empathy. You can’t live with out love.

Joe Boyd is the Founder and President of Rebel Pilgrim Productions, a film, television and media production company that exists to spark hope and action in the world. He is the producer of several movies, including the multi-award winning comedy Hitting The Nuts, Hope Bridge and A Strange Brand of Happy. Joe is the author of Between Two Kingdoms as well as a regular contributor for The Huffington Post, Patheos, Leadercast, Christian Standard, and Rebel Storytellers. As an actor, Joe’s credits include a recurring role in ABC’s General Hospital and a two-year run in Tony n Tina’s Wedding at The Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Follow Joe on Twitter @JoeBoyd.

Source:  http://rebelstorytellers.com/40-things

Getting Unstuck: Part 1 of 3

by Dr. Jeffery Baker

What might be useful to know about how ordinary people get themselves unstuck is that it’s a very different approach and orientation than what is used to treat mental illness. Psychology has been able to scientifically treat 14 different mental illnesses and cure two of them. Psychology has been able to classify mental illness and understand its causality. Psychology has also been able to invent treatments and rigorously evaluate their efficacy. However none of that is helpful to the average person. Think of your well-being on a scale from 0 to 10. The mentally ill person is suffering and living a life at a -6. The goal of the treatment interventions is to alleviate the suffering and get them to zero. At the very least, they are no longer experiencing impairing symptoms. The average person however does not wake up in the morning with the hopes of living at zero. They would like to move from +2 to +6.

Quite recently psychology is investigating the normal functioning person who simply gets stuck in life. A good deal of what has been learned on how to help the normal person regain vitality and motivation to resile against adversity has emerged from the investigation on how the brain learns. These new learning theories have helped shape our understanding of how the brain functions and how we get stuck.

If you find yourself struggling in the areas relating to your personal growth or relationships that just aren’t working, you should follow this discussion. Some of you are in a crisis with your parenting situations. Others have chronically conflicted relationships. Often I hear men say they are trapped in jobs that are unsatisfactory and have become a grind. Many also describe a dead spiritual life that has left them doubting if God exists.

There are four issues that tend to obstruct the average person from personal growth and development. They are neither hierarchical nor developmental. In no particular order they are: being disconnected from one’s values, being committed to and directed by one’s emotions and or thoughts rather than one’s values, avoiding discomfort, and being married to unrealistic goals.

I would like to address the first of four core areas that cause people to get stuck in their lives.

The first core area is our style of life is separated from what we truly value, meaning there are miles of distance between our heart and our feet. What we do day-to-day, walking through our daily routines, is far from what truly matters to us. Often the insidious path that we have chosen in life has slowly loosened our grip on what used to give us energy and direction. Many people do not feel depressed—they don’t feel anything. They simply feel lost or numb. No wonder we have such a fear of zombies. Many of us are not far from feeling like the living dead, just stumbling through life seeking sustenance to just keep on stumbling through life. Often people have been on this path so long they can’t even remember or have any working knowledge of what is important to them or what they value.

So for the normal person this must begin with exercises in self-awareness to discover or rediscover their core values. What truly matters to them, why does something work, why do some things distress us so terribly? Why do certain things get us, or hook us, or haunt us? To successfully get unstuck one must realize their passions and dreams.

It is a common experience for me to see a person struggle to articulate why something works for them or what makes it important to them. Often people will say what they think is the right thing to say which can be very different than what they actually believe or value.

An easy shortcut for most of us is to use some type of questionnaire that could help us unearth these deep feelings. I’m going to suggest a two-part process. The first would be to use a free online questionnaire to discover your signature strengths at https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu. Take the VIA Survey of Character Strengths and examine your top five signature strengths.

Part two is after you have examined your top five signature strengths, take each one and ask yourself what it is about those areas that when you act on them, it energizes you. An example of that would be if you scored in the area of Relational Intelligence. If you ask yourself what it is about relationships that are so important to you, most people identify three values. The first is connection which is enjoyed on a very deep level when they feel intimately connected with those around them. They love the ability to share their emotional life with others. Next is caring when one enjoys the intense satisfaction of acting affectionate or compassionate, or even in a kind way. Lastly is contribution, where one is excited and fulfilled by the act of giving. Now, there is one last question to ask to uncover your hidden values. Ask yourself what is it that drives you crazy, frustrates, or maddens you about relationships. Some would say disrespect, which indicates that respect is of great importance to you and is probably one of your core values within the area of Relational Intelligence.

This last part might be a bit confusing. Please take a moment and consider the idea that it is your values that stimulates the limbic system in your brain, which is your feeling center. The way the limbic system works is when you experience something that you value, the brain creates a positive feeling and the reinforcement to pursue that behavior again. Conversely, when you experience a negative emotion it is because you are not getting what you care about. The thing that you believe should happen or you want to happen isn’t happening at all. When you experience something that has no value to you one way or the other, then you have a neutral emotion because you’re not stimulating your limbic system.

At this point you should have some idea or starting point at least as to what your values are and hopefully have begun to develop what has been called a Value Compass. This is your starting point by which you can start connecting the dots between how you live and what’s important to you, and begin to close that distance. The closer your values are to your daily walk through life, the more energy, vitality, and motivation you have. The skill that needs to be mastered at this point is learning how to practice, express, and apply these values in your lifeless world. It will be the subject of my next discussion.

Take the VIA Survey of Character Strengths here

Part Two:  Putting Feet on Your Heart

Part Three:  Your Reptilian Brain

Dr. Jeffery Baker is a clinical psychologist. He has been a health care provider for over 30 years. He is married, has two sons and lives in Hamilton, Ohio. He attended Central Bible College for four years studying theology. Then he entered The Union Institute where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology. After graduate school at Xavier University, he matriculated to a doctoral program at The Union Institute where he completed a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. Dr. Baker has been involved in individual, family, and group counseling with adults and adolescents since 1979. He currently has his own practice, trains law enforcement officers, examines and treats patients, lectures, authors workbooks, and consults with entrepreneurs, professional groups, and universities. He was a boxer for 12 years, and has earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and Judo.

(Source:  http://rebelstorytellers.com/getting-unstuck)

The Power of Carefully Chosen Words: What Every Speaker Can Learn from Emma Watson

This past Saturday, UN Women Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson—best known for her role as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films—delivered an impassioned introduction to the HeForShe campaign at the UN Headquarters in New York. Since then, Watson’s speech has received heavy circulation on social media and been hailed by the press as “powerful,” “game-changing.”

  I couldn’t agree more. Watching Watson use her star power as a vehicle to promote global gender equality reminded me that each of us has an opportunity and responsibility to stand up for the causes we believe in, whatever those may be. By following a few basic communication guidelines, Watson showed us how to do it effectively.

She knew her audience. Watson made clear from the very beginning that her speech was intended for the men and boys who could become advocates for change. She appealed not just to their sense of right and wrong, but also to the impacts of gender inequality on men’s lives as they suffer the consequences of “being imprisoned by gender stereotypes.” She explicitly invited them to “step forward” and become part of the solution. She even went so far as to explicitly address one of the questions stirring in the back of their minds when she said “You might be thinking who is this Harry Potter girl? And what is she doing up on stage at the UN.” The fact that she’d reflected on this question in advance demonstrated just how much thought went into crafting these remarks.

She expressed the difference between the world today and what it could be. Speakers can create powerful emotion by creating a clear contrast between “what is” today and “what could be” tomorrow. Watson did this perfectly when she called for a society where she’d be “afforded the same respect as men” (and what this would mean in terms of pay, rights, and political representation) but then pointed out that “No country in the world can yet say they have achieved gender equality.”

She made it personal. The best speakers know how to use stories from their own life to add emotion to the story. Watson showcased this ability when she outlined her own journey to becoming a feminist, starting with being called “bossy” for wanting to direct a play at age 8. She even admitted to her own “nervousness” about the speech towards the end. This hint of vulnerability made her seem human and relatable, important traits for any speaker to emulate.

She called for clear action. It’s not enough to make the case for change; great speakers know that they need to make sure the audience knows when and how to act. Watson spoke to this from the beginning when she said “I am reaching out to you because I need your help. We want to end gender inequality—and to do that we need everyone to be involved.” After making the case for men to join her movement, she added urgency to this plea by ending with a reminder that anyone and everyone can be part of the change. No audience member could walk away without asking themselves, “if not me, who, if not now, when.”

Emma Watson’s speech wasn’t perfect. At times, her nerves showed and a close watch reveals her looking down at her notes quite a few times. But that’s not what people noticed or what got written about in the news the next day. Her powerful words and well-thought-out message clearly conveyed the level of preparation and thought that went into this speech. I’m excited to see what comes next from this up-and-coming powerhouse as she grows into her own shoes as a powerful voice for women’s rights.

Emma Watson's "HeforShe" Speech as UN Women Goodwill Ambassador from UN Women

Source:  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140924214952-172811-the-power-of-carefully-chosen-words-what-every-speaker-can-learn-from-emma-watson?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0

Prayer for Stress

A Prayer to Heal Stress

Heavenly Father, please grant me peace of mind and calm my troubled heart. My soul is like a turbulent sea. I can't seem to find my balance so I stumble and worry constantly. Give me the strength and clarity of mind to find my purpose and walk the path you've laid out for me. I trust your Love God, and know that you will heal this stress. Just as the sun rises each day against the dark of night. Please bring me clarity with the light of God.

In your name I pray, Amen.

- See more at: http://www.prayers-for-special-help.com/prayer-for-peace-of-mind.html#sthash.dzPYRotx.dpuf

Peace of Mind

A Prayer for Peace of Mind

Almighty God, We bless you for our lives, we give you praise for your abundant mercy and grace we receive. We thank you for your faithfulness even though we are not that faithful to you. Lord Jesus, we ask you to give us all around peace in our mind, body, soul and spirit. We want you to heal and remove everything that is causing stress, grief, and sorrow in our lives.

Please guide our path through life and make our enemies be at peace with us. Let your peace reign in our family, at our place of work, businesses and everything we lay our hands on.

Let your angels of peace go ahead of us when we go out and stay by our side when we return. In Jesus' name, Amen.

- See more at: http://www.prayers-for-special-help.com/prayer-for-peace-of-mind.html#sthash.dzPYRotx.dpuf