8 Aspects of the Emotional Manipulator

Emotional Manipulation is Also "Covert Aggression." See: "Psychopaths: Wolves in Sheep's Clothing" Here is a list adapted from an article by Fiona McColl

1

There is no use in trying to be honest with an emotional manipulator. You make a statement and it will be turned around. Example: I am really angry that you forgot my birthday. Response - "It makes me feel sad that you would think I would forget your birthday, I should have told you of the great personal stress I am facing at the moment - but you see I didn’t want to trouble you. You are right I should have put all this pain (don’t be surprised to see real tears at this point) aside and focused on your birthday. Sorry." Even as you are hearing the words you get the creeped out sensation that they really do NOT mean they are sorry at all - but since they’ve said the words you’re pretty much left with nothing more to say. Either that or you suddenly find yourself babysitting their angst!! Under all circumstances if you feel this angle is being played - don’t capitulate! Do not care take - do not accept an apology that feels like bullshit. If it feels like bullshit - it probably is. Rule number one - if dealing with an emotional blackmailer TRUST your gut. TRUST your senses. Once an emotional manipulator finds a successful maneuver - it’s added to their hit list and you’ll be fed a steady diet of this shit.

2
An emotional manipulator is the picture of a willing helper. If you ask them to do something they will almost always agree - that is IF they didn’t volunteer to do it first. Then when you say, "ok thanks" - they make a bunch of heavy sighs, or other non verbal signs that let you know they don’t really want to do whatever said thing happens to be. When you tell them it doesn’t seem like they want to do whatever - they will turn it around and try to make it seem like OF COURSE they wanted to and how unreasonable you are. This is a form of crazy making - which is something emotional manipulators are very good at. Rule number two - If an emotional manipulator said YES - make them accountable for it. Do NOT buy into the sighs and subtleties - if they don’t want to do it - make them tell you it up front - or just put on the walk-man headphones and run a bath and leave them to their theater.

3
Crazy making - saying one thing and later assuring you they did not say it. If you find yourself in a relationship where you figure you should start keeping a log of what’s been said because you are beginning to question your own sanity --You are experiencing emotional manipulation. An emotional manipulator is an expert in turning things around, rationalizing, justifying and explaining things away. They can lie so smoothly that you can sit looking at black and they’ll call it white - and argue so persuasively that you begin to doubt your very senses. Over a period of time this is so insidious and eroding it can literally alter your sense of reality. WARNING: Emotional Manipulation is VERY Dangerous! It is very disconcerting for an emotional manipulator if you begin carrying a pad of paper and a pen and making notations during conversations. Feel free to let them know you just are feeling so "forgetful" these days that you want to record their words for posterity’s sake. The damndest thing about this is that having to do such a thing is a clear example for why you should be seriously thinking about removing yourself from range in the first place. If you’re toting a notebook to safeguard yourself - that ol’ bullshit meter should be flashing steady by now!

4
Guilt. Emotional manipulators are excellent guilt mongers. They can make you feel guilty for speaking up or not speaking up, for being emotional or not being emotional enough, for giving and caring, or for not giving and caring enough. Any thing is fair game and open to guilt with an emotional manipulator. Emotional manipulators seldom express their needs or desires openly - they get what they want through emotional manipulation. Guilt is not the only form of this but it is a potent one. Most of us are pretty conditioned to do whatever is necessary to reduce our feelings of guilt. Another powerful emotion that is used is sympathy. An emotional manipulator is a great victim. They inspire a profound sense of needing to support, care for and nurture. Emotional Manipulators seldom fight their own fights or do their own dirty work. The crazy thing is that when you do it for them (which they will never ask directly for), they may just turn around and say they certainly didn’t want or expect you to do anything! Try to make a point of not fighting other people’s battles, or doing their dirty work for them. A great line is "I have every confidence in your ability to work this out on your own" - check out the response and note the bullshit meter once again.

5
Emotional manipulators fight dirty. They don’t deal with things directly. They will talk around behind your back and eventually put others in the position of telling you what they would not say themselves. They are passive aggressive, meaning they find subtle ways of letting you know they are not happy little campers. They’ll tell you what they think you want to hear and then do a bunch of jerk off shit to undermine it. Example: "Of course I want you to go back to school honey and you know I’ll support you." Then exam night you are sitting at the table and poker buddies show up, the kids are crying the t.v. blasting and the dog needs walking - all the while "Sweetie" is sitting on their ass looking at you blankly. Dare you call them on such behavior you are likely to hear, "well you can’t expect life to just stop because you have an exam can you honey?" Cry, scream or choke ‘em - only the last will have any long-term benefits and it’ll probably wind your butt in jail.

6
If you have a headache an emotional manipulator will have a brain tumor! No matter what your situation is the emotional manipulator has probably been there or is there now - but only ten times worse. It’s hard after a period of time to feel emotionally connected to an emotional manipulator because they have a way of de-railing conversations and putting the spotlight back on themselves. If you call them on this behavior they will likely become deeply wounded or very petulant and call you selfish - or claim that it is you who are always in the spotlight. The thing is that even tho you know this is not the case you are left with the impossible task of proving it. Don’t bother - TRUST your gut and walk away!

7
Emotional manipulators somehow have the ability to impact the emotional climate of those around them. When an emotional manipulator is sad or angry the very room thrums with it - it brings a deep instinctual response to find someway to equalize the emotional climate and the quickest route is by making the emotional manipulator feel better - fixing whatever is broken for them. Stick with this type of loser for too long and you will be so enmeshed and co-dependent you will forget you even have needs - let alone that you have just as much right to have your needs met.

8
Emotional manipulators have no sense of accountability. They take no responsibility for themselves or their behavior - it is always about what everyone else has "done to them". One of the easiest ways to spot an emotional manipulator is that they often attempt to establish intimacy through the early sharing of deeply personal information that is generally of the "hook-you-in-and-make-you-sorry-for-me" variety. Initially you may perceive this type of person as very sensitive, emotionally open and maybe a little vulnerable. Believe me when I say that an emotional manipulator is about as vulnerable as a rabid pit bull, and there will always be a problem or a crisis to overcome.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/6WapOg/:1X@w!PHm+:WGzUURGR/www.cassiopaea.com/cassiopaea/emotional_manipulation.htm/

45 Life Lessons Written By A 90 Year Old

1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.

2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.

3. Life is too short not to enjoy it.

4. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and family will.

5. Don’t buy stuff you don’t need.

6. You don’t have to win every argument. Stay true to yourself.

7. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.

8. It’s OK to get angry with God. He can take it.

9. Save for things that matter.

10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.

12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry.

13. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.

14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.

15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye… But don’t worry; God never blinks.

16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.

17. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful. Clutter weighs you down in many ways.

18. Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.

19. It’s never too late to be happy. But it’s all up to you and no one else.

20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.

21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

22. Overprepare, then go with the flow.

23. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.

24. The most important sex organ is the brain.

25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.

26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words, ‘In five years, will this matter?’

27. Always choose Life.

28. Forgive but don’t forget.

29. What other people think of you is none of your business.

30. Time heals almost everything. Give Time time.

31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.

32. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

33. Believe in miracles.

34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn’t do.

35. Don’t audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.

36. Growing old beats the alternative — dying young.

37. Your children get only one childhood.

38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.

40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d
grab ours back.

41. Envy is a waste of time. Accept what you already have, not what you think you need.

42. The best is yet to come…

43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

44. Yield.

45. Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.

http://kangalex.com/post/31729006624/45-life-lessons-written-by-a-90-year-old

http://kangalex.com/

Born Rich, Born Greedy

Research suggests that the upper classes are more morally ambivalent than the rest of us. Or, to put it more bluntly, they’re a thieving bunch of recidivists with the ethical inclinations of a polecat in a henhouse.

Adam Smith predicted this years ago, and skewered the argument that many make in favour of predatory capitalism – that self-interest is the best way to allocate capital. A little enlightenment may come in useful for those wanting to debate the issue.

Hypocrites and Economists

We’ve already seen a bunch of research which shows that education, position and training is predictive of people’s ethical attitude to money. For example, in Game On: Basel III the research by Lammers, Stapel and Galinsky describes how more powerful people are perfectly secure in their own hypocrisy, routinely condemning the behavior of people less powerful than themselves, while seeing nothing wrong in engaging in it themselves.

Meanwhile, in Studying Economics Makes You Mean the evidence suggested that people with an education in economics were more likely to behave in the less than altruistic way that their subject predicts – a fairly clear case of reflexivity in action, where the respondents were able to use the justifications of self-interest developed by their education to defend themselves against accusations of unethical behavior.

Self-Interested Discourse

If you start looking around you’ll find that the financial industry is beset by these types of discourses: the original economic argument by Adam Smith that enlightened self-interest was the best form of economic governance has mutated into an academic justification for unethical behavior. Sadly, “enlightened self-interest” isn’t exactly an easily understood term. Perhaps the closest we can get to this is the idea that we can get others to do what we want by appealing to the things that they want. As Smith puts it in The Wealth of Nations:

“But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of.”

This type of self-interest isn’t the same as that frequently quoted by people within the markets seeking to justify screwing over some section of society: you can’t simply look to your own interests and ride roughshod over anyone else and argue that this is in everyone’s best interests, because it’s not. You need to offer others what they want in order to get what you want; it's called "trade".

Upbringing is Everything

In fact the research showing that an economics education makes people more self-interested wouldn’t have been surprising to Adam Smith either: he was convinced that the differences in the way that people behave was dictated by upbringing and education, and couldn’t possibly be determined by anything innate:

“The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education. When they came into the world, and for the first six or eight years of their existence, they were perhaps, very much alike, and neither their parents nor playfellows could perceive any remarkable difference. About that age, or soon after, they come to be employed in very different occupations. The difference of talents comes then to be taken notice of, and widens by degrees, till at last the vanity of the philosopher is willing to acknowledge scarce any resemblance. But without the disposition to truck, barter, and exchange, every man must have procured to himself every necessary and conveniency of life which he wanted.”

So recent research by Paul Piff and colleagues, Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior, wouldn’t have come as a shock to Smith, indeed he’d probably have been expecting it. The range of studies covered a whole range of less ethical behaviors from upper class individuals, including quite literally taking candy from babies. Neatly, though, in the last reported study the experimenters made the idea of “greed is good” salient to the lower class individuals by priming them, and promptly found that they behaved just as antisocially as their upper class compadres: leading to the idea that this is the default state of mind for the latter group.

Why Oh Why

Quite why social class inclines people to a greed is good mentality is hard to say, but a couple of theories revolve around social dependency and education. The social dependency argument is that upper class people tend to be more financially independent and have less need to rely on other people to help them through their lives – and, in Smith’s formulation, if you don’t have to rely on the enlightened self-interest of others then there’s no reason you should show it yourself.

The education argument is related to this: upper class individuals are more likely to have a received an education and an upbringing that emphasises the philosophical heart of modern economics; self-interest is good. As the researchers comment:

“Unethical behavior in the service of self-interest that enhances the individual’s wealth and rank may be a self-perpetuating dynamic that further exacerbates economic disparities in society, a fruitful topic for the future study of social class.”

In commentary about this research many people have drawn the conclusion that higher status equals higher wealth and have seen a direct connection with the inequitable returns extracted by bank employees in particular and chief executives in general and the evidence presented. Obviously the relationship isn’t that direct, many self-made men and women have worked their way into these types of positions without being noticeably less altruistic than anyone else.

Primed For Instability

The clue to this is probably the evidence on priming: working in an environment that emphasises financial rewards as your main goal is going to provide a constant stream of reminders that you need to act in your own self-interest. This is almost certainly exacerbated by the fundamental instability of life in the financial industry: as we saw in the The Business of Capital is Bust, the anthropologist Karen Ho has studied Wall Street from the inside:

“I had bankers telling me, "I might not be at my job next year so I'm going to make sure to get the biggest bonus possible." I had bankers who advised the AOL–Time Warner merger saying, "Oh, gosh, this might not work out, but I probably won't be here when it doesn't work out." I looked at them like, "What?" Their temporality is truncated.”

Put people in an environment where self-interest is rampant and where everyone is out for whatever they can get while they still can and you'll see the idea of enlightenment fly out of the window. Educate someone to believe this is true as a philosophy of life and you'll get the same result. Upper class people care less about the rest of us because that's the way they've been brought up, while economists are trained to believe it and traders are institutionalised to live it. For the rest of us, our enlightened self-interest should dictate that we avoid them all.

After all, the only way to really deal with a polecat is to keep it out of the henhouse. Either shoot it or build a bigger fence: but don't bother negotiating with it, it won't understand what you're talking about.

http://www.psyfitec.com/2012/06/born-rich-born-greedy.html/

Hypnosis For Weddings...

Imagine a stress-free wedding. It can actually happen. Brides and grooms are able to relieve wedding day stress through hypnotherapy. Your wedding day can be the day you've always dreamed of - without all the added worries!

The amount of pressure on brides to be perfect is enormous, especially on what they are told simply must be the happiest day of their life. In reality, we all know that weddings are a time of stress and preparation – the speeches, the wedding dance, entering a new life, a new family, and don’t forget the stress of the expense. 

These days, couples are turning to the newest component of wedding planning, a hypnotherapist.

“Spring is one of my busiest times as brides and grooms come for hypnotherapy to overcome fear of speaking, dancing, and to overcome social phobias. These are things most of us are rarely called upon to do,” says Dr. Georgina Cannon, Master Clinical Hypnotherapist at Toronto’s Hypnosis Centre.

Hypnosis allows upcoming brides and grooms the opportunity to overcome wedding day stresses including fear of public speaking (speeches), social phobias (being centre of attention), fear of flying (honeymoon), weight loss (the bride has to look great in that dress), and more. This type of hypnotherapy assisted numerous couples in pulling off great events by using the subconscious to retrain the mind to accept the attention and to gain confidence in speaking and more.

The ensuing stress is why many brides and grooms are turning to hypnotherapists for help. Many hypnotherapists see couples prior to their big event, helping them to download the enormous pressure. Hypnotherapy offers bridezillas and groomzillas some very inventive ideas that can be used throughout the day to help de-stress.

In sessions with couples, a good hypnotherapist should offer a tool-box of subliminal suggestions that help the couple relax and enjoy their day.

1, 2, 3 Relax:

1. The bride and groom receive suggestions so that they automatically de-stress as they speak their vows.
2. The words “I do” can be a suggestion to bring them into deep relaxation.
3. The hypnotherapist can plant a suggestion so the bride and groom become more and more relaxed as the do their wedding dance.
4. The bride’s bouquet can be a focus to relax breath and walk in balance.
5. The groom can pre-plan to have his bride be the focus during his speech so that looking at her will make him relax.
6. Before the wedding, play a self hypnosis relaxation CD.
7. Don’t sweat the small stuff – no one really cares of the lining of the envelope matches the flowers or not.  This is not a day to be perfect, it is a day to be loved and loving.
   
   
   http://www.hypnotherapyarticles.com/ArtG/articleg00043.htm
   http://www.hypnotherapyarticles.com/index.html

Weight Gain Linked To Personality Change

A new study based on a long-term data from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has found a connection between weight gain and changes to personality traits.

“We know a great deal about how personality traits contribute to weight gain,” said the study’s lead author Angelina Sutin of the Florida State University College of Medicine. “What we don’t know is whether significant changes in weight are associated with changes in our core personality traits. Weight can be such an emotional issue; we thought that weight gain may lead to long-term changes in psychological functioning.”

The study was recently published in the journal Psychological Science and included over 1,900 people from NIH’s Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging and the Baltimore Epidemiologic Catchment Area study. The researchers used data about participants’ personality traits and their body weight that were collected at two points a decade apart.

An analysis of the data revealed a connection between a minimum 10 percent increase in body weight and an increase in impulsiveness compared to those who recorded minimal weight change. The data was unable to show a direct cause-and-effect relationship, but they do reveal a link between a person’s physiology and their behavior.

The researchers also found an increase in deliberation among those who had gained weight, marked by a greater propensity to think longer about their decisions. While the tendency for deliberation tends to increase as a person progresses into adulthood, the increase was almost twice as much for participants who gained weight compared to those who kept a stable body weight.

“If mind and body are intertwined, then if one changes the other should change too,” Sutin said. “That’s what our findings suggest.”

The researchers theorized that this connection between weight and increased deliberation could be the result of perceived negative feedback from those around them. The weight gain could be giving people increased anxiety surrounding eating or social situations, they said.

Taken together, the findings suggest that those who gain weight are more conscious of their decision-making, yet still have difficulty resisting temptations.

“The inability to control cravings may reinforce a vicious cycle that weakens the self-control muscle,” the researchers wrote. “Yielding to temptation today may reduce the ability to resist cravings tomorrow. Thus, individuals who gain weight may have increased risk for additional weight gain through changes in their personality.”

Strategies to combat weight gain often focus on either the physiological or the psychological, but these results could suggest a more holistic approach.

In writing a column for the Tampa Bay Times, psychiatrist Dr. Lavinia Rodriguez advises that ‘last resort’ procedures like gastric bypass should be accompanied by addressing any psychological issues that may have caused the weight gain in the first place.

“When patients regain weight after bariatric surgery, it’s usually because of psychological issues,” Rodriguez wrote. “It’s not always deep-seated problems that stand in the way of success, but seemingly simple things like perfectionism, attitudes about exercise, and other common issues.”

She recommends that these patients pursue a common-sense fitness and diet regimen after undergoing surgery.

Or how about hypnosis?

http://healnowtherapyhypnosis.blogspot.mx/2012/01/how-to-lose-weight-with-hypnosis.html

http://healnowtherapyhypnosis.blogspot.mx/2011/10/lose-weight-with-hypnosis.html

http://healnowtherapyhypnosis.blogspot.mx/2011/12/gastric-band-hypnosis-could-it-make-you.html

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1112838948/weight-gain-linked-to-personality-changes-050613/

http://www.redorbit.com/

How To Get Over A Breakup

Breakups can be devastating to our emotional health, we stop eating, we cant think straight, we cant sleep, we feel physical pain - our entire lives are turned upside down. A breakup is a breakdown of our security, a blow to our ego, a rejection in the biggest and most personal way possible. Sometimes a breakup is amicable, sometimes it is one person breaking away, sometimes there is a third party involved - but it is always a big change that each individual has to cope with, yet so many of us struggle. Change is difficult, rejection is difficult, relationships are difficult. Without a strategy to get over a breakup there is a good chance of becoming stuck in a limbo of sorts, where perhaps the relationship is rekindled and broken several times despite there being obvious flaws, and the relationship is drawn out into a much longer, slower and ultimately more painful death.

1. Think through everything thoroughly, but not obsessively. Go ahead and mull it over, as many times as necessary, within reason. Consider all the reasons you two broke up. Even if it sometimes seems as if there wasn't a good reason, there certainly was one - and probably more than one. Understand that you enjoyed being together for a while, but if the relationship was not what both you and your partner wanted for life, it would have ended eventually, no matter what. In this case, better sooner than later. Thinking about the reasons why it ended can make it much clearer to you that it takes two people to start a relationship, but just one discordant person is enough to end it. It may also help you avoid many missteps in the future if you can identify areas where you contributed to the demise of the relationship.

2. Don't rethink your decision. If the breakup was your decision, keep in mind that only thinking about all the good times you had with your partner may cause you to forget the reasons why you broke it off. By the same token, try not to second-guess the situation if the decision to end things was not yours. It's very common to romanticize the good parts of the relationship, convincing yourself that maybe the bad parts weren't so bad after all, that maybe you could just live with them. Or that maybe if your ex would know just how you feel, he/she wouldn't want to break up after all. Don't play this game with yourself. Accept the situation and work on moving forward.

3. Keep your space. Even if you and your ex have decided to stay friends, break away completely from each other right after the breakup. This means not seeing each other, not being around his/her family members, no phone calls, no e-mails, no text messages, no Facebook, and no IMs - not necessarily as a permanent measure, but until you feel that you can converse with him/her on a purely platonic level, without an ulterior motive (and yes, wanting to get back together counts as an ulterior motive). If he/she tries to convince you to see him/her, ask yourself honestly what the point would be. If you're reliving the past by seeing him/her, it's not hard to get caught up in the moment and it will be harder to let go again. You may have to have some contact in order to deal with the practical aspects of things like moving out, signing papers, etc., but try to limit this to what's absolutely necessary, and then keep such calls/meetings short and civil.

4. Cope with the pain appropriately. It's okay to feel like you have messed up - accepting responsibility for your mistakes or shortcomings is healthy. On the other hand, you must also accept that you are a good person, and that you did your best and you're not the only one who made mistakes. Of course, a stage of denial is completely natural, but acceptance is the key to being able to start moving on.

5. Deal with the hate phase. This is when you want to just scream because your rage feels boundless. The amount of anger you feel depends on how antagonistic the split was, the circumstances, and how long it took to make the final break. You may resent your ex for wasting your time. You may realize that the breakup was inevitable (hindsight will reveal clues you failed to notice at the time). You may even feel a lot of anger towards yourself, but let go of that feeling fast! It's a waste of time and energy to rip yourself apart over something you no longer have the power to change. There are so many positive things you can do with your emotions and energy. Although it may feel good to replace your feelings of love towards your ex with hate, this can still lead to complications and mixed emotions of love and hate which are never a good thing.

6. Talk to your friends. You want people around you who love you and who will help you feel good about yourself. Surrounding yourself with compassionate, supportive friends and family will help you see yourself as a worthwhile person, and you'll find it easier to get steady on your feet again with your loved ones around you in a comforting net.

7. Write all your feelings down. Write in a journal or try writing poems. The most important thing is to be absolutely honest and don't edit yourself as you go. One of the best results of writing it all down is that sometimes you will be amazed by a sudden insight that comes to you as you are pouring it all out onto paper. Patterns may become clearer, and as your grieving begins to lessen, you will find it so much easier to understand valuable life lessons from the whole experience if you've been writing your way through it. No relationship is ever a failure if you manage to learn something about yourself. Just because it didn't work out doesn't mean it wasn't a necessary part of your journey to becoming who you're meant to be.

8. Make a list of reminders. One of the best tricks to help you stick to your resolve is to make a list of all the reasons your ex was not the one for you. Be ruthless and clear––this is not the time to be forgiving. What you're doing is creating a picture for yourself that will call up an emotional response when you feel tempted to think that "maybe if you just did this or that, it would work out..." Write down what happened and how it made you feel, being clear about the things you never want to feel again. When you find yourself missing your ex in a weak moment, and think you might actually be getting too close to the telephone, get out this list, read it over a couple times, and then talk to yourself, "This is the truth of what it was like. Why would I want to go back and torture myself again?" If you're caught in a low-self-esteem trap, thinking you don't deserve better, imagine this happening to a friend of yours, and think what you would say to your friend: "Get as far away as you can! That relationship was no good for you!"

9. Out with the old, in with the new. A breakup can signify a new beginning. Therefore, cleaning and organizing your personal space will leave you feeling refreshed and prepared for the new things to come. A mess can be overwhelming and depressing, and will just add to your stress level. The added bonus is that keeping busy with tidying your space doesn't require a lot of brain power, but does require just enough focus to keep you from recycling pain. Occupying yourself with such tasks designed to make your life better and easier will also occupy your mind enough to help you through the residual pain. Clean your room, get some new posters, clean up the icons on your PC desktop. As insignificant as cleaning up sounds, it'll make you feel better.

10. Remove memory triggers. There are all kinds of things that remind you of your ex––a song, a smell, a sound, a place. Once the grieving period has had some time to process, don't dwell on painful feelings or memories. There are probably things that are pushing your buttons without your conscious recognition. Try walking around each room in your house with a box and removing things that make your heart ache or your stomach turn. Really focus and look carefully. You may realize that the little blue bird-shaped box sitting on the mantel has become pretty invisible for the last couple years, but when you take a conscious look at it, you notice that every time you turn towards that corner of the room and it catches your eye, you feel a sharp little pain in your solar plexus. It can work wonders to clear your space of all these triggers. If you have a keepsake, such as a watch or piece of jewellery that was given to you by your ex, and it's a reminder of the good aspects of your relationship, there's nothing wrong with keeping such a thing, but for the time being, try putting it away for later, when you've given yourself some time and space. Put these reminders far away from you, such as in a box in a place you'll never go. Out of sight, out of mind.

11. Find happiness in other areas of your life. Whether that means spending time with your friends and family, signing up for that class you've always wanted to take, or reading every book on the New York Times bestseller list, remind yourself that a relationship is one part of life, but even when you are in one, there are personal pleasures that you can always enjoy on your own. Indulge in those things now. As they say, the best revenge is living well.

12. Stay active. Exercise improves your mood and alleviates depression, and the distraction will help keep your mind off your situation. Go running outside, visit (or join) the gym, or just go for a walk, maybe with a friend, and think of releasing the anger or sadness with every step. If you don't exercise regularly, here are some ways to motivate yourself to work out:

13. Let go of the negative emotions. Understand that there is no benefit in holding on to heartache, regret, and hatred toward another person. Realize that although it is over, your relationship with that person was unique and special in a lot of ways. You can congratulate yourself for being brave enough to take a risk and fall in love, and encourage your heart that even though love didn't work out this time, there will be a next time.

14. Remind yourself of the negative things. Not necessarily all negative, but the "turn-offs" of that person. For example, the less attractive you find them, the quicker you'll get over them. Your mentality has to strictly be all bad characteristics about this person, without sounding hateful, or "hating" on this person. (Ex. his/her hair always had a funny smell to it, he/she never brushed his teeth, he/she never bought anything for my birthday, he/she had the ugliest smile I've ever seen, he/she had the most annoying laugh, ETC).

More Tips:

• Stop telling "the story." How many times this week did you tell "the story" about how badly you were hurt and how horribly you were wronged? How many times a day do you think about this hurt? It is a stake driven into the ground that keeps you from moving away from this hurt.
• If your ex has left you for another person then ask yourself: If s/he said s/he wanted you back, would you really want him or her? Would you ever trust him/her not to break your heart again? Would you be hurt, angry, distrustful when s/he is 10 minutes late calling you, wondering where she is, who he is with? Though you may believe that the answer to all your prayers would be a reconciliation with your ex, if it did happen, you might find that Mr. Spock from Star Trek was right when he said "You may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, aswanting. It is not logical, but it is often true."
• Write a letter to your ex, but do not send it. Sometimes it just helps to get all of your feelings out. However, sending it is not a good idea. This letter is just for you, so write out everything you wish you could have said and be done with it. It doesn't do any good to rehash the breakup over and over again, so just pretend you are telling them how you feel for the last time. Tell them how they hurt you. It doesn't hurt to look back on the relationship and analyze how you changed for the better because of it! Tell them that too. This can help you let go of them, and realize that your relationship did have some positive effects. Ultimately, they make you who you are today.
• Remember that your ex may be trying to get over you, as well. Be sensitive to that, and keep your distance. If you've decided to stop seeing one another, do just that: stop.
• Write a story. Think back to when your relationship with this person began, and document it from beginning to end. This may be very painful, but it will give you a broader perspective. When you get to the final chapter, finish off on a positive note and write "The End". If you're writing in a notebook, close it forcefully, take a deep breath, and put it on a bookshelf. If you wrote on loose leaf papers, fold them, put them in an envelope, and seal it. You may choose to keep the story, or you may choose to shred it or burn it. The very act of documenting your relationship and closing the book, however, will help you find closure emotionally.
• Have a symbolic ceremony. People still hold funerals for the deceased whose bodies were never found, and you can still have a formal way to say goodbye to relationships that were never resolved. Gather all of the things that remind you of this person and burn them, or donate them to charity. Give a eulogy to the relationship, and say it out loud.
• Keep your dignity. Many times, it's our own ego that causes the pain; we feel rejected and deceived, embarrassed. We doubt our self worth and adequacy. A breakup, especially one in which your partner has cheated on you, can really undermine your self-confidence and shake your self-esteem to the core. Help rebuild your inner stability by impressing yourself with accomplishment - volunteer, take a class, do things that remind you of your value as a person.
• Make a list of the good things that emerged as a result of this relationship. Look at the problem from a completely new angle; look at the positive side. See if you can identify 10 positive outcomes of this experience.

Warnings

• After some time passes (how much time depends on the length and/or intensity of your relationship and how dependent you let yourself become on your ex), you will start to feel better. This does not mean that you should jump into another relationship right away, especially a serious one. Take it easy. You have all the time in the world to feel better, and just because you meet a nice guy/girl does not mean you should get involved. Your emotions may still be unstable and the first person you meet may get a version of you that is not completely healed. It may even take years to heal from your past relationship.
• Watch for stalking or menacing behaviors, and if you notice anything, report them to the police immediately. This person is probably just difficult and not dangerous. But don't take any chances. If necessary, get a restraining or protective order and call the police each and every time it's violated; you will need the paper trail.
• If you find yourselfcompulsively checking your ex's MySpace, Facebook, or any other social networking profile, help yourself out and use a program or browser extension to block the URL to that profile. It also helps to take them off your friends list. Even if things ended on a clean slate, it can be too painful or uncomfortable to see what the other person is up to.

http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Over-a-Break-Up

ADHD A 'Fictitious Disease'?

Fortunately, the Swiss National Advisory Commission on Biomedical Ethics (NEK, President: Otfried Höffe) critically commented on the use of the ADHD drug Ritalin in its opinion on 22 November 2011 titled Human enhancement by means of pharmacological agents: The consumption of pharmacological agents altered the child’s behavior without any contribution on his or her part.

That amounted to interference in the child’s freedom and personal rights, because pharmacological agents induced behavioral changes but failed to educate the child on how to achieve these behavioral changes independently. The child was thus deprived of an essential learning experience to act autonomously and emphatically which “considerably curtails children’s freedom and impairs their personality development”, the NEK criticized.

The alarmed critics of the Ritalin disaster are now getting support from an entirely different side. The German weekly Der Spiegel quoted in its cover story on 2 February 2012 the US American psychiatrist Leon Eisenberg, born in 1922 as the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, who was the “scientific father of ADHD” and who said at the age of 87, seven months before his death in his last interview: “ADHD is a prime example of a fictitious disease”

Since 1968, however, some 40 years, Leon Eisenberg’s “disease” haunted the diagnostic and statistical manuals, first as “hyperkinetic reaction of childhood”, now called “ADHD”. The use of ADHD medications in Germany rose in only eighteen years from 34 kg (in 1993) to a record of no less than 1760 kg (in 2011) – which is a 51-fold increase in sales! In the United States every tenth boy among ten year-olds already swallows an ADHD medication on a daily basis. With an increasing tendency.

When it comes to the proven repertoire of Edward Bernays, the father of propaganda, to sell the First World War to his people with the help of his uncle’s psychoanalysis and to distort science and the faith in science to increase profits of the industry – what about investigating on whose behalf the “scientific father of ADHD” conducted science? His career was remarkably steep, and his “fictitious disease” led to the best sales increases. And after all, he served in the “Committee for DSM V and ICD XII, American Psychiatric Association” from 2006 to 2009. After all, Leon Eisenberg received “the Ruane Prize for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Research. He has been a leader in child psychiatry for more than 40 years through his work in pharmacological trials, research, teaching, and social policy and for his theories of autism and social medicine”.

And after all, Eisenberg was a member of the “Organizing Committee for Women and Medicine Conference, Bahamas, November 29 – December 3, 2006, Josiah Macy Foundation (2006)”. The Josiah Macy Foundation organized conferences with intelligence agents of the OSS, later CIA, such as Gregory Bateson and Heinz von Foerster during and long after World War II. Have such groups marketed the diagnosis of ADHD in the service of the pharmaceutical market and tailor-made for him with a lot of propaganda and public relations? It is this issue that the American psychologist Lisa Cosgrove and others investigated in their study Financial Ties between DSM-IV Panel Members and the Pharmaceutical Industry7. They found that “Of the 170 DSM panel members 95 (56%) had one or more financial associations with companies in the pharmaceutical industry. One hundred percent of the members of the panels on ‘Mood Disorders’ and ‘Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders’ had financial ties to drug companies. The connections are especially strong in those diagnostic areas where drugs are the first line of treatment for mental disorders.” In the next edition of the manual, the situation is unchanged. “Of the 137 DSM-V panel members who have posted disclosure statements, 56% have reported industry ties – no improvement over the percent of DSM-IV members.” “The very vocabulary of psychiatry is now defined at all levels by the pharmaceutical industry,” said Dr Irwin Savodnik, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California at Los Angeles.

This is well paid. Just one example: The Assistant Director of the Pediatric Psychopharmacology Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School received “$1 million in earnings from drug companies between 2000 and 2007”. In any case, no one can easily get around the testimony of the father of ADHD: “ADHD is a prime example of a fictitious disease.”

The task of psychologists, educators and doctors is not to put children on the “chemical lead” because the entire society cannot handle the products of its misguided theories of man and raising children, and instead hands over our children to the free pharmaceutical market. Let us return to the basic matter of personal psychology and education: The child is to acquire personal responsibility and emphatic behavior under expert guidance – and that takes the family and the school: In these fields, the child should be able to lead off mentally. This constitutes the core of the human person.

http://one-vibration.com/profiles/blog/show?id=2127676%3ABlogPost%3A1228002&xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_post#.UZgBqqKkpeW

http://one-vibration.com/

VIDEO Jeffrey Dahmer: The Monster Within

INFOGRAPHIC: Psychology of Colour

http://nowsourcing.com/

http://nowsourcing.com/2012/01/31/the-psychology-of-color/

Highway Hypnosis

When most of us get into our cars to make our daily commute home from work, a different state of mind begins to set in. We relax a bit. We start drifting. We’re kind of “blank.” Enter the state of highway hypnosis. So what is highway hypnosis exactly? Here is our definitive answer. Enjoy!

The feelings we often have during our commutes to and from work where we zone out are referred to as “dissociative experiences.” When we’re making turns, using our blinkers, going forward when the light turns green – all while not being aware of it – we are in a state of hypnosis.

When does it happen?

Dissociative experiences normally occur when we are driving long distances or at highway speeds, driving during sleep hours, or if we are under stress or fatigued. Dissociation can happen while we are reading a book, watching television, attending school or even listening directly to someone. When we ask, “what is highway hypnosis?” we need to realize that we are present, but also mentally detached and less aware of what we are doing.

What is it not?

Highway hypnosis is not the same as driving while tired. Whereas the body begins to shut down for sleep when tired, with highway hypnosis, the mind can be fully functional, driving the vehicle, and yet not be aware of the experience when the drive is over. “Wow, that was a fast trip!” you might say. If you experienced the trip differently on the way back versus on the way to, it is because you were in a different mental state.

Highway hypnosis is not the same as daydreaming. When we daydream, we are creating imaginary scenarios with the creative parts of the brain. With highway hypnosis, we are performing the task of driving, going through the motions without being aware of those motions.

Is highway hypnosis a bad thing?

It’s not necessarily bad, but it can be dangerous because we are not as mentally alert as we should be while driving, so we want to reduce the likelihood that highway hypnosis occurs.

How can we avoid highway hypnosis?

The best way to avoid highway hypnosis is to get a full night’s rest, eat healthy meals; drink plenty of water throughout the day and exercise regularly, keeping stress levels low. By doing these simple tasks, you will keep your mind and body functioning at a higher level, staying more alert, ready to react to anything on the road in the appropriate timing and manner.

The most important thing you need to know is realizing when highway hypnosis is happening in order to help you avoid the potential pitfalls.

http://www.arizonahypnotherapyclinic.com/what-is-highway-hypnosis/blog-43/

http://www.arizonahypnotherapyclinic.com/

How Foetuses Learn Language

Babies are born with the ability to recognise familiar sounds and language patterns, according to new research. A glimpse into the fast-moving minds of infants.

Mastering a foreign language can be a frustrating experience and one that gets harder as we age. The younger you start, the easier it seems to be.

Now researchers in the US and Sweden have found evidence that we start learning language before we're even born.

The study discovered that in the last 10 weeks of pregnancy, foetuses are listening to their mothers communicate. And when they are born, they can show what they've heard.

Forty baby boys and girls - about 30 hours old - were randomly exposed to different vowel sounds that are unique to either English or Swedish. They included the English "e" sound in sweet or the Swedish "eu" sound that is comparable to oeuf, the French word for eggs.

The babies' response to each sound was measured by the strength of their sucking on a pacifier connected to a computer.

In each group, the babies sucked hardest when they heard the vowels representing the foreign language. The American babies sucked harder when they heard Swedish vowels and the Swedish babies sucked harder when they heard English vowels.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

The foetus in the last ten weeks is not only listening, is not only taking note of the sounds, but remembering and learning them”

Patricia KuhlInstitue for Learning and Brain Science

The results indicate that babies are born with the ability to distinguish different languages and are curious enough to explore the language that is unfamiliar, says Patricia Kuhl. She is one of the study's authors and co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington.

"Babies are learning when they're still in the womb," she says.

"We're showing that the foetus in the last ten weeks, when we know that the auditory system is fully working, is not only listening, is not only taking note of the sounds, but remembering and learning them."

But parents who think they can accelerate the process by exposing their unborn child to an intensive audio course in Greek or Farsi might be doing more harm than good.

Babies born to bilingual mothers have shown they can equally accommodate two or more languages - but that ability is acquired through natural exposure.

"We would caution (against) adding extra things to listen to because foetuses spend most of their time in a sleep state and we don't know what providing extra stimulation - particularly loud stimulation from a loudspeaker outside the womb - might do to that developing sleep-wake cycle," says Christine Moon, the study's lead author and professor of psychology at Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington.

"We also know that too much sound can disrupt the ability to hear and may disrupt the connections that are being made in the auditory cortex, not just the ability to get sound but the ability to make sense of the sound."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22457797

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/

VIDEO Manufacturing Consent: Thought Control In A Democratic Society

15 Styles Of Distorted Thinking

1. Filtering: You take the negative details and magnify them, while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. A single detail may be picked out, and the whole event becomes coloured by this detail. When you pull negative things out of context, isolated from all the good experiences around you, you make them larger and more awful than they really are.

2. Polarized Thinking: The hallmark of this distortion is an insistence on dichotomous choices. Things are black or white, good or bad. You tend to perceive everything at the extremes, with very little room for a middle ground. The greatest danger in polarized thinking is its impact on how you judge yourself. For example-You have to be perfect or you're a failure.

3. Overgeneralization: You come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or piece of evidence. If something bad happens once, you expect it to happen over and over again. 'Always' and 'never' are cues that this style of thinking is being utilized. This distortion can lead to a restricted life, as you avoid future failures based on the single incident or event.

4. Mind Reading: Without their saying so, you know what people are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, you are able to define how people are feeling toward you. Mind reading depends on a process called projection. You imagine that people feel the same way you do and react to things the same way you do. Therefore, you don't watch or listen carefully enough to notice that they are actually different. Mind readers jump to conclusions that are true for them, without checking whether they are true for the other person.

5. Catastrophizing: You expect disaster. You notice or hear about a problem and start "what if's." What if that happens to me? What if tragedy strikes? There are no limits to a really fertile catastrophic imagination. An underlying catalyst for this style of thinking is that you do not trust in yourself and your capacity to adapt to change.

6. Personalization: This is the tendency to relate everything around you to yourself. For example, thinking that everything people do or say is some kind of reaction to you. You also compare yourself to others, trying to determine who's smarter, better looking, etc. The underlying assumption is that your worth is in question. You are therefore continually forced to test your value as a person by measuring yourself against others. If you come out better, you get a moment's relief. If you come up short, you feel diminished. The basic thinking error is that you interpret each experience, each conversation, each look as a clue to your worth and value.

7. Control Fallacies: There are two ways you can distort your sense of power and control. If you feel externally controlled, you see yourself as helpless, a victim of fate. The fallacy of internal control has you responsible for the pain and happiness of everyone around you. Feeling externally controlled keeps you stuck. You don't believe you can really affect the basic shape of your life, let alone make any difference in the world. The truth of the matter is that we are constantly making decisions, and that every decision affects our lives. On the other hand, the fallacy of internal control leaves you exhausted as you attempt to fill the needs of everyone around you, and feel responsible in doing so (and guilty when you cannot).

8. Fallacy of Fairness: You feel resentful because you think you know what's fair, but other people won't agree with you. Fairness is so conveniently defined, so temptingly self-serving, that each person gets locked into his or her own point of view. It is tempting to make assumptions about how things would change if people were only fair or really valued you. But the other person hardly ever sees it that way, and you end up causing yourself a lot of pain and an ever-growing resentment.

9. Blaming: You hold other people responsible for your pain, or take the other tack and blame yourself for every problem. Blaming often involves making someone else responsible for choices and decisions that are actually our own responsibility. In blame systems, you deny your right (and responsibility) to assert your needs, say no, or go elsewhere for what you want.

10. Shoulds: You have a list of ironclad rules about how you and other people should act. People who break the rules anger you, and you feel guilty if you violate the rules. The rules are right and indisputable and, as a result, you are often in the position of judging and finding fault (in yourself and in others). Cue words indicating the presence of this distortion are should, ought, and must.

11. Emotional Reasoning: You believe that what you feel must be true-automatically. If you feel stupid or boring, then you must be stupid and boring. If you feel guilty, then you must have done something wrong. The problem with emotional reasoning is that our emotions interact and correlate with our thinking process. Therefore, if you have distorted thoughts and beliefs, your emotions will reflect these distortions.

12. Fallacy of Change: You expect that other people will change to suit you if you just pressure or cajole them enough. You need to change people because your hopes for happiness seem to depend entirely on them. The truth is the only person you can really control or have much hope of changing is yourself. The underlying assumption of this thinking style is that your happiness depends on the actions of others. Your happiness actually depends on the thousands of large and small choices you make in your life.

13. Global Labeling: You generalize one or two qualities (in yourself or others) into a negative global judgment. Global labeling ignores all contrary evidence, creating a view of the world that can be stereotyped and one-dimensional. Labeling yourself can have a negative and insidious impact upon your self-esteem; while labeling others can lead to snap-judgments, relationship problems, and prejudice.

14. Being Right: You feel continually on trial to prove that your opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and you will go to any length to demonstrate your rightness. Having to be 'right' often makes you hard of hearing. You aren't interested in the possible veracity of a differing opinion, only in defending your own. Being right becomes more important than an honest and caring relationship.

15. Heaven's Reward Fallacy: You expect all your sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if there were someone keeping score. You fell bitter when the reward doesn't come as expected. The problem is that while you are always doing the 'right thing,' if your heart really isn't in it, you are physically and emotionally depleting yourself.

*From Thoughts & Feelings by McKay, Davis, & Fanning. New Harbinger, 1981. These styles of thinking (or cognitive distortions) were gleaned from the work of several authors, including Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck, and David Burns, among others.

http://access.ewu.edu/caps/selfhelp/stressmanage/distortthink.xml

What has been missed from this list??

BOOK LAUNCH Eldon Taylor: I Believe 'Trying, Losing and Persisting'

You never lose unless you quit. Vince Lombardi is often quoted as saying, “The difference between winning and losing is quitting.” There are thousands of stories about people who failed miserably time after time before finally achieving their goals. They succeeded because they never quit.

Knowing your own limitations is different from quitting, which is a mental state. You may see a ballplayer walking off the field, but long before taking this action, his mind set sail through all the possibilities, reasons, and rationalizations for giving up. He may have even rehearsed the event—to try it on, so to speak—before the actual action. So as I said, it’s first a mental action, like my son’s strikeout.

There are people I’ve worked with in the past who persist at quitting. They’re not aware that they’re giving up, per se, any more than my son was aware that he’d surrendered to striking out before the first pitch was thrown.

Becoming aware of this tendency in ourselves is the only way we can end these self-destructive, self-sabotaging patterns. Persisting should be all about allowing our efforts to become better and better. We persevere at practice—reinforcing our improvement instead of mentally rehearsing our failure expectation. As Marilyn vos Savant is credited with saying, “Being defeated is only a temporary condition; giving up is what makes it permanent.”

Winning

I believe that inside every human being is a winner. Each and every one of us possesses a unique ability—a talent, if you will—and chief among all of our abilities is the one called “Doing our very best.” I believe that this ability is what makes us champions.

I remember being confused as a young man about such statements as “All men are created equal.” It doesn’t take an Einstein to see how untrue this statement is—or is it? I tell a story on myself in my book Choices and Illusions, in which I made just this inquiry. It seems appropriate here to share what I learned.

Imagine a rocket scientist who, after much work, launches an interstellar voyager. Imagine the pride he feels in the accomplishment. Now imagine a so-called menial laborer. On his hands and knees for endless hours, he scrubs and polishes a floor. He has worked so hard and with so much pride that he has scrubbed his knuckles raw. Now he stands back and beholds his labors. The floor absolutely glistens—every square inch of it. It never looked that good even when it was new. Now . . . which man senses the most pride, the rocket scientist or the floor scrubber?

Even at a young age, I understood that feeling. The fact is that when you do your utmost, you enjoy the same state of specialness, the same ecstatic feeling, the same sense of purpose and pleasure as anyone else, regardless of the act (launching rockets or scrubbing floors).

I believe there are no real losers because in the end, you cannot escape yourself. You—both here and in the hereafter—will learn to persevere, and in time you’ll turn the act of trying or the pattern of losing into winning because that’s who you ultimately are! You’ll acquire the habit of applying your best to all that you do, and as the rocket scientist–floor scrubber story illustrates, that means you’ll always come out ahead. You were created a winner, and a winner you were meant to be. Believing in yourself makes winning happen, so the only question is what you’re going to do to reinforce a strong, vital faith in yourself—for what you believe always matters!

Always remember the following analogy from Alfred Adler. It’s one of my favorites, and it will help you remember to believe in yourself along the way, even when you feel you’re drowning.

What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, do you not? And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning—and some of them many times over—what do you find? That you can swim? Well—life is just the same as learning to swim! Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning how to live!

Reflection

The only way you lose is by quitting. Failure becomes permanent only when you give up. When you visualize quitting, you’re rehearsing the event. Can you think of examples from your own life when you were so convinced you’d be unsuccessful that you never even tried? Isn’t this often the most basic frustration that people have during a midlife crisis? Do you dare to look again at those dreams you once had and discarded—and to try again, this time with persistence, determination, and tenacity?

Eldon Taylor has spent over 25 years researching the power of the mind and developing scientifically proven methods to use this power to enhance the quality of your life. I Believe is a book that will not only inspire you, but will highlight the kinds of beliefs you hold that may be causing you to fail. In the process, it will provide you with the opportunity to choose, once again, the beliefs that drive your life. 

http://www.progressiveawarenesspromotions.com/it/13e/index/J.php

BOOK LAUNCH Eldon Taylor: I Believe. 'Codependence'

Among many people, there’s a certain attitude of codependence. This is often expressed in terms of a bargain, a contract, or a sort of quid pro quo. That is, we think, You should do this for me because I do this for you. If you loved me, you’d do x, y, and z. The notion implies a duty. For example, parents often assume codependent roles and expect their children to nearly kneel and worship them because of parental sacrifices. Building relationships on such patterns will almost always lead to resentment and disappointment.

Examining our motives is important. Where our closest, most intimate bonds are concerned, maintaining a realistic outlook is key. There will be many changes during a long-term personal relationship. The initial romance will wear off, the hormones will cool down, and the Cinderella nature of perfect love will curl up in a mature bonding, provided the connection isn't built on false assumptions and immature, unrealistic notions taken from movies and television shows.

It’s estimated that approximately half the marriages in America will end in divorce. Further, this figure applies to first marriages versus later unions, since “67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce, according to Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology.”⁵

There are many reasons for the high divorce rate, including disappointment, selfishness, demanding too much, economic differences, pettiness, blaming, laziness, and differences in values or faith. Inherent in all of these factors are the underlying beliefs each partner brings to the marriage. Surprising to many is that the lowest proportion of divorce belongs to atheists and agnostics. Perhaps that is because the initial expectation is simply more pragmatic. For the atheist, the connection is all about here and now; for the religious person, there are both explicit and implicit assumptions about unions made in heaven.

The actual reasons for divorce are not my point here, however. This book is all about the role of belief in our lives. It’s easy to see that an unreasonable expectation will lead to a failed relationship. It’s equally obvious that our expectations are built upon our beliefs, and if we’re to enjoy our lives to the fullest, choosing what we believe and how and who we share those beliefs with is pivotal.

If you’re having difficulties with someone, take a look at your assumptions and then consciously choose your course of action. That said, never be afraid to let someone go if that’s what he or she wants. There’s an old saying that goes like this:

  “If you love someone, let them go. If they come back, they were always yours; and if they don’t, then they never were.”

Reflection

What do you see in your relationships? Are your expectations blinding you to the real attributes of the other person? Are you denying yourself in your attempt to be what someone else would like you to be? These questions are really two sides of the same coin, but they’re vital components to creating the kind of connection you want.

Eldon Taylor has spent over 25 years researching the power of the mind and developing scientifically proven methods to use this power to enhance the quality of your life. I Believe is a book that will not only inspire you, but will highlight the kinds of beliefs you hold that may be causing you to fail. In the process, it will provide you with the opportunity to choose, once again, the beliefs that drive your life. 

 http://www.progressiveawarenesspromotions.com/it/13e/index/J.php

BOOK LAUNCH Eldon Taylor: I Believe

Eldon is the NY Times best-selling author of Choices and Illusions. He has just released his paperback version of his International best selling book, I Believe.

Join the book launch party and receive over 100 bonus gifts plus the chance to enter drawings to win super-gifts from supporters of Eldon. This is a limited time event. Please click here for more details. http://www.progressiveawarenesspromotions.com/it/13e/index/J.php

Video: The Marketing Of Madness

6 Things Science Can Predict About You In Infancy...

We like to think that, for the most part, who we are is based on life experience, hard knocks and good old-fashioned attitude. Sure, genetics plays a part, but ultimately it's your own choices that matter -- you're not "destined" to be anything.

But science, as it usually does, has some surprising and kind of scary things to tell us. Apparently, no matter what kind of life you lead, scientists can still figure out who you'll be at 30 based on who you were as a toddler. Studies show ...

6. If a 4-Year-Old Is Patient, He or She Will Be a Successful Adult

In the 1960s, a Stanford psychologist basically tortured 653 4- to 6-year-old kids by putting candy in front of them and telling them not to eat it. In the process, he may have unlocked the entire secret to a successful life.

The experiment went like this: The children were placed in front of a plate of treats like marshmallows and Oreos and told that they had a choice -- they could either choose one treat right away, or get two treats later. All they had to do to double their treats was sit alone with the candy for 15 minutes while the researcher left the room. It was testing their ability to delay gratification.

Naturally, most of the kids at least attempted to wait, but when left alone, they began sweating and seizing like heroin addicts. Most of them cracked and went on a sugar-devouring rampage. Only about 30 percent were able to hang in there for the whole 15 minutes. And those kids wound up being more successful in life.

They found this out with a follow-up study on those same kids, and learned that the impatient children were more likely to be stressed, found it harder to maintain friendships and had lower SAT scores. The SAT scores of the kids who delayed gratification for the full 15 minutes were, on average, 210 points higher, and their parents described them as "significantly more competent." Though at this stage, it could still theoretically be chalked up to the brain-destroying power of marshmallow overconsumption.

Then, in their 30s, the patient kids were living Leave It to Beaver-like lives of happiness and success, and the impatient kids were more likely to be fat, unhappy drug addicts. So the researchers decided to scan their subjects' brains to see what was going on up there. Apparently, the patient subjects had a lot of prefrontal cortex activity, meaning they had greater control over social behavior and planning. The scans of the impatient kids showed more activity in the ventral striatum, the portion of the brain commonly linked with addiction.

So, if you want to predict the futures of the 4- to 6-year-old children in your life, tell them to not eat a marshmallow for 15 minutes. If they don't eat it, continue pumping cash into their college funds. If they do, just go ahead and buy that speedboat you've always wanted.

5. Babies Fed on Demand Are More Likely to Be Smart
So, now that you're familiar with the above test, you might think that this means good parents will teach their kids to wait for their food, damn it! If they're not born with the ability to delay gratification, then you'll delay it for them! That'll teach the little bastards!

Nope. While conventional wisdom says that giving kids what they want, whenever they want, is the best way to create terrible humans, research says otherwise -- at least when we're talking about infants. Babies who are fed on their own terms (i.e., "whenever they start crying") have IQs up to five points higher at age 8 than babies who are fed according to a set schedule. They also do better on their SATs -- the effect lasts right through their teens.

And this was a huge study, too -- 10,419 children all together. The Institute for Social and Economic Research found that "schedule-fed babies performed around 17 percent of a standard deviation below demand-fed babies in standardized tests at all ages, and four points lower in IQ tests at age 8 years."

And yes, before you ask, this proved still to be true after the study had corrected for socially disadvantaged kids and mothers who couldn't afford to feed their kids until they started trying to eat the bars of their cribs. In fact, poor kids scored the same advantage as rich kids who were just as demanding.

Author and psychologist Penelope Leach says it has to do with the development of the baby brain, which is in the early stages of learning how to communicate with other humans. At that age, the "Crying for food equals I get food" lesson and bonding with mom are more important than the "Life is a cruel bitch that laughs at my desires" lesson that will inevitably be taught later.

4. A Baby Who Snores Is More Likely to Be a Problem Child

Aw, your baby's snoring! So adorable! Now keep that in mind so you can pinpoint the origins of the insatiable thirst for chaos he'll later develop.

Yes, a baby who snores is 20 to 100 percent more likely to become a hyperactive tyrant. Researchers conducted a sleep habit study that followed 11,000 children from birth to age 7. The parents enrolled in the study filled out questionnaires about their child's sleep habits and breathing difficulties at six different points in the seven-year span. A second component to the study involved screening the children for emotional and behavioral problems at ages 4 and 7. The researchers then slammed the two halves of the study together until science fell out.

They discovered that babies who snored displayed more behavior problems at ages 4 and 7, including aggressive, combative conduct and depression. By 7, a snoring baby was 1.5 times more likely to be a hyperactive, defiant monster child.

Dr. Karen Bonuck, the study's lead author, hypothesizes that snoring causes the baby to deliver more carbon dioxide to his or her brain than oxygen. Since the child is still forming neural connections, this could cross some of the wires in the emotional regulation and social conduct centers of the brain. Or maybe what you're misinterpreting as "snoring" is just the sound of the devils who have possessed your child growling in the night. It could go either way.

3. Smaller Babies Do Worse on Exams

Want to know whether it's worth it to put money aside for your baby's college education? Just put that baby on a bathroom scale.* A study conducted in England found that the smaller the baby at birth, the poorer he or she performs on exams later in life.

*This is a joke. Do not do this.

So the earlier you start your prenatal steroid regimen, the better.

The researchers picked out 334 kids from schools that had a pretty homogenous socioeconomic enrollment set (so they could prevent winding up with a bunch of kids who were both small and stupid for some extraneous reason, like, say, they were malnourished due to their parents' crippling meth addiction).

Half of the kids selected were of lower-than-normal birth weight, and the others were normal or larger. At 8 years old, the kids were all given IQ tests. The researchers then examined all of their GCSE (a standardized test) scores when the kids had turned 20. The normal birth weight group not only scored higher on the IQ tests, but also scored an average of a half grade better on their GCSE tests than their less wind resistant classmates. They also completed more of the exam (the GCSE lets you choose which portions you take).

Most go right to the "beer and balls" section, which has never been failed by a single participant.

The leader of the research team, Professor Peter Pharoah of the University of Liverpool, stresses that this doesn't mean that your gigantic freak mammoth baby is going to win a Nobel Prize. But nevertheless, science doesn't quite know how it works, though it does seem to contradict the cliche of the short, scrawny nerd outsmarting his ogrish jock classmates.

What we're trying to say is that for accuracy's sake, Bruce Banner should be bigger than the Hulk.

2. Moody Toddlers Grow Up to Be Gamblers

Back in the '70s, some researchers in Dunedin, New Zealand, decided to examine a bunch of 3-year-olds to see whether they could predict future temperaments in kids who are still only old enough to drool on themselves and regard mundane objects with confused fascination. Observing the toddlers during independent 90-minute sessions, the researchers classified the kids as best they could as well-adjusted, reserved, confident, inhibited or "undercontrolled" (because you can't call toddlers "assholes").

Which might be part of the reason so many of them are assholes.

Roughly 10 percent of the children were in that last category, which involved "lack of self-control, rapidly shifting emotions, impulsive and willful behavior and relatively high levels of negative feelings."

When they returned to study those kids at ages 21 and 32, the researchers discovered an unexpected side effect of their subjects' infant dickishness -- they didn't all wind up in jail, as might be expected, but scientists did find that when the "undercontrolled" kids grew up, they were twice as likely to have gambling problems as any other temperament classification.

"You might have trouble picturing this, but I used to be a complete douchebag as a child."

Lead researcher Wendy Slutske cautions that just because your toddler is a mood-shifting jerk, that doesn't mean he or she is destined to be a compulsive gambler, but she suspects that some are born vulnerable to addiction. This would explain why some people can hit up a penny slot, win $100 and never gamble ever again, and others play until they're buried in the desert.

1. Fearless Babies Are More Likely to Become Criminals

If you've ever screamed at a baby and the baby just stared back with hardcore steely resolve, just go ahead and teach him or her how to turn pacifiers into shanks, because, according to Adrian Raine, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist, a fearless baby is more likely to become a criminal as an adult.

Raine got his hands on a mental illness study from the 1970s that tested the fear responses of about 1,800 3-year-olds. The toddlers were exposed to two sets of sounds -- one was a neutral tone that was followed by nothing, and the other was a neutral tone followed by a shit-your-pants-terrifying wail. The toddlers quickly figured out when to expect the scary noise, and most of them sweated in response -- a normal fear reaction. Then again, there were some kids who showed no signs of fear at all.

"Blast that noise at me again and see if I don't take off my hat and beat you to death with it."

In 2009, Raine checked in to see what the original test subjects had been doing with their lives, and found something fascinating. Along with everyone being a little fatter and uglier than they were when they were 3, Raine found that 137 of the test subjects had criminal records -- and not one of them had been among the group who had sweated during the fear study when they were 3.

The discovery was examined for any result-skewing factors such as race, gender and income, but more than anything else, the outstanding variable was that all of the convicted subjects had been fearless toddlers. This leaves us with an unsettling implication -- the possibility that some people are actually born criminals.

Before you use this research to establish a Minority Report-style pre-emptive justice system, Raine notes that many other kids who also didn't show fear as babies went on to lead perfectly law-abiding lives. We would like to note that this only proves that they were never caught committing any crimes. Or maybe they grew up to be scientists who tormented 3-year-olds by blasting scary noises at them.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19889_6-insane-things-science-can-predict-about-you-at-infancy.html#ixzz2Rh2ZxWfr