Habit

"Man is a creature of habit."

This simple statement is deceptively profound. Most people's lives are comprised of a collection of habits that dictate many of their physical, emotional and mental actions and reactions. Depending on the level of conscious awareness you invest in a habit's creation, habits can either enslave you, turning you into a mindless automaton, or free you to pursue creative, joyful activities that enhance and give meaning to your life. Most people have a mixture of good and bad habits.

Habit is defined as an acquired behavior pattern followed until it has become almost involuntary. Habits can be good or bad, productive or non-productive. Good habits lead to skills, such as learning to ride a bicycle. They also save you time and energy by automating the performance of desirable actions. Brushing your teeth or driving a car are examples. These acquired behavior patterns free your mind from having to concentrate, as would be required of unfamiliar actions.

Bad habits predispose you to undesirable outcomes. Excessive drinking, smoking, drug use and overeating are examples of bad habits that can harm your body and impair your judgment, aside from wasting your time.

Common sense tells us that you want to replace bad habits with good ones, which is the basis of all self-development and evolution. But as almost everyone who has ever tried to quit smoking will tell you, this is not always as easy as it would seem.

Smokers are addicted to nicotine. But according to modern brain science, all habits induce emotional states that produce chemicals in your brain. Consequently, you become addicted to the chemicals secreted by your brain no matter what kind of habit you create!

With every thought or action you undertake, you create electrical pathways in your brain. As Joseph Dispenza says in the movie What the Bleep do We Know?, "neurons which fire together, wire together." Repetition etches these patterns more deeply into your brain.

To replace a bad habit with a good one, you need to break the association with your emotions and the chemicals you've grown accustomed to, and rewire your brain. This requires concentration and will.

If you are unaware or unwilling to acknowledge your non-productive habit, you will have a hard time replacing it. If you are not convinced a particular habit is bad for you, you will have no incentive to change it. But, if you are aware of your unwanted habit and are willing to devote your attention to it, then it can be changed. Deeply focused concentration, such as during a visualization exercise, increases the potency of your thoughts and more deeply affects your brain's rewiring.

Remember, it took regular action to install your unwanted habit - possibly over the course of several lifetimes - so it will take regular action to undo it. This is where your will comes in.

You strengthen your will, as well as your habit, with repetition. Every time you consciously reject the urge to give in to your bad habit, you strengthen your will. Every time you consciously undertake an action to install a new, positive habit, it becomes easier. This is how you rewire your brain and overcome your addictions.

When these habits are of a positive nature, this self-reinforcing cycle produces positive results, but the contrary is also true. This demonstrates a principle that Jesus taught, "For he that hath, to him shall be given; and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath."

In other words, consciously acting to install positive habits strengthens your will and further attracts more like experiences. Giving in to bad habits, weakens your will, not only making it harder to install good habits, but doing so may cause you to lose what good habits you already had. Can there be any better reason to develop your will and consciously establish positive habits?

The development of good habits is meant to improve your life, free you from the grip of negative habits and attract even more positive experiences to you. At the same time, always remember to be guided by wisdom and not convention. You should strive to perform good actions based on your own inner wisdom and conscious choice, not based on convention - not even good habits. This is the ultimate freedom.

By Edwin Harkness Spina She is an award-winning author and speaker.

Self-Esteem: You Are Not Who You Think You Are

David sat in front of me at one of my five-day intensive workshops. A successful businessman with a wife and two grown children, David believed that he was not good enough.

"I'm insufficient," he said. "I'm inadequate."

I looked at this kind man and felt deep sadness for him. He did not know who he was.

"Why do you believe that?" I asked.

"I didn't do well in school, and I've made lots of mistakes in my life."

"So you are basing your worth on your performance, right?"

"Of course."

David could not conceive of any other way of defining his worth other than through his performance – which he never saw as good enough.

I asked David to look inside – at the essence of himself - and tell me what he sees. All he saw was emptiness.

"David, please close your eyes. Now imagine a wonderful being who loves you very much. Who comes to mind?"

"My grandfather. He died when I was young, but he really loved me."

"Good. Now imagine that you are seeing yourself through the eyes of your grandfather. What does your grandfather see when he looks at you?"

"He sees a bright and creative little boy, who is very kind and caring. A loving little boy. A little boy who is funny and likes to laugh, and likes to make other people laugh."

"Is there anything wrong with this little boy? Anything inadequate or insufficient?"

"Oh no! He is a wonderful little boy."

"David, this is who you really are. You are not your performance. Your performance will come and go and at some point you might retire and not perform at all. Yet that does not mean that you are, therefore, worthless. Your worth is in who you are, not in what you do. Your worth in intrinsic."

David realized that, because of his highly critical and rejecting parents, he had always been trying to prove himself and always came up short in their eyes. As a result of seeing himself as unworthy and inadequate, he did not treat himself well. He treated himself the way his parents had treated him – with criticism and neglect. He was always trying to take care of everyone else, but rarely thought about taking care of himself. He was constantly abandoning himself emotionally, just as he had been emotionally abandoned by his parents.

"David, if you chose to see yourself as your grandfather saw you rather than how your parents saw you, how would you feel about yourself and how would you treat yourself?"

"I've just been thinking about that. I just realized that I treat my dog better than I treat myself! I would never judge my dog the way I judge myself."

"So what would you do differently if you saw yourself the way your grandfather sees you?"

"I would stop judging myself as insufficient and inadequate. I'm a really good person. I am not at all insufficient or inadequate as a person. And I choose my friends based on who they are as people – not on their performance. So I obviously value the very qualities that I possess!"

"What else would you do if you really valued who you are?"

"I would listen to my own feelings and take care of my own needs instead of taking care of everyone else's feelings and needs. I would no longer see it as selfish to take care of myself instead of taking care of everyone else. I would be at least as attentive to myself as I am to my dog!"

David was glowing. He was discovering who he really is, not who he thought he was.

People often think that their worth – who they really are – is based on looks and performance. Yet these qualities are transitory. What is real and eternal is who you are in your heart and soul. If you shift your definition of your worth from outer to inner, you will stop trying to prove yourself. You will know that you are already a beautiful being, totally deserving of love.

By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

Beyond Fear and Addiction: Six Steps to Healing

There is a wonderful anachronism for FEAR:

False
Evidence
Appearing
Real

Much of the fear in our lives is based on false evidence.

Our bodies are designed to respond with the fight or flight mechanism to real and present danger - such as being physically attacked. In the face of real and present danger, the adrenaline flows and the blood drains out of our organs and brain and into our limbs to prepare us for fight or flight.

Yet many people spend much of their time in the anxiety and stress of fight or flight when there is no real and present danger. This is because the body responds the same way to imagined danger as it does to real danger. The body thinks that the false evidence coming from our thoughts is real.

This constant state of fear and anxiety often leads to various addictions in the hope of numbing out the difficult feelings. Food, alcohol, drugs, nicotine, gambling, sex, TV, shopping, approval, attention, work, anger, rage, violence to self and others – all can be used in attempts to block out painful feelings.

Yet, the addictions themselves are an abandonment of self, in that they are not a healthy and loving way of dealing with painful feelings. And it is self-abandonment that causes the most fear, anxiety, and depression.

Thus, many people are caught in a very negative circle based on self-abandonment:

• Thinking negative thoughts about the future - about rejection, failure, loss of others, loss of self, loss of money – creates fear in the body and is an abandonment of self.

We are abandoning ourselves when we allow ourselves to make up thoughts about the future that scare us. This would be like saying to a child, "You are going to end up alone. No one will ever love you. You will be out on the streets with no food and no help." Saying this to a child would be considered child abuse, yet many people tell these same things to themselves over and over when there is no objective truth to these statements.

• Once we have created fear with our negative thinking, we try to avoid the fear with our various addictions.

Avoid responsibility for creating our fear by turning to addictions is another self-abandonment. This is like offering a frightened child a cookie instead of addressing the source of the fear. The self-abandonment creates deep inner emptiness and aloneness, which perpetuates the addictive behavior. It also creates neediness, leading to pulling on others for love, approval and attention.

• Addictive behavior perpetuates the original fears – an endless vicious circle of self-abandonment.

Moving Beyond Fear and Addiction

There really is a way out of this! While the process of moving beyond fear and addiction is simple, it is not easy. It takes deep commitment and devotion to your peace and joy.

1) Choose the willingness to feel your painful feelings and take responsibility for creating them, rather than continue avoiding them with your various addictions. It is only when you are willing to be with your feelings rather than avoid them that you can learn about how you are creating your own pain.

2) Consciously decide that you want to learn about what you are thinking or doing that is causing your pain.

3) Dialogue with the part of you that is in fear and pain - you can think of this feeling part of you of a child within – about how you are causing the pain. Discover your thoughts and actions that are causing your pain.

4) Open to learning with a Higher Power – your own highest wisest self, an inner teacher or mentor, a guardian angel, God – about what is the truth regarding your negative thinking and what the loving action is toward yourself.

5) Take the loving action for yourself that you are guided to do in Step 4.

6) Notice how you feel. If you feel more peaceful, then you know that you have taken loving action. If not, then you need to go back through these steps to discover another loving action.

By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

Experiencing Our Feelings

This past full moon and lunar eclipse were very powerful for me. I experienced the energies quite intensely. The night before and after the full moon I couldn't sleep at all. I experienced all the pent up emotions I carried within me. A major illumination finally occurred to me concerning a situation I repeatedly attract in my life. I realized I attract people that will tell or show me in various ways that I am not good enough. I have struggled with low self esteem throughout my life. I receive this message from people that I care about and it hurts me so deeply. I saw that the reason I keep getting this message that I am not worthy of being treated good is because I don't value myself enough or feel I am worthy.

In that moment I was able to reclaim my inner power and truly know that I am worthy of love. I must once and for all stop allowing people, even those I care about, to treat me poorly. It is time for me to stand up for my needs and set boundaries. The messages I have been receiving where others have told me or done things to show me I'm not good enough, have been there to show me that this is not true. When I can really love and value myself, no matter what others say or do, they will no longer effect me in the same way because I won't own it.

I sense that because I haven't truly felt that I deserve love, respect and kindness that when someone would say or do something to hurt me it would penetrate my being and I would feel the pain and affirm that somehow I don't deserve to be valued. Once I completely realize that I no longer wish to experience this mirroring effect in the way that I am treated that I will never attract situations and people that will treat me in this way.

The thing is, so many people show me so much love, kindness and respect. I am learning how to accept love and truly believe that I am worthy of it. I feel with this awareness I can really see that when those I care for do and say things that send me the wrong message, I don't need to own it. In essence they are actually not feeling good about themselves and projecting it onto me. It doesn't mean that I have to believe it or accept the message.

The solar eclipse on January 26, followed two weeks later with the intense full moon energies and lunar eclipse has magnified our issues and brought them to the forefront for us to see and heal them. We are being challenged to go to the next level of conscious awareness so we can clear the issues that have been holding us back from experiencing love and intimacy.

It takes a brave person to face their shadow side and come to terms with patterns that don't belong in the new energy. The message I am getting is that we need to feel our feelings and express ourselves. Upon that realization I cried. I hadn't cried in probably over a year or more. No matter how much I have wanted to cry it has been bottled up inside of me. The tears were a release. We have been suppressing and not feeling what is inside of us. We can't move forward if we are stuck in the past or continuing a pattern that doesn't serve us.

In many instances we have been denying our feelings. We don't want to deal with the fear, anger, resentment, sadness, loneliness, or anxiety we've been feeling. Rather than acknowledging that it is there we pretend it isn't, this way if it is out of sight, it is out of mind. Many think it is not spiritual to feel these emotions so they will pretend they are not there. We are humans for goodness sakes! We are spiritual beings having a human experience and we are being shown that now is the time to feel what is inside of us.

In the moment that I really understood what has been happening with me, I really saw what I have allowed to occur in my life, and experienced the feelings, I was able to transmute it and move past it. I am understanding that when I get these negative messages about myself I can recognize it for what it is and not own it.

We are meant to feel. Our society has become about doing and not feeling. It is time to change that. We need to learn to be in the present moment and allow ourselves to experience pleasure, happiness and love. If we want to fix what is wrong in our lives and world we must realize we have strayed away from feeling.

It can be scary to feel. I think we may wonder if we start feeling our emotions we might go crazy and go on some rampage since they've been bottled up for so long! If we express our anger or fear it might overwhelm and consume us. I truly believe it is safe to show whatever emotion we are experiencing as long as it is in a healthy and productive way. Holding it in is much more dangerous. It leads to illness, anger and imbalance.

In order to experience true intimacy in our relationships we need to allow our emotions to be expressed. When we take a chance to express love to another we risk opening up and revealing our vulnerable and tender side. We must take a risk of getting hurt and rejected. Without opening up we never get the opportunity to experience love, affection, pleasure and true intimacy.

We are being challenged to look deep within ourselves and confront what is there. I had to face my low self esteem issues, feeling not good enough or worthy of love. As we heal our shadow side, we transmute the lower energies that hold us back from loving. We are being guided into the new energy by metamorphizing into who we really are, so we may experience what we really want in our lives. The tears I cried were not only those of sadness and frustration, what I was experiencing is a realization, hey, I am worthy, just because I carried around these feelings since childhood I've outgrown them.

As we acknowledge and accept our shadow side, experience the pent up feelings, and process the awareness, we can then release the issues and let go of those feelings once and for all, and move on to opportunities to give and receive all the wonderful things meant for us.

By Stefanie Miller

Over 40 and Laid Off?

By Craig Nathanson

The 5 most important steps you must take now...

Do nothing
Probably not the first piece of advice you would expect to get! When you are laid off, the range of emotions you feel can be overwhelming. You become your own worst critic, and you start coming up with all the reasons why you lost the job. At home, you hear more of this from your family members, although maybe not so directly.

You feel like a failure. Your self-esteem has taken a hit, and you feel depressed and a little lost. You feel angry and you're not sure what to do about it. You rush forward into a new job search, and related frantic activity....

Stop -- wrong approach.
Instead, take some time for reflection. Chances are you didn't even like this job or the work itself. Privately, you are a little excited to be free of this job prison, although you would not admit this to anyone right now.

This is the time to get away. It may be for a few days, or maybe a few weeks. Do nothing during this time except think deeply about what you want out of your life and what activities bring you the most joy. This is a rare space of time to think seriously about who you are, and where you want to make a contribution. Don't lose this opportunity.

Forget about money
Sure, your immediate concerns probably revolve around how to pay next month's bills. Ideally, you tap into other resources to buy time. After 40, we need more time than money. There is probably nothing you can do in the next two weeks that will make a difference in the short term. Instead of working on your resume, make a money plan to get you through the next 1-3 months.

This is a rare opportunity in your life to really invest the time to think. What work MUST emerge through you now? No external job description will ever get this right for you. This must come from you. Where do you most want to make a contribution in the world right now? Why is this important to you? This is the MOST important question you must answer about your life and the reason you are here.

Get educated
Once you have defined what you are really passionate about, it's time to get educated. Who is doing the work you most want to do? Read everything you can. The more you read, the more inspired you will get. Eventually, you may choose to embark on some formal education, but for now simply gather enough data to help you feel good about your choice of work.

When you are working at and learning about what you love, and what really interests you, you won't be able to tell the difference between work and play. Soon, your vocation will become a lifelong vacation. Instead, most of us just work at jobs. The difference between our jobs and the rest of our lives is very clear. Your life can be better than this!

Brand yourself
Whether you decide to work for yourself or others, the process should be the same. What are exactly your best gifts, and what do you enjoy most? What kind of services or products can you create and sell to others using your unique gifts? What are the features and benefits of what you will offer? What is the perfect niche audience for you and your products and services?

Let's say, for example, that you like to design art work. You think, "Who would buy what I love to do most?" You think a little deeper, and realize that you could design cost-effective restaurant menus that would draw people to the restaurants. Your menus would feature specials, ingredients, and customer reviews. Restaurant owners would benefit as customers would learn more about their eateries, and what they have to offer. Then another thought hits: you could write a newsletter, displaying your brand, targeted at restaurant owners giving advice on how to brand their restaurants!

You decide to call this business "Creative menus". You are off and running. This same logic works whether you love to help animals or design software. The reason we are seeing so many layoffs today in corporate America is that most organizations don't know how to develop entrepreneurial thinking or entice creativity inside their businesses.

Make a plan
Write down your vision of your perfect vocational day. Without this vision, you will have no motivation to move forward. Most people don't change anything in their lives until the pain of not changing becomes greater than the initial discomfort associated with changing.

Most people look for jobs in an illogical way. They look for them! Most jobs were not designed for you in the first place. You spend days and months networking, hoping a Job will come to you. The job probably will come to you eventually, but it will quickly look like the last job prison you were in. There is a strong tendency to go back to what we did before, ONLY because it was familiar and we were good at it. After 40, it becomes critical to avoid this trap.

First define a plan, and steps to create for what you want. Then you will know where to look, and how to start building exactly what would be perfect for you.

Laid off recently?
Congratulations! You have a unique, perhaps once in a lifetime, opportunity to get to know yourself better and to ask better questions of yourself. Be careful what you ask, because the work you choose to do can determine the kind of person you become.

Take that pink slip and run to the nearest beach for reflection and peace. This is the best gift you can give yourself now. I'll be cheering you on as you go!

Craig Nathanson is a coaching expert

Women talk three times as much as men, says study

It is something one half of the population has long suspected - and the other half always vocally denied. Women really do talk more than men. In fact, women talk almost three times as much as men, with the average woman chalking up 20,000 words in a day - 13,000 more than the average man.

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Character- Jakie Robinson

It requires incredible foresight to remain faithful to an idea. To ignore what your eyes and ears tell you and imagine better. One individual - Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson imagined better and ended eighty years of baseball segregation. He crossed the color line and made his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 as the first African American in major league baseball.

One of five, born on January 31, 1919 in Cairo, GA, Robinson was raised in relative poverty by a single mother. Even though he wasn't born into a privileged environment, Jackie was destined for something infinitely larger. His professional baseball career, which spanned from 1947 to 1957, is the quintessential story of an All American Baseball hero.

Despite unmitigated racial discrimination from baseball's management, teammates and fans, Robinson possessed the courage to defy retaliation and was the consummate athletic professional. He was an outstanding base runner, stealing home 19 times in his career more than any ball player since World War I. As a disciplined hitter, a versatile fielder and an outstanding defensive player Robinson won Rookie of the Year in 1947 and Most Valuable Player in 1949 for the National League. He was the first African American inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame and became a member of the All-Century Team. He received a championship ring when he led the Dodgers to a 1955 World Series victory over the New York Yankees.

Major League Baseball retired Robinson's number 42 - never to be worn by another ball player - in recognition of his accomplishments on and off the field in a ceremony at Shea Stadium.

Robinson's historic achievements in baseball were but one aspect of his life and legacy. Quoted as saying, "I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me - all I ask is that you respect me as a human being" he was a champion of civil and human rights. He was a staunch supporter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Anti Defamation League of B'nai Brith. He founded the Jackie Robinson Construction Corporation to improve living conditions of Black Americans in metropolitan areas and he served as Vice President of Chock Full O' Nuts.

Robinson was a significant fundraiser for the NAACP and a major figure in national politics influencing leaders such as Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Nixon; Hubert Humphrey and Nelson Rockefeller. As a syndicated columnist, he was a civil rights movement forerunner. One of only two players in baseball Jackie received the Congressional Gold Medal and President Ronald Regan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Stress May Cause The Brain To Become Disconnected

Does stress damage the brain? In the March 1st issue of Biological Psychiatry a paper by Tibor Hajszan and colleagues provides an important new chapter to this question.

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People with higher IQs live longer

The discovery was made after researchers looked into the medical records of one million Swedish army conscripts. After taking into account whether they had grown up in a safer, more affluent environment, they established the connection between IQ and mortality.

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6 Year Old Boy with 176 IQ

"Pranav Veera, 6, can recite the names of the U.S. presidents in the order they served in office. He can say the alphabet backward. Give him a date back to 2000, and he'll tell you the day of the week . . ."

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Working Long Hours Linked to Mental Decline

In a recent study, working long hours was associated with decreased cognitive function in middle-aged adults.

The study examined 2,214 middle-aged British civil servants who were working full-time. The researchers performed various tests to measure the participants' cognitive function at the time of study enrollment (1997-1999) and again at follow up (2002-2004).

According to the authors, working more than 55 hours a week was linked with poorer mental skills, including impaired short-term memory and recall, compared to those who worked a standard 40 hours. Individuals who worked the most hours experienced the greatest decline in cognitive function.

These results were similar after adjusting for potential confounding factors, including age, gender, marital status, education, occupation, income, physical diseases, psychosocial factors, sleep disturbances and health-risk behaviors.

In addition, participants who worked overtime slept fewer hours, reported more symptoms of depression and drank more alcohol than those who worked just 40 hours.

The potential mechanism for these negative effects remains unknown. It is also unclear if the effects may be long-term. Additional research is warranted in this area.

For more information about cognitive decline, please visit Natural Standard's Medical Conditions database.

Child abuse 'alters stress gene'

Analysis of brain tissue from adults who had committed suicide found key genetic changes in those who had suffered abuse as a child. "If you're a public health individual or a child psychologist you could say this shows you nothing you didn't already know. "Beyond that, you could ask whether a drug could reverse these effects

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Neuroscientist says social websites harm children's brains

Social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter are causing alarming changes in the brains of young users, an eminent scientist has warned.

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Scientists warn of first ever case of human mad cow disease

The first case of a person being infected with the human form of mad cow disease after receiving contaminated blood plasma has been identified by scientists.

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Buying Experiences, Not Possessions, Gives Greater Happiness

Can money make us happy if we spend it on the right purchases? A new psychology study suggests that buying life experiences rather than material possessions leads to greater happiness for both the consumer and those around them.

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How memories form, fade, and persist over time

What was the name of that guy with that stuff in that place with those things? Don't you remember?

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Is Quantum Mechanics Controlling Your Thoughts?

The rules of quantum mechanics are turning up everywhere these days, and may be behind the efficiency of photosynthesis, the accuracy of our sense of smell, and even the source of our conscious mind.

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Mind-Body Therapy May Improve Pelvic Pain

Mind-Body Therapy May Improve Pelvic Pain

A new study suggests that a mind-body therapy called Mensendieck somatocognitive therapy may reduce long-term (chronic) pelvic pain in women. The effects lasted several months after the treatment ended.

Mensendieck therapy emphasizes body awareness. During treatment, patients learn how to correct their movements, breathing patterns and posture. This therapy is commonly used in Europe, especially Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Last year, Norwegian researchers found that Mensendieck therapy reduced pain and restored normal movement in 40 women with chronic pelvic pain with no known cause. The researchers reported their findings after a one-year follow up in the latest issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

In the study, the participants were randomly assigned to receive either standard care alone or standard care plus 10 weeks of Mensendieck therapy.

At the beginning and end of the study, the authors measured the motor function (including movement, posture, gait and respiration), pain and psychological stress and well being. All of the women in the Mensendieck therapy group experienced significant improvements in all areas compared to the control group.

One year later, the authors found that the women in the therapy group experienced additional improvements in their symptoms. During the one-year period, their pain scores improved by 64 percent, and they experienced significant improvements in psychological distress. In contrast, pain scores in the control group did not change appreciably.

Although these early results are promising, additional studies are needed before a firm conclusion can be reached.Natural Standard

The Mystery of Borderline Personality Disorder

People with borderline personality disorder are some of psychology's hardest cases. Many commit suicide. But recent treatment advances are unlocking what was once a mystery illness.

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Exercise Improves Old Brains

The moment of truth has arrived, again. The holidays have passed, the leftovers are dwindling and you have renewed your annual New Year's resolution to get back into shape... for real.

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