Respond To Negative Quotes

When women respond negatively to misogynistic or rape humor, they are "sensitive" and branded as "feminist," a word that has, as of late, become a catchall term for "woman who does not tolerate bullshit.

I am made for running. Because when you run, you could be anyone. You hone yourself into a body, nothing more or less than a body. You respond as a body, to the body. If you are racing to win, you have no thoughts but the body's thoughts, no goals but the body's goals. You obliterate yourself in the name of speed. You negate yourself in order to make it past the finish line.

Respond to negative thoughts as you would to small children who do not know any better; simply smile and show them a better way to be.

If you're anxious, when you start to feel something is bothering you in a relationship, you tend to quickly get flooded with negative emotions and think in extremes. Unlike your secure counterpart, you don't expect your partner to respond positively but anticipate the opposite. You perceive the relationship as something fragile and unstable that can collapse at any moment. These thoughts and assumptions make it hard for you to express your needs effectively.

What the other person says or does cannot really annoy or irritate you except you permit him to disturb you. The only way he can annoy you is through your own thought. For example, if you get angry, you have to go through four stages in your mind: You begin to think about what he said. You decide to get angry and generate an emotion of rage. Then, you decide to act. Perhaps, you talk back and react in kind. You see that the thought, emotion, reaction, and action all take place in your mind. When you become emotionally mature, you do not respond negatively to the criticism and resentment of others.

I will no longer let the fear of vicious comments or replies stop me from speaking what I believe to be right. I will also never give a message that everybody will agree with. I know that even my most faithful followers will never agree 100% with what I say. I also know that they know that and are fine with it. I am done letting the bullies win. They won’t anymore. Not here.

There is no energy more powerful than love. Love creates miracles, heals all wounds, and purifies all lower energies. You cannot give love away, for the more you give, the more you will receive in return. When you choose love you bring about the highest good for yourself and others. Offering love is always the right choice. With love you can transform or be transparent to people's emotions and thoughts, neutralize "negative" energy, and harmonize with all life in the universe. All energy in the universe responds positively to love.

Just because you’re in the process of bettering yourself doesn’t mean there won’t be times when you make questionable choices, respond out of character, lack proper communication, or let negativity get the best of yourself. That’s all a part of the process of becoming better. How else would you know what needs cleaning up if you don’t stand in your mess every once in a while?

If someone else is putting out negativity, then maneuver around them like you would a puddle on the ground. If you respond with negativity, you will only get dragged into the mud. It is a talent to stay positive and avoid negativity in the face of a sometimes cruel, unfair, and indifferent world. Cultivate that talent. It's the secret to living a happy life.

One channel is the Stress Channel and the other is the Peace Channel. We really do have a choice about what we listen to. The Peace Channel can only be heard when we are present in the moment, when we are in the now. To tune in to the Peace Channel, all we have to do is be, experience, notice, and naturally respond to what is arising in the moment. To tune into the Stress Channel, we just have to start believing our thoughts again. [...] Eliminating stress is just a matter of tuning out the negative and tuning in the positive and just being, experiencing, and dancing to that music instead of the mind's chatter.

A general word of advice: It’s always more effective to assume the best in conflict situations. In fact, expecting the worst—which is typical of people with insecure attachment styles—often acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you assume your partner will act hurtfully or reject you, you automatically respond defensively—thus starting a vicious cycle of negativity.

Negativity may misguide a person to see daylight as moonlight; and then he goes to sleep instead of rising up to work. No every irresponsible act is caused by laziness; negative attitudes take a bigger share!

Negative attitudes and emotions such as hatred, disgust, or contempt are the morally correct ways to respond to wrongdoing, and therefore they are virtuous.

Forgiveness does not mean you forget what someone has done, contrary to the saying “Forgive and forget.” Not reacting with negativity, or giving in to the negative emotions, does not mean you do not respond to the acts or that you allow yourself to be harmed again. Forgiveness does not mean that you do not seek justice or that the perpetrator is not punished.

Under-slept employees are not, therefore, going to drive your business forward with productive innovation. Like a group of people riding stationary exercise bikes, everyone looks like they are pedaling, but the scenery never changes. The irony that employees miss is that when you are not getting enough sleep, you work less productively and thus need to work longer to accomplish a goal. This means you often must work longer and later into the evening, arrive home later, go to bed later, and need to wake up earlier, creating a negative feedback loop. Why try to boil a pot of water on medium heat when you could do so in half the time on high? People often tell me that they do not have enough time to sleep because they have so much work to do. Without wanting to be combative in any way whatsoever, I respond by informing them that perhaps the reason they still have so much to do at the end of the day is precisely because they do not get enough sleep at night.

Most abusive men put on a charming face for their communities, creating a sharp split between their public image and their private treatment of women and children. He may be: Enraged at home but calm and smiling outside Selfish and self-centered with you but generous and supportive with others Domineering at home but willing to negotiate and compromise outside Highly negative about females while on his own turf but a vocal supporter of equality when anyone else is listening Assaultive toward his partner or children but nonviolent and nonthreatening with everyone else Entitled at home but critical of other men who disrespect or assault women The pain of this contrast can eat away at a woman. In the morning her partner cuts her to the quick by calling her a “brainless fat cow,” but a few hours later she sees him laughing with the people next door and helping them fix their car. Later the neighbor says to her, “Your partner is so nice. You’re lucky to be with him—a lot of men wouldn’t do what he does.” She responds with a mumbled “Yeah,” feeling confused and tongue-tied. Back at home, she asks herself over and over again, “Why me?

By starving myself into society’s beauty ideal, I had compromised my success, my independence, and my quality of life. Being overweight was really no different. It was just the “f— you” response to the same pressure. I was still responding to the pressure to comply to the fashion industry’s standards of beauty, just in the negative sense. I was still answering to their demands when really I shouldn’t have been listening to them at all. The images of stick-thin prepubescent girls never should have had power over me. I should’ve had my sights set on successful businesswomen and successful female artists, authors, and politicians to emulate. Instead I stupidly and pointlessly just wanted to be considered pretty. I squandered my brain and my talent to squeeze into a size 2 dress while my male counterparts went to work on making money, making policy, making a difference.

Rape humor is designed to remind women that they are still not quite equal. Just as their bodies and reproductive freedom are open to legislation and public discourse, so are their other issues. When women respond negatively to misogynistic or rape humor, they are “sensitive” and branded as “feminist,” a word that has, as of late, become a catchall term for “woman who does not tolerate bullshit.

people, both professionals in the field and lay people, are not fully aware of the extent to which human beings are directed and controlled by primal feelings. They underestimate the pain that is aroused by positive experiences in life. They cannot understand a person’s resistance to positive or corrective experiences and the negative reactions caused by genuine caring or concern. They do not recognize the fact that when people are responded to in a new, more positive way, it severs their bonds and cuts them off from their past. It makes them aware objectively that they were not loved or treated respectfully, that they were not listened to or responded to realistically or compassionately when they were young.

If you get in tune with the tendency field, through expanding and exploring the set of positive characteristics within yourself, the tendency field responds with constant energy, and affirmations. If you work against the tendency field, by being negative, unfair, unloving, and unconscious of the truth, you weaken your connection to the tendency field, and you experience existential dread, no matter how rich or famous or powerful you are.

Problems arise only if we respond to difficulties with a negative state of mind. Therefore, if we want to be free from problems, we must transform our mind.

It’s not the situation, but whether we react (negative) or respond (positive) to the situation that’s important. Zig Ziglar

Addiction in all its forms, large and small, serious and less serious (no addiction is trivial), is one of the central themes of our lives. Identifying our own addictions of thought and action is part of each person’s spiritual journey. Food, control, talking too much, work, sex, pornography, alcohol, drugs, always being right, noise, negative thinking, negative humor, skepticism, cynicism, minimalism…the list is varied and endless. It doesn’t matter what it is for you, and it doesn’t matter what it is for me. What matters is how we respond.

If God has given you a mission, you must be tough enough to handle what people say and still not be distracted while doing what you were created to do. Are you tough enough? God and the enemy know the truth about you, and remember even great people doing great things for great causes meet negative criticisms. All criticism is not bad, just like all flattery is not good. Many times people don’t criticize you because they are evil; they do it because they have been trained to think anyone who doesn't perceive and see things in the same manner is an enemy. The critic is a prisoner to his own experiences and perspectives, erroneously believing his limited experiences are the sum of all truth. When you acknowledge your critics, you give them your power and validate their words. They are not important until you respond.

I was receiving at least ninety-nine incredible, positive, and life-changing responses for every negative or abusive one, yet I couldn’t stop looking at the one percent. I couldn’t get them out of my mind. I let them kill my excitement. I let them destroy my love for what I was doing. I let them shut me down. I let them bully me into changing the way I did things around here. I almost stopped. I almost gave up. I almost quit writing. But every time, I remembered my dad. He taught me better than that. And I forced myself to be excited again. I forced myself to see the goal and vision of why I was excited in the first place. I forced myself to start skipping over the negative replies and start diving into the loving ones.

My borrowed power insists that negative situations, too, assist me on the path to greater becoming. It's never about the circumstance(s); these are surface level 'symptomatics'. How we deal with the energy it brings, however, is telling of how we choose to respond. There's no escaping Earth-School lessons. Embrace that it's still about your development, and not the illusion of fear's representative attempting to lead you astray. Be conscious and see free.

We don’t have to stop thinking or do away with our negative thoughts to be happy and aligned with Essence; we only have to stop responding to them.

We have to own our behavior. It’s not about what they do to us; it’s about how we respond to what has been done.

Problems arise only if we respond to difficulties with a negative state of mind.

To respond is positive, to react is negative. Zig Ziglar

Human social life is built on this ability to “reflect” each other and respond to those reflections, with both positive and negative results.

We should try to recognize how we feel whenever we encounter challenges so we can learn to control our fear, manage our stress, and respond with purpose and determination.

The measure of our success will not be determined by how we act during the great times in our life but rather by how we think and respond to the challenges of our most difficult moments.

A positive affirmation can have a negative vibration. Most affirmations don’t work because the Law of Attraction doesn’t respond to words – it responds to how you feel about the words you use. On

Problems arise only if we respond to difficult external situations with a negative state of mind. Therefore, if we really want to be free from problems we must learn to control our mind by controlling our desire.

In one experiment, CA would show people on online panels pictures of simple bar graphs about uncontroversial things (e.g., the usage rates of mobile phones or sales of a car type) and the majority would be able to read the graph correctly. However, unbeknownst to the respondents, the data behind these graphs had actually been derived from politically controversial topics, such as income inequality, climate change, or deaths from gun violence. When the labels of the same graphs were later switched to their actual controversial topic, respondents who were made angry by identity threats were more likely to misread the relabeled graphs that they had previously understood. What CA observed was that when respondents were angry, their need for complete and rational explanations was also significantly reduced. In particular, anger put people in a frame of mind in which they were more indiscriminately punitive, particularly to out-groups. They would also underestimate the risk of negative outcomes. This led CA to discover that even if a hypothetical trade war with China or Mexico meant the loss of American jobs and profits, people primed with anger would tolerate that domestic economic damage if it meant they could use a trade war to punish immigrant groups and urban liberals.

By ages four through six, kids in cultures from around the world respond negatively when they are the ones being shortchanged. It isn’t until ages eight through ten that kids respond negatively to someone else being treated unfairly.

I was in fear I would not have my job anymore because of my physical burnout. And my internal dialogue responded back that I should be in fear of losing my life, my values and my integrity. It was at that point that everything changed—for the better.

When we choose to operate on the frequency of compassion and kindness, we create, and reinforce our own reality, as filled with compassion and kindness. I refer here to the idea of unconditional compassion and kindness. It means that we can choose to react to any situation, as negative as it may seem to be, with kindness and understanding. Whenever someone chooses to be rude to us, there is no need for us to respond with rudeness. A moment of self-reflection can remind us that fire fought with fire only increases the heat. The more often we practice our conscious positive response, to any situation, our automatic negative reactions are gradually being replaced with a conscious decision to act in the most loving way we can conceive at the moment.

Inflection points come in all forms: positive, negative, easy, hard, obvious, and subtle. The way you respond—whether you grab hold of an inflection point and leverage it for all it’s worth or just let it carry you along—is as important as the event itself.

Elite performers win in their minds first. The mind is a battleground where the greatest struggle takes place. The thoughts that win the battle for your mind will direct your life. Mental state affects physical performance. The mind constantly sends messages to the body, and the body listens and responds. Therefore, elite warriors train their minds to focus and think in a way that maximizes how they practice and how they perform in competition. Getting your mind right means managing two things: A) What you focus on. B) How you talk to yourself. If you focus on negative things and talk to yourself in negative ways, that will put you into a negative mindset. Your performance will suffer. If you focus on productive things and talk to yourself in productive ways, that will put you into a productive mindset. Your performance will be enhanced. We teach our players to replace low-performance self-talk with high-performance self-talk. We tell our players, “The voice in your mind is a powerful force. Take ownership of that force.

Okay, not a terrible point,” Noise said. “But it’s also a great example – the point that makes my point. We don’t get to choose what happens to us. But we always get to choose how to feel about it. And why on earth would you ever choose to feel anything but good?” Bird snorted. “Mate, it can’t be that easy – not for you, not for anyone. Who could feel good about this?” Noise nodded. “Look. In any situation, there are always many aspects to it, many facets that one can attend to. An infinite number, perhaps. And it is very rare that all of them are completely negative. Can we agree on that?” Bird didn’t respond. “And the thing is this: you get to choose. Which aspects to regard. The good or the bad ones. And that choice will define you. It will certainly define how you feel.

Be mindful of your reactions. When you’re negative, it will bring about negative consequences. Always choose kindness, love and compassion over anger, pride, jealousy, arrogance and malice. Learn to respond in a positive manner. It will have a huge impact on your life!

Optimism won’t prevent negative events from happening; optimism will ensure that you respond to those negative events in the most beneficial way possible—a way that leads to positive outcomes. Your mindset determines how you respond to the negative events that will inevitably happen to us all.

Horse Frightened by a Lion depicts a majestic stallion in a very different situation. Stubbs painted this magnetic masterpiece to illustrate the nature of the sublime, which was one of his era's most popular philosophical concepts,and its relation to a timelessly riveting feeling: fear. The magnificent horse galloping through a vast wilderness encounters the bottom-up stimulus of a crouching predator and responds with a dramatic display of what psychologists mildly call "negative emotion." The equine superstar's arched neck, dilated eyes, and flared nostrils are in fact the very picture of overwhelming dread. The painting's subject matter reflects he philosopher Edmund Burke's widely circulated Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which asserts that because "terror" is unparalleled in commanding "astonishment," or total, single-pointed,--indeed, rapt--attention, it is "the ruling principle of the sublime.

the way we frame information for ourselves or for others can make a big difference in how we see and respond to choice. Every time we encounter new information or reexamine old information, we’re influenced by its presentation. We can use framing to our advantage, but sometimes it has a negative impact on the quality of our decisions.

When engaging in simple everyday banter and communications, this rule of thumb can really help suppress a lot of our negative word ‘vomit’ since we often mindlessly chat about the things we don’t like. If we refrain from expressing our negative opinions about things unless they’re directly asked for, we can train ourselves to respond rather than react the second we see or hear something and then feel we must verbalize our views about it. Remember, even if we don’t agree with someone or something, we can still speak about the subject at hand in a positive light to encourage growth rather than guilty motivation. I like to say I express more “inspirations” than “opinions” with each passing day.

Nor is it a trivial matter that whites and men do so strongly feel themselves beleaguered by cultural change. In January 2019, South Carolina’s Winthrop poll conducted a fascinating experiment. Winthrop polled people of all races across eleven Southern states. One question was phrased in two slightly different ways. Half of the people surveyed were asked whether they agreed that “whites have privileges that non-whites do not have.” The other half were asked whether they agreed that “non-whites face barriers that whites do not face.” Logically, of course the two questions mean exactly the same thing. But they yielded very different answers. When asked whether they enjoyed special “privilege,” only 50 percent of whites agreed. Among the most conservative whites, only 36 percent agreed. But when asked whether nonwhites faced extra “barriers,” 70 percent of all whites and a majority even of the most conservative whites agreed.18 People do not like being negatively judged. When they feel negatively judged, they hunker down. On the other hand, people do have a sense of fairness. When that is appealed to, they respond more generously.

I run. I am made for running. Because when you run, you could be anyone. You hone yourself into a body, nothing more or less than a body. You respond as a body, to the body. If you are racing to win, you have no thoughts but the body's thoughts, no goals but the body's goals. You obliterate yourself in the name of speed. You negate yourself in order to make it past the finish line.

I run. I am made for running. Because when you run, you could be anyone. You hone yourself into a body, nothing more or less than a body. You respond as a body, to the body. If you are racing to win, you have no thoughts but the body’s thoughts, no goals but the body’s goals. You obliterate yourself in the name of speed. You negate yourself in order to make it past the finish line.

All you need to do is sit down and take a breather. Do not just react negatively to the situation. Instead, respond with hope and a definite plan to get you out of that swamp. You do not need a “one size fit all solution”. All you need are the initial steps to get you going. If you will just focus your energy in resolving your issues rather than focusing on being paralyzed, there is a way out of it!

Before we move on to the stuffer who collects retaliation rocks, I want to address the issue of impossible people. We know that all things are possible with God. But all things are not possible with people who refuse to be led by the Holy Spirit. I’ve had to get really honest about certain people in my life. It isn’t productive or possible to confront them and expect anything good to come from it. If someone has told me over and over through their actions and reactions that they will make my life miserable if I confront them, at some point I have to back away. But I don’t want to stuff and allow bitterness toward them to poison me. So, how do I back away and not stuff? I acknowledge that I can control only myself. I can’t control how another person acts or reacts. Therefore, I shift my focus from trying to fix the other person and the situation to allowing God to reveal some tender truths to me. I typically pray something like this: God, I’m so tired of being hurt. I’m so tired of feeling distracted and discouraged by this situation. Pour Your lavish mercy on my heart and into this hard relationship. Help me to see the obvious hurt they must have in their life that makes them act this way. Help me to have compassion for their pain. Help me to see anything I’m doing or have done that has negatively affected this situation. And please help me to know how to separate myself graciously from this constant source of hurt in my life. It all feels impossible. Oh God, speak to me. Reveal clearly how I can best honor You, even in this. My job isn’t to fix the difficult people in my life or enable them to continue disrespectful or abusive behaviors. My job is to be obedient to God in the way I act and respond to those people.

The goal of the magician, particularly the chaos magician, is to position his or her life so that it responds positively to volatility rather than negatively. Volatility should make your life better, not worse, just as the thousands of microtears in your muscles during weight training lead to larger biceps. Be the bicep, not the teacup! It’s easier than it sounds, and it gets easier the further you stray from society’s recommended life. As

Think about what you want to be, do, and have. Think about it often until you are very clear about this. Then, when you are very clear, think about nothing else. Imagine no other possibilities. Throw all negative thoughts out of your mental constructions. Lose all pessimism. Release all doubts. Reject all fears. Discipline your mind to hold fast to the original creative thought. When your thoughts are clear and steadfast, begin to speak them as truths. Say them out loud. Use the great command that calls forth creative power: I am. Make I-am statements to others. “I am” is the strongest creative statement in the universe. Whatever you think, whatever you say, after the words “I am” sets into motion those experiences, calls them forth, brings them to you. There is no other way the universe knows how to work. There is no other route it knows to take. The universe responds to “I am” as would a genie in a bottle.

To tip the cognitive hurdle fast, tipping point leaders such as Bratton zoom in on the act of disproportionate influence: making people see and experience harsh reality firsthand. Research in neuroscience and cognitive science shows that people remember and respond most effectively to what they see and experience: “Seeing is believing.” In the realm of experience, positive stimuli reinforce behavior, whereas negative stimuli change attitudes and behavior. Simply

I AM NOT SO INTELLIGENT The epiphany I had in my career in randomness came when I understood that I was not intelligent enough, nor strong enough, to even try to fight my emotions. Besides, I believe that I need my emotions to formulate my ideas and get the energy to execute them. I am just intelligent enough to understand that I have a predisposition to be fooled by randomness—and to accept the fact that I am rather emotional. I am dominated by my emotions—but as an aesthete, I am happy about that fact. I am just like every single character whom I ridiculed in this book. Not only that, but I may be even worse than them because there may be a negative correlation between beliefs and behavior (recall Popper the man). The difference between me and those I ridicule is that I try to be aware of it. No matter how long I study and try to understand probability, my emotions will respond to a different set of calculations, those that my unintelligent genes want me to handle. If my brain can tell the difference between noise and signal, my heart cannot. Such unintelligent behavior does not just cover probability and randomness. I do not think I am reasonable enough to avoid getting angry when a discourteous driver blows his horn at me for being one nanosecond late after a traffic light turns green. I am fully aware that such anger is self-destructive and offers no benefit, and that if I were to develop anger for every idiot around me doing something of the sort, I would be long dead. These small daily emotions are not rational. But we need them to function properly. We are designed to respond to hostility with hostility. I have enough enemies to add some spice to my life, but I sometimes wish I had a few more (I rarely go to the movies and need the entertainment). Life would be unbearably bland if we had no enemies on whom to waste efforts and energy.

Acornology Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there was a kingdom of acorns, nestled at the foot of a grand old oak tree. Since the citizens of this kingdom were modern, fully Westernized acorns, they went about their life with a purposeful energy; and since they were mid-life baby-boomer acorns, they engaged in a lot of self-help courses. There were seminars called “Getting All You Can out of Your Shell” and “Who Would You Be Without Your Nutty Story?” There were woundedness and recovery groups for acorns who had been bruised in their fall from the tree. There were spas for oiling and polishing those shells and various acornopathic therapies to enhance longevity and well-being. One day in the midst of this kingdom there suddenly appeared a knotty little stranger, apparently dropped out of the blue by a passing bird. He was capless and dirty, making an immediate negative impression on his fellow acorns. And to make things worse, crouched beneath the mighty oak tree, he stammered out a wild tale. Pointing up at the tree, he said, “We … are … that!” Delusional thinking, obviously, the other acorns concluded, but they continued to engage him in conversation: “So tell us, how do we … become that tree?” “Well,” said he, pointing downward, “it has something to do with going into the ground … and cracking open the shell.” “Insane!” they responded. “Totally morbid! Why then we wouldn’t be acorns anymore.

Human social life is built on this ability to “reflect” each other and respond to those reflections, with both positive and negative results. For example, if you are feeling great and go to work where your supervisor is in a vile mood, soon you will probably feel lousy, too. If a teacher becomes angry or frustrated, the children in her classroom may begin to misbehave, reflecting the powerful emotion being expressed by the teacher. To calm a frightened child, you must first calm yourself.

She looked down and her smile was gone. “I don’t like it when people look at me,” she whispered. “They rarely have good intentions. And if I look back at them and make eye contact, they think they can speak to me. And that’s usually when they say something I don’t want to hear.” She tucked a stray red curl behind her ear. “It’s why I shake sometimes. My body responds to the fear. And the negative energy. The hate. And it’s trying to stay strong for my insides that are about to fall apart.

We’ve all seen the headlines implying that people with PTSD are dangerous. We must not resort to thinking, due to fear, that a person with PTSD equals a ticking time bomb. The stigma surrounding PTSD is so negative. It arouses concerns and provokes whispers and worried glances. People don’t understand it at all. They assume I’m a potential powder keg just waiting for a spark to set me off into a rage, and that’s just not true, about me or any person with PTSD. I have never physically assaulted anyone out of anger or rage. I'm suffering with it and people are afraid to ask me about it.

Neuroticism, or the tendency to be anxious, stressed, critical, and moody, is far more predictive of relationship unhappiness and dissolution than is personality dissimilarity. While personality similarity can help the years run smoothly, any two people will be different in some way or another. How a person responds to these differences can be more important than the differences themselves. To a person who runs high in Neuroticism, differences are seen in a negative light. Anxiety and judgments about these differences then lead to criticism and contempt, two leading relationship killers.

I...I haven’t done a lot of this.” His cheeks flushed pink and my eyes widened. “I mean, I’ve done some stuff, but not a lot. I haven’t...had sex.” For the longest moment I couldn’t respond. All I could do was stare at him. “You’re a virgin?” One side of his lips kicked up. “Yeah. You sound surprised.” “I am. I thought... I don’t know. You were with...Paige. I just assumed you had sex before.” “That would be a negative,” he replied, picking up my hand. “You’re looking at me like you don’t understand how it’s possible.” He could really read minds. “It’s gotten close, but I just never— I haven’t wanted to go that far.” He shrugged a bare shoulder. “I haven’t done it, either,” I blurted out. “I mean, that’s super obvious since...you’re the first boy I’ve kissed, but yeah, I don’t even know...what I’m saying and I’m just going to shut up.” Rider chuckled. “Don’t. I love it when you ramble.” “Only you would enjoy that.” I curled my fingers through his. “Do you want to...go that far with me?” His lashes swept up and his eyes, with their greenish flecks, met mine. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. Someday.” Warmth swept across my cheeks as I whispered, “I...I want that, too. Someday.” The dimple in his right cheek appeared. “Then we’re on the same page.

most of our stress today comes from mental processes: from worrying about things. And the HPA axis isn’t designed to handle that kind of stress. We “activate a physiological system that has evolved for responding to acute physical emergencies,” Sapolsky writes, “but we turn it on for months on end, worrying about mortgages, relationships, and promotions.” And over the past fifty years, scientists have discovered that this phenomenon is not merely inefficient but also highly destructive. Overloading the HPA axis, especially in infancy and childhood, produces all kinds of serious and long-lasting negative effects—physical, psychological, and neurological.

​The human brain, that incredibly powerful personal biochemical computer that each of us has, is capable of doing for you anything reasonable that you’d like it to do. But you have to know how to treat it; you have to know how to wire it in the right way. If you do it right, and give it the right directions, it will do the right thing—it will work for you in the right way. ​But if you give your mental computer the wrong directions, it will act on those wrong directions; it will continue to respond to the negative programming that you and the rest of the world have been giving it. You have literally been wiring your brain in the wrong way, physically—without even being aware of it.

To realize we love another to get love because we do not love our own self is one of our core human wounds. For each of the two parts of this prayer meditation, express out loud or silently these sentences. Let the feelings and memories come. Express the feelings intuitively, changing and adding to the sentences if it helps. You can repeat one sentence several times in a row until you feel it, or go straight into the next one. You can improvise sentences that may better fit your feelings. One may also experience spirit interference in this prayer meditation. This can manifest as voices and feelings disagreeing with it. Unless you are living as unconditional love, you can be sure these are negative spirits trying to dissuade you from traveling deeper into your own wounds to release them, thereby banishing these spirit influences forever. Do each part for one hour. This meditation prayer can be about two hours long. Center yourself and drop into a prayerful, silent heartful space. Ask to become vulnerable and open your heart. Part One: I am not loved I am not loved I am not loved I have never been loved My parents did not love me I need love I need love I need love Please love me My quest for love has never worked My quest for love will never work Nobody really loves me Nobody really loved me How do you feel? Part Two: I am love I am love I am love God loves me God loves me God loves me God desires me God desires me God desires me I am love I am love I am love (from your heart) I am not loved I have never been loved I am not loved I am not LOVED I am just not loved No one has ever loved me No one loves me I am not loved I am not loved I do not love myself I do not love myself I do not love myself I am loved I am loved I am loved I am LOVED God is not here for me God has never been here for me God is not here for me God has left me I am not loved I have never been loved No one loves me God loves me God LOVES me God wants me God wants me God LOVES me God WANTS me God desires me I don’t want God I don’t want God I don’t want God I want fear I want fear I want fear I AM LOVED I AM LOVED I AM LOVED God wants me God desires me God loves me What does this make you feel? The experience of love and need in co-dependent relationships In such a relationship, one or both partners cover each others emotions by giving false comfort, false ‘love’ and other placating behaviors that prevent the other in deeply feeling and owning their own emotions. When you want to get out of this pattern, this prayer meditation will help. It will let both partners feel the truth of the unspoken demand of love and how they respond to it. Simply sit in front of your partner and express out loud these sentences as a way to reveal the unconscious behavior that is being played out between you both.

If I don’t respond, will there be negative repercussions? Are they trying to make their problem my problem? Am I being baited into an argument? Is this distracting me from more important tasks? Sometimes the unnecessary stress in our life is our own doing, because we intentionally engage with the people or situations creating it. Although we often don’t mean to, we find ourselves instinctually catching the ball out of habit or obligation or because of our history with that person (ex-spouse, childhood friend, overbearing parent). You may not be able to control what another person says or does, but you can always control your response, or lack thereof, to it. If you don’t like drama, then don’t invite it in.

Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.” —CLARE BOOTHE LUCE When things go wrong, when you experience sudden reversals and disappointments, your natural tendency will be to respond with negativity, fear, and anger. Whenever you feel hurt or threatened by loss or criticism, you react to protect yourself with the fight-or-flight response. As a leader, your first job is to take firm control over your mind and emotions, and then to take control over the situation, in that order. Leaders focus on the future, not the past. They focus on what can be done now to resolve the problem or improve the situation. They focus on what is under their control, their next decisions and actions. You must do the same.

Margaret Beale Spencer was hired as a consultant by CNN to re-create the doll tests for the modern age. This time, however, white children were tested as well as Black children. The tests showed that white children tended to identify the color of their own skin with more positive attributes and those with darker skins with more negative attributes. The researchers called this phenomenon “white bias.” The tests showed that the Black children were far less likely to respond with white bias. Dr. Spencer concluded, “All kids on the one hand are exposed to the stereotypes. What’s really significant here is that white children are learning or maintaining those stereotypes much more strongly than the African American children.

control our lives and to powerfully influence our circumstances by working on be, on what we are. If I have a problem in my marriage, what do I really gain by continually confessing my wife’s sins? By saying I’m not responsible, I make myself a powerless victim; I immobilize myself in a negative situation. I also diminish my ability to influence her—my nagging, accusing, critical attitude only makes her feel validated in her own weakness. My criticism is worse than the conduct I want to correct. My ability to positively impact the situation withers and dies. If I really want to improve my situation, I can work on the one thing over which I have control—myself. I can stop trying to shape up my wife and work on my own weaknesses. I can focus on being a great marriage partner, a source of unconditional love and support. Hopefully, my wife will feel the power of proactive example and respond in kind. But whether she does or doesn’t, the most positive way I can influence my situation is to work on myself, on my being. There are so many ways to work in the Circle of Influence—to be a better listener, to be a more loving marriage partner, to be a better student, to be a more cooperative and dedicated employee. Sometimes the most proactive thing we can do is to be happy, just to genuinely smile. Happiness, like unhappiness, is a proactive choice. There are things, like the weather, that our Circle of Influence will never include. But as proactive people, we can carry our own physical or social weather with us. We

There is the space of encounters which allow one to trace out an absolute limit to the analogy between the social world and the physical world. This is basically because two particles never encounter one another except where their rupture phenomena can be deduced from laboratory observations. The encounter is that durable instant where intensities manifest between the forms-of-life present in each individual. It is, even above the social and communications, the territory that actualizes the potentials of bodies and actualizes itself in the differences of intensity that they give off and comprise. Encounters are above language, outside of words, in the virgin lands of the unspoken, in suspended animation, a potential of the world which is also its negation, its “power to not be.” What is other people? “Another possible world,” responds Deleuze. The Other incarnates the possibility that the world has of not being, of being otherwise. This is why in the so-called “primitive” societies war takes on the primordial importance of annihilating any other possible world. It is pointless, however, to think about conflict without also thinking about enjoyment, to think about war without thinking about love. In each tumultuous birth of love, the fundamental desire to transform oneself by transforming the world is reborn. The hate and suspicion that lovers excite around them is an automatic defensive response to the war they wage, merely by loving each other, against a world where all passion must misunderstand itself and die off.

The old saying, “You Snooze, You Lose” may have a much deeper meaning than any of us realized. When you delay waking up until you have to—meaning you wait until the last possible moment to get out of bed and start your day—consider that what you’re actually doing is resisting your life. Every time you hit the snooze button, you’re in a state of resistance to your day, to your life, and to waking up and creating the life you say you want. Think about the kind of negative energy that surrounds you when you begin your day with resistance, when you respond to the sound of the alarm clock with internal dialogue along the lines of, “Oh no, it’s time already. I have to wake up. I don’t want to wake up.” It’s as if you’re saying, “I don’t want to live my life, at least not to the fullest.

Positive or negative, the beliefs we identify with will result in any number of effects that will dominate and shape our lives. In order to be free of these effects, we must free ourselves from our identification with such beliefs. Still, you might respond: “But these so-called ‘beliefs’ are really just assessments, things I’ve actually witnessed in my self. They’re not something I just made up.” Which illustrates my point. We continue to think and act within these patterns—further reinforcing the conviction that they are genuine aspects of ourselves—because we believe they are us. We see them as natural expressions of the way we are, and will defend our right to act them out. Even if we attempt to get free, we’re likely to fall again into being “stupid,” or “superior,” or what have you, since that is what appears to us as true.

Many people assume that working from home is like a vacation, where you get to do what you want when you want. This was not the case for me. The demands of eBay put me on the strictest schedule I’d ever endured. Because my auctions were timed, there were very real consequences for missing deadlines. The prime time for auctions to go live was Sunday evening. If mine went up late, that meant my customers, who were likely waiting to pounce on my latest batch of vintage gems, might end up disappointed, instead giving another seller their business. If I took too long to respond to a customer inquiry, she might get impatient, choosing to bid on something else. Shipping orders out late might result in negative feedback, and if I didn’t steam and prep all the clothes the night before a shoot, there wouldn’t be time to get through everything in one day.

feel that such obvious age-old “truisms” simply must be real. They think that if they don’t continue to believe these thoughts, they are lying to themselves. Once again, remember that to know what is true and what is not, you have to be conscious of the thoughts and have an intelligent perspective on them. Most negative thinking is automatic and goes unnoticed. You’re not really choosing how to respond to your situation, it’s being chosen for you by bad brain habits. To find out what is really true and what is not, you need to question it. Don’t believe everything you hear—even in your own mind! I often ask my patients about their ANT population. Is it high? Low? Dwindling? Or increasing? Keep control over the ANTs in order to maintain a healthy deep limbic environment. Whenever you notice an ANT entering your mind, train yourself to recognize it and write it down. When you write down automatic negative

Rape humor is designed to remind women that they are still not quite equal. Just as their bodies and reproductive freedom are open to legislation and public discourse, so are their other issues. When women respond negatively to misogynistic or rape humor, they are “sensitive” and branded as “feminist,” a word that has, as of late, become a catchall term for “woman who does not tolerate bullshit.” Perhaps rape jokes are funny, but I cannot fathom how. Humor is subjective, but is it that subjective? I don’t have it in me to find rape jokes funny or to tolerate them in any way. It’s too close a topic. Rape is many things—humiliating, degrading, physically and emotionally painful, exhausting, irritating, and sometimes, it is even banal. It is rarely funny for most women. There are not enough years in this lifetime to create the kind of distance where I could laugh and say, “That one time when I was gang-raped was totally hilarious, a real laugh riot.

The word ‘emotion’ comes from the Latin e for exit and motio for movement. So emotion is a natural energy, a dynamic experience that needs to move through and out of the body. As children, however, we are often taught not to express our emotions; for example, we might have been told, ‘boys don’t cry’, or ‘don’t be a baby’. Or when we are angry we are taught that it’s not appropriate to express it: ‘Don’t you dare raise your voice to me!’ At some level most of us are taught that emotions are not OK. As healthy adults, we need to let go of the emotional patterns from the past that mess up our lives and no longer serve us. As Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, often said, ‘The only way out is through.’ It’s not easy, and the vast majority of people deny the symptoms or anaesthetise themselves through work, TV, food, alcohol or some kind of drug. By discharging negative emotions attached to past memories we become more able to respond spontaneously in any given moment, allowing us to be more present in our relationships and to the gifts of the world around us.

In addition to work, ADHD can significantly impact family life and relationships. The effects of ADHD on relationships are not necessarily negative; in fact, they can bring out many positive attributes. Loved ones may feel energized around you and recognize that your sense of spontaneity and creative expression brings a lot of joy into their lives. On the flip side, friends and family may complain about imbalanced relationships, issues with intimacy, and/or fraught dynamics. If you get easily sidetracked, you may be late to dates with friends and family (or completely forget to meet). You may forget to respond to emails, calls, and test. Family and friends may take these behaviors personally. This can feel hurtful to you when you are trying your best with a brain that works differently than theirs. Of course, this does not have anything to do with how much you care for your loved ones, so communicating what you're going through and strengthening your organizational skills to respect important commitments can keep your treasured relationships humming along smoothly.

When high expectations are communicated to members, the unchurched are attracted to these churches that have meaningful membership. One such church among the churches we have received information on is Carron Baptist Church, an African-American church in Washington, D.C. They actually require their members to agree to a church covenant that mandates the following: To read the Bible daily. To pray with and for members of your family daily. To attend all worship services unless hindered by health or circumstances beyond your control. To abstain from gossip, backbiting, murmuring, or negative talk. To respond to conflict and disagreement according to biblical precepts. To share your faith regularly; to invite people to church. To participate in Bible study/ Sunday school To be in agreement with the church’s doctrine. To be involved in at least one ministry in the church. To tithe. To abstain from alcohol and illegal drugs. To be sexually pure. The unchurched that visit Carron Baptist Church quickly discern that it is a high-expectation church. Yet they keep returning, keep joining, and the church continues to grow.

Try not to be the hater. Try not to be the person who tears down someone else's work. The world needs more people who contribute their gifts and share their work and ideas. Working up the courage to do that can be tough. Support those who display that courage and vulnerability. Even if you don't enjoy their work, at least appreciate the fact that they did something. It's easy to be passive and complain. It's much harder to step into the creative arena and bring into existence something from nothing. And nobody needs permission to create. There aren't any prerequisites to contribute to the world around you. You just need to choose to build something and follow it through, and get out of your own way (limiting beliefs / self doubt / excuses). Too many people die with great ideas inside them. Let them out! It's all fleeting castles made of sand anyways. What do you have to lose? If you do find yourself on the receiving end of negativity, the choice is still yours to not react in anger, to accept that opinion as 1 out of 7+ billion and keep being true to yourself, as that is truly all that matters. You can either be judged because you created something or ignored because you left your greatness inside of you. Your call.

Our Real Self feels both joy and pain. And it expresses and shares them with appropriate others. However, our false self tends to push us to feel mostly painful feelings and to withhold and not share them. For simplicity, we can describe these joyful and painful feelings across a spectrum, starting with the most joyous, going through the most painful, and ending with confusion and numbness, as follows: Viewing our feelings in this way, we see that our Real and True Self, our Child Within, is empowered with a wider range of possibilities than we might have believed. The maintenance and growth of our Child Within is associated with what psychotherapists and counselors call a “strong ego,” or sense of self i.e., a flexible and creative self that can “roll with the punches” of life. By contrast, the false self tends to be more limited, responding to mostly painful feelings—or no feeling at all, i.e., numbness. Our false self tends to be associated with a “weak ego” or self sense i.e., a less flexible, self-centered (negative or egocentric) and more rigid one. [Originally Freud and his followers used “ego” to mean what we now understand as being both our True Self and false self. But since about 1940, object relations and self psychologists have differentiated these and generally do not use the term “ego.” Today, more people equate ego with false self.] To cover up the pain we use relatively unhealthy defenses against pain which give us fewer possibilities and choices in our lives.

Situation awareness means possessing an explorer mentality A general never knows anything with certainty, never sees his enemy clearly, and never knows positively where he is. When armies are face to face, the least accident in the ground, the smallest wood, may conceal part of the enemy army. The most experienced eye cannot be sure whether it sees the whole of the enemy’s army or only three-fourths. It is by the mind’s eye, by the integration of all reasoning, by a kind of inspiration that the general sees, knows, and judges. ~Napoleon 5   In order to effectively gather the appropriate information as it’s unfolding we must possess the explorer mentality.  We must be able to recognize patterns of behavior. Then we must recognize that which is outside that normal pattern. Then, you take the initiative so we maintain control. Every call, every incident we respond to possesses novelty. Car stops, domestic violence calls, robberies, suspicious persons etc.  These individual types of incidents show similar patterns in many ways. For example, a car stopped normally pulls over to the side of the road when signaled to do so.  The officer when ready, approaches the operator, a conversation ensues, paperwork exchanges, and the pulled over car drives away. A domestic violence call has its own normal patterns; police arrive, separate involved parties, take statements and arrest aggressor and advise the victim of abuse prevention rights. We could go on like this for all the types of calls we handle as each type of incident on its own merits, does possess very similar patterns. Yet they always, and I mean always possess something different be it the location, the time of day, the person you are dealing with. Even if it’s the same person, location, time and day, the person you’re dealing who may now be in a different emotional state and his/her motives and intent may be very different. This breaks that normal expected pattern.  Hence, there is a need to always be open-minded, alert and aware, exploring for the signs and signals of positive or negative change in conditions. In his Small Wars journal article “Thinking and Acting like an Early Explorer” Brigadier General Huba Wass de Czege (US Army Ret.) describes the explorer mentality:   While tactical and strategic thinking are fundamentally different, both kinds of thinking must take place in the explorer’s brain, but in separate compartments. To appreciate this, think of the metaphor of an early American explorer trying to cross a large expanse of unknown terrain long before the days of the modern conveniences. The explorer knows that somewhere to the west lies an ocean he wants to reach. He has only a sketch-map of a narrow corridor drawn by a previously unsuccessful explorer. He also knows that highly variable weather and frequent geologic activity can block mountain passes, flood rivers, and dry up desert water sources. He also knows that some native tribes are hostile to all strangers, some are friendly and others are fickle, but that warring and peace-making among them makes estimating their whereabouts and attitudes difficult.6

Spot Rumination Triggered by Emails Email is a common trigger for rumination. Text messages, Facebook comments, and tweets can be too. All the nonverbal cues, and many of the context cues, are stripped out of this type of communication. The asynchronized nature of email often adds to the issue. For example, does a slow reply to an email mean the person is disinterested? Or might it mean something else? Is the person busy? A habitual slow replier? Waiting on some information before coming back to you with a reply? Still thinking about what you’ve said? Is the person disorganized and got distracted? Not checking messages? Did your message go to spam? If you get caught in email-induced rumination, recognize if you’re jumping to any negative conclusions about why the person hasn’t responded and try coming up with alternative explanations that are plausible. Use the next experiment as a guide. Remember that slowing your breathing will always help you think more clearly and flexibly, so do this too. Experiment: Can you recall a time when a nontimely response to an email set off rumination for you? What was (1) your worst-case scenario prediction for the person’s lack of response, (2) the best-case scenario, and (3) the most likely scenario? If you struggle to think of an answer for “most likely,” pick something that falls in the middle, between your answers for the best- and worst-case scenarios. In the email incident you just recalled, did you ever find out what the reason for the slow response was? Often you won’t find out the reasons for other people’s actions, which is part of why this type of rumination tends to be so futile.

Anxious: You love to be very close to your romantic partners and have the capacity for great intimacy. You often fear, however, that your partner does not wish to be as close as you would like him/her to be. Relationships tend to consume a large part of your emotional energy. You tend to be very sensitive to small fluctuations in your partner’s moods and actions, and although your senses are often accurate, you take your partner’s behaviors too personally. You experience a lot of negative emotions within the relationship and get easily upset. As a result, you tend to act out and say things you later regret. If the other person provides a lot of security and reassurance, however, you are able to shed much of your preoccupation and feel contented. Secure: Being warm and loving in a relationship comes naturally to you. You enjoy being intimate without becoming overly worried about your relationships. You take things in stride when it comes to romance and don’t get easily upset over relationship matters. You effectively communicate your needs and feelings to your partner and are strong at reading your partner’s emotional cues and responding to them. You share your successes and problems with your mate, and are able to be there for him or her in times of need. Avoidant: It is very important for you to maintain your independence and self-sufficiency and you often prefer autonomy to intimate relationships. Even though you do want to be close to others, you feel uncomfortable with too much closeness and tend to keep your partner at arm’s length. You don’t spend much time worrying about your romantic relationships or about being rejected. You tend not to open up to your partners and they often complain that you are emotionally distant. In relationships, you are often on high alert for any signs of control or impingement on your territory by your partner.

The slave protests against the condition of his state of slavery; the metaphysical rebel protests against the human condition in general. The rebel slave affirms that there is something in him which will not tolerate the manner in which his master treats him; the metaphysical rebel declares that he is frustrated by the universe. For both of them it is not only a problem of pure and simple negation. In fact in both cases we find an assessment of values in the name of which the rebel refuses to accept the condition in which he finds himself. The slave who opposes his master is not concerned, let us note, with repudiating his master as a human being. He is repudiating him as master. He denies his right to deny him, as a slave, by making excessive demands. The master fails to the extent that he does not respond to a demand that he ignores. If men cannot refer to common values, which they all separately recognize, then man is incomprehensible to man. The rebel demands that these values should be clearly recognized as part of himself because he knows or suspects that, without them, crime and disorder would reign in the world. An act of rebellion seems to him like a demand for clarity and unity. The most elementary rebellion, paradoxically, expresses an aspiration to order. This description can be applied, word for word, to the metaphysical rebel. He attacks a shattered world to make it whole. He confronts the injustice at large in the world with his own principles of justice. Thus all he originally wants is to resolve this contradiction and establish a reign of justice, if he can, or of injustice if he is driven to the end of his tether. Meanwhile he denounces the contradiction. Metaphysical rebellion is the justified claim of a desire for unity against the suffering of life and death – in that it protests against the incompleteness of human life, expressed by death, and its dispersion, expressed by evil. If a mass death sentence defines man’s condition, then rebellion, in one sense, is its contemporary.

A True Story Let me tell you about Wendy. For more than ten years, Wendy struggled unsuccessfully with ulcerative colitis. A thirty-six-year-old grade school teacher and mother of three, she lived with constant cramping, diarrhea, and frequent bleeding, necessitating occasional blood transfusions. She endured several colonoscopies and required the use of three prescription medications to manage her disease, including the highly toxic methotrexate, a drug also used in cancer treatment and medical abortions. I met Wendy for an unrelated minor complaint of heart palpitations that proved to be benign, requiring no specific treatment. However, she told me that, because her ulcerative colitis was failing to respond to medications, her gastroenterologist advised colon removal with creation of an ileostomy. This is an artificial orifice for the small intestine (ileum) at the abdominal surface, the sort to which you affix a bag to catch the continually emptying stool. After hearing Wendy’s medical history, I urged her to try wheat elimination. “I really don’t know if it’s going to work,” I told her, “but since you’re facing colon removal and ileostomy, I think you should give it a try.” “But why?” she asked. “I’ve already been tested for celiac and my doctor said I don’t have it.” “Yes, I know. But you’ve got nothing to lose. Try it for four weeks. You’ll know if you’re responding.” Wendy was skeptical but agreed to try. She returned to my office three months later, no ileostomy bag in sight. “What happened?” I asked. “Well, first I lost thirty-eight pounds.” She ran her hand over her abdomen to show me. “And my ulcerative colitis is nearly gone. No more cramps or diarrhea. I’m off everything except my Asacol.” (Asacol is a derivative of aspirin often used to treat ulcerative colitis.) “I really feel great.” In the year since, Wendy has meticulously avoided wheat and gluten and has also eliminated the Asacol, with no return of symptoms. Cured. Yes, cured. No diarrhea, no bleeding, no cramps, no anemia, no more drugs, no ileostomy. So if Wendy’s colitis tested negative for celiac antibodies, but responded to—indeed, was cured by—wheat gluten elimination, what should we label it? Should we call it antibody-negative celiac disease? Antibody-negative wheat intolerance? There is great hazard in trying to pigeonhole conditions such as Wendy’s into something like celiac disease. It nearly caused her to lose her colon and suffer the lifelong health difficulties associated with colon removal, not to mention the embarrassment and inconvenience of wearing an ileostomy bag. There is not yet any neat name to fit conditions such as Wendy’s, despite its extraordinary response to the elimination of wheat gluten. Wendy’s experience highlights the many unknowns in this world of wheat sensitivities, many of which are as devastating as the cure is simple.

When I Know I Must Speak Pleasant Words Pleasant words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the bones. PROVERBS 16:24 WHAT ARE THE FIRST WORDS you speak to your spouse when you both get up in the morning? Are they pleasant and positive? Are they covered with the love and joy of the Lord? Or are they powered by yesterday’s resentments, disappointments, and unfulfilled expectations? It is of utmost importance that a wife sets the tone of the day for the entire family, but especially for her husband. It is easy for you as a wife to not be ahead of your emotions and thoughts before you talk to your husband in the morning, especially when you have a lot on your plate, too much to do, you don’t feel well, you’re upset at your husband, or you haven’t had enough time with the Lord to get your heart right. And if you have been up in the night, for whatever reason, and haven’t had enough sleep, your mind can be set on a negative track long before your husband wakes up. You may have already thought up many things you want to communicate to him that do not include pleasant words. If you dive in with these issues before he is ready to talk, it can set the day on the wrong course. The thing to do, right when you wake up in the morning, is ask God to give you pleasant words that bring “sweetness to the soul” of your husband when you first see him—even if you don’t think he deserves it at that moment. When God gives you the right attitude first thing in the morning, you’ll see what a difference it makes in your day and night. Your husband will respond differently than he would if your words were harsh. A soft word can turn away much suffering and bring great healing. It’s not worth it to start your day any other way. My Prayer to God LORD, I pray You would help me to pause every morning when I wake up to thank You for the day and ask You to fill me afresh with Your love and joy, so that the first words that come out of my mouth to my husband are pleasant. Help me to hesitate before I speak to him for the first time in order to plan how I can set a positive tone for the day. Make me to be a woman with a gentle and loving spirit so that uplifting words flow naturally from me. I pray that the next time I see or talk to my husband, my words will bring sweetness to his soul and health to his body. May they also bring sweetness and health to the very soul of our marriage. I know there are times when pleasant and sweet is not my first reaction. I realize I can sometimes worry and allow thoughts and words that are not glorifying to You. At those times I depend on You to transform me so that I can be a strong conduit for Your love to my husband and family. Help me to be a person he wants to be around. Break in me any bad habits of negative, faithless, or critical thinking. Help me to forgive anything he has done or said that is still in my mind. I release the past to You so I can do what is right today. Help me to always consider the state of my heart before I speak. In Jesus’ name I pray.

I was in a copse of pine trees, and the pine was overpowering my scent. The pheromones of the big cat mingled with the pine and I spun around. I was smelling and looking for the flash of white, but I couldn’t see it. I grew angry and I pawed at the earth. The aroma of the soil cleansed my nose as I leaned down and sniffed deeply. I slowly closed and opened my eyes. As I looked ahead I saw something. There, further on, I had another glimpse of the large white cat. She was stopped and her hindquarters were in the air. I stared, trying to figure out what she was doing. Her forepaws and head were on the ground, but her hind was wiggling. She was next to a tree, marking it, so I slowly paced in a zigzag pattern as I walked close to her. I was being cautious because poachers had been known to employ shifters to entice real animals in the wild. She turned her head and growled at me. I took it as an invite to come closer. I ran up to her and started circling. She was an albino panther as I thought. I paced closer, breathing deep. I was in the middle of Ohio, outside of a lost cougar and a few bobcats there were no big cats here, at least not counting lycanthropes, and this creature didn’t smell like one of those. Her rump almost wagged in anticipation, and I felt my tiger body respond. I circled her, taking a swipe in her direction to see if she was going to respond negatively to me. The pink eyes followed me and she growled. I walked up to her, sniffed her face and neckline. I didn’t smell any other male on her, and I walked to her raised rump. Burying my nose in her groin I smelled deeper, and she shifted her body. I felt it before I could see it. She was shifting, changing from albino panther to human. I sat on my hindquarters as I watched. Her white fur seemed to melt from her, sliding upwards, starting with her back legs. The flesh and fur on her feet slid forward, leaving human feet and calves. It was fully fleshed, unlike some lycanthrope changes when they’re younger. The calves of her legs appeared, and slowly slid up. The panther flesh was sliding forward, slowly and methodically. Across her ass and groin, now lower back and stomach. The pheromones I smelled earlier were coming from her, the human form. I stood and started pacing behind her, and her panther head shook in a very human gesture. I stopped, fighting the desire to lean forward and lick her wetness with my large tongue. The flesh was sliding forward and as her teats turned into breasts, I growled in need. Next were her shoulders and arms, then her head and hands. As the transformation ended, there was a pile of fur and flesh lying in front of her. Her human form was beautiful; a full figured woman with long white hair, that was perfectly natural. She looked to be in her early forties, but didn’t have a line on her face that she didn’t want. In the corners of her eyes were small, but beautiful, crow’s feet, laugh lines surrounded her mouth. She laid out with her former form under her, laying on it, propped up by her elbows. She smiled with the confidence of someone who was used to being in charge. Her long hair flowed around her shoulders, framing her body. She reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t figure out who.

Kaffman (2009) described childhood victimization as a "silent epidemic", and Finkelhor, Turner, Ormrod, and Hamby (2010) reported that children are the most traumatized class of humans around the globe. The findings of these researchers are at odds with the view that children have protected status in most families, societies, and cultures. Instead, Finkelhor reports that children are prime targets and highly vulnerable, due principally to their small size, their physical and emotional immaturity with its associated lack of control, power and resources; and their related dependency on caregivers. They are subjected to many forms of exploitation on an ongoing basis, imposed on them by individuals with greater power, strength, knowledge, and resources, many of whom are, paradoxically and tragically, responsible for their care and welfare. These traumas are interpersonal in nature and involve personal transgression, violation and exploitation of the child by those who rely on the child's lesser physical abilities, innocence, and immaturity to intimidate, bully, confuse, blackmail, exploit, or otherwise coerce. In the worst-case scenario, a parent or other significant caregiver directly and repeatedly abuses a child or does not respond to or protect a child or other vulnerable individual who is being abused and mistreated and isolates the child from others through threats or with direct violence. Consequently, such an abusive, nonprotective, or malevolently exploitative circumstance (Chefetz has coined the term "attack-ment" to describe these dynamics) has a profound impact on victim's ability to trust others. It also affects the victim's identity and self-concept, usually in negative ways that include self-hatred, low self-worth, and lack of self-confidence. As a result, both relationships, and the individual's sense of self and internal states (feelings, thoughts, and perceptions) can become sources of fear, despair, rage, or other extreme dysphoria or numbed and dissociated reactions. This state of alienation from self and others is further exacerbated when the occurrence of abuse or other victimization involves betrayal and is repeated and becomes chronic, in the process leading the victim to remain in a state of either hyperarousal/anticipation/hypervigilance or hypoarousal/numbing (or to alternate between these two states) and to develop strong protective mechanisms, such as dissociation, in order to endure recurrences. When these additional victimizations recur, they unfortunately tend to escalate in severity and intrusiveness over time, causing additional traumatization (Duckworth & Follette, 2011). In many cases of child maltreatment, emotional or psychological coercion and the use of the adult's authority and dominant power rather than physical force or violence is the fulcrum and weapon used against the child; however, force and violence are common in some settings and in some forms of abuse (sometimes in conjunction with extreme isolation and drugging of the child), as they are used to further control or terrorize the victim into submission. The use of force and violence is more commonplace and prevalent in some families, communities, religions, cultural/ethnic groups, and societies based on the views and values about adult prerogatives with children that are espoused. They may also be based on the sociopathy of the perpetrators.

Of course, it is painful when your partner verbally attacks you. Recognize that by responding in kind, you are almost guaranteeing more volleys in your direction, the negative cycle will continue, and you will find no peace.

While paying attention to positive and negative feedback is very important, it is not enough. What also matters is acknowledging and responding to this feedback. This is how you nurture your relationship with your audience.

Make her qualify herself a few times before escalating to a first date. Doing this will imply to her that you are man who has options. One way to do this is to briefly mention a personality trait that you admire in others and then suggest that perhaps she has that personality trait. If she responds by confirming what you suggest, she is essentially validating herself to gain your approval. Only after she does this a few times should you consider asking her to meet you in person. Here is one way to make her qualify herself to you. “I’m a big fan of people who take care of their health and yet also enjoy the little things in life. You mention in your profile that you eat healthy. I think that’s great. Do you allow yourself to indulge in a little bit of ice cream or chocolate every now and then?” Pass the sneaky tests women will throw at you in their messages by straddling the line between alpha and beta. If women find some incongruence between your profile content, photographs, and messages, they will try to expose the cause of that discrepancy. For example, if your profile content and messages to a woman indicate that you are a man who is successful with women, but you are 5’8” tall, bald, and far from handsome, she will want to make sure that you really a high-value man. So, she might mention a recent bad date, a strange email message, or some other communication that she received from a low-value guy and ask you what your thoughts are on that issue. If you talk negatively about the low-value guy, she will convince herself that you could not possibly be a high-value man. After all, high-status men do not make fun of those who stand lower in the social hierarchy. If you empathize with the low-value guy by explaining his actions, she will think that you must be a low-value guy yourself. How else could you feel this guy’s pain? The best

How High Emotional Arousal Affects Your Relationship There are many ways that negative emotional arousal affects your relationship, both directly and indirectly. For example, it may lead you to overreact in some situations, and perhaps even to underreact in others. This, in turn, makes it more difficult for your partner to respond in understanding, soothing, or loving ways: he or she simply doesn’t have accurate information on which to base a response. So, even if your partner wants to respond in a loving way, and doesn’t have his or her own negative emotional arousal to deal with (which is unlikely), it makes the job harder.

Leroy helped me process the reality that when we engage in the messiness and tension of a suffering community, we experience the positive and negative ways that people respond to that suffering. As a result, we live in the tension between desperation and excess; while we live in the black, others fight for survival in the red. This becomes a real aspect of community: struggling through loving our neighbors when our neighbors do not enjoy the same blessings we do.

That would actually be being genuine …or ‘I need you.’ And you can use all of these above excuses in your relationship with God and ‘desiring’ prayers to Him – except He will not respond and you will be left alone or at worse the prey of negative spirits. Many people try to use God as the ultimate substitute, but end up hooking into negative spirits pretending to be God, or pretending to help you. So how does it feel to use someone, usually your partner or children, every day?

When you choose to be patient, you respond in a positive way to a negative situation. You are slow to anger. You choose to have a long fuse instead of a quick temper. Rather than being restless and demanding, love helps you settle down and begin extending mercy to those around you. Patience brings an internal calm during an external storm.

~Jw~Zc2til~-t-Zvtl~- ~O-wti 71.LZwd~-tL A man of too many friends comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. -PROVERBS 18:24 A good paraphrase of this opening Scripture is, "A woman of too many friends will be broken in pieces." Indiscriminately chosen friends may bring trouble, but a genuine friend sticks with you through thick and thin. Our friends have a positive or negative effect upon our lives. Many of us have told our children to be careful who they run with because people are known by the company they keep. There are certain areas in our lives where we have no choice about who we are around, such as work, church, neighbors, and social clubs. In these settings we are thrown together. How ever, in our family and private times we can be very discriminating about those with whom we associate. We must realize that our time and energy are among our most precious assets. Therefore it's important to make wise choices in the selection of people we will spend time with. Are they people who build us up and encourage us to be better people than we would be by ourselves? Why have you chosen the people who are closest to you? How do they contribute to who you are? It's not that you cast off those who don't contribute positively to your life, but I encourage you to reevaluate your relationships and see how you respond when you are around certain people. Do you respect them? Do they encourage you to grow? Do you have a kindred spirit? Do you share like values? If you can't answer in the affirmative, you might want to review how much time you spend with these people. Some changes might be in order. You have a limited amount of time to spend with others, so select wisely; much of who you are-positive as well as negative-will be formed by the friends you keep.

This isn’t, however, just a public relations challenge for organizational leaders; corporate social responsibility is a very real issue for job seekers. For the 2007 Cone’s Millennial Cause Study, 68 percent of Generation Y’ers stated that they currently do or will refuse to work for a company that does not have a strong corporate social responsibility record, and 75 percent will pay particularly close attention, both for employment and consumer choices, to companies who have strong CSR records. Numerous studies have found that a company’s CSR record will affect an organization’s ability to recruit and retain qualified employees (i.e., Chesloff, 2010; Greening & Turban, 2000). Murray’s (2008) survey found that one third of the respondents felt working for a caring and responsible employer was more important than the salary that they earned, and nearly one half would turn away from an employer with a negative corporate social responsibility history.

From GOD’s perspective, everything that happens in life is a Spiritual test. In every situation in life, we can respond from God consciousness or negative ego consciousness.

Research6 by Michael Treadway has shown that people who work hard release greater amounts of dopamine (neurotransmitters that are markers of pleasure) in reward areas of the brain. Overachievers live off the fleeting high that comes from responding to that one extra e-mail, getting that additional project out of the way, or checking one last thing off the to-do list. Work addiction—unlike addictions involving alcohol or other substances—is rewarded by our culture (with promotions, bonuses, praise, awards, and so on) and therefore considered a good thing despite its long-term negative impact on well-being.7

Let’s assume that people respond to stress.” “Is that true?” “Well, not just negative stress, but also positive stress like interest, or ambition. If they’re under too little stress, they don’t care, so it’s very hard to motivate them to do something. But if they’re under too much stress, they panic. They freeze, or they get angry and do completely irrational things.