Strengthening Relationship Quotes

What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?

Relationships are treated like Dixie cups. They are the same. They are disposable. If it does not work, drop it, throw it away, get another. Committed bonds (including marriage) cannot last when this is the prevailing logic. Most of us are unclear about what to do to protect and strengthen caring bonds when our self-centered needs are not being met.

On the left side of a strong woman, stands a strong man; he is strengthened by her character.

The more connections you and your lover make, not just between your bodies, but between your minds, your hearts, and your souls, the more you will strengthen the fabric of your relationship, and the more real moments you will experience together.

The feeling of love comes and goes on a whim; you can't control it. But the action of love is something you can do, regardless of how you are feeling.

People with serious illness have priorities besides simply prolonging their lives. Surveys find that their top concerns include avoiding suffering, strengthening relationships with family and friends, being mentally aware, not being a burden on others, and achieving a sense that their life is complete.

When people say they don't want to get into a relationship, it should never be taken into face value because it is never really the whole truth. It is usually a vast collection of issues and fears and complications, forced to conceal one tiny hope lurking underneath it all: that someday, somebody will come along to discover, accept and understand and strengthen that feeble hope.

While it may not be a simple act, offering forgiveness not only has the power to heal relationships, it strengthens the well-being of those who give this life-changing gift.

I need to make money. I need to write today. I need to clean the bathroom. I need to eat something. I need to quit sugar. I need to cut my hair. I need to call Verizon. I need to savor the moment. I need to find the library card. I need to learn to meditate. I need to try harder. I need to get that stain out. I need to find better health insurance. I need to discover my signature scent. I need to strengthen and tone. I need to be present in the moment. I need to learn French. I need to be easier on myself. I need to buy organizational storage units. I need to call back. I need to develop a relationship with a God of my understanding.

Stop trying to control how you feel, and instead take control of what you do.

Be like the sun who fell in love with the moon and shared all his light.

Our love is sharpened by the stone of our challenges and strengthened by the struggles of our growth.

When I am with you, I am invincible. When I am with you, your kind and loving presence strengthen me down to my very core. When I am with you, I finally know what heaven on earth feels like. For when I am with you, I am the best I could be. I'd rather walk through the burning coals of hell than enjoy comfort and luxury with someone else. For life without you, is not life at all. I love you.

Let go of excessive thinking and see how everything changes. Your relationships change because you don't demand that the other person should do something for you to enhance your sense of self. You don't compare yourself to others or try to be more than someone else to strengthen your sense of identity.

If you both agree that the relationship will be your spiritual practice, so much the better. You can then express your thoughts and feelings to each other as soon as they occur, or as soon as a reaction comes up, so that you do not create a time gap in which an unexpressed or unacknowledged emotion or grievance can fester and grow. Learn to give expression to what you feel without blaming. Learn to listen to your partner in an open, nondefensive way. Give your partner space for expressing himself or herself. Be present. Accusing, defending, attacking — all those patterns that are designed to strengthen or protect the ego or to get its needs met will then become redundant. Giving space to others — and to yourself — is vital. Love cannot flourish without it. When you have removed the two factors that are destructive to relationships — when the pain-body has been transmuted and you are no longer identified with mind and mental positions — and if your partner has done the same, you will experience the bliss of the flowering of relationship. Instead of mirroring to each other your pain and your unconsciousness, instead of satisfying your mutual addictive ego needs, you will reflect back to each other the love that you feel deep within, the love that comes with the realization of your oneness with all that is. This is the love that has no opposite.

when you avoid solitude, you miss out on the positive things it brings you: the ability to clarify hard problems, to regulate your emotions, to build moral courage, and to strengthen relationships.

You could help someone else in a relationship. you could strengthen them and support them. but you couldn't actually do everything for them. you couldn't solve all their problems.

The fundamental defect of the female character is a lack of a sense of justice. This originates first and foremost in their want of rationality and capacity for reflexion but it is strengthened by the fact that, as the weaker sex, they are driven to rely not on force but on cunning: hence their instinctive subtlety and their ineradicable tendency to tell lies: for, as nature has equipped the lion with claws and teeth, the elephant with tusks, the wild boar with fangs, the bull with horns and the cuttlefish with ink, so it has equipped woman with the power of dissimulation as her means of attack and defence, and has transformed into this gift all the strength it has bestowed on man in the form of physical strength and the power of reasoning. Dissimulation is thus inborn in her and consequently to be found in the stupid woman almost as often as in the clever one. To make use of it at every opportunity is as natural to her as it is for an animal to employ its means of defence whenever it is attacked, and when she does so she feels that to some extent she is only exercising her rights. A completely truthful woman who does not practice dissimulation is perhaps an impossibility, which is why women see through the dissimulation of others so easily it is inadvisable to attempt it with them. – But this fundamental defect which I have said they possess, together with all that is associated with it, gives rise to falsity, unfaithfulness, treachery, ingratitude, etc. Women are guilty of perjury far more often than men. It is questionable whether they ought to be allowed to take an oath at all.

Many people will not be honest because they fear loss of intimacy and togetherness. In reality, honesty brings people closer together, for it will strengthen their identities. The more you realize your separate identities, the closer you can become. Telling loved ones what is really on your mind and telling others what you really think is the foundation of love.

it’s through an orientation toward healing and repair for ourselves and others that we recover our capacity for feeling, for relationship, and, with that, the ability to strengthen our bonds and work together.

When we evaluate the rightness or wrongness of actions or behavior, we need to ask ourselves if that behavior will edify—build up—ourselves or someone else, or if it will tear down. The question is not what we can get away with, but what is healthy and edifying. When it is all said and done, are we edified spiritually? Have we been built up and strengthened in our relationship with the Lord or with our spouse, or have we been weakened? Do we come away encouraged or discouraged, confident or filled with a sense of guilt or shame? Is our conscience clean?

Caring for the one who worries about you is the best thing you can do to strengthen the relationship.

In between every action and reaction, there is a space. Usually the space is extremely small because we react so quickly, but take notice of that space and expand it. Be aware in that space that you have a choice to make. You can choose how to respond, and choose wisely, because the next step you take will teach your child how to handle anger and could either strengthen or damage your relationship.

Being less available over text, in other words, has a way of paradoxically strengthening your relationship even while making you (slightly) less available to those you care about. This point is crucial because many people fear that their relationships will suffer if they downgrade this form of lightweight connection. I want to reassure you that it will instead strengthen the relationships you care most about. You can be the one person in their life who actually talks to them on a regular basis, forming a deeper, more nuanced relationship than any number of exclamation points and bitmapped emojis can provide.

A complaint is a unique opportunity to strengthen the relationship with the client.

The more importance we place on avoiding unpleasant feelings in life, the more our life tends to go downhill.

So perhaps the best thing to do is simply be aware of how much venting is okay and how much is too much.

Please take responsibility for the energy you bring into this space. I realized that for every relationship, not only do I have to be accountable for the energy I bring, but I also have to take responsibility for the energy that I allow from others. I understand that strengthening the bond in any situation is impossible if you’re not surrounded by energy that lifts you up.

Knowing our personal financial identity allows for healing, empathy, and further strengthening of relationships when we apply it in the context of family or other relationships with friends, a spouse, and co-workers. It is also a very helpful framework for healing our money mindset and money blocks (including ancestral money blocks), so we can re-write our own personal money stories, that are rooted in our own personal financial identity.

It is not easy to shut out the world, set aside a few minutes by yourself, and spend time in God’s Word and prayer. But it is essential if we are to grow in our relationship with God and be strengthened for the battles ahead. Don’t delay. Begin now to spend time alone with God every day.

Having an honest relationship with time is no simple task. First, you have to open up to the possibility that time is your friend, there to help you, and that recording future plans in whatever way you see fit isn't a burden but rather something that strengthens your pursuit of your dreams.

Prioritizing friendship is sometimes tricky; society often indicates to women that it’s not on the same level as the other relationships in our lives, such as the ones with our romantic partners, our children, or even our jobs. Devoting ourselves to finding spouses, caring for children, or snagging a promotion is acceptable, productive behavior. Spending time strengthening our friendships, on the other hand, is seen more like a diversion.

There's several reasons why it make sense to begin building a culture of radical candor by asking people to criticize you. First, it's the best way to show that you are aware you are often wrong and that you want to hear about it when you are. You want to be challenged. Second, you'll learn a lot. Few people scrutinize you as closely as do those that report to you. [...] Third, the more first hand experience you have with how it feels to receive criticism, the better idea you'll have of how your own guidance lands for others. Fourth, asking for criticism is a great way to build trust and strengthen your relationships.

Eating disorders are so profoundly a coping mechanism for failures in human relationships that to get over one it’s essential to strengthen the capacity to relate to another, which is a lot of what happens in therapy. Underneath my desire

The fact that you can act with love even when you don’t feel love is very empowering. Why? Because whereas the feelings of love are fleeting and largely out of your control, you can take the actions of love anytime and anyplace for the whole rest of your life.

I apparently held a belief that if I expressed my anger, I would destroy our bond forever. The relationship was not ruined; in fact, it was strengthened. But I had no reference, no previous experience to tell me this could be so. I had never dared express my anger at my family and had a marked lack of experience in this process of rupture and repair.

When you carry resentment towards another, you are effectively strengthening your relationship with that person. Let go of the resentment and you break the ties that bind you.

When we behave naturally, others relax and relationships are formed or strengthened.

When we focus on what we can do, it’s amazing how little time we have left to become consumed by our disappointments.

One of the greatest challenges with drawing boundaries is becoming comfortable with being misunderstood.

Real boundaries aren’t about what you say or do—they are internal. They provide a sense of where I end and you begin—what’s my responsibility and what’s not.

Carnegie was right when he wrote, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming genuinely interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

The reason that marriage is so painful and yet wonderful is because it is a reflection of the gospel, which is painful and wonderful at once. The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope. This is the only kind of relationship that will really transform us. Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God’s saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent. The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God’s mercy and grace.

Suppose you ignore your head and follow your heart to get into a relationship. When it ends, the head starts haunting you with logic, "See.. I told you it was a wrong decision. You have wasted precious time of your life." Head becomes too strong, heart becomes too weak. This imbalance of power between head and heart causes extreme pain. To bring balance again, strengthen your heart. Spend quality time with things you love.

Suppose the Lord says, “I have a gift for you—a beautiful, wonderful expression of what love is. I will provide you with a spouse who will love and cherish you. Your relationship with this person will bring out the best in you. It will give you an opportunity to experience some of the deepest and most meaningful dimensions of human love that are possible. That individual will walk alongside you to encourage, challenge, and strengthen you when you lose heart. Within that relationship, your mate will love you, believe in you, and trust you.

I was thinking not very long ago about the difference between the people we "grew up" with vs. the people we're "growing old" with - not always being one and the same - and how time (and the memories we forge together) really does strengthen pretty much all of our relationships/friendships (whether they had started on the right foot or not). And I guess what I've mostly learned (by moving to NZ especially) is that the more Significant people you have in your life, the more 'manageable' the idea of loss, losing a loved-one, can become - not because you can replace them (obviously you can't) or because they're interchangeable (no one is), but because like a foundation to a house the more pillars you have (people you love) holding it up (loving you) the more solid/resilient you become - and from there, I find you're better equipped to overcome whatever life throws your way. That said time does pass us by very quickly. I find it much more noticeable through our growing kids than ever before.

For the natural selectivity of the island I will have to substitute a conscious selectivity based on another sense of values – a sense of values I have become more aware of here. Island precepts, I might call them if I could define them, signposts toward another way of living. Simplicity of living, as much as possible, to retain a true awareness of life. Balance of physical, intellectual and spiritual life. Work without pressure. Space for significance and beauty. Time for solitude and sharing. Closeness to nature to strengthen understanding and faith in the intermittent of life: life of the spirit, creative life and the life of human relationships. A few shells.

I have always found a natural relationship between running and meditation. Running can be a support for meditation, and meditation can be a support for running. Running is a natural form of exercise, for it is simply an extension of walking. When we run, we strengthen our heart, remove stagnant air, revitalize our nervous system, and increase our aerobic capacity. It helps us develop a positive attitude. It creates exertion and stamina and gives us a way to deal with pain. It helps us relax. For many of us, it offers a feeling of freedom. Likewise, meditation is a natural exercise of the mind—an opportunity to strengthen, reinvigorate, and cleanse. Through meditation we can connect with that long-forgotten goodness we all have. It is very powerful to feel that sense of goodness: having confidence and bravery in our innermost being.

I need to make money. I need to write today. I need to clean the bathroom. I need to eat something. I need to quit sugar. I need to cut my hair. I need to call Verizon. I need to savor the moment. I need to find the library card. I need to learn to meditate. I need to try harder. I need to get that stain out. I need to find better health insurance. I need to discover my signature scent. I need to strengthen and tone. I need to be present in the moment. I need to learn French. I need to be easier on myself. I need to buy organizational storage units. I need to call back. I need to develop a relationship with a God of my understanding. I need to buy eye cream. I need to live up to my potential. I need to lie back down.

Many marriages ultimately dissolve, of course, but there’s no compelling evidence that people bolt as soon as things get difficult. On the contrary, it’s precisely when things get difficult that many of us redouble our efforts to strengthen our relationship, either by engaging in effortful relationship-maintenance activities or by recalibrating our expectations.

THE POWER OF TWO If two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. —MATTHEW 18:19 Imagine for a moment the unlimited power of a husband and wife who walk constantly in agreement—the power of a mother and father united in the raising of children who understand the power of relationships, are saturated in wisdom, and are full of faith! How different would our world be today if there were more couples like this? How different would the church be? How different would our communities be? How different would our nations be? Father, Your Word says one person can put a thousand to flight and two can chase off ten thousand. Strengthen the hedge of protection around my marriage and family and whisper peace into my relationships, ministry, workplace, and business. No evil shall come near to my dwelling place or my marriage. Cause my relationships to work in perfect harmony with You today. Break any unhealthy patterns in our relationship, guard our thoughts and words, and fill us with new levels of passion and zeal for your calling upon us as a couple. Remove every hindrance from the divinely ordained intimacy and unity You intend for our relationship. In Jesus’s name, amen.

I've learned that there is no currency like trust and no catalyst like hope. There is nothing worse for building relationships than pandering, on one hand, and preaching, on the other. And the most important quality we must all strengthen in ourselves is that of a deep human empathy, for that will provide the most hope of all--and the foundation for our collective survival.

1. Choose to love each other even in those moments when you struggle to like each other. Love is a commitment, not a feeling. 2. Always answer the phone when your husband/wife is calling and, when possible, try to keep your phone off when you’re together with your spouse. 3. Make time together a priority. Budget for a consistent date night. Time is the currency of relationships, so consistently invest time in your marriage. 4. Surround yourself with friends who will strengthen your marriage, and remove yourself from people who may tempt you to compromise your character. 5. Make laughter the soundtrack of your marriage. Share moments of joy, and even in the hard times find reasons to laugh.

First, strive for a solid foundation of trust, loyalty, respect, and security. Your spouse is your closest relative and is entitled to depend on you as a committed ally, supporter, and champion.   Second, cultivate the tender, loving part of your relationship: sensitivity, consideration, understanding, and demonstrations of affection and caring. Regard each other as confidante, companion, and friend.   Third, strengthen the partnership. Develop a sense of cooperation, consideration, and compromise. Sharpen your communication skills so that you can more easily make decisions about practical issues, such as division of work, preparing and implementing a family budget, and planning leisure-time activities.

Young women use the linguistic features that they do, not as mindless affectations, but as power tools for establishing and strengthening relationships. Vocal fry, uptalk, and even like, are in fact not signs of ditziness, but instead all have a unique history and specific social utility.

One study found that viewing leisure as "wasteful" and "unproductive" undermines enjoyment of relaxing or fun activities, even as leisure itself has been shown to lower blood pressure, reduce risk of depression, and strengthen social relationships. Worse still, viewing this downtime as wasteful is associated with lower happiness, greater depression, and more stress and anxiety. This effect was strongest for leisure activities that are not in service of other goals (like exercising or meditation), but whose sole purpose is enjoyment (like relaxing, watching TV, or pursuing hobbies).

As long as the ego runs your life, most of your thoughts, emotions, and actions arise from desire and fear. In relationships you then either want or fear something from the other person. What you want from them may be pleasure or material gain, recognition, praise or attention, or a strengthening of your sense of self through comparison and through establishing that you are, have, or know more than they. What you fear is that the opposite may be the case, and they may diminish your sense of self in some way. When you make the present moment the focal point of your attention — instead of using it as a means to an end — you go beyond the ego and beyond the unconscious compulsion to use people as a means to an end, the end being self-enhancement at the cost of others. When you give your fullest attention to whoever you are interacting with, you take past and future out of the relationship, except for practical matters. When you are fully present with everyone you meet, you relinquish the conceptual identity you made for them — your interpretation of who they are and what they did in the past — and are able to interact without the egoic movements of desire and fear. Attention, which is alert stillness, is the key. How wonderful to go beyond wanting and fearing in your relationships. Love does not want or fear anything.

The further you stay away from the revenge mode, the more you will strengthen your relationship with yourself and will be closer to your soul.

What I personally discovered was that my happiness at work could be strengthened by improving my relationships at work, more than by the work itself. True,

Every interaction is a chance to strengthen the customer relationship.

Studies have shown that dancing has been known to improve relationships. It can strengthen the couple’s bond and relieve emotional tension.

Whenever I feel as if my faith is being tested, give me the grace to see you moving in my life to strengthen my relationship with you.

Strengthening our relationship with grief means making a friend of loss.

We need to pay attention with a particular attitude: one of openness, curiosity, and receptiveness.

We cannot be everything to everyone, or even to everyone we are close to.

It’s reasonable to expect people you are in relationships with to care about your pain, even when they aren’t doing anything “wrong.

Just because you understand where someone is coming from, doesn’t mean you approve of where they’re going.

There are just two imperfect people activating each other’s sensitivities and making emotional decisions.

Boundaries are the opposite of control.

When you repair your relationship with Allah, He strengthens your relationships with people.

What is it about pushing our limits that makes us stronger? How does suffering strengthen the relationships that hold us together?

Tech companies create addictive gadgets that hook your attention and distract you from your loved ones and your purpose.

Tiny habits are the smallest things you can do that will make the biggest difference in your life.

What relationships need strengthening in your life? Don’t wait for them to grow cold or bitter, but ask God to help you strengthen them by putting God’s love into action—begin today.

When we look at our words and deeds in this context, it strengthens our resolve to be incredibly selective. Everything we say and do becomes a part of who we are and how we connect to others.

blame does not go to one person alone, but rather that two people are in a system. They act in relation to each other. The enemy is not each other but the dynamic that is triggered between them.

We have to wonder what this might suggest about the relationship between the public realm and private lives in our settlement. Some have proposed that we need to do more in encouraging individual interests and pursuits, even if they don't appear terribly useful or practical, to bolster and deepen those inner reserves that "make" a person into who she is, and how, by extension, she identifies and values herself. Other, more conservative, voices balk at this, countering that we need, in fact, to strengthen the bonds of the commune, so that to end one's own life would be tantamount to a grievous assault on us all.... But if we calm ourselves and open our eyes and step back far enough, we have to admit that our society, if not fundamentally unwell, has been profoundly wounded.

trust.” Smiling fondly, she recrossed her ankles, switching them up, and leaned forward in her seat. “He’s your friend, Aoife, and you’re his. Never mind loving one another, that’s the easy part, you and Joey like each other. You enjoy one another’s company, and I can promise you that all of those wonderful aspects of your relationship, all of those effortless conversations you find yourself having with him, or all of the content spells of silence you spend in one another’s company, will only strengthen your ability to stand the test of time. And more crucially, the test of parenthood.

God is Power— Infinite, Irresistible, Inexorable, Indifferent. And yet, God is Pliable— Trickster, Teacher, Chaos, Clay. God exists to be shaped. God is Change. This is the literal truth. God can’t be resisted or stopped, but can be shaped and focused. This means God is not to be prayed to. Prayers only help the person doing the praying, and then, only if they strengthen and focus that person’s resolve. If they’re used that way, they can help us in our only real relationship with God. They help us to shape God and to accept and work with the shapes that God imposes on us. God is power, and in the end, God prevails. But we can rig the game in our own favor if we understand that God exists to be shaped, and will be shaped, with or without our forethought, with or without our intent.

Whether with a new acquaintance or an existing relationship, stay open to the possibility that your perceptions aren’t entirely accurate; it just may give you the opportunity to strengthen the bond.

He pressed his cheek to my forehead. "I don't know," he said. "I think you're my strength." It was a sweet and romantic statement, but something about it bothered me. "That's not quite right," I said, wondering how I could put my feelings into words. I knew you could help someone else in a relationship. You could strengthen them and support them. But you couldn't actually do everything for them.

The loneliness, bleakness, wretchedness you feel without this person you love existed before you fell in love. What you call love is merely stimulation, the temporary covering-up of your emptiness. You escaped from loneliness through a person, used this person to cover it up. Your problem is not this relationship but rather it is the problem of your own emptiness. Escape is very dangerous because, like some drug, it hides the real problem. It is because you have no love inside you that you continually look for love to fill you from the outside. There is a difference between understanding the futility of this escape and deciding not to get involved in this kind of relationship. A decision is no good because it strengthens the thing you are deciding against. Understanding is quite different.

Second, building trust requires risk—mostly emotional. Testing strengthens trust. Friendships grow while working through difficulties together and finding resolution. This includes clarifying misunderstandings, admitting wrong, apologizing and forgiving. As we deal with the bumps in a relationship, mutual confidence increases. Soon both parties are confident the other will not intentionally hurt them.

1. Identify the meaning you give to a situation. 2. Express using the following: “When _____________________________ (insert the situation) happened, I interpreted it to mean ______________________________ (insert the meaning you gave to it), and I felt ___________________________________ (insert the emotion you experienced).” 3. Identify what you need from your loved one and the strategy they can use to meet that need better. 4. Express using the following: “I need you to _____________________________ (insert what you need). You can do this by ___________________________________ (insert the “how”/strategy they can use).

spirit of gratitude acknowledges that others, including our spouse, friends, and God, gave us many gifts, big and small, to help us achieve the goodness in our lives. Gratitude is a relationship-strengthening spirit. It’s more than a feeling. It’s an attitude, a habit, a choice, a motive, a way of life.3 Perhaps that’s why Cicero, the Roman philosopher, said, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

I think her wisdom should be considered for all relationships. When we give people relational access to us, it should never lead to “less safety, less sanity, or less strengthening for the individuals in that relationship.

People with serious illness have priorities besides simply prolonging their lives. Surveys find that their top concerns include avoiding suffering, strengthening relationships with family and friends, being mentally aware, not being a burden on others, and achieving a sense that their life is complete. Our system of technological medical care has utterly failed to meet these needs, and the cost of this failure is measured in far more than dollars.

Words are words. People add meaning to words. Information is information. With words people add value to information. Words breathe life into information. Words move mountains of information. Words are action. Momentum for living evolves from pursuit of deeper, wider and higher significance, utility and value of words. Words we sow, nourish and harvest feed hungry minds and hearts. Gathered words strengthen, ignite and release us. Words identify, signify and proclaim our individuality. Words pronounce a purposeful life’s choices. With wisdom, courage and patience we must choose high-performing words for long-term relationships. Chosen words become soul mates.

This means God is not to be prayed to. Prayers only help the person doing the praying, and then, only if they strengthen and focus that persons resolve. If they’re used that way, they can help us in our only real relationship with God.

Overfunctioning isn’t about other people but about a lack of internal boundaries. Overfunctioning can manifest in all kinds of behavior, including people-pleasing and enabling, which require a hard look at our own side of the responsibilities chart.

Throughout college, my monastic, scholarly study of human meaning would conflict with my urge to forge and strengthen the human relationships that formed that meaning. If the unexamined life was not worth living, was the unlived life worth examining?

Love thrives not in perfection, but in acceptance. It grows when we recognise the beauty in imperfections and embrace them with compassion. Relationships are strengthened when empathy replaces judgement, and connection becomes the foundation of every bond.

Each conversation provides an opportunity to strengthen relationships and achieve better outcomes. Information exchange can influence a person's mental state, so it's crucial to use communication in a way that promotes positive change in others and yourself.

A FINAL DECISION How do you move further along on your own path toward a good life? First, by recognizing that the good life is not a destination. It is the path itself, and the people who are walking it with you. As you walk, second by second you can decide to whom and to what you give your attention. Week by week you can prioritize your relationships and choose to be with the people who matter. Year by year you can find purpose and meaning through the lives that you enrich and the relationships that you cultivate. By developing your curiosity and reaching out to others—family, loved ones, coworkers, friends, acquaintances, even strangers—with one thoughtful question at a time, one moment of devoted, authentic attention at a time, you strengthen the foundation of a good life.

Interestingly, when you practice feeling gratitude toward your partner, you start to notice more positive aspects of both the person and the relationship.[10] In this way, gratitude counteracts unrealistic expectations and can strengthen loving feelings toward them.

God is Power— Infinite, Irresistible, Inexorable, Indifferent. And yet, God is Pliable— Trickster, Teacher, Chaos, Clay. God exists to be shaped. God is Change. This is the literal truth. God can’t be resisted or stopped, but can be shaped and focused. This means God is not to be prayed to. Prayers only help the person doing the praying, and then, only if they strengthen and focus that persons resolve. If they’re used that way, they can help us in our only real relationship with God. They help us to shape God and to accept and work

For many people, apologetics is one of the biggest things that God has used to strengthen their faith and help them grow in their relationship with Him. Learning about the various ways that science, history, and philosophy cohere with God and how apparent conflicts can be resolved is exciting and edifying. Like Jacob struggling with God and refusing to let go until God blessed him, apologetics allows us to struggle with God over the deep philosophical and theological questions of our time. There’s a blessing for us in that struggle!

the idea of delayed reciprocity. You give expecting to receive. Yet we often give and receive according to intermittent, sometimes random intervals. That time lag is where a relationship emerges. Perhaps gifts serve political ends. But Mauss also believed that they strengthened the bonds between people and communities. Your obligation isn’t just to repay the gift according to a one-to-one ratio. You’re beholden to the “spirit of the gift,” a kind of shared faith. Every gesture carries a desire for connection, expanding one’s ring of associations.

We can honestly say that everyone we've known who has used effective communication has been grateful for it in the long run. Often, effective communication brings about huge relief by showing you just how strongly your partner feels about you -- and by strengthening the bond between you two. And even though in some instances the response may not be what you hoped for and you'll be convinced that you've ruined everything -- if only you had said or done something else, he would surely have come around -- we've never heard anyone say in retrospect that they regretted raising an important issue in a dating or relationship setting. In fact, they overwhelmingly express gratitude that effective communication got them that one step closer to their long-term goal of either finding the right person or strengthening their existing bond.

Most people are shocked to realize that people-pleasing isn’t about other people’s comfort—it’s about your own. It’s about your sense of self being so determined by the opinions and feelings of others that you must manage those things by contorting yourself around the needs of others.

While doctrine can seem stuffy, boring, and useless, it can also be surprisingly devotional. Yes, the study of God can profoundly deepen your faith and strengthen your relationship with the living God because doctrine helps us know more about Him. The more we know about Him, the more we love Him.

You have the most accurate barometer for truth living within you. Every time you choose to trust yourself, you are strengthening a muscle that will someday become second nature. This will trickle into every area of your life—relationships, career, everyday decisions, where to live, where to vacation, etc. You have a gold mine inside you, and the more you use it, trust it, believe in it, the more miracles you will experience. Life will take on a magical feeling. Things will seem to flow with more ease and enjoyment. Your life will unfold in a way where you feel incredibly loved because you are.

We want a purpose so that we can guide our everyday life towards an end. That is obviously what we mean by purpose. But if I understand how to live, then the very living is in itself sufficient, is it not? Do we then want a purpose? If I love you, if I love another, is that not sufficient in itself? Do I then want a purpose? Surely, we want a purpose only when we do not understand or when we want a mode of conduct with an end in view. After all, most of us are seeking a way of life, a way of conduct, and we either look to others, to the past, or we try to find a mode of behavior through our own experience. When we look to our own experience for a pattern of behavior, our experience is always conditioned, is it not? However wide the experiences one may have had, unless these experiences dissolve the past conditioning, any new experiences only further strengthen the past conditioning. That is a fact which we can discuss. And if we look to another, to the past, to a guru, to an ideal, to an example for a pattern of behavior, we are merely forcing the extraordinary vitality of life into a mold, into a particular shape, and thereby we lose the swiftness, the intensity, the richness of life.

Caring Across Generations, led jointly by twenty organizations representing caregivers, care consumers, and their families, is a national movement to embrace our changing demographics, particularly the aging of America, and an opportunity to strengthen our intergenerational and caregiving relationships.

In humans, the ability to strengthen one’s readiness to face potential trauma without transforming life itself into an act of interminable vigilance, depends on a relationship with an important other who relates to your subjective states as important to him or her—and to whose mental states you can reciprocally relate.

Breaking cycles of dependency, establishing cordial relationships between people of differing economic means, and reestablishing sound values and principles in our society can serve only to strengthen the fabric of our nation, which is what any government should want to do and which clearly promotes the general welfare.

When you experience a pervasive lack of psychological safety in childhood, you learn to hide, suppress, or despise the most vulnerable pieces of yourself because they will be weaponized against you. You hide them to protect yourself, but, in doing so, you ensure that you never get the opportunity to prove the story wrong.

Routine and habit are our everyday life. Some are aware of their habits, others are not. If one becomes aware of habits—the repetitious movement of the hand or of the mind—one can put an end to them with comparative ease. But what is important in all this is to understand, not intellectually, the mechanism of habit-forming which gradually destroys or blunts all feeling. The fear of change strengthens habit, not only physically but also in the very brain cells themselves. So having once become established in a routine, we keep going, like a tramcar along its rails. We take things for granted in all relationships, and this is one of the major factors of insensitivity. So habit becomes a natural thing. Then we say: why should one pay attention to these things that one does every day? And so inattention cultivates habit; and then we are caught. Then the problem begins of how to be free of habit. And then there is conflict. And thus conflict becomes the way of life we accept naturally!

I’ve shared with you that long stretches spent in noiseless contemplation is one of the secrets of the advanced mind. Ultimately, you’re the only person you’ll be with your entire life. Why not strengthen your relationship with your greatest self, fully know your genius and start a lifetime love affair with your most noble nature?

People who discover they are polyamorous find they can take joy in their loved one’s having a wonderful experience with another lover and that when their loved one comes home the relationship is not damaged. Indeed, it is possible that the relationship is strengthened. A word was even coined for this feeling: it is called compersion.

Guilt plays a pro-social function in strengthening relationships; it encourages taking responsibility, motivates amendatory behaviors such as apology or confession, leads to higher quality solutions to crises and is associated with more constructive anger management … Guilt is also associated with positive empathy and the ability to acknowledge and understand others’ points of view. In contrast shame is associated with responses that are injurious to social relationships… Shame, too, seems to be a driving force in traumatized behavior. Negotiation feels like a defeat, a reminder of the earlier violation. Giving in, adjusting, and changing feel life-threatening. Difference, as to the Supremacist, becomes a threat.

Recognition for us is about presence, about profound listening, and about recognizing and affirming the light in each other as a mechanism for nurturing and strengthening internal relationships to our Nishnaabeg worlds. It is a core part of our political systems because they are rooted in our bodies and our bodies are not just informed by but created and maintained by relationships of deep reciprocity. Our bodies exist only in relation to Indigenous complex, nonlinear constructions of time, space, and place that are continually rebirthed through the practice and often coded recognition of obligations and responsibilities within a nest of diversity, freedom, consent, noninterference, and a generated, proportional, emergent reciprocity.

Girls aside, the other thing I found in the last few years of being at school, was a quiet, but strong Christian faith – and this touched me profoundly, setting up a relationship or faith that has followed me ever since. I am so grateful for this. It has provided me with a real anchor to my life and has been the secret strength to so many great adventures since. But it came to me very simply one day at school, aged only sixteen. As a young kid, I had always found that a faith in God was so natural. It was a simple comfort to me: unquestioning and personal. But once I went to school and was forced to sit through somewhere in the region of nine hundred dry, Latin-liturgical, chapel services, listening to stereotypical churchy people droning on, I just thought that I had got the whole faith deal wrong. Maybe God wasn’t intimate and personal but was much more like chapel was … tedious, judgemental, boring and irrelevant. The irony was that if chapel was all of those things, a real faith is the opposite. But somehow, and without much thought, I had thrown the beautiful out with the boring. If church stinks, then faith must do, too. The precious, natural, instinctive faith I had known when I was younger was tossed out with this newly found delusion that because I was growing up, it was time to ‘believe’ like a grown-up. I mean, what does a child know about faith? It took a low point at school, when my godfather, Stephen, died, to shake me into searching a bit harder to re-find this faith I had once known. Life is like that. Sometimes it takes a jolt to make us sit and remember who and what we are really about. Stephen had been my father’s best friend in the world. And he was like a second father to me. He came on all our family holidays, and spent almost every weekend down with us in the Isle of Wight in the summer, sailing with Dad and me. He died very suddenly and without warning, of a heart attack in Johannesburg. I was devastated. I remember sitting up a tree one night at school on my own, and praying the simplest, most heartfelt prayer of my life. ‘Please, God, comfort me.’ Blow me down … He did. My journey ever since has been trying to make sure I don’t let life or vicars or church over-complicate that simple faith I had found. And the more of the Christian faith I discover, the more I realize that, at heart, it is simple. (What a relief it has been in later life to find that there are some great church communities out there, with honest, loving friendships that help me with all of this stuff.) To me, my Christian faith is all about being held, comforted, forgiven, strengthened and loved – yet somehow that message gets lost on most of us, and we tend only to remember the religious nutters or the God of endless school assemblies. This is no one’s fault, it is just life. Our job is to stay open and gentle, so we can hear the knocking on the door of our heart when it comes. The irony is that I never meet anyone who doesn’t want to be loved or held or forgiven. Yet I meet a lot of folk who hate religion. And I so sympathize. But so did Jesus. In fact, He didn’t just sympathize, He went much further. It seems more like this Jesus came to destroy religion and to bring life. This really is the heart of what I found as a young teenager: Christ comes to make us free, to bring us life in all its fullness. He is there to forgive us where we have messed up (and who hasn’t), and to be the backbone in our being. Faith in Christ has been the great empowering presence in my life, helping me walk strong when so often I feel so weak. It is no wonder I felt I had stumbled on something remarkable that night up that tree. I had found a calling for my life.

My brief forays into the formal ethics of analytic philosophy felt dry as a bone, missing the messiness and weight of real human life. Throughout college, my monastic, scholarly study of human meaning would conflict with my urge to forge and strengthen the human relationships that formed that meaning. If the unexamined life was not worth living, was the unlived life worth examining?

If you want to predict how happy someone is, or how long she will live (and if you are not allowed to ask about her genes or personality), you should find out about her social relationships. Having strong social relationships strengthens the immune system, extends life (more than does quitting smoking), speeds recovery from surgery, and reduces the risks of depression and anxiety disorders. It’s not just that extroverts are naturally happier and healthier; when introverts are forced to be more outgoing, they usually enjoy it and find that it boosts their mood. Even people who think they don’t want a lot of social contact still benefit from it. And it’s not just that “we all need somebody to lean on”; recent work on giving support shows that caring for others is often more beneficial than is receiving help. We need to interact and intertwine with others; we need the give and the take; we need to belong. An ideology of extreme personal freedom can be dangerous because it encourages people to leave homes, jobs, cities, and marriages in search of personal and professional fulfillment, thereby breaking the relationships that were probably their best hope for such fulfillment.

Yet, citizens who want to help empower their political values would be better off if they spent less time consuming politics as at-home amateurs and instead fell in line to help strengthen organizations and leaders. Rather than kibitzing with their social media friends, they could adopt some of the spirit of the party regulars, counting votes and building interpersonal relationships in their neighborhoods.

Paul is basically saying that God has not kept who He is a secret. Knowing God is not hard. It’s actually the most obvious thing in the world. All you have to do is glorify Him as God and be thankful. This response, because it agrees with the truth, gives you open access to the vast treasures of the knowledge of God. But without that response, your thoughts become futile and your heart is darkened. Futile means “purposeless.” When we fail to sustain the response of thanksgiving for everything in our lives, our thinking is cut off from our purpose in God. When we lose sight of our purpose, we will inevitably make choices that are outside of God’s intentions for our lives, and this can only be destructive because it works against His design for us. A dark heart is a heart that is unable to perceive spiritual reality. It is unmoved by the desires and affections of the Lord, and therefore cannot respond to His invitation to relationship, which is the source of life. As Paul goes on to explain in Romans chapter 1, a dark heart perverts our desires and leads us into all kinds of sin that degrades our identity and relationships. The most perverted sins known to mankind came about through a door left open because of the absence of thankfulness.

Love is a condition. There are many circumstances in life that can affect this condition. So it falls on you and I to insulate love from the things that would cause it harm. We, the protectors of love, are responsible if the condition of our love becomes critical. Yes, broken fences can be mended, but love on life support should be left to die. So our earthly desire should be to strengthen the condition of love daily.

How we view God, or a higher power, can have an impact on how we relate to others. Often the role(s) we see God as having in our lives influences our relationships with others. It can affect the way we think others perceive us and how we treat them in return. However you perceive a higher power, be it through the eyes of a Christian, Buddhist, pagan, or agnostic, you still might be able to glean some important self-revelations by reflecting on the qualities of God. Consider your own perceptions and if those views impact how you relate to others. It may help you recognize the motivations behind your actions and help you understand how you view and treat others. By reflecting on our perceptions of how we view God, we can challenge ourselves to grow as individuals and strengthen our relationships, regardless of how we label ourselves in worship.

(...) I also believe that most crabby people can change by making a conscious choice to react to the world in a different way. The key is to scan your environment regularly for things and people to appreciate rather than to criticize. In so doing, you create a new climate of praise and gratitude in your life. Instead of getting bogged down in people’s faults and mistakes, you get swept up in a fruitful search for reasons to say “thank you.

LOVE is not just an acronym: it is a useful way of thinking about “love” itself. If you think of love as an ongoing process of letting go, opening up, valuing, and engaging, then it is always available to you—even when the feelings of love are absent. So in this sense of the word, you really can have everlasting love. But if you think of love merely as an emotion or feeling, then it can never last for long because all feelings and emotions continually change.

and I am convinced that healthy emotional boundaries—such as being clear and vocal about what you will and will not let into your life—are what make relationships functional. Your gut lining is a boundary between you and everything else in the universe that is poised to inundate and overwhelm your biology and generate unrelenting inflammation. Healing and strengthening your gut lining with food—therefore creating and strengthening this critical boundary and reducing intestinal permeability or “leaky gut”—allows you to be selective about what you want to take in from the universe on a material level. You can choose what serves you. I reflect on the fact that many of the problems in society—including violence, mental illness, developmental issues, and pain—start in humans, and humans are made by cells that become dysfunctional largely because of oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, and chronic inflammation. How miraculous that food can directly combat those things. We can’t have a healthy society without well-functioning humans. We can’t have well-functioning humans without well-functioning cells. And we can’t have well-functioning cells with mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, chronic inflammation, and cellular and hormone disruption from toxic chemicals in our food. We combat those things through nutrient-dense, unprocessed foods grown in living, thriving soil.

Superusers …   1. Check in frequently and consistently—not just once a year for an intense engagement.   2. Create content that others can access.   3. “Police” the community and ensure that cultural norms that strengthen the group are enforced.   4. Have a two-way relationship with the organization itself—providing feedback and suggestions.   5. Demonstrate genuine desire to help other members.   6. Attract new members.   7. Aid in the onboarding of new members.

I thought about some of those happier moments in my marriage. I certainly had them. How could I deny the day Kelly was born and the way that had strengthened my relationship with Ronnie, for example? Of course, it did feel as if we were different people then. Time, experiences, events, even other people change us, and if we don’t change together, we grow into strangers. Maybe that was all it was; it was no one’s fault. Guilt has no place in evolution. It’s beside the point.

How can you be happy while the world is falling apart? The people who are resilient versus those who are not have a TLC mindset. They see what is happening as temporary, local, and with some sense of control. People who crumble in hard times tend to see the situation as permanent (things will never change) and global (it’s everywhere), and they feel as though they have no control over the situation (they feel like a victim). Here’s how I used TLC to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Living frugally even when you can afford to live luxurious will not only help you to save money. It will also help you to realize what is truly important in life. The secret that Warren Buffett knows is that money truly cannot buy you happiness. It can buy you a sense of security and it can open many doors for you. However, happiness comes from being engaged in fulfilling work; from strengthening your relationships with those who are most important to you; from doing those things that make you happy.

Building power through collective struggle means that when we band together in groups of people who share many things in common—not everything, but many things—and we decide we want to work toward something, the very process of doing that is the practice of making the world we want to live in. In building the relationships we need to topple an unjust world, we are also strengthening the muscles we need to care for one another; we are stitching together microcosms of the world that will replace the one we have.

thirteen key choices that can be made to maximize any person’s talent: 1. Belief lifts your talent. 2. Passion energizes your talent. 3. Initiative activates your talent. 4. Focus directs your talent. 5. Preparation positions your talent. 6. Practice sharpens your talent. 7. Perseverance sustains your talent. 8. Courage tests your talent. 9. Teachability expands your talent. 10. Character protects your talent. 11. Relationships influence your talent. 12. Responsibility strengthens your talent. 13. Teamwork multiplies your talent.

Research shows that practices like yoga and meditation that help us to focus our attention on the present moment, are especially powerful in restructuring the brain. When new neural pathways are forged, we are able to break free of our default patterns and live more actively in a conscious state. In fact, functional MRI (fMRI) brain scans confirm this,23 showing tangible evidence that consistent consciousness practices actually thicken the prefrontal lobes, the area where our conscious awareness actually lives. Other forms of compassion-based meditation (or just closing your eyes and thinking about someone you love) help strengthen an area called the limbic system, which is the emotional center of the brain. All of this work helps to rewire our brain, disrupt our default thought patterns, and wake us up out of our subconscious-driven autopilot. From this foundation of consciousness we can then begin to witness the conditioned patterns in our thoughts, beliefs, and relationships. This honest self awareness shows us our pathway towards change and ultimately healing.

Our challenge as adults is to develop a strong voice that is uniquely our own, a voice that reflects our deepest values and convictions. Once we are comfortable within that voice, we can bring it to our most important relationships. We can choose to move to the center of a difficult conversation--or we can let it go. We can speak--or decide not to. Whatever we choose, we can head back to the sandbox with clarity, wisdom, and intention. By doing so, we can strengthen the self and our connections, and have the best chance of achieving happiness during our time with each other.

Bit by bit, our people begin to embody the changed anticipation of being cared for and treated with kindness and respect. Part of what strengthens this new way of being comes from us having co-internalized one another. We continue to be their reflective companion on the outside, and they will also feel how we continue to carry them with us in our inner world. It is quite beautiful to watch this healing unfold, often revealing itself as changes in body, feeling, behavior, relational choices first, then later affirmed in more frequent words of tenderness toward themselves.

When we think thoughts, neurotransmitters at one branch of one neuron tree cross the synaptic gap to reach the root of another neuron tree. Once they cross that gap, the neuron fires with an electrical bolt of information. When we continue thinking the same thoughts, the neuron keeps firing in the same ways, strengthening the relationship between the two cells so that they can more readily convey a signal the next time those neurons fire. As a result, the brain shows physical evidence that something was not only learned, but also remembered. This process of selective strengthening is called synaptic potentiation.

I felt it as sure as the love I had for her: every husband should have a man available to help worship his wife's pussy. Nothing was more intimate and caring than a husband who approved of one particular man violating his bride's vows. It was more than just his relationship to his bride. It was the special connection multiplied between all three. It was an enrichment all husbands should know. If the husband truly loved his wife, he should know that another man ejaculating on her face was a gift – cumming in her pussy a compliment above all others. The bond of trust was strengthened. The intimacy intensified beyond imagination. The love nurtured to transcendence.

In 40:31 he says to wait for God because God will renew their strength as they wait for Him. The word wait is the Hebrew word qavah, which means 'to bind together, to be joined, to meet, to expect, to be confident, trust, endure.' If we read this verse with all those definitions included, it would say, 'Those who are bound together with the Lord, joined with the Lord, who meet with the Lord, who confidently expect and trust and endure... will renew their strength.' The image here is more than just an expression of time; it's an expression of unity. It's about relationship--knowing Him, trusting His character. When we live in that space, He strengthens us for whatever we're enduring.

The message of EFT is simple: Forget about learning how to argue better, analyzing your early childhood, making grand romantic gestures, or experimenting with new sexual positions. Instead, recognize and admit that you are emotionally attached to and dependent on your partner in much the same way that a child is on a parent for nurturing, soothing, and protection. Adult attachments may be more reciprocal and less centered on physical contact, but the nature of the emotional bond is the same. EFT focuses on creating and strengthening this emotional bond between partners by identifying and transforming the key moments that foster an adult loving relationship: being open, attuned, and responsive to each other.

For the natural selectivity of the island I will have to substitute a conscious selectivity based on another sense of values - a sense of values I have become more aware of here. Island precepts, I might call them if I could define them, signposts toward another way of living. Simplicity of living, as much as possible, to retain a true awareness of life. Balance of physical, intellectual and spiritual life. Work without pressure. Space for significance and beauty. Time for solitude and sharing. Closeness to nature to strengthen understanding and faith in the intermittent of life: life of the spirit, creative life and the life of human relationships. A few shells." (Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea, pg 112)

Heaven” is actually a country that we build within ourselves, or that we continue to build. We come from it, and we harvest materials for it while we are here, doing this through sharing our talents with others, and through being dedicated to our relationships in life, through loving others and through strengthening our ability to believe, through our faith. What is faith? Faith is the strength to believe even when believing is a very difficult thing to do! I think that faith is acquired here in this world, because there is no need to have faith in our eternal countries. But here, as we acquire faith in the midst of our hardships, we are begetting unto our eternal countries the strong glue that holds some buildings and some temples together.

Doubt is a subject which many Christians find both difficult an sensitive. They may see it as something shameful and disloyal, on the same level as heresy. As a result, it is something that they don't- or won't- talk about. They suppress it. Others fall into the opposite trap- they get totally preoccupied by doubt. They get overwhelmed by it. They lose sight of God by concentrating upon themselves. Yet doubt is something too important to be treated in either of these ways. Viewed positively, doubt provides opportunities for spiritual growth. It tests your faith, and shows you where it is vulnerable. It forces you to think about your faith, and not just take it for granted. It stimulates you to strengthen the foundations of your relationship with God.

Every time I have seen families embrace and accept their homosexual family members, nothing bad had happened! The association has always been positive and loving, caring "family" experience has only grown and flourished. They are available to each other for that family support that is so valued in our culture. Families are strengthened not weakened. When families have rejected their homosexual family members it has not turned out well, even when that rejection was done 'lovingly.' You know, love the sinner...hate the sin? I've known homosexuals rejected by their families who looked for acceptance in all the wrong places. Bright, promising lives lost to drugs, disease, and death. I've seen families who reject those they should love, depriving themselves of that valuable relationship. (120)

Codependency" is a pop-psychology term that often finds itself in these types of books. But it won't be in this one. That's because codependency often implies that there's a problem in being emotionally dependent on others. Some people then mistakenly believe that true emotional health only occurs when you achieve the Zen-like state of unattachment, as though you need to be able to meet all your own emotional needs yourself. This is crap. You are a social creature and you need relationships to survive, and you thrive in a state of interdependence. While you are not responsible for meeting every emotional need of another person, you do have some responsibilities to others, as they do to you. This book will help you identify which responsibilities are reasonable to meet and which are reasonable to expect. This understanding will be rooted in your own values - not in the demands of others.

Suppose your partner has deep-seated fears of abandonment: afraid that you will leave her for someone “better.” Or suppose she fears becoming trapped, controlled, or “smothered.” Then when you fight, these fears will well up inside her; she may not even be aware of them because they very quickly get buried under blame or resentment. Or suppose deep inside your partner feels deeply unworthy: that he is inadequate, unlovable, not good enough. This is painful in itself, but when people feel this way inside, they often act in ways that strain the relationship. Your partner may continually seek approval, demand recognition for what he achieves or contributes, ask for reassurance that you love or admire him, or become quite jealous and possessive. If you then react with frustration, scorn, criticism, impatience, or boredom, you will reinforce his deep-seated sense of unworthiness. And this then gives rise to even more pain.

Throughout college, my monastic, scholarly study of human meaning would conflict with my urge to forge and strengthen the human relationships that formed that meaning. If the unexamined life was not worth living, was the unlived life worth examining? Heading into my sophomore summer, I applied for two jobs: as an intern at the highly scientific Yerkes Primate Research Center, in Atlanta, and as a prep chef at Sierra Camp, a family vacation spot for Stanford alumni on the pristine shores of Fallen Leaf Lake, abutting the stark beauty of Desolation Wilderness in Eldorado National Forest. The camp’s literature promised, simply, the best summer of your life. I was surprised and flattered to be accepted. Yet I had just learned that macaques had a rudimentary form of culture, and I was eager to go to Yerkes and see what could be the natural origin of meaning itself. In other words, I could either study meaning or I could experience it.

It is one thing to die. It is another thing for an innocent person to die for a guilty one. It is something much more that Jesus would take on himself all the curses the world deserved in concentrated form. This meant that his relationship with his Father, the one thing that had sustained him throughout all the previous insults and rejection, was about to be removed. Moses knew he could not lead the people through the wilderness unless God was present. Without his Father’s grace and mercy, Jesus had to wonder if he would be able to take one more step, let alone make it all the way to the cross. So he prayed. The result was that he was strengthened. His mission came into full view (John 18:11), and he was able to see the divine plan to the end. From that point on, the gospel accounts communicate two unmistakable points. They press these points until we are undone by them: Jesus experienced incomparable shame, and he experienced it at the hands of everyone.

Questions for Self-Examination 1. What belief patterns did you inherit from your family? 2.  Which of those belief patterns that still have authority in your thinking can you acknowledge are no longer valid? 3.  What superstitions do you have? Which have more authority over you than your own reasoning ability? 4.  Do you have a personal code of honor? What is it? 5.  Have you ever compromised your sense of honor? If so, have you taken steps to heal it? 6.  Do you have any unfinished business with your family members? If so, list the reasons that prevent you from healing your family relationships. 7.  List all the blessings that you feel came from your family. 8.  If you are now raising a family of your own, list the qualities that you would like your children to learn from you. 9.  What tribal traditions and rituals do you continue for yourself and your family? 10.  Describe the tribal characteristics within yourself that you would like to strengthen and develop.

When He Needs to Understand the Power of His Own Words Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. PROVERBS 18:21 MANY MEN DON’T FULLY COMPREHEND the power and impact of their words. Just by reason of being male, a man’s voice has the strength to be intimidating. A man can say something casually, carelessly, or insensitively without even realizing that he has frightened or hurt someone. Not all men use their voice to that degree, but many do. A man has the power to heal or harm the heart of those to whom he speaks, and never is that more true than within his marriage and family. What your husband says to you or your children—and the way he says it—can build up or tear down. His words can strengthen family relationships or break them apart. You cannot have a successful and fulfilling marriage when your husband is careless or thoughtless in the words he speaks or the manner in which he speaks them. When a husband speaks hurtful words to his wife, he strikes her soul with a damaging blow far greater than he may realize. If your husband ever does that, pray he will understand his potential to intimidate or even wound. Ask God to help your husband hear what he is saying and the way he says it even before he says it. The book of Proverbs says, “He who guards his mouth preserves his life, but he who opens wide his lips shall have destruction” (13:3). Pray that God will fill your husband’s heart with an abundance of His love, patience, kindness, and goodness so that they overflow in the words he speaks to you and your children. If your husband has never hurt another with his words, then thank God for that and pray he never will. Pray that his gentle spirit will rub off on the other men around him. My Prayer to God LORD, I pray You would lead my husband in the way he speaks to me and our family. Help him to build up with his words and not tear down. Teach him to bless and not curse, to encourage and not discourage, to inspire and not intimidate. I pray when he must speak words that are hard for others to hear, help him speak them from a kind heart. Your Word says that out of the overflow of our hearts we speak (Matthew 12:34). If ever his heart is filled with anger, resentment, or selfishness, I pray he will see that as sin and repent of it. Fill him instead with an abundance of Your love, peace, and joy. Help him to understand that “life and death are in the power of the tongue” and there are consequences to the words he says (Proverbs 18:21). Where my husband has been abusive or hurtful in the words he has spoken to me, I pray You would convict his conscience about that and cause him to see the damage he is doing to me and to our marriage. If I have spoken words to him that have caused harm to our relationship, forgive me. Enable me to speak words that will bring healing. Help us both to think carefully about what we say to each other and to our children and how we say it (Proverbs 15:28). Enable us to always consider the consequences of the words we speak. I know we have a choice about what we say and the way we say it. Help us both to always make the right choice. In Jesus’ name I pray.

Omega-3 fatty acids are essential. Insufficient levels of two of the most important omega-3s—eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)—have been linked to depression and bipolar disorder, suicidal behavior, inflammation, heart disease, ADD/ADHD, cognitive impairment and dementia, and obesity.[1] Ninety-five percent of Americans do not get enough dietary omega-3 fatty acids.[2] The human body doesn’t produce omega-3s on its own, so you have to get it from outside sources, such as fatty fish. If you aren’t getting enough of this essential nutrient from your diet, it’s bad news for your brain. That’s because omega-3s contribute to about 8 percent of your brain’s weight. At Amen Clinics, we tested omega-3 levels of 50 consecutive patients who were not taking fish oil supplements. A shocking 49 out of 50—that’s 98 percent!—had suboptimal levels. In a subsequent study, we analyzed the scans of 130 patients with their omega-3 levels. Patients with the lowest levels had lower blood flow in the areas of the brain associated with depression and dementia.

What content types best meet the needs of our target audience and their changing, multiple contexts? What content types best fit the skills of our copywriters? What content types do we already have? What contexts are appropriate for the delivery of our content, and how will we translate our information into multiple content types appropriate for different screens, resolutions, locations, and contexts? Is existing content still good? Is it still current, relevant, and brand-appropriate for our needs, our users’ needs, and the context in which we want to deliver it? How will we get more content to bridge the gaps between what we have and what we need? What is the workflow that already supports that, and do we need to refine it? How will we make the case for these new content types to other team members who help shape the user experience? Who will do this for launch? Who will maintain content on an ongoing basis? Who will train them? How will we help people find the answers, definitions, and other information they need? What are the relationships within our content?

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.

Imbolc celebration may be understood to be a Moment for dedication to Original relationship with Place of Being, this Universe/Cosmos, one’s original nature, the pre-informed, the wild: one’s Gaian indigeneity. We – as a species and as individuals - are in fact, in “the belly of the Mother,” always have been, and always as new beings, and even yet to understand ourselves. Each particular being is a seamless continuation and expression of the Original Ovulation. At Imbolc/Early Spring, the continued birthing – the rushing away from Origins, the continued rippling forth of Creation - may be celebrated with the understanding of the difficulties, the resistances that even Gaia-Universe has encountered, and how this has served the unfolding of the story as we know it. Imbolc may celebrate Gaia’s rush to diversity, differentiation; we commit ourselves to this, beginning with ourselves. The ceremonial process of “purification and strengthening” may be understood as a feeling for where it is in us that the Universe is acting now – where each one feels the excitement of Creativity calling to them in their lives.

Our faith may be strengthened by noticing what the blood has already accomplished. Heaven and hell bear witness to that. Faith will grow by exercising confidence in the fathomless fullness of the promises of God. Let us heartily expect that as we enter more deeply into the fountain, its cleansing, quickening, life-giving power, will be revealed more blessedly. We know that in bathing we enter into the most intimate relationship with the water, giving ourselves up to its cleansing effects. The blood of Jesus is described as a “fountain opened for sin and uncleanness.” (Zech. xiii, I). By the power of the Holy Spirit it streams through the heavenly Temple. By faith I place myself in closest touch with this heavenly stream, I yield myself to it, I let it cover me, and go through me. I bathe in the fountain. It cannot withhold its cleansing and strengthening power. I must in simple faith turn away from what is seen, to plunge into that spiritual fountain, which represents the Savior’s blood, with the assurance that it will manifest its blessed power in me. So let us with childlike, persevering, expectant faith, open our souls to an ever increasing experience of the wonderful power of the blood.

Although we don’t like to think about it, it seems that sorrow and suffering are inevitable in any human life, even a happy one. There’s the suffering of loss, of disappointment, of disrespect; the suffering of physical pain, illness, old age; the suffering of broken relationships, of wanting something badly and not being able to have it, or not wanting something and being stuck with it. There’s the inevitable suffering of painful, afflictive emotions, like jealousy, grief, anger, hatred, confusion, anguish—all kinds of emotions that cause suffering. These things are part of life. No one can avoid suffering. Given that this is so, how can we not take our lives in hand and make a serious effort to develop wisdom, compassion, and resilience? How can we not prepare our minds and hearts for the inevitable suffering that we are going to be facing someday? We have insurance for our car or home because we know we need to protect ourselves from the possibility of accident and loss. We go to the doctor because we know our health requires protection. Why then would we not think to guard and strengthen our mind and heart to cope with the suffering that certainly will be coming in some measure at some time?

Ever seen a movie where the hero gets punched right in the face? A gruesome slow-mo close-up, where a spray of sweat and blood flies through the air? Notice how you wince, or flinch, or turn away even though you know it’s only a movie? Even though you know it’s make-believe, you can’t help relating to it on some level. How ironic is it that we can so easily relate to the nonexistent pain of a fictitious movie character, but we often completely forget about the very real pain of the people we love? Humans are social animals. When it comes to affairs of the heart, most of us are pretty similar. We want to be loved, respected, and cared for. We want to get along with others and generally have a good time with them. When we fight with, reject, or distance ourselves from the people we love, we don’t feel good. And when they fight with, reject, or distance themselves from us, we feel even worse. So when you fight with your partner, you both get hurt. Your partner may not reveal his pain to you; he may just get angry, or storm out of the house, or quietly switch on the TV and start drinking, but deep inside he hurts just like you. Your partner may refuse to talk to you, she may criticize you in scathing tones, or go out on the town with her friends, but deep inside, she hurts just as you are. It is so important to recognize and remember this. We tend to get so caught up in

Spirituality is more about whether or not we can sleep at night than about whether or not we go to church. It is about being integrated or falling apart, about being within community or being lonely, about being in harmony with Mother Earth or being alienated from her. Irrespective of whether or not we let ourselves be consciously shaped by any explicit religious idea, we act in ways that leave us either healthy or unhealthy, loving or bitter. What shapes our actions is our spirituality. And what shapes our actions is basically what shapes our desire. Desire makes us act and when we act what we do will either lead to a greater integration or disintegration within our personalities, minds, and bodies—and to the strengthening or deterioration of our relationship to God, others, and the cosmic world. The habits and disciplines5 we use to shape our desire form the basis for a spirituality, regardless of whether these have an explicit religious dimension to them or even whether they are consciously expressed at all. Spirituality concerns what we do with desire. It takes its root in the eros inside of us and it is all about how we shape and discipline that eros. John of the Cross, the great Spanish mystic, begins his famous treatment of the soul’s journey with the words: “One dark night, fired by love’s urgent longings.”6 For him, it is urgent longings, eros, that are the starting point of the spiritual life and, in his view, spirituality, essentially defined, is how we handle that eros.

1. Commit to take the lead in the godliness of your relationship. Read the Bible's passages about how men and women and all Christians should treat one another. Especially take the lead in establishing boundaries that will keep you from sexual sin. Assume that this woman is going to be your wife or the wife of some other Christian brother (who might be currently dating your future wife). Treat her as the precious sister in Christ that she is. 2. Decide in advance whether or not you are willing to love a woman in the self-sacrificing, nurturing way the Bible describes. Until you are ready to faithfully hold a woman's heart in your hand, do not enter into a dating relationship. 3. Realizing that God wants you to learn to put her interests ahead of your own, ask her the kinds of things she likes to do and be eager to spend time doing them. 4. Be willing to talk about the relationship. Initiate honest dialogue about how you feel. Do not resent her desire to have the relationship defined, but protect her heart by making your level of commitment clear and thereby making clear the appropriate kind of intimacy to go along with that commitment. 5. Pay attention to her heart. Ask her about her burdens and cares. Seek ways to minister to her and to make her cares your own. Instead of being critical of her, speak words of encouragement and support. 6. Do not be shy in ministering the Word of God to her. Do not preach, but exhort her and call to mind God's promises and God's love for her in Jesus Christ. Make it a primary goal that she will be spiritually stronger by having been in a relationship with you. 7. If something about her bothers you, think about how you can encourage her in that area. Realize that none of us is without flaws. Pray for her weakness and try to strengthen her in that area. If your concerns are enough to deter you from wanting to marry her, let her know in a forthright manner while being as considerate as possible.

also been a white-collar worker in my career. In my experience, there are two types of people who do this type of work: Achievers and Hiders. Achievers are the people who want to perform at a high level. They are ambitious, motivated and energetic. They are full of ideas and want to move up the corporate ladder, which are great attributes to have. But there is a downside for the Achiever. The moment a person decides to be an Achiever, they become a target. Their boss sees them as threatening to their job, so they start to hold them down or take shots at their reputation. Their peers see them as a person who will either embarrass them or keep them from getting a promotion, so they start to do what they can to undermine their accomplishments. So, to remain an Achiever and survive in this hostile environment, a person must become good at one thing that has nothing to do with their productivity—and that’s politics. They must learn how to navigate the political world by diminishing their enemies and strengthening their relationship with powerful people. In fact, some of the most successful people in the corporate world aren’t Achievers at all. They are pure politicians. So if you decide to work in the corporate environment and to be an Achiever, you must accept the fact that you must become a good politician also. Now, let’s talk about the Hiders. These are the people who HATE politics, but still need a job. They learn not to be the ambitious Achiever. They don’t stand out. They don’t speak up in meetings. They don’t bring new ideas. They HIDE. They keep their heads down and do as they’re told. They do just enough so that they aren’t talked about negatively. They survive. And this has worked for decades. But in the New Economy, it’s becoming much more difficult to hide. And people are running out of time. So, back to our Perfect Career List: Can a white-collar job deliver on the list? Again, the clear answer is no—certainly not in very many areas. Sales

These are things to have under your belt in order to make and strengthen boundaries: Educate them. To be blunt, narcissists aren’t exactly in tune with their interpersonal or communication skills. Try using incentives or other motivators to get them to pay attention to how their behavior affects others. They may not empathize or seem to get what you’re saying, but at least you can say you tried to look at it from your point of view. Understand your personal rights. In order to demand being treated fairly and with respect, it’s important to know what your rights are. You’re allowed to say no, you have a right to your feelings, you are allowed privacy—and there are no wedding or relationship vows that say you are at the beck and call of your partner. When a person has been abused for a long time, they may lack the confidence or self-esteem to take a stand on their rights. The more power they take back, though, the less the abuser has. Be assertive. This is something that depends on confidence, and will take practice, but it’s worth it. Being assertive means standing up for yourself and exuding pride in who you are. Put your strategies into play. After the information you’ve absorbed so far, you have an advantage in that you are aware of your wants, what the narcissist demands, what you are able to do and those secret tiny areas you may have power over. Tap into these areas to put together your own strategies. Re-set your boundaries. A boundary is an unseen line in the sand. It determines the point you won’t allow others to cross over or they’ll hurt you. These are non-negotiable and others must be aware of them and respect them. But you have to know what those lines are before making them clear to others. Have consequences. As an extension of the above point, if a person tries ignoring your boundaries, make sure you give a consequence. There doesn't need to be a threat, but more saying, “If you ________, we can’t hang out/date/talk/etc.” You’re just saying that crossing the boundary hurts you so if they choose to disregard it, you choose not to accept that treatment. The narcissist will not tolerate you standing up for yourself, but it’s still important. The act of advocating for yourself will increase your self-confidence, self-esteem and self-worth. Then you’ll be ready to recover and heal.

10 Practical Strategies to Improve Your Critical Thinking Skills and Unleash Your Creativity In today's rapidly changing world, the ability to think critically and creatively has become more important than ever. Whether you're a student looking to excel academically, a professional striving for success in your career, or simply someone who wants to navigate life's challenges with confidence, developing strong critical thinking skills is crucial. In this blog post, we will explore ten practical strategies to help you improve your critical thinking abilities and unleash your creative potential. 1. Embrace open-mindedness: One of the cornerstones of critical thinking is being open to different viewpoints and perspectives. Cultivate a willingness to listen to others, consider alternative opinions, and challenge your own beliefs. This practice expands your thinking and encourages creative problem-solving. 2. Ask thought-provoking questions: Asking insightful questions is a powerful way to stimulate critical thinking. By questioning assumptions, seeking clarity, and exploring deeper meanings, you can uncover new insights and perspectives. Challenge yourself to ask thought-provoking questions regularly. 3. Practice active listening: Listening actively involves not just hearing, but also understanding, interpreting, and empathizing with the speaker. By honing your active listening skills, you can better grasp complex ideas, identify underlying assumptions, and engage in more meaningful discussions. 4. Seek diverse sources of information: Expand your knowledge base by seeking information from a wide range of sources. Engage with diverse perspectives, opinions, and ideas through books, articles, podcasts, and documentaries. This habit broadens your understanding and encourages critical thinking by exposing you to different viewpoints. 5. Develop analytical thinking skills: Analytical thinking involves breaking down complex problems into smaller components, examining relationships and patterns, and drawing logical conclusions. Enhance your analytical skills by practicing activities like puzzles, riddles, and brain teasers. This will sharpen your ability to analyze information and think critically. 6. Foster a growth mindset: A growth mindset is the belief that your abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. Embracing this mindset encourages you to view challenges as opportunities for growth, rather than obstacles. By persisting through difficulties, you build resilience and enhance your critical thinking abilities. 7. Engage in collaborative problem-solving: Collaborating with others on problem-solving tasks can spark creativity and strengthen critical thinking skills. Seek out group projects, brainstorming sessions, or online forums where you can exchange ideas, challenge each other's thinking, and find innovative solutions together. 8. Practice reflective thinking: Taking time to reflect on your thoughts, actions, and experiences allows you to gain deeper insights and learn from past mistakes. Regularly engage in activities like journaling, meditation, or self-reflection exercises to develop your reflective thinking skills. This practice enhances your critical thinking abilities by promoting self-awareness and self-improvement. 9. Encourage creativity through experimentation: Creativity and critical thinking often go hand in hand. Give yourself permission to experiment and explore new ideas without fear of failure. Embrace a "what if" mindset and push the boundaries of your thinking. This willingness to take risks and think outside the box can lead to breakthroughs in critical thinking. 10. Continuously learn and adapt: Critical thinking is a skill that can be honed throughout your life. Commit to lifelong learning and seek opportunities to expand your knowledge and skills. Stay curious, be open to new experiences, and embrace change.

Myth 1: Infants don’t remember anything, so experience in infancy doesn’t really matter. Reality: The infant brain has a huge capacity for memory. Memories from infancy are stored in the brain as implicit memory, which makes up the emotional brain, the unconscious mind, and the foundation for lifelong mental and physical health. Myth 2: Responding to cries spoils an infant or teaches an infant to be dependent. Reality: Responding reliably strengthens a baby’s emotional brain circuits, helps them grow confidently independent, and gives them the gift of stress regulation for life. Myth 3: Babies can and need to learn to self-soothe, which means go from a state of high stress to a state of safety on their own. Reality: Babies cannot self-soothe because they do not have the brain parts to do so until way beyond infancy. Myth 4: Babies are resilient, so experience in infancy doesn’t matter. Reality: Experience in infancy matters. It interacts with genes to influence mental health. Myth 5: We can’t make a difference to our baby’s mental health outcomes if our baby inherits mental health genetics and intergenerational trauma through epigenetics. Reality: Nurture makes an impact on inherited DNA and epigenetics to reduce or silence mental health effects. Myth 6: Everyone falls in love with and knows what to do with their baby right away. Reality: Lots of time touching, smelling, and looking into your baby’s eyes slowly builds your love, knowledge, and relationship with your baby. Myth 7: Having a baby impairs your brain function. Reality: Having a baby changes your brain to give you nurturing superpowers. Myth 8: Being with my baby is doing nothing. Reality: Being with my baby is vital brain-building, circuit-sculpting, cycle-starting activism for my baby’s future. Myth 9: Only pay attention to your baby’s stress and emotions when there’s a reason for them. Reality: All of your baby’s stress and emotions need to feel welcome and safe. Myth 10: Since my baby will be with a grandparent, a nanny, or at daycare, I should reduce my care at home to prepare them. Reality: Providing my baby with as much nurture as possible when we are together is what they need to build their brain. Myth 11: You need to buy things for your baby’s brain development. Reality: Your presence is the key to your baby’s brain development. Myth 12: I need swings, seats, and containers to take care of my baby. My baby needs lots of classes and socialization to thrive. Reality: The sensory experiences from my body are the only thing my baby needs. Myth 13: I should feed my baby on a schedule. Reality: Feed your baby when their body is experiencing physiological signals of hunger and showing hunger cues. Myth 14: Breastfeeding or body feeding past six or twelve or twenty-four or thirty-six months is extra, spoiling, or for no reason. Reality: Breastfeeding or body feeding at six or twelve or twenty-four or thirty-six months is brain-building and nurturing. Myth 15: Holding a baby is doing nothing. Reality: Holding a baby is seriously hard and brain-building work. Myth 16: Newborn babies are happy with a swaddle, hat, pacifier, and bassinet. Reality: Newborns are happy on someone’s skin, chest-to-chest, covered by a blanket—no swaddle, hat, pacifier, or bassinet needed. Myth 17: Babies’ stress and emotions don’t matter and can be ignored. Reality: Babies feel transformational stress and a huge range of emotions that influence how their brains and bodies develop. Myth 18: If we respond to our crying, clinging babies, we teach them that that behavior is good, so they learn to cry and cling more. Reality: When we respond to crying and clinging, babies cry less, and we build the infant brain to be more independent later. Myth 19: There’s no difference if I hold my crying baby; they’re crying anyway. Reality: Holding my crying baby provides a nurture bath to their brain regardless of how long they cry...

a new person in an old life’. This experience is common for clients who have achieved a turnaround in their attitude to their self. Previously they will have built a life around them that reflected their lack of self-acceptance. They may have been self-defeating, over-submissive and under-valuing of their own abilities. When self-acceptance is achieved all these things can now change, but sometimes at the cost of considerable turmoil. Perhaps the client’s relationships at home and at work can be nourished and strengthened by his development but it is possible that these relationships have been founded upon the client being weak.

April 15 I trust in your word. (Psalm 119:42) The strength of our faith is in direct proportion to our level of belief that God will do exactly what He has promised. Faith has nothing to do with feelings, impressions, outward appearances, nor the probability or improbability of an event. If we try to couple these things with faith, we are no longer resting on the Word of God, because faith is not dependent on them. Faith rests on the pure Word of God alone. And when we take Him at His Word, our hearts are at peace. God delights in causing us to exercise our faith. He does so to bless us individually, to bless the church at large, and as a witness to unbelievers. Yet we tend to retreat from the exercising of our faith instead of welcoming it. When trials come, our response should be, “My heavenly Father has placed this cup of trials into my hands so I may later have something pleasant.” Trials are the food of faith. Oh, may we leave ourselves in the hands of our heavenly Father! It is the joy of His heart to do good to all His children. Yet trials and difficulties are not the only way faith is exercised and thereby increased. Reading the Scriptures also acquaints us with God as He has revealed Himself in them. Are you able to genuinely say, from your knowledge of God and your relationship with Him, that He is indeed a beautiful Being? If not, let me graciously encourage you to ask God to take you to that point, so you will fully appreciate His gentleness and kindness, so you will be able to say just how good He is, and so you will know what a delight it is to God’s heart to do good for His children. The closer we come to this point in our inner being, the more willing we are to leave ourselves in His hands and the more satisfied we are with all of His dealings with us. Then when trials come, we will say, “I will patiently wait to see the good God will do in my life, with the calm assurance He will do it.” In this way, we will bear a worthy testimony to the world and thereby strengthen the lives of others. George Mueller

Every dinner, every elbow touch, every impromptu seminar on politics and history adds up to build a relational narrative: You are part of this group. This group is special. I believe you can reach those standards. In other words, Popovich’s yelling works, in part, because it is not just yelling. It is delivered along with a suite of other cues that affirm and strengthen the fabric of the relationships.

There exists today a dangerous relationship between the extreme left and the extreme right, and between black rage and white fear. The confrontation tactics of the one evoke a reactionary response from the other. When the would-be revolutionaries of the new left manhandle professors, occupy buildings, and destroy property, the right wins new adherents. When sincere but misdirected young black people engage in violence in the name of justice, they are strengthening those very forces which in the past have inflicted violence and injustice upon the Negro community. Such acts of protest may be cathartic, may appear to be bold and militant; but let us be very clear--their primary effect is to bring about a political reaction. These acts have set loose a wave of panic in this country, and opportunistic right-wing demagogues understand the nature of that panic and are building their political futures upon it. These demagogues do not believe in meeting the black community's urgent needs for income and education. Indeed, social justice, by removing the cause of social unrest, would threaten the very base of fear upon which they stand. Their program is the billy club and their staunchest ally the police arm of the state. They believe in repression. The lessons of these recent developments should be clear. An assault upon our democratic institutions will not reform them but destroy them. Violence will lead to more violence, not to social justice. And the fundamental tragedy is that the absence of justice will provoke more people to engage in violent acts. We must find a way out of this vicious cycle.

our own suffering that we can easily forget our partner is in the same boat. Suppose your partner has deep-seated fears of abandonment: afraid that you will leave her for someone “better.” Or suppose she fears becoming trapped, controlled, or “smothered.” Then when you fight, these fears will well up inside her; she may not even be aware of them because they very quickly get buried under blame or resentment. Or suppose deep inside your partner feels deeply unworthy: that he is inadequate, unlovable, not good enough. This is painful in itself, but when people feel this way inside, they often act in ways that strain the relationship. Your partner may continually seek approval, demand recognition for what he achieves or contributes, ask for reassurance that you love or admire him, or become quite jealous and possessive. If you then react with frustration, scorn, criticism, impatience, or boredom, you will reinforce his deep-seated sense of unworthiness. And this then gives rise to even more pain.

The reality check we need cannot be gained through “listening to our hearts” and telling ourselves who we are. Through God’s Word we gain an eternal perspective through which we can evaluate every heart twinge, relationship, and circumstance. Do you know a timeless, familiar Bible verse that speaks to this? “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps. 119:105). What mercy from God that he would give us his illuminating Word and that it is always shining, regardless of whether we perceive it.

If we facilitate the connections that humans need during the day (or whenever our employees work), then we can go to sleep at night knowing we're lengthening the lives, boosting the health, reducing the stress, and strengthening the mental health of humanity in general, instead of being the ones blamed for their burnout, exhaustion, and poor health.

For one thing, when you avoid solitude, you miss out on the positive things it brings you: the ability to clarify hard problems, to regulate your emotions, to build moral courage, and to strengthen relationships. If you suffer from chronic solitude deprivation, therefore, the quality of your life degrades.

Prayer is a communication tool that strengthens your relationship with God.

To hold your soul in hell and not despair is to manage to hang on to the faith in the reality of the spiritual realm, even in the harshest time of the physical realm, even when all seems lost and in fact if you want to climb the mountain of spiritual awakening, spiritual consciousness there must be that stage where we are taken to the far edge beyond what we can bear or think we can bear. And if we hang on in faith and trust, if we call upon the help of that spiritual reality, that miracle will happen and against all odds renewal, new beginnings, redemption, can take place. This is a verifiable, magnificent experience that I know personally, that I know others have experienced, and that you can experience. So, from the point of view of the Fourth Way all the difficulties of life become firewood for the fire. In other words, strengthen your consciousness, raise your consciousness to another level of perspective and transcendence so that you can walk calmly through the nightmare and holding on through that dark night you will achieve a new level of faith, understanding, and relationship with the spiritual reality. If some of you are in times of great suffering and all of us walk that path somehow sometime, remember that and take it seriously for it is one of the pearls of great price and discover that the very negative things of life, personal and destructive can turn into the fertilizer for your soul, the awakening of a deeper self, and the face-to-face encounter with the reality of God's help. (p. 142-142)

Adults with ADHD as a group have often experienced more than their fair share of disappointments and frustrations associated with the symptoms of ADHD, in many cases not realizing the impact of ADHD has had on them. When you reflect on a history of low grades, forgetting or not keeping promises made to others, repeated exhortations from others about your unfulfilled potential and the need to work harder, you may be left with a self-view that “I’m not good enough,” “I’m lazy,” or “I cannot expect much from myself and neither can anyone else.” The end result of these repeated frustrations can be the erosion of your sense of self, what is often called low self-esteem. These deep-seated, enduring self-views, or “core beliefs” about who you are can be thought of as a lens through which you see yourself, the world, and your place in the world. Adverse developmental experiences associated with ADHD may unfairly color your lens and result in a skewed pessimistic view of yourself, at least in some situations. When facing situations in the here-and-now that activate these negative beliefs, you experience strong emotions, negative thoughts, and a propensity to fall into self-defeating behaviors, most often resignation and escape. These core beliefs might only be activated in limited, specific situations for some people with ADHD; in other cases, these beliefs color one’s perception in most situations. It should be noted that many adults with ADHD, despite feeling flummoxed by their symptoms in many situations, possess a healthy self-view, though there may be many situations that briefly shake their confidence. These core beliefs or “schema” develop over the course of time from childhood through adulthood and reflect our efforts to figure out the “rules for life” (Beck, 1976; Young & Klosko, 1994). They can be thought of as mental categories that let us impose order on the world and make sense of it. Thus, as we grow up and face different situations, people, and challenges, we make sense of our situations and relationships and learn the rubrics for how the world works. The capacity to form schemas and to organize experience in this way is very adaptive. For the most part, these processes help us figure out, adapt to, and navigate through different situations encountered in life. In some cases, people develop beliefs and strategies that help them get through unusually difficult life circumstances, what are sometimes called survival strategies. These old strategies may be left behind as people settle into new, healthier settings and adopt and rely on “healthy rules.” In other cases, however, maladaptive beliefs persist, are not adjusted by later experiences (or difficult circumstances persist), and these schema interfere with efforts to thrive in adulthood. In our work with ADHD adults, particularly for those who were undiagnosed in childhood, we have heard accounts of negative labels or hurtful attributions affixed to past problems that become internalized, toughened, and have had a lasting impact. In many cases, however, many ADHD adults report that they arrived at negative conclusions about themselves based on their experiences (e.g., “None of my friends had to go to summer school.”). Negative schema may lay dormant, akin to a hibernating bear, but are easily reactivated in adulthood when facing similar gaffes or difficulties, including when there is even a hint of possible disappointment or failure. The function of these beliefs is self-protective—shock me once, shame on you; shock me twice, shame on me. However, these maladaptive beliefs insidiously trigger self-defeating behaviors that represent an attempt to cope with situations, but that end up worsening the problem and thereby strengthening the negative belief in a vicious, self-fulfilling cycle. Returning to the invisible fences metaphor, these beliefs keep you stuck in a yard that is too confining in order to avoid possible “shocks.

when you avoid solitude, you miss out on the positive things it brings you: the ability to clarify hard problems, to regulate your emotions, to build moral courage, and to strengthen relationships. If you suffer from chronic solitude deprivation, therefore, the quality of your life degrades.

Risk stepping into the mess because, more times than not, on the other side of the tension there are new beginnings, strengthened relationships, and the knowledge that conflict is not something to avoid, but a means to a deeper, stronger, and kinder world.

Preassessment Sit comfortably. Take a few deep breaths, relax, and answer the following questions in writing. Where is your self-esteem lately? Some answer this simply, as in low, medium, or high, or on a scale from 1 to 10. For some, responses are more complex. For instance, you might note that your self-esteem, in truth, fluctuates, or that, although you are growing stronger, you still struggle with mistakes you make or have made, or with expectations you or others have. There is power and courage in honestly acknowledging what is. Just observe where you are now, without judging yourself or wondering what others might think. How did your family of origin contribute, for good and bad, to your self-esteem? What have you learned to do to increase your self-esteem? What, if anything, can make you inferior as a person? What, if anything, can make you superior as a person? Using an artistic medium—colored pens or pencils, paint, crayons, finger paints, and so forth—draw your opinion of yourself on a separate sheet of paper. There is something revealing and almost magical in expressing without words how you experience yourself. The answers to questions three, four, and five especially can provide insight into what can ultimately strengthen self-esteem, although not in the ways most people think. Did you notice that the very things that raise self-esteem can also threaten it? For example, if getting a raise at work lifts your self-esteem, does failing to get a promotion cause it to fall? If a compliment makes you feel superior, does criticism make you feel inferior? If love raises self-esteem, does a relationship that does not work well destroy it? Many assume that we get value from what we do; from skills, talents, and character traits; or from acceptance from others. While all of these are desirable, I suggest that none of these make good first steps for self-esteem building. Where, then, does human value come from?

When we give relational access to us, it should never lead to "less safety, less sanity, or less strengthening for the individuals in the relationship.

Fearlessly being yourself is the best gift you can offer to this world.

Each conversation provides an opportunity to strengthen relationships and achieve better outcomes.

First, finding a healthy outlet for uncomfortable feelings—discussing them, having a good cry, listening to sad or angry music, and so on—usually does the job, providing all the relief a teenager needs. Second, making ourselves available to talk with our teenagers about their ups and downs is one of the most enriching aspects of parenting, and it goes a long way toward strengthening our relationships with them. Third, demonstrating our loving interest in what’s weighing on our teens models the attentive compassion that they should come to hold as a standard for all of their close relationships. Fourth, trying to implement any of the strategies offered in this chapter almost certainly won’t work unless we have already given emotional expression a chance to work its magic.

Talk about Them It shouldn’t be surprising that the thing people most like talking about is themselves. If you’ve ever gotten dating advice or corporate networking advice, it’s probably started with something along the lines of, “Ask them about themselves.” Not only does this make sense, but neuroscience tells us that it’s true. The average person spends 60 percent of their conversations talking about themselves, and the reason for this is simple—it makes them feel good! Remember how we discussed that when someone hears their own name, an MRI will show parts of their brain lighting up? When people talk about themselves, some of the same areas of the brain tend to light up. In addition, areas of the brain associated with feelings of reward are activated as well. These are the same areas of the brain that respond during sex, when ingesting cocaine, and when eating high-sugar foods. In other words, talking about yourself is practically an addiction. And by asking people to talk about themselves, you are feeding their addiction. Makes sense that someone will like you when you do that, right? So, whether you’re on a date, networking at a business event, or trying to build rapport with someone at the negotiating table, asking the other person about themselves is a great way to strengthen the relationship.

An essential concept to remember from the previous section is that people are very rarely arguing about being right or wrong; they’re more often arguing about being seen and heard. People feel so much pain in intense conflict with those they care about because, when someone has a different perspective, our subconscious perceives it as our feelings being treated as invalid. This ultimately feeds conflict.

Ditch quick-fix thinking for lifestyle longevity.

You Cannot Change What You Do Not Measure

Scientific research has made it clear that our lifestyle choices affect brain health.

Your brain controls everything you do and everything you are.

You are not stuck with the brain you have. With the right guidance you can make it better, and I can prove it.

Physical health takes consistent effort and daily practice over a long time, including eating right, smart supplementation, exercising, managing stress, and making many, many more good decisions than bad ones.

If you are struggling with your brain or mind, welcome to normal.

the better overall brain function someone has, the more likely they are to exercise a high degree of free will. On the other hand, people whose brains are unhealthy often struggle with feeling ineffective in life and making good decisions for themselves. Consequently, they experience a diminished sense of free will.

I wanted a healthier brain like hers, so I spent decades working to improve it.

Warren Buffett has two rules of investing: Rule #1 Never lose money. Rule #2 Never forget Rule #1. In the same way, the most important rules of brain health are as follows: Rule #1 Never lose brain cells. Rule #2 Never forget rule #1. Losing brain cells is much harder to recover from than any financial loss.

Pick one of the strategies listed above to add to your daily routine.

Instead of seeing himself as a failure, he recognized his own potential and found great fulfillment in serving his country.

We can fix these problems, but it requires a new perspective.

She taught me the four key skills in DBT. First is mindfulness. It’s the ability to radically accept things as they are and be present in the moment. The second is distress tolerance, which is the ability to tolerate negative emotions instead of trying to escape from them. The third is emotional regulation, which teaches you the ability to manage and change intense and problematic emotions. The fourth is interpersonal effectiveness, which teaches you to communicate with others in a way that is assertive, maintains self-respect, and strengthens relationships.

Even though we can indeed raise our status with material goods, the feeling doesn’t last. There is no social relationship associated with that burst of serotonin. Again, the selfless chemicals are trying to help us strengthen our communities and social bonds. To find a lasting sense of pride, there must be a mentor/parent/boss/coach/leader relationship to back it up.

IN MANY RESPECTS, modern-day India counted as a success story, having survived repeated changeovers in government, bitter feuds within political parties, various armed separatist movements, and all manner of corruption scandals. The transition to a more market-based economy in the 1990s had unleashed the extraordinary entrepreneurial talents of the Indian people—leading to soaring growth rates, a thriving high-tech sector, and a steadily expanding middle class. As a chief architect of India’s economic transformation, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seemed like a fitting emblem of this progress: a member of the tiny, often persecuted Sikh religious minority who’d risen to the highest office in the land, and a self-effacing technocrat who’d won people’s trust not by appealing to their passions but by bringing about higher living standards and maintaining a well-earned reputation for not being corrupt. Singh and I had developed a warm and productive relationship. While he could be cautious in foreign policy, unwilling to get out too far ahead of an Indian bureaucracy that was historically suspicious of U.S. intentions, our time together confirmed my initial impression of him as a man of uncommon wisdom and decency; and during my visit to the capital city of New Delhi, we reached agreements to strengthen U.S. cooperation on counterterrorism, global health, nuclear security, and trade.

Many studies show that the key to contentment and confidence is three things: *​Growing competence in a pursuit you love *​Strengthening every day the relationships around you *​Increasing your freedom of choices Quote from the pope: “If we start without confidence, already we have lost half the battle and we bury our talents.

Conversations worth having enliven people, strengthen relationships, unleash creativity, and move organizations forward fast.

Để hợp nhất gia đình của mỗi người chúng ta hơn nữa với Đức Chúa Trời Ba Ngôi, hãy xem xét lời cầu nguyện sau: Lạy Chúa Ba Ngôi, cảm ơn vì món quà của gia đình chúng con. Lạy Cha Chúng Con Ở Trên Nước Thiên Đàng, Cha đã tạo ra chúng con giống theo hình ảnh của Cha và chào đón chúng con như những đứa con yêu dấu của Cha. Lạy Chúa Giêsu, Chúa phục vụ chúng con bằng sự sống, cái chết và sự phục sinh của Chúa trong các bí tích đang diễn ra và sự sống của Giáo Hội. Lạy Chúa Thánh Thần, Chúa lắng nghe lời cầu nguyện của chúng con và chuyển cầu cho chúng con. Lạy Chúa, xin thêm sức cho chúng con khi chúng con tìm cách chào đón, lắng nghe và phục vụ nhau với tình yêu thương lớn lao hơn mỗi ngày. Chữa lành bất kỳ vết thương nào ngăn cản chúng ta chia sẻ tình yêu ban tặng cuộc sống của Chúa. Chỉ cho gia đình chúng con cách phản ánh trung thực hơn hình ảnh của Chúa trong ngôi nhà, các mối quan hệ và công việc của chúng con. Chúng tôi mời Chúa đến ở với chúng con trong ngôi nhà của chúng con - Ngôi nhà Ba Ngôi của chúng con - khi chúng con tìm cách yêu thương nhau như lần đầu tiên Chúa yêu chúng con. Sáng danh Đức Chúa Cha, Đức Chúa Con và Đức Chúa Thánh Thần, như đã có trước vô cùng và bây giờ và hằng có và đời đời chẳng cùng Amen. --------------------ooo------------------- To unite your family even more with the Holy Trinity, consider the following prayer: Most Holy Trinity, thank you for the gift of our family. Heavenly Father, you created us in your image and welcome us as your beloved children. Jesus, you serve us with your life, death, and resurrection in the ongoing sacraments and life of the Church. Holy Spirit, you listen to our prayers and intercede for us. Lord, strengthen us as we seek to welcome, listen to, and serve one another with greater love each day. Heal any wounds that prevent us from sharing your life-giving love. Show our family how to more faithfully reflect your image in our home, relationships, and work. We invite you to dwell with us in our home—our Trinity House—as we seek to love one another as you first loved us. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

about someone you love) help strengthen an area called the limbic system, which is the emotional center of the brain. All of this work helps to rewire our brain, disrupt our default thought patterns, and wake us up out of our subconscious-driven autopilot. From this foundation of consciousness we can then begin to witness the conditioned patterns in our thoughts, beliefs, and relationships. This honest self awareness shows us our pathway towards change and ultimately healing.

Transparency in the case of an Anxious Attachment is essential. Since they tend to be people-pleasing, it is imperative that they do not sacrifice their needs and that they communicate them properly. If not, the Anxious individual will begin to harbor resentment.

It is important to also create a clear, coherent strategy for the needs that have been expressed and accepted. Since perceptions for every individual are uniquely shaped over time, saying “I need support” may mean different things to different people.