You are currently browsing all posts tagged with 'insight'

What do you think of this miracle of insight ?

  • Posted on January 12, 2011 at 11:22 pm

As I was dying…the lord had appeared to me…and i suddenly saw life in such a different light…I realized that I would never be able to kiss my lover..ever again..because my body would be gone..His lips seemed to me to be made of gold…and lined with silver…the gift of romance was so precious and so intoxicating. I would never eat food again…departed from my flesh…every type of food was suddenly revealed to me as a divine gift from heaven…from Jesus…every tiny taste or sip…a feast for a king and a queen…I would never see children again..and now they appeared to be what they really were…little divine children..their laughter sounded like a gold ball rolling on a silver platter…and I would lose the privilage to laugh as humans do…since my flesh would soon go away..and my own laughter…now revealed as a drink of Heavens wine…and Heavens nectar….was a song of a princess…the daughter of the Lord and Lover King…King Jesus…blessed is He who kept me here….

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How do you define a “perfect” relationship?

  • Posted on July 2, 2009 at 7:15 am

Couples will admit that it takes conscious effort to nurture a healthy relationship. During those first exciting stages of dating, everyone is on their best behaviors. It can be hard to find fault with one another. Everything feels perfect.

Those minor character flaws may be perceived as endearing or quirky in the beginning. Six months later, they can be seen as perpetually annoying habits or unbearable irritants. Either way, nothing’s perfect and that’s what makes it “perfect”… (I know…it’s a paradox. But life itself is one big paradox – if you haven’t already noticed).

My point is this: In order to realize ‘perfection,’ you must first experience imperfection. It’s the same with saying you cannot know ‘happy’ if you’ve never known ‘sadness.’ One side of the equation cannot exist without the other. That’s the paradox of life!

So don’t get too caught up trying to define a “perfect relationship” or compare your relationship with others to get some sort of validation. No two couples are the same. What works best in your relationship may not necessarily work well for another couple.

So remember: Perfect is nothing but a word to describe what appeals to you most. We say it’s perfect when things go our way. We say it’s perfect when two people come together happily. So you see, it’s just a word associated with being content.

Simply put: If you’re in a relationship that puts you in a good state of mind, then, you are in a ‘perfect’ relationship. And if you’re still looking for that ‘perfect’ person, keep in mind they don’t need to be perfect in all that they do, just as long as they’re a perfect fit for you.

From her columns to her blog, Penny continues to capture the hearts of her readers with exhilarating insight and inspiring wisdom. Her blog offers tips, advice and inspiration on everything to do with relationships. Let this site be a place you go to for some insight to inspire healthier, happier relationships in your life. http://www.relationshipadvicefrompenny.com

Article Source: How do you define a “perfect” relationship?

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9 Action Steps for Dealing with the Child Bully

  • Posted on July 2, 2009 at 7:15 am

I am not sure which would impact me the most, first hearing that my child was a child bully, or hearing that my child was a bully victim! Both situations are ones that most parents dread having to ever hear about their child. Similar, yet different. Involving the same social problem, yet impacting the child in different ways. To put things another way, the child has assumed the role in their social ranking as either the prey or the predator.

As a parent, it is our responsibility to take action should we find out that our child has been accused of tormenting and intimidating other children. Ideally it would be helpful if we could have some insight into the fact that there may be a behavior problem, before we have to find out from someone else, such as the dreaded phone call from the school, police, or hearing it through the neighbourhood “grapevine”. What we need are some helpful child bully guidelines to help identify this potential behavior problem.

How you react to this unpleasant news that your child is a bully will set the tone for all future dealings between you and your child over this problem. Outrage and threats will in most situations only make things worse and sever the much needed lines of open and honest communication between you and your child. Instead, take a deep breath, clear your mind and carefully plan your next move. Use your mind, rather than your heart, to move forward.

Consider the following “action steps” if you are unsure of what to do if your child is bullying others.

Action Steps For Parents

Action Step #1: Remain Calm

Upon learning that your child is bullying, remain calm and focus on getting as many facts, not opinions, as possible about the incident before discussing it with your child. If school related, then talk to the teacher or other school staff involved to find out what exactly happened.

Action Step #2: Set Expectations

Discuss in very clear terms the kind of behavior you expect to see from your child and that bullying of any kind, verbal or physical, is inappropriate and unacceptable.

Action Step #3: Ask Why

Provide your child with the opportunity to explain why they felt the need to bully another child. This can easily lead into a discussion of other non-aggressive ways that your child could have dealt with the situation, or more appropriate ways of expressing their feelings.

Action Step #4: Change Places

It is important for the child bully to learn to show empathy towards their victim. Discuss how the targeted child must have felt when being attacked and how they would have felt being the victim. Impress on your child that no one deserves to be bullied, no matter what the circumstances.

Action Step #5: Mending Fences

Clearly a wrong has been committed against another child. Talk about ways that your child could make amends for what they did. Encourage a face to face verbal apology along with an assurance to the victim that this will not happen again.

Some parents mistakenly believe that buying a “gift” for the victim on behalf of their child will solve the problem. Big mistake, as the child bully is showing no personal responsibility for their inappropriate behavior as they see mom or dad buying them out of trouble.

Action Step #6: Rules and Consequences

Part of your action plan must include very clear rules and consequences should the bullying behavior continue. Rules may include after school and weekend curfews, where and who the child is allowed to hang out with, and any other actions that will allow you to monitor their behavior.

Consequences must be reasonable and meaningful to the child. For example a
consequence of no TV for a week if caught bullying, means little to a child that has access to online chat, games, X-Box, or Playstation during their “grounded time”.

Avoid at all times any consequences that involve physical force such as spankings, as these may actually reinforce the aggressive behavior, that the use of physical force is an acceptable way to solve a problem.

Action Step #7:Goals and Feedback

Don’t think that you can change the bullying behaviors of your child over night or in a week. Such behaviors are learned over extended periods of time, depending upon the age of the child, and will take perhaps months or years to completely disappear.

For now, set some short term goals that the child can realistically meet. Depending on the situation, perhaps a day or a week at a time without any reports of bullying behavior. Don’t forget to praise your child not only for meeting the goals, but also for making an effort when things don’t go well.

Action Step #8:Communication

As you embark on a course of action to support your child in dealing with their
inappropriate behavior problem, remember to let others know what you are doing such as the child’s school and teacher, neighbours, and even other people that your child may have contact with such as a sports coach. You cannot be with your child 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, so these people can act as your eyes and ears in the community. Keeping watch on your child and offering their support should the child be tempted to engage in bullying behavior when you are not around.

Action Step #9:Look in the Mirror

Many of us forget that we are behavior models for our children from a very young age. Do we exhibit any types of inappropriate behavior in front of our children that may have contributed to their development into a child bully? If we use verbal abuse and/or physical violence in our home to solve problems, what messages are we sending to our child. “Do as I say, not as I do” is a poor message for any child. As parents we need to be consistently role modeling the types of good behavior we want to see in our children, especially for the child bully.

Finally, I would encourage you to keep things in perspective regarding child bullying. Research as well as common sense supports the fact that most children, at some time in their life, do bully other children occasionally due to stress. Reasons may include:

1. Sibling rivalry (we have this lots at my house!) :)
2. Stress from school work.
3. Upset about problems in the home.
4. Death of a family member.
5. Break up of the family unit.
6. Relationship problems outside the family.
7. Simple boredom (yep, see this one at my house too!) :)
8. Frustrated over an on-going problem in their life.
9. Just having a “bad” day and need to vent on someone.

Bullying due to these kinds of incidents, is still wrong, and needs to be addressed by the parent. The good news is that with some discussion about the inappropriate behavior and reasonable consequences, the child will usually see the error of their ways and be willing to made amends to the offended party. This type of child is not the one that we need to worry about as parents.

Unfortunately, there are children out there, who for many different reasons seem to be involved in repeated incidents of bullying, both in the home and outside, at school, the playground, etc. These children may exhibit some of the following characteristics:

1. Exhibit aggressive behavior most of the time.
2. Display a lack of self-control.
3. Enjoy any situation involving violence.
4. Have a low opinion of themselves.
5. Like to “stir things up”.
6. Refuse to take ownership of their inappropriate behavior.
7. Unlikely to feel sorry for the victim.
8. May be victims of bullying themselves.
9. Find it difficult to socialize normally with other children.

These are the children who are most “at risk” and need the support of the parents and society in general to help them deal with their over aggressive behavior towards other children now, and perhaps other adults later in life.

If you are looking for more information about children who bully, visit Barry Kareful’s bullying prevention website for additional information and resources on the child bully.

Article Source: 9 Action Steps for Dealing with the Child Bully

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Domestic Abuse Victims – 5 Tell-Tale Signs That You’re Still Wearing “The Abused” Hat

  • Posted on July 1, 2009 at 10:12 pm

Domestic abuse victims heal and transform themselves at different rates. You can tell when their recovery process remains in progress, yet to be completed. And if you are a domestic violence survivor, you know when you’re still wearing that “I’m a Victim” hat.

Here are some tell-tale signs that you are still fulfilling the role of victimization. If you catch yourself…

1) Looking for free lunch

2) Seeking to please other people for approval

3) Believing your actions “caused” another person’s response

4) Assuming you are where you are, entirely because of the deeds of others

5) Expecting to uncover your own inner truth through another person’s truth

Now please take a deep breath and re-read these five tell-tale signs again. This time see them as a whole. Take your time to find the underlying commonality in these five signs.

…Do you see that they are all related? These five tell-tale signs in combination—that is, as a cluster—reveal victimization just as the five red flags of intimate partner abuse in combination define the syndrome intimate partner violence.

Domestic abuse victimization, once established, doesn’t wash away in the shower, nor do most people leave it behind themselves when they leave their batterer. Healing victimization is a progression of transformations that dismantle the pattern revealed in the five tell-tales signs of wearing the “I’m a Victim” hat.

Now don’t get me wrong here. I’m not implying that you are responsible for your abusive partner’s battering behavior toward you. This is not about blame. It’s about insight, ownership, responsibility, understanding and transformation.

If you are healing from domestic violence and want help, read Psychological Healing from Domestic Abuse and Domestic Abuse Healing from Within. Dr. Jeanne King, Ph.D. helps people recognize, end and heal from domestic abuse. Copyright 2009 Jeanne King, Ph.D. www.PreventAbusiveRelationships.com

Article Source: Domestic Abuse Victims – 5 Tell-Tale Signs That You’re Still Wearing “The Abused” Hat

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Setting Personal Goals ~ Achieve Those Goals

  • Posted on July 1, 2009 at 9:05 pm

Being part of the complete personal development method, personal goal setting is beyond any doubt fundamental in furnishing a clear insight of what you want to achieve. Determining at least one or more goals looks like to be a simple procedure. You establish a particular goal, a goal which is considerable and has a particular time-frame to be done. You carry out with your tasks, appraise your advancement to accomplishing your goal and then measure the upshot impartially to refine your personal goal setting.

Apparently, it reads well while sounding simple enough to do. Unfortunately, personal goal setting seldom turns out that way for a wide varity of reasons; chieflt because we often fail to establish realistic goals. In addition, we oftentimes arbitrarily establish goals with only a hazy view to how our goals will actually be achieved. Yet while we are normally driven at the begining of the method of personal goal setting, it’s not really much at all unusual to lose our motivation somewhere down the road.

Whilst setting your goals, it’s crucial to first understand that each goal you set needs to be practical and easily achievable, devoted a suitable amount of time and resources. For example, Determining goals to earn $25,000 a month inside of the next three months, when your current earnings are far less than $3,000, is in all likelihood unrealistic. Nonetheless, setting an ongoing practical goal to increment your income by 3% to 15% a month is not simply realistic, but also more likely to be achievable.

Once you have nailed down a goal you think you can achieve, your next step is to split it down into more bite sized, controllable projects and arranging them in succession (presuming one goal hinges on the conclusion of each other). Prior to specifying an finish date the overall goal should be carried out, make certain that all little goal is devoted a valid measure of time for completion and allow the sum of the tasks determine the end date, as an alternative to arbitrarily picking one.

Depending upon how long into the future your goals are imaged it can be really valuable to schedule regular progression reviews, even when you are the sole person taking part. For example, setting a time every Monday morning to review your advancement and apply any needed alterations can keep your goals on track. Try not be taken aback if something unexpected interferes with your advancement now and then. This is natural and you will simply have to find a means to make up for it.

One more fraud barrier to truly meeting your goals is the task of personal goal setting itself. Be sure to avoid implementing a goal development method that uses up more resources than the current goal itself. Likewise, an uncomplicated spreadsheet can at times meet your requirements to meet the full goal setting needs. For bigger scale goal setting development, a horde of goal setting software exists, normally scalable for most individuals.

Apart from really carrying out the process to ultimately realizing your goal, the final step should be to earmark a little time to measure the full process and your performance when done. This must be carried out impartially and assumed as a learning opportunity, a process that can help you to boost your process the next time round.

With precise development, setting goals that are practical can truly benefit you and your enterprise over time, especially when you simplify your goal administration process for yourself. If you look on personal goal setting as a evolving process centred on continuous process advancement, in the long run you will see a considerable improvement in everything that you aspire to do!

Go to http://PersonalDevelopmentUncovered.com for more on setting personal goals. The web site is packed with free techniques to help you learn setting personal goals.

Article Source: Setting Personal Goals ~ Achieve Those Goals

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Goal setting process

  • Posted on July 1, 2009 at 9:05 pm

Self discovery : Figure out what you want in life
Once I attended an interesting workshop. The conductor of the workshop asked us a question. She asked, if we were given an option to be a bird or animal, what would we want to be, and why. She gave us ten minutes to think about it and write it down on a piece of paper. It was something that really set everyone thinking, it was a strange question, it was not like which bird or animal we like, but it was different, it was me as a bird or animal that made us think. Different people came with different responses, some wanted to be a lion for the power and strength it had, some wanted to be a geese for the freedom it enjoyed and the symmetry with which they flew along with the rest, in absolute harmony with their community. Everyone spoke what they wanted to be and why, and it was a good entertaining session. But the exercise was not meant for entertainment purpose, it was meant to take us towards self discovery . She asked wether the reasons we gave as to why we wanted be a particular bird or animal actually the things we wanted in life. It is was right, everyone nodded their heads, some wanted power and strength and hence saw themselves as lions. It was an enlightening experience, an insight I never had experienced before. This is something I would suggest everyone to do on their own to find out afterall what we want to be in our lives. And once we find our answers we can start on the next exercise of how we can achieve what we aspire for. What are
the things that we need to do, what should be our long term goals.

Goal setting : Set goals which lead you to what you want in life
1. Set long term goals first. Your long term goals should guide your short term goals.
2. Goals should be mutually workable. See to it that the goals don’t work against each other, as it will not help either of the two goals. Prioritise goals in order of importance, work accordingly.
3. Correct goal setting is important, one should not undermine the importance of well crafted goals. They will help you all along your journey till you achieve your goal. Try and set SMART goals where each letter of the acronym SMART stands for in the order of the letters as, Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timebound.

Plan your actions : Make plans of how you will achieve your goals
After setting goals, you have to figure out what all you need to do to achieve your goal, the action plans which you will implement to achieve your goal. Identifying only your goal and not putting a plan in place is undoing the good work of setting your goal. Goal setting answers the ‘What I want’ part of the question, Action planning answers the ‘how I will achieve it’. Both, goal setting and action planning are equally important.

Work your plans and track your progress : Keep your eyes open to see if you are going where you planned. Deciding what you want and putting a plan in place is one thing, implementing it is another. People set certain things as goals, because they are not trivial for them, and would require some effort in planning and working on them. What you need now is discipline, determination and persistence. Measure your progress all along till you achieve your goal. Plot graphs if required, engage with your goal by revisiting it, thinking about it, writing about your experience. These will help to reaffirm what you are upto and re-energise and keep the momentum going. If you don’t spend some time thinking about the goals each day, you will soon lose the focus required to achieve the goal.

Following a process is better than not following any, it atleast rules out failure to achieve goals on some counts, and that is a good enough reason to begin with and have a process in place.

The autor is the founder of http://www.getgoaling.com, a simple yet comprehensive system to achive your goals. It enables you to set and track your goals with action plans, to do lists and reminders.

Article Source: Goal setting process

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