3 Tips On How To Renew A Relationship

Many people these days don't know how to renew a relationship or they simply do not want to try. Let's face it - adult relationships take some nurturing and attention to succeed. A healthy relationship requires both partners to invest some time and energy to make it happen.

Check your sexual health temperature.

Okay, I said it. If you aren't getting along or "getting it on" in the bedroom then change it up a bit. I am no Dr. Ruth but you might just want to change the how, why, when and where you do it.

There are numerous studies related to sexual health in relationships and tons of resources online to discover. With that said, how about you just try to change it up a bit. See what happens. Spontaneity could be the mother of invention or intervention.

How is your mental health?

I'm not asking you to check your head to see if you are crazy here. What is your mindset? Are you stressed at work? Are you stressed because you aren't working or are out of work? Are the children driving you bananas?

Your state of mind plays a huge role in the health of any relationship. You might just need to have some "me" time before you go home to your particular situation.

Communication is key.

Do I really need to say it? You have to talk. I don't know anybody that has been given the gift of telepathy. Don't assume you know what your partner is thinking or going to say. Speak up. Just don't speak loudly by raising your voice. I'm not talking about arguing just opening your mouth.

In order for the truth to be known it must be heard. You can't hide it and expect it to come out. You have to bring it out into the open and let it breathe. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about saying you are right and they are wrong. I'm saying that you must open your mouth and communicate and let your thoughts be heard. Good communication is crucial if you are serious about learning how to renew a relationship.

Any relationship requires ongoing attention, especially when it is strained. There are answers to your questions and solutions to your dilemma. The truth can be found at Try Making Up

Health Affirmations - 3 Opportunities For Success

Affirmations are the words we use to make things "firm" in the world. Words have active creative power. They can be used intentionally to create positive change in the world -- including enhancing your state of health. In this article, we'll explore three challenges that interfere with health, along with sample affirmations to modify the challenges and enhance health.

Holistic health challenge #1: an inappropriate relationship with food. While specific food choices are based on an individual person's values and culture, there are some general themes that apply across the board. Difficulties may arise...

* When a person loses touch with the feeling of hunger and eats either substantially more or less than their body requires in order to be satisfied and nourished.

* When a person places convenience over health and begins to rely on processed convenience food products instead of whole, fresh foods.

* When a person takes their food source for granted, failing to appreciate the cycles of nature and human effort that makes their sustenance possible.

This stands to affect your health in several ways, including inadequate nutrition and weight challenges. Affirmations for a health-promoting relationship with food might go something like this. (Modify as desired to suit your own situation.)

* I listen to my body's messages of hunger and satisfaction, eating the perfect quantity of healthy foods.

* I enjoy eating the fresh whole foods that nourish my body, mind, and spirit.

* I am thankful for the foods that nourish and sustain me and my family.

Holistic health challenge #2: thinking, speaking, and acting in a way that demeans your own intrinsic value and worth. It is one thing to accept responsibility for a mistake, yet another thing entirely to demean yourself in the process. The fall-out from failing to make this critical distinction may surface...

* When a person speaks about him or herself in derogatory or critical terms.

* When a person fails to recognize and make use of their natural talents and gifts for the benefit of all.

* When a person allows fear of criticism to interfere with expression of their deepest personal values.

* When a person works to exhaustion instead of honoring necessary time for rest and contemplation.

Health challenges of poor self-concept include reluctance to engage in health-promoting behaviors and to become a proactive advocate for yourself. Here are some sample affirmations for honoring a positive relationship with the self:

* I express my natural talents freely and easily.

* When I am authentic, I am truly alive.

* I love and appreciate my unique nature.

* I balance active times with rest and rejuvenation.

Holistic health challenge #3: placing more faith in an outsider's opinion of what's best for your life than you place in your own. Of course we consult experts for advice -- on everything from health care to taxes to plumbing! Yet it's also true that you are the ultimate expert on your own life. Nobody on the "outside" understands your situation in quite the same way that you do. Difficulties may arise...

* When a person constantly asks other people what they should do (often ignoring the advice in a continual quest for even more) instead of looking inward for their own wisdom.

* When a person receives most or all of their expert advice from a single source or perspective instead of balancing opinions from various viewpoints.

* When a person acts on an expert's advice, despite the inner conviction that the course of action is not right for them.

Health-related effects of unwillingess to take responsibility for your intrinsic wisdom include poor health care choices and choosing inaction by default. Here are a few sample affirmations for building a stronger relationship with a person's own internal voice of health and wholeness:

* I consult with others, consider their advice, and then form my own opinions.

* I honor my own deepest wisdom.

* I seek solutions that support the highest good, both for me and for the world around me.

Practice affirmations in a way that suits you -- either repeating particular positive statements on a regular basis or weaving them into the continuous texture of your daily life.

Elizabeth Eckert coaxes, cajoles, and gently guides the creation of healing intent. She's the founder of http://www.wordcures.com and author of Word Cures: How to Keep Stupid Excuses From Sabotaging Your Health. Begin your self-talk makeover today -- it's simple healthy living

5 Actions For Successful Relationships

Couples that have a very good relationship are not just lucky. Successful, loving relationships do not just happen. The couples that have loving relationships are taking specific actions that people in unsuccessful relationships are not taking.

ACTION 1 - KINDNESS TO SELF AND OTHER

Think for a moment about how you go through your day. Are you focused on what you don't like in yourself or your partner? Do you spend much of your thinking time judging yourself or your partner? Or, do you make the spiritual attribute of kindness to yourself and others, including your partner, your highest priority?

People in successful relationships treat themselves and their partner with kindness - kind words, kind actions, kind looks, kind listening, and kind thoughts. It is far more important to them to be kind than to try to control their partner with anger, judgment, criticism, irritation, blame, resistance or withdrawal.

ACTION 2 - PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR FEELINGS

People in loving relationships do not make their partner responsible for their feelings. When they feel angry, hurt, anxious, depressed, resentful, irritated, guilty, or shamed, they look within at their own thoughts and behavior that may be causing their painful feelings. They do not see themselves as victims of their partner's choices. Rather, they learn how to manage their own feelings without dumping their upset on their partner. When they can't manage their own feelings, they get the help they need rather than dump anger, blame, anxiety or depression onto their partner.

ACTION 3 - ORGANIZATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY

People in successful relationships take responsibility for managing their time and space in ways that work for themselves and their partner. They make sure they have enough time with each other to talk, learn, resolve conflict, play and make love. The make sure they have time with children, time for chores, time for work and time for relaxation. They take care of their mutual living spaces in ways that respect their partner's needs. If one partner tends to be neat and the other messy, they both strive to make their living environment pleasant for both of them rather than either of them complying, controlling, or resisting. Because their highest priority is kindness to themselves and each other, they are motivated to discover ways of living together that meets both of their needs.

ACTION 4 - FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Successful couples make sure that they not only earn enough to support themselves, but they learn how to manage their money in ways that do not create stress for themselves or their partner. They decide mutually if both of them will work or not. Partners in loving relationships do not unilaterally decide to stop working and live off the other person. Nor does either partner make unilateral financial decisions that have a negative effect on the other partner.

In successful relationships, one partner does not spend money in such as way as to create stress for the other person. Loving partners mutually decide on their budget and then both of them stick to it.

ACTION 5 - HEALTH AND WELLBEING

When two people care deeply about themselves and each other, they strive to take care of their physical health. Loving partners do not behave in ways that cause their partner to fear for their wellbeing. They do not take unnecessary risks, such as riding a motorcycle without a helmet, or participating in activities that could harm their eyes without wearing goggles. They don't drink and drive. They eat well, get enough exercise, and don't smoke. People in loving relationships do not want their partner to suffer the grief of their loss through premature illness, so they strive to take good care of themselves - partly out of caring for themselves, and partly out of caring for their partner.

Once again - successful relationships don't just happen. They are the result of each person taking physical, emotional, financial, organizational, and spiritual responsibility within their relationship.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?" and ?Healing Your Aloneness.? She is the co-creator of the powerful Inner BondingR healing process. Learn Inner Bonding now! Visit her web site for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or email her at margaret@innerbonding.com. Phone sessions available.

On Doing Only Your Half in Romantic Relationships

Recently, someone asked me, "How does someone do only 'their half' in a relationship and leave the rest to their partner?" They then went on to say, "I know it sounds like a stupid question but sometimes, it's hard to know. Especially when I feel at times like I am trying to coax a wounded animal out from under a porch."

My answer? I know you already know this but I'll say it to you anyway. There are no stupid questions. So please let that one go. Please.

Now start with this. If you are attracted to folks who resemble "abused animals hiding under a porch," then you may have some major rethinking to do as to who you are attracted to. Starting with asking yourself why you feel you must be the one to regain their trust.

What would this imply about you? That you have a major block in and around that people are supposed to want to earn your trust as well. Not after you earn theirs. Simultaneously. With you. This, in fact, is one of the most important parts of every relationship, romantic and otherwise. The simultaneous process of earning each other's trust. In fact, you and I are doing this very thing right now.

Of course, there are exceptions, such as when you are parenting young children. Your own and other peoples.' Also, during the course of every major relationship, we each get faced with times wherein we must temporarily be the "go first" person in the trust department. For instance, say your are with someone who gets diagnosed with a major illness. Say, cancer. For a time, you would have to be the "go first" person with regard to earning trust. To do this in those times would simply be an act of healthy love.

Problems arise though when you treat people in everyday life events as if they are currently experiencing a major health crisis and thus, are entitled to special privileges. Major health crises are temporary conditions. Childhood mental health problems are not, major or otherwise.

Thus, if you are compensating for someone's childhood mental health problems in other than a temporary way, then you are enabling them, and you, to avoid having to heal your birth - separation moment anxiety. Translation. You will, forever, feel trapped by the "fear of being left." Which is not the same thing as the "fear of being alone."

Most folks, in fact, do not actually fear "being alone." They mistakenly believe this though, in part, because the mental health community has been ratcheting these kinds of ideas into our brains for decades now. And yes, some few folks do fear being alone. But this is much less common than being afraid of being left, as in, reliving one's birth separation-moment anxiety.

As for your question about doing only your half, this idea should be the baseline from which you vary on occasion. In other words, doing more than your half should be the exception, not the rule. Anything other than this and you are definitely regressing to an earlier time. And to an earlier relationship. Usually with the parent with whom you have the most unfinished business.

With warm regards,

Steven Paglierani is a writer, teacher, personality theorist, and therapist whose work on learning and human consciousness is read weekly by thousands all over the world. He is the author of Emergence Personality Theory, and his mission is to make the world better for children by restoring and deepening their love of learning.

He can be read or reached at his site, http://theEmergenceSite.com

Relationships: Attract at Your Common Level of Self-Love

Marty tells me in a phone session,"Susan is always criticizing me. How do I get her to stop?"

Fiona tells me in a phone session,"Jeff is often withdrawn. I feel so angry about this."

It's always easy to see what your partner is doing that you don't like, but it's generally very challenging to see your end of a dysfunctional relationship system. However, your end of the system is equal to your partner's end, as we attract people at our common level of woundedness or our common level of health.

What does this mean?

This means that the degree to which you emotionally abandon yourself - by judging yourself, ignoring your feelings, turning to addictions, and/or making others responsible for your feelings - is the same degree to which your partner is emotionally abandoning himself or herself.

The minute Marty tells me about Susan criticizing him, I know that Marty is likely criticizing himself and may also be giving himself up to her to try to have control over getting her approval. Each is controlling in their own way, but Marty is aware only of how Susan is trying to control him.

When Fiona tells me about Jeff's withdrawal, she is also telling me about her anger - two sides of their dysfunctional relationship system.

The problem is that Marty and Susan and Fiona and Jeff all got together wanting to get love, rather than knowing how to love themselves and share their love.

Do you really want to continue to do this in your life?

Attracting at Your Common Level of Emotional Health

Attracting at your common level of emotional health means that you have done the inner work necessary to heal your feelings of shame and insecurity. It means that you know how to fill yourself with love and share your love with others. It means that you have stopped abandoning yourself and have learned how to love yourself, which means that you take responsibility for your feelings, rather than making another responsible.

When you learn to value yourself and take responsibility for your feelings, you are no longer attracted to someone who emotionally abandons themselves. You are drawn to people who also value themselves and want to share love rather than get love. So you will no longer end up with someone who blames, withdraws, judges or sees themself as a victim. You will just not find this person attractive, as they are not at your common level of emotional health.

The Frequency of Attraction

The Law of Attraction states that "Like attracts like." This means that people with a low frequency - people who are insecure and self-abandoning - attract each other, while people with a high frequency - people who love and value themselves - also attract each other. People who are positive, open, secure, giving, caring and kind to themselves and others are not attracted to people who are closed, negative and needy of approval and attention.

While no one deliberately seeks out someone who is closed, negative and needy, if this is you, this is what you will attract into your life. If you want a loving relationship, then you need to do the work of learning how to take emotional responsibility. This means:

Learning to be present in your body rather than stuck in your mind avoiding your feelings
Being open to learning about what your feelings are telling you rather than protecting against them with various addictions and self-judgments
Learning to access a spiritual source of love, rather than expecting someone else to be your higher power
Learning to take loving action in your own behalf rather than expecting others to do this for you

Why not start today with learning how to love yourself rather than continue to abandon yourself?

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner BondingR process. Are you are ready to discover real love and intimacy? Click here for a FREE CD/DVD relationship offer, and visit our website at www.innerbonding.com for more articles and help. Phone Sessions Available. Join the thousands we have already helped and visit us now!

Taking Control of Your Health & Well-Being

Do you ever wonder why, in spite of all your good intentions, you just cannot seem to take control over your health and wellness the way you really want to? The answer to that question can be found in the words of Albert Einstein, who reminded us "you cannot correct a problem with the same thinking that created it". In other words, you cannot change old behaviors without new information.

The Institute of Medicine recently published a study that indicates ninety million Americans are "health illiterate", which means we do not know how to interpret or use health information to control or improve our health, or prevent chronic disease. Data compiled previously identified, "lack of information as the number one root cause of death". Understanding that there exists a cause and effect relationship between what we know and how we behave, we need a model of integrating this important information to change the behaviors that lead to chronic disease. According to a 7-year, 1996, Harvard Medical School study, approximately 70% of all cancers are preventable through lifestyle changes. Furthermore, our diseases and conditions are primarily a result of stress, food, environment, attitude, emotions or beliefs that keep us in behaviors that lead to illness. Which invites the question, are we consciously choosing to be unhealthy, or do we just not understand sufficiently the relationship between what we think, how we behave, what we put into our bodies and how we keep ourselves well or make ourselves sick?

In a world exploding with health information, especially on the internet, we are caught in the dilemma of having abundant amounts of information, without a context through which we can understand and utilize this information in a way that is appropriate for our own unique personal health needs. There is, however, good news - making its way into the mainstream of health care is an integrated model of health information and education that provides a "whole picture of health" perspective, allowing each of us to discern and create our own unique approach to taking charge of our health and well-being. Whole Health Education, developed over the past 28 years, in cooperation with Boston physicians, nurses and educators, is an approach to understanding the cause and effect our behaviors and choices have on our state of health. Demystifying the five major factors that influence how sick or well we become, Whole Health Education provides a perspective on human anatomy and physiology, bio-chemistry, psycho-social, environmental and spiritual aspects which allows for an authentic understanding of what we need know to resolve chronic health problems or to stay healthy. Integrating evidence-based information with the wisdom of various spiritual teachings and a whole-person overview of behavioral options, Whole Health Education offers each of us a tool for personal health management by providing personalized health information that explains the physical, emotional, nutritional, environmental and spiritual aspects of a health concern.

For example, Mature Onset Diabetes affects approximately 18.2 million Americans and is the leading health concern in our culture today. As all chronic conditions are, Mature Onset Diabetes is a multi-dimensional disease state and the unique Whole Health perspective, can facilitate the restoration of health for those with chronic diseases such as diabetes.

Physical/Structural

What happens on a physical and structural level with Mature Onset Diabetes? The specialized beta cells of the pancreas, which produce insulin, become incapable of producing adequate amounts of the critically necessary secretion. This happens over a period of years and can begin in our bodies, over time, by eating large amounts of insulin-provoking foods. These insulin provocateurs, which are sugars and starches in the form of complex carbohydrates, require the pancreas to produce more insulin so that the sugars can be carried over the cell membranes to all parts of the body. Serious disturbances occur when we do not have enough insulin to carry the sugar over the cell membranes. Insulin hooks onto the sugar molecule and acts like a lock and key mechanism to bring that sugar into the cell which is then used in the energy cycle of cell metabolism. The nervous system, brain and the lungs cannot function without the proper metabolism of sugars.

Emotional/Social

Just as diabetes is a lack of nourishment on a chemical/nutritional level, so is it a lack of emotional nourishment on an emotional/mental level. It relates to the "feel good" nourishment component of your body. What do we know about carbohydrates and serotonin? Carbohydrates provoke the production of serotonin. Serotonin is a neuro-transmitter that produces a feeling of well-being. There is a direct relationship between what our body is doing chemically and how we feel emotionally. When we crave or build our diet around carbohydrates, this can be a way of "self-medicating" our emotional needs by eating carbohydrates to provoke insulin production.

Sugar problems can affect us emotionally. Let's say you have a pancreas that is not working properly. What can happen somatic/psychically from the pancreas to the brain? If we are feeling the ups and downs of hypoglycemia, and its biochemical/neurological symptoms, it may undermine our sense of security, self esteem, and produce anxiety and fear.

What is the emotional component of diabetes and the pancreas? Often, it can be a poor sense of self-esteem and a fear of not being "good enough" or not belonging. These feelings, medicated by the serotonin foods, can lead us to not look deeply enough into what is causing our health concerns and allow the feeling/feeding cycle to continue.

Chemical/Nutritional

On the nutritional side, the treatment for people with Mature Onset Diabetes is to decrease the stress on the pancreas by making changes in their diet -- decrease starches and sugars and decrease calories. Eat less, eat right. What kind of a diet would be best for preventing Mature Onset Diabetes? Vegetables, vegetables, and vegetables combined with lean proteins such as fish, chicken, water, a little fruit and a little fat. In a hypoglycemic situation, it is wise not to eat grain or sugar, but sprouted grain bread, and other substitutes can be healthy and satisfying.

Because hormones are chemicals, diabetes and hypoglycemia are both hormonal-based problems. What we know about the hormone system is that it works as a balanced interdependent system. Diabetes is an endocrine-related, systemic problem. With a systemic problem like diabetes, you have a body system problem--you do not just have a condition by itself. It is known that the pancreas is related, through hormone interaction, to the adrenals, and the adrenals are in turn related to the reproductive system. It is known that these glands are related through hormone interactions to the pituitary and the pituitary is related to the thyroid gland, the thyroid is related to the thymus, and the thymus is related to the immune system.

Environmental/Internal & External

The environment that we work in, live in, walk through, live near -- how does that environment have an impact on the way that we feel and the way we feel about ourselves?

How do we learn to trust in the order of the universe? By behaviors that come from trusting the order inside ourselves. We do this by setting boundaries -- codes of conduct of how we are going to behave, eat, work exercise and live. If we don't violate our own boundaries, we are less likely to let anybody else violate our boundaries. We have to start with ourselves. Our experience of victimization can begin with our own self-victimizing behavior.

Spiritual/World View

A Hindu Vendata truth is that "the whole world is one family". It is said that there is only one disease, the disease of separateness, separating oneself from the awareness that we are one living organism. Competition creates isolation. The spiritual challenge presented by hypoglycemia and diabetes appears to be involved with over- or under-valuing the self: judgment of self and then others. Where are we in the process of getting to the truth that we are all equally important? The drama created by a one-up or one-down dynamic that we may allow to be part of our experience can lead to psychophysiology and the behavioral issues which can contribute to and create Mature Onset Diabetes.

Whole Health Education can transform our experience of taking care of ourselves. It can provide an understanding of our health concerns and conditions from this multi-dimensional perspective that makes sense in a way we can utilize the information directly and in a meaningful way. In addition, having the information provided in a mindful, respectful way that invites each of us to discern what we know about our health and condition, how to choose to resolve the problem and what kind of care we choose to have, allows each of us to experience whole-person health care through whole health information. Then, WE become the center of our health and healing process, rather than the doctors or practitioners we go to for guidance.

Women in Abusive Relationships - The Issue in Plague Proportions That Hardly Ever Gets Mentioned

Women in abusive relationships is a scourge that is a plague throughout the world.

Before I proceed I need to comment on the widely held belief that abounds today that abuse in relationships is as likely to be perpetrated by women as it is by men.

My comment is - poppycock. In other words, this is nonsense. The figures we constantly hear are that 1 in 3 women all around the world are in abusive relationships, and that does not include the broader definition of all the non physical aspects of abuse.

It diverts our attention away from dealing with the issues associated with women being abused in relationships. So little has been achieved to this point in time and this red herring gets thrown into the ring to distract us.

In my view it is an indication of part of the problem. It attempts to contradict the vastness of the issue of women in abusive relationships, and demonstrates how those who put forward this belief, are blind to the consequences.

This is not to deny that some women are abusive in relationships, but it is not comparable.

In all my years as a counsellor, I saw women constantly who were living in absolute fear of the men they were living with. I have never seen one man who has claimed he is living in fear of the woman he was living with.

It never ceases to amaze me how the issue of women in abusive relationships gets such little attention.

We keep hearing that 1 in 3 women experience physical abuse in their relationships, not to mention all the other abuse that is experienced as well.

We hear that 3 women a day are killed by a male partner in the US. In Australia it is 1 every 5 days.

Being a woman in an abusive relationship, is still the biggest threat of injury to women - more than heart attacks, cancer, strokes, car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined.

Statistics tell us the most dangerous place for a woman to be is in her own home - not some dark alley, or seedy neighborhood, or a parking lot.

Yet the warning that is regularly put forward is to be wary in such places - and also of strangers.

In addition, today, we are bombarded by the belief that we are at the mercy of terrorists and we need to be alert to the possibility of being targeted. Billions of dollars is being spent on our protection.

The outcomes of women being in abusive relationships highlights the contrast, and the evidence against, the panic associated with so-called terrorism.

Terrorism in the home throughout the world, is gigantic in comparison, yet barely gets a mention, and peanuts is spent on dealing with it in any meaningful way.

Any money that is spent on the issues associated with women in abusive relationships, tends to be on what I would call band aiding issues.

That is to say, it is usually spent on paying for women to live in safe houses and the expenses associated with getting them to that point.

Whilst this is necessary and a good thing, it plays no part in creating any real changes that are necessary to make a difference.

Some governments have policies claiming to aim at eliminating and preventing abuse in relationships, yet have nothing more in place than indicated above.

A major campaign is required as a start for overcoming the problem of women in abusive relationships.

The community generally needs to be made aware of the widespread nature of the problem.This needs to be done by making contact with a broad cross section of media outlets and getting them to do interviews with those who have the information available.

Articles about the problem of women in abusive relationships need to be submitted to these outlets as well. In addition talks must be organized with a whole range of people such as corporate groups, schools, government departments etc., etc.

The issue of women being in abusive relationships is increasingly being recognized as a serious violation of basic human rights.

Today, international organizations, such as the World Health Organization, regard the prevention of abuse in relationships as a high priority and there is a need for urgent action.

A World Health Organization report demonstrates that women being in abusive relationships is widespread and deeply ingrained, and has serious impacts on women's health and well-being.

According to Amnesty International, violence against women in relationships is the greatest human rights scandal of our times.

Leo Ryan has been a relationship counselor for more than twenty years.He discovered inequality is a major problem and his focus is How To Have Equality in a Relationship. Go to his website: http://www.TheEqualRelationshipGuy.com and get a Free report about how to solve a common example of inequality in a relationship.