Category Archives: Marriage

Sometimes Words Get In The Way

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Sometimes Words get in the way. Sometimes they don’t say enough. Sometimes they get stuck in the back of your throat. But just because your tongue is tied doesn’t mean you’re cut off from each other.

in-love

It’s great to say those magical three words,”I love you,” but there are many others ways to let your loved one know how you feel. You can say an awful lot with a look, a touch, a smile, a frown, a thoughtful gesture, a shrug, a favorite meal, a changed diaper, a silently paid bill, a remembered anniversary, or a romantic walk along the beach.

You can also communicate negative thoughts in silent ways, like forgetting her birthday, not calling to say you’ll be home late. Sometimes such thoughtlessness is only carelessness, even then there’s an unspoken message. So let your loved one know how you feel, what’s in your heart, and what’s on your mind . . . in words and in gestures.  And as you do be careful how you choose your words, and just as careful in the gestures you make. Just because nobody hears the tree falling in your forest of love, the effect of the thud will still be felt.

 

Tie Up Your Emotional Loose Ends

Posted in Addictions, Co-Dependency, Difficult Relationships, Love, Marriage, Relationships by

Keep Your PromisesEveryone has a few emotional loose ends attached to something that their sweetheart has said or done.  Some are harmful while others fester like unexpressed resentments, unmanaged hurts, unresolved conflicts, unmentioned little embarrassments, or unfair requests that are hiding out in the background. Sadly, unsaid, they stand between sweethearts spoiling their emotional bond, clouding the clarity they’d like to have for one another.

Leaving them with emotional loose ends, instead of letting their conflicts, requests, and difficulties languish in the slough of non-expression, they bring them to a conclusion and make peace with one another before going on. Doing this implies that they both desire and believe they can bring their union into the place of emotional homeostasis, of calm, in which they can begin to take tender emotional risks and deepen their relationship.

We all have a tendency to let things go, to hope that whatever is amiss will just work itself out or disappear. Some things do become conveniently irrelevant in time, but the truth is that not resolving resentments and conflicts takes an incredible amount of energy. And all the energy could better be used for kissing each other or making plans to go on a date. So instead of building gallows for your love, take an extra time to resolve your unfinished emotional loose end, no matter how trite or inconsequential it may seem.

Remember ” You Are Not A Trash Can” and love blossoms under blue skies and trying up emotional loose ends shoos all the dark clouds away.

 

Wait . . . what? What is an Authentic Voice?

Posted in Friendship, Hope, Love, Marriage, Relationships, Self- Help by

An authentic voice is when we are being 100 per cent ourselves, without fear or reservation. Think about the person you are when you are with your friends, spouse, or your children, and your family. Are you consistently the same or do you change according to who your audience is or how they respond? Have you discovered your authentic voice? Think of how you speak on the phone, the voice you use when you are typing an email, or the words you chose when telling a story at the dinner table. Have you ever tried journeying? Or maybe you’re a blogger who hasn’t found your voice yet.  If so try this little exercise. Think of a memory or story  now call your mom or best friend and tell them the story. 

You can start out by saying. “Hey, remember when.  . . ? Or, “Did I ever tell you the story about the time . . .? Once you finish the conversation, write it down in your journal or on your blog and as you are writing say it to yourself without any fear or reservation and when you are finished ask yourself if the voice in which you just told the story matches the voice in which the story is written. If they match great! You have just used your authentic voice. If they’re quite different, well, read on!Mr & Mrs.

There is no better place to start getting to the authentic heart of your story than with your own blog entries and the nice thing about using a blog is that you can write in a timely manner while topics are still fresh on your mind and the true emotion is there. Many bloggers use events as starting points for writing or journeying. Such as a wedding anniversary.

For example I read a story on a blog about a woman who wrote about the night her  husband proposed to her and how it took her fifteen years to feel brave enough to write him a love letter.  I applaud her for being brave and taking  an opportunity to write from her heart using her authentic voice. Her story  reminding all of us that we don’t always get do overs and second chances.  Some don’t get fifteen years with the love of their lives . So write from your heart and use your authentic voice  . . . and be real.

Your Truth May Not Be What It Once Was

Posted in Addictions, Co-Dependency, Difficult Relationships, Hope, Love, Marriage, Relationships, Self- Help by

Be RealTruth is a journey toward itself. To live in truth is to be aware that , as your context changes, so will your view of the truth and the range of the truth that your heart and soul can contain. Your truth may not be now what it was or what it will be in the future; but it is your duty to live and speak your truth of the moment and to be willing to change it, should some larger truth be revived.

In relationships, we begin with the small truth about what’s true in that moment for us and speak them, in love, to the person we love. We start by sharing our stories, our needs, our hopes, and our dreams, then move on, through the many and varied vicissitude of our ever unfolding personal selves, toward the truth that embraces us all. For the ultimate truth is immense ; it swallows up all other truths, our little individual truths, the contradictions we all are living, and even the bigger truths of paradox principles and rules.

Begin your journey toward truth. and search for the truth inside you that is longing to be expressed and when you find your truth speak it. See the truth as it stands in your midst, that is carried, embodied, and spoken to you by those you can trust and start living the higher truth as it revealed to you. Your truth can come to you through art, in music, in literature, in nature, and in your dreams. Receive that truth and allow it surround you , for  truth is everywhere. Surrender yourself to the truth, for to live your life in truth is to live in freedom.

There is nothing purer than the truth. It stands inviolate on its own merit, seeing through falsehood and equivocation, shining brilliant at the spiritual totem around which our whole lives are organized. The truth is indivisible , stunning, eternal, the Alpha and Omega of our mortal human existence. Nothing less than the truth can ever equal it: and nothing less than the truth can ever pass it and you certainly were not created to be used as anyone’s trash can so if you are feeling that way stop and sift through the lies you are believing about yourself because the truth will set you free indeed.

Be Willing To Be Surprised

Posted in Co-Dependency, Difficult Relationships, Hope, Love, Marriage, Relationships by

Be Available To The Mystery Love of the heart and soul is mysterious. It takes chances. It believes in miracles. It is breath, movement, music, an evanescent moment, a blissful surprise. To be available to its mystery is to be willing to be surprised . .  . as a child discovers their face in a mirror, or a husband undressing his bride for the first time, and discovers the secrets of her. To be open to the miraculous is at last to be bountifully blessed. It is to move with grace, as you sweetly conduct your life, from the mountains of your mind to the rivers of your heart.

To be available to mystery means that you are open, expectant, waiting , continually poised on tiptoe prepared to be illumined .  .  . not locked down in your own expectations of how you think it should happen. In life and in love, this means living free, with your mind-set loose from its gears, not endlessly chattering inside, “But it has its own way,” or “”I thought is was going to be this way.” Our own ideas, those tidy little constructions of the intellect and psyche, just serve to limit our reality, shutdown possibilities, create a universe only as complex and rarified as the busy minds that invented it.

If you are too invested in the concepts of the mind, you will only recognize the things and allow into your life the kinds of experiences that confirm what your mind is already seen. When you set out to prove your presumptions, you scotch your chances of falling toward the miraculous. That’s because being  available to the mystery means being willing to believe that something more or different  . . . something you literally cannot imagine could be lying in wait for you. Indeed, when you surrender to mystery, you may step into an experience so huge and splendid and grand that, truly, you may feel as if you just stepped right out this world.

Remember you are not a trash can and you deserve to be loved the right way . . . meaning by someone who doesn’t disrespect you in any way. Whenever a negative situation occurs in your life, you have choices about how you think about them, which will determine how you respond. Please think highly enough of yourself to say no to anyone who disrespects you and if you feel that you can’t please seek professional help.

 

Enjoy Your Imagination

Posted in Hope, Love, Marriage, Relationships by

It's better

It’s easy to get in a rut and it’s the exceptional that makes love feel like love, and not just a two-person of the  drab, dull, daily routine. That’s not to say that our daily routine isn’t good because everyone knows that after they experience an  unfortunate event that we really appreciate our seemly dull routines. Everyone, (well almost everybody) likes a surprise, the uninvited appearance of the utterly unexpected, the rabbit comes out of the hat, the hidden treasure, the silver lining. The unanticipated leaves us happily off-kilter, so spice up your life by doing something completely different. 

Throw gardenia petal on the bed, put a love note in the freezer, read to each other a bedtime story, bury tickets to the circus under his pillow, follow your sweetheart around with a camera and make a photo essay of them. Leave an erotic message on his cell phone, call her work just to tell her that you love her, sever a candlelight dinner in bed and lastly don’t forget to take the kids to Nana’s house for the night or weekend. Just remember it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you do something unexpected and as often as you can and watch your love turn from dishwater dull to the sparkle of champagne.

Your relationship is priceless.

Not everyone had been given such a gift.

Treasure it, hold it in your hand and up to the light.

Image yourself letting its extraordinary beauty open your heart

And transform you life

Don’t ever forget that you are not a trash can

You are priceless . . .

Pay Attention To What You Are Saying

Posted in Love, Marriage, Relationships by

HelloA relationship isn’t something like grandma’s silver that you take out of its box once a year to polish. It’s something that needs constant spiffying up. Okay, given your busy lives, constant is an exaggeration. But how about giving your relationship a shining for fifteen or twenty minutes once a week? That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? And what do you use for polish?  Really mean it when you say I love you. Make sure your words and your actions are in sync. Talk to each other. Keep it simple . . . don’t try to analyze everything. Be sure you’re saying what you really mean. 

It’s great to reach for the stars . . . just don’t be disappointed if you only get as far as the moon. Don’t take your partner’s foibles personally. Romance is more important than you may think. Play your song. Two hearts beat stronger by candlelight. Turn off the TV . . .  turn on love. Look your sweetheart in the eyes. Make coming home something to look forward to. Dare to do things differently. Schedule a date for just the two of you. find activities to do together. Remember the goal isn’t to find the right answer, but merely to treat each other with love and respect . . .   not a trash can. You’ve been taught to say “thank you” for presents, but do you acknowledge the little things your sweetheart does for you? You can never say “thank you” too many times, though most people don’t say it enough.  

 

Don’t Drift To Far Away From Your Sweetheart

Posted in Love, Marriage, Relationships by

Lunch On The BeachAs you go through life, there are danger signs everywhere: red lights and stop signs, speed bumps and blinking lights, and circles. But when it comes to a relationship, visible warning signs are few and far between. Sometimes the greatest perils come tiptoeing in sight unseen, and one the most lethal of these sneaky assassins of arbor is boredom.

Before it drains the power out of your love, sweep that gray fog of boredom aside by adding energy. In the same way the warm rays of the sun dissipate a real fog, energy can pierce the grayness of your love. All you have to is: talk, run, jump, ski, walk, go. It doesn’t matter where or how. All that matters is the you do something. The more you do, the further away you’ll push boredom, and the stronger you love will be.

Beware too, that sometimes boredom wears a disguise. It’s call routine. Routines are necessary in life, especially when there’s so much to do., but they have a serous side effect, which is boredom. The key to using routines wisely is to break from them regularly. If you always eat dinner at six , then one night a week, eat at five or go to dinner and a movie. Every once in a while, use your fingers instead of a fork.

If that thought creeps into your head to throw a grape at your sweetheart, then do it! If you pass your hubby washing his hands at the sink, put an ice-cube down his shirt. Sleep on the other side of the bed once in a while. Slip a homeless person a $10 bill. Wear something unexpected to bed. Drive home the long way. It doesn’t matter what it is that you do that’s different . It only matters that you do different things regularly.

Do You Really Need to Fire Your Verbal Machine Gun?

Posted in Addictions, Co-Dependency, Difficult Relationships, Love, Marriage, Relationships, Self- Help by

Be RealBefore you fire your verbal machine gun it’s important to investigate the maturity of your emotional output. Just because you feel like saying something doesn’t mean it has to be said in the way or at exactly the moment you feel like saying it. Remember, your relationship is a precious thing that deserves to be preserved. Look for a more appropriate time and way to express your feelings so that your relationship will be enhanced rather than eroded or destroyed.

When you fight leave the kitchen sink in the kitchen. What I mean by this is don’t just throw things into the argument that don’t have anything to do with the issues at hand. Why bring up something that happened ten months ago that just adds confusion and  is not the right way to treat someone or anyone.

So no matter what you’re so furious about, try to resist the temptation to let it all hang out or to let the devil take the hindmost. It’s important to stop and think before you let the other person have it. Ask yourself two questions.

Do I really need to say this? That is, does this horrible, angry, vituperative, or character-blasting thing really need to be said? Will it improve the immediate situation? Is there anything useful to be gained by saying mean words? For example, saying to your sweetheart that you not only think your sex life is awful now, but it has been for the past five years? Will this or similar remarks speed up the person’s evolution, or your own, or is saying it just the indulgence of revved up emotions that want to released?

Ask yourself this question. Do I really need to say this now? The diatribe you want to indulge in may include some very valuable points that really do need to be expressed. But is this the time to make them? Will you set off a furor or engender a useful response? Remember you are not a trash can and if you are in a relationship with someone who says horrible, angry, vituperative character blasting things at you or about you . You might consider getting counseling to find out why you are allowing someone to treat that way because God didn’t create you to be treated badly by anyone.

 

Acknowledge The Little Things

Posted in Hope, Love, Marriage, Relationships, Self- Help by

I Heart YouYou’ve been taught to say “thank you” for presents, but do you acknowledge the little presents your sweetheart gives you every day? You can never say thank you enough or be thanked enough. Grand gestures are fun and they can make your heart soar. But if they only happen once or twice a year what’s the fun in that? Little gestures are not as splashy and they might even go unnoticed. Sometimes it seems like if it wasn’t for the raindrops the oceans would soon be empty and doing small acts of kindness for the one you love or receiving kindness from them can be like raindrops that keep your reservoir of love flowing.

When people lose their sweetheart whom they’ve loved dearly, it’s not the grand gestures that they miss. It’s the little things. It’s the nightly kiss goodnight. It’s the vase with just one flower in it that they gave you just because, its hold hands at the movies. It’s the hugs and that sparkly in their eyes that says  I’m glad you’re here. The little things are like the nails that hold a house together . You don’t see them, but they’re doing their work. And like nails, the little things don’t insert themselves without some help. Each one may not take a lot of energy, but if you put just enough energy into the little things, over time you’ll build a great big love.

Everybody wants to hear how much, and precisely why, he or she is loved. Even when they’ve been chosen, even when they’ve tied the knot, they still need the verbal reassurance that they are loved. Everyone needs to be endured, to feel that they are special, delightful, delicious, precious, irreplaceable, to the one they love. They want to be singled out, to be told we are loved above all by the person who has chosen us. You shouldn’t settle for less. Make no mistake having feelings about someone isn’t as good as sharing those feelings with them. Make no mistake words mean a lot to all of us. We all walk around with a huge collection of insecurities, and none of us is so sure, so cut and dry in our conviction about our own self-worth that we don’t need the inspiration of being told every which way, over and over again, exactly why, how and how much we are loved. We need to be told, and the words need to be heart-felt. You’re not a trash can and you were created to be loved in all the right ways not in ways that cause you pain.

 

You Deserve To Bathe In Loves Glow

Posted in Harmony, Hope, Love, Marriage, Relationships by

love (2)Love is complex all by itself and it’s not an emotion that can readily be understood. You can’t take it apart to analyze it and it doesn’t become any clearer when seen through a microscope.  Many men enjoy complexity and life is like a giant puzzle they’re itching to solve, and the more pieces, the better. That’s fine if they are building something in their workshops, tinkering with their cars, or driving to some unknown destination, but is doesn’t always work so well when assembling love.

Just because love exists doesn’t mean that it can be understood. So accept love’s simplicity and appreciate it without an examination. Accept it as it is. Accept each other and your singular. Think of it this way love is like a coat of many colors. You put it on and bathe in its glow. You don’t have to understand anything. You don’t have to see how the pieces fit they just do for the two of you. Remember you’re not a car to just be tinkered with or driven to some unknown destination . . .  you deserve to experience the simplicity of love and bathe in loves glow.

love Is A Mystery

Posted in Co-Dependency, Difficult Relationships, Love, Marriage, Relationships, Self- Help by

Last KissLove is a mystery, the essence of it is almost angelic. It’s very nature goes beyond what we can understand by any of the systems through which we usually comprehend reality. It both binds and frees us. It opens our hearts and breaks our hearts. It can  neither be seen, except in the eyes of the beloved, nor felt, except in the heart of the one who is cherished.

In visible, its absence leaves us gray hearted, wounded in spirit, while its presence transforms our hearts, our psyches, and our lives. Many seek love without knowing what it is, knowing they will know when they find it. This is the true mystery of love, that no matter how much we are unable to describe it, we always recognize it when we experience it. Sometimes love comes to stay, nourished and coddled by the feelings and efforts of those who have invited it in. Love infuses itself into relationships by means that are beyond our invention or imagining . 

But if it is not honored and nourished, love will leave. In bowing to the mystery of love we acknowledge that love is beyond our comprehension, that we will never fully understand it. The love we seek, seeks us, embraces us without our knowing, and binds our spirits into itself. There is a point at which in the presence of love there is nothing more to say or prove, nothing left to ask for or regret , nothing left except the miracle of love itself. Having a relationship is about loving and being loved, feeling preciously and deliciously connected to your sweetheart. You’re not a trash can so why settle for anything less than being deliciously connected to your sweetheart?

In A Time Of Crisis Can You Rely On Your Sweetheart?

Posted in Co-Dependency, Difficult Relationships, Harmony, Love, Marriage, Relationships, Self- Help by

FreeSadly, you may be in a crisis or maybe more than one. You may be feeling that no matter how blue the skies are today, it’s going to rain on your parade at some point. When that happens you should be able to use your sweethearts shoulder to cry on but sometimes for one reason or another they let you down. If the crisis thunders by quickly, the relationship will surely hold, but if it lingers it could  pull you further and further apart until the relationship breaks. And in a hurricane of events, even the most solid of duos may find themselves straining to hold their relationship together.

When you’re under stress, it’s easy to take your sweetheart for granted, but that may leave you blind-sided by a blow from somewhere that you least expect it. If your relationship has never been test by one of life’s more serious curves, don’t assume that you know how well your tires will stick to the road. In times of crisis, don’t leave having some private time to chance where you can be alone with your sweetie. Family and friends may want to crowd around to comfort you, but it’s very important that the two of you connect without being under the spotlight.

If your relationship seems like a firestorm no matter how terrified or tense or sad you are, push aside those emotions and focus on yourself. Dive deep down away from the flames and into what’s in your heart and hold on until you can take action and make the necessary changes. Sometimes it can be your sweetheart that is the crisis. If that’s the case you might have to take some alone time to sort out if the crisis is on going because of their choices and just let them go or figure out if it’s just a one time crisis. No matter what storms of life you are in remember you are not a trash can and you deserve to be loved and respected.

Put More Of Yourself In Every Shared Moment

Posted in Harmony, Love, Marriage, Relationships by

Take My PictureLove is like a garden and unless you tend to it, you’ll never reap the full rewards that it brings. The ground needs to be tilled with kindness, because if is too hard, love’s seed can’t spout up. The seeds have to be planted with care if they are to penetrate your heart. Love needs to be watered with kind words and compliments. 

Love longs for your undivided attention just as the weeds of pettiness and lies must be pulled from the field of love. The fruits of love need time to grow and cannot be picked until they are ripe. If you don’t put the required effort into your garden of love, you can be certain that the weeds will invade and your garden will yield little in the way of love. But if you work at it, you’ll find a bumper crop of love waiting for you to harvest everyday.

When you’re in love, every day should be considered memorable: every good-morning kiss, every hug, every caress, every cuddle. They could be considered seeds that you plant in your garden of love. Your precious minutes spent together on earth are not so easily held onto. A walk down the aisle, that period of tropical bliss you call your honeymoon, your toddlers first steps, or a family vacation may stand out in your memories.

Even if you can’t remember every time you do something together it, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t act like you will. The two of you will experience  thousands of events together and they can’t all stick out in your mind, but you can learn to enjoy those moments more by putting more of yourself into each and every shared moment, they’ll mean so much more to you when they’re occurring. Stop kissing perfunctorily and put some passion into each kiss. Look your sweetheart in their eyes and mean it when you say “I love you.” At the end of the day, your memory banks may not be any fuller, but your love will be a lot stronger. You’re not a trash can you deserve someone who looks into your eyes everyday and says, “I love you” and treats you with respect and kindness.

 

 

Rediscover The Harmony In Your Life

Posted in Addictions, Co-Dependency, Difficult Relationships, Harmony, Hope, Love, Marriage, Relationships, Self- Help by

A man should find himself before he finds a womanHarmony is the spiritual beauty of any intimate relationship and the elegant coexistence, peaceful compatibility, a similarity of frequency. It’s knowing that you share the same view of the world, that what you want out of life runs along parallel lines. It’s looking at your sweetheart and being able to say to yourself,”We stand for the same things, don’t we? “We may encounter some rough spots, but at heart we both share the same values.”

In relationships, harmony is a gift of the spirit. It is a mystic similarity of essence that allows you to operate both separately and together from knowing that between you there is a sacred resonance. In a sense, it’s the very reason you chose each other in the first place, if there weren’t a certain degree of harmony between you, you wouldn’t have thrown your lot in together and established a relationship. When there’s harmony you can feel it: it will add grace to all your undertakings, your work, the rearing of your children, the way you conduct the actions in your daily life, the way you handle conflict, and what you perceive to be the underlying deep direction of your life.

Unfortunately, life scratches and claws at the harmony of our relationships. Too many demands in to many forms can undermine the pleasant ground of any union’s harmoniousness. Conversely, harmony that is nurtured can be restored by being lovingly remembered. If the harmony in your relationship is lacking ask yourselves the following questions: After all the fuss and fray, when the kids are in bed, when the fight is over, is the stream of your life together most of the time so good, so flowing, that, in general, you can give thanks for his or her presence in you life? In what ways are the two of you at the core, a complement, a mirror, a balance for one another? What things still gives you pleasure together? What is the highest purpose of your relationship and what is your common undertaking? 

If you are having a hard time finding answers to these  questions, take a good look at what’s compromising the harmony in your relationship. Is it something you can change? is it circumstantial, you’re wife’s been working over time for a month, or is it an emotionally issue that needs to be dealt with? What is the one thing you can do or say that would be a first step towards restoring harmony? Once you take the first step towards harmony it will pursue you.

 

Have The Courage To Say No

Posted in Difficult Relationships, Hope, Love, Marriage, Relationships, Self- Help by

Don't marry the wrong personHaving the courage to say “No’ means that you trust yourself and your relationship. It means you believe your bond has the strength and resilience to absorb your “No,” as well as the power and to grow in moral fortitude. In saying “No” you exercise that faith, that the two of you, together, can live by the values represented by our No; recognizing that theses values will take you to a level higher that the one embodied by the things that you are choosing to resist. 

Sure, you could have five more drinks and lose consciousness. Yes, you could tell a lie and lose your integrity, Yes, you could capitulate to all your sweethearts preferences and then resent him or her because you did. We are defined in life and in love not only by what we have the fortitude to undertake but also by what we have the courage to resist. In a long ago movie, Days of Wine and Roses, a man a woman descend into a wildly gyrating spiral of alcoholism, all the while egging each other on. Finally, the man says “No” to himself, then eventually to his wife. 

Life doesn’t always ask us for such intense denunciations, not is the path to our “No’s” always so excruciatingly painful. But we all have things that we have to say “No” to, for ourselves and in our relationships or else move in a direction that isn’t for our highest good.

Sometimes these “No’s” are small and simple, an unadorned statement of preference that’s a quiet affirmation of your right to be yourself. “No, I don’t want to go to the late show; I’ll be too tired for work in the morning. “No, I don’t want dessert,” “No, I don’t want to go to the party.” Sometimes they ask for more strength, require that you actually take a stand:  “No, I buy a new car  . . . We’re already in too much debt,” or sometimes, as in the unforgettable, movie, they involve issues of life and death: “No, I won’t give up my AA meeting just because you’d like me at home on Tuesday night.”  “No, I don’t want to marry you and “No I don’t want to drink or use drugs with you any more. Sometimes you just got to say “I”m not a trash can and stick up for yourself . . .

Smoke Screens

Posted in Difficult Relationships, Hope, Love, Marriage, Relationships, Self- Help by

You Got To Be KiddingSome criminals use smoke screens when they commit crimes. Setting off a smoke bomb serves as camouflage, a diversion and a covering for illegal behavior. Smoke screens are specifically designed to obscure, confuse, and mislead. Can you think of a time when someone used a smoke screen to divert attention away from their own flaws? Hiding their wrongs behind a “wall of smoke” is their way of avoiding having to own their bad behaviors. Sometimes when they realize that the smoke screens aren’t working they’ll attack your self-worth by pointing out your faults. 

Leaving you with a critical spirit that focuses on your faults and the faults of others in trying to increase your sense of self-worth. A critical spirit is evident based on a combination of classic characteristics that critical people exhibit. The following list will help you recognize and better understand those who a critical spirit or mouth. Here is a list you can use to gain some insight into your own smoke screens or others.

S- Spreading harmful gossip with the justification that “everyone ought to know”

M- Making others feel embarrassed about their success while secretly envying them.

O- Objecting to criticism from others to avoid personal accountability.

K- Kidding some with the intent to hurt.

E- Engaging in “constructive” criticism is in no way constructive.

S- Shifting the blame to someone else when you yourself are to blame.

C- Criticizing someone’s happiness because you are unhappy.

R- Reminding others of their past failures to avoid attracting attention to your failures.

E- employing sarcastic humor as a weapon to attack.

E- Elevating yourself by putting others down.

N- Nurturing perfectionistic  tendencies to make yourself look better.

Imagine a beam of wood embedded in your eye. It’s to large for you to dislodge without immense pain. It’s too terrifying to think of other people prying it out. The solution seems simply: Ignore it . . . deny it . . . create a smoke screen so no one will notice it. But you can’t hide the beam forever, eventually it will be revealed.

Most people who display a critical spirit seem to be strong to the average observer because of the boldness with which they spew out their critical comments. In truth, criticism is more often the weapon of the weak than of the strong. It serves both to disguise their perceived inner deficiencies and to deceive others into thinking they are self-assured and confident while making others feel like trash. . . you are not a trash can . . . don’t be fooled by someone’s smoke screen  . . . not even your own.

Don’t Settle For Less Than An Ocean Of Love

Posted in Difficult Relationships, Hope, Love, Marriage, Relationships, Self- Help by

GoodbyeGrand gestures are fun. They can make the heart soar. But if they only happen once or twice a year, what’s the fun in that? Little gestures are not as splashy but they are like raindrops of love, so let your love rain down. When people lose a partner whom they’ve loved dearly, it’s not the grand gestures that they miss. It’s the little things. It’s that perfect cup of coffee in the morning. It’s loading the dishwasher and actually turning it on. I’s checking to make sure the front door is locked before you go to sleep at night. It’s the hugs. It’s holding hands at the movie show. It’s what doesn’t need be said while strolling along the seaside because their eyes say it all. Don’t just settle for few raindrops of love ask for oceans of love,  because you deserve to be loved with grand waves and little waves of love.

Here is another way to look at it  the little things are like the nails that hold a house together. You don’t see them, but they’re doing their work. And like nails, the little things don’t insert themselves without some help. Each one may not take a lot of energy but if you put just enough energy into the little things, over time you’ll build a great big love. You’ve been taught to say “thank you” for presents, but do you acknowledge the little presents your sweetheart gives your every day? You can never say ” thank you” too many times, thought most people don’t say it enough. 

You’re not a trash can . . .

Create Your Canvass Of Love

Posted in Difficult Relationships, Hope, Love, Marriage, Relationships, Self- Help by

LoveSome days you may push love aside. Other times love may push you around. Just make certain in your heart and in your head that you are working in unison when creating your canvass of love. since you “fall” in love, many people treat love as if it were some strange beast over which they have no control. But you have more say over your emotions than you think. Watch a sad movie and you’ll cry. Dance to your favorite tune and your spirit will soar. You can have a similar effect on the setting of your love dial.

While love can be overwhelming at times, or so subtle you can’t tell it’s their, that doesn’t absolve you from using self-control. Even if you are head over heals in love, you should keep some control, or you risk driving away the person you adore. There are times to go overboard and other times to bank that excess love. And at the other extreme, if your schedule is crammed twenty-four hours a day, you can’t forget that you have a sweetheart who had needs that must be meet. Sure, there are days when you can take out a loan that you promise to pay back with interest, but you can also overextend that type of credit and wind up bankrupt. 

You don’t need any special skills to be an artist at love. You just need to be aware that you deserve to be loved and love by that one person special man or woman who you call sweetheart. That makes you want to shout “I love you” across the room. Think of yourself as a painter, a painter of love, a painter who mixes colors to come up with various shades. It’s the same with love sometimes love can become boring if it becomes to monotone. If you are just going through the motions to keep your one and only from ending the relationship then you are short-changing yourself and them. It is far better to get  to the root of your problems and see if the love you once felt can be restored.

If you’re in a loving and healthy relationship then take a few minuets and image yourself as a painter of love who mixes colors to come up with various shades. What shades best express how you feel about your sweetheart? Maybe shades of  passionate red, or succulent deep purples or soft romantic pinks or maybe all the colors of the rainbow express your feelings of love and passion. You must do the same with love because even love can be boring if it’s always the same old routine. So, some days, even if you’re not feeling overly romantic but vary much in love with your sweetheart turn up the heat and create a rainbow of love. Shout! “I love you “and put an extra oomph into the way you kiss them in the morning. Not only will your sweetheart appreciate your use of the brighter colors in your palette of love, but it will probably change your mood as well.