Tag: mission

Behavior Is Contagious – Especially With Fibromyalgia

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People with fibromyalgia face many obstacles.

We live with fatigue, brain fog, chronic pain and other symptoms. We work to find ways to manage this syndrome. We seek coping mechanisms. Many fibro patients have overlook the importance of who and what we surround ourselves with.

  • This can have a dramatic affect on how we cope.

Conserving energy is an important part to coping with “Fibro Fatigue”. It takes far more energy to deal with negative people. Energy when you don’t have any left to expend.

Let’s look at who we surround ourselves with and the effects on our lives.

People You Should Remove from Your Life

  1. You have to cut the “downers” the negative people
  2. You have to cut out the “distractors”
  3. You have to get rid of “people who play the victim”
  4. You have to stay away from “know-it-alls”
  5. You have to dump the “drama queens/kings”

Neuroscience 101
Good and Bad Behavior Is Contagious

One study found that emotions circulate through interpersonal relationships just like the flu virus.

These patterns can actually be tracked statistically just like the flu virus.

  • Each positive person you surround yourself with increases your chances of being positive by eleven percent.
  • Each negative person you let into your life more than doubles your chances of being negative.

Understanding Why This Happens

A mirror neuron is a cell in your brain that fires both when you act and when you observe another person acting.  Interacting with other people engages your mirror neuron system. 

This brain mechanism causes you to copy other people whether you want to or not. If you spend enough time with anyone, no matter who it is, you will start to mimic their behavior.

This means you need to start cutting negative people out of your life right now.

Here is a short 2 minute video
explaining mirror neurons

Here are five types of people
to start avoiding now!

# 1 The “Downer”

Some people can walk into a room and light it up. Other people walk into a room and kill it.

  • Downers Are Those That Kill Positive Energy

They are those people who seem to have a dark cloud following them wherever they go. These people are unlucky, negative and always depressed.

Don’t feel bad for these people. Odds are:

They like being miserable
WHY?
They like the attention it gives them

You must drop unhappy people from your life. Why?

Because your happiness and your physical health depends on it. Research shows that being exposed to negative people pulls away neurons in your hippocampus. This is the part of your brain that is responsible for problem solving. This means that negative people literally rot your brain

Stop hanging out with people who suck away your energy

#2 Avoid Distracting People

Distractors come in a variety of flavors

  • There are those annoying people who drive you nuts.
  • People who make you focus on them instead of focusing on yourself and your mission.

Distractors are also those people that are truly amazing or really hot or incredibly brilliant.]

  • Those people who catch your eye for one reason or another.
  • Distractors make you forget about your goals and everything that you’ve set out to do in life.

A lot of promising futures
have been sacrificed to these distractors.

Some people drop out of school or quit a job they love, just to be closer to a distracting person. This allows them stay in that distracting relationship.

Others get hooked on celebrity gossip or get rich quick schemes

  • Everything that glitters is not always gold.
  • Most shiny things are just distractions and this can include people.

Don’t let any person make you forget that you are amazing – and that you have something amazing to offer the world.

#3 Stay Away from People Who Play the Victim

Don’t know how to identify a victim?

Here’s what you look for:

  • Look for people who preach self-sacrifice
  • Look for people who try to make you feel guilty for your strengths
  • Look for people who try to make you feel guilty for your accomplishments
  • Look for people who try to make you feel bad just because they are feeling bad

Victims are:

  • Masters of positioning themselves on the moral high ground
  • Using obligation to manipulate you into doing what they want you to do.
  • People who like to make you feel responsible for their happiness.

No one is responsible for someone else’s happiness

#4 Stay away from know-it-alls

Know-it-alls are those people who will never let you live down past mistakes. They bring you down by using  the psychological phenomenons of “Imposter Syndrome” and “Negativity Bias.”

Imposter Syndrome is describe as the inability to internalize your own accomplishments. It’s that voice in your head that creeps up every now and then telling you that you’re a phony and it’s only a matter of time until people find out.

Negativity Bias on the other hand refers to your brains preference for negative information over positive information.

  • Never allow anyone to make you feel bad about yourself.
  • Don’t let some” Know-it-All” use these techniques against you.
  • Focus on where you are now. Not on your past mistakes.

#5 Refuse to be around drama queens.

Drama queens/kings are those people who love conflict. They are addicted to drama and to winning arguments no matter the cost. Even if there’s nothing to be won. Drama queens love drama for the sake of drama.

  • They don’t want to win or find a solution they just want the drama.
  • Their minds are simple and their lives are boring.
  • The only way they can fill a sense of purpose in life is by creating drama.
  • Don’t let these people suck you into their drama.

Any time you spend trying to correct or even understand a drama queen is a waste of time. You are better off ignoring these people period.

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Addiction Will Affect Your Relationship

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EDITORS NOTE:

CITB focuses on chronic illness. I have personally experienced and live with the chronic illness of substance abuse. This is a guest post by Caleb Anderson of RecoveryHope.org. RecoveryHope.org was started by Caleb and Molly Anderson after Caleb received treatment for opiate addiction. Molly has made it her mission to learn how to help Caleb fight his battles and support him in his recovery. Together they now help others by providing research and resources about the many challenges of overcoming drug and alcohol addictions.

We thank Caleb and Molly for their contribution to  CITB. We know you will enjoy their insights. Please visit their website RecoveryHope.org for more information on substance  abuse and recovery.

There are plenty of ways relationships can become strained. It’s possible to have a strong, healthy relationship, but it’s not easy. It takes work.

When you add an addiction to the relationship, things get much harder. Substance abuse can challenge even the strongest relationship, and many couples break up over it. Thankfully, there are actions you can take to both help your partner and save your relationship. But before you can help, you need to know whether your partner has a problem.

Substance Abuse Leads To Unhealthy Relationships

How do you know if your partner is struggling with addiction? Medical News Today lists a number of signs and symptoms of addiction to watch for, including: bouts of moodiness, bad temper, poor focus, a feeling of being depressed and empty, frustration, anger, bitterness, obsession, denial, etc.

The Mayo Clinic has an exhaustive list of signs related to specific addictions, including marijuana, opiates, and cocaine.

Having a relationship with an addict can lead to pain and stress. It can also lead to heartbreak because addiction can lead to infidelity. Swift River explains this is due to several factors, including a higher chance of risky behavior such as sex with others. Some even use sex as payment for whatever they need.

How You Might Be Enabling

Whether it’s secrecy, anger, or infidelity, the addict is responsible for their own behavior. However, there are ways you might be enabling your partner’s addiction. Enabling is when you help your partner to continue abusing substances even if you don’t realize it. Here are a few ways you might be contributing to the addiction:

  • Ignoring evidence that they have a substance abuse problem.
  • Helping them avoid the consequences of addiction.
  • Buying or using the same drugs and alcohol along with them.
  • Failing to hold them responsible when you’ve set boundaries or rules that are not met.

Even if you mean well, you can enable addiction because your partner has no reason to change. Addicts often need to get treatment or hit “rock bottom” before they realize how bad things have become due to their addiction. Protecting your partner makes it harder for them to get help.

Helping Your Loved One

Then how can you help your partner get better? Many people think about staging an intervention, but as Psychology Today notes, these should be last-ditch efforts as there’s no evidence they help an addict in the long-run. Instead, you need to politely and gently convince your partner to go to a doctor or therapist. Focus on how it’s hurting the relationship and ask, not tell, if they would consider getting help.

Once they have entered addiction recovery treatment, you need to be loving and accepting of your partner. Work with your loved one to find healthy habits and activities. This can mean social activities with friends who don’t use as well as healthy ones like yoga, exercising, or just taking a nice walk. Not only will this help your partner get better, but it can heal the relationship as well.

Don’t Let Addiction Ruin Your Relationship

The worst thing you can do when facing your partner’s addiction is to ignore it. This actually enables substance abuse. Instead, understand how addiction impacts your relationship. Then you can focus on getting your loved one the help they need to get sober. By helping your partner, you are also helping your relationship.

 

Please visit RecoveryHope.org for more information on substance  abuse and recovery

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Reclaiming Your Sexuality

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Bringing Sexy Back

If you’ve been out of the dating scene for a while (perhaps due to divorce) and are thinking about entering a new relationship, or have found that your relationship has become sexless, the idea of having a sexual encounter can be very exciting, but also very nerve-racking. It’s easy to lose touch with your sexual self, and it’s important to give your body and mind permission to feel pleasure and reawaken your sexuality. Here are a few suggestions to help you feel more sexual and open to the possibility of experiencing renewed sexual pleasure:

Be open to the possibility that some of your concerns about sex might be quite overblown.

First, list the things that worry you most about reclaiming your sexuality or that you are fearing right now about sex. Once you’ve made your list, it’s important to see if your fears and anxieties are realistic. If not, make a commitment to yourself to replace unrealistic beliefs with ones that serve you. For example, if you write: “I worry my sexual partner might not find me attractive,” replace that with, “this person is expressing interest in being intimate with me, so where’s the evidence that he/she is not attracted to me?” Practice catching yourself every time you find yourself focusing on one of your worrisome beliefs and replace it with a thought that’s not fear based.

How you feel about your body often affects your ability to feel excited about sex. 

Make another list of the things that you’re not happy with about your body. Notice the things you’re ready, willing and able to alter and those which are beyond your control. Instead of concentrating on how your body could be different, see if you can shift your focus to changing your attitude about your body insecurities instead. Usually, no one else is noticing those “flaws” you see but you!

Feeling attractive is most of the battle.

Much of your sexuality comes from how you think of yourselfas a sexual being. So if you do things to feel sexier, you’re giving your mind the opportunity to catch up with you. Maybe this means putting on a sexy outfit, wearing lingerie underneath your clothing, or putting on a little extra makeup. Perhaps getting pampered in some way, sleeping with satin sheets, taking a bubble bath, or reading a steamy book can help you to hit the right chord. You know what makes you feel sexier, do it and notice whether this helps with your reawakening.

When you are involved in any activity, sexual or not, it can be very pleasant to focus on the sensory experiences around you. 

For example, if you are taking a walk, tune into the sounds of nature around you, become aware of the crunch of leaves under your feet, feel the breeze on your skin and take notice of the way your body feels as you take each step. Becoming more aware of experiencing sensuously pleasurable moments in your daily life can go a long way toward helping you to stay present and attuned to your sensory experience during sex.

Your sexuality is a part of you, even if it has felt dormant for a while.

With some effort to reconnect with your sexual desires and by refusing to let your fears and anxieties get in the way, you can very quickly open yourself to many new, exciting and pleasurable experiences!

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Important Things in Life

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I’m sure you have experienced a wake up call at some point in your life. Events such as a divorce, a new baby, a firing, a terrorist attack, or a near-death experience tend to hit us like a ton of bricks and are not easily forgotten.

Personally, what I find interesting is that implicit in the idea of a wake up call is that we have, in some sense, been asleep. What is it that we have been asleep to? When I think of wake up calls, the word that comes to mind is “priorities”. Wake up calls tend to make us stop, pull back from the runway of life, and consider exactly what it is that is important to us. Very often we realize that we have had our priorities upside down. Perhaps we have spent too much time at the office, too little time with our kids, or have neglected our health. So to answer my earlier question, it seems to me that many of us travel through life asleep to what really is important.If you are in a slumber, the following are some ideas to help you wake up and remember the important things in your life:

Connect to Your Own Mortality

Some may find it depressing to think about death, but it can actually be a great technique to improve your life. Try, for example, to imagine laying on your deathbed. What could potentially give you cause for regret? Would it be all the money you didn’t make? Or would it be the friendships you didn’t nurture, the time you didn’t spend with your family, and the places you didn’t see?

Now, consider if the way you now live your life will give you cause for any regrets when you do actually come to lay upon your deathbed.

Steve Jobs was a famous advocate of connecting to your own mortality. In his Commencement Speech at Stanford University, he said: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

Write a Personal Mission Statement

I admit to being one of those people who normally skips the exercises in self-help books. I did, however, decide to follow Stephen R. Covey’s advice in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and write a personal mission statement. In short, a personal mission statement is an individual statement of who you are, what you are about and what you value. The process of writing such a statement helps to clarify your inner-most thoughts and feelings, and once finished is something you can turn to for guidance.If you are interested in writing your own personal mission statement, I recommend Dr. Covey’s Mission Statement Builder.

Have a Meaningful Conversation with an Older Person

As you grow older, you naturally acquire experience and knowledge of what is important in life. For example, is there anything you could tell the “you” from 10 years ago that would make life easier? I’m sure there is. A great way then to acquire the wisdom that comes with age is to seek out an older person, such as a grandparent, and have a meaningful conversation with them. Ask them about their life, what they have learned, and what they would do differently. You may just find they experienced many of the thoughts and feelings you are currently when they were younger.

Meditate

Usually the problem is not that we don’t know what is important in life, but that it is forgotten as we get caught up in the everyday tasks that form life. One of the best methods I have found to overcome this problem is meditation. Meditation is a great way to relax both your mind and body. Such a state is ideal for gaining a better understanding of who you are and what you value.

Volunteer

It is easy in life to become consumed with your own sense of self importance. A very effective way to step back and see life in a greater context is to volunteer. For example, helping those with less than yourself will help you realize just how fortunate you really are. So often we act in such a way that we don’t already have the important things in life, when actually they are right under our nose

My Personal Mission Statement

Just as each person is unique, so will be their personal mission statement. That said, I believe we can find inspiration in the statements of others. The following is my personal mission statement.

  • I will be loving and proactive in building and maintaining my relationships with family and friends, so that I may be considered a successful husband, father, son, brother, uncle, and friend.
  • I will always act with integrity and never compromise with honesty, so that it may be said that I am a person who stands for what is just and right.
  • I will approach life with a curious nature, so that I am someone who continually strives to better understand both my inner and outer worlds.
  • I will look after my health by regularly exercising, eating well, and limiting the intake of anything that may be harmful to my body.
  • I will treat money as my servant, not as my master. I will seek financial independence over time. My wants will be subject to my needs and means. I will spend less than I earn and regularly save and invest part of my income.
  • I will try to help others live a better life by writing articles for my blog that are both inspiring and motivating.
  • When times are tough, I will remember there are still countless reasons I have to be thankful. As such, I will give something back to the community, via donation and volunteering, so that those less fortunate receive a helping hand.

Even just now, after having rewritten my personal mission statement above, I feel a sense of clarity and direction about my life.

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Core Relationships

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Our Core Relationships Define Everything About Who We Are
And
How We Live Our Lives As Individual Human Beings.

Our 5 internal core relationships are essentially our relationship with the various aspects of ourselves, and greatly influence our 7 external core relationships, our interaction with the world around us. Going back to the core is the only effective way to permanently transform ourselves and create lasting change in our lives.

These core relationships not only shape our thoughts and behaviors, but also our very perceptions of ourselves and our world, thus defining the opportunities we are able to perceive and the reality we experience.

Understanding our unique core relationships allows us to experience more freedom and empowers us to create more fulfillment in our lives.

 Our 5 Internal Core Relationships

To better understand the mechanics of our relationship with ourselves, which is composite and complex, we can define separate but overlapping relationships with several different aspects of ourselves. These core aspects are Love, Meaning, Purpose, Power and Coherence/Integration.

Coherence/Integration

Coherence/Integration is the synergy of our fundamental aspects – physical, mental and spiritual, as well as the synergy of finer elements within each of those fundamental aspects. The correct function of the physical systems that make up the physical body is required for the health and well being of the body to become a serviceable power. The integration of the finer aspects of mind are required for coherent clarity and focus, and for the development of self-worth and self-love.

Love

Love can be defined as our ability to accept and integrate all that we are into a coherent and powerful presence. It allows us to transcend the illusion of duality and is the seat of our power to manage our lives and consciously create our reality. Love can also be defined as unity and harmony, beginning within us and extending infinitely outward.

  

Meaning

Meaning is expanded from our underlying beliefs about ourselves, the universe, our connection to it and relevance within it. Our sense of meaning is something we are constantly seeking to expand. Meaning produces resilience and clarity of purpose in life.

  

Purpose

Purpose is derived from meaning, from our definition of self and our connection to the universe which surrounds us. Without a clearly defined purpose we lack the clarity necessary for true success in life.

  

Power

Power can be described as our ability to master our lives in a way which serves us and produces the results we desire. Our level of Power is reliant on our other internal relationships with Love, Meaning, Purpose and Coherence/Integration. Authentic power derives from being authentic, or true to ourselves, which in turn requires that we know and understand ourselves intimately.

Our 7 External Core Relationships

Each of the 7 external core relationships is associated with one of the 7 basic areas of life (or aspect of our interaction with the world around us) which can be developed into a power. As individuals we have a natural affinity and interest with certain areas, and a natural tendency to ignore or avoid other areas. These 7 core relationships are arranged in a hierarchy of varying priority dependent on our interest in the specific areas. Knowing and understanding this hierarchy brings clarity to the apparent chaos in certain areas of our lives, explain why we express certain behavior patterns, and why we have been unsuccessful in certain areas in the past.

In each of the 7 basic areas of life our level of empowerment can range from extreme disempowerment to extraordinary empowerment. This level of empowerment in any specific area is not measured relative to other people, but rather relative to our specific needs, and the level of empowerment of the other 6 areas of our own life. Areas neglected become challenging, the more disempowered we are in certain areas the more severely we are challenged in these areas, with extreme disempowerment leading to challenges overflowing to affect even the empowered areas of our life.

Health & Vitality

It is pretty self-evident that our relationship with our physical body is important, as having robust physical health and vitality will obviously benefit us regardless of which areas of life we choose to specialize in. There are of course people who specialize in the physical realm of health, vitality, strength, endurance and beauty, etc. Some of them develop these qualities to levels where these qualities become a source of power in their life. World class athletes, super-models, health & fitness gurus,

Knowledge & Wisdom

Knowledge and wisdom are essential ingredients for success and fulfillment. Being empowered in this area simply requires that we have accumulated the knowledge and wisdom we need to fulfill our life goals. Of course, as with the other areas, there are those who are focused on this area and dedicate themselves to accumulating vast amounts of knowledge and/or wisdom. These people are often labeled geniuses, but in truth we all have our own unique brand of genius, its just a matter of recognizing, appreciating and expressing it to its full potential.

Spirituality & Evolution

This area is a particularly broad area, because although “spirituality” generally describes a connection to a higher intelligent order, our spiritual mission in life can be expressed in any of the other areas as well. Here the question of authority comes into play, as there is in reality no authority above our own because each of us is uniquely connected to the spiritual source. Disempowerment in this area would entail suppressing our desires because they are not condoned by the spiritual authority of the day. As Einstein said ‘my contempt for authority made me one”.

When we become our own authority, listen to our own inner guidance, and follow our dreams we become an authority unto ourselves. Extreme empowerment would be having developed a high level of awareness and connection to the higher order intelligence, being able to “download” information in the form of inspiration, and would also include an unwavering clarity of purpose.

Partnerships & Family

Relationships with family and life partners can be developed to a high level of power, or they can be disempowering. If we suppress or repress our desires for fear of losing loved-ones we are disempowered. If they are supportive and encouraging, mutually fulfilling relationships, then obviously they are empowering. The concepts of compromise and sacrifice have no place in truly empowered relationships, where each is appreciative of the others qualities, strengths and empowerment, while also accepting of each others weaknesses and less empowered areas.

Connection & Influence

Social connection & influence as you may have already guessed, can range from disempowered reclusiveness and lack of influence, to celebrity status with huge influential power.

  

  

Vocation & Business

Vocation in this context is far more than your chosen profession, it is your calling, or your self-defined life purpose. Some people know from a young age what they want to do with their lives, while others take many years to figure it out. In the end, we all have within ourselves a purposeful and meaningful calling in life.

  

Wealth & Finances

Financial empowerment is today one of the areas in which we are most pressured to succeed. Of course wealth is used here in the broadest possible context, including our accumulation of relationships, influence, knowledge, wisdom, health, self-worth, and fulfillment, etc.

  

  

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