How does your marriage affect your health?

How does your marriage affect your health?
When you marry your lifestyle habits become more alike. The November 2008 issue of Psychology Today presents research showing marital relationships steer our physical well being. Researchers are finding that spouses influence each others eating habits, doctor visits, use of alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana.

Couples can even develop the same illness over time the Yale School of Public Health did a study over four years of over 6,000 people. Results showed that in every single behavior there was spousal effect. For example if one spouse quit smoking the other was 6-8 times more likely to quit. If one quit drinking alcohol the other was five times more likely to quit. The one exception to this is exercise. Here there was an effect, but it was milder.
The good news: one of the best ways to change your spouse is to change yourself.

Nagging does not work and in fact can have the opposite effect. So look to yourself, and " clean up your side of the road", your spouse may follow. You may be pleasantly surprises what happens when you stop trying to "help" them change. Instead focus your attention on getting your own habits on track.

Three Steps To Change

Let’s say you have decided to make a change. You have recognized that you have a pattern or habit pattern that you want to pay attention to. So you have recognized something, you have choices. Congratulations!

Here is an example:

You may have found yourself following a habitual pattern or perspective on a situation in your life and you do not like it. You have yourself thinking self critical thoughts, measuring yourself against others, and coming up short. Thinking to yourself what a failure or burden you are, or that you are undeserving of love.

You ask “How can I change this?”
Here are three steps to take. Do an experiment, try this for 3 days.

• Awareness: Become aware of the signs that the pattern is present. Clues:
Thoughts and feelings.

• Acknowledge: Do the work to understand and explore yourself, so in the moment of awareness you can remember what is happening.

• Correct it: What is the change? What is the new choice? For example I deserve and receive love. See it, feel it, think it. Create a momentary, in the present, experience of this feeling. You may have a memory of something you experienced in you life that already gives you this experience.

Now follow these three steps through out the day. Practice this for three days. Pay attention to what happens. What inspires you, what dreams you dream, what is happening? Is anything different?
Perhaps you would like to continue this experiment a few more days and continue to pay attention.

Favorite Self- Talk

Here is my favorite self talk (self talk = things you think to yourself)

I AM HERE


If you like that thought, try this:

On a piece of paper write in large letters:

YOU ARE HERE

Hang this up where you see it often.

These tips will help bring you back into the present moment. Try it, and see what you experience.


In my esoteric studies of the hebrew letters I understood this about I am here:

This is what Moses was saying at the burning bush.

I am Here

I am present in a High place, a mountain, where I hear the still small voice.
A place I hear divine revelation. I breathe out.

The present.

Goals: Three Ways They Sabatoge Success

You might be thinking, WHAT, how can having a goal possibly sabotage me?

1.When you set a goal it is something you hope will happen in the future.The future has not occurred yet.You have no control over the future.


2. The goal you set might or might not happen. This future oriented focus puts pressure on you. It is an end point you are trying to get to and this pressure will sabotage the outcome.

3. Setting a goal puts an expectation in your mind. If what is happening does not match your expectation you feel discouraged, angry, and disappointed. You need to blame someone or something. Often you blame yourself.

So what can you do? Not set goals? Then how do you create changes in your life?

Here is what you can do. Set an intention. An intention is present oriented. It means in this moment you are putting your focus, your attention, and your will in the direction that you are aiming for. You can focus on the intention right now.

For example say your intention is to get a job. Right now, in this moment, you are putting yourself in the direction of a job.
 Right now, in this moment, you act according to that intention by making a call.
All of this is happening here and now and you have the power to make a choice now to act accordingly to that intention.
You can focus on the power of now by making choices that support the intention. This gives you power, because you have a choice each moment. Your actions take place in the present moment.

As you focus on your intention, you can make choices aligned with this. If you do not make the call today, you can refocus on the intention later and act.

Staying in the now helps. You have choices in the now. The future does not exist yet and what will happen out of your hands. You influence the future through the now, by the choices you make each moment..

Set an intention and conceptualize that this means all your attention will be focused in this direction today, the outcome, what happens in the future, will be what it will be.

Thoughts Become Things

How do you create?

First understand the basics of the creative processes. Causation comes from the divine. Another words, what this means to you... what is the spark or impulse of the first stirring in consciousness of the answer to this question, What Do You Want?

Believe it or not most people do not know the answer to this question. Let us say what you want is a successful business. Initially you experience this as a spark of energy, an idea. What happens then? You begin to have thoughts and images of what that will be like. These thoughts and images spur feelings. You may feel anything from excitement and motivation, to fear and paralysis, or some combination. Depending on which of these thoughts and feelings are happening you begin to make choices. The choices are the concrete actions (or in action) that you do in your everyday life. Do you pick up the phone and make the phone call. Or do you put it out of your mind. If you want to lose weight, do you take that walk this morning, or make some excuse to yourself.

So what is going on from the divine spark of the idea, to the thinking, and imaging, to the emotional response and finally the choices you make?

As the initial divine impulse comes into being it channels through you. You have a set of patterns and beliefs, kind of like programming. This comes from both your life experience and from the meaning and responses that you bring to these life events. As the spark of divine light comes into being through you it begins to fragment, to split. Some Energy gets trapped, held or in some way diverted from the original intention. You may begin to de-rail your actions by how you think and feel about what is happening. Bottom line you are not moving towards what you intended. It is not happening, or perhaps something is happening but not what you intend.
This is the opportunity for you to become conscious of the thoughts and images, these create the feelings which provide the fuel for the choices in this world of action.

What fuel are you giving your self? Are your thoughts an unending stream of critical negative self talk, are fears and anxieties paralyzing you, stopping you from fully participating in life.

Keep going back to the original intention you started with. Follow the process:

Emanation Spark of direction. Flash of Inspiration. Make sure you have an understanding of what you are truly seeking.

Thoughts, beliefs, Images then begin after the initial spark.

Feelings: the fuel for the next step

Actions. Actual physical doing, what choices you make in your everyday life.

Working with a therapist can help you to make changes. Therapy can teach you how to develop tools to unlock places in your life you feel stuck.

Three Things You Can Do Today To Increase Your Happiness

Do you understand what gives you happiness? How do you describe happiness? It is not the giggling, jump up and down feeling. The definition agreed upon today involves feeling satisfied, content, and fulfilled.

What do you think would make you happy today? Most likely your answer is something like money, house, car or something that bring a momentary feeling of happiness.The happiness would fade as the novelty of the desired thing wore off. You are adaptable and the money, house, new car or accomplishments will decline to give you happiness. You will feel something is missing and want something else.

So what can you do? Living a meaningful life, utilizing your gifts and your time, and living with thought and purpose will help.

Here are three things to start today.

1. Gratitude: Tell someone every day that you are grateful to them, or write it in a letter or email. At the end of the day make a list of gratitude’s in that day. If something challenging has happened see if you can turn it around and find something to be grateful for in the situation.

2. Find ways to be kind to others, especially if you can do it anonymously.

3. Savor your life. Learn how to be mindful using all your senses fully in each moment. Mindfulness is a relaxed state of awareness of the present moment. You feel a curiosity and openness to life and others. You let go of judgments. This allows you appreciate what is present in your life now. It helps you become less adapted to what you have in your life now.

Are you ready to begin today? Try an experiment and do these three things for the next week. Check in with yourself and see if your happiness isn’t increasing, do you feel more content and satisfied? If your answer is yes then continue to remember these three steps and practice them daily.

Are You Experiencing a Spiritual Bypass?

Are you pursuing a spiritual path? Have you found yourself disappointed or frustrated? Either with the people or the outcome? Are you ready to give up?

Here is what I think is happening. There has been a great deal of interest in pursuing mystical, esoteric, spiritual mysteries. People have been jumping the band wagon of spiritual pursuit, both traditional practices and “commercialized” versions of enlightenment. What I am suggesting is that one needs psychological healing in psychotherapy before spiritual work is effective.


What is a spiritual bypass then? It is when you are not recovered from your psychological wounding,and you become involved in a spiritual pursuit in order to heal. Thinking this is “the answer" to everything that has been bothering you. The outcome often is feeling let down, one loses faith and trust.

The ability to trust, have faith and have discipline to practice true spiritual pursuits requires one to have a balanced psychological foundation. Without this you are bypassing work and jumping to spirit to find peace and balance. You have no foundation to support this work and it will collapse.

Here is one example of how this might happen. Early psychological wounding (first year of life) can result in an impaired ability to form healthy attachments. The wounding to early consciousness needs to be repaired in order to provide a balanced, solid foundation. Someone wounded in this way will attach to the people and practices of a spiritual tradition in a dysfunctional way. They might want to be controlled (taken care of), becoming dependant on, or becoming so disappointed by the humanness of their companions, that they reject all.

Do yourself a favor. Heal yourself in the emotional and mental realms first. Do not try to climb the ladder to the divine, until the lower rungs of your ladder have been repaired.

First make sure the basics in your life are handled. You have a secure home and way of maintaining your day to day living. Then heal your psyche.

Seek a therapist or group to work through any wounds, patterns, or beliefs that are destructive.Counseling can help you discern what is truely healthy for you. Now when you begin your spiritual journey, you are prepared to respond to the wonderful fulfillment as well as the disappointments, and frustrations along the way.