Deciding Between Personal Well-Being And A Greater Good

The below Huffington Post article touches on an interesting dilemma we all have to deal with on a daily basis; the internal negotiation we go through between what we know are our needs and what we  know would be easier on somebody else or a group.

In a smaller scale these are the decisions we have to make between friends, partners or family members.  In a larger scale they are the decisions made by organizations and countries.

My concern is for the smaller scale dilemmas when we have to choose saying or not the truth to a partner or when to keep the “peace” in a family situation by not bringing up the fact that we are being disrespected or ignored.

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At The End, What Truly Matters Is Chocolate Ice-Cream

I have just read a post on the Huffington Post by Aaron E. Carroll, the Director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research, Indiana University School of Medicine.

In his post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-e-carroll/its-the-life-in-end-of-li_b_664152.html) he describes when he was an intern at a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and how end of life was handled.

In one of the situations he had been a part of the mother had been aware her baby was not going to make it so together with her husband and her six year old daughter they took the baby to the park to see the water, brought him to family members so everyone could hold him, showed him the sun and let him lay in the grass and let a dog lick his face.

Reading this, I became very emotional.  Instead of suffering for the baby’s short time, the family opted for living and in doing so they chose what really matters: chocolate ice-cream, sun, grass and relationships.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Being A Stay At Home Dad

I love this post on the Huffington Post.  It’s a candid share of a man living a non-traditional life.

We are often afraid of what others will think of our choices and either stop ourselves from doing what we want or we feel the need to hide our choices.  At the end of the day our lives are for us and are for real.  Our lives are not for show.

Let’s celebrate this man’s courage.

by Brian Gresko

I used to dread when people asked what I did for a living.

“Oh, I’m a writer, and also, ahem… a stay-at-home dad.”

“What do you write?”

“Well … I guess I’m mostly a stay-at-home dad.”

Usually, after an awkward moment of silence, I would change the subject to get the conversation rolling off in some other direction. But there were times when I was dismissively told that staying at home with a baby sounded like fun, for a year or so anyway, as if I was on an extended vacation or just taking a break from my “real” job. Once, a guy asked if I also did the laundry and cooked. I yakked for a bit about the challenge of balancing chores and baby before registering my interrogator’s mocking smirk. For some assholes, there is still such a thing as woman’s work…Continued

The Fine Line Between Loving With Our Entire Heart, And Losing It

Walking the very fine line between expectations and fully committing is always a tough one when it comes to the affairs of the heart.

You just met someone and you are excited about the possibilities.  Your emotional and sexual energies have been awoken.  You know part of your excitement is self-created, meaning it is being fed by your imagination but how much do you let yourself go?

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Are You Addicted To Drama?

I usually check out the Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com) in the morning.  I like some of their political posts as well as their living posts.  I’m also loyal to the Huffington Post because I am one of their regular bloggers.

In today’s Living section I saw a headline that caught my attention; “Are You Addicted To Drama? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-ferry/self-help-are-you-addicte_b_623182.html ” posted by Tom Ferry.  I started reading it right away because I have not only been addicted to drama in the past but I have also had many people in my life suffering from the same condition.

While I agree with some of Tom’s statements such as: “how you feel determines your attitude. Your attitude then determines your actions, which ultimately determines the outcome”, and “Why are most people comfortable in this place of conflict? There’s a perceived benefit to being dramatic. We get attention. Our needs are being met because we are connecting with others” the accusatory and blaze tone he chose to use is in my opinion a reflection of his lack of understanding of why people create drama in their lives.

People create drama in their lives because:

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Turning Loneliness Into Deeper Connection

I have just read the posting below and thought of sharing it with you.  It is a good companion to my earlier post The Pleasures Of Solitude (http://theloveprojectinc.com/?p=3192)

—-

By Anne Naylor, posted on the Huffington Post

Loneliness accepted becomes a gift
leading one from a life dominated by tears
to the discovery of one’s true self
and finally to the heart of longing and the love of God.
-Unknown

This week, I have been reading Alex And Me by Dr Irene Pepperberg, the touching and inspiring story of the author’s scientific studies with a Grey parrot, Alex, and his intelligence and language skills. A feisty bird by all accounts, he also demonstrated qualities of empathy and understanding — qualities I call “heart skills.” His premature death was deeply grieved.

Do you ever feel disconnected and find this world to be a lonely place, lacking in warmth and friendship? Or perhaps you are one who thrives in solitude. Do you feel overwhelmed by demands being made on you for your time and attention, but absent from real contact with others? Do you ever wonder in all of the busy-ness who your friends really are? …Continued

The Mind Of The Soul

I really like the below blog posted on the Huffington Post today by Dr. Judith Rich.  Among many things it talks about the importance of embracing our pain and difficulties by acknowledging and giving them the room they need.  That is not to say we should be depressed and anxious.  But what we should do is let the pain breathe instead of wanting to bury it with money, sex, drugs, partying or whatever else we use to hide our hurts.  Only by giving enough room to pain, making friends with it, do we come to understand ourselves and not suffer so much.  We learn to make the pain be part of our existence and experience rather than be destroyed by it and the result and wisdom.

The soul is not interested in homes and cars but is interested in experiences and beliefs.  And they include everything and anything.

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Soulful Living: Why Is It Cultivating The Soul So Painful

“Everyone should know that you can’t live in any other way than by cultivating the soul.” – Apuleius, Roman writer

Several readers responded to last week’s post, How To Know The Way Of The Soul, with observations that their own soul’s process was extremely painful. One reader asked, ” Does it always have to be so painful?” while another wondered, “How can I stop this pain?”

Thomas Moore, author of Care Of The Soul, writes:

Care of the soul speaks to the longings we feel and to the symptoms that drive us crazy, but it is not a path away from shadow or death. A soulful personality is complicated, multifaceted, and shaped by both pain and pleasure, success and failure. Life lived soulfully is not without its moments of darkness and periods of foolishness.

Soul is the font of who we are, and yet it is far beyond our capacity to devise and to control. We can cultivate, tend, enjoy, and participate in the things of the soul, but we can’t outwit it or manage it or shape it to the designs of a willful ego…Continued

What About Self-Help?

Just read an article by Deepak Chopra (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/when-you-help-yourself-wh_b_578892.html).  It’s a good post about self-help really being about self-discovery if it is to have lasting changes.

What he left out is that self-help is really an American phenomenon.  Somehow we have developed a society that needs to read about, having sex, loving, being in a relationship, being happier, finding ourselves etc. instead of just being.  Why is that?

I think one of the answers is our values as a society, families, and individuals.  In the United States we live under constant pressure to work and to succeed while the rest of the world uses work as a means to have more fun. To us work is an end unto itself and success defines us.  The result is that more and more we live in our own world of trying to succeed and less and less in actually living.  And we are in a hurry, so we want immediate answers.

We want to have good sex now.  So instead of communicating with our partners, spending the time to actually enjoy the intimacy, we read books that give us step by step ways to have better sex.

We want a better relationship now.  So instead of giving the time and attention a relationship needs we read a manual on how to make it better.  We don’t have the time to just be.

I’m not ditching self-help books but am saying the answer, as Mr. Chopra has written, lays within us.  It also lays in the way we live our lives, and in the ways we have constructed our societal set of values.

Work and technology are tools to allow us to have better relationships with others and ourselves.  Not the other way around.  So if we really want to have better sex, relationships, lives, we need first to set our priorities straight.  Once we do that, we are set to take the voyage of self knowledge and most likely will not need any self-help books.

Yes, I Suck: Self-Help Through Negative Thinking

I was reading the Huffington Post today and following on different links until I came across the piece below from Time Magazine on positive thinking.  Based on many studies the piece concludes that rather than keeping a mantra going of how wonderful we are, if we actually acknowledged our thoughts and feelings, we would have a more fulfilling and lasting experience.

I’ve always been of the mind that if we keep repeating something that we know not to be true like “I’m so happy” when we feel miserable, it will cause even more distress because all we are doing is underscoring the differences between what we are saying and how we are feeling.

Acknowledging how we feel and then moving on is an honest and courageous way to deal with our lives with lasting results.  Please read on.

TIME MAGAZINE

By John Cloud

In the past 50 years, people with mental problems have spent untold millions of hours in therapists’ offices, and millions more reading self-help books, trying to turn negative thoughts like “I never do anything right” into positive ones like “I can succeed.” For many people — including well-educated, highly trained therapists, for whom “cognitive restructuring” is a central goal — the very definition of psychotherapy is the process of changing self-defeating attitudes into constructive ones.

But was Norman Vincent Peale right? Is there power in positive thinking? A study just published in the journal Psychological Science says trying to get people to think more positively can actually have the opposite effect: it can simply highlight how unhappy they are…Continued

The Paradox Of Success

Good post by Roger Fransecky on the Huffington Post on the push and pull of work or personal happiness.

“We are wired to be goal-striving creatures who quest for the prize: the corner office with a breathtaking view, the new BMW 7 series, the prom queen with a Harvard MBA, the staggering bonus, seat 2A, the hole in one.

But the past few decades have been unkind to our definitions of “winning.” Our politics are arm-wrestled by pragmatists eager to appear on “Meet the Press,” who fear change and would rather tweak policy at the shadowy edges. In management we hunger for new ideas and inspiration from the parallel streams of business authors and wily gurus, and we are, too often, left undernourished…Continue

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