Inner Strength

If you can start the day without caffeine,
If you can get going without pep pills,
If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,
If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it,
If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment
If you can ignore a friend’s limited education and never correct him,
If you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend,
If you can conquer tension without medical help,
If you can relax without liquor,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,
Then You Are Probably The Family Dog!

A friend sent me this email today. I don’t know who wrote it originally.

It looks like a dog can be a perfect Yogi or Yogini (a female yoga practitioner) much easier than we humans can. Our mind gets in the way! If we only could learn how to just be, without constantly judging and criticising we would be a lot happier.

Try it for 1 hour - make a real effort to suspend judgment for 1 hour of your day today, look at things as they are, not the way you think they are. Share your experiences in the Comments Section.

Connie,

Your Yoga Partner

From http://www.yogainahurry.com

When catering for children, do NOT use wine, use apple juice only instead.

This cake can be made completely without sugar and still tastes nice. 

You have to use fresh apples, tinned ones won’t do - the filling will go too sloppy.

Base:

225 g flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

60 g sugar (or fruit sugar or xylitol)

1 pinch of salt

75 g soft butter

Knead dough (or make in food processor) and let rest in fridge for 1 hour.

Filling:

1 kg apples

2 packets of vanilla custard powder (or 100g or cornflour and one teaspoon vanilla essence)

2 packets of vanillin sugar

375 ml of white wine

375 ml of apple juice

I use 750ml of apple juice. If you use the white wine the recipe specifies extra sugar to be added (about 80g)

Roll out dough and line springform (26cm in diametre), also pulling the dough up to the side, make sure the edge is fairly high.

Peel and core apples and cut into cubes (about ½-1 cm in diameter). Boil up a custard out of the apple juice (or a wine and apple juice mixture), custard powder, vanilla sugar and sugar (if used). As soon as custard is cooked, stir in all the apple cubes.

Spread this filling into the base and bake for 50-60 minutes at about 200 degrees C. Wait a little while before removing from tin, as the filling will set as it cools.

Enjoy!

Today I found an article entitled “Building Trust”. It was written by T.C. Coleman from “Upwardaction”. The article was referring to people in business and contains a number of very good points.Here is one of them:

“Exhibit Personal Integrity. When building trust it is important to always honor your commitments. Simply put, say what you mean and do what you say you will do. Some of us, even with the best intentions, find ourselves falling short of our promises. Starting today, only commit to what you know you can do, not what you want to perform or think you should be completing.”

Most of you reading this would think of the interactions and relationships you have with other people, your clients or your family.

But …first of all these principles have to be put into action when interacting with yourself!

Ask yourself the following questions:

• How can others trust me if I can’t trust myself?

• How often have I broken promises I made to myself?

• How often have I put others first, to my own detriment, when there was no pressing need to do so?

• How often have I taken something on just because I was unable to say “no”?

What effect does all of this have on you?

• Your self esteem takes a hit every time you break a promise you made to yourself
• Negative self talk takes over and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy
• You don’t even take the first step to change things for the better
• You feel you have no control over your life
• You develop a “victim” mentality
• Your stress levels increase
• Your health suffers

To Increase your Self Esteem start by taking the following action steps:

• Starting today, only commit to what you know you can do
• Always honour the commitments you made to yourself
• Do what you say you will do - for yourself, even if nobody else knows about the commitment you made
• Put your appointments with yourself into your diary - be on time and treat yourself like you would a V.I.P or a very important customer.

Yoga has a set of rules to live by. One the concepts is called “Ahimsa”.

Ahimsa is non-violence in action, thoughts and words. It is very broad and applies to everything, you will hear me come back to this principle time and time again.

Ahimsa has to start with oneself, from within. Negative self talk is a form of violence towards yourself. Not keeping your commitments towards yourself is a form of violence.

Make one appointment with yourself today and keep it! Start practising Ahimsa and build your self esteem in the process.

Connie,

Your Yoga Partner

© yogainahurry.com

This post was written by an acquaintance of mine, Coach Nora.

If you like her ideas and want to learn more about relationships and how to improve them or need emotional support before, during or after a divorce you can find her website details at the end of this article. She has lots of great free articles for you to download.

Understanding Anger Management

Anger is a normal emotional reaction to our frustrations in everyday world. It is natural to feel angry when a goal is blocked in some way. But anger isn’t just one emotion, is a family of emotions that are related to our brains and show in our behavior. Anger has a variety of names from mild irritation to frustration: from anger to rage.

Even when anger is a normal reaction, uncontrolled anger is a serious problem that has been related to domestic abuse, marital conflicts and family fights. Scientific studies show that one-third of couples studied presented at least one incident of domestic violence during the course of their marriage.

Anger related incidents have also long lasting consequences, taking a lot of time and effort to heal, if ever. This is why is so important to learn to express this anger in a controlled manner, allowing us to resolve the issues while protecting the relationship with our loved ones.

Why Anger is such a strong feeling?

The anger feelings are caused by the present situation, but based on previous experiences you have had in the past-even if you don’t remember them. The current situation is telling your brain to activate “old anger” in its attempt to protect you even though the original danger is no longer present. This explains why small incidents may trigger completely disproportionate outbursts, which scare anyone with its intensity!

What is Anger Management?

Managing those feelings requires identifying and mastering the specific thoughts and actions that trigger anger reactions in your brain, and being able to use these skills on a daily basis, as to modify your behavior.

Anger management is NOT about never getting angry-that would be an impossible and ridiculous goal, because angry feelings are “hard-wired” in our brain and probably serve a protective and survival function.

Rather, anger management is about learning how to regulate and express those natural angry feelings in a way that makes you a more effective human being. Well managed anger will also help you with better relationships, better health, less stress and more occupational success.

What can be done to manage unbalanced angry feelings?

Start looking into anger outburst incidents in your past life, and try to spot the issues that triggered such strong feelings at that moment. Look for older stories that repeatedly came back into those incidents. See the patterns: are you always reacting to perceived put downs? Or perceived controlling behavior by others? See the interaction: someone controls somebody, and watch your reactions: you see that as an intolerable, damaging situation. Now, make a list of all the controlling, dominant people in your life, and remember your own reactions: anger, grief, resistance, rebellion.

Now recall those incidents of old pain, and see them from your present, adult standpoint. Nobody can dominate you anymore; even better, now you know how to defuse such a situation in a positive way. It’s enough for you to say: “Many thanks, but that is only your opinion; I prefer to do things in my own way…” and walk away!

If you regain your own personal power to define precisely what is what you want to do, and how to do it in order to be able to walk away, much of the old anger dissipates. You are now the owner of your own power. When you are meditating, this is the best time to tell yourself that what is past humiliation can’t hurt you anymore. And now you can mentally forgive anyone involved in that incident, including your old self, for being immature and weak once upon a time.

Now you are ready to take a new look into your redefined and more powerful present situation, and keep old stories safely neutralized in the memory vault.

You can have more ideas and coaching suggestions to improve your emotional life from http://www.norafemenia.com/. Please, let us help by bringing to you the best coaching advice to grow and enjoy your own life!

__________________
Peacewonk,
Giving you strong ideas for better living:
http://www.passiveaggresive.com/

For the past 2 weeks Sydney has been celebrating the Chinese New Year.

The Year of the Rat was ushered in in style, with lots of noise, fun, celebration and food. Contrary to what you may think, the Year of the Rat promises to be a good year!

Here in Sydney part of the fun are the Dragon Boat Races in Darling Harbour. A lot of Corporations have Dragon boat teams nowadays - I suppose it keeps the employees fit and builds team spirit.

Today some very different teams were racing - they were all comprised of women, and every single on of these women was a survivor of breast cancer.

They all wore hot pink outfits (some even had pink paddles).

They had come from all over the country to compete in the race and “give a face to breast cancer”, to have fun, stay fit and experience solidarity and camaraderie. There were hundreds and hundreds of women, all ages, all nationalities. The ones who were unable to row supported their teams from the shore.

After the races, there was a flower ceremony. All the dragon boats went back out onto the water and formed one huge raft, the women linking hands. Thousands of pink/red rose petals were thrown into the water to commemorate all the women who had died of breast cancer. Some blue petals were amongst them as well (for the men, who can suffer and die from the disease as well).

The petals were floating on the surface of the water while everybody observed a minute of silence. It was an incredibly moving ceremony.

If you want to find out more go to:

http://www.dragonsabreast.com.au/