How to Improve Communication Challenges

By Susie and Otto Collins
What are your communication challenges?
We all have developed communication challenges along the way–unhealthy patterns and ways of avoiding communicating what we are honestly feeling in situations.
For us, even though we have a great relationship and work hard at communicating clearly, we sometimes lapse into old patterns when conflict comes up. We’re guessing that many of you do the same.
When old patterns come up for Susie, they usually manifest in unhealthy ways like being afraid of speaking her truth if it’s unpleasant for the other person to hear, agreeing for the sake of keeping the peace, and not clearly asking for what she wants.
Otto’s communication challenges are making assumptions, imagining fear in the future, black and white thinking, and not speaking about what’s bothering him but letting things build up.
What gets in the way of your ability to communicate with the people in your life?
Are you immediately defensive when someone starts to criticize something you are doing or calls attention to something you could improve?
Do you think one thing and say another?
Is your mind always somewhere else instead of listening to the people in your life?
Take a few moments and write down the ways that you stop communication with other people. If you have a partner or a close friend, talk over your challenges with them.
Talk about ways that you might be able to stop yourself from going into some of these unhealthy communication patterns. Talk about how you’d like to communicate in your life.
Clear, honest communication is a skill that can be learned if you have the desire to do so. Making yourself aware of your particular communication issues is one of the first steps to creating close, connected relationships.

Benefits of Kissing

Kiss more, and kiss longer. That’s what some researchers are advising as the health benefits of kissing are revealed.

Matthew Messina, DDS, a dentist and consumer advisor for the American Dental Association, says the extra saliva produced during kissing washes bacteria off your teeth, which can help break down oral plaque. Bryant Stamford, PhD, director of the health promotion center at the University of Louisville notes kissing can help you lose calories. “During a really, really passionate kiss,” he says, “you might lose two calories a minute – double your metabolic rate.” Others claim that kissing exercises the facial muscles.

Stress relief is another health benefit of kissing. Psychologist Joy Davidson, PhD, likens kissing to meditation. “It stops the buzz in your mind, it quells anxiety, and it heightens the experience of being present in the moment. It actually produces a lot of the physiological changes that meditation produces,” she says. The fact that kissing leads to touching is also a good thing. Touching and massaging release oxytocin, a hormone known to have a calming effect on the body.

Source: Soundmedicine

WebMD explains many of the physiological effects kissing can have on the body, from boosting immunity to burning calories.

And how to make passionate kissing? Click here to find out.

6 Ways to Make your Guy Loves you Forever

Photo by pbeens@flickr

Found this while roaming on the net. It’s interesting and full of useful information that every girl should embrace it as a good knowledge. You may be surprised at the things guys really can’t resist about women, and some of them are the very qualities women fear will drive men away—from letting a curse word loose to leaving all kinds of makeup near his bathroom sink. Here’s why these habits and others actually win a man over.

1. He loves that you indulge at dinnertime.
Guys love girls who love to eat—not girls who say they aren’t hungry and then pick at their date’s food all night. Paul, 30, who lives in Boston, thinks that food may be the reason he fell in love with his fiancée: “When we first started dating, I thought it might be awkward if I wanted greasy food like wings—I figured she’d think it was fattening or unhealthy. Women I’d dated in the past only wanted to go out for salad or sushi. But she was enthusiastic about eating all kinds of things with me. I loved that easygoing attitude of hers.” Aside from showing that you’re not high-maintenance or neurotic about your weight, that kind of unabashed enthusiasm also tends to translate into other areas—including the bedroom. “A woman with a healthy appetite for food tends to have a healthy appetite on all levels, and sex is absolutely a part of that,” explains Barton Goldsmith, Ph.D., author of Emotional Fitness for Couples: 10 Minutes a Day to a Better Relationship. (more…)

Stay young in a simple way

Sometimes staying young in body and mind is not possible by doing diet or whatsoever. It can be achieved by having a great time and enjoy the moments of the life. Maybe these 10 points can help to you to stay young in body and soul. In order to stay young it requires both mental and physical health. Remember a body can't live without a mind.

1. Get rid of non essential numbers which includes age, blood pressure levels, sugar levels, weight and height. Let the doctors worry about them. That is why you pay them.

2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down.

3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, astronomy, history or whatsoever. Never let the brain idle. " An idle mind is the devil's workshop."

4. Enjoy the simple things in life.

5. Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.

6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person who is with us our entire life, is ourselves.
   Be ALIVE while you are alive.

7. Surround yourself with what you love, whether it's family,  friends, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever.

8. Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.

9. Don't take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall, to the next county, to a foreign country, but NOT to where the guilt is.

10. Tell the people you love that you love them, at every opportunity.

Famous Quotes from Albert Einstein

We always have something to learn from this Talented Genius Albert Einstein . Here are some of his most famous quotes. 

• In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.
• Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius (and a lot of courage) to move in the opposite direction.
• A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin – what else does a man need to be happy?
• Imagination is more important than knowledge.
• Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.
• One does not make wars less likely by formulating rules of warfare.
• Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
• I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details.
• If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
• The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
• Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
• The only real valuable thing is intuition.
• A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.
• Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
• I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
• Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
• Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
• Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.
• Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
• Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
• The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
• The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
• Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
• The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
• We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
• Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
• The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
• If A is a success in life, then A equals X plus Y plus Z. Work is X; Y is play; and Z is keeping your mouth shut.
• Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe.
• As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain. As far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
• I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
• The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.
• How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?
• The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking.
• Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
• You see – wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: You send signals here, and they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.

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