As a co-dependent, one of the hardest realities for me to accept was that I am worthy of love and life's richest blessings.

I don't know how I ever started believing that I was unworthy and undeserving of the good and the wonderful things that are available in life.

Some of it came out of my divorce. Some of it came from religious legalist. Some of it came from people who wanted to hurt me for one reason or another. But the message I received is not accurate.

As a human being, I am deserving of self-love and love from others. I am permitted to recognize the good in me and seek ways to continually develop my capacity for giving and receiving love. I am worthy of healthy relationships. I am a worthwhile person, no matter what anyone else says or does. I don't have to believe or accept the negative messages that others send my way. I don't have to sellout my self-esteem to the values or expectations of anyone who happens to overlook or refuse to see the good in me.

If you have negative people in your life who are sending you messages that you are inferior in some way, you don't have to believe their lies. If you, yourself, are telling yourself negative messages, you don't have to continue doing so.

My new wife found a little formula that she shared with me. It goes like this. Everyday, give someone (including yourself) each of the following compliments:

You are wonderful
You are beautiful
You are amazing
I'll always love you.

Just think how your life would change if you started telling yourself this everyday. Think how your relationships might improve if you started giving these compliments to the significant others in your life every day.

Thank You, God, for showing me and telling me that I am wonderful, beautiful, and amazing. Thank you for always loving me. Thank you for teaching me to always love myself and to always express positive messages of love to others. Amen.

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next: Friends and Lovers

Relationships can be wonderful indeed! My new wife and I have decided that our honeymoon will never end. We've committed to keeping our relationship as happy and fulfilling through the years as it is today. But both us of are experienced enough with bad relationships to know that good relationships don't happen by magic.

One of the ways we are going to accomplish our goal is through mutual respect. Rather than taking our relationship for granted, we treat each other as we would treat an honored guest in our home. We freely give sincere compliments and praise to each other. We thank each other for the little things that make our lives smoother and easier (like taking out the trash, riding along on kid-taxi trips, or unloading the dishwasher). It's this kind of mutual respect and kindness and helpfulness that defines what being a healthy "family" means.

Our relationship is valuable, so we hold each other in high esteem. We treat each other as we want to be treated in turn.

A very wise man gave the same prescription for healthy relationships long ago. Seems his advice works equally well for marriage partners, too.

Thank you, God, for showing me how to keep my relationships healthy and happy and growing. Help me to continually cultivate the wonderful, fulfilling relationships You have brought into my life. Amen.

 

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next: Letting Go of High Standards

There are a couple of people I deal with on a daily basis who have both used the term "people-pleaser" to describe my demeanor and my behavior. Along with that label, they offered their analysis that "I need people to like me."

Actually, I could care less whether people like me or not.

On the surface, what must look like people-pleasing is actually a concerted effort on my part to overcome and to contain my natural tendency to let people know, with brutal honesty, when they don't measure up to the exacting standards I set for myself or for them.

I do have very high standards and expectations, which I have (and to a certain degree) continue to work on letting go of—in particular, in my relationships with other people.

But I do work to maintain my high standards in certain areas of my life. For example, in my work I set certain standards of quality for what I produce. At work, my striving for a certain standard results in high quality output.

In relationships, however, my striving for too high a standard has proven to cause conflict and pain, which I now prefer to avoid.

Rather than going to any length to get people to like me (which is the major manifestation of a people-pleaser), I am actually going to great lengths, internally and externally, to avoid the clashes and conflicts that naturally result from my seemingly innate ability to be extremely harsh, cruel, and brutal with my words.

I am in the process of learning how to use my "talent" for words in positive, constructive, and encouraging ways. And I am learning to let go of the high standards and expectations I set for myself and for others. Most importantly, I am learning to let go of my need to inform others when they do not meet my overly high standards and expectations.

Thank you, God, for showing me where my relationships undergo stress - from my need to express too harshly that others don't live up to my standards and expectations. Thank you for teaching me that kindness, gentleness, and politeness lead to rewarding relationships. Thank you for showing me how to let go of my high standards. Amen.

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next: Letting Go of Conceptual Limitations

Detailed information on childhood obesity, how to prevent childhood obesity and how to help your overweight child.

How can parents halt the creeping epidemic that threatens our kids' futures? The solution: Change the environment so they can move more and eat well.

In our push-button, remote-control, car-oriented culture—where pizza makes house calls and kids between the ages of 2 and 17 spend more than three years of their waking lives watching TV— we've created the fattest generation in history.

Waistlines are widening in people of all ages, but "our children, in particular, are gaining weight to a dangerous degree and at an alarming rate," warns the Institute of Medicine of Washington, DC, in a new action plan ("Preventing Childhood Obesity: Health in the Balance") commissioned by Congress to address this growing public health threat. In just 30 years, the prevalence of childhood obesity has soared, with nearly one in three American kids now tipping the scales past healthy weight.

Once dismissed as harmless "baby fat," childhood obesity is increasingly recognized as a serious health threat that can lead to numerous physical ailments such as type 2 diabetes. In fact, one-fourth of obese kids ages 5 to 10 already have at least two components of what is called metabolic syndrome, a cluster of health problems (including insulin resistance, high blood pressure and high cholesterol) that increases the risk of coronary heart disease and diabetes. Overweight kids also are more likely to be ostracized and bullied—or to bully others.

The grim reality is that obesity exerts a life-shortening effect, which threatens to reverse the steady rise in life expectancy observed in the modern era, contends a recent study published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Today's children are on track to be the first generation in U.S. history to live less healthy, and even shorter, lives than their parents.

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How did we get this way? Increasingly, experts point to our "obesogenic" environment, which encourages people to eat too much and move too little.

"We live in a world where the energy demands of daily living are at a historic low and the availability of high-calorie, easily obtainable, inexpensive food is at a historic high," notes Harold Kohl, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "We've created the 'perfect storm' for obesity—particularly for children."

Numerous societal changes have dramatically reduced the amount of energy children burn, while expanding the number of calories they consume. Budget-crunched schools have cut back or eliminated physical education classes—and sometimes even recess. Working parents concerned about safety would rather their kids play video games or watch TV indoors than run around outside. Computers have revolutionized the classroom, entertainment, shopping and communication. Fast food, in "super size" portions, is everywhere—even in some schools—as are vending machines stocked with sodas and chips.

"Our willpower hasn't changed" in just 30 short years, notes Yale University obesity expert Kelly Brownell. "The gene pool hasn't changed." What's changed, he contends, "is our increasingly toxic food and physical activity environment. Society has long placed responsibility for obesity squarely on the sufferer, when we need to consider our environment as the real cause."

Just as we dramatically altered the tobacco environment, Brownell says we must change our culture's obesity-promoting environment. "Twenty years ago, if you said we should ban smoking in public places, people would have said you were crazy," he notes. "People need to learn how to resist pressures to overeat and under-exercise and demand change." Who's at risk?

Since we're all surrounded by pressures to sit still and overeat, no one is immune from the dangers of gaining an unhealthy amount of weight. "When you have a problem that affects one-third of the population, everyone is at risk," says William Cochran, MD, a pediatric obesity specialist at the Geisinger Clinic in Danville, Pa., and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics' task force on obesity prevention. "At especially high risk are children who have one or two obese parents as well as African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans."

Overweight adolescents also are at high risk because their problems with weight likely will worsen with time. Physical activity tends to decline dramatically during teenage years—especially among females—and weight gain is common, Cochran says. Younger, obese teens, especially girls, battle depression more than their slimmer counterparts, and that trend continues into adulthood. "Obese adolescents have an 80 percent chance of becoming obese adults," Cochran notes. "And obese adults tend to have obese children. So it's important to intervene at this time to help prevent obesity in the next generation."

The first step in preventing obesity is identifying the problem, which is done by calculating a child's Body Mass Index, or BMI. In adults, the BMI is a single number—calculated as a ratio of height and weight—and has been used for more than a decade to define overweight and obesity. Until recently, however, BMI was not used for children because the calculations are more complicated than they are for adults. Since kids are constantly growing, you must compare their height-weight ratio to the norm for children of the same age. In 2000 the CDC released a BMI for kids that, Cochran notes, "is not a specific number; it's a percentile." Healthy weight falls between the 5th and 85th percentile for age and sex. Anything over the 95th percentile is considered "obese."

Pediatricians should calculate each child's BMI at least once a year, Cochran says. But the sad fact is, he says, they don't always. In fact, "it's probably happening only about 10 to 20 percent of the time." Although pediatricians are typically excellent in preventive health measures—such as newborn screenings, immunizations and promotion of car safety seats—many have dropped the ball on prevention of childhood obesity. "Calculating BMI takes extra time, which typically physicians are not reimbursed for," he notes. "And it can be a tense issue to bring up with parents, one that can create negative feelings and a sense of hopelessness. People often aren't really sure exactly what to do about it."

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Cochran advises parents to ask to have their child's BMI measured at every doctor visit, even if the appointment is for an ankle sprain or a cold. "It's important to look for trends, like moving from the 50th percentile to the 75th percentile," he says. "If you see this kind of significant increase, you can start taking action to keep things from getting out of control." Some states are taking the matter into their own hands. For example, Pennsylvania recently passed a law requiring BMI to be measured every year in public schools.

Prevention is the best cure, Cochran says, adding that small steps can make a big difference in a child's weight. "One of the key things to watch out for is sugary beverages," he says, "since 20 percent of kids who are overweight get that way because they drink too many calories." Consuming just 150 calories more a day than you burn adds up to a weight gain of 15 pounds in a year, he notes. Since the average adolescent male drinks three cans of soda a day, he says, "cutting back on even one 150-calorie soda can make a significant difference in a youngster's weight."

Fat-proof the home

A growing number of experts are calling for environmental solutions to America's epidemic of overweight and obese kids. "If we want healthy weight kids, we need to create a healthy food and physical activity environment," says Penny Gordon-Larsen, an assistant professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

That's why the Gordon-Larsen home has none of America's typical obesity-promoting features, such as soda, juice drinks, sugared cereals, video games, computer toys or TVs at the dinner table or in the kids' bedrooms. When her children—Bella, 5, and Fred, 3—are thirsty, they have two choices: water or skim milk, served in fun cups with curly straws. "I don't give my kids juice ever at home," says Gordon-Larsen, who notes that the recommended allowance of juice for kids ages 1 to 6 is just 4 to 6 ounces daily—the equivalent of half a juice box. "Evidence is building that our bodies aren't set up to regulate the calories from liquid, and the sugar from over consuming juice contributes to obesity," she says.

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Nutritionally, "it's always better to eat the whole fruit," she says, which is why she keeps fresh fruit readily available in colorful bowls and places sandwich baggies of cut-up veggies at a kid's eye-level in the refrigerator. If the children want a snack before dinner, she offers them broccoli florets or carrot sticks with tiny dipping cups of soy sauce. On the rare occasions she brings cookies into her house, she picks just one kind so they won't be tempted by too many choices. Dessert is a single square of dark chocolate. The children's TV watching is limited to one hour of commercial-free DVDs on the weekend, since numerous studies link excessive TV to obesity. The children play outdoors every day—"There's no bad weather, just bad clothes," Gordon-Larsen says. And the whole family enjoys active playtime together—walking, swimming or hiking—almost every day. Sounds a bit too easy, doesn't it? Gordon-Larsen admits that she can't monitor her kids' choices all the time. Although "controlling the home environment can be fairly easy," she acknowledges that it's harder once kids start going to school, day care and friends' homes. "You can send your kids to school with a healthy lunch, but they may want to share their friend's chips and salsa," says Susan Okie, MD, author of Fed Up! Winning the War Against Childhood Obesity (Joseph Henry Press, 2005). One of the most common problems Okie observed in talking with families struggling with weight issues is "not to make it into a control battle between parent and child," she says.

As an example, Okie points to 10-year-old Meagan, a Los Angeles girl who was beginning to be teased at school about her weight. "Part of her wanted to go with the healthy eating plan and not be teased," she says. "But part of her wanted to eat ice cream and cookies and not have anyone tell her what to do." While parents need to be concerned, Okie cautions that "negativity and nagging don't work." Okie advises parents to get support from a health professional, such as a nutritionist, nurse practitioner, physician or other provider skilled in behavior change. Praising healthy behaviors—not just rewarding weight loss—is important in achieving lasting results. "It's not about dropping 10 pounds in a month," she says. "The goal is to create a life-long change of habits."

Fat-proof the community

The Gordon-Larsens are fortunate to live in a "walkable" community called Southern Village, which is designed to allow residents to walk and bike to playgrounds, schools, recreation facilities, restaurants and the grocery store. Model communities like this one are being created across the nation as more and more research confirms that lifestyle diseases such as obesity (and related conditions including diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol) require lifestyle solutions. This involves changing our "obesogenic" environment to make it easier for people to move more and eat better—at home, in schools and in the community.

"Past attempts to solve the obesity problem have failed, at least in part, because we've mostly focused on the individual," says Allen Dearry of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which sponsored a conference this spring on Environmental Solutions to Obesity in America's Youth. "It's very difficult for an individual to adopt healthy habits if his or her surroundings make it hard to be active and eat well. For individual behavior change to be successful, we have to create an appropriate environment."

Researchers at Tufts University in Boston are doing just that as part of a three-year project called Shape Up Somerville: Eat Smart, Play Hard,. Through a variety of strategies, such as making it safer to walk or bike to school and offering healthier options for school lunches, "we're assessing the impact of healthy environmental changes on the weight of students in grades one through three," says the study's principal investigator, Christina Economos, of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts. "This is an important age group to intervene in because if you can get overweight kids to be active and eat right, you can help them grow into their weight." While research results won't be available until later this year, preliminary data suggest that the intervention has made significant improvements in the children's BMI, she says.

Parents need to get involved in their schools and communities to advocate for more opportunities for their kids to be active and have healthier food choices, says Economos, who advises getting rid of fund-raisers that involve candy and selling wrapping paper or fruit instead. "Our children are being overwhelmed with treats today," she says. "There's no reason why parents should show up with donuts and soda when it's their turn to bring a snack." Instead, she recommends providing parents with a list of acceptable options, such as orange slices and water. Parents can also lobby for quality daily physical education classes, she says, and afterschool programs that promote active play—not sitting around in front of computer and TV screens.

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One of the best things parents can do to promote healthy weight for their children is to "be a good role model," says Economos, who has two young children. "As a parent I try to follow the guidelines for healthy eating and physical activity. We hike, swim and bike together as a family and try to get outdoors as much as possible. Sometimes we just put on the music and dance." Finding time for fitness is "a matter of priorities," she says. "We don't watch TV. The average American watches four hours of TV a day. So if you cut back on this, it's pretty simple to find time to be active."

Make it a family affair

Everyone in the family—including siblings and grandparents—should be encouraged to eat right and exercise to successfully combat childhood obesity. According to William Strong, MD, emeritus professor of pediatrics and cardiology at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, "If you tell a child to be active and eat better and the family isn't doing it too, it's a set-up for failure. Instead of sitting on the bench at the playground, get up and play with your kids." Roll a ball back and forth, take walks and, if your child is old enough and interested, take an active class together, such as martial arts or yoga. To make time for physical activity, he says, "parents should reduce screen time (TV and video games) to less than two hours per day."

Sadly, some children are active only about 10 minutes a day, notes Strong, who, along with Robert Malina, is author of a new recommendation published in the June issue of the Journal of Pediatrics, calling for school-aged children to participate in 60 minutes or more of moderate to vigorous physical activity daily. "If you don't have 60 minutes all at once," he notes, "it can be broken up into shorter bouts." The benefits of daily physical activity go far beyond weight control. Research links regular exercise with a host of health benefits including a stronger heart, lungs, muscles and bones, as well as better concentration, memory, classroom behavior and academic performance.

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One of the most important ways to make sure kids will be active is to make movement fun. "Activity has to be enjoyable, so people will continue to do it," he says. "Find something active your children like to do and encourage them to do it. If they have a good time, they'll want to do it again and again. And that's how you create good health habits that last a lifetime."

Tater Tots!

Sitting in front of a screen sipping sugary drinks and eating fatty foods is a daily fact of life for most American kids. For example:

• Children 6 and under spend an average of two hours a day using screen media (TV, computers, video games), and the average child watches three hours of TV a day. Higher levels of TV viewing are associated with higher levels of obesity.
• Thirty-six percent of kids under 6 years old have a TV in their bedroom, and 26 percent of children under 2 have a TV in their bedroom.
• Walking or biking can be deadly, since many towns have no pedestrian or bike lanes. Pedestrian fatality is the third leading cause of injury-related death among children 5 to 14. This may explain why 75 percent of trips a mile or less are made by car, and only about 14 percent of trips to school are made by walking, down from 50 percent in 1969.
• Kids are bombarded with food commercials—the average child sees 10,000 per year, with 95 percent of them being for candy, fast food, soft drinks and sugared cereals.
• Daily P.E. classes are only offered by 8 percent of elementary schools, 6.4 percent of middle schools and 5.8 percent of high schools.

What you can do to help your overweight child

1. Practice what you preach. Don't expect more from your kids than you're willing to do yourself. Make these changes for the whole famly.
2. Eat family meals, with no television.
3. Offer nutritious snacks, such as vegetables and fruits, low-fat dairy foods and whole grains.
4. Teach children about proper portion size, and encourage moderation rather than over consumption: Don't insist on "cleaning the plate" and avoid using sweet treats for rewards.
5. Use low-fat dairy products. After age 2, kids should drink low-fat milk.
6. Eliminate carbonated beverages and high fructose corn syrup. Use only 100% fruit juice and limit that to 4 ounces daily for toddlers and 6 to 8 ounces for older children.
7. Prioritize and promote physical activity, and be sure that your kids get at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity every day.
8. Breastfeed infants exclusively for at least the first four to six months of life. Research shows that breastfeeding reduces the risk of obesity.
9. Limit recreational (non-school) "screen time" (computers, TV, video games) to no more than one hour a day.
10. Do not allow TV in a child's bedroom.
11. Advocate in the schools and community for healthy food choices and adequate opportunity for regular physical activity.
12. Have your doctor calculate your child's BMI at least once a year. Learn more at http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/childrens_bmi/about_childrens_bmi.html

Source: Alternative Medicine

back to: Complimentary and Alternative Medicine

Note: It seems that lately many of my relationship coaching sessions have been about low self-esteem and low self-acceptance. My friend, Brian Tracy, has written a terrific article and I wanted to share it with you. Pass it along to your friends - Larry James

Brian Tracy writes. . .

Psychologists today generally agree that your level of self-esteem, or how much you like yourself and consider yourself to be a valuable and worthwhile person, lies at the core of your personality. Your level of self-esteem determines:

Your level of energy and the quality of your personality, how much you like other people and, in turn, how much they like you your willingness to try new things and to venture boldly where perhaps you have never gone before, the quality of your relationships with others-your family, your friends and your coworkers and how successful you are in your business, especially if you are in sales.

But before you begin enjoying the wonderful effects of high self-esteem in your life, you have to learn to accept yourself unconditionally. And even before you achieve self-acceptance, there are other steps you have to take.

Self-acceptance begins in infancy, with the influence of your parents and siblings and other important people. As a child, you have an overwhelming need for love and approval and acceptance from the important people in your life. A developing child requires this emotional support the way roses need rain. Healthy personality growth is absolutely dependent upon it. A person grows up straight and strong and happy to the degree to which he receives an abundance of nurturing in his formative years, prior to the age of five.

Someone once said that everything we do in life is either to get love or to compensate for the lack of love. Almost all of our problems, as both children and adults, can be traced back to "love withheld." There is nothing more destructive to the evolving and emerging personality than being unloved or unaccepted for any reason by someone whom we consider important.

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As adults, we always strive to achieve what we felt we were deprived of in childhood. If you grew up feeling, for any reason, that you were not totally accepted by your parents, you will be internally motivated throughout your life to compensate for that lack of acceptance by seeking it in your relationships with other people. To the growing child, perception is reality; reality is not what the parents feel toward the child, but what the child feels that the parents feel. The child's evolving personality is shaped largely by his perception of how he is seen and thought about by his parents, not by the actual fact of the matter. If your parents were unable to express a high degree of unconditional acceptance to you, you can grow up feeling unacceptable-even inferior and inadequate.

It's quite common for a youngster to grow up in a household where he or she feels a lack of acceptance by one or both parents, especially the father. When the young person becomes an adult, the psychological phenomenon of "transference" takes place. The individual goes into the workplace and transfers the need for acceptance from the parents to the boss. The boss then becomes the focal point of the individual's thoughts and feelings. What the boss says, how the boss looks, his comments and everything that he does that implies a feeling or an opinion about the individual is recorded and either raises or lowers the individual ¹s level of self-acceptance.

Your own level of self-acceptance is determined largely by how well you feel you are accepted by the important people in your life. Just as the Law of Correspondence says that your outer life tends to be a reflection of your inner life, your attitude toward yourself is determined largely by the attitudes that you think other people have toward you. When you believe that other people think highly of you, your level of self-acceptance and self-esteem goes straight up. However, if you believe, rightly or wrongly, that other people think poorly of you, your level of self-acceptance will plummet.

The best way to begin building a healthy personality involves understanding yourself and your motivation. Toward this end, I'd like to introduce what is called the "Johari window" and explain its effect on your personality.

The Johari window provides a view into your psyche. According to this theory, your personality can be divided into four quadrants, like a square divided into four smaller squares.

The first part of this window is the box in the upper left-hand corner. It represents the part of your personality that both you and others can see. This is the open part of your personality. The lower left-hand box of this window into your psyche represents the part of your personality that you can see but that others cannot see. It is a part of your inner life.

The upper right-hand box of this window represents the parts of your personality that others can see but of which you are unaware. You have somehow blocked these parts from your consciousness.

Finally, the lower right-hand box represents that part of your personality that is hidden from both you and other people. It's the deeper, subconscious part of your personality that represents urges, instincts, fears, doubts and emotions that are stored away below a conscious level, but that can exert an inordinate impact on the way you behave, often causing you to feel and react in certain ways that sometimes even you don't understand.

One of your goals is to develop a fully rounded personality, to become a fully functioning human being with a sense of inner peace and outer happiness.

A measure of your maturity is often manifested in the way you treat different people. When you are at your very best and your self-esteem is at its highest, you'll find that you are genuinely positive and friendly toward everyone, from the taxi driver to the corporation president. When your personality is completely together, you treat everyone with equal respect.

The way to move toward a higher level of personality integration and, therefore, a higher level of peace and personal effectiveness, is to expand the area of your personality that is clear to both you and others. And you do this through the simple exercise of self-disclosure. For you to truly understand yourself, or to stop being troubled by things that may have happened in your past, you must be able to disclose yourself to at least one person. You have to be able to get those things off your chest. You must rid yourself of those thoughts and feelings by revealing them to someone who won ¹t make you feel guilty or ashamed for what has happened.

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The second part of personality development follows from self-disclosure, and it's called self-awareness. Only when you can disclose what you ¹re truly thinking and feeling to someone else can you become aware of those thoughts and emotions If the other person simply listens to you without commenting or criticizing, you have the opportunity to become more aware of the person you are and why you do the things you do. You begin to develop perspective, or what the Buddhists call "detachment." You can stand back from yourself and your past and look at it honestly. You can "disidentify" from the intense emotions involved and view what has happened to you with greater calmness and clarity.

Now we come to the good part. After you've gone through self-disclosure to self-awareness, you arrive at self-acceptance. You accept yourself for the person you are, with good points and bad points, with strengths and weaknesses, and with the normal frailties of a human being. When you develop the ability to stand back and look at yourself honestly, and to candidly admit to others that you may not be perfect but you're all you've got, you start to enjoy a heightened sense of self-acceptance.

One of the keys to happiness is to "live in truth" with yourself and others. And one of the ways to live in truth is to stop trying to be perfect and to see yourself honestly, as you really are. Attempts to achieve needless perfectionism, and an intense, often unconscious desire to impress people with how good you are, are real time wasters and energy killers.

There is a joke that cuts to the heart of this issue: "When you are in your 20s, you are very concerned about what people think about you. When you are in your 30s, you don't really care that much about what people think about you. And when you get into your 40s, you discover the real truth: Nobody was even thinking about you at all." A valuable exercise for developing higher levels of self-acceptance involves doing an inventory of yourself. In doing this inventory, your job is to accentuate the positive and minimize the negative. The real difference between optimistic people and pessimistic people is that optimists are always looking for the good in every situation, the opportunity in every problem, while pessimists are always looking for the down side and the problem in every opportunity. When you honestly analyze yourself during this inventory, you will be amazed at how extraordinary you really are and how incredible your potential is for accomplishing the things that you really desire.

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Begin your inventory by recalling your accomplishments. Think about all the things that you have achieved over the course of your lifetime. Make a list of them. Think of the subjects you passed and the grades you received. Think of the awards and prizes you won. Think of the people you have helped and the kind things that you have done for others. Think of the adversities that you have triumphed over. Think of the goals that you have set and achieved. Look at the material parts of your life; think about all the things that you have managed to acquire as the result of hard work and disciplined effort.

Now, to increase your level of self-acceptance, think of your unique talents and abilities. Think of your core skills, the things that you do exceptionally well that account for your success in your profession and in your personal life right now. Think of the results that you have achieved by applying yourself to the challenges of your world. Think of your earning ability and your ability to accomplish your goals. Think of your ability to make a contribution to your company and to your family and to the world around you. Think about all the things that you have to offer to your world.

Finally, to boost your level of self-acceptance, think about your future possibilities and the fact that your potential is virtually unlimited. You can do what you want to do and go where you want to go. You can be the person you want to be. You can set large and small goals and make plans and move step-by-step, progressively toward their realization. There are no obstacles to what you can accomplish except the obstacles that you create in your mind.

Here's an important fact to keep in mind when it comes to self-acceptance. What we work for more than anything else is respect. The British author E. M. Forster once explained, "I write to earn the respect of those I respect." Almost everything that we do, or refrain from doing, is somehow associated with gaining, or at least not losing, the respect of the people whom we respect the most. And only when we feel that we are respected by those we respect do we accept and like ourselves to a great degree.

One way to raise your level of self-acceptance, then, is to pick a role model, someone you admire and look up to and want to be like, and then pattern your life and your work after that person's. Many businesspeople have become top executives by selecting a role model who had already reached the top and then patterning their lives along the same lines. Everything you do that you feel is consistent with what someone you admire would do increases your level of self-acceptance.

A second way to assure a higher level of self-acceptance is to develop good work habits and to work efficiently and effectively toward the accomplishment of high-value results. The most respected people in any organization are those who can get the job done. Your level of self-efficacy, in other words, your belief in your ability to do what is expected of you, has an incredible effect on how much you accept yourself as a good and valuable person.

A third way to increase your level of self-acceptance is to be very aware of your image and the way you appear to people. If you want to be respected and admired by others, you need to act like a person who is worthy of respect. And remember, everything counts. Everything you do or don't do can either contribute to or take away from your image and the impression you are making on others. When you know that you look absolutely excellent on the outside, your level of self-acceptance shoots up.

A fourth way to raise your level of self-acceptance is to take complete responsibility for the various parts of your life. Refuse to make excuses or to blame other people. Never complain; never explain. Volunteer for assignments and responsibilities, and then carry them out without comment.

The key to achieving a feeling of mental well-being is having a sense of control, a sense of self-determination and internal mastery. This sense of self-control is tied directly to your willingness and ability to accept full responsibility for every part of your life. When you criticize others, or you make excuses for things that you did not do well or complete on time, you actually feel more negative about yourself, and your sense of self-acceptance declines. When you take charge of every part of your life, you feel terrific about yourself, and your level of self-acceptance and self-esteem goes up.

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A fifth way you can build up your level of self-acceptance is by interpreting events in a positive way. Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania calls this your "explanatory style." He concludes that high-performing men and women have a tendency to talk to themselves in a positive way and to explain things that are happening to them and around them in a way that allows them to stay optimistic.

Look for the silver lining in whatever cloud may be hanging over your head right now. Look for the lesson or opportunity in each obstacle or setback. Look for reasons to excuse others and let them off the hook, rather than becoming angry or upset. Play mental games with yourself to keep your thoughts on the things you want and off the things that you fear or that make you unhappy.

A sixth way to raise your level of self-acceptance is to become a habitual goal setter. Write down clear goals and a plan for what you want to accomplish and then work your plan every day. Develop of clear sense of direction for your life. Work on track and on purpose. Know exactly who you are and where you are going. Each step that you take toward the accomplishment of a predetermined objective raises your self-esteem and improves your level of self-acceptance at the same time.

Finally, a seventh way to raise your level of self-acceptance is to practice the Law of Indirect Effort, or reverse effort, and realize that everything you do or say to another person rebounds and causes the same effect on you. Whenever you are warm and friendly and courteous to another, you improve your own level of self-respect and self-acceptance. Whenever you do something nice for another person, you tend to feel better about yourself. Whenever you do or say anything that causes another person to like himself more, you find yourself liking yourself more as well.

One of the great riches of life is the self-acceptance that leads to self-esteem and maximum performance. By being aware of and practicing these recommendations, you can increase your self-acceptance to the point where you can confidently move forward toward the realization of your full potential.

Copyright 2007 by Brian Tracy. Reprinted with permission. Brian Tracy is the most listened to audio author on personal and business success in the world today. His fast-moving talks and seminars on leadership, sales, managerial effectiveness and business strategy are loaded with powerful, proven ideas and strategies that people can immediately apply to get better results in every area. For more information, please go to www.briantracy.com.

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next: Larry James Selected "Best Officiant" in the Greater Phoenix Area!

"The key to healing our wounded souls is to get clear and honest in our emotional process. Until we can get clear and honest with our human emotional responses - until we change the twisted, distorted, negative perspectives and reactions to our human emotions that are a result of having been born into, and grown up in, a dysfunctional, emotionally repressive, Spiritually hostile environment - we cannot get clearly in touch with the level of emotional energy that is Truth. We cannot get clearly in touch with and reconnected to our Spiritual Self.

We, each and every one of us, has an inner channel to Truth, an inner channel to the Great Spirit. But that inner channel is blocked up with repressed emotional energy, and with twisted, distorted attitudes and false beliefs."

"It can be relatively easy to access Love and Joy in relationship with nature. It is in our relationships with other people that it gets messy. That is because we learned how to relate to other people in childhood from wounded people who learned how to relate to other people in their childhood. In our core relationship with ourselves we don't feel Lovable. That can make it very difficult to connect with other people in a clean and energetically clear way that helps us to access Love from the Source instead of viewing the other person as the source. We are so defended, because of the pain we have experienced, that we are not open to connecting with others. If we haven't done the grief work from the past we are not open to feeling our feelings in the moment. As long as we are blocking the pain and anger and fear, we are also blocking the Love and Joy. The more we heal our emotional wounds and change our intellectual programming the more capacity we have to be in the moment and tune into the Love within.

I will discuss further in the next column in this series, how to differentiate between looking outside for the source and combining our energy with some outside influence to help us access the Source within."

The True Nature of Love-Part III, Love as a Vibrational Frequency

(If you have not already read part 3 you may wish to do so before reading part 4 - all internal links in this column/web page will open in a new browser window so that you can read them and then be back at this column when you collapse the window.)

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As I say in the quote above from the last column in this series, relating to nature is easy - relating to other people is messy. That is because we did not learn how to have a healthy relationship with ourselves in early childhood. We have to clear up our relationship with our self in order to see our self clearly before we can start to see our relationship to other humans clearly.

And I want to make a point right at the beginning of this article that this is a gradual process of finding a sense of balance - not an absolute destination. The language I have to use to describe this multi-leveled, multi-faceted growth process is very limiting.

"Unfortunately, in sharing this information I am forced to use language that is polarized - that is black and white.

When I say that you cannot Truly Love others unless you Love yourself - that does not mean that you have to completely Love yourself first before you can start to Love others. The way the process works is that every time we learn to Love and accept ourselves a little tiny bit more, we also gain the capacity to Love and accept others a little tiny bit more.

When I say that you cannot start to access intuitive Truth until you clear out your inner channel - I am not saying that you have to complete your healing process before you can start getting messages. You can start getting messages as soon as you are willing to start listening. The more you heal the clearer the messages become."

So, with that qualification about the limitations of language, I am now going to try to communicate as clearly as possible how clearing our relationship with ourselves can help us to be energetically clear in our relationship with other people and with life.

Many of the expressions that are in common usage in the language of human interrelationship are incredibly accurate on multiple levels. One such expression is 'giving your power away.' If we are not clear in our relationship with self, if we are reacting to the definitions of self that we learned in childhood, then we are giving power away both literally and figuratively on multiple levels.

The level that most people are not aware of, and that is important for the focus of this column, is energetically. When we give power away to other people because our relationship with self is dysfunctional, we actually allow cords of energy to tie us to those people. These cords (ribbons, cables, tethers, threads, strands) of energy exist on the Etheric plane - which is where the Life Force energy runs through the chakra system.

We can literally be drained of our Life Force by these dysfunctional connections to other people. All of us learned to allow ourselves to both be drained of Life Force by others as well as to steal Life Force energy from others to survive.

We need to steal Life Force energy from others because we are blocked from clearly accessing our own Life Force energy by our dysfunctional relationship with self. Because our inner channel is not clear. In clearing up our inner channel to tune into the higher vibrational emotional energy of Light, Love, Joy, and Truth, we are also accessing our own Life Force energy. (The Life Force energy and the vibrational range of Light, Love, Joy, Truth, and Beauty are not the same thing but they are intimately interrelated.)

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So, when I talk about giving our power away on an energetic level, it is an actual drain of energy, of power. Our codependence/ego defense system is set up to help us survive by trying to keep us from being drained of power at the same time it tries to steal energy from outside sources. Since we cannot clearly access the Source energy we have available to us to within, we look externally for sources of power and energy.

Codependency is outer or external dependence. We are dependent on outer or external sources to feed us the energy we need to survive. We make people, places, and things and/or money, property and prestige the Higher Power that we look to as the source of our energy, our power.

We are attached to those things literally on an energetic level by the cords of energy that are created on the Etheric plane due to the relationship between the bodies of our being that exist on that plane - which includes our mental and emotional bodies.

(I am now going to use a quote from my Trilogy, and again a little later in this column a continuation of this quote as well as a quote from another article, that are part of my Joy2MeU Journal and are only available to subscribers of that Journal. I apologize for that to all of you that are not subscribers. This is not an attempt to get you to subscribe - although it would certainly be OK if you decided to do that - it is just the best way I can find to facilitate communicating what I am attempting to communicate here. For those of you who are not subscribers, there is plenty of material on this web site to focus on that will help you clear up your relationship with your self without having to understand the more metaphysical aspects of this life experience. In fact, many people focus on the metaphysical aspects as a way of avoiding doing the emotional healing - so sometimes it is best not get to caught up in the metaphysical.)

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"The holographic illusion which is the Physical plane is composed of multiple levels of illusions. The most basic illusion within the Physical plane is that substance and separation exist. They do not. Everything in the physical universe is composed of energy. This energy interacts to form energy fields. These energy fields interact according to energy patterns to form other energy fields, which in turn interact according to energy patterns to form other energy fields, which in turn interact....etc., etc. The interaction of the One energy produces energy fields on the sub-subatomic level. These energy fields interact to produce subatomic energy fields, which in turn combine/interact to produce the energy field that we call the atom. (Remember energy fields are formed by energy vortex interaction, and atoms are are little bundles of swirling energy.) These atoms interact/combine to form the energy field that is the molecule. Molecular energy fields interact to form every type of substance/matter which humans perceive.

All energy fields are temporary effects of energy vortex interaction. (Temporary is a relative term. Physicists measure the lifetime of some subatomic particles/energy fields in quintillionths of a seconds, while the planet Earth has existed for billions of years - both are temporary.) The energy patterns which govern these interactions are also energy fields in and of themselves. For example - the individual human mind is an energy field, but it is also an energy pattern that governs the flow of communications between a humans' Spiritual being and physical being, and within the seven bodies which make up the humans' being. (The seven bodies and the mind will be discussed later. Note that attitudes in the mind can block the flow of communication from the Soul because the mind is an energy pattern.)

Each energy field vibrates at certain frequencies, and is interrelated and interdependent with all other energy fields. Each letter in this sentence is an energy field composed of energy fields vibrating at certain frequencies, each combination of letters that forms a word, each combination of words that forms a sentence, etc., etc., etc. (Millions of atoms can go into making up a single letter - aren't you glad you asked.) Each word, each concept, each idea, is an energy field interacting according to energy patterns that are energy fields.

(Get the point? The bottom line is that nothing is what it appears to be. You are made up of the same subatomic, atomic, and molecular energy as the chair you are sitting in and the air you are breathing. Just bring to consciousness for a moment the fact that your physical body vehicle is composed of an uncountable number of energy fields interacting according to energy patterns. Just to imagine the number of energy fields interacting within your physical body at this moment is overwhelming. Now think of the number of energy fields and energy patterns that come into play when dealing with something outside of yourself, and then of course there is your emotional body and your mental body, etc. - and you wonder why relationships are so hard.)

The Dance of the Wounded Souls Trilogy
Book 1 - "In The Beginning . . ." History of the Universe Part V

The fact that the mind is an energy field that is also an energy pattern of interaction is very important to realize. Communication from within (both internally between different parts of our being and from our spirit/Soul/Higher Power) and without - stimulation from our environment and everything/everyone in it - flows through the energy field that is the mind to our being.

Our experiential reality is determined by the interpretations of our mind - by the intellectual paradigm which we are using to define / determine / translate / explain our reality. The attitudes, definitions, and belief systems which we hold mentally dictate our emotional reactions. Attitudes, definitions, and beliefs determine perspective and expectation - which in turn dictates our relationships. Our relationships to our self, to life, to other people, to The God-Force / Goddess Energy / Great Spirit. Our relationships to our own emotions, bodies, gender, etc., are dictated by the attitudes, definitions, and beliefs that we are holding mentally / intellectually. And we acquired those mental constructs / ideas / concepts in early childhood from the emotional experiences, intellectual teachings, and role modeling of the beings around us. If we have not done our emotional healing so that we can get in touch with our subconscious intellectual programming then we are still reacting to that early childhood programming / intellectual paradigm even though we may not be aware of it consciously.

"The Truth is that the intellectual value systems, the attitudes, that we use in deciding whatís right and wrong were not ours in the first place. We accepted on a subconscious and emotional level the values that were imposed on us as children. Even if we throw out those attitudes and beliefs intellectually as adults, they still dictate our emotional reactions. Even if, especially if, we live our lives rebelling against them. By going to either extreme - accepting them without question or rejecting them without consideration - we are giving power away."

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"It was impossible to start Loving myself and trusting myself, impossible to start finding some peace within, until I started to change my perspective of, and my definitions of, who I was and what emotions it was okay for me to feel.

Enlarging my perspective means changing my definitions, the definitions that were imposed on me as a child about who I am and how to do this life business. In Recovery it has been necessary to change my definitions of, and my perspective of, almost everything. That was the only way that it was possible to start learning how to Love myself.

I spent most of my life feeling like I was being punished because I was taught that God was punishing and that I was unworthy and deserved to be punished. I had thrown out those beliefs about God and life on a conscious, intellectual level in my late teens - but in Recovery I was horrified to discover that I was still reacting to life emotionally based on those beliefs.

I realized that my perspective of life was being determined by beliefs that I had been taught as a child even though they were not what I believed as an adult."

I went home to do some writing and was pretty amazed at what it revealed. I realized that I was still reacting to life out of the religious programming of my childhood - even though I had thrown out that belief system on a conscious, intellectual level in my late teens and early twenties. The writing that I did that night helped me to recognize that my emotional programming was dictating my relationship with life even though it was not what I consciously believed.

I realized that the belief that "life was about sin and punishment and I was a sinner who deserved to be punished" was running my life. When I felt ìbadî or ìbadî things happened to me - I tried to blame it on others to keep from realizing how much I was hating myself for being flawed and defective, a sinner. When I felt good or good things happened I was holding my breath because I knew it would be taken away because I didn't deserve it. Often when things got too good I would sabotage it because I couldn't stand the suspense of waiting for god to take it away - which "he" would because I didn't deserve it.

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I could suddenly see that I had been playing a game, with that punishing god I learned about in childhood, for all of my adult life. I tried not to show that I enjoyed or valued anything too much so that maybe god wouldn't notice and take it away. In other words, I could never relax and be in the moment in Joy or peace because the moment I showed that I was enjoying life god would step in to punish me.

We cannot get clearly in touch with the subconscious programming without doing the grief work. The subconscious intellectual programming is tied to the emotional wounds we suffered and many years of suppressing those feelings has also buried the attitudes, definitions, and beliefs that are connected to those emotional wounds. It is possible to get intellectually aware of some of them through such tools as hypnosis, or having a therapist or psychic or energy healer tell us they are there - but we cannot really understand how much power they carry without feeling the emotional context - and cannot change them without reducing the emotional charge / releasing the emotional energy tied to them. Knowing they are there will not make them go away.

A good example of how this work is a man that I worked with some years ago. He came to me in emotional agony because his wife was leaving him. He was adamant that he did not want a divorce and kept saying how much he loved his wife and how he could not stand to lose his family (he had a daughter about 4.) I told him the first day he came in that the pain he was suffering did not really have that much to do with his wife and present situation - but was rooted in some attitude from his childhood. But that did not mean anything to him on a practical level, on a level of being able to let go of the attitude that was causing him so much pain. It was only while doing his childhood grief work that he got in touch with the pain of his parents divorce when he was 10 years old. In the midst of doing that grief work the memory of promising himself that he would never get a divorce, and cause his child the kind of pain he was experiencing, surfaced. Once he had gotten in touch with, and released, the emotional charge connected to the idea of divorce, he was able to look at his present situation more clearly. Then he could see that the marriage had never been a good one - that he had sacrificed himself and his own needs from the beginning to comply with his dream / concept of what a marriage should be. He could then see that staying in the marriage was not serving him or his daughter. Once he got past the promise he made to himself in childhood, he was able to let go of his wife and start building a solid relationship with his daughter based on the reality of today instead of the grief of the past.

It was the idea / concept of his wife, of marriage, that he had been unable to let go of - not the actual person. By changing his intellectual concept / belief, he was able to get clear on what the reality of the situation was and sever the emotional energy chains / cords that bound him to the situation and to his wife. He was then able to let go of giving away power over his self-esteem (part of his self-esteem was based on keeping his promise to himself) to a situation / person that he could not control. He gained the wisdom / clarity to discern the difference between what he had some power to change and what he needed to accept. He could not change his wife's determination to get a divorce but he could change his attitude toward that divorce - once he changed the subconscious emotional programming connected to the concept.

It is letting go of the dream, the idea / concept, of the relationship that causes the most grief in every relationship break up that I have ever worked with. We give power and energy to the mental construct of what we want the relationship to be and cannot even begin to see the situation and the other person clearly.

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Far too often - because of the concept of toxic / addictive love we are taught in this society - it is the idea of the other person that we fall in love with, not the actual person. It is so important to us to cast someone in the role of Prince or Princess that we focus on who we want them to be - not on who they really are. In our relationship with our self, we attach so much importance to getting the relationship that we are dishonest with ourselves - and with the other person - in order to manifest the dream / concept of relationship that will fix us / make our life worthwhile. Then we end up feeling like a victim when the other person does not turn out to be the person we wanted.

"A white knight is not going to come charging up to rescue us from the dragon. A princess is not going to kiss us and turn us from a frog into a prince. The Prince and the Princess and the Dragon are all within us. It is not about someone outside of us rescuing us. It is also not about some dragon outside of us blocking our path. As long as we are looking outside to become whole we are setting ourselves up to be victims. As long as we are looking outside for the villain we are buying into the belief that we are the victim".

"As little kids we were victims and we need to heal those wounds. But as adults we are volunteers - victims only of our disease. The people in our lives are actors and actresses whom we cast in the roles that would recreate the childhood dynamics of abuse and abandonment, betrayal and deprivation."

The attitude / dream / concept that has all the power is internal - it is not really about the other person. All of our emotional responses to life are based upon an internal relationship with our own intellectual paradigm / belief system / definitions. Other people are actually actors that we cast in the roles of the movie that we are projecting from our own mind. The foundation for what kind of movie we are making was laid in childhood due to our emotional wounds. If we want to change the quality of the movie, we need to get to the subconscious attitudes by grieving / clearing the emotional energy. Then we can change the music we are dancing to in our relationship with life and with other people. Now, you have probably noticed that I have shifted from the metaphysical level back down to the practical level here - I am sorry if this is confusing. It can be difficult to speak about multiple levels simultaneously, but I find it necessary because it is so important to actually do the healing and not just get caught up in the intellectual gymnastics of trying to figure it all out.

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The real point that I am trying to make here is that the healing process is an inside job. No one outside of you can drain you of energy, or exert power over you, unless it fits into the intellectual paradigm that your emotional wounds have set you up for. The cords / chains / threads of energy that connect us to other people connect us because of our beliefs. By changing the beliefs we can disconnect from the unhealthy linkage we have to other people. We can then learn how to connect energetically in ways that are healthy and Loving - We can learn the difference between healthy interdependence (which involves giving some power away over our feelings) and codependence.

"Codependence and interdependence are two very different dynamics".

"Codependence is about giving away power over our self-esteem Interdependence is about making allies, forming partnerships. It is about forming connections with other beings. Interdependence means that we give someone else some power over our welfare and our feelings".

"Anytime we care about somebody or something we give away some power over our feelings. It is impossible to Love without giving away some power. When we choose to Love someone (or thing - a pet, a car, anything) we are giving them the power to make us happy - we cannot do that without also giving them the power to hurt us or cause us to feel angry or scared".

"In order to live we need to be interdependent. We cannot participate in life without giving away some power over our feelings and our welfare. I am not talking here just about people. If we put money in a bank we are giving some power over our feelings and welfare to that bank. If we have a car we have a dependence on it and will have feelings if it something happens to it. If we live in society we have to be interdependent to some extent and give some power away. The key is to be conscious in our choices and own responsibility for the consequences".

"The way to healthy interdependence is to be able to see things clearly - to see people, situations, life dynamics and most of all ourselves clearly. If we are not working on healing our childhood wounds and changing our childhood programming then we cannot begin to see ourselves clearly let alone anything else in life".

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Codependence vs. Interdependence

We can have healthy ties / threads / cords of energy connecting us to other people but only by learning to see ourselves clearly. As long as our self definition is enmeshed with other people's attitudes and behaviors, we are incapable of making True choices about our own best interests. Until we start seeing ourselves clearly, we will continue to be energetically drawn to people who will recreate our childhood emotional wounds.

Our emotions tell us who we are - our Soul communicates with us through emotional energy vibrations. Truth is an emotional energy vibrational communication from our Soul on the Spiritual Plane to our being/spirit/soul on this physical plane - it is something that we feel in our heart/our gut, something that resonates within us.

Our problem has been that because of our unhealed childhood wounds it has been very difficult to tell the difference between an intuitive emotional Truth and the emotional truth that comes from our childhood wounds. When one of our buttons is pushed and we react out of the insecure, scared little kid inside of us (or the angry/rage filled kid, or the powerless/helpless kid, etc.) then we are reacting to what our emotional truth was when we were 5 or 9 or 14 - not to what is happening now. Since we have been doing that all of our lives, we learned not to trust our emotional reactions (and got the message not to trust them in a variety of ways when we were kids.)

We are attracted to people that feel familiar on an energetic level - which means (until we start clearing our emotional process) people that emotionally / vibrationally feel like our parents did when we were very little kids. At a certain point in my process I realized that if I met a woman who felt like my soul mate, that the chances were pretty huge that she was one more unavailable woman that fit my pattern of being attracted to someone who would reinforce the message that I wasn't good enough, that I was unlovable. Until we start releasing the hurt, sadness, rage, shame, terror - the emotional grief energy - from our childhoods we will keep having dysfunctional relationships.

Feeling the Feelings

It does not make any difference what our conscious intellectual beliefs are as long as we are reacting energetically to old programming. That is why it is so vital to do the emotional healing. In order to clear our emotional body of the repressed emotional energy so that we can change the intellectual paradigm that is embedded in our mental body / mind, it is necessary to do the emotional healing. All of the intellectual knowledge of Spiritual Truth and healthy relationship behavior that we can acquire will not significantly transform the behavioral patterns that are being driven by the subconscious programming. We cannot heal our fear of intimacy so that we can open up to receiving Love without feeling the feelings.

This grieving is not an intellectual process. Changing our false and dysfunctional attitudes is vital to the process; enlarging our intellectual perspective is absolutely necessary to the process, but doing these things does not release the energy - it does not heal the wounds.

Learning what healthy behavior is will allow us to be healthier in the relationships that do not mean much to us; intellectually knowing Spiritual Truth will allow us to be more Loving some of the time; but in the relationships that mean the most to us, with the people we care the most about, when our "buttons are pushed" we will watch ourselves saying things we don't want to say and reacting in ways that we don't want to react - because we are powerless to change the behavior patterns without dealing with the emotional wounds.

We cannot integrate Spiritual Truth or intellectual knowledge of healthy behavior into our experience of life in a substantial way without honoring and respecting the emotions. We cannot consistently incorporate healthy behavior into day to day life without being emotionally honest with ourselves. We cannot get rid of our shame and overcome our fear of emotional intimacy without going through the feelings.

Walking around saying "We are all one," and "God is Love," and "I forgive them all," does not release the energy. Using crystals, or white light, or being born again does not heal the wounds, and does not fundamentally alter the behaviors.

We are all ONE and God is LOVE; crystals do have power and white light is a very valuable tool, but we need to not confuse the intellectual with the emotional (forgiving someone intellectually does not make the energy of anger and pain disappear) - and to not kid ourselves that using the tools allows us to avoid the process.

There is no quick fix! Understanding the process does not replace going through it! There is no magic pill, there is no magic book, there is no guru or channeled entity that can make it possible to avoid the journey within, the journey through the feelings.

No one outside of Self (True, Spiritual Self) is going to magically heal us.

There is not going to be some alien E.T. landing in a spaceship singing, "Turn on your heart light," who is going to magically heal us all.

"The only one who can turn on your heart light is you."

And, of course, the way we turn on our heart light is to tune into the energy, the power, of the Transcendent emotional energy of Love, Light, Joy, Truth, and Beauty. We need to open up to receiving Love - and we cannot do that without changing our relationship with the child who we were.

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"It is necessary to own and honor the child who we were in order to Love the person we are. And the only way to do that is to own that child's experiences, honor that child's feelings, and release the emotional grief energy that we are still carrying around." * "A "state of Grace" is the condition of being Loved unconditionally by our Creator without having to earn that Love. We are Loved unconditionally by the Great Spirit. What we need to do is to learn to accept that state of Grace.

The way we do that is to change the attitudes and beliefs within us that tell us that we are not Lovable. And we cannot do that without going through the black hole. The black hole that we need to surrender to traveling through is the black hole of our grief. The journey within - through our feelings - is the journey to knowing that we are Loved, that we are Lovable."

The healing process is an inside job.

The relationship I need to heal is between me and me. Everything in my lesson plan / life experience is there for me to learn from so that I can heal my relationship with me. All the people who play a significant role in my life are teachers reflecting back to me some aspect of my relationship with my self - with my humanity, with my emotions, with my sexuality, with whatever - that needs healing. Through healing my relationship with me I am owning and honoring my connection to everything.

There is nothing wrong with who we are - it is our relationship to our self that is so messed up. We are all Spiritual Beings having a human experience. We all have Divine worth as children of The Source. We are all perfect parts of The Source. In our relationship with ourselves on this level we need to learn to open up to receiving the Love that is our True state of being - that is why we are here. To heal so that we can reconnect with Love.

I am going to have to put off talking about the details of energetic clarity in relationship and "how to differentiate between looking outside for the source and combining our energy with some outside influence to help us access the Source within" until my next column (this one is getting too long) in order to to make one point very clearly here. It was impossible for me to start to get clear energetically in my relationships with others and life until I started to have boundaries that told me where I ended and other people began. As long as I believed that I was responsible for other people's feelings and behavior I could not start seeing myself clearly. As long as I was looking to other people for the juice / energy / power to feel OK about myself, I was set up to be a victim and recreate the old patterns.

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This is The big paradigm shift. Shifting our intellectual paradigm - our attitudes, definitions, and beliefs - is necessary in order to raise our consciousness and open up to consciously accessing the Transcendent vibrational energy of Love, Light, Joy, and Truth. I had to stop looking outside for the answers and start accessing the Truth within. Only when I started to open up to the idea that perhaps, maybe, I was Lovable and worthy in a way that was not dependent on outside or external conditions, could I start to let go of defining myself in reaction to other people and other peoples belief systems.

In order to get clear on how to connect to others in a healthy way we must first realize and define how we are separate from others. On the level of our physical being, our ego-self, we are separate and need to own that before we can open up to consciously experiencing how we are connected to everyone and everything. We need to see our relationship with ourselves clearly in order to see our relationships to others clearly.

One of the things that I had to get clear on in order to start learning who I am was selfishness. I had been taught that it was bad to be selfish and that I should do things for others. I learned to steal energy from others through what I was telling myself were unselfish acts. I was just being a "nice guy" and did not expect anything in return - Bull. I always had expectations - I just was not being honest with myself about them - because I had been trained and conditioned in childhood to be dishonest with myself emotionally and intellectually.

I had to come to a realization that there is no such thing as an unselfish act. If I rescue a stranger from a burning car wreck, it does not have anything to do with the stranger - it has to do with my relationship with myself. I believe that every thing a human being does has a pay off - and it was a very important part of my growth process to start looking for those pay offs. I had to learn to get honest with myself and stop buying into the illusion that anything I did was for some one else. I had to stop looking outside for the energy boost I got from doing something nice so that I could own that the energy boost came internally.

The power / energy / juice that we need comes from within - not from outside. People, places, and things can sometimes help us to access the power that is within us - but they are not the source of that power. The source is within!

It has always come from within - we were just trained to look outside for it because of the reversity of the planets energy field of emotional consciousness has caused human beings to do human backwards. Codependence is a disease of reversed focus - looking externally for that which is available within us.

"Codependence is also a disease of reversed focus - it is about focusing outside of ourselves for self-definition and self-worth. That sets us up to be a victim. We have worth because we are Spiritual Beings not because of how much money or success we have - or how we look or how smart we are. When self-worth is determined by looking our-side it means we have to look down on someone else to feel good about ourselves - this is the cause of bigotry, racism, class structure, and Jerry Springer.

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The goal is to focus on who we really are - get in touch with the Light and Love within us and then radiate that our-ward. I think that is what Mother Theresa did - I can't know for sure because I never met her and it can be difficult to tell looking from the outside where a persons focus is - Mother Theresa could have been a raging codependent who was doing good on the outside in order to feel good about herself - or she could have been being True to her Self by accessing the Love and Light within and reflecting outward. Either way the effect was that she did some great things - the difference would have been how she felt about herself at the deepest levels of her being - because it does not make any real difference how much validation we get from our-side if we are not Loving ourselves. If I did not start working on knowing that I had worth as a Spiritual Being - that there is a Higher Power that Loves me - it would never have made any real difference how many people told me I was wonderful."

The relationship I need to heal is between me and me. Everything in my lesson plan / life experience is there for me to learn from so that I can heal my relationship with me (which will heal the Karma I need to settle.) All the people who play a significant role in my life are teachers reflecting back to me some aspect of my relationship with my self - with my humanity, with my emotions, with my sexuality, with whatever - that needs healing. Through healing my relationship with me I am owning and honoring my connection to everything.

There is nothing wrong with who we are - it is our relationship to our self that is messed up. We are all Spiritual Beings having a human experience. We all have Divine worth as children of The Source. We are all perfect parts of The Source. In our relationship with ourselves on this level we need to learn to open up to receiving / accessing the Love that is our True state of being - that is why we are here. To heal so that we can reconnect with Love.

We can have healthy ties / threads / cords of energy connecting us to other people but only by learning to see ourselves clearly. As long as our self definition is enmeshed with other people's attitudes and behaviors, we are incapable of making True choices about our own best interests. Until we start seeing ourselves clearly, we will continue to be energetically drawn to people who will recreate our childhood emotional wounds.

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Both the classic codependent patterns and the classic counter dependent patterns are behavioral defenses, strategies, design to protect us from the devastating pain and debilitating shame of being abandoned because we are flawed, because we are not good enough, not worthy and lovable. One tries to protect against abandonment by avoiding confrontation and pleasing the other - while the second tries to avoid abandonment by pretending we don't need anyone else. Both are dysfunctional and dishonest.

Joy2MeU Journal - article The Defensive Dance - Codependent & Counter Dependent Behavior

On an energetic level, abandonment means getting unplugged from our energy source. Abandonment feels life-threatening because the cords that bind us to other people, and feed us Life Force energy, gets unplugged and we do not know how to access that energy for ourselves. That is why it is so important to learn to plug in internally, access the Transcendent emotional energy of Love, Light, Joy, and Truth that is available to us within.

It is very important for us to learn to let go of our unhealthy attachments to other people and outside sources so that we can access the power from the Source that is available within. Learning how to define ourselves as separate, how to have boundaries that tell us who we are as individuals, is a vital step in starting to see ourselves with more clarity so that we can see others and life with more clarity.

And once again here, I want to make the point that clarity with our self is not an absolute destination. This healing is a gradual process of finding a sense of balance - a sense of what clarity feels like, so that we can look for and recognize when we have it and when we do not. In order to do that it is vital to learn how to be emotionally honest with ourselves so that we can be discerning in our relationship with our own mental and emotional process. Through that honesty we will achieve some energetic clarity as well.

Through that energetic clarity we will be able to access Love from the Source - and we will learn to Love and trust our Self to guide our self through this boarding school that is life as a human.

next: Mother's Day

Who YOU are being makes a difference in your relationship. It affects who your partner is and how they respond to you. If how they respond to you causes you stress, discomfort, etc., it may be wise to make some new choices about who you are being in the relationship. It may be the cause of why they are being the way they are.

When we make adjustments in the way we are being with our love partner, over time they begin to give the appearance of changing; sometimes for the worse, but generally for the better. This is so because as our behavior changes our attitudes about them also changes. We begin to see them as someone who is doing the best they can (or know how) and we become more loving toward them.

So if your intention is to change your partner. . . give it up! It won't happen. What can happen is a more loving relationship when YOU are being the change agent for your own attitudes and behavior. What have you got to lose?

 

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next: Getting Your Needs Met MUST Be a HIGH Priority

"Tastefully written, Red Hot LoveNotes for Lovers is specific, practical, often poetic and rich with creative ideas and inspirational insights."

Dr. John Gray, Ph.D., Author
Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus & Mars and Venus in the Bedroom

 

Red Hot LoveNotes for Lovers is dedicated to love partners who are deeply committed to the idea of passionate monogamy, fidelity and having lots of fun together in the bedroom! This book will help you learn the art of creative sexual expression, openly and fully, with words and deeds. It will assist you in having better, more frequent, loving sex with 100% pleasure and 0% guilt. Red Hot LoveNotes for Lovers will help you create the freedom to seek the highest possible expression of sexual love. It unlocks the secrets of physical pleasure.Each time you visit this page, you can "sneak a peek" between the covers of Red Hot LoveNotes for Lovers!

Red Hot LoveNote. . . Making love can be like a tonic to your relationship. Instead of the toxicities that withholding your love and affection can bring, making love can liberate you from that awful state. Making love assists in the process of building trust. You feel much safer to relate with your lover on a higher level. When you "let go" of all of the stuff that keeps you from being close, it brightens your spirit; you feel more alive. Life is too short to be so short-sighted. When you communicate at the higher level of making love, you can feel free to discuss your mutual needs without fear that someone will step on your words. You actually begin to feel younger; you feel rejuvenated. It's like a breath of fresh air. You begin to grow together. . . not apart. Be assertive. Focus more carefully on fulfilling the needs of your love partner, without giving up yourself, and your needs will have a much better chance of survival. Remember, we create our own reality. Make love. Not war! Celebrate your love for each other. . . tonight!

Copyright © MCMXCVIII - Larry James.
From the book "Red Hot LoveNotes for Lovers."

 

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next: Keynotes and Seminars

Affirmative Guidelines For A Healthy Love Relationship

(As seen on ABC TV's "The View" with Barbara Walters)

"How to Really Love the One You're With" is a revealing and personally empowering look at self-liberating insights that will assist you in achieving a healthy love relationship anchored in unconditional love. Its' wisdom will inspire you to deeper levels of self-acceptance and understanding. These words of love will benefit anyone; married or single; whether couples already in a committed relationship or singles who may be in search of a healthy love relationship.

Larry James has transformed words of love into a message of hope that offers encouragement, inspiration and the opportunity for enlightenment in relationships. He presents a priceless treasury of inspiring and insightful thoughts, ideas, indispensable guidelines and reflections on how to really love the one you're with. 312 pages.

"How to Really Love the One You're With" is Larry's best selling book and is an "easy-read" with 57 topics on the most important areas of love relationships, including:

• achieving unconditional love, commitment, forgiveness, acceptance, support, creating space between partners, saying "No" to the past, becoming friends and lovers, communications, the importance of truly listening to what your partner really says, planned activities together, making love, looking out for #1, trust, maturity in relationships, resolving conflict, knowing what turns you on and many more.

Several topics deal with preparing yourself for love if you have recently come from a relationship as a result of death, divorce or separation. Enjoy reading a few excerpts that can be found in the Relationship Articles MENU before you buy the book!

Included with each topic are quotations (281 in all) from various relationship experts about the importance of healthy love relationships as they relate to that topic. Larry calls them "LoveNotes." You will love 'em!

"Larry James speaks from the heart. His words carefully craft a message of hope that inspires couples to work together in a spirit of love and understanding. The powerful effect of his work in the area of relationships can change your life!"

Jack Canfield, Bestselling Co-author
Chicken Soup for the Soul series

Here are some very special tips and suggestions about "How to Get the Most From Reading a Relationship Book."

If your favorite local book store is sold out or to have this book personally signed by the author for yourself or someone you love call: 800-725-9223

next: Red Hot LoveNotes for Lovers

Evidence is mounting that manic depressive illness (Bipolar Disorder), a major public health problem affecting one percent of the population, stems from multiple genes. Scientists have pinpointed new sites on 5 chromosomes that may contain the thus far elusive genes that predispose for the illness, also known as bipolar affective disorder. Patients experience recurrent mood and energy swings and face a 20% risk of death by suicide if untreated. Three independent research teams, two supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), report on the genetic linkages in the April 1st issue of Nature Genetics.

"While still provisional, these studies taken together signal real progress," said Steven Hyman, M.D., newly appointed Director of NIMH. "Science is now beginning to deliver on the promise that modern molecular genetics holds for the mentally ill."

One of the NIMH-funded studies found evidence for bipolar disorder susceptibility genes on chromosomes 6, 13 and 15 in a large Old Order Amish pedigree, consisting of 17 interrelated families affected by the illness. The findings suggest a complex mode of inheritance, similar to that seen in diseases like diabetes and hypertension, rather than a single dominant gene, say the principal investigators, Edward Ginns, M.D., Ph.D., NIMH; Steven M. Paul, M.D., NIMH and Lilly Research Laboratories; and Janice Egeland, Ph.D., University of Miami.

"An individual's risk for developing bipolar disorder probably increases with each susceptibility gene carried," said Dr. Ginns, chief of the NIMH Clinical Neuroscience Branch. "Inheriting just one of the genes is probably not sufficient." Moreover, different genes account for the illness in different families, complicating the task of finding and replicating linkages across populations. "To boost the odds of detection, we have traced the transmission of the illness over several generations in a few genetically isolated large families, thus limiting the number of possible genes involved and increasing each gene's effect," explained Dr. Paul, who was NIMH Scientific Director before becoming head of central nervous system research at Lilly.

Bipolar disorder and other related mood disorders occur at an unusually high rate among the Amish families studied. Yet, the Old Order Amish community as a whole has the same prevalence of psychiatric illness as other populations, noted Janice Egeland, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Miami Department of Psychiatry and Project Director of the Amish Study, funded by NIMH over the past two decades. All of the bipolar affected members analyzed can trace their ancestry back to a mid-18th Century pioneer family suffering with the illness. The families studied also have a relatively narrow spectrum of affective disorders, with bipolar being the predominant diagnosis. Family members were rigorously diagnosed by clinicians unaware of family relationships and genetic marker status.

In the latest phase of the study, the researchers employed sophisticated gene mapping and other advanced methodologies in the screening of human chromosomes, which included 551 DNA markers in 207 individuals. Exhaustive analyses carried out by Jurg Ott, Ph.D., and colleagues at Columbia University, employing multiple models of genetic transmission, yielded evidence for linkage of bipolar disorder to DNA markers on chromosomes 6, 13, and 15. The research group also includes investigators at Yale University, The Human Genome Research Center (Evry, France) and Genome Therapeutics Corporation.

Drs. Ginns and Paul propose that bipolar affective disorder is caused by the variable effects of multiple genes, probably including more than were suggested in their study. They hypothesize that an individual's particular mix of such genes determines the various features of the illness: age-of-onset, type of symptoms, severity and course. Dr. Egeland and her colleagues are continuing to identify additional members of the Amish kinships and are closely monitoring children at risk for developing the illness. Testing of additional DNA markers in the identified chromosomal regions is in progress as investigators attempt to close in more precisely on the illness-causing genes. Although the same genes responsible for bipolar affective disorder among the Amish may also transmit the illness in other populations, it is likely that additional sets of susceptibility genes are also involved.

Two families from Costa Rica's Central Valley were the focus of a second NIMH-supported study in the same journal. Like the Amish pedigree, they come from a community that has remained genetically isolated, and which can trace its lineage back to a small number of founders in the 16th to 18th Centuries. Also as in the Amish study, the investigators, led by Nelson Freimer, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, employed a large number of chromosomal markers, 475, to screen for possible gene locations. Among bipolar affected individuals, a new region on the long arm of chromosome 18 was implicated.

In a third study, Dr. Douglas Blackwood of Edinburgh University and colleagues, using l93 DNA markers, traced vulnerability to the illness to a region of chromosome 4 in a large Scottish family with a 10-fold higher than normal rate of bipolar disorder. They then found the same association for the chromosome 4 marker in bipolar affected individuals in 11 other Scottish families.

"Scientists agree that individuals with a genetic predisposition do not invariably develop bipolar disorder," noted NIMH Acting Scientific Director Sue Swedo, M.D. "Environmental factors can also play a role in determining how genes are expressed and cause illness." Moreover, other major affective disorders typically occur in the same families who have bipolar disorder. One's risk for developing major depression, bipolar, or schizoaffective disorder rises to 50-74% if both parents have an affective disorder and one has bipolar disorder. There is also evidence that desirable traits, such as creativity, may occur along with bipolar illness. Scientists are hopeful that identification of genes -- and the brain proteins they code for -- will make it possible to develop better treatments and preventive interventions targeted at the underlying illness process.

As part of its genetics initiative on bipolar disorder, the NIMH is promoting the identification of, and sharing data from, well-diagnosed families among research groups. Members of families interested in participating in genetics research should contact NIMH Public Inquiries (5600 Fishers Ln., Rm 7C-02, Rockville, MD 20857) for information.

Source: National Institute of Mental Health

next: Life Events and Bipolar Disorder (Preliminary Findings)
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