Taking control: Peace comes with the renewing the mind!

A butterfly was a worm before! Renewing your mind is
allowing  total transformation! 

The ultimate goal of any person is attaining sustainable peace with self, family, community and the world at large. Renewing the mind is finding a sustainable strategy to understand peace and its functional role, which directly contributes to ideal relationships, health and wealth.

Peace defined!

Peace is the emotional state wherein a human being experiences love of self – acceptance of who you are. It pertains to acknowledging the Creator and His creation; thus embracing others and non-human inhabitants of planet earth. Peace therefore starts with individual being and become evident in social interaction with others. Harmonious environment supports ideal health because strife leads to stress which is the source of various illnesses. Since peace is the byproduct of unconditional love, it is key ingredient in maintaining lasting relationships. It also supports economical prosperity by enabling individuals to access available resources; thus generating social harmony between national and international exchange of goods and services.

The concept of renewing the mind!

Mankind is a spirit being because he is created in the likeness of his Creator. The spirit self is characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. A human being has a soul; the part that consists of the mind, will and emotions. The physical man has carnal nature which is characterized by sensual tendencies that seeks own pleasure and often contribute to social strife. The soul being a middle man could therefore be aligned to the spirit self and displays the positive characteristics or to the flesh and manifest in negative behavior.  For the soul to permanently pursue positive nature a person must make a conscious effort to renew his or mind.

Why renewing the mind is beneficial!

Renewing the mind is learning and adopting full responsibility of embracing peace through unconditional acceptance of self and others. According to medical studies, we suffer from various form of illness due to stress, and lifestyle diseases. For example cancer results from prolonged emotional pain, wrong eating and other harmful habits like abuse of substance. On the other hand when a person adopts a positive attitude towards life, illness could be reversed gradually.  When a person changes his/her thoughts, words and action from negative to positive, meaning disallowing negativity, the body is able to heal itself. The function of the mind is to sensors all thoughts. Any recurring thought is regarded as important regardless of whether it is negative or positive. A renewed mind is able to:

1.   Think positively: You consciously abandon destructive thoughts.

2.   Feel and maintain peace: You seek spiritual enlightenment wherein peace is your ultimate goal.

3.   Act with to manifest love: Absence of strife allows you to feel love and distribute it through loving self and others unconditionally.

4.   Receive with open mind: Change from seeing weakness to choosing to see strength in self and others; thus allowing growth to abound.

A renewed mind is one that is trained to align to the spirit self.  The result is harmony between mankind and the environment which is conducive to longevity and prosperity. When your thoughts, words and actions are aligned to that of the Creator, wisdom and peace abounds.

Taking control: Should wives ignore violation of marriage vows!

Marriage is a process of establishing a special trust between two people who have been attracted to each other and progressed through dating to the point of joining two families into a lifetime relationship. The two individuals declare loyalty and full access to each other physically, socially, financially and emotionally.

Marriage vows may not contain all binding words; but they cause deep
emotional wounds when they are violated...!

Living the marriage vows!

The vows could be repeated after the presiding officer or be special words of love, trust and commitment to each other from the heart. Depending on how the couple wants to impress each other, the list could be long and specific. Words reveal thoughts and feelings and marriage is usually a well planned social occasion which brings other people into the relationship.  Honeymoon is not a starting point because the environment is overcharged with emotions and novelty of the couple merging their future dreams. The true picture of a relationship takes off at a place called home. Here each party struggle to get used to being legally accountable to someone. How? Both explains thoughts, actions and feelings; and jointly plan a day schedule. After work each one gives a summary of work activities and whether it was generally a good day or not! This is an ideal version and routine life of newly-weds.

As they discover each other’s flaws and white marriage gets tainted, this routine behavior changes.  The first sign of deterioration is emotional withdrawal. Few months into the marriage, the couple experience longer period of silence and forgetfulness regarding daily activities and assigned chores. At this point often a lady is pondering about the ‘vows’ which brought tears of joy to both parents and friends!  For the first time a lady seeks a real meaning of ‘…to have and honor her …for good and for worse….’  Wow!  What exactly was the meaning of these vows? Should she ignore these memory lapses or should she correct the behavior assertively? There is a belief that nothing will happen to you that you do not allow. If this is true, it is best to express concern for unexplained errands which left her not knowing how to plan ideal intimate time, entertainment and even planning a family!

Reality check on maintaining marriage vows!

A vow is binding and it is more so when done in the presence of parents and many witnesses. The reality is that it is hard for a person who has been free from parents’ supervision for most of adult life to start having to account to someone else.  It is more so when pre-marital counselling was not in the picture.  The minimum of six sessions over a period of six months is meant to provide real life situations in a safe environment and to cover essential subjects which parents and friends often overlook:

1.    Childhood emotional health: Have you successfully exited into adulthood? This refers to ability to walk away from childhood emotional hurts and consciously choose to cut loose from such anchors.

2.    Accountability: Clear communication should be established before marriage.  Communication enables you to know the needs of your spouse and how you could meet them. When you withhold some information about your activities or plans, you are ruining that trust which bound you together.

3.    Excuses are disguised lies:  Excuses do not exonerate you from your responsibility to give and have full attention to your marriage. They leave you guilty and wanting in integrity.    

4.    Unexplained errands punch holes in a relationship: Communicating your thoughts, actions, feelings and future plans cement the relationship and establish strong foundations upon which to raise children. Marriage equation with space in it is untrue because the same behavior would not be acceptable when tables are turned.

Marriage vows should not just be exaggerated words; they should be carefully selected because words are indestructible. You need to see them as projecting what you believe in and will stand by when you consider walking away.  Wives should not ignore violation of vows; they are signs that all is not well. It is always better to know where you stand rather than being delusional about your future! 

Taking control: Have you learned to be vulnerable to your partner?

Just allow one person to have access to your being! Expose your fears and your most personal needs and let love abound!

As a social being, you are vulnerable to your environment, which instills both good and bad practices and beliefs throughout your life.  The same vulnerability is critical in a romantic relationship to enable your uniqueness to offer deep and unconditional affection for another person.

Vulnerability defined!

Vulnerability is being exposed to hurt physically, emotionally or manipulated by those who have power over material or non-material goods and services by denying permission to access them.  In relationships, vulnerability denotes allowing another person a full access to your being and private space; thus denying ego to protect you in moments of weakness or covering undesirable behavior or withholding information you regard as private or confidential.

Why you have to learn to be vulnerable to you partner!

Allowing yourself to be vulnerable denotes you are willing to unreservedly give yourself to your partner so that love could abound. According to John Browlby, the theme of the Theory of Attachment is availability and responsiveness to personal needs as between parent and child; and between romantic partners.  For you to know whether you have allowed yourself to be vulnerable to your partner, you have to recall whether your partner knows both your weaknesses and strengths. If you have withheld certain information because you felt it will disrobe you of the current image you have projected, it means you have allowed your ego to maintain your false image.  The following will assist you in evaluating your willingness to be vulnerable to your partner:

1.    You have subtle fear to disclose your fears and weakness: You may recall situations when you avoided an opportunity to talk about yourself especially with regard to issues where you made mistakes. I do not advocate for staying in your unpleasant past; but your past could shed some light on how you made poor choices. Remember that you cannot change what you have not acknowledged as needing change.

2.    Responsiveness of your partner to unpleasant you: Would it not be helpful to know the scope of your partner’s capacity to accept you for who you are? Life is composed of both good and bad experiences; and it would be helpful to know that your partner will carry your burden when you are physically and emotionally incapacitated. It is also important to note that secrets tend to create gaps which ultimately attract mistrust and withholding of affection.  Such holes  are not conducive to building lasting relationship because even though one does not have concrete prove of these internal cognitive processes, a person have a way of ‘knowing’ that the relationship is not based on trust.

3.    Overcoming fixation on emotional wounds: Conscious disclosure of weaknesses denotes that you have matured and believe in yourself. It is trusting on your strength which is accepting and living in the power of positive energy. Willful omission of weaknesses on the other hand is motivated by fear which is a negative energy. Such poor response to your weaknesses can only widen the gap more instead of bringing you closer to your partner. 

The benefit of being vulnerable to each other is building love on trust. Love thrives when you disclose emotional issues into the open so that they have no hold on you. If your partner is mature, she/he will also disrobe ego stuff so that both of you could be vulnerable to each other.  Both will respect and deeply honor each other and willingly be supportive to bring the best out of each other. That is what ideal relationship is about!

Taking control: How to accelerate your starting over goals!

Starting over goal is a well thought and clear statement of purpose that articulates what you want to achieve after you failed the first time.  They are regarded as ‘new’ because a person has objectively evaluated the core reason for failure and therefore wiser.

A well thought goal motivates you to reach it!

How to successfully accelerate any of your starting over goals!  

All negative thoughts are foggy because they lack consciousness of what is real and are often motivated by the ego’s attempts to cover up flaws.  Failed relationships cause social stigma to self and members of the families.  For instance, a broken relationship often carry misconceptions of why and who contributed to failure. So, it is prudent to take time in the planning of what you want to achieve in starting over goals:

1.    Develop a plan of action:  Of the three categories that define optimal life – relationships, wealth and health – which is a priority?  To make this experience as real as possible, you need to answer this question as objectively as you can and write down key points. Find a template of what SMART goals are and do your best to articulate yours. Break your goal into sub-goals in order that your work plan can have timeline. For an example, if I want to start a transcribing home business, the most important core skill is typing.  Would I be able to have internet connection at home so that I can work anytime and access other helpful resources like the best software and tutorials to learn new skills?

2.    Make your goal a commitment that binds you and override any other activities: Start over goal is like repeating a class; your aim should be to succeed regardless of challenges. In other words, you must ban any excuse against meeting your weekly timeline. For an example, if you have to do something during the week which caused you not to meet your weekly target, you must be prepared to cancel other activities over the weekend so that you can start the next week as scheduled. This is called integrity; which means adding value to your commitment even when no one is looking.

3.    Change the way you think: All things started as an idea and the previous one failed because you did or did not do something. Make sure that you take full responsibility to pass this time like it is with a determined student. Let no one participate in your goal to a point where you could be tempted to delegate major tasks. For example, if you allow other people to help you, it does not shift the responsibility to them; their role is to assist and not take over.

4.    Create conducive environment and evaluate weekly targets: You need positive energy. Maintain a positive emotional state by starting and ending the day with meditation. It has been proved that meditation is a conscious effort to recharge your spiritual and physical self with much needed positive energy. Focus on the end result of the identified goal. Ban procrastination, which comes in many disguises such as watching useless television programs or engaging in non-essential activities like reading promotion mails in your inbox.  Manage your time and keep track of challenges and achievements. Celebrate your small achievements; they are important components of your goal.

Multi-tasks have a tendency to validate reasons why you failed to meet timeline. If this is your first start over goal pertaining to any are of your life, consider dropping other distractions so that any time after the day job, is reserved for the identified goal.  Sub-goals help you ‘see’ the distance between the start point and the finish line. Once you attain one goal, your motivation and confidence will energize you to set another one; thus transforming your perception from being a failure to an achiever!