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!

Taking control: Beware of over-thinking your vision!

Be alert for opportunities because only when you
 seek will you find your life purpose! 

Thinking is a cognitive function which enables a person to perceive, analyse and understand the environment especially in decision making. Overthinking is prolonging this process; thus making it impossible to have satisfactory answers for the matter at hand.

What constitutes a well thought vision? 
A well thought vision is one that informs a logical framework towards the desired goal.  A personal goal is an established and specific need that portrays a person’s life purpose. It is an intense desire that energises a person to pool and direct all resources towards its fulfilment. This is where overthinking could be your enemy because you need to keep focus of the end result and not seek details of HOW you would avail all resources and undertake all steps.  A well-thought vision is illustrated as follows:

1.    What do I want to achieve in my life? The answer could be; I want to run an English medium pre-schools in all ten District of Lesotho.

2.    Why do I want preschools? To impact education system positively by improving the level of English standard during the formative years of children development. The intention is to create a sub-group that appreciates and embraces basic Internet skills and speak and write English as a first language in order to access a global job markets.

3.    Foreseeable positive impact:  A well thought vision has some form of evaluation to measure return on investment.  In this illustration it would be a high proficiency in English and exposure in Internet technology leading to higher grades in these subjects. 

Consequences of over-thinking your vision!

Over-thinking the above given example would be attempting to have step-by-step implementation and management plan which may not be possible because of external factors. Yes, I do have a clear but not conclusive idea of what I want and how it will run. The over-thinking of non-technical vision is likely to create challenges than solutions. Over thinking is likely to enlarge minor obstacles because every time I do not have satisfied details of how I would undertake a certain task or have access to adequate resources, it would take a heavy toll on my motivation. The more I analyse the required resources details, the less likely of getting started at a lower level with readily available resources.

What to do to overcome over-thinking my vision!

Overthinking is a learnt behaviour; it is a form of procrastination when it pertains to non-technical matter and therefore can be unlearnt through affirmation and other behaviour change modification techniques as follows:

1.    Learn to access your inner voice: Bypass you logic to maintain a focus of the ultimate goal. Your vision is always bigger than your own resources. You need others to perform tasks you cannot do!

2.    Think out-side the box: Apply faith that your vision is given and you need to rely on the knowing that, what you want shall come to pass by improving your knowledge base and building a team of people equipped with skills you do not have. Take action on planned activities daily. Look at this long-term assignment like when you take a journey: You may not have all details of the route, but you ask for confirmation of direction along the way to your destination.  Your daily concerted efforts are like your car head-lights; they enable you to see short distance in front but will direct each mile to your destination.

This man banned overthinking...actions
 speaks louder than words!

3.    Think and take actions: Prolonged thinking without action will inflict fear as you elaborate on what you do not know or how far you are from acquiring adequate resources. Your vision may be abandoned and remain a good idea. Believe in yourself and take actions!

4.   Ban the fear of failure: Being anxious is a process of accumulating negative energy. All good inventions came through lots of failures; success came through perseverance. Failures are stepping stones that gives you an opportunity to tune up your reactive attitude to proactive approach.

Thinking is a silent talking; it is a conceiving and birthing phase of all man-made ideas. Thinking enables you to weigh the benefits of investing your personal resources – intellect, time, money and other resources - for your personal intrinsic satisfaction.  Over-thinking for non-technical vision leads to destruction of your vision by creating a reason to postpone a take-off date. Just imagine how you will feel when you look back at your life and see nothing of significance because of over-thinking! 

Taking control: Just for today, I choose to think about my health!

You are what you eat!  Do learn what is suitable for your body!

Healthy body is one that enables you to achieve your identified goals. Your body is so build in a manner that unless is extremely abused, will take you to highest level of physical and spiritual fulfillment. It is your responsibility therefore to know what constitutes a healthy body.

Healthy body concept defined!

You are what you eat! This sums up the importance of food throughout your developmental

stages.  In our era, a lot of food is modified and that contributes to other avoidable health conditions.  Your body benefits more from mother- nature’s produce. Organic food has higher energy and the body knows what to do with it when it touches your tongue and the rest of the digestive system. Your body is mainly composed of water and certain level must be maintained to hydrate your vital organs. Healthy body is one that is active. Your skeletal and muscles are not designed to be idle or stay more than thirty minutes in seated position; you will soon develop some form of pains. This means you have to get up from your desk to stretch your legs every hour. Elimination is also a very important function which your mother learned during your infancy and you must diligently takeover that responsibility to learn which food support that function. Sleep is a natural inbuilt mechanism that ensures that you retire and replenish energy level for the next day.  Sleep deprivation contributes to a host of mental illnesses.  Learn to prepare your body to retire by not engaging in environment that arouses stress like watching action movies, arguments and eating sweet foods. Entertainment is also a vital part of good health management because laughter is therapeutic and produces hormones that automatically deal with your stress levels and get rid of ailments that would otherwise contribute to a host of mental illnesses.

Your body is designed to protect itself.
Your responsibility is to support the system!

Why you need to think about your health!

Very few people have scheduled medical check-ups. Most of us visit medical centers only when the body is crying out loud for urgent attention and must respond to ease the pains. The starting point is empowerment on health subjects including those that you hardly read about such as immune system and how it works; hormones and their role in keeping your vital organs such as reproductive system, mental health and skeletal health functioning. I mention these because very few of us understand how our bodies function and how to look after these so that we can feel and look good. Brief outline of some health area that you need to learn and practice for optimum health are as follows:

1.    Dental health: The mouth need a lot of attention when cleaning but most of us spend the shortest time to clean all 32 teeth. The result is bad teeth which could lead to serious condition called periodontitis, gums disease which is a leading cause of tooth loss in adults. Poor nutrition especially lack of calcium, vitamin C and D compromise the bone structure and supporting tissue. According to studies, untreated periodontitis disease could lead to ailing heart.

2.    Mental health: Ideally it would be good to age and still remember your children and friends; but diet without Omega 3 for an example, could lead to dementia and other debilitating conditions.  Since it is impossible to eat all foods that are required regularly, it is best to supplement your diet under professional guidance.

3.    Reproductive health: Most parents are not empowered to guide their children in this subject. Often they do what their parents taught them. For example, teen boys learn from men’s magazine how to select appropriate under-wears and to avoid other practices like hot bath to protect their prostate health. What about those who have no access to such basic knowledge! They experience the consequences which deprive them of optimum reproductive health. Young girls need a lot of information on how to clean themselves and refrain from other harmful cultural practices. Birth control subject is also a matter of concern, which girls often read about or learn from other risky sources.

Health subject is wide and should be obtained from appropriate authorities. Just for today, note health areas that need your urgent attention:  Do you eat right? How healthy are your teeth? How much do you know about anti-aging lifestyle and how it could enable you to age gracefully? Delayed attention could cost you financially or seriously impact on the quality of your life. Think about this!

  

Taking control: As you think in your heart, so you shall be!

Your thoughts create your world! You winning is dependent on the nature of your thoughts....!

The thinking action is a complex cognitive function associated with the interpretation of the messages from the environment through all ports of senses. It could be a conscious or unconscious processing of past or present pictures, words or unobservable messages. It could be projection of desired future necessary to make decision on your relationships, wealth and health.

Explaining the concept of thinking ‘in your heart’!

Mankind is a spirit being with a soul, living in a body. A soul is therefore a middleman that depends on the level of spiritual enlightenment in influencing your thoughts, words and actions.  Spiritually, thinking is a function of your soul – mind, emotion and will – which inherently could be influenced by intellectual analysis we call logic, or spiritual discernment of the spiritual unobservable environment. The latter is regarded as accurate because in the spirit realm you wisdom is predominantly high; the inner unobservable and powerful self is connected to your Higher Source otherwise called God or your Creator. Thinking is an inbuilt mechanism that enables you to interpret your environment and make sense of activities that affect you.

 

Thoughts create your reality!

Religious literature informs us that mankind is created in the likeness of the Creator and therefore mankind has ability to create. The mind is creative tool which creates whatever emerges and stays in it with intensity. This means whatever thought you allow to recur is regarded as important and will surely come to pass; whether good or bad! This explains why we experience good and bad things we think about relating to other people.  It also explains why the Creator says we must love others as ourselves and should not let the sun go down without forgiving those who trespassed against us.  This clearly is not logical because if you hang on anger because someone grieved you, it would be for just cause.  Your Creator who knows how your body functions commands you to love unconditionally for your own good health and general prosperity.  You may not control bad thoughts, but you can repel them when they come because you know that allowing them will attract similar thoughts, people and circumstances.

Thoughts that support optimal life in your heart!

Your heart is associated with your spiritual self and the fruit of your spirit are listed in the Bible (Galatians 5:22-23 ): “²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” These are indicators of goodness and positive thinking which inherently attract holistic wellness. The key is exercising self-control even though logically you feel you have been wronged. This then means that every person is responsible for creating good health, attracting ideal partners and wealth by simply deciding to comply with the Creator’s antidote for optimum life.

How to generate thoughts that support optimum life!

You have power to create your life! Wow! This fact must real motivate you to decide to take control of your optimum life!  The reality is that, we live with people who think it is their nature to hurt others with their words and actions because they were told that they inherited the genes of their cruel ancestors. Since you can only control your thoughts, words and actions; the ball is in your court! The first step is to empower yourself with this truth and then make decision to create a great life for yourself.  The following practices could help you to transform your life:

1.    Be grateful for what you have: Gratitude is a byproduct of love and is expressing positive thoughts about all things – small and great - you have.

2.    Listen to your feelings: Sometimes you are not sure what you feel; simplify the condition by classifying feelings as either good or bad. Feeling okay is therefore not good, and falls under bad feelings.

3.    Make hard decisions: Do not compromise on bad company. If your friend is not in tune with your new efforts of maintaining positive thoughts and environment, choose to walk away for your own good!

4.    Be creative: Switching your feelings of hurt from your parents, siblings and others depends on your ability to let them go and replace them with thoughts or activity such as singing, watching comedy and prayer!

5.    Practice the law of love: Love yourself enough so that you would not let anyone or thing to steal your joy and peace. Unconditional love means not allowing yourself to dwell on hurtful memories about a person for your own good!

Your mind is a very important tool that makes you an honorable being which distinguishes you from lower inhabitants of planet earth. You create your world with your thoughts; and your feelings help you to know whether you are practicing the law of love or not. Maintaining supportive thoughts for your optimum life is your major responsibility, which transcend the grave. Your daily efforts can transform your life and others when you maintain the Creator’s specification of optimum life.

Taking control: How to analyze the need to start over your new life!

Mankind is a social being; therefore finding someone to walk with is ideal! Nonetheless do not be afraid to start over when there is no solution  to disharmony!

Starting over is a core principle of change and cuts across major subjects, affects social groups,  is necessary for career prospects and personal growth endeavors in general. It occurs out of scrutiny and need to improve spiritually and or socially. It is a life changing decision.

Introspection phase of starting over!

Almost all people take time to make decision to start over a new life because such a decision needs a clear mind.  There is a lot of self-talk; mostly struggling with the cost of losing support from parents and or your children. This is normal because a subconscious mind dislike change. All archived information and experiences that create the kind of a person you have become form a sort of environment that you mind will tolerate and create defense mechanism to maintain the existing conditions. The following include basic questions you are likely to ask yourself when contemplating to leave the toxic relationship to start over a new life:

·        Am I satisfied or happy with life? That question will lead you nowhere because it is too broad!  So, it is best to categorize life in three components that make life complete; relationships, health and wealth. Life changing decisions require specific answer like this; Am I satisfied with this relationship? The answer is ‘yes I am satisfied and happy; or no, I need to start over elsewhere!’  The answers respond to relationship which might have caused you depression or high-blood pressure or loss of a house you purchased together and failed to pay because one of the partners breached the terms of the commitment.

·        Do I have power to change the existing unpleasant situation? If you thinking you could change yourself to bring a positive energy into the relationship without being delusional; you can get started working on you to bring that perceived change.  Note that if change must be from your partner as well, you have no power to change him or her. In principle, if you cannot change your behavior to make the situation better, your option is to remove yourself from the situation.

·        Am I prepared to face new challenges in starting over?  Weighing the consequences of starting over requires clarity of the mind so that you could review your perception of your current beliefs and values. To be objective about this exercise, take a pen and paper and write down your reasons why you need to start over and what you expect that would achieve:

1.    Revised perception about the type of relationship you want for you to know you have started over.

2.    Are you being reactive or you are truly responding to a situation that requires you to take responsibility over your life! Be clear about this: Fear or and anger will always cloud your reasoning and focus; and are likely to cause you to react to challenges from a weak position. Response on the other hand will allow you to express your emotion with control and therefore not derail you from your identified concerns or what you want to achieve.

3.    Starting over could give you an opportunity to expand your scope of solving your challenges and face your own emotional anchors. 

4.    You decide to start over because:

a)   You realize that you are not able to change the way you live and have no room to grow and achieve your identified goals.

b)   You would rather be anywhere than where you are currently.

c)    You believe in your reasoning that you deserve better than what you are receiving.

d)   You know that you can produce better results with renewed thinking and strategies.

e)   You trust in your inner voice; that knowing that gives you peace to move forward.

f)    You know that if you have failed because of unbelief and other hurdles from your partner’s side, you want to proof to yourself that you are capable and want to remove the blame you attached to external factors.

g)   You are the only one who knows what you want and cannot make progress with the current partner who is oblivious of your vision.  

We all learn from our mistakes; starting over therefore is a normal route to try again. This is one of those decisions you want to take without pressure from anyone.  You need to make this as logical as possible because it is indeed a life changing step. The fear of unknown is normal; however, staying at crossroads with regrets for unfulfilled goals is shooting yourself on the foot. Taking time in this phase of internalizing your thoughts and feelings is highly recommended so that you know without doubt that starting over is your only solution for the current situation!

Taking control: How to tame your tongue!

The scars of socialization include experiences of  parents
arguing and sending mixed messages about
effective communication!

A tongue is a very active anatomy which works closely with your brain to communicate your thoughts and feelings to self, with others and about your perception of the world. Your tongue reveals who you are – your strengths and weaknesses.

Why you must tame your tongue!

You can make the world a better place or drive its inhabitants to destruction through your tongue. You must therefore tame your tongue because in all spiritual books, the Creator clearly indicates that He will judge you according to what you said.  The most important fact about the tongue is that is a tool of creation. Mankind is a spirit being created in the likeness of the Creator who created all things though His word. He spoke all things into existence. Mankind is therefore a creator with his thoughts and words too – positive thoughts and words create good things and negative thoughts and words create bad things. Note how the scripture in James 3:6 describes the untamed tongue:  “And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell.” 

How to tame your tongue!

Some spiritually aware people are able to control their tongue by applying helpful principles in the Bible including Psalm 111:10; “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” The Creator’s only law – the law of love – says whatever good or bad you think about or say to others will revert to you! This is a natural law which does not discriminate and applies to everybody all the time. The Creator said we must love Him and others. When you apply love as directed, you will not have any problem with your tongue because:

1.    Your motivating factor is love which is a positive emotion and comes from having positive thoughts. Love generates and brings to life that similarity which mankind has with his Creator.

2.    You learn to banish negative thoughts by being conscious of what you are thinking and choosing to pay attention to positive thoughts only. Things you talk about are products of your thoughts, so the key is renewing your mind so that your tongue could be a projector of your spiritual self, which is created in the likeness and the image of the Creator. At this realm, your tongue builds and does not destroy people. It encourages those who have emotional wounds and releases those who are in bondage of anger because of their socialization issues. The Bible in Proverbs 4:23 encourage you to watch over your heart with all diligence so that you can consciously choose to be the source of blessings to others.

3.    You can choose to engage in personal behavioral change communication strategies such as thirty days abstinence of negative thoughts and words: Commending to gossip conversations; not watching or reading negative news, books and movies; not allowing any negative thought to dwell in your mind or progressing to become a spoken word.

4.    Write the names of the people you know - your sisters and brothers, members of your family, colleagues and the public authorities; and as you do so, listen to your feelings. Feelings are in-build mechanisms that give you accurate feedback of the nature of your thoughts. You either feel good or bad about yourself, others and things!

The outcome of the tamed tongue!

There is a great power in tamed tongue: First you affect people positively and your circle of influence will grow significantly. The power of creation in your thoughts and words speed up the manifestation of the miraculous experiences because everything you think and speak out with emotions produces results. Secondly you regain your control over your own life because as you speak positively to others and avoid blaming, lying, or getting angry and engaging in other negative thoughts and words, you attract good things – people, circumstance and experiences - to occur in your life and will positively impact on your relationships, wealth and health. When that happens, you become a point of reference; you are in the process of spiritual enlightenment. You reflect the nature of the Creator because evidently you create good things in your life. You become prosperous!

Taming your tongue is a necessary exercise in every person’s life. Untamed tongue could easily destroy you; stripping off your self-worth and connection with people you care about. Untamed tongue is the byproduct of the mind on auto-pilot mode; it surprises even the owner! Do take a moment and assess if you are making efforts to control your tongue. The power of the untamed tongue is never neutral; it causes either life or death!