Ways to improve your lifestyle

Are you looking at ways to improve your lifestyle? Are you bored in your current role of employment? Do you think you could be achieving a lot more than you are at the moment? Are you seeking a new challenge? In this article, I give advice on how people can go about improving their lifestyle, this advice is based from my own personal experiences. I believe that we should always be looking into ways of expanding our knowledge and should never just accept second best. The brain is very powerful and loves to be set a new challenge or to a learn a new task. It is what keeps it alive and ticking over. I am sure that we have all heard of the phrase, I think this job is making me brain dead. This is where someone has a role in employment that is not challenging them or their brain, and this can lead them into a state of boredom and even depression. Their mind and brains are desperate for something to get to grips with and something to test them. I am always looking into finding new areas of life which I can learn about. Just recently I have been attempting to educate myself on the ins and outs of website promotion. This is something which is of great interest to me and I wanted to find out about how you can increase the amount of visitors you have to a website. I have spent a great deal of time studying this area and even though I feel that I have learnt a great deal, I would love to know a lot more. What I like about website promotion and website marketing is that the search engines are constantly changing their ideas of how best to rank a site, as they are fighting a constant battle against spam. This certainly keeps me on my toes. One thing I have learnt in this and other fields is that hard work pays off and if you attempt to defraud the search engines you are more than likely going to be found out. That is a good thing in my opinion. I also like to help out people on a voluntary basis. This is something I would advise other people to do if they have the spare time as it can give you a real buzz knowing that you are helping somebody and it also keeps you busy. A lot of people who have too much time on their hands can easily find themselves becoming restless and this can lead them into thinking too much. These thoughts are normally worrying about something or other which of course is not very healthy or productive. The people I help out on a voluntary basis are my parents who run a form of animal sanctuary from their home. My parents are both in the sixties and struggle to look after the many animals that live with them. I normally spend around twenty hours a week at their house, cleaning out and feeding the fifty rabbits, walking the dogs and feeding the cats. It is not exactly the most interesting of things to do, but I know that it is helping take some of the burden away from my mother and father. In the past I have also attended evening study classes. This again is where I am trying to improve my knowledge and is something of course that I can include on my c. v. It is also a great way of meeting new people which is something I like to do. In conclusion there are many ways in which we can become happier and more contented. Our life does not have to be boring and mundane, there is always options out there of how we can go about improving our lifestyle. Good luck.

Controlling behavior loving behavior

When Zack and Tiffany started counseling with me, they were on the verge of divorce after 16 years of marriage. Neither really wanted to end the marriage, yet both were miserable. Both of them believed that their misery was because of the other person, and both could clearly articulate what the other person was doing wrong. “Tiffany is just so distant and unaffectionate most of the time, and when we are together she is so critical of me. I can’t seem to do anything right in her eyes. I try really hard to please her, but no matter what I do, it’s not good enough.” “I just can’t seem to connect with Zack. He’s a really nice guy but I just can’t feel anything with him. I feel irritated with him a lot and I don’t really know why. He just annoys me. I feel like he’s always wanting something from me and I just don’t like being around him. And he’s so darn nice! What’s wrong with me that I don’t like someone being so nice?” I could see immediately that the underlying problem in this relationship was that both Zack and Tiffany were stuck in various forms of controlling behavior, yet neither of them were consciously trying to control. Zack was a caretaker. He tried to control by being a “nice guy” and doing everything he thought Tiffany wanted, including making dinner every night, doing the laundry, and doing most of the child-care, even though both of them worked. He secretly believed that if he was nice enough, he could have control over Tiffany loving him and being turned on to him. What he didn’t realize is that his niceness was really a “pull” on Tiffany, which is one reason she kept her distance. Underneath, Zack had a big fear of rejection and was trying to have control over Tiffany not rejecting him. Tiffany was trying to control Zack primarily with her criticism. She was critical any time she felt Zack wanting something from her to make him feel safe and loved. She had a secret hope that if she criticized him enough, he would stop pulling on her for affection, sex and attention. Unconsciously, Tiffany had a huge fear of enfulfment, and was trying to protect herself from being engulfed and controlled by Zack. In addition, Tiffany could not experience who Zack was because he was putting himself aside to please her. She could not connect with him until he was authentically himself. Everything Zack did to protect against rejection tapped into Tiffany’s fear of engulfment, while everything Tiffany did to protect against engulfment tapped into Zack’s fear of rejection. The more Zack pulled with niceness, the more Tiffany moved away, and the more Tiffany moved away, the more Zack pulled. What was the way out of this protective circle? Both Zack and Tiffany needed to learn how to take loving care of themselves, rather than attempt to control the other. Zack needed to learn how to not take Tiffany’s behavior as a personal rejection. He needed to see that her withdrawal was coming from her fear of engulfment that he was tapping into, but he was not the cause of her fear. She had this fear way before meeting him. Zack also needed to start to be loving to himself rather than “nice” to Tiffany. He needed to learn to take responsibility for his own feelings of well-being instead of being dependent upon Tiffany for them. In learning to take care of himself, he would naturally stop pulling on Tiffany for his sense of worth and security. Tiffany needed to learn to speak her truth without blaming or judging. Instead of withdrawing and criticizing, she needed to stand up for herself and set loving limits with Zack in order to move beyond her fear of engulfment. She needed to learn to say things like, “Zack, I appreciate the dinner you made, but I feel like you made it with an expectation that I should now love you, rather than because you felt like making dinner. I’d rather that you not make dinner unless you are doing it because you really want to and without an expectation attached. I feel pulled on and it doesn’t feel good.” Zack and Tiffany decided that it was worth learning how to be loving to themselves and then see what happened with their marriage. Fortunately, because both of them were devoted to learning to take full, 100% responsibility for their own feelings and needs, they were able to move out of their protective, controlling circle and into a loving circle. As they learned to take responsibility for themselves, their love for each other gradually returned.