Marriage and Relationship Problems: How To Fix Your Marriage

Most people get married for the wrong reasons; it’s as simple as that. Given that, it shouldn’t be a surprise that most marriages are not the blissful unions most young girls hope for and dream about. And, since most marriages are not bastions of happiness and harmony, it certainly stands to reason that something was missing from the beginning. Think about the married people you know. The happy couples are few and far between; and many of them are actually faking-it in order to uphold their illusion of perfection. The fact is that most marriages end in divorce and/or unhappiness. To fix your marriage, you’ll need to get back to basics and start with the fundamentals of any good relationship.

Start with being honest with yourself. Would you want to be married to you; or are you simply seeking a mate to fulfill your own personal ideal of what “your” marriage should be? The fact is that, while anyone could learn to be a good partner, most people are not taught these skills in life – and are probably too lazy or unmotivated to learn them. Western culture and society essentially programs people to be selfish and self-centered; if you want a good relationship, you are going to have to cure yourself of this – and then find someone else who has overcome or avoided this personality pitfall. Relationships are give-and-take affairs – with an emphasis on “giving.”

The next fundamental relationship saver is: Effective communication. You need to learn how to talk to each other and communicate your true agenda. If you don’t share common goals in a relationship, you’re not going to be blissfully happy; and, if you don’t communicate effectively, you won’t know what your goals truly are. Strong relationships require a lot of attention and focus. You need to have an incentive to drag your attention away from sports, video games, the Internet, talk shows and shopping in order to shun the unimportant for what is truly valuable in life. Again, Western culture and technology has a hypnotic grasp on most people and monopolizes their time and attention. In order to have a strong relationship, you must give the Lion’s share of your focus to your partner. You cannot communicate effectively when you’re wrapped-up in the typical life – but you can live a typical, mundane, unfulfilling life that way.

There is an old saying that tells us that the best thing we can do with our human lives is to give them away. Selflessness and sacrifice are truly keys to peace and happiness. In a relationship, however, both partners need to practice these skills. If only one person cares about their partner’s desires and the health of the relationship, then you have one practicing being selfish while the other practices victim-hood. An easy place to start is by making a conscious effort to be kind and gracious always. Don’t judge each other for shortcomings or failure to master this new approach; but give them a good example of kindness and unconditional love. Trust me when I say that this practice mostly benefits the one who uses it. You may not be able to manipulate your partner into being nicer – and that isn’t the point – but you will certainly receive countless benefits as the practice of unconditional, unwavering niceness becomes a part of you and your life.

With Honesty, Communication, and Selflessness, you can heal your relationship – with yourself as well as with a willing partner. If you don’t have a willing partner, don’t feel bad – feel happy that you discovered this as early as you did so you don’t have to fight against unyielding disappointment and sadness. Your life is valuable; you are valuable. These things should not be wasted playing into another’s self-pity and selfishness. If you can master these relationship skills, you’ll be better equipped to choose a better partner and build a better, stronger relationship next time around. Either way, you can have a much happier relationship if you take the time to learn what kind of relationship you want and how to get it, create it and maintain it.

The Cookie Diet: Why Not; And What’s Next?

Surprise, surprise – a new diet! Cookies and weight loss? I’m certainly not knocking it; after all, I did write an article called, “The Dunkin’ Donuts Diet.” Can you lose weight eating cookies? Of course you can. Do diet plans really work? Of course they do. Every diet plan works for some people; but no diet plan works for everyone. And that should tell you something about the true nature of weight loss. Not surprisingly, experts have said that the cookie diet is another bad idea. But, honestly, what do experts really know about anything? Just like the rest of us, they know what they’ve been told – and a very small percentage of that is even remotely close to the truth. If experts knew so much, they would have already solved all of our problems, now wouldn’t they?

Experts shun the cookie diet because it is lacking in fresh produce, etc. Pay attention, experts: There are many places in the world that lack fresh produce and always have. Humans are famous for adapting; we can eat anything and thrive. As long as the Earth has been populated by humans, we’ve been putting things in our mouths to determine if we like the experience or not – not to determine if it is a part of a well-balanced diet. Humans are survivors. Humans are vehicles for experience. “Experts,” on the other hand, are people who paid good money for answers and cling tightly to the information they were given – if they didn’t, it wouldn’t be valuable. Every diet plan is created by some kind of expert; and every diet plan is opposed by some other kind of expert. Experts are a dime-a-dozen. Don’t you wish cookies were as affordable?

There is a simple truth about life and all diets seem to ignore it. Life is for living – not for worrying about what you’re eating. Imagine ancient humans who were happy to find anything to eat – not neurotic about eating enough servings of this or that. Think about animals, for example. Cows are made of meat, bone, muscle, fat, etc – just like humans. Yet cows make those delicious steaks out of grass and water, air and sunshine. Elephants and Gorillas are very similar; they are very large and are vegetarians. And look at dogs; they’ll eat whatever you give them. It’s pretty easy to find those elements in practically anything we eat. How our bodies shape those elements, however, is a matter of psychology. Interestingly, dogs typically won’t be overweight unless their owner is. Hmmm… Humans are made primarily of Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen and Carbon; and we’re formed around some energetic or informational design. We’re made of the same basic elements of most every living thing; but we take on a different shape. I submit to you that our shape is not so much determined by what we take in as what we take in is determined by our shape – psychologically, that is. In other words, it’s not what we’re eating, it’s what’s eating us that makes us fat.

Stressful thoughts and beliefs cause the release of stress hormones that slow our digestion and convert undigested food into fat for storage. Coincidentally, stressful thoughts create uncomfortable feelings most of us soothe by eating food for distraction. Medicine is famous for interchangeably using the concepts of “causation” and “correlation.” Food isn’t causing us to be fat; stress causes us to eat AND it also causes our bodies to produce fat. Stress is the enemy – not food. This is the reason diets are famous for not working. All diets will cause the body to burn off some excess fat; but, if there is no change in our thoughts and beliefs, our body will take the first opportunity to restore the status quo – with a little extra protection this time. Ancient scholars, philosophers and holy men alike, told us that we are the products of our thoughts and that the health of our bodies is determined by the health of our mind and thoughts. Learning to be happy is essential to good health.

So eat those cookies. Eat donuts. Eat whatever you want. But first, get a life and get a grip on your thoughts and emotions. If you do, you’ll find you don’t have as much time or desire to eat. But, if you don’t get a grip on your mental life, you’ll probably find that you have a knack for turning even diet food into fat. A cookie diet? Why not? It certainly isn’t any more or less ridiculous than any other diet plan. But, whether you believe it or not, what you do with your mind, thoughts and life will determine if and how long you maintain any success or results you may experience. The cookie diet will work if you believe it will and allow it to. But no diet will work if you don’t change your mind and thoughts — the mind and thoughts that created the stress that created the fat in the first place. And that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.

The Belief Formula on PonderCentral.com: "You Must Believe!"

PONDER on THIS for Friday, October 9th, 2009 by Pete Koerner in THE BELIEF FORMULA

“Our knowledge is not complete, so it is not reliable. When we place our faith in the unreliable, we train ourselves to be faithless. We come to believe, in fact, that failure and disappointment are natural parts of our existence, so we accept them and then we expect them to show up in our lives. We cannot always make our desires real with sheer force and effort, so we lose the ability to believe in those desires. It is our desires that comprise our prayers; and a belief in prayer is the only way to make prayer work effectively. You must believe in your desires in order to achieve them. To do this, you must turn to methods that allow you to believe in the reality that you wish to create. You must believe.”

Pete Koerner, in “The Belief Formula”

*Special Thanks to Jeff Maziarek, author of Spirituality Simplified and Codi’s Journey, for posting this excerpt from The Belief Formula on his site: www.PonderCentral.com!

For more information on Jeff Maziarek and his work, check out: www.SpiritSimple.com and www.CodiPup.com .

Prayer: Questions and Answers about Prayer

Everyone knows something about prayer – whether they realize it or not. Even if you don’t use the word, “prayer,” the concept is an inescapable part of your daily life. Some people think they know how to pray and some think they don’t; but most people have only the understanding of prayer they were given as children. And that’s not a very clear – or deep – understanding of what prayer really is. Here are some of the more common questions and misconceptions I hear regarding prayer – along with some answers that might help you find a more useful or practical understanding of our spiritual nature and what and who we truly are.

Q. Do you have to be religious to pray?

A. Absolutely not. Prayer is thought; specifically, prayer is focused thought. And, we typically only focus our thoughts on those things that are truly important to us. Humans have always done this and, as a result, they’ve always found answers, guidance, deliverance, etc. The act of directing your thoughts inward – into your heart and mind – in order to change your situation in one way or another is older than any religion. Prayer isn’t the result of religion, in other words, religion is the result of prayer.

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