Quotes That Will Free Your Mind

If you truly want to change your life, you must first change your mind.  You must free it from the restrictive thinking that holds you back.Here are 50 thought-provoking quotes gathered from site Everyday Life Lessons, and from our blog archive that will help tweak your thinking and set your mind free.

1. You are only destined to become one person – the person you decide to be.
2. Do good and feel good.  Do bad and feel bad.  It’s that simple.
3. You are what you do today, not what you say you’ll do tomorrow.
4. We all make choices, but in the end our choices make us.
5. Ultimately, it’s not what you do every once in a while; it’s what you dedicate yourself to on a regular basis that makes the difference.
6. Stay true to yourself.  Never be ashamed of doing what feels right.  Decide what you think is right and stick to it.
7. If you don’t stand for anything, you will remain forever on your knees.
8. No amount of money will make you happy if you aren’t happy with yourself.
9. You know you’ve made the right decision when there is peace in your heart.
10. Don’t worry if your goals seem crazy to other people; oftentimes the crazy ideas are the ones that have the greatest impact.
11. If you’re thinking like everyone else, then you aren’t thinking. 
12. Control your own destiny or someone else will try for you.
13. Sometimes standing up to your friends can be just as difficult as standing up to your enemies.
14. The unhappiest people in this world are the people who care the most about what everyone else thinks.
15. When people undermine your dreams, predict your doom, or criticize you, remember, they’re telling you their story, not yours.
16. There is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally.
17. No one in the world was ever you before, with your particular gifts and abilities and possibilities.
18. Your greatest task isn’t to find love, but to discover and destroy all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
19. A loving, happy person lives in a loving, happy world.  A hateful, miserable person lives in a hateful, miserable world.  The world around you reflects YOU.
20. Worry gives small things a big shadow.
21. Focus your conscious mind on things you desire not things you fear.  Doing so brings dreams to life.
22. It’s not the mistakes and failures you have to worry about, it’s the opportunities you miss when you don’t even try that hurt the most.
23. It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one over and over again.
24. To get something you’ve never had, you must do something you’ve never done.
25. The harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing.
26. Our problems are really our blessings if we use them to grow stronger. 
27. Anyone can run away; it’s super easy.  Facing problems and working through them, that’s what makes you strong.
28. When you have two good options, always go with the one that scares you the most, because that’s the one that’s going to help you grow.
29. Courage is being scared to death, and then taking the next step anyway.
30. Sometimes our greatest insight comes from our failure, not from our accomplishments.
31. You need to screw up to learn.  You need to experience it all to create greatness.
32. Just because you don’t understand something now doesn’t mean the explanation doesn’t exist.
33. Not knowing everything about your future is a good thing.
34. Don’t worry about what you can’t control and you may liberate yourself.
35. People of average ability often achieve outstanding success because they don’t know when to quit.  Most people succeed simply because they are determined to.
36. Temporary happiness isn’t worth long-term pain.
37. Patience can be bitter, but the seeds you plant now will bear sweet fruit.
38. The less you expect, the more pleasant life gets.
39. The more you are in a state of gratitude, the more you will attract things to be grateful for.
40. The things you take for granted, someone else is praying for.
41. It usually isn’t what you have or where you are or what you’re doing that makes you happy.  It’s how you think about it all.
42. Do not dwell so much on creating your perfect life that you forget to live.
43. You are not in competition with anybody except yourself; plan to outdo your past not other people.
44. To admit that you were wrong is to declare that you are wiser now than you were before.
45. Humans see what they want to see.
46. If you spend too much time judging yourself, you won’t have any time to love yourself or anyone else.  
47. At the end of the day, you can either focus on what’s tearing you apart or what’s holding you together.
48. Look through the front windshield and not the rearview mirror.
49. You don’t get to choose how you are going to die, or when.  But you can choose how you are going to live, right now.
50. Be done with regrets; they are an excuse for people who have failed.  You still have a chance.

Are We Genetically Programmed to Fall in Love?

Valentine’s Day, love songs, romance novels—do they influence falling in love? On the surface it seems like they do, but scientific research suggests that there’s another cupid at work: instinct. Love, specifically the passionate variety, is an emotion that is almost beyond our control. Humans, it seems, are programmed to take this amorous tumble. Forget the roses and heart-shaped box of chocolates—it’s our genes that are on the hook for our addiction to love.

According to Elizabeth Pillsworth, assistant professor of evolutionary anthropology at California State University, passionate love has been around since the dawn of time. “It's hard to say with any great confidence when the emotion of love may have evolved,” says Pillsworth, “but given the fact that we haven't found any human populations in which it seems to be absent, either in modern or historical records, we can assume that [love] is characteristic of humans, like feeling compassion or shame.”

Love is one of our oldest emotions. Our hunting-and-gathering predecessors were just as consumed by it as we are today. Back then, passionate love brought people together for survival, safety and continuation of the species. Today, we might not need a partner to help us stay alive, feel secure, or even have babies, but at the heart of love, the need is the same: the desire to love someone and have that amorous feeling reciprocated. This emotion is universal. It crosses generations, cultures and geographical borders.
Why does love make us do crazy things?

So why does passionate love make us act like we do? Triggered by age-old instincts, modern love has a lot to answer for. "People literally describe spending upwards of 90 percent of their waking energy thinking about the object of their desire, planning ways to inadvertently ‘bump into’ him,” says Pillsworth. We dream about the moment when they tell us they love us back. Passionate love with its first flush of excitement is typically a brief condition. It’s normally restricted to the early stages of a relationship. On the plus side, it’s a very romantic phase, however, it’s also incredibly time-consuming and occasionally verges into obsessive territory—the lovesick behaviour called limerence. “Dorothy Tennov, a social psychologist, coined the term in her 1979 book, Love and Limerence,” says Pillsworth. “[It captured] that aspect of love characterized by intrusive thoughts, emotional roller coasters, desperate desire for deep emotional attachment, and even quasi-stalking behaviours.” Passionate love can make some of us do crazy things, but for the majority it’s a helpful tool.

Take the selection of a mate. Our instincts make us seek out certain traits in a potential significant other. Falling in passionate love is the first step in the process. “In looking for a long-term partner, both [sexes] are most anxious to find someone who is kind, mutually attracted to them, and has a good sense of humour,” says Pillsworth. “Beyond that, men place more emphasis on the physical attractiveness of a long-term partner than women do. Women place more emphasis on the resource-acquiring characteristics of a long-term partner.” These preferences date back to ancient times. Men searched for the curvy, “womanly” body type that signals a healthy mate for child-bearing, while the opposite was true for women. A virile, broad-shouldered male was ideal for a sexual conquest, but not necessarily for a life-long relationship. Women primarily sought providers. Falling in love was a good test to see if the person in question was up to scratch before any further commitment was established. Love today isn’t much different.
Is love meant to last forever?

When the bloom of this initial affection wilts and a strong, but less intense, love takes over, the relationship can hit a turning point. Will it spark a break up, or a lengthy monogamous union? Isn’t monogamy in our genes, too? Scientists remain mixed on the subject. Some research suggests that people in the midst of passionate love seem blind to other attractive individuals. They’re focused on that one potential partner, despite other enticing prospects nearby. Such findings fuel the monogamous point of view, but other studies differ. Contrary evidence indicates that men and women will explore extra sexual and relationship opportunities if given the chance, thus monogamy is just a passing phase. Science has been unable to support either theory completely. What is for certain is that we have an ability to use our instincts in conjunction with our own decision-making processes. “[We] have a highly flexible, responsive mating system,” says Pillsworth. “We take in information about our current circumstances: our age, attractiveness, cultural context, and behave accordingly.” Passionate love with all its benefits—and faults—may be driven more by our minds than our hearts, but at least we’re not alone in acting under its spell. We are all at the mercy of this crazy little thing called love.


Web exclusive, February 2011

Love your Life

Small Things to Make Your Life Happier

You can add more happiness and light to your life, by doing some small, simple acts everyday. Though small and simple, these acts will improve your feeling and make your day more enjoyable. Even if you are under pressure and strain, or if you have problems and difficulties, there are many little, and sometimes not so significant actions that can make you feel happy. This happiness might not be strong and deep, and often is of short duration, but it certainly can improve the way you feel.

Below you will find a few suggestions for bringing small moments of happiness into your daily life. With some creative thinking you can find more ideas, which might be more suitable to your life and circumstances.

1. Wake up 10 minutes earlier in the morning, and go stand by the window or go out to the yard or garden, if you have one. Look around you, and enjoy the quietness and splendor of the morning.
2. Get up 10 minutes earlier, and make yourself a cup of coffee. Even if you drink coffee each morning, by getting up earlier you will be able to sip it leisurely.
3. Eat something you enjoy eating.
4. Call up a friend you like, which you haven’t talked with for a long time.
5. Buy yourself flowers.
6. Buy yourself a book.
7. Buy yourself a magazine.
8. Have a nap in the afternoon
9. Do something you like doing, but which you usually don’t have the time to do.
10. Take some time out when busy and read a few pages of a book.
11. Close your eyes and rest your body and mind, just for a few moments, even when you are very busy.
12. Take a break and go out to walk, even if it is only for ten minutes.

Do you have more suggestions? What do you do to bring happiness into your life? You are welcome to comment.

Success Lead to Happiness?

It’s an age-old assumption: Success, whether in school, work or relationships, causes happiness. Many of us strive for success, putting long hours into our work or studies in the hopes of achieving success and, as a byproduct of that success, happiness.

But a review of 225 studies in the Psychological Bulletin found that happiness doesn’t necessarily follow success. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Happiness leads to success.

According to the study’s findings, happy people seek out and undertake new goals that reinforce their happiness and other positive emotions.

Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., of the University of California, Riverside and colleagues reviewed three types of studies: those that compare different groups of people, those that follow individuals over time and those that examine outcomes in controlled settings.

These studies examined questions such as “Are happy people more successful than unhappy people? Does happiness precede success? And does positive affect lead to success-oriented behaviors?”

The results from all three types of studies suggest that happiness leads to greater successes in life.  Lyubomirsky suggests “this may be because happy people frequently experience positive moods and these positive moods prompt them to be more likely to work actively toward new goals and build new resources. When people feel happy, they tend to feel confident, optimistic, and energetic and others find them likable and sociable.”

This doesn’t mean that happy people are always successful and never feel sad.  Part of a healthy sense of well-being includes experiencing painful emotions in response to difficult and painful life circumstances.  These studies found that even generally happy people experienced negative emotions related to challenging or painful life experiences.

Other factors also contribute to success, including intelligence, fitness, social support and expertise.  But Lyubomirsky says, “happy individuals are more likely than their less happy peers to have fulfilling marriages and relationships, high incomes, superior work performance, community involvement, robust health and even a long life.”
Strategies for Greater Happiness

So how can you become happier?

In another review of studies on happiness, looking at 51 studies that tested attempts to increase happiness through different types of positive thinking, Lyubomirsky identified some key ways to improve happiness.

Be grateful.

People reported happiness that lasted for weeks and months after writing letters (they don’t even have to be sent) of gratitude to others.

Be optimistic.

Visualizing positive circumstances and outcomes increased happiness for study participants.

Count your blessings.

People who wrote three positive things that had happened to them each week found their spirits lifted.

Use your strengths.

Identifying strengths and making a commitment to try to use them in new ways appeared to enhance happiness in one study’s participants.

Act kindly.

People who help others report that it also helps their own sense of well-being.


Love your Life
source : googling 

Positive Thinking in Difficult Times

It is rather easier to feel positive when everything goes well, but real positive thinking is revealed when you can maintain it difficult times. It is then that you need it most.

In difficult times, when there are problems and the economic condition is tough, it is so easy to get into negative thinking and self-pity, and be sucked into a vicious circle of worries, fears and the expectation of more problems, lack of money or poverty.

You may read books and articles on positive thinking, and believe that you are positive, but when difficulties and rough times appear, you just forget everything and focus on the problems and difficulties, instead of believing in yourself, looking for solutions and seeking and seizing opportunities.

If you have no job, no money and the future looks bleak you might:

• Indulge in self-pity and feel bad and helpless.
• Indulge in worries and fears and expect more problems.
• Become resentful and angry at the world and at successful people.
• Be sad and focus on your problems.

Does this attitude help you in anything? No, it will only get you deeper into problems, because when you see and expect problems you create more problems. This is where positive thinking and positive attitude are required. It is true, it is not so easy to reject negative thinking in such circumstances, and even if you try, you might find yourself again and again reverting to negative thinking and dwelling on your problems.

If you have lost your way in a forest, will thoughts about your predicament help you? If you just sit down on a rock, and think and imagine that you will never find your way out help you in any way?

If you have failed, lost money or your job, will thinking how bad your condition is help you find a new job or earn money?

Wherever you are now, whatever your situation is, there is always a way out. This might require a different way of thinking, a different approach or developing new skills. Forget the past, as you cannot change it, but you can change your present, and when you change your present, you also change your future.

Keeping a positive attitude, expecting the best, striving to do the best and refusing to indulge in self-pity, negative thinking and worries is the road to a better and happier life.

Love your Life

source : googling

Positive Thinking

Positive thinking brings inner peace, success, improved relationships, better health, happiness and satisfaction. It also helps the daily affairs of life move more smoothly, and makes life look bright and promising.

Positive thinking is contagious. People around you pick your mental moods and are affected accordingly. Think about happiness, good health and success, and you will cause people to like you and desire to help you, because they enjoy the vibrations that a positive mind emits.

In order to make positive thinking yield results, you need to develop a positive attitude toward life, expect a successful outcome of whatever you do, but also take any necessary actions to ensure your success.

Effective positive thinking that brings results is much more than just repeating a few positive words, or telling yourself that everything is going to be all right. It has to be your predominant mental attitude. It is not enough to think positively for a few moments, and then letting fears and lack of belief enter your mind. Some effort and inner work are necessary.

Are you willing to make a real inner change?
Are you willing to change the way you think?
Are you willing to develop a mental power that can positively affect you, your environment and the people around you?

Here are a few actions and tips to help you develop the power of positive thinking:

• Always use only positive words while thinking and while talking. Use words such as, 'I can', 'I am able', 'it is possible', 'it can be done', etc.
• Allow into your awareness only feelings of happiness, strength and success.
• Try to disregard and ignore negative thoughts. Refuse to think such thoughts, and substitute them with constructive happy thoughts.
• In your conversation use words that evoke feelings and mental images of strength, happiness and success.
• Before starting with any plan or action, visualize clearly in your mind its successful outcome. If you visualize with concentration and faith, you will be amazed at the results.
• Read at least one page of inspiring book every day.
• Watch movies that make you feel happy.
• Minimize the time you listen to the news and read the papers.
• Associate yourself with people who think positively.
• Always sit and walk with your back straight. This will strengthen your confidence and inner strength.
• Walk, swim or engage in some other physical activity. This helps to develop a more positive attitude.

Think positive and expect only favorable results and situations, even if your current circumstances are not as you wish them to be. In time, your mental attitude will affect your life and circumstances and change them accordingly.

Love your Life

source : googling

No Joke: Laughing Could Be Good for Your Health

Whenever I took a tumble or scraped my knee as a child, my mother typically assessed the situation and then promptly tickled me, counseling, “Laughter is the best medicine.” This trick remains remarkably effective with my own boys and, to this day, YouTube videos of laughing babies or cats playing with printers still have the power to make me feel a bit better when I’m under the weather.

But while giggling is certainly a great distraction when you’re hurt or feeling low, I can’t help but wonder whether the old adage is true: Can laughter really have a positive impact on health?

There is a growing body of research indicating that a good guffaw may improve immune function, help lower blood pressure, boost mood and reduce stress and depression. And despite a dearth of more rigorous, long-term studies, the sum of these findings is compelling, said cardiologist Michael Miller, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who has researched the topic.

“We don’t have any clinical outcome evidence to show that laughter will reduce heart attacks or improve overall survival. However, we do have a number of studies that have shown that there is a potential upside, in terms of vascular benefits and also overall health,” he explains. “These findings certainly support laughter as a reasonable prescription for heart health and health in general, especially since there’s really no downside.”

A new study from Oxford University supports a long-held theory that laughter triggers an increase in endorphins, the brain chemicals that can help you feel good, distract you from pain and maybe deliver other health benefits.

The study reports on six experiments in which people watched television sitcoms or a live comedy performance, either alone or with others. The participants were then subjected to various measures that prompt discomfort, including wearing an ice-cold sleeve or a tight blood-pressure cuff and squatting against a wall for long periods. In all cases, laughing with buddies for just 15 minutes resulted in an average 10 percent increase in pain threshold. A change in affect alone — in other words, getting happy but not laughing out loud — did not have a significant impact on pain sensations.

According to lead author Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary anthropologist, these results back up prior research suggesting that people who laugh need less pain medication after surgery.

She explains that if laughing “triggers endorphin activation, then it may have direct [health] benefits, because there is a possibility that endorphins help to ‘tune’ the immune system.”

Still, we’re not just talking about a snicker here and there. The key is that real, true, unforced laughter is “an energetic, stressful activity that stirs up all of our physiological systems … involving strong vocalization, an increase in heart rate and blood pressure and muscle contractions all over the body,” says Robert R. Provine, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and the author of “Laughter: A Scientific Investigation.”

He explained that modern laughter of the “ha ha” variety evolved from the “pant pant” of primates and early humans, which he says is “really the sound of rough-and-tumble play.” Indeed, the new Oxford study found that endorphins are released only when “we ‘laugh till it hurts,’?” meaning we end up running out of breath or physically exhausted, Dunbar says. “It is only full belly laughs that do this, not polite titters.”

But before you work up a new stand-up routine, Provine points out that laughter often has little to do with jokes. “Real laughter is unconscious — you don’t decide to laugh, it just happens — and if you look at what people are doing before or during a laugh, it’s usually not associated with jokes,” he said.

Dunbar said the most important benefit of laughter may be that it brings people together, which is clearly good for emotional health. “When you laugh, you’re almost always in the presence of another person, whether they’re physically present or imagined on radio or TV,” agrees Provine, who has shown that laughter in social settings is 30 times as common as when a person is alone.

He said that those studying the effects of laughter need to tease out “to what extent any health benefits of laughter are associated with the social context of laughter.” People are far more likely to giggle when others do (which explains laugh tracks on television sitcoms), he said. “It could be that it’s the playful interaction with friends, family and lovers that makes the difference [in health measures], and not the physical act of laughter itself.”

For now, I intend to keep using the tickle cure on my kids — and I no longer feel guilty about watching those YouTube videos of babies guffawing. In fact, I will no longer feel guilty about inflicting them on others, either. Because who can’t use a few more laughs in her life, regardless of how or why or even if they make you healthier? 


Love Your Life
source : googling

Smile! Now

We smile because we are happy, and we frown because we are sad. But does the causal arrow point in the other direction, too? A spate of recent studies of botox recipients and others suggests that our emotions are reinforced—perhaps even driven—by their corresponding facial expressions.

Charles Darwin first posed the idea that emotional responses influence our feelings in 1872. “The free expression by outward signs of an emotion intensi­fies it,” he wrote. The esteemed 19th-cen­tury psychologist William James went so far as to assert that if a person does not express an emotion, he has not felt it at all. Although few scientists would agree with such a statement today, there is evidence that emotions in­volve more than just the brain. The face, in particular, appears to play a big role.

This February psychologists at the University of Cardiff in Wales found that people whose ability to frown is comp­romised by cosmetic botox inject­ions are happier, on average, than people who can frown. The researchers administered an anxiety and depression questionnaire to 25 females, half of whom had received frown-inhibiting botox injections. The botox recipients reported feeling happier and less anxious in general; more important, they did not report feeling any more attractive, which suggests that the emotional effects were not driven by a psychological boost that could come from the treatment’s cosmetic nature.

“It would appear that the way we feel emotions isn’t just restricted to our brain—there are parts of our bodies that help and reinforce the feelings we’re having,” says Michael Lewis, a co-author of the study. “It’s like a feedback loop.” In a related study from March, scientists at the Technical University of Munich in Germany scanned botox recipients with fMRI machines while asking them to mimic angry faces. They found that the botox subjects had much lower activity in the brain circuits involved in emotional processing and responses—in the amygdala, hypothal­amus and parts of the brain stem—as compared with con­trols who had not received treatment.

The concept works the opposite way, too—enhancing emotions rather than suppressing them. People who frown during an unpleasant procedure report feeling more pain than those who do not, according to a study published in May 2008 in the Journal of Pain. Researchers applied heat to the forearms of 29 participants, who were asked to either make unhappy, neutral or relaxed faces during the procedure. Those who exhibited negative expressions reported being in more pain than the other two groups. Lewis, who was not involved in that study, says he plans to study the effect that botox injections have on pain perception. “It’s possible that people may feel less pain if they’re unable to express it,” he says.

But we have all heard that it is bad to repress our feelings—so what happens if a person intentionally suppresses his or her negative emotions on an ongoing basis? Work by psychologist Judith Grob of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands suggests that this suppressed negativity may “leak” into other realms of a person’s life. In a series of studies she performed for her Ph.D. thesis and has submit­ted for publication, she asked sub­jects to look at disgusting images while hiding their emotions or while holding pens in their mouths in such a way that prevented them from frowning. A third group could react as they pleased.

As expected, the subjects in both groups that did not express their emotions reported feeling less disgusted afterward than control subjects. Then she gave the subjects a series of cognitive tasks that included fill-in-the-blank exercises. She found that subjects who had repressed their emotions performed poorly on memory tasks and completed the word tasks to produce more negative words—they completed “gr_ss” as “gross” rather than “grass,” for instance—as compared with controls. “People who tend to do this regularly might start to see the world in a more negative light,” Grob says. “When the face doesn’t aid in expressing the emotion, the emotion seeks other channels to express itself through.”

Love Your Life

source : googling