The parent-baby bonding process takes time. But that process will probably be one of the most rewarding times your life. The moments when your baby stops crying when he sees you walk around the corner, smiles at you for the first time, and falls asleep contentedly on your shoulder are priceless. They are all indications that your baby feels safe and loved in your presence.

They are all signs that you have bonded.

In those precious first weeks of life, your baby responds to you using all five of her senses. Here are some ways to engage her in each one and ensure the emotional attachment you create with your child is healthy –and rewarding – for you both…

(Continue reading this article via Darn Baby)

As I mentioned in one of my posts, the movie Earthlings was the inspiration behind my “If Slaughterhouses had Walls” t-shirt.

The following video is a must-see for those people out there who think that the vegetarians among us are the “fanatics”..

(Originally posted on Dare To Wish)

A friend of mine asked me that question a few weeks ago. He has a high paying job and what appears to lead a full and fulfilling life, complete with volunteering and interesting hobbies. But he felt that something was still missing. He was looking for his purpose and genuinely wanted to find his passion. “I like a lot of things, but I don’t have any passions. How can I find passion, Tina?” This is a great question, and one that got me pondering about the topic. This article specifically looks at finding passion in your job.

This is part two of my notes from Professor Srikumar Rao’s google talk, along with my personal thoughts on the topic. You can find part one here: How to Make Profound and Lasting Change.

The Problem

Most of us make the mistake of assuming that our ideal job is out there somewhere, and we have to go out and find it. We tell ourselves that our lives will be great, just as soon as we find it. As a result, we end up defining our ideal job using a widely accepted, but arbitrary, set of parameters. How much the job pays, job title on your business card, type of person our boss is, size of our office, how much we get to travel. We say in our minds, once I can find that, then I can be passionate about my job. Chances are, that job probably doesn’t exist. Assuming that it did exist and we were put into that situation, within a few months, we will probably be back in the same state we are now. Unsatisfied.

(Continue reading this post via Think Simple Now)

This article explores four ways to become more aware of your emotions and eating habits so that you can discover how to nourish yourself without reaching for the biscuit tin.

1. Know Your Triggers

The more aware you are of the triggers that prompt you to eat when you’re stressed, bored, or upset, the more control you will have over your eating habits. You can build awareness by keeping a brief food journal of what you eat, where you eat, and why you eat. Discovering why is not always so easy at first but as you get into the habit of increasing your awareness, you will soon discover some interesting clues.

Avoid Adverts: Many of us watch TV to “get away from it all” for a while. Unfortunately in that inert, and sometimes unhappy state, we are a prime target for adverts for comfort junk foods. Skipping the adverts is one way to deal with this, but better still is skipping TV. TV time could be replaced by a walk, some gentle breathing exercises, a shower, a chat with a friend, or anything else that’s upbeat and feels nice and supportive to you.

Tackle Cravings: Once we start to become aware of our triggers then we can work with changing them. If there’s a particular food that you frequently crave you can download my free quick start guide to Emotional Freedom Techniques here. Any time you feel a craving for that food you can work through the EFT sequence and reduce your desire to eat it. This is something I may write more about later, but in the meantime you can read this excellent article on EFT’s success in controlling emotional eating.

(Continue reading this post via Living by Design)

A lot. There is much wisdom to be learned by the addict’s journey from addiction to recovery.

I realize that many of you reading this now are probably not drug addicts and alcoholics. That’s fine – but you stand to gain great insight from the experience of those who have fought and overcome a serious addiction. There are several parallels between recovery and personal development. Many would argue that their paths are actually one and the same.

As a recovering drug addict and alcoholic with over 7 years clean and sober, one of my passions is exploring the process of overcoming addiction. While there are many different recovery programs, most of them share many of the same characteristics, so people who find success in recovery do so by following a similar path.

Here are some of the things that lead to long term sobriety, while also having practical application for personal development:

(Continue reading this post via The Urban Monk)

For much of my life, I’ve been so preoccupied with just making ends meet, that I haven’t had a lot of leftover energy to spend on creating a life that is truly amazing. Can you relate? Now that I make a comfortable living and I’m not stressing out over money constantly, the time has come to challenge myself to take things to the next level.

Money itself does not create an amazing life. Like Tim Ferriss said in his book The 4-Hour Workweek, he was making $70,000 per month but was miserable because he had no time to actually live.

That’s kind of where my life has headed. I’m comfortable, but I don’t have the time I want to live the life I want. As part of the Freelance Smackdown, I challenged Dave Navarro’s time management coaching programs to help me find a few more hours in my day that I could devote to creating passive income streams. After talking to Dave, I got really excited about what I could do with more time. Ultimately, I don’t want more time so that I can work even more. I want more time so that I can live more.

I guess I always thought that somehow this great life would just “happen,” that somewhere along the way things would just fall into place. But now I’m 32 years old and I’m realizing that there is no waiting for something to happen and that creating an amazing life doesn’t happen without a highly concentrated effort.

Have you ever stopped for a moment in time and wondered… “How did this become my life?” If we’re not careful, we can drive ourselves right into a life that bears no resemblance to what we really desire. Is it really possible to break free of an existence we don’t feel passionate about? Do the people living our dream lives have some sort of special quality that gives them a ticket to live an incredible life - or are they just making different choices?

I think it is absolutely possible. I managed to escape one unfullfilling existence (cubicle) in exchange for a new life (freelancing), where I now have a lot more freedom and flexibility. Now, my goal is to take what I learned during that process

(Continue reading this post via Self Made Chick)

A new direction called Positive Psychology has started to take centre stage. Instead of looking at problems and how to fix them, Positive Psychology investigates what allows us to experience life at its best. In this series I’ll discuss what we can learn from this research.

What is happiness?

This question is important for each of us because our view of happiness determines how we live our life.

As Martin Seligman - the founder of Positive Psychology - points out, there are three main ways how people view happiness. Read on to find out which one of these three ways describes the way you see happiness.

The Pleasant Life or the ‘life of enjoyment’:

In this way of life we seek out pleasures and try to avoid pain. The great thing about this way of life is that we truly taste and enjoy the special moments. Like starting a powder run on a snowboard or sharing a laugh with your partner.

But there are some problems with this view of happiness. One is that pain is inevitable in life: relationships end, health can be precarious, and death is certain. This means that if we expect to gain happiness only from pleasure, we are ill equipped to deal with suffering.

The other problem is that the sum of our actual experiences, and how we judge those experiences in retrospect can be radically different. Seligman gives the following example:

When asked about a vacation - so he explains - you might answer, “It was great!”, even though the flow of experiences at the time may have been a series of unpleasant moments, such as sunburn, mosquito bites, upset stomach, scary situations, and a fear of blowing your budget.

I think the same goes for pleasant experiences. I don’t know how it is for you, but after about a week of lying about on a tropical beach I tend to get restless. I miss being creative and productive. So, even though there may be a constant flow of pleasant moments, my overall experience is that of feeling unfulfilled…

(Continue reading this post via Goodlife Zen)

Guilt is, simply put, a wrong notion. Guilt is paralyzing, destructive. You think you have done something you shouldn’t have; you hadn’t done something you should have.

Guilt is the false idea that you could have done better; that you had the power to choose. But if you look deeply into it, you will see that you were helpless. There was simply no choice.

There might still be tears and sadness, efforts at reparation might still be needed – but deep down inside, there will be a measure of peace, resting in the knowledge that you were not at fault.

Understanding Guilt

The death of guilt comes with the realization that you could have done nothing else. Your emotional state, your past conditioning, your beliefs and knowledge, your instincts and intuition – they were just too strong. A beach ball, separated from its owner, pulled along by the raging waves – what can it do? It is dragged out, lost at sea. Who can blame it?

Without awareness, we are without control, completely at the mercy of our past.

Relax your body; close your eyes. Think of the last time you felt angry. Place yourself, as best as you can, back in time…

(Continue reading this post via Urban Monk)

Not exactly, walk by any coffee shop in Tel Aviv and the first thing you will notice are dozens of cigarette butts surrounding the area.

Why is this happening? Restaurant owners are prohibiting smoking anywhere on restaurant property (including tables outside) and requesting that their customers smoke just outside the property line before returning to their tables.

The result? City sidewalks and curbs are turning into heavily littered personal ashtrays.

“Yeah, but what could I possible do about it?”

(Continue reading this post via Green Your Day)

All beliefs effect experience, yet not all beliefs are part of our reality. There are main beliefs and core beliefs. Main beliefs are the beliefs we have about life that match our reality. These are the beliefs that are developed through observing our everyday life and determining that life is this way because we perceive it to be. Having a core belief means believing in something even though we do not experience it as reality in our everyday lives.

You might say main beliefs are the strongest since they are the beliefs that effect our lives on a continuous basis, but core beliefs are strong too since you can have a core belief all your life and never experience it as reality because you have too many main beliefs blocking your core belief.

For example, one of my core beliefs is that anyone can make a living doing what they passionately love, yet I did not always experience this as my reality because I was perceiving/ experiencing life with main limiting beliefs, I did not understand the relationship between consciousness verse reality, and I did not live my passion as a career from moment to moment…

(Continue reading this post via Conscious Flex)