Reading Corner

Links related to the weekly posts.

 

By Posted on Posted in Love, Peace, Reading, Relationships, Successful Relating

Our blog this week was about responding with love, not fear. Here are some article written on that topic.

Choosing Love Not Fear “The choice to reject fear and choose love can feel like something that only applies to moments of crisis, when we’re leaving a marriage, starting a new business, preparing to climb Mount Everest. But in truth, the opportunity to choose love and reject fear presents itself in the smallest moments of life, and specifically, in relationships with those closest to us. Love over fear is a choice every time someone tells us something about ourselves or has an experience of us that we don’t want to hear.”

Is Fear What’s Really Blocking You? Choosing Love Over Fear “I talk about ‘choosing love over fear’ a lot. In fact, these words make up one of my favorite daily mantras: I choose to let love in and fear out. It wasn’t always like this though. Before I was ready to dig deep and really look at (or even be aware of) how my inner world shaped my outer world, I would have thought you were a little nutty, if you told me to ‘choose love over fear.'”

Choose Love Not Fear And Discover You ARE Love “I’m sure you’ve heard ‘choose love not fear’ before. You’ll find it within just about any spiritual path you explore. Intuitively, we KNOW we will be far happier if we follow it. However, when we are in the thick of things in our daily lives, it sometimes feels impossible to do. Therefore, I want to share a ‘bridge’ that I’ve discovered to help you choose love (and therefore, happiness).”

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This week, we wrote about peace in our relationship and how the same principles apply in the world. Here are some very insightful articles about the importance of peace in our lives.

How to Bring Peace of Mind Into Your Day-to-Day Routine “The holiday hubbub: family gatherings, office parties, frenetic shopping, and endless eating. Between the constant conversation and the unceasing celebration, the season can overwhelm us — if we let it. Busyness and socialization can easily engulf us. However, we have a choice. We can let a busy time, crisis, or event overtake our time, attention, and balance. Or, we can thoughtfully and deliberately use small moments of peacefulness to point our hearts and brains towards an essential focus: an awareness of the present and attention to our peace of mind.”

How we can maintain our inner peace (while the world goes crazy) “Everyday, we’re confronted with people that make us angry; people that make us want to argue. You might set out with the best intentions for a day, but you spend three minutes on public transport and — boom — you’re in an expletive-fueled Twitter rant and you’re ready to burn the world to the ground…before 9 o’clock! It can be hard to maintain our cool when we’re living in a world that feels like it’s packed full of annoyances and bitter people, but it’s crucial to maintain this state for our physical and mental well-being.”

10 Ways to Have Peaceful, Loving Relationships “…this is not a post about romance. It’s about any relationship—with your brother, your mother, your coworker, or your friend. Relationships are not easy. They mirror everything we feel about ourselves. When you’ve had a bad day, the people around you seem difficult. When you’re not happy with yourself, your relationships seem to be lacking. If you’ve ever gotten in a fight only to find yourself wondering what you were really upset about, this post may help you.”

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This week, we wrote about finding mutuality in relationships. Here are some other thoughts on this topic. The first link is both academic and perceptive.

Movement Toward Mutuality “RCT suggests that constructive movement or positive change in relationship (a.k.a., growth) depends on three essential, inseparable factors: mutual empathy, mutual empowerment, and movement toward mutuality”

The 3 core skills that every person needs for healthy romantic relationships “‘We may know what a healthy relationship looks like, but most people have no idea how to get one — and no one teaches us how to do so.’ That’s what Joanne Davila, a professor of psychology and the director of clinical training at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York, contends in a TEDxSBU talk”

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By Posted on Posted in Reading, Relationship differences Tagged with

In the last weeks, we’ve written about individuality, core values and total acceptance. But this week, the election results have been so close that I suspect nearly everybody on both sides is upset by them, so instead I’ll talk today about differences in politics. The political divide is incomprehensible to people across the spectrum. Instead of presenting the arguments of both sides, let me suggest a different division that will clarify your reasons for opposition.

Why Has America Become So Divided? “For many of us these days, it feels as if the United States has never been less united. The nation, it seems, has become irrevocably fractured along political and ideological lines — Republican/Democrat, liberal/conservative, red/blue, etc. Sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner with family has never been more uncomfortable and the admonition to avoid discussing religion or politics in polite company has never been more apropos. What has happened to America? And how can we reverse the trend?”

How Identity, Not Issues, Explains the Partisan Divide “U.S. politics increasingly looks like a savage battle between left and right. Consistent with closing ranks in a battle, Americans are expressing policy opinions that align more and more with their political groups. Of all conflicts between groups in America, partisanship is one of the most divisive, with 86% of Americans seeing strong conflicts between Republicans and Democrats.”

Why are political discussions so intense? A video that Phil made. “Political arguments are emotional at base. This video identifies the two core emotions that animate liberal and conservative positions and suggests which one is a better fit for humans.”

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By Posted on Posted in Core Values, Reading, Relationships, Successful Relating Tagged with , ,

Wow! It’s our 250th Reading Corner this week.

In our latest blog, we wrote about what we consider a key aspect of successful relationships: total acceptance. Here are three writers with their own slants on this important topic.

Accept Them as They Are “I admit it: Whether close to home or far away, I wish some people were different. Depending on who they are, I wish they’d stop doing things like leaving cabinet doors open in our kitchen, sending me spam emails, or turning a blind eye to global warming. And I wish they’d start doing things like being friendlier toward me or spending more money on public education. Even if it doesn’t affect me directly, for their own sake I do wish that various people I care about were more energetic, less anxious, or less self-critical.”

Deep Acceptance In Relationships “For securely attached adults, differences between them are generally not threatening to the relationship….For insecurely attached adults (on average one out of three, though people tend to hang out with like-kinds) it’s a whole different ballgame, and this is where things get way more complicated. Insecure attachment means that because of inconsistency in the parenting they received, these folks go through the world with an embodied presupposition of mistrust towards relationships”

LOVE means ACCEPTANCE “The truth is that love, in it’s purest expression, is completely unconditional. To have conditions means that there are requirements and standards that must be met in order for us to love someone. For example, it’s easy to love someone who loves us, who treats us with kindness and respect. But can we love someone who hates us, who would wish to do us harm?”

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