INSTRUCTIONS FOR LIFE

The following is taken from a Nepalese Good Luck Tantra to keep your thoughts on a positive wavelength.

1. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.

2. Memorize your favorite poem

3. Don’t believe all you hear, spend all you have, or loaf all you want

4. When you say, “I love you”, mean it.

5. When you say “I’m sorry”, look the person in the eye.

6. Be engaged at least six months before you get married

7. Believe in love at first sight

8. Never laugh at anyone’s dreams. People who don’t have dreams don’t have much

9. Love deeply and passionately. You may get hurt, but it’s the only way to live life completely

10. In disagreements, fight fairly. No name calling

11. Don’t judge people by their relatives, or by the life they were born into.

12. Teach yourself to speak slowly but think quickly

13. When someone asks you a question you don’t want to answer, smile and ask. “Why do you want to know?”

14. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk

15. Call a relative

16. Say “bless you” when you hear someone sneeze

17. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson

18. Follow the three Rs: Respect for self. Responsibility for all your actions

19. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship

20. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it

21. Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice

22. Marry a person you love to talk to. As you get older, his/her conversational skills will be even more important

23. Spend some time alone

24. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.

25. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer

26. Read more books. Television is no substitute

27. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.

28. Trust in God but lock your car

29. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life. Do all you can to create a tranquil, harmonious home

30. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past

31. Don’t just listen to what someone is saying. Listen to why they are saying it.

32. Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality

33. Be gentle with the earth

34. Pray or mediate. There’s immeasurable power in it

35. Never interrupt when you are being flattered

36. Mind your own business

37. Don’t trust anyone who doesn’t close his/her eyes when you kiss

38. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before

39. If you make a lot of money, put it to use helping others while you are living. It is wealth’s greatest satisfaction

40. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck

41. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly

42. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other

43. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it

44. Live with the knowledge that your character is your destiny

45. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

BEST STEPS TO SOLVE A PROBLEM

-by Ma. Aurora Sicat

Some of the following suggestions, which are based on research on creativity, may help you solve problems at work and your daily life.

1. Take time to understand a problem before you begin to try to solve it.

2. Get all the facts clearly in mind.

3. Identify the facts that seem to be the most important before you try to work out a detailed solution.

How can you do it?

1. Set aside a sizable block of time to focus on a particular problem, rather than attending to it in scattered sessions.

2. Work out a plan for attacking the problem.

3. Establish subgoals: solve part of the problem and go on from there. You don’t have to do everything at once.

4. Write out your thoughts. This allows you to capture important points and to come back to them later. It also allows you to look for patterns.

5. Think of a similar problem you’ve solved in the past and build on the strategy you used then.

6. Use analogies whenever possible. See whether you can generalize from a situation similar to your current problem.

7. Trust your intuition. Take a guess and see whether you can back it up.

8. Play with ideas and possible approaches. Try looking at the same situation in a number of different ways.

How can you do it better?

1. Don’t worry about looking foolish if you say or suggest something unusual or if you come up with the wrong answer.

2. Eliminate cultural taboos in your thinking (such as gender stereotyping) that might interfere with your ability to come up with a novel solution.

3. Try to explore as many alternatives as you need to.

4. Keep an open mind. If your initial approach doesn’t work, ask whether you made assumptions that might not be true.

5. Be alert to odd or puzzling facts. If you can explain them, your solution may be at hand.

6. Think of unconventional ways to use objects and the environment. Look at familiar things as if you’ve never seen them before.

7. Do some brainstorming with one or more other people. This involves trying to produce as many new and original ideas as possible, without evaluating any of them until the end of the session.

8. Strive for objectivity. Evaluate your own ideas as you would those of a stranger’s.

WHY PEOPLE ARE SO ANGRY

There are a lot of reasons why people are angry or why they grow up to be rageaholics.

Here are some of them:

1. They were physically, verbally, or sexually abused as a child and they stored up the rage inside, letting it out as an adult when they finally feel ”safe”

2. They felt unloved or abandoned as a child, either through their parents’ separation, an absent parent, or the death of a parent, and act out that childhood rage as adults when they meet people who love them.

3. They felt powerless as a child they had alcoholic parents they couldn’t save; they watched helplessly as one parent abused the other; they never had permission to express their feelings and as adults, they compensate for that powerlessness by controlling others with their anger.

If a child experiences any of the situations mentioned, he will naturally feel enormous sadness and grief. If he is unable to fell rage at that time, it will surface years later as rage in adults. This is why, according to psychologists, trying to control one’s angry behavior is useless therapy; repressed grief from childhood gets acted out as rage in adults.

The anger is a symptom (though totally unacceptable) of the regeaholic’s deep hurt and sadness. Treating anger without understanding the cause is a temporary and dangerous solution. Traditional talk or psychotherapy will not be an adequate form of help for someone suffering from chronic anger. Hitting punching bags, screaming into pillows to strike out and inner-child work will be essential ingredients in helping a person transform his anger into grief and finally into healing.

IS YOUR PARTNER A RAGEAHOLIC?

Dealing with an angry partner is like dealing with a time bomb. You will never know when it’s going to explode. If your partner has a problem with anger, you adapt your behavior to the situation, editing yourself so as not to upset your partner.

Here are some warning signs that your partner may have a serious problem with anger:

· When you disagree with him, he responds with shouting, name calling threats, or other overactive behavior.

· Your partner has very little patience, and becomes extremely annoyed if he has to wait for services, drive behind a slow vehicle, get put on hold on the phone, listen to you explain things, etc.

· When you ask your partner to do simple tasks, he becomes defensive and rebellious.

· When you give your partner any feedback whatsoever about how his behavior affects you, he interprets it as an attack and viciously attacks back.

· Your partner gets very angry when little things don’t go id way, and takes it out on the people around him.

· Your partner acts out his anger by slamming doors, hanging up on you on the phone, storming out of rooms, leaving the house, sleeping on the couch at night, etc.

· Your partner can switch from a seemingly loving and warm mood to an angry mood within seconds.

· Your partner is quick to yell at you or put you down if you are not doing what he wants you to do, or if he feels you made a mistake

· Your partner often raises his voice or become angry in public places—restaurants, shopping malls, friends’ homes, etc.

· Your partner expresses his anger physically, hitting or throwing objects.

No one turns into a rageaholic overnight. You’ll see signs of difficulty similar to the list above in the beginning of your relationship. They are like sparks that tell you the fire is sure to follow. Don’t ignore the warning signs that indicate your partner has an anger problem.

Trust your gut instinct, and don’t let yourself be intimidated or talked out of your feelings. If a few of these signs fit your partner, you need to take action immediately to confront the problem and insist your partner get help. If most of these statements fit your partner, get out of this relationship now.