10 Signs Your Life Is Getting Better

When you have been through a difficult time, it can be hard to see that things are improving. You may find yourself looking over your shoulder for a while, waiting for something bad to creep up and grab you. However, if you change your focus a little, it can make your healing complete, and you can get back to your normal life. Here's what you may notice:

The bills are getting paid. It may seem simplistic to some, but if you have lost a job and have had to reinvent yourself, taking care of the basics can feel pretty good.

People praise you for your inner strength. Take it in when other people compliment you on getting through your challenges. Sometimes we brush off such compliments, because accepting them reminds us of what we've been through, which can trigger bad feelings. The trick here is to listen to what others are saying and allow yourself to believe it too.

Even though you may still feel sad inside, you are not crying much anymore and you generally feel a little better. Embrace that you are doing better, even if it's only little things that you can see at the moment.

You are getting more done. With emotional healing, we also get extra energy and some creativity thrown in. As you get back to your old self, you can take pride in your productivity and enjoy the process more than you have.

You are rethinking your life path. This is something we should all engage in at least once a year. Maybe you've always wanted to travel or be a writer. Now is the time to take those adventures you've wanted to take and to make changes that will bring you more happiness. This may propel you into a new direction, perhaps toward your life's dream.

You have fewer negatives in your life. Reevaluating your friendships and relationships is natural at this time. People may have dropped out of your social circle and support system—some because they don't like being around someone who is down and others because they just can't be emotionally supportive. Stick with the few who remain, and you will see the numbers grow.

Sometimes you can see a light at the end of the tunnel, but you're still concerned it's an oncoming train. Again, this is part of the normal emotional healing process. As time passes, the light gets bigger and you can see the world beyond.

Life has become a little more social. More friends are inviting you over and/or out, and you are accepting the invitations. You are also inviting people over, and for now this may feel safer than venturing out. Either way works.

Your physical body is responding better. You don't have that unbalanced feeling in your stomach, your energy is better, and you are feeling stronger. If haven't gotten ill in several months, it's another sign you are healing.

You are feeling that your life matters. Feeling that you matter to others is a very important part of many people's lives. I don't think I could live without feeling like I was contributing on some level to humanity. The only thing that's required is your desire to be a good person.

Who you are and what you do with your life is important. When you can't be your best self because you have been through a difficult time, it makes enjoying life harder. Just think about a few of the tips mentioned and take them in. It will help.

Source: http://cc.cc/9rub

FOR ALL CANDLE-LOVERS!!! EARN POINTS FOR REWARDS EACH TIME YOU SHOP! www.luxurycandles4u.com

*********************************************************

Get 5-7 100% FREE full-sized products at your door every month! Try before you buy! http://tiny.cc/FreebieFun 

Advertising that WORKS! http://tiny.cc/AdsThatWork

To all Kawaii lovers! Everything super CUTE for you! http://tiny.cc/EverythingKawaii

Get paid to post mini comments under topics of your interest! Fun site! http://tiny.cc/Post4Cash

Get paid to chat with friends from your phone! http://tiny.cc/Paid2Chat

The ONLY social media site that pays you 90% of their

revenue! http://tiny.cc/SocialMediaThatPays

Love candles? Love jewelry? Need a last minute gift to buy? http://tiny.cc/LuxuryCandles

Get paid to view ads through text messages! http://tiny.cc/CellphoneCash

Guaranteed work from home job for college students, stay at home moms and more! http://tiny.cc/EmailJobs

Fashion Bloggers get paid to share fashion! http://tiny.cc/Fashion4Cash

Share videos, make money! http://tiny.cc/VideoShareCash

Clarity is the BEST person to give you advice & guidance! http://www.clarityfix.me

******************************************************

7 Reasons Most People Are Afraid of Love

What keeps us from finding and keeping the love we say we want?

The story of lost love is one most of us can tell, and the question, "Why do relationships fail?” lingers heavily in the back of our minds. The answer for many of us can be found within. Whether we know it or not, most of us are afraid of really being in love. While our fears may manifest themselves in different ways or show themselves at different stages of a relationship, we all harbor defenses that we believe on some level will protect us from getting hurt. These defenses may offer us a false illusion of safety or security, but they keep us from attaining the closeness we most desire. So what drives our fears of intimacy

(link is external)

? What keeps us from finding and keeping the love we say we want?

1. Real love makes us feel vulnerable 

A new relationship is uncharted territory, and most of us have natural fears of the unknown. Letting ourselves fall in love means taking a real risk. We are placing a great amount of trust in another person, allowing them to affect us, which makes us feel exposed and vulnerable. Our core defenses

(link is external)

 are challenged. Any habits we’ve long had that allow us to feel self-focused or self-contained start to fall by the wayside. We tend to believe that the more we care, the more we can get hurt.

2. New love stirs up past hurts 

When we enter into a relationship, we are rarely fully aware of how we’ve been impacted by our history. The ways we were hurt in previous relationships, starting from our childhood, have a strong influence on how we perceive the people we get close to as well as how we act in our romantic relationships. Old, negative dynamics may make us wary of opening ourselves up to someone new. We may steer away from intimacy, because it stirs up old feelings of hurt, loss, anger or rejection. As Dr. Pat Love

(link is external)

 said in an interview with PsychAlive

(link is external)

, “when you long for something, like love, it becomes associated with pain,” the pain you felt at not having it in the past.

3. Love challenges an old identity 

Many of us struggle with underlying feelings of being unlovable. We have trouble feeling our own value and believing anyone could really care for us. We all have a “critical inner voice

(link is external)

,” which acts like a cruel coach inside our heads that tells us we are worthless or undeserving of happiness. This coach is shaped from painful childhood experiences and critical attitudes we were exposed to early in life as well as feelings our parents had about themselves.

While these attitudes can be hurtful, over time, they have become engrained in us. As adults, we may fail to see them as an enemy, instead accepting their destructive point of view as our own. These critical thoughts or “inner voices” are often harmful and unpleasant, but they’re also comfortable in their familiarity. When another person sees us differently from our voices, loving and appreciating us, we may actually start to feel uncomfortable and defensive, as it challenges these long-held points of identification.

4. With real joy comes real pain 

Any time we fully experience true joy or feel the preciousness of life on an emotional level, we can expect to feel a great amount of sadness. Many of us shy away from the things that would make us happiest, because they also make us feel pain. The opposite is also true. We cannot selectively numb ourselves to sadness without numbing ourselves to joy. When it comes to falling in love, we may be hesitant to go “all in,” for fear of the sadness it would stir up in us.

5. Love is often unequal 

Many people I’ve talked to have expressed hesitation over getting involved with someone, because that person “likes them too much.” They worry that if they got involved with this person, their own feelings wouldn’t evolve, and the other person would wind up getting hurt or feeling rejected. The truth is that love is often imbalanced, with one person feeling more or less from moment to moment. Our feelings toward someone are an ever-changing force. In a matter of seconds, we can feel anger, irritation or even hate for a person we love. Worrying over how we will feel keeps us from seeing where our feelings would naturally go. It’s better to be open to how our feelings develop over time. Allowing worry or guilt over how we may or may not feel keeps us from getting to know someone who is expressing interest in us and may prevent us from forming a relationship that could really make us happy.

6. Relationships can break your connection to your family 

Relationships can be the ultimate symbol of growing up. They represent starting our own lives as independent, autonomous individuals. This development can also represent a parting from our family. Much like breaking from an old identity, this separation isn’t physical. It doesn’t mean literally giving up our family, but rather letting go on an emotional level – no longer feeling like a kid and differentiating 

(link is external)

from the more negative dynamics that plagued our early relationships and shaped our identity.

7. Love stirs up existential fears 

The more we have, the more we have to lose. The more someone means to us, the more afraid we are of losing that person. When we fall in love, we not only face the fear of losing our partner, but we become more aware of our mortality. Our life now holds more value and meaning, so the thought of losing it becomes more frightening. In an attempt to cover over this fear, we may focus on more superficial concerns, pick fights with our partner or, in extreme cases, completely give up the relationship. We are rarely fully aware of how we defend against these existential fears. We may even try to rationalize to ourselves a million reasons we shouldn’t be in the relationship. However, the reasons we give may have workable solutions, and what’s really driving us are those deeper fears of loss.

Most relationships bring up an onslaught of challenges. Getting to know our fears of intimacy and how they inform our behavior is an important step to having a fulfilling, long-term relationship. These fears can be masked by various justifications for why things aren’t working out—but we may be surprised to learn about all of the ways that we self-sabotage when we get close to someone else. By getting to know ourselves, we give ourselves the best chance of finding and maintaining lasting love.

Source: http://cc.cc/5wfe

****************************************************
Start your own jewelry business without any investment! http://tiny.cc/SellJewelry
Awesome Ebooks for the lover of reading! http://tiny.cc/Ebooks4U

Love Candles? Love Jewelry? http://tiny.cc/BlissfulCandles

Guaranteed work from home job for college students, stay at home moms and more! http://tiny.cc/EmailJobs 

Build your own picture business free! http://tiny.cc/PictureBiz 

60% off unique jewelry every week! http://tiny.cc/DazzlinJewels 

Fashion Bloggers get paid to share fashion! http://tiny.cc/Fashion4Cash 

Share videos, make money! http://tiny.cc/VideoShareCash 

Clarity is the BEST person to give you advice & guidance! http://www.clarityfix.me 

Awesome products for everyone & every Holiday! http://tiny.cc/BeautyBliss 

Get paid to post, share and tag pictures! http://tiny.cc/Pics4Cash 

Get paid when your friends & neighbors watch tv! http://tiny.cc/TVCash

****************************************************

What Porn Does to Intimacy

The rapid proliferation of pornography is one of the digital age’s legacies; some 40 million people in the United States visit porn websites regularly, many of them emerging or young adults. Popular media have capitalized on cautionary tales about porn addiction and stories of boyfriends objectifying their girlfriends and wanting them to behave like porn stars. But studies confirm that the preponderance of young men—and slightly less than half of women—thinks that watching sexually explicit material is okay. 

That’s what Spencer B. Olmstead and his colleagues found when they asked college students about the use of pornography in future romantic relationships: 70.8 percent of men and 45.5 percent of women thought they would watch. In contrast, only 22.3 percent of men and 26.3 percent of women thought pornography had no role in a romantic partnership.

Men and women tend to disagree on two issues: How porn is watched (alone, in groups, with a sexual partner); and how often it is watched. As Michael Kimmel reported in his 2008 book Guyland, young men often watch porn with their peers and for different reasons than older men. Kimmel writes that “guys tend to like the extreme stuff, the double penetrations and humiliating scenes. They watch it together with guys and they make fun of the women in the scene.” In contrast, older men with more experience either watch by themselves or with a partner, and with what Kimmel calls “wistfulness” about their younger selves; they tend to prefer material “where the women look like they are filled with desire and experience pleasure.”

The Olmstead study found that women’s concerns had more to do with whether consumption of porn was limited than whom it was watched with. Men tend to think that watching porn has only positive consequences.

As reported by Nathaniel Lambert and others in a review of studies, women whose partners watched porn regularly thought less of those partners and saw porn as more of a threat to the stability of their relationship. On the other hand, other studies have shown that young men and women alike think that sexually explicit material can help them explore their sexuality and adds “spice” to what they do in bed.

Is watching pornography really as benign as people think? The following three studies reveal that it has a greater effect on relationships than those we usually discuss.

1. Porn-free relationships are stronger, with a lower rate of infidelity

That’s what Amanda Maddox and her colleagues found in a study of men and women, ages 18 to 34, who were in romantic relationships. The researchers measured the levels of negative communication, relationship adjustment, dedication or interpersonal commitment, sexual satisfaction, and infidelity. In their study, 76.8 percent of men and 34.6 percent of women looked at sexually explicit material alone; 44.8 percent reported viewing it with partners. They found that people who didn’t view any porn had lower levels of negative communication, were more committed to the relationship, and had higher sexual satisfaction and relationship adjustment. Their rate of infidelity was at least half of those who had watched sexual material alone and with their partners. But people whoonly watched porn with their partners were more dedicated to the relationship and more sexually satisfied than those who watched alone.

2. Watching porn diminishes relationship commitment

What these researchers discovered is that watching porn reminds you of all the potential sexual partners out there, which in turn lowers your dedication to the person you’re actually involved with. It also leads you to swap out the person who’s actually lying in bed with you for some fantasy person you’ve never met (and probably never will).

Does that sound healthy?

Nathaniel Lambert, Sesen Negash and others conducted five separate experiments to find out. In the first, they asked participants, age 17 to 26, who were in relationships (as long as three years and as brief as two months) about their porn consumption and measured levels of commitment. They found that porn consumption lowered commitment in both men and women, but with a stronger effect on men.

In their second study, they had independent observers watch videos of couples performing an interactive task—one partner was blind-folded and had to draw something while the other gave instructions. Among the observers, lower commitment was observed among porn users.

The third study only tested participants who had consumed porn. They had half the group give up porn for three weeks. The other half was asked to give up their favorite food, but were allowed to watch porn. The result? Those who had abstained from sexually explicit material showed increased commitment to the relationship at the end of the three weeks.

The last two studies focused on the effect of greater attentiveness to alternatives on potential infidelity and infidelity itself. And yes, people who watched porn were more likely to engage in flirting (and more) outside their relationships in one experiment; and more likely to cheat and hook-up in the other.

3. The fantasy alternative leads to real-world cheating

In another study, Andrea Mariea Gwinn, Nathaniel Lambert, and others further explored the nature of the other alternatives imaginatively offered up by pornography. They suggested two possibilities: First, that seeing physically attractive and sexually available partners on screen may heighten a person’s perceptions of his own possible partners. And second, that porn may make the idea of multiple sexual partners more appealing—another wound to a committed relationship.

And that’s exactly what they found.

In one study, the researchers found that people who thought about porn they’d watched reported having better alternatives to their current relationship than those who didn’t. A second study showed that, over time, exposure to porn was a robust predictor of infidelity.

More strikingly, the team found that both thinking about possible partners and acting on the impulse to find those alternatives operated separately from dissatisfaction with one's current relationship and partner. In other words, even though one's own pasture may be plenty green enough, just the thought of a greener one can be enough to send one roving.

You might want to keep that in mind if you’ve been watching the hard stuff or if you've become inured to seeing your partner just flip open his laptop "just for fun.”

Pornography is not as benign as you think, especially when it comes to romantic relationships.

Source: http://cc.cc/39w6

****************************************************

Love Candles? Love Jewelry? http://tiny.cc/BlissfulCandles 
Build your own picture business free! http://tiny.cc/PictureBiz 
60% off unique jewelry every week! http://tiny.cc/DazzlinJewels 
Fashion Bloggers get paid to share fashion! http://tiny.cc/Fashion4Cash 
Share videos, make money! http://tiny.cc/VideoShareCash 
Clarity is the BEST person to give you advice & guidance! http://www.clarityfix.me 
Awesome products for everyone & every Holiday! http://tiny.cc/BeautyBliss 
Get paid to post, share and tag pictures! http://tiny.cc/Pics4Cash 
Get paid when your friends & neighbors watch tv! http://tiny.cc/TVCash

****************************************************