How to wing it!

Today I want to write about a topic that has actually been on my mind for quite a while – I just haven’t gotten around to writing about it. I want to write about some of the things to be aware of when you have a child with a person from a different culture and before I start writing, I just wanted to clear that this entry is not about claiming that the Western way of raising kids – or my own way of raising kids – is the only right way. I merely want to state some things that it’s good to consider before you have your first child with a foreign partner.

Let’s take such a thing as medicine to start with. In the Western world a lot of us don’t consider it a problem to give our kids  medication for headaches or transport sickness or any other ailment along the way but in some cultures people do not give medicine to kids and it’s always good to have a discussion about this. How are you going to handle it when your child has a fever? Do you medicate or do you not medicate?

Another thing that might be a challenge is your child’s eating habits. How does your partner feel about candy, for example? If your partner is Muslim, he or she will more than likely expect the child to eat only Halal food. How do you feel about that?

Then there’s the subject of in-laws. In the Western world, we do tend to like our in-laws and do our best to get on well with them but at the same time, we have very clear boundaries for them. We don’t expect our own parents to have a major say in the way we choose to raise our kids but in some culture,s families are much more integrated and everybody has a say in raising the children. That’s another thing you need to consider. If the in-laws come to visit , they might want to stay for weeks or even months at a time . Can you live with that ?

Think about dating. In some cultures girls are not allowed to date even when they reach their teens whereas different rules apply for boys. You on the other hand might think it’s perfectly natural for teenage girls to wear makeup and go out with boys. That’s another thing to talk about.

The last thing I am going to mention is birthdays. In some cultures birthdays for children are only celebrated until they reach their teens and then it stops whereas we in the Western world continue to make a big deal about birthdays even into adulthood.

I’m not trying to discourage you from having babies with a foreigner or somebody with a different culture than you; it’s just my experience that it’s better to have a huge amount of discussions before the child is born because no matter what, you’re going to need to compromise – both of you. If you are both unwilling to let go of certain traditions and beliefs about child rearing, you’re likely to run into a whole bunch of trouble.

Sit down with your partner and discuss your expectations

     
 Red  Shirt
  
If  the red shirt thing is new to you, read below  how it went for a man…

Last  week, while traveling to  Chicago  on business, I  noticed a Marine sergeant traveling with a  folded flag, but did not put two and two  together..

After we boarded our flight, I  turned to the sergeant, who’d been invited to  sit in First Class (across from me), and  inquired if he was heading home.

No, he  responded.
Heading out I asked?

No.  I’m escorting a soldier home.

Going to  pick him up?

No. He is with me right now.  He was killed in  Iraq  , I’m taking him home to  his family.

The realization of what he  had been asked to do hit me like a punch to the  gut.. It was an honor for him. He told me that,  although he didn’t know the soldier, he had  delivered the news of his passing to the  soldier’s family and felt as if he knew them  after many conversations in so few days. 

I turned back to him, extended my hand,  and said, Thank you Thank you for doing what  you do so my family and I can do what we do. 

Upon landing in Chicago the pilot  stopped short of the gate and made the following  announcement over the intercom.

“Ladies  and gentlemen, I would like to note that we have  had the honor of having Sergeant Steeley of the  United States Marine Corps join us on this  flight He is escorting a fallen comrade back  home to his family. I ask that you please remain  in your seats when we open the forward door to  allow Sergeant Steeley to deplane and receive  his fellow soldier. We will then turn off the  seat belt sign.”

Without a sound, all  went as requested. I noticed the sergeant  saluting the casket as it was brought off the  plane, and his action made me realize that I am  proud to be an American.

So here’s a  public Thank You to our military Men and Women  for what you do so we can live the way we  do.

Red Fridays.

Very soon, you  will see a great many people wearing Red every  Friday. The reason? Americans who support our  troops used to be called the “silent majority.”  We are no longer silent, and are voicing our  love for God, country and home in record  breaking numbers. We are not organized,  boisterous or overbearing.

Many  Americans, like you, me and all our friends,  simply want to recognize that the vast majority  of America supports our troops. Our idea of  showing solidarity and support for our troops  with dignity and respect starts this Friday –  and continues each and every Friday until the  troops all come home, sending a deafening  message that … Every red-blooded American who  supports our men and women a far, will wear  something red.

By word of mouth, press,  TV — let’s make the United States on every  Friday a sea of red much like a homecoming  football game in the bleachers. If every one of  us who loves this country will share this with  acquaintances, coworkers, friends, and family,  it will not be long before the USA is covered in  RED and it will let our troops know the once  “silent” majority is on their side more than  ever, certainly more than the media lets  on.

The first thing a soldier says when  asked “What can we do to make things better for  you?” is. “We need your support and your  prayers.” Let’s get the word out and lead with  class and dignity, by example, and wear  something red every Friday.

____

This post was written by Kurt Moore Larson and these opinions do NOT reflect those of his fellow Blogger. However, this blog belongs to both of us  

Image by Scootzsx via Flickr

There is a certain kind of person I have a hard time with. The person who will go out of his way – or her way – just in order to make me happy and put all their own needs aside, not out of kindness but because of a complete lack of self-respect and self value.

They let me get ahead in the line in the supermarket even if they are in more of a hurry than I am. They say yes and agree no matter what I suggest in any situation. You know what I mean; I am sure you have met this person.

Maybe you are this person.

I used to be like that and on one level I still am but not to the degree that I used to be. I was a total pushover; I would bend over backwards and go against my own beliefs and even my knowledge about the kind of person I know myself to be, just to achieve the goal of having somebody like me. That’s the sad thing about it. Sometimes when people are being overly kind to you it’s not necessarily because they are a kind person at heart, it might be because they are searching for something. They are looking for value and love and will do anything to get it.

I wonder what makes a person like that. What makes somebody so desperate to be loved that they are willing to sacrifice their own self-worth? Without self-worth and self love, you cannot receive love either. This kind of person will spend his or her life running around in circles looking for love – like a dog chasing his own tail.

So what can we do to stop being pushovers? I had to learn the hard way which was having my heart broken a couple of times, going through tons of pain and then slowly discovering that if I can’t be myself in any relationship in my life, it’s a relationship I don’t need to be in. Such a relationship would not have a chance of lasting anyway as you cannot go through life acting.

Perhaps it would help you to write down a few situations where you have acted against your belief and known in that moment that you were moving away from your own self in order to please somebody.
Think about those situations and think about how you would have acted differently so you would feel good about yourself.

You will never be able to set boundaries for other people unless you know where your boundaries are. People will put up with different things and it’s up to you to discover how much you can take. How much you’re willing to take. It is very important to set limits for other people; we all have a core that I think needs to be totally private and nobody can enter, even our partner. Our safe place, our limit. We need these boundaries for our mental health. If we let other people enter those private places in our lives, we turn into doormats, pleasers, dogs chasing their tails.

Practice saying no. This is something I need to do all the time and I’m very aware of it because I always feel like I have to make an excuse if I say no to something. It’s not people putting pressure on me; it’s me putting pressure on me – it’s the old feeling, the old thought pattern of “if I say no and don’t have a good explanation, they are going to hate me”. Practice, practice, practice. Try saying no firmly and not giving an explanation and see what happens. You’d be surprised how understanding people are. If they don’t understand and start to pressure you, then they have an issue with respect. That is not your problem so don’t make it your problem. If they get mad with you, they will get over it eventually.

Do something for yourself. This might be something that you’re afraid maybe your mom will disapprove of, your colleagues will not understand, your partner will wonder about – but do it for you because it’s something you would like to do and it will enrich your life to do it – despite of what others think.

Being assertive and having self worth is not being a jerk. In life we all need to be flexible and understanding but being a pushover has nothing to do with being a kind person. A pushover is just someone who is so desperate for love that they are willing to kill that person inside of them in order to get it.

I daily remind myself that I am a great person and it’s okay to be me. If people do not like the true me, why should they be in my life?

That’s something you need to ask yourself if you’re a pushover.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Holding hands reduces pain (telegraph.co.uk)
• 5 Ways Highly Sensitive People Can Live In an Insensitive World (psychcentral.com)
• How To Raise Self-Esteem in Others (howcast.com)
• 6 Ways to Build Self-Esteem (ismckenzie.com)

I hate winter. Seriously. Did you hear me? I can’t stand this darkness and cold weather. It’s getting on my already very worn out nerves.

I wake up in the morning and venture out there for God knows what reason. Oh yeah, to loose a few pounds because this society says that I am FAT. Society says: Lose weight, measure your waist, don’t eat this, don’t eat that, die healthy and skinny.

And it’s cold as Hell. My nature is to stay inside, eat chocolate, potato chips and other cool foods – and drink lots of Coke and hot chocolate with tons of whipped cream on top. Why can’t I just do that? Does God really mean for us to be so healthy it’s killing every single little ounce of joy in life?

I wonder. What are your thoughts on weight loss, joy, Christmas, cold weather and such?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Breaded Fried Chicken (thindependence.com)
• Now we bring the fire inside (timesunion.com)
• 7-Eleven To Make Winos Happy! (perezhilton.com)
• Morning Meditative Run (run-a-bout.blogspot.com)

Image via Wikipedia

This morning I would like to start off with a quote  from an excellent article (translate with Google Translate) that my brother has written about depression:

The opposite of melancholy is sentimentality. If being melancholy is to have a cool relationship with the world – being, as popularly called, cold in the ass – being sentimental is to be overheated, adding facts and other articles too much value. During a depression, the depressed typically experiences seizures or periods characterized by sentimentality,  old loss or fear of new things applies with particular dramatic force. One can imagine that the sudden shift occurs in the struggle to get back to a normal state.

My brother – actually both of them  – is an excellent writer and this morning as I was reading through his article, something that I have not realized before dawned on me. As many of you will know I have suffered from depression and anxiety for many years and on lots of occasions I have written about how depression has affected me , both physically and mentally . I have tried to put down in words how depression has changed me , not in a glorified way where someone says  “I am so happy I had this depression because now I can relate to people better “..
No. I am not glad I have this depression and I wouldn’t wish it upon my worst enemy . Depression deprives you of being able to find a meaning with life. It deprives you of being able to see a future , it deprives you of being able to relate and empathize with others . Depression is cold and it holds you firmly in the now , the cold, meaningless, empty, unloving reality of the now . Because there is no past and there is no future  – you are here now and you are suffering endlessly .

Depression has not changed me for the better. Sometimes I have told myself “well, at least now I can relate to others on a more profound level”. I’m not so sure that that’s true but we all have a need to find meaning in our suffering – suffering without meaning is hell and I don’t want to admit to myself that I have experienced hell . And yet I have . For a human being to be in a state where you are unable to relate to anybody else , why you have no goals in life , you see no meaning in life and you are completely isolated in a state of mental and physical suffering , you certainly are in hell .

I find within myself both of the traits that my brother described so well in his article : melancholy and sentimentality .

I get very melancholy at times . I have described it before as having a stone in my heart . If things hurt me too much , so much that I can no longer stand it , I become hard and cold and a completely different person from who I know to be me. I don’t care if I hurt people and my loved ones have certainly met this person within me. Sometimes I wonder if this is the state of mind that makes people go over the edge and commit herendous crimes : I have suffered so you should all suffer too. I certainly have that feeling within me – when my anxiety is at its worst , I become like an animal backed up in the corner and I show my claws, raise my voice and attack . While I tell myself , wow this is not me , when my mind is clear again I must confess that this is a part of me .

I also have a very sentimental side . My brother calls it putting too much value into things (if I understand him correctly). I do that. When I get very emotional, I tend to use big words, I tend to dramatize events and most of the time I am fearing that a catastrophe is about to happen and other people are just obliviont to the danger. Drama. If I don’t find it, I will create it in my mind. But it tips the other way too: a sunset is not beautiful, it is breath taking, it is a wonder of God.

I see very clearly that these two emotions: melancholy and sentimentality rule within me and they switch from one second to the next. Now I wonder if this is the result of the depression I have suffered and the anxiety I have within me everyday or was I born this way? Did I come out of my mother’s womb with a heartless place inside of me and with the mentality of someone over emotional? I don’t know.

I also wonder, do I contain more aspects than these two? I should certainly hope so. People are complex. We contain many facets. Some we were born with, some we learn in the environment we grow up in – watching the people around us – and some, I do believe, are given to us by either the divine force that is God or they’re from straight out of hell. Even former FBI profiler Robert Ressler believes this to be true: some behavior patterns within the most evil people in the world are straight out of hell and science has not yet recognized it. So sometimes it’s nothing to do with genetics, nothing to do with environment – just something inside people that comes straight out of hell and cannot be analyzed and explained – that’s how I understand Ressler’s words.

(See Robert Ressler Clip here from 03:52).

Related articles by Zemanta

• What defines you? (findingforrest.com)
• Why We Remember (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)

Today I want to write a little bit about something that I call conversation starters. I’m actually writing this post because I suffer from social phobia which is a condition where you fear social contact – so trying to find ways to break the ice with strangers is something that I find quite useful and I thought it would be a good idea to make a list for others in the same situation and you can actually use this list whether you are going out on a first date, going to a family gathering or something else. In any kind of social situation this list is good.

First off, remember that all conversations have three phases:

a. Introductions
b. Conversation
c. Farewell

Introductions are usually quite easy. You shake hands and ..
say your name. It’s a good idea to start things off with a quick smile as well – this shows that you are an open and friendly person which is always a good start for any conversation.

Next comes the general conversation. This is where I usually fall flat on my face because I simply cannot find anything to talk about and I fall into this trap: when the other person is trying very hard to get a conversation going with me by asking interesting questions, I am very busy inside my head thinking about the things I should be saying so I don’t hear what the other person is saying! It’s a common thing for people with social phobia – “I have to think of something to say or this person will think that I’m stupid”. While all these thoughts are going on inside your head, the other person is trying hard to get the conversation on track.
Usually people will give up talking to you and your worst fears will come true: yes, you really are weird to talk to!

This is why a little list of starters might come in handy.

It’s a good idea to look at your surroundings. Can you find something there to talk about? Maybe you are both waiting in line for the toilet – a good thing to say would be “there’s a lot of people waiting here today, huh?”.
That starts off the conversation was something you both have in common: waiting to pee!

Another thing to comment on could be the other person’s outfit. Find something you like and say “I really like your boots” or “that’s a beautiful coat, where did you buy it?” . These are great conversation starters and people always love when you say something nice about them

Of course there is always the old “how are you today?” – but only ask if you are really interested in knowing. Personally I hate when the lady at the supermarket asks me how I’m doing. I am probably the 500th person she asks that morning and she can’t possibly be interested in how I am doing. If you don’t want to know, don’t ask – but if you show a little bit of interest this is a good way to get a conversation going.

Does this seem a little odd to you? Making a list about what to say to a total stranger who might approach you? For people who are naturally outgoing this might seem a little odd. What’s so hard about making conversation? Well, there are some people to whom the social scene is terrifying and we need a little help breaking the ice.

If you want to get into a conversation that’s a little heavier, you could think about a current topic – maybe something you’ve seen on TV or – if you want to make it really heavy – get into politics!
On a lighter note, how about mentioning a movie you just saw at the cinema?

Now if you are anything like me the problem is not only getting a conversation started but also keeping it flowing. This might be one of my biggest problems. If people ask me something I’m very likely to answer yes or no and thus the conversation ends very quickly. To keep the conversation flowing is something I am always struggling with and it’s not that I’m not interested in what people have to say – it’s the fact that my brain is working so hard while they are talking that I sometimes don’t really hear what they say and so I don’t know what to answer!

Now let’s say you walked into the local fast food place and you sit down and have a burger. You notice that there’s a family sitting at the table beside you and the kids are playing with the PlayStation that the restaurant has put in place. Now the dad turns to you and says:

- My kids love to come here because they can play on the PlayStation!

This is where I would totally freeze up! At my most intelligent and outgoing hour I might say  “okay ” or  “yeah it’s fun to play on the PlayStation ” which makes me sound like a total idiot , I know .

What could I say instead ? Well , I might ask if there are other places in town who have the same service for kids. Or I could play dumb  – just to get the conversation going  – and say  “I don’t really know what you do on a PlayStation ..”  and the dad would certainly inform me about it . Or I could let them in on a more personal note : “yes my son loves the PlayStation too”.

It’s very easy to sit at home and come up with answers but trust me when I’m in the actual situation , I sound like a total fool .

Another thing to remember is that just because people lean over towards you and make a comment like this , it doesn’t mean they are willing to go on for a half an hour about the origins of the PlayStation . You need to make it short and friendly and end it gracefully .

Getting away from the conversation in the fast food place could be saying “I am running late but it was so nice to meet you, enjoy your meal”.

Then smile.

That’s it. Short and friendly.

Little tips like these sometimes help me in social situations and like I said, you can use these tips in any social scenario. I hope you found them helpful as well.

Related articles by Zemanta

• What is the difference between shyness and social phobia? (liveactivecultures.net)

So I am up early, frantically kicking off my exercise plan which contains one daily walk. Supposedly it will do wonders for my mental health – aagghhhhhh AARRGGGHHHHHHHH  – you know, stop outbursts like that.

Here’s my motivational video for the day:

Image by George Eastman House via Flickr

You know how people always talk about the wedding jitters? On the way up the aisle you might wonder if this is the right move you’re making. That threatening “forever after” is a lot for most people to handle. Maybe we should alter it to “Yes, I will certainly stay until it doesn’t work out between us anymore. Then I will keep the right to move on”

Wedding jitters. It is, however, my belief that the more scary jitters, or cold feet if you will, happen during year 1 of the marriage. That’s when you start realizing that you were merely deceiving yourself when you thought that you could change him or her into a better person. Oh, and those little quirks you once found so endearing, they will quickly start to get on your nerves. A lot of people get Year One Cold Feet.

He won’t suddenly start picking up the wet towels just because you got married…

She won’t do more around the house. It is my firm belief that in many ways, people just do not change and therefore it is wrong to think that marriage is automatic bliss. Don’t we all assume that? I know I did. I fully expected to stay married forever, as if some magical protective wand had been swung over my head and divorce only happened to other people.

Suddenly I found myself divorced, unable to change my partner or myself. Incompatible.

I don’t know if we can really avoid the first year jitters but we can – already from the beginning – reinforce the things that will make marriage work : Open communication, a high level of tolerance, give each other space to be who we are, understanding, spending time together (especially enjoying the precious time before the kids enter the scene and it will be harder to find time alone together) and allowing each other to have friends/girlfriends outside the marriage. We’re still individuals, not “just” a couple.

Perhaps people don’t talk enough about the important stuff before they get married. It’s so important to discuss values- what do we want and expect from life? We should discuss raising children, HOW to raise children, how to spend and/or save money, what kind of relationship to have with the two families involved, financial stuff and so much more. All the things that make a life.

Just consider the time and effort couples put into planning a wedding that lasts for one day. They should be planning the marriage itself – the one last should last a lifetime.

Image via Wikipedia

Well I am back from the dentist.

She was a very nice lady and she showed great understanding of my problem. Being that because of my anxiety I don’t go very often. She said she had another patient with the same issue and if not for her having to walk her dogs, she would never get out of her apartment. Although my anxiety is not so severe that I can never get out, it is severe enough that I put my dentist visits off. For months or years.

Anyway, she fixed two huge holes today and I am now numb in my face. There is a pretty huge chance I will bite my own lip off.

Exciting huh??

Related articles by Zemanta

• Kardashian Idol White Smile – Best Home Teeth Whitening System (slideshare.net)
• Have you ever seen an orangutan walking a dog? (doggies.com)
• Somatic Therapy for tense people. (informationonhealth.blogspot.com)

Image via Wikipedia

I think this is the first dentist appointment I have ever looked forward to! My God, I have been in such agonizing pain this weekend; it’ll be a total pleasure to sit myself down and be tortured for a few minutes. That’s nothing compared to the Hell I have been through..

Today at 1.10 PM.

Prayers are welcome.