Life Changing Tips For Boomers: Rewire Your Brain To Control Emotions, and Make Positive Life Choices

Do You Seem to Get Caught Up in the Same Old Reactions?

Have you ever blown up at your spouse only to realize—after the smoke cleared—that you might have over-reacted just a tad? Maybe you learn that you haven’t been invited to your uncle’s friend’s sister’s birthday party and you behave as if it’s the slight of the century.

Sometimes even the most minor snafu can send us storming out of the room, slamming down a phone, or just shutting down entirely. It’s like we just can’t help it—the reaction is as automatic as a mallet to the knee.

Science Reveals It May Not Be Your Fault

New research indicates that these habitual, knee-jerk responses go way back to our childhood. As youngsters, we learned to adapt to our families’ idiosyncrasies as a way of survival. Psychologists used to refer to these coping mechanisms as our baggage—but what science has now shown us is that these responses are actually hard-wired into our brains. And because our responses are so ingrained, they have become our filtering system for future incidents. In other words, if something happens today that the brain reads as being similar to something that happened in the past, it will respond as if it were the first time, even though you may be in your 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and beyond.

Bringing This to Life

For example, let’s say a child comes from a home where the parents fight frequently. That child is going to associate yelling with bad feelings. In later years, if his spouse raises her voice, he’s likely to shut down like when he was a kid—metaphorically running to his room, closing the door, and essentially blocking out the noise.

Does this mean if you come from a family of yellers you’re doomed to hide under your bed every time someone raises a voice? Luckily, recent research indicates that the brain continues to grow throughout our lives—and old patterns can be released as new ones are formed in your boomer years..

Help Is On the Way

The way to managing your anger and knee jerk reactions is to establish new connections by refocusing your attention to a different outcome or possibility. But, before you can foster these new connections in your brain, you have to be aware of the old brain triggers.

When I try and distinguish whether someone’s reaction is a past association, I look to see if their reaction to the situation is automatic and intense. Additionally, when I try and offer an alternative to why they’re behaving that way, the person is resistant and reluctant to consider any other view or interpretation of the situation—other than their own.

In my practice, I work extensively with clients to help them rewire and rewrite their lives. Here is an easy exercise to get you started on rewiring your brain to control your anger and over-reactions that will bring about positive changes in your life-today!

1. Thinking of Alternatives:

a. When you’re projecting your past experience onto a present one, try and imagine alternative ways to handle the situation. For example, let’s say you have lunch plans with a friend—who cancels at the last minute. Immediately, you feel an overwhelming sense of hurt and rejection. Which is how you always feel in similar situations—indicating—voila—a past pattern! Be conscious of this and take a step back to recognize it.

b. Then, approach the situation from an entirely different perspective. Maybe you use humor to deflect the bad feelings, thinking to yourself, “Gee, I guess it’s my deodorant.” Or, you choose the direct approach and ask your friend if you’ve done something to upset her. Or, you take the practical route and figure your friend just overbooked, overextended, or over-promised—and give her a get-out-of-jail-free card. (Hint: If you have difficulty coming up with alternative ways to handle the situation, think about how someone else - your mother, a childhood friend, an admired acquaintance - might handle the same situation.)

2. Plugging in New Choices:

a. Now, replay the actual situation as vividly as possible—the phone ringing, the sound of your friend’s voice, the awkward goodbyes—and imagine yourself carrying out one of your new solutions. Maybe you decide that being understanding of your friend’s busy schedule is the best choice.

b. Replay the phone call and plug in your new behavior, the understanding you, rather than playing out your old behavior of feeling rejected and hurt.

Making it Last

Before long, you will begin to see a slight shift in how you feel. By doing this exercise again and again, you will refocus your attention on a new outcome. This will rewire your brain and make a new neural connection—a connection to positive change!

By Karen Sherman Ph. D

Finally, a psychologist who goes that extra mile & cares about people. Whether Karen Sherman, Ph.D. is giving a speech or offering a workshop-she’s helping people. Let Karen help you make positive life choices both personally & in your relationships by signing up for her free newsletter at http://www.drkarensherman.com/newsletter.htm
Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com/

QUIZ - CAN MONEY BUY HAPPINESS?

Can riches buy happiness? Wealth can buy many luxuries, but not happiness. Money cannot buy contentment. Money can surely buy us time with a psychiatrist with who we can talk about our unhappiness, but no amount of money can buy us happiness. Sometimes more money, and status can rob us of happiness. Think of many very rich people. They cannot move around like ordinary citizens. They will be immediately stared at. They have lost a lot of freedom in quest of money and fame.

What gets us happiness? We get happiness by doing what we like. We do not get happiness by forcing us to do what we do not want to do. Our happiness comes from our satisfaction of doing our heart felt desires. Our contentment comes from that. Money can destroy friendships, and break family relations. The more money you have, the more people expect from you. If you refuse, your relationship goes downhill. Sometimes I wonder if we have more than our minimum requirement of money, will we be happy at all?

If you have a giving nature, money can buy you happiness of a different kind. When you visit an orphanage, and are able to donate as much as they want to feed the small kids, you will feel a sense of genuine happiness. Money can make you do good things in life that make others happy.

When you make others happy, you become happy.Money can help you do that. No expensive dinner can make you feel as happy as the smile on the face of parents to whom you have given money for their childrens medicine.

By C.D. Mohatta

CD Mohatta writes for ecards, screensavers and wallpapers. The topics of his writings include love, inspiration, holidays, birthdays etc. You can view free wallpapers, send free greetings and solve fun quizzes & tests.
Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com/

RELATIONSHIP TEST - ARE YOU CONTINUING WITHOUT PLEASURE?

A relationship should be like a flowing river. Fresh, moving around and finding ways around obstacles. Enjoying a relationship should never be like a still pond of water that just exists. A relationship should have life and should never be a compromise.

But many relationships become like a pond. They began like river but are now stationary wondering where to go, and whether to exist at all. But they continue existing without any pleasure. The main reason is the inability of partners to face the uncertainty of breaking the relationship.

The relationship continues because the partners do not want to face the future alone. They are tired of it and worried that they will undergo more pain if they break the relationship. They neither try to refresh the relationship nor break it. There lies the heart of the matter.

What should they do? They should sit together, talk about the stagnation in the relationship, and talk about how to give it a new life. If they decide that it will not be possible, they should break up and look towards a better future. A relationship without pleasure will break up any way after some years. By that time, lot of time would have been lost and the discord would leave a very bad stamp of experience on both the partners. Better to control the disease in time. Start taking steps from today. Become more aware about your relationship. Analyze it more closely.

By C.D. Mohatta

The author, C.D.Mohatta writes fun quizzes & tests on topics like love, personality, dating, relationships, friendship, business, etc. The author writes forfree ecards on holidays, birthday, love, friendship, family and all events and occasions. One more site recommended by the author has free arcade games which surfers can play online

Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com

Happiness: The Secret Ingredient is YOU!

Discovered: The Secret Ingredient to Happiness is Ourselves! As many of you know I am a positive psychologist and happiness coach—I encourage finding out what's good about ourselves (rather than what's bad), and seeing ourselves in a positive light. I teach how to understand your own needs and your talents, and how to do the work necessary to create a life full of happiness.

Here, I’d like to introduce you to a happiness creation process I developed from many years of observation, case studies, and happiness research.

In my happiness research I found that women are happy at least part of the time, but often dismiss their good feelings as just a blip on the ‘radar screen of life’. They also frequently lose their “good mood” as soon as someone criticizes or puts them down.

I began to realize that becoming, and staying happy requires a habit that can practiced and improved upon, and I developed a model called “The Enchanted Self” that shows how we can improve our happiness using something I call “Recipes for Enchantment.”

def. The Enchanted Self - the capacity to initiate positive states of being unique to our disposition and talents.

def. Recipes for Enchantment – the ways we’ve found to create happiness for ourselves that are unique to us.

The Enchanted Self is something you control, and you do it using “Recipes for Enchantment” that are unique to you.

Although there are many “Recipes for Enchantment” that most of us have in common, it’s important to remember that you are unique, and what makes you happy isn’t necessarily going to be the same as for the other people in your life. YOU are the “secret ingredient” in the recipe for creating your own happiness. As such, you must discover the unique things that enhance your happiness.

Here’s a “recipe” for discovering some of the unique things that make you happy…

Exercise: Recipe for Personal Pleasure

Give yourself a quiet space, a pad of paper and a pen, and permission to daydream. The world is your oyster. Plan out a day that is designed to make you happy.

- What would that day be like and what would you do?

- Where would you go?

- Who would be with you, if anyone?

- What would you see?

- How would you feel?

- What would you eat that day?

- What are some of the aromas that would please you that day?

- What would be the highlight of the day?

- How would you feel at the end of the day?

- Now you're looking back on that day.

- What would you be most pleased about?

- What are some of the ingredients you would need to make this day come true?

- What are three steps YOU need to take to get closer to experiencing a pleasing time right now? [Remember YOU are the main ingredient. ]

By Dr. Barbara B. Holstein

Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein, Positive Psychologist, originator of THE ENCHANTED SELF, is the author of: The Enchanted Self, A Positive Therapy, Recipes for Enchantment, The Secret Ingredient is YOU! and DELIGHT. Visit http://www.enchantedself.com/
Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com/

SEVEN KEYS TO HAPPINESS

This article summarizes much of what I’ve learned thus far on my journey to self-discovery and positive growth. Along the way, through many of life’s ups and downs, with the help of many awesome teachers and mentors, I now most often live in a state of happiness and contentment. I still have lots to learn but I wanted to share with you what I’ve found most helpful thus far. I truly believe that all people have the capacity to choose their mental attitude. Therefore, if happiness is what you desire, then you must choose it. Here are some helpful ideas to help you do just that.

1. Self-Worth

Self-worth—without it, happiness will always be just beyond your grasp. Self-worth is, of course, something that can be measured along a continuum. It isn’t like you either have it or you don’t. You can possess varying degrees and those degrees can themselves vary depending on the circumstances of your life.

Generally, the person who is happiest has a healthy amount of self-worth without an inflated view of their own self-importance. This is the fine line that must be walked between confidence and arrogance.

Confidence implies a certain sense of surety while recognizing that each of us is just a different cog in a very big wheel. No one person is any more important than anyone else. Those with high self-worth know their life’s purpose. They are in tune with what their mission is and proceed to make it their life’s work. They also recognize the value of everyone else with whom they share space.

Those who are arrogant recognize their own self-worth but then proceed to look down upon those they deem as unworthy. Then at the other end of the continuum, there are those who recognize the importance of others but don’t believe they are worthy to breathe air.

A healthy balance of self-worth is the key.

2. Gratitude

The second key to happiness is gratitude. It is human nature to enumerate the things that are NOT the way we want them to be. We are programmed to notice when things are off, and not necessarily appreciate when all is as we want it. This makes maintaining an attitude of gratitude a challenge but nonetheless something we should strive for. I have mentioned before that Universal Law tells us that we attract those things we think about most often. When we are grateful for what we have, more is bestowed upon us.

I know someone who believes, “No good deed goes unpunished” and lives his life accordingly. Another person I know always says, “I have the worst luck. Nothing good ever happens to me.” And you know what? They are right! The Universe delivers to them exactly what they expect. There are others who have similar bad luck but who persevere or find the lesson in the situation. These people find more happiness and contentment in return.

Another point about gratitude is to be thankful for what you have. I love the line in the song that says, “It’s not having what you want; it’s about wanting what you got!” There’s nothing wrong with wanting to do better than you are as long as you are grateful along the way. Even when things are bad, there is always good to be found in it. Life is in perfect balance and order. Anything with a great deal of pain associated with it also has a tremendous positive side if we are of the mind to see it.

3. Positive Life Framing

The third key to happiness is positive life framing. There are three ways to view any piece of information—positively, negatively or neutrally. Viewing information as neutral is the best way to go through life. It allows us to accept everything as it comes and to stop resisting what actually is in any given moment. However, many of us have great difficulty with that one.

As an incremental step, it is helpful to find a way to reframe life’s negative events into positive ones. Even in life’s tragedies, there is a way to find something positive about the situation. Almost always, in hindsight, we can see the benefit. The real benefit comes when we are able to see the benefit as the tragedy unfolds, or at least stay open to the thought that there is a benefit even if you are unable to see it in that moment. Just as in physics where there can be no neutron without a proton, so it is with life where there can be no negative event without a corresponding positive one.

4. Internal Locus of Control

The fourth key to happiness is possessing an internal locus of control. People who have an internal locus of control believe that they are responsible for their own behavior and its results based on their own personal decisions and efforts. This is contrasted with those who have an external locus of control. These individuals believe that their behavior is determined by external circumstances such as other people, fate, luck or circumstances beyond their control.

Having an internal locus of control produces a “can do” attitude. An external locus of control generally results in a helpless attitude. Even though people with an internal locus of control still have situations that occur that are beyond their control, they will seek some action that can be taken by them to improve the situation. They do not spend time bemoaning the fact that something bad happened to them. They look for decisive action opportunities to turn things around.

In this way, a person is more in charge of their own destiny. They can reject the role of victim and take definitive action to create greater life satisfaction.

5. Lifelong Learning

The fifth key to happiness is to adopt an attitude of lifelong learning. Your goal each day should be to learn something new. As you encounter new people and situations, look for the wisdom that can be extracted from them. Particularly in areas where we believe we made a “mistake”, seek to uncover the lesson. There is always a lesson to be learned.

When we believe we know all there is to know, that is when we are in dangerous territory. When we think we know all, then we stop learning from the people and situations in our path. When we stop looking for the lessons, we begin to blame things external to ourselves for the pain we experience instead of seeking to learn whatever we need to know for our life’s journey.

6. Love

Love is the sixth key to happiness. I am not talking about having a significant other in your life who loves you. I’m talking about having love inside of you that is just bursting out of you to touch others. Unconditional love is a concept we all strive for—unfortunately, most of us are looking to receive it rather than give it. You are truly fortunate and blessed when you have the unconditional love of someone—whether it’s your life partner, your mother, father, aunt, uncle, grandmother, grandfather, foster parent, friend or puppy!

Truly unconditional love is rare and a gift to be cherished. However, ask yourself the question, how many times have you extended unconditional love? Do you have unconditional love for your fellow human beings? This is the kind of love that will lead to happiness. It doesn’t matter if that special someone doesn’t love you back, it’s what’s in YOUR heart that matters. Are you someone who only loves as much as you feel you are being loved in returned? That certainly isn’t unconditional! If you are seeking love in your life, then you must be loving in order to attract the love you seek. This will lead to the ultimate happiness—loving, expecting nothing in return. Try it.

7. Contribution

The last key to happiness is contribution. This is a combination of knowing and following one’s life purpose. When people understand their divine purpose in this life and then go about fulfilling that purpose, they are making an awesome contribution to the good of mankind. Having meaningful work and leaving a legacy is an important key to happiness. When we do the work we were meant to do, we touch lives. It doesn’t matter whether one’s purpose is to clean the public restrooms or to find the cure for AIDS, following your divine purpose will bring about a strong life fulfillment that cannot be experienced any other way. Contribution is critical to happiness.

Implementing these seven keys to happiness in one’s life is not an easy task. Personal coaching can be helpful as you are attempting to change some old, harmful habits into more productive, happiness-inducing ones. Jack Canfield says, “Of all the things successful people do to accelerate their trip down the path to success, participating in some kind of coaching program is at the top of the list. A coach will help you clarify your vision and goals, support you through your fears, keep you focused, confront your unconscious behaviors and old patterns, expect you to do your best, help you live by your values, show you how to earn more while working less, and keep you focused on your core genius.” Why not give it a try?

By Kim Oliver

Kim Olver has a degree in counseling, is a certified and licensed counselor. She is a certified reality therapy instructor. Kim is an expert in relationship, parenting and personal empowerment, working with individuals who want to gain more effective control of their lives and relationships. Visit http://www.therelationshipcenter.biz/
Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com/

Six Guides for a Planned and Purposeful Life

Only 3 or 4 people, out of a hundred, set goals and live a purposeful life. If you want to turn your dreams into reality, there is no other way. Talking or wishing has never resolved any problems and never will. Action is what is important. Planning is what is essential. Having a purpose is the foundation.

Here are six guides, or six steps for a planned and purposeful life. These steps brings action, wisdom and enlightenment as you pursue your dreams.

First, do, positively, the creed that calls for action, performance, production and accomplishment.

The new creed of living is the creed of "do". It is the opposite of the creed of "do not," the negative creed of rejection, procrastination, fear and failure.

This positive creed says "do, rather than do not"; "do, rather than talk about it"; "do, rather than wish"; "do, rather than wait."

Second, deliberately condition your subconscious by what you do consciously. Wholeheartedly want the best outcomes from your actions. Let your subconscious have free reign in demonstrating its great power.

The subconscious mind has the power to work for you and bring you all the good that you desire. It has the ability, when properly understood and used, to help you attract people, opportunities and money that will guarantee and maximize your chances of success.

Unleash the power of the subconscious mind by visualizing, affirming, feeling and doing. You then activate the law of attraction that will give you all the good that you desire according to your dominant thoughts.

Third, establish in your life a pattern of personal "retreats" where you concentrate on your purpose in life, and look at your progress objectively.

Meditation is reflecting and receiving. Receiving inspiration, wisdom, health and spirituality.
Meditation is a continuous and profound contemplation on a subject or series of subjects of a deep nature.

Meditation brings a sense of fullness and wholeness. It is one of the only permanent source of tranquility available to human beings.

Prayer is meditation. The habit of meditation is the basis for all real knowledge.

Fourth, seek guidance, and use all of the readily available resources to equip you with practical, usable knowledge of positive living.

Coaches, mentors and good advice are everywhere. You can attract the best by the person you are, the person you want to be.

People will help you find a solution when you’re down. Mentors will believe in you when you doubt. A good friend will give you some advice that can transform the moment and recharge your batteries.

Fifth, keep your program full of positive, progressive action by having several goals in prospect, on a variety of subjects, at the same time.

Setting goals will set you apart from the average person. Setting and achieving goals are not reserved to an elite. Yet, it seems that only 3 or 4 people out of a hundred properly select goals that will change their lives.

Sixth, take advantage of the full capacity of your subconscious to serve you by deliberately giving your inner mind positive projects to work on, even while you sleep.

Your subconscious mind works 24/7. You can find in it an ally that will help you solve problems. Watch your thoughts, especially when you’re about to sleep. Give your subconscious a problem to solve or some positive thoughts to work on during your night.

These six guides for a planned and purposeful life involve your whole you: your body(action), your spirit(meditation), your mind(conscious and subconscious) and your heart(emotions) to activate the law of attraction.

Copyright by Emmanuel Segui

Turn your life around by unleashing the power of your subconscious mind. Sign up for our free 5 part mini-course: It is possible to design and live an extraordinary life by mastering the dynamic factor which master-controls your life.http://www.subconsciousmindexposed.com/
Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com/

Communicating With Plants

Plants’ experience of being in the world is very different from the experience of us animals. Because plants cannot move about, they exist in a state of profound acceptance and peace within themselves. Emotions such as fear, hate, jealousy, possessiveness, etc. are wholly unknown to plants and would serve no useful purpose. On the other hand, plants are capable of experiencing a wide range of higher emotions the like of which we animals could scarcely conceive.

At the same time, there are feelings which plants share with us animals, such as love, pain, joy, thirst, etc. It is the feelings we share with plants which provide the basis of our ability to communicate with them.

Feeling with plants is not so different from feeling with people. For example, when we are about to have sex with someone who really turns us on, we feel a palpable surge of sexual energy connecting us to that person. Similarly, when we walk into a room to face someone who is madder than hell at us, we feel connected to that person by a palpable wave of anger and fear. When a baby smiles at us, we feel a rush of joy that has us automatically smile back. However, most of our interactions with other people do not have this feeling of connectedness and emotional immediacy. Most of the time we don’t even look the people we are addressing in the eye, let alone feel with them. Because of our social training, we tend to regard sharing feelings with other people as threatening. We are taught to close up and defend ourselves, and to keep our interactions as sterile and devoid of feeling as possible.

In order to communicate with plants (or people), you have to be able to regard them as your equals. If you are afraid (ashamed) to talk with homeless people, beggars, crazy people, etc. then you’ll also find it difficult to talk with plants. However, it’s actually easier to communicate with plants than it is to communicate with people because plants don’t have defenses and self-importance agendas in place which engage our own defenses and self-importance agendas. To feel with plants (or people) doesn’t mean to gush all over them; all it means is to recognize them as beings whose feelings are as important to them as your feelings are to you.

When first learning to communicate with plants, it helps to be in contact with the same individual plants on a daily basis. Ideally you should go out, preferably alone, to the same tree or meadow for at least a few minutes every day. If you can’t do this, cultivating garden or house plants will work just as well, although it’s easiest to communicate with large trees. This is because from a feeling (light fiber) point of view, humans and trees are very much alike – the light fiber (auric glow) configurations of both humans and trees are quite similar, whereas that of insects, for example, is very different from either. It is easier for humans and trees to communicate with each other than it is for either to communicate with insects.

Now even the least psychic person, going up to a large tree, should be able to pick up something of the personality (mood) of that tree. How does the tree make you feel – happy, sad, loving, jolly, heavy? Can you pick up its sex: sense a male or female presence – or its age: young and vigorous or old and mellow?

This isn’t all that hard to do – you can call upon your senses to buttress your feelings, as in the exercise of seeing pictures in the clouds, except that you do it by feeling rather than thinking – by relaxing into the process rather than controlling it. It’s exactly what a rationalist would term “anthropomorphism.”

For example, spiky trees (like palmettos and Joshua trees) have a sassy, masculine energy. Cedar trees tend to be clowns or wise guys. Banana trees are joyous and loving. Weeping trees really do have a doleful air about them. Tall, erect trees have proud and regal personalities.
Trees that seem to be reaching longingly for the heavens are reaching longingly for the heavens.

A good time to learn to connect emotionally with trees is when they’re dying. The next time you see a tree being felled, pause and quiet down your thoughts and watch it attentively. You should easily be able to feel the tree’s agony just before it falls, since trees (and all beings) are filled with power at the moment of their deaths and profoundly affect the beings around them. Loggers triumphantly yell “Timber!” when a tree falls to cover their sense of shame and disconnectedness – to block communication with the tree at the moment of its death.

Another good time to pick up on plants’ feelings is when they are in motion. Plants are happiest when they are moving – blown by the wind and the rain. Wave back to them when they wave at you (it’s only polite). Watch how they dance in the breeze. See how the trees which overhang roads and walkways cast down blessings on all who pass beneath them. See how the young growing tips are more alert, vigorous, and naively impetuous than the older and mellower lower leaves. Be aware of the awareness of plants: when you walk through a wood or meadow, feel as though you were walking through a crowd of people, all of whom are watching you.

Some people pick up on the feelings of plants by seeing faces in the bark or foliage. They impose that thought form (of a face with a giggly, dour, saucy, etc. expression) over the feeling of the tree, since that’s how most people are conditioned to interpret feelings – by associating them with facial expressions.

What we’re tying to get at are feelings, which can be apprehended directly, without any need for sensory cues. However, the senses can provide a useful point of reference and serve as a bridge between imagination and pure feeling, which is how they function in dreams. When you see with your feelings rather than your mind, your visual attention isn’t focused on any one thing, but rather everything within your field of vision strikes your attention with equal impact (vividness), as it does in dreams. To see this way you have to have your mind quiet, and you have to be in a joyous and abandoned mood. If you’re bummed out or grumpy, you won’t be able to see what plants are feeling any more than you’d be able to see a baby smile at you.

Much of our social training entails learning to stifle our senses – to not see what is right before our eyes, to not listen to what our ears are hearing, to be offended by smells, discomfited by touch. Cutting off our senses leaves us feeling apathetic and disconnected from our world. Therefore, if we want to renew our feeling of connectedness which we had as infants, we have to start plugging our senses into our feelings again. And because they are so nonthreatening, feeling with plants is a good place to start.

Not only do different species of plants have different feelings associated with them, but also there is considerable individual variation in personalities between different plants of the same species, between different branches on the same plant, and even between different leaves on the same branch. By lightly holding a leaf for a moment between your thumb and forefinger, you can feel which leaves want to be picked for medicine or food purposes and which ones want to be left alone. The leaves that want to be picked have a high, vibrant feel to them, whereas leaves that don’t want to be picked feel dead in your hand.

Even if you can’t seem to tune in to the feelings of plants, you can still telepathically “talk” with them. Plants can talk to you in thoughts, and these (at first) seem indistinguishable from your own thoughts. That is, it will seem to you that you are the one who is thinking these thoughts, when in fact it is the plants which are sending you messages. That’s why it’s important to have your own mind as quiet as possible – to be in a relaxed mood – if you expect plants to talk to you; if your own mind is buzzing, there’s no way the plants can get a word in edgewise. Any thoughts or feelings you have while sitting under a tree or working with plants are probably messages from the plants.

So how do you know if you are actually communicating with a plant, and not just imagining it? The answer is: you don’t. You just go with your intuition rather than going with your concepts, what you’ve been taught. Instead of hypnotizing yourself into believing that the world of concepts is reality, you hypnotize yourself into believing that the world of feelings – of magic – is reality. The only difference between these two equally valid points of view is that from one of them plants talk to you, and from the other they don’t.

If you feel self-conscious talking to plants, just remember that what you have been programmed to call the “real” world is merely a figment of your imagination also. And if you start calling something else the real world, then that something else becomes the real world; it becomes as real as this one.

If you’re dubious, just ask the plant over and over, “Is this you, Mr. or Ms. Plant talking to me, or am I just imagining it?” And if you keep getting the same answer over and over, “It’s me, the plant! It’s me, the plant!” – then just assume that it is indeed the plant talking to you, and listen to what it has to say. You can ask questions and get answers, both questions and answers coming as though you were holding a conversation in your own mind.

It’s easy to learn to talk with house and garden plants, since these are particularly eager to discuss matters such as fertilization, watering, shade, grafting and transplanting techniques, etc. But in addition to such mundane affairs, plants (particularly large trees) can give you helpful advice on all sorts of matters. Take them your problems; ask them what they think you should do. Some of my best friends and most trusted advisors are trees.

Whether you are consciously aware of it or not, you are already communicating with plants all the time. The soothing, healing, tranquilizing feeling that comes when you are gardening or are out in nature is in fact your psychic attunement to the joyous vibrations of the plants around you. To follow this feeling one step further – to its source – is to put yourself into direct communication with the plants. It’s as easy as smiling at a baby.

(excerpted from Bob Makransky’s book Magical Living)

INVITATION TO SUBSCRIBE TO FREE MONTHLYASTRO-MAGICKAL E-ZINE!
MAGICAL ALMANAC is Bob Makransky's free monthly e-zine of astrology and magick. MAGICAL ALMANAC is chock full of astrology tips and suggestions for bringing magick into your life

To subscribe, send an e-mail to: MagicalAlmanac-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Privacy Statement: We will not give or sell your name or e-mail address to anyone, ever.

Bob Makransky is a systems analyst, programmer, and professional astrologer. For the past 30 years he has lived on a farm in highland Guatemala where he is a Mayan priest and is head of the local blueberry growers association. Check out his books, articles, FREE MONTHLY ASTRO-MAGICAL E-ZINE, free downloadable Mayan Horoscope software, free instructions on how to channel and run past life regressions, short stories, cartoons, etc. etc. at: http://www.dearbrutus.com/
Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com/