family

How to end a hurtful relationship

We often hear words like “Let it go” or “just cut him/her off”, but when it comes to actually following this advice, we’re not as good at letting things, people and situations go as we think we are. What are we afraid of?

Read also What negativity does to our life.

Ending a painful and destructive relationship is like removing a tooth that’s making you suffer. You have to be prepared to feel even worse pain after the operation, but it will ultimately recede.

I can’t compare people with teeth but… some relationships are very much like toothache: you are constantly in pain, lose your inner peace, your productivity, creativity and sense of adequacy. Mental or physical pain is always a signal that we have to take some sort of action. You should never simply change your attitude towards pain and quietly accept it. Although you can endure it for a time whilst trying to deal with the cause, but if your ‘medication’ doesn’t work then ‘surgery’ may be the best option.

Letting go of people has been always been a challenge for me. Being highly empathetic I often find myself being highly attuned to other people’s feelings, and caring deeply about them. My parents and grandparents always taught me to consider others people’s feelings before my own. I think that people with high emotional intelligence are also more susceptible to suffering from such situations and that they are therefore open to exploitation by less sensitive people. If you feel that you fall into the former category, then the following points could be useful.

Pay attention to inner discomfort.

Emotions never lie. If you feel uncomfortable with someone this may indicate that you are in a toxic relationship. However, don’t stress. Just vocalize your worries, feelings and/or doubts immediately. Don’t wait for the problem to solve itself. If the other person is overly aggressive, highly defensive or attacks you instead of looking for a mutually acceptable solution, then it’s time to leave. Don’t wait for it to become unbearable.

Do not be afraid of emptiness.

First of all, the feeling of emptiness is a good feeling. Emptiness can be space for something new, for people who will truly appreciate you, for better opportunities and for inner peace. This empty space could be vacant for some time, but that’s ok! Don’t rush to fill it. Look around, try to spend more time with your inner child, listen what she is talking about, do something nice for her. I’m sure you will find plenty of things you have always wanted to do but never had time. You won’t believe how wonderful that time of ‘emptiness’ can be if you reinterpret it as time for yourself.

Cut! Cut and go!

Don’t be afraid hurting people if they were not afraid hurting you? Stop pretending that you’re Mother Teresa. Just cut those people off! Stay polite and respectful and explain your position if you feel like it, but don’t back away from the decision. Be ready to endure one last blast of pain. Be ready for the fact that some people might be aggressive. Don’t take anything personally, and remember that severing ties with the wrong people is like removing an unhealthy tooth: you experience extreme pain, and then relief…

Big love and peace x

Tatiana Dmitrieva

Putting yourself first: Why YOU should be a priority

Being nice to other people is great, but you can’t please everyone. Being willing and able to give a helping hand to others is a fantastic personal quality, but don’t delude yourself. If you don’t take care of yourself, nobody will. It should always be your first and foremost responsibility. Make yourself a priority. Believe me, it’s not selfishness – it’s a necessity!

In this short article I will outline four key reasons why you ALWAYS have to put yourself first, and what particular steps should be taken to do so.

I’ve been working with people for 16 years. Unfortunately, I’ve heard too many sad personal stories from burned-out and deeply depressed altruistic, kind and open people who helped others too much without even the slightest appreciation. I’ve heard even more stories about broken relationships when one partner always put other partner’s feelings over his/her own. Every story is unique, but all of them have one thing in common: when you neglect your own feelings and interests, people start taking you for granted.

There is a simple explanation for that phenomenon. First of all, neglecting your own feelings, you assume the position of ‘less valuable person’. People detect this vibe and start neglecting your interests and feelings too. In essence, people always treat you as you treat yourself. Note that what’s important is what you feel but not what you think about yourself. There is a huge difference between these two dimensions of self-awareness; you can encourage yourself with uplifting thoughts, such as: “I deserve the best”, “I’m clever and attractive”, or “People respect me as a professional” – but ultimately this is just noise. What you really feel is what really matters.

Neglecting your own feelings, you assume the position of ‘less valuable person’. People detect this vibe and start neglecting your interests and feelings too.

What should you do to change the pattern? A good therapist or high performance coach could be helpful. Here are no short cuts, I’m afraid. However,

the solution of every problem starts from a conscious acknowledgement of why you have to do certain things.

So, here’s why you should always put your own feelings first:

It’s important for your health

It’s simple: if you neglect your feelings you become stressed. You may be a “people person” and really enjoy helping others, but stress and burnout will ensue if you are always relegating your feelings and interests to the back of the queue. As a result your stress hormones will increase, your body will stop functioning properly and you’ll get sick. You might feel tired, fatigued, demotivated and even develop a serious condition such as hormonal imbalances, digestion problems, weight gain, sleep deprivation, depression, and so on.

It’s important for your relationships

When you always elevate your partner’s feelings and interests over your own, and give more than get back, you will not only start appreciating him or her less but also be constantly exhausted, drained or, conversely, overwhelmed and have a sense of being unfairly treated. Those bitter feelings could utterly destroy your relationship.

So, take time for yourself if you need it. Rest well, and come back to your loved one fresh and happy. If you are permanently overworked and have no energy to spend quality time with your partner, then explain your situation, skip a date or two, recharge yourself, and ask your partner for help.

If you get a lot of superficial and useless advice instead of solid actions I reckon it’s time to accept the fact that the person you are with is not your real ‘partner in crime’. Remember, partners take responsibilities and should not only share the good times with you, but also the hard work and tough periods in your life.

Here I’d like to add a few words about gender-related differences: Even though modern society actively supports the idea of equality of the sexes, we are not the same. Our bodies and hormones are different and as a result our contributions to a relationship are not the same either.

This is a broad and complex topic which I intend to tackle in a future article.

Watch this amazing talk about gender differences and relationships by John Gray (the author of best-seller Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSi00H4f8Fs

It’s important for your career and self-realisation

Logically, if you’re stressed and tired and feel useless and demotivated, you can’t be productive and creative in your daily job. Constantly trying to please your co-workers and business partners is a certain route to self-destruction. Put your own needs first.

Interact and collaborate by all means, but don’t allow work to be piled on your shoulders just because you are “that nice guy”.

You can – and must – limit your tasks. You also have the right to rest and holidays. Don’t forget about these simple things, as overwork reduces your productivity and could affect the overall team’s results. Putting your feelings and health first is not selfish it’s highly beneficial for the whole team.

It’s important for this World

Spiritually speaking, all of us are responsible for those energies we transmit to the World. When we are on our best form we contribute more to society. On the other hand,

by transmitting misery, apathy, anger or a sense of victimhood, we multiply those low feelings poisoning the space around us.

It’s important to assume responsibility for our shared wellness, and always take care of yourself and protect your interests. The more balanced and happy people there are around, the happier and more harmonious our lives will be.

Tatiana Dmitrieva

Mindfulness for kids. Simple explanation of complex philosophy.

The highest function of education is to bring about an integrated individual who is capable of dealing with life as a whole

Krishnamurti

If you were to google mindfulness it states that

it is a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.

For me, mindfulness is learning to live in the present moment and take things one thing at a time. It is a tool that helps myself and my students to deal with the anxieties that we deal with on a daily basis. It is a reminder to be grateful for the things that I have and the things that are going right in my life. For my reading students, it is a tool to help them calm themselves at the beginning of every class period and through our “Mindful Monday” practices, it helps them to train their brains to focus on tasks (something that has helped some of my most struggling readers).

Many believe that mindfulness is meditation. What I have found through my reading and research is that mindfulness is like the marathon that you train for and meditation is the training that you do for that marathon. Through meditations, you are able to train your brain to be aware of when you are “off task” and tune back into the moment that you are in. Being in tune with the present helps us to be more productive, helps us to enjoy the things that we do more, and helps us to deal with our stresses by not worrying about the past or the future.

The whole concept of mindfulness really resonated with me after hearing about it at the workshop earlier this year. I am a self-confessed worry wart. I have always been. Anxiety and the need to please have burdened me all of my life. Add on the role of being a mother and the anxiety and mommy guilt has been enough to put me over the edge! However, when I started to read the journals that I ask my students to keep daily, I began to realize that

my anxiety at age 40 was nothing in comparison to what some of these 11 and 12-year-old boys and girls are dealing.

I could not believe how anxious they were and how so many of them were desperate to find some tool to help them. It made me really start to think about what may happen to some of them if they did not learn to handle the stresses that they are feeling at this point in their life.

As a teacher and a mom, I worry about what kids are doing to relieve stress. We hear all of the time about drug abuse, bullying, and suicide. It all scares me to death. While it seems that every generation has their new and different things that stress them out, it seems to me like a tool like mindfulness is exactly what all generations could use to help them to relieve anxiety and live a happier life.

With the age of less and less recess in schools and technology distracting us from everything, I truly believe that mindfulness is a tool that everyone needs to learn, especially our children. It used to be a badge of honor to be able to say you could multi-task like no one else (Read also How to cope with information overload). However, there is more and more research to say that our brains are not meant to multi-task. The part of our brain that was meant to activate for fight or flight for a short amount of time is now activating for longer and longer periods of time with no rest. None of this is good! Read also How to declutter your mind.

…When I decided to start the journey of mindfulness with my students, I knew that I needed to do more than tell them about it. I knew that it was going to be important to incorporate it into our every day. Since I teach middle school, I see my students for a 40 minute class and then they move on to other classes…

I started by explaining to the students how their brains work. I gave them some of the facts from brain research. I also polled them through their journals to find out if they categorized themselves as “stressed” or “anxious”. It amazed me to read the results.

So many the students who seem to have things together day in and day out confessed to being ridden with stress and anxiety for various reasons.

After explaining how the brain works and why we tend to feel anxious in different situations, I had them think about situations they have been in where stress and anxiety has taken over. We identified how our body reacts (how we feel, how we look, etc). Many students had no problem coming up with the typical symptoms of their heart racing, sweating, shaking, etc. I then told them that I was going to give them a tool to help them in situations of high stress, but also a tool that will just help to give their brains a break throughout the day. It is called our “Mindful Minute”. My goal for the class is to work up to a full minute (deeply focusing on the present moment), but at first a full minute is hard for the students to complete…

..Recently, I asked my students to write about the times that they have used the mindful minute outside of class. Many wrote about doing it on their own before a big hockey game or dance recital. Others have said that they actually focus on their breathing to help them fall asleep at night. Still others told me about how they try to do it as soon as they feel anxious about something. I cannot tell you how happy that made me to hear that they were actually applying this skill outside of the classroom. After all, that is what it is all about!

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Source:

https://mymindfulmission.wordpress.com/2016/05/17/what-is-mindfulness/

Why you can not Get a Good Sleep in Someone Else’s Bed

Half of your brain may be staying awake to keep watch when you sleep in someone else’s bed…

Whether you’re staying in a hotel or having a sleepover, you never sleep quite as well on a bed that’s not your own.
That’s an observable fact. When scientists have people sleep in a lab for an experiment, they often toss out the first night of data because people sleep so poorly. But before now, they haven’t known why.
In a small new study published in Current Biology, researchers from Brown University found out what goes on in the brain when a person sleeps in an unfamiliar place. They measured brain activity during the deep sleep of 35 young, healthy people.

The researchers found evidence that something unique indeed goes on in the brain during the first night: one hemisphere of the brain, the left, shows wakefulness while the other shows sleep.

This alertness during sleep in half of the brain has been observed in other animals—including whales, dolphins and birds—and is thought to act as a kind of night watch.

“The environment is so new to us, we might need a surveillance system so we can monitor the surroundings and we can detect anything unusual,”

says Masako Tamaki, one of the authors of the study and research associate at the Laboratory for Cognitive and Perceptual Learning at Brown University.

We’re most vulnerable when we’re asleep, in other words, and by staying partially awake, our brains might be trying to protect us.

Our brain remain active when we sleep. researchers also found that when they outfitted the people in the study with earphones, the left side showed a larger brain response to high-pitched sounds than the right—suggesting more vigilance in that hemisphere.

The study raises a lot of unanswered questions; researchers don’t yet know why they saw this effect in the left hemisphere and not the right. But interestingly, both of these asymmetries only occurred on the first night—something to keep in mind the next time you can’t fall asleep in a strange place.

Source: Time

https://scitechafrica.wordpress.com/2016/04/24/reason-you-cannot-get-a-good-sleep-in-someone-elses-bed/