Monthly Archives: June 2012

Quotes of the Week | Let’s Grow

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Every day do something that will inch you closer to a better tomorrow.
Doug Firebaugh

Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still.
Chinese Proverb

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Your real influence is measured by your treatment of yourself.
A. Bronson Alcott

If we all did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves.
Thomas Edison

A man who finds no satisfaction in himself will seek for it in vain elsewhere.
La Rochefoucauld

Fear less, hope more, eat less, chew more, whine less, breathe more, talk less, say more, hate less, love more, and good things will be yours.
Swedish Proverb

Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world.
Miguel de Cervantes

Quotes of the Week | Pursuit of Happiness

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When in doubt, choose Love.
– Anonymous

Your task is not to seek love, but to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
– Rumi

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host.
But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
– Maya Angelou

The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.
– Rumi

Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect.
It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.
– Anonymous

The appearance of things change according to the emotions and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty really are in ourselves.
– Kahlil Gibran

Find the guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot, who calls you back when you hang up on him, who will lie under the stars and listen to your heartbeat, or stay awake just to watch you sleep. The one who turns to his friends and says, “thats her”.
– Anonymous

Soul Searching | Letting Go

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Over the last few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching and this is what my soul found:

1.  Practicing the art of being rather than doing (it’s harder than I thought).

2.  Letting go of controlling people by asking them what they want and respecting their answer.

3.  Letting go of being a super hero (example: people pleaser, solver and rescuer) by simply listening.

4.  Not being upset by criticism or feeling elated by compliments.

5.  True forgiveness means wanting the best for that person.

6.  My identity is not what I do, what I have or what others say I am.

7.  Letting go of expectations I put on myself, automatically releases expectations I unconsciously place on others.

8.  Learning to say ‘no’ without feeling guilty.

9.  Learning to graciously accept help from others.

10.  True freedom means letting go of perfection.

My soul searching will be an on-going quest as I’m forever changing, learning and growing. May your journey take you into deeper and unchartered places that will bring freedom, renewal and exciting discovery of yourself.

© Susie Lee 2012

Quotes of the Week | Just for Laughs

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”I haven’t failed.
I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
– Thomas Edison

”It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.”
– Howard Ruff

”The quickest way to double your money is to
fold it over and put it back in your pocket.”
– Will Rogers

”When you come to the end of your rope,
tie a knot and hang on.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt

”Age is an issue of mind over matter.
If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
– Mark Twain

“If you want to test your memory,
try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.”
– E. Joseph Cossman

”Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”
– Henry Ford

”If you keep saying things are going to be bad,
you have a chance of being a prophet.”
– Isaac B. Singer

”A mind is like a parachute,
it doesn’t work if it isn’t open.”
– Frank Zappa

“If you want to make your dreams come true,
the first thing you have to do is wake up.”
– J.M. Power

“Luck is a dividend of sweat.
The more you sweat, the luckier you get.”
– Ray Kroc

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last.
Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”
– Zig Ziglar

“The elevator to success is out of order.
You’ll have to use the stairs… one step at a time.”
– Joe Girard

“I don’t know the key to success
but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
– Bill Cosby

The Key to Physical Intimacy is Emotional Intimacy

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(Borrowed in part from our friends at HealthyMarriageTips.com)

Supermarket magazines bombard us with a constant stream of “Secrets to the Best Sex Ever”.

Here is the real secret.

If you increase the quality of your emotional intimacy you will significantly increase the quality and quantity of your physical intimacy.

Physical intimacy can take place with a total stranger and while it will be physically exciting it can never come close to the exultant ecstasy that comes from becoming one with your spouse with whom you have developed a strong emotional bond.

Emotional intimacy usually takes time to develop. It can’t be rushed or purchased. But it can be built one conversation and one experience at a time.

Before going much further it would also be good to give you our definition of emotional intimacy. Emotional intimacy is your perceived sense of closeness with your spouse.

It’s built on trust, acceptance, forgiveness and knowing that the other person honestly wants what is best for you and “has your back”.

On average women tend to develop emotional intimacy through words and men tend to develop emotional intimacy through experiences. An example for women would be when they share their feelings about something they are struggling with. An example for men would be a hard and difficult experience that they overcame like fighting in a war, participating on a sports team, or any other shared physical activity that involves an element of danger and or difficulty.

Emotional intimacy also involves a tremendous amount of risk. It leaves you vulnerable to getting hurt because it involves lowering your walls and allowing someone else inside your defenses. Which in turn could allow them to use what they learned later on to hurt you.

It’s no wonder that Paul Simon wrote,

“I’ve built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain….

…If I never loved I never would have cried.
I am a rock,
I am an island.”

Yet even still there exists inside all men and women the desire and the need to feel close to someone.

So how do you have “safe” emotional intimacy? And how do you build and strengthen it?

The first step is to realize that no one is perfect. In other words you will never be able to engage in “safe” emotional intimacy. You will make mistakes and so will your spouse. What you can work towards is an emotionally intimate relationship in which you both quickly apologize and forgive each other when you do occasionally hurt each other. In a future tip we will cover how to accomplish this. The keyword though is, occasionally hurt each other. Emotional abuse is real and can be far more damaging then physical abuse. We will address emotional abuse in a future tip as well.

The second step is to engage in activities that will help your emotional intimacy grow stronger. For men that means setting aside time to JUST LISTEN. When a man hears a problem they want to fix it as quickly as possible and move on. Bite your tongue and let your wife talk about her feelings. If she asks you for a possible solution then feel free to share your ideas, otherwise JUST LISTEN. The other skill that MUST accompany listening is empathy. It’s not good enough to just keep your mouth shut. You also need to try and understand how she feels. Does this skill come naturally to most men. No, but it is like any other skill. It can be learned. At first it will feel awkward, but no more awkward than dribbling a basketball and shooting a layup with your offhand. If you stick with it and develop the skill, then the rewards in the physical intimacy area will be more than you can possibly imagine.

Besides setting aside at least 15 minutes a day to just talk, other activities you can engage in to build emotional intimacy include sharing with each other your dreams, struggles, difficult experiences you went through growing up, participating in difficult physical activities together like training for a marathon or backpacking in the mountains, praying together, sharing embarrassing moments, making promises and keeping them, sharing two things a day that you appreciate that your spouse did that day, saying please and thank you, asking about his or her day, giving at least a paragraph long response to “how was your day”, writing thank you notes, trying to see the world from your spouses perspective, complimenting your spouse, being totally faithful to your spouse, making sacrifices for your spouse and brainstorming other ways to strengthen your bond of emotional intimacy.

It also takes being intentional and even coming up with a plan . So make it happen and the rewards will come pouring in.

For more tips, log on to HealthyMarriageTips.com

Quotes of the Week | Nothing is Impossible

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If what you’re doing is not your passion, you have nothing to lose.
– Anonymous

The person who says something is impossible should not interrupt the person who is doing it.
– Anonymous

It is never too late to be what you might have been.
– George Eliot

All our dreams can come true – if we have the courage to pursue them.
– Walt Disney

What the mind can conceive, it can achieve.
– Napoleon Hill

If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.
-Milton Berle

The sky has never been the limit. We are our own limits. It’s then about breaking our personal limits and outgrowing ourselves to live our best lives.
– Anonymous

Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
– Life’s Little Instruction Book, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Everything you want should be yours: the type of work you want; the relationships you need; the social, mental, and aesthetic stimulation that will make you happy and fulfilled; the money you require for the lifestyle that is appropriate to you; and any requirement that you may (or may not) have for achievement or service to others. If you don’t aim for it all, you’ll never get it all. To aim for it requires that you know what you want.
-Richard Koch

Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinion drowned your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
– Steve Jobs