The Powerful Secret Your Mother Never Told You

Power. Say that word out loud. Roll it around in your mouth. How does it feel? Does it excite you? Or do you feel the "OW" in the middle?

Successful people know how to express personal power on a fairly consistent basis. Yet for most of us, we fear power because we are at the mercy of someone else's power. This isn't surprising: As children, we learned to submit to other people's rules. We were told to eat food that we didn't like, to follow a schedule not our own, and to override our individual sense of inner knowing and self-determination. As children, our compliance was a matter of survival. We may even have forgotten how to hold on to personal power because giving it away was so automatic.

It is easy to find examples of giving away your power. Not speaking up when someone tells an offensive joke; not offering to lead a group at work or in the community; not voting; not expressing your preferences in your family. Finding your power means listening to the inner voice that longs for freedom and light.

The current "Us against THEM" mindset, like a revolt that demands to be heard, is what some people consider "taking Power." Yet fighting against something without vision or understanding is something else. Personal power does not mean aggression. David Hawkins makes a clear distinction in his book "Power vs. Force," page 132:

"Because force automatically creates counter-force, its effect is limited by definition. We could say that force is a movement-it goes from here to there (or tries to) against opposition. Power, on the other hand, is still. It's like a standing field that doesn't move. Gravity itself, for instance, doesn't move against anything. Its power moves all objects within its field, but the gravity field itself does not move.

"Force always moves against something, whereas power doesn't move against anything at all. Force is incomplete and therefore has to be fed energy constantly. Power is total and complete in itself and requires nothing from outside. It makes no demands; it has no needs."

To live in the world as a fully expressed human being requires personal power. You grow your personal power when you listen to the voice of clarity, freedom and love within you. Power comes from setting deliberate boundaries and eliminating unconscious limitations.

INCREASING YOUR PERSONAL POWER

Practicing each of the following steps will increase your power:

Open your heart to your dreams. Dare to picture what you REALLY want (whether you know how to get it or not). Your inner voice may have been smothered by years of neglect. It takes belief in your ability to dream to reawaken the authentic YOU.

Imagine that all you want already exists. After all, the picture in your mind is the first step of actual creation. Because you can see it, you can believe it, and with belief, you can create it. Every great invention, every successful company, every piece of art, began with a thought. If you can see it and hear it and feel it in your imagination, you can create it.

Be grateful for your life as it is today. If you focus on what you don't have, you focus on lack. You surround yourself with the sense that everything is scarce. You become unhappy and often beat yourself up for being in a "predicament." When you are grateful for what you have, you can sense the fullness of life in its giving you so very many wonderful things.

Accept everything that happens as a gift that moves you forward. Become an inverse paranoid. No matter how things look in the moment, believe that the world conspires to make you successful. Losing a job may open you to get a much better job, or to go back to school or start a business. Traffic jams saved some people's lives on Sept 11, 2001 because they did not get to work on time.

Set boundaries to define your values. Continue to gain clarity on what is important to you. Set your priorities around your clarity. Expect excellence-and expect that your vision is supported by others. Think BIG. Sequential thinking is small. For quantum growth, you must be willing to think out 5 to 10 years and see a massive organization. Once this goal resonates with you, the steps to get there will become clearer.

Listen and feel the resonance of YES. Success feels GOOD! If you find yourself miserable, overwhelmed and unhappy, you have fallen into an old pattern of giving up your power. Why is that? Well, if you don't have power, you can blame someone else for the problem. The trouble is that you have to acknowledge responsibility for your life. What we don't see when we take the easy way out is that we allow all our power to leak away, like water through a sieve.

With these attitudes, you can expand your personal power. Read about great leaders, volunteer for leadership roles, do every task with excellence. Before long you will find many goals magically showing up. Behind every successful human is a vivid dream whispering "yes..." Be willing to step up, over and over again. The path you really want is at the top of the heap. Keep stepping up.

Are you tired of struggling for success? Carole Hodges provides the kind of guidance that business owners need in this busy world. Get your Special Report - 15 Attitudes that Complicate Your Life and Paralyze Your Business and simple tips to make change NOW.

Becoming Your Mother's Mom

It's hard to have a parent with dementia. Not just for the obvious reasons -- the dementia. However, the other really big difficulty is the change in relationship.

Dementia takes away a number of very important abilities. That's exactly why the many dementing illnesses, of which Alzheimer's is only one, are so hard for families.

As adults, we make our own decisions. We plan. We follow through. We pay bills. We shop. We keep doctor's appointments. We drive to our friend's house for dinner. We live our life. At some point in the course of dementia, all of that will be stripped away.

The stripping usually begins item by item. Each step of that process poses a new dilemma for you. When do you take over each part of your Mom's life? How do you know if it's too soon? How do you know what you should do? When do you become boss?

For the outside person, a professional caregiver like me, it's much easier. So you could always start by asking yourself a few vital questions that we outsiders would ask.

Five Questions to Ask Yourself:
1. Is Mom safe in all she does?
2. Is she eating, drinking, bathing and dressing adequately?
3. Should she be driving?
4. Does she take her medicines properly?
5. Is she safe in the kitchen?

If you can't answer a resounding YES to all these, you do have a problem. Or rather, you have a dementia trend which results in problems, some of them very dangerous. Time to intervene.

Usually, already when families have the question -- when should we intervene with Mom? -- the answer is already "Now"! Family members are asking the question because they have already noticed signs of things not being okay.

It's always helpful to list the issues. The things you've noticed, the signs of decline, the factors that worry you. Run my Alzheimer's test: see what fresh foods are in the refrigerator, run your finger along the stove and see if there's the dust of an unused appliance, check washing machine and dryer to look for signs of
laundry in process, ask Mom what she did yesterday, sneak a look at her mail for unpaid bills and too much junk mail.

I know this sounds underhand, and it is, but for a very good reason. You want to know if your Mom needs help and she won't admit it. Two reasons: one is she doesn't remember the chaos her life is descending into and two is that she's too afraid to tell you.

Five Things Your Mom Hides:
1. That she can't manage;
2. That she's very frightened;
3. That she's confused;
4. That she can't remember;
5. That she's not willing tell you her needs.

She's in a very difficult stage of her life. She's a responsible adult who can't be that any more. So now she's a responsible adult with childlike fears and adolescent attitudes. That's why your relationship is getting complicated.

You are now the boss of her. But you must not boss her. You must support, nurture, protect and tiptoe forward subtly to pick up her slack with tact and kindness. Do not turn anything into a battle. You will both lose and it will be emotionally wrenching.

Five Things to Do Right now:
1. Bring meals over (or have them delivered);
2. Organize help with the housekeeping;
3. Dementia-proof her environment;
4. Call a family council;
5. Make a family plan.

Be kind to your Mom. That's the only way she'll trust you.

Frena Gray-Davidson is a longterm Alzheimer's caregiver and her latest book is "Alzheimer's 911: Hope, Help and Healing for Caregivers", available from http://www.amazon.com. Go to her website at http://www.alzguide.com/ and sign up for her free monthly email newsletter for caregivers.

Worry

As mothers we worried about everything from where our sons and daughters are to how soon will we see them again. When we find ourselves thinking about everything that could go wrong with our children while they are way from us, we ought to also think about everything that could go right!

Most often worry can be defeated by changing thoughts.

Nicholl McGuire
http://organizerhome.blogspot.com

Feeling Loved and Accepted

Sometimes mothers think that the only way they can get married or find someone new is to make the man feel obligated to them by having more children. If you were to step outside of your mind and become the man for a moment looking at you, what he would see is a frazzled woman, cooking, cleaning, hair undone, no makeup, and caring for children, I can almost bet you that’s not what he really had in mind. Instead, he sees the beautiful woman he first met complete with hair done, nails polished, waxed, trimmed, and perfected in the image of whatever he fantasized.

One way we can feel loved and accepted not just by a man but ourselves too, is to model positive, strikingly beautiful women inside and out while maintaining the personality that caused him to fall in love with us. When you feel good about yourself, the world will indeed take notice with comments like, “You look nice today, your hair is pretty, where are you going…can I come?”

Nicholl McGuire
http://tipsdatingoldermen.blogspot.com

A Simple Tip to Keep the Children & Teens Busy on Weekends

I don't know about you, but I don't like to see my children waste a weekend playing video games all day! So what I do is make plans for them on weekends especially when the weather is not good. The first thing I do is get the notebook and pen out and I create a time chart based on their waking hours usually I make it neat enough to hang up or I write notes on a dry erase board that in the past I hung up in their room before we relocated. Basically it looks something like this... I include action photos, stick figures and stickers for the little ones who can't read. 

 8:00 - Wash face, brush teeth, and put your clothes on. 

 9:00 - Watch television, computer time, or play video games using ear phones. 

 

10:00 - Breakfast 

11:00 - For older ones read a book, complete homework, or do practice math and reading worksheets. The younger ones: color, toys, stack blocks, or other age appropriate activity. 

12 noon - nap time for the little ones and "do nothing" time for the tweens. During this time I encourage the older ones to reflect on their day, the past, present and future. 

Since I am a praying mother, I encourage them to use this time to talk to God quietly in their minds. Its like a form of meditation and it works when they are lying down on their beds usually they will go to sleep too. The remaining part of the day is usually planned out as well. Sometimes we deviate from the schedule because we may have errands to run and places to go. I provide enough time between activities and projects for them to complete them during the evening since the day begins to slow down for me, but pick back up for them since they are energized. 

I encourage any parent to relax while the household is quiet. Rather than participating in physical activities that will only leave you tired and irritable and not recharged to deal with the children during the second half of the day, do those tasks (like exercising) while they are awake. Get them involved. 

Let the older ones do chores and use an incentive program for their assistance such as: pizza, money, or a new toy, game or article of clothing they really like. I noticed that with a well-planned weekend, the children's behavior was much better and I didn't have to discipline as much. After awhile they get used to your plan and they just start doing things without your asking. 

My eldest son (who stays with his dad but comes during school breaks) doesn't have to be told anything. He use to come over and look at his schedule, now he just does things automatically including dusting! Hope this works for you! Nicholl McGuire http://www.twitter.com/motherhoodtips