How To Refresh Your Relationship Today

Relationships — like everything we do in life — don’t really operate as well as we think they do on auto-pilot. While everything may seem fine on the surface, dig a little deeper and you’ll find two people who are unhappy, but just don’t know how to broach the subject.

Let’s face it, sometimes our romantic relationships can just become stagnant.

It’s time to reignite the flame and restore the passion that you and your partner deserve.

How do you do it? Click through to find out!

1. Be social. Look for healthy couples to hang out with. Summer is almost over, but there’s still time for barbecues, pool parties, camping, picnics in the park, and going to the beach. Socializing with other couples will bring about new adventures to add to your list.
2. Make your partner feel special. Let him or her know that your relationship is at the top of your priority list. Brainstorm different ways that you can show them daily.
3. Learn to be an effective communicator. Being a good communicator means being a good listener. Most couples listen with the intent to reply. Instead, listen with the intent to understand.
4. Play nice. It’s not always going to be fun and games. There will be times that you and your partner don’t get along. Watch your tone. No name-calling, no degrading, and no blaming. Before you speak, ask yourself, “is this helping or hurting the relationship?” If you slip up, don’t forget to apologize.
5. Volunteering at a church, soup kitchen, women’s shelter, animal shelter, Red Cross, or nursing home is a great way to give back to the community and will leave you and your partner with a sense of accomplishment.
6. Break up the routine from time to time to make things more exciting.
7. Learn to accept your partner for the things that you like and don’t like. Respect each other’s differences. Allow your partner to be themselves. If we mold our partner to be what we wish they were, then we only love the reflection of ourselves.
8. Everyone needs alone time. Take a personal day and enjoy being with yourself. Go for a walk, have a spa day, hit some balls on the golf course, or whatever else you find relaxing.
9. Surprise your partner. Try a card to let your partner know how much you appreciate him or her, a smiley face balloon to brighten a tough day at work, a bouquet of seasonal flowers, or a gourmet box of chocolates to share while watching a romantic movie. Surprises can also come in other forms. Straightening up the garage or cleaning up the kitchen can be a great gift.
10. Intimacy not only means physical affection, it also means emotional affection. Take time to talk to your partner about your emotional and physical needs. Discuss how you can improve in these areas and follow through.
11. Equally divide chores. Evenly distributed chores could equal more intimacy.
12. Experience something new. Maybe redo a room together or learn how to make sushi this Friday night. Check out the website Pinterest for ideas that might interest both of you.
13. Schedule some uninterrupted time for the two of you on the family calendar.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/09/05/how-to-refresh-your-relationship-today/

How To Really Work Out Your Brain -- And Why You'll Want To

You know (if you even read one out of every 10 of our columns) that we believe daily exercise is next to tooth brushing and flossing for keeping you looking good and keeping your body fit and working right. But it is even more important for the one part of your body where size matters: your brain. Powering through a Zumba class or hiking for an afternoon does as much good for your noodle as for your muscles and blood vessels. But that's not the only kind of workout that will beef up your brain.

A group of scientists from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago published a study in the July 2013 issue of the journal Neurology showing that greater cognitive activity in childhood, middle age and in old age makes your brain better later.

So what does that mean for you? If you want to be “all there” for your children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren, there's plenty you can do right now to prepare. And just because it has to do with challenging your brain cells doesn't mean it has to feel like homework.

Think that you're too old to spend time playing games? Nonsense! Just think of it as doing a mental workout. Doing word puzzles, playing card games and reading your favourite trashy novels all count as ways to keep your mind active. Yoga engages your core and a riveting whodunit engages your grey matter. In fact, there are any number of fun, natural activities that might seem frivolous, but give you the lasting benefits of psychological circuit training. Write in your journal or email with an old friend. Turn off the TV for a while and have a chat with your next-door neighbour. Simple social interaction might not seem like a mental workout, but spending time with your social network is associated with better health and happiness and less dementia later in life. The same is true of taking part in your favourite hobbies. Not a bad way to work out, huh?

Just like any good exercise regimen, you have to target different areas of the body for the full effect. Physical activity is among the other good habits that support mental acuity and stave off cognitive decline as you get older. Yes, exercising your body enlarges your brain, not just your biceps. As does eating right, including getting enough omega-3s from fish. Here's another easy one to check off the better-brain to-do list: Get plenty of sleep.

When you look back with your crystal clear memory decades from now, you’ll be glad you did.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/17/brain-games-_n_3756854.html?utm_hp_ref=healthy-living

6 Tips For Happiness

Tip 1: Manage Your Time
“Time,” so they say “is money.” But imagine that as if it was the hours and minutes of your life, managed by a “Universal Bank of Time.” 

Under their strict account usage terms, the UBT would mandate a compulsory daily withdrawal of 24 hours. The hours would be automatically transferred to you at the start of each day. But you could never make a deposit, you could never put back what you didn’t use – unused hours would be taxed at 100%. Worse still, there’d be no online banking with the UBT. No paper statements. You couldn’t even get a balance - you’d never be sure how much time you had left.

If real bank accounts worked this way you’d make sure you spent every penny of your daily withdrawal limit on something worthwhile. Pretty soon you’d probably start to plan your spending – you might even keep a book of items you wanted to spend your money on. So with that in mind…


Tip 2: Make a “Now List” 
Most folks have heard of a Bucket List (taken from the movie of the same name), a list of all the things you’d like to do before you die (“kick the bucket”). It’s a fabulous idea - except for the built-in assumption that we’re going to be doing all these marvelous things at some far flung point in the future, probably when we’ll be far too old and frail to do anything more than regret each and every item on the list as a missed opportunity.

So let’s dispense with the term Bucket List. What we want is to “Live Life Now” list – or a “Now List” for short. Write down everything you’d like to do, then start making it happen.


Tip 3: Collect “Trophies” Andy Warhol, so it’s said, never opened any of his mail. He merely collected it up, put it in a box, and when that box was full, sealed it and wrote the year on the top. 

I’ve never taken the time to find out just how true this story is, but I do know that the first time I heard it, it had a profound effect on me. I wanted to do the same. However, being a somewhat deluded individual, I was fairly certain I could improve on the concept.

And so I started to collect things. Theatre tickets, And so I started to collect things. Theatre tickets, raffle tickets, train tickets, plane tickets, postcards, greeting cards, thank you cards, business cards, labels, badges, anything that was evidence of somewhere I’d been, something I’d done, or someone I’d met. And something I could pin to a board.


Tip 4: Decide What’s Important
Most people I encounter haven’t actually got a clue what they really want. They might wake up in the morning and want to go back to bed. They might flick through a magazine and want those shoes. They might even want the person in the magazine wearing those shoes. But these desires come and go. Few of them seem to stick around and become important - and that’s a mistake.

Knowing exactly what you want is hugely important. Merely knowing has the power to change everything. Not convinced? Then allow me to introduce you to the incredible, completely automated wish-fulfilment machine you have inside your head…


Tip 5: Use The Power of Focus
Brains are amazing. Especially yours. Even mine has its moments. And one of the most fascinating mechanisms of the human brain is how it deals with focus. Have you ever noticed how when you buy a new car, or even when you’ve merely decided what type of car it is you want to buy, you start seeing that same car everywhere?! That’s the power of focus. It happens because in order for our brains to cope with the extraordinary amount of information coming in through our five senses from the world around us, we’re programmed to concentrate on what’s “important,” and more or less ignore the rest.

Unconvinced? Excellent!

You might be asking yourself how does the brain determine what’s important? And the answer is: you tell it! And this mechanism isn’t just taking place during card tricks; this happens all day, every day. Your brain is continually filtering the information coming in based on what you’ve decided is important. Strange then that we quite often focus on entirely the wrong things, or nothing at all. 


Tip 6: Remind Yourself Of The Important Things Most people own a wallet, a purse, or some other item to carry around their credit cards, dog-eared receipts or (if you’re really retro) cash.

If your wallet is like mine then it might have a small see-through pocket where you’re supposed to put a photo of a loved one. Ditch it. Not the loved one, just the photo.

On a small piece of card, just big enough to fit that space, write down what you really want in life – your “life vision” if you like – and place it in your wallet. What we’re doing here is utilizing that Power Of Focus on a daily basis by creating something that will remind you of those important things, each and every time you look in your wallet.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-jones/6-tips-for happiness_b_3436324.html#slide=2567639