Magic is a wonderful and amazing thing. And David Blaine is one of our contemporary magicians. Take a few moments to watch this video where he explains some of this secrets. Talk about self-discipline!

David Blaine - Secrets Revealed

We all have something to be sorry about. Why? Because we’re all human and we make mistakes. Furthermore, we often don’t know when we’ve offended somebody. Words come pouring from our mouths before we realize that they have an effect. Or a careless action affected someone close to you.

Listen - it happens. But the beauty of a well-placed apology is this: it can melt all the pain and hurt away. It can begin a brand new day. It can lighten the load for both parties:

Did you know there’s an author who has written about the technicalites of apologies? Even apologies can be broken down into a science!

The fascinating book On Apology, by Aaron Lazare begins with this paragraph:

“One of the most profound human interactions is the offering and accepting of apologies. Apologies have the power to heal humiliations and grudges, remove the desire for vengeance, and generate forgiveness on the part of the offended parties. For the offender they can diminish the fear of retaliation and relieve the guilt and shame that can grip the mind with a persistence and tenacity that are hard to ignore. The result of that apology process, ideally, is the reconciliation and restoration of broken relationships.”

A genuine and effective apology can reduce the pain of guilt and shame and help to resolve anger. Effective apology can create a satisfactory asymmetrical balance where genuine remorse is accepted as the only available compensation to offset an irreparable loss.

Apology restores the congruence between what we acknowledge to ourselves and what we acknowledge to others when we blame ourselves for their loss.

Definitions

1. A sincere acknowledgement of responsibility, wrongdoing, and regret.
2. Restoring power to the injured.
3. An encounter between two parties where the offender acknowledges responsibility for an offense or grievance and expresses regret or remorse to the aggrieved.

Root: Latin apologia, from Greek apologi? : apo- + logos, A speech in defense

Commonly used synonyms include: acknowledgment, admission, amends, atonement, concession, confession, defense, excuse, explanation, extenuation, justification, mea culpa, mitigation, plea, redress, reparation, and vindication. These are inexact substitutes because they each refer only to a portion of a full apology.

The Paradox of Apology

A genuine apology provides so much benefit with so little cost, it is surprising and unfortunate it is not more common. The decision to apologize is a tug-of-war between stubborn pride and guilt. Since guilt is authentic, and stubborn pride is not, it seems best to get on with the apology. Making a sincere apology is an act of courage, not a sign of weakness.

Many people are reluctant to apologize because they fear either humiliation or retaliation. This is unfortunate because most genuine apologies elicit gratitude as the response. Failing to apologize can be a costly dominance contest that prolongs bad feelings in a relationship that could have been easily avoided or foreshortened.

Elements of an Apology:

A successful apology includes each of these four elements:

• Accepting personal responsibility; acknowledge the specific offense and the pain it caused and clearly take personal and unconditional responsibility for the offense. Acknowledge directly to each of the injured parties your role in causing the damage and their suffering,
• Showing Remorse; humbly and sincerely describe the painful regret you feel for committing the offense. Look backward to express your regret. Then demonstrate forbearance by looking forward to describe the lessons you have learned and the changes you have made to ensure nothing like it will ever happen again.
• Offering an explanation; honestly, candidly, and simply describe why the offense happened. If it was inexcusable, simply say so.
• Making reparations; fully repair the loss if that is possible, otherwise ask: “Is there anything I can do to make this up to you?”

“Just be yourself,” you’ve heard, time and time again. But what does that really mean? In order to be yourself, you have to know what a “yourself” is, right? What if you feel like you’ve lost yourself? Or don’t like yourself?

Well, here are some words of wisdom from the masters, who have thought long and hard on this matter:

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.  ~e.e. cummings, 1955

He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away.  ~Raymond Hull

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.  ~William Shakespeare

All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was.  I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory.  I was naïve.  I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer.  It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with:  that I am nobody but myself.  ~Ralph Ellison, “Battle Royal”

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another.  ~James Matthew Barrie

Most people are other people.  Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.  ~Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, 1905

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.  ~Judy Garland

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.  ~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.  ~David Carradine

A man who is “of sound mind” is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.  ~Paul Valéry, Mauvaises pensées et autres, 1942

I am told to just be myself, but as much as I have practiced the impression, I am still no good at it.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant duplicity.  Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike, and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune.  ~Boris Pasternak

Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.  ~Shakti Gawain

Ah, two simple words that sometimes get stuck somewhere between the heart and throat. Here are a few words of wisdom from past and present. If you owe someone apology, why not make today the day you free those words.

When you realize you’ve made a mistake, make amends immediately.  It’s easier to eat crow while it’s still warm.  ~Dan Heist

Keep your words soft and tender because tomorrow you may have to eat them.  ~Author Unknown

Never ruin an apology with an excuse.  ~Kimberly Johnson

In some families, please is described as the magic word.  In our house, however, it was sorry.  ~Margaret Laurence

True remorse is never just a regret over consequence; it is a regret over motive.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

There’s one sad truth in life I’ve found
While journeying east and west -
The only folks we really wound
Are those we love the best.
We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and for deeds left undone.  ~Harriet Beecher Stowe, Little Foxes, 1865

Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge.  ~Isaac Friedmann

An apology is a good way to have the last word.  ~Author Unknown<!–Dell Crossword Puzzles–>

An apology is the superglue of life.  It can repair just about anything.  ~Lynn Johnston

The only correct actions are those that demand no explanation and no apology.  ~Red Auerbach

Apology is a lovely perfume; it can transform the clumsiest moment into a gracious gift.  ~Margaret Lee Runbeck

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.  ~Paul Boese

Remember, we all stumble, every one of us.  That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.  ~Emily Kimbrough

It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.  ~Grace Hopper

If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say?  And why are you waiting?  ~Stephen Levine

For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness.  ~Author Unknown

Not the fastest horse can catch a word spoken in anger.  ~Chinese Proverb

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.  ~William Blake

True friends stab you in the front.  ~Oscar Wilde

I was walking through the woods with a little friend of mine (my niece.) She picked up a long stick and wrapped some vine around it. Then she put a big blob of moss on top and tied it with more vine. She looked at me and said, “I’m magical now.” I asked her why and she said, “Because I have magic wand, of course.”

Soon after, I homemade a wand and we waved them throughout the day, at anything we wanted to change or simply touch with a little extra cosmic love.

So today, you will receive lessons on creating your own magic wand. And before you poo-poo the idea, think about it: why wouldn’t a magic wand work? Why shouldn’t it? If there’s even an iota of belief, then it’s a totally legitimate wand, ready for action and change and transformation and magic. Wave it over yourself first, instructing you to believe in its power.

Take a walk in a natural place. Keep your eyes open for a stick or branch that has been laying on the ground and that is no shorter than 13 inches. Let it jump out at you, and follow your intuition. This stick should be appealing to you, as it could be a tool that you use for many years. If you feel drawn to a particular tree, connect with its energy and bless and thank the tree for what you’re about to take from it, before removing any small branches.

Scrape off the bark with a sharp blade or a wood burner.

Carve down to your desired shape and style.

Use charring to change the appearance or to amplify carvings.

Personalize your wand with things yourself. It’s YOUR wand pick exactly what you want. You can use feathers, crystals,runes and stones for the internal. Also adding any cords, metal wire, or symbol that is meaningful to decorate the external of the wand. Go with anything that comes to mind. Make it whatever you see it to be.

What is your life’s purpose? Does anyone have an easy answer? Perhaps some do. Perhaps your purpose changes as you evolve. Perhaps the search for a purpose is a purpose in and of itself!

This week’s quotes - on purpose:

(Check out this first one for its obvious relevance.)


Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure.
Abraham Lincoln

The purpose of our lives is to be happy.
Dalai Lama

When I chased after money, I never had enough. When I got my life on purpose and focused on giving of myself and everything that arrived into my life, then I was prosperous.
Wayne Dyer

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.
Napoleon Hill

We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.
George Washington

The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. The soul must languish when we give all our thought to the body.
Mohandas Gandhi

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
John F. Kennedy

Success demands singleness of purpose.
Vince Lombardi

I look forward to a great future for America - a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.
John F. Kennedy

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
William Shakespeare

Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement.
W. Clement Stone

To forget one’s purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
Kahlil Gibran

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, “Where’s the self-help section?” She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.
George Carlin

Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.
Aristotle

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
Helen Keller

True happiness… is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
Helen Keller

All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.
Brian Tracy

Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience.
Dale Carnegie

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.
Pablo Picasso

Here at Only Positive News, we’ve talked about forgiveness a lot - and it’s for a good reason. Many people get stuck in a state of anger and pain in their lives. It’s hard to see the positive when you feel mired in the negative.

These techniques are deceptively simple but I like them for just that reason. Sometimes forgiveness is simpler than we think. Or we forget that there are actually techniques that can help us move forward today.

1. Allow yourself to experience anger, but don’t hold onto it for months or years on end. When the anger starts to consume you, you’ve held onto it for too long.
2. Express your feelings in a positive way through writing a journal or talking to a professional, close friend or family member who can help you make sense of the situation.
3. Try to step into the shoes of those who hurt you in hopes you’ll see the situation from their perspective.
4. Write a letter about your feelings to the people who hurt you. Using “I feel” or “I felt” are productive ways to start sentences.
5. Most importantly, have patience with yourself: “Remember, forgiveness doesn’t have to happen in a day.”

Like the simple but effective yogic advice to “be kind, starting with yourself,” we can always benefit from being reminded of these basic, healthy premises.

Source: YourTango.com

Most of us know the basics when it comes to lifting our spirits: exercise, socialize, express, eat well, meditate. But there are a lot of boosts out there you may not know about. Here are a few “out of the box” aids when you’re feeling down:

•Kriya Yoga. This is a form of Yoga that uses a type of rhythmic hyperventilation, and its daily practice has been shown in studies to alleviate several or all of depressive symptoms in whole ranges of depressive symptoms.

•Bright Light Therapy. Originally a test and treatment for depressed pregnant woman, the Bright Light Therapy has also been used to treat SAD (seasonal affective disorder), where the sufferer has a depression due to the season’s lack of sunlight.

•St. John’s Wort (hypericum perforatum). This is a long-studied, and well tolerated natural herbal cure for depression.

St John’s Wort contains a variety of natural antidepressant substances including, hypericin, pseudohypericin and hyperforin. These work at the root of mild depression, boosting neurotransmitter function and returning your mood to normal.

It may not work as fast as the pharmaceutical alternatives, but there are NO side-effects, and in time (perhaps 6 weeks) are just or more effective.

•EPA. This is one of the Omega-3 fatty acids, derived from fish oil. Recent studies show high does of this natural substance are curing acute depression, even suicidal tendencies.

•Saffron. New studies have indicated that saffron (long known for its anti-depressive qualities) is as effective as imipramine and Prozac.

•DL-Phenylalanine (DLPA), is now considered by many doctors an effective antidepressant. This herbal remedy for depression works by raising phenylethylamine (PEA) levels in the brain increasing the production of Norepinephrine. This natural antidepressant also protects and increases the lifetime of Endorphins (chemicals involved in mood and pain regulation). DL-Phenylalanine converts to L-tyrosine in the body.

•L-Threonine is an essential amino acid. In several studies, L-Threonine supplementation gave people with acute depressive symptoms a greater control over their moods.

•5-HTP. This is an herbal remedy for depression that is also the immediate precursor to Melatonin and Serotonin. Serotonin gives a neurochemical balance during times of stress, and is essential to regulating mood and other important bodily functions.

* Skullcap (scutellaria laterifolia). ) Skullcap is rich in the minerals that are essential for the nervous system. This herbal remedy for depression is also used for agitation, neurasthenia, anxiety, fatigue, hysteria, and headaches, Skullcap as an herbal remedy for depression is useful to relieve withdrawal symptoms when going off of pharmaceutical antidepressants and tranquillizers.

Source: Light Therapy Boxes

I stumbled across this article over coffee this morning and a light bulb went on over my head. Of course, career changes aren’t linear! They are often messy and multi-layered. Our ability to embrace that process means the difference between a happier career or a just so-so career. Thanks to The Tough Guide to Work for this sound advice:

If you are like most people you may believe that cracking a major career question goes something like this: realise that there is something wrong about your current situation

• reflect on what you really want to do, your ideal end point
• identify your options against your fixed goal
• take a series of linear, sequential steps to get there.

It’s a great plan on paper. Unfortunately it’s not the plan followed by people who successfully reinvent their career. Alternatively you might imagine a storyline more like a movie script. The film’s hero (you) has an epiphany about what they will do for the rest of their life. They write a Jerry Maguire-like memo and stick it to their boss. They start afresh in a new industry and become incredibly successful. The End.

The reality is much messier. Successful career changers tend to start experimenting with new job ideas. You might start volunteering somewhere at the weekend. You might go and work-shadow a friend who has a job that kind-of appeals to you.

Change happens in fits and starts. It is rarely the transformative revelation that great novels & movies will make you believe. Neither is it a slow, steady, gradual evolution. You will likely start chipping away at a new idea, suddenly you will get huge traction and everything will be changing and before you know it, it has all slowed down again.

The main message here is that opportunities for significant transitions in your life will come and go. If you are looking to make changes then you will need to embrace these moments of opportunity even though you will never feel quite ready for them.

Take a look at this fact:

Worldwide, women receive only about 5 percent of agriculture extension services and own about 2 percent of land worldwide.

An obvious discrepancy, this article proves that when female farmers are empowered, it benefits the community as a whole.

Although women farmers produce more than half of the food grown in the world-and roughly 1.6 billion women depend on agriculture for their livelihoods-they are often not able to benefit from general agriculture funding because of the institutional and cultural barriers they face-including lack of access to land, lack of access to credit, and lack of access to education. Worldwide, women receive only about 5 percent of agriculture extension services and own about 2 percent of land worldwide.

But research has shown that when women’s incomes are improved, when they have better access to resources like education, infrastructure, credit, and health care, they tend to invest more in the nutrition, education, and health of their family, causing a ripple effect of benefits that can extend to the entire community.

In Kibera - sub-Saharan Africa’s largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya, where anywhere from 700,000 to a million people live - women farmers, with training and seeds provided by the French NGO Soladarites, are growing vegetable farms in sacks filled with dirt. More than 1,000 women are growing food in this way. During the food crisis in Kenya during 2007 and 2008, when conflict in Nairobi prevented food from coming into the area, most residents did not go hungry because there were so many of these ‘vertical farms.’

In Zambia, Veronica Sianchenga, a farmer living in Kabuyu Village, saw improvements in her family’s quality of life when she began irrigating her farm with the “Mosi-o-Tunya” (Pump that Thunders), a pressure pump that she purchased from International Development Enterprises (IDE). In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the task of gathering water - in the driest parts of the continent this can require up to eight hours of labor per day - usually falls to women.

Explaining that her children are eating healthier, with more vegetables in their diet, Mrs. Sianchenga adds that she is also enjoying increased independence. “Now we are not relying only on our husbands, because we are now able to do our own projects and to assist our husbands, to make our families look better, eat better, clothe better - even to have a house.”

In Rwanda, the Farmers of the Future Initiative (FOFI) helps to empower young girls and other students by integrating school gardens and agriculture training into primary school curriculums. More than 60 percent of students in Rwanda will return to rural areas to farm for a living after graduating, instead of going on to secondary school or university. While both young boys and girls benefit from the training, it is especially important for young girls to learn these skills, says Josephine Tuyishimire, so that they can avoid dependence on men for food and financial security. And so they can share what they learn.

Equality isn’t just a women’s issue, it’s a world issue.

Source: WorldChanging.com