“Don’t get this game,” my sister warned me, “it will ruin your life.” Well, my life wasn’t ruined like 13-year Lucas Chan, who spent $4300 on the notorious Candy Crush game in one marathon session.

It’s one of the healthy outlets for me to distract myself, come down from stress and chaos, from screaming kids, messy kitchen, homework projects, piles of laundry.

But in order to allow myself to escape into this virtual reality, I need to trust/control myself that I won’t spend too much time and money, and I’ll use this a break, not an escape. As a doctor of Natural Health, specializing in the mind-body connection, I know that there’s a root cause for this need to escape. So I have to know my reasons: What am I escaping from? When I feel overwhelming anxiety, I know I need a break, and if I go for a run or cuddle with my cat and play Candy Crush, I’ll come back with a different perspective on my family. But in order to know how to not let a break become a great escape, I need to be aware of the core emotion that driving me. So I ask:

Is there too much going on and I feel powerless and out of control?

These breaks can be opportunities to:
Shift gears from overwhelm to being at ease.
Remind myself that I am a mature, smart, resourceful adult who can handle my
family.
Know that I don’t have to do everything right now, that I can choose to take a break and do things because I want to, not because I have to.

So go ahead, indulge in your favorite game, whether it’s Candy Crush or list others because some distractions are actually appropriate. And you can demonstrate to your family a healthy, appropriate ways to deal with stress or overwhelm. All from playing Candy Crush. Who knew?

One night my indoor kitten snuck out, and for four straight hours I sat on the chilly, moon-lit deck meowing his name into the darkness. When the little rascal finally did come home, he taught me nine profound life lessons that will fluff up your heart and get your mind purring…

1. Don’t rely on me to feel good – I’m highly unreliable. Rely on yourself only. There is something inside of you, which is always reliable.
2. I’m here to mind my own business and do what pleases me, and so should you.
3. I’m not small and fragile, unsafe and unstable in the midst of a wild, cruel jungle-world. I’m solid and powerful, safe, and guarded, and so are you.
4. I’m never lost. Once I know Home, I can always find my way back, if I choose, and so are you.
5. I’m not helpless. I have installed mechanisms to defend myself if there is something or somebody rubbing me the wrong way; I’m free to hiss, scratch and leave the unwanted, and so are you.
6. I honor others with my presence and affection. It’s my gift to them to be cherished and appreciated, and so are you.
7. I don’t care about other people’s opinion of how, where and with whom I live and neither should you.
8. I don’t worry about others’ opinions about my appearance. I’m perfect in my own uniqueness, and so are you.
9. When I jump onto your belly and purr, I am letting you feel the love you already have in you.

Three weeks ago, I was flying from Boston to Los Angeles, and my nine-year-old son was asking the flight attendant questions like “What movie are we going to watch tonight?” and “How long is the flight?” He was using a normal voice and being very polite. (During the 6-hour flight he asked maybe three questions total.) But the flight attendant grew increasingly impatient and started rudely snapping at my son: “Keep your voice down, young man!” and “Stop asking me when we’ll arrive in LA, because the answer will always be the same.” Meanwhile, she was being super-nice to a male passenger and chatted loudly with him for half-an-hour.

Everything clinches within me, but I say nothing because my own inner child (a part of me who holds the cluster of learned responses from the first ten years of my life) is now triggered. She who is not supposed to talk back to adults, and who, God forbid, has her own opinions, wants and needs. And so, crying on the inside, I keep silent, blindly staring at my phone. And then later, looking at my son, who has not yet developed a complex of being unworthy or inappropriate, and who finally got what he wanted (headphones, a movie and a snack box), I wonder: Do our kids represent too much happiness and aliveness, freedom and self-esteem to us adults, who have forgotten these things?

I get my laptop out and start typing…

It must be very frustrating to be a child. Constantly being bossed around by parents and teachers, told what to do, study, eat, wear, play with, be injected with. It leaves our kids feeling disempowered, helpless and out of control.
But who are the kids? They are people like us in smaller bodies. Their minds are like sponges, innocent clean slates. Children believe everything we adults say, and internalize it as their reality. Every time we criticize them, they form a mental perception that “Something is wrong with me, I must be bad, it’s my fault, I am not lovable, I am a disappointment, I don’t know what to do.” And then they are yelled at and punished—disciplined for reflecting back to us our own human pitfalls.

With time, the negative momentum, like a huge snowball, creates low self-esteem, which can result in depression later in life—a chronic state of unhappiness. And if a person feels anxious and depressed for a prolonged period of time, it becomes a habitual way of being. Life is seen though a shady lens of perceptional unhappiness, leading to negative life choices, and the inability to take positive action. The longer this habitual unhappiness is practiced, the harder it is to replace it with joyful living.

And yet, it’s really never too late to stop this avalanche. What’s crucial to realize is that we can’t condemn, reprimand or punish our children for the emotional pain they are experiencing. Our parental guidance should come from a place of wisdom and understanding, acceptance and compassion. The child needs to be consistently acknowledged, empowered and loved. There must be a way to allow our kids to express their boundless, free, heavenly nature here on Earth while being conscientious (kind, loving and responsible) members of society.

Frederick Douglas said, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” Brilliant. There needs to be a mental shift, where we grant our kids the gift of empowering parenting. Which means that we have to become empowered adults, because we can’t offer what we don’t feel inside. So if we set an example of enjoying life, respecting other’s opinions and appreciating their differences, then when we demand good behavior from our kids, they will mirror back to us the jumping-rope-skipping-giggly and profound beauty of this life.

When we feel good about ourselves, we offer the language of encouragement to our kids with statements like:

• You know what’s right for you, and I trust you
• You are amazing, capable and smart
• You deserve to be happy; life is always getting better for you
• You are always trying your best, and I see you succeeding
• What you have to say is important; your opinion matters
• When you think of something you want and believe, it is possible, it will come to you

Statements like these, when they are used often, will create mental-emotional alignment (mind and heart think and feel in unison), leaving our children feeling self-assured, capable and excited about embracing life¬—not numb to it, blocking it, or disconnecting from it.

And wouldn’t this be the best thing we could do for both ourselves and our children—shining the light of empowerment upon the generations to come?

http://abuseisnotasecret.com/the-real-cause-of-emotional-pain-and-how-to-end-it/

http://abuseisnotasecret.com/how-to-forgive-the-unforgivable-and-learn-to-trust-again/

What happens next freaks me out, even in my sleep. I am suddenly aware of a number of ghostly, transparent beings drifting in the air above the birthing woman. Shockingly, I realize that two of them are my grandparents: Grandma Asya is lingering close to the bottom of the woman’s huge, bulging belly, and Grandpa Zalmon is at the top, close to the diaphragm. Two angelic beings are there, too, right by my grandparents’ side. Standing eight feet high, they look like vertical celestial doves with a human visage, their wings spread open, pouring rays of brilliant light onto the oblivious mother-to-be.
Apparently, there is no privacy whatsoever in this delivery room, and no time for sentimental schmoozing between my grandparents and me; it seems I am here on business only.
“Help her!” the angel standing next to my grandma floats closer to me, and I immediately recognize the voice that woke part of me up. Hovering directly above the birthing woman, like some rescue helicopter beaming a spotlight, I’m like a music conductor moving her arms in unison with some interspatial, energetic symphony.
Tales of Large, Loud, Spiritual Family
Chapter 18
A New Year’s like no other

Life worth celebrating!

http://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article_cdo/aid/2496385/jewish/Life-Worth-Celebrating-A-Chuppah-25-Years-Late.htm

“I go over Jessica’s simple explanation of how it’s we who attach all the meaning
and interpretation to everything that happens to us, and how these become
our unconscious beliefs – lenses of perception through which we look at life.
Hundreds of those lenses, in fact, created over many years, distorting the sacred
truth within. But if I am the one who has sentenced myself to these mental
conclusions, at some point in my childhood, then now, as an adult, I have the
choice to conclude something else. Something which will allow me to taste the
delicious sweetness of my well-hidden authenticity. And when this part of me,
my authentic being – maybe even my spirit – takes over, my thinking will leap
to a higher level.”

Chapter 15
Jessica, me, and the Palm Tree Fairy