Here’s an excerpt from “101 Relationship Myths” about sexual attraction”. Enjoy!
“One of the relationship myths that has caused me the most pain during the course of my “relationship career” is the idea that strong sexual attraction and falling in love means you’re compatible and a good match. So a couple of years ago I decided to take a closer look at this idea and find out if it’s really true that when you’re on cloud nine and feel strong sexual attraction to someone, it means you’re going to be a good match as a couple.
It didn’t take me long to find the answer. When I looked back at some of my previous relationships, I could see that even though we were really attracted to each other, the reality was that we were not that good a match. Yes we might have felt blissful or even in love in the beginning, but when it came to relationships, lifestyle and interests, we often had very different views, preferences and values.
This realization was a revelation to me. Up until then, I’d been basing my choice of partner on whether or not there was a strong sexual attraction between us and not on whether or not we were a good match. And suddenly I could see the painful consequences of this misunderstanding – for me and my partners.
One of the consequences of believing that strong sexual attraction means you’re a good match was that in the beginning of a new relationship, I often found myself exaggerating or only focusing on the woman’s “positive” sides (oh she’s so beautiful, so spiritual, and so forth) while downplaying or even ignoring her more “negative” sides. For example, I would overlook the sudden unkind remark that made me feel uncomfortable and instead sweep it under the carpet because I was so much in love. Or I’d accept an action or actions on her part that I’d never accept in anyone else. But in her case, because the attraction was so strong, I’d let it slide. And I have to admit that if I had been totally honest with myself, the truth was I already knew on the very first date, in the very first five minutes or so of our conversation, why the relationship would sooner or later become unworkable. Yes it’s true, I actually knew from the very beginning the reasons why we would not be a good match…
But because I was so infatuated and innocently believed that strong sexual attraction means you’re a good match, I ignored reality. And the result was almost always the same. As soon as the intoxication of falling in love began to wear off and the reality began to set in, it would become more and more painful for me to stay in the relationship. And then, the long, difficult battle to extricate myself would begin.
Find your core values
So if strong sexual attraction and falling in love don’t necessarily mean you’re a good match – what does? What makes two people a good match?
One of the things that make two people a good match is that they have the same “core” values. By having the same core values, I don’t mean being the same personality type or having the same education or working in the same field. I mean you have the same basic attitudes when it comes to what’s important in life, not least what’s important when it comes to relationships.
One of the reasons why many relationships get into serious trouble is that the man and the woman don’t have the same core values. A “mismatch” like this usually spells trouble because most people live according to their core values – and usually unconsciously expect their partners to do so too. This can be problematic when these core values don’t match. Let’s take an example. Let’s say one of your core values is “freedom” while your partner’s core values are “security and feeling safe”. Obviously this can make your relationship problematic because you will both unconsciously be expecting the other to behave in a manner that is in conflict with his or her core value or values. So when you are faithful to your core value and give yourself and your partner lots of “freedom”, your partner may get upset and feel insecure because his/her core values of “security and feeling safe” are not being met or are threatened. The opposite is true too. When your partner tries to live in harmony with his/her core value and strives for “security” for example, by wanting clear agreements on how you do things, the “freedom-loving” partner feels stifled and inhibited. You feel your core value of “freedom” is being threatened. So this is why it is so important to be more aware of what you and your partner’s (or a potential partner’s) core values are.
My former girlfriend, sexologist and couples therapist Joan Ørting has developed a good exercise to help us become more aware of our core values when it comes to relationships. I suggest you give this exercise a try – it can be really interesting. Ask yourself the following questions and answer as honestly as you can.
Question: What is most important for you in a relationship?
Answer: That my partner accepts me and loves me unconditionally.
Question: How does it make you feel when your partner accepts you and loves you unconditionally?
Answer: It makes me feel SAFE.
Conclusion: So feeling SAFE is one of your core values.
Repeat the questions until you identify 3-5 of your main core values. Once you’ve done this, prioritize the values so that you end up with a list that looks like this:
My core values when it comes to relationships: 1) FEELING SAFE 2) BEING TOGETHER 3) JOY
Or perhaps you’ll come up with a list of core values that looks like this:
1) FREEDOM 2) ADVENTURE 3) BEING TOGETHER
Becoming aware of your core values can be a really big help when it comes to determining if you and a potential partner are a good match. And if you’re already in a relationship and are having problems, it may be because your core values do not match. So it can also be helpful to do this exercise with your partner and then talk about what your respective core values are. Understanding how your core values differ can make it easier to communicate with each other in the future.”
An honest, fun, full-throttle story of a newly divorced woman throwing herself back into life…without a safety net!
.
Attracted to the wrong men and don’t understand why? Afraid of being alone, getting older and losing your sex appeal? A little sex crazed (or a lot)? And still dreaming of a man who can save you from your life?
Chick Lit meets Self-Help in this high-spirited tale of a newly divorced, 40-something woman with two teenage sons who is trying to take control of her life, her sex-crazed body, and her new relationships with men – while struggling to build a career in advertising in the big city (plus going to quite a few therapy sessions).
Until one day an unsavoury business scandal threatens to ruin the burgeoning career of our brave heroine…
.
REVIEWS & ENDORSEMENTS
A SINGLE LIFE SEEN FROM INSIDE Are you the type that is attracted to the wrong men – and do you do the most insane things to keep your relationships with them anyway? Are you terrified by the thought of being an old, wrinkled raisin that no man will ever want? And are you – once in a while – just a little hungry after sex? Yes? Well then you will really be able to identify with Pebble Beach. She is in her mid-40s, newly divorced, and mother of two teenage boys. She is struggling to make a career for herself as a copywriter. At the same time she’s trying – using all the tricks of the game – to make it as a single woman. Or in reality she’s trying to find a new man – but in fact it’s really going rather poorly on all fronts. “Single for the Second Time” is written by Barbara Berger, the woman who’s written more than 10 self-help books so among other things, the reader closely follows Pebble Beach as she goes through an intense therapy process in her search to find herself. The book makes you laugh, cry and think as well. It touches on themes like addictive relationships, low self-esteem, alcoholism and poor communication in an entertaining yet serious tone. A good and informative book for singles – and for those who don’t understand single women! ~ Bibi, Danish weekly magazine Søndag
.
MY REVIEW
.
I finished reading your book last night. I found this book dynamic, intense, stimulating and a real depiction of the complicated lives we all tend to create for ourselves. Pebble only took her power back after reaching a saturation point, a point where she mastered her “fear of loss”. It is astounding to read how her compulsive desire to please positioned herself in mortal danger. You succeeded extremely well with your depiction of her mental blindness and inability to identify individuals or situations that added very little or no value to her life. Most of us tend to see only what we want to see in others. This goes for everything else in life. You brilliantly displayed the horrific price Pebble paid before she woke up to her real potential. I loved how you shared her self-talk and futile attempts to make sense of the games that she became embroiled in. What I found enlightening and disturbing is that you will find a Pebble drama in every building, home or office that you observe when you look out of your window. You will without doubt discover the Pebble Beach in yourself when you turn away from the window and look in a mirror. Your subliminal ability to leave your reader with a question in his mind about his own compulsive and often obsessive behaviour in certain areas of his life gives this book longevity. It will be an idiot that reads this book and then sends it off to a second hand book shop. I recommend that we as readers take Pebble Beach off the shelf when we find ourselves struggling and straining to make sense of anything or anyone. This amazing book will then remind us once again where we allowed ourselves to get sucked in by illusions created in our futile minds that might once again return to our old and outdated software that we operated on historically. (Habitual reaction Patterns). The real value of The Adventures of Pebble Beach is that you learn and gain insight without even being aware of it. You become so embroiled by Pebble’s adventures that you fail to grasp that you are at the same time busy with a purification process while you load wisdom and insight into your sub-conscious archives.
Rene
.
READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AND OTHER WORKS HER ON OWN BLOG AT THE LINK BELOW
Having good persuasion skills has become a necessity in today’s fast-paced world. A large part of your success depends on the cooperation of other people. Influencing them to your way of thinking is now a very essential step in the fulfilment of your goals.
Here are 5 simple yet effective persuasion tactics you may use everyday to build loyal and lasting relationships through the power of persuasion and influence.
Tactic # 1: You Must Enter Their World.
Copy them. Observe how they act, how they speak, and how they think. If they rub their forehead while they think, act like them. If they speak at a clear and slow pace, try to do the same thing. This is called mirroring. In due time, the people you’re mirroring will subconsciously feel more comfortable with you. It’s as if they see themselves in you. However, you must proceed with caution. Do not let them be aware that you are copying them. They might interpret it as mockery and you’ll just get into trouble.
Tactic # 2: Meet Their Existing Needs and Desires.
People are self-centered. They are initially concerned with their own well-being before others. If you can prove that your proposal will provide more advantageous benefits to them than to your own, then they will probably accept it. If you could focus more on their interests, desires, needs, and expectations, then you would satisfy their cravings for attention. Moreover, it would show that you really care about them. Mutual trust and respect would be established. Satisfy the “What’s In It For Me?” test first, before convincing others to do what you want them to do.
Tactic # 3: Provide Them with Compelling Evidence.
Explain to them how your ideas or suggestions could be the most effective techniques to implement. Show them undeniable proof that you have the best product by way of testimonials, before and after scenarios, and detailed comparisons against your competitors. Just make sure that all your claims are true and verifiable. Always maintain a good reputation. Be friendly and nice. Smile to brighten up the day. Make a sincere compliment to raise their spirits. Little things like these count a lot. Make them feel that whenever they need help or just someone to look up to, you’ll always be there to lend a hand. They would tend to be more receptive to people that they trust.
Tactic # 4: Communicate Wittingly But Clearly.
Most people, if not all, would like to be accepted and to be perceived as likeable in the eyes of others. But what if you have to tell something undesirable to your friend, which is just for his or her own good? How can you get your message across without hurting their feelings? Substitute negative statements with positive ones. Instead of saying “You don’t understand,” say “Let me explain.” Instead of remarking “You’re wrong,” say “Permit me to clarify.” Instead of stating “You failed to say,” just mention “Perhaps this was not stated.” There are certain words that affect a person more negatively in comparison with other words that have the same meaning.
Tactic # 5: Agree with Them First…
Nothing could be more pleasing to the ear than hearing someone else say that you are right. In this case, be prepared to let other people know that you respect their opinions. You may add your comments at the end, but acknowledge them first. Say: You’re right, although … Great suggestion, however … I agree with your opinion, however … I would feel the same way if I were you, although … I understand your situation, however … Reassure your counterparts that the decision made will benefit both parties. People need to feel that they have made the right choice.
People who leave religion to seem to be the ones who tried hardest and who have invested those most time into soul-searching.
.
There are themes of intense searching, bible reading, efforts to conform and find the promises of their religion, only to fail time and again. Ironically, the intense searching, bible reading and attempts to understand led many to recognize there were many things they were not being told and much was hidden or poorly explained.
The more sexually restrictive a religion is the more it uses guilt.
Conservative religions teach guilt and proscribe many behaviors such as sex before marriage, masturbation, oral sex and sex outside of marriage, and use religious based approaches to sex education with emphasis on abstinence only, failing to teach about birth control, condom use and abortion.
Biology seems to trump religion despite the millions of dollars and hours devoted to teaching religious children how to behave within their
religious restrictions. Other general studies of sexuality show that 95% all adults have had premarital sex by the time they marry including, we believe, most ministers who tout abstinence only.
The religious kids were learning from sexual experience more than the less religious!
Most religions preach incessantly against pornography, yet it is the religious
children in this sample that used it more.
.
.
It appears that the things religions preach against most – sexual experimentation, pornography and the Internet – are what religious kids may use the most, while failing to talk to their parents.
Non-religious kids seem to be following the religious proscriptions better than the religious ones.
For the most religious, getting religion out of their lives seemed to make a huge difference in their sex life.
Those from the most guilt based religions would show the greatest drop in guilt and biggest increase in sexual satisfaction.
If porn is as bad as religions say it is, they aren’t doing a very good job of keeping it out of the hands of children and adolescents, 20% or more of both groups said they were using porn by 12 years old. For all the billboards and sermons against porn, there seems to be little return on the investment.
We were most interested in religion’s effect on porn use. If religion’s proscriptions are effective, we should see a clear difference between those who are most and least religious in the teen years when they are getting strong messages from their religion about sex. Looking only at men, we can see that there is very little difference between the groups. This suggests that the effect of religion is negligible for men.
Having good persuasion skills has become a necessity in today’s fast-paced world. A large part of your success depends on the cooperation of other people. Influencing them to your way of thinking is now a very essential step in the fulfilment of your goals.
Here are 5 simple yet effective persuasion tactics you may use everyday to build loyal and lasting relationships through the power of persuasion and influence.
Tactic # 1: You Must Enter Their World.
Copy them. Observe how they act, how they speak, and how they think. If they rub their forehead while they think, act like them. If they speak at a clear and slow pace, try to do the same thing. This is called mirroring. In due time, the people you’re mirroring will subconsciously feel more comfortable with you. It’s as if they see themselves in you. However, you must proceed with caution. Do not let them be aware that you are copying them. They might interpret it as mockery and you’ll just get into trouble.
Tactic # 2: Meet Their Existing Needs and Desires.
People are self-centered. They are initially concerned with their own well-being before others. If you can prove that your proposal will provide more advantageous benefits to them than to your own, then they will probably accept it. If you could focus more on their interests, desires, needs, and expectations, then you would satisfy their cravings for attention. Moreover, it would show that you really care about them. Mutual trust and respect would be established. Satisfy the “What’s In It For Me?” test first, before convincing others to do what you want them to do.
Tactic # 3: Provide Them with Compelling Evidence.
Explain to them how your ideas or suggestions could be the most effective techniques to implement. Show them undeniable proof that you have the best product by way of testimonials, before and after scenarios, and detailed comparisons against your competitors. Just make sure that all your claims are true and verifiable. Always maintain a good reputation. Be friendly and nice. Smile to brighten up the day. Make a sincere compliment to raise their spirits. Little things like these count a lot. Make them feel that whenever they need help or just someone to look up to, you’ll always be there to lend a hand. They would tend to be more receptive to people that they trust.
Tactic # 4: Communicate Wittingly But Clearly.
Most people, if not all, would like to be accepted and to be perceived as likeable in the eyes of others. But what if you have to tell something undesirable to your friend, which is just for his or her own good? How can you get your message across without hurting their feelings? Substitute negative statements with positive ones. Instead of saying “You don’t understand,” say “Let me explain.” Instead of remarking “You’re wrong,” say “Permit me to clarify.” Instead of stating “You failed to say,” just mention “Perhaps this was not stated.” There are certain words that affect a person more negatively in comparison with other words that have the same meaning.
Tactic # 5: Agree with Them First…
Nothing could be more pleasing to the ear than hearing someone else say that you are right. In this case, be prepared to let other people know that you respect their opinions. You may add your comments at the end, but acknowledge them first. Say: You’re right, although … Great suggestion, however … I agree with your opinion, however … I would feel the same way if I were you, although … I understand your situation, however … Reassure your counterparts that the decision made will benefit both parties. People need to feel that they have made the right choice.
Here’s an excerpt from “101 Relationship Myths” about sexual attraction. Enjoy!
“One of the relationship myths that has caused me the most pain during the course of my “relationship career” is the idea that strong sexual attraction and falling in love means you’re compatible and a good match. So a couple of years ago I decided to take a closer look at this idea and find out if it’s really true that when you’re on cloud nine and feel strong sexual attraction to someone, it means you’re going to be a good match as a couple.
It didn’t take me long to find the answer. When I looked back at some of my previous relationships, I could see that even though we were really attracted to each other, the reality was that we were not that good a match. Yes we might have felt blissful or even in love in the beginning, but when it came to relationships, lifestyle and interests, we often had very different views, preferences and values.
This realization was a revelation to me. Up until then, I’d been basing my choice of partner on whether or not there was a strong sexual attraction between us and not on whether or not we were a good match. And suddenly I could see the painful consequences of this misunderstanding – for me and my partners.
One of the consequences of believing that strong sexual attraction means you’re a good match was that in the beginning of a new relationship, I often found myself exaggerating or only focusing on the woman’s “positive” sides (oh she’s so beautiful, so spiritual, and so forth) while downplaying or even ignoring her more “negative” sides. For example, I would overlook the sudden unkind remark that made me feel uncomfortable and instead sweep it under the carpet because I was so much in love. Or I’d accept an action or actions on her part that I’d never accept in anyone else. But in her case, because the attraction was so strong, I’d let it slide. And I have to admit that if I had been totally honest with myself, the truth was I already knew on the very first date, in the very first five minutes or so of our conversation, why the relationship would sooner or later become unworkable. Yes it’s true, I actually knew from the very beginning the reasons why we would not be a good match…
But because I was so infatuated and innocently believed that strong sexual attraction means you’re a good match, I ignored reality. And the result was almost always the same. As soon as the intoxication of falling in love began to wear off and the reality began to set in, it would become more and more painful for me to stay in the relationship. And then, the long, difficult battle to extricate myself would begin.
Find your core values
So if strong sexual attraction and falling in love don’t necessarily mean you’re a good match – what does? What makes two people a good match?
One of the things that make two people a good match is that they have the same “core” values. By having the same core values, I don’t mean being the same personality type or having the same education or working in the same field. I mean you have the same basic attitudes when it comes to what’s important in life, not least what’s important when it comes to relationships.
One of the reasons why many relationships get into serious trouble is that the man and the woman don’t have the same core values. A “mismatch” like this usually spells trouble because most people live according to their core values – and usually unconsciously expect their partners to do so too. This can be problematic when these core values don’t match. Let’s take an example. Let’s say one of your core values is “freedom” while your partner’s core values are “security and feeling safe”. Obviously this can make your relationship problematic because you will both unconsciously be expecting the other to behave in a manner that is in conflict with his or her core value or values. So when you are faithful to your core value and give yourself and your partner lots of “freedom”, your partner may get upset and feel insecure because his/her core values of “security and feeling safe” are not being met or are threatened. The opposite is true too. When your partner tries to live in harmony with his/her core value and strives for “security” for example, by wanting clear agreements on how you do things, the “freedom-loving” partner feels stifled and inhibited. You feel your core value of “freedom” is being threatened. So this is why it is so important to be more aware of what you and your partner’s (or a potential partner’s) core values are.
My former girlfriend, sexologist and couples therapist Joan Ørting has developed a good exercise to help us become more aware of our core values when it comes to relationships. I suggest you give this exercise a try – it can be really interesting. Ask yourself the following questions and answer as honestly as you can.
Question: What is most important for you in a relationship?
Answer: That my partner accepts me and loves me unconditionally.
Question: How does it make you feel when your partner accepts you and loves you unconditionally?
Answer: It makes me feel SAFE.
Conclusion: So feeling SAFE is one of your core values.
Repeat the questions until you identify 3-5 of your main core values. Once you’ve done this, prioritize the values so that you end up with a list that looks like this:
My core values when it comes to relationships: 1) FEELING SAFE 2) BEING TOGETHER 3) JOY
Or perhaps you’ll come up with a list of core values that looks like this:
1) FREEDOM 2) ADVENTURE 3) BEING TOGETHER
Becoming aware of your core values can be a really big help when it comes to determining if you and a potential partner are a good match. And if you’re already in a relationship and are having problems, it may be because your core values do not match. So it can also be helpful to do this exercise with your partner and then talk about what your respective core values are. Understanding how your core values differ can make it easier to communicate with each other in the future.”
An honest, fun, full-throttle story of a newly divorced woman throwing herself back into life…without a safety net!
.
Attracted to the wrong men and don’t understand why? Afraid of being alone, getting older and losing your sex appeal? A little sex crazed (or a lot)? And still dreaming of a man who can save you from your life?
Chick Lit meets Self-Help in this high-spirited tale of a newly divorced, 40-something woman with two teenage sons who is trying to take control of her life, her sex-crazed body, and her new relationships with men – while struggling to build a career in advertising in the big city (plus going to quite a few therapy sessions).
Until one day an unsavoury business scandal threatens to ruin the burgeoning career of our brave heroine…
.
REVIEWS & ENDORSEMENTS
A SINGLE LIFE SEEN FROM INSIDE Are you the type that is attracted to the wrong men – and do you do the most insane things to keep your relationships with them anyway? Are you terrified by the thought of being an old, wrinkled raisin that no man will ever want? And are you – once in a while – just a little hungry after sex? Yes? Well then you will really be able to identify with Pebble Beach. She is in her mid-40s, newly divorced, and mother of two teenage boys. She is struggling to make a career for herself as a copywriter. At the same time she’s trying – using all the tricks of the game – to make it as a single woman. Or in reality she’s trying to find a new man – but in fact it’s really going rather poorly on all fronts. “Single for the Second Time” is written by Barbara Berger, the woman who’s written more than 10 self-help books so among other things, the reader closely follows Pebble Beach as she goes through an intense therapy process in her search to find herself. The book makes you laugh, cry and think as well. It touches on themes like addictive relationships, low self-esteem, alcoholism and poor communication in an entertaining yet serious tone. A good and informative book for singles – and for those who don’t understand single women! ~ Bibi, Danish weekly magazine Søndag
.
MY REVIEW
.
I finished reading your book last night. I found this book dynamic, intense, stimulating and a real depiction of the complicated lives we all tend to create for ourselves. Pebble only took her power back after reaching a saturation point, a point where she mastered her “fear of loss”. It is astounding to read how her compulsive desire to please positioned herself in mortal danger. You succeeded extremely well with your depiction of her mental blindness and inability to identify individuals or situations that added very little or no value to her life. Most of us tend to see only what we want to see in others. This goes for everything else in life. You brilliantly displayed the horrific price Pebble paid before she woke up to her real potential. I loved how you shared her self-talk and futile attempts to make sense of the games that she became embroiled in. What I found enlightening and disturbing is that you will find a Pebble drama in every building, home or office that you observe when you look out of your window. You will without doubt discover the Pebble Beach in yourself when you turn away from the window and look in a mirror. Your subliminal ability to leave your reader with a question in his mind about his own compulsive and often obsessive behaviour in certain areas of his life gives this book longevity. It will be an idiot that reads this book and then sends it off to a second hand book shop. I recommend that we as readers take Pebble Beach off the shelf when we find ourselves struggling and straining to make sense of anything or anyone. This amazing book will then remind us once again where we allowed ourselves to get sucked in by illusions created in our futile minds that might once again return to our old and outdated software that we operated on historically. (Habitual reaction Patterns). The real value of The Adventures of Pebble Beach is that you learn and gain insight without even being aware of it. You become so embroiled by Pebble’s adventures that you fail to grasp that you are at the same time busy with a purification process while you load wisdom and insight into your sub-conscious archives.
Rene
.
READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AND OTHER WORKS HER ON OWN BLOG AT THE LINK BELOW
An honest, fun, full-throttle story of a newly divorced woman throwing herself back into life…without a safety net!
.
Attracted to the wrong men and don’t understand why? Afraid of being alone, getting older and losing your sex appeal? A little sex crazed (or a lot)? And still dreaming of a man who can save you from your life?
Chick Lit meets Self-Help in this high-spirited tale of a newly divorced, 40-something woman with two teenage sons who is trying to take control of her life, her sex-crazed body, and her new relationships with men – while struggling to build a career in advertising in the big city (plus going to quite a few therapy sessions).
Until one day an unsavoury business scandal threatens to ruin the burgeoning career of our brave heroine…
REVIEWS & ENDORSEMENTS
.
A SINGLE LIFE SEEN FROM INSIDE Are you the type that is attracted to the wrong men – and do you do the most insane things to keep your relationships with them anyway? Are you terrified by the thought of being an old, wrinkled raisin that no man will ever want? And are you – once in a while – just a little hungry after sex? Yes? Well then you will really be able to identify with Pebble Beach. She is in her mid-40s, newly divorced, and mother of two teenage boys. She is struggling to make a career for herself as a copywriter. At the same time she’s trying – using all the tricks of the game – to make it as a single woman. Or in reality she’s trying to find a new man – but in fact it’s really going rather poorly on all fronts. “Single for the Second Time” is written by Barbara Berger, the woman who’s written more than 10 self-help books so among other things, the reader closely follows Pebble Beach as she goes through an intense therapy process in her search to find herself. The book makes you laugh, cry and think as well. It touches on themes like addictive relationships, low self-esteem, alcoholism and poor communication in an entertaining yet serious tone. A good and informative book for singles – and for those who don’t understand single women! ~ Bibi, Danish weekly magazine Søndag
.
MY REVIEW
.
I finished reading your book last night. I found this book dynamic, intense, stimulating and a real depiction of the complicated lives we all tend to create for ourselves. Pebble only took her power back after reaching a saturation point, a point where she mastered her “fear of loss”. It is astounding to read how her compulsive desire to please positioned herself in mortal danger. You succeeded extremely well with your depiction of her mental blindness and inability to identify individuals or situations that added very little or no value to her life. Most of us tend to see only what we want to see in others. This goes for everything else in life. You brilliantly displayed the horrific price Pebble paid before she woke up to her real potential. I loved how you shared her self-talk and futile attempts to make sense of the games that she became embroiled in. What I found enlightening and disturbing is that you will find a Pebble drama in every building, home or office that you observe when you look out of your window. You will without doubt discover the Pebble Beach in yourself when you turn away from the window and look in a mirror. Your subliminal ability to leave your reader with a question in his mind about his own compulsive and often obsessive behaviour in certain areas of his life gives this book longevity. It will be an idiot that reads this book and then sends it off to a second hand book shop. I recommend that we as readers take Pebble Beach off the shelf when we find ourselves struggling and straining to make sense of anything or anyone. This amazing book will then remind us once again where we allowed ourselves to get sucked in by illusions created in our futile minds that might once again return to our old and outdated software that we operated on historically. (Habitual reaction Patterns). The real value of The Adventures of Pebble Beach is that you learn and gain insight without even being aware of it. You become so embroiled by Pebble’s adventures that you fail to grasp that you are at the same time busy with a purification process while you load wisdom and insight into your sub-conscious archives.
Rene
.
You can read a portion of a chapter at the following link
People who leave religion to seem to be the ones who tried hardest and who have invested those most time into soul-searching.
.
There are themes of intense searching, bible reading, efforts to conform and find the promises of their religion, only to fail time and again. Ironically, the intense searching, bible reading and attempts to understand led many to recognize there were many things they were not being told and much was hidden or poorly explained.
The more sexually restrictive a religion is the more it uses guilt.
Conservative religions teach guilt and proscribe many behaviors such as sex before marriage, masturbation, oral sex and sex outside of marriage, and use religious based approaches to sex education with emphasis on abstinence only, failing to teach about birth control, condom use and abortion.
Biology seems to trump religion despite the millions of dollars and hours devoted to teaching religious children how to behave within their
religious restrictions. Other general studies of sexuality show that 95% all adults have had premarital sex by the time they marry including, we believe, most ministers who tout abstinence only.
The religious kids were learning from sexual experience more than the less religious!
Most religions preach incessantly against pornography, yet it is the religious
children in this sample that used it more.
It appears that the things religions preach against most – sexual experimentation, pornography and the Internet – are what religious kids may use the most, while failing to talk to their parents.
Non-religious kids seem to be following the religious proscriptions better than the religious ones.
For the most religious, getting religion out of their lives seemed to make a huge difference in their sex life.
Those from the most guilt based religions would show the greatest drop in guilt and biggest increase in sexual satisfaction.
If porn is as bad as religions say it is, they aren’t doing a very good job of keeping it out of the hands of children and adolescents, 20% or more of both groups said they were using porn by 12 years old. For all the billboards and sermons against porn, there seems to be little return on the investment.
We were most interested in religion’s effect on porn use. If religion’s proscriptions are effective, we should see a clear difference between those who are most and least religious in the teen years when they are getting strong messages from their religion about sex. Looking only at men, we can see that there is very little difference between the groups. This suggests that the effect of religion is negligible for men.
Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy describe their book The Laughing Jesus as ‘a damning indictment of Literalist religion and a passionate affirmation of Gnostic spirituality’ (p. 5). They summarize some of the key differences between these two approaches as follows:
Gnosticism is about waking up from the illusion of separateness to oneness and love.
Literalism keeps us asleep in an ‘us versus them’ world of division and conflict, inhabited by the ‘chosen’ and the ‘dammed’. …
Gnostics use symbolic parables to communicate the way to wake up.
Literalists mistake Gnostic myths for literal accounts of miraculous historical events and end up lost in irrational superstition. (pp. 6-7)
The history of the three major western religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – illustrates that Literalism is ‘a pernicious source of ignorance, division and suffering’. From Sudan to the Middle East, from Kashmir to the Philippines, many of the conflicts that afflict the world today are either rooted in religion or have religion as one of their main contributing factors. They are a continuation of a long and gruesome history of killing and dying for the sake of God.
Although attention currently focuses on the violence perpetrated in the name of Islam, we should not forget the horrors the West has perpetrated in the name of Christianity. The Crusaders, for example, butchered more than 70,000 Muslims in the Al-Aqsa mosque alone, burnt thousands of Jews alive in their synagogues, and impaled children on spits. In Europe thousands of men, women and children were condemned for heresy, subjected to gruesome tortures and burned alive by the Inquisition, which then repeated the slaughter on an even grander scale in the Americas.
As the authors say, fundamentalists of all religions ‘have willingly abandoned rationality in favour of blind faith in old books’ (p. 20). The reason fundamentalists are so extreme is that they have an absolute certainty that they are right and everyone else is wrong.
Religious Fundamentalism is an irrational pathology which leads otherwise decent men and women to become enemies of open mindedness and big-heartedness, and enlist in the service of divinely sanctioned bigotry. Fundamentalism creates dangerously self-righteous people who turn against those who espouse the truly spiritual values of love, tolerance and understanding. (p. 17)
If we examine the ‘sacred’ scriptures of Judaism, Christianity and Islam critically, we quickly realize that, while they may contain profound spiritual allegories and passages of inspiring beauty, they are also full of contradictions, wanton cruelty and mindless violence – with ‘God’ himself often being the worst offender. Clearly, ‘they were not written or inspired by God, but created by men. And often by the worst kind of men. Politicians dressed up as priests’ (p. 8).
An honest, fun, full-throttle story of a newly divorced woman throwing herself back into life…without a safety net!
.
Attracted to the wrong men and don’t understand why? Afraid of being alone, getting older and losing your sex appeal? A little sex crazed (or a lot)? And still dreaming of a man who can save you from your life?
Chick Lit meets Self-Help in this high-spirited tale of a newly divorced, 40-something woman with two teenage sons who is trying to take control of her life, her sex-crazed body, and her new relationships with men – while struggling to build a career in advertising in the big city (plus going to quite a few therapy sessions).
Until one day an unsavoury business scandal threatens to ruin the burgeoning career of our brave heroine…
REVIEWS & ENDORSEMENTS
.
A SINGLE LIFE SEEN FROM INSIDE Are you the type that is attracted to the wrong men – and do you do the most insane things to keep your relationships with them anyway? Are you terrified by the thought of being an old, wrinkled raisin that no man will ever want? And are you – once in a while – just a little hungry after sex? Yes? Well then you will really be able to identify with Pebble Beach. She is in her mid-40s, newly divorced, and mother of two teenage boys. She is struggling to make a career for herself as a copywriter. At the same time she’s trying – using all the tricks of the game – to make it as a single woman. Or in reality she’s trying to find a new man – but in fact it’s really going rather poorly on all fronts. “Single for the Second Time” is written by Barbara Berger, the woman who’s written more than 10 self-help books so among other things, the reader closely follows Pebble Beach as she goes through an intense therapy process in her search to find herself. The book makes you laugh, cry and think as well. It touches on themes like addictive relationships, low self-esteem, alcoholism and poor communication in an entertaining yet serious tone. A good and informative book for singles – and for those who don’t understand single women! ~ Bibi, Danish weekly magazine Søndag
.
MY REVIEW
.
I finished reading your book last night. I found this book dynamic, intense, stimulating and a real depiction of the complicated lives we all tend to create for ourselves. Pebble only took her power back after reaching a saturation point, a point where she mastered her “fear of loss”. It is astounding to read how her compulsive desire to please positioned herself in mortal danger. You succeeded extremely well with your depiction of her mental blindness and inability to identify individuals or situations that added very little or no value to her life. Most of us tend to see only what we want to see in others. This goes for everything else in life. You brilliantly displayed the horrific price Pebble paid before she woke up to her real potential. I loved how you shared her self-talk and futile attempts to make sense of the games that she became embroiled in. What I found enlightening and disturbing is that you will find a Pebble drama in every building, home or office that you observe when you look out of your window. You will without doubt discover the Pebble Beach in yourself when you turn away from the window and look in a mirror. Your subliminal ability to leave your reader with a question in his mind about his own compulsive and often obsessive behaviour in certain areas of his life gives this book longevity. It will be an idiot that reads this book and then sends it off to a second hand book shop. I recommend that we as readers take Pebble Beach off the shelf when we find ourselves struggling and straining to make sense of anything or anyone. This amazing book will then remind us once again where we allowed ourselves to get sucked in by illusions created in our futile minds that might once again return to our old and outdated software that we operated on historically. (Habitual reaction Patterns). The real value of The Adventures of Pebble Beach is that you learn and gain insight without even being aware of it. You become so embroiled by Pebble’s adventures that you fail to grasp that you are at the same time busy with a purification process while you load wisdom and insight into your sub-conscious archives.
Rene
.
You can read a portion of a chapter at the following link
Having good persuasion skills has become a necessity in today’s fast-paced world. A large part of your success depends on the cooperation of other people. Influencing them to your way of thinking is now a very essential step in the fulfilment of your goals.
Here are 5 simple yet effective persuasion tactics you may use everyday to build loyal and lasting relationships through the power of persuasion and influence.
Tactic # 1: You Must Enter Their World.
Copy them. Observe how they act, how they speak, and how they think. If they rub their forehead while they think, act like them. If they speak at a clear and slow pace, try to do the same thing. This is called mirroring. In due time, the people you’re mirroring will subconsciously feel more comfortable with you. It’s as if they see themselves in you. However, you must proceed with caution. Do not let them be aware that you are copying them. They might interpret it as mockery and you’ll just get into trouble.
Tactic # 2: Meet Their Existing Needs and Desires.
People are self-centered. They are initially concerned with their own well-being before others. If you can prove that your proposal will provide more advantageous benefits to them than to your own, then they will probably accept it. If you could focus more on their interests, desires, needs, and expectations, then you would satisfy their cravings for attention. Moreover, it would show that you really care about them. Mutual trust and respect would be established. Satisfy the “What’s In It For Me?” test first, before convincing others to do what you want them to do.
Tactic # 3: Provide Them with Compelling Evidence.
Explain to them how your ideas or suggestions could be the most effective techniques to implement. Show them undeniable proof that you have the best product by way of testimonials, before and after scenarios, and detailed comparisons against your competitors. Just make sure that all your claims are true and verifiable. Always maintain a good reputation. Be friendly and nice. Smile to brighten up the day. Make a sincere compliment to raise their spirits. Little things like these count a lot. Make them feel that whenever they need help or just someone to look up to, you’ll always be there to lend a hand. They would tend to be more receptive to people that they trust.
Tactic # 4: Communicate Wittingly But Clearly.
Most people, if not all, would like to be accepted and to be perceived as likeable in the eyes of others. But what if you have to tell something undesirable to your friend, which is just for his or her own good? How can you get your message across without hurting their feelings? Substitute negative statements with positive ones. Instead of saying “You don’t understand,” say “Let me explain.” Instead of remarking “You’re wrong,” say “Permit me to clarify.” Instead of stating “You failed to say,” just mention “Perhaps this was not stated.” There are certain words that affect a person more negatively in comparison with other words that have the same meaning.
Tactic # 5: Agree with Them First…
Nothing could be more pleasing to the ear than hearing someone else say that you are right. In this case, be prepared to let other people know that you respect their opinions. You may add your comments at the end, but acknowledge them first. Say: You’re right, although … Great suggestion, however … I agree with your opinion, however … I would feel the same way if I were you, although … I understand your situation, however … Reassure your counterparts that the decision made will benefit both parties. People need to feel that they have made the right choice.
An honest, fun, full-throttle story of a newly divorced woman throwing herself back into life…without a safety net!
.
Attracted to the wrong men and don’t understand why? Afraid of being alone, getting older and losing your sex appeal? A little sex crazed (or a lot)? And still dreaming of a man who can save you from your life?
Chick Lit meets Self-Help in this high-spirited tale of a newly divorced, 40-something woman with two teenage sons who is trying to take control of her life, her sex-crazed body, and her new relationships with men – while struggling to build a career in advertising in the big city (plus going to quite a few therapy sessions).
Until one day an unsavoury business scandal threatens to ruin the burgeoning career of our brave heroine…
REVIEWS & ENDORSEMENTS
A SINGLE LIFE SEEN FROM INSIDE Are you the type that is attracted to the wrong men – and do you do the most insane things to keep your relationships with them anyway? Are you terrified by the thought of being an old, wrinkled raisin that no man will ever want? And are you – once in a while – just a little hungry after sex? Yes? Well then you will really be able to identify with Pebble Beach. She is in her mid-40s, newly divorced, and mother of two teenage boys. She is struggling to make a career for herself as a copywriter. At the same time she’s trying – using all the tricks of the game – to make it as a single woman. Or in reality she’s trying to find a new man – but in fact it’s really going rather poorly on all fronts. “Single for the Second Time” is written by Barbara Berger, the woman who’s written more than 10 self-help books so among other things, the reader closely follows Pebble Beach as she goes through an intense therapy process in her search to find herself. The book makes you laugh, cry and think as well. It touches on themes like addictive relationships, low self-esteem, alcoholism and poor communication in an entertaining yet serious tone. A good and informative book for singles – and for those who don’t understand single women! ~ Bibi, Danish weekly magazine Søndag
.
MY REVIEW
.
I finished reading your book last night. I found this book dynamic, intense, stimulating and a real depiction of the complicated lives we all tend to create for ourselves. Pebble only took her power back after reaching a saturation point, a point where she mastered her “fear of loss”. It is astounding to read how her compulsive desire to please positioned herself in mortal danger. You succeeded extremely well with your depiction of her mental blindness and inability to identify individuals or situations that added very little or no value to her life. Most of us tend to see only what we want to see in others. This goes for everything else in life. You brilliantly displayed the horrific price Pebble paid before she woke up to her real potential. I loved how you shared her self-talk and futile attempts to make sense of the games that she became embroiled in. What I found enlightening and disturbing is that you will find a Pebble drama in every building, home or office that you observe when you look out of your window. You will without doubt discover the Pebble Beach in yourself when you turn away from the window and look in a mirror. Your subliminal ability to leave your reader with a question in his mind about his own compulsive and often obsessive behaviour in certain areas of his life gives this book longevity. It will be an idiot that reads this book and then sends it off to a second hand book shop. I recommend that we as readers take Pebble Beach off the shelf when we find ourselves struggling and straining to make sense of anything or anyone. This amazing book will then remind us once again where we allowed ourselves to get sucked in by illusions created in our futile minds that might once again return to our old and outdated software that we operated on historically. (Habitual reaction Patterns). The real value of The Adventures of Pebble Beach is that you learn and gain insight without even being aware of it. You become so embroiled by Pebble’s adventures that you fail to grasp that you are at the same time busy with a purification process while you load wisdom and insight into your sub-conscious archives.
Rene
.
You can read a portion of a chapter at the following link
Here’s an excerpt from “101 Relationship Myths” about sexual attraction. Enjoy!
.
“One of the relationship myths that has caused me the most pain during the course of my “relationship career” is the idea that strong sexual attraction and falling in love means you’re compatible and a good match. So a couple of years ago I decided to take a closer look at this idea and find out if it’s really true that when you’re on cloud nine and feel strong sexual attraction to someone, it means you’re going to be a good match as a couple.
It didn’t take me long to find the answer. When I looked back at some of my previous relationships, I could see that even though we were really attracted to each other, the reality was that we were not that good a match. Yes we might have felt blissful or even in love in the beginning, but when it came to relationships, lifestyle and interests, we often had very different views, preferences and values.
This realization was a revelation to me. Up until then, I’d been basing my choice of partner on whether or not there was a strong sexual attraction between us and not on whether or not we were a good match. And suddenly I could see the painful consequences of this misunderstanding – for me and my partners.
One of the consequences of believing that strong sexual attraction means you’re a good match was that in the beginning of a new relationship, I often found myself exaggerating or only focusing on the woman’s “positive” sides (oh she’s so beautiful, so spiritual, and so forth) while downplaying or even ignoring her more “negative” sides. For example, I would overlook the sudden unkind remark that made me feel uncomfortable and instead sweep it under the carpet because I was so much in love. Or I’d accept an action or actions on her part that I’d never accept in anyone else. But in her case, because the attraction was so strong, I’d let it slide. And I have to admit that if I had been totally honest with myself, the truth was I already knew on the very first date, in the very first five minutes or so of our conversation, why the relationship would sooner or later become unworkable. Yes it’s true, I actually knew from the very beginning the reasons why we would not be a good match…
But because I was so infatuated and innocently believed that strong sexual attraction means you’re a good match, I ignored reality. And the result was almost always the same. As soon as the intoxication of falling in love began to wear off and the reality began to set in, it would become more and more painful for me to stay in the relationship. And then, the long, difficult battle to extricate myself would begin.
Find your core values
So if strong sexual attraction and falling in love don’t necessarily mean you’re a good match – what does? What makes two people a good match?
One of the things that make two people a good match is that they have the same “core” values. By having the same core values, I don’t mean being the same personality type or having the same education or working in the same field. I mean you have the same basic attitudes when it comes to what’s important in life, not least what’s important when it comes to relationships.
One of the reasons why many relationships get into serious trouble is that the man and the woman don’t have the same core values. A “mismatch” like this usually spells trouble because most people live according to their core values – and usually unconsciously expect their partners to do so too. This can be problematic when these core values don’t match. Let’s take an example. Let’s say one of your core values is “freedom” while your partner’s core values are “security and feeling safe”. Obviously this can make your relationship problematic because you will both unconsciously be expecting the other to behave in a manner that is in conflict with his or her core value or values. So when you are faithful to your core value and give yourself and your partner lots of “freedom”, your partner may get upset and feel insecure because his/her core values of “security and feeling safe” are not being met or are threatened. The opposite is true too. When your partner tries to live in harmony with his/her core value and strives for “security” for example, by wanting clear agreements on how you do things, the “freedom-loving” partner feels stifled and inhibited. You feel your core value of “freedom” is being threatened. So this is why it is so important to be more aware of what you and your partner’s (or a potential partner’s) core values are.
My former girlfriend, sexologist and couples therapist Joan Ørting has developed a good exercise to help us become more aware of our core values when it comes to relationships. I suggest you give this exercise a try – it can be really interesting. Ask yourself the following questions and answer as honestly as you can.
Question: What is most important for you in a relationship?
Answer: That my partner accepts me and loves me unconditionally.
Question: How does it make you feel when your partner accepts you and loves you unconditionally?
Answer: It makes me feel SAFE.
Conclusion: So feeling SAFE is one of your core values.
Repeat the questions until you identify 3-5 of your main core values. Once you’ve done this, prioritize the values so that you end up with a list that looks like this:
My core values when it comes to relationships: 1) FEELING SAFE 2) BEING TOGETHER 3) JOY
Or perhaps you’ll come up with a list of core values that looks like this:
1) FREEDOM 2) ADVENTURE 3) BEING TOGETHER
Becoming aware of your core values can be a really big help when it comes to determining if you and a potential partner are a good match. And if you’re already in a relationship and are having problems, it may be because your core values do not match. So it can also be helpful to do this exercise with your partner and then talk about what your respective core values are. Understanding how your core values differ can make it easier to communicate with each other in the future.”
An honest, fun, full-throttle story of a newly divorced woman throwing herself back into life…without a safety net!
.
Attracted to the wrong men and don’t understand why? Afraid of being alone, getting older and losing your sex appeal? A little sex crazed (or a lot)? And still dreaming of a man who can save you from your life?
Chick Lit meets Self-Help in this high-spirited tale of a newly divorced, 40-something woman with two teenage sons who is trying to take control of her life, her sex-crazed body, and her new relationships with men – while struggling to build a career in advertising in the big city (plus going to quite a few therapy sessions).
Until one day an unsavoury business scandal threatens to ruin the burgeoning career of our brave heroine…
REVIEWS & ENDORSEMENTS
A SINGLE LIFE SEEN FROM INSIDE Are you the type that is attracted to the wrong men – and do you do the most insane things to keep your relationships with them anyway? Are you terrified by the thought of being an old, wrinkled raisin that no man will ever want? And are you – once in a while – just a little hungry after sex? Yes? Well then you will really be able to identify with Pebble Beach. She is in her mid-40s, newly divorced, and mother of two teenage boys. She is struggling to make a career for herself as a copywriter. At the same time she’s trying – using all the tricks of the game – to make it as a single woman. Or in reality she’s trying to find a new man – but in fact it’s really going rather poorly on all fronts. “Single for the Second Time” is written by Barbara Berger, the woman who’s written more than 10 self-help books so among other things, the reader closely follows Pebble Beach as she goes through an intense therapy process in her search to find herself. The book makes you laugh, cry and think as well. It touches on themes like addictive relationships, low self-esteem, alcoholism and poor communication in an entertaining yet serious tone. A good and informative book for singles – and for those who don’t understand single women! ~ Bibi, Danish weekly magazine Søndag
.
MY REVIEW
.
I finished reading your book last night. I found this book dynamic, intense, stimulating and a real depiction of the complicated lives we all tend to create for ourselves. Pebble only took her power back after reaching a saturation point, a point where she mastered her “fear of loss”. It is astounding to read how her compulsive desire to please positioned herself in mortal danger. You succeeded extremely well with your depiction of her mental blindness and inability to identify individuals or situations that added very little or no value to her life. Most of us tend to see only what we want to see in others. This goes for everything else in life. You brilliantly displayed the horrific price Pebble paid before she woke up to her real potential. I loved how you shared her self-talk and futile attempts to make sense of the games that she became embroiled in. What I found enlightening and disturbing is that you will find a Pebble drama in every building, home or office that you observe when you look out of your window. You will without doubt discover the Pebble Beach in yourself when you turn away from the window and look in a mirror. Your subliminal ability to leave your reader with a question in his mind about his own compulsive and often obsessive behaviour in certain areas of his life gives this book longevity. It will be an idiot that reads this book and then sends it off to a second hand book shop. I recommend that we as readers take Pebble Beach off the shelf when we find ourselves struggling and straining to make sense of anything or anyone. This amazing book will then remind us once again where we allowed ourselves to get sucked in by illusions created in our futile minds that might once again return to our old and outdated software that we operated on historically. (Habitual reaction Patterns). The real value of The Adventures of Pebble Beach is that you learn and gain insight without even being aware of it. You become so embroiled by Pebble’s adventures that you fail to grasp that you are at the same time busy with a purification process while you load wisdom and insight into your sub-conscious archives.
Rene
You can read a portion of a chapter at the following link
Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy describe their book The Laughing Jesus as ‘a damning indictment of Literalist religion and a passionate affirmation of Gnostic spirituality’ (p. 5). They summarize some of the key differences between these two approaches as follows:
Gnosticism is about waking up from the illusion of separateness to oneness and love.
Literalism keeps us asleep in an ‘us versus them’ world of division and conflict, inhabited by the ‘chosen’ and the ‘dammed’. …
Gnostics use symbolic parables to communicate the way to wake up.
Literalists mistake Gnostic myths for literal accounts of miraculous historical events and end up lost in irrational superstition. (pp. 6-7)
The history of the three major western religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – illustrates that Literalism is ‘a pernicious source of ignorance, division and suffering’. From Sudan to the Middle East, from Kashmir to the Philippines, many of the conflicts that afflict the world today are either rooted in religion or have religion as one of their main contributing factors. They are a continuation of a long and gruesome history of killing and dying for the sake of God.
Although attention currently focuses on the violence perpetrated in the name of Islam, we should not forget the horrors the West has perpetrated in the name of Christianity. The Crusaders, for example, butchered more than 70,000 Muslims in the Al-Aqsa mosque alone, burnt thousands of Jews alive in their synagogues, and impaled children on spits. In Europe thousands of men, women and children were condemned for heresy, subjected to gruesome tortures and burned alive by the Inquisition, which then repeated the slaughter on an even grander scale in the Americas.
As the authors say, fundamentalists of all religions ‘have willingly abandoned rationality in favour of blind faith in old books’ (p. 20). The reason fundamentalists are so extreme is that they have an absolute certainty that they are right and everyone else is wrong.
Religious Fundamentalism is an irrational pathology which leads otherwise decent men and women to become enemies of open mindedness and big-heartedness, and enlist in the service of divinely sanctioned bigotry. Fundamentalism creates dangerously self-righteous people who turn against those who espouse the truly spiritual values of love, tolerance and understanding. (p. 17)
If we examine the ‘sacred’ scriptures of Judaism, Christianity and Islam critically, we quickly realize that, while they may contain profound spiritual allegories and passages of inspiring beauty, they are also full of contradictions, wanton cruelty and mindless violence – with ‘God’ himself often being the worst offender. Clearly, ‘they were not written or inspired by God, but created by men. And often by the worst kind of men. Politicians dressed up as priests’ (p. 8).
The Old Testament and Judaism
The Old Testament, or Tanakh, contains fragments drawn from Palestinian, Egyptian and Mesopotamian folk traditions, woven together into a pseudo-historical narrative – but one riddled with inconsistencies and anachronisms. In 161 BCE the Jewish leader Judas Maccabeus made an alliance with the Romans that led to a rebellion against the Jews’ Greek rulers. Judas and his sons established the Hasmonean dynasty that ruled Judea for the next century. The texts we know as the Tanakh were written, compiled and extensively edited during this period, ‘to serve as the mythological justification for the Hasmonean desire to rule all of Palestine’ (p. 37).
The Hasmoneans constructed a history that portrayed themselves as descendants of an ancient people who were bequeathed this whole area by God himself. …
What marks the language of the Tanakh is its self-conscious ethnicity and narrow sectarianism, both of which were pronounced features of the Hasmonean dynasty. Several scholars now consider that the Tanakh was produced by a ‘Taliban-like Fundamentalist core of religious bigots’. (pp. 37-8)
Jewish Gnostics interpreted stories such as the Creation, the Fall, Noah’s Flood and Exodus as symbolic: ‘Genesis was seen as an allegory of how human beings became lost and exiled in the world, whilst Exodus was seen as an allegory of awakening to gnosis’ (p. 49). Some parts of the Old Testament seem to be more realistic and historical, but archaeological research has proved them to be grossly inaccurate. The kings named Saul, David and Solomon appear to be mythical, King David’s allegedly vast kingdom never existed, and Jerusalem was not the capital of a huge empire but just a small village. The region was occupied by a few wandering nomads and pastoralists, and there are no remnants of grand palaces, temples or dressed stone buildings. Nor is there any evidence that the Jews were ever held captive in Egypt, or made an exodus from that country, or invaded the land of Canaan, or were held captive in Babylon.
We are often told that Judaism was the first religion to introduce monotheism – but this is merely Jewish and Christian propaganda. Freke and Gandy point out that cunning editorship and translation have disguised the fact that there are an embarrassing number of gods running around the Bible. The two main ones are El (often used in the plural: Elohim), and Yahweh (variants: Yahu, Yau, Nebo). The Jewish prophets repeatedly condemned their people for worshipping other gods, such as Baal, Ammon, Chemosh and Tammuz. Yahweh (Jehovah) was therefore up against a lot of competition, which may explain why he declares himself to be a jealous god! Freke and Gandy describe him as a partisan and cruel tribal deity, representing the crude self-interest of a nationalistic people.
The Old Testament is an incredibly bloodthirsty book. In this respect, it appears to reflect the Hasmoneans’ legendary capacity for cruelty and butchery. For example, Moses flies into a rage on learning that a returning Israelite war party has slaughtered only the adult male Midianites. He orders them to return, saying: ‘Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man’ (Numbers 31:17-18.
The Old Testament is rarely ethically or spiritually uplifting.
Take the story of Noah, whom God saves after drowning the rest of humanity but who turns out to be nothing but a vindictive drunk! After the flood, Noah, always partial to a drink, passes out naked on the floor. One of his sons, Ham, accidentally comes across his father and goes off to tell his two brothers, Shem and Japheth, who return and respectfully cover their father’s nakedness. When Noah regains consciousness he curses Ham’s son Canaan, declaring that his offspring would ever after be slaves to Shem, Japheth and their descendants. So the moral of the story is that the Canaanites deserve to be punished because their ancestor’s father saw Noah naked! (p. 46; Genesis 9)
God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah with ‘fire and brimstone’ because he considers their inhabitants to be degenerates, and only Lot and his family are thought worthy of saving (Genesis 19).
But immediately after this we are told how Lot’s daughters get their father drunk, seduce him, become pregnant, and Lot then raises his daughters’ sons as his own. If this is the new standard of morality that God wanted to raise out of the ashes of Sodom and Gomorrah, why did he bother destroying these cities in the first place? (p. 48)
Abraham’s son Isaac was conceived when Abraham was 100 and Sarah, his wife, 99. God tells Abraham to build an altar of wood, tie up his son, lay him on the pyre and slit his throat (Genesis 22).
As if that wasn’t sick enough, just as Abraham is about to carry out this dreadful instruction, God tells Abraham that it was all just a trick to test his fidelity! … Fortunately, if anyone today declared that they were about to slit their child’s throat on the instructions of the Lord they would be immediately arrested. (p. 47)
Abraham fathered his older child, Ishmael, on Sarah’s maidservant Hagar (Genesis 16, 21, 25).
Jealous of Hagar and Ishmael, Sarah urges Abraham to abandon them in the desert. Incredibly God thinks this is a good idea. Abraham takes Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness where he leaves them to die. A miracle saves them and Ishmael goes on to become the ancestor of all the Arabs.
As Freke and Gandy say, it’s hard to find any moral sense in any of this.
But as a way for Jews to denigrate Arabs its message comes across loud and clear. The Arabs are descendants of an outcast bastard whom God himself abandoned to his fate in the desert. (p. 47)
King David, supposedly the greatest king of Israel, seems to have had rather dubious moral standards. One afternoon he spotted Bathsheba, the wife of one of his generals, bathing. He seduces her and she becomes pregnant. He then sends her husband to the battlefront with the express orders that he be exposed to maximum danger and he is duly killed. David then marries Bathsheba. To punish him, Yahweh did not allow Bathsheba’s first child to live (II Samuel 11-12). As Freke and Gandy comment, ‘This is not ethics. It’s infanticide’ (p. 48).
There are countless other examples of the Old Testament God’s passion for sowing death and destruction. For instance, he killed Judah’s firstborn son, Er, for being ‘wicked’. Then he slew Onan, another of Judah’s sons, because while copulating with Er’s wife (on his father’s instructions) he deliberately ‘spilled his semen on the ground’ to avoid making her pregnant – which God also considered to be ‘wicked’ (Genesis 38). He attacked the Gibeonites by hurling large hailstones down on them from the sky, killing even more of them than the Israelites with their swords (Joshua 10:11). He sent a plague on Israel, which killed 70,000 men, then sent an angel to destroy Jerusalem, but relented before the violence could begin (1 Chronicles 21:14-15). He slew all the firstborn in Egypt, both humans and animals – which understandably gave rise to ‘loud wailing in Egypt’ (Exodus 12). In another incident, God struck down 5070 men at Beth Shemesh, after they had made the mistake of looking into ‘the ark of the Lord’ (1 Samuel 6:19). The Assyrians suffered an even worse massacre: the ‘angel of the Lord’ slew 185,000 men as they slept in their camp (2 Kings 19:35, Isaiah 37:36). The orthodox response to all this bloodletting is that since God is, by definition, all-good and all-wise, his murderous acts – however despicable they may seem to us lowly mortals – are really perfectly just and ‘divine’!
The New Testament and Christianity
All the various mystery religions of antiquity had a myth about a dying and resurrecting godman. In Egypt he was Osiris, in Alexandria Serapis, in Greece Dionysus, in Asia Minor Attis, in Syria Adonis, in Persia Mithras. Elements shared by many of these myths include the following: the godman is born of a virgin, in a cave or cowshed, on 25 December and in front of shepherds; he surrounds himself with disciples; he turns water into wine; he dies at Easter time as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, sometimes through crucifixion; he rises from the dead on the third day and ascends to heaven; his death and resurrection are celebrated by a ritual meal of bread and wine, symbolizing his body and blood (pp. 53-4).
The New Testament story of Jesus is therefore a Jewish version of a pagan myth. Jewish Gnostics of the 1st century CE were eager to synthesize pagan and Jewish mythology; the Jesus myth fuses the pagan godman with the Jewish Messiah. The gospel story is a critique of literalist Judaism, and its hero, Jesus, constantly breaks Jewish religious laws. The Jesus cult was also designed to give less orthodox Jews hope and reassurance following the suppression of futile revolts led by Jewish zealots, notably in 70 and 135 CE. While gnostic Christians recognized Jesus as a mythical figure, literalist Christians claimed that he was a real man who lived out the pagan myths of the godman, and that these earlier myths had been inspired by the devil to lead the faithful astray!
There is no serious evidence that the biblical Jesus was a historical figure. The Romans kept detailed legal records, but no record of the trial or crucifixion of Jesus has ever been found. The Jewish writer Philo never mentions him. There is a paragraph referring to Jesus in the works of Josephus, but it is an obvious interpolation; it is not found in the earliest manuscripts and when removed the text makes more sense. Paul’s letters, the earliest Christian documents we possess, never quote Jesus or mention any details about his life. Paul is clearly a Gnostic who regards the Jesus story as an allegory encoding mystical teachings. The only elements of the Jesus myth that Paul mentions are Christ’s death and resurrection, which are understood as symbolizing the process of initiation.
It was Justin Martyr, in the second century CE, who first began to speak of Jesus as a real man who had been put to death by Pontius Pilate. The Literalists tried to rebut the charge that the Jesus story had been plagiarized from pagan myths by inventing more and more pseudo-historical details. At that time there were dozens of Christian gospels in circulation, many of which have now been found at Nag Hammadi, which portrayed Jesus as a mythical figure. A generation after Justin, literalist bishop Irenaeus suddenly produced the four canonical gospels, which tell the Jesus story as a historical narrative; he rejected all other gospels as spurious. Irenaeus also came up with several other previously unknown texts – The Acts of the Apostles, ‘a crude piece of anti-Gnostic propaganda forged in the late second century’ (p. 67); and a number of additional letters by Paul (known as the pastorals), in which Paul has been transformed from a Gnostic into a Literalist.
Freke and Gandy write:
In the third century CE the holy forgery mill of Literalist Christianity continued to churn out documents to add to the new Testament. …
The process that created the New Testament was uncannily like that which produced the Old Testament. Both were put together by sectarian Literalists intent on creating and maintaining their own power and authority. Both contain the remains of Gnostic myths which have been buried beneath accretions of blatant political propaganda. Both are riddled with contradictions and anomalies because they have been altered and amended by so many editorial hands. The Literalists’ Bible is not holy scripture. It’s an unholy mess. (pp. 70-1)
The brutal persecution suffered by early literalist Christians whipped up religious fanaticism and many eagerly embraced the opportunity for martyrdom. The situation changed completely when the despotic Roman emperor Constantine adopted literalist Christianity as the state religion in the 4th century CE. Literalist Christians set about persecuting their gnostic and pagan rivals out of existence. In the 5th and 6th centuries bands of black-robed Christian monks roamed through the disintegrating Roman Empire, laying waste to pagan civilization. The West reverted to a brutish life of ignorance and superstition, resulting in a thousand years of misery called the Dark Ages. For a time, the Islamic world became the centre of gnostic spirituality and science – until it too finally succumbed to orthodoxy.
People who leave religion to seem to be the ones who tried hardest and who have invested those most time into soul-searching.
There are themes of intense searching, bible reading, efforts to conform and find the promises of their religion, only to fail time and again. Ironically, the intense searching, bible reading and attempts to understand led many to recognize there were many things they were not being told and much was hidden or poorly explained.
The more sexually restrictive a religion is the more it uses guilt.
Conservative religions teach guilt and proscribe many behaviors such as sex before marriage, masturbation, oral sex and sex outside of marriage, and use religious based approaches to sex education with emphasis on abstinence only, failing to teach about birth control, condom use and abortion.
Biology seems to trump religion despite the millions of dollars and hours devoted to teaching religious children how to behave within their
religious restrictions. Other general studies of sexuality show that 95% all adults have had premarital sex by the time they marry including, we believe, most ministers who tout abstinence only.
The religious kids were learning from sexual experience more than the less religious!
Most religions preach incessantly against pornography, yet it is the religious
children in this sample that used it more.
It appears that the things religions preach against most – sexual experimentation,pornography and the internet – are what religious kids may use the most, while failing to talk to their parents.
Non-religious kids seem to be following the religious proscriptions better than the religious ones.
For the most religious, getting religion out of their lives seemed to make a huge difference in their sex life.
Those from the most guilt based religions would show the greatest drop in guilt and biggest increase in sexual satisfaction.
If porn is as bad as religions say it is, they aren’t doing a very good job of keeping it out of the hands of children and adolescents, 20% or more of both groups said they were using porn by 12 years old. For all the billboards and sermons against porn, there seems to be little return on the investment.
We were most interested in religion’s effect on porn use. If religion’s
proscriptions are effective, we should see a clear difference between those who are most and least religious in the teen years when they are getting strong messages from their religion about sex. Looking only at men, we can see that there is very little difference between the groups. This suggests that the effect of religion is negligible for men.
The moral of this story, if you want a good sex life, don’t get involved with a highlyreligious person. Many in our sample seem to have taken that path. Of those that do have highly religious spouses, the majority have sexual problems in the relationship.
The main benefit that people express is the ability to just enjoy sex without guilt.
Over and over people said, they are much happier and fulfilled not only in their sex life,but in the rest of their life as well since leaving religion.
Guilt messages have remarkably little measurable effect on actual behavior. As in other surveys, our results show that religion has a slight effect in delaying the onset of sexual activity.
Religious parents are perceived to be poorer at sex education compared to less religious parents, though neither are particularly good at it.
Religion simply ignores biology and creates psychological states that interfere
with appropriate sexual expression and development. Teaching guilt and shame around things that are perfectly natural. Religion impacts how people see their bodies and express their sexuality whether gay, lesbian or straight. Religions have nothing to say about our biology. They are in large measure clueless about hormones, braindevelopment, attraction factors, body image formation and many other things.
If parents and schools spent as much time teaching kids about safe and enjoyable sex as they do teaching about safe driving, there would be fewer
unwanted pregnancies, less disease, fewer abortions and far less guilt and shame that lead people to make poor decisions about partners and behavior.
Eliminate guilt and shame around sex, and religions have very little to work with.
Religions cannot claim that their ideas and principles actually impact
behavior or make people happier.
We can also see that religion creates guilt and shame around the most basic sexualact, masturbation, but has no effect on its practice.
Condemning children for masturbating, telling them they will go to hell or suffer in thislife for doing it, is child abuse pure and simple.
Religion uses sex for purposes of propagation not the happiness of its adherents.
There is ample evidence in this survey, that one of the best things one can do to
improve your sex life is leave religion, especially if you were in a conservative religion.
We have seen that stigmas, shame and guilt do not work in preventing or stopping behavior, but they do make people feel sexually miserable.
95% of Americans have sex before marriage. Your minister probably had sex beforemarriage but he tells you not to. Protect yourself, use a condom.
Adolescents and young adults are in a critical time trying to
establish their sexual identity. Religion intentionally plays upon the doubts and fears of youth to infect them with medieval ideas of sexuality.
Society, the church, your parents and an endless number of other programmers dictated which paths are acceptable. You were trained like a dog to experience guilt and fear of loss when you made perceived mistakes according to the dogma of that specific group or person.
An honest, fun, full-throttle story of a newly divorced woman throwing herself back into life…without a safety net!
Attracted to the wrong men and don’t understand why? Afraid of being alone, getting older and losing your sex appeal? A little sex crazed (or a lot)? And still dreaming of a man who can save you from your life?
Chick Lit meets Self-Help in this high-spirited tale of a newly divorced, 40-something woman with two teenage sons who is trying to take control of her life, her sex-crazed body, and her new relationships with men – while struggling to build a career in advertising in the big city (plus going to quite a few therapy sessions).
Until one day an unsavoury business scandal threatens to ruin the burgeoning career of our brave heroine…
REVIEWS & ENDORSEMENTS
A SINGLE LIFE SEEN FROM INSIDE Are you the type that is attracted to the wrong men – and do you do the most insane things to keep your relationships with them anyway? Are you terrified by the thought of being an old, wrinkled raisin that no man will ever want? And are you – once in a while – just a little hungry after sex? Yes? Well then you will really be able to identify with Pebble Beach. She is in her mid-40s, newly divorced, and mother of two teenage boys. She is struggling to make a career for herself as a copywriter. At the same time she’s trying – using all the tricks of the game – to make it as a single woman. Or in reality she’s trying to find a new man – but in fact it’s really going rather poorly on all fronts. “Single for the Second Time” is written by Barbara Berger, the woman who’s written more than 10 self-help books so among other things, the reader closely follows Pebble Beach as she goes through an intense therapy process in her search to find herself. The book makes you laugh, cry and think as well. It touches on themes like addictive relationships, low self-esteem, alcoholism and poor communication in an entertaining yet serious tone. A good and informative book for singles – and for those who don’t understand single women! ~ Bibi, Danish weekly magazine Søndag
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MY REVIEW
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I finished reading your book last night. I found this book dynamic, intense, stimulating and a real depiction of the complicated lives we all tend to create for ourselves. Pebble only took her power back after reaching a saturation point, a point where she mastered her “fear of loss”. It is astounding to read how her compulsive desire to please positioned herself in mortal danger. You succeeded extremely well with your depiction of her mental blindness and inability to identify individuals or situations that added very little or no value to her life. Most of us tend to see only what we want to see in others. This goes for everything else in life. You brilliantly displayed the horrific price Pebble paid before she woke up to her real potential. I loved how you shared her self-talk and futile attempts to make sense of the games that she became embroiled in. What I found enlightening and disturbing is that you will find a Pebble drama in every building, home or office that you observe when you look out of your window. You will without doubt discover the Pebble Beach in yourself when you turn away from the window and look in a mirror. Your subliminal ability to leave your reader with a question in his mind about his own compulsive and often obsessive behaviour in certain areas of his life gives this book longevity. It will be an idiot that reads this book and then sends it off to a second hand book shop. I recommend that we as readers take Pebble Beach off the shelf when we find ourselves struggling and straining to make sense of anything or anyone. This amazing book will then remind us once again where we allowed ourselves to get sucked in by illusions created in our futile minds that might once again return to our old and outdated software that we operated on historically. (Habitual reaction Patterns). The real value of The Adventures of Pebble Beach is that you learn and gain insight without even being aware of it. You become so embroiled by Pebble’s adventures that you fail to grasp that you are at the same time busy with a purification process while you load wisdom and insight into your sub-conscious archives.
Rene
You can read a portion of a chapter at the following link
Sondae staan hulle op die kansel en preek die Bybel as onfeilbare Woord van God.
Maar in hul harte glo hulle nie meer die dinge wat hulle aan hul gemeentelede verkondig nie.
So bieg vyf predikante “van die hoofstroom-kerke” in ’n potensieel opspraakwekkende boek wat pas gepubliseer is.
Dié leraars vertel elkeen die geloof wat hul kerkverband bely, rym nie meer met die vertwyfelings wat hulle al jare lank in hul harte ronddra nie.
Die boek, Hier staan ek, is ’n bloemlesing van mense se verhale oor hoe hulle van die kerklike verstaan van God en Christelikheid afskeid geneem het.
En hoewel daar essays is deur mense soos prof. Sakkie Spangenberg en die digter Lina Spies, wat al voorheen in die media vertel het dat hul geestelikheid nie meer met tradisionele kerkdogma rym nie, is daar ook getuienisse deur vyf predikante wat bieg in hul harte glo hulle ook nie meer alles wat hul werk se posbeskrywing van hulle vereis nie.
“Ek kan nie meer bid nie. Ek voel soos ’n leuenaar in die gemeente. Ek lees nie meer Bybel nie. Huisgodsdiens het vir my ’n ondraaglike las geword, iets wat ek so vinnig moontlik wil verby kry sodat ek met my eie worsteling kan aangaan,” skryf een van die predikante, wat nes die ander vier onder skuilname skryf.
Benewens enkele biografiese besonderhede, verklap hulle bloot dat hulle nog in die bediening is en in hoofstroom-kerke (die indruk word geskep dit is deel van die Gereformeerde susterskerke) werk.
Hulle skryf ook dit is vir hulle swaar om een ding in hul binnekamer te glo, maar ’n ander ding van die preekstoel af te bely.
“Eensaam. Eensaam en alleen. Verneuk. Verneuk en beangs. Dit is waarskynlik die woorde wat my gevoel tans die beste uitdruk,” skryf een, wat vertel dat hy kort ná sy eerste aanstelling deur die geloofsvrae van ’n gemeentelid op ’n twyfelpad gelei is.
Deesdae glo hy nie meer in Jesus se maagdelike geboorte, opstanding uit die dood of lewe in ’n hiernamaals nie.
’n Tweede een, ’n “dominee in my middel-dertigs”, vertel hy is as student al in sy geloof ontnugter, maar het desondanks predikant geword.
Hy kon hom egter wel in ’n mate met die Christenskap versoen danksy die aanklank wat hy toenemend by die kontemplatiewe spiritualiteit van die Katolieke mistici vind.
’n Derde, wat 38 jaar ervaring in die bediening het, vertel hy het allerlei vertwyfelings wat hy nie durf uitspreek nie, want hy “het geweet ek sou geëtiketteer en waarskynlik verwerp word … My loopbaan kon ook in gedrang kom.” Tans beskou hy Jesus eerder as “navolgenswaardige leermeester” en die Bybel as wegwyser.
’n Vierde predikant vertel hy is ontnugter deur die wrede verhale in die Ou Testament en die onvermoë van teoloë om sy kritiese vrae te beantwoord.
Die vyfde skryf die Christelike kerk behandel godsdiens soos ’n dieretuin waar God “in ’n hok” aangehou word en dat hy eerder in die “wildtuin van sienings” wil beweeg waar panteïsme, panenteïsme, agnostisisme, post-teïsme en ander lewensbeskouings ook welkom is.
In die voorwoord van die boek, wat deur Griffel Media uitgegee word, skryf die samestellers hulle wil met dié stories twyfelaars gerusstel dat hulle nie alleen is nie.
Die stories in die boek kan volgens hulle “’n aanduiding wees van die soort probleme waarmee nie net leke nie, maar selfs ook teologies geskooldes worstel”.
“Do not take anything in this book literally! Wait, on second thought, take it all literally!” – Joseph Matheny’s quote on the back of the book.
Do you ever wonder what would be possible if you decided to completely rid yourself of limitations – social, psychological, and otherwise? Would you use such methods to assist your fellow beings, or to manipulate them for your own ends? A book for such desire exists, and to be Limitless is the goal of all who persist through it. First-time contributor Donovan, here, to share my thoughts on Christopher Hyatt’s work, The Psychopath’s Bible.
I’m a twenty-something, sheltered white-male in the middle of a state that is filled almost entirely with suburbs. I’m a “Week of Determination” individual and a bit of an optimist, at that. I consider myself introspective and have been playing with psychology, philosophy, and spirituality for about 7 years. That said, here’s what I got from the book.
The Psychopath’s Bible, when read the first time through, appears to be the rant of a mad man hell-bent on enslaving his fellow humans and getting everything that he wants at any cost (be that to himself, his peers, or the planet).
Hyatt coins the terms “Toxick Magick” and “Toxick Magician” to describe any person insane and/or desperate enough to follow his methods of multi-layered manipulation. Contained in the book are descriptive and, at times, seemingly-random methods for abandoning one’s preconceptions of self and evolving to become a better being. Targets aimed-at by Hyatt include willpower, morality, fear, belief, value, and image. The book is written with a “no mercy for the weak” attitude and contains legitimate exercises to liberate oneself and make Dr. Hyatt’s family some money in the process (in at least three exercises it is suggested that you buy multiple copies of the book for various reasons). Overall, Hyatt’s writing styles lead the average reader to believe that they are reading pure, self-driven madness so that they may quickly put the book down as they reach for their nearest book of fluffy insignificance.
It doesn’t take a genius to catch Hyatt’s little “winks” throughout the book. The most obvious are his explicit contradictions of previous statements to let you know that you are on the right track; Hyatt constantly puts down people-lovers and species advocates, and yet in a book filled with statements of exclusivity to psychopaths he adds the statement, “If you forget everything else, remember this: Everyone is a Psychopath.” Such a statement must be taken to heart when the author spends the majority of the book “convincing” you of the weaknesses and mindlessness of others.
After reading through the book a couple of times, one notices that much of the information contained in the book is nothing but one large contradiction; The Psychopath’s Bible is a book that liberates, yet it is written under the pretense that the methods are only for personal gain and not for the betterment of the species? For a book to be written so well as The Psychopath’s Bible, the author must truly have a passion for what he is writing. In this case, he is essentially writing a field-manual for the evolution and betterment of whomever is brave enough to press onward through the book.
What I’m getting at, here, is that The Psychopath’s Bible teaches people to sift through bullshit to discover the gems within. If you were to perform all of the exercises in the book without raging hatred in your heart, you would appear, to Average Joe, a kind and considerate human being. That, along with the fact that the book itself would not exist if Hyatt did not have a vested interest in keeping this miserable species going strong by whatever means necessary, leads me to believe that this book was written to inspire the evolution of the self and of others. If I’m correct, then Dr. Hyatt had far greater intentions than mere selfishness when he wrote this book fully intending it to benefit those who can decipher its foggy intentions, and he did a stand-up job in doing so.
Then again, I could read this book a third time and discover that I’ve missed the whole damned point entirely.
Everyday you make a thousand choices. You choose what to wear, where to go, who to meet, what to eat and what to do. MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, YOU decide WHAT TO THINK. One thing is sure and that is that your day will not be better than your thoughts. ...................
Just close your eyes for a moment and see if you can visualise this open toolbox and if you can see the hundreds of tools that are neatly placed in this toolbox. Now look if you can see the maker’s name on these tools. The creator of these tools (thoughts and perceptions) is you. You created thousands of thoughts and perceptions (tools) about everything since your childhood. ..................
When confronted with any situation or problem you reach into this toolbox and take out what you think the most appropriate tool would be and then attempt to fix the problem. It is estimated that your mind thinks at least 2,500 thoughts an hour. Every thought that you think is a tool (perception) that you have that you imagine would work best under specific circumstances. This thought process continues day and night and will do so for the rest of your life. .....................................
I am convinced that we think ourselves to a standstill. We never stop playing with these tools in our toolbox and can hardly ever really relax for a while. If we are not faced with a problem or task that needs completion we still continue to take out these tools and mentally rehears and contemplate how we will use them should something that we fear become a reality. ............................
We are forever thinking and scheming and never become still and tranquil inside. Our bodies might seem relaxed, but deep inside our heads this thought process continues churning around. What I am most worried about is that most of the tools that you have in your toolbox are very old and outdated. .......................
Many of the opportunities, problems and obstructions that you face daily cannot be repaired while you are using old and outdated tools. If you take a modern mechanic’s toolbox and you place the toolbox of a mechanic of fifty years ago next to it you will find that there are major discrepancies. When you are confronted with something that needs repair and you do not have the right tool for the task at hand it can be very frustrating. We usually improvise and try using some other tools and hope that it will also get the job done. ........................
When you are faced with a problem you need to select the right tool for the task at hand. If you do not have the tool in your toolbox it can complicate your life. What most people seem to ignore is that it is sometimes better not to reach for your toolbox when faced with a problem. Sometimes you need time to pass or need to leave the problem with its rightful owner. How well you use your tools is usually reflected in the world you see around you. What would you do if you were faced with any or all of the following? .........................
You get a flat tire on your way to an important customer or meeting. You can fall apart, develop a migraine and think that life is against you or you can take out the right tools (patience and reality) and take care of the problem in a relaxed manner. ........................
You have been working on the computer for hours and suddenly lose all your work. You can drop dead with a heart attack; think that God hates you or you can take out the right tool (sanity and reality) and begin over and this time remember to make a backup of your work. ....................
A lover or wife possibly cheated on you. You can go crazy and get an assassin to take out the potential threat to your relationship, think that you are a failure or you can take out the right tool (no fear of loss) and get on with your life. .......................
When you have the right tools in your toolbox it makes life a lot easier. The choices we make are vital in our lives. The more quality choices we make during any given day the higher the probability of success and peace of mind. ................
I suggest that you equip your toolbox with the best tools you can lay your hands on. It is important to upgrade if you discover that one of your tools are outdated or that a more modern version is available. How would you react if your TV packed up and a technician that obviously knows very little about electronics arrived at your house with only a sledgehammer and a few other primitive tools in his toolbox? I am sure that you will send him away and find someone better qualified and equipped for the task. .....................
You might sometimes be like this incompetent and poorly equipped technician indicated above if you do not often update your tools (thoughts) in your toolbox. You can also have all the right tools in your toolbox and never use them because you are afraid that you might make a mistake. ..................
You must remember that happiness and success is always just one thought (tool) away. You should remember when you find it difficult to cope with something that one new tool (thought) could change your life. One fresh thought and one new idea can change your life from pain and suffering to success and peace of mind. ........................
You are today what you were programmed with yesterday. The choices that you make on a moment-to-moment basis decide your fate and future. You can never feel or perform better than the ongoing thoughts and feelings that you allow to occupy your mind! .......................
The mistake we make is that most of us live our lives on a reactive basis. We start and complete our day in a reactive state of being. Something comes to our attention via our five senses or via a thought in our mind. We automatically slip into the “role” that we created for ourselves many moons ago. We act, react and experience the same feelings and emotions that we embedded with our scrip at its inception. We do exactly the same when new stimuli push the previous “drama” off the stage in our minds. We sustain this reactive mode of thinking until we finally go to bed at night. Most of our days are made up of a tapestry of “roles” that we played in our own colorful way. It is important to understand that nothing is going to change until we do something different. We cannot repeat the same old recipes and expect a different outcome. ....................
You can use the “Portable Life Skills Wisdom” book to develop a range of appropriate scripts that you can use when you are faced with a problem or project that need your attention. You will if you apply the scripts in this book find that you no longer run your life on a reactive basis. The new scripts will help you to live your life in the moment. You will become more realistic. You will treat each event on its own merit. How do you do this? ......................
The Process ....................
Read the first message in your book. Write it down if at all possible. It will assist you to absorb the data provided. Now sit back and close your eyes and visualize how you will apply the specific message in the various areas of your life. See yourself on the screen of your mind using the message in all your day-to-day activities. It is important to attempt to feel and experience the benefits that this new mode of thinking will bring into your life. Do this for ten minutes. Then open your eyes and begin to apply the wisdom on all occasions where appropriate in your activities on that given day. ...........................
Proceed to do the same with second message etc. in your book tomorrow. You will upload almost a thousand powerful recipes if you sustain the process indicated above. You can in less than three years upload a powerful “tool” system that will serve you for the rest of your life. This can be a life changing experience if you apply it daily. You will discover that the ten minutes you invest daily will upload countless new strategies into your subconscious computer. Build a successful and happy life. The key however is action. You can have the best tools available to man and still fail if you don’t use them daily. Wishing you the very best with this endeavor. .............................
Daily Support System (This Blog) ................
You not only have the massive key ideas in the book that you can use when appropriate you also receive daily posts on a wide range of subjects that will expand this system to a level never offered before. Visit this blog daily for fresh new ideas with a sprinkle of historical wisdom that stood the test of time. ..........................
Rene
PORTABLE LIFE SKILLS DAILY WISDOM GUIDE 