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Resources to deal with bullies, difficult, abusive or toxic people

Resources to deal with bullies, difficult, abusive or toxic people

These are books I’ve found helpful in learning how to deal with difficult people. You can use them as a place to start finding resources that will help you cope and care for your well being.

  1. Tongue Fu!: How to Deflect, Disarm, and Defuse Any Verbal Conflict by Sam Horn
  2. Take the Bully by the Horns: Stop Unethical, Uncooperative, or Unpleasant People from Running and Ruining Your Life by Sam Horn
  3. The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to recognize it and how to respond by Patricia Evans
  4. Verbal Abuse Survivors Speak Out; On relationship and recovery by Patricia Evans
  5. Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal with People Who Try to Control You by Patricia Evans
  6. The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense at Work by Suzette Haden Elgin
  7. Toxic People: Decontaminate Difficult People at Work Without Using Weapons Or Duct Tape by Marsha Petrie Sue
  8. The Reactor Factor: How to Handle Difficult Work Situations Without Going Nuclear by Marsha Petrie Sue
  9. Coping with Difficult People: The Proven-Effective Battle Plan That Has Helped Millions Deal with the Troublemakers in Their Lives at Home and at Work by Robert M. Branson
“Remove Mind Tattoos” from wikihow

“Remove Mind Tattoos” from wikihow

from wikiHow – The How to Manual That You Can Edit

“Mind tattoos” are mental imprints. Though not physically visible, these manifest themselves in your actions, reactions, and thought processes, and more often than not, they are a negative imprint. If body tattoos are exhibits, might we not view mind tattoos as inhibits?

Unable to be concealed no matter how hard you try to cover them up with excuses, distractions, or addictions, mind tattoos harm you through their persistence and habitual nature. However, with small effort and much resolve, it is possible to shed your mind tattoos. On paper the recipe is very simple, and certainly it will be harder to actually implement, but once you’re resolved to deal with your mind tattoos, and once you dedicate yourself to this task, your life will take a turn for the better.

Steps

  1. Use the simple displacement method. Mind tattoos and negative mindsets grow in a vacuum. Do not allow such a vacuum to be created in your mind. Increase your curiosity for things around you and beyond, allow yourself the privilege to be wonder-struck. Let the newness of every moment tickle your senses. Question yourself, keep asking what, why, when, where and how. A questioning mind is an open mind. It is not a knowing mind (the knowing mind soon leads to arrogance and shutting down on newness). Only an open mind can be creative. A knowing mind can never be creative.
    • When you open your mind, it can be filled with creativity, positivity and newness. Negative mindsets and tattoos will be displaced and deleted.
    • A questioning stance sensitizes the mind in a very special way, enabling it to sense what would have been missed otherwise.
  2. Come out of the mindset of blame games. The most damaging tattoo is the tendency to look for and find a scapegoat for every situation. Release yourself from the tendency of being problem averse and for shifting away responsibility. Stop wringing up your hands whenever there is a problem; while it is good to hope for a life without problems, realistically it is possible only when you work to make your problems surmountable, by cultivating a problem-friendly attitude. This means just rolling up your sleeves whenever you’re faced with a problem, and searching for an opportunity to improve the quality of your life by dealing with the problem. Being faced with a problem is never a problem. It is way of life and once you have woven problem-solving into the matrix of your life, you will feel stronger, more capable, and freer of the negative mind tattoos.

  3. Open your mind to ideas from friends, acquaintances, and even strangers. A tattooed mind is beset with preconceived ideas and closed to suggestion from outside. Open up your thinking to the ideas, opinions, and viewpoints gathered from your friends, colleagues, and even from strangers. Once you realize the value of these alternative ideas and views, you will be in a position to start using your increased understanding and empathy to improve the quality of your own thought and decision processes.

  4. Set achievable goals, and achieve set goals. A major reason for negative thought process is failure on personal or professional front; not just failure though – it is the failure to learn and grow from failure, to accept it as part of life’s lessons. The negative thinking can set in when personal or professional goals are not properly set. An improper understanding of your strengths or constraints often results in goals being not properly set and many excuses being made to sidestep developing a purpose to your life. In letting others make the decisions and change the rules on you, you drift rather than achieve through life. Instead, know yourself, understand yourself, and be yourself when setting your goals. This way you can be successful in setting and achieving your goal and keep failure out of your door. Moreover, do not be dissuaded by the failures but see them as detours that teach what to do better next time.

  5. Come out of the habit of perennial dissatisfaction. Perennial dissatisfaction is a major indication of a person with a negative mindset; a positive thinker can spot such a person a mile away and will do their best to steer clear (hence, you attract more negativity than its opposite). It is good to be acutely aware of your dissatisfaction and unfulfilled desires. However, this awareness should not frustrate you or cause you to give up citing everything as being “too hard” or “all over”. Even if you are frustrated, it should never be reflected in your behavior toward other people. As a matter of fact, you should use this awareness as a stimulus to realize your dreams, and to be grateful for that which you have achieved already. See How to Stop Feeling Like Your Life Isn’t Good Enough.

  6. Don’t overestimate the effects of your level (or lack) of schooling. A feeling of being uneducated or inadequately educated is one of the biggest self-destructing tattoo one can carry around. But higher level schooling can also imprint more negative tattoos: arrogance, self-righteous behavior, and greater dissatisfaction with one’s lot in life or sensitivity to past failures. Whatever category you fall into, understand that schooling is different from education. Education is sourced from life itself, the people you meet, the things you discover, and the environment in which you move and observe daily. Very often people with less or no schooling are found to be highly educated in matters of life and other way round. Less schooled people are often highly successful because they have minds clear of the biases that schooling can build into us. The more highly schooled who have simply associated their learning with being of a “higher status” might actually lack openness to new ideas and empathy for others, so they wind up less likely to succeed. Both would do better to
    • realize that universities and degrees do not determine your level of your education and do not even determine a person’s all-round intelligence or suitability for the rest of life.
    • Instead, figure out what you still need to learn and find the fastest way to learn it.
  7. Reframe your situation from different angles. A situation often appears to be hopeless and irretrievable. In many cases, such catastrophizing does not ultimately turn out to be true, especially where it is based on allowing ourselves to be the victim and to imagine things that are not there. Try to reframe the situation from different angles till you find an angle from where it looks acceptable. For example, in a cricket match in a close run-out decision, sometimes it appears that the batsman is out; however, reframing it from different angles gives the umpire more options of viewing the truth and taking correct decision. Similarly, being your own inner umpire (referee) by mental reframing of the situation often helps you to make the correct decision.

  8. Tattoo your mind with conscious, positive thoughts. What we tattoo on any part of the body for others to see is not as important as what we tattoo in our minds. Much of what is tattooed there has been absorbed from the criticisms, expectations, and limitations placed upon us by other people; they are not wanted or chosen tattoos but they are embedded out of obligation, loyalty, misplaced trust, and over-eagerness to please the other. On the other hand, positive, successful, energetic mind tattoos are a must to attain success and are tattoos that we can choose to implant and thrive from. So, it should be your conscious (and ultimately subconscious) endeavor to keep tattooing your mind with thoughts that are only about winning or thriving. Implant and nourish the tattoos that reflect who you want to be, the goals you want to reach, and the successes you seek to achieve. Mentally, make or choose your day’s outcomes for the day every single day.
    • Focus doesn’t simply sprout unaided. It requires effort and conscious attention. However, once you are focused, you can achieve a great deal of your heart’s desire because you’re consciously attending to what needs to be done, as well as channeling your subconscious experience more effectively.

Tips

  • Be very careful when implementing the process of removing your negative tattoos. It is necessary to restrain your feelings and impulses.
  • While you are going through this reform process, people around you could be the biggest inhibiting factors for you. Please be patient with them and be determined in your objective. Sometimes the fears and insecurities of others mean that they want us to stay where we are and not change or improve but you cannot bear their burdens for them, you can only choose to be a better person for yourself.
  • Take the advice and guidance of peers and elders. While you do not have to heed all that is said, other people’s experiences are important sources of information and guidance to set you on the better path through avoiding the pitfalls that they experienced. Remember that reinventing the wheel is a waste of your time when you stand in front of many generations’ of experience.
  • Thriving is better than winning at someone else’s expense. In the long run it helps you sleep better at night and gives you more future resources. If you step on people during the climb, they’ll kick you hard on the way down and remember exactly who you are.

Warnings

  • Give yourself time. Expecting too much too early can result in disappointment and frustration.
  • Your mental tattoos are well entrenched and may resist evacuation initially. You need to be persistent and confident. You can, and you will, release your mind from them.
  • Filter the advice that comes in from other people with trial and error. Try it honestly but when the trial fails, look at why. They can be right for themselves and wrong for you. Sedentary people can get sick from lack of exercise but a disabled person can get sick from exercise. If those other people have the same mind tattoos, they can often just reinforce them – it didn’t just crop up on its own. Don’t let them just hand the same biases back to you with a new set of intellectual rationalizations. Your mind tattoos came from somewhere so consider the source and weigh ideas for themselves.
  • If your friends and enemies both agree on something about you, it’s probably true or something about you makes people see you that way.

Things You’ll Need

  • A strong resolve
  • Self realization
  • A will to change
  • Dedication
  • Sacrifice

Related wikiHows

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Remove Mind Tattoos. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Embrace The Changes From Personal Growth

Embrace The Changes From Personal Growth

by Linda-Ann Stewart

When you grow up and mature, you no longer wear the types clothes that suited you as a teenager. They don’t fit the image of who you are now. The same can be true of friendships. Have you ever gone back to a school reunion, and not had anything in common with the good friends you had back then? This is normal. As you mature, grow and have more experiences, you change your view of life, your likes, values and opinions.

When this happens, you don’t try to go back and recapture the old way of doing things. It would be pointless, self-destructive and shortsighted. By moving forward, you’re fulfilling the natural impulse to grow and stretch. Your relationship to your old world changes irrevocably with growth. As the saying goes, “You can’t put the genie back into the bottle.”

The same thing happens when you jump up a level of spiritual, mental or emotional consciousness. For instance, when you realize that you deserve to take care of your health and well-being and begin to say “no” to unreasonable requests for your time, your perspective on everything else changes, too.

The same is true when you have some sort of spiritual peak experience or mental expansion. Your relationship to your inner self and the Universe alters. The way you used to connect to the Infinite changes.

It may seem like the door has closed to your contact with the Divine. It hasn’t. God hasn’t moved. You have. Your consciousness has expanded; therefore the way you used to relate to your inner landscape has also shifted. It’s not a bad thing, it can just seem disorienting.

When this happens, your way of experiencing life will probably also change. For instance, if you were originally logical and analytical, you may discover that you’ve become more intuitive. Before, you would reason out a project, now the answer might just pop into your mind. You may sense that a certain person isn’t being honest, whereas before, you would have taken them at face value. As a result of this unasked for change, you might belittle your new insights, and try to return to pure logic because it’s safer and more familiar.

The opposite can take place if you’ve always been intuitive and followed your heart. You may discover that your guidance comes to you now on a more conscious level. Instead of opportunities dropping into your lap, or synchronistically bumping into a person you wanted to see, you might have a conscious impulse of what to do or where to go. It’s now up to you to listen to the urge or ignore it. You could also need to make deliberate choices and follow guidance to their fulfillment, rather than just drifting with the tide.

You’re no longer operating out of an unconscious ability. Now you are more aware of what your insight is telling you. Because it’s much easier to operate unconsciously, you could doubt your guidance and try to dismiss it because it’s coming to you in a different fashion than it used to.

In both situations, if you try to backpedal into what worked before, you’re going to be frustrated. You can’t go back, unless you want to stall your progress. By opening to a greater awareness, you’ve expanded your mind to incorporate more of it. Consciousness includes intuition and reason, heart and head. When you increase your awareness, you’re beginning to balance them and the old responses will also change.

You can’t undo what’s been done, anymore than you can retreat to your teenaged self once you’ve grown up. The Universe is always moving forward, and you must move with it or be left behind. You’ve leaped out of your comfort zone into something that can more fully serve the more conscious you.

Affirmation

I am opening myself up to a greater experience of Life and the Universe. As I grow and expand, I embrace my new awareness and abilities. With confidence and trust, I allow my new relationship to myself and the Infinite unfold in a wonderful way. I balance my heart and mind, knowing that they both have a role in helping me expand into my highest potential.

Copyright 2011 Linda Ann Stewart
All Rights Reserved

Your Beliefs Determine Your Actions

Your Beliefs Determine Your Actions

You tend to filter current situations through your beliefs. If you tend to believe that nothing good happens for you, you probably overlook opportunities that come your way. This means you don’t take action on them, because you don’t realize there’s any action to take. But you can change those beliefs and filters. Here’s an exercise to practice turning negative beliefs around in your daily life.



Copyright 2011 Linda Ann Stewart
All Rights Reserved

“Will the subconcious mind accept negative or false suggestions during hypnosis?”

“Will the subconcious mind accept negative or false suggestions during hypnosis?”

Question: Will the subconscious mind accept negative or false suggestions during hypnosis?

Answer: Your subconscious will accept anything that you tell it and believe to be true. There are many documented cases in which a person with an allergy to a rose, for instance, is hypnotized and told that a plastic flower is a rose. They experience the same allergic symptoms to that plastic flower as they would to a real rose.

However, your subconscious won’t accept suggestions that go against a strong principle or belief for survival. For instance, if you have an imprinted belief that success will harm you in some way, your subconscious will reject any suggestions for success.

In hypnosis, you suggest ideas that currently aren’t so, to create a new reality for yourself. Your subconscious can’t distinguish between what is positive or negative, so be sure to phrase things positively and know what it is you really want.

Copyright 2011 Linda Ann Stewart
All Rights Reserved

Exercise Is Effective To Combat Depression, Anxiety, and Stress

Exercise Is Effective To Combat Depression, Anxiety, and Stress

Many years ago, I was depressed from a relationship breakup. I knew that exercise would help my mood, so I forced myself to go for a walk. After 30 minutes, on the last quarter-mile to my house, I checked in on my mood and found it had improved by 80%.

In the years since, many studies have validated my experience. Exercise is considered almost magic in what it can do for depression and anxiety disorders. I know it felt like magic for me.

Yet another study has come out verifying how amazing exercise can be for these mental conditions. Exercise reduces depression, anxiety, and stress, increased energy, and re-establishes positive behaviors.

Until my walk, I hadn’t been able to plan or work on a project that needed my attention. Afterwards, I had the energy and ability to focus on what I needed to do.

Drugs and medications take weeks, if not months, to start working and give people a light at the end of the tunnel. Exercise is effective within 25 minutes. Imagine taking a pill, and a half-hour later feeling significantly better.

Yes, it’s hard to drag yourself out to do it, but keep the end result in mind. In a half-hour, you could feel better if you exercise, or you could feel the same as you do now because you sat on the couch. Which do you prefer?

To read more about this current study, visit  Sports Are 80 Percent Mental: Is Exercise The Cure For Depression?

“Secrets to Setting An Intention”

“Secrets to Setting An Intention”

by Linda-Ann Stewart

When you set an intention, you’re focusing your energy to create a new behavior, attitude, or experience in your world. You’re saying to yourself, and the Universe, “This is what I want.” The Universe always says, “Yes,” to your goal, for It supports all of your endeavors.

However, your subconscious mind needs to be convinced. It knows your intention, but it will always act on your prevailing thought. Which may not agree with your current desire. It will follow the idea with the most energy behind it, the strongest emotion, and the one that is habitual. To get its cooperation for your change of direction, you have to be completely committed to your desire.

Here are some strategies that can increase your success and make it easier to achieve your goal.

Make a plan and work the plan. You must be focused mentally on your goal, and take steps towards it. Break the goal down into stages, then smaller steps, and each day make one tiny advance in the direction of your dream.

Be specific about what you want. The Universe and your subconscious work best with a clear idea of what you want as your goal. If you want a new car, decide what make,  model, and what color. The Universe always pours good in the form of substance into your life. And your subconscious forms that substance into reality. Your subconscious creates a pattern of that idea, then seeks the way to bring it about.

Use affirmations to support your change of belief and attitude. In this way, you begin to empower your intention and increase its influence in your subconscious. You’re not changing the Universe’s mind with affirmations. Affirmations help to reprogram and expand your subconscious to accept more Universal good. Repeat affirmations for 15 minutes at least once a day that underscore your belief that your goal is possible, that you deserve it, and that doors are now opening for you. State that you now have this goal in your life. This gives your subconscious the model to follow.

Change your thinking and position towards the issue. You may have a deep seated belief that you can’t accomplish it, or that you don’t know what to do. The problem is that you’re entrenched in your old patterns, and can’t see any way out. If all you do is change your attitude to believing the change possible, that will alter the dynamics. You have to break the stalemate that has kept you mired down. Evaluate what you believe about the issue, and find a way to open up the door to a better way of  thinking about it.

Take some action. Any positive action. This shifts the energy and breaks the status quo. It gains the attention of the subconscious, which will then realize that you’re serious about changing. It could simply be exploring classes and sending for information in your interest zone. Or you could go out and start networking. Just create some channel for the good to start flowing to you.

Visualize the end result. You don’t have to figure out “how” it’s going to come to you. That would actually short-circuit the energy. This is different from being specific about what you want, and establishing the steps you’re going to follow. You don’t know how you’ll find the right car, even when you go out and start looking. Although you know what kind of job you want, you can’t know where it’s going to be. Just mentally rehearse how you’ll feel when you achieve and what you’ll be doing. Use all of your senses and imagine it as if it already has happened. And make sure you’re in the visualization, not an observer.

Ask the Universe to establish order. Since you may not know what to do or how to accomplish your goal, ask the Universe to create it in Divine Order. Sometimes, what is best for you isn’t what you think it is. Let go of the concern over the outcome. You don’t have to worry about it. You’ve done your job by focusing on what you want, opening your mind to a greater experience of it, visualizing and taking action. The rest is up to your subconscious and the Universe. The Law of Attraction will take over and do what’s necessary.

These strategies activate all levels of your being: mental, emotional, physical and spiritual, and focuses them on your goal. This increases the power of your intention because all aspects of you are now involved. Every hour, check in and quickly reinforce your commitment to your intention by thinking of the end result. When you successfully follow these steps when you’re setting and following through on an intention, you may be surprised at how quickly it will manifest.

Copyright 2011 Linda Ann Stewart
All Rights Reserved

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“10 Steps to Turbo-Charge Your New Year’s Resolutions”

“10 Steps to Turbo-Charge Your New Year’s Resolutions”

by Linda-Ann Stewart

This is a time of year when many people establish New Year’s resolutions to improve their lives in some way. And generally within weeks, if not days, they give up on their good intentions and go back to their old ways, feeling like nothing can ever change. Most people just don’t know how to set a goal and achieve it. Here are ten steps that you can use to manifest any desire you have.

1. Write down everything you want to change in your life.

I mean everything, from your weight to your mom stopping her nitpicking, increased income to putting up that little picture you got at the flea market. Big and small, write them all down. Take a small note pad with you to catch the ones you think of in the supermarket or at work. Add them to your master list.

2. Prioritize the importance of each one.

First, go through and eliminate the desires that you have no power to change, like your father’s health, or the state of the economy. With what’s left, give each one a number from one to ten to establish its importance, with one being very important, and ten being least important. Take the ones you rated a one or two, and again assign each a number of importance. Whittle them down to a few really strong desires.

3. Pick the most important one to focus on.

Choose one goal to work on. It would be nice if you could stop smoking, lose weight, start exercising, and quit biting your nails all at once, but that’s not realistic. Your subconscious can only handle so much change at once.

4. Write down why you want to achieve that goal.

What are the reasons and motivations you have for the realization of that desire? Why do you want to eat healthier? Is it to feel better, live a longer life, or to continue to be there for someone close to you? Get detailed because this is your driving force, your power for change.

5. Write down the steps you need to take to accomplish your desire.

Under each step, note down micro-steps. For instance, to lose weight, you could write, “Diet.” But what does that mean? Eat more fruits and vegetables, eliminate sweets, reduce calories or carbohydrates or simply eat less at each meal? You could then decide on various meals to prepare or foods to have on hand.

6. Be willing to do whatever is necessary to attain your goal.

That is, within reason, legal and moral. You may have to do things that stretch you out of your comfort zone, or that are difficult in the short term. But keep your attention on why you want it, and your subconscious will take your commitment and make it easier to reach.

7. Read your reasons and goal out loud at least three times a day.

This will help keep you energized and enthusiastic. Reading your goal keeps your subconscious focused on what you want. Visualize that you’ve accomplished it, and affirm that you have achieved it. You may not know how it’s going to come about, but your subconscious knows just what to do.

8. Take some action towards your goal each day.

Even if it’s the same thing you did yesterday, take one of the micro-steps you’ve chosen. This helps to convince your subconscious that you really do want the goal, and aren’t just daydreaming about it. And the action also sends out energy to attract what you may need to manifest your goal.

9. If you reach a dead end, ask the Universe for guidance.

You’re not in this all by yourself. At any point, from setting the goal to its actual manifestation, ask the Universe for direction and be open for any impulses or nudges.

10. Be grateful for the fulfillment of your goal.

You can have what you desire, through the power of your Higher Mind. Even before you see the completion in your life, you have received it. Thanking the Universe for Its help, guidance and success of your desire communicates to your subconscious. The subconscious uses the power of that emotion, and the feeling of conclusion to create your desire.

If you seem to resist doing any of these steps, or the goal isn’t manifesting, ask the Universe if you’re blocking it for some reason. If you are, find a way to deal with that and move forward. You could also be trying to force it, instead of trusting your subconscious to manifest it. That’s why the gratitude step is so important. This encourages you to let go of the worry and doubt, and let the Universe and your subconscious mind handle the details.

Affirmation

I can have anything I desire through the power of my Higher Mind. My creative mind knows just what to do and how to do it to accomplish my goal. I’m willing to do whatever is necessary to make this positive change in my life. I keep my mind focused on my goal, and take the steps necessary for the fulfillment of my desire. I trust my creative mind, and the Universe, to take care of the details and bring me whatever I need to realize my desire.

Copyright 2009 Linda Ann Stewart
All Rights Reserved