Lifestyle Choices

This is the most important step of all, for no house can be a real home unless those who live there hold ideals that are kind, noble, and good. Without high ideals it is easy for even the best of homes to drift apart. There must always be some things that will hold the family together, such as family worship, in which all the members may share. These happy occasions are not likely to come by accident but must be carefully planned by the parents. (more…)

Who Starts the Quarrels?

How do most family quarrels start? This, of course, is hard to say, for usually there is no single cause. Often there is some underlying discontent, particularly on the part of the wife. Marriage has changed her lot completely, while her husband may be carrying on the same work that has occupied his time for years. He may prefer to continue his routine uninterrupted, while she will want plenty of variety. She may then assume that he does not love her. This may be true in some instances, but not in most. In any case she may begin to feel rather neglected. She wants more attention. A brisk family contention may seem a rather rough way to bring this about, but it usually attracts the attention she craves—sometimes much more! Most men will take just so much, then there may be trouble, perhaps even physical violence. The sensible thing to do is prevent such episodes before they reach the place where there seems to be no turning back. (more…)

Almost every healthy person at some time has had a desire to be married. This is the most natural thing in the world.

There may be various reasons for this desire— love, sex, security, companionship, and so forth —but the urge is usually there. And yet it takes far more than a mere urge for one to be happy in marriage. Surely there must be some counsel that young and old can follow to avoid the mistakes so many are making every day. (more…)

THE DRAWER WITH THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING and what to put in it

Filing is a word that makes most women look mutinous, but it’s not only a good idea, but in home emergencies absolutely essential. Don’t be frightened by the idea of filing. The verb only means putting things in a sensible place where you can find them quickly and easily. Four years of my filing fit into a suitcase.

Know your limitations and don’t plan a filing system that is better than you are, as you won’t stick to it and you will find that even more depressing than doing it.

What follows sounds amazingly neat and tidy, but it isn’t. Most of my key work seems to be on the front of old envelopes (backs already used for key work). If I stopped to type or write them out they would never get done; it’s easier to shove any old scrap of paper into its correct place in the system than to have it lying around. (more…)

Make your own decisions: Althoughspecialists may be useful to analyse asituation and suggest solutions, theycannot run your life for you. Onceyour choices are clarified, use yourcommon sense to make your owndecisions. Then force yourself to bepessimistic, to look for the snags inthe arrangements and face them.

Don’t opt out because you don’tunderstand your position. Make your adviser explain it all again until s you do understand it, and so can be b responsible for deciding which path e you want to take. Be prepared to be f responsible for your own decisions. y Life is a risk. Nothing is certain inthis world and there is no guaranteed le security, financial, intellectual or d emotional. Security lies in your own st self-reliance to deal with the problems of life. You will make some right decisions and some wrong ones. Pay the penalty for the wrong ones, cut your losses and start again. (more…)

Lean is supposed to be beautiful. As a result, some women spend most of their adult lives trying to get thin and stay that way. For, in our society, thinness has become a symbol of loveliness, success, self-control, and social acceptability—and being overweight the twentieth-century bete noire of womanhood. You know the kind of thing: “Lose that nasty twenty-five pounds with our super new slenderizing regimen and it will transform your life into a wonderful world of bliss.” Well, don’t believe it. (more…)

Your unconscious mind is tremendously powerful. It is a source of energy and creativity which—provided you can get in touch with it and turn it toward your desired ends—will work wonders for you. The use of creative imagery specifically geared to slimming can help you harness your own power. Following the principles of creative imagery, here are a few imaginary trips you can take to help you slim. Some will bring insight and increased self-awareness, others will help you get accustomed to yourself as a healthy, lean woman, still others can help you shed old, no longer useful thought patterns that have been hampering you. (more…)

The enormous fuss that is made about cellulite always surprises me. “Does it or doesn’t it exist?” “What are its causes?” “What, if anything, can be done about it?” Such is the way women tend to treat cellulite, as if it were some kind of externally imposed curse to which they fall innocent victim.

Cellulite is the manifestation of the wrong kind of lifestyle for health and beauty: eating wrongly (or too much), living under prolonged stress, being exposed to too many pollutants, and all the other things that we tend to think we can get away with, but never really do. And no number of expensive or painful treatments is going to help the problem for long unless you change the things that brought it on in the first place. (more…)

Not only are your eyes the truest of all physical reflections of who you are, they are also an ageless expression of beauty. For there can be something breathtaking about the eyes of an old woman, as there is about the eyes of a child. Like any other part of your body, to be beautiful your eyes have to be healthy, and to be healthy they need care.

But the care they need is quite different from what we are usually led to believe. For eyes are not the delicate, poor, vulnerable things we have been taught they are—overworked, constantly struggling against inadequate light and overstrain, and longing for some well-deserved tinted glasses to rest them. Far from it. Your eyes are tough. They were made for use, and the more you use them, to read and to see with, and the more you exercise the muscles around them, and the more they are exposed to the full spectrum of natural sunlight, the healtheir and more beautiful they will be. And not only will your eyes benefit, so will the rest of your body. (more…)

1. Don’t dwell on what went wrong. Learn from it and put it behind you. If, at any stage, you find you are slipping and the programme is not working, go back to the things that did work - sharpen up your focus again and look at the basics; exercise, nutrition and monitoring.
2. Spend plenty of time on your successes. Make something out of them. Find ways to reward yourself for doing it right and getting to your short- term goals. Try to set the goals so that they are at least achievable - there is great power in feeling that you have actually over-achieved.

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How much hair you have, the color of it, the thickness, curl, and length it will grow before a new hair is begun all depend on your genetic inheritance. There is nothing you can do to change that. The diameter of each hair (its fineness) is determined somewhat by its color. Blondes tend to have more than anyone else (about 150,000 hairs), but the hairs tend to be finer. Brown hair is usually second with about 115,000, followed by black with 110,000 and red at about 90,000. How full your head of hair looks depends on both the number of hairs there and the thickness of the shaft itself. You need a lot of fine hairs, for instance, to give the impression of fullness but considerably fewer thick ones to give the same impression. If your hair is fine, you can make it look thicker by increasing the diameter of each strand with protein shampoos and body-building conditioners or by coloring your hair and giving it a permanent to swell out the shaft. (more…)

The first step in managing stress is to recognize the causes and to be aware of the symptoms.

You need to recognize the situations in your life that are the stressors. Try to identify the things that make you feel “stressed-out.” Everything from minor irritations, such as traffic jams, to major life changes such as births, deaths, or job loss can be stressors. Or a stress overload of just too many demands on your time can make you feel that you are no longer in control. You may feel so overwhelmed that you become depressed.

Make yourself aware of how your body feels when you are under stress. Are the muscles beginning to tighten? Are you gritting your teeth, gripping the steering wheel tightly, drumming your fingers, patting your foot, or hunching your shoulders? Can you feel your heart beating faster, your breathing rate becoming faster and more shallow? Are you perspiring, shaking, or getting a headache? (more…)

However, staying productive and finding the right balance between work and leisure requires effective management of yourself. This means taking account of your own energy and personal preferences and arranging your life so that you can express who and what you are — in other words, deciding for yourself how to organize things so that there is time for different parts of yourself— for instance, time for sport, quietness, friendship, vanity, laughter, hard work and so on. You need to learn to be sensitive to your own needs. You also need to learn to take an objective overview so that you can ask yourself the question “What do I need for myself in my life now?” (more…)

`I have a horse and compete in show jumping competitions.

Although this is tiring, it takes my mind off any problems and helps me relax.’

Karen, 28, caterer

`Relax — what’s that? My ideas have changed rather. Now if I manage to sit for half an hour with a cup of coffee and a magazine, while the children are in bed, that’s realising.’

Tracey, 31, social worker

`I read every day, have a facial at the beauty salon every month,

and I never work at the weekends because we always do something nice as a family.’

Ann, 41, chartered accountant
`No, I don’t get regular opportunities to relax — I’m always

uptight and tired. My jaw is permanently locked because of stress.’

Sheelagh, 33, accountant (more…)

(If you think you can, or you think you can’t - you’re right! Henry Ford)

When life is going well and you feel in control, nothing can stop or deter you. Other people don’t get to you, and coping with frustrating, frightening or hurtful situations seems much easier. Let’s face it, when life is good you seem to be able to handle anything. We wish it was always that way for everyone, but it’s not always so, is it? Challenges and emotional pain can come out of the blue. Life can suddenly be thrown out of kilter. And it is when you find yourself in this position that your true character is tested.

In times of struggle, we need a warrior attitude: staying positive, keeping our spirits up and tackling fears or challenges face-on. But we must also allow time to acknowledge and not suppress the myriad of feelings we have, such as anger, hurt, frustration or worry. It’s a crazy balance to strive for. It’s almost like we need to adopt a ‘warrior princess’ attitude. Be strong and sensitive, compassionate and honest, able to express and defend yourself and yet maintain honesty, love and determination. Whew - quite a lot to consider when you are feeling anything but all those things! (more…)

So far, we have discussed many positive life changes you can make to experience a healthier, happier life. But getting into new habits is not always easy. We are creatures of habit and our own laziness often stops us from implementing the most sensible resolutions we might have made such as exercising regularly, taking time out to care for ourselves and using positive self-talk, for example. So how do you keep up the motivation? When it comes to motivation there are two types of pain the pain of discipline and the pain of regret. Which one will you choose? The pain of getting up and exercising or meditating now or the pain of regret tomorrow or 10 years from now? Looking after yourself is only a one-minute decision each day — a decision to eat the food that is healthy, the decision to go to the gym, or the decision to look after your skin. Here are our top tips to getting motivated and keeping it up: (more…)