Forgiveness. For your health.

A friend on Facebook gave me permission to share her story of forgiveness with you. A reminder that it’s never to late to ask for forgiveness.

Buddha once said, “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”

Forgiveness also has proven health benefits.
According to an article in the January 2005 issue of Harvard Women’s Health Watch , forgiving those who hurt you can improve your mental and physical wellbeing.

Forgiveness is good for your heart — literally. One study from the Journal of Behavioral Medicine found forgiveness to be associated with lower heart rate and blood pressure as well as stress relief. This can bring long-term health benefits for your heart and overall health.

A later study found forgiveness to be positively associated with five measures of health: physical symptoms, medications used, sleep quality, fatigue, and somatic complaints. It seems that the reduction in negative affect (depressive symptoms), strengthened spirituality, conflict management and stress relief one finds through forgiveness all have a significant impact on overall health.

A third study, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, found that forgiveness not only restores positive thoughts, feelings and behaviors toward the offending party (in other words, forgiveness restores the relationship to its previous positive state), but the benefits of forgiveness spill over to positive behaviors toward others outside of the relationship. Forgiveness is associated with more volunteerism, donating to charity, and other altruistic behaviors. (And the converse is true of non-forgiveness.)

So as the year comes to a close, maybe we should forgive or ask for forgiveness to start the new year fresh.
We may just need to forgive that person we see in the mirror.

Here is a brief video showing one such study.

What I Learned From Oranges

I would like to share lesson I received while listening to a talk by Dr. Wayne Dryer.

He turned our attention to an orange. He said if you put pressure on it you will get orange juice.
No matter how hard you squeeze it, you will never get apple juice, or grape juice, only orange juice.

Now, why do you get orange juice from an orange?
Because that’s all it has inside, only orange juice.

We should also strive to have only love in our heart.
That way, when someone in life squeezes us…
There is only love inside to pour out.

Walk in beauty.

Smart Phone Made Me Think

In the past I had the iPhone 4. I was never a fan of Apple products. Recently, after seeing the new iPhone 6 plus I decided to give them another chance.

After having it a few days now I am very happy with this newer version.

It will search the web, find a restaurant, solve math questions, set an alarm, and even send a text message.

You can do all of that with a simple voice command or question to Siri.

I found that asking Siri random questions could be quite entertaining.  Which brings me to the  point of this post.  I received an answer about the following question that I was not expecting

” Are you a man or a woman?”

The answer:

“Well, my voice sounds like a man’s, but but I exist beyond your human concept of gender”.

Is it possible that we limited the potential of ourselves or others because of preconceptions of gender?

 

Girls wear pink, play with barbies, wear dresses, and carry a purse.

Boys wear blue, play with trucks, wear pants , and carry everything.

I wonder how many kids have been limited in life by this.

Why not just do things according to what appeals to us, rather than what is the norm.

I applaud the parents that do not impose stereotypes on their children.

Let them explore life for what it is.

I am not sure that we will see many that will.

Can we go beyond our human concept of gender? I think we can.

This video is interesting.

Please tell me what you think about this subject in the comment box below.