HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY, LOVED ONES!!!!!
I hope that you are all enjoying your holiday weekend and that it is filled with good friends and family, and everlasting memories!!!
Just did my weekly weigh-in and here are the results:
Pounds Lost This Week: 3lbs.
Total Pounds Lost: 77lbs.
*Until Next Time, LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE!!*
I hope that you are all enjoying your holiday weekend and that it is filled with good friends and family, and everlasting memories!!!
Just did my weekly weigh-in and here are the results:
Pounds Lost This Week: 3lbs.
Total Pounds Lost: 77lbs.
*Until Next Time, LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE!!*
Hoisin Chicken and Broccoli With Spicey Cheese Sauce
Filed under: Chicken, licious, My recipes, TheNewLicious.com Author: Licious
Hoisin Chicken and BroccoliWith Spicey Cheese Sauce
It was SOOOO yummmy!!!
What You Hate Most In Others May Be The Shadow In Yourself
Filed under: Intent.com, Kellen Von Houser, Self Help Articles, TheNewLicious.com Author: Licious
*I found this INCREDIBLE article by Kellen Von Houser on Intent.com and wanted to share it with you guys!*
The Shadow in ourselves consists of all the emotions and thoughts we repress as being socially inappropriate. Jealousy, rage, that evil twinge that relishes the thought of your boss being called on the carpet? That is shadow material. The more we repress shadow material, the more of a hold it has on us.
An example? I think this is most easily seen in homophobic people. It is said that people who are homophobic harbor homosexual feelings themselves, or fear that they do. So they erect what a Freudian would refer to as a defense mechanism called a "reaction formation" in which feelings, emotions or impulses which cause anxiety are suppressed and overcome by erecting an exaggerated spectre of the opposite tendency. If you experience homoerotic feelings which you think are unacceptable, you suppress them and loudly and longly spew homophobic diatribes as a defense. This is why you see politicians and televangelists who have spent years decrying homosexuals or prostitutes suddenly on the news confessing to the same behaviors they spent years condemning.
For a Jungian, the Shadow works in the same way. What we repress and try to deny will come back to haunt us. Jung described the Shadow as, "everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about
himself and yet is always thrusting itself upon him directly or indirectly". Shame, sexuality, rage, fear, weakness, jealousy, hurt and resentment can be shoved down into our unconscious and become shadow material. A perfect example is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Robert Louis Stevenson does a beautiful job of juxtaposing the entirely proper and socially acceptable Dr. Jekyll with his darker, shadow side, Mr. Hyde. In the light of day Dr. Jekyll suppresses all of his shadow material and presents this picture perfect, socially acceptable model of behavior. But at night, when no one can see, his dark side comes to life in Mr. Hyde.
Robert Bly, the poet and author, describes our shadow material as "the long bag we drag behind us". In Bly's book, "A Little Book on the Human Shadow, he says the bag continues to get bigger and bigger as we age, for it contains all that we repress and deny about ourselves and about our lives, unless we actively work to bring the shadow into the light. He writes,
Let’s talk about the personal shadow first. When we were one or two years old we had what we might visualize as a 360-degree personality. Energy radiated out from all parts of our body and all parts of our psyche. A child running is a living globe of energy. We had a ball of energy, all right; but one day we noticed that our parents didn’t like certain parts of that ball. They said things like: “Can’t you be still?” Or “It isn’t nice to try and kill your brother.” Behind us we have an invisible bag, and the part of us our parents don’t like, we, to keep our parents’ love, put in the bag. By the time we go to school our bag is quite large. Then our teachers have their say: “Good children don’t get angry over such little things.” So we take our anger and put it in the bag. By the time my brother and I were twelve in Madison, Minnesota we were known as “the nice Bly boys.” Our bags were already a mile long.
Facing Your Shadow
What Do You Hate?
How do we identify shadow material within ourselves? One really easy way is to look at people who we absolutely loathe. They represent something we loathe within ourselves, our shadow material. Example?
I once asked my mother what kind of people irritated her the most. Her response?
"People who just go on and on and on and never make their point. I just hate that. That just keep rattling on and on, repeating themselves over and over again without ever getting to the point. I just hate that. Why don't they say what they mean rather than repeating themselves over and over again?"
(She continued on for another 5 minutes, but I'll spare you. You get the point.) I've noticed this about myself. People who really annoy me are usually doing something I do. Sometimes I'm aware that I do it, sometimes I'm not, unless I pay attention to what I'm "hating" in otherwise. The more strongly I'm irritated by someone's behavior, the bigger the shadow in myself.
Have you ever seen someone with road rage? Do you know who irritates them the most? You got it. People who drive like they do!
What Makes You Laugh?
Another way to identify shadow material is with humor. What do you laugh at? Sometimes we laugh from recognition. I think of comedians as modern court jesters; they tell the court what a lot of us are afraid to say and we laugh because we identify with what they are saying. This can be shadow material. I'm afraid that saying what Carlos Mencias says might be considered racist or sexist or homophobic, but when he says it I laugh. He has exposed my shadow. Andrew Dice Clay was popular several years ago for this reason.
Comedy can also expose some of our evil or wicked little desires that we stuff away from the light of day. There is a category of funny videos which often make it onto TV shows like America's Funniest Home Videos which show people falling. People falling off of trampolines, off skate boards, crashing into things. It's often obvious that this is a very painful experience, yet the audience laughs. A person with a lot of suppressed anger towards others may find these especially funny.
What Do You Project?
Like an emotional movie projector, "projecting" refers to a behavior in which we project our own internal beliefs, feelings or experiences onto someone else when we feel they are inappropriate. Shadow material is especially susceptible to being projected onto someone else. Look around you? Does you view everyone as a cheat? A gossip? A liar? Does everyone around you seem angry? Unhappy? Fearful? You may be seeing your own shadow projected onto others.
The Mexican culture has a wonderful saying which translates roughly into English as, "The lion believes that all are like him". That about sums it up.
What Do You Dream?
The Shadow can also work on your dreams and your daydreams. Just like shadows of light, psychological shadows get longer as the day comes to an end and appear in full force in the middle of the night, in our dreams. The monsters in our nightmares may be our own Shadows fighting to come into the light of our awareness.
What Do You Miss?
The Shadow is not necessarily evil. It is merely repressed. Many times we feel compelled to repress good qualities as well, such as; normal instincts (sexual feelings), appropriate reactions (i.e. anger or fear), realistic insights or creative impulses. I was reading about a psychiatrist who was talking to a psychiatric patient in an ER ward one evening when a fire truck whizzed by. The patient got up and ran out of the ER. When he returned hours later, the psychiatrist learned that the patient had always wanted to ride a fire truck, saw the opportunity whizzing by, jumped on the back and road off to the fire. Now this is impulsive and a bit dangerous, but not evil. How many of us would like to ride on a fire engine? How many of us would like to be so uninhibited that we could just jump on and go for a ride? But instead we repress it for fear of being seen as "crazy" or "immature" or "irresponsible". That childlike joie de vive often gets repressed alone with the anger, shame and jealousy. Women may suppress their masculinity, their intellect or their power. Men may suppress their femininity, their fear or their sensitivity. These parts that have been suppressed are lost to us unless we search our Shadow, find and release them.
Reclaiming Your Shadow
Humans are only complete when we embrace our darkness and our light. Our Judeo-Christian culture teaches us that darkness and light are polar opposites and that we must embrace the light and deny the dark. We are beginning to learn that denying the dark only gives it more power. Instead of us controlling it, it controls our thoughts, our obsessions, our desires, our dreams, our loves and our hatreds.
The only way to "control" the dark is to embrace it, own it and take responsibility for it. We only feel whole when we acknowledge all of our thoughts, impulses, desires, wishes and feelings. We must look into the dark to see the light.
*For more articles about mental health, please visit my blog at Kellevision.com.*
*Article Credit: www.Intent.com and Kellen Von Houser*
Ultimate Top 30 Healthy Snack Recipe Posts On The Internet
Filed under: Healthy Snack Recipes, Recipes from Readers, TheInternetChef.biz, TheNewLicious.com Author: Licious
Hey guys!!! I met this INCREDIBLE woman via Twitter and she linked me to an article on her website that I just HAD to share with you guys!!! Click HERE to be directed to the article and please make sure to visit www.TheInternetChef.biz daily for outstanding recipes!!! You can also follow her on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/Bridget_Cooks!
Rest In Love: Michael Jackson
Filed under: Michael Jackson, The Real Slimbaby, TheNewLicious.com Author: Licious
I would like to send out my sympathy, prayers, support, love, peace, & comfort to the Family, Children, Friends, Loved Ones, and Fans of
Michael Jackson.
May you rest in perfect
love and Peace, Sir.
(You can contact The Real Slimbaby at www.MySpace.com/slimthephenomenon
Falling In Love With Yourself
Filed under: Dr. David Simon, Healing, Intent.com, Self Help Articles, TheNewLicious.com Author: Licious
I found this most incredible series by Dr. David Simon on Intent.com. Please read it and then visit the site to continue reading his entire series. It's life changing!
You are powerful, intelligent, and interesting. You are complicated and valuable. You are attractive. You are a good person. You are worthy of love. You are deserving of happiness. My hope is that you can embrace these truths more readily now than when you started this book. Say them to yourself and see if you can embody the essence of this recognition without real or feigned modesty, without self-pity or self-importance.
You have these lovable qualities and more because you are living the gift of a human incarnation and have this rare opportunity to be a conscious manifestation of the universe. Your individuality is a wave on the ocean of universality. Even as each wave expresses its unique qualities and talents, it retains its essential oceanic nature. To use another metaphor, gold can be made into bracelets, charms, and coins, but its elemental goldenness cannot be destroyed. You are the universe playing hide-and-seek with itself. You are the sacred in disguise. You are God in drag. Knowing this, you cannot feel sorry for yourself for very long, because your heart and soul retain the memory of your essential divinity. With this awareness, you have the capacity to create a compelling life story – a story in which you are free to love and in which you love freely.
Your inner being is perpetually seeking to seduce you. Although it faces stiff competition from the sensory enticements of the world, your soul is not a jealous lover. Connect with it regularly and it will gladly share you with the world. Through the clearing of emotional confusion and misunderstandings, you have taken a major step towards embracing your true nature. The more clearly you recognize who you really are, the easier it is to see through all of God’s other disguises. Then, no matter where you are or whom you’re with, you will feel comfortable and open, because you know at your core that you are divinity expressing itself in a living form – as are all the other sentient creatures you encounter in life. Living and loving from the center of your being, you are always at home with yourself.
When you love something, be it a puppy, your garden, or a child, you naturally want to take good care of it. Now that you are committed to choices that support and reinforce your happiness, treat yourself with the same intention and caring you’d give to anything else you love. Minimize toxicity; maximize nourishment. Life-damaging habits, which in the past provided temporary relief from your sense of unlovability, have outlived their usefulness. You no longer need to anesthetize yourself from yourself. Look at your use of love-substituting behaviors and begin trusting your internal pharmacy of well-being, rather than depending upon chemicals that temporarily modulate your emotions. Commit to a regular practice of meditation, yoga, exercise, and conscious communication, and enjoy the power you have to create balance from within, reducing your need for outer acts of manipulation.
Look at every aspect of your life and identify experiences that are depleting rather than nourishing. Evaluate your food, water, air, music, TV, internet sites, and job choices and see how you can reduce the ingestion of energy and information that is not serving you, while replacing it with that which does.
David Simon, M.D. is the Co- Founder, CEO and Medical Director of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing. Dr. Simon is dedicated to catalyzing the evolution of the prevailing health care system into a healing system that encompasses the emotional, spiritual as well as physical health of the individual. His new book Free to Love, Free to Heal: Heal Your Body by Healing Your Emotions comes out on June 25, 2009.
Just joining the series? Start from the beginning of David Simon's 2-week guide for healing your past wounds and letting go of toxic emotions through power of love-- for yourself and for others.
*Credit: Intent.com and Dr. David Simon*
Ranch Burger Wrap With Applewood Smoked Bacon
and a side of Mango Slices
Since I can't have bread yet, I wrapped the burger in a piece of
Romaine lettuce. It was VERY good!!!!!
and a side of Mango Slices
Since I can't have bread yet, I wrapped the burger in a piece of
Romaine lettuce. It was VERY good!!!!!
Looking Good while Doing Good: 5 Beauty Tips for the Giving Heart
Filed under: Beauty Tips, Intent.com, licious, Volunteering Author: Licious1. Make an effort to look good. Because when people look good and know it, they tend to feel good. When you are feeling too self-conscious about your baggy jeans or the stain on your shirt, you have less mental energy to focus on other people's needs and concerns. On the other hand, if you already know how smoking you are (and you're not, you know, arrogant about it), you are already bringing more positive, passionate energy to every person you are trying to help.
2. Invest in some comfortable, stylish shoes--like TOMS. Many volunteer activities call for comfortable shoes, as they may require lots of walking, standing, going through nature or doing other activities that may ruin your nicer and more expensive dress shoes. If you need some comfortable shoes for your volunteering activity, make it TOMS. Not only are they ridiculously comfortable and affordable, TOMS will donate a new pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair you purchase.
3. Align your fashion with your volunteering: make sure it does more good than harm. If you're going to spread good into the world, make sure the clothes you're wearing are doing minimal harm. This means no sweatshop labor, fair trade, organic--or even better, secondhand. As a start, check out American Apparel and No Sweat Apparel.
4. Treat yourself to a beauty indulgence after volunteering. So you have been spending a few hours or a few days every month giving up your personal time to a greater cause. You deserve a treat! Treat yourself to a professional manicure or a facial. Get that new haircut you've been postponing for weeks. This is more than poofy indulgence; before we treat other people well, we have to know how to treat ourselves well. Remember that the next time you feel a tinge of guilt for spending money on yourself for that much needed back massage.
5. Smile a lot! This is a no-brainer beauty tip for volunteering but worth bringing up anyway. Smiling instantly makes you look more attractive and younger. Smiling also makes you feel good and makes other people around you feel good. And really, you can't get any more gorgeous than that.
While we're on the topic of smiles, consider donating to these non-profit organizations dedicated to providing craniofacial surgeries to people in need like the World Craniofacial Foundation.
*Article Credit: Intent.com*
Hey Loved Ones!!! I know Im late, but I wanted to post this week's weigh-in results! Hope you all had a fantastic week and I pray that you are all enjoying your weekend!
Pounds Lost This Week: 2lbs.
Total Pounds Lost: 74lbs.
Pounds Lost This Week: 2lbs.
Total Pounds Lost: 74lbs.
Share Your Intentions And Support Others
Filed under: Daily Inspirations, Deepak Chopra, Intent.com, licious, Malika Chopra, TheNewLicious.com Author: Licious
Please visit www.Intent.com and start your own account. I am on the site under my real name, "Stephanie Alva". Please feel free to look me up. I'd love to support you in your Intentions, too!
