12 ways to better yourself

How To Be A Better Partner

If you have ever been in a relationship that failed, you most likely have sat down afterwards and wondered what went wrong. Sometimes it is easy to spot how much of it was their fault but it is not too easy to look at where you, personally, went wrong. Everybody wants to be the best at what they do, and being the best you can be for your partner is no exception.

Listed below are 12 simple lessons that will help you to achieve that goal. Remember, if you want to be good to someone else, you also have to be good to yourself.

Be romantic.Whenever a relationship starts to fail, the lack of romance is one of the first indicators. It is very natural for people to get complacent and forget the fun things they used to do when they first got together. A relationship has to be constantly worked on and being romantic is an absolute must.

Never disparage yourself.Whenever you are disparaging yourself, you are basically saying that you are no good for your partner. If you don't believe that you are good enough for them, then you won't be. It's as simple as that. Don't sit around and beat yourself up over past mistakes, that will only prevent you from trying and succeeding at new things tomorrow.

Always be honest.There is not one single relationship that will succeed in the long run if built on a lie. Even if your partner never finds out the truth, the fact that you know you lied will affect your feelings for yourself and your partner. With that kind of a hindrance, the relationship will never reach it's full potential.

Do not do things just to keep your partner happy.How many times have you done something for or to your partner that you really did not want to do, just to make them happy? How did it make you feel? Every time you compromise yourself in that way, a piece of your love for them dies. It is much better to explain to them that you don't feel good about certain things and work on an alternative together.

Do not ask your partner to do things you know they don't want to do.This is the reverse of the above lesson and fairly self-explanatory. If you know they really don't like doing something, and if that something is for you and of no benefit to them, then why ask them to do it unless you are being selfish or mean?

Do not belittle your partner.Everyone makes mistakes in life and everyone works or catches on at different speeds. If you spend your time nagging at your partner or putting them down about every little thing they do wrong, then how can you expect them to do anything right? Do you want a life-partner or a puppy dog?

Do not put off things you have promised to do.Trust is an important part of any relationship and it needs to be developed. If you say you are going to do something and don't, then how can your partner rely on you in the future?
Always be there for your partner.Nothing is more important in your life than your partner. Friends come and go, as do children, but your partner is with you for the whole journey. If they are in trouble or need you, nothing else matters, other than to be there for them.

Communicate.Things change in a relationship almost on a daily basis. If you don't talk to your partner you could very easily wake up one day and find that you have drifted too far apart to bridge the gap.

Do not commit adultery or other harmful acts against your relationship.This one is really self-explanatory. Nothing destroys a relationship faster than infidelity or wrong doings.

Treat your partner with respect.It is extremely easy to take someone for granted and once you start to cross that line, it is very difficult to go back. Be careful not to treat your partner worse than you would treat your best friend.

Be open and receptive to your partner's wants and wishes.It takes two people to have a relationship and when you shut one of them out because you are not open to their ideas and wishes then you really don't have a relationship at all. Always be open and receptive to what they say. Also, be open to new experiences and ideas, you never know what you might learn.

Friends and Lovers

Can platonic relationship turn passionate? Would you want it to?

Pop culture abounds with examples of friends who’ve navigated or tried to the path to romance
“
Chandler in friends, Laurie and Jo march in Little Women and Harry met Sally…which explores sexual tension to determine if, in fact, men and women can be friends.
Can men and women be friends? I mean, can they really be just friends?

All friendships, even same sex ones, have ambiguous and changing boundaries. You may think somebody’s a best friend but and they just consider you a casual friend. Perception is not always the same.

In other words your perceptive can shift. Suddenly you see a friend as desirable but he or she still sees you as only a friend. Which leaves you with two choices, you can try to change it to a romantic relationship or you can learn to live with it so that there’s flirtatious banter.

It’s sexual attraction without acting on it. And the primary reason many of us don’t act is fear: the worry that if our friends rebuffs us or move from platonic to romantic fails, friendship is irrecoverable.

It is shame but there’s a comfort to friendship that often gets destroyed when romantic feelings are raised, an awkwardness that accompanies the transition into and out of these feelings.
It feels very uncomfortable when somebody likes you more than you like them and making transition is always a risk. You should be really sure you want to take that risk before you make the move.

The right timing often is paired with the maturity to understand the difference between what makes friends compatible and what makes romantic partners compatible. Do you both want kids? Where do you want to live? These kind of talks, so pragmatic are imperative to saving a relationship.

“The friend definition very different from the romantic one” Kathy Werking says, “Flaws that are OK in a friendship may not be OK in a romantic relationship.”
But if the flaws are benign and there’s a spark, that’s a great place to be.

Is he really good enough for me ???

My life may have been about him at one point.
But I have come to learn that my life was never about him.
It was about choosing to love him.

And when it unreciprocated, that was the speed bump.
I needed to warn my self that at times of euphoria,
I really need to slow down,
And I should ask my self...
"IS HE REALLY GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME?!?"

Love Quotes 4 u...!!

Love Is In The Air

"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing." - Goethe"

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia." - H.L. Mencken"

Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it...It really is worth fighting for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more." - Erica Jong"

Sometimes love is stronger than a man's convictions." - Isaac Bashevis Singer"

Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness." - Oliver Wendell Holmes"

Maybe love is like luck. You have to go all the way to find it." - Robert Mitchum"

Love stretches your heart and makes you big inside." - Margaret Walker"

Love has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale... Love loves; this is its nature." - Howard Thurman"Love is like war: Easy to begin but hard to end." - Anonymous"

Where love is, no room is too small." - Talmud"

Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." - Mark Twain"

Love is more than three words mumbled before bedtime. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day." - Nicholas Sparks"

To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven." - Karen Sunde"A love song is just a caress set to music." - Sigmund Romberg"

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit." - Peter Ustinov"

Love is like a violin. The music may stop now and then, but the strings remain forever." - unknown"

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence." - Erich Fromm"

In the final analysis, love is the only reflection of man's worth." - Bill Wundram, Iowa Quad Cities Times"

Love doesn't make the world go round, love is what makes the ride worthwhile." - Elizabeth Browning"

To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down."- Woody Allen

What Keeps Us From Being Truly Happy

What keeps us from being truly happy is quite simple really, yet difficult to put into practice until we really understand it. The fact of the matter is that the living entity is a pure spiritual being, but encased within a material body. What this means is that the individual soul, when in the materially conditioned state, identifies itself as this temporary body, which may, for example, be male or female, black or white, young or old, American or Russian, healthy or sickly, or something else. When the spiritual identity is transferred to the temporary body, all of the desires that the living entity has are then focused on the physical form, centered around the mind and senses. So the living being then tries to seek pleasure and satisfaction by serving the mind and senses. The problem is that there is a lack of reality in material existence since its basis is on the wrong identity. Material activities have little to do with the spiritual being within the body. Therefore, at some point the living being, who is almost lying dormant in the material form, will become restless with this lack of attention for its spiritual needs and start to wake up to the fact that he is still not fulfilled or satisfied, in spite of how many material engagements have occupied him. This then carries over into material consciousness, and the person will then feel unhappy with the way things have gone.

So it is the material mind and senses that have desires for sensual pleasure, which the mind may interpret as happiness. Yet the soul is still waiting for the proper attention to fulfill its own spiritual needs. The soul is simply the observer of material activities, and does not participate in them. It is like watching a movie, or having an out of body experience when merely watching what the body is doing, or what is happening to the body. But the soul is not the material body. It is only within it.¹ The correct understanding is that the gross physical and subtle bodies (consisting of mind, intelligence and false ego) have nothing to do with the pure spirit soul within the body. They are simply a superficial covering of the pure Self.² For this reason it is considered that the most foolish part of spiritual ignorance is identifying with the temporary material body. It is this misconception that precedes the idea that my legs, my hands, or my head are actually myself. Then all that appears to be connected with the body becomes "my" wife, "my" husband, "my" family, "my" property, "my" job or duties, "my" money, and on and on. All this continues without considering that we came into this world with nothing, and when we die we take with us nothing. Then everything in between those two conditions called birth and death are but temporary activities and belongings that do not really have much of a connection with our real identity.³ This is what people forget to consider, and what gives rise to the numerous problems that follow this initial misconception.

The main foolishness of the gross materialistic lifestyle is that people work very hard for what they think will be a permanent home, family, or career. What upsets most people is when they learn or experience that nothing is permanent. Something always happens sooner or later to disrupt or take away what they have been working to accomplish or acquire.⁴ So in truth, the spirit soul only "imagines" or "pretends" (for lack of better words) that he or she is the material body. Yes, the body is real, and so is a dream, but only as long as the person does not wake up from the dream. Once he awakes, then he sees through the illusion of the experience, regardless of how real it may have seemed to be. Similarly, as a person enjoys or suffers in a dream, life on the material plane is also illusory and full of joys and sorrows of short duration that have little to do with the spiritual Self. In this way, without proper regard for our spiritual identity, one thinks he is a permanent part of this temporary world.⁵ The individual and independent soul is transcendental or above the material nature. It exists on a much higher frequency or vibrational level. Thus, the soul can never actually be affected by material happiness or distress. It is only due to the false ego that causes the bodily covering to overwhelm the spiritual being and consider itself a material form. This further creates the tendency for one to enjoy or suffer while influenced by bodily activities, although a person is actually above it all. The purpose of spiritual practices is to relieve a person from this condition, and reawaken one to his genuine spiritual identity. Therefore, once again, because there is no real or permanent connection between the living being and matter, all happiness and distress have no essential reality in material existence. They go on as regular events, with you or without you. The more we think we are these material bodies that need to be served and catered to, the more we will be absorbed in the illusory highs and lows of life, which have little to do with who and what we really are. This is the main reason why our material engagements are limited in how much happiness or pleasure they can ever give us.

THE WRONG AIM IN LIFE

Because of the bodily conception of our identity, it brings us to the wrong aim of life, which is our motivation toward selfish material enjoyment. This is what keeps us in the illusion and prolongs whatever suffering and anxiety we may be experiencing. For example, when we have worked hard in our life and have struggled to attain a house, and are surrounded by wife or husband, children, community, have an education, a career, or whatever else we have wanted, sometimes we feel very happy. Sometimes we are completely jubilant, yet sometimes we are not so satisfied. At other times we may feel completely bewildered, not sure of what we want. In this way, for whatever reason, things are always changing. Again we find that what we think gives us security or happiness is an illusion because the mood of the mind is always fluctuating. Because of that alone, what once was like nectar in the beginning can become like poison in the end. When something is new it may be exciting, but after some time it can get dry and tasteless. That's the nature of the material world. So if you are looking for steady and sure happiness by being absorbed in the material energy, one must be aware of this shortcoming.

One key point here is that real happiness can be found in any condition, as long as you begin to make the connection with your higher Self. Once you realize that you are a spiritual being, you can understand that you are never connected to matter because you are a part of the superior spiritual energy of God. Always. You are a minute particle of eternity, bliss and omniscience. However, you are part of the marginal potency in the sense that you have the free will to either become absorbed in the material energy or be released from it. It's your decision. Once you make that decision, then you can engage in those practices to raise yourself, your consciousness, to higher levels of perception and attain freedom from the encroaching material problems that can, at times, seem overwhelming. Or you can remain absorbed in relishing whatever attracts your senses and the ups and downs that go with it.

Nonetheless, when the mind is motivated by passion, a person is forced into making many plans. Then he pursues them and voluntarily accepts so many troubles in hopes of attaining happiness and something meaningful in this world as a result of his schemes. Through this means he expects to enjoy life. He sees a beautiful house, and he wants one. He sees a fast car, and he wants one. He sees a lovely lady, and he wants her. This is because he thinks that surrounding himself with such possessions will make him happy. He thinks that once he achieves any of these, then he can relish his accomplishments.¹⁰ This is the way that achieving the results of one's hard work gives a false sense of happiness.¹¹ A person may feel that he has attained his goals, but such happiness soon gives way to the next desire or goal, or even the next problem. The fact of the matter is that one who cannot control his senses comes under the control of never-ending material desires. One with uncontrolled senses never feels satisfied with what he has for long. He always wants more or something new.¹² Thus, without realizing it, he is forced to act on those desires for more and more prizes, accomplishments, and possessions. His life often becomes more complicated, and the happiness he longs for keeps alluding him, like the donkey chasing after the carrot. The donkey does not understand that the more he chases after the carrot, the more he is merely serving a master. Thus, the materialist is forced to continue to serve his unquenchable thirst for material enjoyment at the dictates of the master, known as his mind and senses.

Yet as time goes on, he may question the course of action he has taken. He may indeed look around and wonder why he has not attained the happiness for which he had hoped. He sees that time has slipped away. In fact, he may be an old man, and if he has not kept himself so busy that he has no time to reflect on life, he may start to worry that death is drawing near. His friends may start to die off, giving a warning sign that his turn may be next. At that time, he may feel that all of his prizes, possessions, and property and wealth, have lost the meaning that they once had. They cannot protect him from death, and he has made no spiritual progress to console himself of what future lies ahead of him. Without proper spiritual knowledge, a person is left with nothing but his own ignorance for his counsel in trying to figure what to do. Thus, at death, the materialist is taken away from everything he had worked for and everything that had given him any pleasure, and another life goes by without gaining any substantial understanding of the true purpose of it.

WRONG AMBITIONS AND THEIR HIDDEN RESULTS

Those people who are trapped by the desire to enjoy material life cannot understand the real goal of earthly existence. One who is overly attached to the objects of material happiness cannot understand that he is wasting precious time by working to merely maintain house and home.

The real purpose of life is to realize the Absolute Truth, and that chance is spoiled by the pursuit of too many materialistic goals. A foolish person cannot understand that life offers the chance for real liberation, freedom from the limitations that capture a person while in this material creation, and freedom from the essential problems of life, starting with birth, disease, old age and death.¹³

Unfortunate as it may be, those interested in enjoying a so-called beautiful life, surrounded by family and friends, and searching after wealth, think that such things are life's ultimate goal. Such people never find life's true purpose. Thus, they are forced to go through many lifetimes engaged in the same pursuits.¹⁴ In this way, the conditioned soul continues to wander throughout the world in various lives searching after the same happiness as always. Sometimes he may be fortunate in a high position, and at other times he may suffer in a low circumstance. In any case, in his search for material happiness he is ever neglecting the way toward real freedom from these continuous ups and downs.¹⁵

As we all know, while living in the material world, we do need to make a living, and have money and necessities to survive. Nonetheless, a spiritually progressive person is not so interested in anything that is temporary. When he or she knows the transcendental pleasures of spiritual life, such a person will engage in the spiritual pursuits that deliver one to the unlimited happiness within the Absolute Truth, in connection with one's higher Self and the Supreme Being. After all, materialistic pleasures are available even to the hogs and dogs who also eat, sleep and have sex. What is the need for a human being to strive so hard for the same thing? Better to strive for spiritual purification which allows our consciousness to enter into the spiritual strata wherein exists unlimited transcendental bliss. In such a state, the living being can attain self-sufficient happiness and feel that wherever he may be and at all times, without being dependent on temporary material facilities for sensual pleasure.

Therefore, the key point is that, yes, work to maintain yourself, keep your body and soul fit. Work to attain basic happiness while living in this world, but keep your life simple. This allows you to be free from the many complexities that actually create more problems and less peace of mind. Raise your family peacefully, if you have one. However, we should keep in mind that we must not be overly attached or affectionate to anything without striving for spiritual consciousness. Such material attachment without the spiritual perspective is what leads us farther away from the true happiness and contentment that we seek.¹⁶ We must reflect on how we can continue to aspire for keeping all of our relations in the proper frame work of spiritual Truth. That is where we all, not only ourselves but also the people with whom we are involved, can be truly happy and peaceful.