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Live the life you love

Finding the love of your life

Most Law of Attraction techniques for manifesting a fabulous love life include regular visualization, collecting images or creating "vision boards" that reflect our desires, making space for someone new in our lives, scripting about our partner as if they're already here, etc.

While these processes help bring our dreams of love to reality, there are other steps required to allow your ideal partner to appear. If you're serious about getting the love life you want, follow these six tips:

1. Get clear about what you want. Before you can create the relationship of a lifetime, you need to know what that is for you. Sometimes people make the mistake of defining their ideal relationship as being with a specific person, rather than identifying the true essence of what they really want. Clarify the fundamental feelings, emotions, and experiences you want, and let the Universe fill in the face. (Otherwise you may play the game of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.)

2. If you're in a dissatisfying relationship now, stop pigeon-holing your partner. When we're not happy with a current relationship, we often box our partners in without realizing it. We think of them as who they have been, rather than allowing a mental space for who they might be.

As long as we hold a mental image of them as the person we aren't happy with, they continue to show up that way. Give them room to be who they are capable of being by entertaining higher thoughts and expectations of them. People live up to and down to your expectations!

3. Be open. Let the Universe surprise you. Often the relationships of a lifetime form in ways you never would have expected. Connect with your internal guidance (emotions, gut feelings, intuition) and respect that guidance. It won't steer you wrong.

4. Love yourself the way you want to be loved. Our most important relationship in life is the one we have with ourselves, yet we rarely give this the attention it deserves. Every other relationship in our life is a reflection of how we treat ourselves. For that reason (and also just because it feels good), treat yourself the way you want to be treated. Say and do nice things for yourself. When you're good to you, others will be too!

5. Love others the way you want to be loved. To create strong vibrational alignment with the relationship you desire, love others the way you want to be loved. Unconditionally, without reservation, openly - however it is you want to be loved - offer it to someone else. It's another powerful way to create alignment, and guess what - it feels good too!

6. Finally, let go of what's not working in your life. In order for good things to happen (like getting the love life you want), you have to feel good. Eliminate what's bringing you down; stop putting up with the things you're tolerating. Whether it's a job, bad habit, apartment, relationship - whatever doesn't feel good needs to be remedied. Creating a vacuum in your life allows the Universe to fill it with something better.

This action item alone can open the window of opportunity that allows an avalanche of good things to come your way!

by Jeannette Maw

Playful Parenting

The Fun in parenting

Raising kids is serious business, but making time for fun is equally important.

7 secrets to raising happy kids

Parents should be the space where children can express themselves freely and just have fun. -- ST FILE PHOTO

There is so much advice on parenting these days, it is enough to make any parent run screaming, a harried father once remarked to me.

In the serious job of parenting, where is the room for fun?

But play is important, says Ms Katy Harris, a behavioural therapist who works at the Kaleidoscope Therapy Centre in Novena. Fun and play are like immunisation, protecting kids against all the other tough things in life.

'They are the antidote to 'trying hard' and coping with urban life - be it learning self-care, skills or routine tasks - everything from how to clean our teeth to knowing the letters of the alphabet, to managing school,' Ms Harris said in an e-mail interview with Mind Your Body.

Ms Harris tells parents that eating, dressing and bathing all offer opportunities for teasing, making up stories and using the imagination. Children learn useful watching skills, steps and sequence abilities, memory lessons, good listening and engagement - all the secret weapons to learning well in school.

'If in doubt go for using what you have - the tins in the cupboard to play shop, the pans in the kitchen to play drums, old socks to make puppets, rice and pasta to glue into pictures. It doesn't take a toy store - only love and a commitment to sharing through joy,' she says.

Ms Suvi Pitkola, an occupational therapist at the centre says the most fun activities are three-dimensional, concrete and real. They involve using all our senses: touch, smell, taste, hearing and listening, vision, movement and body position. She says the best fun is when the child leads.

'The adult is not telling the child what to do and how, but creates a situation in which the child can take charge and use his own imagination and curiosity to come up with play ideas,' she said.

Parenting coach and father of two boys Kenny Toh says he tries to do this by understanding his kids' preferences first.

'Our boys have different tastes - Sean, eight, finds soccer with Dad fun, while Dylan, six, prefers 'cerebral' games like chess and Scrabble,' he said.

He offers another perspective, which is that parents could create a relaxed atmosphere conducive to playfulness. 'Do our children look forward to being with us, or their favourite uncle or aunt who are more fun to be with?'

So it is not how much time you spend with the children but how they feel around you which matters. 'Do they feel comfortable to be spontaneous and do crazy things in our presence, or are they always fearful of being scolded or nagged?' he said.

Mr Toh believes that ultimately to raise happy children, parents should be the space where children can express themselves with freedom - sort of like a safe playground on which they play their hearts out and have fun.

- SHEFALI SRINIVAS

MUSHROOM TART AND GRAVY

Mushroom Recipe

This is a vegetarian recipe using mushroom to make mushroom tart and gravy

1 lb. of mushrooms, 1/2 lb. of Allinson fine wheatmeal, 4 oz. of butter or Allinson frying oil, pepper and salt to taste. Pick and wash the mushrooms, remove the stalks, dry them and cut them into pieces;make pastry with the meal, 3 oz. of the butter, and a little cold water; roll it out, line a large plate and heap the mushrooms upon it,dredge well with pepper and salt, and cut the rest of the butter into bits to be scattered over the mushrooms; when you line the plate, keep a little of the paste, cut this into thin strips and lay them in diamond shape across the pie; bake the pie 3/4 hour in a moderate oven.

The Gravy.--The stalks of the mushrooms, 4 eschalots chopped very fine, 1 teaspoonful of Allinson cornflour, 3 bay leaves, 1/2 oz. of butter, pepper and salt to taste. Fry the stalks and eschalots in the butter, then gently cook them in 3/4 pint of water for 1/2 hour,adding seasoning and the bay leaves; strain, return the sauce to the saucepan, and thicken it with the cornflour.

Popcorn Recipe

Popcorn is a delicious, nutritious snack that has been around since before the late 1800s. Traditionally, popcorn was made over the fire. This was not the best way to make popcorn as most of the corn would end up in the fire as it exploded. Since then, there have been many new ways created to make popcorn, including saucepans, air poppers, microwave ovens and woks. Below is an easy, quick way to make popcorn that tastes great.

What You Need To Make Popcorn

One of the easiest ways to make popcorn is with a regular saucepan. Just make sure that it has a lid to avoid having popcorn exploding all over your kitchen floor. You can also use a wok. A wok is a large deep frying pan used to cook oriental dishes. Many people prefer them because they keep the oil and un-popped corn kernels in the bottom of the pan directly over the heat. If you do not have a wok, a regular saucepan will do just fine.

You will need some popcorn kernels. These are different from regular kernels, so make sure you have the right ones. Other ingredients needed are some butter, approximately one stick, some vegetable oil and some regular salt.

How to Prepare Popcorn

Once you have your wok or saucepan and all of your ingredients, you will need to have your stove on medium heat, and place the vegetable oil in the bottom of the pan. You only need enough to cover the bottom of the pan. Do not go overboard or you will end up with fried corn rather than popcorn. Slowly melt your stick of butter in another pan on low heat.

Cover the bottom of your pan with popcorn kernels, making sure not to put too many in at once, but enough so that you can not see the bottom of the pan and cover the pan with a lid. After about a minute, you should begin to hear your popcorn start to explode. Move the pan around from side to side to help the process.

Once the popcorn starts to reach the lid, place it on an unheated burner while it finishes popping. Use the butter that you melted earlier to pour over the popcorn and add salt to taste. Place your popcorn in a bowl, and give it a shake around to make sure the salt and butter are distributed evenly. If you want fat-free popcorn, just use salt without the butter or for a sweet snack, use icing sugar instead of salt. Then sit back and enjoy the popcorn that you have just made.

By Kelvin Ho

From www.rumorist.com