executive chauffeured services Westchester Cadillac Deville rentals Deerfield Cadillac Deville rentals Oakbrook limousine airport Highland Park Addison shuttle .. Drug testing

Spring Into Enchantment

Who can control a smile sneaking across your face as you go outside on a beautiful spring day, suddenly finding your nostrils filled with a sweet aroma of fresh blooms, while feeling warm breezes against your skin, whispering, "No coat today."? Nature provides enchantment all around us in the spring. The birds sing, the flowers bloom, animals have their babies, new birds learn to fly. If you look high up in a tree you might see an exquisite bird singing loudly, full of life. It is as if nature gives humans an opportunity for enchantment all around. Yet, we often are indifferent, not responding spontaneously to the rebirth of spring. We seem to be, at times, equipped to live lives of misery brought on by ourselves. Many of us are able to generate a bad mood, put ourselves down, see our future as dark or today as gloomy. We have lost or never had the easy comfort and capacity to relax and enjoy life that a cat has on a sunny porch just snoozing and rolling over. We humans have to work at enchantment. Let s take a moment and look at what the major components of this work called "enchantment" are.

To experience what we call THE ENCHANTED SELF, that is positive states of mind and body again and again, a person must be able to develop three capacities. The first is the ability to successfully meet one s needs. This can be challenging when we find ourselves committed or obligated to be elsewhere or doing other things. There is a saying, "If you can t go to the mountain than bring the mountain to you." You may yearn to be outdoors playing sports or gardening but find yourself stuck indoors at home or at work. Opening the windows to let fresh air in, displaying a vase of colorful flowers on a table are some of the ways that can enable you to experience a spring day.

What s important is that you recognize what you need and then act upon it. This may mean verbalizing what you want to others or just giving yourself permission to take the time to do something that adds enjoyment to your life.

The second capacity we need to develop is having a positive appreciation of yourself, so that you see yourself as worthy of experiencing enchanted times. This means recognizing your personal value. Your children and/or husband, wife, boss, significant others are all important and should be treated with care and respect, but they are not more important than you. You are unique, with talents, coping skills and potential. You have the right to balance your life so that your needs can be taken into consideration. This self value is another building block of enchantment.

The last component is recognizing what really does give you pleasure. You may love walking on the beach, your bare feet touching the sand, still cool in the spring. You may enjoy going to a local county park when temperatures start rising. Someone else may prefer to engage in a more active social life in the spring and perhaps does not care about being outdoors. The spring may stimulate a yearning to have friends visit, or go to the local fine restaurants and experience different types of foods Enchantment requires a self knowledge that only each person must know for himself or herself.

And don t forget your memory banks, your wonderful treasure chests. As you begin to spring into enchantment, it is in these memory chests that you will recognize your special interests and preferences. Your positive memories can help you frame out what you would like to do this season.

Here is an exercise to get you started:

Close your eyes and let your mind wander back to something that you loved to do as a child in the spring. Did you like to climb trees? Did you like to ride a bike? Go fishing? Run? Catch lightning bugs at night? Think about the way your body felt as you did this activity. Did you feel excited? Did you feel particularly alive and alert? Did you feel relaxed? Think about how you felt when the activity was over. Were you exhausted? Were you revitalized? Were you hungry? Now list some of the skills that were necessary to perform that activity. For example, if you used to love to climb trees, some of the skills might have been agility or arm strength to lift yourself onto branches. Another skill was probably good balance. Do you still have these skills? If so, what would you like to try at this stage of your life that might let you get back in touch with the physical pleasures that you were so naturally in touch with as a child? Perhaps dancing or lifting weights or rock climbing? Whatever your physical pleasure may have been, lift it out, dust it off, and use it. And most important, enjoy!

If you do not have these skills, what are some alternatives? Perhaps rather than tree climbing you could stretch in all directions, lying on a mat or on a soft carpet. This will require much less in the way of balance or risk-taking. Perhaps you would enjoy a risk-taking adventure via a book, movie or a computer game. Reinvention of yourself in order to experience pleasure is a never ending pursuit.

How do we finally begin to generate a world of enchantment? It is very simple. If you are leading an enchanted life you will quickly see that you send out positive energies and positive messages. Before you know it, there is a mutuality of shared enchantment going on. Laughter is infectious, good moods are catching, and like the birds singing, all of these happy reflections of harmony are resonated again and again as they move out in ever expanding circles. We hope you will take some time to spring into enchantment and to let yourself move from feeling enchanted to being truly enchanting.

About The Author

Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein, originator of THE ENCHANTED SELF?, a method of bringing delight and meaning into everyday living, invites you to view her new line of ENCHANTED WOMAN products, downloadable e-books, and free gifts at http://www.enchantedself.com. Chat with others in Dr. Holstein's e-group, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/encself/join, and sign up for her free e-group at www.enchantedself.com. Order her book, THE ENCHANTED SELF: A Positive Therapy, or the CD-rom or tape version and her book RECIPES FOR ENCHANTMENT: The Secret Ingredient is YOU!, or the ED-rom version, at http://www.enchantedself.com/ordering.htm

enchantedself@verizon.net

limousine chicago service

In The News:

Cell phone customers are fuming and they’re refusing to extend their long term service contracts, or at least that's the message based on recent subscriber numbers released by U.S. carriers.

The 16th annual Webby Awards took place Monday night in New York City at the Hammerstein Ballroom, where winners and celebrities walked the red carpet in support of innovation.

No more violent shaking. No more tapping the “57” logo. And certainly no more ketchup left to waste at the bottom of the bottle -- all thanks to PhD candidate Dave Smith and his team of MIT researchers.

Israeli archaeologists have discovered a 2,700-year-old seal that bears the inscription "Bethlehem," the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Wednesday, in what experts believe to be the oldest artifact with the name of Jesus' traditional birthplace.

They floated like butterflies, now they are being stung -- for a second year running. Eleven months after officials in China were ridiculed for some of the worst Photoshop efforts on record, they are at it again.

The designer behind many of Apple's most popular gadgets will be knighted Wednesday at Buckingham Palace in London.

Your sneakers will come alive with the soon to be released-- Nike+ Basketball and Nike+ Training—apps plus shoes.

The first commercial spacecraft ever launched toward the International Space Station is playing a game of catch-up today (May 23) as it heads toward an unprecedented rendezvous with the orbiting lab.Dragon, built by commercial rocket firm Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

The Boy Scouts of America is trying to recruit a new generation of kids to join its troops with high-energy, high-tech activities that include thrill-inducing zip lines at a new adventure camp, apps and a television show.

The next iPhone or iPad from Apple is surely around the corner, and Google is getting into everything from cloud computing to car making. But what the cards hold for $100 billion behemoth Facebook is far from clear, experts say.

Rumors of the hairy humanoid known variously as the yeti, bigfoot and sasquatch have persisted for decades. Now scientists are hoping to make more of a case for the creature -- with the help of genetic testing, Reuters reported.

Scotty has finally been beamed up. The ashes of the actor James Doohan, who played Scotty on the 1960s television series "Star Trek," were launched to space this morning (May 22) on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Cows are a red herring. The most dangerous potential source for methane release lies underneath thinning permafrost and glaciers in the Arctic. Ecologists have just mapped the seeps where methane is bubbling up, and they found more than 150,000 of them.

At a time when black magic was relatively common, two curses involving snakes were cast, one targeting a senator and the other an animal doctor, says a Spanish researcher who has just deciphered the 1,600-year-old curses.

Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, U2 frontman Bono and more honored the memory of late Apple founder Steve Jobs Monday in New York City at the 16th annual Webby Awards.

Humans' close relationship to dogs has so far obscured their history so much that it's not yet possible to use genetic data to tease out the details of their domestication, new research indicates.

A Jurassic mom's almost certainly painful death is perfectly preserved in a rare fossil skeleton, one of the many unique items that will go on display in the Houston Museum of Natural Science's $85 million dinosaur hall when it opens to the public June 2. We take a first peek at the exhibit.

A Jurassic Mom's almost certainly painful death is perfectly preserved in a rare fossil skeleton, one of the many unique items that will go on display in the Houston Museum of Natural Science's $85 million dinosaur hall when it opens to the public June 2.

The rise of Kickstarter's crowdsourcing platform means consumers can now vote with their dollars, investing in unique new projects that they believe in, from smartphone watches designed from e-paper to coffee joulies that keep your drink at the perfect temperature. Here are the 12 most funded design projects.

Jodie Foster may have seen proof of alien lands in the 1997 Robert Zemeckis film "Contact," but the real life astronomer the filmmakers based their sci-fi odyssey on didn't find so much as a tentacle.

Spring Into Enchantment

Positive Attitude Tips Positive Attitude Tips