Cool Book of the Day

Love's Secret is featured as cool book of the day. Check it out and the person who leaves the nicest kudo on the site will win a copy! Follow this link.

You might wonder what is a kudo. Just a nice pat on the back. I have much more respect for authors now since Love's Secret was released by Sedona Publisher's in Nov 2007. It has been a big learning curve and a lot of hard work. Love's Secret was also awarded Finalist by USA Book News in their Self Help Relationship category.

Go on over and leave your kudos and win a copy of the cool book of the day. Love's Secret will help you deal with your relationship commitment issues and help your live your life in love with the love of your life.

Here is an excerpt:

Craving Love—Fearing Love

Bob had just met the woman of his dreams. Based on his past, he was scared to death he would mess up again. When Bob first entered my office, he was desperate for answers. He wanted to succeed this time more than anything else in the world. In the past when he made a commitment, his fears would surface, and he himself sabotaging the relationship.

This time he wanted things to be different, not by chance, but because he had a plan and tools to deal with his fear of intimacy. He was terrified of love which kept him commitment phobic, but he had never realized his patterns. During our sessions he discovered his fear, and the EFT offered him hope that he could heal. In the past he had spent his time consumed with searching for the one, the perfect mate.

Face the Fear
In this chapter you will find the secret for dealing with fear of intimacy and commitment and the underlying fears that can keep you caught in the swinging doors of toxic relationships.

LOVE’S SECRET number one is to make a commitment to your own healing. You can then be a support within the relationship for healing your issues as a couple. This chapter explores what commitment means and why you or your mate might be commitment phobic. You will find solutions to overcome your phobias and tools to build new habits to live your life in love. Your commitment to your own inner-healing will build a base for a happy, long-term, loving relationship.

*Exercises for journaling and inner-reflection are included throughout the book.
*These exercises are intended to connect you with your inner wisdom and find answers to create the life and relationship that you have longed for.
*Quiet inner-reflection through journaling allows ideas and hidden inner-desires to bubble up from within.
*Once you have your inner answers on paper, you can examine them and focus your energy to create your heart’s desire.

If you have any questions leave your comment below. Also I am giving away a copy Feb29 to the person who has left the most comments on this blog. Join in the discussion. What is your biggest reltionship commitment issue?

A Happy Ending

A Happy ending to a sad New Year's beginning.
Last month, while riding in a New York City taxi, a young woman named Erika Gunderson found a $500 Canon digital camera that the cab's previous occupant had left behind.

She, her boyfriend, and his mom decided to create a happing ending. After much searching found the rightful owner.

Murphy, an insurance underwriter, had been devastated to lose the pictures from a trip he had planned for years. It was Jan. 10 _ his 34th birthday _ when he heard he would be getting the photos back. "I was over the moon," he says now. "Best present ever."

"I owe you one," he wrote to Ascher. "It's good to know there are some honest people left in the world."

Such a heart warming up lifting story. Great to acknowledge that we do have wonderful honest people who go the extra mile and give their best. Kudos to this family for their determination.

Do you have experiences where you have received or given a gift like this to someone you don't know or have never met? Just met a new blogger over at Spa Clientele check out her post on Zen and Simplicity--great post.

Wordless Wednesday--Enjoy Your Snowman!

What is a Bucket List? 5 Steps to Create Your Bucket List

What's all the buzz about the bucket list and as my friends say what is a bucket list? A bucket list is the list of things your heart has desired that you have never made time for in your life. This is the list of things that you made a vow inside yourself to accomplish before you kick the bucket. Be outrageous don't sensor what comes through when you concentrate on your bucket list.

Five tips to Create Your bucket list
1. Treat yourself to a retreat and spend time getting to know yourself.
2. Climb to the top of a mountain and sit quietly until you hear the voice of your inner wisdom.
3. Spend fifteen minutes just sitting and listen to what you have to say inside.
4. Write yourself a love letter and mention all the accomplishments from last year. What's missing? What do you wish you could have accomplished??
5. Sit for fifteen minutes out in the sunlight and absorb the healing light from the sun. When you come in sit and write what has emerged from inside. You are establishing a connection inside to bring your deep desires to the surface and add them to your bucket list.

We are all so busy "doing" we forget how to be. Share you top three wishes on your bucket list! To share your comment click on the comment button. This will open a comment box. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Love Secrets for Your Bucket List

What's on your bucket list? How do you add joy to you life? Follow these simple suggestions add joy to each day. Just read a post by Publicity Hound
and decided to follow her lead by writing about the bucket list. She publishes great publicity tips weekly on her blog.

One of the major messages from the trailer for Bucket list is to add joy to your life daily. Gift yourself something that you love each day. When is the last time you danced? Most of the retreat guest who visit us in Sedona respond the same way when asked this question. I love to dance--but I don't have time or I don't have a partner. I haven't asked anyone this question that I haven't gotten that answer to. So how do you include dancing in your life and gift yourself with joy? Simple!

Take a dance or movement class and learn to tap into and move your emotions. Choose music that you love and respond to. Find a comfortable space and schedule time to move to the music. Get inspired! Watch how Ellen DeGeneres transforms herself and audience when the music starts and the dancing begins. Feel the emotion as you watch each couple compete on Dancing with the Stars.

You are the only person who can add joy to your life if you wait for someone else you will miss out. Share your Bucket List for adding joy to your life!

What's Love Got To Do With It??

Here is a toast to Simpleology and their test training. And you might wonder what's love got to do with blogging? Well I think that to be dedicated to a blog is like being dedicated to a relationship with someone you love. At times you want to quit and give up, then you get some inspiration and you keep showing up.

I read an article yesterday over at Copyblogger
where he asked What is a Blog? He has received 90 comments on this post. A dream come true for any blogger to get 90 comments.

So this toast is to all the bloggers who keep blogging and hoping for comments and readers for their blog. You have to love writing to keep your passion alive for blogging.

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

A Valentine's Day Wish

What is your wish for this Valentine's Day? To meet prince charming or Cinderella? Or, did you think you had met him or her--but now it seems like the wicked witch turned him or her into a frog? Here are some tips to ignite passion and heat up your realtionship.

Surprise your mate with a date to remember. Don't wait for him or her to read your mind to find your heart's desire. Create a romantic night to remember with romantic flair. Purchase natural veggie oil candles, place flowers of your choice in the bedroom, get an set of sheets that you don't mind getting oil on. Take natural coconut oil and add your favorite medicinal grade essential oils like ylang-ylang, rose geranium, sandlewood, and a hint of ginger (most of these oils are all natural aphrodisiacs). On your chosen night, meet your special one at the door. Run a warm bath and have them soak for at least fifteen minutes. Have their favorite romantic music playing, next wash their back and pretend you are massaging your special one for the first time. After they dry off have them move to your sheets either on your bed or on the floor and massage them from head to toe with your special coconut passion oil. The rest is up to you. Have a wonderful loved filled date with your mate and congratulate yourself for gifting yourself and your special partner a night to remember! Check out our retreats for couples and learn new communication skills to keep love and passion alive.

Wordless Wednesday--Couple Reunited After 60 Years

Who wrote this script--Choosing Love

In yesterday's blog entry, you read about a couple who were separated for sixty years. They had given up all hope of reuniting again. Through deep determination, they learned to release their deep hurt and pain and move on with their life. There are many great lessons to learn from their amazing love story.

First, if you close your heart you will deny yourself love. In order to give and receive love you must keep your heart open.

Second, a person who's heart is closed pushes opportunities for success in money and life away. In order to succeed in life and love you must learn to trust life, and love, and keep your heart open. Research suggests that our heart is our emotional brain read on.

Resent research suggests that the heart is our emotional brain. Molecular biologists have discovered that the heart is the body's most important endocrine gland. In response to our experience of the world, it produces and releases a major hormone, ANF -- which stands for Atriol Neuriatic Factor -- that profoundly effects every operation in the limbic structure, or what we refer to as the "emotional brain."

This includes the hippocampal area where memory and learning take place, and also the control centers for the entire hormonal system. And neurocardiologist have found that 60 to 65% of the cells of the heart are actually neural cells, not muscle cells as was previously believed. They are identical to the neural cells in the brain, operating through the same connecting links called ganglia, with the same axonal anddendritic connections that take place in the brain, as well as through the very same kinds of neurotransmitters found in the brain.

Quite literally, in other words, there is a "brain" in the heart, whose ganglia are linked to every major organ in the body, to the entire muscle spindle system that uniquely enables humans to express their emotions. About half of the heart's neural cells are involved in translating information sent to it from all over the body so that it can keep the body working as one harmonious whole.

And the other half make up a very large, unmediated neural connection with the emotional brain in our head and carry on a twenty-four-hour-a-day dialogue between the heart and the brain that we are not even aware of.

The heart and our emotions are important not only to our physical health but we also need an open heart to find true love and success. EFT or Emotional Freedom Technique and Love's Secret offers tools to open your heart to love. Were you aware that your emotional brain is in your heart??

This article was excerpted from

Nurturing Heart-Brain Development Starting With Infants

1999 Interview with Joseph Chilton Pearce

by Chris Mercogliano and Kim Debus

Journal of Family Life, Volume 5, No.1, 1999

A Beautiful Love Story--To warm Your Heart!

This is a heart warming story, that affirms that love does win--although sometimes it may take years! Get your Kleenex ready and enjoy!

Three days after their wedding, Anna Koslov kissed her husband Boris goodbye. A soldier in Russia's Red Army, he was set to rejoin his military unit. The young couple expected that they would be together again soon, ready to begin the joys of married life, and to raise a family together.

But when Boris returned home from his military expedition, he found the house cold and empty. When he called his wife's name, there was only the echo of his own voice. Anna was gone.

Under the brutal regime of Joseph Stalin, Anna and her family had been declared enemies of the state. Boris' new bride was sent into exile in the vast plains of Siberia, with no chance to contact her husband. He didn't even know if she was still alive.

"I threatened to commit suicide rather than go because I couldn't live without him," she told The Telegraph, "but in the end I was forced to go. It was the most miserable time of my life."

Boris spent years searching for his lost love, but never found a trace of her. Over the years, both Boris and Anna remarried other people, and had children. But they never forgot about one another: After Boris became a writer, he dedicated a book to Anna, the woman he had loved and lived with for a mere three nights.

As time went by, Boris and Anna's respective spouses passed away. Last year, Anna, a lonely widow, went back to visit the old house where she and Boris had spent those precious few nights. Now an elderly woman, she wanted to pay tribute to the time they'd shared there, knowing that she would never see her husband again.

In a remarkable twist of fate, the town received another long-lost visitor on that very same day – an 80-year-old man who had come to lay flowers at his parents' gravestone. But when he caught sight of the woman across the road, he knew something else had drawn him there.

"I thought my eyes were playing games with me," Anna said. "I saw this familiar-looking man approaching me, his eyes gazing at me. My heart jumped. I knew it was him. I was crying with joy."

It was Boris, the man she thought she'd lost for good 60 years ago.

"I ran up to her and said: 'My darling, I've been waiting for you for so long. My wife, my life..." he said.

"I couldn't take my eyes off her. Yes, I had loved other women when we were separated. But she was the true love of my life."

Never give up on love and always follow your intuition there is always a reason for those gentle urges inside. Listen and allow yourself to be blessed. When we ignore our inner urges we never know what blessings we deny ourselves!

Fighting Fair To Keep Passion and Love Alive

Learning to clear your disagreements without using out old tactics that destroy love; shows signs of emotional maturity. It is an art to air your dirty laundry and reach a compromise without closing your heart.

When you begin a serious discussion on an issue that has an emotional charge; make an agreement to find a mutual compromise. Begin the discussion by taking five minutes at the beginning to sit and look into the eyes of your partner. Focus on your commitment to your mate and what you love about them, and remember your goal to find a mutual compromise. Your commitment will keep you on track and avoid falling into old habits of arguing to prove your point. When you begin a discussion with an agreement to find a compromise, there is a higher purpose to guide you through.

"Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit."-Kahlil Gibran
“Love is the condition in which the happiness of another is essential to your own.”
-Jubel in Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein

Writer's Strike--Turn Off the TV and Find Your Way back to Love!

Do you push love away in the name of being right? Do you like being right more than being in love and giving love? Write a new script to create the love you want and deserve by giving up your need to be right. Learn to fight fair and air your differences and find a compromise.

If you use all the dirty tricks you know when you fight you might feel like you won. But if you close your heart and push love and your mate away--nobody wins. Switch channels and quit playing the wrong and right game. Create a new playing field where everyone wins and you deepen your love connection! Share with me ways that you have learned to reach a compromise and stay connected to your heart, love, passion, and your mate.

Look at what Kahlil Gibran has to say about love and fighting. " Among intelligent people the surest basis for marriage is friendship - the sharing of real interests-
the ability to fight out ideas together and understand each other’s thoughts and dreams. "
-Kahlil Gibran

Finding Your Way Back to Love through Love's Secret

If you have lost that loving feeling and need to find your way back to love follow this secret. When you are feeling like you can't let go of anger, pain, and resentment; ask yourself what's important. You are never upset at what you think you are upset at. And if you quickly assess your stance you will find that with a commitment to love you can't hold on to anger. Quickly decide what you want to commit to--anger or love. Anger is poison and not a good emotion to be committed to. Love builds health, heart connections, and leaves you feeling good inside.

Find your way back to love--commit to focus on love and give yourself permission to let go of anger. Anger causes many stress related health problems and is not worth pushing love away.

Make a commitment to love by never going to bed angry. A moment wasted in anger is love lost forever. Share your secrets with me on how you stay focused on love.

Writer's Strike--Looking for Love In all the Wrong Places

Looking for love in all the wrong places? Write a new script to allow love into your life and create your own golden globe award.

Put your fears in the past and reach out to new unexplored territory to meet the person of your dreams. Open your heart and allow yourself to feel the deep well of love inside. Recognize your patterns and how you push love away and resolve to allow love into your life. Open yourself up to new experiences that stretch you beyond your limits. In order to step into your power step out of your comfort zone.

Writer's Strike? Who wrote this script?

Writer's are still on strike and unable to watch your favorite weekly show. Take time to look at the script that continues to run your life. Are you tired of all the old reruns and patterns that always turn out the same. Make this year your year to write a script for success in love, money and your life.

It's a good time to determine what success means to you and then create your script to make it happen. Success to many is money and the things that money can buy. But money can't buy love, passion and romance. If you give all of your time to the pursuit of money and "things" money can buy; one day you will wake up with regret. Leave me a post and let me know what success means to you.

Is Britney Bipolar--Or Emotionally Unstable

5 steps to emotional stability

1. Learn to be still within and enjoy your own company. One of the best paths to learn stillness is yoga and pranayama.
2. Eat a healthy diet with several small meals each day. This helps to stabalize blood sugar as well as moods.
3. Avoid sugary foods, alcohol, and refined carbohydrates. Eat fresh vegetables and lots of greens.
4. Schedule time for exercise that you enjoy and can incorporate daily.
5. Establish a spiritual connection and spend time deepening that connection daily.

Learn to develop a healthy and happy attitude. No matter how unhappy you might be--you can choose to change your attitude. An attitude of gratitude can bring about positive change.

Writers Still on Strike?Here'sYour Script for Passion, Success and Love!

Looking to write a new script for your love relationship? Want to heat up your bedroom and create more love, passion, and romance? Here's your new script for passion, love, and romance.

Create a vision for what you want in your love relationship. A love relationship can be riddled with land mines waiting for the wrong reaction to set off an explosion of emotions. Free yourself of old toxic emotional reactions that push love and passion away, and focus your thoughts, emotions and actions on love habits. Love habits build a foundation for a flourishing garden for love. Each day give something to the person you love and show them how much you love and appreciate having them in your life.

Text message a love note to your partner and plan a hot date. Build excitement with the one you love. It doesn't matter whether you just met them or if they have been a partner for years. You must invest time, love, attention and keep dating in order to create excitement; otherwise passion dies.

Write your Own Script!

Tired of the old story that has you locked in pain and drama? Then write a new script and put writing on your inner walls that supports love, passion and romance. Love's Secret award winner in self help relationship empowers you with tools to write a script to support your love relationship. Follow these tips to live your life in love with the love of your life.

1. Post notes on your mate's mirror and remind them how much you love them. Make a date for sometime later in the week and keep that date. Build expectation for the date and make it as hot as you wish!

2. Make a commitment to yourself and your mate to focus on love "thoughts" and let your stinking thinking go.

3. At an unexpected time text message or leave a message on your mate's phone reminding them of the up coming date. Play, keep fun, and magic alive in your reltionship.

Check out these blogs for other suggestions on fun and romance http://www.blogher.com/write-new-script-2008.

Dr Phil cancels out on Britney

Love hurts when you are addicted to pain and drama. What causes an addiction to pain and drama? Growing up in an environment where it was devoid of love or gave a feeling of being safe. Many never felt love unless they created a "drama" to gain attention and what they thought was love. Now living their life from patterns and conditioning they create a virtual "hell" on earth. Dr. Phil declared that Britney needs intervention to save her from her self destructive behavior.

Retreat and Heal offers couples retreats and gives couples a break from their environment and life habits. Day to day living from old habits can become a combat zone if you stuff your emotions and lack the ability to release emotions in a healthy way. Emotional Freedom Technique is a new way of moving emotions through your body to release the charge before you explode in an unhealthy way.

4 Steps to emotional freedom.

1. Become aware of the emotions that you experience on a daily basis.

2. Notice the emotions that you are most comfortable with and the ones that you are uncomfortable with.

3. Learn to feel your emotions and resolve to let them go. The same part of the brain that becomes addicted to heroin and other addictive drugs is the part that becomes addicted to anger, anxiety, frustration and fear. Many of never learned to feel emotions or mature ways of expressing them.

4. If emotions are habitually held in it will eventually lead to an unhealthy physical reaction. This can be as simple as a headache or as devastating as chronic fatigue or Epstein barre. Please take a look at this video http://www.emofree.com/splash/video_popup.asp. EFT is a magical self help therapy you can comfortably learn to apply to release emotions that have devastating consequences when you hold it in.

Oprah, Terry Real, Annie B Lawrence and Love's Secret

What is normal in a marriage? It is normal in our society to go for the largest and most dramatic wedding, and wake up after the honeymoon in debt and married to someone you don't know.

Love's Secret empowers couples to live their life in love by making love a priority and learning love habits. Here is three steps to build a love foundations and live your live in choice rather than reacting from patterns of the past.

3 Steps to Love

1. Spend fifteen minutes at the beginning of your day focusing on the things your love about your mate. The more time you spend foucusing on love the easier it will become to choose a love response to your mate.

2. Learn what makes you and your mate happy. Each day do something for yourself first and then your mate that makes you happy. As you give to yourself and then to your mate you are building a larger foundation of love and happiness to draw from.

3. Stay current with your emotions. Spend at least five minutes with yourself in silence each day. Learn to quickly feel your emotions and be honest with yourself. If you are a stuffer you become a ticking time bomb ready to explode at any moment.

Oprah, reveals stress caused problems--Stress can make you Sick

Stress could be the underlying cause of pain and muscle fatigue? Stress and emotional tension can cause tension headaches, also referred to as “migraine headaches.” Trigger points in muscles of the upper head and neck can create other physical symptoms as well, such as: numbness and tingling in the hand and fingers, carpal tunnel, weakness in the arm and hand effected. When you have an accident if the trauma is not rehabilitated it can continue to cause inflammation and changes in the body physiology for years to come.

These symptoms include: pain at the original site of injury, pain in the opposite side of the body, pain in old injury sites that were not properly rehabilitated, pain and problems with old weaknesses of the internal organs such as stomach ulcers until finally one day you wake up and you hurt all over. The body is doing its best to alert you that there is inflammation present that needs to be properly treated.

Consider making this year the year to commit to your health and happiness. Ways to deal effectively with stress include massage, yoga, daily exercise, healthy eating habits, and occasionally time away from “your hectic life”. Time away can be spent enjoying a personal retreat. We have the perfect place for you here in Sedona, Arizona. Remember us when the holidays are over and you start making your plans for your special vacation this year.
Focus for the New Year “New You”

You are the writer, director, and actor of your life's play. Write big parts, direct with humor and let your authentic self-shine.

Affirmations for Creating the Life You Want and Deserve
My thoughts and focus become the antennae that create my life's experience. Today and everyday I focus my thoughts and intentions on joy, creativity, purpose, and fulfillment.

Visualization to Create the Life You Want and Deserve:
In my mind's eye I connect to the flow of spirit and creativity within me. I see myself walking in my power, speaking my truth, and loving each moment of each day. Acknowledging that I am the writer, director, and actor of my life's play: I create my life drama with passion. In my mind's eye I see myself creating and experiencing the kind of life I want to live. I imagine a script in which I AM successful, loved, prosperous, and enjoy radiant health. In this role, I learn my lessons easily and I playfully express my life's purpose. I combine these images with the feelings of joy and let them go, knowing that they will create the good things I am visualizing and thinking.

Find Santa at http://clauschronicles.blogspot.com/ hop on over and let him know I sent you. Tell him you are there to avoid the Santa rush for next year. Remember to include Love’s Secret on your wish list in order to live your life in love!

©copywrite 2008 Annie B Lawrence, Ph.D, CHT.

Mommy Doodle a great blog at blogger

Mommy Doodle is a great site to pick up ideas on graphics and loved the holiday craft shared. I also am a mom and love doodling with my grandsons age 1 and 2.

Here is a great doodle idea for grandmoms. We just purchased a small card table and chairs for tots and I can sit in it with my grandsons and we love doodling with crayons together and creating a picture. We then post it to our refrigerator. Our grandson always notices that we have that posted from his former visit.

Happy new year gandmoms, moms, and doodlers. Remember to take time to play and enjoy your children, and grandchildren they grow up much too soon!

Just found Santa Claus--And Made a Wish

http://www.retreatandheal.com/products.html Santa has a blog located right here on blogger.com. Wish I had know that earlier--he offers some light hearted cheer that is valuable in our everyday life. Stop by and get your wish in for 2008 early.

By the way Santa if you read this post it would be great if you could post a review of Love's Secret on your blog. I know that it can help your readers learn to live their life in love and leave pain and drama behind. Here is a review that I just received and you can find a podcast interview here http://podcast.revvell.com/2007/11/20/revvell-interviews-annie-lawrence.aspx.

This is a wonderful book. In it, Annie B. Lawrence describes her own relationships and gives examples from her own practice of various situations she has encountered with her clients. What I enjoyed about this book is 1) true life examples; 2) questions one may ask of oneself to get deeper into situations 3) envisioning and 4) EFT exercises you can do yourself to assist in bringing your love into reality. In this book, there is no blame. It's about finding out where you are and how to get where you want to be. Easy to read; easy to understand. If you need a coach, Annie is available AND, I'd suggest you check out her beautiful location in Sedona Arizona.
Revvell P. Revati, N.H.E.'s "http://podcast.TheBookCrawler.com".

Hope all your wishes come are granted for 2008!

What's Your Consumption Factor? Creating An environment we can live in

In a New York Times Article entitled "What's Your Consumption Factor" we are given new insight into our foot print we are leaving on our environment. We are impacting our environment 32 times more than developing countries. The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. That factor of 32 has big consequences.

As we begin our new year it is a good time to consider how we can change our consumption factor so that we can lessen our foot print on our environment. As stated in http://livinginatoxicworld.blogspot.com/ those countries that consume most leave a heavier foot print and in order to preserve our environment for our children must work to reduce our consumption.

We can choose to be the change we want to see in our world and work to reduce our consumption and thereby reduce our environmental footprint. Our environment, our own health, and the future of our children depend on us.