8 Suggestions to Help Strengthen Your Marriage

Understanding that your marriage will probably be under a great deal of stress as you adjust to new children and your changing roles, it is important that you invest the time to nurture your relationship with your spouse during this challenging period. Following are a few suggestions to help strengthen your marriage.

Avoid Comparisons- Resist the temptation to compare your spouse to others. There is no shortage of stories about how great other husbands are. The ensuing comparisons will only make you feel resentful or bitter. You’d do better to focus on your husband’s strengths rather than concentrate on his weaknesses.

Touch- This is an important form of communication in a marriage. Have you ever noticed how cold a relationship appears when couples seem unable to touch and hold each other? It’s as if there is an invisible wall between them. Make it point to hold each other. Take your husband’s hand while walking at the mall; touch him on the shoulder as you walk by; greet him with a kiss and a hug –daily.

Flirt- Always looks for opportunities to flirt with your spouse. Provocative greeting cards, occasional slaps on the rear, suggestive whispers,  a wink from across the room-these all add dimension to a marriage and keep the passion alive.

Play-Find an activity that you both enjoy and do it regularly. Our children need to understand that a healthy marriage is a vital element of a healthy family. Kids naturally think that the world revolves around them. Spending time alone with our spouse helps send the message to our children that they aren’t the only ones in the family. Dating makes it clear that Mom and Dad have their own special relationship and that they need time with each other occasionally to keep it healthy.

Follow the Rules of Engagement- All marriages have conflict; it’s a fact of life. But how we handle these conflicts can have a lasting impact on our marriage and on our physical well-being. Research at Ohio State University showed that when couples used sarcasm, insults, criticism, and put- downs during conflict, their bodies produced higher levels of stress hormones.

Give Each Other Space- Space can become a treasured commodity when you have children. Both husbands and wives need occasional time alone, particularly when the children are young. In a healthy marriage, giving your husband the space he needs will likely be a favor that he returns to you.

Avoid Jealousy- When we accept our redefined role in the marriage, we need to understand that the perks associated with our new job also change, and that they will not be similar to those of our spouse.

Forgive, Forgive, and Forgive- The secret to a strong marriage isn’t the perfect relationship or the perfect spouse, it’s forgiveness. We all screw up, sometimes royalty. Forgiveness means that we move forward, ignoring the inclination to revisit the past over and over again. If your marriage is suffering from some old grievance, and divorce is not an option, then you have nothing left but to forgive.

In a world in which marriage is so often an object of derision, may yours silence the critics.

Secret of Happy Families

Love the Ones You’re With

I love my life! Happiness is about loving the ones you are with and loving them right, as well as loving them the way you want to be loved in return! Sure , I am like most others when it comes to money and such always wanting more of that but when it comes down to what truly matters in this world – love I feel rich as they come.

Happiness in this blog, can offer only guidance and advice based on my own experiences that I hope will help you find your way to your own happiness.

Let’s begin by reviewing some facts from happiness researchers, who look past plastic surgery, fancy homes, and lots of money for the true source of happiness. Research points to specific concrete things that do in fact nurture internal, long-term happiness. That list includes the following:

Religion. Involvement in faith improves social and community ties, which leads to greater happiness.

Sense of humor. People with a hopeful outlook that demonstrates joy to others are less likely to be dragged down by negative events.

Free time. Activities that combine socializing, physical activity, and the need for some level of skill are shown to led to happiness.

Happiness Is Somewhere in Between

Some people can never be happy unless the conditions are what they consider to be absolute perfect. The job, the house, the money in the bank, their waistline, and hairline, kid’s school, you name it. They have to have all of the above to be happy at all. They think that some day when all this happens at once, they’ll find true happiness. And they’re always disappointed, whether they get it or not, since the list of requirements keeps getting longer.

Other people manage to find a little joy here and there-enough to keep them happy. They cherish and savor ach one of these moments that might be overlooked by someone else. And they’re always smiling like idiots-even though the rest of us can’t see any reason to smile.

I try hard not to be the first type, and I wish very hard that I could be the second type. But with all the demands of life. I’m just happy to be somewhere in between.

The Six Step Plan to Creating a Happy Home

When it comes to creating a happy home, most of us recognize the importance of behavior, diet, and health. But these important factors are only part of the equation.

Sometimes people think that if everyone in a home loves one another enough, happiness will just happen. Unfortunately, that’s not always true. Family members can love one another and still not get along. They may struggle to maintain pleasant relations until someone finally says or does something to tip the scales, and everyone blows up.

Happy families are families with happy parents and happy parents are parents who know the family is expressing those values that are most important to the parents. Here the Six Steps are explained, in brief:

Modeling. This is “do-as-I- do, not-as-I-say” step. It assumes that the real message of parent lies in her actions, not her words. Think a favorite teacher you had. How did she act? What did he model? What behaviors did she display that mean a lot to you?

Consistency. This step means always being the same person, no matter how tired or upset or angry you might feel. You can be mom who is angry, but not that raging monster Mom turns into when she gets mad. Consistency, in other words, means holding on to the self through thick and thin, on a 24/7 basis, 365 days a year. Research shows that children do best when their home life is consistent.

Reinforcement. This step involves acknowledging people in your family when they demonstrate or model desired behaviors. Reinforcement is a mild and casual form of attention. It’s present but not overbearing. Let’s say that helping around the house, obeying curfew rules, and working diligently on homework every day during homework time are desired behaviors.

Showing Rational Empathy. There is a subtle yet major difference between empathy and sympathy. Being sympathetic means feeling pity, while showing empathy means at least trying to understand why a person feels and acts as she does. In their book, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, authors Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish turn empathic treatment into an art form and show how the use of empathy can be a very effective way of dealing with kid’s unwanted behaviors.

Showing Care and Concern for Animals, Plans, and Nonliving Things in the home. You do not have to be perfect. You just have to place enough value on these objects to illustrate that they are special enough to be in your home. In your culture of planned obsolescence with homes full of objects purchased, tossed aside, and forgotten, and with food meant to taste good but not to nourish –this step is especially important.

Showing Care and Concern for All the People in the Home. This step is not as obvious as it may sound. In The Nanny Diaries, the young nanny can handle just about everything- the added duties, unpredictable hours, having to shop for her boss’s mistress, getting stuck with more than a dozen other children to care for during vacation, and other occupational burdens.

The six Steps can be done in any order and work best when used simultaneously, like instruments in an orchestra. Let’s take a family that lives by Six Step philosophy, all the people are given loving attention.

Characteristics of Healthy Families

In healthy families, the family is the stable source for sustenance, nurturance, growth, and development of each member. There is mutual support as members share in problem solving and decision making. There is also recognition that the family is dynamic and that each member will become part of another family system at some point in time.
Healthy families maintain flexible boundaries that support and encourage exchange between the family and the larger society. There is a defined power structure, which results from clear role definitions and appropriate rules. In healthy families, power is shared among members, within parental roles and appropriate with age. Also, there is an open communication system in which there is honest, clear, and direct communication. Finally, the healthy family is adaptable, flexible, and resilient; this allows for coping with changing demands.

The following specific characteristics or traits can be observed in healthy families

* Members interact with each other repeatedly in many contexts.
* Members are encouraged to grow and develop as individuals and members of the family.
* Members are enhanced and fulfilled by maintaining contacts with a wide range of community groups and organizations.
* Members make efforts to master their lives by becoming members of groups, finding information and options, and making decisions.
* Members support and maintain a healthy environment and lifestyle.
* Members engage in flexible role relationships, share power, respond to change, support growth and autonomy of others, and engage in decision making that affects them.
* Members support mastery of developmental tasks leading to interdependence, progressive differentiation, and transformation to meet the requisites for survival of the system.
* In their book “Assessment of Families,” Allender and Spradeley stated that members provide nurturance and resources for growth and sustenance.

Families are vital to promoting and preserving health. It is acknowledged that individuals can best be understood within the context of their family and the family can be essential in helping address individual health needs. Furthermore, the family itself may be healthy or unhealthy and may possess a number of risk factors that affect each member and the family as a whole.

A happy Home

 Just what is a happy home? This question, it seems to me, can be answered in one sentence: It is a home governed by unselfish love. There is only sin in the world and that is selfishness.

Eliminate that from the human heart and the earth would be an Eden. Eliminate it from a home and the home is a miniature heaven.

A man thinks he loves his wife and children because he works hard for their support. But if he constantly reminds them of the expense they are to him and seems to begrudge every dollar paid out to maintain the home, he spoils the happiness of that home by selfish thoughtlessness.

Thoughtlessness and selfishness are twins. Forgetfulness is the offspring of selfishness. The father and mother who forget that they were ever young, and who expect their children to settle down to the habits of middle age in their teens, ruin the home as a place of happiness for the family.

It is as impossible for the expanding nature of youth to be satisfied with uneventful days, as for steam to remain peaceful in a closed vessel. It must escape somehow, some way. If not by natural egress, then it produces an explosion. It was the inconsiderate parent who caused rope ladders to be invented. Children are not consulted before being brought into life. Something is due them afterward to make up for the discourtesy. Yet, for their own sakes, much should be expected of them also. In the most ideal homes I have ever seen, the children were maids of honor and pages, always ready to wait upon king father and queen mother. I have observed that such children love and respect their parents far more than those who are waited upon by their elders.

Nothing is more ruinous to a child’s happiness in life than to allow it to rule the home. It finds neither friend nor comrade, wife nor husband, ready to give it the same sort of servitude, and is consequently wretched.

 A happy home does not result from a large income. A large amount of love, plenty of good sense and a very little money will make a happy household. In a home where the husband becomes simply the father and thinks of his wife only as the mother of his children and of secondary consideration, happiness does not dwell.

A happy home, whether it consists of two or twelve members, is one where love presides at the board and watches over the couches; where each person loves himself last and considers the others first; where the irritable word is restrained and the affectionate thought given utterance, and where each is glad in laboring for the others comfort and relieving the other’s cares. I believe there are many of these homes in our beautiful world, and I rejoice in knowing a few such.

Tips on Home Insurance

Nobody likes to spend money for insurance. But if something could cause you a financial catastrophe, you should insure against that risk. The point of insurance is that you spend a relatively small amount of money to protect against losing a great deal of money. For example, if your home burns to the ground and it’s not insured, you could be out tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars.

Shopping for insurance can be a headache. You should make sure you have enough coverage, that you keep your coverage up-to-date, and that you get the best bargain.

Don’t be tempted to save money and get the last amount of coverage. This is your home! If you want to save money, don’t scrimp on the policy. Instead, get a higher deductible. Doing so can lower the cost of the premium.

It’s easy to put off getting insurance until the last minute. Then, because you have to have the policy at closing, you may just call the first company you think of. It’s better not to wait until the last minute. Shop around and get quotes from several companies. Rates can vary significantly from area to area and from company to company.

If you make a new purchase, keep your receipts and add the item to your inventory of possessions. Having receipts will help you if you have to file a claim. A standard policy will not cover business assets. If you work from your home, you may need additional coverage.

Check about changing the policy. Can you raise the coverage later? Some policies are tied to the Consumer Price Index and rise accordingly. You may have to pay extra for this feature.

Find out what is not covered. If the price in your basement bursts and you have water damage, is it covered? What about earthquakes (usually not covered)? Find out how damages are paid. You want the full replacement cost. If your roof is damaged, you want the insurer to cover the entire payment for a new roof not a partial fee.

Some Tips for Women Travelers

Each country and culture has their own views of what is appropriate behavior for women. Although you may not agree with these views, it is wise to abide by the local laws and customs to avoid problems. You must familiar with the laws and customs of the places where you wish to go.

Here are some tips for women travelers:

• Familiarize yourself with the area by studying maps before you get there. Avoid reading maps and guidebooks out in the street or in public areas; you’ll look confused or lost.
• If your hotel doesn’t offer information, ask a local female employee whether she walks in the area at night.
• In countries that aren’t as welcoming to large groups of women, consider having male guides or allowing male travelers to join the group.
• If you must ask directions, ask other women, families, or women with children.
• Consider renting a cell phone when you’re abroad, so you can keep in touch with other travelers or friends and family back home.
• Stick with a friend or groups. Even if you’re traveling solo, there’s safety in numbers, so join up with another traveler or group for parts of your journey.
• Take cultural cues from those around you, for example, if other women don’t make eye contact or smile at other when in a bar, don’t do so.
• No hitchhiking.
• Keep with you a small light and/or whistle, but avoid potentially illegal items like pepper spray. Use common sense and avoid dark streets and empty neighborhoods at night.
• Stay alert in crowded areas like marketplaces and public transportation. These are easy locations for pick pocketing and even sexual assault.

If you’re a women traveling solo, it’s worth doing some cultural research before you head off. Whatever your destination, it’s important to establish the status of women in local society, their cultural expectations and how they behave. Changing the way you dress and behave will not only protect you from harassment but also show respect to the people of your host country.

Tips for Saving Money on Business Insurance

Insurance companies base insurance premiums on statistical and specific evaluated risks. As the risks associated with insuring a particular activity, item or individual increase, so do the premiums charged. Of course, there are steps you can take to minimize your insurance costs.

• Obtain at least three quotes for each type of insurance you need and analyze each for the range of coverage, cost/protection value and reputation of the agent, broker and insurance underwriter. But remember: the lowest cost certainly does not necessarily mean the best coverage. However much you might save, if a policy does not properly meet your specific needs, it is not worth the savings.
• Contact local business associations. Most home business associations have business insurance programs in place for members at a much lower cost because of volume purchasing. Often the savings will pay for the price of membership.
• Contact your current insurance broker and inquire about special home business riders. The popularity of home business has increased so much in the past decade that many insurance companies now offer their policy holders home business rider options, which can be tagged onto their homeowners policies for less than the cost of separate home business policies.
• Consider raising your claims deductible, the portion of any insurance claim you pay before the insurance coverage pays the balance. As a rule of thumb, the higher your deductible, the lower your premiums. But do not make your deductible so high you would not be able to pay it in the event of a misadventure.
• Get creative and find out if there is an insurance agent or broker in one of the local business or barter clubs who would be willing to accept your products or services in exchange for decreasing or eliminating the cost of insuring your home business.
• Take the logical approach to home business insurance and prioritize your true insurance needs. You can add or increase insurance coverage as your business grows and you become able to pay higher premiums.

Start with the basic plans that will deliver the best protection for your family and clients now and then increase your insurance coverage as your means allow.

You can use the Insurance Coverage Worksheet to determine if you need specific insurance coverage for your home business and the costs associated with each type. In some cases, more than one insurance policy will be required to protect employees, partners or family members. In other cases, insurance policies may overlap in their coverage and you won’t need quite as many as you think. By using riders and buying various umbrella policies, you may be able to save money.

Business Travelers Insurance

Home business owners who frequently travel within and beyond their homes state, province or country should carry short-term business traveler’s insurance as needed or permanent coverage if frequent travel warrants. Business traveler’s insurance can cover common problems, such as trip cancellation and lost luggage, and more extreme problems, such as political abductions, extended hostage situations, false imprisonments, kidnapping negotiations and related costs, and political evacuation and repatriation expenses. A few of these are extreme situations, and the rise in global unrest, these extremes are becoming real threats for many travelers.

The Association of Business Travellers offer its members unique insurance options, including trip cancellation, political evacuation, repatriation and medical evacuation. The association’s website, abttravel.com, includes information about member benefits as well as general information about business travel. Many credit card companies and other business and industry association also offer members and customers travel insurance options at lower costs than can generally be obtained by individuals.

Tips on Travel Insurance

While many cruise passengers buy trip insurance in case of emergencies, that insurance doesn’t always offer the protection they need. For instance, some cruise ship companies may not be liable for injuries suffered during offshore excursions that are not affiliated with the cruise. This is one of the major reasons why you should buy travel insurance from a third party and not from the tour operator itself.

Compare the cost of the trip versus the cost of the policy. If you just bought a $200 airline ticket, is that worth covering? If you paid for it with a credit card and the airline ceases to operate before your flight, you’re already covered under federal credit laws by your own credit card company, since you bought or contracted for a service that you didn’t get.

Look for a policy with a travel insurer that is not only independent from your tour operator but also licensed by your state. Many cruise lines and tour operators offer insurance, often at lower premiums than those charged by outside insurers. But if the cruise line or tour company goes out of business, there may not be money to cover your claim.

If flight or cruise delays make you want to cancel, you may be out of luck. Read the fine print; with some policies, more than half of your vacation has also to be delayed before you can cancel and be covered.

And last but not least, remember full disclosure. If you have a preexisting medical condition and don’t list it on your policy application, your entire claim could be denied, even if your medical condition wasn’t factor in the cancellation.