Breathing is so essential to life that we cannot live without it for more than a few minutes! But while we all breathe, it takes conscious effort to breathe well.   [continued below picture]

When we spend our life in fear and sorrow our breath becomes very shallow and we stop using our full lung capacity. Even when you come out of the fear or the sorrow often the breathing does not rebound.

All of our major organs including our brain depend on our ability to take in oxygen. Every part of us works better when our breathing improves.

This week be conscious of your breathing. Take five minutes a day to breathe as deeply as you can. One way to increase your breath is to use your arms to help. On your in-breathe raise your arms up over your head and hold them up with your breathe for a count of 5, then slowly lower your arms while you exhale. If you do this regularly you will find your entire body improves in function, including your brain!

How many times has someone given you a compliment and you have responded with a rebuke? Tell the truth. How many times do people try to give something to you and you respond with anger, pain, or self-effacement?   [continued below picture]

Responding to gifts from others in these ways is entirely too common. If you do not respond this way to people trying to contribute to your life you are among a preciously small group of people. This is because receiving is hard to accept if you don’t believe you deserve it, or if the gifts come in the form of helpful tips about things in yourself you don’t want to acknowledge.

Receiving is truly one of the master tools of life. Receiving is your birthright. The first thing that happened to you when you were born was to receive: food, shelter, and hopefully love.

What you may not realize is that the people around you WANT to give to you, but they cannot if you won’t receive. And, truthfully, if you do not accept their gifts you are working against their mission to give.

This week listen to the people around you and acknowledge with grace and joy when others try to give to you. These may be physical gifts, but they may also be comments, ideas, introductions, or simple bits of love. What matters is that you loosen up on life and let it flow to you.

Communication is the basis of human relationships. And the better your communication is, the better the state of relationships in your life.

The key to good communication is authenticity. Most people, while they may not be able to completely know when a person is not telling the truth, they can usually tell “the ring of truth” when something is truly authentic.   [continued below picture]

This week, work on bringing a greater sense of authenticity into your communications. To do this, you must be in touch with that which is authentic within you. Spend 5 minutes each day looking inside yourself for the truth of your feelings and thoughts around some situation or person in your life you wish to make better.

Ask yourself, ‘How do I really feel?’ ‘What outcome do I truly want to create?’ ‘Where can I make an improvement in my thinking around this?’

When you find answers to some of these questions, begin to bring that newly found truth to the situation or person. Every time you open your mouth or touch fingers to keyboard, make a point of remembering your authentic feelings and let them mold your words. Let truth permeate your communications and see how the situation improves.

Faith is defined as accepting something as truth in the face of a lack of physical evidence. How many people have felt this powerful presence of faith to create miraculous events in their lives?  [continued below picture]

Unfortunately, many people feel that faith is only placed well when it is placed on a set of laws (dogma.) I offer a different approach. Instead of putting your faith in words, or ideas, put faith into just two things.

1) The presence of the divine in the world.
2) Your ability to hear, feel, and radiate this presence.

Faith in these two things will open a flood gate in your life for the laws of attraction and reciprocity to work for you consciously.

This week, think of someone in your life with whom you would like to create a deeper connection. Hold your faith in the things stated above when you are talking to that person. You will find your words changing to incorporate more love. You will find the other person responding to you with more compassion.

In other words, holding these two faiths will lead you to more love, greater peace and, dare I say it… a deeper connection with all that is.