Learning to Meditate

People all over the world, for thousands of years, have been meditating. It is not necessary to pay the David Lynch Foundation who promotes TM meditation $1,000 to learn to meditate. Even though they tell you their meditation is different, it’s not. Meditation is meditation. It’s just a way for them to charge $1,000 for their “course” which I felt was disappointing and a lot of “nothing” and a total waste of my time and money. There is really nothing difficult to learn to meditate. And meditation is nothing mystical.

There are a lot of benefits from meditation. There are health benefits—from stress management to helping with high blood pressure, heart disease and depression. It’s also a good habit to practice in your everyday life. It helps center you.

Meditation is basically the process of using a word or phrase to help you focus (mantra) that you keep repeating in your mind while closing your eyes. You can chose any word or phrase that you should use every time you meditate. Or you can use the traditional OM mantra (idealmantra.com), which you chant. You are cutting through your brain’s “chatter” and finding focus. It is normal for your mind to wander while you are trying to focus and meditating. If this happens, and it will, just think of your mantra and continue.

So to begin, put the Insight Timer meditation app on your iPhone or iPad. Set it for 20 minutes or more if you wish (I like to also set an interval sound at 10 minutes so I know I am half way there).  Find a comfortable place to sit (I like sitting at my desk), start the timer, close your eyes and begin to repeat your mantra in your head or chant the OM mantra. Twice a day about the same time every day is optimal, but once a day if that is all the time you have is fine.

Happy meditating!

Reasons to Meditate

People all over the world, for thousands of years, have been meditating. It is not necessary to pay anyone to learn to meditate. Even though they tell you their meditation is different, it’s not. Meditation is meditation. It’s just a way for them to charge for their “course.” There is really nothing difficult to learn to meditate. And meditation is nothing mystical.

Daily meditation is good for stress—but it has many other benefits too…

Meditation isn’t just for people who live a stressful, fast-paced lifestyle. While daily meditation can provide a sense of peace and serenity, it also has many other health benefits. There are many ways to meditate, including mindfulness meditation (concentrating on your senses and the present moment), focused-attention meditation (centering around a fixed object), loving-kindness meditation (focusing on loving yourself, friends, strangers, and even people you dislike), and open monitoring meditation (being attentive to thoughts and sensations without judging or engaging them). Try one of these methods to start enjoying the benefits of meditation for yourself.

1. Meditation can help decrease symptoms of stress.

Because meditation enhances a person’s sense of peace and relaxation, it’s no wonder mindfulness meditation has been shown to decrease stress. In two separate studies of cancer patients and healthcare professionals, two groups that tend to have high levels of stress, daily meditation was shown to improve mood, decrease stress symptoms, and improve quality of life. Focused-attention meditation helps draw your mind away from things that cause stress and allows you to concentrate on a fixed object, your breath, or a repeated sound or phrase, such as “I am at meditating.”

2. Meditation can help manage anxiety disorders.

Mindfulness meditation has been shown to reduce anxiety symptoms, both subjective and objective. Other anxiety disorders, such as depression and panic attacks, also saw similar positive benefits. In a three-year follow-up of a small study, people who had experienced panic attacks reported they had fewer and less severe attacks after starting to meditate regularly. Loving-kindness meditation has been shown to increase positive emotions and decrease symptoms of depression. In many studies, these meditation benefits appeared over time, making daily meditation an important factor in decreasing anxiety disorder symptoms.

3. Meditation can improve the quality of your sleep.

Millions of people suffer from insomnia or other sleep problems, and stress is often the culprit. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to improve sleep by calming the mind, helping people take their attention off their to-do list or other stresses and instead focus on being fully aware of the present moment. Research has shown spending just 20 minutes in daily meditation can reduce sleep disturbances. And yes, sleep meditation can be practiced during the day, and you’ll still reap the benefits at night.

4. Meditation can boost cognition and immune function.

In a study involving just four sessions of meditation training, researchers assessed participants’ working memory, visual-spatial processing, and mood, among other factors. All these measurements were improved, and the participants also experienced reduced fatigue and greater ability to pay attention. Another study showed the practice of mindfulness meditation gave participants a better ability to multitask, greater focus on tasks, and lower stress levels while completing assignments that involve multitasking. Loving-kindness meditation has been shown to reduce stress-induced immune reactivity. Another study showed mindfulness meditation increased antibody production after participants received a flu vaccine.

5. Meditation can be a component of pain management.

Daily meditation has been found to reduce both pain intensity and unpleasantness. Research has shown meditation to reduce pain unpleasantness (how much it bothers you) even more than it reduces pain intensity (how strong the pain was). In one study, just four days of mindfulness meditation training helped reduce participants’ experience of pain. In that study, researchers noticed changes in brain function that causes the subjective experience of pain. Study participants reported that the open monitoring method of meditation was more effective at reducing pain than focused-attention meditation.

6. Meditation can make for healthier relationships.

Beyond personal improvement, daily meditation has been associated with higher relationship satisfaction. Studies have shown several links, including lower personal stress levels as well as a greater ability to respond well when stress occurs within a relationship. People who practice meditation also were found to have more positive perceptions of their relationships, both before and after conflicts. Meditation practitioners also tended to have better communication within their relationships, including an increased ability to control anger.

Also read my Blog post “How to Meditate”

Should You Change Your Name After Divorce

Changing your name after a divorce is always an option.  But changing your name should not be an impulsive decision, nor should any important decision made right after your divorce.

In most states you can request that the judge handling your divorce make a formal order restoring your former or birth name.  If your divorce decree contains such an order, that’s all the paperwork you will need.  You should get certified copies of the order as proof of the name change.  A court clerk will be able to give you all the details. Once you have this official documentation, you can use it to have your name changed on your identification and personal records.

If your divorce decree doesn’t have an order restoring your name, you may be able to modify it.  In some states this is possible even after the divorce is final. But even if your divorce decree don’t contain this order, you may be able to resume your former or birth name if you still have some proof of that name, such as a birth certificate or old passport. In most states you can simply begin using your former name and request that it be changed on all your personal records.

If you were not ready to make a name change at the time of the divorce, and now you are, it is neither too late nor too difficult or expensive.  You can download the form online and submit it to the County Clerk’s office with the small filing fee.  They may process the form for you on the spot.

Money and Your Relationship

Money is consistently the most common reason for conflict in a relationship. Couples with financial problems and debt have higher levels of stress and are less happy in their relationship than those who don’t.

You must be honest about your spending. It’s surprising how common it is for two people in a relationship to lie about how they spend their money. It’s called “financial infidelity,” and when it’s discovered, it represents a serious breach of trust in a relationship. Surveys suggest secret spending occurs in one out of three committed relationships. Shopping for clothes, spending money on a hobby and gambling are the three most common types of secret spending that can cause conflict in a relationship.

But it is very important that you should always have some financial independence. You should both have your own money to spend on whatever you want. This is “discretionary” money, and it should never be questioned how it is spent. It is your choice to make.

It is important in a relationship to do fun things—take a trip, go to dinner, see a show. This will help you have a better relationship.

Facebook and Your Marriage

Instead of communicating face to face, couples are sharing their feelings and marriage on Facebook. This could doom a relationship. Too much emphasis on social media can indicate that a couple is less concerned with how they feel and more concerned how their relationship looks to outsiders.

There is a growing trend, and not a good one, of sharing Facebook and other social media sites with your spouse. People should have their own personal space, even online. Every phase of your life should not be “we.”

Couples should have a face-to-face conversation about how they are going to handle social media, including posting photos.

Spending time telling your spouse your feelings directly and not on social media is the best way.

Decline in Divorce Rate

Even though you continue to read about the rising divorce rate, the divorce surge is over—it is no longer true that the divorce rate is rising, or that half of all marriages end in divorce. Actually, this has been true for some time.

Marriages in the United States are stronger than they have ever been. The divorce rate peaked in the l970’s and early 1980’s and has been declining since.

According  to data from Justin Wolfers, a University of Michigan economist (who also contributes to The Upshot), about 70 percent of marriages that began in the 1990’s reached their 15th anniversary. This is up from about 65 percent of those that began in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Those who married in the 2000’s are divorcing at even lower rates. If current trends continue, nearly two-thirds of marriages will never end in divorce.

There are many reasons for the drop in divorce. Some of these are later marriages and birth control, and marriage for love. The delay in marriage allows people more time to know what they want in a partner. Also, the fact that most people live together before marrying means that more unhappy relationships end in breakups instead of divorce. Some of the decline in divorce stems from fewer people actually getting married.

The decline in divorce is concentrated among people with college degrees. Unfortunately, for the less educated, divorce rates are closer to those of the peak divorce years. This causes rising economic aid and social inequality.

The Marriage Dilemna

There are many reasons why the marriage rate has dropped drastically in the United States, and one may be the student-loan debt. A person who has graduated from a private university and borrowed money to pay his or her tuition could owe as much as $200,000. After graduating many cannot get a job and have no choice but to move back home (if their parents will let them).

Many couples chose to live together with no plans to get married. They feel they should wait until they are financially stable to get married and have children. A recent Pew poll found that 39 percent of Americans feel that marriage is obsolete. A sad commentary on marriage.

Unwed Mothers

It used to be called illegitimacy—but now it is the new normal.  After steadily rising, the amount of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold—more than half the births in the U.S. are to women under 30 who are not married.  According to the Washington research group, Child Trends, the fastest growth of unwed mothers is in middle America. These women are in their 20’s, have some college education, but not a four-year degree.  If they were married then their household income would rise, which would mean no government benefits like food stamps and child care. No-fault divorce has signaled that marriage is not as fundamental to society as it once was.  College graduates still overwhelmingly marry before having children. Money plays a big part in why well-educated Americans still marry at high rates. They can offer each other more financial support and hire someone to help with running their household and caring for their children. Children born to married couples are usually better educated and emotionally adjusted.

Prenuptial Agreement

No one should get married without having a prenuptial agreement in place. A prenup is an agreement between two people that deals with the financial consequences if their marriage should end. It is used to protect your assets going into the marriage as well as future assets. It also protects you against premarital debts your future spouse may have.  Even if you have very few assets, it will protect you in many ways in case a divorce should happen to you.  It will also alleviate a lot of issues that come up in divorce and is in the best interest of both parties that you have one. If your financial situation changes or other things change, you can replace the prenup with a postnuptial agreement. If you don’t have a prenup or a postnup agreement, then you will end up in court having a judge decide on the crucial issues of your life including the division of property. More than one-third of adults said prenups make smart financial sense, according to a recent Harris survey. “The time to plan for a divorce is not when you’re in a state of hate,” says Suzie Orman. You can’t fully protect yourself against a marital heartbreak, but at least you can protect your assets.

The Marriage Dilemma

The latest statistics from the Pew Research Center are scary.  In 1960 nearly three-fourths of people 18 and older were married. In 2010 the number had dropped to 51%. Four in ten births were to unmarried women.  If this trend continues, within a few years less than half of the population in the United States will be married.

This will cause not only social problems, but also economic problems. The steadily dropping marriage rate contributes to income inequality. As marriage continues to become an occurrence of people better-off and better-educated, one has to wonder if the lack of financial stability contributed to the decision not to marry, or did the decision not to marry contribute to financial instability?

Growing up in a stable, two-parent household attributes  to educational achievement.  Educational achievement attributes to lifetime income.