What is trust, and why is it important to us? We all know people who can't trust, who often expect things to go bad, ignore what they know, leap quickly into action without accessing the risk, and push others away. What can we do to develop trust?"Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement."
- Golda Meir
Trusting yourself can be a matter of listening to your own inner voice as a source of wisdom and strength. We can do this as long as doubt and fear do not get in the way, with questions like: what if I am making a mistake? What was I thinking? Why would anyone listen to me? Developing self trust can take a great deal of patience and self-forgiveness. We first must learn to minimize our regrets and see our mistakes as opportunities. We need to rely on confidence instead of approval.
"Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances" Ralph Waldo Emerson
By advising us to trust the ideas of men, not the events in their lives, Emerson expresses his belief that history was biography. This is a form of trusting others outside of convention, namely, trusting in the ideas of men and how they shape our lives.
"No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence." TS Eliot
Trust between people is the most widely studied form of trust. Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines trust as: an attitude that we have towards people whom we hope will be trustworthy, where trustworthiness is a property, not an attitude. For trust to be warranted (i.e. plausible) in a relationship, the parties to that relationship must have attitudes toward one another that are conducive to trusting one another. Moreover, for trust to be warranted (i.e. well-grounded), both parties ought to be trustworthy.
"I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish He didn't trust me so much." Mother Teresa
We see from this statement by Mother Teresa, that trust in something greater than ourselves, in a divine organization to life, or in God can work both ways. Having faith that everything will be alright, that tomorrow will come or that the Lord provides, are all examples of trust in creation.
What do YOU think?
Some say laughter is the quickest way to change our mood or thinking. How often do you laugh? Can you laugh at yourself? Do you intentionally seek laughter to change your mood? Is laughter of value in your life, or just a natural reaction to stimuli? Marshall Brain has studied laughter and tells us that the average adult laughs 17 times a day. When we laugh heartily, changes occur in many parts of the body, even the arm, leg and trunk muscles. Laughter seems to be produced via a circuit that runs through many regions of the brain. (This means that damage to any of these regions can impair one's sense of humor and response to humor, experts say.)
Behavioral neurobiologist and pioneering laughter researcher Robert Provine believes that laughter is a decidedly social signal, not an egocentric expression of emotion. In the absence of stimulating media (television, radio or books), people are about 30 times more likely to laugh when they are in a social situation than when they are alone. Humor that creates laughter in these situations may be:
The incongruity theory suggests that humor arises when logic and familiarity are replaced by things that don't normally go together.
The relief theory - an actual story or situation creates tension within us. As we try to cope with two sets of emotions and thoughts, we need a release and laughter is the way of cleansing our system of the built-up tension and incongruity.
In some respects laughter may be a signal of dominance/submission or acceptance/rejection. Consider the distinction between laughing with and laughing at someone.
The superiority theory comes into play when we laugh at jokes that focus on someone else's mistakes, stupidity or misfortune.
A speaker, in other cases, may buffer an aggressive comment with laughter or deliver a remark using "laugh-speak," a consciously controlled hybrid of laughter and speech. In this sense laughter may modify the behavior of others by shaping the emotional tone of a conversation.
Laughter, in its highest form, can also be intentionally used to uplift the spirits of others, as in the case of clowns and comedians who visit hospitals and hospices to bring smiles to those in most need of them. In the Presence of Humor: A Guide to the Humorous Life by Cy Eberhart is a systematic and comprehensive guide, written to increase your ability to find and achieve the humorous life by activating your comic viewpoint. It's designed to help you realize the spiritual strengths that come from experiencing the humor present in your living.
What do YOU think?
Hippocrates , the father of modern medicine, tells us that, "healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity." We all know that when we are not feeling well, we want to heal, and there are myriad resources available to us for help. But what is healing? How do we choose the best resource from the overwhelming amount of information available?Harvard Medical School online dictionary defines healing as:
1 : to make sound or whole especially in bodily condition
2 : to cure of disease or disorder <heal injured tissues>
intransitive verb
1 : to return to a sound state
2 : to effect a cure
The National Cancer Institute online dictionary defines cure as: 
To heal or restore health; a treatment to restore health.
It may be that to understand healing, we need to understand illness. Dr. Bernie Siegal, MD and author of several books on health and healing says, "There is no incurable disease from which someone has not recovered, even at the threshold of death." If one person has the innate capability to overcome a particular disease, the all of us must have that same ability.
In his book, Healing Crisis, Dr. Bruce Fife tells us that the symptoms of the healing crisis are the same as those of an illness. For this reason, the healing crisis is greatly misunderstood and often believed to be an illness that must be treated to restore health. The healing crisis is a positive event, a sign of improving health. According to
The "life force," often called "energy" in Western culture, is the substance that permeates and bonds all. It is sometimes referred to as the "vital force." In Energy healing is based on the belief that our "life force" creates energy fields that are unbalanced during emotional or physical disease. Because our energy fields are part of an interconnected whole, the use of focused intention by one individual can aid in the health and well being of another. Many individuals use their own individual means of directing their intention to heal.
An interesting feature of energy healing is that it may be performed over distances of thousands of miles. The "life force" claimed to be transmitted by energy healers does not have the properties of any known form of energy., comparable practice to energy healing that is used frequently in the West is prayer. A 1996 survey showed that 82 percent of Americans believed in the healing power of prayer. A survey of patients in American Cancer Society support groups for breast cancer found that 88 percent experienced beneficial effects of spiritual and religious practice.
In an effort to incorporate Western sciences' need for physical proof, studies have been performed on the impact of energy healing on living, isolated cells as opposed to human subjects. According to the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in the 
Indeed there is growing interest and evidence for alternative health exploration based on a "life force," wholeness, and interconnections. The National Institutes of Health has established a Center that is devoted to research in the area of Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The budget is growing rapidly and research into areas such as energy healing and prayer is being encouraged. Several large clinical trials, especially on the effects of prayer, are now underway in major academic institutions across the
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