Life On Earth – Page 2 – University of Life

Love Languages

by Shaun Roundy

Explanations about how love works are all fine and good, but ideas don’t make much difference until you put them into action. That’s what love languages are all about.

Love languages is an idea popularized by Gary Chapman’s books that identify five specific ways that people show love, based on what they value. Some people give gifts, others say nice things, share quality time, do acts of service, or communicate affection through physical touch.

When two people don’t speak the same language, it’s helpful to observe how the other person expresses love. Then you can both notice more readily the messages being sent, and try expressing your affection in those terms so your partner will more clearly understand how you feel.

It’s also important to communicate – let your partner know how you communicate love and how you like to receive it. Otherwise you may totally miss the messages being sent and feel unappreciated for your efforts even though each of you may be doing your best.

Love languages reveal the method by which people prefer to express love, but that’s only the first step. How often and thoroughly those messages are spoken is even more important.

For example, if you understand love via gifts, do you prefer expensive ones or thoughtfully chosen ones more?

If you appreciate quality time, what does that mean to YOU? Do you prefer quality conversation, exciting adventures, or creating something together? How much does constantly checking your phone detract from that time?

If physical touch is your thing, then how long your massage lasts speaks volumes.

Your words and actions when you’re not communicating love also matter immensely. If one minute you say, “I love you!” (whether with words, gifts, touch, etc.) and the next minute, you’re criticizing, complaining, being angry or impatient, etc., those negative messages will undermine and can entirely erase your good intentions.

SLIDER

Where do you fall on the “Love Languages” love slider?


1: If people don’t love me the way I want and expect, then I’m blind to whatever they’re trying to communicate. I don’t believe they really love me, or they’re not very good at it!	3: If someone really loves me, they’ll learn to love my love language best. If they don’t, I’ll find a new relationship where love doesn’t require so much effort!	5: It’s so sad to speak separate love languages! We’ll never fully understand or appreciate each other, and it’s annoying to have to try!	7: Speaking other love languages is sometimes inconvenient, but it’s important to try, and it’s worth it!	10: I like my love languages best, but becoming bilingual sounds like a fun challenge.

11. Going to extremes: In your desire to make the right impression and please someone, don’t deny or lose yourself. Don’t forget who you are and become someone else in order to please someone so they’ll love you back and you can feel secure. You may fool them for a while, but

FOR DISCUSSION

How do you most often show love? How do you like to be shown when someone cares for you?

Do you think that your love language is the best one?

How do you think speaking different love languages would affect the quality of a relationship?

HOMEWORK

Look around at how people express love and affection and see if you can figure out their love language. Notice whether they send you any messages of love in their language.

Once you have a guess regarding someone’s love language, try speaking it. Make it a fun challenge, as if you were learning another language in preparation for an overseas vacation. See how fluent and comfortable you can become!

If you’re in a relationship, ask your partner what they like best that you do for them.

Pivotal Moments: Confidence

by Shaun Roundy

blondeprofilewind What moments have changed your life’s direction, for better or worse? What events shaped your future and turned you into the person you are now? Have you ever created major changes in life without some external impetus to force your hand?

What if you could change anything about your life right now? What would you change? Think it over!

One of the most important traits you can develop is confidence. It makes you more attractive. It gives you the courage to live your dreams. It smooths out dozens of small bumps in the road of life and helps you progress much faster toward your inherent potential.

With that in mind, here are a few stories of confidence-related pivotal moments to help you process the concept. PLEASE SHARE your own pivotal moments in the comments sections below! Everyone would love to hear and learn from them.

A Scout is…Confident?

I went to scout camp the summer before 9th grade, and sitting around the fire one afternoon, Coy started spitting watermelon seeds at me as he ate. Coy was one of the “cool” kids and I was not. After several seeds, something in me snapped – something small at first, then bigger. “If you spit one more seed at me,” I warned, “I’ll beat the crap out of you.” Coy calmly took another bite of melon, chewed, then spit a seed at me. Read more “Pivotal Moments: Confidence” →

Are You Really In Love?

by Shaun Roundy

Spring is in the air, and with it, people all around you are falling in love – including yourself.

Lucky you! Congratulations! The ecstatic bliss you now feel is the most joyous experience you’ve ever known. The sun shines brighter, birds sing more sweetly, and you’re about to live happily ever after!

But hold on for just a second – because you just realized how utterly sappy all that sounds to everybody else who’s not in love, and how much you sound like a Disney princess, which you know – or at least you used to know – is not exactly realistic.

So which is it? Are you in love or aren’t you? Will you live happily ever after or are you setting yourself up for heart break? Does True Love exist or is it only an appealing myth? You’d like to know for certain so you can plan accordingly.

Okay, great, let’s find out! Read more “Are You Really In Love?” →

Spirit & Peace

by Shaun Roundy

Spirituality means many things to many people, yet most spiritual traditions have much in common regarding the experience of spirituality, even when beliefs and interpretations differ. One such commonality is the Principle of Peace.

We live our lives much like a sailboat on the ocean. We may think we’re in control of our lives, yet most everything around us – the sky and sea shifting above and below – remains largely a mystery. Winds and currents shove us this way and that. We can set our sails and grab the tiller to steer a course, but storms and doldrums can upset the best laid plans.

Yet despite the inherent uncontrollable nature of life, and even in the midst of the storm, our spirituality can bring us immense peace.

I once took a 5-week, 2,500 mile ocean voyage from Aruba to Acapulco as first mate aboard a 53′ sailboat. While crossing the stormy Gulf of Tehuantepec, a gale blew for 14 hours and several times, the 50 knot winds and 15′ waves flipped our boat on its side.

To make a long story short, I was getting worried and said a little prayer. I then instantly knew two things – that the storm would continue for a while yet, and that we’d make it through just fine. From that point on, my worries ceased completely.

How does this work? How can we obtain peace and joy even when the world around us is in turmoil?

For one thing, the Divine, no matter what you call it – the Creator, a Heavenly Father and Jesus, the Universe, or otherwise – has such power and wisdom that from its perspective, everything is okay, or at least it will turn out okay in the end.

Our most difficult challenges and trials could be compared to a child who sees life as most certainly not okay when it has to go to bed or when you don’t buy it candy. As an adult, you know it’s not the end of the world.

As adults, our trials seem just as serious as they did as children, and we continue to lack an even more advanced perspective to evaluate them from. The Divine certainly doesn’t enjoy watching us suffer, but from its perspective, our struggles are often no more serious than the short-sighted child’s.

When we make a connection with the Divine, which forms the basis of personal spirituality, we often capture of glimpse of that viewpoint and experience a portion of its peaceful perspective. With experience, we learn to trust that assurance, and we continue forward with greater courage and hope even when all we see are storm waves from horizon to horizon.

Homework: seek a connection with the divine, and when you attain it, reconsider your sense of self and perspectives on the world around you in light of that peace. What does it teach you about ultimate reality? How does it change your perspective and encourage you to trust that everything is ultimately okay despite temporary challenges?

Inspiring Life Quotes Galore!

by Shaun Roundy

In case you haven’t noticed, I recently opened up my quotes database for everyone to enjoy. Find & enjoy it at quotes.UofLIFE.com

I started collecting my favorite quotes to have them on hand for writing projects, or when preparing for workshops or speaking engagements, and to memorize them so I can spout them off in the middle of any casual conversation.

But I soon I caught myself skimming through them most mornings, just to remind me of their great wisdom, and I noticed myself learning from them more deeply than ever. I recommend that you do the same!

So bookmark that page and follow us on Twitter, where we now tweet all new quotes. I’ll keep collecting quotes as I read, research, surf the web, and whatever.

Here’s my favorite addition from this morning: “I have no use for people who have learned the limits of the possible.” – Terry Pratchett, RIP.

Ruthless Self Love

by Shaun Roundy

Today’s podcast discusses overcoming self doubt and insecurity and features this quote from Don Miguel Ruiz: “Love is ruthless; it doesn’t feel sorry for anyone, but it does have compassion.”

We discuss how this reveals an important way to love yourself by not putting up with your brain’s silly doubting games and swap that in for unapologetic belief in yourself and devotion to your well being.

Kilgore Trout-Style Life Transformation

by Shaun Roundy

The following software-translated transcript is rough – I’ll clean this up later:
Welcome to this university life and RapidEnergyHealing.com podcast. Today we’re going to talk about your true identity, Read more “Kilgore Trout-Style Life Transformation” →

Ephemeral Art

by Shaun Roundy

This summer, people started building crazy cairns (rock piles that mark a trail) all along the bike trails in the mountain foothills above my home.

At first they would simply gather rocks and stack them tall; then as months wore on, they grew more elaborate. I started adding sticks for arms and turning them into cairn men. Sometimes others would remove the sticks or knock over the piles, but someone else would always rebuild them.

Now summer has passed, most of the leaves have dried up and dropped from the sky, and despite a long, gorgeous autumn, the snow can’t be too far away. I’ll still run the trails, but the cold won’t let me linger the way I’ve enjoyed for so many months.

Thanks to the change of seasons, every time I pass a cairn, I think about how ephemeral this world is – nothing is built to last. The only thing that will ever endure is the fleeting moment of “now,” and that truth ought to affect your perspective and priorities. Read more “Ephemeral Art” →

Heal Your Mind

by Shaun Roundy

UPDATE: the book is finished and you can find it here: Heal Your Emotions

I’ve been working on writing my next book, which will be one of the best and most important things I’ve ever created. It’s (tentatively) called Basic Intuitive Energy Healing ::: Heal Your Mind ::: A Scientific Approach to Speaking your Brains’ Languages and Turning Pain into Power and it includes over 50 simple yet highly effective healing techniques that you can use on yourself (or if you’re already a skilled energy healer, you can apply them to others for good effect).

I’ve been wanting to write it for about ten years, but the time wasn’t right until now. In hindsight, the reason is obvious – I thought I knew a lot ten years ago, and I did, but I’ve learned so much just in the past year that the book will now be far more complete and useful than it would have been then.

Here’s the introductory story which gives a general idea of what the book is about, and stay tuned as I reveal more details soon!

Once upon a time, you found yourself wandering through a deep, dark woods. You didn’t know exactly where you were headed, but hurried along the path just the same, hoping to escape the unpleasant shadows and the too-cool breeze that made you wrap your arms tightly around yourself and shiver.
Out from the darkness came distant, unpleasant voices in faint, scarcely-audible whispers. “You’re not good enough,” they said, “why even try? You’re a fool if you think you’ll ever be happy again!”
“Nobody loves you,” others murmured. “You’re all alone. You’ll always be alone.”
You pretended to ignore the voices as you hurried along, but deep inside, you knew they were right. Read more “Heal Your Mind” →

Thank a Teacher

by Shaun Roundy

I recently came across this inspiring letter written by a new teacher and she gave me permission to share it here:

So, I’m a brand-new 7th grade English teacher. I work in a school where something like 80% of the kids live below the poverty line. Many of them have families who are barely making it. Many of them wear the same clothes to school multiple days in a row. For many of them, school lunch is the only meal they will eat that day. Many of their parents struggle with drugs, alcoholism, or are incarcerated.

And here I am, some 25-year-old white girl who saw Freedom Writers and wanted to make a difference. Want to know a secret? Some days, I feel like I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. Read more “Thank a Teacher” →

Who Are You and Why Does it Matter?

by Shaun Roundy

Today’s brief podcast discusses how to find out who you REALLY are and why it matters so much. This is seriously one of the most valuable lessons I’ve ever learned.

If you give this a try, I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments sections below!

Search and Rescue on the Radio

by Shaun Roundy

NPR’s All Things Considered interviewed me last week about the emotional toll on search and rescue members when searches must be called off. Listen to it here:

http://www.npr.org/2014/05/04/309075885/calling-off-the-search-the-emotional-toll-of-search-and-rescue

Toronto’s AM640 Talk Radio interviewed me about the same topic this morning and I’ll post a link to that as soon as it appears on their site.