Improve your marriage

Every marriage has its ups and downs. Conflict is a normal, even healthy, part of any relationship. What’s important is how you handle it. The rules for marriage are simple. No sudden moves, don’t crowd the other person, and keep all disastrous thoughts to yourself. Misery is the secret of happiness in marriage. Go make yourself miserable, and then come home. 

• Positive thinking can transform your life and your marriage immediately. Having a positive attitude can take practice, but the contagiousness of positivity can save your marriage.
• Positive thinking can reduce stress levels and may increase lifespan, improve cardiovascular health, lower depression levels, and even cut down on the common cold. 
• It’s basically impossible to be positive 100% of the time. But being mindful of your attitude is the key to making positivity an outlook you can attempt on the hardest of days.
• Showing gratitude and appreciating spouse is a great way to truly see all the things that they do for you. 
• The happier you feel, the happier your relationship will be, and the easier it will be to manage conflicts.
• Few people know your spouse as well as you do, so he or she will undoubtedly appreciate the power of your full attention. 
• Stopping to listen to your partner is a luxury you don’t have. Before you speak, take a minute to listen and empathize. Stop and listen to what your partner is saying. Showing empathy can improve communication.
• Steer clear of criticism, confrontation and hostility. Avoid verbalising critical thoughts, keep discussions from escalating, and don’t use absolutes. If a fight does start, try to change the subject, inject gentle humor, empathize or show your partner extra appreciation. Walk away and cool off for a while.
• If you find yourself in the middle of a heated argument, take 10 minutes to calm down and reconvene when the stress has left the room. Go for a walk, listen to a couple of your favorite songs, or agree to take a break together to put your disagreement aside. When you’ve both relaxed, you’ll be able to come back at your discussion with a fresh perspective.
• It’s tempting to blame your partner when you feel angry, disappointed, bored, betrayed or stressed out about your relationship. The next wrong step is expecting your mate as the one who must change for the relationship to improve. Change yourself. When you address your own flaws and seek the best in your companion, magic happens. Optimism increases. And you both feel motivated to change in ways that lead to even more joy.
• We get caught up in the daily chores and we feel like we don’t have time to have hobbies. May be you have hobbies, but they don’t involve your spouse. Put an activity on the calendar you can both look forward to. There are countless hobbies or vacation that you can start together that take very little time or money, but can strengthen your marriage considerably. 
• If you haven’t had a vacation in a very long time, plan a trip - even a one-night getaway counts. The much-needed time away from home can be refreshing and rejuvenating. 
• Here are little ways to make your spouse feel loved. Sit down and reminisce the photo albums of some of your favorite moments together. Revisiting some of your old wonderful experience to share and will bring about new memories for your long, happy future together.
• Be sure that compliments and thank yous are heartfelt and specific, and make eye contact when you smile. Speak less and listen more.

The couple that plays together stays together.

Marriage is not a contest; Never keep score.
In marriages, there are neither guarantees nor rules.

Religion - Swami Vivekananda Quotes

Swami Vivekananda was religious, but never a superstitious person. 

• All religion is to be based upon morality, and personal purity is superior.
• All religious superstitions are vain imaginations. 
• Beliefs, doctrines, sermons do not make religion.
• Believe in the doctrine, and you are safe.
• Circumstances can never be good or bad. Only the individual man can be good or bad. What is meant by the world being good or bad? Misery and happiness can only belong to the sensuous individual man.
• Despondency is not religion.
• Experience is the best source of knowledge. 
• First bread and then religion.
• Great is the tenacity with which man clings to the senses.
• In religion lies the vitality  of India.
• Intellectual assent and intellectual dissent are not religion.
• It is an insult to a starving people to offer them religion.
• Mere believing in certain theories and doctrines will not help you much. 
• No destruction of religion is necessary to improve the Hindu society.
• One religion cannot suit all.
• Religion is the greatest and healthiest exercise for the human mind.
• Religion requires hard and constant practice.
• Religion is a necessary thing to very few, and to the vast mass of mankind it is a luxury.
• Religion is the retaliation of Spirit as Spirit; not Spirit as matter. Religion is a growth. Each one must experience it himself. 
• Religion has no business to formulate social laws.
• Religion is not in doctrines, in dogmas, nor in intellectual argumentation;
  it is being and becoming, it is realization.
• Religion is manifestation of the Divinity already in man.
• So long as even a single dog in my country is without food,
  my whole religion will be to feed it.
• Talking is not religion.
• The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
• The goal of all religions is the same, but the language of the teachers differs.
• The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. 
• The ideal of all religions is attaining of liberty and cessation of misery.
• The man who is frightened into religion has no religion at all.
• The proof of one religion depends on the proof of all the rest.
• The very rich can understand truth much less than the poorer people. The rich man has no time to think of anything beyond his wealth and power, his comforts and indulgences. The rich rarely become religious. Why? Because they think, if they become religious, they will have no more fun in life.
• True religion is entirely transcendental.
• Try to be pure and unselfish— that is the whole of religion.
• We must not only tolerate each others, but positively embrace them, and that truth is the basis of all religions.
• We must not judge of higher things from a low standpoint.
  Everything must be judged by its own standard. 
• You are what you make yourselves. 
• You are religious from the day you begin to see God in men and women.

Selfishness is the chief sin, thinking of ourselves first. The unselfish man says, 'I will be last, I do not care to go to heaven, I will even go to hell if by doing so I can help my brothers.' This unselfishness is the test of religion. He who has more of this unselfishness is more spiritual and nearer to Shiva.

मातृदेबो भब पितृदेबो भब, दरिद्रतृदेबो भब, मूर्खतृदेबो भब

The poor, the illiterate, the ignorant, the afflicted -- let these be your God. 

Know that services to these alone is the highest religion ... Swami Vivekananda