Michael Cavallaro- Positive Thinking Another Perspective

Video: Positive Thinking Another Perspective

Michael Cavallaro, author of The 55 Concepts, A Guide to Conscious Living, offers a different perspective on what positive thinking is and is not.

Michael Cavallaro: Conscious Eating

Video: Author of the 55 Concepts Michael Cavallaro


Michael Cavallaro speaks on conscious eating and how that translates in to our belief systems.

Kindle: Amazon's Original Wireless Reading Device (1st generation)

Michael Cavallaro: Personal Insanity

Michael Cavallaro: Author of the
55 Concepts  

Video:This information is about how we create our own insanity within us. We in our beliefs, patterns and isssues create this insanity. The 55 Concepts, A Guide to Conscious Living, will assist in the uncreation of this personal insanity.
Live At The Troubadour [CD / DVD Combo]

Mastering the Art of Being Human Introduction

Video: Michael Cavallaro- Mastering the Art of Being Human Introduction

Being a human being is an art. All human beings are artists. You as the artist of your life are creating a painting, an existence, that has never existed in the way that it exists through you!

Michael Cavallaro on Understanding Yourself

Video: Michael Cavallaro
on Understanding Yourself






Have you ever wondered why you are like you are?  This is a discussion on beliefs, belief systems and programs.

Scientists Study the ABCs of Fear

There’s a trick to panic attacks,” said David Carbonell, a Chicago psychologist specializing in treating anxiety disorders. “You’re experiencing this powerful discomfort but you’re getting tricked into treating it like danger.”

According to the WASHINGTON (AP): Science is getting a grip on people's fears.

As Americans revel in all things scary on Halloween, scientists say they now know better what's going on inside our brains when a spook jumps out and scares us. Knowing how fear rules the brain should lead to treatments for a major medical problem: When irrational fears go haywire.

"We're making a lot of progress," said University of Michigan psychology professor Stephen Maren. "We're taking all of what we learned from the basic studies of animals and bringing that into the clinical practices that help people. Things are starting to come together in a very important way."

About 40 million Americans suffer from anxiety disorders, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. A Harvard Medical School study estimated the annual cost to the U.S. economy in 1999 at roughly $42 billion.

Fear is a basic primal emotion that is key to evolutionary survival. It's one we share with animals. Genetics plays a big role in the development of overwhelming -- and needless -- fear, psychologists say. But so do traumatic events.

"Fear is a funny thing," said Ted Abel, a fear researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. "One needs enough of it, but not too much of it."


Armi Rowe, a Connecticut freelance writer and mother, said she used to be "one of those rational types who are usually calm under pressure." She was someone who would downhill ski the treacherous black diamond trails of snowy mountains. Then one day, in the midst of coping with a couple of serious illnesses in her family, she felt fear closing in on her while driving alone. The crushing pain on her chest felt like a heart attack. She called 911.

"I was literally frozen with fear," she said. It was an anxiety attack. The first of many.

The first sign she would get would be sweaty palms and then a numbness in the pit of the stomach and queasiness. Eventually it escalated until she felt as if she was being attacked by a wild animal.

"There's a trick to panic attack," said David Carbonell, a Chicago psychologist specializing in treating anxiety disorders. "You're experiencing this powerful discomfort but you're getting tricked into treating it like danger."

These days, thanks to counseling, self-study, calming exercises and introspection, Rowe knows how to stop or at least minimize those attacks early on.
Scientists figure they can improve that fear-dampening process by learning how fear runs through the brain and body.
The fear hot spot is the amygdala, an almond-shaped part of the deep brain.

The amygdala isn't responsible for all of people's fear response, but it's like the burglar alarm that connects to everything else, said New York University psychology and neural science professor Elizabeth Phelps.

Emory University psychiatry and psychology professor Michael Davis found that a certain chemical reaction in the amygdala is crucial in the way mice and people learn to overcome fear. When that reaction is deactivated in mice, they never learn to counter their fears.

Scientists found D-cycloserine, a drug already used to fight hard-to-treat tuberculosis, strengthens that good chemical reaction in mice. Working in combination with therapy, it seems to do the same in people. It was first shown effective with people who have a fear of heights. It also worked in tests with other types of fear, and it's now being studied in survivors of the World Trade Center attacks and the Iraq war.

The work is promising, but Michigan's Maren cautions that therapy will still be needed: "You're not going to be able to take a pill and make these things go away."

When it comes to ruling the brain, fear often is king, scientists say.
"Fear is the most powerful emotion," said University of California Los Angeles psychology professor Michael Fanselow.

People recognize fear in other humans faster than other emotions, according to a new study being published next month. Research appearing in the journal Emotion involved volunteers who were bombarded with pictures of faces showing fear, happiness and no expression. They quickly recognized and reacted to the faces of fear- even when it was turned upside down.

"We think we have some built-in shortcuts of the brain that serve the role that helps us detect anything that could be threatening," said study author Vanderbilt University psychology professor David Zald.

Other studies have shown that just by being very afraid, other bodily functions change. One study found that very frightened people can withstand more pain than those not experiencing fear. Another found that experiencing fear or merely perceiving it in others improved people's attention and brain skills.

To help overcome overwhelming fear, psychologist Carbonell, author of the "Panic Attacks Workbook," has his patients distinguish between a real threat and merely a perceived one. They practice fear attacks and their response to them. He even has them fill out questionnaires in the middle of a fear attack, which changes their thinking and causes reduces their anxiety.

That's important because the normal response for dealing with a real threat is either flee or fight, Carbonell said. But if the threat is not real, the best way to deal with fear is just the opposite: "Wait it out and chill."

Want more info?

Check out this Harvard Med publication that pretty much sums up our lives, if your not consciously living.

Fear. . .or Fear Not

Brief History Lesson on the Closest Idea Out There To The Actual Truth

This is an excerpt from Educational Psychology Interactive by Huitt, W. (2007)


Abraham Maslow (1954)  attempted to synthesize a large body of research related to human motivation. Prior to Maslow, researchers generally focused separately on such factors as biology, achievement, or power to explain what energizes, directs, and sustains human behavior. Maslow posited a hierarchy of human needs based on two groupings: deficiency needs and growth needs. Within the deficiency needs, each lower need must be met before moving to the next higher level. Once each of these needs has been satisfied, if at some future time a deficiency is detected, the individual will act to remove the deficiency.

The first four levels are:
1) Physiological: hunger, thirst, bodily comforts
2) Safety/security: out of danger
3) Belonginess and Love: affiliate with others, be accepted
4) Esteem: to achieve, be competent, gain approval and recognition

According to Maslow, an individual is ready to act upon the growth needs if and only if the deficiency needs are met. Maslow's initial conceptualization included only one growth need, self-actualization.

Self-actualized people are characterized by:
1) being problem-focused
2) incorporating an ongoing freshness of appreciation of life
3) a concern about personal growth
4) the ability to have peak experiences

Maslow later differentiated the growth need of self-actualization, specifically naming two lower-level growth needs prior to general level of self-actualization(Maslow & Lowery, 1998) and one beyond that level (Maslow, 1971).

They are:
5) Cognitive: to know, to understand, and explore
6) Aesthetic: symmetry, order, and beauty
7) Self-actualization: to find self-fulfillment and realize one's potential
8) Self-transcendence: to connect to something beyond the ego or to help others find self-fulfillment and realize their potential

Maslow's basic position is that as one becomes more self-actualized and self-transcendent, one becomes more wise (develops wisdom) and automatically knows what to do in a wide variety of situations. Maslow recognized that not all personalities followed his proposed hierarchy. While a variety of personality dimensions might be considered as related to motivational needs, one of the most often cited is that of introversion and extroversion.

Reorganizing Maslow's hierarchy based on the work of Alderfer and considering the introversion/extraversion dimension of personality results in three levels, each with an introverted and extroverted component. This organization suggests there may be two aspects of each level that differentiate how people relate to each set of needs. Different personalities might relate more to one dimension than the other. For example, an introvert at the level of  Other/Relatedness might be more concerned with his or her own perceptions of being included in a group, whereas an extrovert at that same level would pay more attention to how others value that membership.

There is much work still to be done in this area before we can rely on a theory to be more informative than simply collecting and analyzing data. However, this body of research can be very important to parents, educators, administrators and others concerned with developing and using human potential. It provides an outline of some important issues that must be addressed if human beings are to achieve the levels of character and competencies necessary to be successful in the information age.

Inspirational Story Of The Month

From Darkness Comes The Most Beautiful Light- How Patrick Henry Hughes Will Change Your Life

     A young man sits at a piano and plays. The music filling the air is so beautiful, anyone hearing it knows the young man is a true master. Then, his voice starts in:

     "Clair de Lune... it means the light of the moon. 
     In the darkness of his eyes and the sweetness of his hands, when Patrick Hughes plays it is the music of possibility, and the sound of promise."
     The camera pans in a little closer and you suddenly realize something very special about Patrick that makes the music even sweeter.

What is it?
     Patrick was born without eyes and a painful joint condition that does not allow him to straighten out his limbs.  Patrick was crippled from birth.  Waking is impossible.  But, Patrick's possibilities are unlimited. When his father, Patrick John Hughes, was interviewed, he said he and his wife were devastated when their son was born.  "Why us?  We worked hard and played by all the rules.  We just didn't understand." Yet, the Heartbreak ended instantly. Before Patrick was even a year old, his parents sat him down at the piano.  That's when the magic started. When his mom or dad would hit a note, Patrick would find the exact same note on his first or second try.  If you don't think that is a gift, blindfold yourself and give it a try. By the time he was two, he was playing requests like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and You Are My Sunshine. Patrick's dad immediately "got it" and knew what the future held.  He said, "Okay, we're not going to play baseball, we're going to play music together. Let's see how far we can run with this."

     As Patrick grew, his musical ability went through the roof.  He performed in Middle School and High School and became pretty well-known for his unbelievable gift. Which is why, when he enrolled in Louisville University, the Associate Director of Bands at Louisville, Dr. Greg Gyne, asked Patrick to join the marching band. Patrick's response?  "Yeah right!"  How could a blind man in a wheelchair march in the marching band? - enters wonder dad. Patrick's father found a way.  He joined the marching band with him!  No, he does not play an instrument.  He goes to every class with Patrick, then every band practice.  And while Patrick plays the trumpet, his father wheels him around with the rest of the marching band. His father works the graveyard shift at UPS so he can spend the day with his son. When asked about his father's work day, Patrick said, "Poor thing- He goes to work at about 11 p.m. Monday - Thursday night, gets in about 6 a.m., goes to bed about 6, and sleeps until around 11."

     Patrick's dad's response?  "He's my hero.  I've told him before.  What he goes through has taught me that I don't really have any complaints.  I guess a father couldn't ask for anything more than the relationship I have with Patrick." Patrick:  "God made me blind and unable to walk- big deal.  He gave me the musical gifts.  I have the great opportunity to meet new people." If you would like to hear more about this story and see Patrick and his father in action.  Trust me, it's the best thing you can do with 10 minutes of your day.

 

Beyond Calcium: What Your Bones Really Need

 By, Dr. Michael F. Roizen
 Co-Author of 4 #1 NY Times Bestsellers including: YOU Staying Young. 

The Owner's Manual For Extending Your Warranty (Free Press) and
  YOU: BEING Beautiful. The Owner's Manual to Outer and Inner Beauty

    Are you careful about getting enough calcium and vitamin D to keep your bones young and strong? "Enough," by the way, means 1,500 mg of calcium and 1,000 IU of D (1,200 IU if you're a woman over 65) every day. Do you get that much? Fab-YOU-lous. Just don't stop there. There are at least five other nutrients you need for a sturdy skeleton. Yes, we mean YOU! Currently, a whopping 10 million Americans and 2 million Canadians have osteoporosis, the debilitating "brittle bone" disease. The higher percentage of Canadians probably reflects the lesser power of the sun to convert inactive vitamin D to active as you travel north -- and that form of the vitamin is essential for the incorporation of calcium into bone. And guys, you're not in the clear: Men make up 20% of all osteoporosis cases. Don't want to be part of these statistics? Here's what to eat enough of:

     Protein-Your bones may seem a bit dull, but they're actually super-busy, constantly breaking down and rebuilding themselves. One key nutrient your body needs to rebuild them is protein -- in fact, 22% of bone is made of it.  Your daily dose: One-half gram of protein for every pound you weigh. But don't go to extremes. A protein-heavy diet makes your blood more acidic. To neutralize that acid, your body steals calcium from your bones and dumps it into your bloodstream, but your bones end up paying the price. Get it from: Low-fat dairy products (they're full of calcium, too), skinless white meat poultry, fish, tofu, and beans.

     Potassium -Found mainly in fruits and vegetables, potassium also neutralizes acid. No wonder studies have found that people who eat lots of potassium-rich foods have stronger skeletons. Your daily dose: 4,700 mg from food (potassium supplements can be dangerous for your heart so don't take one without speaking with your doc first). Get it from: Bananas, oranges, baked potatoes, plums, raisins, and tomatoes.

     Vitamin K -Bone-building proteins with sci-fi-sounding names like matrix Gla protein, osteocalcin, and protein S all need vitamin K to do their job. Run low on K, and your risk of a fractured hip jumps by 30%. Your daily dose:  90 mcg for women, 120 mcg for men. Get it from: Leafy greens including broccoli, spinach, kale, and even parsley.

     Vitamin B12 -In 2008, a major study found that people who were low on B12 lost more bone than people with robust levels of this B vitamin. Found only in fish and animal foods, B12 helps keep bones in tiptop shape by controlling the amount of homocysteine in your blood. That's a good thing, since homocysteine has been linked to hip fractures . . . and heart disease, too. Your daily dose: 2.4 mcg Get it from: Fish, shellfish, lean beef, and low-fat dairy. If you're over 50, consider a supplement; B12 absorption decreases with age.

     Magnesium-Women with osteoporosis are often seriously short on magnesium, which makes up 1% of the minerals in bone. That may sound piddlin' but if you don't have enough magnesium, bone crystals enlarge, making your bones more brittle and prone to fractures. Your daily dose: 400 mg. Fringe benefit of taking a supplement: Magnesium also helps prevent constipation, which calcium supplements can cause. Get it from: Whole-grain cereals, brown rice, almonds, peanuts, and spinach.

     Loading up on healthy foods is key for a strong skeleton, but you may need to limit some others that can actually cause you to lose bone: Caffeine, Sodium, Cola (in addition to caffeine, compounds in cola extract or phosphoric acid may be responsible) Vitamin A supplements exceeding 2,500 mg (don't worry about vitamin A from foods; you can't get too much of it) Excess alcohol (while moderate amounts of alcohol have been linked to healthy bones, too much can weaken them). One more piece of skeleton-saving advice: In addition to eating a healthy diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables, don't forget a side of regular weight-bearing exercise. It will help you look, be, and feel younger.

        Mehmet and I released YOU: Being Beautiful:  The Owner's Manual to Outer and Inner Beauty.  Beauty doesn't as much reflect our vanity as much as it does our humanity and our health. So stay tuned for more tips on Staying Young, and on being more beautiful.

      About the author: Michael F. Roizen, M.D., is a professor of anesthesiology and internal medicine, Chief Wellness Officer, and chair of the Wellness Institute at the Cleveland Clinic.  Dr. Roizen can be heard on over 30 radio stations Saturdays from 5 to 7 pm.   For a listing just email a request to YouDocs@gmail.com 

     NOTE: You should NOT take this as medical advice.  This article is of the opinion of its author. Before you do anything, please consult with your doctor.

Here's Some Knowledge

The following is to be...

Used only at social parties, gathering , events, and networks like Facebook. Otherwise, it could be used against you unless you attempt to further your research on a topic.

 Did You Know?

The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time television were Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
Coca-Cola was originally green.
Everyday, more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury.
The Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.
Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.
City with the most Rolls Royce's per capita: Hong Kong
State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska
Percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28%
Percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%
Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33
Cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $6,400
Average number of people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000.
Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.
The youngest Pope was 11 years old.
First novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer.
The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.

A Simple Way To Increase Your "BRAIN POWER"

 Wouldn't it be nice? Wouldn't it make life so much easier?  Just imagine how much time you could save and how much more money you could make if you were just a little bit smarter.  Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do about your intelligence.  You were born just so smart, yet that's the way it is- maybe/maybe not.  While you may not be able to change the total amount of intelligence genetics has given you, you can drastically improve the way you use the mind you have.  Think of it as your brain is a muscle, and performs better with exercise.  And, the more exercise you have, the better the response and performance. 

     On the contrary, not exercising your brain leads to deterioration. Harmful drug use can also be devastating.  Recent Activity Is Crucial - You should continue to exercise your body if you want the healthy effects to last.  And, you must continue exercising your brain to be "smarter." So, how do you do it?

     First tip is easy, yet oh so difficult- STOP WATCHING SO MUCH TELEVISION  What's the big deal with watching TV?  Well, answer this quick question- How do you feel after watching a couple hours of the boob tube?  Energized or tired and drained- ready to take a nap?  How do your eyes feel?  Sharp and focused or droopy and fuzzy?  This is because television DRAINS your brain instead of working it out and re-charging it.  It's like you're a battery and the TV drained the power right out of you.  What's that?  You need the TV to relax?

Here's an easy solution, try reading a book or Kindle, or listening to audio CD. Reading actively engages your brain - so you get the positive effects of "exercising it" to make it more efficient... and... it helps you relax and re-charge your mental capacity. You don't have to read about Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity to improve your brain power, although that would definitely help.  Just reading an interesting story for 20-30 minutes every night can do wonders, especially one that has a lot of imagination to invoke your imagination.  Everyone who is an avid reader knows the book is always better than the movie.  That's because YOU conjure up the perfect image for characters and situations when you read the book.  In the movie, a Hollywood producer makes the choice for you and they can never do it as well as you can in your mind.

Author Suggestions :

By Khaled Hosseini        THE KITE RUNNER
By Douglas Adams         THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY
By Dan Brown                 Angels & Demons      
                                      The Da Vinci Code
                                      The Lost Symbol
By John Kennedy Tool  A Confederacy of Dunces
By Michael Cavallaro     The 55 Concepts



Might as well grab a book and start reading. If you don't like it, toss it aside and start another. The good thing about all this is - reading will quickly become a habit.  Just do it for 21 days and you will most likely pick an empowering habit that lasts a long time.