POSITIVE THINKING AND BETTER HEALTH

Mind over matter is more than a scientific mantra. Better health through positive thinking is no longer a new age superstition. Scientists and members of the medical community are embracing the concept that thinking positively leads to behaving positively which in turn improves overall health. At one time, scientists refuted this idea in part because happiness and optimism are difficult to measure in scientific terms. However, today study groups as well as therapy sessions are proving that better health can be obtained through positive thinking.

Studies indicate that human thinking patterns affect human behavioural patterns. Therefore, better health can be achieved through positive thinking and positive behaviour, which in turns results in better health. Patients who remain in a positive mood can manage pain and serve symptoms as well as change their lifestyle more effectively than patients who are feeling down. This means thinking positive means positive health benefits.

Healthy people tend to eat healthy and take time to do healthy activities so it makes sense that healthy people also have healthy thoughts. The same is true with health care putting forward a positive attitude will help your body assert itself in a positive way. This means looking at the positive aspects of every situation. Instead of dwelling on the negative, a positive person tends to focus on the opportunities and solutions associated with various issues. In health care focusing on solutions is the easiest way to better health.

This technique influences health by decreasing stress, lowering blood pressure, reducing the risk of heart disease and even increasing life expectancy. Many groups, including cancer support groups and weight loss programmes, are incorporating therapies designed to encourage thinking positive into their regiments for better long-term results.

Medical professional have suspected that better health can be achieved through positive thinking yet studies are rally just now being conducted. The health benefits of positive thinking are that they empower the patient to behave positively as well as be proactive about their health. The mind cannot magically heal a broken leg overnight but it can allow the patient to feel good about the healing process, prevent the patient from feeling defeated and giving up on healing as well as make the time in recovery more pleasant and relaxing.

HUMAN RELATIONS SKILLS

1. Become genuinely interested in other people.
2. Smile
3. Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important
sound in any language.
4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
5. Talk in terms of other person's interest.
6. Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely.

AS THE DEEPEST URGE IN HUMAN NATURE IS THE DESIRE TO FEEL IMPORTANT.

Teenagers and Dating Violence

About 3 percent of 12- to 17-year-old girls are physically or sexually assaulted by a boyfriend or date, a U.S. study suggests. In interviews with a nationally representative sample of U.S. teens, researchers found that 2.7 percent of girls and 0.6 percent of boys said they had been the victim of serious dating violence -- including physical abuse, sexual assault or being threatened with a weapon.

The findings offer some insight into the prevalence of the problem, as well as some of its consequences, according to lead researcher Kate B. Wolitzky-Taylor who is now at the University of Texas at Austin. She and her colleagues at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, found that teenagers who said they'd been the victims of dating violence were nearly four times more likely to have experienced symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depression.

"Overall, these findings suggest that dating violence in adolescence is a significant public health issue to address, particularly for older adolescent girls," the researchers report in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

The study did not look at less-severe forms of violence, such as being shoved or slapped without injury, and it did not assess verbal abuse. So the percentage of teenagers in abusive relationships may be much higher.

The bottom line, according to the researchers, is that dating violence needs to be detected early -- by parents, doctors or school assessment -- and prevented whenever possible. Teaching middle school students how to handle conflicts in their relationships, for example, might help them later on to manage romantic relationships and possibly prevent violence, the researchers note.

In addition, Wolitzky-Taylor told Reuters Health that teenagers who have a friend in a violent dating relationship should be taught to report the situation to an adult.

The study also found that certain factors seemed to put teens at greater risk of dating violence -- such as a history of stressful or potentially traumatic events, like witnessing violence or losing a parent, sibling or friend. Older teenage girls were also at greater risk than boys or younger girls.

Wolitzky-Taylor said that "we might want to be more on the lookout" for signs of dating violence in teenagers with risk factors.

TEENS AND MISGUIDANCE

There are many kinds of teenagers in this world. There are those who are especially quiet and shy, those who talk a lot and like company, those who prefer to be with his/her usual friends, and those who are extrovert and like to mix around with new friends.

In the world today, we have teenagers who behave rowdily in public and resort to gangsterism/waywardness to solve their emotional problems. These are the teenagers who often end up committing crimes like shoplifting, robbery, sexual abuse and even drug abuse.

All the above-mentioned are crimes committed by these children as a result of peer influence that usually starts from school. Most of them (teenager) don’t see anything bad in what their peers are doing, as their level of thinking at this stage is usually low and they do not know they are on the wrong track except when being guided and counseled by teachers, parents, close relatives, caring adults or even the religious group they belong.

Most people, when they see or talk about these problem teenagers, they often feel that they are all bad people without proper education and feel that they are the inferior people of the country and thus do not like associating with them. However, most people have shown that they have a lack of emotional intelligence towards these problem teenagers, as they see no good thing in them, which sincerely, shouldn’t be addressed that way.

It is a very important to note that when a child is in the adolescent stage, it signifies a child’s growing up into an adult from an ignorant little kid. However, it is also the most dangerous period of time for any child. This is because if the child is not guided properly through his growing up days, he may be led astray by bad company to commit crimes of low degree like gangsterism, sexual abuse thereby leaving their live at stake to vulnerabilities.

As a child grows up to become a to-be adult, he/she starts having a mind of his/her own and makes his/her own sets of thinking. If this child is properly guided while he/she starts shaping his/her personal thoughts and beliefs, he/she will grow up to be a worthy citizen of our country. However, this is not always the case in all the teenagers. During a child’s teenage days, he/she will often face many personal problems but some teenagers will not reveal it to anybody except their closer friends. Due to this, if the parents of these teenagers do not do anything about it, like showing concern for the child and assuring him/her that it is okay to confide his/her problems with them, the child will instead turn to his/her friends. If his/her friends are those who are any other normal teenagers, it should be okay. However, these teenagers often prefer to stick with friends who face the same problem as them, that is, family problem that their parents do not bother about them and do not care about them.

These teenagers would often hang around with their so-called "good" friends. At the beginning, it seems all okay. However, when these group of friends are face with days of boredom, they will start thinking of wild ideas to have some fun. Their wild ideas, like vandalism (hooliganism, sexual destruction) and shoplifting, may seem perfectly alright and very fun to them, because they never tried anything like that before and may not be taught that these things are against the law.

As the days pass with them doing these "fun" stuff without getting caught, they begin to get bored of these as well. In this case, they start thinking up of even wilder ideas, for example, robbery or even extortion, prostitution. Some of these teenagers actually do these things without knowing that they are wrong. It is only when they get caught that they know it’s wrong, and when that happens; it is all too late already.

Though there are actually some teenagers who know they are committing crimes but they still continue doing it. The reason being that they have nothing to do and want a challenge and they believe that they will not get caught for committing crimes because they see themselves as grown and smart. Which becomes a part of them and they grow with it thereby leaving immoralities at the increase thereby exposing their lives to all vulnerabilities such as the popularly known HIV/AIDS and other Sexually Transmitted Diseases, which could be contacted mostly through sexual harassment and also unsafe use of sharp objects like knife, blade, needle and what have you.

In a nutshell, it is advisable for the elderly ones who are seen as the leaders to always lead right in speech and in behaviour to enable the teens emulate their good acts and listen to what they say.

So autograph yourself with excellence, for the LEADER leads and the YOUTH follow.

GUIDE/COUNSEL A TEEN TODAY AND MAKE A POSITIVE CHANGE IN THE WORLD.