How much of your thinking time is spent being upset or unhappy about something? What if all that time was spent in gratitude for what you have and for beauty around you? What if you were present enough in this moment to revel in fact that you can turn on a faucet and have hot water come out? That you have food to eat and a bed to sleep on? If you are reading this, it is likely that you have a computer, which means you have more than most of people on this planet.

Try this little experiment: find something of beauty - it can be as simple as a leaf, a flower, a photograph, a small work of art or top of a tree out your window. Now let yourself completely open to thing of beauty. Let yourself feel beauty in your body - in your heart, your solar plexus, in your stomach, arms and legs, in your forehead. Let beauty enliven your body and fill it with vitality. Breathe in beauty and feel your body’s reaction to it. Open to gratitude, thanking God for this experience of beauty.

Notice peace and joy it gives you to be in this moment with this simple object of beauty. What would life be like if you spent more moments like this, in present with beauty and with all you have? How much of your waking time is spent in this way?

Beauty and gratitude are soul foods. When you choose to open to them, you extend an invitation to love, peace and joy. This raises your frequency and opens door to your spiritual Guidance. Your Guidance is always here for you, helping you on your soul’s journey. Opening to beauty and gratitude, with a deep intent to learn about what is loving to you and others, will open you to your spiritual Guidance.

In Inner Bonding, there are only two possible intents at any given moment: intent to learn about love and intent to protect against and avoid pain. The intent to learn says that we want to learn about our own pain in order to understand what we need to do to be loving to our Inner Child and others; The intent to protect says that we want to avoid experiencing our pain at all cost. The child-adult is always in intent to protect and loving Adult is always in intent to learn.

The six-steps of Inner Bonding are:

1 - The willingness to become aware of our pain rather than protect against it with our various addictions.

2 - The conscious decision to move into intent to learn.

3 - Dialoguing with our wounded self to discover false beliefs and resulting behavior behind pain. Releasing anger and pain in appropriate ways.

4 - Dialoguing with our Higher Power to learn about truth and loving behavior.

5 - Taking loving action in behalf or our Inner Child.

6 - Evaluating action.

All parents needs to be in a process of healing themselves. It is particularly important for single parents to be in this process since they are primary role-models for their children. The more you heal fears and false beliefs of your wounded self, more loving you will naturally be with yourself and your children. Learning to utilize these six step throughout day, especially in times of anger, fear, anxiety and stress, will eventually heal false beliefs leading to these difficult feelings.