Toxic Personalities

Although we like to think that the people in our lives are well-adjusted, happy, healthy minded individuals, we sometimes realize that it just isn’t so.  Personally, I’ve had moments where I’ll be skipping through my day, happy as can be, thinking life is grand and BAM, I’ll be blindsided by someone who manages to knock the happy wind out of my sails.  Sometimes it is easy to write it off and other times, not so much.

Maybe you are a positive person, but when you are around a certain individual, you feel negative.  Or, maybe you have an idealistic view of the world and when you are with certain people, you are made to feel silly, unrealistic or delusional.  Or, maybe you pride yourself in being completely independent and in control of your life, but when you are around a certain family member, you regress into a state of childhood.

Some of these situations, and yes, these people, can have a tremendously negative impact on our lives.  And, although we are all human and have our ‘issues,’ some ‘issues’ are quite frankly, toxic.  They are toxic to our happiness.  They are toxic to our mental outlook.  They are toxic to our self-esteem.  And they are toxic to our lives.  They can suck the life out of us and even shorten our lifespan.

Here are the worst of the toxic personalities out there and how to spot them:

1. Manipulative Mary: These individuals are experts at manipulation tactics.  Is a matter of fact, you may not even realize you have been manipulated until it is too late.  These individuals figure out what your ‘buttons’ are, and push them to get what they want.<
* Why they are toxic: These people have a way of eating away at your belief system and self-esteem.  They find ways to make you do things that you don’t necessarily want to do and before you know it, you lose your sense of identity, your personal priorities and your ability to see the reality of the situation.  The world all of a sudden becomes centered around their needs and their priorities.

2. Narcissistic Nancy: These people have an extreme sense of self-importance and believe that the world revolves around them.  They are often not as sly as the Manipulative Marys of the world, but instead, tend to be a bit overt about getting their needs met.  You often want to say to them “It isn’t always about you.”
* Why they are toxic: They are solely focused on their needs, leaving your needs in the dust.  You are left disappointed and unfulfilled.  Further, they zap your energy by getting you to focus so much on them, that you have nothing left for yourself.

3. Debbie Downers: These people can’t appreciate the positive in life.  If you tell them that it is a beautiful day, they will tell you about the impending dreary forecast.  If you tell them you aced a mid-term, they’ll tell you about how difficult the final is going to be.
* Why they are toxic: They take the joy out of everything.  Your rosy outlook on life continues to get squashed with negativity.  Before you know it, their negativity consumes you and you start looking at things with gray colored glasses yourself.

4. Judgmental Jims: When you see things as cute and quirky, they see things as strange and unattractive.  If you find people’s unique perspectives refreshing, they find them ‘wrong’.  If you like someone’s eclectic taste, they find it ‘disturbing’ or ‘bad’.
* Why they are toxic: Judgmental people are much like Debbie Downers.  In a world where freedom rings, judgment is sooo over.  If the world was a homogeneous place, life would be pretty boring.  Spending a lot of time with these types can inadvertently convert you into a judgmental person as well.

5. Dream Killing Keiths: Every time you have an idea, these people tell you why you can’t do it.  As you achieve, they try to pull you down.  As you dream, they are the first to tell you it is impossible.
* Why they are toxic: These people are stuck in what is instead of what could be.  Further, these individuals eat away at your self-esteem and your belief in yourself.  Progress and change can only occur from doing new things and innovating, dreaming the impossible and reaching for the stars.

6. Insincere Illissas: You never quite feel that these people are being sincere.  You tell a funny story, they give you a polite laugh.  You feel depressed and sad and they give you a ‘there, there’ type response.  You tell them you are excited about something and you get a very ho-hum response.
* Why they are toxic: People who aren’t sincere or genuine build relationships on superficial criteria.  This breeds shallow, meaningless relationships.  When you are really in need of a friend, they won’t be there.  When you really need constructive criticism, they would rather tell you that you are great the way you are.  When you need support, they would rather see you fail or make a fool of yourself.

7. Disrespectful Dannys: These people will say or do things at the most inappropriate times and in the most inappropriate ways.  In essence, they are more subtle, grown up bullies.  Maybe this person is a friend who you confided in and uses your secret against you.  Maybe it is a family member who puts their busy-body nose into your affairs when it is none of their business.  Or maybe, it is a colleague who says demeaning things to you.
* Why they are toxic: These people have no sense of boundaries and don’t respect your feelings or, for that matter, your privacy.  These people will cause you to feel frustrated and disrespected.

8. Never Enough Nellies: You can never give enough to these people to make them happy.  They take you for granted and have unrealistic expectations of you.  They find ways to continually fault you and never take responsibility for anything themselves.
* Why they are toxic: You will spend so much time trying to please them, that you will end up losing yourself in the process.  They will require all of your time and energy, leaving you worn out and your own needs sacrificed.

All of these personalities have several things in common.

1) the more these people get away with their behavior, the more they will continue.

2) Unfortunately, most of these people don’t see that what they do is wrong and as a result, talking to them about it will fall on deaf ears, leaving you wondering if you are the crazy one.

3) Most of these people get worse with age, making their impact on you stronger with time.

Frankly, life is too short to spend your time dealing with toxicity.  If you can, avoid spending mucho time with people who are indicative of these behaviors and you’ll feel a lot happier. Have you encountered these personalities?  What have you done?  Any personalities you would add?

*by Brett Blumenthal

The Long Weekend

We spent the long weekend visiting an old town where I spent five years of my childhood (and early teens). It’s been a long time since I visited that place. It was just too bad though that we were unable to visit the compound where we used to live and the school I went to during our residence there. Security is very strict, and since most of the people we know who lived there before have moved on to other places as well, so we didn’t have any excuse to use to get in and visit.

It would have been nice to go around the housing once more and let our kids run across the vast fields of grass (and golf course surrounding the houses) like we used to do when we were kids.  It would have been a great photo opportunity and relive and take photos of memorable places of my childhood… Yes, all were would haves.

Anyway, we still had fun visiting Mt. Samat and swimming in a newly opened resort.

Web’s Most Dangerous Keywords

Which is the most dangerous keyword to search for using public search engines these days?

It’s “screensavers” with a maximum risk of 59.1 percent, according to McAfee’s recently released report “The Web’s Most Dangerous Search Terms“.

Upon searching for 2,658 unique popular keywords and phrases across 413,368 unique URLs, McAfee’s research concludes that lyrics and anything that includes ‘free” has the highest risk percentage of exposing users to malware and fraudulent web sites. The research further states that the category with the safest risk profile are health-related search terms.

Here are more findings:

• The categories with the worst maximum risk profile were lyrics keywords (26.3%) and phrases that include the word “free” (21.3%). If a consumer landed at the riskiest search page for a typical lyrics search, one of four results would be risky
• The categories with the worst average risk profile were also lyrics sites (5.1%) and “free” sites (7.3%)
• The categories with the safest risk profile were health-related search terms and searches concerning the recent economic crisis. The maximum risk on a single page of queries on the economy was 3.5% and only 0.5% risky across all results. Similarly, even the worst page for health queries had just 4.0% risky sites and just 0.4% risk overall

This isn’t the first time McAfee is attempting to assess the risk percentage of particular search terms, as the company did similar studies in 2006 and 2007. And whereas the research attempts to raise awareness on malicious practices applied by cybercriminals, it also has the potential to leave a lot of people with a false feeling of security since it’s basically scratching the surface of a very dynamic problem.

*taken from an article in zdnet.com
*full article here

Parenting 101

Our parish sponsored a four-part series of free parenting talks. We were able to attend the first two sessions, missed the third and hoping would be able to attend the last one on May 23.

The nice thing about the parish leading such an activity is the talks cover both spiritual and psychological aspects on parenting. The first part of each talk is delivered by a priest and gives a biblical basis as to how we should raise our children in relation to the theme of the talk, while the second part is delivered by a lay person who talks about the topic from a socio-psychological perspective.

One of the things we discussed and learned were general personality traits of a child based on their birth order. Of course, there are always exceptions to the general rule.

*I seemed to have missed taking notes on the qualities of an eldest child… where was I?

Only child - “strives to get his own way, be the center of attention”
+ Creative
+ Often acts very grown-up
+ Positive peer relationships as an adult
- May be pampered, spoiled, self-centered
- Relies on service from others, rather than being self-reliant
- Feels incompetent (adults are more capable)

Second child – “strives to catch up or overtake”
+ Sociable
+ Puts forth best effort
+ Develops abilities lacking in oldest child
- May rebel
- Can become “bad” child if oldest is “good”
- May be uncertain of abilities if oldest is successful

Middle child – “strives to make life fair”
+ Adaptable
+ Concerned with justice
+ Knows how to get along with all kinds of people
- Feels “squeezed” — may push others down to elevate self
- May be “problem child”
- Feels doesn’t have place

Youngest child – “strives to get service”
+ Knows how to influence others
+ Charming
+ Friendly
- May be manipulative
- Expects others to take care of his or her responsibilities
- Feels inferior or overtakes other siblings

How true is this based on your own birth order among your siblings or among your kids?

Go Adam!

Adam Lambert

Although I have not been able to religiously follow this whole season of American Idol (unlike the past seasons), I have seen enough to rally for a favorite contender.

Yes, it’s Adam. I don’t like it that he’s so gay (and at times theatrical), yet I still find his performances great compared to the other contestants.

Earlier in the season, I was rooting for Danny Gokey who was booted off last week.  But as the show progressed, I was slowly getting bored with Gokey and I found Adam consistently delivering exceptional performances.

Being a fan of  Tears for Fears and a lover of the song “Mad World”,  Adam’s rendition of the song has become one of my favorites. With that performance, he had definitely gotten my vote!

This is his second performance of the song (during the finale)…

Fashion Snapshot #2: Wedges and Sandals

Summer is almost over for us (or was it over already since typhoons started early?)… but anyway, I still have this urge to do this since I’m such a fan of wedges and sandals…

All I can do is drool over them online since I couldn’t find them locally… nor could I find a close one that is good enough (or  priced reasonably enough).

Hubby and my sisters would tease me to be like Imelda Marcos when I was younger (and still single) since I had a great fetish for shoes and I did have a lot of them. Not anymore though. Now I love to window shop and only on rare occasions, do I give in to the temptation and treat myself.  For these past few years though, hubby is the one buying me shoes at Charles & Keith whenever he travels to Singapore (since it’s usually cheaper there especially during sale season).

Wedges and Sandals from Piperlime

Most of the shoes in the photo are my “typical” favorites. I guess most of these are the styles that is so “me”.  I prefer to wear these kind of sandals or wedges when I go out in casual wear. I’m not the flipflop type,  the sneaker type, nor the kitty-heel type or whatever other type is out there.

The wedges and sandals above are all available online at Piperlime.

So Proud of My “Little Mermaid”

We enrolled our eldest daughter, who turned six last March, in swimming lessons this summer. She had classes at 7:30 to 8:30 in the morning, Mondays to Fridays.  Often times, we go home around 10:00am already because she’d either be attending again the second class (9:00-10) or playing around with some of her “swimming” friends. More often than not, she’d be playing after her lessons.

Her classes started April 1 and ended on their graduation day — which was this morning, May 16. After almost 6 weeks of swimming, 5 days a week, she has become super “tanned”! It’s a good thing she’s not bothered by her dark color now. All she knows is how much fun she has when she swims. One time, I commented about how dark her skin is, she simply told me in a matter-of-fact tone : “Don’t worry mommy, my color is going to come back.” Good for her. It’s the mom who’s worried

I guess she (and our youngest) got this from me and my husband — we love the water too!

This morning during their swiming graduation, she finished second place during the competition for her age group. There were four of them in her event.

During the past few days, I noticed she was getting nervous about the competition and was even opting not to attend the graduation, just to avoid the race. She was also worried about swimming across alone, without any of their instructors with them in the pool. Luckily I was able to talk her into attending,  to just have fun and focus on just swimming across, not on winning.

I didn’t want her to miss this day out of fear. I know it will make a difference for her when she grows up and look back to this day. It may just be another summer activity in her life, but  it’s the small things that they do that will make a difference in how they see and will see themselves later on.

She was so glad that she did come to her swimming graduation. Aside from being able to swim across, finishing second place was another accomplishment that gained her more confidence. She’s very happy that she was able to swam across and very proud of the medal she got… (though all kids ages 6 and below were given medals, win or lose).

Winner or Loser? You Get To Choose.

I found this article interesting. How much of what we do and who we are  have been based on what others see or tell us?

I had a lot of fun with creative experiments while getting my graduate degrees in Psychology. Students are known for devising interesting experiments to test various human theories. A number of years ago, some students decided to use one of their friends as a guinea pig, to see if false suggestions could cause reactions in the body.

On the chosen day, the guinea pig left the dorm, suspecting nothing unusual. However, a friend greeted him with, “Good Morning, Chuck! How are you doing today? You look a little pale.” Seconds later another friend rounded the corner with “Chuck, are you feeling okay? You look a little sick!” A third friend greeted Chuck and said, “You really shouldn’t be out of bed! You look horrible!” Before the young man could get to his first class, he turned around, went back to the dormitory and fell into bed. He was in fact, sick.

Has anyone been feeding you false information lately? Maybe the newspapers are in on a big joke — telling you no one is hiring. Your “friends” have been misinformed — you really are competent and capable. Your boss is a bozo, not you. Maybe your spouse or your parents haven’t been very encouraging.

What would happen if rather than listening to the feedback, you decided to “see” and create your own future? Isn’t there just as much likelihood that you could create a good, clean, positive future? Are there really limitations in front of you — or are those obstacle just between your own two ears?

- Dan Miller

“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” -Proverbs 23:7

“Think you can or think you can’t; either way you’re right.” -Henry Ford

Back.

I just realized it’s been almost two months since my last post. Time really flies. My schedule last March was so toxic, I barely had sleep with how many batch of orders for invitations being finished, not to mention the preparations we had to do for a seminar for the parish end of March.

After everything was done, I got sick first week of April.  Post-stress sickness. Haha.

Holy Week was refreshing since I was able to relax and enjoy time with my family. We didn’t go out of town… just stayed here.

Although my day is still not complete without logging into my computer, it was also quite refreshing spending more hours away from my computer during the past weeks.

Now, I’m back… missed my blog!

Sailing High In the Sky.

Exhilarating. Liberating.

That is how I’d best describe the experience of parasailing.

We went to Subic last Saturday to try out this adrenalin-pumping adventure. I was pretty nervous and wondering if I would be able to push through with this considering I have fear of heights, but I did it.

Once up in the air, it was a mix of different emotions…  a feeling of freedom, nervousness, excitement, fear, fun, anxiety, thrill and strangely peace.

The wind was quite strong during that day so even at only half the 600-ft maximum cable height, you’d be dancing and swaying up in the air.

It was an awesome breathtaking ten-minute experience!

And even the (speed) boat ride out to the sea was fun and invigorating in itself.