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All Posts By

Cyndi Baker

Dec 22

How To Cure Wetting the Bed

By M-Power
What causes wetting the bed? It comes down to 2 primary causes. A deficiency in antidiuretic hormone which is the hormone that dries us up when we are sleeping. If you don't have enough of that then you're gonna need to get up and go to the bathroom at night. The other cause has to do with deep sleeping. I'll get into that here because that's one that we can really do something about. Both heavy sleeping and a deficiency of antidiuretic hormone have to be present in order for bedwetting to occur. If you generate enough hormone, then you don't have to get up and go at night. If you're not sleeping so deeply then you'll be able to get up and go when you get the signals. Now, that gives us some ideas about how to cure it. Your central nervous system, takes good care of you by…
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Dec 20

Five Factors That Determine The Outcome Of Divorce For Children

By M-Power
The 5 factors that determine the outcome of divorce for children come from working as a child custody evaluator for the courts for almost 13 years. Honestly, it's yuck work, not fun. When bitter, angry, divorcing people can't figure out how to share their kids, it gets messy but I learned a lot of things in that context. These 5 factors that I'm about to share with you can make the difference for your kids. In fact, they've been shown through the research to be the 5 factors that determine the outcome of divorce for children. The resource for this is Dr. Elizabeth Ellis. She wrote a compiled book called Divorce Wars. Not a fun read. It's pretty academic. She has pulled together all of the research that had been done in this area, and suggests that these are the 5 factors that determine the outcome of divorce for children.…
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Dec 19

How to Make a Great First Impression

By M-Power
First impressions are really important in a lot of different contexts in our life. You think about things like a job interview for example. Or social interactions or workplace interactions with co-workers or a customer or client. Those first impressions are really crucial. Dr. Ann Demarais did some research years ago that illuminated the important aspects in forming a great first impression. She wrote the book "First Impressions," which I highly recommend. We'll put a link down below. Dr. Demarais found that how we focus makes a big difference. So, let's take a look at how Dr. Demarais has set this up. Imagine a quadrant system and we will pick 2 elements to focus on so you can see exactly how this works. In the first column, our focus is how I feel in first person. So, I'm focused on how I feel as opposed to how you feel. Now,…
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Dec 18

How To Be More Patient In A Relationship

By M-Power
How To Be More Patient In A Relationship Paul: Vicki, you have got to know some stuff about how to be patient in a relationship. You've been living with me for how long? You know, when we don't feel patient, it's because of a violation. A violation of an expectation, that makes sense? Vicki: Yeah. Whether expressed or not expressed. Even realized. Paul: This is one of the benefits of metacognition. When you can think about your thinking. And back off from and say, "Okay, why am I feeling impatient?" There are 2 elements actually. One is a violation of an expectation, you expect it to go a certain way and it didn't and so you're feeling a little tipped over. And the other is a connection to timing. Vicki: Timing is a big one. Paul: Which is really part of the definition of being patient, is that you disconnect…
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Dec 17

How To Control Your Thoughts

By M-Power
Honestly, I don't know if you can control your thoughts. Let's do a little test. Let's just try this out. Think about bananas. Think about the color, texture, and taste of bananas. Imagine what they look like, what they feel like. You got it? Okay, step 2. Do not think about grapefruit. You know the round ones that are sour and they kind of squirt you in the eye when you stick a spoon in them? Do not think about grapefruit. How are you doing? Oh! You're thinking about grapefruit, aren't you? I told you not to. What's wrong? Well, can you control your thoughts? Notice it's not too hard to intentionally think about something on purpose. It's really hard to intentionally not think about something on purpose. There are so many triggers in our environment. I can be driving down the freeway in my car and suddenly I'm thinking…
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Dec 17

6 Steps to Avoid Holiday Stress

By M-Power
I have 6 holiday stress tips to help you this holiday season. I could probably get away with just one if it's this: Can the shoulds. Can them. Get rid of them. We too often put expectations on ourselves that overwhelm us. We feel frustrated because we are not where we should be. We are not doing things we should do. Do you see where the should creeps in all over the place? What if we were to take everything that's on your should list and just throw it out. Toss it out the window. No more shoulds. What would happen? Oh, you might not get all of that stuff done? But it's okay because it's not a should anymore. Some may say, "Oh, but Dr. Paul, I want to do this." Oh, well, that's different. Do you want to do this stuff? Are you doing it because you should…
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Dec 10

10 Things You Should Never Say To Your Child

By M-Power
I talk a lot in my positive psychology practice about things you should do, or try to do, or say to your kids. Today, while giving you 10 things to never say to your child, I am not trying to be negative, but help you to understand that what we say matters. I found an article online from Parenting Magazine, written by Michelle Crouch. This was an interesting article and as a psychologist, it caught my attention. Now hopefully, you're already aware of the obvious ones, okay. Like saying "Oh, she's the cute one." Oh really? Be careful with that one. Or "He's the smart one" or "She's the athletic one." Putting these labels on our kids doesn't help. "Why can't you be more like your brother?" These are the obvious. We are not going to go there today. This particular article triggered some thinking for me and I wanted…
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Dec 09

Winning A Custody Battle – Four Things You Must Do

By M-Power
There are four things that you must do to win a custody battle, but they are probably not what you would expect. As a professional psychologist, 13 years of my career was committed to doing child custody evaluations for the court before I switched over to positive psychology. Here is what I learned. As a professional evaluator for the court, there are two worlds that are created for a child. Before parents separate, the child’s world is just one big whole like a circle. When mom and dad separate, for whatever reason, that world splits. And now we have mom's world and dad's world, and they are very different. Where do the kids belong? Right there in the middle Now, actually the kid’s world is larger than either mom's world or dad's world because the kids world includes both mom’s and dad’s world. Research shows very clearly that the number…
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Dec 09

How To Apologize To Your Child For Yelling

By M-Power, Uncategorized
Even with our best efforts, sometimes we do it. We lose our cool and yell at our kids. How do you apologize to your child for yelling? We can learn something from our kids. You know when your kids are kind of conflicted with each other and they end up hurting each other they end up yelling or whatever it is. And you tell them, "Okay now, tell your brother you're sorry." And it doesn’t sound sincere at all. Nobody is convinced. Well, let's learn something from that. Be authentic. Be real about this. I don't want you to pretend to apologize to your child or do it with some strings attached. For example, what if I were to say, "I'm sorry that I yelled at you. But you shouldn't have..." You are not really sorry at that point. I gave the apology, then I threw the other party under…
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