Keeping An Open Mind To New Experiences

When you commit to a goal, the methods to achieve that goal will appear. When the methods do appear, they may not be (and seldom are) dressed in familiar garb. Many people are in the habit of saying “no” to all new experiences. Part of this, of course, is the comfort zone: “It’s new, so don’t do it.”

Alas, saying no to something before we know what we’re saying no to has a rather nasty name - one that no one likes to hear applied to themselves. That word is prejudice. It means, of course, to prejudge something. Human beings do it all the time. How many opinions do you have of people you have never even met?

By watching TV, we all have had the chance to meet a number of famous people who we initially “knew” only through the media. Many of them lived up to (or down to) their reputations. Others did not. Some people who had “bad reps” in the press were, in fact, delightful. Others, who are known to be magnificent individuals, were, in fact, monsters.

“My mind is made up,” the old saying goes, “don’t try and confuse me with the facts.” The answer to this comes from Aldous Huxley, “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” William S. Burroughs gave the tendency to make up our minds before we have enough information an even more severe interpretation: “A paranoid is a man who knows a little of what’s going on.”

If something presents itself to you, and you don’t know enough about it to really decide if it might help you achieve your goal, don’t say no - find out more. How do we find out more? By asking, doing, listening - in short, by getting involved; experiencing.

As you may have gathered by now, our advice on new opportunities is: if it’s not going to physically harm you, and it might be helpful on the path to your ultimate goal in life, then try it. Other than the comfort zone’s control of your life, what have you got to lose?

Another reason people don’t even want to hear about new opportunities is that people are afraid to say no - especially after they’ve “gotten to know someone.” It’s the old don’t-say-no to-people-you-know-but-do-say-no-to-people-you-don’t-know rule. It’s a rule perpetrated by the people we know, for obvious reasons. (”Why are you giving your money to this charity to save eagles when your own brother needs new plumbing?”)

No, we’re not suggesting you listen to the spiel of every person who tries to sell you a flower at the airport. It is safe to assume that one flower-seller will tell you about the same thing as any other. We are suggesting, however, that you listen to it once. You never know when someone or something has a lot to offer you in reaching your dreams.

Popularity: 16% [?]

How To Reduce Stress By Taking Power-Naps

Learning to relax under pressure and stress is not easy. In fact, it’s downright tough to deal with high stress levels at work or at home and be able to effectively handle it without getting rest. But here lies the catch-22, and that is that unless we rest appropriately, then we cannot handle stress in a positive manner. So how can we relax under pressure? Why not learn to take quick “power naps”?

If your job involves a lot of reading, it would make sense to learn to speed-read. If your life contains a lot of stress, it would be a tremendous help to be able to take a quick “power-nap” for even a few moments when under fire. Most people can definitely relax on a two week vacation, many can totally relax on the weekend, and some people can relax every evening after work ends. But how many, during even the most stressful days, can count to ten, suddenly be at complete rest for a few moments, and then wake up refreshed? This is the power nap, and we are going to show you how to do it.

This does not mean that you will necessarily put yourself sound asleep in the middle of the day, but simply that you can learn to slow your pulse and breathing rate, and reverse many of the natural stress responses in your body. Depending on the images or triggers that are designed for you, you could, for example, count to ten and place yourself on a nice beach with your hand in the warm sand for a few seconds. Then you could count back down to zero and be fully refreshed. Other people find success by closing their eyes for a few seconds and imagining a dial, set on high, when they are very tense. In their minds, they simply imagine the dial being turned down. In this way, they can gain control of themselves, and “command” their pulse and blood pressure rates to decrease.

Some of you already have the skills to help you relax on command, gained from such diverse (and excellent) activities as prayer, yoga, martial arts, meditation, exercise, listening to music, and doing favorite odd jobs around the house. But if you find that your current levels of stress are too high for even these methods, then you should have an ace up your sleeve: the power nap.

Best learned with a few lessons from your own hypnotist, the power nap can be taken at the drop of a hat. It can break up your most stressful days with a few moments of total relaxation for your body (to the extent that you will be unable to prevent your jaw from slackening). It also relaxes your mind so that you are aware of none of your surrounding stresses. With practice and coaching, you may be able to gain an excellent recharging of your batteries in a few minutes per day, and spare yourself the burnout of the constant use of the same brain and body circuits. The same skills are also helpful in getting to sleep at night.

Popularity: 18% [?]

3 Tips For Goal-Setting

Before you decide whether a single goal fits into your goals program, you should work that goal through a process that can help determine whether you should be pursuing this goal at the current time. This can take considerable time but it can save you much time and frustration by eliminating goals that are not for you at this time and helping to identify what you need to focus on now.

1. Target in on your goal: Your goal must be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. Remember: Some goals must be big and some goals must be long-range.

Significant goals must be broken down into smaller parts to ensure daily accountability. For example, if you want to lose 50 pounds this year, you can break that down to a goal of 4 pounds a month or 1 pound a week and then figure out how many calories you need to cut out or burn off to achieve that weekly weight loss.

2. Identify how you benefit from the goal: People often fail to reach their goals because they concentrate on the costs rather than the benefits. “If I lose the weight,” they reason, “I’ll have to give up this and do that.” Or “If I quit smoking, I know that I’ll gain weight and be miserable and difficult to get along with.”

Instead of concentrating on the negatives, think of the benefits that you’re going to enjoy. As you set goals, make a list of the tangible rewards that will be yours when you reach each goal. Each time you begin to ask yourself whether pursuing a goal is worth the effort, simply take out the list of benefits and read them aloud again.

3. List the obstacles that stand between you and your goal: You need to identify obstacles in order to be realistic and avoid being surprised. People have experienced many times that they had no idea that pursuing such-and-such a goal was going to be so demanding, require so much effort, take so long, and involve so many unexpected pitfalls. Careful planning in advance eliminates much of this disappointment, but you must understand that you can’t always see the roadblocks ahead. That’s why commitment, attitude, responsibility, and focus on the benefits remain constant necessities. Patience is also extremely important. Just remember that by keeping yourself focused on the goal, you can see the benefits and not just the obstacles.

Very few people get excited about obstacles. A mammoth traffic jam when you’re in a big hurry or a bad cold just before a long-planned vacation doesn’t create excitement in your life. Disappointments or setbacks of any kind are seldom viewed with enthusiasm. Yet those very difficulties should generate excitement, if for no other reason than that overcoming obstacles makes you strong and enables you to soar to greater heights.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Technical Skills + The Right Attitude = Success

Your attitude is enormously important; it enables you to accomplish amazing things. But without the right skills, you’re limited in what you can do, regardless of your attitude. An enthusiastic salesperson with the right attitude can achieve a degree of success in selling a good product - sometimes even considerable success. But this individual can’t realize his or her full potential without being thoroughly trained in the product and understanding something about the people with whom he or she is dealing.

Salespeople must have good people skills and be able to answer the questions that prospective customers ask. Without those skills, they miss a high percentage of the sales that they should be making.

In a similar vein, many enthusiastic, highly motivated, upbeat people don’t have a clue how to operate today’s high-tech equipment. Others don’t know how to deal with people effectively in a changing world. As a result, they can have limited success, at best.

In short, without the skills to go with the right attitude, your success ceiling is predetermined, and it isn’t especially high. Remember, motivation always precedes education. The person with the right attitude and the right skills can become more successful than ever before because competition for good-paying, skilled jobs continues to decline.

Popularity: 23% [?]

How To Invest Wisely

Why should you bother investing at all when your neighborhood bank is a nice, safe place to put your money? The answer: inflation and taxes. If your savings, after taxes, doesn’t grow faster than the cost of living, its purchasing power will steadily erode. Put another way, if you don’t find a way to put your money to work for you effectively, you’ll never be able to reach the financial goals you cherish. In short, after you take care of your emergency savings fund, you need to become an investor. The following example, which doesn’t even account for the take of taxes, will show you why:

Had your grandmother stashed $90 under her mattress 50 years ago, (the price of a decent-quality, three-piece bedroom set in 1945) that money today would buy little more than a set of sheets. If she had invested that $90 in a bank savings account that kept even with inflation, she could still afford that roomful of furniture. But if she had put her 90 bucks in the stock market, it would have grown to more than $25,000 today: enough not only for that bedroom set, but for a down payment on a second home to put it in.

If that story doesn’t impress you, here’s a scarier one: Investing wisely can mean the difference between retiring to a cushy house on the 18th green or retiring to a state-run oldsters’ home. Saving, while extremely important, is essentially just putting money away for safekeeping. Investing, by contrast, is using your money to produce more money.

Are you thinking that you need a lot of money to invest? You don’t. Many equity mutual funds, which pool money from small investors and use it to buy stocks, accept initial investments as low as $500 or even $250. More than 140 fund families let you in with $100 or less. Most funds also let you invest as little as $50 or $100 a month. You can also see what it’s like to be a stock investor buy purchasing a single share of a company for, say, $30.

If you haven’t invested a dime in your life, you’re not alone. Millions of Americans don’t own any stocks or mutual funds. Some of them have just decided that they don’t know enough to invest intelligently. Others think that investing is too scary and worry about the possibility that they’ll lose money. Still others think that investing in stocks and mutual funds is no different from playing the craps tables. The truth is, it isn’t hard to learn how to invest, putting money into stocks or stock funds isn’t scary, and by investing defensively, you can protect yourself from losing money. As for the craps analogy, it’s flat wrong. Winning at dice means having good luck. Winning as an investor means using your brains.

Popularity: 24% [?]

How Your Decisions Impact Those Around You

The position you occupy - whether in a company, in a family, or in any other relationship - has a direct bearing on the decisions you make. If you work in your company’s marketing department, for example, you’re probably very excited about any legitimate method of getting your product and/or business in front of the people who are in a position to buy.

When you’re confronted with a choice that affects not only you but also other people, the process becomes more complicated. Before making any decision that involves more than one person, get input from all sides. One decision you should make right up front is to be open minded and empathetic to the other people’s needs and desires. That decision enables you to get along better with the other people, bring balance to the process, and maintain harmony, which is important for achieving maximum effectiveness.

When a decision impacts a number of people who are part of your team, remember that decisions are more likely to be implemented effectively and enthusiastically when everyone on the team feels like an important part of that team. When possible, include the others in the process. If involving them is either impossible or impractical, understand that their acceptance of your decision depends on your credibility. If you have a track record of using mature judgment and doing what’s right, your decision is more likely to be well received.

Popularity: 16% [?]

6 Ways to help accept and appreciate your differences

Despite the fact that there are many couples who have been married for ten, twenty, or even thirty or more years, some never get around to developing a tolerance for each other’s differences. They have made the mistake of thinking that, just because two people fall in love and get married, each of them should act and think like each other. In time they forget about the differences that attracted them to each other in the first place, and only seem to be getting offended by each other.

In any type of relationship where two people are closely bonded, differences in opinions and priorities are bound to develop. It is also inevitable that each individual within the relationship handles anxiety and stress different as well. At first these difference do not create a problem, but as the relationship progresses, the lack of understanding one another can lead to some very series complications.

If you and your partner are having the same type of issues, then break the cycle by keeping the following points in mind:

1. Acknowledge the role that you both play during any type of problem that comes up. Take responsibility for your actions that contributed. It is a mistake to automatically assume that the fault lies with your partner.

2. Without saying your words in an accusatory manner, state your feelings and your needs specifically as you can. Instead of starting your sentences off with “You always…” or “I can’t stand the way you…” or “You make me feel…” Instead, try “I often feel that…” or “Might you consider…” or “Can we try…”

3. Always be willing to compromise with each other. Having this ability can mean the difference between a successful marriage or a failed marriage.

4. Develop a respect and an appreciation for each other’s perceptions and individuality. Stop trying to be “right” all of the time. Instead, be willing to take some blame and be willing to be wrong.

5. Remember that no matter how well suited you and your partner may be for each other, there will invariably be times when you will clash. So just keep in mind that “different” is just that, and not a moral judgment.

6. Practice this philosophy: There is no right or wrong. It may be hard to get around that way of thinking in the heat of an argument with your significant other, but this technique can take you from throwing insults, to compromising and working out the problem, in a heartbeat.

Popularity: 17% [?]

The Connection Of Modern Heart Attacks To Stress

While it is well-established that stress can bring on ulcers, only recently have we have begun to see a relationship between stress and the heart. Heart attacks are largely a modern problem. Although they have been reported in the medical literature for centuries, as recently as the late 1920’s this disease was rare in North America. Then things began to change, until now in the United States over a million people have heart attacks every year. Most of the victims are men over the age of 65, but women have heart attacks too, and so do younger people (and the incidence of heart disease in these two groups is rising sharply).

What causes heart attacks? The fact is that nobody knows for sure. It is generally agreed that things like high blood pressure, a large amount of cholesterol in the blood, lack of exercise, obesity, and cigarette smoking all contribute to heart disease, but more and more it is beginning to appear that the single greatest cause of heart attack is the stress of life.

This is a view that has been held with special enthusiasm by two San Francisco cardiologists named Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman. These men divide the population into two broad categories, Type A and Type B. The Type A person is ambitious, aggressive, self demanding, competitive, and pushing to be successful. He or she “goes all the time” and is driven by the clock. In contrast, Type B people are more casual. They are less competitive, less worried about the time, and not so preoccupied with achievement. The two types even differ in their approach to relaxation. Type B can enjoy casual conversation and forget his work during a game of golf. Type A competes as intensively in sports as elsewhere and is even inclined to take up jogging. That, states Dr. Friedman, is the best way for such people to achieve sudden death at age 35.

While it probably is true that nobody fits these categories exactly, most of us tend to fall into one or the other of the two classifications. After studying this problem for over twenty years, Drs. Friedman and Rosenman believe that when people live a Type A lifestyle there is seven times more risk of heart attack than with a Type B mode of living. Even if they don’t smoke, get little exercise, show normal blood pressure, and have no family history of coronary disease.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Goal setting in sports is not a new thing

Goal setting in sports is not a new concept. It has been there always. All sportsmen know that they can excel only if they have a clear goal before them. This goal can be to participate in Olympics; it can be to be a national champion in swimming; it can be to make it to the college team. Each sportsman sets his or her goals, and tries to achieve them with the help of coaches or their own efforts.

The key to success is to have a clear goal. However, this goal should be realistic and based on the sportsman’s skills. Not everyone can become a world champion. There are many who should be happy to win a medal at the college level, and this is what their goal should be.

The goals need not be set for individual records. They can be set to enhance fitness, improve attendance, increase intensity, develop team spirit or establish consistency. They also need to be specific. Instead of saying, “I want to improve my performance,” a sportsman must define his goal as, “I want to win the next 200 meter race.”

It is also sensible to have a few, carefully defined goals than several goals. This allows sportsmen and coaches to keep their attention focused. They are also able to set better deadlines. Timelines are especially valuable in high-risk sports where fear often promotes procrastination in learning new skills.

Team goals in case of team sports can easily be broken down into individual goals with each individual having specific responsibilities and specific targets to meet for the overall success of the team.

It is not only the individual who sets the goals in sports but also the coach. For the coach goal setting is more about how he or she is motivating the sportsman. By providing more time and attention to an athlete who is having a lean time, or by rewarding those who are doing better, the coach helps sportsmen achieve their goals more easily.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Are You Making The Right Choices In Your Life?

You are what you are and where you are because of countless choices that you’ve made during your lifetime. Each choice has an influence, however slight, upon your path in life. You can choose to be cheerful, or you can choose to be gloomy. You can choose to be rude, or you can choose to be courteous. You can choose to love your neighbor, or you can choose to hate your neighbor. You can choose to be sober, or you can choose to be drunk. You can choose to be an asset to society, or you can choose to be a detriment to society. You can choose to eat sensibly, or you can choose to indulge in unhealthy eating habits. You can choose to be prosperous, or you can choose to be broke. You can even choose to be mentally healthy, or you can choose to literally destroy your sanity. When you understand that every choice has an end result, you place yourself in a position to become successful in every area of your life. Each choice that you make takes you either toward what you want in life or away from your heart’s desire.

Taking Inventory: You are where you are right now because of the choices you have already made, so taking a look at the past helps you understand the true impact that choices have on your life. You should take inventory of everything you have and everything you’ve done that has any significance. These things happened because of a series of choices that were made for you as a child and by you as you matured.

Asking yourself a question: What do you really want out of life? Reflecting on that question can save you an enormous amount of time and heartache. An extremely high percentage of college graduates end up in a field unrelated to what they majored in, which leads me to think that most people wander through their childhood, teenage years, and young adulthood with no clear concept of what they want to do with their lives. Many people pursue goals that are set or influenced by someone else, but pursuing those goals, if they aren’t also your goals, doesn’t produce maximum satisfaction or significant accomplishments.

The beginning point for the momentous undertaking of figuring out what you want from life is a note pad, a quiet spot, and time to ponder the question at length. Think along the lines of “If I were absolutely certain that I wouldn’t fail, and if I had all the resources necessary to get there, what would I really want to be, have, or do?” Let your imagination run wild, and permit no judgment to follow the impulses that you put on that piece of paper. Don’t use money as your yardstick, but don’t eliminate it as a desirable goal. Money is frequently the result of performance and service, but making money your prime goal influences other choices to a large degree.

Popularity: 17% [?]

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