Will Money Make Me Happy?

Most of us know deep down that money doesn’t buy happiness, but we don’t want to believe it. Yet we need only look to see the many unhappy people living at the higher socioeconomic levels. Many wealthy people don’t appear to be any happier than people of modest means. These wealthy people don’t laugh more, don’t jump for joy more, and aren’t any more blown away by life.

In fact, rich people rarely experience the happiness and prosperity that are supposed to come with wealth. They may be wealthy by all rational measures, but their state of happiness indicates quite the opposite. A 1995 study by University of Illinois showed that one third of the richest people in the United States are not actually as happy as the average-income person in this country.

It shouldn’t be surprising that some of the most miserable and unhappy individuals we meet are wealthy people. Some people become more miserable and unhappy as they become wealthier because of their high expectations for what money can do for them. Originally, these people think that acquiring a great deal of money will make them happy. It doesn’t - and then they have no excuse for being unhappy, so they become even more miserable and unhappy.

Should you have the misfortune of being unhappy, and should you be looking to money to change your life, it’s time for a reality check. Once and for all time, you are unhappy because you don’t have your emotional act together. Don’t feel bad about it - just do something to rectify the situation. We all fall into that trap at one time or another. Unless we address our shortcomings in this area, we are destined to be unhappy, even if we end up in the highest socioeconomic group in our country.

Clearly, a lack of money for basic necessities will leave us unhappy and dissatisfied about our position in life. This doesn’t mean that having a lot of money will leave us truly happy and satisfied, however. Money may get us to a neutral state, somewhere between unhappy and happy, somewhere between dissatisfied and satisfied. Generally speaking, however, more money coming into our lives won’t get us beyond that neutral State. After we reach the neutral state, happiness depends on things that money can’t buy.

Money can be a vehicle for enjoying life to its fullest, provided you take the time and effort to get a good grasp on what money can and can’t do for you. Riches will enhance your life if you have a healthy attitude toward money and detract from it if you don’t. Put another way, understanding what money can do for you can help you get what you want from life. In the same vein, knowing what money can’t do for you can save you a lot of disappointment, dissatisfaction, disillusionment, ulcers, and nervous twitching.

Popularity: 13% [?]

The Connection Between Unintentional Negative Programing & Our Self Esteem

I’ll give you an example of some of the negative programming most of us have received in our life that has contributed to chipping away at our confidence levels. During the first eighteen years of our lives, if we grew up in fairly average, reasonably positive homes, we were told “No!,” or what we could not do, more than 100,000 times! If you were a little more fortunate you may have been told “No!,” only 75,000 times, or 50,000 times, however many, it was considerably more negative programming than any of us needs.

Meanwhile, during the same period, the first eighteen years of your life, how often do you suppose you were told what you can do or what you can accomplish in life? A few thousand times? A few hundred? Most people cannot remember being told what they could accomplish in life more than three or four times. Whatever the number, for most of us the “yes’s” we received simply didn’t balance out the “no’s.” The occasional words of “belief” were just that occasional, and they were far outweighed by our daily doses of “cannots.”

This negative programming that we all received (and still receive) has come to us quite unintentionally. It has come to us from our parents (who wanted to protect us); it has come to us from our brothers and sisters, from our teachers, our schoolmates, our associates at work, our life-mates, advertising of all kinds, the morning paper, and the six o’clock news.

Leading behavioral researchers have told us that as much as seventy seven percent of everything we think is negative, counterproductive, and works against us. At the same time, medical researchers have said that as much as seventy five percent of all illnesses are self-induced. It’s no wonder. What if the researchers are correct? That means that as much as seventy five percent or more of our programming is the wrong kind.

Until very recently no one understood well enough the human mind, how it really works. The result was that without knowing what they were doing, and with us not recognizing the immense effect this “casual” programming was having on us, “they” have been programming us in the wrong way. Everything and everyone around us, without being aware of it, has been programming us.

Unfortunately, most of it was the wrong kind of programming, and we took it to heart. Year after year, word by word, our life scripts were etched. Layer by layer, nearly indelibly, our self-images were created. In time, we ourselves, joined in. We began to believe that what we were being told by others - and what we were telling ourselves - was true. No matter how innocently given or subtly implied, we began hearing the same words and thoughts repeatedly; hundreds, even thousands of times we were told, or we told ourselves, what we could not do, could not accomplish. Repetition is a convincing argument.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Why You Feel So Bad When You Should Feel Good

Many people may say, “I don’t have a distorted self-image. I know myself thoroughly and accurately, and I know for a fact that I am inadequate.” Very capable and gifted people who have come to think of themselves as inadequate may not budge from their belief even in the face of undeniable evidence to the contrary. One woman, a highly skilled physician who had graduated from college and had won the coveted Phi Beta Kappa Award for scholastic excellence, had intense feelings of inadequacy. When I pointed out to her that she could not possibly deny her intellectual superiority, her response was “When they told me I had won the Phi Beta Kappa Award, I knew they had made a mistake.”

Where does this negative attitude toward oneself come from, and why is it so prevalent? We might assume that children who grew up under conditions of poverty and emotional deprivation or abuse would develop negative self-concepts. This is often the case. But we find the same feelings of inadequacy and inferiority in people who grew up in stable and comfortable environments with apparently loving and caring parents.

We can only hypothesize why this occurs. A child’s only support are his parents, who care for him and serve as a bridge between his needs and his world. The child must preserve his trust in his parents at all costs. If he sees them as unreliable, the anxiety of being adrift in the world without adequate support is virtually incompatible with sanity. The child must therefore see his parents or other adult caregivers as wise, just, and trustworthy.

If parents punish a child, and the child does not fully understand why he is being punished, the child cannot afford to think, “My parents don’t know what they are doing.” This thought is too threatening. The child instead concludes, “My parents are right. I deserve this punishment because I am bad.” If the child cannot attribute the punishment to anything he did to warrant it, he concludes, “I am bad. Even if I don’t do things that are wrong, I am just bad.” The child may develop feelings of shame, guilt, and inferiority, even though he may not have any idea why he should feel this way.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Learn Why Having A Negative Self-Concept Is A Recipe For Failure

Your self-concept is wrapped up in a set of descriptions and images - of good success scenes or bad failure scenes that you’ve experienced. It is also carried in a set of personality trait labels you use to tell yourself and others what you are really like. Your self-evaluations are important because they influence most areas of your behavior, defining the limits of what you will attempt. You avoid an activity if your self-concept predicts you will perform so badly as to humiliate yourself. For instance, if your self-concept includes the belief that you would be a poor ice skater, you might never try it, and will indeed remain a poor ice skater. Often people excuse themselves with “That’s just the way I am.” By using this excuse, they deny themselves opportunities for personal growth.

If you could listen in, you would hear non-assertive people saying all kinds of negative sentences to themselves. They selectively remember some criticism of themselves, exaggerate it to monstrous proportions, and repeat it over and over like a chant. The man battling his bulging waistline might be saying, “I am ugly, fat, and disgusting. No one can stand to look at me. I am a fat worm. I’ve got no will power.” The shy, retiring boy at a dance might be saying, “Those girls are whispering about me. My pimples are horrible. If I talk to that girl, she’ll insult and ridicule me. I never know what to say to girls. I’ll die if she cuts me down.”

The fact is that people are often their own worst downers. They say to themselves, “I am irrational, emotional, stupid, dull, ugly, shy, cold, submissive, fat, ineffectual, overbearing, bitchy, childish, a bully, a miserable father (mother), a lousy speaker, a failure, and over-the-hill.” We all have our own lists. People can be terribly brutal with themselves. Out of the whole animal kingdom, only humans are endowed with this capacity to make themselves miserable. Can you imagine your pet cat or dog moping around, saying such brutal things to himself?

Worse yet, in many cases our negative view of ourselves may be communicated to new acquaintances before they have time to form an independent impression of us. If we tell people we are inadequate, they may do us the disservice of believing us. A woman in one of Sharon’s assertiveness classes repeatedly advertised herself poorly by prefacing each remark with, “I doubt if my idea is worth anything, but…” Without realizing it, the class did indeed pay less and less attention to her ideas - at least until they stopped to examine the subtle message her remark conveyed.

The toll of a negative self-concept is that it limits what we are willing to try, forestalling opportunities for growth and enjoyment. Doomsday prophesies about our social failures tend to be self-fulfilling. The shy woman who retreats from friendly overtures is indeed judged to be cold, aloof, disdainful, and the man who was turned down for approaching her is even less likely to make another overture to her (or vice versa!) The student with anxiety about taking a test “goes blank” to such an extent that he does indeed fail just as miserably as he had feared.

Popularity: 17% [?]

The Difference Between Men & Women’s Insecurity

In most cases, men typically assume that once a woman is fulfilled and content with the relationship, she should stay that way. He thinks that once he has proven his love for her, then she should know it forever. She should feel secure with him, regardless of what happens, without ever needing to be reassured or reminded. While this point of view is obviously different from what women think, from the male point of view, this attitude makes perfect sense.

Here is when trouble sets in, because women find this attitude absolutely hard to accept. It is just plain inconsistent with their internal reality. And like all people who want to be and feel loved, women need to be reassured that she is special, that she is worthy, understandable, and of course lovable. This is no different for men. They also need to be reassured, but they get encouragement mainly through their work. Women, however, primarily need reassurance through the relationships they are in.

When a man’s work fails, he begins to doubt his worthiness. In a complimentary way, when a woman is ignored by her husband, she begins to doubt her worthiness. She needs a constant supply of verbal signs, symbols, and ongoing reassurance from him that he loves and cherishes her.

If a man is in a relationship, he isn’t regarded to worry about rejection unless it actually happens. He does not consciously feel a need to be reassured because his successes in the world in which he works gives him that reassurance. And as a result, he doesn’t readily respect a women’s ongoing need to be reassured.

His focused reasoning goes something like this: “Even though I am preoccupied with my career these days, my wife should already know that I love her today, tomorrow, and all of the days after that, unless I tell her differently.” To a women this is just as absurd as the following comments would be to a man: “Even though my husband is broke and out of work, he should now that he will be rich with money again, because he was rich at one time before the business went bankrupt” or “Although he came in last today, he should know he’s a winner because at one time he did win his major yearly tennis tournament.

Certainly a man’s failures challenge him to realize his worth independent of his successes, but it is equally true that as he follows his failures with increasing success, his sense of self-worth is strengthened. As his business failed he must regroup himself and try again. As he begins to succeed, his confidence becomes more solid. Through a series of setbacks, the man who is able to try again strengthens his self-esteem.

A woman’s self worth is challenged when her partner withdraws. This painful experience is a time to center herself and realize her worth independent of his love. However, it is equally important that her feelings of insecurity are followed by reassurance and support from her partner.

Popularity: 14% [?]

In Order To Succeed, Always Assess Your Current Situation

In order to be successful, not only must you know where you are when you start, but you must also plot your course as you go. Airline captains must know where they started, but they also must constantly plot their course and stay in contact with the ground personnel and with other aircraft in the air; otherwise, disaster awaits them.

You may not be faced with that type of disaster, but you can rest assured that your personal, family, and business lives are on a collision course with failure if you don’t regularly assess where you are and what progress you’re making.

In your journey to the top, you have to change course on occasion because you can’t know all the nuances, obstacles, and circumstances that may arise. That’s why flexibility and checking up on where you are as you go are so important. Checking up on yourself requires discipline because when things are going well, you may assume that they always will - and that’s when you encounter disastrous situations. Just remember that you can discipline yourself and change your course of action to prevent being disciplined by others. Discipline is an important quality that you must have in order to achieve your potential and have any shot at greatness.

Popularity: 17% [?]

What To Do If You’re Already A Victim Of Financial Fraud

The only good news about the rise in identity theft is that there are now more resources than ever before to help victims. You still need to guard yourself for battle with credit bureaus, creditors, and even collection agencies, but you’re not out there alone.

The Federal Trade Commission has extensive information for ID theft victims at www.consumer.gov/idtheft, or you can call 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357) to get free information. You also can find helpful resources at the Identity Theft Resource Center (www.idtheftcenter.org or 1-858-693-7935) and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (www.privacyrights.org or 1-619-298-3396), among other locations.

Some financial institutions are remarkably responsive to identity theft victims, whereas others presume that anyone reporting ID theft is a liar until proven otherwise. Either way, you’ll want to be assertive, persistent, and relentless in your efforts to clear your name. The Privacy Rights Clearing-house, the California Public Interest Research Group, and the Identity Theft Resource Center suggest that you take the steps outlined in the next sections.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Need more intimacy in your love life?

Does your husband, wife, or partner feel that you are not providing enough intimacy time? Or rather, do you feel that the fault for lack of intimacy is caused by them? There is a high probability that no one person is to blame.

In today’s world we are all so busy that the combined schedules of work and family has taken away the time for intimacy. So before you blame your partner for this problem, you must first take a look at your schedules and learn to implement time management, yes even for more frequent lovemaking.

I realize that the idea of “scheduling” in intimacy seems so formal, but there is nothing wrong with this practice and your love-life will improve as a result. So it cannot be that bad for you right?

Below are some tips to help you combine time management and your intimacy needs together to create a happy medium for you and your partner.

1. Use an appointment book to create sacred time for the two of you to be together. A good example would be to set aside one night each week as a “date” night. On this evening you will make arrangements to have everything out of the way accept for time with your special someone. And treat this scheduled time just like you would treat an important business meeting or job interview. Be excited, be on time, give it your all, make it meaningful.

2. Another tactic would be to schedule your entire week around your chosen intimacy times, and not the other way around. In other words if you and your wife, husband, or partner decide that you want to have lovemaking times three times per week then your work, family, and social life would be created around those three times.

3. Last but certainly not least, another great way to free up your time to enable you to spend more intimacy with your special other is to stop spending time with time-wasters. Social and family obligations, while it is respectful to attend them, can be a real time waster as well as a drag to go to if you are doing it out of expectations from from your family and friends.

If you catch yourself attending these family and social obligations week after week, while personal time with your loving partner is suffering, then it is time to put a temporary stop to those obligations and take back your time. This is so that you are your wife, husband, or partner can be more intimate with each other instead of giving your time to other people.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Research Shows That Stress Can Be Relieved By Way Of Massage

The key antidote to stress is relaxation and there is nothing better and more efficient at relieving stress than having a warm, relaxing massage. Yet, at least in our society, the common practice of massage has remained an esoteric experience for decades being only popular to athletes and prizefighters, but rarely experienced by the rest of us outside of a little shoulder and neck rub. And for too many years, massage has been out of favor with mainstream society and thought of as more of a taboo type of activity other than improving mental, spiritual, and physical health. Fortunately today, the health benefits are being widely recognized.

With the rise of holistic and alternative modes of healing and health maintenance, along with the growing acceptance of the Chinese idea of energy flow throughout the body, massage has achieved widespread respect. It now shares a common choice among many people who measure it up against various healthcare options. According to the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA), research studies are amassing solid evidence that massage does more than merely relieve tension in sore muscles. It actually promotes physical and emotional health and well-being in more ways than one.

Studies indicate that massage (among other benefits) actually lowers blood pressure and heart rate, promotes improved circulation, relaxes muscles, and helps improve joint mobility. Data from the University of Miami, which hosts the Touch Research Institute, shows that touch can directly reduce stress hormones circulating in the blood, while it reduces pain and improves immune function. The institute reports a correlation between touch deprivation and an increased tendency to respond to problems with anger or violence. Children suffer both physically and emotionally when they are separated from their parents and receive little touching and cuddling.

The elements of touch and properly applied pressure points have been shown to benefit the nervous system, and some forms of massage are said to improve the function of internal organ systems by improving energy flow throughout the body. After years of resistance, most physicians and healthcare practitioners now accept massage as a valid treatment of injuries and some illnesses, as well as a useful tool for preventative medicine and stress reduction.

A massage before you exercise improves blood flow. It stretches and warms tight muscles, thus reducing the risk of injury. A massage after heavy or stressful physical activity can loosen strained or knotted muscles, release tension, and bring you back to a relaxed state.

Sometimes, muscle soreness is the result of an exercise workout or some vigorous physical activity. At other times, the stress of your work or the ergonomics of your workstation may result in muscle pain or fatigue. These types of physical stresses also responds well to properly executed massage.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Success Means Taking Time For Your Family

Your relationships may grow together or apart because of the priority you do or don’t place on your personal time. Your kids are growing up. You are getting older. Time you could have spent with your family or on your own personal dreams and goals is irreplaceable.

How many families have you observed in which there seem to be no shared interests or little interaction or quality time spent together? They’re not a family; they are just roommates. If you want roommates, find tenants who will pay rent but will not get involved in your business or personal life. Family members should not be treated as nonpaying tenants who just happen to occupy the same house.

Make dinner each evening with your family a commitment. Set an automatic business cutoff time. If you like to work late at the office, then schedule dinner at 6:30 or 7 p.m. Be there every time, no matter what you leave undone at the office. Don’t worry, it will still be there tomorrow. Ensure that your family spends at least thirty minutes together at the table each evening with meaningful discussions, a lot of humor, a lot of fun. Make it a family tradition.

If you want to spend quality time with your family at dinner without one of you being stuck in the kitchen cooking, serving, and cleaning up, then bring home take-out or have someone cook and deliver. Or share kitchen chores as a family, making that part of the quality time you spend together. Get creative - it’s your life.

If you become a slave to either office worries or to household chores, they will have power over your life. If, on the other hand, you treat your personal time as the most important time of your life, you will end up refreshed, less frustrated, and less stressed out, and you will have more positive energy each time you tackle new business situations and problems.

Schedule all of your personal activities on a “Daily Activities List.” Your daily business activities are scheduled on that same list. Compare the two schedules. Is there a conflict or the potential for conflict? If so then reschedule to avoid it. And remember, a scheduled personal activity, like a scheduled business activity, is an appointment that you are committed to keep. Don’t lose sight of why you work so hard - to be able to enjoy your personal life and to finance your personal dreams and goals.

Popularity: 32% [?]

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