Archive for Self Improvement Center
June 5, 2008 at 2:04 am · Filed under Self Improvement Center
As one who has suffered from the long, term effects of trauma I feel compelled to share some experience and hope with those who seek to heal themselves and create true quality of life.
First there must be a desire for change. No more wearing your suffering as a badge. That said let us move on to the subject of focus, which is a problem area for those who have suffered from trauma.
If you cannot focus then you cannot create change. Blessed be that now there are a number of simple to use tools that will go a long way towards enabling you to remedy this situation.
The science of Brain function has made great strides in understanding how this magnificent piece of creative software works. This has led to advances in technology designed to alter Brain wave frequencies. If you are like me you tried with dismal results to practice Meditation but without the ability to focus you were doomed to fail.
Enter, Brain wave technology, in an audio format that you can use to achieve relaxation and meditative states as well as enhance learning abilities. I have tried some of these tools and found them to be quite effective.
There have also been great strides made in the area of subliminal technology but be forewarned you will need to do your homework here as there are those who make false claims.
I encourage those of you who are truly interested in making positive changes in the quality of your lives to do some research into these new technologies. I ask no one to take what I say at face value. Get out there and do some legwork.
Go to the search engines and do a search on Brain wave technology and subliminal technology. When you have addressed the problem of focus whole new worlds will open up to you. Now get out there and start doing your homework!
To Your Success
The Island Outlaw
May 24, 2008 at 4:41 pm · Filed under Self Improvement Center
“Great work is done by people who are not afraid to be
great.”
- Fernando Flores
I use to be envious of great people.
By “great”, I mean people who have achieved things so noteworthy
they become famous for it.
Some do it early in life, like athletes. Tiger Woods is a great
example.
Others take more time reach their success through business.
Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have both risen to the top with
their business achievements.
Still others achieve their prominence through service to others.
The Reverend Billy Graham and Mother Teresa are living legends
for their service to people.
Our world is full of people who have accomplished greatness with
their lives. It’s easy for any of us to name five or ten great
people we admire.
Like I said, I used to regard them with envy. But, the older I
get, the more I realize why we have great people in our world.
They exist to teach us.
Here are things I’ve learned from these teachers.
Sacrifice
Great people make sacrifices to achieve their greatness. Too
often we consider sacrifice bad.
It’s not.
We make sacrifices with every decision. Even if we do not decide
we still make a sacrifice. It’s a basic law of reality; you
can’t do or be everything. You need to choose.
When you choose one course of action, you automatically
sacrifice the opportunity to choose any other course of action.
That’s all right. It’s better to make a bad choice than to never
choose. When you fail to choose, you’re saying nothing is
important enough for you to make it a priority. If nothing in
your life is important, what kind of life is that?
You risk an empty life if you spend too much time failing to
choose.
Faith
Great people make choices because they believe they are the
right choices. They have unyielding faith in the path they
choose. Don’t think they’re always right, though. Great people
are probably wrong more often than the rest of us. This is
because they take risks without fear of failing. They know
failure is not bad. It’s simply a way to learn. So, they take
more risks.
Faith that you’re making the right choice will help you make the
choice. That’s the first step.
Persistence
Once you choose a course of action, you will face obstacles. You
will face resistance.
Whether you’re learning a new skill, developing a new
relationship, building a business, starting a new job, you will
always face “speed bumps” on your journey.
Willie Jollie likes to say “Murphy has a piece of paper with
your name and address on it and he WILL be paying you a visit!”
Willie is right and that’s okay because that’s simply how life
works.
Persistence is what keeps you on task. It reminds you that you
made a choice for the right reasons so a few obstacles shouldn’t
stop you. Persistence helps you keep doing what you’re supposed
to do so you accomplish what you want. It keeps you motivated
and energized every day so the speed bumps don’t knock you off
course.
Great people understand the power of persistence. They use it
every day.
Courage
When you choose a course of action and you follow it, you often
are doing something new. Maybe it’s new and strange to you.
Because it’s new and strange it seem dangerous. It might cause
you fear. One of the biggest reasons we don’t try new things is
our fear of the unknown and fear of failure.
We have fear, which is good because it causes us to examine and
evaluate before we jump in. Diving headfirst into shallow water
might be a life-threatening decision. Fear of splitting our head
open keeps us from jumping in without checking first to make
sure it’s safe.
But fear can be an obstacle too.
Fear is the foot that applies the brakes. Courage is the foot
that presses down on the accelerator. It keeps us moving in the
right direction.
In great people, the foot with courage is much stronger than the
foot with fear.
Focus
Many people get criticized for not multi-tasking. “You have to
learn to do several things at once” they’re told (usually by a
supervisor or manager). Too often we fall into this trap. We
think we can accomplish more by doing two, three or more
unrelated tasks at the same time.
So, we talk on the phone while we drive to work. We eat lunch at
our desks while we work on an important project. We watch TV
while we chat with our spouse or kids.
Great people understand the flaw in this.
When you try to do too many unrelated things at once you do none
well. Your attention is split among many tasks. The power of
your focus is watered down because it’s spread over too many
things that demand your attention.
Think of focus as a ray of sunshine through a magnifying glass.
On a sunny summer day it’s easy to burn a piece of paper with a
magnifying glass if you hold it close enough. By focusing the
light on a tiny area, you intensify the amount of energy applied
to the paper. This increases the heat and can cause the paper to
smolder if you hold it there long enough.
If you pull the magnifying glass away, the focal point spreads
out. It becomes less intense. It never produces enough heat to
burn the paper because the light is spread too thin.
When you focus on one task instead of many, your energy is just
like the sunlight passing through the magnifying glass. It
intensifies and has a greater effect on whatever you’re doing.
Great people understand this. They focus. And it works.
Purpose
People who accomplish great things have found their purpose in
life.
We all have a unique set of skills and talents. Part of our
purpose is to use our talents and skills the best we can. Our
challenge is to discover what our talents are and how we should
use them.
Great people have a knack for discovering this.
They figure out what they’re good at and they do it. I think
most come to this discovery naturally and without much thought.
It’s instinctive.
This is the most important lesson for anyone to learn. We need
to find and follow our purpose. A man whose intellect is far
superior to mine once said: “You gain points by following your
unique purpose. You lose points if you follow some else’s
purpose.”
Proof
The above lessons are helpful. With them, we can understand
better how great people are able to accomplish so much. They
give us a roadmap to help us on our own journey.
So, one reason we have great people, who become famous, is to
help the rest of us understand some of these “lessons of
greatness”. They help us understand how they accomplish great
things.
But there is another, more important reason.
Great people show us what is possible. They show the power of
human potential. They give us real life examples of the
potential our world has to offer. They are flesh and blood just
like us, yet they have done things most people don’t even dare
to dream of.
Here’s an example:
For centuries, people assumed the four-minute mile was
impossible. The “experts” believed humans simply did not have
the physical ability to run that fast.
Then in 1954, Roger Bannister did the impossible. He ran a mile
in less than four minutes.
Six weeks later, another person broke the four-minute barrier.
Since then dozens of runners have done the same thing.
Once one person broke through the magical barrier, it was easier
for others to do the same thing. They knew it was possible
because another person had already done it. We put great people
on pedestals. We do this so they can remind us we can all be
great. They are real-life examples that we all have a purpose.
We all have unique talents and skills. We all have the ability
to accomplish great things in our lives.
They help us see what does not yet exist for us. They help us
see our dreams by achieving theirs. They help us have the faith
and courage and persistence and focus we need to make our dreams
happen.
The great people in our world do a great service to the rest of
us.
So, next time you meet someone famous who has accomplished great
things, shake their hand and thank them. I know I will.
May 14, 2008 at 12:18 pm · Filed under Self Improvement Center
Life first Drive slowly Then time. …The sign read. What an
appropriate statement for this intersection. The sign resides on
the three way corner of Maple and Humphrey where the traffic of
two elite towns intersect. SUVs, BMWs, Mercedes, and Mercedes
SUV’s lay the pedal to the floor and sit to wait. For some it is
the only pause their day will allow. The towns of Marblehead and
Swampscott (pronounced Swampscett) are ocean front towns with
their corresponding property prices. Now to maintain those
property taxes and SUVs and their like, life first is an axiom.
For the truth is time is short and it is the force that governs
life. But how to spend that time is the question. Drive slowly
is a good start. Scientist say the bigger the star is the more
hydrogen it needs to burn to keep from falling in upon itself.
Then there is the likes of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Elvis
who shot their way across the screen at night in short flashes
of light. Either speed, diet pills, downers, alcohol or
hydrogen; faster you go more you need. High maintenance.
Now imagine if a star was growing at exuberant rates
exponentially. Now there is a certain perimeter around a star
that will burn all the hydrogen in its reaches. Now as that star
grows the material in its vicinity it will devour. The larger
the star more space it encompasses. Space it had to burn out
other bodies of matter or displace them to occupy. Now if this
process had no cap to it, it is not hard to conceive that in
time this star will encapsulate the whole universe. Our planet
of life and any others out there would be burnt away in its
corona.
Now I wonder if people who over-consume wonder why their are
hungry people in this world? Or if they do at all. When does it
cross a CEO’s mind to sell a yacht, trade in an BMW for an
oldsmobile, sell that house in the Hamptons, turn back 20 of 100
acres back to public forest before they decide giving people the
choice between smack Ramain or Macaroni and cheese. Does it ever
pass a small business owners mind twice the social cost when he
purchase a BMW instead of giving a living wage to the people who
run his store and support him. If he slow down enough to think,
would he understand.
Rome fell when it let its middle class vanish. Now lets pretend
that the tax rate was 6%. And that those funds went to maintain
the infrastructure that the senators said was never enough to
keep their vast empire afloat. Now lets make up a number for the
total population. Lets say three million, and out of that there
was 100,000 in the upper caste, 900,000 in the middle, and two
million in the lower economic caste. Well the middle class fell
through the hole and then displaced many of the lower levels out
of their occupations. Now out of the lower two million, there
was few stones and even few that gave blood. So now those stones
begin looking for blood to turn into food on the highways. Then
those highways are falling apart because now there is only a tax
base of 600,000 at 6% instead of two million at 6%. So do you
think that upper caste was going to pay higher taxes? But who
then pays for the military to keep the Germans out.
Today Coffee Anen, suggest to the world to boost spending for
aids research in the third world where it is epidemic. With the
third world owing vast debts to the developed countries, it is
not going to have the means to pay them back if their work force
is in need of constant overwhelming medical care. Health care
then begins to drain those countries of all of their expendable
income that could of gone to paying down their debts. But also
as their population increases their infection rates and they
become more fluent in the world economy and travel abroad more
frequently. Infection rates in the world ports of the developed
world will increase and spread into their interiors. Plus the
numbers of immigrants to those ports will bring increased
danger. When the slaves in Rome coughed within their masters
presence, it was the great equalizer. For it brought death in
the form of the plague. For death is an equal opportunity
employer.
Then again you must ask, how much time have you given your
kids. We are the only creature that takes twenty years to raise
its youth. We control the vast environmental web. If we buy that
SUV or put that nuclear plant in, or increase timber production;
they are behaviors that effect that web. So we must be careful
in raising our children. We need to take time to correct their
mistakes and to point our own. For how we interact with our
children is how they will interact with their future
relationships. If we ignore them, they will ignore those around
them. If we mistreat them, they will mistreat those they come in
contact with. If we fill them with prejudice, they will fill
others with it. If we teach them fear, they will fear others.
But if we take time to teach them love, patience, understanding,
truth, strength, honesty, and self esteem; they will pass these
gifts on to those the encounter. Now if every one is related by
six degrees, how would you like your son or daughter to affect
the world? Now do you have time.
Do you have time for your wife or husband who will help you
accomplish this goal. Do you have time to make them smile. Do
you have time to share with them. Do you have time for them to
make you feel special. Do you have time to accept forgiveness
from them and live tomorrow as a new day. Do you have time to
enjoy what you have reaped so far. Or are you over extended from
your new gained wealth. Do you live in a rotary from hell. Well
you have a choice as you sit at that three way stop sign at the
intersection of Mapple and Humphrey Streets; You could always
turn northeast and head for Salem. But drive slowly on the way;
and I almost forgot to tell you to think about yourself first,
for the more you have within yourself the more you have to give.
So Life first.
May 4, 2008 at 2:31 pm · Filed under Self Improvement Center
“If you are going through hell , keep on going” - Sir Winston Churchill
Staying Power.Some of you may know that record by the late Barry White.On that track, he was talking about his love making abilities and his prowess at it.
That is not what this article is about.It is about that trait that sets successful people apart from the failures, whether it is in business or in marriage.
How does staying power relates to online marketing ? It is a fact that successful marketers have that ability.For them, it is simply a matter of sticking around when things don’t work out the way they want it to.
Staying Power.Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and many other great men and women all had it.It was that ability which made them different from being simple dreamers and wishers.
They had to have it to make their dreams and aspirations become a reality.This is the kind of attitude that we all need to have.Some people are born that way and luckily for the rest of us, it can be learnt.
Staying power requires persistence, consistency and a “never say die” attitude.With practice one can develop their staying power in any area of life they are engaged.
If you are serious about making your business and personal endeavors survive the long haul, start by thinking about ways you can develop your staying power.It really works !
You don’t have to take my word for it.Next time you happen to see Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates or Arnold Schwarenegger ask them.Their answer would not be far from what I expected.
© Nicholas Dixon
*****************************************************
Nicholas Dixon is a Jamaican webmaster, writer and affiliate
marketer. Find out
how you too can create an online income with our
list of highly recommended
programs by visiting
http://WWW.Oceanroc.com/affiliate-directory
*****************************************************
April 16, 2008 at 5:15 pm · Filed under Self Improvement Center
How can you stay energized in the face of so many obstacles? Why
do some people look at life from a positive point of view all
the time? What is the formula for success?
The prime ingredient in any success story is motivation.
Motivation is the driving force to keep going, “when the going
gets tough.” In order for you to stay motivated about anything,
you must choose something you have a passion for. This will help
you to stay inspired in good, or bad, economic times.
So before you consider motivation, do some self-analysis and
realize your passion. This must be something you would love to
do every day, and don’t consider it to be work, because you
enjoy it so much.
How many of us have known an artist or musician that pursued
his, or her, dream. Some make money, and some don’t, but all put
a lot of work into their passion. They do this willingly,
because their work inspired them. It wasn’t the money that kept
them going. The life of most artists, or musicians, is one of
economic struggle, even in the best of economic times.
Once you have found your passion, make sure it is something that
will help others in some way. This allows you to feel positive
about your work and find solutions for people’s problems, which
leads to the first factor needed to stay motivated, all the time.
The first factor is gratification in your work. Without it, why
should any of us want to keep working at a goal every day? So,
you must have a deep feeling of satisfaction from your work.
The second factor is recognition. Everyone wants to be
recognized and be proud of their accomplishments. Look at how a
child glows after getting an award and receiving praise from
his, or her, parents. Recognition makes us all feel worthy.
The third factor is staying positive in the face of negativity.
You can’t close your eyes and ears to negative input or a
“doubting Thomas.” However, you can use negative energy as fuel
for your own cause. Always look at “the glass as half full,” as
compared to half empty.
How is this possible? Use the doubts of others as an incentive
to prove them wrong. I call this “negative motivation.”
Teenagers often do this with parents: Mom or Dad says it won’t
work, so the teenager works twice as hard to prove his, or her,
parents wrong. Adults can borrow on this method and learn from
rebellious teenagers.
The fourth factor is complete health in mind, body, and spirit.
You need friends in high places to stay motivated and succeed,
so why not take time to pray? I never heard anyone tell me they
felt bad about praying, but I have heard many people say they
don’t pray enough.
You have to allow for down time; even the toughest of us need a
break now and then. If you must work hard, due to an impending
deadline, remember Benjamin Franklin’s words, “Early to bed and
early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
Take the time to sleep, exercise, go on vacation, play with your
kids, show love toward those who love you, and live life as well
as you can. If you follow this formula, you will be motivated
and success will surely follow.
© Copyright 2005 - Paul Jerard / Aura Publications
April 14, 2008 at 11:34 pm · Filed under Self Improvement Center
Everyone should have the opportunity to ride in a private jet. And everyone should
drive the autobahn in Germany at least once. Nobody should die without the
experience of eating homemade fresh food cooked by the hands of a southern
woman in her own kitchen.
Everybody should go to a college football game at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge.
And while you’re in Southern Louisiana, show yourself friendly to a large group of
folks and tag along to a crawfish boil.
Love all people blessed with age. They’ve been places you may not know about and
seen things you probably wouldn’t want to see. Love the little children, too. They’re
loud and obnoxious but they teach us the little things that prepare us for a lengthy
life.
No one should underestimate the power of chicken. Or the power of Jesus. Everyone
should have a special dinner in their honor while they’re still alive. Everyone should
have the opportunity to spend money freely at an electronics store for at least an
hour. Everybody should pull up all the way to the white line at traffic lights.
Everyone should experience high definition sight and sound in the comfort of their
own home. Everyone should be loved by someone they want to be loved by. Nobody
should leave this earth without knowing how relaxing it is to consume a hot
beverage while gazing out a large window at skiers skiing down a snow covered
mountain.
Everyone should try my mama’s greens. Everybody should have an iPod. Everybody
should see video of themselves when they’re not at their best so they won’t be so
hard on everybody else. Everybody should give money away every chance they get.
More people should smile more.
The way I see it, everybody is rich in one way or another. Share your wealth with the
world.
©2005 warmCHiL WORLDWiDE / MJStyle
I don’t consider myself a writer. I only speak from my heart - it doesn’t lie.
