Thursday, September 30, 2010

Wellness - Hoax, Hype Or Real?

"Wellness" is everywhere. We have wellness holidays and wellness homes, wellness drinks and wellness shoes; there are wellness companies and even an entire wellness industry. "Wellness" sounds like a new, trendy concept. Most people don't really know what it is, but it is definitely real.

In spite of "wellness" having burst on the scene seemingly out of nowhere, it is what mankind has sought out at all times. Wellness is what makes life enjoyable. It goes beyond good health. The aim of Wellness is to maintain and improve health, to ensure positive vitality, a strong immune system and resistance to illness.

Here are a few more definitions:

American Heritage Dictionary:

"Wellness is the condition of good physical and mental health, especially when maintained by proper diet, exercise and habits."

Unknown:

"Wellness is about waking up every morning and having enough time, energy and freedom to live the life you want."

and

Prof. Paul Z. Pilzer - The Wellness Revolution:

"Wellness is the quality or state of being in good health especially as an actively sought goal"

What Does Wellness Mean to You?

In contrast to wellness, the term "health", as we use it today, is directly linked to treatment of disease, not its prevention. You seek help from the National Health Service (NHS) when your health is failing and you receive care in your final phase of illness. The health professions are overwhelmed by these demands, and consideration of prevention or enhancement of good health is ignored. The NHS is really a National Sickness Service. It does not ensure health. It provides services reactively to people with existing diseases. Wellness, on the other hand, is proactive: aiming to prevent diseases from developing, to make people healthier and look better, to slow down aging.

Wellness goes beyond good health. The aim of Wellness is to maintain and improve health, to ensure positive vitality, a strong immune system and resistance to illness. The foundation of Wellness is nutrition. We are what we eat. Our health depends on what we eat. Our moods depend on what we eat. Our productivity depends on what we eat. Our enjoyment of life depends on what we eat. And, of course, to get our day off to a great start depends on what we eat to break the fast.

House of Commons Health Committee - Obesity Report, May 2004:

" ...while our evidence suggested that people are, generally speaking, aware of what constitutes a healthy diet, there are multiple barriers to their putting this into practice."

Our lifestyle has become hectic. We are stressed. We don't take time to have three proper meals a day. We resort to fast food and television dinners, skip meals and snack. Convenience foods have reduced the main ingredients in our daily diet to refined carbohydrates, the wrong type of fat and an abundance of caffeine in tea or coffee while we ingest very little fibre, vitamins, minerals, and trace elements. By contrast, our calorie intake by far exceeds the calories we burn. Especially fast food provides extremely high levels of calories without leaving us with a feeling of satiation. This lack of stimulus makes us eat more, and we literally pile on the pounds. At the same time we suffer from deficiency of some of the most vital nutrients we need to maintain good health.

As a consequence, dietary related illnesses are on the increase including health problems such as coronary heart disease, diabetes, kidney failure, osteoarthritis, back pain and psychological damage. The strong association between obesity and cancer has only recently come to light. In the opinion of experts, 90% of cancers could be prevented with the right level of nutrition.

Whatever your level of wellness you are at, improving your nutrition wil lift you to a higher level of wellness. It will help you stay healthier longer, age more slowly and get more out of life.

Here is a list of

Factors That Impact Health:
Fast food diets that are high in fat and low in nutrients Overly-processed, convenience foods Sedentary lifestyle Pollution Stress Certain medications Lack of dietary fibre from fruits, vegetables and whole grains Not enough healthy sources of protein in our diets to support healthy muscle and bone Lack of proper rest

Wellness is no different from anything else in life: if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Key Steps For Achieving Optimum Wellness:
Define Your Wellness Goals. Have a personal wellness evaluation. Identify key areas you need to impact to reach your wellness goals. Get recommendations from your Personal Wellness Coach. Make a plan of action that you can commit to. Get the ongoing support you need to stay on your wellness track for a healthier future.

These steps are designed to accommodate individual needs. One size definitely does not fit all. But this does not mean that there are no general rules.

To get started, here are

3 Basic Steps To Optimum Wellness

1 - Balance Your Diet

You need to get enough of the right foods including colourful fruits and vegetables, protein, good carbohydrates and just enough good fats for the taste you want. You also need vitamins, minerals and fiber from dietary supplements to provide the nutrition missing from your diet that your cells need for good health.

2 - Drink Lots of Water

Your body is about two-thirds water. In an average day, you lose about one and a half litres of water even without excessive sweating. To feel your best, you should drink 6 to 8 large glasses of water a day.

3 - Exercise Regularly

Regular exercise can help you feel and look your best. Exercise conditions your heart and relieves stress and makes it easier to achieve and maintain a healthy body weight.

However, check with your doctor before beginning an exercise program. Once you get the go-ahead, start slowly and gradually work up to longer and more strenuous workouts. Overtraining, especially when you're just starting out, can lead to strains and injuries.

When you don't have the time and daily exercise isn't practical for you:
Set a goal of exercising four times a week in 30-minute sessions. You can count minutes of activity that are already part of your day, such as time spent gardening, towards a goal of 30 minutes of exercise accumulated throughout the day. If you're driving to work, try parking farther away from your workplace to get a brief walk in. Or, if at all feasible, give up the car and walk or cycle in combination with or without public transport. Take the stairs instead of the elevator.

Find the exercise that works best for your lifestyle, whether it's at a gym, on a hiking path or on a playing field. If you're going to exercise outside, make sure you protect your face and exposed parts of your body from sun damage.

Most importantly, whatever you choose, have fun.

Max Alter, Ph.D.
More information on Wellness and nutrition is in my free report "Get Your Day Off To A Great Start" at http://www.myhealthybreakfast.com/freewellness/

For further discussion of the issues raised here and in the report go to my blog: http://blog.myhealthybreakfast.com

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Wellness Coaching: Defining Wellness

Recently I was involved in assisting in the curriculum development for a wellness program for indivuals with chronic medical conditions at a Chicago area clinic. The process was a marvelous opportunity for me to distill 25 years of work in the fields of healthcare, coaching, martial arts, yoga, meditation, psychology and philosophy into a cohesive package. As so many individuals are interested in the issue of wellness, I thought I would share my thoughts with you as well. While the early parts of this article speak to those with medical conditions, the latter parts outline my model of wellness independent of medical status.

What do health care professionals define as wellness?

It may come as a surprise to you, but with volumes of criteria established to diagnose medical and psychological illnesses there is no uniform working model of wellness! If you are not content to define health and wellness simply as the absence of disease (or pain), I could not agree with you more. No doubt you have met many individuals in your life who have no apparent disease condition but who are not living balanced, healthy lives. Similarly, there are many examples of individuals with chronic medical conditions who appear to have transcended their disease state to embody what many of us would identify as wellness.

Can I achieve wellness if I have a chronic medical condition?

Wellness does not require that you be free of all medical conditions. That is good news for those of us with bodies! In addition to the reality that accidents and illnesses can impact us profoundly, we are all aging and, of course, we do eventually die. While at least the last two are natural processes, we are not always comfortable discussing these issues in our culture. You may even be wondering why I would bring this up in a discussion on wellness!

Wellness is about embracing the natural unfolding of life.

The author, Byron Katie, states, "When I argue with reality, reality wins, but only 100% of the time."

If you have a medical condition, it IS a part of your life. Understandably, you have likely spent a good deal of time on a quest to return to "your" life, the life you recall and identified with before your physical condition changed. Your physical condition was a misplaced chapter, maybe accidentally put in your life from someone else's book! Now, if you could just find the editor-in-chief to take it out so that YOUR story can continue as you were writing it...

Wellness is about embracing YOUR life as it unfolds.

That doesn't mean that you should become passive or give up. You may be familiar with the Serenity Prayer:

God give me the courage to change what I can

The strength to accept what I cannot

And the wisdom to know the difference.

Wellness is about learning the difference between what you can change and what you cannot and focusing your energies wisely.

You are so much more than the story of your medical condition. Whatever you are experiencing now IS your life. How you relate, or don't, to your body's condition and how you embrace or reject exploration your experience will determine the quality and richness of your life, regardless of the state of your body at any given time.

Even if a cure is not possible, healing is always within your reach!

Toward a Model of Wellness:

Most simply, wellness brings a sense of wholeness. Medical conditions are not a uni-dimensional phenomenon. Chronic medical conditions affect an individual physically, socially, psychologically and spiritually. Wellness is an integration of mind, body and spirit so that one has a sense of balance and harmony in life.

Wellness is a lifestyle. As you know, the world appears to be getting more complex every year. Developing a wellness lifestyle will allow you to revitalize and re-energize yourself so that you can continue to thrive in the face of the ongoing external demands of life, preparing you to cope with the changes that tomorrow inevitably brings.

Wellness is more than developing self-soothing techniques to get you through a rough day. You may have heard about or been taught self-help or stress management techniques that focus you internally and teach you ways to improve your self-care. Some people commit to taking hot baths or listening to music regularly to relax. Others write affirmations and stick them on their mirrors to promote positive thinking. Others may take up journaling. While these types of techniques are useful and certainly have their place in decreasing stress they can fall short for many people. First, new habits are hard to maintain. Just look at how many New Year's Resolutions end up abandoned in 3 weeks time! Secondly, too often these techniques are used in isolation and don't seem to relate to how a person is living day to day in relation to their family, their workplace or their circle of friends. The techniques then become little more than bandages for larger problems in a person's life.

Wellness promotes self-understanding. You are not your body. You are not your thoughts. You are not your emotions. One key aspect of wellness is to learn how to control your thoughts and emotions. This does not mean that you stop having them, but that you stop being controlled by them. Being able to stand outside yourself and gain understanding of your life situation and your reactions to it is a critical piece of gaining control in your life.

Wellness promotes a sense of flow. In our "GO GO GO" culture, we tend to over-emphasize external productivity. Many people identify themselves as "Type A" and take pride in that. As a result, learning how to pace is a big challenge for many people. Another component of wellness is to be aware, respectful of and in tune with your flow between external productivity and rest periods. A well-paced life allows for a sustainable level of productivity so that surges of effort followed by extended "crashes" no longer define one's life.

Wellness creates a sense of connection and meaning in life. Self-care and self-understanding alone do not define wellness. You are part of a larger system. You may have a family, friends, co-workers, a church or other community. Beyond our human connections, we also have connections with nature and you may also have a sense of spiritual connection to something greater than yourself.

Wellness is mind-body-spirit integration that promotes self-care and self-understanding and connects your life to the larger world. It is a state of being joyfully and enthusiastically engaged with your life, even when it doesn't turn out exactly as you had planned.

Laura Young, M.A. is a life coach and owner of Wellspring Coaching. A contributing author to several books including 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life with Jack Canfield, John Gray and Bob Proctor, coming in September, Laura specializes in working with individuals facing midlife transitions (personal and career), as well as those seeking relationship improvement, individuals coping with grief and loss and those seeking high level personal development. With doctoral training in counseling psychology, Laura has written extensively on such topics as stress management, motivation, finding one's life purpose, creativity,achieving life balance, cultivating a healthy lifestyle and improving communication in personal and professional relationships .Visit her website to learn more about her coaching services. Visit her blog, Adventures of a Dragon Slayer [http://laurayoung.typepad.com/dragonslaying/] to view her extensive resource base.

Wellness Coaching - The New Hourly Pay Boom For Wellness Coaches

The new pay boom for Wellness Coaching has reached grandiose heights. Wellness coaching is a form of life coaching specifically related to improving ones overall physical well-being and improving the quality of one's diet and fitness lifestyle.

In recent years, Wellness Coaching has increased in popularity in the health community because of it's foundation in holistic nutrition and alternative health. As more and more people become in tuned to the benefits of holistic health, career opportunities for Wellness Coaches, Holistic Life Coaches, and Holistic Life Counseling are sky-rocketing. Specifically, Wellness Coaches are reaping the tremendous benefits.

After teaching Wellness Coaching online since 2003, Carmellita M. Brown the lead instructor for Lose Weight While Becoming a Wellness Coach says: "Wellness coaching is now seeing a pay boom. More people are looking for someone to help whip them into shape."

According to Carmellita Brown, Fitness Trainers are not the only ones able to earn by the hour. "Wellness Coaches can earn as much as $150 an hour for their services," says Brown. With just 20 clients and twice a week visits, Wellness Coaches can earn a staggering $6,000 weekly.

So, what are Wellness Coaching clients looking for? Wellness Coaching clients are looking for eating plans for weight-loss and anti-aging, information on the lifestyle improvements, and a regiment for the entire family. Furthermore, the main focus on lifestyle improvements has included ways to increase live foods in the diet, promote natural weight-loss, and prevent disease through food and mineral consumption.

According to Brown, this is where the Wellness Coach shines, "Unlike Nutritionists who normally follow the Standard American Diet model, properly trained Wellness Coaches understand more about the benefits of live foods, food combinations, maintaining the body's pH levels, detoxification, and mineral supplementation." In addition, Brown emphasizes that Wellness Coaches who also understand spiritual principles and self-development techniques are the most effective in helping clients develop healthful habits and lose weight.

And how are Wellness Coaches building their list of loyal clientele? First, many Wellness coaches are using the internet as a viable resource for building clientele even in their own cities. With their own blogs, websites, and online social networks, Wellness Coaches are finding the internet a great resource for building clientele. Even in face to face transpersonal coaching (one on one coaching), Wellness Coaches can find clients in their own cities on the net.

Second, many Wellness Coaches use nutritional network marketing companies to expand their list of clientele. Many Wellness Coaches work with Network Marketing Sales representatives for nutritional products to reach new clientele. Many Network Marketers of nutritional products hire Wellness Coaches as speakers and trainers in order to increase sales. For this service, many Wellness Coaches may charge a fee of $200 to $500 for a 3 hour workshop.

Third, many Wellness Coaches succeed at writing books and e-books on subjects related to nutrition, physical health, mental health, and weight loss. Coupled with blogs and websites, this proves to be an excellent way for Wellness Coaches to build clientele.

And finally, the key to most Wellness Coaches' success lies in their ability to articulate the anti-aging process, the science of losing weight, and the ability to transform one's lifestyle. Training and access to the latest information about such matters can quickly evolve into a thriving career in Wellness Coaching and earn a Wellness Coach the new hourly pay boom.

Roslyn Randle is an accomplished Writer, Author, and Internet Marketer. She is Editor-in-Chief of Headline Articles and co-instructor for several online courses. To learn more about wellness coaching visit Lose Weight While Becoming A Wellness Coach at http://universalclass.com/i/crn/9478.htm Also discover your divine right to live in wealth by visiting Abundance Training 101: The Universal Law Of Abundance at http://universalclass.com/i/crn/14056.htm

The Powers of a Positive Attitude

I am going to ask you to something very weird right now. First of all, I want you to listen to your thoughts. Now tell me, what thoughts fill your head? Would you label them as positive, or negative?

Now let's say you are walking down the street with these thoughts. Do you think anyone who would meet you would be able to tell you what’s on your mind?

The answer to number one is up to you. But, the answer number two can be pretty generic. Although people will not be able to tell you exactly what you think, they will more or less have an idea of how you are feeling.

Here's another question. When you enter a party filled with friends, do they all fall silent as if something terrible had happened? Or does everybody there perk up as if waiting for something exciting to happen?

You know what? The answer to all these depends on your frame of mind.

Thoughts are very powerful. They affect your general attitude. The attitude you carry reflects on your appearance, too – unless, of course, you are a great actor.

And it doesn't end there. Your attitude can also affect people around you.

The type of attitude you carry depends on you. It can be either positive or negative.

Positive thoughts have a filling effect. They are admittedly invigorating. Plus, the people around the person carrying positive thoughts are usually energized by this type of attitude.

Negative thoughts on the other hand have a sapping effect on other people. Aside from making you look gloomy and sad, negative thoughts can turn a festive gathering into a funeral wake.

A positive attitude attracts people, while a negative attitude repels them. People tend to shy away from those who carry a negative attitude.

We can also define attitude as the way of looking at the world. If you choose to focus on the negative things in the world, more or less you have a negative attitude brewing up. However, if you choose to focus on the positive things, you are more likely carry a positive attitude.

You have much to gain from a very positive attitude. For one, studies have shown that a positive attitude promotes better health. Those with this kind of attitude also have more friends. projecting a positive attitude also helps one to handle stress and problems better than those who have a negative attitude.

A positive attitude begins with a healthy self-image. If you will love the way you are and are satisfied, confident, and self-assured, you also make others are around feel the same way.

A negative attitude, on the other hand, has, of course, an opposite effect. So, carrying a negative attitude has a twofold drawback. You feel bad about yourself, and you make others feel the same way.

If you want to have a positive attitude, you have to feature healthy thoughts. This is probably very hard to do nowadays since, all around us, the media feeds us nothing but negative thoughts. A study shows that for every 14 things a parent says to his or her child, only one is positive. This is truly a saddening thought.

If you want a healthier outlook in life, you need to think happy thoughts, and you have to hear positive things as well. So, what can you do? Well, for starters, you could see a funny movie, you could play with children, spend some time telling jokes with friends. All these activities fill you with positive stimuli, which in turn promotes positive attitude.

Although it is impossible to keep ourselves from the negative things around us, you can still carry a positive attitude by focusing on the good things, the positive things in life.

And this positive attitude you now carry can be of benefit to other people. Sometimes when other people feel down, the thing people mostly do is try to give them advice. But sometimes, all they need is somebody to sit by them, and listen to them. If you have a positive attitude you may be able to cheer them up without even having to say anything.

If positive attitude is really great, why do people choose to adopt a negative attitude instead? One who carries a negative attitude may be actually sending a signal for attention. Before you get me wrong, feeling sad, angry, or gloomy is not wrong itself. But dwelling on these thoughts for far too long is not healthy either. There is a time to mourn.

As always, if you are beset by troubles, even in your darkest hour, focus on the good things in life, you will always have hope. Problems become something you can overcome.

You do not have much to lose by adopting a healthy, positive attitude. Studies show that such an attitude actually retards aging, makes you healthier, helps you develop a better stress coping mechanism, and has a very positive effect on all the people you meet every day. So, what's not to like about a positive attitude? Adopt one today.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Wellness Programs, Health and Wellness and Wellness Tips

Thousands of men and women all over the world have reduced their chance of getting stress-related diseases through wellness programs and general health and wellness. Corporations in the Western world have been recently implementing voluntary wellness programs in order to create healthier happier employees. This may mean providing facilities where employees can practice their fitness regimes as well as providing wellness tips through trained professionals and tailoring routines for all of the individual employees. The benefits of reducing the stress in our every day lives is endless.

Health and wellness is so important because it affects all aspects of our lives. Information is available through the Internet, media, and of course the references of our friends and family. Wellness programs suggest we use whole food supplements, Chinese herbs and the ayurvedic medicine of India. Wellness tips are a great way to start experimenting on what best works for you. This is a free guide to all alternative healing products and information so you can find exactly what you are searching for.

We provide a guide that allows you to find many qualified alternative healing providers as well as an abundance of wellness tips. You will be able to create wellness programs that are specially customized for you and your entire family. Remember, balance, health and wellness can drastically improve all areas of your life. Imagine living completely pain free and stress free, the possibility is there and available to you.

http://www.wellness-supplements-vitamins.com/wellness-programs.html

Gregg Makarowski - Is a successful internet publisher and author.

Monday, September 27, 2010

UNLOCK YOUR SELF IMPROVEMENT POWER

When we look at a certain object, a painting for example – we won’t be able to appreciate what’s in it, what is painted and what else goes with it if the painting is just an inch away from our face. But if we try to take it a little further, we’ll have a clearer vision of the whole art work.
We reach a point in our life when we are ready for change and a whole bunch of information that will help us unlock our self improvement power. Until then, something can be staring us right under our nose but we don’t see it. The only time we think of unlocking our self improvement power is when everything got worst. Take the frog principle for example –

Try placing Frog A in a pot of boiling water. What happens? He twerps! He jumps off! Why? Because he is not able to tolerate sudden change in his environment – the water’s temperature. Then try Frog B: place him in a luke warm water, then turn the gas stove on. Wait til the water reaches a certain boiling point. Frog B then thinks “Ooh… it’s a bit warm in here”.
People are like Frog B in general. Today, Anna thinks Carl hates her. Tomorrow, Patrick walks up to her and told her he hates her. Anna stays the same and doesn’t mind her what her friends says. The next day, she learned that Kim and John also abhors her. Anna doesn’t realize at once the importance and the need for self improvement until the entire community hates her.

We learn our lessons when we experience pain. We finally see the warning signs and signals when things get rough and tough. When do we realize that we need to change diets? When none of our jeans and shirts would fit us. When do we stop eating candies and chocolates? When all of our teeth has fallen off. When do we realize that we need to stop smoking? When our lungs have gone bad. When do we pray and ask for help? When we realize that we’re gonna die tomorrow.
The only time most of us ever learn about unlocking our self improvement power is when the whole world is crashing and falling apart. We think and feel this way because it is not easy to change. But change becomes more painful when we ignore it.
Change will happen, like it or hate it. At one point or another, we are all going to experience different turning points in our life – and we are all going to eventually unlock our self improvement power not because the world says so, not because our friends are nagging us, but because we realized its for our own good.

Happy people don’t just accept change, they embrace it. Now, you don’t have to feel a tremendous heat before realizing the need for self improvement. Unlocking your self improvement power means unlocking yourself up in the cage of thought that “its just the way I am”. It is such a poor excuse for people who fear and resist change. Most of us program our minds like computers.

Jen repeatedly tells everyone that she doesn’t have the guts to be around groups of people. She heard her mom, her dad, her sister, her teacher tell the same things about her to other people. Over the years, that is what Jen believes. She believes its her story. And what happens? Every time a great crowd would troop over their house, in school, and in the community – she tends to step back, shy away and lock herself up in a room. Jen didn’t only believed in her story, she lived it.
Jen has to realize that she is not what she is in her story. Instead of having her story post around her face for everyone to remember, she has to have the spirit and show people “I am an important person and I should be treated accordingly!”

Self improvement may not be everybody’s favorite word, but if we look at things in a different point of view, we might have greater chances of enjoying the whole process instead of counting the days until we are fully improved. Three sessions in a week at the gym would result to a healthier life, reading books instead of looking at porns will shape up a more profound knowledge, going out with friends and peers will help you take a step back from work and unwind. And just when you are enjoying the whole process of unlocking your self improvement power, you’ll realize that you’re beginning to take things light and become happy.

What Innovation Can Do to Your Life

It's a talent that everyone has, yet they think they don't. The power of innovation. If you've ever marvelled at somebody's creative prowess, guess what, you can create and innovate too. It just takes time. Everyone is born creative. The box of crayons in kindergarten were not limited to those who possessed potential; because the truth is, everybody has potential.

You know how long it took to learn to ride a bike or drive or to never commit the same mistake again? It's the same with innovation. It takes a bit of practice and a lot of time before this mind function comes easily when called. This article will teach you a few tips on how to bring innovation into your life.

Don't listen to what other people say. Follow the beat of your own drum. Allowing for the input of other people will only bring cacophony to the music you are trying to make. If you have an original idea, don't waste your time and effort trying to make people understand. They won't. And the help you will probably get comes in the form of negative feedback. If all those geniuses listened to their peers, we would probably still be living in the middle ages.

Spend time on it. I cannot stress that enough, although, please do not mistake this tip to tell you to quit your day job entirely. Do not. This involves some tricky time management but with a little discipline you'll be able to squeeze both in.

Exercise. Take a walk. Run a mile or two. Send all those endorphins coursing through your veins. Exercising certainly clears and relaxes your mind and allows for anything to pop up.

Record your dreams. Aren't some of them just the craziest things that your conscious mind would never have thought of? If you've had these dreams before, and I'm sure have, this only shows you the untapped innovative power you have lying within. So jot down those notes. Those dreams may just create an innovative spark in you.

Find your own style. You can always tell a Van Gogh from a Matisse. You'll know Hemingway wrote something by the choice of words on the paper. So it is the same with you. People will appreciate your innovation more because it is uniquely yours and that no one else would have thought of what you were thinking. That will let people see how valuable an asset you are.

Don't hide behind nifty gadgets or tools. You don't need the most expensive set of paints to produce a masterpiece. The same way with writing. You don't need some expensive fountain pen and really smooth paper for a bestseller. In fact, J.K. Rowling wrote the first book of the Harry Potter Series on bits of tissue. So what if you've got an expensive SLR camera if you're a crappy photographer? Who cares if you've got a blinging laptop if you can't write at all? The artist actually reduces the number of tools he has as he gets better at his craft: he knows what works and what doesn't.

Nothing will work without passion. What wakes you up in the mornings? What keeps the flame burning? What is the one thing that you'll die if you don't do? Sometimes people with talent are overtaken by the people who want it more. Think the hare and the tortoise. Ellen Degeneres once said that if you're not doing something that you want to do, then you don't really want to do it. And that's true. Sometimes you just want something so bad you become a virtual unstoppable. And that is passion. Passion will keep you going.

Don't worry about inspiration. You can't force it; inspiration hits when you least expect it to, for those unpredictable yet inevitable moments you should prepare. An idea could strike you on the subway, yet alas, you poor unfortunate soul; you have no sheet of paper to scribble down a thought that could change the world. Avoid these disasters. Have a pen and paper within your arm's reach at all times.

I hope this article has helped you bring more innovation into your life. Keep in mind that you're doing these things for your own satisfaction and not anybody else's. But soon enough they will notice, and everything should snowball from there.

The Road to Intuition

Have you had that experience when all of a sudden you just had this huge hunch that something is about to happen, and to your surprise, that intuition was eventually translated to reality?

When you feel strongly about something without logical basis to it, that's called intuition. It comes in three impressions: clairvoyance or "the third eye", sensing clearly and feeling through listening.

Clairvoyance is when your eye goes beyond what it can see. This is when you know what is happening somewhere.

Sensing clearly is basically what we refer to as "hunch" or "gut feel." This is the time when you are overwhelmed with a feeling and you can't explain it and all you can say is "I just know."

On the other hand, feeling through listening or clairaudience is being able to "listen" between the lines. Intuition also happens at times when a certain sound, whatever it is - be it a car's honk or a bird's twitting - ushers in an intense feeling.

They say only a number of people are gifted with intuition. Astrologers even insist that people born under the Scorpio or Pisces signs are naturally intuitive it almost borders on E.S.P. But studies have been sprouting left and right that proclaim that anyone can develop intuition.

Why the need to develop intuition, you ask? Why not let your emotional and psychological state as it is? First and foremost, intuition promotes good communication. It makes you more sensitive to the people around you; it often keeps you from hurting those you love because you are intuitive enough to understand them. Intuition also makes you far more creative than ever. Intuition means releasing more creative juices for any means of expression. Lastly, intuition has a healing power. This healing power is not in the physical sense, but in delving deep into your soul to eradicate some negative energy buried in it.

With that being said, are you ready to develop your intuition? Here are some ways to unlock this gift:

1. Hypnosis

Oh yes, get yourself hypnotized. Hypnosis is not limited to watching a pendulum move back and forth. Perform self-hypnosis or you can avail of hypnotic programs that can strengthen your intuition.

2. Meditation

Meditating means finding peace in yourself. If your mind and heart are cluttered with too many baggage and hurt, you wouldn't be able to quiet down that part of you that could eventually initiate intuition. There are so many ways to meditate: take a yoga class, or just simply practice some breathing that could bring you straight to Zen.

3. Think positive!

A worry-free, fear-free state could do so much to improve your intuitive ability. By staying positive, you attract good energy that would be able to easily recognize imminent feelings and events.

4. Just let go.

What does this mean? If you are on the brink of making a huge decision, let go of all the inhibitions and head to a quiet place where you could find out where the letting go has brought you. Sometimes you just have to listen to the voice within you, and that voice wouldn't come out unless you let go.

5. Never expect.

After letting go of the inhibitions and all those things that stop you from thinking and feeling clearly, never expect for an answer right away. Never expect that the "hunch" would fall on your lap immediately. Give it a little time then you'd just get surprised that -- wham! -- now you have your answer.

6. Believe in your first impressions.

When you see someone for the first time and think that he is a bit too arrogant for your taste, chances are that impression actually holds true. Most of the time, first impressions are brought by intuition.

7. Stay happy!

See? All you need to be intuitive is to stay happy! Happiness attracts immense power and such power includes intuition. In tapping your intuition, your motivation must be happiness and contentment. Given that premise, intuition will fall to you easily.

Intuition is helpful, because sometimes it leads you to something that cannot be achieved otherwise. A lot of lives have been saved by intuition alone. Decisions are easier done if armed by this gift. Develop intuition now and reap benefits you have never imagined.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO IMPROVE YOUR SELF?

Sometimes, when all our doubts, fears and insecurities wrap ourselves up, we always come up with the idea of “I wish I was somebody else.” More often than not, we think and believe that someone or rather, most people are better than us.- when in reality, the fact is, most people are more scared than us.

You spot a totally eye-catching girl sitting by herself at a party, casually sipping on a glass of Asti Spumanti. You think to yourself, “she looks so perfectly calm and confident.” But if you could read thru her transparent mind, you would see a bunch of clouds of thoughts and you might just be amazed that she’s thinking “are people talking about why I am seated here alone?... Why don’t guys find me attractive? …I don’t like my ankles, they look too skinny… I wish I was as intelligent as my best friend.”

We look at a young business entrepreneur and say “Wooh… what else could he ask for?” He stares at himself at the mirror and murmur to himself, “I hate my big eyes… I wonder why my friends won’t talk to me… I hope mom and dad would still work things out.”

Isn’t it funny? We look at other people, envy them for looking so outrageously perfect and wish we could trade places with them, while they look at us and thinks of the same thing. We are insecure of other people who themselves are insecure of us. We suffer from low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence and lose hope in self improvement because we are enveloped in quiet desperation.

Sometimes, you notice that you have an irritating habit like biting off your finger nails, having a foul mouth, and you – of all people, is the last to know.

I have a friend who never gets tired of talking. And in most conversations, she is the only one who seems to be interested in the things she has to say. So all of our other friends tend to avoid the circles whenever she’s around, and she doesn’t notices how badly she became socially handicapped – gradually affecting the people in her environment.

One key to self improvement is to LISTEN and TALK to a trusted friend. Find someone who you find comfort in opening up with even the most gentle topics you want to discuss. Ask questions like “do you think I am ill-mannered?”, “Do I always sound so argumentative?”, “Do I talk too loud?”, “Does my breath smell?”, “Do I ever bore you when were together?”. In this way, the other person will obviously know that you are interested in the process of self improvement. Lend her your ears for comments and criticisms and don’t give her answers like “Don’t exaggerate! That’s just the way I am!” Open up your mind and heart as well. And in return, you may want to help your friend with constructive criticism that will also help her improve her self.

One of Whitney Houston’s songs says “Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.” True enough. In order to love others, you must love yourself too. Remember, you cannot give what you do not have.

Before telling other people some ways on how to improve themselves, let them see that you yourself is a representation and a product of self improvement. Self improvement makes us better people, we then inspire other people, and then the rest of the world will follow.

Stop thinking of yourselves as second-rate beings. Forget the repetitive thought of “If only I was richer… if only I was thinner” and so on. Accepting your true self is the first step to self improvement. We need to stop comparing ourselves to others only to find out at the end that we’ve got 10 more reasons to envy them.

We all have our insecurities. Nobody is perfect. We always wish we had better things, better features, better body parts, etc. But life need not to be perfect for people to be happy about themselves.Self improvement and loving yourself is not a matter of shouting to the whole world that you are perfect and you are the best. It’s the virtue of acceptance and contentment. When we begin to improve ourselves, we then begin to feel contented and happy.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Why Coaching is the Way to Go in Team Management

When you hear the word “coach”, what comes first into your mind? Do you picture a basketball team with a man/woman shouting out directions? Or perhaps a football team with a man/woman pacing to and fro and calling out the names of the players?

Coaching is no longer reserved to sports teams; it is now one of the key concepts in leadership and management. Why is coaching popular?

Coaching levels the playing field.
Coaching is one of the six emotional leadership styles proposed by Daniel Goleman. Moreover, it is a behavior or role that leaders enforce in the context of situational leadership. As a leadership style, coaching is used when the members of a group or team are competent and motivated, but do not have an idea of the long-term goals of an organization. This involves two levels of coaching: team and individual. Team coaching makes members work together. In a group of individuals, not everyone may have nor share the same level of competence and commitment to a goal. A group may be a mix of highly competent and moderately competent members with varying levels of commitment. These differences can cause friction among the members. The coaching leader helps the members level their expectations. Also, the coaching leader manages differing perspectives so that the common goal succeeds over personal goals and interests. In a big organization, leaders need to align the staffs’ personal values and goals with that of the organization so that long-term directions can be pursued.

Coaching builds up confidence and competence.
Individual coaching is an example of situational leadership at work. It aims to mentor one-on-one building up the confidence of members by affirming good performance during regular feedbacks; and increase competence by helping the member assess his/her strengths and weaknesses towards career planning and professional development. Depending on the individual’s level of competence and commitment, a leader may exercise more coaching behavior for the less-experienced members. Usually, this happens in the case of new staffs. The direct supervisor gives more defined tasks and holds regular feedbacks for the new staff, and gradually lessens the amount of coaching, directing, and supporting roles to favor delegating as competence and confidence increase.

Coaching promotes individual and team excellence.
Excellence is a product of habitual good practice. The regularity of meetings and constructive feedback is important in establishing habits. Members catch the habit of constantly assessing themselves for their strengths and areas for improvement that they themselves perceive what knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to acquire to attain team goals. In the process, they attain individually excellence as well. An example is in the case of a musical orchestra: each member plays a different instrument. In order to achieve harmony of music from the different instrument, members will polish their part in the piece, aside from practicing as an ensemble. Consequently, they improve individually as an instrument player.

Coaching develops high commitment to common goals.
A coaching leader balances the attainment of immediate targets with long-term goals towards the vision of an organization. As mentioned earlier, with the alignment of personal goals with organizational or team goals, personal interests are kept in check. By constantly communicating the vision through formal and informal conversations, the members are inspired and motivated. Setting short-term team goals aligned with organizational goals; and making an action plan to attain these goals can help sustain the increased motivation and commitment to common goals of the members.

Coaching produces valuable leaders.
Leadership by example is important in coaching. A coaching leader loses credibility when he/she cannot practice what he/she preaches. This means that a coaching leader should be well organized, highly competent is his/her field, communicates openly and encourages feedback, and has a clear idea of the organization’s vision-mission-goals. By vicarious and purposive learning, members catch the same good practices and attitudes from the coaching leader, turning them into coaching leaders themselves. If a member experiences good coaching, he/she is most likely to do the same things when entrusted with formal leadership roles.

Some words of caution though: coaching is just one of the styles of leadership. It can be done in combination with the other five emotional leadership styles depending on the profile of the emerging team. Moreover, coaching as a leadership style requires that you are physically, emotionally, and mentally fit most of the time since it involves two levels of coaching: individual and team. Your members expect you to be the last one to give up or bail out in any situation especially during times of crises. A coaching leader must be conscious that coaching entails investing time on each individual, and on the whole team. Moreover, that the responsibilities are greater since while you are coaching members, you are also developing future coaches as well.

Friday, September 24, 2010

Your Recommended Daily Allowance for Relaxation

Stress is the curse of living in modern times. Everyone suffers from stress. And the stress we suffer takes a heavy toll on our bodies, emotions and minds.
Feeling stressed out, worn out by fatigue or just simply having a miserable day, the best thing to do is relax.

Watching television may be a form of relaxation for some, but is not a recommended method by experts. When we watch TV we are bombarded with commercials, ads, sounds and images. So how do we achieve relaxation? If there are thousands of ways we can get stressed, one of them is not meeting deadlines, there are also many ways we can relax.

In recent studies, experts have determined that heart disease is linked to anger and irritability is linked to mental stress. Too much stress brings about ischemia that can lead to or cause a heart attack. Relaxation takes on added importance in light of this matter. Managing your anger and attitude is significant to heart health, and relaxation can help you manage stress.

One way of relaxation is transcendental meditation. Recent studies have also shown that this method might reduce artery blockage, which is a major cause for heart attack and stroke. People practice transcendental meditation by repeating uttering soothing sounds while meditating, this is to achieve total relaxation. The researchers found that practitioners of transcendental meditation significantly reduced the thickness of their arterial wall compared with those who didn't practice transcendental meditation.

Another study on another method of relaxation, acupuncture, seems to reduce high blood pressure by initiating several body functions for the brain to release chemical compounds known as endorphins. Endorphin helps to relax muscles, ease panic, decrease pain, and reduce anxiety.

Yoga is also another method for relaxation and may also have similar effects like acupuncture. In another study, participants were subjected to several minutes of mental stress. Then they were subjected to various relaxation techniques, such as listening to nature sounds or classical music. Only those who did Yoga significantly reduced the time it took for their blood pressures to go back to normal. Yoga is a form of progressive relaxation.

Breathing is one of the easiest methods to relax. Breathing influences alamost all aspects of us, it affects our mind, our moods and our body. Simply focus on your breathing, after some time you can feel its effects right away. There are several breathing techniques that can help you reduce stress.

Another easy way to achieve relaxation is exercise. If you feel irritated a simple half-hour of exercise will often settle things down. Although exercise is a great way to lose weight, it does not show you how to manage stress appropriately. Exercise should also be used in conjunction with other exercise method.

One great way of relaxation is getting a massage. To gain full relaxation, you need to totally surrender to the handling and touch of a professional therapist. There are several types of massages that also give different levels of relaxation.

Another method of relaxation is Biofeedback. The usual biofeedback-training program includes a 10-hour sessions that is often spaced one week apart.

Hypnosis is one controversial relaxation technique. It is a good alternative for people who think that they have no idea what it feels like to be relaxed. It is also a good alternative for people with stress related health problems.

Drugs are extreme alternatives to relaxation. They are sometimes not safe and are not effective like the other relaxation methods. This method is only used by trained medical professionals on their patients.

These relaxation techniques are just some of the ways you can achieve relaxation. Another reason why we need to relax, aside from lowering blood pressure in people and decreasing the chances of a stroke or a heart attack, is because stress produces hormones that suppress the immune system, relaxation gives the immune system time to recover and in doing so function more efficiently.

Relaxation lowers the activities within the brains' limbic system; this is the emotional center of our brain.
Furthermore, the brain has a periodic need for a more pronounced activity on the right-hemisphere. Relaxation is one way of achieving this.

Relaxation can really be of good use once a relaxation technique is regularly built into your lifestyle. Choose a technique that you believe you can do regularly.