Inspire everyone around you with these 18 tips

Posted February 20, 2012 at 12:19 am

by Marc Hack

Live by choice, not by chance.  Make changes, not excuses.  Be motivated, not manipulated.  Work to excel, not compete.  Listen to your own inner voice, not the jumbled opinions of everyone else.

This is the way to inspire people!  This is how you can grow into the best version of YOU!

Here are a few more ideas to get you started with inspiring everyone around you [continue]...

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How scared are you?

Posted February 15, 2012 at 12:57 am

by Joel Runyon

I was talking to a friend the other day. They’re in their senior year of college and enjoying things mostly. I asked them what they were going to do after college, and they really had no idea. After a few more minutes of prodding, my friend admitted,

    I really don’t know, but I’m scared to death.

Good! I told them. If you’re scared to death, you’re doing it right.

I think everyone starts out scared. Scared they’re doing it wrong, scared they’re going to make a mistake, scared they’re going to fail. Over time, we’re taught, that you should take the safe way, do things you’re qualified for. Be nice, stay comfortable and in return, you won’t have to scared.

We gravitate towards comfort, and are lulled in by it’s but over time that comfort zone we’re lulled into turns into a sort of apathy. Every once in a while you need a good scare to get you jolted back on the right path (but that’s always much easier to say than do).
A Good Scare

A month ago, I really scared myself for the first time in a long time.  I went skiing.

Every year a bunch of friends from college get together and catch up. This time we went skiing. I’m moderately coordinated, but I’m not a big cold-weather fan and usually do what I can to avoid it (like going to an island).

I had been skiing before, but it was a while ago – as in at least 15 years. Since then, my only experience with skiing was avoiding [continue]…

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Your biggest regret if you were to die tomorrow?

Posted February 14, 2012 at 2:32 am

by Susie Steiner

There was no mention of more sex or bungee jumps. A palliative nurse who has counselled the dying in their last days has revealed the most common regrets we have at the end of our lives. And among the top, from men in particular, is ‘I wish I hadn’t worked so hard’.

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom.

“When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently,” she says, “common themes surfaced again and again.”

Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

“This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.”

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

“This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their [continue]…

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Why do you keep telling people this?

Posted February 9, 2012 at 3:11 pm

“I don’t have the time!”

Well, if you don’t, in theory, neither do I. You see, time is the one constant that all us human beings have. After all, we each have the same 86,400 seconds per day to do what we need, want, and have to do.

Somebody once said that life gives us only two things: opportunity and time. Now, when you think about the old adage, time is money, can you see how that really means that life gives us money?

If you weren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth, that might not seem right, but it really is. See, whenever you do something, or get something, you use up one or more of three resources: time, money or energy.

And really, since everything in the Universe is made up of energy at a quantum level, all three of those are energy. So let’s take energy out of the equation and say that you either use (spend) time or money. Always. Every second of the day. All 86,4000 of them.

In return, you get a certain level of value back (another form of energy). You can trade time for sleep (value), trade money for food (value), trade time and money for a date with someone special (value), and on and on.

Now, you know from high school physics class that energy can not be created or destroyed; it can only change forms. So when we say we “make money” or “make time” for something, what it really means is that we’ve effectively turned one into the other… or another type of value into one… or one into more of the same.

Huh?

If that’s about as clear as mud, just stick with me for a minute (see, I’m asking you to give me some of your time… and I’ll give you value in return, in the form of some thought-provoking information).

Continue Reading…

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9 tips for living a kick-ass life

Posted February 2, 2012 at 1:59 pm

by Henrik Edberg

“It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.”

“Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

“When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.”

You may know Mark Twain for some of his very popular books like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He was a writer and also a humorist, satirist and lecturer.

Twain is known for his many – and often funny – quotes. Here are a few of my favourite tips from him.

1. Approve of yourself.

“A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.”

If you don’t approve of yourself, of your behaviour and actions then you’ll probably walk around most of the day with a sort of uncomfortable feeling. If you, on the other hand, approve of yourself then you tend to become relaxed and gain inner freedom to do more of what you really want.

This can, in a related way, be a big obstacle in personal growth. You may have all the right tools to grow in some way but you feel an inner resistance. You can’t get there.

What you may be bumping into there are success barriers. You are putting up barriers in your own mind of what you may or may not deserve. Or barriers that tell you what you are capable of. They might tell you that you aren’t really that kind of person that could this thing that you’re attempting.

Or if you make some headway in the direction you want to go you may start to sabotage for yourself. To keep yourself in a place that is familiar for you.

So you need give yourself approval and allow yourself to be who you want to be. Not look for the approval from others. But from yourself. To dissolve that inner barrier or let go of that self-sabotaging tendency. This is no easy task and it can take time.

2. Your limitations may just be in your mind.

“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

So many limitations are mostly in our minds. We may for instance think that people will [continue]…

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This doesn’t interest us, either….

Posted January 29, 2012 at 7:11 pm

[ Editor's Note: All we can say is "WOW" on this one ] -

Via I Heart Wall Street

By Oriah from her book, The Invitation
published by HarperONE, San Francisco, All rights reserved. Used with permission of the author.

* * *

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon…
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with [continue]…

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Why you need a PhD. in anger!

Posted January 23, 2012 at 3:50 am

via I Heart Wall Street

One of the most primal emotions we have sloshing in our eight pound noggin is anger.

It’s easy these days. With Wall Street. Tax codes. Hypocrites & liars. Traffic. Game theory in everything. Technology killing cash cows & jobs and yet, still not moving fast enough. Politics & Politicians who don’t even know the three reasons they have for killing a department. And, of course, the gays with their impeccable sense of style.

The thing about anger is, it’s a defense mechanism. We use it to protect our sense of reality, nurtured by the cause and effect of everyday of our lives tilling toward now. Put simply, anger shows up when something doesn’t go the way we expect. So we snap.

“Mr. McGee, don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” [see picture]

Boundaries, imagined or real, get pushed. So, (most) people stuff it, especially when it comes to money. I know. That trade isn’t working out? You didn’t follow your instinct, and now it’s up 30%. “ALL of your friends at the cocktail party…”, “Why is all of this trash in the market rallying, I own great companies…” I know.

Or maybe you’re still down from 2008, this is not what you expected. Your plans were for growth. And, “why can’t I just refi my mortgage? I’ve been making the higher payments for 5 years now. On time. Every month.”

I know… it sits there boiling, until one day, something probably totally unrelated sets you off. Your eyes beam green, eerie music plays, and your anger grows is unleased (along with your biceps).

I know because that’s my job. It also helps that I’m just a very angry person. You could say I have a PhD. in anger.

The thing about anger is, it’s also a gift. When Steve Jobs got angry [continue]….

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How to increase productivity and enjoy life more

Posted January 10, 2012 at 3:01 am

via The Big Picture

Tony Schwartz notes:

Our most fundamental need as human beings is to spend and renew energy.

***

When I began to crash in the early afternoon following my red-eye flight, I took a 30-minute nap in the room we have set aside for that purpose in our office. The nap didn’t give me nearly enough rest to fully catch up, but it powerfully revived me for the next several hours.

At the other end of the spectrum, exercise … positively influences our cognitive functioning, and our mood.

The truth is that we ought to be exercising nearly every day, ideally for at least 45 minutes, including strength training at least twice a week.

***

The secret to optimal well-being and effectiveness is to make more rhythmic waves in your life. To build the highest level of fitness, for example, it’s critical to challenge the heart at high intensity for short periods of time, and then to recover deeply.

The bigger the amplitude of your wave — the higher your maximum heart rate, and the more deeply you recover — the more flexibly you can respond to varying demands and the healthier you likely are.

The same rhythmic movement serves us well all day long, but instead we live mostly [continue]…

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We think too much, and feel too little

Posted December 21, 2011 at 12:04 am

One of the best “gut check” vids you’ll ever watch:

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Why nice people can’t change the world

Posted December 15, 2011 at 2:43 am

Here is an excerpt from an incredible blog post by, Joel Runyon.

The Problem With Nice

“Nice” is a neutered word. It’s a pleasantry that we use to say about someone when there’s nothing else to say about them. But, somewhere along the line, “nice” becomes a goal. It’s something to shoot for. Instead of worrying about accentuating the skills that make you – you, we become embroiled in the sea of sameness as we waddle towards the central line of mediocrity.

Instead of focusing on doing something that matters, and focusing on being who you were meant to be, we neuter the adjectives and the people themselves by aiming for nice.

Instead of focusing on what you know you need to be doing, you rearrange your life priorities to do what other people view as acceptable and appease their expectations. You start to hear these statements:

• I really hope they’re nice.
• That seems like a nice place
• What’d you think about Frank? Oh, he’s nice.

Filler statements that don’t mean anything but a low-level of acceptance that means you don’t have terribly offensive body odor. We’re told that “nice’ is a great goal because you can’t get people to like you if you have body odor, and we all want people to like us, right?

The problem is that nice people seldom do big things because they’re so afraid of stepping on anyone’s toes that stepping outside their comfort zone is paralyzing and doing something that matters and changing the world involves getting wayyyyyyyy outside of your comfort zone (and stepping on a few toes now and then).

If you start to do something important, you’ll hit resistance. You’ll make people uncomfortable, offended or even angry. People will push back even if it doesn’t directly affect their life. They won’t like what you’re doing because it makes them have to consider the fact that maybe (just maybe) someone else has created a bigger story and a bigger world to live in and that the the small, safe world they created for themselves might not be the only way to live.

See the full post here…

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