Use Change To Design A Healthy Life

Tell me what a man eats and how he treats his body, and I will tell you how long that man will live! Diet, yes. Living habits, of course. Attitude about life, naturally. They all matter.

Your human body is a marvel of construction. It is strong, resilient, capable of withstanding amazing amounts of abuse—but not endless abuse.

Disease, decay and early death are not products of any single excess or failure. Rather, they are the end result of living contrary to the laws of life day after day. The disease of the forties or fifties results from the mistakes of the twenties and thirties.

No one can help a man who refuses to help himself. If your life is to be a long and happy one, you must want to live! There is a whole beautiful, lovable and loving world to go on living in.

Doubtless our most important discovery in the past one hundred years is the knowledge that man is a part, a glorious part of nature. Nature’s pattern, above all else, is motion, constant motion, a never ending cycle of change. Electricity, as we now understand it, is motion. The universe is motion. Man himself is motion. Understand this, for it is basic in understanding yourself and your life.

Though you may hear the same name and return to the same house both evenings, you are, on Tuesday, a different person from the one you were on Monday. Twenty-four hours have wrought change; subtle change, true, but change none-the-less. You are a day apart from the one you were.

That is why it is so important for you to understand. Each day brings changes, both mental and physical. Your body is constantly changing. Are you aware of it? If not, then learn now, for you are about to apply this knowledge and change your life—mind and body!

Look at your hand. Turn it in the air, examine it closely. Is it the same hand you had yesterday, a year ago, ten years ago? It is not! In twenty-four hours, since this time yesterday, a small area of your hand has been shed and new tissue has replaced it.

Overnight a bit of you has been reborn. This is constant, never-ending. New tissue replaces old. You scrape your arm and it bleeds. Within a matter of days, that scraped skin has been naturally removed and new skin has replaced it.

Every organ, every bone, every single cell of life you call your body is in the endless process of change. A single red blood corpuscle has a life span of two months. This means that, in a period of 60 days, every blood cell you had at the beginning has done its work and ceased to exist, while new cells have been born to replace them all. This is the hope, the root of re-birth.

Your body is essentially a different body from that which you possessed ten years ago. New organs, blood and skin have all been reborn in a period of seven years. Grasp this fact. Understand it and understand how it applies to your own life.

What can it mean to you? What can it mean to the dream of a long and creative life? It is strange how so many of us accept the law of constant motion in all things that concern us except that most important matter of all, our health and life.

The housewife who finds her home cluttered with the dirt and waste of living does not hesitate to clean it out regularly. But that same woman frequently loses this understanding when she concerns herself with her own health and life.

If she is overweight, she may accept this, using such foolish phrases as “it is natural for me” or “that is a family trait.” If she suffers from headaches or chronic indigestion, she reminds herself that her mother or father suffered similarly and therefore it cannot be prevented.

She fails to apply the same logic to her body as she does to her home. She has forgotten that life and health, like all things which confront us, are of our own making,

Equally foolish is the man who, a year after his near-fatal heart attack, is back to his old habits. “Life is no fun eating the foods the doctor ordered and giving up nights in front of the TV with my favorite snacks Besides, doctors can perform miracles these days.”

What men have done, men can undo. This is the past history of man, and the promise of a bright future. Man is the living symbol of progress. He changes. He adapts himself to natural changes around him. He learns and applies his learning to making a better life for himself.

We have done this everywhere except for health and life itself! The longer we refuse to devote ourselves to an understanding of what makes for health, the greater the problem will become.

This is not just idle chatter. This is the substance of all that we have ever learned about health and rational living. If you cannot say, with certainty, that you want: to live—that you love life—then you are not prepared to build the kind of body and mind that will extend your life and end pain and disease.

If you know within yourself that life is precious, life is good, then more abundant health and happiness are yours for the building. If this is not so, then you have a job to do on yourself. Begin by accepting the fact that you, and only you, are responsible for creating your own life.

How To Get Your Raise

Salary raises in recent years are handed out with what seems to be automatic regularity for a variety of group reasons. More helpful would be concern for the individual who wants to make a habit of success.

Today we are faced with periodic pay raises to meet increased costs of living, faced with pay raises based on seniority, faced with pension plans, Social Security, medical benefits, and on and on. The biggest obstacle in the course to success today is the comfort we can heap on mediocrity.

When raises are handed out at periodic intervals for the above reasons, the man whose contributions to increased efficiency entitle him to a raise is more apt to be reminded of the raises he has already received than the raise he deserves. As a matter of fact, the man whose superior talents entitle him to a raise is too often considered as a problem.

If group raises have become a fixture, no employer likes to choose between a group raise or a discontented crew. The net, and much more serious result, is that extra effort and the employment of superior talents tends to be discouraged.

Some management policies about wages may have worked in the past but are overdue for replacement. First would be the policy for annual reviews. Once-a-year may make it simpler for management but the policy ignores individuals who progress faster and contribute more than their associates. The unhappy result---the incentive to achieve excellence is lowered.

Another is the management-by-exception graph on the wall supposed to indicate the course of sales or production moving upward. Theoretically, the supervisor should be able to detect and recognize superior performance.

Instead the supervisor usually spends time helping or dealing with the lazy, inefficient individual who is lowering the group record. The average worker who does what is expected is considered to be no problem and needing no special supervisor attention beyond the usual pep talks.

Too often the gifted or exceptional individual is considered as much of a problem as the below-par man. While management by exception weeds out the incompetents, it usually continues to breed mediocrity by failing to recognize merit.

The superior employee is doing well without special attention by management. "Good old Harry (or Mary) is valuable and trusted to step up and solve any unexpected emergencies. Besides, recognition might lead to promotion and then there would be the trouble of having to hire and train a replacement."

In spite of the obstacles, there are techniques for getting raises that have worked consistently for thousands of people in all kinds of work. They are: (1) Be sure you have earned your raise. (2) Be sure your supervisor knows you have earned it. (3) Be sure he knows that you know you have earned it. (4) Be sure he knows you know he knows.

In spite of what most of us were taught, there is no "fairy" just waiting to reward us with a salary raise for all our hard work. The responsibility for getting a raise belongs to the person who wants it-you.

Are you fully informed on what you have been doing, and how well you have been doing it? Until you make your own appraisal of your situation, you will not know where you stand.

You have the same prerogative as management. Keep a written record of what is expected of your job, and especially keep track whenever your performance has exceeded that which was expected of you. In that way you can document your claim to having earned a raise.

When you take your talents for granted, you assume that they are equally obvious to others, and that is rarely the case. Whenever you have an idea that would be a more efficient or cost saving procedure, let the supervisor know-possibly the best way is by asking for advice on how to implement the idea.

You want cooperation from the supervisor. It is important that the person recognize your idea as a way to improve life for both of you-not as a plot to undermine his job. Most people seem to put the emphasis on "making good" instead of "doing better."

Two important things happen when you begin to keep a record of your above-par work. First, you are "thinking rich" when you are looking for your highest values instead of your "get along" values.

And second, when you are conscious of your written progress report, you will begin looking over the job to see what more contributions you can make. This approach transforms the day of work from routine into one that is making use of your own unique talents.

Keep in mind that even the fairest of employers must profit from your enterprise. Does your idea do the job faster, better or at less cost? The written record will help clarify your position and reveal why you are uniquely deserving of a raise.

It should reveal that you have self-confidence, without arrogance or egotism. It should indicate knowledge of your own worthwhileness, a belief in your value to the company, and a genuine concern in doing whatever may be necessary to continue your-and the company's-progress.

Journey From Insomnia Through Nightmares To Clarity

Normally, a short time spent reading in another room is the best way for me to get back to sleep—staying in bed just does not work when I get a bout of insomnia.

Instead of the usual magazine I grabbed a never-read and long-forgotten book My Brother’s Keeper by Marcia Davenport. The author was probably thinking about the mysterious house occupied by the Collyer brothers somewhere on New York’s upper Fifth Avenue when she wrote the book.

The novel starts when the police, after neighborhood complaints, finally break into the once fashionable but now ruinous mansion. The first brother was dead of starvation in one of the few rooms in the house not stuffed to the ceiling with newspapers and assorted junk. Eventually they found the second brother buried under a junk trap he had designed to catch intruders.

The story is a replay of how two men of education, charm and ability followed a life of self-destruction to such a bizarre ending.

I had already viewed a couple television programs showing the tons (yes, TONS) of junk removed from homes of some modern day hoarders. People keep buying and/or saving in case the things could be used someday. I was flabbergasted that anyone could live under such conditions.

The experts explained that an obsession for collecting can escalate as the years go by. Anyone who has tried to help a parent downsize before moving to a smaller place knows how much emotion and pain can result. Memories get tied to the strangest items.

In that 50-year old novel the reason for collecting stacks of newspapers was that they might read them when they had more time. That was my explanation for printing out all the emails, courses and reports that I had stacked around the home office.

My problem: There is always something new or better—so the stacks to read kept getting bigger and bigger and the actual working space on the desk kept getting smaller and smaller.

Considering all of the printouts, was I really so different from the hoarders on those TV programs? Or was it only a matter of degree? More information was arriving daily!

Being surrounded by stacks of paper (no matter how neatly arranged) is a quick way to feel overwhelmed. You unconsciously forget all about priorities and start whittling away on the easy projects just to get some space. Or is it excuses called procrastination?

The “great” plan is to get a big block of time when all your creative energy can be concentrated on the top priority project! But those little projects take longer than they should have. Time and energy are wasted on what is best described as busy work of no real importance while top priority waits for attention tomorrow.

One of the basic laws of work: The more you have to do, the more important it becomes to concentrate on one job at a time. Work organized for successful accomplishment is work organized to direct full attention upon the job at hand, with no dissipation of energy on nagging distractions.

I ended up having to spend a couple days sorting, filing and discarding. The big surprise was the quantity of paper going into trash bags—most of the time while I questioned why it had ever been considered important in the first place. (Next project is the cupboard filled with “stuff” from my home sewing phase.)

It is amazing how much life has improved now that I start my day with a clean desk. No distractions—one project at a time. The number of projects quickly completed has multiplied as well.

There is power in the now! I like this feeling of freedom and space. Also, I am now far more careful in selecting what deserves space in my home--in every room.

Your Secret Weapon--Ideal Posture

Good posture makes everybody look 150 percent better. You look thinner – taller – and your clothes hang better. It is probably the most consistent connective thread running through every man and woman of style.

There is a certain magnetism, self-confidence, and to-the-manor-born charisma about a strong, graceful carriage. It is a body language that works.

But there is much more to good posture than your mother might have told you. It is during a state of ideal posture that the muscles will work most efficiently. Poor posture not only takes away from esthetics, it compromises how we were designed to function, eventually leading to pain and/or injury.

Old, unconscious habits of misalignment, never detected and thus never corrected, directly cause muscle and joint pain, fatigue and general bodily difficulty. Most of us do not realize this crucial connection, much less know what to do about it.

Whenever we get injured, we experience pain. The body will seek avoidance of pain even if it means moving in ways we would appreciate as poor posture. That wrong way of moving may become a habit by the time healing is completed.

Some therapists seem to believe that the absence of pain equals recovery…it does not! The body must be retrained to use muscles correctly. Continued misuse may well lead to serious problems later in life.

Extended sitting is one of the primary causes of poor posture. Not only do people sit most of the time they are at home, eating or watching TV, the seated workplace is the most common in the world today. Some people sit almost every minute of their waking day, aside from walking to the bathroom.

The modern environment is not favorable to good posture. It is practically impossible to sit both correctly and comfortably in a chair. Most chairs are so constructed that maintaining correct alignment while sitting is out of the question.

They are the wrong size, the wrong shape, and the wrong degree of firmness. The seats of many chairs are too long from front to back for anyone under five foot four inches or so. Place as many pillows as you need behind your back so that you can relax a little and still be held upright.

A big part of improving ones posture is to become active. However, most of us need guidance to understand where our alignment is wrong and how to correct it—and finding that guidance may take some effort.

Weak muscles tend to get weaker and strong muscles tend to get stronger when standard gymnasium exercises are poorly supervised. It is human nature to enjoy doing the things we are “good” at and avoiding those where we feel clumsy or that hurt.

Simply looking and studying correct posture charts does not help much. It takes a trained observer to discover the flaws and problems in how we stand, sit and move. It may include assessment of our home and work environments.

There are a few excellent bodywork methods that are wonderful for improving alignment and helping you move with more fluidity. Some have been popular with dancers and athletes for years. They include yoga, Tai Chi, Pilates, Alexander technique and Feldenkrais method.

The emphasis is on doing and being. Your mind is directed toward your body, concentrating on what is happening as it happens. Learning, growth and integration are brought about by the activity itself. Exercise is more pleasant when your mind is totally engaged with your body.

It is well worth experimenting to find the method that appeals to you. You will come to look forward to the stimulation it will provide. As time passes you will find that without conscious effort you are walking and sitting straighter, moving more gracefully.

Your muscles will become firmer and sleeker, better shaped, stronger without being large and bulky. And you will be calmer and more relaxed, with a new sense of control and inner harmony. These effects are subtle at first, and it takes time for them to develop, but they are real.

Only when your body is in balanced alignment, each part working in harmony with every other part, can you experience the power, lightness and ease intended by nature.

What Penalties Do You Pay By Thinking Poor?

A man getting ready to change jobs had made plans, worked out his program and taken the first steps. To put himself in the right frame of mind, he took his wife out for dinner and dancing and “had a ball.”

This was the way he expected to celebrate after he had the job, but he thought that celebrating ahead of time might give him the feeling of success, and help him achieve what he wanted. His “thinking rich” worked!

You can see the “think poor” and “think rich” ideas at work in children. Boys of the same age often want bicycles. They may want them as aids to playing with friends, aids to making money, or merely because other children have bikes and they want to “belong.”

One boy wants the bike because he can finish the morning paper route faster and have more time with his pals. He is thinking differently from the boy who wants the bike because it will allow him to deliver packages to more people in the same amount of time.

The first boy is thinking in a limited way, only about himself; the other is “thinking rich” about expanding his world to serve more people. By thinking rich, the second boy increased his service and efficiency because he understood the value of how he used time.

Narrow outlooks are evident in adults as well. Too often adults continue to follow thoughts of what profits they will get personally rather than first considering how to be profitable to others.

Worry is a doubly vicious form of mental harassment. It consumes an enormous amount of mental and physical energy while contributing nothing to one’s welfare. It is like a wasteful disease. It produces “think poor” thoughts that create more room in which worry can expand.

There can be no half-way measures with success. Talent unused is talent wasted. Some people seem to believe that by using only half their talents on the job, they will have the rest in reserve to be called up in emergencies.

One might as well say that the Olympic high jumper should practice with the bar set at three feet to keep his talent in reserve for the great day when he will be called upon to jump seven feet, six inches. With his muscles subdued by that kind of training, he will never make it, and with your best talents subdued by “think poor” thoughts, neither will you.

All of us suffer from fixations (like a $50,000 debt) that cause us to freeze in the face of the enormity of the thing instead of looking for the ways to cut it down to size. Your brain creates these fixations when it is conditioned by “think poor” thoughts, and will just as readily banish them free of charge and with little effort when you train it to “think rich.”

There is no trick to setting up a mind-training program. Part of your brain is always working—on regulating your heart beat, breathing, digestion, and other automatic functions.

This subconscious part of your mind also responds to commands from your conscious mind, enabling you to walk, run, drive a car and perform all the routine tasks of living without having to concentrate your mental powers on every step, turn of the car wheel or blink of the eye.

The greatest but most misused function of the subconscious is to collect all your experiences, evaluate them, and file them in your memory for future reference. At some time or other, when faced with a knotty problem, you have said the equivalent of “let me sleep on it.” And if you actually did sleep on it, feeling strongly that you would have the solution by morning, the chances are good that you woke up with the answer.

It is this mysterious obedience of the subconscious to the commands of the conscious mind that only recently has come to be appreciated. Now we know that if the conscious mind “thinks poor,” the subconscious responds in the same low key.

If you think you do not have time to do all that must be done, if you feel that you are a hard-luck victim for whom things always turn out badly, your subconscious will influence your conscious mind to waste time on projects that are bound to turn out badly.

Conversely, if you “think rich,” this same subconscious will go to work with enthusiasm, slaving away for you even while you sleep. The readiness of your subconscious to go to work for you is one of the great discoveries of recent years.

What this means to you is that when your conscious mind makes a habit of success, your subconscious mind will also make a habit of success, awakening you every morning with “think rich” ideas and answers. When it is conditioned by “think poor” thoughts, your subconscious drags you out of bed to go “back to the salt mines,” already defeated before the day begins.

Only your conscious mind can determine what you want out of life, and guide your subconscious accordingly. And once it has been mastered, it becomes the obedient servant that works day and night to help you achieve your objectives.

Build Success Into Your Thinking

Today, in spite of all of our labor-saving devices, we still hear the complaint: “There isn’t enough time for everything that has to be done.” We are still looking for some magic time-stretcher, and all too often ignoring the time savers that we have.

We still have the same number of hours as our grandparents, or even great-grandparents, had, and on a man-to-man basis each of us can produce eight times as much in a 40-hour week as the best could do in a 60-hour week. We are better fed, housed and clothed.

Our nightly entertainment, at the flick of a television dial, provides a range of diversions from grand opera and Shakespeare to slapsticks. We have all of this—riches beyond their wildest dreams—and yet as many of us “think poor” today as did in their time. Why?

How often growing up did your elders say: “Be content with your lot.” “Let well enough alone.” “A penny saved is a penny earned.” “The rich get richer while the poor get poorer.” “Get an education and find a job that’s secure for life.” “A penny saved is a penny earned.” (There’s plenty more, but you get the idea.)

We call ourselves enlightened, but that kind of “thinking poor” is still with us. Any person in the United States has available to him through town, city, and state libraries more information than did all the world leaders prior to the 20th Century combined, and just as much as any world leader of today.

Compared to us, men like Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford, were poorly informed, and what information they had was often poorly organized, and even more often inaccurate. But they “thought rich” and rich thinking helps to create riches.

Though the advances of the last quarter of a century have been called vast or overwhelming, every survey by academic, commercial, and governmental agencies indicates that greater advances will be made during the next decade than during the previous quarter-of-a-century.

Not only will this open new opportunities that didn’t exist a few years ago, but it will create a great need for success-oriented people to match the accelerated rate of expansion. Those who get the leading jobs will be the ones who think rich enough to get them.

The Idea Comes First

Money is only frozen energy. It becomes useful only after you defrost it and exchange it for what you want. The way you think, therefore, influences the way you use money. What you think you want, you buy—assuming you have the money.

If you want something enough, you will devote the time and energy needed to acquire the money with which to buy it. By the same token, if you don’t want much—if you “think poor”—you will only work enough to get the “poor” things you want.

Make rich thinking a habit for it will work wonders for your career. It is not that thinking makes it so, any more than in the words of the old song, “wishing will make it so.” But success-oriented thoughts, supported by knowledge of your own achievements and guided by intelligent planning, will certainly make it so.

Some have said that the reward of being satisfied with one’s lot is that at least one has peace of mind. The idea suggested is that if one does not strive to better himself, he will not be hurt and frustrated if he does not make it.

Quite the opposite is true. Man is a proud creature, but pride, unless it is false, can be based only on achievement. When a man’s work become so routine that all sense of achievement is lost, pride suffers, and all the platitudes about contentment cannot soothe an injured pride.

To put it more strongly, achievement on which to feed one’s pride is as necessary to the complete man as income on which to feed his family. A poorly fed pride means a poorly fed family, with a further loss of pride and a greater increase of worry and frustration.

Are You Clinging To The Myth About Job Security?

Job security is a myth that must be replaced by the reality of ability security! But the very reasons that make jobs insecure—obsolescence, automation, decentralization, company mergers and the like—are in themselves symptoms of progress and greater productivity, and therefore more security.

Changes can vary between painful and disastrous for the man who is unprepared for them, while the man who is prepared welcomes them for the opportunities they provide.

And the changes will be coming faster. Some of the Department of Labor statistics suggest that within six years one out of seven of us will be employed in a job category that does not exist at the present.

When a university teacher repeated that prediction to his class it was greeted with groans accompanied by bitter cracks such as “How can you study for a career if it is not going to be there?”

The teacher’s response: “You are not selling the label put on a chosen career, but the intelligence and talents of the man who chooses it. Your career label can change, but there will always be a demand for your abilities.”

We no longer have the luxury of believing that the college degree has us set up for life. Occupational security exists only when confidence in known abilities exists. It is only through being your best self that you can live up to your potentialities.

You are well on your way to performing at your best when every morning you can face the day filled with expectation instead of resignation.

The added factor is that what is best for you is best for the others around you. The successful man is not he who gets ahead by climbing over others, but he who gets ahead by producing the values that are of service to others.

Remember that you will not be the only one who is producing services of value. If no one is competing with you, if you never have to dig to find the best that is in you, you may never know just how good your best might be.

Never worry about the competition. Worry produces fear and hate, and fear and hate can take up so much room in your mind and so color your thinking that you cannot present your best side at all.

The Chinese proverb “A bit of fragrance clings to the hand that gives flowers” also goes for the verbal or written bouquet. Say something nice to someone, and a bit of its niceness will cling to you. The man who finds good things to say about others will find others saying good things about him.

And while one man saying a good thing to another is only one man expressing an opinion, when a lot of men begin saying good things about one man, you have got a consensus.

This is not “do-gooder” advice that I am thrusting at you. It is cold, practical business advice. When you speak well of and to your associates, they will think and speak well of you. Look for what is good in others, and they will look for what is good in you.

Let us carry that one step further. To repeat, the successful man is not the one who climbs over others but who is of most service to others. The higher you go, the more people you can serve, and to be practical about it, the more people you will have serving you.

It is rather discouraging when the average employee is not giving you their best abilities. Your own success is being slowed down by the inertia of employees who are living to punch the time clock on the way home to freedom.

This will not be the case if you have made a habit of recognizing that best that is in you, and the best that is in your associates. The best employer is the man with the best employees, and he doesn’t get them until he learns how to recognize and appreciate a good employee when he has one.

This valuable educations starts when you begin to look for the best qualities in your associates. Then when you get your promotion, you will be able to use their best qualities in support of your own, and the executive with that kind of support has at least twice the strength of the executive who stands alone.

In this world the real shortage is in the number of people who know how to use their best abilities for the advancement of themselves and others. When you prepare yourself for progress, you are preparing to double your earning power while doubling your hours of leisure. When you prepare yourself for a label, such as a title on the door, you are saying you want to leave things as they are.

Now which do you really want—all the fantastic wonders of the future, or the world pretty much in the condition your father has it now? The entire career to which you thought you had devoted your professional life may have been merely a preparation of your talents for this new job you were really born to do.

Be Very Careful Using Labels--Especially About Yourself

Labels are often greatly misunderstood and misinterpreted. Ask five friends or strangers to describe a career title like administrator or engineer and you will most likely get five very different answers.

The quicker someone attaches verbal or mental labels to people, the more shallow and lifeless their reality becomes. These instant experts believe they know all about a person even though they have never met. They pre-judge without waiting for any facts.

A variety of labels are given to each one of us in our lifetime: husband, wife, mother, father, parent, grandparent, employee, employer, citizen and on and on. However, for now concentrate on the labels surrounding work.

Asking about a persons work is an easy way to start a conversation when meeting someone for the first time. A problem occurs if, as a child, you were told repeatedly to stop sounding like a braggart or know-it-all. So the answer is a vague word or two with the unspoken hope that the person listening is interested enough to pursue the subject further.

In contrast to the excessive modesty are the individuals at the other end of the spectrum. Remember the person who rattled off a bunch of techno-babble jargon or shop-talk supposedly designed to impress you with his importance within his super-duper company.

After a few minutes your eyes started to glaze over, you wished for a pair of ear plugs and discovered someone across the room you had to see immediately!

How do you answer when someone asks what work you do? Dull, nondescript words create nothing in anyone's mind--no image, no feelings; just blah. Generalities make no impact because they speak to no one in particular; they leave no impression. They get no one's attention.

You can joke or make flip remarks about your job or employer when talking to close friends or relatives. But be warned that careless comments made within or outside that circle may come back to haunt you.

Once words are said you have lost control of where or when they might be repeated. The stranger (to you) just might be a close friend or relative of an important executive in your company or a potential future employer when you want to change jobs.

You know you will get questions about work so take some private time to draft an appropriate answer. Forget the label (title) that the personnel office gave you. Remember you are writing a response to use in a social situation. You are not on an interview trying to impress a future boss.

When that job label question comes up, you will be ready with a three or four sentence answer that leaves an impression that you are a contributing employee. Pick out something about your work that would be interesting—the challenges, contact with customers, travel, making a difference or the location.

It might help to practice speaking it while you gain confidence. That way you will eliminate all those pauses while you scramble for words.

The secret for making this a memorable conversation is to immediately get back to learning more about the stranger. Your sincere interest in them is going to make a favorable impression. Your job label is really not important. It was just a way of getting to know you.

A reminder: No two things can occupy the same space at the same time. There is no room to have another agenda going on in your head—like wondering what you are going to say next.

When you are really listening to someone, you become connected with that person. What you want is for them to notice and remember you as a person worth knowing. Someone who actually listened to what they were saying.

How To Be Happy Now!

We have heard (and possibly even made) comments like:

• I will be happy when I can spend summer at the beach.
• I will be happy when I get promoted.
• I will be happy when I live in my dream house.
• I will be happy when I reach my ideal weight.
• I will be happy when I get my bright red Cadillac.
• I will be happy when I win the lottery.
• I will be happy when I _________ ______ (fill in the blanks).

The problem with this kind of thinking is that happiness waits until you have some possession or a certain event happens. In the meantime you have pushed the pause button on your life and are simply going through the motions like some robot. Supposedly real living will only start when you get all the “things” on your list of wants.

No one deliberately chooses to put their life on hold or to live somewhere in the middle—neither good or bad, just okay. All these circumstances are the result of the thousands of little decisions, which are reached as a result of the thoughts you give attention to.

Be conscious of all the negativity, fear, anxiety, and lack in the messages you receive daily. It pummels you from every direction. It comes from television, radio, the internet, your friends and family. The quickest way to get you to buy something new is to make you dissatisfied with what you have.

Being conscious of negativity is one thing but wallowing in it is quite another. Our minds are like a garden. We can intelligently cultivate our garden, or we can allow it to run wild. Something will grow. Either we choose what that will be or we can let things happen by default.

We all avoid the individuals, whether family, friends, neighbors or co-workers, who are constantly whining, complaining or bitching—on any subject. It is no fun to be around them. Yet, without really trying, we can fall into that habit ourselves if we stop monitoring our thoughts.

Be happy and appreciative of all the wonderful things you have in your life right now! It all depends on your perspective on what has happened.

A teacher once suggested that we end each day by making a list of 10 things for which we were grateful. After a week of trial, everyone was groaning that it was impossible to list that many things day after day after day!

Put your mind towards looking at things in a different way. Here are some ideas from an unknown author that will help you get started. For instance:

Be thankful that you do not already have everything you desire. If you did, what would there be to look forward to?

Be thankful when you do not know something, for it gives you the opportunity to learn.

Be thankful for your limitations, because they give you opportunities for improvement.

Be thankful when you are tired and weary, because it means you have made a difference.

It is easy to be thankful for the good things. A life of rich fulfillment comes to those who are also thankful for the setbacks.

Gratitude can turn a negative into a positive. Find a way to be thankful for your troubles, and they can become your blessings.

I choose to be grateful for the clothes that fit a little too snug because it means I have enough to eat.

I choose to be grateful for the parking spot I find at the far end of the lot because it means I am capable of walking and I have been blessed with transportation.

I choose to be grateful for all the complaining I hear about the government because it means we have freedom of speech.

I choose to be grateful for my shadow that watches me work because it means I am out in the sunshine.

I choose to be grateful for the lady behind me in church who sings off key because it means I can hear.

I choose to be grateful for the lawn that needs mowing, windows that need cleaning, and gutters that need fixing because it means I have a home.

I choose to be grateful for the alarm that goes off in the early morning hours because it means I am alive.

When we start appreciating the simple pleasures of an ordinary day, it takes the pressure off. The cumulative effect of a series of ordinary days is actually extraordinary. You create a kind of exceptionality that everyone can share. Most importantly, you will wake up each day happily planning how to have another successful day.

Have You Joined The Crowd Who Have Grey Life Syndrome?

People with Grey Life Syndrome have a life that is not good, not bad--simply bearable! They have decided to settle for okay and give up the struggle for excellence. Occasionally they may feel happiness, self-esteem, joy and love, but the feeling is very brief, then it is back to okayness.

Their belief is that it is not necessary to be happy with the job; it can be okay or irritating if it feeds us. Television will get them through the weekend. They do not believe life can get better, they strive to make it tolerable.

Are you playing small instead of dreaming big? Are you aiming to get by instead of experiencing adventure? Are you operating on autopilot where life is safe and predictable instead of using your creative thinking abilities? Have you settled on safety to avoid being threatened or challenged?

If we are not starving in the street, we can sometimes get complacent with our circumstances. If you are moderately comfortable with your current state, you might not be motivated enough to really dig in and attempt something bold, daring and challenging. Creativity is simply the process of looking at the same thing as everyone else and seeing something new.

In order to feel alive, a man must feel that he is growing, that he is continuously becoming more useful. The alternative--working day after day and year after year at routine tasks merely to keep his physical husk alive--is a form of occupational vegetating that dulls both the mind and the spirit.

Take a risk! Taking risks helps to keep you youthful, as well as preventing your life from becoming a yawn-inducing routine. Forget perfect--just do it. No one is perfect. There will always be ups and downs, but the ups should outweigh the downs…and the progress is steady, not 'perfect.' However, the results are lasting.

The Grey Life Syndrome people who will not strive after better things cut themselves off from all the glorious and wonderful possibilities of attainment. One word of caution: This does not mean lazily being a mediocre employee while you wait for the lucky opportunity to appear. The Universe will not give you your next assignment until you are overqualified for this one.

Each person has his own way to success and his own kind of success. Your path to greater progress will not be exactly the same as that used by anyone else, even if the principles for achieving success are the same.

Live life to the fullest. Do everything you can to live a great life, not just a ‘get by’ life. Help others…be a hero, be kinder, love with all your heart and live life like you mean it.

The secret to success or failure, happiness or unhappiness, is that we become what we think about most. Your nature as a human is to grow, develop and unfold into your greatest good. That is where true prosperity lives.

How To Benefit Using Company Politics

At one time or another, we have been warned to stay out of office politics—it can be the ruin of a promising career! It is an old warning with a lot of tradition to support it.

Company politics has seen its evil days, but the day when close-knit groups resented each other in general and all ambitious newcomers in particular is drawing to a close. Most people are recognizing that such intramural skirmishing for prestige and influence did the groups no good while greatly impairing the productivity of the company.

“Company” in this context is a generic term that applies to any working situation. It does not matter whether it is private industry, government agency, educational institution or some other kind of organized work situation.

When people get along together, production rises; when they do not, it falls. Politics—good or bad—is inescapable. If people are not talking about their work at the drinking fountain, during a coffee break, or at lunch, they just do not care, and that is bad.

Company politics is here to stay. To close your ears to it is not to remove yourself from politics but from the company. How else are you going to know what is going on? And if you do not know what is going on in the company, how are you to know where you are going?

If you follow three simple rules, playing good company politics will be easy, informative and rewarding.

1. Say something interesting or constructive about your work.
2. Say something good about your boss, supervisor, or company policy--with sincerity.
3. Keep on doing a good job.

If you cannot do those three things after a month or two on the job, if your work is so dull and the company so uninteresting, you are in the wrong job. Start looking for a different one now!

Private life and work are both parts of you as a whole human being. They cannot be completely separate incarnations. You are probably spending your most productive hours in each day at work—five days a week! Friendships do count in the business world.

Bad politics is based on greed, selfishness, power-seeking, and often prejudice. More often than not, the leaders are insisting that some outside influence is the cause of all their problems. They are unwilling to admit that their own actions might be at fault.

I once worked in an office where the goal seemed to be finding something nasty to say about the boss. It was almost a “can you top this” kind of daily conversational game.

The two most vocal individuals had worked for the longest time in the department. They must have been getting some kind of emotional payback from their actions in order to justify working for such an individual. Possibly: “You have the title but I am better than you in every way!”

Actually company politics is not the name for it, for the company will suffer irreparable damage in the long run. It is personal or factional, or clique politics, played for the advancement of the few, and let the company go hang, as it frequently does. Yet it cannot be ignored.

If bad office politics is to be counteracted intelligently, it must be recognized for what it is, from the lowest man subjected to its pressures to the president of the firm. If one is in no position to combat it, then one must know what it is all about for his own protection.

Personal success is not to be found where partisanship and bias have more influence than merit. Always remember that recognizing the talents and achievements of your staff and co-workers is a valuable asset. If you fail to give credit where and when it is deserved, there should be no complaints when the same thing is done to you.

Hard work and attention to detail does not automatically bring a promotion. Your skill working with others is an essential ingredient. It is almost tragic to overlook the constructive side of office politics. If you do not know what is going on around you, no one is going to know you are around.

Welcome T otal Freedom Into Your Life

Our ordinary life experiences bear little resemblance to those of our father, and much less to those of our grandfather. Yet most of our traditional roles have been passed down through so many generations that they are in a rut.

There is a serious danger in following the “established” roads to success. Many of them are as out-moded as the directions for following the Oregon Trail. Many of them lead to goals that no longer exist, or are over-crowded. There are many kinds of successes to be reached, but are they the roads for you, leading to where you want to go?

Our culture is still telling us to go to school so that we can get a job and make money. Teachers, parents, friends and government tell us that after 40 years (or so) of hard work, we will have a secure retirement. The evidence shows us that work does not necessarily equal wealth. People work long hours and have little to show for it.

The usual career training systems allow no time for learning the skills for personal and financial freedom. Why do only a few people seem to get wealthy and financially free, and why is it that the knowledge they seem to have appears to be so elusive?

Our education system is still following procedures created in the 1800s. The masses are not taught how to create wealth but how to work for others. We graduate as a doctor, lawyer, chemist, chef or any other career you care to mention.

That expensive education provides training about a job but the graduate is left without a clue on wealth-building or how to have a healthy, happy life. Too often wealth is equated with collecting “things” – expensive automobiles, a mansion with a second vacation home, jewelry, designer clothing, and whatever else is the latest fad.

One author asked the question – what would you do if your annual income suddenly becomes your monthly income? Or, what would you do if you had a million dollars? We all have visions about a dream life! However, the records on most lottery winners paint quite a different picture. Within five or ten years most are in worse condition financially than they were before the win.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Before you go off to some fantasy land, take time to consider what you want out of life. What is important to you, regardless of what tradition, your boss, or your friends might say? Your guiding influence should come from within.

Keep asking yourself “why” until you really know what gives you the feelings of joy and accomplishment. Take some time to decide what health, wealth and happiness mean to you.

Only you can know your achievements, and in getting to know them you will meet, possibly for the first time, that most interesting and increasingly successful stranger who is yourself. You will continue to grow and change as your world expands.

Your Mind--A Secret Weapon For Vibrant Health

Would you like to have bounce in your step and wellness shining from your eyes? Our body gets back into order when we give it all of the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients that it needs for optimum performance.

Most people look on disease and sickness as inevitable. Large numbers of people break nearly every known natural law of health, and are surprised that they become ill. Yet the wonder is that they are as well as they are.

We are not machines. We are far more complicated and dynamic than any machine that will ever be. And you must honor the dynamic and fluid system when it comes to how you eat and how you exercise.

Most of us take our bodies for granted. We expect them always to do what we ask of them, effortlessly and efficiently; we assume that they will always be there for us. So we go through our daily lives thinking about anything and everything except how we use these reliable vehicles, these loyal servants that unquestioningly carry out all our orders.

We were endowed at birth with bodies that are perfectly designed to serve us with ease and enjoyment through a long, active and pain-free lifetime. So what goes wrong?

It is not an inescapable toll of some vague aging process. Blessed with the phenomenal powers of regeneration, our bodies can withstand years, even decades, of systematic misuse and still continue to serve us faithfully, with only the occasional twinge or ache.

We can try to blame “something” that runs in my family, our age or an old injury. But this is simply adding insult to injury. It is the piling up of years of abuse—of driving the car with the brake on and without changing the oil, so to speak.

Always recognize the true miracle of our bodies. Without any prompting from us, food is digested and changed into fuel, air is breathed, nutrients are circulated to every cell and hands and feet follow our desires for any action we want to take.

But the body goes beyond that. If we fail to supply the kidneys with enough water to rid the body of waste, the liver steps in and helps to strain out the impurities. If we break a leg, other muscles help us move around while the leg heals. Man-made machines do not work until the broken part is replaced.

We may not observe all the rules, but we willingly accept the idea that food, exercise and sleep are essential for optimum health. However, the link that gets ignored too often is the mind.

When we look to the mind we find a prolific cause of sickness. Man thinks himself into ill health and disease. People who are forever thinking about disease, illness, operations and other morbid subjects, become a prey to these things. Those who believe that sickness is inevitable, manifest it in their life.

Yes, it is hard to forget the aching finger, toe or whatever. Constant thinking of how much it hurts just puts you in a worried and depressed mood—and you know what worry does to blood pressure.

No one can say it is easy, but change your focus onto another subject. Remember the times as a child when you forgot about an injury because you were too busy doing something that you enjoyed.

Once we become aware of what we are doing to ourselves and begin to use our bodies the way they were designed to be used, the damage can be halted and healed. Health is harmony—a delicate balance and adjustment between spirit, soul, mind and body.

Your Five Closest Friends--How Do They Affect Your Success?

One of the biggest factors in your prosperity is the people you associate with. They color your goals, expectations, and what you believe can be achieved in your lifetime.

The five most important people for your prosperity are not necessarily consciously chosen. It is much more likely that it just happened. You may have heard that if you add up the annual income of the five closest friends and divide it by five, you will likely find that is the amount you make a year.

This does not stop with money—carry the idea further to the quality of your health, relationships and happiness. In particular, we need to understand the impact these friends have where health is concerned. How much similarity is there in eating and exercise habits?

You made the decision to move to a healthy lifestyle. No doubt there was anxiety over change, and fears about your ability to persevere. You are not actually trying to be something different, but are simply letting go of all the wrong habits that you have mistakenly accepted for a while. This is the time when that circle of close friends can become crucial.

At the start your closest friends encouraged and praised your success in losing weight. You probably heard some “that is what I have been telling you” words mixed in. Also, you have met some new role models who know how to have the health that you want.

When you get close to your goals, problems start happening. Strangers and casual acquaintances are complimenting you about your appearance. However, your close friends now seem to be doing their best to sabotage your weight loss.

One long-time friend invites you to her favorite pizza place to celebrate and you end up choosing the sausage with extra cheese and toppings. Another friend pushes the calorie laden snacks while you are watching television. Your spouse brings home a box of your favorite chocolates. Today your mother was hurt because you took only a small slice of cake she had made especially for you—it used to be your favorite!

Everyone seems to be ganging up and saying that you earned and deserve special treats. They know it is against your new routine, but this one time will not matter! Really? It would have been easy to give up but you did not quit. Each time you returned faithfully to your new eating plan. However, instead of losing you gained weight this past week.

Stop! This is not the time for anger and hurt feelings. Nor is it necessary for you to change your goals. But you do need to try and understand what is happening. You are no longer the person they have known and loved for years.


It is not just your size that has changed. You have new interests and activities. The friends are missing the old times and things you used to do together. There is fear that they will lose you and their life will be changed forever.

Allow everyone time to adjust. At the same time, practice using the words "no" or "no thank you" when that is how you feel. And you are not obligated to explain why. You simply prefer doing something else.

Later, you may wake up and realize that while you have been moving forward, the old friends have been stuck in neutral or moving backwards. Most times they just fall by the wayside—they do not want to join in your new activities and you no longer enjoy the old pastimes.

Releasing negative relationships is the highest good for all concerned. They come to the conclusion that you are no fun anymore, and they attract people who are at their level of consciousness. You, in turn, will attract those with desires similar to yours.

Think of your health as wealth. Perfect health is the foundation for a fulfilling wealthy life. You chose to have abundant health—a state of unbounded energy and vitality. Let others make their own choices.

Self Insight Creates Personal Power

“Why” is the world's best teacher!

You have your choice of living your own life or of letting other people live it for you. The more you live your own, the greater personal power you will have with other people; the less you determine your own activities the less influence you have. It is really as simple as that.

You can, if you choose, let other people run your life for you. And, in the long run, they will contribute more to its ruin than to its construction.

Do not waste your time and energies wondering about the opinion of others toward you. Never permit another person to determine your decisions, your beliefs or your emotional moods. Make up your mind that you will respond as you really want to, not according to what is expected of you.

None of us need to sway before the pointless influence of other people, much less do what they do because it seems to be the proper thing to do. Unfortunately, lots of people do. Make up your mind right now that you are going to be influenced by you.

A sure road toward understanding the other man—and thereby influencing him—is to first understand yourself.

To develop adequate self-insight we must frankly face ourselves as we actually are, not as we would like to see ourselves or as we want others to see us. Human behavior follows certain basic patterns. If you can get first-hand knowledge of its principles by observing yourself in action, you enable yourself to predict the attitudes and behavior of the other man.

You already do this to some extent or other. For instance, you enter a friend’s back yard and find him adding the finishing touches to his homemade barbecue pit. You know very well that he would not at all mind a compliment or two on his skill in building the pit. How do you know what he wants and needs from you? Because you would like a word or two praising your own efforts in a similar situation.

Your insight into your own need for a kind word enables you to understand his need, therefore you say the thing that influences him toward you in a favorable way. That is a very obvious example of the persuasive force found in self-knowledge. Its development can empower you far more than may be obvious to you at present.

You must have an idea of what you want if you are to understand what other people want, for your basic needs are the very same as those longed for by others. By knowing what they need you can satisfy them; by satisfying them you can influence them.

Possibly this seems familiar. There is some routine that you do on a regular basis that has become a dreaded and boring part of the day, but you know everyone depends on the information to be timely and accurate. How good did you feel when someone actually thanked you and praised your efforts?

Start making it a habit to notice and praise others for those daily “small” things. Thank you does not have to be used only for major events.

Ask yourself how well you know yourself. To that very same degree you will know and control others. Self-insight is a personal power you should start developing to maximum use right now.
If you have committed an error, admit it—do not try to hide it, justify your actions or allow someone else to be blamed. There is something humanly likeable about admitting shortcomings and errors. And there is something extra appealing about the person who faces his need for correction.

Remember that one of the greatest principles for human growth and personal enrichment is: Never try to protect a mistake. The more we attempt to justify a false position, the more we are bound by it. Whenever you make an error, look at it squarely, even cheerfully, and then take immediate action.

Do not wait for the ideal solution to pop up; it never does. Just go ahead with whatever imperfect plans seem best for the time. This is the honest and courageous self-correction that carries your human relations from fair to good to superb in the shortest time possible.

It takes mature strength to admit and solve problems in our business or within the home circle. One of the best things about self-correction is this: If we do it, others will not be so tempted to try and do it for us! We retain our independence.

Every time you correct yourself you charge yourself with extra personal strength. Make enough corrections and you will have more than enough people who will want to do things for you. If you do not believe it, try it.

This quote from Robert Louis Stevenson summarizes self-insight well: “To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.”

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”

Unlike the wicked queen in Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, most anyone wanting to lose weight avoids looking in mirrors if at all possible. Of course there are the normal routine glimpses such as the half-asleep gaze while brushing teeth or during the morning's rush to get off for work.

All of us who have been described anywhere from pleasingly plump to obese avoid looking at ourselves like a plague. It is self protection when we really do not like the image reflected back to us from that mirror.

Unfortunately, not enough attention is paid to those inner feelings. Instead we are told to concentrate on losing fat, learning to make healthy food choices and exercising.

False Myth: Reaching your “magic number” on the bathroom scale is going to solve all problems: Life will be happy ever after just like the Snow White story. It takes more than weight loss to replace those hidden feelings of self hatred or dislike. First we recognize the feelings and then we can go on to create a positive image.

Your clothing has gone from loose to the point where certain movements might result in some unexpected exposure that could prove embarrassing. You can postpone it no longer—some new smaller sizes must be purchased.

You have been looking forward to finally being able to wear more stylish clothing. Instead, in spite of your leaner body, the shopping trip becomes a painful experience. You select some outfits that look promising. The store staff interrupts their gossip session long enough to point you in the right direction for the dressing rooms.

The next 20 to 30 minutes are full of misery because nothing looked good. That saleslady’s smirk when you told her nothing fit or looked right was the final straw. Her parting comment about the style being better on thinner individuals did not help matters. Defeated, you order a smaller size of the same-old, same-old comfortable “things” that you had learned to hate!

The learning experience of choosing what looks best gets bypassed when you have been purchasing large size clothing for any length of time. Limitations on the selections seem to increase rapidly as the size goes up. Shopping becomes more a matter of grabbing something to cover rather than to flatter the body.

No matter what dress size you are or how much you weigh, perfect proportions are hard to come by. It is easy to have a change in hair color. Contact lenses will provide a new eye color. But there are certain “givens” that are not going to change ever and others you can change with plastic surgery if you have enough money.

You cannot grow taller but your clothes will certainly look better with the improved posture gained from your exercise program. Many of the other problems such as bone size, tall or short, top heavy or bottom heavy and long or short waisted can be minimized by using camouflage in clothing.

Before your next shopping trip, spend some time really studying why one friend looks great in the current fashion and another does not. I have found that health and/or fitness magazines have more practical, usable ideas than the standard high fashion ones. Also you can increase your fashion “smarts” doing some people watching at the local mall. Spend some thought figuring out why one person has succeeded while another has failed to look their own personal best.

At intervals the Oprah Winfrey show has programs on looking your best. Their experts will take ordinary women (no fashion models) and show how they can improve their image by clothing selection alone. It is magic now and not six months later. The best part is the explanation of why the choices were made. The undergarment features are equally helpful. (You can always tape programs for later viewing.)

Just once I would like to see the same skills in clothing selection, makeup and hair styling used for the “before” and “after” photographs in the diet product advertisements. Instead the before photograph shows the person in the worst image possible. The after view has also had the benefit of a very skilled photographer.

One of my favorite books is Leah Feldon’s “Does This Make Me Look Fat?” Her book gives definitive rules for dressing thin for every height, size, and shape. It is a great tonic for the ego to learn that even the rich and famous have doubts about appearance and have tricks to disguise their problems.

Take time to explore your local book store. There are other good books offering advice on styles to flatter the various figure types and avoid the trial-and-error disasters. Many of the department stores have personal shoppers who can guide you to the right choices for your body type and lifestyle.

Be open to experiment to find your best styles. Always remember that you are unique--no one else is exactly like you. Shopping becomes much more fun when you know in advance the kind of clothing that shows you off in the best possible way. Your weight loss program is a success when you enjoy looking at that mirror image. You have learned how to look and feel beautiful!