Category → Self Improvement
6 Tips For Quitting Smoking
If you are currently a smoker, quitting the habit could be one of the most important things you will ever do in the next part of your life. In fact, if you quit now, you will most likely be adding seven years to your life.
While many people try to quit and fail, it is not an impossible task. Thousands of people, just like you, have decided to quit and have succeeded. You too can be among the successful former-smokers. Here are six tips that will help you to quit smoking once and for all:
1. Make a vow that you are going to quit smoking from today onwards
Success in all spheres of life begins with firm determination. If you are wishy-washy you can never do anything. However, if you make up your mind, once and for all, that you are giving up the habit, whenever a craving comes, you will remember your vow and not give in.
2. Exercise more and get your body in shape
If you sit idle there is more chance that you will light up your cigarette and relax. Fill your spare time with sports and vigorous activity. Try to feel how good it is to get your blood circulating and breathing the air deeply. If you are not the athletic type, then brisk walking will have the same benefit as other kinds of sports.
3. Avoid places and pastimes that put you within reach of cigarettes
If going to a bar or pub means that you are going to have a drink and then light up, maybe it is better to avoid that place for the time being. Once you have truly stopped smoking and you feel how good it is, you can go anywhere and not be tempted. But while you are in the transition phase it is better to carefully choose where you will spend your recreational time.
4. If you have to put something in your mouth, drink water or eat healthy snacks
Whenever you get a desire to put a cigarette in your mouth, replace it with something that will help you rather than harm you. Drinking small amounts of water throughout the day is not only a good way to help you quit smoking, but it is also a great way to stay healthy. You should drink 4 litres (quarts) of water per day, if you can. If you need to put something solid in your mouth, then eat a piece of fruit.
5. Get support from your friends and family
Tell them that you are giving up smoking for health reasons. Your true friends will support you and not offer you cigarettes. Your family and loved ones will similarly support your efforts and help you to avoid situations where you may feel obliged to smoke out of social pressure.
6. Strengthen your will power with yoga and meditation
Very few people are born with perfect will-power. Like anything else, practice makes perfect. If you want to strengthen a physical muscle you may work out with weights. If you want to strengthen your “mental muscle” you need exercise as well. Yoga and meditation are disciplines that enable even complete beginners to build up their capacity to concentrate and firmly accomplish whatever they set out to do. Try it out and see for yourself.
Follow these six tips and you will be well on your way to quitting smoking.
Build Your Self Esteem
So how do you keep up your self-esteem in a hard-hitting atmosphere? It seems like everywhere you turn. The best way is to know the kinds of people and situations that will bring you down and thwart your efforts to stay focused. Here we will focus on some of these people and situations you need to avoid if possible.
* Negative Work Environment – Beware of the “dog eat dog” theory where each person is fighting just to get ahead. Competition is everyplace. Make sure it is a fair competition.
* Other People’s Behavior – gossipmongers, whiners, backstabbers, controllers, naggers, complainers, exploders… all these kinds of people will create awful feelings for you
* Changing Environment – Changes challenge our paradigms. Change will be there forever you can’t avoid this one, but can learn to deal with it.
* Past Experience – Don’t let pain change into fear. Treat each failure and mistake as a lesson.
* Negative World View – Don’t wrap yourself up with all the negativities of the world. In building self-esteem, we must learn how to make the best out of worst situations.
* Identity – You have your own identity. If your parent is a failure, it doesn’t signify you have to be a failure as well. Learn from other people’s experience, so you’ll never have to encounter the same mistakes.
You can’t always avoid or even change a situation. And you certainly aren’t going to have much luck changing a person. You can, however, learn how to avoid such situations and people and deal effectively with those you can’t avoid.
Just putting the above advice into action in your life, you will see your self-esteem grab hold and start to climb. Before long, you will instinctively begin to know when a situation is bad for your self-esteem.
Don’t dig your own pit
If you want to enjoy your life out of spending, enjoy if you have you have your own resources and money.
But don’t enjoy your life by becoming a debtor to somebody.
Of course in the modern world, there are many ways and means, which force you to become a debtor.
Attractive advertisements in the satellite TV force you to become a debtor. It tempts you to buy the modern amenities at any cost.
Even though if you don’t have any money or resources it show you many resources for obtaining credit to buy that product. But you must think thousand times before becoming a debtor.
In today’s world credit is the easily available commodity. Numerous companies are waiting to pull you in their trap. They are competing severely to pull you in their trap.
But you must be careful to entangle in that trap.
In spite of this caution if you are prepared to enjoy, then you won’t get any pleasure, but you will lose your peace of mind.
Let us discuss about the common desire of everybody. It is natural that every body wants to have their own house. It is a reasonable desire.
But the desire can be attained if you have enough money on your own to buy the house.
If you are an executive working in a company what will be your thinking?
You will ready to apply for some loan and buy that house. You have decided and applied for a loan also and the loan has also been sanctioned.
You will ask the engineer to construct the house with in the sanction of loan.
The Engineer on seeing the plan will say “Sir, you are constructing house once in your lifetime, why such a low budget house, we can increase slightly your plan sir, it won’t cost much only a 10% increase in your normal budget” he will tempt you.
By that time you will also have some Himalayan courage, and think why we can’t adjust that 10% increase, ok we can adjust that 10% increase by obtaining loan from our relatives, and you give consent to the engineer’s suggestion.
The Engineer will begin to build your house. The house is also going to be completed soon and only some finishing work is there.
You ask your engineer ‘when can I take possession of the house’, sir?
The engineer will politely tell you, Sir, there is a small problem, the problem is there is a sudden increase in the cost of materials, so I fear whether it is possible to complete the building what we have already planned.
But you are in the dream that the house should be constructed at any cost. So you don’t bother about the resource to complete the house and prepared to arrange for the money required for completing the house.
What you will do. The next thing before you will be some bank balances available out of your savings and the jewels of your wife or your children.
So your savings, jewels will all go from you and fill the cashbox of another businessmen.
Your house will become ready finally. On seeing the house raised beautifully you forgot all the sources where the money came from to complete the house.
You will forget about the loan you obtained from your company.
You will forget about the loan you obtained from your relatives.
You will forget about the erosion of your savings and jewels.
All these will come to your remembrance only when the company commences their recovery for the loan you obtained.
All these will come to your remembrance only when your relatives need the money they paid.
All these will come to your remembrance when you don’t have enough money in your savings account for your urgent requirement.
Then your mind will think about the resource to fill up the deficit in the family budget, the loan to repay to your relatives and for your urgent requirement.
You will get easy resource to fill up this deficit, because you are working in a company, getting regular salary, higher salary. Companies are ready to give credit.
You are also ready to get credit from another company to fill up the deficit.
So you are ready to close the small debt pit, and begin to dig another debt pit, which is little more in size than the first pit.
The same deficit pressure mounts after some time. Again you are prepared to obtain loan from another company.
Now you dig another debt pit, which is more than the size of first and second debt pit.
Like this you will go on digging pit after closing the earlier pit to overcome your deficit.
Finally at one stage when you see the remaining pit, it will look like a deep pit, which you cannot fill it up from any source.
So the ultimate choice before you will be to dispose off the house and fill up the huge pit finally stands before you.
You have also made arrangements to dispose off the house.
One person came forward to buy the house. Even though the rate offered by him is not as expected by you, you have no other option except to get the money and fill it up the debt pit.
The house was finally sold off and you got the money. But while working out the amount you have to settle to your debtors, you need some more money.
However with the proceeds realized out of selling the house, you have settled most of the debt and still keep some portion of the debt.
You have lost all your savings, jewels, and other resources and still you have to settle more debts?
Where all of your money has gone?
It is no secret, most part of your debt were for the interest.
The interest made you to close one pit and dig another pit and finally you was let with a big pit with most part of the pit were for interest.
This is a common plight of most of the families especially in the middle class peoples.
The reason is due to their mental capability to enjoy all modern amenities without knowing their economic capability.
Enjoying the life is absolutely necessary but it should be from our own resources. We can enjoy the life but not on obtaining debt.
We have to increase our resources to enjoy the life. We should find out the opportunities to increase our resources and then think about enjoying the amenities.
20 Tips For A Great Night’s Sleep
Getting a good night’s sleep helps us to be happier, more productive people, so here’s some tips to help you get a good night’s sleep:
1. Avoid drinking tea or coffee late at night
2. Stop smoking – nicotine is a stimulant and so can make it difficult to get to sleep and stay asleep
3. Go to bed at the same time each night so that you set a routine
4. Only use the bed for sleeping and sex
5. Use dimmers on your light switches, and dim the lights in the hours before you go to bed to mimic the change from daylight to night time
6. Avoid taking exercise in the evening – exercise early in the day to promote restful sleep
7. Try using affirmations, such as: “I let go of the day, and enjoy restful, peaceful sleep” repeated several times while you prepare for sleep
8. If you can’t get to sleep after a while, get up keeping the lights low and do something boring until you feel sleepy
9. Alcohol may help you get to sleep, but you are more likely to wake during the night feeling thirsty and needing to go to the bathroom
10. Try relaxed breathing: breathe slowly and deeply concentrating on your abdomen rather than your chest
11. Get your allergies checked out, particularly if you wake craving particular food in the middle of the night
12. Avoid paying bills and similar jobs just before sleep
13. Try a herbal tea – chamomile, passion flower, lavender flowers or valerian are good, or take a herbal supplement such as scullcap or valerian
14. Put the essential oils lavender and clary sage on your pillow and inhale their soothing vapours as you sleep
15. Try some flower remedies – there are lots of different types. In the Bach flower remedies you might like to try ‘vervain’ if you find it difficult to switch off from the
day; ‘holly’ if anger and resentment keep you awake; ‘white chestnut’ for persistent unwanted thoughts; ‘aspen’ if you wake because of nightmares
16. Try holding your frontal eminences (the bumps on your forehead, about half way between your eyebrows and hairline) if you are awake because of stress
17. Try taking supplements – magnesium and calcium can work well
18. If you suffer with hot flushes/flashes, try some natural support for your endocrine system at this time. I personally recommend Neways wild yam and chaste berry cream
19. Many alternative and complementary therapists have success with people with sleep problems. Find a local therapist and ask them if they have experience in this field
20. Sleep problems can be a sign of an underlying medical condition (e.g. thyroid problems or depression), so get this checked out with a suitably qualified health professional
How to Communicate Confidently
One thing common to all great communicators is that when they speak, everybody listens. However, communicating to people is one of the greatest fears for most of the human beings, and especially when it comes to public speaking. Most people dread public speaking more than death! Do you ever wonder why you don’t seem to get listened to by others even though you too have many ideas to share? Then read on, this article is just for you.
Confident communication however, is more than what you speak. It takes into account your body language as well.
What’s inside the mind of a Successful Communicator?
Confident communicators aren’t a know all
Of course, you need to have good knowledge about the subject you are talking about, but what actually matters is not what you say, but how you say it. Successful people don’t do different things, they do things differently. The first step is to believe in what you say. You must be fully convinced in the idea and only then will there be conviction in the tone of your voice. Your voice now is equipped with the power to hold people’s attention. Once you have conviction in your voice, and what you speak is useful for the other people and it actually helps them or gives some credible information, you get appreciation. This certainly peps up your self-confidence!
Confident communicators don’t let people make them nervous
Most people suffer from fearing catastrophes that never happen. Most people tend to make a very high imaginary impression of other people in their minds.
So much so that their mind starts believing that other people are perfect. This creates an unfair comparison between their own personality and the imaginary personality of other people that they create. This thinking breeds a fear of meeting and talking to other people. It lowers their confidence and they fear what it will be to meet and talk to these “perfect” people. However, in real life nobody is perfect and you must realize this. Everybody has their own set of faults and weaknesses. It’s important for you to realize that every human being is essentially imperfect. This will give you greater confidence to go out and face people.
Take it or leave it. You snooze, you lose
Ideally you must be the best of your moods and carry a pleasant demeanor when you go out and meet people. However, it might not always be possible and it may so happen that you are not fully prepared to communicate, or you are a little tense over some other matter. A confident communicator, though, develops an ability to keep control of his emotions. This quality helps the communicator to keep control of the situation. You may still not be in a good moodb but you must make sure that you keep indecisiveness at bay. Your indecision will fritter away your focus and energy and you fail to make any impact. If you decide to communicate. Be yourself, have faith in yourself and go ahead.
Mind your body language
Your gesture, postures and eye contact probably talk louder than your words. Body language cuts across all barriers of communication such as language, time, place, knowledge and so on. Your body language starts getting interpreted unconsciously by everyone around. People start forming impressions about you the moment you make an eye contact and body language certainly contributes a considerably large part of the impression you make.
A few facts you must know
- You may have a sad expression on your face because of some other matter, but the person you are talking to may feel that you don’t approve what he says, leading to misunderstanding.
- A steady gaze may convey intensity, anger, aggression or strong interest. Little eye contact may imply lack of confidence or shyness.
- Open hands may convey honesty and openness; however, making a lot of hand gestures might mean that you are being nervous.
Confident communication, including words and gestures, is something that you do not perfect in a day. You must grab every opportunity to communicate. Try to check your communication skills, your strong points and the mistakes you make along with the overall affect on the other person. Try to learn from your experiences and there is no reason why you can’t make it. Get going. Good luck!
No Guarantees
Life is like a road. There are long and short roads; smooth and rocky roads; crooked and straight paths. Just like any road, there are corners, detours, and crossroads in life. Definitely the most confusing road that you come across is a crossroad. With four roads to choose from and with limited knowledge on where they would go, which road will you take?
There are no guarantees. This is one of the most essential things you must understand about life. Nobody alleged that choosing to do the right thing all the time would always lead you to happiness. Loving someone with all your heart does not guarantee that it will be returned. Gaining fame and fortune does not guarantee happiness. There are many potential outcomes, which you cannot control. The only thing you have power over is the decisions that you will make, and how you react to different situations.
Had you known that you were making an erroneous decision, would you have gone along with it? Definitely not, why would you choose a particular path when you know it would get you lost? However, think about results that occurred because you did make that decision? Was there something good that came from it? Did you learn a lesson?
You can’t allow indecision about whether your choice is right or wrong cause you to be immobile. You need to keep moving along your life’s road and sometimes that means having blind faith in yourself and your decision-making. If you have taken the time to know yourself and what you want from life, you can better your chances of making correct decisions, even when there are unknowns involved.
Life can be an exciting, albeit, bumpy at times, ride. Don’t let indecision find you sitting on the curb and watching everyone pass you buy. Risk it, take that chance, and you will not regret that you did.
21 Life Changing Questions You Cant Afford to Not Ask
Imagine finally taking off seven coats you’ve been wearing on top of each other for years and years. You’ve forgotten that some people consciously choose to live without seven layers of coats on even though most people are living that way.
You remember the possibilities you imagined your life would be when you were a child. You decide to take off the coats and start running joyfully through the spring fields you forgot about. You move into the light where you finally begin to laugh and live feeling inspired every day instead of simply walking around reacting to life, complaining, counting down the days to the next weekend or vacation until you finally die.
Start taking off the coats that have layered your soul since you started to grow up. Forget about the negativity of the news. Don’t believe negative people telling you that you canít make more money or move to a nicer city or do anything to better your life. Ignore all the forces telling you what you canít do. Close your ears to people who blame their boss, the government, their friends, and their circumstances for what they donít like about their lives.
It’s time to leave ‘em all behind and say ‘See ya!’ It’s time to adopt a new Belief System (yeah, whatever we believe is simply B.S. – just opinions we made up that may or may not actually be true.) It’s time to drop all that limited thinking that keeps you stuck on the birth-school-work(paycheck-to-paycheck)-death merry-go-round.
It’s time to learn the magic of saying YES. Iím going to make YES your new favorite word. Imagine what you want most in life right now. Dream BIG. Think of what your ideal life would look like. See all the tiny details. You have no limitations. You can have exactly what you want.
Money is no object. Your time is your own to spend as you like for as long as you wish. Dream BIGGER now. What fills your soul with more joy than youíve ever felt before? Remember the best experience of your life? Start there and make it as amazing as you can.
How are you spending your days and nights? Who are you with? What are you doing? What emotions are coming up? What smells are in the air? What are your favorite foods that youíre eating and tasting? What cities and countries are you visiting? What are you wearing?
As you reach out to touch your loved ones youíre sharing this life with what sensations run through your hands? -Get as specific as possible. The more specific you are the more youíll get out of doing this. I want you to see, hear, feel, taste and smell every little piece of the life you were born to live.
As you walk into your dream house how big are the doors? How high are the walls? How much of the square footage is covered in windows? How have you furnished it? How many rooms does it have? How many rooms does your guest house have? How many acres of property do you own? What do you see outside of the windows? A meadow? A stream? The ocean? The sunset?
Is this the most fantastic day of your life? YES, it is. Get more in depth. See how your smile looks. Feel the warmth in your heart and the ease and peace in your spirit. Hear the sounds of the surroundings that feed your soul. Feel the excitement in your bones as you realize that you are actually living in your dream come true.
How amazing do you feel right now? You deserve this life donít you? YES, you do.This is no accident. If you are in a human body then you deserve to use it to build the life you truly want to be living. Hundreds of thousands of people are doing it right now. Can’t you do it too? YES, you can. You may need some help, guidance and support, but you can and you will create the life of your dreams. YES, it’s yours for the taking.
YES, you’re ready. YES, you will live it now. How do you feel right now? YES, right now at this moment. Imagine feeling this light and warm every day. You’re smiling aren’t you? If you aren’t then you didn’t do the exercise above slow enough to absorb it and I invite you to do it again.
Feeling is what creates what we have and do. Positive thinking without honest feeling behind it will leave you wondering why nothing’s changed.
When you learn to consciously create with your feelings you’ll start getting better results in your life. Right now you’re probably getting results based on your unconscious feelings. The scary part of this is that most people only feel in reaction to what happens to them. I’m teaching you how to create with your feelings instead.
This feeling, actually a feeling even lighter and clearer, is the place where my clients learn to live from. If you’d like to learn more about living from an authentic state I invite you to visit AngryEnoughToChange and read about my Champion Coaching program. This program can support you in experiencing even deeper versions of this ecstatic state.
Please re-read this exercise and get precise about what you want. Simply getting conscious about your desires and feeling as if you’re already living this way will magnetize it to you. You’re creating everyday so you may as well do it consciously to get what you really want. You deserve it, so go for it!
Are You a Negative Thinker?
Barbara sought my help because of her chronic fatigue. She had been going to different kinds of doctors and trying different nutrition plans for years and nothing was helping her. One of the doctors suggested that she try psychotherapy.
In became evident early in our work together than Barbara was deeply addicted to thinking the worst. Constant negativity went through her mind about every aspect of her life. She would get out of her car and worry about getting robbed. In social situations, she would tell herself that people didn’t like her. She was always worried about money, even though she was a successful graphic designer. Her husband could never do anything right. There was something wrong with every doctor she saw.
Negative thinking causes much stress in the body. I told Barbara to imagine that she was telling these negative thoughts to a child. How would the child feel most of the time? Barbara could see that this child would, of course, feel anxious and stressed much of the time in response to all the negativity and catastrophic thinking.
The medical profession has long told us that stress is one of the leading causes of illness. Stress sets into motion the body’s fight or flight response, pouring cortisol into the body and eventually exhausting the adrenal glands. Adrenal exhaustion can be one of the results of so much negative thinking.
While Barbara could understand the possible effect her negative thinking was having on her health, it was extremely challenging for her to give up her negative thinking. Barbara deeply believed that her negative thinking kept her safe from disappointment. She believed that thinking the negative thought before the bad thing would happen prepared her to deal with it. She didn’t want to be caught off guard. She believed that she could not handle the pain of disappointment, so that if she knew about it ahead of time and actually expected it, she wouldn’t feel disappointed.
In addition, Barbara believed that if she was vigilant enough and thought through all the bad things that could happen, she could prevent them. She believed that by thinking ahead, she could somehow have control over the outcome of things.
Finally, Barbara also believed that she could control how people felt about her by acting right and saying the right thing. She was constantly vigilant about her behavior with others in her attempts to control how they felt about her and treated her.
However, in trying to control her feelings, others’ feelings and the outcome of things, Barbara may have been causing her illness. The underlying cause of her negative thinking was her devotion to this control.
The problem with all of this is that it is based on an illusion – the illusion of control. The fact is that Barbara could not foresee every event that could cause her some pain. She was devastated every time something happened that she had not thought of beforehand. How could something painful come out of the blue like that? How could she have not foreseen it?
The paradox of all of this is that, in trying to foresee future catastrophes, Barbara was not present in the moment. Real safety is in being present in the moment so we can respond appropriately to whatever is happening in the moment. When we are fully present in the moment, we are available to receiving information from our inner Guidance. All of us have a Source of Guidance that is always available to us, and that is here to help us and protect us. But we can access our Guidance only when we are fully present in the moment, not when we are trying to control the future.
Barbara is in the process of becoming more aware of her negative thinking. She is not yet healthy, but she has some better days now, days that are lighter and more fun.
Moving out of negative thinking is a process that takes time. If you are a negative thinker, you have been practicing this form of thinking your whole life. It is not going to stop in a day. But if you tune into the stress you feel and learn to connect your stress with your negative thinking, you can slowly change this pattern.
Vitality and joy can be the result of letting go of your negative thinking and learning to be present in the moment.
