Comment from a Reader - Thanks, Ingrid!
December 26, 2011 by thegreenchildrenfoundation · View Comments
For me gift giving is about giving proper Gifts, thoughtful Gifts, Gifts from the heart. The ones you made/bought/collected with the person at heart. Those are the most valuable and fun ones to give.
I hear you on the receiving part. But I also have that feeling when giving a gift. The not knowing how the receiving party is going to react - that’s just as satisfying.
A couple of months ago I gave a friend of mine a cake I made especially for him. It wasn’t something you can buy in a shop, it requires a bit of effort and love and care. It came right out of my heart. So I was realy curious what he would think of it. His reaction made a real impression on me. I barely see that reaction on people anymore. The look on his face when he received it - the thrill, the thankfulness…the sheer appreciation. Immense joy! It really felt I made a connection.
And I think that’s what’s it all about. Walking that extra mile, putting in that extra effort. Giving your love and make that connection.
Whishing you a warm loving Xmas spend amongst your loved ones
BIG HUG,
Ingrid
Beth
Positive Quote Wednesday - on Prosperity
September 21, 2011 by admin · View Comments
He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
Mark TwainPoverty is the worst form of violence.
Mohandas GandhiBeing unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
Mother Teresa
Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them.
Mother TeresaLoneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.
Mother TeresaThe world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.
John F. KennedyWars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.
Muhammad AliComing generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.
Khalil GibranPoverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.
Khalil GibranIn poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.
AristotleSome people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.
Coco ChanelLove conquers all things except poverty and toothache.
Mae WestIn a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.
ConfuciusFocusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.
Barack ObamaAs you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
Henry David ThoreauI worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.
Groucho MarxYou can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.
Bill CosbyPoverty is the mother of crime.
Marcus AureliusMoney is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
Woody Allen
Beth
Booze it Up! 13 Rad Recycled Bottle Crafts & Projects
February 28, 2011 by thegreenchildrenfoundation · View Comments
[ By Steph in Art & Design, Home & Garden, Tricks & Hacks. ]
Got a recycling bin full of glass bottles? Why waste them when you could have a new table lamp, candle holder, shelving unit, hummingbird feeder – even a house? Reuse beer, wine and liquor bottles for these 13 fun and creative crafts and projects for the home and garden.
Wine Bottle Table Lamp
(images via: wit and whistle)
Turning any wine bottle into a table lamp is as simple as drilling a hole and inserting a strand of lights. The color of the bottle enhances the glow of the light, adding ambiance to a room. The only special tool needed is a glass drill bit.
Wine Bottle Candle Holder
(image via: design sponge)
How simple and elegant are these DIY wine bottle candle holders? In shades of brown and green, they’re an earthy addition to a wooden table. This tutorial by Design Sponge uses a simple glass cutting kit and some sandpaper to snap the bottles in half.
Wine Bottle Shelves
(images via: renest)
Would you ever have thought of using wine bottles and slabs of wood to create a shelving unit? DIY recycled furniture is rarely easier than this. Made by Zero Waste Design, the shelves are created by drilling holes into the wood for the necks of the bottles, with hook and eye strainers adding a bit of stability. The Glasgow-based furniture maker also offers a how-to on Instructables.
Bottle Trees
(images via: recyclart, metaefficient, examiner)
Turn your holiday tree into an ode to beer (or perhaps just a sparkling green alternative to a living tree) using reclaimed empty bottles. This design uses circular platforms to support each tier of bottles, and as you can see, the result is as big as you want it to be, from a standard living room-sized tree to the monster 1,000-Heineken-bottle tree set up in Shanghai in 2009. Bottle trees are also popular year-round as garden art and easy to create.
Beer Bottle Drinking Glasses
(images via: bottlehood)
Got half of a wine bottle left over from your candle holder project (above)? Use it as a drinking glass! This tutorial from Instructables explains how to cut and finish the edges of your favorite beer or wine bottles to create custom drinking glasses – or you could just buy a set from Etsy seller Bottlehood.
Tiki Lamps
(images via: design sponge)
Bamboo tiki torches not your style? These DIY recycled wine bottle torches are modern and minimalist, but the best part is, they cost next to nothing. Design Sponge has the details on how to use $5 in hardware to create simple copper-colored tiki lamps that can be mounted to a wall or fence.
Beer Bottle Chandelier
(images via: coolmaterial.com)
Unless you’re handy with welding tools, this project is not so DIY-friendly, but it’s still an amazing use of beer bottles. Maybe you could even come up with your own cheap and easy solution for creating a custom beer bottle chandelier.
Chalkboard Vases & Pantry Organization
(image via: curbly, berm design)
Chalkboard paint transforms any old bottle into a cool customizable vase – or just use a swipe of it as a label that can be erased and re-written again and again.
Wine Bottle Bell Chimes
(image via: my vintage décor)
These wine bottle bell chimes were made using a hemp string, a wooden ball and a piece of hammered copper, but you could improvise any number of materials to come up with a similar result on your own. Just use the glass cutting kit from the beer bottle drinking glasses tutorial to slice off the bottom of the bottle. A wood or metal ring inside the bottle neck holds the string in place.
Hummingbird Feeders
(images via: deelux designs)
Etsy shop Deelux Designs uses liquor bottles to make these backyard feeders, filled with colored food that looks disturbingly like the real thing – but you could also use wine or beer bottles in a simple wire holder, as illustrated at Crafting a Green World. The feeder tubes are sold on Amazon.com for less than a dollar each, so plan on making some to sell or give away as gifts.
Beer Bottle Solar Hot Water Heater
(image via: neatorama)
Chinese farmer Ma Yanjun came up with a novel, inexpensive way to provide hot water for members of his family: laying 66 bottles, connected by hose pipes, on a board covered with aluminum foil. Placed on a rooftop and pointed north to collect the maximum amount of sunlight, this incredible DIY solution really does work. Instructions don’t seem to be available, but anyone good with DIY projects could probably come up with design based on Ma’s prototype.
Bottle House
(images via: bottlehouses.com)
Got skills that go beyond vases and bird feeders? You could make an entire house out of glass bottles. The collection of glass buildings at Prince Edward Island – including a chapel, a tavern, a gift shop and a six-gabled home – are just a few examples of how surprisingly beautiful this sort of eco-friendly construction can be. The bottles are used much like bricks, with mortar in between.
Buddhist Temple Made from Bottles
(images via: treehugger)
It’s the ultimate reclaimed glass bottle project: not a solar hot water heater, not even a house but an entire Buddhist temple. Monks in Thailand’s Sisaket province collected over a million green Heineken bottles and brown bottles of local Chang beer to create a complex of 20 buildings including the main temple, halls, prayer rooms, water tower, sleeping quarters and even a crematorium. Even the roofs are made from bottles. And if you’re wondering, no, the caps weren’t wasted – the monks used them to make mosaic murals.
Want More? Click for Great Related Content on WebEcoist:
18 Clever Christmas Trees Created With Recycled Materials
Forward thinkers were some of the first environmentalists. Nowadays, most of us recycle. As always, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Some people are just more creative tha…
8 Comments - Click Here to Read More
Climber survives after 1000 Foot Fall
February 15, 2011 by thegreenchildrenfoundation · View Comments
Adam Potter, a Scottish climber, survived 1,000 feet (300m - the height of the Eiffel Tower!) fall with only minor injuries, said Herald Sun in a report.Potter, a 35-year-old from Glasgow, lost his step on Saturday and fell down the near-vertical and craggy eastern face of Sgurr Choinnich Mor, a 1094-metre-high mountain in the western Highlands.
He was found at more or less 790 metres, making his tumble nearly 300 metres from the summit. In an interview with Sky, Potter revealed his story: “We were about 3000ft (914m) t up, give or take a few. I couldn’t really see the bottom at that point because there was a lot of cloud coming and going.
“As I slipped, I gained speed very quickly. I tried to slow myself down as quickly as possible because I knew once I had got the speed it would be difficult to lose it.
“I couldn’t because I went over the cliff edge and gained lots of speed… I was trying to slow myself down with my feet, my hands, my walking pole.
“Then I’d go over another cliff and it went on and on this way.
“I spoke to the helicopter people this morning and they said three of those drops were over 100ft (30m) in height each so I was quite lucky.”
“It wasn’t until I was at the bottom… and looked up that I appreciated I’d come a long way,” he added.
The helicopter that rescued him was on a training exercise at the time and was at the scene within 30 minutes. When the crew saw him standing beneath three craggy outcrops they thought it was impossible that the person was Adam Potter.
“We honestly thought it couldn’t have been him, as he was on his feet, reading a map,” said Lieutenant Tim Barker, the crew’s observer.
“It seemed impossible. So we retraced our path back up the mountain and, sure enough, there were bits of his kit in a vertical line all the way up where he had obviously lost them during the fall.
“It was quite incredible. He must have literally glanced off the outcrops as he fell, almost flying.”
When a paramedic reached Mr Potter he was shaking from “extreme emotional shock and the sheer relief at being alive”.
Many part of his face skin were exfoliated. He was also suffering from sore shoulders that were wrenched by the rucksack on his back, suffered whiplash and chest pain and three minor breaks in his back, but was being treated as “walking wounded” yesterday.
“He is lucky to be alive,” Lieutenant Barker said.
“It’s hard to believe that someone could have fallen that distance on that terrain and been able to stand up at the end of it, let alone chat to us in the helicopter.”
But the accident didn’t put him off climbing. He planned to climb Mount Everest in the following weeks.
“I will be a little bit more cautious next time and perhaps a little bit safer,” he said. “But I could have slipped on the pavement going out the front door.
“The only difference is the consequences of slipping up there are greater because of the distance you can fall.”
Beth
14 Ways to Elicit Trust
November 16, 2010 by admin · View Comments
According to the “experts”—sociologists, psychologists, economists, political scientists—trust is based on expectation. To the degree you believe you can expect a certain response from someone, you trust him. To the degree you believe he will reciprocate at some point in the future in some (often undefined) way, you trust him. Of course, past experience—with the person in question or with others—will affect that confidence, but in the here and now, certain behaviors and visual cues can also influence if and how much you trust someone:
1. Familiarity. The more contact you have with someone, the more information you collect about him or her. The more information you have, the more confident you can be in your expectations.
2. Resemblance. If someone looks, dresses, or acts like you, you’re more likely to believe his or her actions and reactions will be similar to your own. A 2002 study at a Canadian university showed that people are more likely to trust someone whose facial features resemble theirs.
3. Consistency. The more someone behaves with consistency, the better you’re able to establish patterns and form expectations.
4. Punctuality. If someone is regularly on time, it not only signals consistency, but also general conscientiousness toward other people.
5. Flexibility. Social-exchange theorists have found that people are more likely to trust someone who does not try to explicitly negotiate or force a binding agreement. (Think of the last car salesman you encountered.)
6. Discretion. The ability to keep a secret and exercise tact will always inspire trust.
7. Transparency. The flip side of discretion is transparency. We want someone to keep our secrets, but not her own. Self-disclosure builds trust.
8. Competence. In the workplace, nothing inspires trust more than getting the job done right.
9. Engagement. Trust is based on an understood reciprocity. If someone does not even appear to invest in you, he likely doesn’t have much to lose in betraying you.
10. Face Time. Part of engaging is an effort to make “face time.” A recent study showed that people in the workplace are more likely to trust team members with whom they interact in person more than those they work with via email or videoconference.
11. Facial hair. Another recent study in the Journal of Marketing Communications found that consumers trust pitchmen with beards more than those without. There are limits, however, to the beard-trustworthiness theory. Graphic designer Matt McInerney was only halfway kidding when he made a graphic spectrum of “The Trustworthiness of Beards.”
12. Eye contact (but not too much). This is perhaps the biggest behavioral indicator of trustworthiness. But the quality of the eye contact, observes psychologist Elaine Ducharme, also matters. Is it steely or warm? Too much eye contact can be unnerving.
13. Handshake (not too firm, not too soft). Any businessperson can tell you the importance of a firm handshake in building confidence. However, like eye contact, there is a middle ground. Too firm suggests aggression; too soft suggests passivity.
14. Posture. No one trusts a slouch. A straight back projects an image of strength and confidence.
Of course, while these behaviors and visual cues might inspire trust, they don’t guarantee trustworthiness. As Ducharme wryly reminds, many psychopaths maintain excellent eye contact.
Beth
Only Positive News
October 7, 2010 by · View Comments
When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
Abraham LincolnNo part of the education of a politician is more indispensable than the fighting of elections.
Winston ChurchillYou either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
John LennonFighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.
George CarlinVictory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.
Napoleon HillThe supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
Sun TzuFor to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.
Sun Tzu
Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.
Sun Tzu
It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
Helen KellerBe kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
PlatoPart of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.
Norman Vincent PealeThe world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.
Ernest HemingwayTo be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
e. e. cummingsIf Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
James MadisonAll the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.
George OrwellMost sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.
Jonathan Swift
As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.
Vincent Van GoghThe tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.
Edward AbbeyIf you insist upon fighting to protect me, or ‘our’ country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits where I have not shared and probably will not share.
Virginia WoolfBeauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.
Fyodor DostoevskyAs we become purer channels for God’s light, we develop an appetite for the sweetness that is possible in this world. A miracle worker is not geared toward fighting the world that is, but toward creating the world that could be.
Marianne Williamson
Now I’m fighting cancer, everybody knows that. People ask me all the time about how you go through your life and how’s your day, and nothing is changed for me.
Jim ValvanoYou must show the world that you abhor fighting.
Desmond Tutu
Positive Quote Wednesday - on Fighting
October 6, 2010 by thegreenchildrenfoundation · View Comments
When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
Abraham LincolnNo part of the education of a politician is more indispensable than the fighting of elections.
Winston ChurchillYou either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
John LennonFighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.
George CarlinVictory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.
Napoleon HillThe supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
Sun TzuFor to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.
Sun Tzu
Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.
Sun Tzu
It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
Helen KellerBe kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
PlatoPart of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.
Norman Vincent PealeThe world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.
Ernest HemingwayTo be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
e. e. cummingsIf Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
James MadisonAll the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.
George OrwellMost sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.
Jonathan Swift
As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.
Vincent Van GoghThe tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.
Edward AbbeyIf you insist upon fighting to protect me, or ‘our’ country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits where I have not shared and probably will not share.
Virginia WoolfBeauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.
Fyodor DostoevskyAs we become purer channels for God’s light, we develop an appetite for the sweetness that is possible in this world. A miracle worker is not geared toward fighting the world that is, but toward creating the world that could be.
Marianne Williamson
Now I’m fighting cancer, everybody knows that. People ask me all the time about how you go through your life and how’s your day, and nothing is changed for me.
Jim ValvanoYou must show the world that you abhor fighting.
Desmond Tutu
Beth
Positive Quote Wednesday - Have you Found Yourself?
June 8, 2010 by admin · View Comments
People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates. ~Thomas Szasz, “Personal Conduct,” The Second Sin, 1973
You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself. ~Alan Alda
Never mind searching for who you are. Search for the person you aspire to be. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor. ~Dr. Alexis Carrel
The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart. ~Julien Green
There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~Anaïs Nin
The value of identity of course is that so often with it comes purpose. ~Richard Grant
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer. ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
All men should strive
to learn before they die
what they are running from, and to, and why.
~James ThurberI know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of. ~Michel de Montaigne
If you don’t get lost, there’s a chance you may never be found. ~Author Unknown
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. ~Henry David Thoreau, 1854
A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. ~George Moore
It is good to feel lost… because it proves you have a navigational sense of where “Home” is. You know that a place that feels like being found exists. And maybe your current location isn’t that place but, Hallelujah, that unsettled, uneasy feeling of lost-ness just brought you closer to it. ~Erika Harris, lifeblazing.com
Beth
How to Have more Positive Relationships
April 9, 2010 by thegreenchildrenfoundation · View Comments
“There are plenty of fish in the sea.”
“Time heals all wounds.”
“Get over it.”
You’ve heard ‘em all right? Russell Friedman and John W. James say jaunty phrases like these are the worst words of advice for handling a breakup. “The attempt to soothe is always well intentioned but rarely helpful,” say the authors of Moving On: Dump Your Relationship Baggage and Make Room for the Love of Your Life.
Despite its oh-god-not-another-one-of-those-books title, this is one of the best relationship books to have crossed my desk in a while (and trust me, a lot of them cross my desk).
Rather than spend a lot of time splicing, dicing and trying to spice up the failing relationships we’re currently in, Friedman and James, founders of the Grief Recovery Institute have applied techniques they’ve used to help clients deal with death to help people deal with the one thing they rarely do when they enter into a new relationship: That is, properly say good-bye to all the other crappy relationships that have gone before.
“A breakup is the death of a relationship,” says Friedman. “And just as when someone dies, you’re suddenly robbed of all the hopes, dreams and expectations you had for the future with that person.” Then we drag all that disappointment, anger and resentment (because of course, the relationship death was all the other’s person’s, right?) into our next relationship. After a few rounds of this, it’s no wonder so many of us can’t make the damn things work. In fact, says Friedman, the 50% divorce rate is nothing compared to the 70 per cent of relationships that fail outside of marriage.
Friedman and James partly blame our society’s discomfort with feelings of sadness.“By the time a child is 15 years old he or she will have received more than 23 thousand messages that sad or painful feelings should not be communicated to others,” they write.
Pet fish dies? Don’t worry honey, there are plenty more fish in the, er, pet fish store. Hurt son? Suck it up and get over it. All that stuff we learn about feeling bad or sad gets packed into the suitcase and hauled into adulthood and into our relationships.
Relationship ends? Don’t worry; you can get a new one. Heart hurtin’ like someone’s shoved it full of broken glass? Suck it up and get over it.
But the new fish/relationship isn’t a replacement for the old one, say the authors. Relationships aren’t replaceable or interchangeable. Each is unique and need to be experienced, completed and mourned differently.
And that old, “time heals all” bit? Friedman and James liken this advice to expecting time to fill a flat tire with air. To take the analogy further, imagine you continue driving on that flat tire while you’re waiting for time to fill it up again. It would make driving in a straight line really hard and eventually, you’d destroy the rim and the wheel.
So just like you need to take action to fill up your tire before you can more forward (like call a tow truck or use a jack and fix it yourself), we need to take action in order to refill our emotional flat tires and move forward into healthier, happier relationships.
The action the authors suggest is something they call the “past relationship review,” an exercise that forces you to formally review past relationships and be honest with yourself about the good, the bad and the ugly of each one. But the process isn’t just an intellectual one. “We know people who can recite a doctoral thesis on what happened and who did what to whom but still aren’t emotionally complete,” says Friedman.
Their suggested process, if done honestly and openly, allows you to “complete” past relationships by forgiving your exes for their shit and apologizing for your own so you don’t end up dragging all that “unfinished emotional business” into subsequent relationships.
But he was a bastard and I’ll never be able to forgive him, you say. Forgiving doesn’t condone the person’s behaviour, says Friedman. Not forgiving, however, makes it impossible to move on. “Not forgiving keeps you in prison and not them,” he says.
In fact, forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person. “It’s only for you, to set you free,” says Friedman.
Which is why the authors are so adamant about the fact that none of this process be shared with your exes. They mean it. This is strictly a personal exercise. Suddenly calling him up to tell him you forgive him for being such a jerk isn’t going to inflate anyone’s tires.
Friedman likens the process to scraping old paint off a house to prepare it for a fresh coat.
And, once you’re ready for it, they’ve got some great advice for making that fresh coat last.
For more info or to order the book, go to relationshipbaggage.com.
Beth
9 Tips on a More Positive Life
April 6, 2010 by admin · View Comments
1. Appreciate as much as you can. This is one of those very simple things you can do to bring more positivity in to your life. I have also found appreciation to be a great way to turn an angry, sad and frustrated mood around to a more positive one.
2. Stop comparing yourself to others. If you don´t then you´ll just create a lot of unnecessary pain in your life. If you pass one person then you´ll just find another person more successful than you. And your brief sense of being a winner will transform once again into anxiety, fear, tummy-aches and possibly heart-attacks.
3. Realize that it is possible to choose how you react. You don´t have live your life in reaction. You have a choice. There is always a gap between stimuli and reaction. If you focus on that gap it will widen and although it might seem in the beginning like stimuli and your reaction are tied together that is not the case.
4. Educate yourself. Self-education can be a great help to live a more positive life. Read great books on the areas of your life you want to improve. Maybe it’s it your financial situation. Or your health. Or your relationships. Ask people with more success in that area than you what they did to improve.
5. Act as if. Your emotions work backwards too. So even if you don´t feel positive, confident, calm or decisive you can act like it. And after you have done that for a few minutes, guess what happens? You will actually start to feel positive, confident, calm or decisive.
6. Live in the now. Don´t let your thoughts drift into the past or future more than necessary. It’s often a sure-fire way to start negative loops of thoughts in your mind.
7. Do some mental rehearsal. This is great way to improve your performance and decrease anxiety in any upcoming situation. Maybe you´re heading into a meeting soon. Then visualize now how great the events will unfold – see and hear it – and also how great will you feel at this meeting.
8. Redefine failure. Michael Jordan once said: “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
9. Focus on what you want, not on what you don´t want. One common problem is to focus your thoughts on what you don´t want rather than what you want. If you do that then it will be hard to get what you want in life. If you want to improve your finances then focus on having a great financial situation rather than your lack of money and your debts.
Beth
