Using Affirmations - Stress Management from MindTools Harnessing Positive Thinking Use positive thinking to your advantage. © iStockphoto/hometowncd "I'm never going to be able to do this job; I'm just not smart enough." "Why does my boss want me to present at the trade show? "I wish I could stick up for myself at work; in every meeting, I let the others walk over my ideas. Many of us have negative thoughts like these, sometimes on a regular basis. The problem with these negative thoughts is that they can be self-fulfilling. This is why consciously doing the opposite – using positive affirmations – can be helpful. Why Use Affirmations? Affirmations are positive, specific statements that help you to overcome self-sabotaging, negative thoughts. While there's limited research into the effectiveness of using affirmations in a general setting, there is evidence that the use of positive affirmations can successfully treat people with low self-esteem, depression, and other mental health conditions. Note: When to Use Positive Affirmations Tip: Tip 2:
100 Excellent Art Therapy Exercises for Your Mind, Body, and Soul January 9th, 2011 Pablo Picasso once said, "Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." It's no surprise, then, that many people around the world use art as a means to deal with stress, trauma and unhappiness – or to just find greater peace and meaning in their lives. If you're curious about what art therapy has to offer, you can try out some of these great solo exercises at home to help nurse your mind, body and soul back to health. If you like the experience, you can also seek out professional art therapy treatment in your area. Emotions Deal with emotions like anger and sadness through these helpful exercises. Draw or paint your emotions. Relaxation Art therapy can be a great way to relax. Paint to music. Happiness Art can not only help you deal with the bad stuff, but also help you appreciate and focus on the good. Draw your vision of a perfect day. Portraits Often, a great way to get to know yourself and your relationships with others is through portraits. Collaging Self
PERMA Model - Career Development from MindTools Bringing Well-Being and Happiness to Your Life Put yourself on the road to happiness. © iStockphoto/silberkorn We all want to be happy. When we're happy, we're productive, we're good at building meaningful relationships with those around us, and... we feel great! However, happiness is a notoriously difficult thing to pin down, and by focusing on it too intensely, we can end up feeling unfulfilled. In this article we'll look at the PERMA Model. About the Model The PERMA Model was developed by respected positive psychologist, Martin Seligman, and was widely published in his influential 2011 book, "Flourish." "PERMA" stands for the five essential elements that should be in place for us to experience lasting well-being. 1. For us to experience well-being, we need positive emotion in our lives. 2. When we're truly engaged in a situation, task, or project, we experience a state of flow : time seems to stop, we lose our sense of self, and we concentrate intensely on the present. 3. 4. 5. Engagement
Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner: Rare Photos, 1949 Is he the greatest living painter in the United States? That was the direct, provocative question asked in an August 1949 LIFE magazine article that helped cement Jackson Pollock’s reputation. It was a question Pollock spent much of the rest of his life struggling to answer — while desperately hoping to show the skeptics why LIFE was right to even ask such a monumental question in the first place. As the single most recognizable practitioner of Abstract Expressionism — the movement that put America and, specifically, post-World War II New York at the epicenter of painting’s avant-garde — Pollock was a genuine art star. But he soon abandoned the radical “drip” technique that had earned him both fame and, among some art critics, vilification and spent the last few years of his life battling the twin demons of depression and alcoholism. Today, a painting from Pollock’s “drip period” can fetch north of $100 million at auction.
Boost Employee Engagement in Just 30 Minutes per Month « Leadership.BlogNotions - Thoughts from Industry Experts I’m going to admit right now that that title is slightly misleading, but only slightly. You really do have the power to make a measurable, positive impact on employee engagement. The secret is for you to spend as little as 30 minutes with each employee that you directly manage at least once a month. These mini-meetings, called one to one meetings, are so powerful in moving the needle on employee engagement because of the relationship they cement not only between company and employee but especially between manager and employee, the most impactful relationship of all for both employee satisfaction and employee engagement. One to one meetings are your chance to engage that employee in meaningful conversation about their role in the company. So why do these simple meetings fail to happen more than they do? Meet Bill Bill ran operations for a mid-size professional services firm. One of the most glaring issues about the firm was that nobody cared. Taking Bill from Unprofessional to Professional
The Next Breadbasket Using hand tools and draft animals, a family harvests wheat in Ethiopia’s famine-prone highlands. Education has helped small farmers become more efficient, but wheat yields are still a third below the world’s average. With more than a third of Ethiopians malnourished, the government is courting industrial farms to help close the gap. By Joel K. Bourne, Jr. Photographs by Robin Hammond She never saw the big tractor coming. “No one even talked to me,” the 45-year-old Chirime says, her voice rising with anger. Chirime’s situation is hardly unique. Sugarcane hawkers await customers on the Nacala railway in northern Mozambique, where Brazil and Japan hope to turn 35 million acres of small farms over to industrial-scale soybean production. Though some corporate farms have pushed small growers off their land, Bananalandia, a 3,500-acre enterprise near Maputo, has improved life for the locals. Many of those hurdles are now falling. It’s an optimistic vision, for sure.
Performance Matters. First Impressions Don’t. 25 Things You Keep In Your Life That Are Only Holding You Back 1. The phone numbers of people that never, ever call you or text you first, and often don’t even respond when you text them. 2. Mean or uncomfortable exchanges with people — either in your text or internet history — that you occasionally go over and re-read because they make you feel angry and terrible all over again. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. For more good advice and inspiration, read The Truth About Everything here. Telling vs. Teaching: Great Leaders Know the Difference Think about a leader and chances are your first image is of someone giving orders -- maybe it’s the quarterback in a huddle outlining the next play for his teammates, maybe it’s an army officer coolly barking commands in the heat of combat. But chances are, when many of us think of leadership, we picture a person telling others what to do. After all, that’s the essence of leadership, right? Wrong, says Christine Comaford, an executive coach and author of SmartTribes: How Teams Become Brilliant Together who recently participated in a series of interviews on the website of fellow author Keith Ferrazzi. In the course of a long exchange about leadership, she tells the story of an executive she was coaching who couldn’t stop telling his employees how to do day-to-day things. It was a waste of time and a distraction for the executive, Comaford explains, and resulted in employees who weren’t really developing new skills or additional confidence. Here’s your recipe: five inquiries per advocacy.
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10 foods to eat so you never have to diet I may be wrong, but I feel that there is something that happens in my body to help melt away fat by eating the combo of (mostly veggies) as suggested by the above... Most potent, in my opinion, is the onion/garlic duo as used in the salad mix... It seems to me that these two especially help for weight loss... I also use sunflower seeds and/or flax seeds often in the mix... beans, avocados, and the small portions of chicken, shrimp, or fish add the proteins or bulk to the intake, imo... remember, I don't eat wheat and very little dairy... no yogurt either... Now last summer, I had a large red nasty rash on my upper left arm.. It would not heal, and was ultimately called Exzema, (sp) the itch that rashes...
Planning Your Calls: A 5-point Checklist for Recruiting Success The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise and is not preceded by a period of anxiety . — John Preston, Boston College When I started my sales career, I did not fully understand how to “plan for success.” My overall excitement level when it came to planning probably fell somewhere below my excitement for root canals and colonoscopies. Safe to say, I preferred doing — not planning. Why Plan Calls? I quickly learned the value of planning and, more importantly, how closely planning was linked to my success in sales. When I was in (large business-to-business) sales, I was expected to develop and present detailed territory plans and account plans to my sales manager. He didn’t want anything left to chance when it came to reaching my assigned quota. Successful sales professionals don’t wing it. Being in Control I learned how to use planning as a control mechanism. And of course, I couldn’t always control my customers. And … drum roll please …
"Life-Changing Books" We asked our readers what books made the biggest difference in their lives, and here’s what they had to say. The list below tells you what books shaped their lives and why. 1984 – George Orwell 1984 “was the first book I actually enjoyed reading. A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson “Wow this book is incredible. Ariel – Sylvia Plath “After reading through these suggestions, I realized there’s a big hole: Poetry! Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut “This book reignited the pilot light of my imagination like no other book had done in quite awhile. Crooked Cucumber – The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki “Although I am not practicing Zen (yet), this book is like my Bible in that I plan to always read over it and reflect upon the messages therein. Disturbing the Peace – Vaclav Havel “I read it as a junior in high school, picked up on the bargain pile at a B. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer Great Expectations – Charles Dickens Hiroshima – John Hersey –“Epic.