How To Be Patient!

How to be Patient
Learning to Stay Calm
The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the
egg, not by smashing it open.
– Arnold Glasgow, American humorist

Here's the problem: You're waiting for someone to finish compiling a
report that you need for a meeting. Because of an issue that came up,
you're already 15 minutes late.

You can feel your body getting tense, and you're getting quite cross.
You start sweating, and suddenly you yell at the person for being slow
and putting you behind schedule. You can tell she's hurt, but you can't
help it. She's making you late!

Does this sound familiar?

Many of us are impatient at times. Losing control of our patience hurts
not only us, but those around us. Impatience raises our stress level
and can even cause physical harm to our bodies. Being impatient can
also damage relationships.

In this article, we'll examine strategies that you can use to be more
patient.

Why Practice Patience?

Others often see impatient people as arrogant, insensitive, and
impulsive. They can be viewed as poor decision makers, because they
make quick judgments or interrupt people. Some people will even avoid
impatient people, because of their poor people skills and bad tempers.

People with these personality traits are unlikely to be at the top of
the list for promotions to leadership positions. Impatience can even
affect relationships at home.

The more patient you are with others, the likelier you are to be viewed
positively by your peers and your managers, not to mention your family
and friends.

Signs of Impatience

How do you know when you're being impatient? You will probably
experience one of more of the following symptoms:

Shallow breathing (short breaths).

Muscle tension.

Hand clenching/tightening.

Jiggling/restless feet.

Irritability/anger.

Anxiety/nervousness.

Rushing.

Snap/quick decisions.
Finding Your Causes

If you experience the symptoms of impatience, your next step is to
discover the true cause. Many of us have "triggers." These could be
people, phrases, or specific situations (like rush-hour traffic) that
regularly cause us to enter an impatient frame of mind.

Make a list of things that cause you to become impatient. If you're
having trouble identifying your triggers, use these tips:

Stop and think about the last time you were impatient. What caused it?
You can narrow this down to the root cause by using the 5 Whys
technique.

Ask your family, friends, and co-workers about your impatience. Chances
are that they know what gets you "wound up".

Many people become impatient due to physical factors such as hunger,
dehydration, or fatigue. Analyze your body the next time you start to
feel impatient. A simple remedy might be a snack and a glass of water!

Keep a journal with you to record when you start to feel impatient.
Write down what the situation is, and why you're getting frustrated.
Identifying your triggers helps because it forces you to examine your
actions and uncover why you're doing what you're doing. This knowledge
also helps you devise strategies to avoid becoming impatient.

Of course, it would be great if you could avoid the triggers that make
you impatient. But for most of us, that's just not possible. So you
have to learn to manage impatience instead.

Managing the Symptoms

When you feel impatient, it's important to get out of this frame of
mind as quickly as possible. Try these strategies:

Take deep, slow breaths, and count to 10. Doing this helps slow your
heart rate, relaxes your body, and distances you emotionally from the
situation. If you're feeling really impatient, you might need to do a
longer count, or do this several times.

Impatience can cause you to tense your muscles involuntarily. So,
consciously focus on relaxing your body. Again, take slow, deep
breaths. Relax your muscles, from your toes up to the top of your head.

Learn to manage your emotions. Remember, you have a choice in how you
react in every situation. You can choose to be patient, or choose not
to be: it's all up to you.

Force yourself to slow down. Make yourself speak and move more slowly.
It will appear to others as if you're calm – and, by "acting" patient,
you can often "feel" more patient.

Practice active listening and empathic listening. Make sure you give
other people your full attention, and patiently plan your response to
what they say.

Remind yourself that your impatience rarely gets others to move faster
– in fact, it can interfere with other people's ability to perform
complex or highly-skilled work. All you're doing is creating more
stress, which is completely unproductive.

Try to talk yourself out of your impatient frame of mind. Remind
yourself how silly it is that you're reacting this way. People often
don't mind if a meeting is delayed, just as long as you let them know
that you're running late in advance.

If your impatience causes you to react in anger toward others, use
anger management techniques to calm down.

Some people become impatient because they're perfectionists. However,
in addition to causing impatience, perfectionism can actually slow
productivity and increase stress. Learn how to stop being a
perfectionist with our Coaching Clinic I'm a Perfectionist!
Remember that, although many people are naturally patient, the rest of
us need to practice patience for it to become a habit. Becoming more
patient won't happen overnight, but do persist – it's so important!

Key Points

Many of us struggle with impatience. But if we want healthy work
relationships and a successful career, then we need to spend time
making patience a habit.

Start by identifying your triggers. Often a specific person or
situation can immediately cause you to become impatient. When you
identify the specific causes, you're better able to discover why it's
happening. You can then use strategies to overcome your impatience.

Cash Back for Consumer Electronics!

In honor of the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day, Wired and YouRenew are challenging readers to recycle 40,000 consumer electronics in one month and get cash back.

From Earth Day, Thursday, April 22, through May 21, go to http://www.wired.yourenew.com and type in your used phone, digital camera, laptop, or even your old calculator to find out what it is worth.

Thinking $5, $10, $20? Think again. The average order is $65 and can go as high as $275 for an iPhone 3GS.

It's easy. Send the used item(s) to YouRenew and they'll send you what it's worth; YouRenew refurbishes and resells the products, keeping them out of landfills, where they leak lead, cadmium and mercury into our environment and ultimately our drinking water.

Help us, help the Earth.
http://www.wired.yourenew.com

EFT AND THE LAW OF ATTRACTION

Drink Sustainably

Drink Sustainably

The BetaCup Bodystorming Session - Overlap 09 from the betacup on Vimeo.

58 billion paper coffee cups are thrown away, unrecycled, each year. The betacup challenge is an effort to reduce this waste – and we need your help.

We invite you to submit ideas but also to comment and rate others’ ideas, and engage in discussions with other betacup community members and contest jurors.

You should consider:

Waste Reduction – how does the Idea reduce the number of non-recycled coffee cups thrown away each year?

Resources Required – what resources will it take to implement the Idea? (money, energy, water, materials, time, etc)

New or Existing Capabilities – does the Idea use existing technologies or approaches? If not, what must be created or invented to implement the Idea?

The Whole experience – Don’t forget the importance of the “whole experience”. Alternatives to paper cups are available today but they are not being widely used. How effective is the Idea likely to be in achieving its goal?

A different contest format (hint: we’re encouraging collaboration)
The betacup differs from most contest formats, because it is open. We are using jovoto, so when you submit an idea, your ideas are open to the public for comment and ratings.

We think this feedback process will help make ideas even better, so we encourage you to submit ideas early and benefit from the feedback. Don’t have an idea? No problem, you can still help out by offering feedback to others.

How will the $20,000 prize be awarded?
The top idea as decided by a jury will earn $10,000.

The top 5 ideas as decided by community ratings will have $10,000 divided amongst them.

It is our intention that ideas submitted belong to the person submitting them. However, because the ideas are posted publicly, we encourage you to discuss possible intellectual property issues with an intellectual property lawyer before submitting. Additional please review the ownership and licensing terms are discussed in the contest rules.

This international contest starts on April 1, 2010 and ends on June 15. Visitwww.jovoto.com, register, and be part of the solution.

Trash floats eco-warrior's boat - latimes.com

Trash floats eco-warrior's boat - latimes.com

Posted using ShareThis

Solomon's Mines on Amazon!

Maybe we don't have to anymore

Maybe we don't have to anymore..

Scientific American Mind - December 22, 2009
Fall in Love and Stay That Way
Nothing is more fulfilling than being in a successful love relationship. Yet we leave our love lives entirely to chance. Maybe we don't have to anymore
By Robert Epstein

The best way to get students interested in scientific studies is to give them hands-on experiences that get them excited about the subject matter. In chemistry courses, teachers accomplish that with test tubes and mysterious liquids. In a course I taught recently at the University of California, San Diego, on relationship science, I piqued my students’ interest with exercises on, well, love.
To begin, I invited eight students who did not know each other to come to the front of the auditorium, where I paired them up randomly. I then asked each individual to rate, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much he or she liked, loved, or felt close to his or her partner. Then I asked the couples to look deeply into each other’s eyes in an exercise I call Soul Gazing.
There was some giggling at first and then some very intense gazing. After two minutes, I again asked for the numbers. The result? A modest 7 percent increase in loving (meaning 1 point added for one person in one couple), an 11 percent increase in liking, and a whopping 45 percent increase in closeness. There were gasps and cheers in the audience. When I asked everyone in the class to pair up for two minutes of gazing, 89 percent of the students said the exercise increased feelings of intimacy.
And that was just the beginning….
Eye ContactAbout 50 percent of first marriages fail in the U.S., as do two thirds of second marriages and three quarters of third marriages. So much for practice! We fail in large part because we enter into relationships with poor skills for maintaining them and highly unrealistic expectations. We also tend to pick unsuitable partners, mistakenly believing that we are in love simply because we feel physical attraction.
That combination of factors sets us up for failure: eventually—often within a mere 18 months—the fog of passion dissipates, and we begin to see our partner with new clarity. All too often we react by saying, “Who are you?” or “You’ve changed.” We might try hard for years after that to keep things going, especially if children are in the picture. But if we start out with the wrong person and lack basic tools for resolving conflicts and communicating, the chances that we will succeed are slim to none.
Over the years, having looked carefully at the fast-growing scientific literature on relationship science and having conducted some new research of my own, I have come to believe that there is a definite fix for our poor performance in romantic relationships. The fix is to extract a practical technology from the research and then to teach people how to use it.
At least 80 scientific studies help to reveal how people learn to love each other. A 1989 study by psychologist James D. Laird of Clark University and his colleagues inspired my Soul Gazing exercise. The researchers showed that mutual eye gazing (but not gazing at hands) produced rapid increases in feelings of both liking and loving in total strangers. Mutual gazing is like staring, but with an important difference: for many mammalian species, staring is both intended and received as a threat. Try it on a New York subway if you have any doubts about its efficacy. In mutual gazing, however, people are giving each other permission to stare; that is, they are being vulnerable to each other, and that is the key element in emotional bonding. The vulnerability created when people are in war zones can create powerful emotional bonds in seconds, and even hostages sometimes develop strong attachments to their captors, a phenomenon called the Stockholm syndrome.
Signs of vulnerability in an animal or another person bring out tendencies in many people to provide care and protection—to be drawn to that being and to like or even love him or her. And as research in social psychology has shown for decades, when a person is feeling vulnerable and thus agitated or otherwise aroused, he or she often looks around for clues about how to interpret and label those feelings. The body is saying, “I’m aroused, but I’m not sure why,” and the environment is suggesting an answer, namely, that you’re in love.
A Technology of AffectionSoul Gazing is one of dozens of exercises I have distilled from scientific studies that make people feel vulnerable and increase intimacy. Love Aura, Let Me Inside and Secret Swap are other examples of fun, bond-building activities that any couple can learn and practice.
Students could earn extra credit in my course by trying out such techniques with friends, romantic interests or even total strangers. More than 90 percent of the students in the course reported using these methods successfully to improve their relationships, and more than 50 of the 213 students submitted detailed reports about their experiences. Nearly all the reports documented increases in liking, loving, closeness or attraction of between 3 and 30 percent over about a month. In a few cases, ratings tripled. (Students did not need to enhance their relationships to receive extra credit; all they had to do was document their use of the techniques.)
The few exceptions I saw made sense. One heterosexual male saw no positive effects when he tried the exercises with another male; moreover, the experience made him “uncomfortable.” When he tried them with a female, however, his intimacy ratings increased by 25 percent—and hers increased by 144 percent!
A student named Olivia attempted the exercises with her brother, mother, a good friend and a relative stranger. Soul Gazing failed with her brother because he could not stop giggling. When she and her mom tried the Secret Swap—an activity that creates vulnerability when people disclose secrets to each other—intimacy ratings increased by 31 percent. Exercises she tried with her friend boosted ratings between 10 and 19 percent, but most impressive was the outcome of gazing with someone she barely knew: a 70 percent increase in intimacy.
One student did the assignment with her husband of five years. The couple, Asa and Gill, tried out eight different exercises, and even though their “before” scores were usually very high (9s and 10s), every exercise they tried increased their scores by at least 3 percent. Overall, Asa wrote, “I noticed a drastic change in our bond for one another. My husband seems more affectionate now than he was, for which I am really grateful.” She also reported a bonus: a substantial drop in the frequency with which she and her spouse called attention to their past mistakes. This change probably came about because the couple was now, as a result of my course, broadly interested in enhancing their relationship.
Taking ControlThe students in my course were doing something new—taking control over their love lives. We grow up on fairy tales and movies in which magical forces help people find their soul mates, with whom they effortlessly live happily ever after. The fairy tales leave us powerless, putting our love lives into the hands of the Fates.
But here is a surprise: most of the world has never heard of those fairy tales. Instead more than half of marriages on our globe are brokered by parents or professional matchmakers, whose main concerns are long-term suitability and family harmony. In India an estimated 95 percent of the marriages are arranged, and although divorce is legal, India has one of the lowest divorce rates in the world. (This is starting to change, of course, as Western ways encroach on traditional society.)
Young couples in India generally have a choice about whether to proceed, and the combination of choice and sound guidance probably accounts for the fact that studies of arranged marriages in India indicate that they measure up well—in, for example, longevity, satisfaction and love—against Western marriages. Indeed, the love experienced by Indian couples in arranged marriages appears to be even more robust than the love people experience in “love marriages.” In a 1982 study psychologists Usha Gupta and Pushpa Singh of the University of Rajasthan in Jaipur, India, used the Rubin Love Scale, which gauges intense, romantic, Western-style love, to determine that love in love marriages in India does exactly what it does in love marriages here: it starts high and declines fairly rapidly. But love in the arranged marriages they examined started out low and gradually increased, surpassing the love in the love marriage about five years out. Ten years into the marriage the love was nearly twice as strong.
How do they do it? How do people in some arranged marriages build love deliberately over time—and can we do it, too?
Over the past few years I have been interviewing people in arranged marriages in which love has grown over time. One of these couples is Kaiser and Shelly Haque of Minneapolis, who have been happily married for 11 years and have two bright, well-adjusted children. Once he had a secure life in the U.S., Kaiser, an immigrant from Bangladesh, returned to his native country to let his family know he was ready for matrimony. The family did the rest. After just one meeting with Shelly—where, Kaiser said, there was “like at first sight”—the arrangements were made. “We’ve grown to love each other and to get to know each other over time,” Kaiser says. “The sparks are getting bigger, and I think we can do even better in the future.”
Kaiser and Shelly are not atypical. A study that Mansi Thakar, a student at the University of Southern California, and I presented at the November 2009 meeting of the National Council on Family Relations included 30 individuals from nine countries of origin and five different religions. Their love had grown, on average, from 3.9 to 8.5 on a 10-point scale in marriages lasting an average of 19.4 years.
These individuals identified 11 factors that contributed to the growth of their love, 10 of which dovetailed beautifully with the scientific research I reviewed in my course. The most important factor was commitment, followed by good communication skills. The couples also identified sharing secrets with a spouse, as well as accommodation—that is, the voluntary altering of a partner’s behavior to meet the other person’s needs. Seeing a spouse in a vulnerable state (caused by injury or illness) was also singled out. There are many possible lessons here for Westerners, among them: do things deliberately that make you vulnerable to each other. Try experiencing danger, or thrilling simulations of it, as a couple.
The results conflicted with those of American studies in only one respect: several of the subjects said their love grew when they had children with their spouse. Studies in the U.S. routinely find parenting to be a threat to feelings of spousal love, but perhaps that tendency results from the strong feelings and unrealistic expectations that launch our relationships. The stress of raising children tends to disrupt those expectations and ultimately our positive feelings for each other.
Creating LoveA careful look at arranged marriage, combined with the knowledge accumulating in relationship science, has the potential to give us real control over our love lives—without practicing arranged marriage. Americans want it all—the freedom to choose a partner and the deep, lasting love of fantasies and fairy tales. We can achieve that kind of love by learning about and practicing techniques that build love over time. And when our love is fading, we can use such techniques to rebuild that love. The alternative—leaving it to chance—makes little sense.
Love-Building ExercisesHere are some fun exercises, all inspired by scientific studies, that you can use to deliberately create emotional intimacy with a partner—even someone you barely know:
Two as One. Embracing each other gently, begin to sense your partner’s breathing and gradually try to synchronize your breathing with his or hers. After a few minutes, you might feel that the two of you have merged.
Soul Gazing. Standing or sitting about two feet away from each other, look deeply into each other’s eyes, trying to look into the very core of your beings. Do this for about two minutes and then talk about what you saw.
Monkey Love. Standing or sitting fairly near each other, start moving your hands, arms and legs any way you like—but in a fashion that perfectly imitates your partner. This is fun but also challenging. You will both feel as if you are moving voluntarily, but your actions are also linked to those of your partner.
Falling in Love. This is a trust exercise, one of many that increase mutual feelings of vulnerability. From a standing position, simply let yourself fall backward into the arms of your partner. Then trade places. Repeat several times and then talk about your feelings. Strangers who do this exercise sometimes feel connected to each other for years.
Secret Swap. Write down a deep secret and have your partner do the same. Then trade papers and talk about what you read. You can continue this process until you have run out of secrets. Better yet, save some of your secrets for another day
Mind-Reading Game. Write down a thought that you want to convey to your partner. Then spend a few minutes wordlessly trying to broadcast that thought to him or her, as he or she tries to guess what it is. If he or she cannot guess, reveal what you were thinking. Then switch roles.
Let Me Inside. Stand about four feet away from each other and focus on each other. Every 10 seconds or so move a bit closer until, after several shifts, you are well inside each other’s personal space (the boundary is about 18 inches). Get as close as you can without touching. (My students tell me this exercise often ends with kissing.)
Love Aura. Place the palm of your hand as close as possible to your partner’s palm without actually touching. Do this for several minutes, during which you will feel not only heat but also, sometimes, eerie kinds of sparks.
Studies in IntimacyDozens of scientific studies illuminate how people fall in love—and hint at techniques for building strong relationships. Here are 10 kinds of investigations that are helping to inspire a new technology of love.
Arousal. Studies by researchers such as psychologist Arthur Aron of Stony Brook University show that people tend to bond emotionally when aroused, say, through exercise, adventures or exposure to dangerous situations. Roller coaster, anyone? See the Falling in Love exercise above.
Proximity and familiarity. Studies by Stanford University social psychologists Leon Festinger and Robert Zajonc and others conclude that simply being around someone tends to produce positive feelings. When two people consciously and deliberately allow each other to invade their personal space, feelings of intimacy can grow quickly. See the Let Me Inside exercise above.
Similarity. Opposites sometimes attract, but research by behavioral economist Dan Ariely of Duke University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and others shows that people usually tend to pair off with those who are similar to themselves—in intelligence, background and level of attractiveness. Some research even suggests that merely imitating someone can increase closeness. See the Monkey Love exercise above.
Humor. Marriage counselors and researchers Jeanette and Robert Lauer showed in 1986 that in long-term, happy relationships, partners make each other laugh a lot. Other research reveals that women often seek male partners who can make them laugh—possibly because when we are laughing, we feel vulnerable. Know any good jokes?
Novelty. Psychologist Greg Strong of Florida State University, Aron and others have shown that people tend to grow closer when they are doing something new. Novelty heightens the senses and also makes people feel vulnerable.
Inhibitions. Countless millions of relationships have probably started with a glass of wine. Inhibitions block feelings of vulnerability, so lowering inhibitions can indeed help people bond. Getting drunk, however, is blinding and debilitating. Instead of alcohol, try the Two as One exercise above.
Kindness, accommodation and forgiveness. A variety of studies confirm that we tend to bond to people who are kind, sensitive and thoughtful. Feelings of love can emerge especially quickly when someone deliberately changes his or her behavior—say, by giving up smoking or drinking—to accommodate our needs. Forgiveness often causes mutual bonding, because when one forgives, one shows vulnerability.
Touch and sexuality. The simplest touch can produce warm, positive feelings, and a backrub can work wonders. Even getting very near someone without actually touching can have an effect. Studies by social psychologist Susan Sprecher of Illinois State University, among others, also show that sexuality can make people feel closer emotionally, especially for women. There is danger here, however: confusing sexual attraction with feelings of love. You cannot love someone without knowing him or her, and attraction blinds people to important characteristics of their partner.
Self-disclosure. Research by Aron, Sprecher and others indicates that people tend to bond when they share secrets with each other. Once again, the key here is allowing oneself to be vulnerable. See the Secret Swap exercise above.
Commitment. We are not that good at honoring our relationship commitments in the U.S., but studies by researchers such as psychologist Ximena Arriaga of Purdue University suggest that commitment is an essential element in building love. People whose commitments are shaky interpret their partners’ behavior more negatively, for one thing, and that can be deadly over time. Covenant marriage—currently a legal option only in Arizona, Arkansas and Louisiana—is a new kind of marriage (emerging from the evangelical Christian movement) involving a very strong commitment: couples agree to premarital counseling and limited grounds for divorce. Conventional marriage in America can be abandoned easily, even without specific legal cause (the so-called no-fault divorce).
Note: This story was originally published with the title "How Science Can Help You Fall in Love"

Food pantrys are low everywhere for both people and pets. Here's a link for the latter:
The Animal Rescue Site is having trouble getting enough people to click on it daily so they can meet their quota of getting FREE FOOD donated every day to abused and neglected animals. It takes less than a minute (about 15 seconds) to go to their site and click on the purple box 'fund food for animals for free'. This doesn't cost you a thing. No need to enter any data. Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate food to abandoned/neglected animals in exchange for advertising.

Here's the web site http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/

This is pretty simple... Please pass it along to people you know. If you know of a link providing food to pantrys and/or soup kitchens, please share it with me.

Thank you and Happy Thanksgiving.

Dreamtime

Keeping luxury afloat, Alastair Callender's eco-friendly Soliloquy yacht proves that future pleasure vessels can maintain opulence without damaging the earth.
At 58 meters long, wind, solar and hybrid marine technologies power the rigid wing yacht, resulting in zero emissions capabilitity, lower fuel costs and a quieter journey.

Renewable Energy Wrecks Environment, According To Researcher

"Renewable does not mean green.

Building enough wind farms, damming enough rivers, and growing enough biomass to meet global energy demands will wreck the environment.

Renewables may be renewable but they are not green.

If we want to minimize new structures and the rape of nature, nuclear energy is the best option."

~!

how to fly

"When you come to the edge of all the light you have known and are about to step out into the darkness, faith is knowing one of two things will happen… There will be something to stand on or You will be taught how to fly.”

Pickpocket Almanack

Pickpocket Almanack is an experimental school without walls. Each season, under the direction of independent curator Joseph del Pesco, a temporary faculty comprised of artists, designers, writers, and filmmakers creates theme-based courses by selecting from a diverse series of scheduled public Bay Area events, including lectures, screenings, workshops, and panels. Each course takes these events out of context and gives them a new thematic frame, providing a set of journeys through Bay Area cultural life, as well as some new connections and unexpected discoveries, led by some of the community's most distinctive cultural figures. Faculty for the fall season includes Les Blank, Jens Hoffmann, Ben Kinmont, Beth Lisick, and Rick and Megan Prelinger.

Discussion is conducted online, with participants and faculty meeting in person at the end of each season. There are no age or experience requirements, and all courses are free and not for credit (tickets may be required for some programs and events). Participants may enroll in a maximum of two courses per season; space may be limited for some courses. Enrollment for the fall season (October through December 2009) begins on September 23.

View courses and sign up at www.pickpocketalmanack.org.

BLUE LOUNGE! Cool Products & Design...

11 Design Awards in the last year!

www.bluelounge.com

Did You Know?

Fantastic video on the progression of information technology, researched by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Brenman, remixed By the way, I did not create this video! Created in 2008, I wonder what today represents?

.... to everyone that visits:

I hope lots of people absorb this!

ONE. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.



TWO. Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any other.



THREE. Don't believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want.



FOUR.. When you say, 'I love you,' mean it.



FIVE. When you say, 'I'm sorry,' look the person in the eye.



SIX. Be engaged at least six months before you get married.



SEVEN. Believe in love at first sight.



EIGHT. Never laugh at anyone's dreams. People who don't have dreams don't have much.



NINE. Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt but it's the only way to live life completely.



TEN.. In disagreements, fight fairly. No name calling



ELEVEN. Don't judge people by their relatives.



TWELVE. Talk slowly but think quickly.



THIRTEEN! .... When someone asks you a question you don't want to answer, smile and ask, 'Why do you want to know?'



FOURTEEN. Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.



FIFTEEN. Say 'bless you' when you hear someone sneeze.



SIXTEEN.. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.



SEVENTEEN. Remember the three R's: Respect for self; Respect for others; and Responsibility for all your actions.



EIGHTEEN. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.



NINETEEN. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.



TWENTY. Smile when picking up the phone.. The caller will hear it in your voice



TWENTY- ONE.. Spend some time alone.


A true friend is someone who reaches for your hand and touches your heart.

from the Tony Robbins Organization.

Havasupai Indian Waterfall Relaxation

Up To 90 Percent Of US Paper Money Contains Traces Of Cocaine, Study Finds

Up To 90 Percent Of US Paper Money Contains Traces Of Cocaine, Study Finds

Shared via AddThis

Official Pilates flip!

Ya gotta take a look at this...

Thanks Charlie!

Mayonnaise Jar & Two Beers...

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 Beers.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him.

When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full.

They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar He shook the jar lightly.

The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.

He then asked the students again if the jar was full.

They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar.

Of course, the sand filled up everything else.

He asked once more if the jar was full.

The students responded with a unanimous 'yes.'

The professor then produced two Beers from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand.

The students laughed..

'Now,' said the professor as the laughter subsided, 'I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life.

The golf balls are the important things---your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions---and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.

The sand is everything else---the small stuff.

'If you put the sand into the jar first,' he continued, 'there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls.

The same goes for life.

If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.

Spend time with your children.

Spend time with your parents.

Visit with grandparents.

Take time to get medical checkups.

Take your spouse out to dinner.

Play another 18.

There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal.

Take care of the golf balls first---the things that really matter.

Set your priorities.

The rest is just sand.

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the Beer represented.

The professor smiled and said, 'I'm glad you asked.'

The Beer just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of Beers with a friend.

Please share this with someone you care about. I JUST DID!

LIFE ISN'T ABOUT WAITING FOR THE STORM TO PASS...

...IT'S LEARNING HOW TO DANCE IN THE RAIN !

Anyone care to take me to Hawaii?