Leisure - time with no sound

If you adhere to a very active rota, as most people do, you at times just want to get away from it all. You’ll need time to recover and refresh whatever power you’ve spent. As the world gets smaller, the stress placed on you ironically increases. This inversely proportional association is what can amaze you. There may be days that you’ll feel unable to meet all the requirements and deadlines you have to finish. Through these disorderly times, you’ll need to take a pace back and take a moment’s respite.

To keep your sense, you should have a crib sheet of valuable tips that will help as your anchor. You undeniably will need time away from it all, a place where no noise and phone calls can cut short your peaceful feelings. Common sense dictates that you need to give your brain a possibility to unwind. Strategies may change, of course, because of varying interests. Some people favour watching TV over reading, while others feel the need to keep their hands occupied to help them slow down.

If you are an avid person who reads, decide on a book that gets you eager and keen. Self-help reads may come into play at this time. There are so many writers out there who are more than willing to share their ideas on how to unwind. All you need to do is go to your nearest bookstore and buy yourself a copy of one of these books. If, on the other hand, you enjoy daydreaming, then give yourself time to think of happy thoughts. Set a quota for yourself. A good suggestion would be to have at least three cheerful thoughts every day. You may perhaps think about your upcoming plans or happy moments. No matter what it may be, just make sure that these get you to once again stand up and face the day with a smile on your face.

The most fashionable tactic that people employ in this day and age is a massage. This is very much like meditating. These two things have been recognized to effectively unwind the muscles in your body. So, after a late night’s work, drive yourself to a spa and ask for a full body massage. Get yourself in the zone by thinking about your thoughts while someone soothes the kinks out of your muscles.

Some of you may find that doing all these is just about next to impractical, especially if you have a family to take care of. The ploy here is to be quick-witted. Try to produce your own tranquil spot in the house. Think about the best place for you. If you are creative enough, you’ll realize that there are hundreds of places you can think of. A drive to the store or picking a corner in the loft could be enough. The secret here is to plan in advance and pick a place where no one can invade it when you need that time on your own. I personally find myself looking forward to a drive to the shopping mall. Being on your own in the car helps me think about the things I want to do while listening to my preferred tunes.

We all have a place we identify as our own. The secret here is to be creative. These spots, however straightforward they may be, can be our very own secure little nook where we can simply lock ourselves away from the world as we go into paradise. This can be our very own dwelling, and no one else’s.

What do we really want to do?

When we graduate high school and start choosing the course we want to take, most of us opt for something that covers a wider range of job opportunities. At 18, we sometimes don’t have a clear picture of what we want to be in the future. Our future endeavours are not always known at such a tender age. There are those lucky few, however, that already have a clear path in their minds. If we were to inherit a large sum of money, then this is not so much of an issue. Sadly, though, most of us have to work for bread to be able to survive in today’s cut-throat world. Then, we graduate and realize that we should have taken a different path. As much as we would like to back to school and study, we have to choose work above everything else. So, what happens to us? Not to fret because there may be a way to solve this dilemma.

Personality tests are becoming increasingly popular among people entering the workforce. These tests were intended to reveal the taker’s most desired career path. On the surface, this may sound like a great idea. We sometimes have dreams that are not in line with who we are. We should also give ourselves a chance to test the unknown. After all, our capabilities can’t be boxed and we can’t fully define our path to success by simply knowing who we are. We may have hidden strengths that may only reveal themselves when the need arises. Introverts may do well in a career in sales, and how are we to know what we can do unless we dabble in it.

It may sometimes appear that we’ll lead happier lives if we stick to our strengths and what we’re most comfortable with. Part of us will always remain unsatisfied when we limit our horizons out of fear or conformity. We might find ourselves waking up one day with a deep feeling of regret, and this is what we want to avoid at all costs.
Growing up, we’re completely dependent on our parents to meet our survival needs. Over time, we learn to cope with the demands life gives us. Our survival skills can only get us so far in the adult world. In most cases, the need to simply endure and carry on eventually wears thin, revealing the hidden chasm of anxiety.

We should not avoid the career that we want based solely on the need to get through day by day. We first must overcome our fears. We need to delve into something that fits our desires to a T. Courage is what is needed here. If we can’t afford to give up the benefits of enjoying monetary stability, we must find the time to start small. The World Wide Web offers so many opportunities to hone and develop our hidden strengths. As we gain the respect of the other people, we will find that job offers slowly start to trickle in. Take what we can and slowly start to let go of the other things that we don’t really enjoy. If we become vigilant about this, we will soon find ourselves doing what we exactly want.

And that, my friends, is the secret to getting our dream job!

Having fun with your free time

With the very hectic planet that we live in, it’s often challenging to squeeze in some quality time for ourselves. Some people toil vigorously and don’t get an adequate amount of rest for months at a time. If you look at data, the quantity of breakdowns experienced by people continues to increase. Why? It’s just because people have forgotten to take care of themselves. They work and take care of their duties thinking that they don’t need a break. They find that finishing a task is more urgent than giving themselves a moment’s rest. They continue to traipse through life, until one day, they basically give way and lose control.

I’m all for hard work and resolve. Triumph can only be attained if these two qualities are present. But we also need to know when to say that enough is enough. Our minds need to rest, or else it can fail us when we most need it. In fact, universities advise that students study ahead of time. Last minute cramming can lead to lack of sleep. On the day of the test, many of these students have had entire mental blackouts, instances where everything they read about and studied for just leaves their brain. Everything has basically flown out the window, and everything they’ve worked for has become controversial.

If there’s one way to take pleasure in life, it’s knowing the meaning of rest. We do want to comply with all our tasks. But we also need to learn how to enjoy life and relax in its distinctive moments, in case we fail to remember what we’re really here for. We are all blessed with friends and family. If we don’t give ourselves an adequate amount of time to spend with them, then we may as well watch all our relationships fall to pieces. No one wants this to happen to them. While many do go on holiday with their loved ones, they also take their work with them. This plainly isn’t quality time.

So, how do we really get to get pleasure from our spare time? Here are a few tips to follow:

Notify everybody at work so that they will know not to hassle you.
End what needs to be done and keep the pending items protected in a drawer.
• write down what you need to work on after you get back.
• know that your friends, family and loved ones are just as critical as your work.
• give yourself time to ponder on your life and work out ways in which you can balance the whole lot.
• keep yourself surrounded with friends during your spare time to decrease the likelihood of thinking about your responsibilities.
• learn how to put in order your life.
• learn to ask for help when you have trouble sorting something out.

The mainly crucial thing to identify here is that we’re not isolated. We have people we can count on, as long as we also know when to assist a person in need. Your friends are there to help you revitalize your spirit and keep you from breaking down. Living just seems less harsh when you have someone to lean on. Keep in mind, as we take pleasure in our spare time, we need not feel at fault. We basically are enjoying life and we are giving ourselves a possibility to revitalize and bring back the passion we have for work.

The truth behind the law of attraction

Life forever has a way of working out. The current triumph of books like the secret and the law of attraction can praise the people's excitement to its escalation in sales. However, many too misunderstand the custom of this law. They've misconstrued the broad message of these books and have led themselves to believe that they simply have to sit back, relax, and think about what they yearn for with their lives.

As far as I’m concerned, I think that the law can just be put to good quality employ with action on our part. I do think that the cosmos works with us when we try hard to accomplish all our ideas. But, it can merely shove fortune towards our way. The rest is up to us, whether we decide to bump into it halfway or not. Taking into consideration all, no one rewards the idle.

If we made an inventory of all the successful individuals in this world, we'll realize that each of them went through hell and high water just to be where they are today. Whoever said that the path to success was easy couldn't have been further from the truth. In reality, to reach our goal, we'll have to ready ourselves with the hurdles we'll face along the way. It's now simply a question of how badly we want the dream to become a reality.

As go through the hole-ridden path, we sometimes will stumble along the way. We court failure when we have the kind of self-defeating attitude that leads us to believe that the more we'll fall, the harder it'll be to get back up. This is a shortcut to sabotaging our dreams. It's when we shift our focus to become pessimistic that we doom ourselves to failure.

Instead of thinking of what we don't want to happen, we should think of what we want. Putting words like don't or no in our statement is an indication of where our focus is, and that is in the negative. On the other hand, if we make claims about things that we yet have to achieve, this can also be seen as a lie.
Positive thinking is based on the belief we will get what we want and that we are in the process of fulfilling our dreams. We've all heard of the term self-fulfilling prophecy. It is in believing that good things will come to us because we've already started to fashion our lives according to our personal desires.

This article, in no way, claims that success can only be measured through our monetary achievement. Winning comes in all forms and in every aspect of our lives. Be it with our personal or career paths, we can only truly say that we've won if, at the end of the day, we go to sleep with a happy and content heart. We truly have to understand what the law of attraction is.

Simply put, it is accepting the fact that we can do what we want and that anything is possible if we work at it. Something good can happen to us today and the miracle is already set to unfold if we open the doors to opportunities that will make us happy.

Your life’s course

Ever notice yourself waking up one morning up full of gusto and force to chase your life’s ideas and then appreciate six months later on that you aren’t even one pace nearer to any of your goals? If you find yourself in this rut, then possibly it’s because you’ve been caught in a trap, the kind that is awkward to get out of. Where are you headed? You don’t know. Where have your ideas gone? On the back burner.

A good number of us don’t know our route in life. We live with so many ideas inside us but one way or another we keep finding ourselves finding excuses to delay the pursuit of our goals. We offer up so many excuses: bills to pay, family to take care of, work to finish, etc. Too many excuses and too many delaying tactics. In the end, when we see that we haven’t accomplished much, we have no one to blame but us. We don’t want to live life this way. But then, who does?

We get off route time and again, as most people do. We get too caught up in life’s little hindrances that we forget to live in the moment, to get pleasure from the now! The rationale for all the doubt may lie on the fact that our ideas are not as well-defined as we would want them to be. The question here, therefore, is focus. We must have clearness of thinking to know how we can complete what we want. We need a step-by-step idea that spells out what we have to do to get to the end. When we experience setbacks, we have to know how to deal with each of them. After all, nothing in life is exact. There are just things that are way away from our control, and if we live life going a step forward and then two steps back, we go further away from our ideas. The farther we go, the more unattainable it will seem to get what we want.

It’s also central to allow the state of affairs we’re in. We all live in unique environments and have various methods of coping with realism. The foremost thing is that we are in touch with the things that transpire around us. Knowing how our environs influence us will give us clues on what to do with the usual boundaries set on us. After that, we make a pledge to modify the circumstances we are in and to track our expansion on a regular basis.

We can sometimes fall flat on our faces and carry out social faux pas along the way. If this happens, just consider it’s not the end of the world. We get up, keep moving, and come up with an even better plan. We don’t need to be super heroes to avoid traps. What we need is an everlasting spirit to carry on despite mistakes. We have to be our own principal enthusiast, the person who cheers the loudest during game time. If not, who will trust in a person who doubts? Let us start chasing our dreams and stop running away from harsh certainty.

Tips for being creative in spite of your Workload

We all have goals that we want to achieve, dreams that we want to achieve. Our goals differ from each other, but reaching these may not be as easy as it looks. Yes, you have the perfect work attitude, and yes, also know how to prioritize. There are, however, some things in life that you just cannot control.

A sudden blackout may hinder you from completing your work, or an important family gathering may require you to let go of all your chores. What do you do when this time comes? Do you blame the things you cannot control for your failures? While this may be the easy way out, it is far from being right.

Life is made up of two types of people: the positive and the negative. The positive tend to win all the time because they also take responsibility for their failures by embracing them. The negative, on the other hand, simply walk away and point their finger at everyone but themselves.

How do you win in life? How do you become a productive person while being able to keep a very busy work schedule? The first thing you must know and accept is that you simply cannot win every time. It's what you do when you fail that counts. Here are some helpful tips to know and follow so that you can go through trials and misfortunes as smoothly as possible:

1. Don't blame other people for your failure - to blame them is to pass on your responsibilities. This is tantamount to throwing your arms up in the air and saying, “I give up!”

2. When problems arise, deal with them accordingly - plan what you need to do. Ask for help if you need to and let failures serve as lessons learned.

3. Never forget - remember what caused you to create the mistake in the first place. Keep these in mind and avoid situations wherein you'll be forced to make the same mistake twice.

4. Never let anything stop you - as you strive for success, there will always be hurdles to face. These hurdles simply slow you down, but that's all they will do.

5. Plan your life - make a careful schedule for each task to be done. No matter how many tasks there are, each undertaking achieved allows you to cross something off your list of things that have yet to be done.

6. Know that you are in control of your life - have a firmer grip on your responsibilities. Familiarize yourself with each objective and do research if you must. The more you know about something, the easier it will be for you navigate your way through it.

7. Think positive - this may be the most important thing you can ever do. Believe in yourself and in your abilities. You simply have to meet achievers to know that these people are the ones who believe in themselves the most. Success is not so much about talent, but more on the idea that with effort and an optimistic attitude, you can do most anything.

Productive people are those who know what they're doing. You can be one of them if you simply work on honing your talents and abilities. It's a matter of fine-tuning and letting yourself be more in touch with the aspects in your life.

Remember, nobody is excused from making mistakes. The fact is, every living person has made many of them. You simply have to figure out what you need to do to attain every single dream that you have.

Control Stress on hectic Days

Feeling like a lead weight is on your shoulders is probably a very common feeling. With the busy lives we lead, we can't help but feel that there aren't enough hours during the day, as if the 24 hours that were allotted to us weren't enough to cover all our priorities.

We can all honestly say though that the overwhelming feeling of having too many things to do is, at some point, our own doing.

When it comes to work, you have to ask yourselves if it's all worth it. If your efforts bring a promise of triumph, then by all means, push yourself forward. Giving up is probably one of the biggest mistakes you can ever make when you strive to win. Every trial surpassed is a step closer to your goal.

Now, if you've made up your mind about going forward and overcoming all the hurdles, here are a few helpful tips that will make your mission easier:

1. Focus on what needs to be done - with the amount of work you still have to do, you need to know which elements are your priorities. Lower priority tasks can be rescheduled while you concentrate on the higher priority tasks.

2. Break down your schedule and allot a reasonable amount of time for each of the tasks - this applies more to the smaller tasks. While you cannot let go of and forget about the trivial matters, you only need to give a fraction of the overall time completing the less important chores.

3. Eliminate clutter - if you find yourself working in a chaotic environment, you will soon see that you also become less productive. Clutter distracts your mind, and if you need to clear the space before starting anything, then by all means, do so. In the end, you can concentrate better and finish your work faster.

4. Set goals - without goals, you simply drift through life like a fish that follows the current of the sea. Goals give you the adrenaline that you need to complete what needs to be done. Attaining your objectives will make you happy, and one way to get to this happy place is by working towards it.

5. Focus - make sure that you set up a corner in your house where there are fewer distractions. Don't give in to temptation and position your work station beside the television. Be strong, be firm, even with yourself.

6. Know when to pamper yourself - spoil yourself and give yourself small rewards. The gratifying portion of your day does not have to be elaborate. In fact, a simple neck message or a cup of herbal tea will do.

7. Ask for help - know that even the heroes in movies needed help at some point. For us normal people, we would most likely need it even more. Seek the advice of friends and know that you can also delegate tasks to the people in your life.

If you continue to stress about everything, your health is bound to fail. It's not a choice between your job and health. It's simply a matter of balance, in knowing when to say no and let go. If the amount of work reaches the point where your health and relationships are affected, then maybe it's high time to do sit down and consider rethinking what you're doing.

Motivation and Goal Setting

If you've ever worked in a corporate setting, particularly in a management position, you're no stranger to the idea of establishing goals and their importance to any business that practices management by objectives.

Even if you've never been in a position requiring you to define specific, measurable goals, you may not realize that every single day you've done so. Chances are, by not knowing you were actually setting goals, you were able to achieve them with far less analysis than accomplished through formal goal setting.

The variation between achieving formal goals versus informal goals is one of motivation. Quite often with formal goals, we may make progress towards our objective, but not have a clear understanding of the process required - and we often see a decline in our enthusiasm to continue or to continue effectively.

This is perhaps most often seen in group work environments, where one or two members of the group seem to "Get It", while others just sort of follow along, contributing as asked and simply waiting for others to ensure the goal is achieved at some hazy upcoming point.

Yet as individuals, we are often able to accomplish our own informal goals almost subconsciously. Each and every day of our lives, we plan, act upon and accomplish countless short-term goals, while simultaneously working towards longer-term goals, by establishing patterns of activity.

For example, you may get up a 6:00 AM each weekday, shower, dress, have breakfast and drive to your place of employment. Odds are you've done these thousands of times without giving it a second thought and yet, you are in fact achieving five goals every morning.

You're able to do this for several reasons - first of course, you understand the primary goal of getting to work on time each day at the task level. Next, your motivation for doing so no doubt includes the desire to avoid being fired for continued lateness. Another motivation is simply a need to demonstrate being a reliable member of the organization.

On a longer-term basis, we often plan for and follow through on everything from vacations and holidays to paying off our mortgages and other debts. Here again, we have plenty of stimulus to do these things and we do them subconsciously. And yet we often meet or exceed these goals with little or no effort.

What's most fascinating about this is that in our personal lives, we rarely use any complicated system to track and complete these tasks. No software, no systems and at best we might scribble down a reminder note to ourselves and stick it on the fridge.

If you really sit down and think about it, there's no reason why you could not apply the same approach to your business or work related goals. A task is a task, whether it has to meet with a teacher at 2 pm or having to ensure a critical order was placed and is being tracked.

If you can find your driving force for staying on top of things at the office as you do at home, you'll never again have any serious trouble meeting your business goals!

Software for mind mapping

Mind mapping software is designed to aid in the somewhat complicated process of mind mapping. A mind map is a diagram used to represent ideas, words, tasks, or other items that are linked to and arranged around a central key word, idea or concept. Mind maps are used to structure, classify, visualize and generate ideas, and serve as an aid in problem solving, decision making, organization, study, and writing. As you can imagine, creating such a diagram by hand can be daunting to anyone new to mind mapping.

The cost of high quality mind mapping software starts at about $150, and many mind mapping programs have a free trial option. Two of the most highly rated and popular mind mapping software programs are iMindMap and NovaMind. If you want to get started right away, one of these two will likely meet your needs.

Buzan's iMindMap is designed by Tony Buzan who many consider the father of mind mapping. An obvious benefit of choosing iMindMap is that you are linked in to Buzan's techniques and innovations. For those unfamiliar with the process, there is flash movie explaining the concept. There are also a number of flash video tutorials explaining how to use the software. There are three editions of iMindMap: Elements, Professional and Ultimate. The software is compatible with Microsoft Office and Open Office.

NovaMind is another excellent example of quality mind mapping software. While you don't get the Tony Buzan stamp of approval, NovaMind does have some unique features not found in other programs. For instance, NovaMind is one of the only mind mapping software programs with a free layout mode where you can put branches anywhere you like. It also has rainbow colouring, an integrated branch suggestion system, and a special module for screenwriters. NovaMind also comes in three editions: Express, Pro, and Platinum.

The iMindMap and NovaMind mind mapping software both work on the Mac and Windows operating systems. You will find both systems workable and easy to use. The price structure is similar, so your choice will boil down to which features are more important to you as a user.

Before you purchase any mind mapping software, make sure that you first identify your needs. You should also consider your budget, and whether you can upgrade for a discount within the same family of programs. Once you've identified your needs you can start comparing the different mind mapping systems. Many programs come with a free trial which will greatly assist you in making an informed decision.

Most people who invest the time necessary to learn the mind mapping process become lifetime converts. Trying to accomplish the process on paper can be extremely frustrating and time-consuming. Good mind mapping software pays for itself very quickly in terms of saved time and frustration.

Positive Thinking Breeds Success

People can often be their own worst enemy, especially when they allow their negative feelings to create artificial barriers to achieving their goals, personally and professionally. We see this every day - person A begins talking enthusiastically about a new opportunity and immediately persons B and C shoot the idea down by focusing only on the negative outcomes that could potentially result.

In other cases they allow emotions like anger to cloud their judgment for no other reason than because they take everything that happens too personally. It's almost as if their egos won't allow them to miss an opportunity to get upset and start an argument. Coupled with a false sense of indignation they fail to realize that they are actually creating more barriers to resolving whatever the issue may have been in the first place.

While it's true in nature that opposites attract, in real life nothing could be further from the truth. Positive people tend to draw towards other optimistic people, and of course negative people cluster together like schools of baitfish. The difference between the two groups is that the optimistic ones tend to simply stroll through life knowing that whatever challenges they encounter they will quickly and easily overcome.

A good example of these behaviors is in reviewing two identical technical support requests with diametrically opposite results.

In the first case, the positive customer is experiencing a problem installing a piece of software. Quickly realizing that the problem is beyond their skill level, they call the support hotline confident that resolution to the issue will be forthcoming. They cheerfully and courteously explain the problem they are experiencing and patiently worked with the support staff to correct it, which happens in a mere 10 minutes.

In the second case the negative customer is experiencing a similar problem. Frustrated and angry they call the support hotline and immediately launch into a belligerent tirade about the quality of the product and the company that produced it. While the support staff attempts to help the customer, they quickly become frustrated at the customer's refusal to provide the needed information.

The customer insists upon escalating problem to a supervisor or manager where the tirade continues. After 45 minutes of arguing with various supervisors and managers and live no resolution in sight, the customer or threatens to sue or file legal complaints and hangs up without resolving the installation problem.

Optimistic people never worried about encountering problems with anything. They understand that things happen, more importantly they also understand that there is a solution out there somewhere. Their goal is to simply resolve the issue as quickly and efficiently as possible, which they know they will be able to do some way, somehow.

It's for this reason that those who think positively and optimistically are far more likely to be successful in both their business and personal lives. They can't help but know that everything is going to work out the way they expected to, if not even better.