The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.
~Randy Pausch

Long story short – I’ve been accepted to the NYU Dental School graduating class of 2013. That means I start Monday August 24th, and go on my four year journey of Dental mastery!

I really want to thank a lot of people. Thank you foremost to all my family and friends that believed in me. I can’t say that it’s been an easy road, and your words of encouragement, the occassional kicks in the butt, and your excellent ability to give me space during many hundreds of tests over the years has helped tremendously.

Thank you to the various people that recommended me to the school, vouched for me as a person and as a student, and generally went out of your way and put your name on the line for me. This is a huge story that I could write a book about… I’d call it something like “How to Network Like a Monster and Crush It in The Trenches!”

A few facts about my failures (or the many ways I figured out NOT to get into dental school). I applied to Dental school straight out of college, and I didn’t get in. Both my GPA and Dental Admission Test didn’t meet the hardcore requirements brought on by 6000 applicants going after 200 spots. I then retook my admission test in the August of 2006, and got my Masters in Biomedical Science in 2008.

The waiting list. In December of 2008, I got on the waiting list for NYU Dental school, during which time I was supposed to wait. I take ‘waiting’ a bit differently then most other people. This included interning at the school, going on a circuit of continuing education seminars for dentists, and studying for another 3 months to retake my dental admission test. Much more on this in future posts.

The future. I can’t wait to get into dental school and learn everything I can. I want to be able to say that my patients will not get a better treatment anywhere else in the world, they might get just as good (someone else’s 100%), but they won’t get any less from me. I’m also looking forward to combining both my knowledge of personal development and social media to create communities both online and off, and to create both brighter smiles and a brighter world.

All I can say is… If you have a dream,  whether you have to go through those doors sideways, backwards, or jump in from the roof… don’t give up.

Thank you for the congratulations in advanced… let em rip.

Attention: Don’t forget to download my free ebook, How to Get a Girlfriend!!

Mark Sisson is the guy that puts the facts behind lifestyle, exercise, and nutrition claims. His current mission is to create the happiest, healthiest, leanest, most fit, and productive life that he can while he’s here on earth.

In the good ol’ days Mark Sisson was a professional triathlete, endurance runner and finished in the top five of the US National Marathon Championships — ultimately qualifying him for the Olympics. Following conventional wisdom, and exercising more than most human beings on this planet, Mark found himself to be unhealthy and overworked.

This unexpected state of health beckoned Mark to ask the question of ‘what do we do in the name of fitness?’ He spent the rest of his life, up until now, doing research on diet, fitness, nutrition, and all the erroneous assumptions that have been surrounding these topics over the last several decades.

Mark looks at our lives in the 21st century from an evolutionary perspective. Particularly, how our genes expect us to act and behave in a particular way, in order for us to be healthy. Unfortunately, we mismanage our genes, and Mark’s life for the past 20 years has been centered on figuring out which genes we want to turn on/off to manifest good health, lean fit bodies, happiness, productivity, and all of the things that make us human.

The Reluctant Crusader Against Conventional Wisdom

Mark Sisson takes it upon himself to dispel many of the myths that we believe about science by investigating them back to the original source. Let’s take a look at just five of the many myths that he’s undertaken during his career.

1. Myth: “Your diet ought to be comprised of a largely carbohydrate based intake” The food pyramid has at it’s base 6-11 servings of grains on a daily basis, which is something that humans never adapted to, and possibly the worst advice that the government could give us. Grains may be largely responsible for the obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and arthritis that we experience as a population.

2. Myth: “Saturated fat is bad for you” Saturated fat is a critical component of human cell membranes, and is what our bodies choose to store added fuel as. There’s nothing inherently wrong with saturated fat, but combined with the high carbohydrate intake that increases insulin level and wreaks havoc on other systems within the body, saturated fat can become a bad thing.

3. Myth: “Cholesterol is bad for you” Cholesterol is one of the most important molecules in the body.

4. Myth: “Avoid the sun. UVA and UVB rays are causing cancer” Mark contends that staying out of the sun causes more cancer than it prevents. Human bodies need vitamin D, which is manufactured when the sun hits the body and converts cholesterol into vitamin D. Vitamin D is incorporated into the immune system in ways that prevents us from getting cancer.

5. Myth: “Drink 8 glasses of water a day” There’s no rational reason to drink 8 glasses of water per day, because we get most of the water we need from the food we eat.

Mark Sisson: #Primal vs #Vegan

The human body is a very adaptable mechanism. For instance, some people have survived on seaweed and shoe leather  during the great potato famine. However, surviving is not necessarily thriving, and Mark contends that there has never been a society in history that has survived on a meatless diet.

Speaking extremes — if you happen to be an adult that has already gone through the development stages, and go from a fried food and grain diet to a fresh fruits and vegetables based diet, you’ll obviously see improvements and feel better for some time.

The base of the Primal Blueprint foods pyramid has fruits and vegetables as the base of the diet. Cutting out the meats, fish, poultry, and other proteins may have it’s consequences, but it doesn’t mean that as a Vegan or Raw Foodist or Vegetarian you won’t thrive and survive. It’s just not optimal if you are looking to maximize your health, strength, lean body mass and all the things required to create the ideal body.

Mark Sisson goes on to share his thoughts on a book that I have enjoyed for a few years called The China Study. He contends that the book was written with a bias that does not reflect the actual research. Perhaps if Dr. Campbell, author of The China Study, wrote a book based on the actual research, he might not have come up with the same conclusions.

In recent longevity studies, it has been shown that individuals who consume the least amount of calories tend to be the ones that live the longest. The results in The China Study could thus be a function of calorie restriction. Mark Sisson contends that Dr. Campbell never looks at populations that are strictly vegetarians, just ones that consume less meat, less fish, and thus less calories.

In The Primal Blueprint, Mark Sisson points out that humans evolved to do a lot of low level activity, and the populations of China that have been studied in a lot of studies are rural populations where people do a lot of physical labor. They’re working their days doing low level activities in the fields, which Mark contends is the perfect type of exercise.

The Research Methods of Mark Sisson

Mark Sisson is not a doctor, yet he’s consistently producing high quality scientific articles that he’s researched from various sources. Mark feels that not being a physician allows him to have more of an open mind and this is because he was not exposed to the methodologies taught in medical school.

Mark uses Pubmed.com to do most of his scientific research (I also like to use scholar.google.com). You can easily lose yourself for hours by following links to more articles cited by the ones you were searching for, and the ones reviewing the ones you searched as well.

It’s important to realize that not everything written on the internet is a factual scientific study. For this reason, it’s important to learn how to differentiate between what’s science, and what’s an opinion column. I take for granted that I’ve seen hundreds of scientific papers throughout college and my masters program (I used 150 citations for my masters paper alone). You want to learn what is what, so you can take your research to the next level and not be misled.

Mark contends that for every article you find to prove one viewpoint, there is another one out there with facts proving the exact opposite. He uses the example of fish being good for you because they contain beneficial omega fatty acids, yet often times contain an unhealthy level of mercury from pollution. It’s also important to realize that studies cost money, scientists need to be paid, and it’s not uncommon for the people that pay to have a study made to get the results that they were looking for.

The Day to Day of Mark Sisson

Now here’s a man that doesn’t put his shoes on one at a time like the rest of us. Mark Sisson is usually up at 6:30 AM, has his cup of coffee with heavy whipping cream and the occasional bit of sugar. He then does some crossword puzzles while reading the paper, catching up on twitter, or ingesting some sports news. Mark then moves on to do some interviews, blog posts, and e-mails.

On workout days he’ll either head over to the gym, or goes to the beach to catch some waves. Mark values play very much, and works out so that he can play. The gym workouts are short, sweet, and pretty intense: pushups, pullups, dips, squats, lunges, and dead-lifts. The goal is to be able to play different sports, snowboard in Aspen 6 days in a row, have fun paddling for 3 hours straight, and play Ultimate Frisbee with his 15 year old son. Mark just wants to be able to play, and at 56 he’d like to do so uninjured.

He then comes home to do some work and have his ‘Big-Ass Salad‘. He’ll work the rest of the afternoon, and stop to have his favorite snack – a handful of Macadamia nuts. The end of the day might include a workout, if he hasn’t had one already. Mark no longer obsesses about missed workouts, since he realizes that 80% of his body composition is based on the foods that he eats and 20% based on how he trains. Then there’s the evening, which is filled with either family time, getting some writing in, or catching up on a movie (yes, he’s human too!)

The Mentors and Books That Shaped Mark Sisson

• The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins is a book that cemented how important it is that we understand how evolution has brought us to where we are today.
• Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. A tough read if you’re not a scientist that offers a lot of explanation about how the scientific community has been manipulated and subject to politics, funding, and special interest groups.
• The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton. A book about how to reprogram our genes based on the thoughts we think.
• Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky. A book on how the stress response that is so vital to the survival of every animal has become perverted in the human organism because of our ability to worry.

One More Tip for Success

The first tip for success is when you take on any program — diet, exercise — regimen, it’s important that you own it and understand that no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, no matter what sort of background you have or what sort of future you predict for yourself your health is probably your number one job. If you’re not healthy and don’t have the ability to go through life and enjoy every moment, it really sours the whole life experience.

I really do want people to own that notion that your job as a human being, first and foremost, is to stay healthy. That’s what your genes want you to do, and when you do that then everything else you do increases by orders of magnitude. The enjoyment of life, the ability to experience movement and be able to travel and to have access to memories and to be able to support your loved ones and to be able to love. All of these things emanate from the first core job one, which is to stay healthy. It’s critical to embarking on any new program.
~Mark Sisson~

More Mark Sisson

• MarksDailyApple.com – Main blog
• PrimalBlueprint.com – The book (Amazon.com)
• @Mark_Sisson – Twitter (use #primal)

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Attention: Don’t forget to download my free ebook, How to Get a Girlfriend!!

Suzy Welch graduated at the top of her class at Harvard Business School, wrote a column in Oprah’s O Magazine, and was the editor of the prestigious Harvard Business Review. Since then Suzy has gone on to marry the ex-CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch, who now runs 11 companies.

Jack and Suzy Welch co-authored the bestselling book Winning. Most recently, Suzy Welch documents the decision process that has brought her much success in life in her bestselling book 10-10-10: A Life Transforming Idea.

Suzy Welch: The Mission

Suzy’s life is currently focused on talking about and spreading the message of her new book 10-10-10. Her current work revolves around talking about the book, and helping people understand the idea. This is all connected into her life mission of helping people create their own lives.

10-10-10: A Decision Making Tool

Suzy Welch says that our biggest faults in decision making are the two deadly Gs, gut and guilt. In this case, 10-10-10 serves as an intervention. It forces us to take our decisions, and instead of basing them on expedience, pressure, or the last voice in the room, to make those decisions after we think about the consequences in the context of 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years.

It doesn’t have to be taken literally, and with a stopwatch, but generally as the immediate future, and the distant future. Suzy Welch has been using this idea in her personal life for 13 years, and spreading it for the past 10, and then writing about it in O Magazine about 5 years ago. Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have effectively applied 10-10-10 to their own lives.

This 10-10-10 process has helped people to create their own lives, and change their lives from being reactive and gut driven, to proactive and strategic. The tool is organized around how 10-10-10 has worked in relationships, careers, entrepreneurs, managers, friendships, and the dozens of stories in the book reflect how 10-10-10 can be used in all aspects of our lives.

10-10-10: A Three Step Process

First of all, Suzy Welch says that compromise is a bad decision making tool, because everyone is left only a little bit satisfied, which often backfires in the long run. Let’s look at the steps to take instead of compromise.

Step 1: Define The Question. A lot of times we are faced with a dilemma, but we don’t really know what we are deciding, which makes it really hard to get to the solution. We’re all over the place, and when we get to a solution, we come to realize that’s not even the problem.

Define the questions like “do we buy this house, do I stay in this relationship, do I take this job?” Sometimes this is simple, and sometimes it’s the hardest part.

Step 2: Data Collection. Also known as identifying your options. It doesn’t always have to be a simple binary options like yes or no, but it could be something outside the box that goes beyond yes or no. Once you’ve laid out the options it’s time to examine the consequences in 10-10-10 format.

Step 3: Prioritize Your Values. Things like “who you want to be, what you stand for, how you want to live” must be prioritized, so that you can make decisions properly and really own your decisions as a reflection of your authentic values. The book goes into greater detail as to how one can ‘excavate’ their values and really figure out what they are.

Suzy Welch: Conquering Her Day

In the hopes of getting out of this interview with a HUGE secret, and sharing it with you guys, I asked Suzy Welch how she manages to do more than most of us in the same 24 hours that all of us get.

Suzy Welch is at a point in her life where she really lives by her values, so she knows what matters to her. Because of this, she doesn’t spend a lot of time on things that don’t matter to her. The biggest time saver in the world after knowing your values is candidly communicating them. Suzy is able to tell someone “this is how much time we’re going to spend on something, because of whatever reason.”

The best thing you can do is not be a phony, and candidly tell people how and why you’re spending your time. Then you don’t make a lot of excuses or have a lot of phony conversations, and that creates a huge efficiency.

Suzy Welch on Extraordinary Leadership

It’s not about you. I mean REALLY that’s it. ~Suzy Welch

When you’re an individual contributor you concern yourself with yourself and your performance. The place that people trip up when they make a transition from being individual contributors to leaders is that they don’t get that it’s no longer about them. A great leader is not one that raises their hand, it’s one that realized it is no longer about them, and succeeds on the reflected glory of their people.

The better you make your team, the more you build their skills, self-confidence and their ability to over deliver the better a leader you are. It is about them.

Suzy Welch’s Biggest Mentor

It’s Jack Welch. While Suzy Welch let’s life be her mentor, and literally learns from everyone, Jack Welch is ultimately her biggest mentor. He’s also the mentor to millions around the world. Suzy Welch now believes that if we’re realistic about ourselves, we could probably achieve bigger dreams than we allow ourselves to believe.

Suzy Welch: The Problem of Poverty

I asked Suzy Welch which world problem she would tackle first. She believes that poverty seems to be the underlying cause of most other problems. The key is ending it is to create self-sufficient communities. How’s that for a goal worth giving your life for? If you’re reading this, and want to discuss possible solutions, I’m sure Suzy would have a pair of ears to lend.

One More Tip For Success

Success is when you’re living a happy, centered, fulfilling life and for each individual that comes in a different package. To get happiness, you must live by your authentic values.

More Suzy Welch

• Suzy Welch – Main Site
• Suzy Welch – WelchWay
• Suzy Welch – Everybody’s Business
• Suzy Welch – Twitter
• Suzy Welch – Amazon

Practical Personal Development on iTunes

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Attention: Don’t forget to download my free ebook, How to Get a Girlfriend!!

AJ Jacobs is a fascinating NY Times bestselling author, current editor of the infamous Esquire magazine, and what I would say is the “father of outsourcing.” AJ Jacobs has written The Know-It-All, in which he documented his experience of reading the whole Encyclopedia Britannica from front to back in his journey to becoming the smartest man on earth.

Another riveting book written by AJ Jacobs is The Year of Living Biblically, in which he followed all the laws of the bible as literally as possible. Some of the other wacky-genius things that AJ Jacobs has done include many one month experiments, known as immersion experiments, which we get into during our interview.

AJ Jacobs: Immersion Experiments

When AJ Jacobs gets interested in a subject, he likes to become immersed in it, and live it from the inside out. Sure enough, when AJ Jacobs became interested in religion and the bible, he decided that the best way to learn it would be to live it.

After researching several versions of the bible, and recording a large list of rules, AJ Jacobs proceeded to follow every single rule in the bible – literally. This included not shaving his beard, following the 10 commandments, and stoning adulterers, as well as many other rules.

This immerse way of learning is truly gripping, and life changing, as AJ Jacobs will testify. While he is no longer religious, the year of living biblically changed his psyche in such a way that the rules of gratitude have carried over into his secular life. Pressing the elevator button, AJ Jacobs is grateful that the elevator comes, and then once again upon arrival he is grateful that the elevator didn’t plummet to the basement.

AJ Jacobs: Creating a Bestselling Book

Let there be no mistake, AJ Jacobs attributes some of his success to luck. Hundreds of great books do not become NY Times bestselling, so riding on the theme of gratitude, AJ Jacobs is very grateful to have made it onto this list (love the humility in this man!).

AJ Jacobs started writing in a tiny newspaper in California about PTA meetings and sewage taxes. After about 15 years in the business, AJ Jacobs finally got to the point where he could write the book. AJ Jacobs took on topics that fascinated him, such as religion and the Encyclopedia (which pretty much covered everything, from advarks to zygotes).

While AJ Jacobs does have narrow focus topics that he enjoys, such as the history of peppers, he decided to write on his more general topics of interest in order to break in in popularity.

When writing The Know-It-All, AJ Jacobs first created a 20 page proposal, which included only 1 letter (A) of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Including the approval chapter, the entire book took approximately 2 years to write.

AJ Jacobs: Outsourcing Your Life

Following his love for immersion experiments, AJ Jacobs outsourced his entire life for one full month. When I say entire life, I mean it. He outsourced reading bedtime stories to his kids, arguing with his wife, shopping and beyond.

In his upcoming book The Guinea Pig Diaries (coming September 2009), AJ Jacobs includes many of these immersion experiments such as My Outsourced Life (Esquire, 2005.), and uses outsourcing to get a lot of the research done for the book. This is 110% on my reading list (I’ll be reviewing it here, and AJ, when you read this, I’d like to do coffee and an autograph!)

So with everything outsourced, what does one do with all the free time? Nothing too out of the ordinary, just some TV, catching up on reading books, and just taking the month off. Following the article, an onslaught of people requested more information about outsourcing from AJ Jacobs. In response, a lot of these outsourcing companies created special departments for “personal life” outsourcing. (I even hear there was some hate-mail from people who thought that AJ Jacobs single handedly ruined our economy by encouraging mass outsourcing, but I think he just wrote about what was inevitably going to happen anyway – globalization).

AJ Jacobs’ article My Outsourced Life has also been included in Tim Ferriss’ bestselling book The Four Hour Work Week. Tim Ferriss called AJ Jacobs while he was still writing 4HWW to request permission to use the article. Tim said he was a recent Princeton graduate and first time writer, so AJ Jacobs was nice enough to let him use the article for free, under the assumptions that only 500 or so copies would be sold. A business mistake he later regretted when just 6 months later 4HWW was number 1 on top of the NY Times bestseller list.

AJ Jacobs: Radical Honesty

Radical Honesty is a movement that requires the “removal of the filter” between your brain and mouth. Not only are you to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but you are to say directly what is on your mind at all times. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Big trouble ahead! The Esquire article in which AJ Jacobs documented this experience was called I Think You’re Fat, which should give you some indication as to just how much trouble this whole Radical Honesty business is really worth.

For AJ Jacobs, to not lie to his wife or boss, was unheard of in his normal day-to-day (something that many of us can relate to). An awkward moment presented itself when AJ Jacobs and his wife ran into a couple they knew from college. The couple suggested that they should all get together, and being under the influence of Radical Honesty, AJ Jacobs had to say “You seem nice, but I’d rather not, because I have enough friends that I don’t get to see, so I don’t want any new ones.” (Damnit AJ, I was hoping WE could be friends… maybe if one of your friends disappears…. jk!)

Now that the experiment is over, AJ Jacobs is once again left somewhat changed. However, instead of bashing people over the head with Radical Honesty, AJ Jacobs practices something called “Sustainable Radical Honesty.” This means you pick when you’re honest (ok, no it doesn’t). This means that you take responsibility for your own actions and mistakes, but when it comes to speaking at the expensive of someone’s feelings you bite your tongue. We both agree that with the way technology is headed, it will ultimately be futile to lie, since everything will be transparent and exposed.

AJ Jacobs: Interviewing George Clooney

I personally love interviewing people, and I’m so humble and grateful to have the opportunity to do so through this site. AJ Jacobs interviews some really awesome people, like George Clooney, so I’m sure he can relate.

The standard stale method of going about such an interview is a lunch with the celebrity. Is AJ Jacobs standard or stale? No. AJ Jacobs is different and remarkable, so he did something a little bit different with that interview.

AJ Jacobs sat George Clooney in front of a computer and had him look at George Clooney fan and hate sites. Believe it or not, George Clooney has never looked at these, in an attempt to spare his personality from splitting.

The first website the viewed together was called “George Clooney is Gay Gay Gay,” to which George Clooney replied, “This is absolutely not true, I am Gay Gay, but that third gay is not true.” Funny guy!

AJ Jacobs: Favorite Books

A Walk in The Woods by Bill Bryson. Bryson documented “trying” and failing to walk the entire Appalachian trail. In the entertaining process Bryson documents his experience, the history of the Appalachian trail, and environmentalism in the US. This type of book, one that combines a personal story with real nonfiction history is AJ Jacobs’ favorite type.

In the realm of personal development books, AJ Jacobs likes Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cas Sunstein. This book talks about how people are born with a brain full of biases, leading us to be irrational. It then gives pointers on how to overcome and compensate for these biases and ultimately be a happier, healthier, and wealthier person.

AJ Jacobs: Tip for Success

Altering his own psyche by reading about positive psychology has really helped AJ Jacobs’ to redefine what success means and increase his happiness level. Had he still been using his old philosophy from 20 years ago, he would have been miserable today, despite achieving what we would say is a great life and great deal of success.

This is because that philosophy stated that there is always something bigger and better, so don’t be happy until you get there, and then don’t be happy until you get to the next level. Under the influence of this new positive psychology AJ Jacobs has learned to really be satisfied with what he has, that fact that he’s published a book, can read interesting books, live interesting experiments, and still have enough to eat.

More AJ Jacobs

• AJ Jacobs Official Site
• AJ Jacobs on TedTalk (this is kind of a big deal!)
• AJ Jacobs – The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible.
• AJ Jacobs – The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World
• AJ Jacobs – The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment

Practical Personal Development on iTunes

Enjoying the Podcasts? Make sure you click the image above and subscribe to this podcast via iTunes. This ensures that you get the full repertoire of interviews in an easy to listen to format.

Attention: Don’t forget to download my free ebook, How to Get a Girlfriend!!

Hello Alex,

I ran across your blog (and subsequently have sent you a LinkedIn invite) regarding finding what motivates you in reaching your goals, and having a powerful “why”.

My question to you is how do you find your “why”? Do you have resources you could guide me to that will give me some direction in finding what my “why” is? It really isn’t as easy as people think, would you agree?

Thanks so much for your website and blog, it’s been a huge help to me, I look forward to hearing from you.

~Judy

Thank you very much for such an excellent question Judy, I’m happy to have you as a reader. As you already know, figuring out our why is not always an easy and simple endeavor. I’ll try to give you a few tidbits of my opinion on the subject, to go along with all the research I’m sure you’ve done and are currently doing.

Motivation is a core, fundamental principle is doing everything from getting out of bed, overcoming adversity, to conquering the world. You already knew that. I’m sure you’ve also heard the saying, “if your why is big enough, the how doesn’t matter,” aka “if there’s a will there’s a way.”

Our motivations are shaped largely by our environment. The books we read, the people we talk to, as well as the random events that we happen to go through (and our reactions to those events). All this input creates a belief system, or paradigm, of the way the world works (in our mind) and what we consider to be good, virtuous, or worthy of going after.

Without a doubt, my opinion, is that our belief system guides us. The question is, does our belief system control us without our knowledge from within our subconscious, or are we holding the reigns by examining (and reexamining!) our belief system consciously.

Our “current” why, attached to our current belief system, is already within us. Everything that has shaped us up to this point, including how we consciously shaped ourselves, has created a belief system with it’s own why for the motivating itself. It’s always a selfish why. Selfish because the why is self serving, and our personal belief system is the only one it will serve directly.

This selfish drive, or motivation, to achieve also has a lot to do with our self-worth. Are we worthy of getting what we feel we deserve? Do we deserve the things that we “know” to be the very best, and will we allow ourselves to go after them. This principle of self-worth will help to determine what we spend our life on. The currency of our life is our time and energy, and the things that we consciously choose to spend our time and energy on are the things we’re giving up our life on.

So we begin by consciously asking ourselves. What am I willing to die for? If you think about it, your career is most likely where you’ll spend most of your life, then sleeping, then with family and friends. You need to ask yourself, is the place where you’re spending most of your time and energy worthy of your life? If yes, then how are the other things, like exercising, eating healthy, having delicious relationships, all contributing to your maximum output in this place. If the answer is no, the question becomes, what is a time, place, cause, and journey that i’m willing to give up my life for, one hour at a time?

Thanks for the excellent, thought provoking question.

Dear readers, what have you done in order to find your why?

Attention: Don’t forget to download my free ebook, How to Get a Girlfriend!!

Lewis Howes, a good friend and fellow mutant, is an absolute sensation in the online social networking world. He’s a record holding arena football player, author, networking event planner, ridiculously good networker, and now the owner of his own publishing company.

Lewis Howes has become one of the leading LinkedIn consultants, helping people improve their profiles, connect and network with people in their field, and ultimately place themselves in careers that they love.

Lewis Howes turned his passion for helping people, networking, and LinkedIn, into a book called LinkedWorking, with co-author Frank Agin. The book goes into great deal on LinkedIn techniques, each one backed with a real-life success story from their clients.

Lewis Howes: Football Record Holder to Social Media Tycoon

A freak accident left Lewis Howes temporarily disabled. With a mangled wrist, and a full arm cast, Lewis Howes had to take a brake from sports and look for a creative outlet elsewhere.

Instead of spending 6 hours a day training for sports, Lewis Howes would spend 6 hours a day, in bed, networking with sports professionals on LinkedIn. This wouldn’t be much of a problem for most people, but as a world-class athlete limited from his physical activities, this was another big challenge to overcome.

Luckily his wrist is all better now, and the invaluable experience that he gained from that time, when he turned adversity into opportunity, has gotten him a great career helping people achieve their very own professional goals.

LinkedWorking: Teaches You To Make Real Moves Using Linked In

“I’m on LinkedIn, but not getting any job offers, what am I doing wrong?”

That’s the question that Lewis Howes tackles in both his LinkedIn consulting business, as well as in his book LinkedWorking. Lewis Howes takes real life networking principles and teaches you how to apply them to the tools and applications within LinkedIn.

Lewis Howes has one of the largest networkers on LinkedIn, particularly a sports centered network of individuals who are looking to meet other sports professionals. In the same way that Lewis Howes grew his network, and met all the top people in the sports industry, he consults, and illustrates in his book, how we can do the same thing.

The point isn’t just to make a pretty profile. Lewis Howes teaches us how to stop thinking in terms of old-fashioned resumes and enables us to portray our skills, talents, abilities, hobbies, interests and personality, ultimately creating the persona of the real person that we are, and getting us into the career that we dream of.

What I like about LinkedWorking is that it is riddled with success stories for each of the tools that Lewis Howes presents. You begin to understand how everything that he teaches has been successfully applied time and time again with real people.

418 Publishing: Starting Your Own Publishing Company (Goodbye Middleman!)

After looking at many publishing companies, and considering all their pros and cons, Lewis Howes decided that the best route to take his book from his computer and into our hands was by self-publishing. He then went ahead and created the 418 Publishing company.

In order to self-publish, Lewis Howes had to front some money, find a printer that works with a lot of publishers, apply to work with them, buy ISBN numbers, have a cover designed, have an editor, have someone do the layout and design of the book, and then follow up with marketing efforts.

He describes it as a challenging process at first, but well worth it for him, since he is in the process of doing a book tour, and doing a lot of self-promotion for the product. Marketing would be one of the biggest reasons to get a publisher, but you aren’t guaranteed that your book will be popular regardless, and you’ll end up keeping less money on book sales.

Marketing expert Seth Godin says that out of the 70,000 books published each year, only 100 or so get proper marketing treatment. Odds are you won’t be one of those top 100, and you’ll need to leverage your own network to make sales.

Hosting Networking Events With 300+ People Via LinkedIn

To create all his networking events, all the promotion, sponsors, and venues were found through LinkedIn. Lewis Howes created lists of people in his network, and divided them by cities. A couple of e-mails, stating “free food, half priced drinks, and very cool networking opportunies” and Lewis Howes fills up venues with 300-500 people.

The venues are contacted before hand, and something is planned for an off night when no one usually comes in. Venues are happy to not only do this for free, but offer a 10% on all food and bar sales. Lewis Howes tries to make everyone happy, by announcing sponsors all throughout the night, offering door prizes, and connecting people amongst each other.

The sponsors are happy because they get dozens of qualified leads, the attendees are happy because they meet people in their industry, meet people in positions to offer them jobs, get cool gifts from Lewis Howes, and genuinely leave feeling like they had a productive and fun time.

Lewis Howes Shares His Networking Skills

The most important rule of networking, according to Lewis Howes, is to define your intentions before setting out to an event. By saying “I just want to go out there and have fun,” and not setting up a real goal, you’ll likely pass up a lot of networking opportunities due to lack of focus.

On the other hand, if you create an intention that you’re sure about, and clearly define it, such as, “I want to make 10 quality contacts at this networking event,” then it’s likely that this will happen. With the intention in place, you’ll idle less, talk with more people, put yourself out there, and ultimately walk away meeting the number of people you set out to meet.

I personally think it’s not about the quality of contacts, but the quantity. If you happen to make one real solid relationships from a networking event, then it’s worth 20 loose ones. Regardless, go out there and make it happen, and you won’t have any regrets. Without regrets, you’ll end up having more fun too. Remember what Jim Rohn says, discipline weighs ounces, but regret weighs tons.

Lewis Howes’ Recommended Reading

The Alchemist by Paulo Cuelho: This book is a real easy read, with a great story line, and a message that we can all relate to. It reminds us that life isn’t about the destination, it’s about the journey that we’re on.

The Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman: This book is about a talented, olympic bound athlete, that gets injured and loses his ability to compete. After meeting a humble socratic-like gas station attendant, our peaceful warrior pulls himself up, and competes in another event that he’s physically able to – the moral is to take each day as it comes.

Lewis Howes’ Mentors

Lewis Howes tries to surround himself with as many successful and positive people as possible. One of his mentors is Chris Hawker who is a genius eventor. He comes up with the most amazing, simple, and useful inventions.

Another mentor is the old CEO of his college, Stuart Jenkins, who is also a Socratic figure who always has something useful to say. He was involved with licensing the invention of the Nike Air Bubble (the bubble in the sneakers). He also created another company, Skydex, which is seen is Navy ships, as well as used as a matte for pole vaulting.

Lewis Howes’ favorite mentor is his brother Christian Howes. At 19 he was encarcirated for 4 years. After getting out, he turned his life around, and became a music sensation in the Jazz world. Argueably one of the most successful Jazz musicians of our time. He also teaches at Berklee College of in Boston, which I visited yesterday, and travels the world to play for fans.

Final Success Tip:

“Connect with everyone.” A lot of people think they should connect only with people in their network. By reaching out and accepting other connections you expand your second and third degree connections. This exposes you to far more opportunities, because you never know who you’re going to meet, and how they can add value to your life.

More Lewis Howes

• SportsNetworker
• LinkedIn
• LinkedWorking Website

Practical Personal Development on iTunes

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Ronn Torossian, CEO of internationally acclaimed public relations firm 5WPR, is a devoted father, Jew, and all around decent human being. His company 5W Public Relations has been a breath of fresh air in an otherwise old, passive, and slow industry, since he founded it in 2003.

Since then, Ronn Torossian has taken the company to the Inc 500 list, as one of the fastest growing public relations firms in the country. 5WPR stands out as being diverse and aggressive, and continues to deliver excellent service to their clients, despite the bit of doom and gloom in these economic times.

Ronn Torossian works with everything from small businesses to mega-corporations, which includes accounts with corporate, religion, and government groups. The mission is to work hard, and deliver the true essence of a company to the media, and ultimately to the hearts and minds of the general population.

To name drop a bit, Ronn Torossian has served clients such as Evian Water, Snoop Dogg, Pamela Anderson, Marc Ecko, Bad Boy Entertainment, high powered Politicians, the Government of Israel, as well as 2 of the 50 richest people in the world.

Successful People Seek Other Successful People

One of the great things about Ronn Torossian’s job is that he gets the opportunity to network with people that are highly successful. One such person is Marc Ecko, whom Ronn Torossian asked “what drives you every day?”

1. Never stop pushing. 2. Know when to make decisions — whether they be good, bad, indifferent, ugly — make a decision!
~Marc Ecko

I’m a firm believer that we’re a mix of the people that we surround ourselves with. We absorb their philosophy and adopt their behaviors. Ending a relationship with a co-worker, friend, or even worse, a family member, that is doing harm to our way of life can be a hard thing. Especially if there is a great deal of emotional attachment or interdependency. However, it can open up more opportunities, and more time and space to fill with more positive people, that will help us improve both our lifestyle, as well as our impact on the world.

Most Significant Contributor to Ronn Torossian’s Success

God. His Mother. Working Hard. Ronn Torossian doesn’t believe that people get lucky in business, or that people that don’t work hard will get ahead. People that think in terms of 9-6 don’t have what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.

When you start to think in terms of “eating and breathing your company” you become success material. You bring your worries home to you at night, and into the weekend, and you do whatever it takes to keep your head above the water.

Ronn Torossian’s Day to Day

The day to day work is not always glamorous. It’s hard work, and clients can call at all hours of the day and night, depending on their specific needs and expectations. It’s not all about celebrity parties, and living in the lime-light.

There isn’t an exact formula or certainty to a day in the life of Ronn Torossian. It’s not like a scene from the Jetsons, where George Jetson comes in for his 3 hour day, and presses a single button repeatedly, while Mr. Cosmo yells at him.

Ronn Torossian starts off early by waking up at 5:00am. He arrives at the gym at 5:15am, where he runs and works out until 7:00am. Talk about being in great shape, last time I saw Ronn Torossian, his neck was the size of a tree-trunk (that’s a compliement).

Today work starts at 7:45am, Ronn Torossian takes care of business, does the interview with me at 9:30am, takes a client meeting at 10:00am in the office, another one at 12:00pm out of the office, two interviews in the afternoon, speaking to a college at 5:00pm, and then dinner with a client/friend at 8:00pm downtown. Running the large firm goes in between all of the meetings (which I’m sure he only told me a small fraction of in the interview), and then what’s left goes into ‘personal time’.

Ronn Torossian Blog

These are the rantings and ravings of a successful businessman. The content is anything from the business of being an entrepreneur, marketing thoughts and policies, thoughts on what’s going on in TV and media.

It’s a good read for an entrepreneur, as well as anyone interested in marketing, pr, and communications in their own brand. He writes it all himself and updates 4-5 times per week.

Surprisingly, most CEOs of Ronn Torossian’s magnitude don’t blog, and don’t share knowledge and tips with the world. This is another thing that separates 5WPR from the competition, makes them different, and shows that they’re playing to win.

5WPR – Playing to Win
~coined by Alex Shalman

Tips for Managing Small Scale Public Relations

Many readers of this site have blogs, websites, small-businesses, or some other kind of entrepreneurial venture. I asked Ronn Torossian for some tips for us, in order to handle our own, small-scale, public relations.

1. Don’t make the story about you, make it about something in the news.
2. Work hard, work hard, work hard.
3. Search engine optimization, twitter, facebook, and any way to dive into social and traditional media.

I was also curious to know how an unknown author could promote their book like the big boys. Ronn Torossian represents Barnes & Noble, so he knows this space, and how difficult it is to break into it.

1. Find the stories being written about your topic, and make sure you’re mentioned in them.
2. Seek out all the blogs and websites that write about your topic, and pitch to them.
3. Be very specific to the audience you’re trying to reach.

Ronn Torossian’s Productivity Tip

Like many of us, Ronn Torossian is still learning and tweaking every single day, and says that his faith in God helps him to keep pushing forward. The other thing that keeps him pushing forward is that he grew up with no money, which keeps him hungry every day.

Ronn Torossian got the opportunity to spend a couple of days with a client, that is one of the richest men in the world. Ronn Torossian noticed that the man wasn’t wearing a watch, one day after the other. Finally Ronn Torossian asked him “You’re one of the richest men in the world, how come you aren’t wearing a watch?”

The man recalled that when he was 13, he asked his dad for a watch for his Bar Mitzvah. His dad had to decline this request, because he could not afford to buy his son a watch. He saved up, and got himself a watch the following year. When he was a bit older and more successful, and accumulated X million dollars, he stopped wearing his watch. This served as a reminder from his youth, when he couldn’t afford a watch, and this fueled the hunger that pushed him to even more success.

Ronn Torossian’s Recommended Reading

• The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
• Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy
• It’s Not the Big That Eat the Small…It’s the Fast That Eat the Slow: How to Use Speed as a Competitive Tool in Business by Jason Jennings

Final Tip for Success

Work hard, be focused, and don’t please all people. Please yourself, pleasure your clients, take chances. Even in an economy like this, there is a chance to win, you just have to understand what the market place is, what the market place is looking for, and go for it — don’t be afraid of failure.
~Ronn Torossian

More From Ronn Torossian

• Ronn Torossian Blog
• 5W Public Relations
• Ronn Torossian on Facebook

Practical Personal Development on iTunes

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“You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective. Analyze your life in terms of its environment. Are the things around you helping you toward success – or are they holding you back?”
~W. Clement Stone

The premise of my argument is that our ability to reach our full potential is either enhanced, or limited, by our environment. Therefore, it is in our best interest to find an environment that is best suited for us to thrive in. I define environment not merely as an area, but as the sum of our life experiences, the friends that we have, and the books that we read. In essence, environment is the nurture component of the nature versus nurture argument.

Our potential is our fixed-capacity for personal growth; meaning you cannot get more potential than you’ve got, but you can certainly strive to reach, or fall short of reaching it. A great environment is a very crucial component that can propel us toward this potential, but at the same time, an environment that is not conducive for growth will restrain us from reaching our full potential.

Experience

“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”
~Ayn Rand

Our experiences serve as a foundation from which we make future decisions. Experiences can be either positive or negative, and they can also be falsely-positive or falsely-negative if the proper level of insight isn’t reached.

A false negative experience can be a failure that creates an unwarranted fear. This would be like falling off a bicycle, and never getting back on, or having a heart break, and avoiding future relationships. A false positive experience is an unwarranted sense of courage. This would be like winning a fight based on sheer luck, and then continuing to pursue fights and deeming yourself unconquerable, or having unprotected sex without the consequence of disease or pregnancy, and continuing to pursue this dangerous lifestyle.

When an experience is truly positive or negative, it’s smart to use it toward future decision making, because the experience is a good representation of what will occur the next time you may have this experience. For example, if you go to class, listen proactively, and study well, you’re going to see a good grade again, just like you did last semester. This is a clear positive. Another example is, if you try penicillin, and have an adverse allergic reaction, then it’s safe to assume that you are allergic, and you should never take this family of medicines again. This is a clear negative. These are both examples of smart assumptions, otherwise known as learning, that keep us doing more beneficial things, and avoiding detrimental ones.

It’s important for us to be able to distinguish between true and false experiences. Looking at life in retrospect and doing a lot of thinking introspectively will greatly reduce the amount of false assumptions that we allow to govern our decisions in life.

If there are no contradictions, we will quickly uncover the veil of falsehood that surrounds our experience. We’ll recognize fact as fact, and falsehood as falsehood, and our future decisions will reflect truth. The key is to stop and think about our experiences, instead of letting them govern our lives. After all, we’re humans, not hamsters that are meant to be stuck in a spinning wheel of ignorance.

Friends

“Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them.”
~W. Clement Stone

Many years of my life have been spent with people whose philosophy on life has been nothing short of a vast deviation from truth. Some were timid, while others were steadfast in their ideals, in spite of the falsity of those ideals and the harm that having those ideals may cause to them and to the people around them. Don’t worry, I’m not the only one that’s been exposed to these people. Some of them are still in my life, and I’m sure that you’ve got one or two of your own.

I’m not saying that it’s impossible to transcend the philosophy of your friends, and the people that you speak with most often. I’m saying that if you’re with people who are spewing falsehood, you’re going to have a hard time getting upstream without a paddle and arriving at truth.

I’m making the assumption that arriving at truth will give you a better life and will improve life for all of us as a collective as well. Otherwise, you might as well throw out the notion that you should be striving for truth, and stop worrying about who your friends are.

If you’re with me, and you understand that you can choose a better life, through the means of a better philosophy, then it’s time to take an honest look at who you associate with. We begin this exercise by taking a close look at the five people with whom you spend the most time with (technology permits this to be any type of communication, not exclusive to face-to-face conversation).

What if your top-five consists of a drug dealer, a rapist, a murderer, an alcoholic, and a convict? You speak with these people daily, maybe you even try to discourage them from their ideas and practices, but how long can you maintain integrity to your vision of truth before their philosophy seeps into your mind? How long before your mind becomes a melting pot of negativity, which you begin to spread into the world?

Yes, this is very extreme, but I’m sure there are people out there whose top-5 looks like this. Your type might not be this bad, but it could still be bringing you down, and keeping you from reaching your full potential. You might be the proud associate of a complainer, a pessimist, a TV-junkie, a binge eater, and a shopaholic. Not as bad, but still not a group of people that will get your operating on all cylinders toward your potential.

What if we take away the people that we’re bound to based on emotional holds, geographical location, and family orientation, and design our very own mastermind group of friends. If we can pick and choose anyone, we could pick fun, friendly, motivational, intelligent, respectful, compassionate, successful, controlled, powerful, and courageous people to associate with. Their philosophies will become our philosophy, and this will be reflected in our choices, habits, and goals.

Books

“A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.”
~Henry David Thoreau

“When you sell a man a book, you don’t sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue – you sell him a whole new life.”
~Christopher Morley

Books are like a cheat sheet to life. By reading great books, you are saving yourself from making years worth of mistakes, and learning to do things faster and better. By becoming more efficient at life, you’re freeing up more time for the enjoyment of life. By getting closer to the truth, you’re enabling yourself to use your time more wisely.

As with friends, you run the risk of reading bad philosophy, and thus getting further from the truth. The good thing is that by becoming an avid reader, and seeing an onslaught of various ideas, your mind becomes capable of deciphering which philosophies will actually serve you well. You’ll have enough depth of knowledge so that you won’t be easily swayed by bad ideas, while at the same time being open to experiencing those ideas that can bring you closer to truth.

Fifty years of someone’s life experience is yours for the taking within several hours worth of reading. You can effectively gain tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of hours full of people’s life experiences. Your environment, the one that decides how quickly you’ll achieve your potential will thus evolve internally, despite your geographic location, and the people you are predisposed to.

Putting It All Together

By combining constant introspection into the reality of your experiences, a solid base of friends that serve to better your philosophy, and an arsenal of books that you’ve not only read, but applied to your life, you are effectively shaping your own destiny. You’re not only tampering with, but beating your environment, and creating a new one that will serve whatever purposes you can dream of.

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When Barack Obama was pronounced the winner of the 2008 presidential election, the world was energized with a new spirit of hope. Now, right at the dawn of inauguration day, we are seeking Obama in Spiderman comics and companies like are Pepsi modeling after Obama’s marketing campaign. It is the first time in my life that I have seen a political figure become such a celebrity!

There is no question that 2008 had been a revolutionary year in American politics. For the first time in this country’s existence we will see a black man, who won the election by a popular landslide, be the president of the most powerful country on earth. Judging by the extreme enthusiasm, America was clearly ready for this. And regardless of conflicting views on Obama’s liberalism, it is evident that this man is a great orator with an amazing ability to connect to listeners. His resume, too, is outstanding, boasting of experience and accomplishment in academia, writing, foreign affairs, civil rights, environmental awareness…etc. He is young, captivating, moral, and inherently motivating. Obama is the new face of America.

Americans… still believe in an America where anything’s possible – they just don’t think their leaders do. ~Barack Obama

9 Ways That ‘Yes We Can!’ Like Barack Obama

Barack Obama is a stand for…

1. Change By Us, For Us and Now

Why not us? Why not today? Why not now? Obama believes that those who seek change must be the initiators.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.~Barack Obama

As we know, try all we may, we cannot change anyone but ourselves. This is the same with situations. Only we can act to change our circumstances. Procrastinating action with excuses is easy. If we desire to accomplish something great, then we must have a vision, and be that vision.

2. Constant and Never Ending Improvement

Although Obama recognizes how hard others have worked for this country, he believes that there is much more to improve. There is never an end to improvement.

It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.

No matter how good times may be, we can always aspire for an even better tomorrow. A black man will be president, but that does not mean that there is an end to racism. Jay-Z said “Rosa Parks sat so Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so Obama could run. Obama ran so we can all fly.”, but even flying is a means to something bigger.

3. Rational Measures

Personal development aficionados sometimes plunge into action. We attempt to tackle happiness, jump out of our comfort zones, and wage magnificent wars against a slew of vengeful carbohydrates. And although extremes can be great, we must also make sure that our goals are well planned and rational.

I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.~Barack Obama

When a nation chooses to declare a war, Obama believes that this war should be well justified, as war can have huge implications on the nation and its citizens. As the Bush administration was declaring war on Iraq, which had soon become one of the most unpopular wars in history, Obama was pushing for anti-war rallies in his home state of Illinois. So what happened to the so-called weapons of mass destruction? We have not found any. We are now merely moderating someone else’s civil war.

4. Possibility

America is a nation where any person, regardless of where they came from could freely practice religion, politics, trade, and love.

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. ~Barack Obama

As Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, my parents came to America to start a new life full of possibilities.  In Kiev where my parents lived, no matter their merit, they could not attend good Universities. “Jew” was like a scar written on their passports. America has always been the land of opportunity, and it is very encouraging that a politician can so openly relate to this, himself.

5. Future Forecasts for Today’s Efforts

Obama recognizes that nothing comes from nothing, that we must win small battles today in order to prevent greater problems in the future.

Poorly secured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, or secrets from a scientist in Pakistan could help build a bomb that detonates in Paris. The poppies in Afghanistan become the heroin in Berlin. The poverty and violence in Somalia breeds the terror of tomorrow. ~Barack Obama

Any business owner or investor knows that it is extremely important to anticipate impending change before taking on projects. Bill Gates did not believe that the internet would become as ginormous an information medium as it has and had significantly lost on this bet. Owners of Blockbuster franchises may not have seen Netflix and HBO on demand revolutionizing where people get their movies. The government had not foreseen a global recession. Obama may have a lot on his hands right now, but he will work on it today for a better tomorrow.

6. Not taking Yourself Too Seriously

I kind of figured that anyone about to run a country would feel pretty important, but this “skinny guy from the South Side of Chicago with the funny name” was pleasantly surprised when he realized he was on high demand.

The fact that my 15 minutes of fame has extended a little longer than 15 minutes is somewhat surprising to me and completely baffling to my wife.~Barack Obama

When we take ourselves too seriously we are susceptible to a lot of insult. What I mean is that we perceive more as insult when, otherwise, it would be taken as light-hearted comments. When we take ourselves too seriously, we may also get more discouraged in the face of hardship because we would get hung up on our mistakes instead of coming up with solutions to the problem. Therefore, be conscious of what you worry about. Make sure it is worth it.

7. Unity

Obama focuses on what unites America and Americans, rather than their differences. The following was an excerpt from a speech that he delivered at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America – there’s the United States of America. ~Barack Obama

While this may not have always been a reality in America, and some of our forefathers wouldn’t necessarily agree, it is our ideal vision of America, and the dream that is slowly becoming a reality.

8. Perfection

We do not need to be inherently perfect in order to perfect ourselves every day.

We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent. ~Barack Obama

As someone who has spent so much time on improving herself, it is a marvel to me how so many people are completely okay with being mediocre. Mediocrity does not save people from hunger. It does not cure diseases and it does not write glorious symphonies. We must internalize excellence and make it a part of our identity.

9. Ambition

If there is one great opportunity for people today it is an abundance of resources. Before the internet, people had excuses when they had no way to find something out. Today, not only can we find answers to almost all of our questions, but we can expose ourselves to millions of people who are looking to build knowledge, skills, and social networks. Today, we have no excuse for why we can’t do something. This also means that we can take on social responsibility. The problem is that many people don’t have the drive to balance the available information.

Focusing 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 Obama

People can only tackle greatness when they set high standards for themselves and their lives.

Now, I ask you, what do you admire about Barack Obama and what can we learn from that?

Article written by Marina Tsipenyuk, a conscious thinker, singer, writer, and straight A student at Rutgers Business School for Finance.

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Being able to relax is very important to regain our energy levels, concentration, and get us ready to be even more productive than before. Alas, many people push themselves after they’re tired and out of juice, which ultimately makes them less productive. A timely time-out pays productivity dividends.

30 Ways To Relax Like a Cat

“Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of
harmony and proportion is more readily seen.”
~Leonardo da Vinci

1. Finish Your Work. If you have a few more minutes of work left, finish, bag, and tag! It’s better to finish off a small loose end than to think about it when you should be relaxing. Don’t start another big project, that you know you won’t finish, until after you’ve completed your relaxing, in order to keep your mind on the present.

2. Massage, Sauna, & Hot Bath. When was the last time you rewarded yourself with the gift of relaxation by taking time out to concentrate on blissful restfulness? Get a one-hour massage, sit in a wet sauna for awhile, or make yourself a DIY hot bath at the house while listening to some relaxing music.

3. Beat-Out Your Tension. Beat the tension out at the gym, on the treadmill, or with the punching bag. You can do this without music or accompanied by some high-intensity music that will get your heart pumping. This might not sound too relaxing at first, but once you’re done exercising and the endorphins have overtaken your mind, you’ll be nothing short of relaxed.

4. Block Time. In order to alleviate guilt about taking the time off, go ahead and schedule in a block of time during which you can hang loose, and not worry about anything. This way your mind knows it can chill, and that when the time comes you can get back to 100% efficiency.

5. Turn Off Distractions. Tell whoever you need to that you’re unreachable and turn off your phone, door bell, and internet connection. No one can reach you with a task for you to do, bad news to stress you out, or for any other reason that would drag you out of your zone.

6. Dress for the Occasion. If you’re going to relax, do so in style. Warm sweat pants, pajamas, and loose hoodies are perfect to lounge around in. Make sure you have warm wooly socks to keep you snug as well.

7. Get ‘Extra’ Clean. We’ve all slothed around on a weekend morning without showering. We’re supposed to be relaxing, and no one is going to see or smell us anyway, right? Wrong! Before you set out on a day of relaxation, make sure you get extra clean, shower, shave, brush, floss, rinse, and put on clean clothes. You’ll feel like a million bucks!

8. Tea-Licious. Make yourself a nice cup of herbal tea, with extra anti-oxidants, and sit with a good book or mood music. I’m a sucker for honey, and recommend getting creamy honey to add to your tea. It’s better than sugar for those with a sweet tooth.

9. Moleskin It. Carry a trusty moleskin with you during your relaxation time, and journal whatever is on your mind. You might come up with some great insights or ideas. You might also have a work-related thought, which you’ll be able to jot down so that you can stop thinking about it for now.

10. Full Out Write. Go ahead a write a story about your life, or some kind of a fiction story that can change the world or teach someone a lesson. I personally find writing to be very relaxing, which makes my work day very stress-free.

11. Release Your Tension. If you’ve got a problem on your mind, don’t just let it fester there. Take a piece of paper and start journaling. Vent into the paper, and write down exactly what’s wrong. When you’re done, go ahead and toss that paper into the garbage, and with it the stress.

12. Visualization Exercises. Without leaving the house, you can go away on a spectacular journey, full of white sand beaches, powdery snow, tantalizing sights, and demonizing dragons. Sit down, close your eyes, and let your mind trip (go raw: no drugs necessary!)

“To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization,
and at present very few people have reached this level.”
~Bertrand Russell

13. Thank You Letters. Take some time out to think about the people in your life that deserve a thank you letter. Get a stack of cute postcards, and write a short message to someone you just met, or someone you appreciate.

14. Baking. Baking fills your house with a sweet aroma, and makes for a great treat for your family and friends. The act of being creative, combined with doing something for others is always a treat!

15. Read a Book. Find the perfect fiction novel and escape into another world.

16. Breathing Exercises. Practice breathing in slowly for a 10 count, and then exhaling for a 10 count. Do this a few times in a row and as you breathe out, let go of your worries.

17. Lavender. Spray your bedsheets with lavender and lay down.

18. Stretching and Yoga. Last time I tried Yoga, I ended up hurting my back, but then again it was already hurt before I started. You might want to give this one a shot for yourself.

19. Lay on The Beach. Bask in the sun as you run your fingers through the sand and listen to the waves crashing as the tide comes in.

20. Fishing. Grab a beer and a buddy and head out early in the morning before the sun comes out. Enjoy a great conversation, or quietly reflect on life, and share in every victory as you snatch those suckers right out of the water (now that’s animal cruelty, isn’t it?)

21. Camp Fire. Enjoy the whole process of collecting kindle, starting a fire, and sitting in front of the whispering flames as you tell ghost stories!

22. Grow a Garden. Gardening can tell you a lot about life, such as the changing seasons, sowing and reaping, and it gives you the perfect opportunity to think about life as you work.

23. Picture Collage. This is what you need. A big poster board, pictures of yourself and the people you love, a glue stick, scissors, markers, oh and…. your imagination!

24. Declutter. Clean up your living space, so that everything is clean and tidy. Your living quarters will make you relaxed just looking at them.

When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves,
it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
~Francois de La Rochefoucauld

25. Slow Music. Whether you’re listening to classical/jazz music, or playing the instrument yourself, it’s always relaxing to make yourself a part of a slow song.

26. Lie on a Hammock While Being Fed Grapes. Umm, this is where Marina chimed in. I guess this is her personal fantasy. To each their own!

27. Say No. Don’t take on any responsibilities. Say no to people’s incessant requests and just take time for yourself.

28. Say Yes. Sex is very relaxing.

29. Get Cuddled. Ok, this is getting too cute… kinda like kittens, but it is relaxing, so try it!

30. Pet & Nag Your Cat. If you own one of these furry-creatures, then go ahead and hold them, while telling them about the stresses you are going through. They’re soft, warm, and complacent, meaning they’ll actually listen to you no matter how much you nag at them.

Final Words

At the end of the day, relaxing is a very personal and subjective way to pass time. You’re more than welcome to try any of the tips above, they work, but what’s even better is to find something that is personal and effective for you.

I’m sure that you already have certain things that you do, those that I didn’t mention above, and I would love it if you’d let me know about it in the comments below. Give us your most unique tip, or name your favorite from the list above, I’d love to hear from you either way!

Please vote for this article on StumbleUpon and Digg, I’d appreciate it!

Images by Piez and florencetime

Attention: Don’t forget to download my free ebook, How to Get a Girlfriend!!

I’m going to keep it real and talk about a problem that has been the bane of my existence as I was growing up. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, I MIGHT be the only one, but I am guilty of sacrificing what I want, and who I am, in order to fit into a girl’s life.

Growing up most kids don’t have firm opinions on their own identity, where they’re going in life, or what moral stances are most important to them. I was no exception, and was easily swayed by peer pressure, which led to some bad decisions.

No decisions were as bad as the ones I made in order to please girls. I mentioned I didn’t have a FIRM moral stance on certain issues, but gray area or not, I had an intuitive feeling if something wasn’t ultimately right or wrong. The only thing that was easily swayed was my justification of things being okay to do “just this once.”

My Mistakes

In my escapades of trying to please girls I’ve gone through adopting a certain music and fashion sense, changing my hair, piercing my ear, traveling 2 hours in a ridiculously bad blizzard, buying them stuff, being nice to parents I didn’t particularly like, and putting up with their best-friends who were absolutely unfit to be friends with.

At one point I even smoked cigarettes because a girl who I was madly infatuated with smoked. We’d often go for a walk, or sit in the park, and smoke a few cigarettes while we talked. Eventually I’d even smoke when I wasn’t with her, which turned into a very unhealthy habit that my asthma hated me for.

An interesting thing to note is that during the periods of time where I was feeling the most desperate and needy, I actually got the most girls. This might be counter intuitive to what you thought I was about to say, but the truth is that at these lowest points of self-restraint and ‘standards’ I overplayed the numbers game and ended up with a few bottom of the rung girls.

It should be noted that while I might have gotten these girls, who were for sure of low standard and quality, this type of behavior never got me the high-quality girls, who I would ultimately go on to admire and have a super fun and healthy relationship with (such as current and best girlfriend ever!)

Yes, girls can sense when you’re needy, and it is actually quite repulsive, but the lowest quality girls are even needier and don’t seem to care. That’s why the high-quality girls, the ones that are actually worth your time, won’t usually fall for these low-level tactics.

My Revelation

When that starts to make sense in your own mind you realize that you have a few viable choices. You can continue your behavior and continue to pursue things that aren’t worth more than one night of your life, if that. Alternatively, you can change your state of mind, and ultimately your behavior, in order to become the type of person who is naturally attractive to the high value girls.

This is actually much easier to do than it sounds. I believe that we actually flip a switch in our mind when we make a decision and take action on it. For me that decision was to decide exactly the type of woman I want to marry, have children and build a life long passionate friendship with.

The main ingredient in what I did was to take action. The first step was to figure out what it was that I needed to do. I think that most people are able to figure out what type of questions they need to ask themselves with enough maturity and experience. I also think that anyone has the potential to take action on this information when given a chance and the right motivation.

I would love nothing more than for you to have the type of relationship that I have described, but unfortunately I can’t go to your house, ask you these questions, and motivate you to do what’s best for you. Trust me, I had a roommate in college who I couldn’t pursuade to take ANY action. I literally locked him in a room with a girl who was willing and able, and he ended up running out of the room scared.

Free Advice

Ultimately, if you want to go for bottom of the rung, or if you refuse to work on your confidence and social skills, then there isn’t anything I can do for you. On the other hand, if you do want to take your life into your hands, I’d like to give you some FREE advice.

I’ve taken what I learned since I started dating in sixth grade and I’ve written down the things that have worked for me. The important ones that got me the self-confidence, and skill, in order to get the girls that were not only the highest quality, but the best fit for me, and put them into my free ebook, for your reading pleasure, titled How to Get a Girlfriend.

The funny thing is that after you know the right questions, and you start filtering out girls and being selective, you will naturally be more confident, which will automatically make you more attractive to girls without compromising who you are.

If you’ve enjoyed this post, please vote for it on StumbleUpon. I appreciate it!

Attention: Don’t forget to download my free ebook, How to Get a Girlfriend!!

This week I’m honored to have interviewed Steve Pavlina, a person that I greatly admire. Steve Pavlina has had a lot of influence on my life and personal growth, so I couldn’t think of asked for a better person to interview. Steve Pavlina is the author of the best selling book Personal Development for Smart People, and the most popular personal development blogger in the world.

The stats say that Steve Pavlina’s website sees over 2 million visitors per month. The real power, however, is in the affect that Steve Pavlina has on an individual’s life, and the way his ideas of Truth, Love, and Power spread virally throughout the world.

For over 10 years Steve Pavlina has been passionate about learning personal development, applying it to his life in a variety of wacky growth experiments, and then sharing his findings with the world via his popular blog StevePavlina.com. In this interview we’ll touch base on some of these experiments, and go into a wide variety of topics.

Steve Pavlina: Mission in Life

“To explore consciousness, and raise consciousness.”

Steve Pavlina is very passionate about the principles of Truth, Love, and Power. You can’t make apple pie from scratch, unless you reinvent the universe, and in this way Steve Pavlina didn’t “invent” these principles. He did, however, meditate on them and put them into a very practical format that can be applied to anyone, and any area of life.

Truth is helping people become more aware, knowledgeable, and honest. Love is helping people connect with what they want, be happier and more joyful, while escaping from what they don’t want. Power is helping people take action, become more disciplined, and create the reality that they want to experience and get things done.

Steve Pavlina’s goals are to align everyone with these three principles, which he gets into in great detail in his book. The Steve Pavlina blog, and resources are all aligned with helping people achieve consciousness and improve various areas of their lives.

Steve Pavlina on Measuring Success

The way Steve Pavlina used to go about goal-setting is by setting “smart goals,” meaning goals that are specific, measurable, and action oriented. After much experience with this, Steve Pavlina now takes a different route in setting goals, based purely on that which most inspires him. Instead of thinking of a goal as a place to reach in the future, Steve Pavlina thinks about how a goal will affect him in the present moment.

For example, if setting a goal of becoming a millionaire at a future date does not inspire you right this moment and get you taking some sort of action then it’s a “lousy goal.” My example of the opposite of this would be setting a goal to run a marathon a year from now, and then going right outside for a run, and subsequent training sessions in order to prepare for this. It must create a mental shift, in the now.

Trying to be aligned with Truth, Love, and Power can be disempowering for Steve Pavlina when forced into a specific and measurable box. However, what does work for Steve Pavlina is when he thinks of the goal in terms of “what can I do right now to move people in this direction,” which is when he starts generating ideas and taking action on them.

Even for financial goals Steve Pavlina claims that he doesn’t pay much attention to how much money he makes because it doesn’t inspire him. He focuses more on the present moment, asking himself, “what am I doing right now?” and “what kind of vision can I create that will inspire me right now in this moment?”

A trap that Steve Pavlina used to fall into was setting goals too often. He would fill up pages worth of goals, only to file them away and not look at them. Taking a glance back after six months or so would reveal that no progress has been made in these areas. These were the specific and measurable goals that Steve Pavlina tries to steer clear from these days.

Steve Pavlina on Day to Day and Motivation

Steve Pavlina gets his motivation from the focus on each and every day. The focus in each day, combined with being able to keep yourself free from things that bring you down is what works for Steve Pavlina. With the advantage of being self-employed, Steve Pavlina gets to have control over the way that his day will turn out to a much larger degree than if he was employed for someone else.

Steve Pavlina’s website brings in enough income that he has the privilage to live this way and pay all his bills. The specifics of Steve Pavlina’s daily schedule often vary to some degree. The typical day gets Steve Pavlina out of bed at 5am, and straight into the gym. After this he gets back home for breakfast, at which point he starts to either catch up on communication such as e-mail or phone calls, or just focused in on content creation such as writing and podcasting.

Steve Pavlina’s afternoons sound amazing to me, because he spends them on personal growth activities, which of course I love, such as reading. Steve Pavlina estimates that 30-40% of his weekly “work hours” are spent soaking up new information and connecting with people. It’s not unusual for Steve Pavlina to spend the afternoons in online communication with people, sharing ideas, getting ideas for new articles, and just generally getting inspired. Steve Pavlina even gets the opportunity to coach some people “on the side,” which I think we all do when we give advice to our family, friends, and co-workers, although, I’d be willing to bet that Steve Pavlina takes this to the next level.

At the time of this interview, Steve Pavlina is on day 26 of an experiment where he eats nothing but juices from fruits and vegetables. This is known as Juice Feasting, not fasting, because he gets more than enough calories. So far the experiment has taken Steve Pavlina through a daily detox of different emotions, which I hear is a wild ride. In order to sustain an experiment such as this Steve Pavlina must do a lot of reading. Steve Pavlina has read 10 books on health just this month alone, which is probably more than most people read in a lifetime.

Steve Pavlina likes to live life emersavely. This means that when he gets one of his ideas, he jumps into them fully and gives them everything he’s got. In the Juice Feasting experiment Steve Pavlina gets to learn about the benefits of all the different fruits and vegatables, their properties, and the different affects that they have on our mind and body. This translates into more reading on juice feasting, juicing, and various raw supplements.

Steve Pavlina on Methods of Generating Creative Ideas

I find Steve Pavlina to be like a fountain of creative ideas. Many of the ideas come about from reading extensively on a wide range of growth topics, as well as communicating with many people. It’s a progressive process. It was during his previous 30 day trial into Raw Foods that Steve Pavlina became aware of Juice Feasting. At the time, Steve Pavlina thought the Juice Feasting was way out there, and now he’s fully emersed himself in it.

Out of the many creative ideas that Steve Pavlina gets, he chooses the ones that most inspire him. Since Steve Pavlina wasn’t born to, and never subscribed to the idea of living an average life, it’s of no consequence to him if the ideas are normal or way out there. The factor that matters is whether the ideas are interesting and a good experience for growth. The ones that are growth experiences provide the added benefit of being a topic to share with the audience on the Steve Pavlina website.

Steve Pavlina: Contributing Factors to Success

Do you consider Steve Pavlina to be successful? I definitely do. The start of the conscious journey to success was when Steve Pavlina thought about the idea that he could improve himself by embracing new experiences. Steve Pavlina realized that it didn’t matter if his attempt at something new would be a success, or a failure, because each one would be a growth experience and thus a contributor to his overall success.

Steve Pavlina doesn’t view success and failure as two opposites. He doesn’t even view one as better than the other. Instead, Steve Pavlina likes to ask himself “what am I here to do, and what would I like to experience.”

It’s of little consequence whether Steve Pavlina’s juice feast works out positively and negatively, because despite the outcome Steve Pavlina will be able to extrapolate a valuable benefit. This is due to Steve Pavlina’s paradigm of success, which states that the worst thing you could do is stand still. What it comes down to isn’t about trying to succeed, but about having interesting experience while we’re here. Virtually any experience can be a growth experience if we choose to learn from it.

Steve Pavlina’s: The Courage to Succeed, and Fail

I asked Steve Pavlina what questions he gets asked the most, and what questions he thinks people would benefit most from if they asked him.

The questions that people ask Steve Pavlina the most are “what is personal development?,” and “what does it mean to grow?” As already mentioned, growth is aligning yourself with Truth, Love, and Power. To increase your awareness, to become more connected in your life to what you want, and less connected to what you don’t want, and to build your self discipline.

The question that Steve Pavlina thinks people should ask, is not one of information, such as “how do I gain clarity about my life,” because we usually already know what it is that we need to do ourselves. The problem real problem here is that what we know to do is usually hidden under a few deep layers of fear, which stops us from acting on the solution. So the real question people should ask is, “how do I build my courage?” “How could I face those fears?” “How could I turn towards what I want?” People get a glimpse of what they want, but are afraid to go after it.

A common situation that Steve Pavlina describes is of a person that is working at a job that they are satisfied with, or inspired by. While they know they’re not happy where they are, they don’t have a solid idea as to where they would be happier moving to. This causes them to become stagnant, and not search for a more fulfilling career option. What advice does Steve Pavlina have for people trapped in a job that they don’t want? “Quit!”

Steve Pavlina says that the reason people don’t have the courage to quit is because they over think all the negative consequences of taking action. What are the negative consequences? Not being able to pay your bills, and being homeless come to mind, which is still not the end of your life. Sitting at a job you don’t like, for the rest of your life, is something you don’t like, and so is being homeless, but perhaps it’s not necessary to settle for either of these options and go for what we really want.

It might actually be better to be homeless then trapped in a cubicle cage. At least then you would have more free time, and the ability to rebuild your life from the ground up. Steve Pavlina, although never homeless, used to live in a time when he couldn’t pay his bills and had to scatter to find an apartment of half the size. This taught him that it’s better to consistently question the standard of “get what you want out of life and being able to contribute to people,” instead of beating yourself down and living just to pay your bills.

It’s important to have such reference experiences, many of which are gained from the failures in our life, because they all contribute to our growth. The first business that Steve Pavlina had in the game development business was a failure which sank and went into bankruptcy. Steve Pavlina did the best he knew how to do at the time, but he just wasn’t running a business under a viable business model. The situation was not a disaster, it was a complete catastrophe, and one of the best learning experiences that Steve Pavlina ever had.

Look at people like Walt Disney, and Abraham Lincoln, who failed so many times throughout their life that it was pathetic. When we look back at their life, we all view them as a major success, which was hard earned by lives that were much more full of failures then they were of successes.

Steve Pavlina on Happiness and Suicide Advice

The definition of happiness that Steve Pavlina subscirbes to is that of an emotional feeling of well-being. When it comes to fixing problems, Steve Pavlina believes it is important to realize that it’s not always practical to fix our problems overnight. What works better is to focus on the idea of growth, improvement, and getting better each day, and let that paradigm guide is to success.

At just 19, Steve Pavlina was arrested for felony grand theft. While spending a few days in jail, Steve Pavlina realized that his life was just a train wreck heading in undesirable directions. Thinking of an overnight solution was frustrating, and seemed overwhelming. At that moment Steve Pavlina realized that it doesn’t matter whether he good or couldn’t fix the problems and that regardless of the outcome the truth was that he was the only one responsible for the outcome of his own life.

It was getting that sense of responsibility that really helped Steve Pavlina. He knew that the problems wouldn’t go away on their own, and that no one was going to rescue him, so he had to take action himself. Sometimes this means accepting problems as they are, while other times it means working to fix them. By chipping away at the problems a little bit at a time, Steve Pavlina was able to get his life to a level of normalcy after a few years. He did this by focusing on daily growth, and asking, “how can I make my life a little bit better?”

Chronic pain and depression, as Steve Pavlina learned in his research are often times a factor of our nutritional intake. The emotional “dumps” that Steve Pavlina is experiencing in his Juice Feast are a proof that food can govern how we feel. This means that people who suffer from chronic pain and depression can look into healthier diets, away from unhealthy processed foods, in order to fix their health issues in both the mental and physical capacities.

Relationships are the other major category to work on to promote happiness. It’s important to analyze our lives and see whether the people in our lives are all depressed, and if it’s possible to start spending more hours with people that are positive and uplifting? Steve Pavlina made the decision to change his social relationships in his late teens, and has been evolving his relationships ever since, which had made a huge impact in his life.

Self-discipline is another important factor that Steve Pavlina recommends to work on. It’s important to embrace this principle, instead of giving into wallowing in depression and entertaining suicidal feelings. Being in this state is disempowering, which in my opinion leads to a negative cycle that reinforces itself, and takes discipline to break out of. Our ability to take action is like a muscle, which grows with proper exercise. Unfortunately the opposite is true, and remaining apathetic will make the discipline muscle weak, and make it easier for these negative thoughts to take over your mind.

Another solution is to emerse yourself in positive positive information. Steve Pavlina recommends reading lots of books by positive successful people. Not only will this put you into a positive frame of mind, but you’ll also learn lots of new ideas that you can apply to improve your life. It’s important to note that these changes won’t be instant, but over a period of years we’ll be able to drastically improve the quality of our lives.

Steve Pavlina on Taking Responsibility

Steve Pavlina equates building our personal responsibility to working out with dumbbells. While looking at a set of 40 lb dumbbells might seem like a heavy weight to lift to us, a body builder might think those weights are too light to even bother with.

Therefore, our personal responsibility is more a matter of degree than it is of essence. You can take responsibility for a tiny piece of your life, a larger piece, or you can take responsibility for the whole thing. This is a sliding scale of how much responsibility you’re willing to take, deny, or just blame away on people and situations.

Of course, taking full responsibility is the best option, but a very difficult one if you’re just starting out. A better place to start is with our own bodies, because it’s easier to control what we put into our mouths and how we exercise, and much harder to blame away on other people and circumstances. There may also be addictions, to nicotine, caffeine, etc. which we can take responsibility and gradually increase our control over. The more we practice personal responsibility, the more we increase our capacity for it, and the more capable and competent we’ll feel in our lives overall.

Steve Pavlina on Relationships

The key to the wonderful relationship between Steve Pavlina and his lovely wife Erin Pavlina is their honest communication. They take a lot of time to communicate and have conversations about the state of their relationship itself. They use the principle of truth to address issues that really matter, along with addressing the needs that are, or aren’t being met. After having such honest conversations, their relationship always comes out on top.

The nature of all human relationships is that they’re temporary. Without considering the spiritual afterlife, it’s a given that all physical relationships end by either a breakup or the natural course of death. When recognizing this truth, Steve Pavlina is able to look at his relationship not as a burden, but as a privilege, and the temporary time with Erin Pavlina becomes much more precious.

One advantage to the Relationship between Steve and Erin Pavlina is that they’re able to spend a lot of time together, due to their work at home arrangement. They have a lot more opportunity to work on the principles of Truth, Love, and Power by asking by consistently asking themselves, “how can we increase the level of truth in the relationship and be more honest with each other?” It’s not uncommon for them to sit down for a couple of hours at a time, and talk about how they’re feeling about the relationship.

I had to ask what this picture perfect couple actually fights about, and it turns out it’s compatibility and unreasonable demands that are sometimes made of each other. Sometimes they’ll ask their partner to meet the needs that the other person is either incapable of, or unwilling to meet. What gets them through this issue is to realize that their relationship isn’t their only means of getting fulfillment of their needs, and that they can have other relationships to meet these specific needs.

Steve Pavlina is a bigger fan of physical outdoor activities than Erina Pavlina. After trying to get her to participate in these activities, which she’s not a fan of, Steve Pavlina realized that it’s much better to get other people that do like these activities to participate with him. For one of his favorite activities, Frisbee Golf, Steve Pavlina enjoys the company of friends, instead of expecting Erin Pavlina to fulfill this pleasure.

Instead of just looking at the need, and asking how can he get it from her, Steve Pavlina asks, “how else can I fulfill this?” He can go off and do things with other people, and this opens the relationship up to not being so exclusive. Steve and Erin Pavlina started out as friends, and shortly thereafter this lead to dating. Their mentality has always been to go to each other to fulfill their “best friend needs”, but it’s difficult for one person to meet all of those, and it’s completely impossible to meet ALL of a persons needs.

Steve Pavlina on Living Consciously

In order to promote living consciously, Steve Pavlina recommends journaling. While Steve Pavlina is a PC, and I’m a Mac, we both use our blogs, and journaling software to journal. The added benefit of journaling software over the ol’ pen and paper is that we can type much faster than we can write, and the software provides password protection for our private thoughts. The software is also searchable, and date-oriented, which allows us to easily find certain themes, or find out what we were thinking at a certain time in our life.

Writing down, and then reviewing our thoughts is an excellent aid to living consciously. The usual way that we think thoughts in our head is in a linear pathway, as we jump through one thought to the next in a repeating cycle. In written form, we’re able to go back and track our line of thought in order to get a birds eye perspective.

This look at our thoughts, and thought patterns allows you to see the big picture of what your thinking is and where it’s taking you. You can do exercises where you look at certain thoughts that lead to dead ends, and make a conscious decision to avoid these types of thoughts that just lead you in circles.

It becomes easier to explore new lines of thinking, and to keep track of and see where they will lead you. Some of Steve Pavlina’s thoughts inspire him to write articles, while others lead him to procrastinate. Journaling allows him to choose more thoughts that are productive the next time around. This whole process gives you an awareness of your own mental processes and allows you to examine how they’re affecting you.

Steve Pavlina on Blogging

Narrow niche blog topics are a no-no for Steve Pavlina. He managed to succesfully avoid this when he started the Steve Pavlina blog, which is a general personal development blog. Writing about specifics such as “time management and productivity, fixing your car, and real-estate,” is something that is exhaustible and could lead to boredom.

Once you outgrow a subject in your niche, you become bored, which is easy to do after you’ve written a thousand articles or so on the subject and developed it very well. Such limitation can stun your growth, which is what happened to Steve Pavlina after 10 years of running his games business. He started thinking about another niche site to start, but realized that he didn’t want to be a serial-entrepreneur that consistently picks up and changes projects.

Steve Pavlina wanted to build something permanent, so he decided to start a site about growth itself so he could never outgrow it. Personal development, to Steve Pavlina, is not a niche, rather it is a focus. A way of looking at life that allows the site to follow Steve Pavlina wherever he went. In a way, it became a vehicle of self-expression.

Steve Pavlina: Future Projects

Concentrating on one major project at a time is a great productivity tool, which is why Steve Pavlina aims to finish the Juice Feast before starting anything new. In the future, Steve Pavlina is looking to expand into other media. He’s currently enjoying a lot of professional public speaking, which allows him to be more expressive, so he’s looking into online video to supplement the written content on his website.

In the meantime, Steve Pavlina has been doing some research into the art of video, and palying around with making and editing sample videos. Eventually there will be videos on the Steve Pavlina site, and I would love to see a Steve Pavlina personal growth DVD product in the future as well.

Steve Pavlina: Final Word of Wisdom

Growth is just about the most intelligent thing that we can do in our lives. Instead of focusing on being perfect and living up to some impractical ideal, we can just focus on making our life a little bit better each day. Bring a little more awareness, and get a little more truth injected into our life. Connect a little bit more with what you want, and start disconnecting from what you don’t want in your life. Work on building some of your power and self-discipline.

Each day, take a little bit more action. While perfection is not an attainable ideal, growth is very attainable and accessible to all. Focus on growth, because it makes for a really great life. Working on growth, on a daily basis, will create a major change in your life 5 years from now. So much so that you won’t even recognize who you are today. Your life will be much better then, and the process of getting there will be very enjoyable as well.

More Steve Pavlina

• Personal Development for Smart People Website
• Personal Development for Smart People Book
• Steve Pavlina Happiness Project Interview
• Steve Pavlina on Twitter

Enjoy the podcast and feel free to leave feedback in the comment box below, as well as who you would like to see on future shows.. Next week I have an interview all set to go with John Chow; subscribe so you don’t miss it.

Attention: Don’t forget to download my free ebook, How to Get a Girlfriend!!

In this interview Dan and Jennifer from www.AskDanAndJennifer.com tell us how they started their online relationship media empire. They tell us how they’ve managed a safe and comfortable place for people from all over the world to ask and get answers for their most personal sex-love-relationship related questions.

Our friends also discuss their unorthodox relationship that is 9.5 years difference in age between the two of them with Jennifer being the older of the two. They also go into quite some detail about safe sex, to the point where I accuse Dan of working for Trojan/Lifestyles!

The dating-duo discuss the tipping point of their site taking off, as well as their amazing success on YouTube with their dating question and answer sessions. I then ask them the tough question of what will happen to AskDanAndJennifer if Dan and Jennifer break up!

If you’re currently dating, or interested in improving your already existing relationship, check out my free ebook, How To Get A Girlfriend.

Enjoy the podcast and feel free to leave feedback in the comment box below. I’d like to know if there is anyone you would like me to interview for future podcasts.

Attention: Don’t forget to download my free ebook, How to Get a Girlfriend!!

“According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”
~Jerry Seinfeld

Important Bonus Information: This program officially launched last week, and all the bonuses were sold out after just two days, however, if you do want to get the great bonuses that come with the program, read the instructions at the bottom of this article.

If you’ve ever dreamed of possessing the ability to stand in front of a large group of people and have them listen, laugh, and clap then you aren’t alone. This is both the dream, and the worst fear of most people around the world.

No matter what anyone is going to tell you, being a world class public speaker is going to take some intense practice, failing, fixing, and practicing some more. You’re going to end up reading a lot of books on the subject, talking to a lot of people who may or may not be any good, and then putting together what actually makes sense in order to develop a routine and style for yourself.

Imagine not having to read hundreds of books on the subject, not talking to people that are going to steer you wrong with bad advice, and taking a short cut to getting the best possible information that you can. Disclaimer: This is not a substitute for practice. It’s the best information that will enable you to practice more effectively.

On With Get Applause Now

What you get with the Get Applause Now package is 4.5 hours of mp3 audio, a 64 page Get Applause Now pdf ebook, and video coaching sessions. The mp3 files are as follows:

• How To Write A Winning Speech (mp3)
• Free to Fee (How To Get Paid For Public Speaking) (mp3)
• Humor 101 (mp3)
• Get Applause Now (pdf)
• 10 weekly videos coaching you on public speaking

Who Made Get Applause Now

Get Applause Now is a collaboration between Andrew Rondeau and Darren LaCroix. They join forces to bring you this all inclusive public speaking program.

Andrew has spent the last 25 years as a Manager / Leader, and has worked and managed in numerous large companies and different types of business including Manufacturing, Retail, IT and Financial, managing teams from 10 individuals to 1000!

Darren LaCroix is the 2001 world champion of public speaking. He achieved this title by out speaking 25,000 professional speakers from 14 countries. He now spends his time public speaking, doing stand up, and coaching people in public speaking. The great thing is that Darren was not always a charismatic guy that owned the stage. He once was very timid, disorganized to the point that he would mess up reading flash cards on stage, and hardly got any laughs except when they were in leu of his mess ups.

I think it’s amazing that he was able to pull himself back on stage after being so bad. I think it’s also very good for us that he had to learn the hard way, because he’s able to be a great coach due to his systematic way of teaching himself.

Purchase Get Applause Now

How To Write A Winning Speech

This is a bit of a teaser of what this audio file has to offer. There’s much more useful information within. I really liked how the information is presented. It’s very easy to understand, and welcoming as it is in the form of a dialogue between two world champions of public speaking. They both share their special formulas for how to best accomplish the items I’ve outlined below. This is by far not all that is included, but meant to be a taste before you go on a buy the full version for yourself.

1. How to create a main message — a premise that the rest of our speech will be based on.
2. The most important part of a presentation — the thought process of the listener.
3. Organizing your speech
4. Tie your entire speech together
5. Organizing how you’ll use stage space in your speech
6. Winning speech formulas from 2 world champs
7. Formula for how to focus between yourself and listeners
8. How to open a speech and keep the audience captivated
9. Formulas for getting a laugh from your audience
10. Creating vivid images for your audience
11. The proper ways to get feedback on your speech
12. Defining the “cherry tree” effect
13. and much more!

Humor 101

I’m really excited about the humor mp3. I have a bit of a dry sense of humor, partly because I assume that people will understand the back story, or make the link to what I mean (or maybe I’m just too brilliant for my own good?) This mp3 helps me to set up situations better, and deliver more clearly, so that at the end of the day I’m not the only one laughing.

1. Coming up with original humor
2. Observational/Situational humor
3. Story files for humor
4. How to set up an audience
5. How to build expectation
6. The rule of 3
7. Expectations versus Exaggerations
8. Using tragedies for humor
9. and much more!

Free to Fee

1. How to Inventory your assets and liabilities
2. Speaking for free to generate sales leads
3. Finding a fund to sponsor your speaking
4. Using interviews to leverage yourself
5. Creating a one-sheet of talents
6. Finding the right audience
7. Joining party planning groups
8. The books and websites that will help you convert
9. and much more!

Purchase Get Applause Now

Here’s another video of Darren LaCroix speaking about the
number one thing that helped him get to the top.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bonuses

I know Andrew, he is a good friend of mine. Last week he launched this new fantastic product, Get Applause Now! with a fantastic offer, which was sold out after only 2 days.

But…I have twisted Andrew’s arm to make you a very special offer for the next 72 hours only.

For the next 72 hours only, when you purchase Get Applause Now!, Andrew will personally send you the link for you to have private access to all the extra bonuses for no added cost.

So simply go to this link order the basic course and get all the extra 5 bonuses free…but only if you order within the next 72 hours.

And The Bonuses Are…

• Body Language Magic. An excellent ebook that will not only teach you to read other people’s body language, but how to improve what your own body says about you.
• Powerful Ways to Sharpen Your Memory. This ebook is full of tips and tricks on how to have a better memory.
• Unleash the Creative You. Creativity is one of the fundamental principles of success, and with this ebook you’ll learn how to unleash some of the creativity that’s naturally within you.
• Improve Public Speaking (Subliminal NLP). This audio system allows you to improve your public speaking skills by using affirmations, calming music, and binaural beats for a trifecta of improvement.

Parting Words

Get Applause Now is a great self-study system, there’s no doubt about that. It’s all inclusive, and can either be used all my itself, or in conjunction with other speaking systems. It’s true that nothing beats experience, especially when it comes to public speaking, but I say why reinvent the wheel.

You’ll still have to practice in front of people, that’s for sure, but this will drastically cut your learning curve as well as give you the need to know info on public speaking that would take you ages to gather on your own.The best part is that it’s available for instant download and there’s a 100% -60 day- money back guarantee if you aren’t satisfied (you can’t go wrong with that offer).

Purchase Get Applause Now

Attention: Don’t forget to download my free ebook, How to Get a Girlfriend!!

I didn’t take this pledge lightly and gave it my all. I realize my week 1 weight loss is pretty unbelievable, and I’m pleasantly surprised myself. It feels as if toxic and fat just melted off my body. I’ve been staring at myself in the mirror everyday this week, so it’s hard for me to see all the details (I’m the dummy that didn’t take a before picture), but I’m starting to see more ribs for sure.

I also see a big difference in physical endurance. I just shred it up in spin class and on the treadmill these past couple of days with a new found energy and endurance.

Cheating

I guess you want to know if I followed all my guidelines from the previous article. No. I didn’t manage to pull off every single step flawlessly, even though I tried over and over again. The only cheating I did as far as food choices was to eat 1 piece of multigrain-raisen-nut bread with a thin layer of hummus during Saturday’s lunch, and a Chai from Panera later that afternoon.

My water-fast lasted 25 hours, from 4pm Saturday to 5pm Sunday. As I mentioned on Twitter, my first meal after the fast was Kefir and a serving of strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. Right after this meal my heart started to beat really quickly and my belly hurt, so I took a nap. First thing Monday morning at spin class I had more energy than I’ve ever had in my life — I felt like the incredible hulk.

Active vs. Passive Weight Loss

After going through one week of my weight loss plan I realized that some things are easier to keep than others, depending on your physical abilities and inner core of motivation.

Let’s take drinking 1 gallon of water per day. This was definitely a very active task. The first day I tried to do this I was peeing every 3 minutes and at one point, and for a duration for 5 minutes, I felt my kidney’s begin to hurt from all the peeing. That sucked. So I toned it down but drank as close to 1 gallon as I possibly could each day — find your own sweet spot for this and then go a little further.

Not eating after 7pm is more of a passive way to lose weight. It’s no skin off my back if I skip a meal because I couldn’t get my food in on time. It just means a couple hours of hunger before bed, but an extra enjoyment of food in the morning. I’ve actually come to enjoy hunger throughout this week. I don’t eat until I’m full, not even close, and that keeps me alert and energized throughout the day.

Chewing food started out as an active procedure where I had to actively count to 30 (or until the food was liquid) during every bite. However, after about 4 days I started to eat without remembering the count, and as soon as I took the first bite I started counting, and only when I got to about 10 I realized what I was counting — it became a habit quite quickly.

Not having sweets has been a passive experience for me. I haven’t put myself in many situations where I’ve been tempted by the sweets, and I’ve been either at the internship, work, or with family during the week. The first 2 don’t serve sweets, and the last one knows not to offer — makes it much easier.

For the most part I’ve had salad, or fruit salad as last meal, except one time where I had a piece of grilled chicken and beans. I felt like my body needed some extra protein because my legs were sore longer than usual after my last spin class.

Exceptions

Not making exceptions in the rules for yourself has to be the number one way to reach your goal. When you sit down to make your goals, with an educated and highly conscious idea of the journey that is required in order to get there, you put some good rules together. Once you start breaking them you leave the door open for more breaches to come. Each time you breach, it becomes easier and easier to breach again. The best thing I’ve noticed is to be harder on yourself than anybody else will be.

People around me keep saying that I look great at my current weight, and there’s no reason to lose more. Others say that I’m losing weight too fast, and that it’s “not good.” That doesn’t phaze me because I have a plan and I’m sticking to it!

Expectations

While I did lose more than half my goal weight in one-third of the time, I do realize that it’s now going to be harder. The first weight consisted of water — since I started drinking so much water my body stopped retaining it and thus I lost a few lbs of stored water. There was also some extra toxic, and the first level of easy to lose fat.

I expect that it will be harder for me to lose the last 8.5 lbs. However, harder is just a relative term. With this much weight already off, and these healthy nutritious meals energizing me and allowing me to train longer and harder, I expect that my boosted metabolism will continue to burn the fat and I’ll have no trouble reaching me target.

Your Chance To Build Me

Since I’m well on my way to reaching my 20 lb weight loss for the month of October I’m going to need another goal. If I don’t get another goal, I’m going to be at risk for getting bored, losing motivation, and reverting back to bad habits. This is where you come in!

You build the perfect machine. I’m pretty open to which direction you, my smart and beautiful readers, want me to go. I’m currently at 183.5 lbs. The doctor recommended weight for my height is approximately 160. Should I keep dropping weight, set a fitness goal, maintain my current weight, or do you have something else in mind for me? Share in the comments below!

Attention: Don’t forget to download my free ebook, How to Get a Girlfriend!!

From the onset of the summer I have been feeling very impulsive and have cultivated a wide array of unhealthy food habits. This month I’m pledging to go from 195 lbs to 175 lbs, and I’m going to do it by NOT thinking.

Although I run a self-improvement blog, I’m just as susceptible to falling into bad habits as everyone else. However, I think I have more exposure and opportunity to become aware of my mistakes and to correct them before they become detrimental and leave me with regret (and if you take on journaling you will have the very same opportunity).

I’m 5’8″ and currently weighed in at 195 lbs, the largest weight I’ve been in my life. With my body structure, it’s impossible to tell that I weigh this much. The weight is evenly distributed throughout my body with some large deposits on my thighs. I think I look like I weigh 170 lbs (my spin class instructor told me I look like I weigh 160 lbs yesterday), so I was a slightly surprised at the scale. While I have been exercising almost every day, I doubt that most of this extra weight is new muscle — it has to be fat.

I gained this weight mindlessly. I removed every single restriction that I have had on eating and indulged in in breads, pastries, cookies, cakes, and ice cream and gorged on food until I couldn’t move. The way I’m going to lose this weight will be mindlessly as well. I’ll do it be setting up fool-proof restrictions and guidelines that will get me to my target weight, if I do nothing more than follow them.

I’m at a higher state of awareness while I am writing this article. I’m thinking clearly and have a definite and measurable goal in mind for this weight loss project. Tomorrow morning I might very well find myself in a low state of consciousness and awareness and be very liable to make a wrong decision. With this system, all the decisions are being made now; now all I have to do is stick to them.

Today is October 1st. My goal is to lose 20 lbs in 31 days and weigh 175 lbs on November 1st. The reason I want to lose this weight is so that I can be healthier, more energetic and more focused on my work.

11 Mindless Eating Habits for Skinny Robots

1. Drink 1 Gallon of Water Daily. This is a lot, but I believe it is the right amount. I haven’t been drinking this much liquid recently, let alone this much water. However, it will quench my thirst and keep my stomach full and unlikely to desire more food. I’m going to be peeing a lot the first week!
2. One Cup of Water Before Snacking. With a gallon of water going into me every day I’ll naturally be drinking water before everything. However, the point is that if I feel hunger, I will first drink a cup of water and wait 10 minutes, so that I can make sure I was hungry and not thirsty — the body has a way of confusing the two sometimes.
3. Sunday Fasting. For the next month I don’t have any work scheduled on Sunday. There are 4 Sundays in the month of October, so this means I will be doing a full water fast 4 times. (Read about all the benefits of fasting.)
4. No sweets. Let’s define what I mean by sweets. Cookies, candies, cakes, pastries, chocolates, ice creams and anything else with sugar in it that isn’t a fruit. I’ve already mentioned that I’ll be drinking nothing but water, which automatically removes all the high-carb and high-sugar beverages such as sodas and juices.
5. 3 hours before bed, meal cut off. Having a sleeping routine is awesome for getting all our body processes synchronized and optimized. I’d like to say that I’ll be in bed by 10pm each night, but I know I’ll have to be flexible on this one, especially on weekends. Regardless, I’m going to treat 10pm as bed time, and as such I’m going to make 7pm the last moment to get a piece of food into my mouth for the day.
6. Last meal salad only. It would be silly of me to make a last meal cutoff time and gorge on large amounts of food. That stuff would just sit in my stomach overnight and make me fat! I’m going to keep the last meal a light salad, and allow my stomach to go through a nightly fasting and detox period.
7. Fruit snacks. If I get hungry between meals the only choice is a fruit snack. Apples, pears, strawberries, and blueberries often make their way into my house and I’ll either be eating them straight, or blending them together with a few greens.
8. 30 chews per bite. My biggest problem with food is that I eat way too quickly. I’ve had this bad food habit ever since I could remember. I guess I have a large mouth, so I can basically inhale food without chewing if I wanted to. This is bad because I’m not grinding down the food enough to give it maximal surface area for digestion. For the next month I will be chewing each bite of food 30 times or until it’s liquid — whatever comes first.
9. Daily 30. Regardless of my exercise habits, I’m going to take a 30 minute walk with my iPod. I’m not going to create a rule that I’m going to jog during this walk, but it will be a brisk walk to get my heart rate up.
10. Daily cardio. I might not be able to make it to the gym everyday, but that’s not going to stop me from doing a daily cardio session. Twice a week my gym has 6am spin class, which is 45 minutes of intense bike cardio. Otherwise, I’m going to either run 30 minutes, ellyptical 30 minutes, or do a session of urban rebounder.
11. Eat only when hungry, except breakfast. I’m going to be a stickler for eating breakfast first thing in the morning or right after my morning workout routine, whether I’m hungry or not. It’s important to get the food in me early in order to start up my metabolism and keep my brain full of energy. However, for the remainder of the day I’ll only eat when I’m hungry, and not a bite more.

In addition to my daily cardio exercises, a friend of mine who is a professional personal trainer is going to show me two great morning routines. One for upper body, and one for lower body, so I can alternate them every day. This will be less time consuming, and more effective than whatever I can think up on my own and is geared toward having a lean Christian Bale (in American Psycho) type body.

I’m glad I put on the extra pounds (no regrets)! With all the changes that have been going on in my life lately, this gives me an excellent outlet to concentrate on as I move forward in my mission to take over the… ehh never mind!

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“There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.”
~Woody Allen

Effects of ‘Bad’ Sleep

1. Problems Concentrating
2. Slow Metabolism
3. Low energy levels, fatigue
4. Irritability, behavioral problems
5. Infections
6. Blurred Vision

Cures for Sleeplessness

The truth is that every person has a very unique biological clock and circadian rhythm. I can outline some helpful tips for you, but essentially it will be up to you to find your ideal medium, the amount of hours you need to sleep, and the best sleeping conditions for you. These tips are geared towards the general public and if you’re a bat that needs to sleep upside down I’m not sure there’s anything we can do to help you except turn off the lights!

“Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.”
~Thomas Dekker

1. Don’t Go To Sleep. It might seem counter-intuitive that an article about getting quality sleep would tell you not to go to sleep. What I’m referring to is going to sleep before you feel tired. This causes a pointless waste of time, during which we lay in bed dreading the wakefulness. The key is to wait until we’re feeling drowsy, and think we’ll be able to fall asleep within the next 15 minutes or so.

2. Cool Room Temperature. Nothing makes sleeping harder than obnoxiously high temperatures. If you’re in a hot area, get yourself an A/C or a fan. If it’s winter and your heating system if super high, crack open the window just enough to cool your room — Then snuggle under those blankets and pass right out!

• I find it helps to wear socks to sleep as to not let out any body temperature through this vulnerable limb.

3. All Day Hydration. Make sure you drink plenty of water throughout the day. This will replenish and invigorate every cell in your body, speeding up your metabolism, and restoring your natural body cycles. You may want to tone down the water drinking towards the evening if you have a weak bladder.

• Stay away from sodas, concentrated juices, coffee, and other caffeinated and sugary beverages. They overwhelm your digestive and circulatory systems as well as throw off your natural cycles (including the sleep cycle!).

4. Ease Your Mind. Our world is so full of stimulation, from hard work, internet surfing, games, great conversations, children, and the stresses of life. This could lead us to think too rapidly and be too anxious in order to fall asleep. It helps to ease our mind for at least 30 minutes before going to bed.

• Play music that is soft and repetitive, such as classical, or perhaps some background white noise.
• Schedule tomorrow. This will help relax your mind because you won’t be worrying about remembering what’s important.
• Take it easy. Do not do work, listen to fast music, watch tv, or exercise close to bedtime as it will keep you up-and-atom!
• Read. It helps to have some easy reading (no textbooks!) such as fiction in order to engage your mind in an interesting story. As soon as you feel the drowsiness setting in you can just put the book down and roll over into bed.

5. Sleep in the fetal position. When in doubt refer to the small, untainted and pure among us — kids. They’re naturally inclined to sleep in the fetal position, and doctors would agree that it’s the healthiest position from proper spinal alignment. This means you’ll be able to sleep comfortably, see what kids are doing.

6. The Lap of Luxury. If you’re going to spend money on something expensive, or treat yourself in any way, consider making the first treat one which will improve your life — the gift of comfortable and luxurious sleep. Get yourself an expensive mattress with memory foam, and some high-thread count sheets, and day dream about going to sleep all day. The truth is, if you’re exhausted enough it won’t matter where you fall asleep, but the quality of your sleep depends largely on the mattress.

7. Take Naps. If you feel lethargic or drowsy in the middle of the day, take this opportunity to nap for 30-60 minutes, but no more. Napping will actually train your body to quickly enter deep sleep — a skill you’ll be able to use in the evenings. Be careful not to nap later in the day, or too close to your bedtime, as the extra rest may keep you from falling asleep quickly.

8. Soak Up The Sun. Our brains have a center known as the supra-chiasmatic nucleus (SCN) that controls many aspects of our metabolism, such as body temperature and hormones. This area of our brain is triggered by the amount of sunlight we get. Experiencing sun first thing in the morning releases melatonin, increases our body temperature, and generally makes us more alert. It’s important to get a sufficient amount of sunlight during the day, in order to keep the sleep-wake cycle functioning correctly.

9. Known Yourself. Whether it’s nature vs. nurture, or genetics vs. habit, it’s very important to get to know your own sleeping patterns and how they fluctuate with the seasons. You can do this by experimenting with when you go to sleep, when you rise, and how many hours you sleep per night. Also, experiment with different variations of nap times. Once you find the sweet spot of your sleeping cycle you can get back to this happy-medium whenever you want.

• Schedule. Keeping a strict schedule is a huge benefit to having great quality sleep. If you’re in school, or work a 9-5 job, you’re already benefiting from a set schedule (as long as you don’t mess it up by staying up way too late).
• Freelancers. As a freelancer you may design your own schedule as you see fit. This has the pros of flexibility, but the cons of no set schedule. Even if you don’t have anyone to answer to, see if you can create a schedule where you sleep, eat, and exercise at the same time each day in order to boost your circadian rhythm and get great quality sleep.
• Web workers. The computer monitor does not count as sunlight. This means that if you’re cooped up in front of a computer all day long, you’re going to have to pull yourself away and get some sun.

10. Avoid Alarm Scare. It’s never good to be scared out of your sleep by a noisy alarm clock. Sure it does the job by waking you up, but it scares you in the process. I recommend waking up the way nature intended — with the sun. Obviously this isn’t always possible depending on living conditions and when we actually have to rise. Luckily there is a solution.

• Biobrite Sunrise Clock. This clock brings the sunlight to you, no matter where you are, and no matter what time.

11. Perfect Bedtime Foods. It’s important to eat (or not eat) the proper foods before bedtime.

• Low Glycemic. Having a small amount of low glycemic foods before bed will allow your body to mildly digest and keep the energy reserves from depleting. Often leading to a better, more refreshing sleep.
• Gassy Foods. Whatever you’re intolerant to, whether it be milk, red meat, or beans, avoid these foods before bed. An upset gassy stomach is a sure way to stay awake at night.

Common Sleep Myths

When it comes to myths about sleeping, ignorance is not bliss. It’s important to dispel some of these urban legends in order to avoid making decisions based on wrong information.

1. Sleep More If You’re Tired. If you’re already getting the recommended amount of sleep each night, and you feel tired on top of that, you shouldn’t necessarily seek more sleep to remedy the fatigue. You might have a medical condition that is preventing you from getting high-quality sleep, eating an unhealthy diet, or not exercising enough during the day. You might even be depressed. Try to find the real source of fatigue instead of sleeping away your day.
2. Sleep More On Weekends. Many of us have a hectic week schedule and we make the mistake of sleeping off the weekly sleep deprivation during the weekends. This is a poor decision because it alters the regular sleeping schedule and come Monday you’ll have to readjust once again, becoming susceptible to more low-quality sleep.
3. Lost Sleep? No Problem! People think that running on less sleep, in order to get more done, won’t have a huge toll on them. On the contrary, a chronic sleep deprivation can cause serious illnesses as well as lower our metabolism and certain cognitive abilities. It might seem like you have more hours in the day, but you won’t be getting as much done!
4. Sleep Less When You’re Older. I often hear older people say that with age you do not need to sleep as much. This is true when you go from being an infant to an adult, but between different stages of adulthood you need the same exact amount of sleep. If you’re older, and you can’t sleep as many hours as you used to, you should seek medical advice as to the cause of this problem.
5. Turkey Makes You Sleepy. True enough, turkey contains tryptophan, but there are very comparable levels of this amino acid in other meats and poultry. I think the problem lies in the fact that most people heavily overeat on thanksgiving (as well as have some alcohol on top), and as you know over eating often leads to lethargy.
6. Snoring Does Not Reflect Sleep Problems. This may not necessarily be true. One should look into the sources of sleeping. If sleep apnea or another sleeping disorder is the culprit, then it is essential to treat this sleep-quality-destroying and possibly fatal disorder.

What To Do Upon Waking

The last thing we want to do as soon as we wake up is think. The best way to remedy that is to work up a morning routine that we can stick to and execute without hesitation. Here are some ideas from my own morning routine.

“If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.”
~Dale Carnegie

1. Take Notes. Some of our best ideas, and more exclusive stories come to us during our slumber. Unfortunately, just moments after we wake we become preoccupied with life and lose all recollection of what our dreams had in store for us. By keeping a small note book by our bed side we are able to capture some of these great ideas before they have a chance to whisk away.
2. Drink Water. There’s nothing better than a glass of water to restart the metabolism after about 8 hours of fasting and hibernation.
3. Exercise. Within the first hour or so of waking up proves to be the best time to exercise. Exercise maxes out and restores your energy levels, so that you can go through the day at full power without even needing a cup of coffee.
4. Read. It’s easy to get sidetracked on our self-improvement goals, such as reading, but by adding as little as 30 minutes of reading time to our morning routine we are able to learn and grow on auto-pilot and make leaps and bounds in our reading goals.

Additional Resources

• Sleeping Fun. Take this seven question sleep-survey in order to see how deep you’ve dug yourself into the insomniac hole. It’s quick and fun so you have nothing to lose.
• Sleeping Aid. If after trying this advice you still have a hard time falling asleep, then I recommend you try out the End Tiredness Program. It has proven, expert supported tools to get you into tip-top sleeping shape in no time.
• Meditative Audio. Not only will meditating help you feel more calm throughout your day, but listening to a soothing voice is more certainly very instrumental to dozing off peacefully. For this I recommend Inner Peace Audio by Adam Kayce.

“Sleep is pain’s easiest salve, and doth fulfill all the offices of death, except to kill”
~John Donne

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I’ve previously defined happiness as:

“Happiness is being the creator of your experience, choosing to take pleasure in what you have, right now, regardless of the circumstances, while being the best you that you can be.”

I still stand by this definition. I believe that we make happiness for ourselves by deciding what it is that we’ll choose to take pleasure in. Today’s mussar (self-improvement) class with Rabbi Noach Orlowek provided me with some impressive insights.

Danger of Happiness

Rabbi Orlowek pointed out that “Happiness as a goal can be very dangerous.” If chocolate is what makes you happy, which is perfectly reasonable, and you have diabetes, then chocolate will kill you. It’s understandable why you would keep eating the chocolate, because you’ve impressed upon yourself that this, for you, is happiness, and why bother living if you cannot be happy?

There are plenty of examples in which happiness can be detrimental to your health and to many other aspects of your life. Just think cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs. Such things may give you extreme sensations of pleasure and may make you happy. You may not want to live without this happiness, but what may happen is that you will literally not live if you indulge and experience some very bad luck.

The very same concept applies to mind, body, and soul. Some people might say video games make them happy, some might say pornography, or television, or any other wide array of things. Some of those sources might be ambiguous as to their harm/benefits, and others may very clearly stand out as bad, but you’ll do them anyway.

Happiness: An Asset, Not A Goal

When we look at happiness as a goal to achieve, we leave ourselves open to some detrimental decisions as to what we’ll allow to pass as happiness. If we look at happiness as an asset, something that gives us energy, and puts us in a great mood, then we will be able to use this asset of energy in order to accomplish our real goals.

Take my goal for instance; to operate with the greatest good of all in mind. This goal requires that I build myself up as a person, meaning that I grow, and then it requires me to share this knowledge and facilitate the growth and improvement of others, to the best of my abilities.

It’s an extra challenge to be writing about self-improvement, and for people to take me seriously, if I can’t even make my own self happy. However, being a happy guy, I can fill myself with happy energy and pass it right along to someone that I’m talking to (and maybe even to you through my writing).

This makes happiness a great tool, but not the ultimate goal. Thus, it can be dangerous to constantly seek more and more happiness, especially when the things that make us happy may be causing us to be self-destructive.

Create Happiness in Meaningful Things

If it’s meaningful to you, it will make you happy. If this assumption or theory is in fact true, then it’s very important for us to put meaning into truly positive things. If it makes you happy to compliment someone, improve their life, or to give of yourself in some way, than you’ll always be happy at the benefit of improving the world.

If happiness means making more money, even if it means ruining other people’s livelihoods, then you might be in a zero-sum situation, in which your plus is another persons minus. Here, your goal of happiness isn’t a positive contribution to the world.

If you put meaning into all the wonderful ways in which you can contribute to the world, and make this meaning positive, then you can harness the happiness tool to enable you to achieve your contribution goal.

Further Reading from Rabbi Noach Orlowek

I’ve had class with Rabbi Orlowek, and he’s a genius. I should be having class with him two or three times a week for the next 9 months. From what I’ve seen, I’ll be quoting him often in the near future, so you can find that information here. In the mean time, feel free to order and read one of his books.

• My Discipline, My Child
• My Child, My Discipline
• Raising Roses Among Thorns

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In our society, a concept like Shomer Negiah seems very strange. Premarital sex and the like has gone from frowned-upon act that was restricted to something of a sport. People use sex to not only feel good sexually, but to feel good about themselves. They look at it as both spoils of a conquest and an ego boost that gives a superficial sense of self-worth.

Touch Exploitation

Although sex is no longer reserved for marriage, love, and intimacy, the concept of the human touch as a powerful force has not slipped through the cracks of our society. For years I’ve read about people exploiting “kino” the warmth and closeness of touch, in order to create an artificial closeness with another human being.

This is often used by people that find a person they are attracted to, in order to magnify this attraction ten-fold and create an intense bond on false pretenses. It’s also used in business and other situations in which forging a bond is of benefit to one party or the other.

I don’t see anything wrong with bonding, creating relationships, or getting close to people. I think relationships of all sorts, shapes, and sizes are what we’re here to explore and experience. However, I believe that the power of touch is so powerful that it can leave us blinded to the true nature and intention of a person, leading us to make bad decisions based on this false “information.”

Hillary Clinton on Shomer Negiah

Rabbi Jonathan Shippel once told me an interesting anecdote. A group of Rabbis had an urgent need to speak with President Bill Clinton. Unfortunately, when they arrived unannounced at the white house, the President was away on business. Luckily for them, the first lady Hillary Clinton was in the office and invited the Rabbis in to hear them out.

When the Rabbis got up to the oval office they were greeted by Mrs. Clinton. It was business as usual, and Mrs. Clinton extended her arm for a handshake, but received a response that she wasn’t expecting. The Rabbi did not give her his hand. She was a bit thrown off, but in order to not embarrass her he immediately jumped in and said “Please do not be offended Mrs. Clinton, but because of our religious beliefs, I do not hold the hand of a member of the opposite sex.”

This ignited and peaked Mrs. Clinton’s curiosity. She immediately wanted to know the nature and reason behind having such a custom. The Rabbi explained that a man saves even the simplest touch for none other than his own wife. Mrs. Clinton responded “Wow, I wish Bill knew about this Shomer Negiah.”

Touching Correctly

In the concept of Shomer Negiah, there is a way to touch correctly; meaning with the best intentions, and with the best goal in mind. This goal is to make each touch more special, more profound, and more exclusive, so that each time you touch you’re enabling a connection on a powerful spiritual level.

1. Dating. Don’t touch during dating. You’ll just manipulate yourself, and drown in the extacy of oxytocin hormones swimming through your bodies, blinded to the fact that you may be dating someone that is less than an ideal fit (or even worse) for you. Date by getting to know if you can relate to the person, if you click, if they’re kind, and if your long term goals align (see non-negotiables of dating).

   Touching not only desensitizes you but actually limits the time that you spend discussing what you really do need to know about your significant other because you inadvertently begin to deem some things unnecessary. The physical connection will feel good regardless of compatibility anyway, and you may experience clouded judgment and make the wrong decision for you. Besides, if you are one who worries about testing the engine before committing, you should know that it is much easier to train a person in sex(the way you may want it), than to turn a perfectly unsuitable spouse into a great one.

2. Business. The most you can do is be conscious, meaning keep a watchful eye, for people that are overly touchy-feely during business encounters. If there are two equal deals, why do you pick one person over another, and why would you pick a lesser deal with one person (touch perhaps?).

   Physically proximity may give you the impression that you have a bond with this person, though no such thing really exists. You can do something more, by limiting your handshakes to people of the opposite sex only. Make sure you don’t offend them, and send them over to this article if you need to for explanations, or just tell them what you learned here.

3. Marriage. Shomer Negiah coincides very well with the idea of family purity in Judaism. During the week of a women’s menstrual flow, and the week after, the couple does not touch. This allows for the human need for withdrawal/reconnection to happen monthly by creating a small physical space. No sex, no touching, and if you have a small bed you can sleep in separate ones.

   This allows the reconnection, after two weeks, to feel a honeymoon all over again.I’m not saying you can’t have a perfectly healthy relationship without this rule, or that with this rule everything will be perfect in your relationship, but it does solve a very important issue. Everyone lives by withdrawal/reconnection as sure as there is gravity, and some couples tend to create spiritual, intellectual, and emotional distance, or create fights just so there can be a makeup session. By creating this small physical space, you can enjoy each other, and grow closer at the same time.

The Magic Touch

I recommend reading The Magic Touch: A Candid Look at the Jewish Approach To Relationships by Gila Manolson (Link 1 – Link 2). The book goes into great detail into to the “why” of Shomer Negiah and brings these concepts to life with not only her personal story but stories of her students, as well as biblical examples. I’m looking forward to meeting Mrs. Manolson in Har Nof, Jesusalem if the opportunity should present itself.

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It seems that we are always searching for what is sensible, logical, and politically correct. The older we become, the more such formalities encompass our thoughts and, surely, become us—our identities and traits are unshakable, arguably as they were, have been, and always will be.

Perhaps that is why children are often advised by their elder counterparts to discontinue their illogical, irrelevant pursuits through the utmost peeks of their imagination, in favor of what we believe is “realistic”. Children are silenced, their questions ignored, and their brilliance shunned, for truly they are living in the real world and they are yet unaware of this.

My parents had come home to me and told me about their friends’ undisciplined children. “They kept asking all of these unwarranted questions! The parents didn’t even stop them!”, and yet they did not fail to mention how smart they thought the children were, how observant, how expressive. Though they were not disciplined in the conventional sense, their unmitigated ability to speak and to ask had manifested the most profound capabilities in the realm of self expression. For when children are hushed, they limit their questions to necessities. They reject abstractions to please us, but what they are completely unaware of is that so many of us are hitting the snooze button every morning, hoping to avoid the kind of pathetic reality that we are forcing on them!

But this approach is condemnation. What is it with us and our desire to complicate the world? Why is it that fun is equivalent to unproductive and productive consists of what is un-fun?

And haven’t we all been there? Haven’t we felt so alive drawing, singing, dancing, acting, and listening to some half witted grownup telling us that we must stick to those ways of the world that they think they know so well?

So why are children so happy and grownups so miserable? Surely they do not have to pay the bills, watch what they eat, and be independent, but when was the last time YOU looked out the window and just found the deepest pleasure in seeing a squirrel, fluffy and nimble, or knelt down to pick a flower in the springtime. When we find ourselves so concerned with everything else, we forget that once these were the phenomena of our waking days. Why should we be the arbiters of their desensitization when so much what they employ can help us so greatly?

“Grown-ups can never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to have to explain things to them always and forever” ~ Antoine de Saint Exupéry (The Little Prince)

So what is it that we can learn from children? To name a few things:

1. They are happy to get up in the morning

I have a question for you. When was the last time you stayed up and watched the sun rise? Last summer I remember sitting with my two best friends, watching the sun rise, and feeling so alive. It is a brand new day and a brand new you. Who knows what the day may bring? Don’t miss out on all of the amazing opportunities before you, and take them with gratitude.

2. They do not want to go to sleep at night

Just like the morning, the night has its wonderful mysteries and romantic stories. Whether you spend some time with your family, take a bubble bath, or make love to your spouse, do not go straight to sleep all the time.

3. They play games!

Yes, they love to pretend, and somehow, it always works for them. They live a new life every day, and that life is what they choose to make of it. We can think of life as anything, there is no ultimate truth. When was the last time you played hide and seek without getting frustrated? I did today with my phone! Make little mishaps into games!

4. They know that they don’t know everything…they always ask questions

Stop being Mr. Knowitall. You don’t.

5. They take pleasure in the little things.

I think that at one point we stop thinking of getting treats as exciting ventures. Why? Probably because everything, including ice cream is so accessible. Make it a point to limit such commodities in order to really feel their value. Don’t eat your favorite unhealthy food for a week and then go get it. It will be so great!

6. They appreciate the big things that we seem to ignore.

The seasons, for instance. Could you imagine how amazing it is when a child sees snow for the first time? And the next? And children long for the glistening snow to make angels, the sparkling rain in which they play, the sunny days that they can spend outside in the park. Don’t ignore the child within, and stare in amazement the next time you encounter one of nature’s pleasures.

And remember, adults are just big children.

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Whether or not we know it or like it, customer service is a great part of everyone’s life. Even if one does not own a business or provide services to others, we are constantly selling ourselves into whatever it is that we want to pursue.

Truly successful people are master manipulators in their field; at least that’s what most people would attest to. They sit and strategize for hours, plotting their way to their clients’ satisfaction. If success is a function of manipulation, then what is manipulation, anyway? A warm smile? An occasional joke? Making a client feel that his or her needs are important? That may be manipulation in its own right, but we may just as easily conclude that those are all merely attempts to create lasting and fulfilling relationships with clients.

Unfortunately, we tend to embrace the bad manipulation as much as we do the good. This can mean twisting the truth, delivering below reasonable expectations, and selling out to something outside of our personal values. Fortunately, many people can see through this.

What are you left with when you remove the white lies, evil tactics, and unethical behavior? The answer is — real tactics that work. If you manipulate without performance, you will not only loose the clients that you already have, but you will relieve yourself of those potential clients that supportive and satisfied clients refer.

“The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best, but legendary”.
~Sam Walton

10 Pretty “Ploys” To Very Happy Clients

1. Be honest.

When it comes to great customer service, honesty is key. It is one situation when something legitimately goes awry, and an entirely different one when you anticipate that your promises will not equal your performance. Keep in mind that your most important clients are the ones that you are already serving.

You want them to continue to do business with you and to tell others that you are a person of your word, not an eloquent fraud.

2. Be accessible.

Be sure to give your client all of your contact information so that you can be reached at any point in your correspondence. Many clients worry, especially when it comes to their money. You must be there to reassure them that you are creating the best possible experience for them.

3. Be respectful.

Treat all people, regardless of their job, race, age or status, with the utmost respect. Whether you are working with the CEO of a very prominent company, or a cleaning lady, you should respect their time and their concerns. It is alright to disagree, but a professional must think with clear arguments in mind and be able to present those arguments readily.

Never mock or belittle your clients, and always keep what is supposed to be confidential, confidential.

4. Meet deadlines with quality work.

This is the stuff that testimonials are made of. When you a customer is satisfied with the quality of your work, and it’s delivered on time, they’re much more likely to pass this on to their friends and colleagues.

It is important that you do not settle for mediocrity and push yourself to the best of your abilities. It is for this that you will be appreciated.

5. Go above, and beyond.

Think of your clients, even when it does not concern business. People are very pleasantly surprised by birthday and anniversary cards because it is so sweet of someone to have remembered. A call that takes a few minutes is cherished because it did not have to happen, and people gravitate toward others who exhibit this kind of care.

Check in with your customers, remind them of upcoming promotions and sales on something that they may like. Be conscious of their interests, and inquire about them–not because you are savvy and manipulative, but because you possess a genuine love for people and a commitment to excellent customer service. Cherish your relationships with your clients, and they will do the same to you, and even refer you to others!

6. Assert your Individuality.

What about you is so special that no one else can offer the same? Is it a particular talent, a winning personality, a special ability to sense a customers needs? Exceptional service is done by exceptional individuals who can display their own personal flare. Bring yourself into your work. It makes all the difference.

7. Be Genuine.

This seems comparable to honesty, but in fact it is very different. People are fake all the time, and most of us can see right through it– it is that feeling in our stomachs, that inability to trust someone based on pure intuition.

That fear is certainly relieved when we sense that whoever is assisting us is looking to help us, not con us. You must show your customers that their comfort is very important to you, and that you are not out to get them.

8. Simplify!

There are many technical things that customers should know but that service providers are either hesitant to approach or do so in full force. Do not barrage and intimidate them. Explain those things in terms that they can understand and take into account. Be a facilitator and be prepared with alternatives.

9. Don’t Believe You Know Everything.

No matter how long you have been in the business, no matter what you know, change is coming, and you have to try to anticipate it. It would be very ignorant to think that you know everything and how it always will be. Be conscious of the fact that nothing is forever, and that there is no end to what you can learn.

10. Constant and Never Ending Improvement.

The secret to living a life that you love is consistently bettering yourself. This means physically, mentally, and spiritually. How does this aid you in producing happy clients? The knowledge that you are always getting better is the fastest route to self-confidence.

It allows you to feel confident in your job because you are put-together in your life. If you are living a healthy organized life in a good emotional state, you are able to handle even the most difficult of situations without running for the hills. The bottom line is, when you are confident in yourself, your clients are confident in you, and there is nothing more important to a client.

Conclusion

The tactics that have been given you are tools that can help better your relationships with people in business or with people in general. If we are to recognize that everyone wants to be treated with warmth and respect, we can learn to present these qualities in all of our relationships and use them to guide us in our quest to be better human beings.

“Here is a simple but powerful rule – always give people more than what they expect to get.”
~Nelson Boswell

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“I read so many bad things about sex that I had to give up reading.”
~Anonymous

I’m not knocking Viagra®, as I’m sure it does wonders for men’s sexual problems and erectile dysfunction. Although, I wouldn’t know personally, I swear!

Free Sex Is A Myth

First of all, I’m not suggesting that every healthy, consenting adult is partaking in prostitution. Obviously, it’s only the sickos, perverts, and some relatively normal people with emotional damage or severe insecurities. However, I’m not referring to “free” as in without cash-money.

If you’re a standard American guy that subscribes to premarital sex, then it’s likely that you’re paying for sex by taking girls out on dates, buying them presents, or at the very least spending time and energy to go see them. Fine, maybe you’ve read Make Her Chase You and now the girls come to you, feed you, and bring you presents. Nevertheless, there is a certain amount of time and emotional energy that you’re allocating, as well as the other things we’ll discuss below.

As the standard American girl, who also subscribes to premarital sex, you’re likely aware that sex is not free. I think women are more intuitive about these things. You know that you’re investing time into making yourself beautiful, charming, as well as purchasing clothes that make you look great. If you think this is a generalization, you’re right, and there’s more of that to come.

2. Sex Is Never Free In Marriage

I’m not married, but I’ve been watching married people very closely for the last 23 years, so I have some interesting findings to report. Sex never becomes free, not even after marriage.

Think about the time and effort that you’ve put into your relationships. The good times, the bad times, and the times you wish never existed. Now you just have more of them. Just because your spouse is right there, available, and you don’t even have to get out of bed in the morning to get it, still, doesn’t mean it’s free.

10 (Unwanted) Sex-Related Problems

Let’s go through a small list. Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, Herpes Simplex, HIV/AIDS, HPV, Syphilis, and Trichomoniasis. In some cases you could have a disease, not even know it, and pass it onto a partner. In other cases, it may hurt so much you’d wish you had the nerve to cut your genitals off (I don’t know, I’m just guessing).

In the worst of cases, you’re going to pay for sex with your life. That’s a pretty big price to pay.

2. Screwing A Nut’s Head.

There are plenty of people out there that have experienced sex-related trauma. Perhaps they were molested as children, or have been involved in an abusive relationship. Regardless, sex may just be a trigger for a totally unrelated psychological deviation.

Whatever the cause might be, you might just find yourself in a not-so-fun Lorena Bobbitt type of situation. I can’t think of anything worse than your member put under a guillotine (well, unless it’s my own member).

3. Unwanted Pregnancy.

I don’t know why someone wouldn’t want a baby- they’re cute, cuddly, and always smiling (right?). Well, if you are one of those weirdos that thinks babies take up a lot of time, cost a lot of money, and require many sleepless nights in an attempt to raise a decent human being, you might want to take this into account before having sex.

Arguably, one may never be fully ready to take on the responsibility of a child, but that is especially true when the child is not wanted. Is one unprotected romp really worth bringing in a life into this world that you can’t support, love, or raise the way it deserves?

4. All Kinds of Rape

By all kinds I mean date rape, and the aggressive violent rape that we hear about on TV. Unfortunately, things like that happen, and the victims also don’t think that it can happen to them.

Who are you coming home with? Is anyone under the influence? You need to ask yourself some good questions before you find yourself in a very uncomfortable situation. There’s also the possibility of someone ‘crying rape’ on you, when that couldn’t be further from the truth– know who you’re dealing with.

5.. Sexsomnia (sleepsex).

I’m not saying sex in your sleep has to be a bad thing. It could even prove to be quite pleasant for your partner; that is if they’re consenting. However, there have been cases of sleep sex that was not consented, and the “victim” did not even remember it.

If you do suffer from this, the best piece of advice I can offer you is — sleep alone, or seek medical attention.

6. Boredom.

Most people don’t relate to sex as boring. But, it can get that way, that is if you treat it as a routine. Mix it up, do something different, or take a break.

The Jewish people have an interesting solution known as 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off. During the week of a woman’s menstrual flow, and the week after, the couple not only abstains from sex, but from all forms of touching. During these 2 weeks the couple gets to experience each other on a deeper mental, emotional, and spiritual level. By the time the 2 weeks are up, they’re longing for each other so much that they fall in love all over again.

7. Loss of Productivity.

Sex isn’t always just sex; sometimes it leads to cuddling, or even worse — sleep. Think about that, you’re minding your own business, reading a book, or trying to get some work done, when out of nowhere, without warning, your sex-happy partner pounces on you.

Since you’re caught by surprise, you submit, but then you’re facing the possibility of a heavy arm passed out on top of you, and you need to plot your escape.

8. Lose Your Mind, And Your Money

I got news for you, if you can call it that, but some people (not saying it’s women in particular) use sex as a weapon of mass seduction. They seduce, use, and abuse a sex partner, in order to confuse their emotions, and ultimately get what they want.

It’s sounds simple enough to avoid, or even like a fair win-win situation — money for service — but naive unsuspecting people can be taken advantage of, which is just sad.

9. Making Sex Mean Something.

Susan Rink once said, “when you’re hot, you’re hot; when you’re not, you’re not.” That’s sex in a nutshell. Sometimes people make sex mean more — like love. Love and sex are totally and completely unrelated. Love shouldn’t be based on a pair of orgasms, but as a function of giving to the person we love.

10. Desensitization.

In the modern world, sex is so much a part of our culture that we may stop being emotionally in touch with it. People are indulging in a tendency toward sex as the highest form of satisfaction, when in reality it’s very low on the pleasure scale.

I don’t have any personal quarrels with the LGBT movement, but I think that human beings were created to reproduce, which is only possible through heterosexual sex. I also think that this bond between a man and a woman can be very spiritual, and that as a generalization, the LGBT crowd prioritizes sexual satisfisfaction above reproduction and spirituality (I’m not saying there is no LGBT love, and in the relationships where there is, more power to them).

5 Solutions To Sex-Related Problems

1. Do Nothing.

It’s both one of the easiest and one of the hardest things to do at the same time. It’s easy because, just as the name implies, you don’t have to do anything–nothing at all. That means no masturbation, no touching, and certainly no sexual intercourse.

If there’s nothing for you to do, why is it so hard?

2. Abstain & Masterbate.

Woody Allen once said, “don’t knock masturbation — it’s sex with someone I love.”

3. Use Contraceptives.

Today there are so many great ways to stay protected and get pleasure at the same time. Condoms are still the leading choice for protection against sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancies.

4. Stay Monogamous.

Nothing is a guarantee, but a trusting monogamous relationship offers a greater chance of safety and pleasure at the same time. When you have sex with the same partner, you get to learn each others bodies, desires, and what really get them off.

5. Sex As Art.

If you’re set on having sex, and there’s no talking you out of it, then you might as well do whatever is in your power to harness every morsel of pleasure that you can out of the experience. If you’re already going all out, then by all means try new toys, positions, and places.

You can even read one of my favorite sex-books 500 Love Making Tips. Actually, it now comes with 4 bonuses, and a 56 day money-back guarantee just to make the deal sweet.

Share The Knowledge

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“To make yourself something less than you can be – that too is a form of suicide”
~Benjamin Lichtenberg

Suicide is the act of taking one’s life, but I think it’s suicide not to live our life to the fullest of our abilities and potential — with love, passion, and vitality.

If you aren’t loving the life you live, you’re already dead (or at least en route, ETA — soon). Use this article as an eye opener, if you will, and if there are some areas of your life heading south, see to it that you stop pressing the trigger.

1. Make Money Your Life.

I’ve seen this problem rise up too many times before. Many of my college friends, who were so goal oriented and ambitious have found themselves struck with depression because they realize that their hopes and dreams are just a socially conditioned desire entirely dependent upon their monetary success.

We put so much meaning to money that we fail to recognize that it’s an inanimate object like any other. The truth is that money is green paper, something entirely bereft of depth and no testament to our personal value. That’s just the point! If you do value a green piece of paper as yourself, you are committing suicide.

2. Detrimental Food Choices.

Think of your body as a machine. Every time you fill up on low-grade fuel, your engine is deteriorating. Likewise, if you take the easy way out – this can mean binging on junk food or eliminating food altogether instead of following a healthy diet – you’re killing your precious organs and slowly taking your life.

Fad diets and quick-fixes aren’t the solution. Life is a work in progress that requires our constant and consistent attention. Just like a machine, our body must be kept well-oiled, receive proper maintenance, and not be abused if we expect it to last.

3. Destroying The Environment.

The legacy that we leave behind is solely based on our descendants. Whether it be the offspring of our offspring, or the future generations to follow, by destroying the environment, you are effectively making it harder for these people to survive.

If they don’t have an earth to call home, then whatever you’ve done, and however you’ve contributed to the world dies with them.We are so obsessed with our own property that we fail to see the greater picture. Learn to think of the earth that you live in as your home, all of it’s bountiful gifts as our access to pleasure, and our responsibility to keep it in the healthiest of conditions.

4. Isolating Yourself From Family, Friends, and Society.

Our inability to come to terms with people, whether they be our loved ones, or others that we co-exist with, is a product of our self-righteousness.

We have to learn to embrace workability at the expense of being right.Instead of seeing people as relative to our expectations, we can choose to see people as endless possibilities. This means giving up being right, in favor of harmonious and fulfilling relationships.

5. Allowing Your Judgments To Rule Your Life.

We can make what we think about people as a whole and as individuals the ultimate guide to our lives. By living that people are manipulative, or ultimately out to get us, we’re creating a world for ourselves in which we’re the victims. We can choose to live a life in which people are brilliant. We can choose to see faults as occasional bad apples rather than virtues as occasional good ones.

We must understand that our judgment is not outside of ourselves and that we can convince ourselves of anything and live accordingly. Have you ever noticed that when you deem someone a bad person, everything they do is not genuine, by default? This is because our judgment has created a world of its own, creating a defense mechanism that is not always good or necessary and may make you more cynical, not happy.

6. Usage of Alcohol, Drugs & Very Excessive Smoking.

Don’t do it — need I say more? Okay, I will. By surrounding yourself with people whose attention is focused around such activities you are leaving yourself wide open to their influence.

The idea isn’t to prove day in and day out how strong and resilient you can be. Eventually you’re liable to have a moment of weakness. Do yourself a favor and surround yourself with people you admire, so that emulating them will be a blessing.

7. Forgetting Your Dreams.

Throughout the course of our life we are all capable of losing sight of our dreams and become susceptible to surviving life instead of living it. This can come in the form of not doing what we love, making excuses for our lack of drive, and allowing others to access our limits.

Not that dreams can’t change over time, they should, but we allow them to adapt only to ourselves instead of to our circumstances. People will always have an opinion, but it is important to remember that we are not puppets and are not obligated to live into another persons vision.

8. Giving Up On Growth.

Did you know that a shark must be moving forward at all times? The water runs through it’s gills, providing the required oxygen to sustain life. They’re even moving while asleep. In much the same way human beings must be subject to constant and never ending improvement in order to maintain happiness and fulfillment.

A person that stays still, much like a stagnant body of water, will become infested with doubt, and soiled with insecurities. We’re living in a world of change, so we must embrace change, instead of fearing and avoiding it.

9. Losing Your Individualism.

It’s important to realize that in the grand scheme of things we’re nothing — quite insignificant. However, in order for us to avoid being swallowed up by the latest drivel to come by our senses we must maintain a strong sense of who we are.

Nothing else will keep us from being the victim of a charismatic dictator, an overbearing bully, an infomercial, or an enticing breach of morality. We must choose, not be chosen for.

10. Apathy.

If indifference is the toxic that lacerates relationships, apathy is the venom that leaves us to a slow and painful demise. When the words “I Don’t care” begin to carry that same meaning, we must be on alert!

Once people give up on themselves they’re giving up on everything. Their lives become a day to day search for the minimalist pleasures that leave them believing that their lives are as good as they will ever be, with no hope for beauty, joy, and fulfillment. This is the paradigm of suicide.

“You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be.”
~Chuck Palahniuk

Conclusion

If this article applies to you, you are far from alone. We all have points at which we feel like giving up because we are lonely or unhappy. The most important thing to grasp is that we make the choice
to be lonely, to be unhappy, to be victims of circumstance, rather than vessels of possibility. It is, however, this realization that we are the arbiters of our fate, that can save us and serve us. There is
always hope.

Suicide Advice

I’ve recently had the pleasure of interviewing a top self-improvement expert Steve Pavlina. I asked Steve what advice he has for people that have reached their last rope in life, and that are considering suicide as an option. You can listened to his suicide advice on the interview I did with Steve.

Note: Comments are closed on articles older than 2 weeks, so you can always comment on one of the newer articles.

This article is co-written by Alex Shalman and Marina Tsipenyuk.

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