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Creating A Home Work Space That Is Enjoyable

September 22nd, 2010    Subscribe To Our Feed

If you work from home you will need a great amount of work space. This is also true if you do a lot of school work or simply any form of paper work in your home on a regular basis. You will need a space that is rather private and quiet in which you can get your work done.

Also, there are many distractions around the house that may prevent you from accomplishing your daily tasks. For this reason you will want to set up several place around the house in which you feel comfortable enough to work. You will also want to be sure that these areas are distraction free.

One way that you can save space and money is by purchasing a corner workstation. This is a wise investment because it will not take up a great amount of space in your home. Also, they are designed in a way in which to maximize your surface work area and will most likely come with compartments attached in which to hold your belongings.

While this is a great work place, it can not be your only space that you have available. Dining room table sets are a great place in which you can accomplish a great deal of work. There are many benefits of using this room in your house.

Dining room tables also have a great deal of work space. This is one of the key factors that you need in a quality place to concentrate. You will be able to conveniently spread out all of the things you must complete in an organized manner directly in front of you.

Many people prefer to work in the comfort of their own bed. However, this may not be the most productive place to work but it can be quite comfortable for early morning endeavors. Your current bedding collection may begin to look old and dingy if you work in your bed often. For this reason you may want to change up your bedroom look often.

If you work from home you will want to consider these suggestions so that you do not end up becoming extremely frustrated with yourself. They are easy to follow and you will thank yourself for it a great deal. Also, try to remember that creating a written schedule will cut back on this frustration as well so that you feel more accomplished throughout the day.

Preventing Exploding Aneurysms - Letting It Go!

September 22nd, 2010    Subscribe To Our Feed

As a hard working motivational speaker and parent, I often find myself having to blend work into times when I am also taking care of my child. Yesterday found me sitting in the play place of Burger King - the poor individual’s amusement park -  endeavoring to summon the willpower to not eat all of my son’s chicken nuggets, observing my boy play in the larger-than-life-sized hamster wheel of germs, and at the same time my subconscious tried to work out the puzzling stink.  I gain a lot of insights from these play place petri dishes. On this day I had a reminder on forgiveness.

This kid climbs up to the top and starts howling, like 80 % of the children who climb to the top of the play place and figure out they do not possess the guts to come back down. Like every other mother there, I am hoping that it is not my child - because on this day I didn’t remember to bring my “portable jaws of life”. And in my mind I see good looking firemen struggling to yank my bloated keister free from the plastic pipes. Just for the record - judging from the firemen in my family - I don’t think they can all measure up as hunky..

Momentarily my heart sinks as I hear the unique “I’m hurt” cry. Thankfully we could tell that it wasn’t a “something’s broken” cry, but rather an “I hurt myself and I need Mommy to kiss it” cry. By process of elimination we discovered which little girl it was and promptly confirmed that her mother was not going to squeeze up the plastic tube.

We sent one kid up to get her. He didn’t come back. We sent another kid up, and he got about one-third of the way to our trapped urchin before he got mesmerized by the wheel that turns the propeller on the exterior of the contraption. Because the broad shouldered boys had let us down, we went into a 70’s feminist chant that ginned up one of the girls to go up and get the wayward one. The girl goes directly to the top of the plastic maze and leads the “injured” child back to safety. The blubbering rescuee runs to her mother showing her the injury that no one else can see. But that’s not the end of the story.  Getting one look at the little girl’s mother, it was obvious that she was not going to let this go. It started to look like an episode of Dragnet as the kid’s mother started “sweating” her for the name of the perpetrator in the incident. While the little girl anxiously wanted to go back to playing, the mother continued to grill her - pushing her to point out the junior delinquent behind the episode. I was familiar with this mother’s look. This woman wanted “justice” for the brute that traumatised her child. Somebody was going to “take a fall.” And this type of look never ends well.

As an expert of suburban snooping, I was able to determine that her daughter had not uncovered a suspect. It became apparent that this mother would root out the villain herself. Despite having no convincing evidence, the mother fell upon the normal suspect - the grubby child with the inattentive mother.  The mother gave the poor dirty kid the evil eye, like she was attempting to bore a hole in the tike. It was a Lifetime movie in the making. The innocent poor kid falsely accused, pushed into a downward spiral of low self-esteem and petty crime, consequently living up to society’s expectations.

My first thought was to tell that mother to let it go, give it a rest. Her child was unhurt, and now contentedly playing. No harm, no foul. Was it really vital to pin the guilt on somebody? Did she absolutely need her pound of flesh? Didn’t she possess some forgiveness in her soul? That is when I understood how often I had fallen into the same trap. Those times when my first thought was to find somebody to blame..

Shoot, I misplace something at home, and I commence yelling “Who took it?”  A water main breaks, and I’m looking for who to take to court for not being able to take a bath for a few hours. The playplace reminded me that we’ve lost our capability to forgive, but we have gotten excellent at placing blame.

I recall someone telling me about a kid calling another kid a name on the playground at school. The principal handled it. End of story. Nevertheless it wasn’t the end of the story. The mother of the kid who got called a name chose to start her own “investigation” and questioned all the other mothers about their kid’s experience with the name caller. She had meetings. She sent letters. She pressed them to take action against the name caller’s mother. It was a good old fashioned witch hunt. And these things don’t just occur on playgrounds. I have been in churches, work places, community events, committee meetings - where people are swift to find fault and judge and slow to forgive. And even slower to forget. Where accepting responsibility is no longer sufficient - we insist on payback - oftentimes for something that was not even done to us in the first place.

In case you haven’t realized, people make mistakes - a lot. We’re human, it’s part of our DNA to mess up. I wouldn’t be a motivational speaker if everyone were perfect! Things happen, and sometimes they aren’t anybody’s fault. We need to quit trying to make it somebody’s fault. Yes, we’re responsible for our choices and our actions. Yes, we are accountable for our slipups and should own up to them and take responsibility. But we are also accountable to forgive - not to judge - but to forgive - and then let it go. Quit hunting for someone to pay. Quit letting yourself be consumed with bitterness and a desire for vengeance. Don’t blame the car maker simply because the driver was culpable. You do not owe me due to the fact your coffee was hot and you didn’t warn me. If you come to my home and the meal I cooked you was too hot, where in heck do you get off imagining I have to ante up? And often we hold grudges in cases of crimes that have no evidence to back them up - we find the suspects guilty based on gossip.

For individuals who answer to God, He’s got some seriously hard and fast rules on this one - and He even went so far as to say it a number of times. Yet many of us who answer to God are holding on to grudges like it’s the last thong left on the clearance rack.

But we can’t let this stuff go or it will occur again, some say. We can’t let drunk drivers get off easy - we can’t let another car be sold with poor breaks.  I agree, sometimes we have to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. This falls into making somebody accountable for their actions. This has little related to forgiveness. People can and ought to answer for the decisions they make in life. I’m suggesting to you they have to be forgiven. Forgiveness doesn’t signify you like what they did or agree of their actions. It simply indicates that you will forgive them for having made the mistake.

But a few things are not forgivable. Fine. I’ll grant you that. Ten percent of you out there are dealing with things that could be perceived as unforgivable - the remainder of you aren’t. It is the rest of you I’m speaking to.

So how do we do it? How do we perform the lost art of forgiveness?

If it didn’t involve you specifically, drop it. Don’t engage in in the actions or the discussions surrounding them. Simply say to that person desperate to get you taking part, “I am sorry. I wasn’t there so I will abstain from commenting. It is actually not any of my business.”

Don’t throw every perceived offense in the face of the “perpetrator”. Learn to forgive them in your heart and move ahead. Use a bit of judgment and decide what is really important.

Don’t judge. You simply don’t have the right. We all fall short. We all make blunders and bad choices. If you answer to God, then you already know that each and every sin is equal and you are every bit as guilty as they are. Judgment is not your duty or entitlement.

Don’t meet out justice. Again, it’s beyond your paygrade.

Let gossip end with you. It’s easy. Don’t answer the email. Don’t pass it on. Don’t jump on the phone and spread the news. Don’t bring it up in passing. This is hard. Good gossip is more difficult to hold in than a poot. But do it nonetheless.

If you are specifically engaged in the episode, deal specifically with the folks caught up and manage the situation like an adult.

Not everyone is going to live up to your standards. Let it go.

Take just a moment to look at things from where they sit.

Vicious and stupid people are all around us. You can’t control them, so give up trying. You will get more out of forgiveness than they will. Don’t let your bitterness ruin you.

There is not necessarily someone or somebody to blame in every case. Accidents happen. Don’t blame the bike company because you were imbibing when you rode the bike.

Keep love in your heart and on your mind, and soon you’ll discover yourself taking a different mindset with the majority of situations.

These aren’t uncomplicated things to do. You cannot simply say you are going to forgive people. You have to consistently work at it. But it’s worth the cost. It makes the planet a better place. And in addition, at some point, the mistake will be yours, and it will be you seeking forgiveness.

Three Horse Films To See

September 22nd, 2010    Subscribe To Our Feed

A horse doesn’t need to play a part to be significant; its absence is enough in one film! ‘ A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!’ cries Richard 111 when he finds himself steedless and at the mercy of his enemies on Bosworth Field.The very positive horses portrayed in these films are completely different from Shakespeare’s evil Richard and the horse he cried out for. Everyday life in Richard’s time was sufficiently dangerous that things like horse insurancewould have come at an incredibly high price!

The Black Stallion
Produced in 1979 - some 400 years after Shakespeare - this film deservedly won many awards.The unfolding relationship between Alec and a vigorous Arabian stallion forms the basis of this movie. It includes a shipwreck, the rescue of the drowning Alec by the horse, and a period of slowly developing mutual trust on a desert island. They learn to trust each other and become devoted partners. The film is a fine illustration of how close a horse and a man can get with each other. I don’t want to spoil the movie for you if you haven’t yet seen it. One critic described it as possibly ‘the greatest children’s movie ever made’.It’s not only children, though, who can enjoy this film.

Black Beauty
Why do so many horses have to be black?. ‘Piebald Beauty’ as a title looks a bit flat. Anyway, whereas we see the Black Stallion from the outside as observers, Black Beauty is herself the narrator in this 1994 production. The obviously human nature and attitude of this voice is a serious defect. This isn’t a complaint about the nature of the voice; if it sounded like a horse, any cinema would soon lose its audience. No, it’s what the horse says and how it’s said that grates. And, unfortunately, it voices the opinions of a rather naive and sanctimonious human. Making a horse think and speak as though it were a human is not at all convincing. Although there’s a lot of cringing sentimentality, there’s also some magnificent photography especially of Black Beauty strutting her stuff.

The Horse Whisperer
This film was issued 4 years later, in 1998. It tells us how a young girl, Grace, and her beloved horse, Pilgrim, recover from a traumatic accident. Annie, Grace’s mother, wants to find a way to bring about the recovery of Grace and Pilgrim so she takes them to Montana where Tom, known for his understanding of animals, lives in open country. Tom’s powers of empathizing are equally as effective with disturbed women as with disturbed horses. Tom soon has both Annie and Pilgrim doting on him. The film is not, though, only about the recovery of Grace and Pilgrim and the love that dawns between Annie and Tom; it’s also about the differences between city life (Annie came from a hectic metropolitan life in Manhattan) and country life. Annie must reject either her smooth wealthy husband, or Tom, the plain-speaking horse whisperer. Which of these will she choose?!

There’s a lot of trotting, cantering, and galloping movement in these films as well as movement of the emotional kind. Some of the scenes are truly idyllic and beautiful ; some of the ‘moving’ moments might make you laugh or weep. It is not only a rider that these horses carry; they are also the vehicle for a message. You will have to make up your mind as to what this message is and whether or not its conveyance is a burden to the horse. Your local DVD supplier has the answer; put in an order now to find out!

This article has been published for the millions of horse enthusiasts all over the world by Animal Friends Equine Insurance - the UK’s only not-for-profit horse insurance provider. Horse rider insurance can be bought today online or by phone, and all net profits go to benefit troubled animals all over the world. You can read more about the many charities helped by Animal Friends on the charity support pages of their ethical pet insurance website.

Coping With Saddness By Writing From Your Pain

September 22nd, 2010    Subscribe To Our Feed

Several years ago, I started composing a fiction for tweens, Belle in the Slouch Hat. It’s a story about a young girl who seeks revenge after her brother was killed in the Civil War. I purposely started the tale for my grandchildren; and I needed something to fill an emptiness in me as a result of the loss of my precious mother, and another special woman during my life. They died within two months of each other.

In the event that someone we love dies, we will need to grieve; there is no way to avoid it. Everyone must move through the sadness and agony in their own individual way. My avenue was writing.

Immediately after losing those I loved, it felt almost like something was hindering my suffering and keeping me from the harshness and unhappiness in connection with death. To this day, there’s no doubt that it was the Holy Spirit helping me through essentially the most difficult times in my life. You many decide to call it different things, but I believe it was the Holy Spirit. Ultimately after that, the reality of the deaths set in and I had no choice but to endure the next phase of losing someone you care about, the grieving process.

At age sixy-one, I sat at my computer; I began to write, and I started to get well. I jumped right into writing a novel minus the full understanding of what I was engaging in. I didn’t stop to contemplate how many hours which I would so willingly give to it, nor did I stop to think there was a correct way of doing it, all I know was I had to write. Sometimes it was down-right physically, mentally, and emotionally painful; other times, I felt drained of every once of energy in my body. Occasionally, my sense of meaning and my most treasured beliefs about life were challenged.

There was virtually no schedule for when I needed to finish; and no one could stipulate to me when it would be finished. It required a long time; not a day, not a month, not one year, but two full years.

Apart from the first three pages of my book, I did not produce an order, or a plot ot follow, I just needed to write. I even built a imaginary barrier around me and didn’t want anyone to know just what I was writing, except my hubby.

The more I wrote, the greater I desired to write. Writing provided an avenue to cry, to laugh, and also have a journey. Unknowingly, I had developed my own support group with the characters in my story. For me, it had become a safe setting to express my thoughts and process my tremendous saddness. I also found the best way for me to commenorate those I loved.

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A New Income Source: Blogging

September 22nd, 2010    Subscribe To Our Feed

Most amateur writers who have taken up blogging as a hobby have overlooked the ways to make money blogging. Blogging arose as a way to share day-to-day experiences with friends and soon became a medium for expressing opinions about subjects of general interest. There are some effective ways to use this hobby to supplement income. The actual subject of a blog is important only in that it must interest enough people to establish a following.

The money from blogging can come from several sources. A blogger can build a large enough following to attract advertising revenue from sidebar ads or banners. Other advertisers will place links on a blog page and pay every time a visitor clicks on the link.

Some advertisers will pay the blogger for clicks on links included on the blog page. A blogger can also make money from sales of products and services by including links to his/her retail sales sites.

Simply writing a couple of articles and posting them on a blog will not trigger a sudden influx of cash. Even the most compelling articles do not generate a huge number of followers overnight. To make money online requires making people aware of the blog and creating an interest in visiting the blog page. There has to be a way to convert as many visits as possible into actual sales or registered followers. Word-of-mouth is not effective ‘ some other method is needed.

The search engines were once good ways to get visitors to an online business but search engines have taken steps to keep their search results resistant to manipulation. There is an entire service field growing around Search Engine Optimization services to get more visitors to client sites. The average blogger does not have the resources to implement a full-on SEO strategy so he needs to make use of other means to increase visitors and generate income.

Social networking sites offer the most cost-effective approach to making a blog known to many people. Most people are already using at least one of the available social networks to keep in touch with friends, relatives and acquaintances around the world. It is just a small step to turn these social networks into a home income opportunity.

A writer talented enough to produce interesting and compelling blog entries should have no problem creating promotional updates on social networking sites. To become a top blogger requires real talent that makes the writer stand out above the mass of mediocre bloggers.

The Performance of Your Life

September 22nd, 2010    Subscribe To Our Feed

If you want to give your best singing performance, you need to know how to behave, so here are a few tips to help you out.

Rehearsals

Make sure you’ve rehearsed with the band. Before you go on stage, have a minimum of one dress rehearsal. For the last rehearsal and dress rehearsal you should sing the music from memory.

Outfit

The outfit you choose to wear for the live performance can make or break the show. When you choose an outfit, make sure that you wear it during rehearsals so that you get used to it. Make sure that you can move and breathe in the outfit you have chosen to wear.

Walking out onto the stage

Figure out where to stand on the stage, and then practice walking to that spot. Knowing how to walk across a stage and land in place isn’t as easy as it sounds. The idea is to stop in place, but land in the right posture as well. Do your best to keep your posture as you walk to your chosen position.

Keep the speaker turned away from you

Singing with a band can be really cool, but the first time can be a bit confusing. If the speakers are pointed away from you, which they probably will be, you may have trouble hearing yourself. For the first few times you could ask to have a speaker turned towards you. The problem is that bands play loudly, and a speaker can be distracting if you’re not used to it. If a specific instrument plays the melody line, you may have to get used to picking out that sound from the other instruments.

Smile to your audience

Make sure you smile as you go on stage. Even if you are nervous, a smile, will make you appear more confident. Even if you are nervous, you need to make the smile look authentic.

Acknowledge your audience

It can be difficult to know when to acknowledge the audience. Singers won’t always sing in a small place. To get a feel for whether to include the audience as part of your song, watch and learn from the seasoned pros.

Be prepared for distractions

Unlike in rehearsal, a live performance can have plenty of distractions. People cough, enter late and even leave right in the middle of your song. Because they are not performers, they have no idea how this affects you. When you practice at home you might want to intentionally stage some distractions. The best way to ignore distractions is to have friends distract you and see how lo you can ignore it.

What to do with your hands

Make sure you don’t do anything strange with your hands while you are performing; keep them at your sides if you can. The safest place is at your sides, even if that’s not the most interesting place. If you gesture, then make a complete gesture, because anything incomplete or half done will make you look nervous. Clasping your hands in front of you is another option for your hands.

I hope these performance tips were helpful to you. To perfect your singing skills for the big occasion, I recommend Brett Mannings Singing Success. And if you want to know the best way to make your mark on the music industry, to ensure you get plenty of gigs lined up, check out Social Bandmaker. 

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