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Amazing Weight Loss Transformation #4: Colin Farrell in ‘Triage’
In Triage, Colin Farrell played a war reporter in Bosnia who was taken by Kurd guerrillas in 1988. On returning home, his character must deal with post traumatic stress disorder. Colin Farrell states, “I thought it important that I lose 20 kilos [40 pounds] for the role.” Colin Farrell said his weight losssuccess was down to his addictive and competitive personality.
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Amazing Weight Loss Transformation #5: Rescue Dawn
For Werner Herzog’s 2007 drama “Rescue Dawn”—which was based on real life events—Christian Bale, Steve Cahn and Jeremy Davis played U.S servicemen in a prison in Laos. All three actors lost weight. Steve Zahn lost 40 pounds. Jeremy Davies lost 33 pounds. It is unknown how much weight Christian Bale lost. Rescue Dawn HERE
Amazing Weight Loss Transformation #6: Tom Hanks in Cast Away
In the frankly brilliant movie Cast Away, Tom Hanks plays a moddile aged business man who gets stranded on an island. During a six month period, Hanks lost 50 pounds, going from 225 pounds to 170. He has stated that his weight loss was thanks to a 1200 calorie a day diet.
GET Cast Away HERE
Amazing Weight Loss Transformation #7: Daniel Day Lewis in “In The Name of the Father”
Daniel Day Lewis has always been a fairly hardcore actor. For “In the name of the Father,” he lost 30 pounds to play Gerry Conlon, an IRA prisoner who went on hunger strike. Daniel Day Lewis slept in his on-set jail and demanded that the crew verbally abuse him. He ate little in order to stay in character.
GET In the Name of the Father HERE
There have been some truly amazing weight loss transformations to have taken place on the screen. Below, you’ll find ten of the absolute best. I hope these are inspiring for your own weight loss programs!
Oh, and just a note: I’m not suggesting that anyone should lose as much weight as some of these actor, or that they should do it in the same way (some examples are pretty unhealthy). I’m merely showing how amazing some actor’s transformations have been.
Amazing Weight Loss Transformation #1 : Natalie Portman in Black Swan
For her role in director Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, Natalie Portman transformed herself into a New York ballet dancing. Talking about her role, she said, “I trained beginning a full year ahead of filming, and went into hyper-training six months prior to the film. I was doing five hours a day of both ballet and cross-training, swimming. . . . It was extreme.”
GET Black Swan HERE
Amazing Weight Loss Transformation #2: Seth Rogen in The Green Hornet
GET The Green Hornet HERE
Seth Rogen has to lose a lot of weight in order to play The Green Hornet, a masked crime fighter, and in order to do his own stunts. He combined cardio training with strength training in order to lose the weight.
Amazing Weight Loss Transformation #3: Christian Bale in The Machinist
Before Christian Bale got all pissed off and started yelling at everyone and his mum, he was losing weight like a champion for his role in the 2004 film The Machinist. He played an industrial worker and has to lose 60 pounds for the role.
GET The Machinist HERE
Need to know how to boost selfconfidence? The answer lies in learning to not be so hard on yourself. Read on to discover the key to boosting selfconfidence.
How to Boost Self Confidence by Not Being So Hard On Yourself
Low self confidence affects us in every avenue of life, from meeting new people to job interviews, and while it’s easy to place blame elsewhere—on our critics, on the media etc.—in reality, the best place to look is to yourself.
While the criticism of others can affects our confidence, it’s the way we criticise ourselves which really hurts.
It’s not hard to see how hard we our on ourselves. Whenever we find ourselves in a pressure situation—be it at work, in social life or elsewhere—we often hear a little voice at the back of our minds saying “You’re not good enough. You wont succeed. Why do you even try.”
This voice hurts. It kills our self esteem. If we are to boos our self confidence we need to learn to not be so hard on ourselves.
Sadly, it isn’t necessarily an easy job to silence our inner critic. We can’t just wish our negative selves away. The mind is complex. What we need is to separate negative criticism from objective criticism, to recognise the difference between when we are being fair to ourselves and when we are being too judgmental.
It’s also hard to believe that we are being too hard to ourselves. Most of us would never be so hard on others as we are on ourselves.
The following exercise will allow you to be as accepting to yourself as you are to others, to look on yourself in the same way you would look on those you love. This will naturally give your self confidence a boost in a big way.
EXERCISE to Boost Self Confidence by Not Being So Hard On Yourself
PART 1: Recognising your crucial inner voice
Grab a piece of paper and use it to record negative things you say to yourself throughout the day.
Now, copy the list, but instead of writing “I am . . . “ put it in second person, saying (for example) “Paul is. . . “
Now read the second list back to yourself and notice how you feel about each of the statements. As you read the list, make note of any new criticisms about yourself that come to mind and write those down too.
Exercise Part 2: Getting your critical inner voice out the way
Put your list of criticisms down to one side and put a new piece of paper next to it. On this piece of paper, you’re going to treat yourself as your closest friend would treat you.
Read through each piece of criticism one at a time and on the new piece of paper write a response to the attack, an objective and fair response to your attack, the kind of thing a friend might say. For instance, if an attack was, “Paul is too lazy,” you might write, “I have downtimes when I relax and recharge but that doesn’t make me lazy, I still get plenty of work done.”
It’s important to write this new list in FIRST person (using “I” and “ME”)
Perform this exercise every so often and you will boost your self confidence and stop being so hard on yourself.
Within a month of using this exercise once a week you will notice that you have built your self confidence a great deal.
How to Boost Self Confidence by Not Being So Hard On Yourself
If you want to know how to improve workplace productivity the best place to start is to stop multitasking.
One of the best tools for business success is to simply monitor your focus. Keep your mind on one things rather than many. Stop multitasking!
How To Improve Workplace Productivity By not Multitasking
We live in a world where it seems near impossible not to multitask. Checking Twitter, our phones, chatting to everyone, keeping up with the news. . . it can seem as though we are doing an awful lot, but really, we’re getting less done as a result of multitasking. What we need to do is to take a step back, lay the house one brick at a time. That’s the solid foundation that leads to success.
But in this day and age, how can we possibly take our foot off the gas long enough to readjust to a one-step-at-a-time way of life?
First things first. Let’s take a look at precisely why you need to stop multitasking
Why is multitasking Bad for Workplace Productivity and for Health?
Science has proven that the brain simply cannot operate neither effectively nor efficiently while switching repeatedly between tasks. It takes four times as long to recognise new information when you multitask, meaning you’re actually wasting a heck of a lot of time. You are also far more likely to make mistakes while multitasking. This means that both your workplace productivity and quality of work suffer due to multitasking. We also retain much less information when multitasking, so, when you’re studying for your mba exams, make sure you’re doing just that and nothing else!
A key part of business success training should be to eliminate multitasking
What are the chief causes of multitasking
The main causes of multitasking are usually fairly unimportant. While working we will likely do one of the following things:
Check email
Check twitter / facebook / pinterest etc
Use our phones
Be reading something unrelated
Many of these things we do out of boredom, but nevertheless, when we multitask we seriously effect our workplace productivity.
To Improve Workplace Productivity, Remove Distractions
Okay, so we know that the best way how to improve workplace productivity is to remove distractions, but it’s not as easy as that because, let’s face it, we’re addicted to email / phones / social networking etc. so what do we do about it? The best answer to this question is to simply realise the cost of these distractions.
For bloggers and writers, your chances of online business success is increased just by turning off unnecessary browser windows
Every time you distract yourself while working, say to yourself, “It’s taking me four times as long to achieve what I want to do because I’m distracting myself.” Once you realise the cost of these distractions, you’ll find the motivation to remove them from your life, thus increasing your workplace productivity.
Also, be mindful. Instead of just checking your email be aware of the fact that you’re wasting time and negatively effecting your work by this simple and pointless distraction.
How To Improve Workplace Productivity By not Multitasking
In a recent self improvement article on Forbes, Jeff Bezos revealed one of the most important traits for success — knowing how to change your mind. It’s a great article that I recommend reading in full. Here is an excerpt from the article
Jeff Bezos on How To Change Your Mind
“Bezos said people who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds.” One one level, this seems like a facile answer. How better to always be right than to change your mind as you go along? But Fried makes it clear that Bezos meant this in a much more profound sense.”
Continue Reading the Self Improvement Article HOW TO CHANGE YOUR MIND HERE
New research at the University of Califfornia, Berkley, reveals self compassion, not self esteem, is key to success in life
Of all the subjects covered by self improvement book, one of the most popular falls under the category self esteem. Amazon has 5000 books on the subject of self esteem, books that argue that self esteem is the number one key to success. It’s a viewpoint shared by the majority of Western Civilisation.
Championing self esteem is only natural. After all, if you feel good about yourself you will be more motivated and generally happier. However, there’s one terrible pitfall about self esteem – it prevents us from accepting our failings.
If self esteem is about feeling great about yourself then you’re naturally inclined to turn your eye from the weaker sides of your character. Perhaps this is why recent research has revealed that self esteem does not, in fact, lead people to become more successful. It turns out that high self esteem causes people to think they are more successful but not to actually be more successful.
But if self esteem is not the key to success in life then what is?
Recent research by the University of California Berkley science department has shown that self compassion is actually more important than self esteem.
WHAT IS SELF COMPASSION?
Self compassion is the ability to observe and accept your own weaknesses and mistakes with understanding and kindness. Self compassion is accepting the less-than-awesome aspects of yourself in a nonjudgmental manner. Self compassion has been scientifically proven to improve optimism, happiness levels and personal wellbeing.
With self compassion, you are still aware of your shortcomings and mistakes and you still strive to be the best you can be, but you accept where you are at the present time being with understanding and compassion.
By accepting and understanding who we presently are, we gain knowledge. We recognise that, for example, we tend to forget things often. Were we looking from a point of self esteem we might say to ourselves “I have a great memory” even though, really, we don’t. This faulty viewpoint makes us incapable of working around our weak memory because we are choosing to ignore its existence.
In contrast, when we accept that our memory is not the best, when we recognise and understand this weakness in ourselves, we are then able to look objectively at ways to work around the problem.
So, the next time you screw up, accept it in a nonjudgmental manner. Be realistic and understanding. Recognise what went wrong and what led to the error. That way, you can work around the situation the next time around.
Self Compassion, Not Self Esteem, Is key To Success In Life
I don’t know how many times I said to myself that things would be different “in the future.” Whenever I came across something I wanted I would tell myself, “Well, in the future I will have it.” When I was upset about something I would say, “Well, this will all change soon.” I must have placed half my life on a cloudy dream of the future. And things that I put in the future yesterday are still in the future today.
No, this isn’t another post about the power of now. Nor is it a post about not wishing for things in the future. Rather, it’s a post about simply being self aware, being aware of your present attitude, because your attitude controls your life.
All those times I put things in the future we’re a failure of attitude. When we say we’ll do something “later” or that we’ll have / be something in the “future,” what we’re really doing is tossing our hands up in the air and saying “I don’t know how to achieve this right now, so I’ll just hope that somehow, by some miracle, I’ll work out how to achieve it later on in life.”
This attitude can and does ruin many people. But how do you change it?
The key to changing your attitude lies in self awareness
There’s one major problem with changing your attitude. That problem is that thoughts like “I’ll do it tomorrow” happen so quickly that half the time we’re not even aware that we’ve thought it. Consider it. You’re walking down the street, you see the kinda house you might like to own one day. You quickly say to yourself “One day that will be mine” and then you keep on walking. Your attitude has revealed itself in a heartbeat and you were barely even aware. And the same attitude will be back tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, possibly until its too late, unless you learn to catch your attitude, to catch negative thoughts and to change them there and then.
So, how do you change your attitude and stop those negative thoughts happening.
First off, you’re going to need to slow down. You’re going to need to still your mind enough so that you can actually see the thoughts that go on in there, so that the next time you say “Someday I’ll have that, “ you can catch yourself and change the thought to a more positive one.
There are a ton of ways in which you can slow your mind. My favourite is meditation, though you may prefer relaxing walks, yoga, listening to relaxing music, playing relaxing games, watching relaxing movies. . . whatever you like.
Use this simple self improvement and self awareness exercise
Slow your mind down. This will help you to catch those thoughts.
Then, when you find yourself thinking “one day” do this one simple thing: mentally run through a list of ten things that you can do today, right now, to make “one day” begin now.” Sure, you probably wont get your dream home today, but if you can say, “I’m doing this today, FOR tomorrow” then you make it about the present moment.
This simple exercise will stop the dreadful cycle of making everything about tomorrow and empower you in the moment.
Thanks for reading,
Change Your Attitude Change Your Future: Self Improvement / Awareness
You’re a good friend / relative / partner. You want everyone who’s close to you to be healthy. You’re concerned with your friend / significant other’s weight problem and would like to help, but you don’t know how. What is worse, every time you talk to them about it they become annoyed or aggravated. What do you do?
you want to help a friend lose weight. But you don’t want to offend them. how do you help in their weight loss program? The answer is in mindful eating.
The Right Wrong Way To Help Someone Lose Weight
The wrong way to help someone to lose weight is to be too direct with them. As we all know, weight loss is a personal thing. The vast majority of us don’t wish to discuss our problems. Even those people who would actively admit to needing help would still rather not discuss the issue with someone close to them.
So, what do you, the friend who wants to help out, do?
The RIGHT Way To Help Someone Lose Weight
Thankfully, there are ways to guide others towards healthier choices and a healthier lifestyle without directly talking to them about it.
One of those ways is through mindfulness and mindful eating.
What is mindfulness and mindful eating?
Mindfulness is essentially awareness. People with weight issues and eating issues oftentimes are simply not aware of the amount they are eating and the effect their food is having. They’ll eat a big meal without hardly being aware of having lifted a fork. This is partly why they often feel hungry: because they’re not aware of the amount they have eaten.
You can help a friend to be more mindful of the food they are eating simply by discussing food with them in a mindful way.
The next time you eat a meal with your friend, eat slowly and take time to discuss the food. Discuss all the different flavours in the food. Discuss where the food comes from. Discuss all the different ingredients in the food.
It’s important not to discuss the bad sides of food or the importance to eat healthy food. You don’t want to make the other person feel as though you’re judging them or as if you’re trying to make them eat healthy; all you are doing is subtly encouraging them to recognise the food they are eating; that’s all.
As you discuss food in this manner, you will be encouraging your friend to adopt a more mindful way of eating. This will help them develop a healthier relationship to food, ultimately helping them to lose weight. And you don’t even need to discuss their weight loss problem, you’re simply talking about food!
If you would like to know more about mindfulness and mindful eating, I personally recommend this Book
How To be A Good Friend While Helping Someone Lose Weight
Perhaps no sensation is more universally desired than the sense of freedom. Whether we wish to feel free from work and the worries therein, or free from problematic relationships, or perhaps free from monetary concerns, we all desire more freedom.
Freedom is immensely important. If we do not feel free, we feel unable to explore, to try new things, to try new ways of doing old things. . we feel stuck. This is a huge problem in life. Many people feel stuck for whole years on end. They get caught in ways of doing things, even if those ways are unhealthy and unproductive.
You know yourself whether you need to create more freedom in your life. If you do need to feel more freedom, there are some fantastic exercises you can do to immediately create that freedom. Five of the best exercises follow here.
Five Great Exercises for how to Feel Free
1: Get out in the open: The mental is directly related to the physical. If you want to feel more mental freedom, get out somewhere that offers you more physical freedom. Go for a long walk in the middle of nowhere, or go for a swim. . . anywhere that makes you feel more physically free.
2: Appreciate Your Skills and Options: Far too many people underestimate the opportunities they have in life. Make a list of all your qualifications and skills and either got to a job specialist or do some research online about the kind of work you could do. You may very well be surprised about the options you have.
3: Speak to someone new: What do you do when you get stuck in a certain ways of thinking that you can’t escape from? Talk to someone who thinks differently, that’s what. Have a good chin-wag with someone you wouldn’t usually speak to. Odds are they’ll have a different way of looking at life or at work or at any other subject. By listening to them you’ll open your mind to new ways of thinking. It will be a very freeing experience.
4: Stop Judging, Start Accepting: When we judge ourselves or other people, we serve to close our minds. We see ourselves as thin / fat, rich / poor, smart / stupid, popular / unpopular. The more judging we do, the more limited and constricted we feel. Challenge your judgements and aim to adopt a more accepting and non-judgmental mentality.
5: Take a Risk: People who have jumped out of planes say it’s a very freeing experience. So do people who take similar risks. Take a SAFE risk (in other words don’t do anything to harm yourself). Go bungee-jumping (for instance). The sense of exhilaration will allow you to momentarily escape your habitual thought patterns and get out of your mind. It’s an utterly freeing experience.
With these five exercises to how to feel free, you’ll develop a much greater sense of freedom in no time.
Oftentimes, we hold ourselves back from success because of negative thought patterns and attitudes. By using the following keys to self awareness, we can quickly begin to recognise our thought patterns and thus empower ourselves to change them.
Keep an eye out for these THREE SELF AWARENESS KEYS
Probably every single one of us is guilty of judging other people. We think of people as thin or fat as rich or poor as nice or nasty and so on. Sadly, once we make these judgements, it can be very hard to change them. Once we deem someone to be unfriendly it can be very hard to see them as anything but that. Even if this unfriendly individual suddenly starts acting incredibly nicely towards us, our early negative judgment will keep us from seeing the good in them.
It isn’t hard to see how judgements of this type can negatively impact our lives. It is much better to cultivate an attitude of acceptance and to keep ourselves from judging people too rashly or too quickly.
Self Awareness 2 Needing: Ahhh, the dreaded need. I’m guilty of needing things day in and day out, telling myself “I can’t do THIS without THAT.” I can’t succeed in work until I have more time. I can’t lose weight until I have less stress.
Needing has a disempowering effect. Because we determine that A is impossible without B, we fail to realise that we still have options C, D, E, F and G. For instance, I might say to myself “I can’t be happy until I am successful.” We then wait for success before we allow ourselves to be happy, even though in reality success and happiness have little to do with one another.
Anytime you find yourself NEEDING, when you think you cannot have A without B, challenge the thought. Find five ways in which you actually could have A even if B never happens.
We discussed judging other people above in Self Awareness Key 1. But it isn’t just other people we judge. We judge ourselves to. We think that we are THIS and NOT THAT: we’re intelligent not stupid, we’re rich not poor. . .
Judging ourselves has a similar effect to judging others. It causes us to become inflexible. If we believe we are poor we’ll likely prevent ourselves from socialising with those we deem as being rich. If we think we’re stupid, we might not feel comfortable around intelligent people.
Again, look out for ways in which you judge yourself. Adopt an attitude of open-minded acceptance rather than closed-minded judgement.
Aim to be aware of these patterns of thought and attitudes. You’ll find that changing them has a highly positive effect. By being more accepting we open our minds and give ourselves more freedom. By stopping judging and needing we empower ourselves, helping make ourselves more successful and, more importantly, more happy.
STOP Failing! Become More Successful With The Self Awareness Exercise
Life is hard. It can be hard to find motivation at times. And often it seems impossible to just chill out and have a laugh. Games are easy. They motivate you from beginning to end. And every step of the way is fun. If only there were some way to make life more like games, so life could be fun, rewarding, motivating, relaxing and fun. Sign.
Well let’s turn that frown upside down! Here are five great life coaching lessons from games which, when applied to life itself, will make reality more fun, motivating and rewarding.
Games like The Legend of Zelda The Ocarina of Time are packed full of valuable life coaching lessons. Find three of them below
Life Coaching Lesson from Games #1 : Keep your eyes on the prize
Games continually make us aware of our goal. If we’re playing a fighting game, we can constantly see both our own and the opponent’s health metre. If it’s a RPG we’re given an easily-accessible levelling system so we can see how powerful our character is and what we need to do to get stronger.
So here’s life coaching lesson #1: Always be aware of where you are and where you are going.
Life Coaching Lesson from Games #2: Take Good Care of Your Resources
Resource management is one of the most important aspects of both games and life. In life, if we waste our money on frivolities, we aint up skint and unable to pay the rent. In games, if we run out of resources we’ll probably die. Games help us avoid this fatal ending by showing us what we have and what we need. There’s probably a HUD or item inventory that lists everything. Copy this in real life. Just draw up a massive list or database of what you have and what you need, and keep track as you gain and spend your resources. That way, you’ll never be caught empty handed.
So, life coaching lesson from Games #2 : always be aware of what you have and what you need to find
Life Coaching Lesson from Games #3: Save Your Progress
I’m writing this in an old version of Word right now. I haven’t saved and I haven’t passed a way-point. If the computer dies I lose everything. In a game, this naturally wouldn’t be a problem as I’d constantly be reminded to save (or the game would do it for me). That way, I won’t have to restart back at the end of the last level facing that massive boss with only a pistol.
You don’t want to end up facing that evil boss in real life. I remember when I had to repeat a major part of my degree thanks largely to lack of saving my work. That was a huge end of level baddy I faced again unnecessarily.
Life Coaching Lesson from Games #3: Save your progress, people!
Okay, so that didn’t happen. Nevertheless, it is of the utmost importance in any self improvement / self development or personal development plan that certain rules be understood.
The following ten rules are the key building blocks of all good self improvement plans. Make sure you stick to these commandments throughout your self improvement plan
The Ten Commandments of Self Improvement.
The first commandment of self improvement plans:
Thou shalt believe in self improvement and the ability to change
Simple. There is no sense in committing to a self improvement plan if you do not genuinely believe in your own ability to grow, to change and to develop. Self improvement takes time. Though there may be a thousand self improvement books saying you can change your life in X number of days, in reality it takes time. To make sure you put the necessary time in, it’s first necessary to genuinely believe that you are able to grow and to change.
What if you don’t believe in your ability to change? Simple. If you don’t believe in your ability to change, the answer is to find people who have changed for the better. Read books, newspaper etc. Find role models who can make you believe in your ability to grow and develop. Read their stories. they will empower you.
Here’s one of my favourite stories about a person changing — read it HERE.
The second commandment of self improvement plans:
Thou shalt recognize thine own strengths
It is important in self improvement to recognise where you currently are in life. Self improvement is often about the future, about goals down the line, but it’s important to know where you are now, both in the positive and in the negative. Speaking of which. . .
The third commandment of self improvement plans:
Thou shalt recognise thine own weaknesses
The second half of the above. You need to be honest with yourself both in the positive and in the negative. Only by recognising where you currently are can you truly gain control over where you will go. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Where are you now?
What if you don’t recognise your strengths and weaknesses: In this instance, self awareness is the answer. You need to be aware of where you are at all times in order to keep your feet on the ground and n the right track. The journey of a thousand miles might start with a single step, but you can only take that step with your feet n the ground.
The fourth commandment of self improvement plans:
Thou shalt develop self awareness by keeping a journal
So, the two commandments above established the need to have your feet on the ground and to develop self awareness, but how do you do it? The answer is quite simple and comes in two parts (this commandment and the next one). For this first part, begin a journal. Every night before bed, write for ten minutes about the day. Ask yourself what you succeed in, what you could have done better, what you’re happy about and unhappy about etc. This will help keep your feet on the ground.
For more on keeping a self improvement journal see SELF AWARENESS
There are a million and one tools in self improvement. Many of them are brilliant. Many of them are terrible. Some are based on whimsy, some on scientific fact. No self improvement tool has been an extensively tested as meditation. The benefits of meditation are phenomenal. I shant go into them here for two reasons: 1) There are too many to do them justice and 2) Everything you need to know is already right HERE.
The sixth commandment of self improvement plans:
Thou shalt take it upon thyself to learn and to discover
There is one trait universal to all self improvement practitioners: they love learning.
Learning really is integral to the entire self improvement process. Self improvement, after all, is all about learning about yourself, about people in general ,about psychology, spirituality and other subjects. It is a natural demand of any self improvement plan that you embrace a love of learning.
The seventh commandment of self improvement plans:
Thou shalt not be too hard on thyself
There is a very fine line between recognising your strengths and weaknesses and simply being too hard on yourself. In self improvement, it is imperative to be honest with yourself without being hard on yourself. You want to develop, but you want to feel good about it. For this reason, it is imperative that you always keep your own happiness, peace of mind and mental health as the top-most priorities. If you ever feel that you are becoming too hard on yourself, back off. Yes, self improvement is about pushing yourself, but it’s about pushing yourself through positivity and through encouragement, rather than pushing yourself by constantly shipping yourself.
The eighth commandment of self improvement plans:
Thou shalt recognise that change takes time
Along the same lines as the previous commandment. It is important not to feel that you need to see results now. Rushing is a major major weakness. Whether you’re trying t o lose weight, to get in shape, to train your brain. . . whatever goal you have, rushing is never the answer. When we rush we feel stressed and being stressed in counterproductive. Recognise that self improvement takes time and give yourself a break.
The ninth commandment of self improvement plans:
Thou shalt recognise that some things are out of thy own control
The final part of not being too hard on yourself is to recognise that not everything is within your control. At times, things will go wrong. Outside influences may interfere or there may be some reason why you simply can’t keep to your self improvement plan. Again, back off and give yourself a break. Any self improvement plan that makes you feel stressed is a BAD self improvement plan!
The ten commandment of self improvement plans:
Thou shalt share self improvement with others
Happiness is only real when it’s shared, and so is self improvement. By sharing your self improvement plan with others and by getting other people involved, you don’t only motivate yourself more but you give other people the opportunity to get into self improvement too. Self improvement, if it is worth its weight, must ultimately be about becoming better so we can help other people better. That is the be all and end all. What better way to help others than by sharing self improvement with them?
Discover an effective and easy way to control your emotions with a simple meditation for beginners.
It’s been scientifically proven by groundbreaking research that observing and naming your emotions helps you control them, and the best way to do that is through meditation.
Brain scans have shown that when we associate negative emotions with words we calm the emotional centre of the brain. This is cited as being one of the main reasons why meditation is of psychological benefit because when we meditate we become better able to observe our emotions and thus to name them.
This news seconds the belief held by psychologists that talking about our feelings and emotions enables us to take control of them (and, vice-versa, being unable to talk about our feelings can lead to a person suffering depression).
Research by UCLA psychologist Matthew Lieberman showed that naming emotions caused the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex region—an area associated with thinking in words about emotional experiences— to become more active and activity in the amygdale to become calmer.
How Meditation Enables You To Control Emotions
Many of our readers already practice meditation and so are already seeing these emotional benefits, but if you are new meditation you might like to know how to start.
Thankfully, meditation is an easy practice to pick up. All you need to is find a twenty minute period in the day when you can relax by yourself (for this reason, you may wish to bookmark this page for later by pressing CTRL + D on your keyboard).
Here’s what to do when you have a twenty minute period free to meditate.
How to meditate in your twenty minute break
Find a quiet spot where you can sit or stand comfortably with your eyes closed.
Adopt a position which is relaxing but in which you also feel ready or alert (for instance, you may kneel down or sit crossed legged).
Focus on your breath. simply allow your mind to settle on your breath coming and going in and out of your nose.
You are now doing a basic meditation. Continue to focus on your breath and notice any thoughts or emotions that occur.
When you feel an emotion, don not fight it or indulge in it but simply observe the emotion. Notice how it feels. Observe the pure energy that is emotion.
Name the emotion.
Let the emotion go and return to focussing on your breath.
This exercise is extremely effective at relaxing your mind and allowing you to control your emotions. It will help to relieve stress and can greatly benefit both your physical and mental health.
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How To control Your Emotions By Meditating (with a meditation for beginners)
Show your support for Lad Gaga and UNICEF’s effort to keep kids in school land protected. .. .
Whether you love or hate Lady Gaga’s music and over-the-top theatricality, there’s no denying that Lady Gaga is one of most positive people in the music business these days. Her busy philanthropic endeavours have ranged from supporting HIV and AIDS charities to helping provide relief for victims of natural disasters. Following on from her Born This Way ball in Lima, Lady paid a surprise visit to a UNICEF-supported school in Peru.
Lady Gaga visited Francisco Bolognese in Pachacutec Ventanilla District, a region stricken by violence, gang activity and poverty, all of which prevent students in the area from attending school. UNICEF and the local government have been working together to implement Child Friendly School initiatives to help keep students in school.
Lady Gaga has spoken on the importance of keeping children in school and in a safe, protected environment. She said, “All children have the right to feel valuable, and everybody has a shot – but not everybody has a fair shot. So, I think that what UNICEF does is try to make the shot a little more equal.”
Show your support for keeping children protected and in school by liking and sharing this page. Thank you.
[CBC show="y" country="es, us, fr, uk, ne, de, ca, au, it, gb"] [/CBC]
Lady Gaga Working with UNICEF To Support Children in Lima
