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Never Put Exercise on Hold For Something Much Less Important

  • Posted on July 2, 2009 at 9:30 pm

Sometimes when we are really busy such as having an overwhelming amount of work in front of us that we put our exercise needs on hold until we feel we have caught up and are on top of the task we give so much priority too. We believe that we need that extra hour of time much more than we need the exercise. This sort of thinking can go on for weeks, months, years or even decades.

Without even realizing it you have made an important career change and have made a conscious choice about putting this very important self care need to the side. This will not add to the quality of your life but take it away. Your exercise needs should not be the first thing to go when things get busy but the absolute last. When you are on your death bed in the last throes of life that is when you put your exercise needs aside.

We used to think that exercise was an optional extra and we would approach it like it was a choice. As long as we weren’t sick we thought we were “healthy” and didn’t really need to exercise. If something like our workload increased it was okay to put it aside and take care of that task first and foremost. How on earth could we possibly think that catching up with a little bit of work is more important than our long term health?

It is not until you accept and believe that your exercise needs when met will most definitely change your life for the better. How could you think that you could perform better at work without it? How absurd to think that you could function optimally in any area of your life without proper exercise.

For all of the ten million pieces of advice about how to make exercise regular in your life, the very best advice is to realize you will not get the life you want without it. Whenever you are thinking about not going to the gym tell yourself a little story such as that piece of advice. That will get your butt there and powering into your exercise program.

After all it is well proven that exercise is an essential part of a successful career as well as part of a good life. Exercise boosts your IQ and increases resilience in difficult times and is often the difference between success and failure in getting what we want.

Going to the gym will change your life but to be able to get it in regularly requires a careful mental shift. First you clearly prioritize what is important to you and why.
Then you pick specific times and specific places where it will take place. Then you convince yourself that doing it is not negotiable.

There is clear evidence to show that people who make one conscious change – such as going to the gym 2 -3 times per week – unconsciously change many other positive things in their life. Making that one decision has a ripple affect throughout your life improving things like making better food choices and getting enough sleep.

A proper exercise program that includes at least 60% strength training exercise is the most important thing you can do for a healthy mind and body. It affects how you feel physically, mentally and emotionally, how you look, how you function and contributes to your quality of life. Never ever let yourself believe that a extra hour at work each day could ever make up for removing this from your life.

Do you want to discover the secret to rejuvenating your body and improving the quality of your life? Download my free ebook “I’ve Found the Fountain of Youth- Let Me Show You Too!” here: Health Related Fitness For Free Fitness Report here Fitness Weight Loss Carolyn Hansen is a certified fitness expert and fitness center owner who coaches clients to look and feel younger.

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The Dangers of Recognition

  • Posted on July 1, 2009 at 10:12 pm

We all have the ability to recognise – someone we already know, a difficult situation when we see one, an opportunity that’s staring us in the face or a problem that needs our attention. However, our psychological ability to recognise is just as much a curse as it is a blessing. We take in raw data through our body’s five senses – a psychologist would term this “bottom up” data – through the process of cognition. At this point, the data, of itself is meaningless – we need to interpret it. This is done by adding our “stored knowledge” or “top down information” to the raw data and, in this way, we make sense of what is going on. This is the process of re-cognition.

As I said, this process enables us to make sense of the present moment. Or does it? The big problem with our stored knowledge or top down information is that, generally speaking, it is decades out of date. We generally start storing key elements of that “knowledge” between 12 and 18 months – when we create “schemata” (or pigeonholes) into which we then fit anything similar that we might encounter in later life. From an evolutionary perspective, this gave us a huge advantage – we didn’t have to waste our precious attention on routine day-to-day stuff – we needed that attention to watch out for the next man-eating tiger that might otherwise devour us!

But the result is that, in the modern day, we pay little or no attention to what our senses are actually telling us in the present moment – we prefer, automatically and subconsciously of course, to let our top down information make sense of what’s going on for us. And, in the process, we make nonsense of the present moment and react accordingly.

Somewhere between 12 and 25 years (adolescence), we generally stop taking in new top down information. That has drastic implications for the rest of our lives because, for the rest of our lives, we live in an illusory world of make believe – we create what we think is going on based on out of date information. As a result, so-called “normal” people never really appreciate what is actually happening – everything is “filtered” through their stored knowledge – and, as result, they react to what they think is going on. And, as you and I know, reacting generally makes matters worse, not better.

Quick example. Somebody at work asks you to do something. Because of the way we automatically pigeonhole people, you will have made up your mind whether you like or dislike the person who’s doing the asking within four minutes of meeting them for the first time. Say, for example, she reminds you of your sister-in-law (and you hate your sister-in-law because she reminds you of someone who bullied you at school thirty years ago). Also, the thing you’ve been asked to do is something that you think you don’t like doing – you might, for example, have a hang-up about putting together some sales figures because, when you were small, your father gave you grief over how awful your math marks were (these are all true client stories, by the way).

So, someone, who not only could be the nicest person in the world but who might also have a major impact on your career and on your life, asks you to do a simple task – and you snarl at them in return. It’s an automatic reaction. The request is the raw data – but you’ve made nonsense of the request based on a load of out-dated notions that are stored deeply on your subconscious. And that’s the process of recognition.

And that’s what gets normal adults into trouble. Conflict breaks out at work and at home – not because of what’s actually going on but because of what normal people think is going on. But, worse than that, real opportunities are missed because they are never spotted in the first place. The opportunity could be staring you in the face and, because of your top down data, you wouldn’t recognize it for what it truly is.

Normal people need to stop recognizing and start cognizing all over again. That’s why so many business and sports people meditate – it enables them stop recognizing and start experiencing what is actually and really going on, using their five senses, in the present moment. Watch your TVs – all the great sports people “meditate” before a field kick or a tee shot, before a penalty or a serve in tennis. And I meditation was good enough for someone as prolifically successful in business as Thomas Edison well then, it’s good enough for me. Start paying attention to what your five senses are actually telling you. Stop analyzing, judging, adding your top down out of date information. Whether it’s through some form of formal meditation or just “stopping to smell the roses” – break the vicious cycle of the normal repetitive behaviour that normal recognition automatically produces.

Copyright (c) 2009 Willie Horton

Willie’s work in the area of self-improvement and meditation has been described as “life-changing” and “phenomenal” by clients from every walk of life. His acclaimed two-day personal development workshop is now available online at Gurdy.Net

Article Source: The Dangers of Recognition

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The Dangers of Recognition

  • Posted on July 1, 2009 at 10:12 pm

We all have the ability to recognise – someone we already know, a difficult situation when we see one, an opportunity that’s staring us in the face or a problem that needs our attention. However, our psychological ability to recognise is just as much a curse as it is a blessing. We take in raw data through our body’s five senses – a psychologist would term this “bottom up” data – through the process of cognition. At this point, the data, of itself is meaningless – we need to interpret it. This is done by adding our “stored knowledge” or “top down information” to the raw data and, in this way, we make sense of what is going on. This is the process of re-cognition.

As I said, this process enables us to make sense of the present moment. Or does it? The big problem with our stored knowledge or top down information is that, generally speaking, it is decades out of date. We generally start storing key elements of that “knowledge” between 12 and 18 months – when we create “schemata” (or pigeonholes) into which we then fit anything similar that we might encounter in later life. From an evolutionary perspective, this gave us a huge advantage – we didn’t have to waste our precious attention on routine day-to-day stuff – we needed that attention to watch out for the next man-eating tiger that might otherwise devour us!

But the result is that, in the modern day, we pay little or no attention to what our senses are actually telling us in the present moment – we prefer, automatically and subconsciously of course, to let our top down information make sense of what’s going on for us. And, in the process, we make nonsense of the present moment and react accordingly.

Somewhere between 12 and 25 years (adolescence), we generally stop taking in new top down information. That has drastic implications for the rest of our lives because, for the rest of our lives, we live in an illusory world of make believe – we create what we think is going on based on out of date information. As a result, so-called “normal” people never really appreciate what is actually happening – everything is “filtered” through their stored knowledge – and, as result, they react to what they think is going on. And, as you and I know, reacting generally makes matters worse, not better.

Quick example. Somebody at work asks you to do something. Because of the way we automatically pigeonhole people, you will have made up your mind whether you like or dislike the person who’s doing the asking within four minutes of meeting them for the first time. Say, for example, she reminds you of your sister-in-law (and you hate your sister-in-law because she reminds you of someone who bullied you at school thirty years ago). Also, the thing you’ve been asked to do is something that you think you don’t like doing – you might, for example, have a hang-up about putting together some sales figures because, when you were small, your father gave you grief over how awful your math marks were (these are all true client stories, by the way).

So, someone, who not only could be the nicest person in the world but who might also have a major impact on your career and on your life, asks you to do a simple task – and you snarl at them in return. It’s an automatic reaction. The request is the raw data – but you’ve made nonsense of the request based on a load of out-dated notions that are stored deeply on your subconscious. And that’s the process of recognition.

And that’s what gets normal adults into trouble. Conflict breaks out at work and at home – not because of what’s actually going on but because of what normal people think is going on. But, worse than that, real opportunities are missed because they are never spotted in the first place. The opportunity could be staring you in the face and, because of your top down data, you wouldn’t recognize it for what it truly is.

Normal people need to stop recognizing and start cognizing all over again. That’s why so many business and sports people meditate – it enables them stop recognizing and start experiencing what is actually and really going on, using their five senses, in the present moment. Watch your TVs – all the great sports people “meditate” before a field kick or a tee shot, before a penalty or a serve in tennis. And I meditation was good enough for someone as prolifically successful in business as Thomas Edison well then, it’s good enough for me. Start paying attention to what your five senses are actually telling you. Stop analyzing, judging, adding your top down out of date information. Whether it’s through some form of formal meditation or just “stopping to smell the roses” – break the vicious cycle of the normal repetitive behaviour that normal recognition automatically produces.

Copyright (c) 2009 Willie Horton

Willie’s work in the area of self-improvement and meditation has been described as “life-changing” and “phenomenal” by clients from every walk of life. His acclaimed two-day personal development workshop is now available online at Gurdy.Net

Article Source: The Dangers of Recognition

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Some Strategies to Define Motivation

  • Posted on July 1, 2009 at 9:04 pm

We’ve all heard a lot of discussion about the importance of motivation both in ourselves and in our employees. While the topic comes up a great deal, it’s difficult to define motivation because, like leadership, it’s a bit of an abstract term. You can find a great deal of information available on motivation, and this can help you create a definition to work from as you are working on increasing this important trait in yourself and in others.

The Broad Definition

If you’re looking for the most common way to define the term, the most common definition is that motivation is whatever causes people to act the way they do. For example, if a person robs a convenience store, he or she probably had some reason for acting that way – some motivation that prompted the action. Everything we do, including the choices we make, is going to be affected by our motivation.

Intrinsic Versus Extrinsic

These are two of the basic aspects of motivation. You need to understand these concepts in order to better learn how to motivate yourself and others to take desired actions. Intrinsic motivation refers to reasons that originate inside the person. For example, if you have a deadline, you might be motivated to meet that deadline because doing so gives you a sense of accomplishment. Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, involves motivation that originates outside of the individual. With this type of motivation, you would want to meet that deadline out of need to keep your job or to be rewarded for meeting the goal.

When you define motivation in these ways, you can see how complex the idea is and why it’s so important to start thinking about what is going to work with different people.

The Goal Setting Theory

Different research methods have been studying human motivation for decades, one of the more popular approaches that have been discovered is known as the goal setting theory. Basically, the idea here is that people are going to be motivated more frequently if they have some type of goal to reach. The beauty of this theory, besides the fact that it seems to be true, is that it can work on both intrinsic and extrinsic methods of motivation.

For example, you may have your own goal to reach so achieving that goal would be intrinsic motivation. On the other hand, if the company offers some type of reward as a goal that would be a good example of extrinsic motivation.

Importance of Motivation

Research has discovered that employees who are motivated do provide a wide range of benefits. You don’t have to define motivation to see it work effectively. For example, well-motivated workers strive for higher quality, increased productivity, and improved methods of doing the job. Clearly, these features have far reaching benefits for your business. They can also have far-reaching benefits for you. Whether intrinsic or extrinsic motivation is what works in your workplace, you can be sure that it will be beneficial.

Victor Ghebre is the editor of http://www.settinggoals101.com where you get practical tips and information on goal setting, motivation, leadership and more.

Visit http://www.settinggoals101.com/self-motivation-skills.html to learn how
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