FeelGooder: Tips for Life

Are You Doing What You Love?

December 21, 2010 by Guest Contributor

This post is by Shaun McCarthy of Money Cactus.

Hands up if you are interested in creating wealth! Good, now keep your hands up if you are happy to work hard for it … Do you still have your hand up? If you do, we have a problem!

I’m not going to tell you that wealth creation is easy and you can do it sitting on your hands, but it’s not really that hard, either. The real problem is that wealth creation is a concept that is misunderstood by most people. It’s not just about making money, accumulating assets and increasing your net worth. These are just terms about numbers, helpful ones for a part of wealth creation, but who wants to be a number?

Wealth creation is better than making money, it’s about creating a wealthy life!

Real Wealth Creation

The best part about wealth creation is the creative part. There isn’t just one way to go about achieving a result—in fact, it is completely up to you. You can choose where you want to direct your energy and what you want to focus on, which means it is nothing like hard work! You can apply this to investing, your hobbies, and even your personal life.

The thing that most people struggle with however, is their working life. How do you enjoy that, particularly when you are doing it for somebody else?

Adam Baker at Man Vs Debt wrote a thought provoking post not long ago about Never Working Again. Since I’m a new father, it struck a chord for me. I suggest you go read it, but the general gist is that if you do something you love, then you will never feel like you have to work again.

There are lots of great examples of people that prove this point. Some of my favourites are Chris Guillebeau, who decided to find a way to pursue his desire for travel, Tim Ferriss, who has perfected ways to make work as efficient as possible and leave more time to do the things he loves, and even Darren Rowse, who discovered a love for the blogosphere and found ways to make an income from it while helping others.

You may think that you are not a super-entrepreneur like these people, but you don’t have to be. You just have to have the desire to make something happen for yourself.

Never Work Again

Most people travel through life resigned to the fact that they will have to work hard for the rest of their days. With luck they might start working somewhere they enjoy, they have few or no commitments and very little responsibility. s they become more experienced, their salary increases, they buy more stuff, and they take on more responsibility.

Their working life looks like this:

It’s usually at point A that people realize that things are not really going the way they were hoping. Smart people will look for a solution, while others will continue on their miserable way. As you are a smart person, you can find a solution. This does not necessarily mean quitting your job: what it means is finding a way to increase your working wealth. What we want to create is a working life that looks like this:

Work that gets better the more you do? Surely not! But it’s possible: people do it, and so can you. It is completely possible for you to do this simply by tweaking what you are doing right now. Here’s how:

Find out what it is you want to do.
Invest in yourself and make a conscious effort to succeed.
Work towards your goal and enjoy the journey.
Ensure you are looking after the other important areas of wealth in your life.

It really is that easy!

Even if you don’t want to, or can’t do this in your current job, you can use the skills you already have to help make this happen. Find an aspect of work or life that you most enjoy, or would like to do more of, and focus on it. This is entirely up to you: it could be turning a hobby into a career by teaching others what you know, or selling the things you make. Or like me, it could be finding a job that offers more than just a salary.

My desire was to travel. I wanted to see more of the world. Australia is a long way away from most other places and I couldn’t really afford extensive travel myself, so I found a job that required me to travel. Sure, I had to work while doing it, but I was being paid to go to new places and experience new things all over the world. As far as I was concerned, it was a perfect match!

Investing in yourself

Now that I have a young family, I have a new goal: finding more time to be at home. This has meant shifting my focus and working on ways that will enable me to spend less time at work and more time with my family. I really have to thank Tim Ferriss here, because his advice has been priceless. If you haven’t read the 4 Hour Work Week, then you really should.

This book has provided me with inspiration and ideas to pursue new avenues, and help design a life that I want to live. I still have more to do, but reading this book has been an investment in myself, which I think is one of the most important things you can do. For you, this might mean going to seminars or night classes, going back to school or just reading great books and online resources. The important part is to continue to learn. By developing your skills and knowledge, you will be able to create more opportunities to do the things you want.

You working life is just like the rest of your life: it’s a lot more fun if you have goals in mind. By making purposeful decisions and knowing where you want to go, you are going to enjoy the journey a lot more! Remember that successful people make sure they are looking after themselves and their loved ones as well. I don’t like getting too hung up on finances, but I do make sure that I make my money work for me so that, ultimately, I won’t have to work for it!

Once you get to point B in our ideal work graph, you should have created a situation where even fun work is no longer a necessity, but a choice you can make. At this point you can continue on your merry way, or find something new that you love to do, and go do that instead!

Shaun is not an accountant, financial planner or life coach, but he writes about wealth creation anyway! Shaun’s motto is “Make wealth, not money,” which fits quite nicely with where he wants to be in life. You can find out more by visiting his blog about Personal Wealth Creation.

Save Your Sanity: Holiday Travel with Preschoolers

December 20, 2010 by Guest Contributor

This guest post is by Tara E. Nusz , D.Ed., a school psychologist who blogs at Do These Kids Make Me Look Crazy?

I decided to do some research during my Thanksgiving holiday. Well, “research” may be too strong a word.

I tried to pretend that I wasn’t a mother wrangling two kids under the age of six through three airports on a quest to make it halfway across the country on the busiest flying day of the year. Instead, I visualized myself as an investigative reporter who is doing a self-reflective piece on how a young, beautiful, highly-intelligent mother can make such a task look effortless.

I thought about carrying a Starbucks cup to make myself look extra casual and relaxed, but I decided that would be overkill. Plus, I needed to push our stroller with the bum wheel, which takes two hands. I’m pretty sure asking my three-year-old to hold a steaming cup of chai tea would make me look like a bad mother in the eyes of my fellow passengers.

Anyway, I won’t bore you with the details, but by the time I dragged my frazzled, sweaty, snack-stained carcass into my husband’s waiting car four days later, I ordered him to drive me immediately to the nearest insane asylum.

You’re probably thinking that I was so fatigued because I was poorly planned for our trip. Maybe I spent a little too much time pretending to be a glamorous investigative reporter and not enough time examining the reality of one adult, two kids, 1700 things to pack, and the hazards of bad weather, airport security, flight delays, and the inordinate cost of airport bribes, I mean, snacks.

That may very well be true, but you’re in luck. You get to benefit from all of my top-notch investigative reporting. Here’s what I learned.

Bring snacks

Lots of them. Not just regular, run-of-the mill snacks that you might have lying around the house on a typical day. No, bring out the big guns. The stuff that the young’uns always pester you about in the grocery store but you won’t buy because they were terribly behaved in the produce section.

Pop-tarts anyone? Yogurt covered pretzels? Expensive cheese sticks that you bought without a coupon? Bring it. But don’t tell them what you brought. Keep the suspense alive, and just allude to the awesomeness of the snack. Make statements like, “Sit down and buckle your seat belt. As soon as the plane takes off, I’m going to give you a snack that has sprinkles on it!”

Of course space is limited. But if you have to chose between an extra pair of big boy underwear and those fruit snacks that squirt a little bit of juice in your mouth when you bite them, toss the young’un in a pull-up and leave the undies behind. If he wets the pull-up, you can always have him go commando. It’s not creepy when a preschooler does it.

Tip: Pack snacks that don’t melt or smear excessively. Do they pass the “brush off” test? Can you brush the remnants off your clothes, or will they smear and leave streaks? Goldfish = pass; M&Ms = fail. Skittles can go either way, depending on whether your young’un is a drooler.

Fact: There is no empirical evidence to suggest that sugar causes hyperactivity in children. I learned this in my doctoral program in school psychology, and if you research it, you’ll find that I’m right. Caffeine will make them hyperactive, however, so consider limiting snacks containing chocolate. Sugar will make them fat, of course, but so will the 2 pounds of mashed potatoes drizzled with butter that they will eat for Christmas dinner.

Pack a stroller

Any stroller. Your young’un can walk? Fantastic. But if you bring a stroller, you automatically get to go through the “family” line at the security checkpoint. This line is about 1/20 the length of the regular line. I told the security guard that I’m prepared to shove my son in a stroller until he’s fifteen if it means I can keep going through that line. She told me I am very wise. And because she had a badge, I believed her.

Tip: Pack your young’un in the stroller for the purpose of getting through airport security, but then insist that he get out and burn off some energy before boarding the plane. The stroller can then be used to carry around all the snacks.

Keep the young’uns informed

Prior to your trip, spend a little time each day describing the expectations of the trip. Tell them the schedule. “We’re going to get up really early on Wednesday, eat a waffle in the car, and drive to the airport. Your job will be to carrying the backpack with the coloring books. We’re going to go on two airplanes before we get to Grandma’s. We will be on one plane for just a little while, and one plane for a long time. You have to stay with me all the time, because we’re a team.”

Warning: Apparently young’uns get really mad when they find out that a horribly long plane ride does not conclude with arrival at the destination as promised.

Bring activities for the plane ride

This seems really obvious, right? Well, it was absolute torture for me to watch a young’un who was about five years old get scolded 146 times by his mother during a two and a half hour plane ride because he was fidgeting in his seat and asking for snacks. Um, he’s five. You have a book. You brought something for yourself, why did you not pack something for him?

But because I brought enough snacks to feed all of the passengers on the entire plane if we were to crash on an island, Lost-style, we were able to pass him a couple of Oreos (Note: Oreos don’t really pass the “brush off” test, but they’re really good so it might be worth it. Plus, his stained clothes were his unprepared mother’s problem, not mine).

Tip#1: Bring low-tech activities as well as electronic toys. Remaining dependent on a DVD player or a hand-held video game can haunt you later if they banish all electronics and then you sit on the runway for 45 minutes while they de-ice the plane for the third time.

Mini-tip: Consider packing some extra batteries, first checking that this doesn’t violate any airport security rules.

Tip #2: Stay engaged with your children. Play a mean game of Go Fish. Color together. Play “I Spy”. Plan out what you’re going to do when you arrive at your destination. Sure, maybe they’ll veg out in front of the portable DVD player. But if you notice they are getting naughty or over-active, head it off at the pass by engaging them in a parent-directed activity. Sometimes the word “naughty” is synonymous with “needs attention”.

Tip #3: Space out and rotate self-directed activities with activities that require parent direction. For example, you may let them play with the Itouch for a while independently. But consider playing Hang-Man with them for 15 minutes prior to letting them pop in a movie.

If you bring out all the super-fun activities at once, what are you going to do when you are only half-way to your destination and they have dropped all the crayons, accidentally deleted all the games off your Itouch, and resorted to entertaining themselves by kicking the seat in from of them 4,000 times? Oh, wait. Refer back to #1, which is only effective if they don’t get so full they vomit.

Prioritize going to the bathroom on layovers.

One adult and two kids in an airplane bathroom. Do I really need to say more? I’m sure the passengers seated directly outside of the bathroom suspected that I was giving the young’uns a beating, what with all the bumping, banging, and muffled curse words.

Warning: Avoid snacks that are extremely salty, as they may induce the desire for a beverage. More beverages = more pee. More pee = more time in the airplane bathroom. The more time you spend with your flailing young’uns in the airplane bathroom = less time for that honeymooning couple to attempt to join the Mile-High Club.

Never underestimate the power of a rousing sing-along.

I’m kidding. A sing-along would be akin to suicide. Do you really want your young’uns to see you bludgeoned with a Sky Mall magazine? With that image in mind, you may also want to avoid bringing DVD’s of Dora the Explorer (“We did it, we did it, we did it, did it, did it!”). No one wants to have their mid-flight nap interrupted by Dora and that crazy fox Swiper.

I’d like to conclude this article by apologizing to all of you who now have the Dora Explorer theme song running through your head. At least it’s not the theme song from Yo Gabba Gabba. If you think it would make you feel better, I can give you some dried fruit and switch on your overhead light.

Tara E. Nusz , D.Ed., is a school psychologist who works in a public school outside of Charlotte, NC. She also blogs at Do These Kids Make Me Look Crazy?. Although Tara has to be very serious-minded at work, her blog completely disregards this in favor of “finding the funny” in her roles as mother, wife, and friend.

FeelGooder Fitness Tweak: Winter Running

December 19, 2010 by Lisa Johnson

Lisa Johnson is a fitness blogger at LisaJohnsonFitness.com.

Brian Kelsey, Carpenter, TV Host, drops the last 10 pounds.

Brian Kelsey is the host of Kelsey on the House. He is an up-and-comer at HGTV and also does voiceover work. I laughed when I clicked on his voiceover links—we’ve been hearing this guy for years on everything from movie trailers to CNN!

The situation

Brian gets a lot of resistance training from his job on set at Home Remodels. He’s constantly swinging a hammer and hauling two-by-fours. What he wants to do is focus on losing ten pounds or so by running.

Available equipment

A pair of sneakers.

The plan: cardio

First Brian, please check that your sneakers are fresh and wearing well. Especially as you’re going into the wintry weather of New York in the next few months, you might want to consider a new pair. Generally speaking you should replace your sneakers every six months, or 250 miles.

Also check with your local running store for thoughts on winter running gear. You’re going to need layers, gloves, a good hat, sunglasses for the glare from the snow, a face shield of some sort, good running tights/sweats, and a light jacket that’s easy to move in. There will be a little bit of investment in gear now, but it will save you from overheating or freezing later.

If you’re just starting out, consider the Couch to 5K program—I’m a fan! It’s a great run/walk program that takes ten weeks and culminates in a 5K road race that you’ve targeted. Brian has been running for a while, so for him, we’re going to work on pacing and consistency.

Strategy

Winter running requires strategy. You’ll need to plan a consistent three to four days per week for your running schedule, but the weather might not cooperate. Look at your work schedule and your local weather to plot the best days for running each week. You might find yourself running on the morning of a snow storm to get your miles in. Be flexible.

Scope out a local gym in case the worst case scenario happens and you can’t fit in an outdoor run. Just pay a single-day user fee (usually $15 to $20) and hop on the treadmill for the day. It won’t be great, but at least you’ll get your running done.

Outdoor running

For your normal runs, work on pacing yourself. The first few minutes should be nice and easy until you break a sweat. For two runs a week, do a nice steady-state run where you’re just going along at your usual pace. One day a week do tempo runs and spend one day a week doing hill climbs.

Tempo runs. Tempo runs are comfortably hard runs that push your endurance and your metabolic threshold. You’ll be running almost at your speed limit for two to four miles. It needs to be a sustained effort to be effective. The payoff is torching calories and increasing your metabolism, which means those pounds will just melt right off you. Runner’s World has a great article on the specifics.

Hill climbs. There’s this killer hill near my house. All the local runners know it, and on Saturdays it looks like this weird road race with people running up in a line and then trotting/walking back down. It’s really too steep to run down. This hill is killer for legs and really works to strengthen hamstrings and glutes—muscles that can get little activity if you’re running on flat surfaces all the time. Find a decently hard hill near your house and get to work. Do a quick warm up—just enough to break a sweat and get your body loosened up. Then head to your hill and chug up that sucker. Do three to five repeats, depending on how high the hill is and how stressed your lungs are. This is another way to shock the system and boost your metabolism. You should come back good and sweaty from your hill climb days. Here’s another post with some more tips on hill climb runs.

Brian, you’ll see the weight come right off, but you’ll also see your race times improve. You might just want to pick out a race that’s six to ten weeks away and see how you do.

Good luck with your TV show and your running, and let me know if you have any questions. If anyone else would like a Fitness Tweak just email me through my website—it’s listed below.

Are You a Human Being, or a Human Doing?

December 18, 2010 by Guest Contributor

This post is by Justine Bloome of JusBeing.

Think back on the day you’ve just had. What percentage of it were you “doing” something, versus just “being” in the moment?

Last weekend I attended an incredible retreat in the Yarra Valley; wine country in the State of Victoria in Australia. It was a meditation retreat, run by The Gawler Foundation.

The Foundation is perhaps best known for its founder, Ian Gawler, a decathlete and veterinary surgeon who conquered aggressive bone cancer by way of many intense hours of meditation. Until his recent retirement, Ian traveled the world sharing his insights about nutrition, meditation and self-help healing techniques to those suffering with cancer and multiple sclerosis.

The Gawler Foundation continues his work and also offers a health and wellness-based program for people who would like to simply foster a life of wellbeing, or perhaps continue their journey after recovering from cancer.
The weekend retreat I attended was especially geared to busy individuals who are seeking a short break from the rapid pace of their hectic lives; to take some time to press pause, learn the art of meditation, put the theories into intensive practice and ideally take away mindfulness techniques for daily life.

Circuit Breakers

A little tangent: in my career, I have spent some time creating brand experiences for clients. Some of those were internal brand experiences with staff, who can be a cynical audience to engage with.

I would often research this internal audience to test the level of cynicism and gauge what kind of “circuit breaker” would be required at the beginning of an internal brand experience. A circuit breaker is essentially a device to make people sit up and listen. It forces a kind of “A-ha!” moment, and it establishes a perspective in the audience from the outset that they actually do need to listen to what follows. It’s an incredible technique for anyone trying to communicate with an ambivalent, cynical or skeptical audience.

Human being… or human doing?

Paul and Maia Bedson, the husband-and-wife team hosting the meditation retreat, presented an excellent circuit breaker at the opening of the retreat. Each of the 30 people in the room had to introduce themselves by name and also give themselves a score on the scale below.

I watched expressions change and some of the cynicism drain from the faces of many of the people in the room identified immediately with the red side of the scale:

The doing trap

There is so much written today about productivity, and a lot of it’s focused on how much more we can fit into our busy schedules—it focuses on “doing” more in the same amount of time.

I read a report recently that said that Australians spend a total of 37.5 hours a day doing various activities. Did anyone notice that’s 13.5 hours more than there actually are in a day? And that’s not even counting the 6-10 hours some of us spend sleeping! (The same report gave a figure of 43.4 hours for the average person in the USA!)

So how are we managing to “do” so much in any given day? Well if you consider that 8.7 hours of those hours are spent with media and 5.5 of those hours are spent with technology, you’ve probably worked out the answer is multi-tasking.

With so much “doing” crammed into one day, is it any wonder we never find anytime to just be?

Just being

Meditation comes in many forms, but all types of meditation are all based in the notion of being present, being mindful, being still in mind, being a witness—just being.

A myth I often hear is that meditation is all about having a completely blank mind. This is usually the first question I get asked when I talk about meditation: “How do you manage to get your mind to be completely empty?”

Thinking is not “the enemy” of meditation; rather, meditation is more about stepping outside of your “thinking mind” and becoming an observer, a witness to what’s going on in the here and now.

Being Right Now

If you’ve never tried meditation and would like to experience it for yourself, here are three simple steps you can do now to practice “being”.

Step one

Sitting in an upright position in a comfortable chair, close your eyes and breathe into your belly (not your chest). Relax all your muscles on the out breath and now rest your attention on the blank space behind your eyelids. It might even feel like this dark, blank space actually wraps right around your head.

Just notice that space for a moment. If a thought enters your mind, just watch it from afar, like it was scrolling across the back of your eyelids. Then watch that thought go, without giving it any attention or judgment and rest your attention back on the space in front of your closed eyes.

Step two

Now expand your awareness to also include the sounds around you: those coming into the room from elsewhere, and those coming from you. The sound of your breath, the gurgle of your stomach, the rain outside, the birds chirping, the cars moving down the street—just notice those sounds. Don’t judge them, or think about where they are coming from. Try not to even label them. Just listen and rest your attention on these sounds as you continue to rest your attention on the back of your eyelids.

Step three

Now open your awareness one step further to feel your breath moving into your belly, and feel your belly push the air back out again. Notice the pause in your breathing at the top of the exhalation, before you inhale again and fill your belly with nourishing air. You are still aware of the space in front of your closed eyes and the sounds in the room and those coming into it from afar.

Continue to do this, without judgment, no goal or benchmark you’ve set for yourself. Just make a choice to be present and to truly feel the expansiveness of the space in front of your closed eyes, feel the sounds as they rest upon your ears, and feel the in breath bringing oxygen and nutrients to every cell in your body.

No goals, just a choice

The most important thing to remember as you start to try meditation is that there is no goal. Unlike the “doing” part of your brain which is constantly seeking to achieve, check things off a task list and attain new goals, meditation has no goals. It also has no judgmen—there is no right or wrong way of trying meditation.

Try not to tell yourself that you can’t do it, because the truth is, everyone has this capability in them. It is simply the ability to step back from your thinking mind and observe using your “aware mind” for a while.

Whether you managed five minutes or 15 minutes of taking these three simple steps, you have just experienced “being” through a simplistic form of meditation.

Open your focus

Once you’ve opened your eyes, instead of jumping straight back into “doing,” just notice the differences in yourself. Are your shoulders sitting lower? Do you feel more relaxed? Like you have created some “space” in your mind? Do you notice more of what is around you? Do you feel lightheaded?

The latter symptom may arise because meditation is medically proven to reduce your blood pressure radically and in a very short period of time. This is just one of many health benefits from incorporating a regular 20 minutes of meditation practice into your day.

What will you choose to be today? A human doing? Or a human being?

Justine Bloome, also known as “Jus”, blogs about her quest to be a mindful human being over at JusBeing. Follow her @inbloome on Twitter.

FeelGooder Asks: What’s Your Favorite Bad-day Antidote?

December 17, 2010 by georgina

We all have bad days. I’ve had a couple just this week, so I thought I’d ask you guys for your thoughts…

What’s your favorite bad-day antidote?

I have a few bad-day antidotes: lounging in the bath with a Martini, eating an ice-cream, going for a bike-ride. If the day’s a real doozy, I usually end up getting to the point where I realize, “Oh, today’s actually ridiculous. Nothing’s going to work. Okay then. I won’t take anything seriously until tomorrow.”

But my favorite bad-day antidote is spending time in my garden.

The garden is a good place for getting a fresh perspective

As you can see, my garden is a long way from the house, and it has some pretty fantastic views. Something about being out there changes my perspective slightly—it’s easier to feel distanced from my troubles, and to focus on what’s good.

There are plenty of good things in the garden: small things growing, big things ready to eat, weird insects, birds, and little, determined, indigenous plants happily coexisting with the broccoli and lettuces. My hens are nearby, the forest stands, green and still, just over the garden fence, and since we live on a hill, the sky feels almost close enough to touch.

The garden presents all sorts of paradoxes: it’s seasonal, yet it persists; it promotes growth through decay; it is at once still and a hive of activity. Ultimately, it’s calm and calming, and on even the worst days, the garden restores me—it makes me feel good again.

Tell me: what’s your favorite bad-day antidote?

Reclaim Your Creativity: 3 Steps to Bust Through Inaction

December 16, 2010 by Guest Contributor

This guest post is by Tara Gentile of Scoutie Girl

Ignoring your creativity can have serious consequences. You feel stuck—even depressed. You start heading down a spiral of inaction. It gets harder & harder to make things happen in your life.

Reclaiming your creativity (yes, I know you’ve got some!) can jump start your life in startling ways. Finding your own creative spark will help you set your dreams in motion and push ahead when the going gets tough.

My senior year of college was a real creative peak for me. I was writing daily, blogging on Xanga, and reading like a fiend. I earned a full scholarship to my graduate program of choice with the intent to study postmodern Christian theology.

I was poised to be another small success story of academia.

But while I was working my summer job, I got bit by the conventional life bug. My forward momentum ceased.

I took a full time job at one of the bookstore chains, slinging coffee and steaming milk. I was passionate about coffee and books. Turns out I was also passionate about business. But Fortune 500 retail management doesn’t leave a lot of room for creativity in the workplace.

My independent successes were often overruled by overlords—I mean, middle managers—who preached conformity.

My mood ebbed and flowed with the decisions that those above me made. I rose in the ranks and found that the higher I went, the less creativity I was allowed.

In a lifetime of run-ins with depression, I battled the worst bout while working there. With no time or energy for self-expression, I couldn’t act on my usual creative self remedies. I quickly spiraled out of control, losing about 30lbs as my body shut down. I drove to work wanting to die. I drove home from work wanting to die.

Luckily, I met my husband and recovered. If only it was as quickly and easily as writing that sentence. With his accountability, I made time for me and my mood improved.

Now I realize that period in my life was a direct consequence of inaction. With no creative outlet, I lost touch with my own life.

It turned out that the conventional life I desired wasn’t what I thought it would be. Working my butt off for mediocre-at-best pay didn’t mean I could live on my own, purchase the things I needed, or keep up with any sort of social life outside of the occasional glass of wine with my coworkers, who I already saw too often thankyouverymuch.

On top of this, I realized that when you settle for inaction and the conventional, it’s that much harder to create and act on unconventional circumstances.

It’s that much harder to create the action you need to fulfill your goals.

Settling for inaction doesn’t just delay your satisfaction—it makes it harder to achieve!

Reclaiming my creativity and my own lust for action took a complete break from my circumstances: the birth of my daughter.

While the shift from dreaming to doing wasn’t immediate, I reconnected with my capacity for learning new things and achieving my goals. It was a process—one that was punctuated with reading, writing, and experimentation. Within a few months, I was able to act.

It was like drawing my pistol from its holster on my hip, still plump with post-pregnancy weight.

While my first shot may not have hit true, shot after shot, action after action, my aim and my circumstances improved.

People now ask me how I turn ideas into reality so quickly, how I can generate so much forward progress from a schedule that all to easily gets bogged down in the day to day. Very simply, it’s the cycle of action. The consequence of inaction is more—paralyzing—inaction.

The consequence of action is more—energizing—action.

If you’re feeling bogged down by the day-to-day, unsure of where the energy to achieve your dreams will come from, or simply stuck, here are some ideas for helping you break free.

1. Find your breaking point.

Not where you break, but where you can break the cycle of inaction. What fundamental change can you make in your life to produce an environment where your creativity can thrive? Your solution might be a change of routine or schedule, a change in location, or a break from a toxic friendship. In general, I don’t recommend having a baby for this purpose.

Your breaking point is a change that will allow you to fundamentally shift your perspective on your day to day tasks. Inevitably, these kinds of changes don’t happen overnight, they’re part of a process of change. But working words a single action that has the capacity to renew your energy and restart your forward progress can be motivation in and of itself.

2. Accept that not every idea is a good one.

While you’re recovering from inaction, it’s easy to get discouraged when you discover your new idea isn’t feasible or when your project just doesn’t turn out well. Part of creating your forward progress is failing, learning, and acting again. By accepting that a great many of your ideas won’t turn out, you’ll leave yourself open for even better ideas.

Failure is an integral part of creating more action in your life. It’s not a stumbling block; it’s an opportunity. People who produce a lot of good stuff produce a lot more bad stuff. But they use their failures to propel them forward not hold them back.

3. Don’t hold on to the things that hold you back.

While it sounds simple, many people I know hold on to habits that stop them from making progress: TV, naps, household expectations, shopping… Most of these things don’t have the ROT—return on your time—that exercising your creativity and action on your ideas can.

Whether you goal is to start a business, take up an exercise routine, or write the great American novel, you’ll find your time is better spent working towards your goals. Once you’re in the cycle of action, there will be plenty of time for obligations and mindless activities.

Inaction has serious consequences.

While you may not see its effects today or tomorrow, it’s wearing away at your productivity, tearing apart your creativity. Finding your way back to a cycle of action, progress, and momentum will help you deal with these consequences, reverse them, and find real energy in your life, no matter your goals.

Breaking the cycle of inaction requires a choice: to make your own needs a priority. Allow yourself to examine what kind of action you need to move forward with your goals. Allow yourself to consider what you’ve been missing as a result of your inaction.

Then, little by little or full steam ahead, embrace new choices that require your action.

Tara Gentile empowers people to live more creatively and change the world with their money on Scoutie Girl. Learn more about moving from inaction to accomplishment with her free Creating Action ecourse.

The Twelve Days of Calmness: How to Survive the Holidays with Aplomb

December 15, 2010 by Lisa Johnson

I love the holidays. I love Christmas and New Year, and all the parties, and seeing my friends and family. I love the look of wonder on my son’s face as he jackrabbits from his room on Christmas morning to see what Santa brought.It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all that needs to be done—and maybe a little stressed on the finances too—but my suggestions below are designed to keep everything flowing smoothly and easily. Enjoy!

Choose your holiday parties wisely. Coordinate with relatives and friends ahead of time. Don’t feel like you have to go to everything.
Find a standard holiday gift that will work for most people. Spend the extra time and energy on your truly close friends and family.
Schedule downtime and exercise. Make sure you’re getting the rest you need and keep yourself stress-free with an exercise routine that’s as similar to normal as possible.
Finish the shopping as early as you can. Go online for simple point-and-click shopping, and let the gifts just roll into your driveway. Don’t forget cards—you don’t want to have to do a mad dash for them on Christmas Eve!
Come up with a home-made project—maybe one that you can give as a gift. One year I actually did fruitcake! I’ve also done Christmas ornaments, mulled cider, and more. It can be a really fun activity with the family or a friend. Consider signing up for a local craft class (there are tons around the holidays). Maybe you could make your own soap for everyone?
Be a party host if you love to host, and a stellar guest if you don’t. Don’t feel obligated to host a holiday party. There are many ways you can help your hostess: be a great conversationalist, be gracious to everyone present, and come armed with a few friendly topics to discuss. Don’t be afraid to dig in in the kitchen—but only if you know the host will be happy about it, and not frazzled by the help.
Cut down your own tree! It’s fun, it gets everyone outside, and there’s a little bit of exercise involved in dragging a tree along a wooded path. Plus you’ll be helping a local farmer and getting the freshest tree you possibly can. Check with your town to see if they have a mulching service after the holidays (mine does). Then your tree will live on as mulch in local parks and green spaces.
Don’t just give gifts: give time. A recent survey showed that people who performed small acts of kindness for ten days in a row were markedly happier at the end of the run. Collect mail for a traveling neighbor, shovel an elderly neighbor’s walk, pick up a gift for a busy friend, or just call someone to say “Hi” and stay connected. There are lots of ways to give back to the people in your life.
Start a family tradition or two. Insist that they happen. This may sound silly, but I always give my female relatives fuzzy socks for Christmas. They really look forward to them now, and I have fun shopping for something that everyone will like. Your tradition could be more formal—like seeing a holiday performance every year—or you could finish the holiday decorating with a pizza party. Whatever evolves for you and your loved ones, hold onto that tradition. If you’re like me, you’ll hope your children will carry it on.
Sign up for New Year’s resolution activities now. This is something I learned after 14 years in the fitness industry. People make New Year’s resolutions on January 1, but don’t really do anything about them until a few weeks later. Sign up with a personal trainer or coach (any kind of coach) now. You’ll beat the January rush and get the time you’re gunning for, making it more likely that you’ll actually tackle that resolution successfully.
Buy yourself some bling. Okay, it doesn’t have to be bling—it could be a super-soft blanket—but buy yourself something that either makes you feel spectacular or bathes you in comfort. Some soaking salts for a long hot bath on a cold night maybe? A spa pedicure instead of the usual iffy home job? A new garden tool? A great shade of lipstick? Do something to remind yourself that you’re special, too.
Plan holiday parties with some healthy choices. Every year I challenge myself to do an all-organic, somewhat healthy dinner. I usually pull it off. I would never deny anyone mashed potatoes and gravy on Christmas day but I make sure the veggies are steamed so people can load up on that if they want. I don’t sweat it too much, though. We should indulge every once in a while!

So far I’m doing pretty well with my list. I’ve been keeping my workouts regular (I know it’s easier for me, since I stand in a Pilates studio all day!), we’ve been eating well and I actually have all my Christmas shopping done—including cards!

What are your ideas for a calm and tranquil Christmas? Please share them and happy holidays!

Why Your Health is a Personal Development Issue

December 15, 2010 by Guest Contributor

This guest post is by Mike Reeves-McMillan of Living Skillfully: Change Your Life.

As a hypnotherapist and health coach, I get three main kinds of clients.

People who want to change their behavior, their thoughts and feelings, so that they can be healthier. They want to lose weight, or exercise more, or (very commonly) stop smoking.
People who want to overcome emotional issues such as phobias, anxiety, stress or depression.
People who want to deal with physical symptoms such as skin problems, pain or irritable bowel syndrome.

At first, you’d wonder what these three types of people have in common.

What I’ve come to realize is that what they have in common is a determination to improve their lives. What they’re all looking for, whether they know it or not when they come in my door, is personal development.

For example, my stop-smoking clients. I had a lovely lady in the other day who’s turning 74 next year. She’s smoked since she trained as a nurse in the 1960s. Now she’s decided it’s time to stop. She’s over it.

That, my friends, is personal development. Because what happens when you make that kind of change in your life is that you gain a new confidence in yourself. You gain a new sense of control, a new perspective.

Another stop-smoking client of mine, a divorced mother of two in her late 30s, was smoking, in part, as an act of self-harm. Stopping involved changing how she thought and felt about herself. It was part of a global change in her life, from the dark place she’d been in since her childhood to a new and more powerful way of being in the world and being true to herself. Becoming a non-smoker, for her, was not just getting rid of a bad habit or an addiction, but getting rid of a negative mindset.

And the same is true of my other clients. Overcoming fear, sadness or that helpless feeling you get in the midst of overwhelming stress makes you a very powerful person. If you can do that, you can do all kinds of scary things.

What about changing your body’s responses by changing how you think? A lot of illnesses (more than we usually realize) are stress-related or at least made worse by stress. When we shift out of a stress mindset and when we reconnect to our own bodies and stop dividing them from our minds, it’s like pushing in an electric plug. Power starts flowing.

Health is not just medicine

I have immense respect for conventional scientific medicine. I always make sure that any client with a physical symptom has had it checked by a doctor before I’ll work with them, not just for my own protection and theirs but because I simply don’t have the diagnostic resources that are available to a medical professional. But where Western medicine, as it’s often practiced, falls down is that it treats a biosystem, not a person.

In its place, medicine is wonderful and does things that no other treatment can do. But a while ago, out of interest, I looked at the 20 most commonly prescribed drugs and asked how many of them treated symptoms that can also be addressed by better stress management, good nutrition and exercise. The answer? At least 19.

There are three things that a pill will give you that stress management, nutrition and exercise won’t:

(Usually) more rapid results.
Undesired side effects.
Reliance on the doctor and the pharmaceutical companies for your health.

And it’s the third one that I want to focus on here. If you improve your own health (in the very broadest sense, the functioning of your mind-and-body in the world) through your personal participation in a process that requires effort and attention, that cost in effort and attention is repaid many times over by the increased sense of agency you get. It doesn’t matter if you had a coach help you with information and planning and motivation; clearly, you did it. You made the change. But taking a pill is an inescapably passive act.

Sadly, all too often it’s only when there’s no viable medical alternative that we look to what we can achieve for ourselves. My mother farms dairy goats, and she used to sell milk to a man who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer some years before and given 6 months to live. He had done his research and found a diet that claimed to help in reversing cancer (the goat’s milk was part of it). I have no idea whether it was what he ate or how he thought that cured him. All I know is that he rode a big BMW motorcycle, had a handshake like the bite of a mule and was the healthiest-looking 70-year-old I’d ever seen. Cancer survivors in general tend to love life, but he had an additional reason: he’d taken responsibility for his own cure when the doctors couldn’t do anything for him.

Health is a personal development issue, because to take action for our own health we have to believe in ourselves and our own ability to change. And once we start taking that action, not only will we feel better than we’ve ever felt before, but we’ll have the inner strength to achieve more in every area of life.

So: what health action have you been thinking about taking? What healthy change might you make in your life? And how can you apply personal development principles to bring that change into reality?

Mike Reeves-McMillan is a hypnotherapist and health coach who blogs at Living Skillfully: Change Your Life. His themes for 2011 include connecting to your body and challenging yourself.

How to Make the Most of Your Greatest Resource

December 14, 2010 by Guest Contributor

This guest post is by Mark Riddix of BuylikeBuffett.

What is the greatest resource you have? Your first answer may be your house, car, bank account, or some other financial asset. While these possessions may have some monetary value; they pale in comparison to your greatest resource. You may be wondering what is this valuable gold mine that I am talking about?

The answer is YOU! You are the most valuable resource that you will ever possess. Your gifts, talents, skills, and abilities are priceless. They can all be used to improve your life and the lives of others. Your knowledge base is far more valuable than your home, 401(k), and investment balances combined.

Making money using your most valuable asset

You may not know it but you can create an income stream for yourself by marketing your most valuable commodity. Our economy is based on the timely provision of services and information. Companies are always looking for knowledgeable, confident, capable people Many companies would be willing to pay you for your expertise in a particular area.

That’s right! The skills that you have developed can be turned into income. You can take your knowledge base and monetize it by either finding full time employment in an area or renting yourself out. You can rent out the knowledge that you have through consulting and freelancing.

Speaking from experience, I can tell you that I have been able to turn my passion for financial education into a nice income stream. It is the best of both worlds because I get to help improve the lives of others and have been able to improve my life as well.

Here are a few of the steps that helped me turn my greatest resource into an income stream.

1. Find your passion.

I was always passionate about investing and personal finance so I had the idea to start writing about these topics a few years ago. It was an area that interested me and I noticed that so many people struggled with financial issues.
I would often run into people that would ask me questions about the best places to put their money and how to start saving for their kid’s college fund. I figured that writing would be the best way to share my thoughts on many of these issues.

2. Create a plan.

My next step was to craft a strategy that would enable me to build name recognition and awareness of my skill set. My short term goal was not to make money but to get an opportunity to write.

I began sending out letters and emails to newspapers, magazines, and other publications hoping for the opportunity to write a monthly column free of charge. There were many non-responses before I was finally given the chance to write my own financial column for a local newspaper. This gave me the opportunity to gain exposure and further develop my skills as a writer.

3. Be willing to take a risk.

Once I had written a column for a year, I had the confidence and experience to believe that I could launch a successful blog. I started writing for my own blog and focused on churning out content day after day.

There were some rough patches in the beginning where I thought about giving up but I hung in there. I wrote guest posts, networked with other bloggers, and worked tirelessly to grow my readership. I began to develop a modest income stream by taking small freelancing gigs and earning advertising revenue from ad networks.

4. Stick with it.

After months and months of blogging, I leveraged my experience as a freelance writer into paid writing staff positions. I would write for a number of different sites during the week which gave me the opportunity to generate a few thousand dollars a month in writing income. I continued to earn ad revenue writing for my own site as well. My site had become popular enough that I started to sell ad space directly to advertisers myself.

5. Keep growing!

As time went on, I received more and more offers to write for larger sites. The pay rates increased and all of these jobs led to more recognition for my site. I kept seeking to learn as much as I could about the financial arena.

Over the past year, I was able to compile much of my personal finance knowledge into a book. This along with writing my blog has allowed me to turn my financial knowledge into monthly income. My goal is to hopefully one day grow my site as large as Darren Rowse has done with ProBlogger. Hey, you have to have goals, right?

How will you leverage your greatest resource?

You can take your knowledge base and monetize it as well! Everyone has some gift, talent, and skill that people could benefit from. For example, if you are a lifestyle expert, you can address day to day issues that people are having. If you are a tech junkie, you can help people deal with their IT questions. I know that I could definitely use help with that! I am sure that there are plenty of other areas as well.

Never underestimate the things that you are capable of achieving. Every bit of knowledge that you have and information that you learn is valuable to you and others as well. Your path to financial success may just lie in how effectively you utilize the greatest asset that you have which is yourself.

Mark Riddix publishes his own financial blog, BuylikeBuffett.com and has written a personal finance book titled Your Financial Playbook.

To Love Myself: Overcoming Low Self-esteem

December 12, 2010 by Guest Contributor

This guest post is by Anna Lind Thomas of The Hookup Column

I often try to warn young women of their self-esteem. She can be a self-sabotaging piece of work with only one goal in mind: to do what it takes to alleviate the pain that comes from believing you aren’t good enough.

And if you let her take the reigns in your dating life, she’ll have you in a clinic for an STD test before you realize you weren’t even in to the guy in the first place.

She doesn’t care about consequences. She wants to be loved. She wants to be beautiful. She wants to be noticed.

She wants to be invaluable.

I worked closely with college students for many years, and I saw first hand how destructive low self-esteem could be. It affected their relationships, who or how they would date, or the choices they made when it came to sex, drinking and drugs.

There are fewer tragedies than a woman who doesn’t understand her own worth.

She’s unable to see the beauty in just being a woman, the miracle of being born on this earth, and the belief that she has a purpose only she can fulfill.

Low self-esteem doesn’t care if you fit society’s view of beauty, how much you weigh, if you’re talented, intelligent, poor or wealthy.

She doesn’t discriminate because she was created in a lie, not founded in reality, but of circumstances, tragedies, abuse, or fear. A lie that eventually became a belief. A belief that will eventually inhibit you from being the miraculous human being you were meant to be.

So why me?

We weren’t born lacking self-worth. It takes convincing to separate us from our humanity. We must be taught. Perhaps our parents told us we would never be worth anything. Perhaps someone sexually abused us, teaching us that our body is simply an object. Perhaps we were told we were ugly so many times, we eventually believed it ourselves.

Perhaps we live in a society that creates an unattainable ideal that no one can live up to and we’re bombarded too often with images that remind us … we’re not good enough.

Low self-esteem is a sign that we’ve lost sight of our miraculous existence. That can be a very dangerous sign, indeed.

The dangers of low self-esteem

We often don’t give low self-esteem the respect it deserves. If left to its own devices, it can cause us to make choices that will have devastating effects on not only our lives, but the lives of those around us.

A woman who doesn’t believe she is worthy of love may only allow abusive or unhealthy relationships in her life. If she doesn’t believe she deserves better, she will never demand better.

A woman who believes her body has no value may offer it to all who will take it—all who want it—without ever considering what she wants.

A woman who doesn’t believe she is beautiful may hide herself behind extra weight, or baggy clothes to insure she goes unnoticed in the world. Or, she may do the opposite and desperately seek attention from anyone who will give it her. Anyone who will make her feel, even for just a moment, beautiful.

This is when self-esteem has power. We can take the power back.

Understanding the subconscious mind

How we feel about ourselves is a choice, although it often doesn’t feel that way. To better understand this, we need to understand the power of our subconscious mind. According to the late Florence Scovel-Shinn:

“The subconscious is simply power, without direction. It is like a stream of electricity, and it does what it is directed to do; it has no power of induction. Whatever man feels deeply or pictures clearly, is impressed upon the subconscious mind.”

If I believe I am worthless, then at one point I was presented with the idea that I was. Eventually this idea became a belief. Although it was a lie, perhaps it was believed because people I trusted told me so. Perhaps circumstances confirmed it to me. Regardless, the belief was stored away in my subconscious as a truth. Beliefs are assumed. I don’t think I’m worthless, I know I am. And my subconscious will cause me to live in a way that confirms that to be true.

The power of our subconscious is why our low self-esteem can have such a destructive hold on us. It is something so ingrained in us that we unknowingly make decisions limited by the lies of our subconscious.

I remember one young woman who felt she was unattractive and thought no man would love her as she was. She reflected on a sexual encounter she had with someone she barely knew. Her words were, “I have no idea why I slept with him. I knew he didn’t really want me, but I just did it anyway.”

There are times when we are baffled by our own behavior. More often than not, it’s because our subconscious did the decision making for us. If your subconscious does not believe you can be loved as you are, then it will decide that the only other option is to perform for something that seems like love, instead.

Transforming lies to truths

The truth is, your entire existence is miraculous. You are talented. You have purpose. You are beautiful, simply because you’re a human being who has the ability to do good in the world.

If you believe you’re anything less, then you must go to the root of where your self-doubt began. Perhaps it was during your childhood, your marriage, first job, or a party in college. Visualize that moment in your mind. Then confront it.

Be bold, speak out loud, “Although this moment happened to me, the belief I made about myself is not true. It is a lie. The truth is (fill awesome comment about yourself here).”

Think it. Speak it. Shout it. Every day.

This won’t be easy. Reconfiguring your belief system of yourself will be like disciplining an unruly child. It takes time, frequent correction and consistency.

If you’re at a cocktail party and your self-esteem starts throwing a tantrum because she thinks she’s the ugliest girl in the room, then remove her from the situation and put her in a time-out. Then, go look in the mirror and tell yourself, “I’m beautiful. Anything conflicting with that statement is a lie.”

Remember, your subconscious is simply storing information and guiding you based off images, experiences, information and beliefs. You get to control the information it receives. If you are correcting a long held belief, this may take time, but you will do it. Life is too short not too. Your life is too valuable to waste on lies.

As much as I’d like to, I can’t convince you of your beauty, your lovability and worthiness. You wouldn’t believe me if I tried. What I think doesn’t matter anyway.

You are a unique, priceless human being. This phenomenon in itself makes you worthy of every opportunity to experience a life filled with love and joy.

All you have to do is believe it.

Sources: Scovel-Shinn, F. (2009). The Game of Life and How to Play It. United States: Beacon Hill.

Anna Lind Thomas is the creator of The Hookup Column. Her work is the product of years researching hookup culture and female disenchantment. Follow her on Twitter @anna4thehookup