Posts

Showing posts from April, 2009

Is Happiness connected to Relationships?

3 Strategies to find fulfillment from the people around you By Dwight Bain, Nationally Certified Counselor and Certified Life Coach Relationships- we all are impacted by them, but have you thought about how much of our happiness actually comes from being in a healthy relationship? MTV did and recently conducted a massive study to see what made their viewers, (ages 14-34) the happiest... and the answer may surprise you. The number one answer by a huge margin was that these young people longed for a connected relationship with their family. To be happy at home isn't limited to the younger audience either, because USA Today surveyed an older audience a few months back and discovered the same pattern. The majority of people in the United States define happiness more from the health of their relationships than by their income, house, car or job success combined! I believe God designed us to experience connected relationships and so when we are blessed enough to be in one life is great.

Influence: Connecting with People

By Dr. John C. Maxwell As a train's source of energy and direction, the locomotive plays a vital role. However, unless a locomotive connects to other cars on the track, it is relatively useless. A train's value comes from its ability to transport massive amounts of cargo, and doing so requires the locomotive to link up with dozens of freight cars. Traveling by itself, a locomotive would arrive at its destination empty-handed. In that case, its journey would be nothing more than a waste of fuel. Leaders are like locomotives in that they're blessed with drive, energy, and vision. However, until leaders learn the art of connection, their influence remains minimal. In isolation, their talents accomplish little, and their efforts are squandered. Let's look at practical ways whereby leaders can make meaningful connections with others. 8 Steps for Connecting with People #1 Don't Take People for Granted Weak leaders get so caught up in the vision of where they're going

6 Steps to a Stronger Mind

by Mark Victor Hansen Our minds are all we've got. They are the source of who we, both personally and professionally, are. They determine our success or failure. They are our strength and our weakness. With the quality of our entire lives resting on our minds, it's unbelievable that we choose to fill them with so much garbage. The amount of negativity from television, newspapers, tabloids and other media that bombards us on a daily basis is amazing. We would never think to fill our bodies with only junk food, right? Heck no. We know that if we ate nothing but French fries and ice cream we would experience negative consequences like skin blemishes, weight gain and rotting teeth. But with mental junk food we don't see the physical consequences right away. When our minds are constantly filled with negativity and bad news, our minds begin to decay. That's why we need to develop a strong, Herculean-esque mind. Developing your mental muscles will give you the power to accompl

Hope is the Great Activator

by Zig Ziglar "Without hope what good is tomorrow?" We are surrounded by people who need hope in their lives. We don't often see their need because a lack of hope is not easily communicated. People aren't prone to say, "I need hope." Nonetheless, when we listen closely, we can hear the cries of the hope-needers. Or oftentimes we can see it in their actions. For example: The student with no hope of passing won't study. Why bother? The sales person with no hope of making the sale won't make the call. What's the purpose? The couple whose marriage is in trouble won't seek counseling because (they think) it's all over anyway. The relative who hasn't spoken to you for three years won't try. What's the hope? The senior citizen who doesn't think anyone would be interested in helping him won't ask. The nurse who doesn't think anyone appreciates her wisdom won't offer it. The manager who doesn't see a chance of being

Get Connected- Surviving and Thriving in the New Economy!

By Mary Gardner, for the Orlando Business Journal I just finished up a workshop for the unemployed and the biggest take away came as such a shock to me, since I’ve been an entrepreneur for 16 years. It’s the fact that many of the people who are unemployed have been “company” people their whole career, some of them at the executive level who got early retirement, and they have never given any thought to starting a business, freelancing or temporary work. They had seen themselves primarily as an employee and now are feeling stuck because some of them had sent out nearly 200 resumes and hadn’t gotten but a few phone interviews. According to The Bureau of Labor Statistics most jobs are never advertised and are found through personal contacts. One source mentioned that 80% of jobs were found through their own network and not through job listings via the computer. The two largest job listings of Monster and Career Builder receive thousands of resumes per job listing the chances are slim t

Do You Know Why You Are In a Recession?

By Patrick Morley, PhD (The following article is adapted from Pat Morley’s book, How to Survive the Economic Meltdown) John was highly leveraged when the stock market crashed. By Friday morning of Wall Street’s worst week, John’s equity was paper thin. He said, “If the market goes down another 100 points today, they will call my margin account and I’ll lose everything. On Monday morning, I’ll have to start over.” As we talked on, John explained, “You know. I think I needed this. I’m only in my early 40s, but I’ve made so much money that I stopped working about a year ago. “Basically, I’ve been sitting around on the couch watching movies and getting fat. My life was headed nowhere. God has my undivided attention.” The most difficult lessons to learn are often the ones we already know. Living By Your Own Ideas Like John, during good times a lot of people get lax about doing life God’s way. In fact, a lot of people have never really been trained to understand God’s way. I see this every F

Words To Learn

By by John C. Maxwell In my years studying leadership and evaluating leaders, I have stumbled across a leadership shortcoming that continually amazes me. Leaders will manage a team, work with the same individuals every day, yet hardly know anything about their people! These leaders have never prioritized acquainting themselves with the dreams, thoughts, hopes, opinions, and values of those they lead. The best leaders are readers of people. They have the intuitive ability to understand others by discerning how they feel and recognizing what they sense. I have found that leaders overestimate the amount of time and effort needed to get to know someone. In fact, in only one hour with you in private conversation, I could, probably by asking three questions, find the passion of your life: What do you dream about? A person's dreams are powerful revealers of passion. When a person starts to talk about their dreams it's as if something bubbles up from within. Their eyes brighten, their

The Law of Sowing and Reaping

by Jim Rohn Now, here's the second law that changed my life forever to understand sales and marketing. I learned the law of sowing and reaping. And in the law of sowing and reaping is also the story of the law of averages. Jot this down…the story of the sower. It comes from the Bible. I am an amateur on the Bible, but this is such a useful story. Here's what the story says, and take notes, because the drama's in the details. The sower was ambitious. Evidently, he was ambitious. When you read the whole story you'll conclude yes, this was an ambitious sower. Here was number two. He had excellent seed. The sower who sowed the seed had excellent seed. And the excellent seed could be an excellent opportunity, an excellent product, an excellent story. So we've got an ambitious sower with excellent seed. But now here are the rest of the details of the story. For your information, for the drama of your life, so you can understand things better, learning some of this is ho

Failure to Finish

4 key factors to guide unmotivated students toward academic success By C. Dwight Bain, Nationally Certified Counselor & Certified Life Coach Have you ever wondered why so many students get close to the ‘finish line’ of a semester or even graduation and then fail to finish? Parents, teachers, guidance counselors and tutors can be cheering for a student to push forward to finish strong and sometimes they just sit down and give up. You’ve probably seen it. A bright young person starts out with promise and potential and then halfway through a semester they literally run out of gas and ‘check out’ as it’s called because they completely lose the motivation to finish school. Academic Atomic Bombs When a student ‘checks out’ it isn’t because they don’t know what to do. You can tell them continually that they should be doing their homework, turning in class work, completing reports and playing by the rules to get good grades and move forward with their academic career. Yet they won’t do it

Solve Stress and Save Money by Shopping Wisely

By C. Dwight Bain One of the strategies our family has used for over ten years to solve stress and save money is to work off of a weekly shopping list. It's a simple process of printing out a weekly sheet of paper with the type of products that our family typically uses. We fill it out as a family throughout the week to prevent forgetting something, or buying too much of the products we already have on hand. It keeps us organized, and saves a lot of stress by following a plan, which also helps us to budget our spending before we get to the store. Once we make the list and review it by looking into the fridge or pantry to make sure that nothing is missed, then we grab a yellow marker to identify the products that we have coupons for, since we save about twenty dollars per week by using the manufacturers coupons from the local newspaper. It may sound complex, but it's actually a simple process to solve stress by planning ahead and working together as a family. Just take our l

Achieving Your Dreams

by Jim Rohn, Master Coach While most people spend most of their lives struggling to earn a living, a much smaller number seem to have everything going their way. Instead of just earning a living, the smaller group is busily working at building and enjoying a fortune. Everything just seems to work out for them. And here sits the much larger group, wondering how life can be so unfair, so complicated and unjust. What's the major difference between the little group with so much and the larger group with so little? Despite all of the factors that affect our lives - like the kind of parents we have, the schools we attended, the part of the country we grew up in - none has as much potential power for affecting our futures as our ability to dream. Dreams are a projection of the kind of life you want to lead. Dreams can drive you. Dreams can make you skip over obstacles. When you allow your dreams to pull you, they unleash a creative force that can overpower any obstacle in your path.

5 Reasons Why Dreams Don't Take Flight

By: Dr. John C. Maxwell Most of us never see our dreams come true. Instead of soaring through the clouds, our dreams languish like a broken-down airplane confined to its hangar. Through life, I have come to identify five common reasons why dreams don't take flight. #1 We Have Been Discouraged from Dreaming by Others We have to pilot our own dreams; we cannot entrust them to anyone else. People who aren't following their own dreams resent us pursuing ours. Such people feel inadequate when we succeed, so they try to drag us down. If we listen to external voices, then we allow our dreams to be hijacked. At some point, other people will place limitations on us by doubting our abilities. When surrounded by the turbulence of criticism, we have to grasp the controls tightly to keep from being knocked off course. #2 We Are Hindered by Past Disappointments and Hurts In the movie Top Gun, Tom Cruise plays Maverick, a young, talented, and cocky aviator who dreams of being the pr

Losing Love and Sex while Married

By C. Dwight Bain, Nationally Certified Counselor & Certified Life Coach Why do so many people lose love and sex while losing their marriage? Research shows many different factors that lead to relationship failure but let’s make it personal and explore some hidden reasons that move couples from ‘happy ever after’ to over to shattered dreams and hatred. Jessica and Phillip have been dating six months. They spend long nights together talking about how good things are for them. It feels like they have shared their entire life’s history with each other, so Phillip eventually asks Jessica to marry him. They feel so “in love”, that she instantly says “yes”! Soon they are off to see their pastor for premarital counseling. They discuss finances, children, careers, houses, and in-laws as they map out what it would be like as they begin their lifetime together. One summer day they stand before God and their friends in a little church to say “I do”. Ironically, less than a year later the

58 Warning Signs of Cheating Partners

These are the most common signs of a partner who has detached from you because they are attached to someone else. Check off any of these traits you have seen in your relationship over the last 6 – 12 months. Be honest, the future of your relationship together could depend on it. Behavioral ____ Mate is working longer hours on the job and not coming home as much ____ Your spouse has become lazy, especially with household responsibilities ____ Working late every day, with no noticeable increase of income or volume of work ____ Leaving very early for work ____ Increased use of the internet, emails, IM’s, texts, Facebook or twitter ____ Unaccounted for time away from home ____ Additional mileage on odometer for no apparent reason ____ Smelling of perfume, nicotine or alcohol, like they have been to a club- not work ____ Increased use of alcohol/tobacco ____ Increased use of personal pager or cell phone, especially at odd times ____ New clothing or hair styl