Eat What You Like

The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. On the other hand, the French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans. Conclusion: Eat & drink what you like. It's speaking English that kills you.

Making Decisions

Here is some sage advice about making decisions in both your professional and personal lives, from author and counselor Rebecca Merrill.

Rebecca Merrill c 2004

1. We all have to do it.

2. We never get to stop doing it.

3. Every new decision leads to more decisions. It's just a question of how

4. It's difficult to make good decisions for a multitude of reasons.

5. We spend a small percentage of our lives making decisions, but they determine the rest of our lives, which are the consequences.

6. There are no "right" or perfect decisions.

7. With every decision, you will experience some loss, especially if you choose to do nothing.

8. You can only make the decision you are capable of making when the decision is called for; all decisions are a function of who you are at the time you make them.

9. The quality of your life is directly related to the quality of your decisions.

10. It is well worth your while to learn how to make good ones.

Deskmanship

Is your desk always piled high with papers? Does the situation seem hopeless? It doesn't have to be that way. In my book Breathing Space: Living & Working at a Comfortable
Pace in a Sped-Up Society I observe that you spend so much time at your desk -– it just has to be a comfortable place for you!!

To create more surface space, you could buy a mechanical arm that hoists your monitor over the desk. I have has one and do not know how I lived without it beforehand. Also By clearing your desk every evening, you automatically have to choose what to work on the next day.

Travelling Lighter

Ask for an aisle seat at the front of the plane so that you can to stand up with greater ease, stroll in the aisles, or simply stretch. It's easier to get the attention of flight attendants for extra blankets, pillows, or other in-flight amenities from the front. Aisle seats are best for shorter flights, where you don't anticipate going to sleep.

Arrive light and rested; don't travel with heavy packages. Mail them to your destination via UPS 2nd-day air or, if you have a week, UPS ground tracking. This is an economical and reliable way to know your packages await you. Mark your packages profusely with your name and the words, "Hold for arrival of guest YOUR NAME arriving on DATE." Wrap your packages as if an orangutan will be handling them.

Travel with carry on bags only. Buy the roll-on carts to avoid toting your bags from the airport parking lot to the plane. Most tote systems are made to fit the airline aisles, the overhead seat com-partments, or under the seats.

How to Get Lucky

Richard Wiseman writing in the Skeptical Enquirer advises readers to:
"Open your mind: consider chance opportunities. Lucky People regularly have them, unlucky people don't.... Unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too busy looking for something else. Lucky people see what is there rather than only what they are looking for."

On Being Too Busy

“If you’re too busy to enjoy your life, you are way too busy.” Jeff Davidson

Harvey MacKay on Handling Stress

"Swim with the Sharks" guru Harvey MacKay writing in the Rochester Post-Bulletin offers a long list of tips on handling stress, streamlined here:

• Be completely present for whatever you are doing

• Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue

• When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane

• Keep your pace relaxed, and go outside once a day

• Take notice of the tension in your body

• Find a safe place where you can express and embrace your feeling

To Your Health!

Health links worth visiting;

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16933166

www.med.umich.edu/opm/newspage/2006/hmprobiotics.htm

www.squidoo.com/netipotnasalwash

www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/31/earlyshow/saturday/main3226777.shtml

Cutting off the Catalogs

Catalogchoice.org offers a service to help you "cut off the catalogs" for good. Click and select which catalogs you no longer want rather than having to contact each company separately.

Creativity in Your Life

Notes from the wonderful book, The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron:

* Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy, pure creative energy.
* There is an underlying, indwelling creative force infusing all of life--including ourselves.
* When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator's creativity within us and our lives.
* We are, ourselves, creation. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.
* Creativity is God's gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.

* The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.
* When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction.
* As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.
* It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity.
* Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source.

No Alarm, No Adrenaline Rush

As I have been telling my audiences for years, if you wake by alarm clock then by definition you didn't get enough sleep. Receiving sufficient sleep for the night means that you arise on your own, without an artificial stimulant such as an alarm clock.

If you have trouble getting up at time you prefer to arise, experiment with going to bed earlier, to find that time in which you can comfortably arise without an alarm clock. A secondary benefit
to knowing that you've gotten enough sleep for the night because you've been able to arise on your own is not to awake in an adrenaline rush.

"Alarm" clocks and other devices are named as such because they are meant to alarm you. When you think about it however, is that the way you want to start each day? Being jolting out of your reverie and thrown into waking consciousness ready or not? How much different would your day be if you woke peacefully, naturally, completely on your own?

Advantages for Deviance?

Here are some notes I took from a book with an interesting perspective:

Deviance Advantage: How Fringe Ideas Create Mass Markets
by Mathews, Wenty and Wacker (Crown Books)

* Over the past 3 decades deviance, not reasoning, began to drive the social and commercial agenda. The result? Things that we found pungent only yesterday we lionize today.

* Deviance migrates from the fringe to the social convention, rapidly creating markets, and changing the rules of the social and commercial game.

* The pace of change has picked up to the point where the functional distance between the fringe and social convention is all but disappeared.

* Markets form and dissolve in unanticipated places and in record rates. Yesterday's pariah is tomorrow's market darling, and what was once beyond the social pale is suddenly a hot commodity.

* The pace of deviant change is so intense and so relentless that we are beginning to witness compound deviance. The rules of the game keep changing before we have a chance to write them down.

Jeff comments: It all seems kind of sad, doesn't it? Deviance rules, whereas goodness, purity, and wholesomeness are on the fringe. Gosh, I hope society, and the popular media in particular, wakes up soon.

Concentrate for Breathing Space

Here are notes I took from Sam Horn's session on Concentration on September 15th, 1981. Still great advice to this day!

* Concentration defined: voluntarily focused attention.
* Discipline of ignoring irrelevant matters
* Fixing ones' powers, efforts and attention
* Most people work best under a deadline; when their concentration is focused.
* Fatigue is a big road block to concentration

This last note is telling!:
* Society is moving towards a lower frustration tolerance with less discipline, and more need for immediate gratification. These are detriments to concentration.

Reflection for the Ages

A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.
--John Barrymore

Ways to Hide Your Valuables

From Bottom Line/Personal, January 15, 2007

Kevin Coffey with Corporate Travel Safety says “Most burglars like to get in and out of homes quickly. They will focus on closets and drawers and under mattresses. Their favorite targets include cash, jewelry, checkbooks, credit cards, handguns, cameras and laptop computers.

The safest place to keep valuables is in a safe-deposit box or a safe built into the wall or the floor of your home. If you decide to use another location, let a trusted relative know about your hiding spot or put a note in your safe-deposit box describing the location. Otherwise, your valuables could be lost if you pass away or forget where they’re hidden.”

DO-IT-YOURSELF “SAFES”

These hiding spots will take a bit more time and effort to construct. They might be worth the trouble if you have basic carpentry skills and you keep a significant amount of valuables in your home. Some are best for small items, such as jewelry. Others can hide larger items, such as a laptop computer.

Posts of a poster bed. The tops of the bedposts usually unscrew. Take the tops off, drill down into the wood posts to create hiding spaces for valuables (be careful not to drill into the grooves where the top screws in).

Fake pipe, vent or electrical outlet. Add an unnecessary pipe or duct among the real pipes and ducts in your attic, basement, laundry room or kitchen, and store valuables inside. This pipe or duct should look as if it is part of the home’s plumbing or heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system.

Or use a phony electrical outlet or vent to provide access to valuables hidden in the wall. The fake outlet or vent should match the color and style of the real outlets or vents in your home.

Below a bookcase. The lowest shelf of a wooden bookcase often is a few inches above the floor. Turn the space below into a hiding area large enough for even a laptop computer by cutting a secret door into the wood facing.

Books to Explore

Books to explore:

The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies, by Robert Lang, Yale University Press, 2001

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, by Barry Schwartz, Ecco/Harper Collins, 2004

Mega-Realities of Life

The five mega-realities of life serve as a framework to understanding change and how we can adjust our thinking and activities to maintain some semblance of control.

Sitting right where you are, what you now know about population — the fact that the world gains more than a quarter million people per day enables you to safely predict the following:

1) Investing in real estate, more specifically a home, will continue to be a sound financial move almost independent of your economic station in life.

2) Adopting a somewhat contrarian mindset will prove to be advantageous. Attempting to head into the city or out of the city at the same time as everyone, or booking theater or restaurant reservations at the same time as everyone else will be problematic or increasingly so as time passes. Commutes in all directions will become more arduous. Hence, living closer to work, living closer to shopping and conveniences, telecommuting occasionally, and shopping online will only grow in attractiveness and utility.

3) Old friends become more valued friends. Anchors such as family, close business associates, former college roommates and those who have shared experiences with us become more important with the passing of time. This is not to downplay the role of new friends, for indeed they can become great friends and eventually even old friends!

What to Tell the Junk Mailers

Please remove my name, and all its variations, and remove all of my contact information from any and all of your databanks, mailing lists, shared files, etc.

I do not want any mail, including solicitations, flyers, brochures, catalogs, announcements, circulars, postcards, promotions, faxes, or email at any time, ever, from you or any of your associates, affilitates, subsidiaries, vendors, or clients.

Thank you

Vanquish Telemarketing Calls

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 regulates telemarketing calls. Telemarketers violate the law by using a machine to play a recorded sales pitch, by calling you between the hours of 9 p.m. and 8 a.m., or by calling you within one year after being told "not to."

To avoid some of the law's loopholes, say the following to a telemarketer:

* Put me on your do-not-call list.
* Do not solicit me for anything offered by your firm, its clients, affiliates, subsidiaries, or principals.
* Notify other affiliated organizations of my request.

You may ask that a copy of the telemarketer's "do not call" policy be mailed to your home. If a telemarketer calls you again within one year, or if you do not get the telemarketer's written "do not call" policy, you can sue for $500 for each violation.

These rules apply only to telemarketers making sales calls to your home; see www.fcc.gov/cgb/donotcall. Calls from charities or survey groups are not covered. Also, if you have not done so already register all of your phone numbers with the National Do Not Call Registry. Most telemarketers (some are exempt) will be required to stop calling you 31 days from your registration date. Your registration is good for three years. Visit: www.donotcall.gov

Ask People for Favors

As a boy, Benjamin Franklin asked the governor of Pennsylvania for a
book. In his autobiography, Franklin cites that moment as the beginning of
his publishing career.
He also learned the importance of asking people for favors. People
will then ask you for a favor in return, and thus one forms a free exchange,
the foundation of all business: "one polite request at a time."