midlifejourney.com

Author: Stan the Mann

With a new year is approaching, we naturally look backward at what we have accomplished and forward to what we hope to accomplish. This is the perfect time to set goals.

If you want to set goals that truly work and empower you to get results, here is a system that really works. Use it and you will achieve great things that will surprise and amaze you.

If goal setting has not worked for you in the past, meaning you fell short, it’s probably because you set your goals in general terms. General goals move you in a general direction. It rarely produces big specific achievements. You need to make your goals specific. This will help you achieve what you want more quickly. Clarity is power. And things become much clearer when you write them down. A Harvard study has shown that graduates who have written specific goals are significantly more successful than graduates who do not.

I’ve been setting goals since I was 17 years old. At first, they were general goals and I didn’t write them down. But I did have a vital ingredient for success. I wanted to achieve them passionately.

You see, I did not have a warm supportive family when I was growing up, although my mother did instill in me a high value for education. She divorced when I was two years old and married my stepfather. He was an alcoholic and beat her. He was a strong man with forearms as big as hams. When I was a teenager and tried to protect my mother, he ground my face in the dirt. So you see I had high motivation to leave home as soon as I could. We also were very poor because of the Great Depression. So I had high motivation to make money.

Later I started writing down my goals and making them specific. It enabled me to get a job with Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. Before then all I did was common labor. I loaded a truck by hand with 4 tons of cement blocks. Then I drove to a job site and unloaded it. I did this four times a day, which means I handled 16 tons, just like the coal miner song. I had absolutely no white collar experience. I wanted the life insurance job so bad I could taste it. My passion must have impressed the head of the agency and he hired me.

I was the youngest salesman they had ever hired up to that time. Barely 21 years old, I outsold every one of my 16 colleagues in my agency. I made so much money I forgot to deposit my checks until I was reminded to do so by a call from a harried Metropolitan clerk who was trying to balance her books.

I wanted still more and I got a Masters degree from the University of Michigan, graduating with honors and Phi Beta Kappa, the honor society which fosters and recognizes academic excellence.

No one in my family — mother, father, uncles and aunts — ever graduated from high school.

The goal setting process I now use is simple, easy and fun; yet produces profound results. I’ve been teaching it for over nine years and I see my clients get great results.

I think most people set their goals in general terms, like I used to do, because they’re afraid to make their goals detailed and to set deadlines. They fear not reaching their goals and feeling badly. They avoid painful feelings like disappointment, frustration, feeling insignificant and being full of self-doubt.

When I am making goals, I trigger myself into the mood of a child wishing on a star, innocently full of faith and belief. I think about all the things that I really, really want. I put aside my critical self and don’t worry a bit about how I’m going to do it. Because if I did, it would feel impossible and I would shut down.

I think about what I really, really want. I see it, feel it, hear it. I might even smell and taste it. Just like I wanted that job with the insurance company so I could get out of the house, be my own person, find a good woman to love. I’ve learned that when your desires are strong enough, your unconscious mind will find ways to make it happen. Even the universe will help you out in unexpected ways.
To make your desires strong, you need to have strong reasons why you want to achieve these things. First think of your reasons, don’t worry how you accomplish these things. These answers will come to you. You just have to have big strong reasons why achieving your goals is a must.

Best wishes for a rich and rewarding business and life,
~Stan

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Midlife Relationship Advice: Closets are for brooms, not people!

Author: The Gift Wizard

Do you know someone who is gay? A friend or co-worker, a son or daughter, mother or father, brother or sister? Perhaps you suspect they might be gay but they haven’t come out of the closet yet? Or maybe they are out of the closet, but are struggling to find confidence in themselves. It doesn’t really matter what the situation… the important question is… are you supporting him or her? Do they know that you accept them for who they are?

If not, why not? You should tell them. It’s that simple. It is all too common for a gay man or lesbian, whether they are young or old, to struggle to ACCEPT THEMSELVES. Imagine how hard that is when they aren’t sure whether their loved ones accept and support them.

Being in the closet can be a horrible experience. Your life is a huge secret. The emotional, mental, and even phyiscal strains that secret causes can be extremely detrimental. Long term effects can be depression and anxiety, mental breakdowns, even suicide. The closet is no place for someone. Closets are for brooms, not people.

It’s amazing how much even one small, supportive gesture from you can inspire confidence and hope in someone who is struggling with being gay. Don’t under estimate how much your positive thoughts and support could mean to a gay friend or relative.

Even if they aren’t struggling (at least outwardly), you can never be too supportive. Show your support directly by sending an e-mail or a card. Indirectly, get a mug or t-shirt that shows your support. Display a rainbow (a gay pride symbol) on your car, in your home, or at your workplace. If you love them, do SOMETHING, ANYTHING!

You can find rainbow gifts (hats, shirts, mugs, mousepads, and more) at http://www.the-gift-wizard.com/rainbow-gifts.html

For products with a message like: “Closets are for brooms, not people” visit http://www.cafepress.com/rainbow_closet

To send a free e card, visit:http://www.the-gift-wizard.com/e-cards.html

If someone who is gay or lesbian should have the courage to come outof the closet, you should at least have the courage to show your support. Think about it.

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Gift Wizard is a gift researcher for http://www.the-gift-wizard.com

Author: Kathy Ekdahl, CSCS, ACE Certified Personal Trainer
Personal Best Personal Training

Winter is upon us, and this has been a particularly wicked winter for ice and snow. Perhaps you have already had some falls or slips, or near misses, if you are lucky? While this seems like a hazard of the season, it is not a foregone conclusion. With some consistency and dedication, you could improve your balance and stability within just several weeks of time! When most of us think of fitness, we may not think of balance as something we can train, but rest assured, it is very trainable! Balance can be improved with simple practice and some core stability training.

For example: Take a few minutes every day to practice standing on one leg to begin with. Challenge yourself- if you start with only 10 seconds- continue to practice until you reach 20 seconds, or 30 seconds. Once you can stand on one leg for 30 seconds or more, try doing this with your eyes closed. This is quite a challenge! For the next stage, I recommend practicing standing balance on unstable surfaces such as an “airex pad”, or inflatable disc, but using a pillow from your home will work just as well. These techniques will “fire up” your neuromuscular system, and begin to get your muscles thinking and reacting more easily to unstable surfaces- whether they are a pillow, or the ice in your driveway. Supplement this balance work with some core training such as bridges for your glutes, “Birddog” for you spinal muscles and plank holds for your abdominal and back muscles. I also recommend training the lateral hip muscles- which are important stabilizers for the hip joint and for balance. Something as simple as standing side leg lifts can work, as well as the “clamshell” exercise- a side lying exercise, sometimes using an exercise band, in which you rotate the hip open like a “clamshell”.

Lack of balance is a major risk factor for falls, fractures and serious injuries. Just think, if you start training your balance today, by the end of January your risk of falls and injuries will be much less! If this is not an essential reason to exercise, I don’t know what is!

Visit the Personal Best Personal Training web site.

…for this Christmas Season, as well everyday…

God Bless You this Christmas & Have a Happy New Year.
* *
First Corinthians 13, Christmas Version
- Author Unknown

If I decorate my house perfectly with plaid bows,
strands of twinkling lights and shiny balls,
but do not show love to my family,
I’m just another decorator.
If I slave away in the kitchen,
baking dozens of Christmas cookies,
preparing gourmet meals
and arranging a beautifully adorned table at mealtime:
but do not show love to my family,
I’m just another cook.
If I work at a soup kitchen
carol in the nursing home,
and give all that I have to charity;
but do not show love to my family,
it profits me nothing.
If I trim the spruce with shimmering angels
and crocheted snowflakes,
attend a myriad of holiday parties
and sing in the choir’s cantata
but do not focus on Christ,
I have missed the point.

Love stops the cooking to hug the child.
Love sets aside the decorating to kiss the spouse.
Love is kind, though harried and tired.
Love does not envy another’s home
that has coordinated Christmas china and table linens.
Love does not yell at the kids to get out of the way,
but is thankful they are there to be in the way.
Love does not give only to those who are able to give in return;
but rejoices in giving to those who cannot.
Love bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things, and
endures all things.
Love never fails.
Video games will break,
pearl necklaces will be lost,
golf clubs will rust;
but giving the gift of love will endure

READ NEW ARTICLE ON CAREER PAGE: HOW TO MAKE A CAREER MOVE

Author: Michael Klerck

I am not at all amazed to see so many articles on cruising in Alaska.

While it is disturbing to see no fewer than 4 gigantic liners in the small port of Ketchikan on any day in season, for instance, they do seem to time their arrival so that our shore excursion into a tropical forest (yes tropical) was as memorable as promised.

We chose Alaska because we wanted to visit North America for the first time. But also because it sounded so exotic; it would be, coming from South Africa.

It was nothing short of breathtaking. But it was also the ship itself, Holland America’s Volendam that made it especially so. Imagine sitting in a leather chair nine storeys up in an observation lounge with 270 degree views. Imagine this in almost utter silence, while the ship glides through a narrow passage, with less than 100 metres on either side. We could hear the waterfalls, see the wildlife, and watch in amazement as whales and seals swam passed us. When she approached a ‘corner’ my naval instincts and ocean experience that goes back 30 years said no. How was she going to negotiate what was literally a corner up ahead? Keep in mind this was the largest ship I had ever embarked: over 70 000 tons. I ran below decks to call my wife, and we both watched in amazement as her pods (much like movable outboard motors) and bow thrusters allowed her to sail through effortlessly.

When we reached the glacier it was an experience that was quite simply humbling. All the statistics about the melting ice and the glacier itself retreating many metres each year were disturbing, but then again it was as a result of this that we could approach and enter what was now a ‘modern’ bay, not accessible 20 years ago. In fact because of the sophisticated engines and designs, few ships, even with much less tonnage, have been able to negotiate the narrow passages and actually turn around when they get there.

I delighted in videoing how the captain, by using a pencil sized joystick, was able to program the ship so that she turned so silently and slowly over a period of an hour, without any movement forwards or backwards. I wondered if my small frigate, of just 2500 tonnes, from the South African Navy in 1973 might have done this ‘ I think not. Passengers on the bow, and those sitting astern were then afforded a view of the entire bay and the cathedral-like walls of the glacier itself as the ship turned slowly in the streaming sunshine of the Alaskan summer. The glacier itself was somewhat daunting, with pieces of ice ready to calve. We desperately hoped a large one would break off and crash with thunderous applause into the mottled green bay, but alas only slivers did so on that particular day. We were acutely aware that our very presence added to the environmental changes, but were somehow willing to compromise in order to live the moment; so much like most of us on our endangered planet.

In fact the entire cruising programme must be, for many people, not excluding the planners and ships owners, somewhat of a dilemma. Hundreds of summer cruises a year do take their toll: the air pollution itself is big a factor. But owners and cruise operators do everything they can to minimize the effect. Cigarette butts are a serious no-no, for example; don’t even think of throwing one overboard, and I have do doubt that with technology, our gargantuan liner was probably less guilty of environmental damage than my tiny frigate all those years ago.

Skagway gives one a chance to take a memorable train ride up over the start of the Rockies and into Canada; one follows the path up the mountain on which hundreds of pack animals fell to their death as a result of their owner’s greed for gold. We were simply delighted at the Humpback Whale food festival out in the bay at Juneau, Alaska’s capital (the only one in the world that is not accessible by road). This ’shore excursion’ of about three hours was well worth it. Our small-boat captain guaranteed, with typical American marketing gusto, that we would see them feed. And we did. What a feast! The glaciers retreated with the last ice age and carved a vertical passage down into the bay, meaning that the shoreline has a vertical drop of hundreds of metres into the sea. It was here that a family of Humpbacks secured their lunch with their sophisticated methods of diving and bubble netting their small prey.

Believe it or not, we experienced some disappointment with regard to wildlife. One can see more whales, and really up close, in October to January in Cape Town and surrounds than we did in Alaska. We were constantly reminded that on the multitude of islands we passed on the inside passage (essential method of cruising) that for each square kilometre there was one bear. Sadly, or luckily we encountered and saw not one. I turned to my wife one day and knew what she was thinking. For all the wilderness angle pursued by brochures and guides, we realised how privileged we were to live in a country with the greatest concentration of life on the planet. Alaska seem almost desert-like, but from this aspect only.

We did visit a salmon farm and see beautiful eagles. The whale feeding-frenzy (at home they entertain us with circus tricks) is now edited and copied to a much viewed DVD back home, and we realised that Alaska was not necessarily (for us, that was) a memorable wildlife experience.

But boy, it sure put on another display. One cannot visit without feeling one has been transported to a world of sublime and inexorably, stark, and primordial beauty. It is here, as with other ‘last frontiers’ that the world of yester era can be experienced. The beauty is both harsh and delicate, a place where ancient forces: enemies and allies met and struggled, and still do. I shall not easily forget the sun dispersing dark and ominous clouds, just in time for us to bask in its rays and then literally gasp at the spectacularly beautiful colours that the sunshine itself was able to entice from the seemingly cold and austere glacier.

She, the sun, seemed to thrust herself down onto the orchestra of icy protrusions and phallic structures, like an excited conductor might charge at his musicians with his baton, evoking their hidden talents.

We found our very spirits dancing with every ray that fell and in some weird neurological space my brain did summersaults. I remembered the testimony of a LSD-taking patient years back, and his description of how he ‘heard’ a sunset and could see colours in sounds. Here Nature was the intoxicating influence, and I swore blind that night that I had smelt the very colours that danced on the back of the retreating glacier, and heard every moan of the pristine and exquisitely beautiful blue that shimmered in every crevice and corner of the dazzling bay!

It is a wonder that many of these cruises are so inexpensive (I hate to use the word cheap). On the cusp of summer: April/August, September one can find them for as little as $499. This for an entire week of sublime luxury and relaxation.

Amazingly, with at least four meals a day, and at least one gourmet tray of delights at 2am, my wife and I actually lost weight! The food was nothing short of spectacular and while my wife faithfully journeyed through the entire menu each night, my waiter soon appeased my strange penchant for dining by serving no fewer than three small main courses from around the world. I would certainly not have been able to afford such delights in Paris of Vienna, some not even back home.

Choose your cruise line carefully; while Holland America’s passenger list averaged around 45 in age, a small family of kids had the children’s program and a full-time child minder to themselves, this a distinct advantage. But they might have been lonely. And if it’s love, sex and rock ‘n roll you’re after you might like to take a peek at Carnival or a cruise line that majors in another kind of wildness. Personally I would prefer this type of party cruise in the Med, Caribbean or Mexico. Somehow the breathtaking setting of Alaska itself demands a quiet and humble respect, more in tune with sipping whiskies, and silently walking on the upper deck in the clean, ancient air.

Whatever your choice, go you must. You will not be the same again.

About The Author
Michael Klerck is a writer and winner of the Mondi Paper Magazine Writer’s Award for work in Men’s Health. Visit his website for tips and articles on cruising: http://luxurylinerholidays.com