Mind Body balance :What is it and What it can do.

Developing balance of the connections between mind and body is often a kind of 
intelligence equally as crucial as IQ, EQ (emotional intelligence), or social intelligence. As awareness deepens, bodily sensations provide feedback and guidance about every facet of your life-from nurturing relationships to enhancing effectiveness at work. By working on this info you can reduce stress, balance your health, and get the maximum innate possibility of health, creativity, and spiritual growth.
Sometime in life we can be impacted by stress, unwanted habits, negative or inherited patterns of behavior, interpersonal problems, confidence or self confidence issues, procrastination, insufficient motivation, despondency, depression, anxieties of various kinds along with other emotional problems that manifest themselves in physical form.
This has detrimental effects on our health and wellness, happiness, progress and overall well-being.
Today's lifestyle, sub-optimal nutrition, poor water consumption, stress and emotional issues, poor sleep, chemicals and e-smog all disturb the biological balance from the body.


5 practices to realize greater mind-body balance and confidence

Massage
We realize about massage’s physical benefits but what a smattering of us realize is the fact that massage can definitely translate for an overall greater feeling of wellbeing.

YOGA
YOGA has many benefits beyond increased flexibility. Various studies show that yoga is really a natural pain reliever; it boosts energy, improves mood, cuts down on degree of cortical, the load hormone, in the body, and yes it appears to induce mindful eating rolling around in its practitioners. In addition to all that, yoga seems to relieve body image anxiety in their practitioners.

MEDITATION
While it may appear New Agey to some, meditation is laced with benefits. It is shown to improve sleep, ease anxiety, minimizing hypertension and pulse rate mainly because it improves your feeling of well-being and happiness.

WALKING A LABYRINTH
A lot of people utilize words labyrinth and maze interchangeably, but they are not quite the same. Mazes tend to be puzzles, with participants likely to make choices concerning the path and direction they take.

SPEND TIME OUTSIDE
We'd like nature- historically; we have this type of deep, complex, innate relationship using the natural world. There’s lots of research that shows that experiencing nature is therapeutic.

Miracles of Life

When was the last time you realized that you had hurt yourself but the pain gets disappeared within a few days without applying anything. These healings have not been explained by medical sciences or researches. They can be categorized as miracles. Hoping or praying that the wound get healed an immensely powerful positive energy is generated. Surprisingly, your wishes are granted and the wound disappears. This is a miracle.

An astonishing incident which seems unreal but gives a good effect is a miracle. We all happen to go through some miracles either on a daily basis or maybe occasionally. But the truth lies that they do exist. There are also miracles when the perfect solution to a disturbing problem arises out of nowhere at the right time. There are also miracles when something you dearly wanted and craved would be presented before you in platter. There are miracles in finding the PERFECT spouse, job, occasion, gift or anything your heart desires. The reality is that we are all species on this earthy who are subjected for all the good things in life. The plain fact lies that since we are always overwhelming or overanxious, things that we really desire are things that we are destined for. In some or the other time we are bound to get it. But the sheer lack of motivation seems to lure us away from our desired goal and lands us in whirlpool of confusion. Life is in favors of us and not against us.

Believing in you and getting focused helps to get what we want. Here are simple ways in helping achieving miracles in life:

• Clarity in approach: your goal is just a few miles away form you depending on the genuineness of your approach. Being focused about the end result is the surest away of attaining your goal. Just be focused on the end result and not how it will be done. That task is taken care of the almighty. The universe or the cosmic energy manipulates thing to get what you desire.
• Expect the best: We tend to compromise with life. If we do not get what we desire we settle down for something that is not very likeable. It seems a mere compromise. Even when you are in difficult times, try getting the best you deserve. When you expect the worst, you will get the worst. You deserve it according to your right to exist. Consciously expect that everything is happening for your best and it will happen
• Have genuine faith in yourself and the almighty: to let miracles happen in your life have faith. This encompasses strength in you to overcome any obstacle coming your way. Having faith will give a new direction and will help you in realizing your dreams. Once you start having this, you will feel empowered and your faith will become more self generating.
• Be conscious of your thoughts: you might not believe but your thoughts actually magnetize others the same way. If you have negative thoughts you will attract negative people; butt positive thoughts will attract positive people who will help you in realizing your dreams. Negative thoughts block miracles so you need to eliminate all negative thought. It will not be possible in the beginning but gradually it will.
• Open yourself to all possibilities: your goal is in your hands, but the cosmic energy has the power to give it to you in his way. Holding yourself too tightly will only worsen the situation and will make things seem more difficult to attain. The universal power decides to give you your desires in its own way and not how you want to. By holding yourself too tightly mentally or physically, you can diminish our good fortune completely.
• Visualize yourself: your priority is what you want to be and not what you do not have. Rather than lamenting what you do not have, focus on what you will have a few years down the line. If you want respect, money, good health, family, career, good relations, friends focus on them and you will surely get.
• Store your power: you might have the vague idea of becoming the next bill Clinton or the next Pamela Anderson. People might laugh or even mock at your reaching for the stars. But you do not realize that there is thin line about your desire and attainment. Sharing your thought with someone might leak positive vibrations about the goal; also the person listening to you might hold some negative thoughts which can block your reaching the goal. The depth between you and the universal spirit should not be violated. Therefore it is very important to share as less as possible.
• Be calm: a stable mind is the gateway to acquire anything you desire. A turbulent mind on the other hand is always highly volatile leading you to nowhere. Therefore it is very important to be focused on what you want. This makes your calm and relaxed. This would help you in making the right decision in life for you.
• Pray daily: religious or non religious, anyone who gives himself to god with full faith, is bound to get salvation. While praying let go off all your worries and surrender in the hands of God. Express your keen desire and the rest would be taken care of. The moment you start praying, half of your work is done. You are almost near to your goal. Faith in God really works. Just like our parents take care of the moment we tell them our problem, God also takes care of us in the same way. The only thing required is sheer belief and unlimited empathy. For beginners who have never prayed, find a calm place, allow yourself to have feelings of love, compassion for yourself and everything around you. This would generate a bonding of trust and love between you and God.
• Give what you want: Since everything you give comes back to you in the same momentum, give your best to the cosmic energy. Spread happiness, love, empathy and you will get the same. Miracles are then bound to happen...

Remember you are the only hindrance in getting miracles in your life. So free yourself and let go. Miracles will surely follow.

Self -Discipline : Persistence

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “Press On” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
- Calvin Coolidge

Persistence is the fifth and final pillar of self-discipline.

What Is Persistence?

Persistence is the ability to maintain action regardless of your feelings. You press on even when you feel like quitting.

When you work on any big goal, your motivation will wax and wane like waves hitting the shore. Sometimes you’ll feel motivated; sometimes you won’t. But it’s not your motivation that will produce results — it’s your action. Persistence allows you to keep taking action even when you don’t feel motivated to do so, and therefore you keep accumulating results.

Persistence will ultimately provide its own motivation. If you simply keep taking action, you’ll eventually get results, and results can be very motivating. For example, you may become a lot more enthusiastic about dieting and exercising once you’ve lost those first 10 pounds and feel your clothes fitting more loosely.

When to Give Up

Should you always persist and never give up? Certainly not. Sometimes giving up is clearly the best option.

Have you ever heard of a company called Traf-O-Data? What about Microsoft? Both companies were started by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Traf-O-Data was the first company they started, back in 1972. You can read the story of Traf-O-Datahere. Gates and Allen ran it for several years before throwing in the towel. They gave up. Of course they did a little better with Microsoft.

If they hadn’t given up on Traf-O-Data, then we wouldn’t have such rich collections of Microsoft and Bill Gates jokes today.

So how do you know when to press on vs. when to give up?

Is your plan still correct? If not, update the plan. Is your goal still correct? If not, update or abandon your goal. There’s no honor in clinging to a goal that no longer inspires you. Persistence is not stubbornness.

This was a particularly difficult lesson for me to learn. I had always believed one should never give up, that once you set a goal, you should hang on to the bitter end. The captain goes down with the ship and all that. If I ever failed to finish a project I started, I’d feel very guilty about it.

Eventually I figured out that this is just nonsense.

If you’re growing at all as a human being, then you’re going to be a different person each year than you were the previous year. And if you consciously pursue personal development, then the changes will often be dramatic and rapid. You can’t guarantee that the goals you set today will still be ones you’ll want to achieve a year from now.

My first business was Dexterity Software. I started it in 1994, fresh out of college. But after running it for more than a decade, I was ready for something new. I still run Dexterity on the side, but it’s not my full-time focus anymore. It takes me only about an hour or two a week to maintain it, partly because I designed it to be as automated as possible and to provide me with a passive income. It was successful to the extent I wanted it to be. I could have continued to grow it much larger, but I knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life making computer games. Creating my own game company was my dream at age 22, and after publishing a couple dozen games, I feel I accomplished that goal. 22-year old Steve is very satisfied. But today I have different dreams.

Did I give up on Dexterity? You could say that, but it would be more accurate to say that I was infected by a new vision of something that was far more important to me. Had I stubbornly persisted with Dexterity, this site would never have existed. I’d be working on a new game instead of my first book.

In order to make room for new goals, we have to delete or complete old ones. And sometimes new goals are so compelling and inspiring that there’s no time to complete old ones — they have to be abandoned half-finished. I’ve always found it uncomfortable to do this, but I know it’s necessary. The hard part is consciously deciding to delete an old project, knowing it will never be finished. I have a file full of game ideas and some prototypes for new games that will never see the light of day. Consciously deciding that those projects had to be abandoned was really hard for me. It took me a long time to come to grips with it. But it was necessary for my own growth to be able to do this.

I still had to solve the problem of setting goals that might become obsolete in a year due to my own personal growth. How did I solve this problem? I cheated. I figured out the only way I could set long-term goals that would stick would be if they were aligned with my own process of growth. The pursuit of personal growth has long been a stable constant for me, even though it’s paradoxically in flux at the same time. So instead of trying to set fixed goals as I did with my games business, I began setting broader more dynamic goals that were aligned with my own growth. This new business allows me to pursue my personal growth full-out and to share what I learn with others. So growth itself is the goal, both for myself and others. This creates a symbiotic relationship, whereby helping others feeds back into my own growth, which in turn generates new ideas for helping others. Anyone who’s been reading this site since last year has probably seen that effect in action.

The direct and conscious pursuit of personal growth is the only type of mission that would work for me. If I made it my mission to master real estate investing, for example, I’d probably become bored with it after a few years. Since I want to keep growing indefinitely, I have to maintain a certain level of challenge and keep raising the bar ever higher. I can’t let things get too dull and risk falling into a pattern of complacency.

The value of persistence comes not from stubbornly clinging to the past. It comes from a vision of the future that’s so compelling you would give almost anything to make it real. The vision I have of my future now is far greater than the one I had for Dexterity. To be able to help people grow and to solve their most difficult problems is far more inspiring to me than entertaining people. These values started oozing out of me as I ran Dexterity because I favored logic puzzle games that challenged people to think, often passing up the opportunity to publish games I felt would make money but which wouldn’t provide much real value to people.

Persistence of action comes from persistence of vision. When you’re super-clear about what you want in such a way that your vision doesn’t change much, you’ll be more consistent — and persistent — in your actions. And that consistency of action will produce consistency of results.

Can you identify a part of your life where you’ve demonstrated a pattern of long-term persistence? I think if you can identify such an area, it may provide a clue to your mission — something you can work towards where passion and self-discipline function synergistically.

Dream to Reality: How I Quit My Day Job

A very inspiring article by TINA ,a blogger on inspirations and simple thinking.Think Simple Now.

http://thinksimplenow.com/happiness/dream-to-reality-how-i-quit-my-day-job/

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way
to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.
And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle.
As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.“
~ Steve Jobs

Ever since I learned about the concept of financial independence five years ago, the seed of a dream had been planted. My dream: Having the freedom to deliberately choose how I spend every day – to have complete freedom of time.

As of last week, my dream became a reality.

I left my job at Amazon to start this new life chapter. I have three goals:

• To complete a triathlon
• To learn French
• To live everyday fully, as if my last

My answer to the question “What do you do?” will now be “I spend fulltime pursuing my passions.”

Personal Story

I had a wonderful job at a phenomenal company. I had flexibility, an understanding boss, and a high paying salary. I loved my job. But after 6 years of expending myself on the job, trying out various professional roles, I felt that I’d grown beyond the fixed positions available at the company.

I’m not going lie, having a lot of money is nice. Money can buy you things, nice things. However, the cliché is true – money cannot buy you happiness, and having it doesn’t mean that you are a successful person. After several years, I realized that the more money I made, the less satisfied I became. Days started to blend into one another, time flew by, and I deeply longed for something with more meaning.

Upon realizing that I was trading my time for money, I started experimenting with various passive income sources. I’ve started and ended businesses, I’ve turned hobbies into professional pursuits, and I’ve tested out investment avenues.

In the end, I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter what you’re doing. As long as you are doing something that expresses your passion, you will excel and you will gain satisfaction. I’ve also learned that starting something from nothing and watching it grow is deeply rewarding.

Through my quest to finding my passion, I discovered blogging as a platform where I can share ideas and lessons learned that are closest to my heart, as a way to serve others. For the first time in my life, I feel that I am living my life purpose.

Words cannot express the joy I feel while writing for Think Simple Now, and the numerous times when feedback from readers has brought me to tears. This just feels right.

I wanted to take this time to say Thank You for being part of this with me, and for helping me realize my dream while stumbling upon my passion.

What Now? Q&A

Q: Now that you’re a pro-blogger, will you be working on your blog fulltime?

A: I don’t view myself as a professional blogger, since in my mind, I love this so much that I would pay money to experience it. Having said that, my main focus will be to follow my heart and do what feels right. There are many things I plan on doing, blogging is just one of them.

The following are a list of things I plan to do and incorporate into my life:

• Morning Routine – Establishing a healthy morning routine can be a powerful way to start your day. Mine will include: rising early, drinking plenty of water, exercising, meditation, & reading something inspirational.
• Reading – I love to read, but never found that I had enough time to do so. Now’s my chance to ramp through books I’ve always wanted to read. I have a large reading list with new books and old books I plan to re-read. My plan here is to read at least 2-4 books a month. I tend to crack open several books at the same time, so we’ll see how I do. I will be sharing what I’m reading with you all.
• Yoga – Learning yoga.
• Meditation – Establish a regular daily meditation routine. My plan is to meditate twice a day, between 10-45 minutes each session.
• Exercise – I can count the number of times I’ve exercised in the last year on one hand. True story. It’s an area of my life that needs improving for the sake of my long term wellbeing. I randomly picked triathlon as a goal, since it will be a tremendous challenge, and poses as a goal to whip myself into shape.
• Public Speaking -I feel a draw towards motivational speaking and life coaching. While I’m not set on becoming a coach or a public speaker, I would like to explore in that direction. I will be joining a local Toastmasters group, and train myself in becoming a more engaging speaker and effective leader.
• Travel – My love for traveling comes from a desire to experience cultures that are vastly diverse from my own. Some places on my list are: Mongolia, Arabic China, Bali (Indonesia), Peru and South America, Ethiopia and other African countries. I would also like to live in Paris for several months.
• Writing – I will continue to share life lessons I’ve gained, and write about issues that we all experience as humans. My central theme will remain the same: Personal Happiness, Fulfillment, Clarity and Wellbeing.
• Personal Blog – Think Simple Now posts have always been in the format of in-depth articles on personal development. As such, I don’t consider it a blog, but rather a free web publication on personal wellbeing. I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a more personal blog called Simply Tina, where I’ll be posting much more liberally and casually. The topics will consist of a larger range of subjects: updates of my progress in this new lifestyle, traveling, business lessons, blogging, passive income, the 4 hour workweek lifestyle, startups, empowering mindsets, and useful resources.
• Q: Holy crap, you quit your job? Tell me more. How are you paying for your expenses?
  A: Two years ago, I had set a clear date for when I’d be leaving my job to pursue my passions fulltime. At that time, I only had a small amount of passive income from investments that paid for small bills. So my plan was to save enough money so that I could quit my job to freely pursue my passions fulltime for two years.
  I believed (and still believe) that when we are doing that which we are completely passionate about, money will come. The plan was to explore my passions freely, living on my savings. I was confident that before the end of year two, I would be generating income doing what I love, without needing to get a job.
  This transition was a difficult one, and was really, really scary initially knowing that I would lose my safety blanket: stable job, regular income, and benefits. But once I got over that initial scare, I realized that I was trapped by social conditioning and social pressure that I needed to get a job. The fear eventually passed with time when I focused on what I wanted: to be location independent and have complete control of my time.
  Currently, I have several sources of passive income, but most of my income comes from advertisers, sponsors, and affiliates fromThinkSimpleNow.com. Advertising is the only way I can make the content available for free. If you find the ads annoying, you can use a RSS reader. I do appreciate your understanding and support regarding the ads.
  While I am making income through ads, it is not a lot of money, enough to pay for basic necessities. If you’re interested in helping me out, here are several outlets:
  • Feedback and Suggestions – Drop me an email with topics you’re interested in hearing more on, or let me know what I’ve done right. I’ll also appreciate constructive criticism.
  • Subscribe to RSS – If you haven’t already please subscribe to my RSS feed, or subscribe via email.The subscriber count is a huge motivator for me. Thank you!
  • Donations – If you’ve found the content useful, you can senddonations via paypal. I eat a large number of avocados every week, and these donations go towards buying more avocados on my next grocery run. When I eat those avocados, I’ll be thinking happy thoughts about the donator.
  • Tell Your Friends – The best gift you can give me is by helping me spread the word about Think Simple Now. Thank you in advance for doing this. :)
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  Steps for How I Did It

  I’ve learned many lessons along the way prior to leaving my job. Here are some major points and steps that have contributed towards where I am today. I hope they can be helpful to you.
  1. Clear Vision of Result
  Many of us don’t get the results we want, because we don’t know what it is we actually want. Not knowing what we want is like jumping on a random train, blind-folded. It might take us to a city we’ll enjoy, but it might not. It is completely random and we have no control over where the train goes.
  Alternatively, many of us talk about wanting to be rich. But we don’t know what “rich” means, or understand why we want it, or map out a plan towards obtaining it. This pattern is equivalent to a person in London wanting to be in New York, but hops on a random train in Europe, blind-folded. The ‘wanting’ alone will not get us there.
  To get what we want, we need to first have a clear vision of what thatthing is. The vision needs to be defined using measurable attributes, along with dates for when you will get there. Once you have a clear measurable goal for what you want and when you want it, you can start to work backwards and map out a plan. As the saying goes, “What gets measured, gets managed.”
  In our analogy, say we are living in London but want to be in New York by December 15^th, 2008. We have 4 months to get a travel visa, buy a flight ticket to NYC, look for an apartment or hotel in NYC, take time off work, pack our bags, and ask friends to take us to the airport. Before the end of next week, our plan is to have researched flights and have one purchased.
  2. Understanding Why
  Let’s say that you too wanted to quit your job and have complete freedom of time, what will you do with the extra time? If you don’t know, you’ll be better off staying at your job, since you’ll likely be bored and will start looking for a job soon. Make sure you understand the drive behind the vision.
  List out all the reasons why you want to fulfill your vision. How will achieving that contribute towards your life? How can you use that new found freedom to help others?
  3. Write It Down and Date It
  I prefer to write down my goals along with a date for when it will happen. Writing it down forces you to clearly articulate the thing you want. Writing down your goals also helps by clearing them out of your mind and onto paper.
  It feels just that much more real and doable once it’s in ink and down on paper.
  4. Plan
  If the steps toward achieving your goals aren’t clear, start listing out ideas for potential roads that can take you there.
  Treat each potential road as a separate project, and work on one project at a time. Pick the project that feels the best for you and your interests.
  With each project, list out the major steps you need to achieve in order to reach your goal. These steps are large milestones that are measurable. Make sure you set a target date for when each step will be completed.
  For each step, break it down further into actionable tasks that can be completed in a few hours. Set a target date for each task. Adjust the target date for completing the step, if necessary.
  5. Take Action
  Once you set a goal, wrote it down, and planned it out, take one action immediately. Regardless of how small that action is, you are one step closer to your goal, and in doing so, it will start the momentum you need to follow through.
  Let’s say that your goal is to run a website offering information on gardening that makes you $200 a month in advertising revenue. The first small step you can take immediate action on is to brainstorm for a domain name, or call a friend who knows about running websites to give you advice, or outlining content ideas, or researching demand by checking out existing gardening websites.
  Make a commitment to yourself to take action every week, following the action items from your plan.
  6. Adjust
  Don’t be afraid of failure, if something isn’t working, so what! Just keep adjusting until something does work. Be bold and courageous, try different things. What’s the worst that can happen? If it doesn’t work out, you’ve eliminated another way that something does not work and you now have a higher chance at finding something that does work. Plus you’ve learned a ton along the way.
  7. Emergency Fund
  If you’re thinking about quitting your job at some point in the future, make sure that you are building an emergency fund now. Heck, you should be doing that anyway even if you’re planning to stay at your job.
  If your goal is to quit your job to work on your own thing, make sure you map out exactly what your monthly costs are. This way you’ll know how much money you’ll need monthly. This also helps when building your emergency fund – how much savings you’ll need and how many month you’ll have before burning out your reserves.
  8. Mentors & Models
  You can jump into a new field and eventually reach your goals by trial-and-error, or by modeling after a person who is already achieving the kinds of results you want. This person is a mentor. Modeling means to do things that your mentor is doing, and taking the steps that he or she took. Most often than not, you’ll get further following a working formula that’s already proven to work for your mentor.
  A mentor could be someone who you interact with in a mentor-mentee relationship, someone you don’t know or someone you casually interact with. Remember, having a mentor does not mean you need a one-on-one formal relationship with them, in fact, many potential mentors are busy people, so don’t waste too much of their time.
  Be smart when contacting them. Ask clear, short, conscious questions that are quick to answer, and don’t ask too many questions. There’s nothing that will turn off a potential mentor more than sending them an essay of an email. If you’re a blogger, don’t send them emails asking what they thought of your latest post. Be considerate and respective of their time. Become an excellent observer, and observe what works and what doesn’t.

  Parting Words

  My purpose for this article isn’t to advocate that you should quit your job. This article was written for anyone with a dream that may have somehow pushed it behind the back-curtains on the stage of life. My message here is that achieving your dream is possible if you want it bad enough and are willing to take action for it.
  Regardless of what our dreams are or what our current life story consists of, we have the choice to live deliberately, consciously and purposefully.
  Keep learning, for it will give you personal growth. Keep serving others, for it will give you compassion and a sense of connectedness with others. Together, growth and contribution hold the keys to lasting happiness and riches far beyond what money can buy.
  Find your passion, and then look for ways to use your passion to provide massive value for others. Try different things until you find your passion. When you find it, you will know, for you will feel it in your heart. It’ll be like breathing. Never give up.

  “Forget about the fast lane. If you want to fly, just harness your power to your passion. Honor your calling. Everybody has one. Trust your heart and success will come to you.“

  ~ Oprah

  What is it that you want? What first step can you take? When will you take it? Share your dreams, goals, or thoughts with us in the comment section. See you there.