How Well Do You Know Yourself...

You have to know WHO you are and WHY you want to work before you can know what you want to do and where you want to do it. Knowing yourself is the crucial foundational step in making any effective career decision. We tend to be a lot more successful and get a lot more satisfaction, not to mention have more fun and less stress, when we choose a career that fits WHO we are, rather than just what we are able to do.

To say that I love what I do is a huge understatement. It is truly an expression of who I am, and I feel inordinately blessed that I get to help people discover and confirm how they are designed, who they are as individuals, so they can find careers that are their best fit and love what they do too.

Let me share some important aspects you need to know about yourself and consider when you are making career decisions:

• Aptitudes and natural abilities – Do you know how your brain has been “hardwired” to do things quickly, easily, almost effortlessly? It is hard to really know what your aptitudes truly are without going through an objective assessment process where you perform tasks and activities to measure them. Since aptitudes stay relatively stable throughout your life, they are the key building blocks upon which to build your career. We tend to be happiest and most successful when we are regularly using our strongest natural abilities.
• Skills and experience – What things have you learned to do well through practice and use? Our skills tend to develop fastest when they are built upon our aptitudes and natural abilities, but they are dependent on our efforts and use.
• Interests – What areas particularly interest and fascinate you? What are your areas of concern and passion?
• Personal style – Do you know what your core personality characteristics are? We all have natural innate preferences for things such as how we relate to others, make decisions, get energy, whether we like to work independently or as part of a team, and what motivates us to learn and work.
• Family – Our families have a huge part in shaping our lives, both present and past. What have the role models in your family taught you about work and life? How do you want to integrate those things in your present?
• Values – What do you consider most important in work and life? What do you consider most meaningful? People are definitely the happiest when their work aligns with their values.
• Goals – How do you direct your energy and efforts? What end or results do you want to achieve?  Everyone has a natural way they set goals and a most comfortable time range for setting them that can be measured.
• Career development cycle – Where are you in the career development cycle?  Are you just starting out or evaluating mid-career? Think through where you are in life and how this point in time relates to your past and what you want your life to look like in the future.

Ways To Make Your Brain Work Better

The brain is the human supercomputer with infinite possibilities. It’s the brain that differentiates humans from all other animals. Despite the common belief that intelligence is a genetic phenomenon, studies have shown that this is not true. The brain is a continuously evolving organ, and it is always a work in progress – it keeps revising or remodeling, improving or declining, depending on how we use it. Just like with a muscle, if the brain is properly exercised, anyone can boost their intelligence level significantly, at any age. But if you let your brain remain idle, it is bound to lose its sharpness. 

Here are a few ways to make your brain work better for you:

Exercise Regularly

As we age, the birth of new brain cells becomes slower, and our brain tissue shrinks in size. However, regular exercises can reverse this age-related decline. Studies show that regular exercise – especially cardiovascular exercise – boosts the blood flow to your brain, which helps deliver much-needed oxygen to brain cells (the brain consumes nearly 20% of the oxygen in our body). Studies have shown that people see a significant increase in brain volume if they exercise regularly.

Meditate

With today’s hectic lifestyle – which often involves juggling time between office, work, home and kids – there is very little time left for mind relaxation. Your mind is always crowded with various thoughts and worries, which definitely affects your thinking ability and other brain functions. Meditation is one of the oldest ways to rejuvenate your mind and enhance your cognitive functions. The practice of meditation involves quiet, focused breathing exercises where your mind is free from other activities and thoughts. With regular practice, meditation allows your mind to reach a deeply calm state, which in turn improves other brain functions, such as attention span, memory and focus. Not surprisingly, some of the leading corporate organizations now offer meditation classes for their employees.

Eat Fish

If you don’t eat fish regularly, it may be a good idea to include some in your regular diet – at least twice a week. If you do not like eating fish, or if you are a vegan, then you can opt for a fish oil supplement instead. A study on teenagers in Sweden indicated that eating fish increased the verbal and visuospatial intelligence of the subjects by more than 10%. While the exact mechanism of how eating fish improves brain health is unknown, some believe that, like exercise, it helps increase blood flow to the brain.

Fight Inflammation

Inflammation could be the result of your body fighting toxins, infections, chemicals or free radicals. Studies have shown that inflammation of any kind tends to have a negative impact on mental performance. Researchers have found that inflammation is consistently linked to lower standard intelligence levels. Thus, for keeping your brain sharp, it is important to fight inflammation. Foods such as omega 3 and various antioxidants help in fighting inflammation.

Exercise Your Brain

Like the rest of your body, your brain needs regular exercise to stay healthy and fit. Brain-strengthening or mind-improvement exercises can invigorate your brain and enhance its functions. Crossword puzzles and other word-based games, Sudoku, math word problems and number-based ‘brain teasers’ are some of the ways to improve your brain efficiency. Such mind-building games help in developing problem-solving abilities and mental determination. They are a fun way to enhance brain power.

Experiment With a New Hobby or Skill

A good way to energize the brain is to take it out of its ‘comfort zone,’ by trying out new skills or hobbies. It does not matter what new skill you decide to take up – for example, learning a new language, playing a musical instrument, carpentry projects, etc. When your brain is trying new things, it creates new neurons. Moreover, studies have shown that mastering new skills also helps in improving memory and cognitive functions.

Play Video Games

The more you challenge your brain with daily games, the sharper it becomes. Games enable you to be more attentive and creative, be a critical thinker and learn something new. Video games or computer games are a great way to keep your brain sharp and young. They kick your brain into learning mode, increasing your concentration, attention span and problem-solving ability. Several studies have shown that video games enhance the ability of processing auditory and visual information for better response in the game, thereby enhancing decision-making skills in real life.

Avoid Stress

Studies have found that stress is a major culprit in affecting your brain’s efficiency. According to a study at the University of California, repeated instances of stress response can result in shrinking of the hippocampus, the part of the brain vital to both stress regulation and long-term memory. To stay mentally sharp and active, it is important to fight this cortisol-related aging brought on by stress. To deal with stress-related ageing, it is important to build ‘stress disruptors’ into your regular routine. This may involve simple activities such as a five-minute break in the middle of each day, during which you do absolutely nothing.

Improve Your Diet

Diet plays an integral part in improving both physical and mental functioning. As nutrients are essential for proper growth and development, they are also important for improving the efficiency of your brain. The right foods enhance brain power and reduce the risk of cognitive decline in old age. Certain foods, such as folic acid, vitamin B6 and B12, and omega fatty acids stimulate brain cells to perform better. Fruits, vegetables and whole grains help your mind as well as your body. Coffee, in moderate quantities, also keeps you sharp and alert.

On the other hand, unhealthy foods like saturated fats negatively affect the performance of your brain. Consume alcohol only in moderation and avoid tobacco. Limiting alcohol consumption may reduce the risk of dementia in old age.

It is said that geniuses are not made; they are built. These steps can all help to improve your cognitive performance and sharpen your brain.

TYPES OF WOMEN YOU SHOULD NEVER DATE!

Guys, I have got you a big short to start your week must especially the bachelor. This is exclusively for you and believe me, you will love every detail of the article. Before you continue reading, a few questions to ask you. With all sincerity and i need you to answer the questions for yourself...

1. Have you ever wondered, why the women you date always turn out to be annoying or weird in some way? 

2. Have you ever thought that perhaps you have been choosing the wrong type of women? 

Below is a list of different types of women you should avoid, according to an article I just came across. why not read carefully with me and see if you can grasp one or two things.

1. The Chatterbox: 

This is the woman who never shuts up, barely stopping to breathe. Seemingly only concerned about what is going on in her life, she always has to make a comment about everything and dominates conversations.

2. The Desperate Chick: 

This type of woman seems fantastic at first, until she starts talking about your wedding location, how many kids she wants and the name of your future dog–right after the first date! When a woman advances WAY faster than normal, watch out. She NEEDS a man so bad that she’s willing to put anybody in that slot, even the homeless guy on the corner.

3. The Overly-Critical Woman:

Anything you do for this type of woman is simply not good enough. Nothing seems to work unless it is done according to her standards. Anything that is said by anyone will be quickly taken out of context to become some sort of insult or some reason to wage war against the world. This type of woman has plenty of emotional baggage and will make you an angry and bitter person as there will be nothing but misery with her.

4. The Bimbo:

This type of woman can’t obtain a GED but has managed to secure a PhD in the science of the bedroom. This is an intellectually challenged woman who looks great but, in all honesty, shouldn't open her mouth. Her skills are unquestionably only rooted in the physical realm and unless you’re just after one-night stands, you do not want to bring a stupid girl home to meet Mom and Dad. The majority of girls you see on the streets everyday fall into this category.

5. The High Maintenance Chick:

If this type of woman breaks a nail, she expects you to drop everything you’re doing to drive her to the salon immediately. Her daddy always told her, she was a princess and she expects to be treated like one at all times. She has expensive taste and expects you to shower her with only the best things and take her out to posh places on a regular basis. If you don’t have a lot of money and a penchant for luxury, don’t even bother.

6. The Clingy Girl:

This woman is a nuisance who can’t go anywhere or do anything without the company of her man. She’ll adopt your interests, calls 20 times a day and fly off the handle anytime she’s not around to monitor your behaviour. This type of woman will smother any chance of you missing her by insisting that you spend every waking moment with her, refusing to let you go out with the boys or spend any significant amount of time with anyone else.

7. The Baby’s Mama:

This woman has a great physique, great personality and her toes are pretty too! There’s only one problem–she’s got a pretty large amount of children with assorted “baby-daddy’s”, and when women like this get desperate, any and every guy has the potential to be “daddy.” This woman got knocked up by somebody that she was supposedly in love with, and not only is she a bad judge of character, she’s GROSSLY irresponsible. The same guys that are “jerks” now are the same guys she once thought the world of and had unprotected sex with.

8. The Gold Digger:

The Gold-Digger will compliment you on your expensive watch, ask you what kind of car you drive, what you do for a living, where you live and so on. Like the high maintenance woman, the Gold Digger is basically looking for a sugar daddy, she’ll size you up within the first five minutes and drop you just as quickly if your cash flow runs out and you can’t take her shopping anymore. These types of women will just suck your wallet dry and leave you emasculated. 

Fortunately,you can usually see this type coming from a mile away. She wants to write out the names of all her designer items and post it on her Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

9. The Club Girl:

Club girls are nothing more than fantasy women who have been practically living in bars and clubs since they hit the legal drinking age. They have beautiful faces with full lips, big doe eyes, great legs, and all the curves you could ever ask for. The problem in dating these women is that they love to wear clothes that show off their great assets not just to you, but to every Tom, man-hood and Harry on the street. A woman like this may be carefree and wild; however, once you take a closer look, you’ll realize that her entire life is a party and most nights will end with her puking in your car. Or waking up hungover, in some guy’s bed in the morning.

10. The Feminist:

This type of woman can never be pleased by a man and she believes that men are the cause of all the pains and suffering of society. It is her strong belief that women are much more intelligent than men and are capable of doing things “the right way”. You don’t want to waste any time with this type of woman because anything that you do will always be negative to her.

Summary (Success Secrets - Series 1 to 7) - An Important Understanding

Our minds are a wonderful resource of knowledge packed with information from our lives experiences.

Although we have this wonderful source of knowledge, we're consciously limited to considering a certain number of different pieces of information at any one time. So, if we want to be effective then we must direct our thoughts.

Imagine your mind is a dimly lit library containing everything you have ever thought, seen, heard, tested, smell or felt. Now imagine your conscious attention is like a torch which can illuminate a very small section of the dimly lit library at any one time.

Since you do not know how to consciously recall all this information at once, you need to be selective with what you concentrate on and trust your unconscious mind to supply the resources you need from your library.

Most people never achieve the success they desire because they are scattered, flashing their torch from one thing to the next.

To be successful you must concentrate and focus. This means directing your torch towards your ultimate goals.

Einstein discovered the theory of relativity. Alexander the Great conquered what was then his known world and beyond...

They were all wildly successful at what they did and achieved their place in history through passion and intense concentration.

Note: Make my success secret - series 1 to 7 your close pal as long as you sleep and wake up. Introduce them one at a time. Start by forming some good habits like getting up a little earlier and focussing on one of your goals.

If you find yourself not achieving what you want in life then go over these principles and take an honest look at yourself. Which ones are you not properly implementing?

Inch By Inch And Anything's A Cinch (Success Secrets - Series 7)

Hot on the heels of the consistency principle is the law of growth.

In fact these two success secrets when used together form the basis of almost ALL long term success.

The law of growth states that if you increase your efficiency or concentration or applied knowledge or your understanding by just 1% each and every day then the improvement over an entire year will be colossal.

If you simply added the 1% up over a year you'd have improved 365%. The actual amount when compounded is substantially more!

Success is a progression of small steps, one building on another eventually creating monumental momentum. For instance, before you can become a millionaire, you need to earn $100,000. Before that you need to earn $10,000. Before that you need to earn $1,000. Before that you need to earn $100 and before that you need to earn $1.

The law of growth is achieved by taking things step by step. You only get to take the big steps once you've done the smallest ones first.

The key to continual improvement and growth is enthusiasm. You have to get passionate at what you do. Couple this with good habits and consistency and you'll be shocked and amazed at what you can achieve.

 Note: Keep an ideas, discovery and progress journal. Refer to it regularly. Visualise yourself improving before you go to sleep. There's phenomenal power in setting the rest of your mind to work while you sleep!

The Consistency Principle (Success Secrets - Series 6)

Everyone has at least one movement in their lives when they were 'great' for a while. It might be the first time they said a work or when they took their first few steps as a child. Perhaps it was an exam they sat and passed.

The point is we have ALL tasted success at some point. The difference between the average person and the very successful is therefore consistency.

It's not rocket science. People who are very successful do things which move them towards their goals on a daily basis. They keep doing the things which bring them the results they want.

It's easy to do something well once. It's easy to do something you don't want to do once.

Real power lies in repeating these moments again and again.

A wealthy businessman once said, "You're either consistent or non - existent".

We already have great consistency on our lives. Most of us regularly breathe, move, sleep, eat and drink like clockwork. You know how to do this.

The successful see no difference in taking regular actions to feed their dreams as they do to feed their stomachs.

You either become consistent towards your desires or you end up wasting most of your potential.

Note: Find someone you can be accountable to. Each week send them a list of what you have achieved during the week and include what you also planned to do yet didn't complete. Then write down your general goals for the following week and repeat the process 7 days later. Get them to respond likewise. There's great power in getting accountable for your actions.

Go After The Carrot (Success Secrets - Series 5)

We are often motivated away from pain first and towards pleasure second. This is a HUGE mistake to make when it comes to achieving your desires.

Often people get bogged down in how to do something rather than what they get from achieving the outcome they have set themselves.

People think about the pain involved in the process instead of visualizing the pleasure of the reward on completion.

If you focus on the reward rather than the process you will find procrastination is easily defeated.

Here's a dynamite 3 step formula to blast procrastination away... Simply say to yourself:

1.      What is the one thing I don't want to do and yet if I did it, it would move my life and/ or business forward? Answer this yourself

2.      How will I benefit from doing it? Answer this yourself

3.      Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Act

By doing for the carrot you focus your concentration towards success rather than allowing various reasons for failure to confuse your mind.

Note: Write down your major goals in life first thing every day and visualize yourself attaining them. Add as much details as you can and really bring the pictures alive in your mind. Let the emotions of excitement and pleasure build up inside you. Use this as motivation towards your goal.

Guard Your Time Like A Hawk (Success Secrets - Series 4)

You can usually tell how successful someone is by how much they respect their time.

Your time on this earth is finite, it's ticking down for you this very minute.

Imagine you're in a rocking chair at the age of 70 years. When you look back on your life do you want to see you fritted it away or would you prefer to be able to smile and know you did what you truly desired?

It's what you do with your time that matters. Remember, your time is precious. Time itself is unmanageable despite all the 'time management' waffle in print. It goes on doing its thing regardless of you. The answer to "time management" is to manage your actions instead.

Don't allow others to take your time and break your concentration when they feel like it.

This means cutting out distractions when you are working and prioritizing your actions.

Do you think you can usually pick up the phone and get straight through to someone who is very successful?

I don't think so.

You need to make an appointment first which gets allocated to you by them. They are in control of what they do with their time.

Note: Every day set aside at least one prime time action hour (preferably more - I have 5) where you only work towards your most important goals.

Accept no distraction. Do not answer the phone; read the mails, read emails, talk to co-workers, friends, family or even pets!

Respect and protect time. 

'Perfection' Can Be The Enemy Of Success (Success Secrets - Series 3)

This might seem controversial and may even challenge your beliefs.

Being a perfectionist can be one of the most destructive habits when it comes to success.

Fear of not being able to do it right stops people from ever starting. However, nothing worth doing was ever done perfectly the first time!

It's the decision to act which counts, to get going, to move in the direction you want to go, to just take that very first step!

"You don't have to get it right... You just have to get it going"

Imperfections can be fixed down the track.

I once heard someone say, "Perfect is the enemy of the good". I understand it's a noble belief to do things 'right' however what's the point in having goals if they are never achieved because they are burdened by this 'perfection' milestone?

Consider this quick step formula instead:-

1. Start immediately

2. Improve it until its good

3. Finish

4. Get feedback

5. Polish it until it's very good.

Remember, absolutely nothing happens until you start.

Note: Just begin, even if what you start ends up nothing like the finished article. If you are selling to a marketplace, get something out there and then get feedback from the marketplace to perfect your product or service.

The "Success Six" (Success Secrets - Series 2)

Successful people do things in order of importance.

How many times have you put off something important which needed doing to spend your time on doing something unnecessary, unproductive and unimportant instead?

I believe your time is precious.

Isn't it worth taking a little time to make sure you make the most out of what you have left in the world?

If it's worth doing, it's worth planning. It's worth spending 5 minutes planning out your next day.

Step 1: Write down the SIX most important activities for you to complete the following day. Mike Litman, No 1 best- selling author of 'Conversations with Millionaires' calls these "The Success Six".

Step 2: Then, number your written down activities for the next day 1 to 6 in order of importance because the golden key to successful planning is prioritization.

Step 3: The following day start with number one and continue with it until it's completed. Don't worry if you haven't completed all of them by the end of the day. At least you will have completed the most important projects.

Stop right now. Get out a piece of paper and plan out tomorrow with you 'Success Six'.

Note: Get yourself a small notepad of 5" by 8" and write down you daily plans in order of prioritization. When you complete a task, cross out the item straight away. I always cross them out with a thick pink pen. Meaning, satisfaction guaranteed.