Tuesday, February 27, 2007

How to Manage Your Problems

For every action, there’s an equal reaction. If there’s a left, there’s a right. If there’s a north, there’s a south. Similarly, you can’t see the good side of a person until you come across his bad side.

Problems and solutions are no exceptions to this natural phenomenon. Life is never free of problems. Life came to existence with problems on its tail. Imagine a life with no problems. It would be a dull life. Imagine a life without struggling. With only good things dominating the earth, it would result to laziness.

This is the reason why a problem has its good side also. It makes you strive to look for solutions and ultimately makes you a better person. The only time a problem becomes bad is if you allow it to dominate or overwhelm you, or if you don’t do anything to correct it. And this is where your attitude towards it is put to the test. How you treat problems - how you solve or manage them - can spell all the difference. If you approach a problem the negative way, you can expect negative results. A positive approach will result to positive solutions.

What’s the point of this discussion? You hear that everywhere, every time, people are complaining of problems. You’ll often hear statements such as: “I’m never out of problems. What have I done to deserve such a fate?” In some, the existence of problems in a person’s life is viewed as a punishment, which is a wrong perception. You need to accept the fact that problems are a part of life. Accepting this fact frees you from unnecessary waste of time and energy in trying to discover a problem-free life. Nobody is spared from having problems. If you think reaching retirement age is the solution to attain a problem-free life, wait till you reach that age and you’ll know for yourself how wrong you are. Just when you think you have solved a problem, another one comes along. So accept this fact and live on.

The single most important thing relevant to problems is how you must handle them. As stated earlier, your attitude determines the outcome. View each problem on a wide scope. Look at the possibilities. The problem could be a blessing in disguise - an opportunity might be awaiting you. Take this simple example. A toothache is a problem for someone, but an opportunity for a dentist. Take another example. You have to be terminated from a job to get mad enough to start your own business and be gainfully self-sufficient.

You may ask, “What if my problem defies solution?” There are instances when some problems seem immune to solutions. Let’s be realistic, there’s only one way to solve it - manage it. Take a pro-active stance. Here are some ways to manage or solve your problems:

• Never underestimate nor overestimate a problem. Don’t take a problem for granted when there is a tendency for it to worsen. Likewise, don’t panic at the presence of a problem that may just about require a simple solution.

• Solve your problem pronto. If you are financially distressed, don’t wait for money to drop from the sky. Get a move on to correct this.

• View the problem realistically in a positive light to come up with the best possible solution. Don’t go out blaming other people. Blaming won’t solve the problem; on the contrary, it will create more.

• Dare yourself to take positive action even if it entails hurting your own pride. A slight misunderstanding with your spouse, even if it isn’t your fault, can be corrected by your initiative to return things to normal.

• Get yourself into the action. If you are jobless, go where the jobs are. Find ways to let people know your qualifications and your intention. If you want to be a recording artist and have the potential to be one, audition yourself.

• Don’t belittle your potential. “I don’t stand a chance, so why bother?” Well, if you don’t bother, definitely you don’t stand a chance. But if you bother, chances abound.

• Expose yourself to calculated risks. If you fail the first time, you’ll learn from it. The next time will be “I made it.”

Keep in mind that there is always a solution to every problem. A lot has to do with the way you handle and manage it.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

How to Make Your Time Golden

Time is gold

This simple ageless adage is true today as the first day it came to existence. But what do time and gold have in common?

Both time and gold have a factor common to each other. They sport the number twenty-four - hours for time, carats for gold.

Time wisely spent in pursuit of your aim will lead you to succeed in life. Time is intangible yet valuable. When lost, there is no way it can be retrieved. The only way to ensure time passes you by with utmost value is through self-discipline.

Self-discipline is avoiding time wastage. When you kill time, you are also killing your chances to a fruitful life. Maximizing time usage is important. Make every moment of your day golden by following these techniques:

1. Be your own architect in life. Write down your plans on a blueprint. Design it the way you want it to be. Keep your efforts focused on time efficiency and self-discipline.

Acquire the knowledge you need to materialize your plan. Adjust your habits and behavior pattern whenever necessary. Be willing to revise your plan to keep up with developments around you. Refer to your plan more often than enough. Soon, you will see the foundation of your goal in place. At about this time, the development of your goal has taken a gigantic leap, the kind of head start you need to set your goal on the right course.

2. Start each day with a six-pack. Sorry, it’s not beer. This six-pack consists of goal-oriented, time saving questions that will guide you through the day.

Ask yourself:
• What is the best thing to do today?
• How can I maximize my usage of time today?
• Will my actions bring me closer to my goal?
• Do I need to change some of my habits to hasten goal attainment? Do I need to make revisions in my plan?
• Am I on schedule?

These six-pack questions must be answered in a manner that will accelerate you towards fulfillment of your aspirations.

3. Seek valuable lessons. Do not wait to be educated. Make an active effort to educate yourself.

Learn from people who have experiences on similar interests as yours. This is one way to save time. This is the way to avoid the same mistakes, by learning from the mistakes of others in the past. Similarly, you get to know the right solutions to handle obstacles that others have encountered before.

Experience is your best teacher. It is also a time saver. Three persons with near similar goals will require the experience of only one and still get three times the value of goal achievement.

4. Hasten self-discipline by eliminating hindrances. There is no denying that each individual has unpleasant but otherwise necessary things waiting to be done.

Start working on them. These may take some time but just the same, get them done. Their presence adds burden to your shoulders. Relieve this burden and you lessen anxiety. This paves the way for you to move on with important tasks geared towards your aspirations.

Truly, the essence of using time in charting your pursuit in life is through self-discipline.

For some, self-discipline might mean being controlled and imposing limitations on oneself. What seems to be is not what it is. Actually, these acts of self-discipline or so-called ‘limiting acts’ are imposed to be part of your habit that will set your potentials into the freedom of success you’ve always longed for. And ultimately, you are the beneficiary.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Ways To Keep Your Vision Sharp

The question is, how To Keep Your Vision Sharp!

In a world where people are concerned with major health scares like diabetes, cardiac problems, anemia, and the like, it's all easy for us to forget the simple but important things. Keeping your senses fully functional makes a great difference in your life. Losing even one sense can have a tremendous impact on your latter years if you ignore it in lieu of the "bigger" health threats.

In line with this, you can do three things that can help you keep your eyesight sharp. These three tips are simple enough to follow and will help you keep your vision from deteriorating. These tips will help improve your current visual acuity as well.

1) Eye Health Maintenance
There are two major things to consider when you want to keep your eyeballs healthy. First, you have to maintain a proper diet. Vegetables, especially carrots and squashes, are very good for maintaining your eyesight. Taking Vitamin A supplements also helps the eyes.

Next, try to avoid excessive eyestrain. If you like to read books, for example, don't read while riding a moving vehicle or stare too long at a TV or computer monitor. If you're a movie buff, couch potato, video game jockey, or work with computers for long periods, remember to rest your eyes every hour or so.

2) Medical Stuff
There are two things you can do to maintain your eyesight and these involve working with an optometrist. The first is pretty simple. Have regular eye check ups every six months with an optometrist. This is about the same frequency that you do for regular cardio-vascular and dental checkups. So, it's a good idea to add your eye doctors to the bi-annual agenda.

Secondly, there are medicines that help ease eyestrain. These usually come in the form of eye drops. While most people think that eye drops are simply meant to clean out eyeballs, these drops actually help soothe tired eyes and also act as moisturizers to keep the eyeballs from drying up. Allowing your eyeballs to dry up is actually one of the fastest ways that can lead to the deterioration of vision.

3) Eye Exercises
Lastly, try out a few eye exercises. Like muscles or any other part in the body, eyeballs actually get stronger when used and exercised properly. One common but very effective eye exercise is to randomly pick out a leaf on a tree and then to focus your gaze exclusively on that leaf, try to tune out all the surrounding leaves. This exercise helps focus the retina and makes you see things with greater clarity.

A second eye exercise is speed-reading. Read a short paragraph written anywhere. Start by reading at your normal pace. Then try to re-read the same passage but pick up the speed at which you go, until you can literally skim over the entire paragraph yet still absorb it's contents. This increases the "reflexes" of your eyes. This also increases the rate at which your eyes send and receive signals from your brain.
There you go, these are three simple to follow. Do these and keep your vision from deteriorating.