My Essay Blog

In studying French, there has to be a scale you need to follow, sources you need to continually use as daily aid. There are gazillions of French sources you can take advantage of in the Internet alone; we’re not even talking about books, magazines, educational T.V shows etc.

So you see; there isn’t just any reason at all for you not to learn the French language in this day and age. Let’s set aside first the “infinite” sources you can use from the Internet to learn French. The fact alone that sparing a few minutes of your day to learn French words from the French grammar and vocabulary is already an exceptional help for someone beginning this study. It’s more than a help already since a few minutes of French lessons daily doesn’t even put pressure on you or your brain which means the chance of getting bored is slim. Also, the worry of forcing yourself to absorb French lessons isn’t likely going to happen due to the short sessions.

Aside from this, the fact that materials like books, French magazines and newspapers are just everywhere; it’s apparently another good reason why you shouldn’t stop yourself from learning how to speak, read and write bonjour, oui, and merci. These materials make great practice tools because of how accessible they are to almost everyone. When you have the time and opportunity to read any authentic French material, this simple hobby can be of plus points for you.

After you have gotten used to your daily few minutes French routine and reading from French papers (no matter how unsure you are of the things that you read); you can now purchase a nifty English-French dictionary (choose a good and reliable dictionary in this case) which is going to be great in providing you instant answers to French words that will confuse you.

It’s not a secret that smoking has very bad effects on your health. Even when smokers are fully aware of this, a lot of them fail while trying to get rid of this nasty, dangerous habit. Here are some pointers to help smokers successfully quit this habit.

Nicotine stimulates the transmission of electric pulses in the peripheral nervous system, increases the amount of blood that flows into the coronary arteries, produces tachycardia and vessel constriction, increases arterial blood pressure, collaborates in the process of formation of gastric ulcers, and has many more harmful effects. It has a tremendous addictive power, and it is almost impossible to quit consuming it without firm determination and a carefully designed plan. Nicotine’s effect on the nervous system makes smoking and anxiety two closely related issues. Worse yet, they feed each other: the more nicotine a person consumes, the more anxious he (or she) gets, and the more anxious a person becomes, the more he or she smokes. For this reason, anyone who firmly decides to quit smoking must first analyze his present situation, for it will be harder to reach his goal during periods of particular excitement, family problems, or stress.

However, some things can help. For instance, modifications on a person’s diet can be beneficial in the process of quitting. Complementing your diet with nutritional supplements can be helpful. Also, keep in mind that the habit of smoking is influenced, as we already said above, by anxiety, so stopping alcohol and coffee consumption should help too. Of course, there are some products aimed to ease the quitting process (like patches, or special chewing gum), but most of them are nicotine-based, and the last thing we want in our bodies is more poison! Besides, none of these products can guarantee success.

There are also several self-control techniques that can help you regain control over your mood, dominate the anxiety and achieve a great relaxation. Listening to music, dancing, reading, playing sports, yoga, warm baths, breathing control and outdoors walks are some of them. Each person should use the one that suits him the best.

Some specialists recommend replacing the satisfaction achieved by smoking with other types of satisfactions. For instance, a good practice is to use the money saved by not buying cigarettes to buy yourself a present. It’s a good idea to keep a “non-smoking” jar to put all the money you save by not buying cigarettes. For instance, if you used to smoke one pack a day, put that money in the jar. At the end of the month, you will be able to buy something really nice!

Keep these handy things in mind; they may ease the process of quitting this nasty, harmful habit once and for all.

If you ever wonder why your organization should invest time and money in training, then these 7 reasons should convince you.

1. Integration. Integrating people into the organization was the original purpose of training. You trained employees so that they could continue the systems, purpose, and procedures of the organization. Take the Roman Empire, for instance. “The Roman Empire grew so large and survived so long because there was no car, no radio, no papers, and no phone. You appointed your governor to run a province, fully trained him at headquarters before he went, and then sent him off to run it.” (Antony Jay). In many big organizations, integration is still the number one reason for training people.

2. Beating the Competition. Today, just knowing how the organization functions isn’t enough to ensure its survival and that of the people in it. When faced by intense competition, employees who are well-informed, well-skilled, and highly committed become the chief reason for an organization’s success. As former head of General Motors, Jack Welch, said, “An organisation’s ability to learn, and to translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.”

3. Developing Assets. It is only in the last few decades that people have woken up to the fact that their employees are their most valuable asset. When that asset is developed, it becomes more valuable to the organization as well as the employees. A study by Robert Zemsky and Susan Sharman of the University of Pennsylvania found that a 10% increase in training spend resulted in an 8.5% increase in productivity. A similar increase in capital expenditure resulted in only a 3.8% increase in productivity. In other words, training pays.

4. Performance. It is strange that, while we would never accept that a top-class athlete, doctor or circus performer could ever achieve high standards without training, we so often ignore training in the workplace. We argue that we don’t have time to train, or the means to do it, or that nothing changes afterwards. But, if it can work in every other profession, why not in the workplace? After all, would you want to be operated on by an untrained surgeon?

5. Change. The rapid changes of recent years have transformed the way we view training at work. Where once it was something given to the unskilled and under-performing by specialist departments, now it is an essential for everyone.

“Whereas in former years an organisation could expect reasonable periods of technological stability between waves of change, today in more and more industries, one change rapidly follows another. The purpose of training is to help people develop skills not only for today’s technology but for tomorrow’s and the day after’s. Learning has to be continuous for everyone because organisations face continual change in products, services, processes, markets, competition and technology.” (”Training for new technology”)

6. Practice. One of the most important aspects of training is that it allows people to get things right for when it really matters. In his book “Global Challenge”, Humphrey Walters describes how his yacht crew prepared for the BT round-the-world race with an intensive period of training. When their yacht hit the Southern Indian Ocean, disaster struck: one of the crew went overboard. The rest of the crew had just 4 minutes to save him. Their pre-race training meant they knew exactly what to do. Without the training, he would have certainly drowned.

7. Developing Excellence. We are all born with talents and gifts which nobody else quite possesses as we do. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people either live in total ignorance of their potential or fail to develop it. When professional developers discover people’s unique potential, nurture it, build on it, develop it, and release it, they do far more than help those people perform. They create excellence.

“Luciano Pavarotti, arguably the greatest tenor in the world, was an average singer in the boys’ choir at school. But, by studying, practicing, and rigorous training, he became a peak performance of excellence.” (Charles Garfield)

Without training and development, an organization today is likely to struggle to beat the competition, achieve high levels of productivity, or keep its best workers. Put training at the top of your people agenda, and your success is almost guaranteed.

Many of us will do anything to avoid another’s anger, yet may be quick to anger ourselves. Many of us dread another’s anger yet continue to use our own anger as a way to control others.

Let’s take a deeper look at what generates our anger and how we can learn from it rather than be at the mercy of it.

The feeling anger can come from two different places within us. Anger that comes from an adult, rational place can be called outrage. Outrage is the feeling we have when confronted with injustice. Outrage mobilizes us to take appropriate action when harm is being done to ourselves, others, and the planet. Outrage is a positive emotion in that it moves us to action &ndash to stop crime and violence, clean up the environment, and so on. Outrage comes from a principled place within, a place of integrity, caring and compassion.

Anger can also come from a fearful adolescent place within &ndash from the part of us that fears being wrong, rejected, abandoned, or controlled by others, and feels intensely frustrated in the face of these feelings. This part of us fears failure, embarrassment, humiliation, disrespect, and helplessness over others and outcomes. When these fearful feelings are activated, this adolescent part, not wanting to feel helpless, may move into attacking or blaming anger as a way to attempt to control a person or a situation. Blaming anger is always indicative of some way we are not taking care of ourselves, not taking responsibility for our own feelings and needs. Instead of taking care of ourselves, we blame another for our feelings in an attempt to intimidate another to change so that we will feel safe.

Blaming anger creates many problems in relationships. No one likes to be blamed for another’s feelings. No one wants to be intimidated into taking responsibility for another’s needs. Blaming anger may generate blaming anger or resistance in the other person, which results in a power struggle. Or, the person at the other end of blaming anger may give in, doing what the angry person wants, but there is always a consequence in the relationship. The compliant person may learn to dislike and fear the angry person and find ways to passively resist or to disengage from the relationship.

When blaming anger comes up, the healthy option is neither to dump it on another in an attempt to control them, nor to squash and repress it. The healthy option is to learn from it.

Our anger at another person or situation has much to teach us regarding personal responsibility for our own feelings and needs. As part of the Inner Bonding process that we teach (see our free course at .innerbonding.com), we offer a three-part anger process that moves you out of feeling like a frustrated victim and into a sense of personal power.

The Anger Process

The Anger Process is a powerful way to release anger, as well as to learn from the source of the anger.

Releasing your anger will work only when your intent in releasing it is to learn about what you are doing that is causing your angry feelings. If you just want to use your anger to blame, control and justify your position, you will stay stuck in your anger. This three-part anger process moves you out of the victim-mode and into open-heartedness.

1. Imagine that the person you are angry at is sitting in front of you. Let your angry wounded child or adolescent self yell at him or her, saying in detail everything you wish you could actually say. Unleash your anger, pain and resentment until you have nothing more to say. You can scream and cry, pound a pillow, roll up a towel and beat the bed. (The reason you don’t tell the person directly is because this kind of cathartic, no-holds-barred “anger dump” would be abusive to them.)

2. Now ask yourself who this person reminds you of in your past - your mother or father, a grandparent, a sibling? (It may be the same person. That is, you may be mad at your father now, and he is acting just like he did when you were little.) Now let your wounded self yell at the person from the past as thoroughly and energetically as in part one.

3. Finally, come back into the present and let your angry wounded self do the same thing with you expressing your anger, pain and resentment toward your adult self for your part in the situation or for treating yourself the way the people in parts one and two treated you. This brings the problem home to personal responsibility, opening the door to exploring your own behavior.

By doing the anger process instead of trying to control others with your anger, you de-escalate your frustration while learning about the real issue &ndash how you are not taking care of yourself in the face of whatever another is doing or in the face of a difficult situation.

Whenever anger comes up, you always have the choice to control or to learn.

Time management is the meticulous way of performing the tasks in the available number of hours. It has become a necessity in today’s fast-paced life, as a person ends up performing many roles. One has to be committed to fulfill all the responsibilities with 100% perfection. While doing so, people find themselves perplexed as to how to approach and manage all the things and still enjoy ample leisure hours.

Time management has become the gravest necessity. It basically aims as how the available hours are made use of in such away that all is done correctly as per the need of the hour.

Adopting the Skills in Our Lives

Time management involves a lot of planning and organizing. One has to sit down and chalk out the plan. The most vital factor is bridging the gap between expected and achieved. There are certain steps that help us to manage time perfectly:

• Target: The first and the foremost step is to fix a target in terms of what has to be achieved and in how much time. This could provide an outline, on the basis of which further planning would be undertaken.

• Planning: After ascertaining the needs and the hours, it is the time to attain a perfect balance between the two. Time is allocated to each task to be performed so that the goal is achieved. However, flexibility has to be exercised, as the actual time taken could be different from planned.

• Setting Priorities: Another important aspect is arranging the tasks to be performed in the descending order of priority. When one understands the significance of each event, managing the time becomes easy.

• Time Schedule: Preparing a timetable helps to complete the work on time and meet the goal effectively.

Time management as a whole aims at avoiding wastage of time and proper utilization. The business community also adheres to techniques like resource planning for managing resource. A number of software are used for time management.

In a nutshell, the time normally wasted can be can be put to effective use by making most of time management.

There really is no secret to being happy, you just have to make up your mind to be and you will be. But in case you need more than that here are 15 steps you can take to begin learning how to make yourself happy.

To be happy is relatively easy just decide to be a happy person. The choice is simple really, choose to be happy. Suffering is optional!

Once you make the choice to be happy your world will change to accommodate what it is you want and you will find being a happy person easier to do than you first thought! Abraham Lincoln once said “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

Decide today that you are the best person to make you happy and find ways to do that.

Remember that no one can make you happy! Your happiness lies more in your hands than it does anyone else. Thinking he should, she should, they should make you happy puts your life in a shaky position because when “people” aren’t making you happy, you are miserable.

A great way to be happy. Laugh! Laughter has an amazing effect on the body, mind and spirit, raising us up when we feel down. Just stop for a minute and remember a really funny incident. It doesn’t matter how long ago it happened, just recall it now and see what you saw, hear what you heard and feel what you were feeling. It should bring back the feeling inside of you of being happy. Now whenever you are down just recall that memory. ‘Laughter is the best medicine’.

‘The only thing in life that will always remain the same is change’, and in our life we have the power to make the necessary changes if we want to. Even if we find ourselves in an unbearable situation we can always find solace in the knowledge that it too will change.

Social networks or relationships are important. Nobody likes to feel alone (although you never truly are &ndash but that’s a whole other topic!). Join groups, dating sites, network groups, whatever it takes to get you socialising.

People are different, accept people for who or what they are, avoid clashes, constant arguments, and let go of all kinds of resentments.

If arguments seem unavoidable do your best to make an effort to understand the situation, see it from your point of view, then their point of view, then see if you can become an outside observer looking at the two of you disagreeing and see it from that point of view. What difference does that make for you?

Being grateful is a great attitude. We have so much to be thankful for. Thank the taxi driver for bringing you home safely, thank the cook for a wonderful dinner and thank the guy who cleans your windows.

Express your feelings, affections, friendship and passion to people around you. They will most likely reciprocate your actions.

Avoid holding on to anger or frustrations, this is bad for your health. Instead find ways of expressing them in a way that will not cause injury or harm to anyone. I love thumping my pillow or screaming really loud (into my pillow or somewhere secluded!). I find the best medicine for expressing my feelings is writing in a diary.

Learning is a joyful exercise. Try and learn something new everyday. Learning also makes us expand and broaden our horizons. And could also give us more opportunities in the future.

Run, dance, walk and do other things that your body was made for. Feel alive.

Avoid exposure to negative elements like loud noises, toxins and hazardous places.

I am applying the first of these time management tips right now. You see, there was a time when I tended to do all the “busy work” in the morning, while putting off the important things. I might have gotten to the important stuff later in the afternoon, or maybe not. Now, I get up and I write an article, because this is what is most important for my business right now. I do it whether I feel like it or not.

The result is that I often fell like I have gotten a good days work in before noon. I fact, I find that the business does well even if I take afternoons off so my wife and I can go for a drive in the mountains - as long as I do the important things first. There also doesn’t seem to be nearly as much “busy work” that needs to be done once the important things are out of the way.

Spend some time to decide which things on your “to do” list are most important. If they are longer projects, break them into smaller pieces, and attack one of those smaller pieces as your first work of the day every day. Important things first - not a new idea, but still a valuable time management tip.

Time Management Tip - Planning

Spend just the right amount of time planning. This is a tough one. How do you know if you are spending too much time planning, and so wasting time? How do you know if you are not doing enough planning, and so working inefficiently? I have a partial solution to this problem.

First of all, most of us fall into one of two categories. There are those of us, like myself, that like to plan. I can spend the day making lists, looking at calendars, and dreaming up new strategies to try in the business. Then there are those who don’t like to plan. They are always forgetting to do things that should be on their “to do” lists, because they don’t have such a list.

Both types have their time management problems, but here is my simple solution: If you are of the first type, assume you are spending too much time planning, and start working more directly. If you are of the second type, you almost certainly can be more productive in less time if you plan more. Sit down in the evening and make a plan for tomorrow.

Time Management Tip - Get Up Early

As one who didn’t use to get up early, I can tell you that I am amazed at the difference it makes. It may seem that if you sleep the same number of hours, it shouldn’t matter when you sleep. It does matter (at least it has for me). Is it the quietness of the morning that allows for more and better work? Is it that there are more and more distractions as the day progresses?

I don’t know. I just know that now that I get up early, there seems to be so much time to do things. If you aren’t an early riser, why not try it for a week or two? Try the other two time management tips above as well. Time managed well means more time for whatever you want to do. In my case, since this is my second article of the day, I think it’s time for a drive in the mountains.

Who doesn’t dislike rejection? We all live in fear of rejection - be it from parents, teachers, or friends. However, rejection becomes particularly painful and burdensome when it’s issued by a loan officer. So, give your application for home mortgage refinance the best chance to be accepted!

Application Anxiety

Filling out applications is an aspect of everyday modern living, but the Internet has made it much easier and faster. Whether we are applying to for a job, college admittance, a credit card, an auto loan, or a membership in the Big Ugly Chicken Flying Club, we apply with the hopes of being accepted. This also holds true when we submit an application for home mortgage refinance. To avoid receiving our application with a big red “DENIED” stamp across it, it is wise to know all about the application requirement itself.

Application Arrangement

Many lenders today offer online applications for a variety of loans. Usually, an application for home mortgage refinance will request for the following information.

* Employment information can include information, such as the applicant’s position, monthly income, and duration of employment.

* When you file your application for home mortgage refinance, you will also be asked to provide the approximate loan amount, the terms of repayment sought, the type of residence and property type, and the quantity of units.

* Housing expenses on an application for home mortgage refinance can include such expenditures as monthly rent payments, homeowner’s insurance, first and second mortgage, mortgage insurance, and property taxes.

* Liabilities that applicants list could include taxes, credit line, mortgage, installments, and revolving credit. Under a revolving credit, credit is repeatedly made available after repayment has been made.

* Assets reported can consist of the value of cash deposits, savings and checking accounts, automobiles, and life insurance.

* Personal information requested can include your name, birth date, number of dependents, educational level, contact information, and co-applicant’s information, should you have one.

Application Advice

When completing an application for home mortgage refinance, you should also consider some general approaches in the application process. These tips could help you avoid being denied a mortgage. First, as the saying goes, “honesty is the best policy.” Ensure that all data on your application is true, to the best of your knowledge. Lenders will probably do some additional checking on your mortgage and credit history after you have submitted your application. Furthermore, take the general approach that a monthly payment is more important than an interest rate. After turning on your TV in the middle of the afternoon, mortgage lenders’ commercials seem to tell us otherwise. But remember one simple mantra: sodas, sneakers, and houses are bought with money — not rates!

Rejection is part of life, so we must learn to deal with it. However, it need not be a part of your application for home mortgage refinance. Don’t let it be one.

Some days I feel like a plate of scrambled eggs. All messed up and with the strange feeling that despite my best efforts nothing really got accomplished. I felt like time was not on my side at all. Despite working 14 hours a day I was making very little money and was exhausted.

I needed a change so I implement these five simple steps to give me more personal time:

1. Simplify Your Schedule

Things that can be done less or things that can be done once instead of twice are those things that will help us save a lot of time. Clean your house once every ten days instead of every 7 days &ndash you can do that, it’s normal and the house won’t get dirty in those three extra days. Make a work report every six week not every four weeks if possible. Keep meetings to inform yourself on ongoing projects twice a month not every week. And the list of things that can be done fewer times can go on forever.

2. Challenge yourself!

Watch the clock and settle to finish an activity by a certain hour. Focus, get rod of anything that could distract you and work more efficiently. Work to accomplish one thing at a time, and finish the project 100%.

3. Ask more out of 15 minutes.

Can you find 15 minutes a day that you could use more efficiently? Is there lost time in your activities? Or maybe a less important activity you can give up on? If you manage to save 15 minutes every day, you will win in fact 91 hours every year!

4. Do a list of little activities that don’t take you more than a couple of minutes.

Of course, we usually want to deal with the important problems first. But when we feel tired, stressed, in a bad mood, we find it hard to concentrate and we lose our time forcing ourselves. A list of simple activities will help you finalize something and push up your productivity. And obviously it is always better to know you did something, even is it is small, than to realize you haven’t even started anything. Sometimes even a small task done completely will set you sailing through the rest of your more complicated activities.

5. Make Large projects more time manageable.

On LARGE projects, it is better to tell yourself: “I will work on this for 2 hours and see how much I can get done during this interval”. Focus and try to do all you can during that two hours. This is excellent advice to solve problems, and make progress on projects you avoided lately.

These are some simple steps that help me prioritize my day and get more done. I now have a more profitable day and spend more time with my family.

What is it in moms’ that makes us feel we have to take on the SuperMom identity? What makes us put on that cape?

If you talk to working mothers that you know, or even examine your own experiences, falling into the SuperMom trap is common. We all know SuperMom…faster than the microwave, more powerful than steel wool, able to fold laundry in a single bound. SuperMoms’ scare away the monsters under the bed, creates wonderful family meals, as she works, runs a business, or fosters a career either outside or inside the home.

I have tired to be SuperMom, but the cape kept getting caught under the wheels of my office chair, it did not take long to realize that persona was not for me. I was not going to fit into the kind of mother or woman “they” thought I should be. Now, when I say “they”, I am talking about, television, movies, the experts, the writers, parents, relatives, friends, and the neighbor next door, there is this exaggerated set of standards that has been generated that women hold themselves to, so they put on the cape to try to live up to everyone’s expectations.

Being a wife and mother are important jobs; we are the ones that not only carry sometimes the majority of the home and childcare responsibilities, but also the majority of the “emotional labor”. The hugs of reassurance, the kisses that make the hurts better. We are the ones that cry at night after the children go to bed because our little ones had to learn one of life’s lessons the hard way. We are the nurturers, we hold those little hands throughout their lives, no matter how big they are, we always see those tiny hands in our own. No mother takes that responsibility lightly. It is our job to provide our children with emotional sustenance, and so we put on the cape to give our children everything we can, and everything we are.

We forget that we are women…individuals; we struggle with the duality of our work selves and mommy selves as the two selves collide in conflict again and again. As guilt starts to overwhelm us for wanting something for ourselves, we are tempted to give in to be Supermom and leave a huge part of ourselves behind. We ignore our own needs because we were taught to give to others continuously and keep nothing for ourselves. We are haunted by the images we see on TV, in movies, maybe even the examples we saw in our lives of what a mom is suppose to be. These images have a hold on us, as a whisper in our head that feeds on the very concept of ourselves. We put the cape on and assume the role to try to make peace with the inner conflict.

Like the famous man of steel, we take on a cover identity, one that is not real, because we sacrifice ourselves for mommy hood and for careers. We get lost in conference calls, paperwork, school plays and soccer practices. We forget about ourselves as we stay up into the early hours finishing work, or sewing that Halloween costume that was not done even though we were on the go non-stop all day. Therefore, we put on the cape, just to maintain.

By understanding what makes us buy into the illusion that the way to happiness is through being SuperMom, then maybe we can start to understand why we neglect who we are and where we want our lives to go. The understanding will reveal clarity, a hope, and a desire to reclaim ourselves, our real selves and not just the mild manner identity that we created. It takes a desire to reconnect with our inner selves, a willingness to abandon the out dated expectations and the commitment to stop trying to fit into a unrealistic mold.

You do not need to be someone you are not. Leave behind the thinking that life is an either or proposition. When we realize we can merge our duality back into one, healthy identity, then and only then can we take off the cape and let our true selves live and find the life we deserve.