Your choice of word certainly impacts your success..

I am speechless...

To succeed you have to keep trying and never doubt yourself..

Small Business Guide

Found this rather interesting website which promotes small business ideas; Start Own Business Guide. Single income is no longer viable in this ever rising cost of living. Unless you are a high income earner..then that's good for you. Unfortunately, most of us are stuck in the middle income group and trying to jump over to the high income group seem impossible. This is especially true if you are an employee. Hoping for annual increment of 10% and work for another 10 years? Will you even make 10k per month? By then, is 10k even enough? This is the reason many decide to take immediate action by either getting a second job or start a small business from home. If you are not business savvy it's advisable to invest a little in enhancing your knowledge in whatever business you wish to embark. There are plenty of business books written by business owners which you can leverage on so that your learning curve can be shorten. Attend business seminar, convention and exhibition to widen your knowledge in business. Speak to industry experts and don't be shy to seek for help. Once you have decided the type of home business to embark, start small. Test the market of your products. Learn the business one step at a time. First hand experience is the most important because we tend to remember what we experience ourselves instead of what we read.

Which type of employee are you?

Based on my personal experience, I would classified employee into 2 main categories;

1) Those who treat their jobs as something on the side and needed to make money so that they can live their personal lives. This category of people usually will stay long and loyal to a company as long as their employers can provide them secured jobs. Job is just something they need to do for money. Their main focus is their family  and personal lives. Even if they are not happy with their jobs, chances of them staying is still pretty high because to them it's just a job. They would do whatever being asked by their employers in order to keep their jobs.

2) The 2nd category will be people who treat their jobs as their lives. These people are more likely to hop around between jobs or even embark a business venture. Job equals them. Job is not something they do just to keep live going but they do it because it makes them proud. They need to feel the sense of achievement in whatever job they do.

The difference between these 2 categories of people boils down to the objective of their lives. The first one are more focus to personal lives while the second to career lives. The first type sees job as a tool to make money just to keep life going while the second sees job as an achievement. 

The life of everyone is equal...

The recent aviation accidents involving Malaysia Airlines has attracted worldwide attention. Everyone was angry at the perpetrator of the accident. Some to the extend of writing hatred posts on social medial. Thousands of condolences wishes were posted or broadcasted via social media, newspaper or radio station. The radio stations even have a program specially made for this tragedy.

But.. more people have died in the past years and never once the deceased were given so much attention let alone condolences. I have never seen that many RIP messages in Facebook until the MH accidents happened. Do you know that:

1) 21,000 children die every day around the world?
2) More than 500 Indian migrant workers have died in Qatar since Jan 2012? These workers are
   involved in the building of infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup.


There are many more tragedies or conflicts which sadly caused death of human life. One such example will be the recent Israel attack on Gaza, which has caused the death of over 500. However, if you look at the 2 examples I have brought out, these 2 issues have caused more death than the recent aviation accidents but I hardly hear anyone speaks about it. Is it because of the lack of media coverage? I don't see any RIP messages or radio station talking about it. Everyone loves football and billion of dollars transacted on betting alone. But nobody seem to care how those stadiums were built. Anyone loss his life due to this billion dollars sport entertainment?

Shall we just blame on the media for low coverage on not so important news? News which cannot sell?
Remember, the media only broadcast what sells? What everyone wants to hear? So are we not interested to find out why 21000 children die everyday? Are we not care about the welfare of the migrant workers who die in the name of football? Why the missing MH370 and the down of MH17 caught the attention of so many? Is it because it is something which doesn't happen often and hence we should fell pity and sad for? The death of 21000 children daily is just too common?

A healthy mind leads to a happy life.

In the late 1960’s, Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School conducted scientific studies to test the health benefits of meditation. (As an aside, his findings motivated me to begin my own meditation practice.) He determined that meditation could be used successfully in treating physiological problems, such as high blood pressure, heart disease and migraine headaches, as well as autoimmune diseases such as diabetes and arthritis. As they meditated, he found that his test subjects heartbeats and breathing had slowed, their blood lactate levels decreased, and their brains had increased in alpha activity, which is a sign of relaxation. Dr. Benson also found that meditation was helpful in stopping or slowing obsessive thinking, anxiety, depression, and hostility.

Resetting the Set Point
In the “Set Point Study,” scientists found that each of us has a natural “set point” in our brains for both good and bad emotions. The study found that people accustomed to being happy have more activity in the front portion of their frontal lobes. Meanwhile, the right side is more active in people who worry or are anxious. Even when major events occur in a person’s life, such as winning the lottery, scientists have found that brain chemistry shifts back to its normal, or set point within about six months.
One of the most dramatic examples of what can be called “resetting the set point” was a study done with people who had suffered paralysis from spinal cord injuries. Although they could no longer walk and often suffered from depression in the short run, within six months of the accident, these individuals had returned to their normal mental set points and their original state of happiness. In other words, no matter what happens in a person’s life, the shift back to the set point inevitably takes place.
The good news is that you CAN change your set point through meditation. One study demonstrated that after only eight weeks of meditating for approximately one hour each day, six days a week, test subjects reported they had become happier. Follow-up tests showed that these individuals’ set points had changed—to the extent that their normal level of mental happiness had been raised. In addition, they had become better at picking up emotional cues from others, and they reported developing more empathy towards others’ emotions. On the physical level, the researchers found that the meditators’ immune system responses had improved.

MRI’s and Meditation
In a recent UCLA study, researchers used high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI’s) to scan the brains of a group of subjects who were long-time meditators. They found that these individuals’ brains were larger than their non-meditating counterparts. Another study found that aging people who meditate regularly don’t lose their gray matter as fast as non-meditators. Apparently, the meditators’ brains have noticeably thicker tissue in the prefrontal cortex, which is the region of the brain responsible for attention and control.

Imagine the implications of these discoveries! Not only can meditation prevent brain cells from dying, which typically happens as we age, it can boost a person’s brain size in several crucial regions. Furthermore, researchers have concluded that meditation can actually make a person more intelligent. Evidence is also demonstrating that people who meditate regularly are able to focus more deeply and deal with stress better than non-meditators. 

 

This Article was published on September 15, 2013 by Robert Puff, Ph.D. in Meditation for Modern Life