Control Your Anger With These 5 Steps to Effective Anger Management

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Reduce Stress and Anxiety: 5 Effective Ways to Deal with Stress and Anxiety at Work

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7 Effective Ways to Deal with Rejection in Relationships

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8 Highly Effective Weight Loss & Muscle Building Tactics

Have you ever learned something or had someone impart wisdom to you that didn’t make much of an impact at the time, but  then hit you like a sledgehammer later?

This happened to me when I was training for my first marathon.  My friend and coach, Steve, told me that once you hit 40 you can keep your body fat low, maintain and build muscle, and run great times—but that it just gets harder. Now, at age 52, I am definitely at the place he was talking about.  Even though I have worked out and eaten healthy all of my life, I do both better now.  This article is about some of the key strategies that I have found to make the most impact on weight and body fat, muscle mass, and energy level.

Eating more often throughout the day will help you maintain both your energy level and your blood sugar levels.  I find that a plan that seems to work best is to eat three main meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) and then add in several snacks or mini-meals. Each of your meals or snacks should contain some protein: an easy mid-morning or afternoon snack could be an apple and a small handful of almonds, for example.

On my workout days (5-6 per week) I will add in a sixth snack right after I exercise: this is usually a protein shake with about 100 calories, which works well to recharge me as I head back to my practice.

Drinking more water will help you feel and function better, and starting your morning with two glasses of water will help you to re-hydrate.  This has many health benefits and will also allow your muscles and ligaments to become more pliable and resilient.

Taking in a fair amount of water throughout the day also seems to help many people lose weight, or at least to maintain their weight.

The two best times to eat carbohydrates are in the early morning, and after strenuous exercise. Eating most of your carbs in the morning allows them to be used more effectively by your body over the course of the day, and will be less likely to store them as fat.

Do you  know what the worst time of day is to load up on high glycemic-index carbs? At dinner time, and during evening snacking. The most important foods to avoid are potatoes, white pasta (100% whole wheat pasta is a better option), white rice, bread, rolls, and chips.

Here is another Lifehack article to check out to help with your weight loss goals:

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/avoid-these-mistakes-if-you-want-to-lose-weight-fast.html

If you really want to clean up your diet and start getting fast results, cut out processed foods.

This may take a little practice if you are used to preparing meals that come ready to heat and eat or almost prepared: if you’re a fast-food aficionado, you will have some major changes to make.

A good example of a healthy meal would be a dinner of grilled fish (wild-caught is best), steamed vegetables, brown rice, salad with homemade dressing (olive oil, vinegar and mustard) and maybe a glass or two of red wine.  This could replace frozen, breaded fish fillets, white rice or potatoes, and other commonly-prepared side dishes.

Sugar, in many of its forms (especially refined), is just not good for us. Eating natural sugar with fiber  (like the fructose that occurs naturally in fruit) is much healthier. Unfortunately, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is found in many of the foods and beverages that many of us consume today: why is that?

Corn syrup is cheap and about three times sweeter that glucose, so it’s used liberally in the food industry. It has the potential to pack on fat pounds, increase blood pressure and override your brain’s ability to register “feeling full”. Try to avoid it as much as possible.

This really is the most important meal of your day: research has shown that eating a good breakfast will typically decrease the amount of total calories you take in during the entire day.

What makes for a good fat-burning and muscle building breakfast? Although I’m not much of a hot-cereal eater, whole grain oatmeal could be part of a healthy start to your day.  You could also toss some almonds or walnuts into your oatmeal for additional protein and healthy fat.

I will often have grilled salmon (I’ll grill extra on the weekend and have plenty for breakfasts and lunches during the week), left-over steamed veggies, almonds, and coffee for breakfast, with other favorites including turkey sausage, scrambled eggs (my #1 go-to breakfast), bacon, home-made protein bars and chicken sausage.

Crunches have been shown to provide very little muscle activation to the muscles that make up your abs (abdominal muscles).  There are far more effective options you could do instead.

Try some of these to work your core: planks (front and side), mountain climbers, push-ups, hanging leg raises (hanging from a pull-up bar). Also doing full-body, compound exercise moves will work your core—a good example of this is the kettlebell swing.  This move, in my opinion, is the most effective all-over body move: try 10 sets of 20-30 swings (with the right amount of weight and good form) and you will feel what I mean by total body move.

Check out this Lifehack post to learn more about muscle building: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/10-workout-hacks-for-building-muscle.html

Adding weight-lifting to your exercise regimen will get your body into fat-burning and muscle-building mode faster than any other exercise. The biggest weight lifting mistake that I find people making is that they never start—beyond that, many women tend to lift weights that are too light to get significant results with fat loss and muscle-building.

Men, on the other hand, will often try to lift too much weight and end up with muscle, ligament or joint injuries.The key is to find the right amount of weight for each exercise that will allow you to perform 10-15 repetitions for 3-4 sets.  If you are new to weight training, I strongly suggest that you hire a personal trainer to at least get you started correctly.

What are the benefits of weight lifting for both men and women? Loss of both weight and fat that lasts for many hours even after your workout; repair and building of muscle tissue; increased strength of bones and joints; decreased pain and improved balance.

If you are interested in reading about more cutting edge, anti-aging information on exercise and weight-lifting, I highly recommend these books:

Younger Next Year (for men) and Younger Next Year (for Women).  Written by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge, MD

Featured photo credit:  Couple of women at the gym stretching via Shutterstock

I have practiced as a Chiropractic doctor since 1986. My focus has been on treating people with chronic and severe pain. My passion for helping people achieve their optimal level of health, extends into fitness, weight loss and muscle building. Over the past several years I have written books on Core Stregthening, Whiplash Injury Relief and Chiropractic Care. My most recent e-book, "Our 35 Best Strategies For Over 35 Weight Loss & Muscle Building" is available for free download at my blog...Fatlossforflatabs.com.

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Elements That Make Up an Effective Weight Loss Program

Recent statistics show that one out of three people are trying to lose weight. People chose to lose weight for a wide variety of reasons. But the two most popular reasons are to look better and have more energy. Although these are good reasons to work on losing those extra pounds, I would still say that improving your health or maintaining it is the best and most important reason to lose weight.

If you’re looking for an effective weight loss program to help you reach your weight loss goals you’ll be interested in this article. There are many weight loss products and services out there, and you can easily get lost in the maze of choices and end up with a disappointing program. To help you in your search, I have listed four of the most important things to look for in a weight loss program:

1. Well-structured exercise routines. Regular exercise is a crucial component of successful weight loss and perhaps the best predictor of weight maintenance. Exercise makes it possible to create a calorie deficit as well as use up excess calories that otherwise would be stored as fat. Therefore, no weight loss program will truly be beneficial without a well-structured exercise routine. The two most popular types of exercises for the purpose of weight loss are aerobic exercises and resistance exercises. Most fitness plans use a combination of these two types of exercises.

2. Healthy food plans. It goes without saying that healthy eating is important if you are trying to lose weight, since your weight is largely determined by the number of calories that you take in each day minus what your body uses. If you are a typical 21st century individual, your diet is comprised of mostly of high-calorie, nutrient-deficient processed foods, and your physical activity is very minimal. This means that you’re loading yourself up with a lot of calories and use only very little, causing a steady weight gain. In order for a weight loss program to be effective, it will need to include a diet plan that helps you cut calories by promoting low-calorie, nutrient-rich foods, including whole grains, lean meats, low-fat dairy and plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.

3. Realistic and sustainable methods. There are a lot of programs out there that can help you lose weight; but a lot of them employ strategies that are very restrictive and would be impossible to maintain for the rest of your life. These restrictive approaches to weight loss may seem very promising, but most people who use them never really finish the whole program because of overwhelm and discouragement and many even gain weight back after quitting. It’s important that you look for a weight loss program that you know you can do for the rest of your life. As a basic rule, don’t choose a program that totally restricts you from eating certain types of food or requires you to do punishing, unrealistic workout regimens.

4. Safety. No one wants to achieve their ideal weight but end up with other health problems as a result. Rapid weight loss can lead to serious consequences that include malnutrition, formation of gallstones, fatigue, and a general feeling of ill-health. According to experts, losing 1 to 2 lbs. per week is a sensible and safe rate of weight loss. Additionally, programs that don’t require you to purchase any pills or supplements are generally safer compared to others that do. Real food is best.

Featured photo credit:  Girl trying dress in looking in mirror cheerful and happy via Shutterstock

I am Kara Heissman. I have seen over the years how the quality of people's lives are reduced by their inability to find solutions for certain difficulties in their lives. With the great want to help, I have decided to share my experiences, knowledge and insights with the aim to help everyone live the life that they deserve--happy, healthy and fulfilled. I have my own self-improvement blog contentedlife.org but I have also written for various sites within the same subject area. My writings mainly revolve around stress, self esteem and health and fitness.

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How to Optimize Gmail to Make it Your Most Effective Business Tool

This weeks Lifehack Lesson is all about configuring Gmail to make it super-useful for business. There is a whole plethora of plugins out there that you add to Gmail, but not many sites will explain why they are effective and how to set it up in a way that you can use almost straight away. If you use Gmail for your business correspondence, customer support and need some great ways to make it more efficient, then this is the lesson for you.

This Lesson is written by Trevor Dobrygoski and explains some of the tools that can be used, how they can work together. The actual guts of the lesson will give you a step by step guide and includes tutorial videos on how to set up these tools into your Gmail, and some good ideas of what configurations to set up top optimize your work flow. Here’s an excerpt from the lesson

Gmail is one of the most popular web-based email apps on the web for both personal and business. When using a Google email account for business, the needs are very different than the needs of someone using Gmail for personal reasons.

Many companies have adopted Google email as their email provider of choice. When this happens, the email account will have the company’s domain name, not @gmail.com at the end. This is what’s referred to as a Google Apps account.

The main differences are Google Apps accounts have some limitations. Not with the apps themselves. The limitation might come from the IT department who wouldn’t want you to use your work Google Account to subscribe to YouTube videos. While the accounts can have limitations imposed, upgrades can also be added to make the Google email account more of a tool.

Here’s a rundown of the tools this Lesson will cover and we will help you to get them all working together. The detailed tasks will help you set them up and configure them to get you up and running and there are plenty of videos to help you install and configure each one of the tools.

Labels are how Gmail helps you sort your emails. They are kind of like the folder system other email apps use. They will help you separate emails into groups to make them easier to find later.

Gmail’s filters are the equivalent of the Rules system in other email programs use. Not only are there plenty of choices for choose what emails to filter, there are also a lot of different options for what to do with the incoming email after it’s found…..

This lesson is free for the next 7 days for you to try out. If you like Lifehack Lessons, it only costs $4.99 per month to get access to all the lessons.

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Four Effective Natural Stress Remedies

We know for a fact that stress can crop up anywhere and that it has become an unavoidable part of life. Although we cannot eliminate stress completely, we need to make sure that we keep our stress within healthy levels or we could end up suffering from health problems that are commonly associated with excessive stress levels.

There are so many practical and simple ways to deal with stress, but only very few people actually make use of them. That’s because in this hectic and fast-paced environment we are exposed to we are in demand for instant gratification — and instant stress relief solutions are no exception.

More and more people are resorting to prescription drugs to control and relieve stress; the most common stress-relief drugs fall under the classification of antidepressants and anxiolytics. Although these medications can be effective in alleviating the symptoms associated with stress, they have also been shown to have adverse effects to some users. There are options for natural relief from stress and below are some simple and natural stress remedies which have been proven to help keep stress levels down:

Your choices of food greatly affect your health and your general sense of well being. Although it should be everyones goal to have a well-balanced diet to make the body stronger and better able to deal with the negative effects of stress, there are certain foods that you need to remember when feeling especially stressed out. Stay away from caffeinated drinks, sugary treats and fatty foods during stressful periods as they are stimulating and can aggravate stress. Instead, your choices of food should include foods like:

Soy productsDairy (in moderation)FishPoultryLambBeefFruitsLeafy green vegetablesLegumesEggsAvocadoBananasWhole grains

You probably already know that exercise does your body good, but you may not know that there is a significant connection between exercise and stress. When you exercise, your body releases endorphins, which are hormones that fight stress and exercise also helps get your mind off your problems and clears your head. Virtually any form of exercise, from aerobics to weightlifting, can act as a stress reliever. Some exercises are better than others in relieving stress, like aerobic exercises, Yoga, Tai Chi and Pilates. However, your choice of physical activity should still depend upon your interest and physical condition.

The soothing power of music is well-established. Listening to the right music can have a tremendously relaxing effect on your mind and body, especially slow, quiet classical music. This type of music has been shown to have a beneficial effect on your physiological functions, slowing the pulse and heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and decreasing the levels of stress hormones. Other than its direct effect to the system, music can absorb your attention, act as a distraction and give you time for self-discovery.

Aromatherapy is basically defined as a form of alternative medicine in which certain scents are inhaled to achieve therapeutic benefit. The effectiveness of aromatherapy in helping soothe and calm the emotions has long been proven. Research suggests odor molecules affect certain brain areas that control emotional memories, heart rate, blood pressure, hormone balance and stress levels. The most commonly used scent for relaxation is lavender. So if you need to relax, light a lavender-scented candle or drop a few drops of lavender oil in a diffuser and inhale the soothing scents.

Stress in moderation can pep up your life, keep you sharp and help you accomplish things. The issues begin when stress becomes too much, it can lead to mental, physical and emotional problems. It is important that you know how to manage stress efficiently as the levels of stress that you are experiencing significantly affects the quality of your life.

I am Kara Heissman. I have seen over the years how the quality of people's lives are reduced by their inability to find solutions for certain difficulties in their lives. With the great want to help, I have decided to share my experiences, knowledge and insights with the aim to help everyone live the life that they deserve--happy, healthy and fulfilled. I have my own self-improvement blog contentedlife.org but I have also written for various sites within the same subject area. My writings mainly revolve around stress, self esteem and health and fitness.

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Lifehack Deals: Efficient, Effective and Fun Finance App Toshl Finance Pro

Are you having trouble managing your finances?

Toshl Finance Pro is your solution — and Lifehack Deals is bringing it to our readers for a limited time at only $10 for a 1-year license.

This simple and intuitive web-based application (and mobile app) is a personal financial assistant that, believe it or not makes finance fun. It helps you note down your expenses and income, and plans your finances with detailed budgets so you can be on-top of every penny.

Moreover, you’ll be able to download the mobile app which will make it a breeze when it comes to keeping track of all of your expenses. Your app will sync with your web-based software so it’ll be updated with all of your devices.

With Toshl by your side you’ll reach that peace of mind that comes with knowing where your money is going. And the mobile app makes it a breeze when it comes to keeping track of all of your expenses. Your app will sync with your web-based software, so it’ll be updated across all of your devices.

See how Toshl Pro looks on the web in this live demo!

Here are just some of the features that Toshl Finance Pro offers:

Toshl Finance Pro allows for quick and easy entering of your income and expenses. You can use multiple custom tags, and repeating expenses and repeating income.

With Budgets, Toshl Finance Pro makes it easy to save money Users can do the following to keep an eye on their budget:

Compare the rate of your spending with the time of the monthSave money just on the items you don’t want to be spending onBudgets for all expenses, just for specific tags or all expenses except for specific tagsOne-time budgets, daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, yearlyMove remaining funds to the next budgetLearn from your budget history

Having the ability to use foreign currencies in a financial is incredibly handy for those who spend a lot of time on the go in faraway lands. Toshl Finance Pro lets you enter expenses in any currency, get daily exchange rates for more than 30 currencies, and set a custom exchange rate.

Plan your expenses in advanceSet up repeating expenses and get a feel for next month’s fixed costsStart your financial month on any dayBrowse through any time periodManage your finances on the big screenYour data is automatically backed up and savedPrivate and secureVisualize your finances with infographicsSync with multiple phones

Toshl Apps are as versatile as they are fun and simple to use. You can use them on the following mobile platforms:

iPhoneAndroidNokia Symbian 3Windows PhoneBlackBerryMeeGo

So if you want to get your finances under control in a simple and fun way – then pick up this Lifehack Deals offer while it lasts! You’ll save 50% off the regular price for a one-year license – and you’ll save a whole lot more when you start using Toshl Finance Pro. Get it today!

Mike Vardy is the Managing Editor at Lifehack. An independent writer, speaker, podcaster and "productivityist", you can read more of his writing at Vardy.me. He is @mikevardy on Twitter.

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Five Simple Yet Effective Tips for Managing Your Email

Everyone nowadays gets way too many emails and spends too much time dealing with them. If you feel like you are wasting too much time on email, you need re-evaluate how you manage it. Here are five simple tips to help you regain control over your inbox so you can do more important (and fun) things.

Nobody likes to read long emails. As more people are checking their emails on their phones and tablets, you need to be succinct with what you write.

Try to keep it brief by using no more than six sentences. This will force you to get to the point. If you need more sentences – consider calling the person or having a face-to-face meeting to communicate your thoughts.

Don’t be a slave to your inbox. If you are, someone else has power of how effective your days are and that’s a recipe for disaster. The issue with people treating their inbox as their to-do list is that external people have direct control on how you go through your day and what your workload will be. Instead, you should be the one in control.

Here is an easy way to get started with this: don’t check your email first thing in the morning. Make it the second thing – after you have done your most important task.

This first simple step allows to take back control over your day. Even if email is very important to you, give this a try. If that means post-posing checking your email by half an hour – do it. That is plenty of time to do one important task.

Email is not the best medium for urgent matters – that’s where phone calls excel. However, email is great for correspondence where you don’t require an immediate response.

That’s why you want to make it a habit to not always respond to emails immediately. The idea is that you do not want to condition others that email is an effective medium for urgent matters. If the other person notices that you always respond to email within ten minutes, that person will start to assume he or she can email you for urgent matters.

No.

You want to avoid that as much as possible. Be upfront with people when you communicate a lot via email. I always tell others that they will get a response from me within two business days. If they need to reach me for something urgent, they can call or text me. Otherwise, I prefer to receive emails.

If you constantly checking your email and you process your email as they come in, you are wasting a lot of time. Instead, you should check your email in batches. Batching tasks is an effective way of processing and getting things done that are similar in nature. That’s why you should do this as well as part of how you manage your emails. Here is a simple tip to do that:

Check emails at fixed times and spend no more than half an hour each time.

I like to call this concept “email hotspots” – the times of the day when you process your email in batches. This requires you to turn off your email program and to learn that it is okay to process emails at fixed times each day.

This guidelines is flexible depending on how many emails you get. If you get less than thirty emails a day, checking your email twice in a day should be good enough. In a typical 9-to-5 day, 10am (you have an hour to do one task before checking your email) and 3pm are great times to do this.

The touch it once principle says that each item should only be handled once. This is especially the case for emails. Have you ever read an email, thought about replying back, postponed it and you had to reread the email again to understand what it was about? It happens to the best of us.

Doing this for one email is fine. What if you have to do this with twenty emails? You will be wasting a lot of time. It’s more effective to deal with emails as you read them for the first time. Don’t let emails linger around “for later”. Touch it once. Read and decide what to do right away with it. If it takes less than two minutes to respond, do it right away.

If you have to respond but for some reason you can’t – put the email in the drafts folder. This folder will have all the emails you’ve started to reply to, but have not sent yet. As you come back to it, you know where to find your email and you can promptly respond.

(Photo credit: Businessman Working on Email via Shutterstock)

+Thanh Pham is an obsessed productivity geek, systems thinker, blogger, avid reader and a world traveler. He specializes in time management for organizations and personal productivity for executives. Read more about him over at Asian Efficiency.

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How to Become an Effective CEO: Chief Emotions Officer

Chip Conley, founder of Joie de Vivre Hotels

Chip Conley is the founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, which he began at age 26 and built to more than 30 properties in California alone. In 2010, Joie de Vivre was awarded the #1 customer service award in the U.S. by Market Metrix (Upper Upscale hotel category).

Conley has also been named the “Most Innovative CEO” in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times, and I’m proud to call him a friend.

We’ve shared many glasses of wine together. He doesn’t know what I’m about to tell you, but it’s true (Hi, Chip!). When we first met, and after reading his first book on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I wondered “Is this Chip dude for real? Implementing self-actualization in a company?!?” My curiosity drove me to visit a few of his hotels, including Hotel Vitale, where I eventually concluded: these are the happiest employees I’ve ever met.

He has figured out what makes people tick.

The following post is a guest post by Chip and based on his new book, Emotional Equations. Be sure to read to the end, as there is a chance to win an expense-paid trip to SF to spend an entire day training with him.

Deal-making? Empire building? Self-fulfillment? He’s your guy.

Enjoy…

I graduated from Stanford Business School at age 23 with Seth Godin.

I remember talking with him and others about my aspirations as an entrepreneur and my desire to become a CEO some day. Back then, I thought in order to become a successful CEO, I would need to become superhuman, leaping tall buildings in a single bound. But, after 24 years of being a CEO (I founded Joie de Vivre Hospitality, what’s become the 2nd largest boutique hotelier in the world, and sold a majority interest to a billionaire in 2010), I’ve come to realize that the best business leaders aren’t superhuman, they’re simply super humans as they’ve learned how to become Chief Emotions Officers.

Leaders are the “emotional thermostats” of the groups they lead. If you want to dig into the support for this, read this compelling piece by Daniel Goleman, the man who popularized the idea of “emotional intelligence” in the 90s and proved that 2/3 of the effectiveness of business leaders comes from their EQ rather than their IQ or level of work experience.

There are multiple metaphors I use to describe how emotions work in our lives. One that feels very familiar to me is baggage. Our luggage in life is an apt metaphor for me – a guy who’s been a hotelier for a quarter century. Countless times I’ve seen people show up at our hotel front desks with all kinds of baggage, and only some of it the physical kind. Most of us have emotional baggage that may seem invisible to the untrained eye or invisible to the person carrying the baggage. But the results of lugging that baggage around for years is noticeable in how that person shows up at the metaphorical front desk of life. If you are a Chief Emotions Officer, you are more aware of all the bags you’re carrying and how to open your luggage up and make sense of what’s inside.

Opening up a bag, you may find a truly messy interior with things in complete disarray. But, these emotional equations create a certain logic to how you pack and unpack your bags and, in fact, being a little more conscious of what’s in your bag may allow you to discard a few heavy items that have been weighing you down. Creating your own internal logic regarding your emotional baggage will allow you to carry a lighter bag…one that’s eminently easier to unpack.

We’re going to focus on four emotions that you can start unpacking (i.e. mastering).

Think of emotions as existing on a color wheel. Isaac Newton created the color wheel long ago and helped us understand that red plus blue equals purple, for instance. I learned in my research for Emotional Equations – which allowed me to spend a couple of years with some of the world’s psychology luminaries – that there’s an emotional wheel with primary and secondary emotions: the Plutchik wheel. In my book, I evolve this wheel further so you can imagine that Disappointment + a Sense of Responsibility = Regret. And, once you understand the emotional building blocks of Regret, you can turn it from a downer into a lesson. Regret teaches. Fear protects. Sadness releases. Joy uplifts. Empathy unites. Think of your emotions as messages that give you the freedom, rather than the obligation, to respond. One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Now, let’s unpack and master the emotions of Despair, Happiness, Anxiety, and Curiosity.

I am very proud of this equation.

It’s the one that started my exploration of emotions through the lens of equations. I took Viktor Frankl’s book and distilled it down to this useful mantra at a time in my life in 2008, when I had a series of friends commit suicide, had a flatline experience myself while giving a speech in St. Louis (literally: my heart stopped, and I dropped), and the rest of my life felt in disarray. If you consider the words “despair” and “meaning” to be abstract or off-putting, consider “sadness” as a tamer version of despair or “learning” as a more concrete version of meaning.

First off, in order for the math to work, “suffering” has to be a constant. This is the first Noble Truth of Buddhism, but it’s also true, and not just in a recession. You can always find the suffering if you want to look for it. I had no idea when I started writing this book that this decade would come to resemble the 1930s in that our near Depression-like economic conditions would persist as long as they have. But while the Depression was a very difficult time for so many people, interview-based research studies show that it indirectly prepared young women for losing their husbands later in life. These women learned self-reliance, independence, and courage early in life, which served them (and perhaps saved their families) when their husbands passed.

So, consider “meaning” in the following way: many of us go to the gym to exercise our physical muscles to ensure that our physical body doesn’t bloat or atrophy. If you’re going through a difficult time right now, maybe – unwittingly – you’ve signed up for emotional boot camp and you’re being asked to exercise emotional muscles that haven’t had this kind of workout for years. But, this isn’t meant to be just agony. It’s meant to prepare you for later in life. The emotions you may be mastering today – humility, resilience, persistence, a sense of humor – will serve you well at some later point in your life, maybe in the not too distant future.

For me, having my long-term relationship end in the midst of my train wreck of a life in 2009 was the last thing I was looking for. Suffering felt ever-present, like the fog during a San Francisco summer. The foghorn that cut through this opaque time was the question I asked myself on my most sad, self-pitying days, “How is this experience going to serve me in my next relationship? How is this going to make me a better partner when I find my true soul mate?”

These weren’t easy questions to ask when I felt radioactive and couldn’t imagine anyone loving me again. But I kept the exercise metaphor in mind. The fact that I could joke with friends about my emotional boot camp helped me realize that great rewards – or meaning – could arise as a result of this painful experience. So, just know that there are fruits to gather in the valley of Despair.

People often have a love-hate relationship with this equation. The proper definitions of the numerator and denominator are what create the magic. “Wanting what you have” can be translated into “practicing gratitude,” having a reverence for what is working in your life. The more tricky definition is in the bottom of this equation. To “have what you want” is an act of “pursuing gratification.” I want something and it’s my job to go out and pursue it or “have” it in order to satisfy that want.

Don’t get me wrong. The act of pursuing something can bring us a sense of accomplishment and take us into that focused “flow” state. But, the risk is that “chasing something with hostility” (some dictionaries’ definition of “pursuit”) or even with just focused attention can completely distract you from what’s in the numerator, what you already have. Socrates said it best, “He who is not contented with what he has would not be contented with what he would like to have.”

As a type-A guy who’s spent more than my share of time on the hedonic treadmill, I can tell you that it’s very difficult to simultaneously practice gratitude while also pursuing gratification. Some mystics are able to take the bottom of this equation down to zero, which may give them infinite happiness. But, for the rest of us mere mortals, the risk is not in lack of pursuit, as this is part of what modern society demands of us. The risk is that we completely diminish the power of gratitude.

So, the true power of this equation is in keeping your attention on the numerator.

Someone once said to me that feeling gratitude without sharing it with someone is like wrapping a present without giving it to the intended recipient. So, what are the ways you can show your gratitude in such a fashion that it becomes a habit or practice for you that’s ingrained in your everyday life? For me, I needed to start by having it on my conscious “to-do” list each day. I had a rule that I had to give two face-to-face expressions of gratitude each day at work, preferably to someone who found the thank you unexpected. In fact, I wrote about this in the Huffington Post after one of my recent trips to Bali. What if you thought of your expressions of gratitude like a devotional daily offering?

Let me give you a suggestion about a Gratitude Journal as well. They’re not for everyone, just like personal journals resonate with some while repelling others. The purpose of a Gratitude Journal is to help you be conscious about “wanting what you have.” An alternative means of accomplishing this purpose is to have a Gratitude Buddy. Make it a point to meet with your Buddy once a month (or more frequently if you wish) in a location where there are no distractions and ask each other, “What gifts do you have in your life that are easy to take for granted?” and “What was a recent gift that may have been wrapped up as a pain or punishment?”

For those of you who’d like to explore this equation a little further, I have two suggestions.

1. Check out a research article by Jeff T. Larsen and Amie R. McKibban where they literally put this equation to the test (with inconclusive results, but really interesting findings).

2. Watch my 2010 TED talk, in which I share my key learning from my trip to Bhutan to study their Gross National Happiness Index.

After reading more than a dozen books and 50 research studies on anxiety, I was struck by the fact that 95% of the causes of anxiety seemed to be distilled down to what we don’t know and what we can’t control. You may have heard of the study that demonstrated most people would prefer receiving an electric shock now that’s twice as painful as receiving some random shock in the next 24 hours. This is why, as leaders, we need to recognize that hiding the truth, especially when it’s going to come out at some point in the near future, is a futile mistake that can often just increase the amount of anxiety your employees are feeling.

If we know that the combustible product of uncertainty and powerlessness creates anxiety, we can create what I call an Anxiety Balance Sheet to turn this around. Take out a piece of paper and create four columns. Then, think of something that is currently making you anxious. Regarding that subject, the first column is “What Do I Know” about this issue. The second column is “What Don’t I Know.” The third column is “What Can I Influence.” The fourth column is “What Can’t I Influence.” Spend enough time doing this so that you have at least one item per column but you may find that you have a half-dozen items in some columns.

After you feel complete, what do you notice with respect to the four columns? About 80% of the people I’ve worked this through with are surprised that they have more items listed in columns one and three (the “good” columns) than they do in columns two and four. The reality is that when something is making us anxious, we tend to fixate on those elements of the problem that feel mysterious (what we don’t know) or uncontrollable (what we can’t influence). So, there’s some liberation in just outlining what’s making you crazy and realizing that there may be many balancing positives to those issues that are vexing you.

Now, spend some time reviewing the items in column two (what you don’t know). Is there someone you can ask – your boss, your boyfriend, your doctor – who can help you with some needed information that will move this item from column two to column one? Maybe it’s just doing a Google search? I know it’s scary to ask your boss whether your job is in jeopardy, but remember the electric shock example I mentioned earlier. Anxiety can be more painful and debilitating than bad news. Now look at column four and truly ask yourself, “Are you completely powerless about the items on this list?” I’ve found that having a smart friend sit with me can sometimes help me uncover ways to move items from column four to column three.

In sum, just the act of unpacking your anxiety bag and knowing what’s inside can have a profound effect on reducing your fear of the future.

We’ve had a subtraction, a division, and a multiplication equation so far. Now, we’ll finish with an addition equation around the experience of curiosity. Recent studies have shown that curiosity is one of the most valuable emotional qualities people can leverage during periods of crisis. Fear and most negative emotions train us to narrow our scope. “Fight or flight” reactions are evolution’s means of helping us avert danger. But, oftentimes, we need to move from narrowing our attention to the “broaden and build” way of thinking that Barbara Fredrickson talks about in her book on Positivity. Getting through your own emotional recession may require bigger thinking rather than narrow execution.

When you’re living in a place of fear, it is hard to be curious. But, I’ve found that so much of it comes back to defusing my natural tendency toward reactivity. In other words, it’s learning to pause. Curiosity is not a reactive emotion. It’s one that takes a certain amount of reflection and a willingness to admit what you don’t know. So, ask yourself, “What habitats allow me to be more curious?” I first had to make a list of which habitats made be less curious: the office, any conference room, investor meetings, and spending time with people who I wanted to impress.

So, I knew that these were not places that were going to help me stoke up bigger thinking. Ironically, when I made my list of curious habitats, I found my list to be longer than I expected: anywhere in nature but especially near a beach with crashing surf; hanging out with kids; museums or other experimental spaces with art; zoos; places with a big night sky and lots of stars; my backyard cottage; and any place where I felt comfortable laughing from my gut (it’s hard to be full of humor and full of fear at the same time).

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that seeking the sacred in life opens up my sense of awe and my ability to connect with curiosity.

I’ve recently made a decision to seek out a sacred festival somewhere in the world each quarter as a means of committing to finding habitats for curiosity. As Tim F. knows (he was a fellow citizen of my camp Maslowtopia), I’ve been an aficionado of Burning Man for many years and some of my best business ideas have come out of my time in the desert marveling at transcendent art and having non-linear conversations.

So, if you’re feeling “on empty” creatively, know that curiosity is the fuel you need to seek. In author Liz Gilbert’s 2009 TED talk (TED is another habitat for curiosity), she shares the fact that the genesis of the word “genius” comes from “genie” and that the most creative people in the world are able to become vessels for the genie to inhabit them. My experience is that these genies prefer inhabiting curious places in the world and that’s where they’re most likely to tap you on your shoulder and give you the gift of inspiration that may change your life.

In sum, the more the external world becomes chaotic, the more we rely upon internal logic. This was true in the 1930s when Nazism and political and religious fundamentalism rose. But, that decade also sprouted new thinking from people like Norman Vincent Peale, Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Viktor Frankl, and Reinhold Niebuhr (who created the Serenity Prayer).

I hope that you find these emotional equations help you to think differently, live better, and truly become the Chief Emotions Officer of your own life. It’s worth the introspection.

—

TIM:

Chip is offering an exclusive to readers of this blog: the chance to spend a full day with him in San Francisco.

He’ll cover economy airfare from anywhere in the US (if you’re international, you’ll need to get yourself to the US), and he’ll also cover two nights at Hotel Vitale on the water, or the best alternative if they’re sold out. The usual legal stuff applies: must be older than 18, void where prohibited, no purchase required to enter, etc.

No later than this Friday (1/20/12) at 5pm PST, leave a comment below and answer the following, in order, and in no more than 300 words:
1. What is your favorite inspirational or philosophical quote?
2. How could you apply one of the equations in this post to your life for maximum benefit?
3. What would you like to change or build after a day with Chip in SF?

Only the first 100 entrants are eligible, so the earlier the better!

###

Odds and Ends: The Crunchies, Winners, and More

The Crunchies, something like the tech Oscars, are currently in the finals, and quite a few of my start-ups have made the cut (I’m honored to be involved with all of them). If you like these products or people, please click through to give them a vote! All of the candidates, many of them friends, are outstanding.

CEO of the Year – Phil Libin (Evernote) and Dick Costolo (Twitter)
Angel of the Year – these folks are all incredible, but I have to vote for my man, Kevin Rose.
Founder of the Year – Leah Busque (TaskRabbit) For the story of how Leah and I met, as well as how she got me to be an advisor, see this article: “How to Turn $750 into $1,000,000?

Best Tablet App – StumbleUpon
Best Mobile App – Evernote and Taskrabbit
Best Location App – Uber (check out the San Francisco grid)

For all of the categories and finalists, go here.

Posted on January 19th, 2012

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Make study more effective, the easy way

Decades old research into how memory works should have revolutionised University teaching. It didn’t.

If you’re a student, what I’m about to tell you will let you change how you study so that it is more effective, more enjoyable and easier. If you work at a University, you – like me – should hang your head in shame that we’ve known this for decades but still teach the way we do.

There’s a dangerous idea in education that students are receptacles, and teachers are responsible for providing content that fills them up. This model encourages us to test students by the amount of content they can regurgitate, to focus overly on statements rather than skills in assessment and on syllabuses rather than values in teaching. It also encourages us to believe that we should try and learn things by trying to remember them. Sounds plausible, perhaps, but there’s a problem. Research into the psychology of memory shows that intention to remember is a very minor factor in whether you remember something or not. Far more important than whether you want to remember something is how you think about the material when you encounter it.

A classic experiment by Hyde and Jenkins (1973) illustrates this. These researchers gave participants lists of words, which they later tested recall of, as their memory items. To affect their thinking about the words, half the participants were told to rate the pleasentness of each word, and half were told to check if the word contained the letters ‘e’ or ‘g’. This manipulation was designed to affect ‘depth of processing’. The participants in the rating-pleasentness condition had to think about what the word meant, and relate it to themselves (how they felt about it) – “deep processing”. Participants in the letter-checking condition just had to look at the shape of the letters, they didn’t even have to read the word if they didn’t want to – “shallow processing”. The second, independent, manipulation concerned whether participants knew that they would be tested later on the words. Half of each group were told this – the “intentional learning” condition – and half weren’t told, the test would come as a surprise – the “incidental learning” condition.

I’ve made a graph so you can see the effects of these two manipulations

As you can see, there isn’t much difference between the intentional and incidental learning conditions. Whether or not a participant wanted to remember the words didn’t affect how many words they remembered. Instead, the major effect is due to how participants thought about the words when they encountered them. Participants who thought deeply about the words remembered nearly twice as many as participants who only thought shallowly about the words, regardless of whether they intended to remember them or not.

The implications for how we teach and learn should be clear. Wanting to remember, or telling people to remember, isn’t effective. If you want to remember something you need to think about it deeply. This means you need to think about what you are trying to remember means, both in relationship to other material you are trying to learn, and to yourself. Other research in memory has shown the importance of schema – memory patterns and structures – for recall. As teachers, we try and organise our course material for the convenience of students, to best help them understand it. Unfortunately, this organisation – the schema – for the material then becomes part of the assessment and something which students try to remember. What this research suggests is that, merely in terms of remembering, it would be more effective for students to come up with their own organisation for course material.

If you are a student the implication of this study and those like it is clear : don’t stress yourself with revision where you read and re-read textbooks and course notes. You’ll remember better (and understand much better) if you try and re-organise the material you’ve been given in your own way.

If you are a teacher, like me, then this research raises some distrurbing questions. At a University the main form of teaching we do is the lecture, which puts the student in a passive role and, essentially, asks them to “remember this” – an instruction we know to be ineffective. Instead, we should be thinking hard, always, about how to create teaching experiences in which students are more active, and about creating courses in which students are permitted and encouraged to come up with their own organisation of material, rather than just forced to regurgiate ours.

Reference: Hyde, T. S., & Jenkins, J. J. (1973). Recall for words as a function of semantic, graphic, and syntactic orienting tasks. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 12(5), 471–480.

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6 Effective Ways to Become Persistent

Persistence is probably one of the most admirable characters a person can possess.  It’s the ability to be determined to do or achieve something regardless of any setbacks.

No great achievement is possible without persistent work. –  Bertrand Russell

A distinguishing attributes of those who succeed in life against those who don’t is persistence.

Many has the capacity to set goals and plans toward success, yet only few succeeds, because only few stick to work on their goals and plans until it is accomplished.

Majority stops before they even start or they quit in the middle of their journey.  Oftentimes, the reason for quitting is hardships, discomfort and uncertainty.  They let their fears and doubts paralyze them from moving persistently toward their goals.  Or perhaps, their motivation isn’t firm enough to drive them to work on it.

The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job. – Napoleon Hill

Developing persistence is a master skill to success.  It is easier to relax and do nothing, or just live in our comfort zone, rather than face the uncertainty and discomfort of sailing thru our goals.  Plus, the idea of failure and hardship is unbearable.

But if you want to create change in your life and achieve success, now is the time to develop and master persistence.  Here are six (6) ways to help you develop persistence:

1.  Identify Your Wants and Desires

If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.  – Lawrence J. Peter

Before you can develop persistence and eventually achieve success, you need to first identify your wants or desires.  You can do this by simply writing down specifically all the things you want to have or accomplish.  List down all your desires and wants, no matter how impossible they are to achieve in the moment.

2.  Determine Your Motivation

Motivation comes from a deep reason why we want to achieve or have something.  If you know why you’re doing what you’re doing, it gives you more energy to keep moving.

For an instance, you want to publish a book.  Creating a book takes time and patience.  If you don’t have enough motivation, a reason why you need to publish the book, you probably can never finish it.  But if you’re motivated by the thought of influencing and teaching millions of readers thru your words, only then will you keep pushing yourself to work on finishing the book.

3.  Outline Your Definite Action Step

Identifying your wants or desires speaks of what you want to achieve.  Determining your motivation shows the reasons why you want to achieve what you want.  Outlining your definite action step is necessary to know how you will be able to achieve what you want.

When you know how to get what you want, it makes it easier to achieve it.  To know how, it pays to do some research and planning of what needs to be done on your part.  Be specific on each step you need to take.  Identify at least two (2) ways and plans on how you can achieve your goals.

4.  Keep a Positive Mental Attitude

The road to success is not easy, in fact, it’s challenging, this is why only few succeeds.  There will be countless times you will be face with defeat and failures that if you are weak, you’ll be succumbing to negative thoughts of fears and doubts.

In order to develop persistence and eventually succeed in your endeavor, always maintain a positive mental attitude, regardless of situation.  Keep your thoughts focused on taking action towards your goals.  Avoid negative thoughts and feelings for it will ruin your concentration and persistence.

5.  Build Your Mastermind Group

Mastermind Group composes of people who can help you succeed towards your goal.  Choose carefully who you will trust as part of your mastermind group.  If possible, include only those who can give you unbiased judgments and who has positive mental attitude.  You can’t afford wasting your time listening to cynical advices and pessimist people.  These types of people won’t help you succeed; instead, they will drown your energy that can eventually lead to failure.

6.  Develop Discipline and Habit

All your goal-setting and planning will go to waste if you won’t be able to develop discipline and good habit.

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment. – Jim Rohn

There will be a lot of hindrances that will stop you from moving towards your goal, and without proper discipline, it will be easy for you to sail away.  Upholding discipline and good habits can help you stay in the course, even despite difficulties.

Lou is a professional accountant, personal development coach, public speaker and entrepreneur. She writes and coach on positive attitude, productivity, stress management, success, personal finance and balanced life. Find out more about her works at Live Life to Fullest

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The Kettlebell Goddess Workout: How to Achieve and Maintain a Divine Body with the World's Most Effective Tool for Weight Loss, Strength, Endurance and Flexibility

This item is brand new and still in it's shrink wrap. The Goddess workouts are a complete workout which include a warm-up and a cool down/stretch. The build-your-own workouts include elements from all of the workouts, plus there are additional exercises.

Price: $29.95

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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change was a groundbreaker when it was first published in 1990, and it continues to be a business bestseller with more than 15 million copies sold. Stephen Covey, an internationally respected leadership authority, realizes that true success encompasses a balance of personal and professional effectiveness, so this book is a manual for performing better in both arenas. His anecdotes are as frequently from family situations as from business challenges. Before you can adopt the seven habits, you'll need to accomplish what Covey calls a "paradigm shift"--a change in perception and interpretation of how the world works. Covey takes you through this change, which affects how you perceive and act regarding productivity, time management, positive thinking, developing your "proactive muscles" (acting with initiative rather than reacting), and much more. This isn't a quick-tips-start-tomorrow kind of book. The concepts are sometimes intricate, and you'll want to study this book, not skim it. When you finish, you'll probably have Post-it notes or hand-written annotations in every chapter, and you'll feel like you've taken a powerful seminar by Covey. --Joan Price

Price: $11.95

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Are You Effective Or Just Efficient?

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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change was a groundbreaker when it was first published in 1990, and it continues to be a business bestseller with more than 10 million copies sold. Stephen Covey, an internationally respected leadership authority, realizes that true success encompasses a balance of personal and professional effectiveness, so this book is a manual for performing better in both arenas. His anecdotes are as frequently from family situations as from business challenges. Before you can adopt the seven habits, you'll need to accomplish what Covey calls a "paradigm shift"--a change in perception and interpretation of how the world works. Covey takes you through this change, which affects how you perceive and act regarding productivity, time management, positive thinking, developing your "proactive muscles" (acting with initiative rather than reacting), and much more. This isn't a quick-tips-start-tomorrow kind of book. The concepts are sometimes intricate, and you'll want to study this book, not skim it. When you finish, you'll probably have Post-it notes or hand-written annotations in every chapter, and you'll feel like you've taken a powerful seminar by Covey. --Joan Price

Price: $15.95

Click here to buy from Amazon

5 Tips for Effective Digital Note Taking

Being a full time student, working two part time jobs, being married, and doing some writing and development on the side proves to be daunting. With my discovery of GTD a few years back I was like everyone else; enamored with the idea of getting things off their mind to then produce better and more effectively. I instantly grabbed onto the practice of “ubiquitous capture” by taking notes so I wouldn’t let as many things fall through the cracks.

At first I just used a junky old notebook and a crappy Bic pen. I slowly improved my tools as any good, geeky GTD student would. But it wasn’t until I switched over to a full digital work-flow that I started to see real benefits with the use of my system. I am in a very technical field at work and technical major at school; computers and devices are around me all day long. It only made sense to capture and process thoughts and actions digitally as it was faster and more “iron-clad” for me.

Here are 5 tips on on digital note taking as well some of the pitfalls to look out for.

There is absolutely nothing more annoying that someone click-clacking their way away on a keyboard or iPhone when you are trying to have a conversation with them, regardless if they are actually taking notes or not.

If you are a very fast typer, maybe around 50+ WPM it is a good practice to listen to what someone is saying then jot down a sentence or two to summarize it. Or, if you are in a meeting you could always say, “one second while I get this down so I don’t forget.” The idea is to capture what you need without constantly looking at your screen or phone and not paying attention.

One of the biggest things that I noticed from taking extensive school notes was that a lot of the stuff was pure garbage. I would say that out of typing through a whole 55 minute lecture, I had about a couple of pages of text that was extremely out of order and mostly indecipherable. After taking a look through each class’s notes I soon realized that I have about a half a page of bullet points that were really important and all the rest was considered details and reference.

Now, I wouldn’t say delete everything that isn’t the main points of what you captured, but I would say to consolidate your notes. One good way of doing this is to summarize your notes from a meeting and then take the original junk that you typed down and save it in a “repository” of some kind just in case there was a minor detail you actually did need later.

I am a very mobile person and because of that I need a way to input notes and access them from anywhere I have an Internet connection or device. My tools of choice that make this happen include Springpad, Evernote, and Simplenote. I won’t go into which one I think is better; the important thing is that you can reach them from anywhere and all of them are decently reliable and extremely useful.

Something that I have found to be game-changing when it comes to capturing information is recording a lecture or meeting while taking notes. There are several ways that you can do this, but what I have adopted is the Livescribe pen and paper so I can write naturally, record audio with my writing, and still have digital notes that can (somewhat) easily be transformed to text. You can of course use tools like OneNote for Windows and Circus Ponies NoteBook for Mac to record and type at the same time.

Have you ever had a note you took during a meeting that didn’t make a lick of sense? I know I have. Yet, when recording audio and locking it up to your notes you can refer back to what was being said around the moment you were capturing it. This helps clarify and make your notes come “alive”. Of course, you definitely want to tell your colleagues that you are recording them before hand, that is unless you are looking for someone to sue you.

The biggest tip, and this goes with everything that is related to personal productivity systems; find a tool you love, one that works well for you, and stick to it. I am Captain Fiddly when it comes to list making, project tracking, note-taking, and productivity software. About a year and a half ago I gave up on googling “best note-taking tools” and “best online GTD systems” and just stuck with what I had and what worked well enough for me.

If you have a productivity system itch like I do, pick something simple like Simplenote or if you want a little more power, Evernote or Springpad and devote 30 days to that tool. I guarantee after 30 days that “itch” will go away and you can concentrate more on getting things done rather than finding the best new note tool that doesn’t exist.

Chris is a developer, writer, tech enthusiast, and husband. He studies MIS and Computer Science at Penn State Behrend. Chris is also interested in personal productivity and creativity and how to utilized technology to get more and better things done. Check out his tech writing at androinica.com where he writes about Android.

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A strangely effective video

Australian science reporter Professor Funk has made a fantastic animated video about the science of the placebo effect that’s three minutes of sheer joy even without an active ingredient.

It takes you through the remarkable ways in which the placebo effect differs between different types of pills, perceptions and places and is highly recommended.

Link to ‘The Strange Powers of the Placebo Effect’ on YouTube.

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The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective Teens

Based on his father's bestselling The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Sean Covey applies the same principles to teens, using a vivacious, entertaining style. To keep it fun, Covey writes, he "stuffed it full of cartoons, clever ideas, great quotes, and incredible stories about real teens from all over the world... along with a few other surprises." Did he ever! Flip open to any page and become instantly absorbed in real-life stories of teens who have overcome obstacles to succeed, and step-by-step guides to shifting paradigms, building equity in "relationship bank accounts," creating action plans, and much more.

As a self-acknowledged guinea pig for many of his dad's theories, Sean Covey is a living example of someone who has taken each of the seven habits to heart: be proactive; begin with the end in mind; put first things first; think win-win; seek first to understand, then to be understood; synergize; and sharpen the saw. He includes a comical section titled "The 7 Habits of Highly Defective Teens," which includes some, shall we say, counterproductive practices: put first things last; don't cooperate; seek first to talk, then pretend to listen; wear yourself out... Covey's humorous and up-front style is just light enough to be acceptable to wary teenagers, and down-and-dirty enough to really make a difference. (Ages 13 and older) --Emilie Coulter

Price: $15.99

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