The currency of the new economy is trust

Rachel Botsman writes and speaks on the power of collaboration and sharing through network technologies, and on how it will transform business, consumerism and the way we live. There's been an explosion of collaborative consumption -- web-powered sharing of cars, apartments, skills. In this 20 minute video, Rachel Botsman explores the currency that makes systems like Airbnb and Taskrabbit work: trust, influence, and what she calls "reputation capital."

How to make stress your friend

Stress. It makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. In this 14 minute video, Psychologist Kelly McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, and introduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out to others.

Drink and Be Merry

By Barry McDonagh


Today I want to look at something so simple and yet equally powerful in alleviating the symptoms of general anxiety. This tip also helps reduce the frequency and strength of panic attacks.

Fresh Drinking Water

There is no quicker way to significantly reduce general anxiety than adopting good eating and drinking habits. One of the most easily implemented and effective additions to your diet is fresh water.

Water is a great quencher of thirst but more importantly here -a great quencher of anxiety.

Nearly every function of the body is monitored and pegged to the efficient flow of water through our system. Water transports hormones, chemical messengers, and nutrients to vital organs of the body.

When we don’t keep our bodies well hydrated, they may react with a variety of signals… some of which are symptoms, of anxiety. Here is some interesting information about water


1. 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated.

2. In 37% of Americans, the thirst mechanism is so
weak that it is often mistaken for hunger.

3. Even MILD dehydration will slow down one’s metabolism
as much as 3%.

4. One glass of water shut down midnight hunger pangs for
almost all of the dieters studied in a University of Washington study.

5. Lack of water, is the #1 trigger of daytime fatigue.

Regular fresh drinking water is a vital ingredient to your diet. This is something the medical profession has been telling us for years. When we are dehydrated our cells can feel this at a molecular level and communicate this to the subconscious as an underline subtle anxiety or threat to survival.

The key to rebalancing a deficit of fluids is to drink eight glasses of fresh water daily.
Have you noticed the effects of dehydration on your emotions before? If you have ever suffered from a serious hangover after a night out on the town, you will understand the feeling of dehydration all too well.

Hangovers result from dehydration and electrolyte imbalance. I’m sure many of you are familiar with the “the hangover fear”. This is a heightened sense of anxiety and jumpiness that results from the dehydration of hangover.

The surest way for someone who suffers from high anxiety to experience yet more anxiety, is to drink excessive amounts of alcohol and wait for the hangover to set in the following day.

It is important to be aware that dehydration is a factor that contributes to anxiety and nervousness. The good news is that it is easily remedied by drinking regular fluids. Personally, I have found that not only does regular intake of water ward off any subtle feelings of anxiety, but it is also incredibly useful for building stamina and avoiding fatigue. Give this some real consideration. Simply increasing the amount of fresh water you drink is a very easy step to incorporate into your daily routine. Most of us fall short of consuming the recommended amount.

Always remember that there is a lot of hope for an immediate and successful recovery from all forms of panic attacks and anxiety disorders. You can have the life of your dreams – Anxiety does not have the right to steal that hope from you.

Sometimes taking very small steps can lead to massive improvements. One of my favorite writers wrote about how everyone should approach their problems with the same philosophy as the woodpecker.

Keep chipping away at it and eventually the whole damn tree will collapse!



Barry McDonagh PanicAway.com

To learn more about how to end panic attacks and general anxiety fast then Click Here

All material provided is for informational or educational purposes only. No content is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Consult your physician regarding the applicability of any opinions or recommendations with respect to your symptoms or medical condition.

Image courtesy of digitalart FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Poverty, money -- and love

Following on from this post: How to Buy Happiness, here is a practical application ...

What do you think of people in poverty? Maybe what Jessica Jackley once did: "they" need "our" help, in the form of a few coins in a jar. The co-founder of Kiva.org talks about how her attitude changed -- and how her work with microloans has brought new power to people who live on a few dollars a day. Jessica Jackley is the co-founder of Kiva.org, an online community that helps individuals loan small amounts of money, called microloans, to entrepreneurs throughout the world.

After watching this 18 minute video you can find out more here : www.kiva.org

How to buy happiness

In this 11 minute video, Michael Norton shares fascinating research on how money can, indeed buy happiness -- when you don't spend it on yourself. Listen for surprising data on the many ways pro-social spending can benefit you, your work, and (of course) other people.

The Dream Objective

By James Kyle


There was something not quite right. But, on the other hand, somehow it did feel right.

Everyone in the bar was dressed in pastel tie dyed tops and pants. Logically that didn’t make sense. Now, if I had been walking into a room in Haight-Ashbury in the summer of love then there would have been no incongruence. However, I wasn’t, so, there was something not quite right.

But again, it did somehow feel right. It felt natural, the way it was supposed to. People talking in couples and groups. Some quietly, a few a little less quietly. People appeared relaxed, just talking and drinking and having a good time. The more I looked around the less strange it appeared and the more welcoming. I put aside my analytical unease and I stepped over the threshold.

As I made my way towards the bar area the scent of jasmine incense became increasingly pronounced, adding to the welcoming ambience. I stood for a while entranced and surprisingly comforted by just taking in the vista of the backlit bottles of drinks arrayed behind the bar. There was a simple beauty in the various liquid colours and hues laid out in front of me. Their enchantment took me deeper in to feeling ever more at peace in this exotic location.

I was in a bar, so it seemed natural to order a drink and I turned my attention to the bartender nearest me. She looked up to meet my gaze. However as she did so, once more, I was jarred out of my willing suspension of disbelief. She looked like she was happy to take my order, but she was wearing headphones, her fingers tapping in time to the music she was listening to. What kind of bar was this? It made no sense at all that staff should wear headphones and be unable to hear customer orders. It wasn’t right. There was a flicker of a smile on the bartender’s young face. Did I just say that out loud? Well it was true, it just didn’t make any sense.

My mind began to abstract from all of these strange surroundings. I began to find myself thinking "If I shouted out an order in a bar and no one is there that can hear it, does it make a sound?” My thoughts jumped on, was that notion profound or pretentious?  I started to disconnect more and more from my surroundings. I began to question why I question stuff so much. Where does it end? Does it end at all? Or am I just going to be faced with never ending questions? And then I heard the laughter.

I found myself back in the room, looking at the young bartender, her face a distillation of the purest glee. My intellect made one last attempt at sovereignty, “what was she laughing at?” And then, this thought was swept away as the infectious laughter caught hold and I couldn’t help myself from echoing that joyful state. The whole room was entirely full of laughter. What was to be gained from asking why? The best course was to surrender and accept what is. And so, I let go, and simply lost myself in the stillness of the laughter.

The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self Compassion

Kristin Neff is a self compassion evangelist and she loves spreading the good word about self compassion. She has devoted the last 10 years of her research career to studying the mental health benefits of compassion and more recently she's been working on developing interventions to help people learn to be more compassionate to themselves in their lives. Learn more in this 19 minute video.

Kickstarter and the remarkable projects it helps make possible

For all you entrepreneurs out there - a fascinating 20 minute video about Kickstarter

The co-founder of Kickstarter on the thinking behind his company - and the remarkable projects it helps make possible.

33 More Rules to Boost Your Productivity

By Steve Pavlina


A few of these are similar to the ones already posted, but most are new.  Sometimes looking at the same idea from different angles can be beneficial.

So here are 33 more rules to boost your productivity:

1. Super Slow.  Commit yourself to working on a particularly hideous project for just one session a week, 15-30 minutes total.  Declutter one small shelf.  Purge 10 clothing items you don’t need.  Write a few paragraphs.  Then stop.
   
2. Dailies.  Schedule a specific time each day for working on a particular task or habit.  One hour a day could leave you with a finished book, or a profitable Internet business a year later.
   
3. Add-ons.  Tack a task you want to habitualize onto one of your existing habits.  Water the plants after you eat lunch.  Send thank-you notes after you check email.
   
4. Plug-ins.  Inject one task into the middle of another.  Read while eating lunch.  Return phone calls while commuting.  Listen to podcasts while grocery shopping.
   
5. Gratitude.  When someone does you a good turn, send a thank-you card.  That’s a real card, not an e-card.  This is rare and memorable, and the people you thank will be eager to bring you more opportunities.
   
6. Training.  Train up your skill in various productivity habits.  Get your typing speed to at least 60wpm, if not 90. 
   
7. Software.  Take advantage of productivity software to boost your effectiveness.  Lifehacker recommends new items every week.
   
8. Zone out.  Enter the zone of peak creativity, and watch your output soar.  
9. Denial.  Just say no to non-critical requests for your time.
   
10. Recapture.  Reclaim other people’s poor time usage for yourself.  Visualize your goals during dull speeches.  Write out your grocery list during pointless meetings.
    
11. Mastermind.  Run your problem past someone else, preferably a group of people.  Invite all the advice, feedback, and constructive criticism you can handle.
    
12. Twenty.  Take a piece of paper, number 1-20, and don’t stop until you’ve listed 20 creative ideas for improving your productivity.
    
13. Challenger.  Deliberately make the task harder.  Challenging tasks are more engaging than boring ones.  Compose an original poem for your next blog post.  Create a Power Point presentation that doesn’t use words.
    
14. Asylum.  Complete an otherwise tedious task in an unusual or crazy manner to keep it interesting.  Make phone calls using pretend foreign accents.  Fill out government paperwork in crayon.
    
15. Music.  Experiment to discover how music may boost your productivity.  Try fast-paced music for email, classical or new age for project work, and total silence for high-concentration creative work.
    
16. Scotty.  Estimate how long a task will take to complete.  Then start a timer, and push yourself to complete it in half that time.
    
17. Pay it forward.  When an undesirable task is delegated to you, re-delegate it to someone else.
    
18. Bouncer.  When a seemingly pointless task is delegated to you, bounce it back to the person who assigned it to you, and challenge them to justify its operational necessity.
    
19. Opt-out.  Quit clubs, projects, and subscriptions that consume more of your time than they’re worth.
    
20. Decaffeinate.  Say no to drugs, suffer through the withdrawal period, and let your natural creative self re-emerge.
    
21. Triage.  Save the lives of your important projects by killing those that are going to die anyway.
    
22. Conscious procrastination.  Delay non-critical tasks as long as you possibly can.  Many of them will die on you and won’t need to be done at all.
    
23. TV-free.  Turn off the TV, especially the news, and recapture many usable hours.
    
24. Timer.  Time all your tasks for an entire day, preferably a week.  Even the act of measuring itself can boost your productivity, not to mention what you learn about your real time usage.
    
25. Valor.  Pick the one item on your task list that scares you the most.  Muster all the courage you can, and tackle it immediately.
    
26. Nonconformist.  Run errands at unpopular times to avoid crowds.  Shop just before stores close or shortly after they open.  Take advantage of 24-hour outlets if you’re a vampire.
    
27. Agoraphobia.  Shop online whenever possible.  Get the best selection, consult reviews, and purchase items within minutes.
    
28. Reminder.  Add birthday and holiday reminders to your calendar a month or two ahead of their actual dates.  Buy gifts then instead of at the last minute.
    
29. Do it now!  Recite this phrase over and over until you’re so sick of it that you cave in and get to work.
    
30. Inspiration.  Read inspiring books and articles, listen to audio programs, and attend seminars to keep absorbing inspiring new ideas (as well as to refresh yourself on the old ones).
    
31. Gym rat.  Exercise daily.  Boost your metabolism, concentration, and mental clarity in 30 minutes a day.
    
32. Lovey dovey.  Romantic love will spur you on to greater heights, if for no other reason than to persuade your partner you aren’t such a loser after all.
    
33. Troll hunt.  Banish the negative trolls from your life, and associate only with positive, happy, and successful people.  Mindsets are contagious.  Show loyalty to your potential, not to your pity posse.

www.stevepavlina.com

33 Rules to Boost Your Productivity

By Steve Pavlina


Heuristics are rules intended to help you solve problems.  When a problem is large or complex, and the optimal solution is unclear, applying a heuristic allows you to begin making progress towards a solution even though you can’t visualize the entire path from your starting point.

Suppose your goal is to climb to the peak of a mountain, but there’s no trail to follow.  An example of a heuristic would be:  Head directly towards the peak until you reach an obstacle you can’t cross.  Whenever you reach such an obstacle, follow it around to the right until you’re able to head towards the peak once again.  This isn’t the most intelligent or comprehensive heuristic, but in many cases it will work just fine, and you’ll eventually reach the peak.

Heuristics don’t guarantee you’ll find the optimal solution, nor do they generally guarantee a solution at all.  But they do a good enough job of solving certain types of problems to be useful.  Their strength is that they break the deadlock of indecision and get you into action.  As you take action you begin to explore the solution space, which deepens your understanding of the problem.  As you gain knowledge about the problem, you can make course corrections along the way, gradually improving your chances of finding a solution.  If you try to solve a problem you don’t initially know how to solve, you’ll often figure out a solution as you go, one you never could have imagined until you started moving.  This is especially true with creative work such as software development.  Often you don’t even know exactly what you’re trying to build until you start building it.

Heuristics have many practical applications, and one of my favorite areas of application is personal productivity.  Productivity heuristics are behavioral rules (some general, some situation-specific) that can help us get things done more efficiently.  Here are some of my favorites:

1. Nuke it!  The most efficient way to get through a task is to delete it.  If it doesn’t need to be done, get it off your to do list.
2. Daily goals.  Without a clear focus, it’s too easy to succumb to distractions.  Set targets for each day in advance.  Decide what you’ll do; then do it.
3. Worst first.  To defeat procrastination learn to tackle your most unpleasant task first thing in the morning instead of delaying it until later in the day.  This small victory will set the tone for a very productive day.
4. Peak times.  Identify your peak cycles of productivity, and schedule your most important tasks for those times.  Work on minor tasks during your non-peak times.
5. No-comm zones.  Allocate uninterruptible blocks of time for solo work where you must concentrate.  Schedule light, interruptible tasks for your open-comm periods and more challenging projects for your no-comm periods.
6. Mini-milestones.  When you begin a task, identify the target you must reach before you can stop working.  For example, when working on a book, you could decide not to get up until you’ve written at least 1000 words.  Hit your target no matter what.
7. Timeboxing.  Give yourself a fixed time period, like 30 minutes, to make a dent in a task.  Don’t worry about how far you get.  Just put in the time.
8. Batching.  Batch similar tasks like phone calls or errands into a single chunk, and knock them off in a single session.
9. Early bird.  Get up early in the morning, like at 5am, and go straight to work on your most important task.  You can often get more done before 8am than most people do in a day.
10. Cone of silence.  Take a laptop with no network or WiFi access, and go to a place where you can work flat out without distractions, such as a library, park, coffee house, or your own backyard.  Leave your comm gadgets behind.
11. Tempo.  Deliberately pick up the pace, and try to move a little faster than usual.  Speak faster.  Walk faster.  Type faster.  Read faster.  Go home sooner.
12. Relaxify.  Reduce stress by cultivating a relaxing, clutter-free workspace.  
13. Agendas.  Provide clear written agendas to meeting participants in advance.  This greatly improves meeting focus and efficiency.  You can use it for phone calls too.
14. Pareto.  The Pareto principle is the 80-20 rule, which states that 80% of the value of a task comes from 20% of the effort.  Focus your energy on that critical 20%, and don’t overengineer the non-critical 80%.
15. Ready-fire-aim.  Bust procrastination by taking action immediately after setting a goal, even if the action isn’t perfectly planned.  You can always adjust course along the way.
16. Minuteman.  Once you have the information you need to make a decision, start a timer and give yourself just 60 seconds to make the actual decision.  Take a whole minute to vacillate and second-guess yourself all you want, but come out the other end with a clear choice.  Once your decision is made, take some kind of action to set it in motion.
17. Deadline.  Set a deadline for task completion, and use it as a focal point to stay on track.
18. Promise.  Tell others of your commitments, since they’ll help hold you accountable.
19. Punctuality.  Whatever it takes, show up on time.  Arrive early.
20. Gap reading.  Use reading to fill in those odd periods like waiting for an appointment, standing in line, or while the coffee is brewing.  If you’re a male, you can even read an article while shaving (preferably with an electric razor).  That’s 365 articles a year.
21. Resonance.  Visualize your goal as already accomplished.  Put yourself into a state of actually being there.  Make it real in your mind, and you’ll soon see it in your reality.
22. Glittering prizes.  Give yourself frequent rewards for achievement.  See a movie, book a professional massage, or spend a day at an amusement park.
23. Quad 2.  Separate the truly important tasks from the merely urgent.  Allocate blocks of time to work on the critical Quadrant 2 tasks, those which are important but rarely urgent, such as physical exercise, writing a book, and finding a relationship partner.
24. Continuum.  At the end of your workday, identify the first task you’ll work on the next day, and set out the materials in advance.  The next day begin working on that task immediately.
25. Slice and dice.  Break complex projects into smaller, well-defined tasks.  Focus on completing just one of those tasks.
26. Single-handling.  Once you begin a task, stick with it until it’s 100% complete.  Don’t switch tasks in the middle.  When distractions come up, jot them down to be dealt with later.
27. Randomize.  Pick a totally random piece of a larger project, and complete it.  Pay one random bill.  Make one phone call.  Write page 42 of your book.
28. Insanely bad.  Defeat perfectionism by completing your task in an intentionally terrible fashion, knowing you need never share the results with anyone.  Write a blog post about the taste of salt, design a hideously dysfunctional web site, or create a business plan that guarantees a first-year bankruptcy.  With a truly horrendous first draft, there’s nowhere to go but up.
29. 30 days.  Identify a new habit you’d like to form, and commit to sticking with it for just 30 days.  A temporary commitment is much easier to keep than a permanent one.
30. Delegate.  Convince someone else to do it for you.
31. Cross-pollination.  Sign up for martial arts, start a blog, or join an improv group.  You’ll often encounter ideas in one field that can boost your performance in another.
32. Intuition.  Go with your gut instinct.  It’s probably right.
33. Optimization.  Identify the processes you use most often, and write them down step-by-step.  Refactor them on paper for greater efficiency.  Then implement and test your improved processes.  Sometimes we just can’t see what’s right in front of us until we examine it under a microscope.
    

www.stevepavlina.com

Entrepreneurs: How to think big and accomplish the impossible

How to think big and test assumptions to accomplish the impossible, whether launching a #1 bestselling product, setting a world record, or changing the world.

Marianne Williamson: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure ... Your playing small does not serve the world".

This 27 minute talk is well worth the time invested to be inspired to accomplish the impossible ...

      

Self insight

By James Kyle

Many years ago I attended a series of seminars in London that would eventually lead me to studying for a masters degree in Spiritual Psychology at the University of Santa Monica in California. You can read more about this in this previous series of posts: What Did William Wallace Say?

Now, after many years absence, Insight seminars are returning to the UK. There will be an Insight seminar in the Primrose Hill area of London next weekend.

Some of the key shifts I have made, that have helped empower my own life, started off with "insights" from Insight. The following key concepts are a just a few of the topics covered:

• Letting go of judgement
• Responsibility and keeping agreements with self and others
• Giving and Receiving
• Being true to oneself

The above topics are those that resonated with me. In particular I have given much consideration to this concept of self. The degree to which we play set roles in our lives and how we often choose poor roles that are a disservice to ourselves and unnecessarily disempower us.

Building on this, a key learning for me that really took root as I subsequently read Hayakawa' s book "Language in Thought and Action" was realising that my inner map of reality is just that - a map -  and not the territory. And then a huge leap forward can be made when we start to realise that the very concept of who we hold ourselves to be is just another map of reality ... and this "self" too is a mental construct can readily be changed.

And with that realisation, the words of Marianne Williamson really come to life:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.' We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Of course what you would get out of this seminar will depend on where you are on your personal path of self growth, but I have confidence that wherever that is, you will find value in the seminar. Further details can be found here Insight London Seminar.

For those outside the UK have a look here instead.

Past Posts: Humour and Fiction and More

As per the previous post that celebrated this blog reaching 10,000 views, here is a summary of the top posts that have appeared over its first 12 months. This time, fiction and posts by other authors.

Humour

BBC Theory

My Personal Guru

USM Soul Mate Encounter(TM) Dating Service 

So who was she ...?

The Tree of All Knowledge

Tess's Blog

Tess's Blog (January)

Tess's Blog (February)

Tess' exposé exclusive!!! on little green men

Fiction

Peace of Mind

Heart Centered Listening

Asking the Right Questions

Mirrors

A Personal Fairy Tale

Freedom


By the way all of the above are subject to my Uncopyright Notice. Feel free to share!

Posts by other Authors

Add the best. Drop the worst.

Changing a habit is like playing a game of chess

Happiness First, Then Everything Else

Living a Life of Joy

10 Reasons You Should Never Have a Religion

10 Reasons You Should Never Have a Religion (Part 2)

10 Steps To Spiritual Happiness

10 Powerful Motivational Thoughts


Image courtesy of Dan FreeDigitalPhotos.net