In psychological terms, perception refers to mental operations that organize sensory impulses into meaningful patterns. Now, in lay terms, this basically means that we all have perceptive abilities, but we don’t look at things in the same way. A bulimic will look at him or herself and see a fat person who needs to lose more weight. These sensory impulses have a lot to do with the environment we live in and the information we choose give our focus to.

Our reality is formed by the perceptions we encounter on a daily basis. If you turned on the TV to the major news channels and saw rioting in the streets of Jakarta, bombs going off in Iraq and freak snowstorms in Britain, you’d be forgiven for thinking the world was coming to an end. However, if you decided to spend the afternoon watching uplifting shows on the OWN Network or shows about people who have overcome serious health, psychological and environmental obstacles to be the best they can be, you’d be left with a warm fuzzy feeling and the perception that anything is possible, and that the tools and resources available for you to change your life circumstances are limitless.

So, How Can I Change my Perceptions in Order To Change My Reality?

One of the simple ways in which you can change or alter your perceptions is to control the stimuli coming into your mind. This includes the kind of shows you watch on a daily basis, movies and news channels you choose to listen to. Be vigilant and develop a habit of concentrating on media outlets that seem to give an objective view of the reality on the ground. Avoid tabloid journalism, sensational news and movies containing unbridled violence. I call these energy leeches and are the fastest way to change your perceptions and send your mood into a downward spiral.

Next, surround yourself with good friends. Sounds easy, right?  Wrong. Spotting friends that want the best for you takes a sharpened instinct and a knack for observing human behavior. A friend who’s always too busy whenever you call them for a night out on town but is the first one who jumps at the prospect of a paid shopping trip is an energy leech. True friends will time and time again sacrifice for you and will offer emotional support when needed.  Take an inventory of the people around you and surround yourself with supportive, focused and optimistic people.  Your perceptions will slowly shift from a negative to positive outlook. The continued support you’ll get will act as a buffer and barrier from all the negativity around you, keeping you mentally healthy and resilient to tackle life’s issues as they come.

Lastly, meditation is a great tool that can help center and quiet your mind, and allows you to block out negative thoughts. Yoga and guided visualization are great at training your subconscious at identifying correct, helpful perceptions and storing them for future reference, allowing you to develop a habit of filtering information and impulses as they come into your mind, helping you think of only the best. This in turn will change the reality around you and give you hope and faith that the future will be just fine.

At the end of the day, perceptions are a choice, and can be controlled.  Make a choice to focus on only the best, and ask for only the best to come into your mind and life as a whole.

James N is a trainer, writer, and contributor to DegreeJungle.com a resource for college students. He specializes in offering actionable tips to readers that may need it so they can make good life decisions. He lives in Ontario with his wife Hayley and three kids: Jamie, Chris and Annie.

Sources
http://quizlet.com/6962842/psychology-terms-chapter-6-sensation-and-perception-flash-cards/

http://www.talewins.com/essays/perception.htm

The post How Perceptions Can Change or Shape Reality first appeared on Interesting Observations.

Remove Judgment

We have to be careful with judgments and assumptions. For example, if you have decided not to drink alcohol but then go out and have a few drinks, do you then believe things are not going as planned? Do you believe you have blown it and give up on your plan? Be cautious about what you think is negative or what you think is not a part of the plan. Learn to step back and put it into perspective. When we experience a tragedy, we have to slow down the mental aspect. Stop and realize that the past is gone, the future is yet to be, and that all we have is this moment, where we can choose again. Setbacks are not failures.

Back to Basics

If something happens to disrupt your plan, you need to get back to the basics. Ask yourself why you are doing the things you are doing, i.e. why are you going after a specific project and why did it not go as planned? If you feel things are not progressing in your life, even though you are putting out so much time and effort, you may be stuck on getting “the want.”   Sometimes we hammer away so hard, especially those of us with Type-A personalities, we don’t realize we have to put away our hammer and pull out the screwdriver.

Review your plan, your goals, and your reasons, reevaluate your goals and journal to help you work through what happened and see things from a new perspective.  Once you get an inventory of where you are, organize.  Perform the “plan-do-act” checklist.  When you do this, you are taking action to realize that “something isn’t working as far as your perception goes.”  Plan to get yourself back on track and moving in the right direction.  As you organize, you will get back to the basics and create structure.

Gratitude Gets You There

Change your perspective and adopt massive gratitude. Make a list of what makes you happy and for what you are thankful. Thirty minutes of personal growth will help provide understanding of why you are doing the things you are doing, allowing you to focus on the 1% day-by-day growth and enable you to keep moving forward.

Everything Happens for a Reason

Reviewing your goals and focusing on your growth is the key to getting things back on track when you have lost it.  How do you break the pattern of negative energy?  As Morning-Coach people, we have to be able to realize that things happen for a reason. We need to let go of anger, frustration and ego.  Things really do always going as planned; it is our perception and the way we think about things that prohibits us from seeing it that way. Sometimes we simply get in our own way.

If you find yourself stuck, get back to the basics.  If you have been pushing really hard, slow down, meditate, release, let the Universe work for you and get out of your own way. Open your eyes and put things in perspective.  Take an inventory of where you are and see what steps you need to take to get the clarity that you need. Focus on understanding that the greater good is conspiring for you.  Allowing yourself to see things from a new perspective may help you work through those troubling times when things are not working the way you would like or as fast as you would like.

Author Bio:

The post A How-to Guide for When Things Fall Apart first appeared on Interesting Observations.

Most people think that being a good writer means being able to produce beautiful pieces of written material right off the bat, but thankfully, that is not true.  As is true with quality production, perfecting the final product takes planning and effort, and writing is no different.  Shakespeare did not write “Romeo and Juliet” in one day.

I like to think of writing like building a building.  Let’s consider the steps to building a quality building?  Here they are:

• Setting the Goals
• Planning
• Gathering Material
• Build it

Just like if were to try to build a physical structure without any of these elements, the final product would not be sturdy, so too a quality written piece needs to be built properly.  For example, a well-planned building that is built with sub-par building material will never be a great building.  And so on for each of the other building elements.
So let’s analyze the elements of good written material.

1. Setting the Goals

   What is the purpose of your writing?  Consider what you want your written material to accomplish.  Some examples of purposes for written material are to

1. inform
2. entertain
3. convince the reader of your opinion
4. ask the reader to take an action

       Once you have set a general goal, it is time to consider the format that you will use to accomplish that goal.  Here are some examples of writing formats

1. basic facts about the subject
2. general overview
3. Deal with a few specific aspects, or one specific aspect, of the subject
4. Ranting

2. Planning

   Whereas planning a building structure requires a blueprint, planning a written work of art also requires adhering to general plan.  Write up a plan including what you want each paragraph to be about.  This will make gathering research material much easier, because you will already know what you need.

3. Gather Material

   Once you know exactly what you are going to write about, you will quickly be able to identify whether information that you are researching is pertinent to the subject or not.   Now you can begin to collect pieces of information on the net or in the library.  Don’t get bogged down with this step, you are just gathering material that fits into your subject right now, don’t try to figure out how it all goes together at this point, just get as much interesting info as possible.

The post Producing Written Awesomeness first appeared on Interesting Observations.

And it is 50% off till Wednesday March 3rd.

The ebook is massive 150 pages and comes loaded with techniques that are easy to follow for anyone and to make it even more useful and easy to understand, John is also providing multiple videos showing how to implement these techniques. You must have heard of the .htaccess files but most non-tech people are afraid of using their power to block hackers. Not now because John has included different codes to use for preventing people from peeking into your sites and manipulate your precious data.

Just Imagining the horrible nightmare of someone hacking into your blog can be crippling to say the least. I have heard many horrible stories in the past two years where someone’s account got hacked by some jerk regardless of the size and/or popularity of the blog being hacked, the hackers don’t really care and don’t have a conscience so they don’t think twice about hurting someone’s feelings or the fact that the blog they are hacking might just be the only means of income for someone.

John learned the hard way when his wife’s jewelry site got hacked into and this is what they saw when they entered their site’s url in the address bar above:

According to John: “I spent a whole week researching and investigating for a solution. It was hard work, and I followed a lot of dead ends. I finally found the problem, but here’s what it had cost my wife and I:

Time: That week I spent tracking down the problem is time I’ll never get back.

Trust: The security breach shook our customers’ trust, and some of them never returned – those are permanent lost sales.

PageRank: The site fell from a strong page rank of 5 to an absolute useless 1.

Heartache: We felt horrible that our customers might have damaged computers because of our site.

Money: My wife’s business went from earning $1,000 a month to zero – overnight. That was money we’d been using to make car payments, among other things, and now we had to juggle finances to figure out where it was going to come from.

More money: We lost sales and customers, and we had to pay more money to rebuild the site.

Sure sounds painful to me.    And to help the innocent bloggers from being taken for a similar ride, John did massive research for over two years and put everything in his ebook.   After March 3rd, this Wednesday, the ebook and the videos will be selling at regular price of $39 which I think is still nothing compared to the price we would end up paying in an unfortunate scenario…

So, hurry and buy the essential WordPress Defender – 30 Ways to Secure Your Blog From Attacks Anyone Can Do @ only $19.99 till March 3rd!

The post WordPress Defender – 30 Ways to Secure your Blog is half off! first appeared on Interesting Observations.

[This is a guest post by Stacey Cavanagh of Tecmark SEO Liverpool]  You can follow Stacey on twitter @Staceycav

Social media is something of a buzz term in online right now. Facebook, Plurk, blogging, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Twitter… The list goes on. We’ve probably all heard of most of them, but really, is there any point?

Yes, is the shortest answer.

But just how can social media make life easier?

Keeping in Touch

A few years ago, you probably wouldn’t have kept in touch with all of your school friends. People flit off all over the world, marry, settle, work abroad… Things change and people move on. But thanks to sites like Facebook you can find out what all your friends are up to and send messages quickly and easily. Of course, it’s no substitute for a face to face catch up, but it makes keeping in touch with people from all over the world much easier (and cheaper than international phone calls)!

Business Networking

Linkedin is a social networking site specifically for professional networking. This and others like it have sped up the way in which we network drastically. Facebook allows people to network with others in a similar field from all over the world. Are these people you would have encountered without the Internet? Probably not.  It enables you to expand your network to international levels and make valuable contacts.

Keeping an Eye on the Kids!

Perhaps not the most conventional use of the platform, but social media sites are widely used by children and teenagers. Telling your teen they can use the sites, providing of course that they ad you to their profile, will enable you to be in the know about the company they’re keeping. It offers a certain level of reassurance.

Keeping up with the News

I don’t know about you, but I personally don’t seem to be able to make time to watch the news on the TV day in, day out. Of course I can always read the news on various news sites, but sites like Twitter now enable you to ‘follow’ your favourite news source and receive the headlines in short snippets! This gives you the opportunity, if something catches your eye, to then go read the full article. For me, a browse through the Twitter feed I have set up just for news is enough to make sure I know what’s going on and don’t feel so out of touch.

Interacting with Customers

A fine example of this is with @VirginTrains Virgin Trains on Twitter. They’re a huge company, but have someone to personally respond to complaints, questions or concerns they receive via Twitter.  Indeed a very inspired way to use the platform.  This gives Virgin a very good reputation for customer care and allows the customers the opportunity to have a personal response to a question, rather than dealing with automated telephone services!

This list just scratches the surface. As social media continues to grow (and grow it will with the recent unveiling of Google’s Buzz), the applications for its use will continue to grow too.  And of course everyone has their own personal way of using social media sites.

What do you do with social media?

The post How Social Media Can Make Life Easier first appeared on Interesting Observations.

Or Is it possible the people who answered that poll are the ones who only go to the selfgrowth.com site for inspiration and aren’t really concerned about or concentrating on making money online or offline?

As for me, I am thankful for my family and friends, but honestly, I am more thankful today to have a job that pays my bills (including health care insurance).

What about you?

What are you most thankful for today?

Let us know in the comments here and list at least 3 things that you are thankful for today.

The post What Are You Most Thankful For? first appeared on Interesting Observations.

We all know that there is an enormous amount of information on the web about climate change and it is kind of difficult to figure out where to start and what to say in a short message for your post that hasn’t already been said.  But you know what?  Despite ALL of the information out there, many of us are still not taking the steps necessary to slow down the process of climate change, let alone stop it.   We may even have some ideas that climate change is detrimental but still a lot of us do not have a clear picture of what all this means.   So if you are like me and need to see the big picture, check out the  Climate time Machine by Nasa which shows Changes in the Global Conditions Over Time in a very easy to understand flash videos.

I also came across a few sites/forums where some people were upset and questioned why US has to be concerned about climatic changes in the rest of the world.  That’s such an ignorant position to take as the green house gases are not separated by borders like  most countries are.  Gases in our atmosphere don’t need regulations or permission to move from one country to another!    It’s the same air we all breath, in our homes, and in our offices.   Air pollution is a universal problem and each and every one of us has an obligation to do whatever we can do to correct it if we care for a better future for us as well as our future generations.

Look at this video that shows how US isn’t immune to the wrath caused by polluting environment:

And you can download the fact sheet that explains the connection between Climate Change and Flooding.

Now it’s really easy to start feeling that at our individual levels, it’s difficult to do anything about it.   In order to make a difference in the rate at which the earth’s atmosphere is polluting, we don’t have to drop our daily routines and do something out of the ordinary.  It’s the simplest of things that will eventually make a huge difference in clearing our atmosphere.    Simple things like using energy star products, energy efficient cars, recycling and planting some trees (remember we learned in grade school that plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere?).   If you want to be part of the community while planting trees, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has launched a worldwide tree planting campaign and pledged to plant 7 billion trees by the end of 2009.   They allow people to make online pledges to plant trees.  They have already surpassed their original pledge of 7 billion trees.  Here are the instructions on how to plant a tree!

I think I am going to start planting some fruit trees as that can produce delicious results – for us as well as for the mother earth.

What action(s) are you going to take to reduce the climate change?

photo by nattu

PS: This post is part of Blog Action Day 2009. Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites bloggers all over the world in posting about the same issue on the same day. It’s aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.  It’s not too late to register your blog and be part of “the largest ever social change event on the web.”

The post Plant A Tree : Blog Action Day ’09 Climate Change first appeared on Interesting Observations.

By the way, they are still happily married :)

The post Happiness is contagious – 2! first appeared on Interesting Observations.

Seeing this video not only made me laugh, the affect lasted for a long time.  It also reminded me of a post I had recently read at Seth Godin about leaders who start a movement that people feel compelled to join!

He’s referring to the Guy #3 in the following video:

I have a feeling we’ll see this trend in more and more weddings :)

The post Happiness is Contagious first appeared on Interesting Observations.

Ever since I started participating in the Carnival of Healing, majority of the articles I’ve received happen to be about fitness, losing weight and diets that work or don’t work and some on herbal techniques to cure various diseases.  Exercise, good nutritious diet and medicines are certainly helpful in the healing process but for a complete healing to take place,  inside and out, we need to understand the strong mind and body connection and find a way to live a balanced life.

Since diet articles weren’t doing much to my emotional and spiritual life, I’ve found other ways to find peace and calm and take care of stressful situations.  I’ve found that helping others in need in turn helps me feel better.  It’s easier to forget your own problems when you are busy helping others.  So, I’ve been volunteering some of my time to various causes as I believe that the real responsibility to heal ourselves lies with us taking some action and not just reading, writing or attending some counseling sessions else we will continue to hurt.

As you read this week’s healing articles, I would love to know what you practice to get rid of negativity and heal yourself from hurts and severely stressful situations.

Anmol Mehta presents 6 Safe and Natural Weight Loss Solutions posted at Mastery of Meditation.

Brain Blogger presentsClearing the Haze – Is Marijuana Addictive? posted at Brain Blogger.

“In the past few years, as addiction researchers have been mapping out the chemical alterations in the brain caused by alcohol, nicotine, methamphetamine, and other drugs, America’s most popular illegal drug has remained largely a scientific mystery. It is a drug that millions of Americans have been using regularly for years, and, from a clinical perspective, it remains the least studied illicit drug of all.”

Heartstrong presents A Fresh Look at Organic Produce posted at Healthy Hearts with Heartstrong.

Celes presents Overcoming Perfectionism posted at EmbraceLiving.Net.

“If you are a perfectionist, you would know that perfectionism sometimes disables you more than it enables you. As a perfectionist myself, I experience that often. Here are 8 useful steps to overcome perfectionism and make it an enabler in your life.”

Megan Wong presents Outstanding cure for symptoms of a sinus infection!! posted at Sinus Home Remedy.

Gin G. presents Recovery Diets posted at Sense Scribe.

“Learn the reasons for certain diets during illness and recovery stages and share with your family and friends.”

Kaushik Chokshi presents Awakening is Simple – FREE!! ebook excerpts posted at Beyond Karma.

“How do we free ourselves from the past, from depression and anxiety, from the unease of being which most of us experience? The joy of being is so utterly simple, right here and right now. Awareness and Release techniques allow this natural ease which transforms all of living–-health, relationships, and well-being!”

Crystal Wells presents Finding the Best Diets that Work for You posted at The Best Diets That Work.

“There are a number of diets that exist from starving yourself to death to eating prepackaged meals to only eating specific foods. But what diets work? Really the question should be what are the best diets that work for you?”

Catherine VanWetter presents To the Heart of the Matter – The Myth of Busyness posted at To The Heart of the Matter.

“Have you ever wondered who you are if you are not busy? Busy taking care of other people, busy working, busy doing “stuff”? In everyday life, how does one step off of the “dread mill” of busyness? Are you present?”

Victoria presents Don’t Let Your Breakup Make You Come Undone | Time To Get Married posted at Time To Get Married.

“It is important to not let a breakup ruin your life.”

Aparna presents Home Remedies for headache posted at Beauty and Personality Grooming.

FitJerk presents How To Boost & Strengthen Your Immune System With Top Herbal Remedies posted at FlawlessFitness.

Sarah Scrafford presents The Twitter Diet: 100 Tips, Tools, and Twitter Feeds for Your Weight Loss posted at Ultrasound Technician Schools.

Vera Nadine presents Channeling: Choosing Hope Over Fear – Vera Nadine posted at Vera Nadine.

Nancy Miller presents 100+ Ways to Spring Clean Your Mind and Body posted at Surgical Technician Schools.

Jennifer Mannion presents When Everything Changes – Change Everything by Neale Donald Walsch (A book review) posted at Heal Pain Naturally.

Robert Burton Robinson presents Saving Up to Buy Some Happiness posted at Mind Over Mania.

“Are you happy? If not, do you hope to be happy some day? Mr. Banks thinks he can buy some at The Happiness Store.”

WP presents 5 Simple Ways to Boost Your Immune Health posted at The Conscious Life.

“With flu virus on the loose, it is important to strengthen our immune system so that we do not get infected easily. Try these easy-to-use methods at home and stay healthy today.”

That concludes this week’s carnival of healing.  See Organicsyes’s Weblog for last week’s carnival, and look out for Clara Myers’ Mind Mart for next week’s submissions.  And if you want to get one of your articles published in this carnival, head over to Carnival of Healing Archives.

PS: It was a pleasant surprise to get a carnival submission from Anmol Mehta as I had recently found and added his blog to my daily feed reader.   All of the blogs above have very useful articles and I encourage all of you to go read them and if you like, share them with others.

The post Carnival of Healing #191 first appeared on Interesting Observations.

So how can today’s edition be complete without including that person who has given tears of joy and hope this week to millions around the globe? If you are one of the few who has not heard of Susan Boyle this week, you definitely need to watch her in this video and then read Clayton Makepeace’s article What Are You So Afraid Of?

Reminds me a quote “Success is never found.  Failure is never fatal. Courage is the only thing.”

– Winston Churchill

So, here are this week’s healing articles

ChristianPF present Health benefits of cocoa posted at Natural Health Ezine , saying, “We all know cocoa has some health benefits, but is it all good?”

Robert Galway presents Ftiness Bootcamp posted at robertgalway.com , saying, “Boot camp exercises are chosen to build strength and total body conditioning through repetition, duration, and gradual intensity. A typical day of full basic training in the booth camp exercises are also easy to weave into your running program, as you can do them at regular intervals during your workout at a park, trail or track.”

Alvaro Fernandez presents Brain Teaser to Stimulate your Concentration Skills posted at SharpBrains, saying, “What about a quick brain teaser: can you count?”

Aparna presents Tulsi (Basil) to cure skin problems posted at Beauty & Personality Grooming, saying, “Tulsi has been found to possess extraordinary powers of healing and promoting health. Tulsi is found to be endowed with purifying and antiseptic qualities. The efficacy of the remedies of skin diseases is greatly augmented if they are used in conjunction with Tulsi”

Gerard Banhidi presents Meditation: Introduction posted at Health and Meditation Corner

floslib presents Finding My Beliefs posted at Spirited Script.

Kaushik Chokshi presents The Power of Intention – how to stop the cycle of madness posted at Beyond Karma.

Tom Maurer presents Mind-Body Healing posted at Simple and Spiritual.

Robin Birch presents Finding Our True Selves posted at Let’s Live Forever!, saying, “The “Observer” part of us has always been the same, and is always in ecstasy – we can get in touch with our higher self by being the Observer.”

Pat Doyle presents How To Arrange Your Bedroom For Good Feng Shui posted at Feng Shui Crazy, saying, “The bedroom is one of the most important rooms for Feng Shui. You spend one third of your life in bed, and a restful sleep is important for your general energy level.”

Margaret Garcia presents 100 Best Blogs for Living Healthy on a Budget posted at Surgical Technician Schools.

Julian Pollock presents Avoiding Allergies with Organic Lotion – and Discover the Major Skin Benefits for the Entire Family, From Babies on Up posted at Julian Pollock, saying, “Although the Internet abounds with the advantages of organic skincare, I still feel it’s worth bringing this to people’s attention. (As a private note on the anniversary of my mother’s death, I was quite touched with your writings about your father. I’m told it is a male trait that we try to fix other people’s problems – as opposed to being there for them; but still – I wonder if you know about the Sedona Method – a system of letting go I have been using for six or seven years now and treasure it.)”

Brad presents Playing Your Heart Strings posted at Tri-Freedom, saying, “Letting music take us deep within.”

Ross presents How To Cure Yourself of Hay Fever posted at Energise for Life, saying, “It’s that time of year again! I know it’s coming, you know it’s coming and all the signs are there: the mood of the nation lifts (wahoo!), we start saying hello to each other again, everyone desperately starts trying to get in shape, the sunny mornings give everyone a lift and a spring in their step and the clocks change (at last!). We don’t go to work and come home from work in the dark anymore and we start looking forward to Wimbledon, summer fruits and holidays.”

Daylle Deanna Schwartz presents Law of Attraction in Action: Complacency posted at Lessons from a Recovering DoorMat, saying, “Being complacent takes life for granted and tells the Law of Attraction you don’t appreciate what you have. You can change that!”

Robert Burton Robinson presents How to Lose the Fat and Keep It Off Forever posted at Mind Over Mania, saying, “8 tips to help you lose fat and FINALLY keep it off FOREVER. You’ll feel better and be healthier when your weight is under control.”

Sarah Scrafford presents 50 Foods That Give You the Most Nutrition Bang for Your Buck posted at Masters in Health Care.

GrrlScientist presents Pioneering Stem Cell Research in Race Horses Now Helping People posted at Living the Scientific Life, saying, “Several companies that I’ve been following have been redirecting their stem-cell research that they originally developed to help injured horses to help people recover from Achilles tendon injuries.”

Joe Tichio presents The Best Stress Busters posted at Inspirational Quotes Blog.

VikramKir presents What to eat to lose fat? Food for weight loss! posted at Thoughtfully Vikram.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of healing using the carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Watch for next week’s carnival #186 – April 25 2009: hosted by Jon, Beyond Within
Last week #184 – April 11 2009 carnival was hosted by Ji Hyang, Natural Wisdom

Technorati tags: carnival of healing, blog carnival.

The post Carnival Of Healing #185 – It’s all about having courage first appeared on Interesting Observations.

I had seen people dying before but this was different.  This was very different as I loved (and still do) my dad more than anyone else in the world.  I felt closer to my dad than to my mother or siblings.  I felt he understood me and my feelings more than anyone else could.  So, this year has been the most difficult time in all of my life but I have to say that even so, as time passes, as most of you told me at the time, it has become easier as I try to understand life and death cycle and come to accept it.

Our mom, however week she is right now, is mentally and spiritually very strong.  She has seen us all break down at times and one day she told us that now we should be paying more attention to the ones that are living, than to the one that has moved on the next phase of his journey.  It sounded harsh at the time, but it makes a lot of sense.  Pay attention to your life and the lives of those you love.  And that is what the Carnival of Healing is all about too.  It has information on how to improve the quality of your life.

There are already a lot of great articles submitted to this carnival each week, but I also asked some of my friends who I thought could write on the subject or already do write on healing.  I met Sid Savara via Stumble Upon whose blog is not about ‘healing’ or ‘personal empowerment’ but he was kind enough to point me to one of his posts on inspirational quotes and the very first one is a gem.  I repeat that quote here:

“Life is but a brief moment. The years go by quickly and old age arrives suddenly before we have an inkling. People desire so many things and waste their days in vain. Some yearn for gold, others for power, yet others for glory and a higher station. But when death’s moment nears and they look back at their lives they’ve lived, they realize they’ve been happy only during those moments when they’ve loved.”
-Borje Vahamaki

1. Samir doesn’t write on holistic healing either, but was kind enough to write about what Holistic Health actually means in A Better Definition Of Holistic Health on his blog
2. Jenny’s blog is all about Healing Pain Naturally and this article on Healing – The Unlimited Possiblities, gives a good perspective.

There have been a lot of good articles that I tried to break down in different segments as healing entails all aspects of life: Physical, Emotional as well as Spiritual.  Take a look.

Emotional and Spiritual

1. Akemi presents Spiritual Self Protection And Clearing posted at Yes to Me .
2. Burak Bilgin presents Clear Your Mind posted at Distiller’s Corner .
3. Michael Miles presents Let your subconscious do the work posted at Effortless Abundance .
4. Daylle Deanna Schwartz presents Law of Attraction in Action: “I’m Fine!” posted at Lessons from a Recovering DoorMat .
5. Ross “Tolemac” Cotton presents Law of Attraction Methods and Techniques: Part 1 posted at Tolemac’s Metaphysical Blog .
6. ITAKEOFFTHEMASK presents Balancing the Root Chakra for Health and Stability posted at itakeoffthemask.com .
7. Robin shared The Journey, With Brandon Bays posted at Let’s Live Forever! . .

Physical

1. Tristan presents Weights advice from a Beast! posted at Body And Fitness Blog .
2. Brad presents Calorie Restriction posted at Tri-Freedom .
3. Martin Russell presents Phentermine For Weight Loss – My Story posted at Self Help Blog .
4. Axel presents Jet-Like Motivation posted at axel g .
5. Farid Mostamand presents Skin Beauty Blog posted at Anti-aging Skin care for body .
6. Mike presents What Is Anti-Aging? posted at Daily Health Tips And Health Services .
7. ananga presents Discover What Causes Fatigue and How You Can Stop It posted at Ananga’s Living by Design Blog .
8. Health Tips 101 presents Summer Tea: Blackberry/ Raspberry Leaf Tea posted at Health  Health Tips 101

Getting rid of addictions and disease

1. Kalidasa presents Neck Pain: C5 The Most Common Cause And What You Can Do About It
   posted at Natural Healing And Back Pain Relief .
2. Peter Crump presents Can You Get Cancer From Drinking Chlorinated Water? posted at Which Is THE Best Drinking Water Filter? .
3. Gina Loree Marks presents Liver Has Sprung posted at Blog/Home .
4. Alvin Hopkinson presents Signs of Diabetes – The 8 Signs to Watch Out For posted at How to Control Diabetes .
5. Dean Moyer presents Back Pain and Massage Therapy posted at The Back Pain Blog .
6. 00FF00 presents Hibiscus as a treatment for cystitis and high blood pressure – ooffoo – free to reuse, swap, sell, give away, recycle and more posted at A member of the ooffoo community .
7. Alvaro Fernandez presents New Study Supports Neurofeedback Treatment for ADHD posted at SharpBrains: Your Window into the Brain Fitness Revolution .
8. Brain Blogger presents Lithium as a Neuroprotectant? posted at Brain Blogger .
9. ishanbansal presents How to Save Money on Prescription Drugs posted at Save Few Bucks .
10. Roy Schwartz presents 10 (Proven!) Reasons to Quit Smoking and How You Can Start posted at A Disease A Day .
11. Patricia Turner presents Top 50 Cancer Survival Inspiration Blogs posted at Radiology Technician Schools .
12. NAOMI STEVENS presents PRINCE CHARLES LAUNCHES DUCHY HERBALS posted at Diary From England .

And here are some more interesting reads that indirectly impact the whole holistic concept and mindset.

1. Chris Edgar presents Is There Such A Thing As “Boring” Work? posted at Purpose Power Coaching .
2. Travis presents Crossing Cultural Boundaries | www.datinginislam.com posted at Dating In Islam.
3. Yael Ernst presents Complementary & Alternative Marketing- a Review posted at Chinese Medicine Notes .
4. Online Wellness Association presents PRACTITIONERS: WHY HAVE A WEBSITE? posted at Online Wellness: A Safe Haven .

Check out previous week’s carnival @ Create a Thriving Business

And if you are interested in participating, here is the upcoming schedule for the next few weeks:

• #182 – Mar 28 2009: hosted by Gina Loree Marks, Grace in Gravity
• #183 – April 04 2009: hosted by Clara Myers, Mind Mart
• #184 – April 11 2009: hosted by Ji Hyang, Natural Wisdom
• #185 – April 18 2009: hosted by Pearl, Interesting Observations

You can also familiarize yourself by reading more about Holistic Healing here

photos: Lepiaf.geo

The post Carnival of Healing #181 first appeared on Interesting Observations.

How about your followers?   The site doesn’t require your twitter password so you can be sure it’s safe! 

The post Wanna know more about your twitter followers? first appeared on Interesting Observations.

If you keep up with the world news or write a blog,  you must have heard about the massive fires in Australia where  the death toll has risen to more than 300 in just a few days.   It is times like these I feel blogging is a worthwhile activity which tends to unite humanity.

In an effort to help victims of these fires,  SitePoint has decided to give away 5 books for the price of 1 and donate ALL the money to the victims.   Their goal is to raise $50,000 and donate it to Australian RedCross Victorian Bushfire Appeal.

There is a wide selection of books to choose from.  Here is what SitePoint’s website says:

We’re offering our entire range of books — from PHP to Project Management — for the sale; designers, developers, freelancers, managers, and business owners alike will all be able to choose a selection of professional books to enjoy.

If you or someone you know can use these books, then this is a very nice deal as combined these books are worth some $150.. and you only pay less than $30, and the best of all, you feel good making a contribution to help someone in need.     Here are some horrible pictures from an Australian news site.

fire-ravaged street in Marysville

Burnt out letterboxes remain

When I came across SitePoint’s post this morning, I was watching CNN and the bushfire news segment was on and I instantly bought the following 5 books:

The Photoshop Anthology
The Art and Science of CSS
The Principles of Successful Freelancing
Build of your own website the right way
The HTML Utopia

They also have books on flipping websites, and more techie PHP,  JavaScript and AJAX applications for the techie minds.  Perfect opportunity to earn some good karma.

UPDATE: This deal ended on Friday Feb. 13th, 2009.

The post Buy 5 Books for the Price of 1 at SitePoint – And Earn Some Good Karma first appeared on Interesting Observations.

I have been slow in posting but I regularly moderate comments and delete the spams but lately it has become more and more difficult to distinguish them from legitimate comments.

Following is a sample of what these scum bags have been writing and I just deleted almost 200+ comments that were left on different posts just today!    Reviewing such huge numbers of spam comments is a nightmare and it is possible to delete genuine comments accidentally but I hope I haven’t done that.

Here are some of them:

“great pictures, Especially for me at this winter time ,I am so in love with hot countries,Very peaceful!”

“Wow! this is a really nice blog. I loved reading it.
Thanks!”

“Nice info you have here..
I’ll use this a lot..thanks
and nice site too :D
“Good Afternoon…! ”
“Great Forum & Community!
I’ve been here as a freeloader for a while and finally got around to registration.
I sorta live online – spend most of my days addicted to social sites like MySpace.com and gambling sites like Betot.com.
Besides gambling (this week I made a sweet $2,000) off of betot, I love sports and hiking.
So that’s my self introduction. Happy New Year to All and hope to get to know you all better…
Peace…”

“The concept of holistic health is not new,but it was the first time I am listening to. Medicine is more an approach to how individuals should be treated, as opposed to a treatment method.”

“Howdy Partner, I fell lucky that I located this post while browsing for spyware doctor 3. I am with you on the topic of e going gets tough, tough feels like quitting |. Ironically, I was just putting a lot of thought into this last Thursday.”

“I think your blog need a new wordpress template. Downalod it from http:// genericwpthemes. com . The site has nice and unique wordpress templates.”

“I think you are thinking like sukrat, but I think you should cover the other side of the topic in the post too…”

“What if you are on someone else’s computer say, durning a hurricane evacuation. They dont tell you that have that type of spyware parents use to monitor the pre-teen kids and weeks after you leave, they go into your acocunt and go over all your entries? Is that wrong (ehtically it IS..I mean legally)?    Just asking because my paranoid aunt (erm..uncle’s wife) made my uncle go onto his computer and hell pulled up and printed every journal entry (including somebad ones about her…note – she’s a racist and I complained about it) on a site that you have to be a member of to read the entries, see member pages, etc.. (yes, I changed the passwords on ALL my frequently visited sites) and yes, after going to ther sites on their compy durning the Hurricane Ike evac, I clicked “Tools – Delete Browser History – Delete All” and they still got in…and the passwords were hard and in l33t.)”

HUH?  That last comment really got me thinking..   Is this person really a spammer or they were trying to make a point but I didn’t get it?   This was on the post When the going gets tough, tough feels like quitting
photo: dnorman

The post Clever Comment Spammers first appeared on Interesting Observations.

Right now, that is exactly all of us Americans feel.   Hopeful.  Heck, that is how most of the people all over the world feel about Obama’s rise to Presidency.  This is an amazing moment in our country’s history!    We certainly have come a long way from the day Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the “I Have a Dream” address on August 28th, 1963, but there is still a long way to go.

But with leaders like Obama, who can motivate and inspire others to do the right thing, there is a hope that most people will come together to keeping America strong and proud. In the video below, you can see how some of the very famous celebrities have come together and made pledges to Barack Obama, supporting his call for change. We ALL can do the same. Make a Pledge today to make that change happen, however small it might be.

The Presidential Pledge

Because, together we will be the change that we seek.

The post Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You… first appeared on Interesting Observations.

Online Profits is a course in Internet Marketing, put together by Daniel Scocco of Daily Blogging Tips.  I have been exploring some aspects of Internet Marketing and there are many many people talking about different aspects of this animal but none of them seem to be covering ALL aspects ranging from

Selecting the Domain Names,
Business Principles,
setting up your website,
working with WordPress,
Web Design,
Online Business Models,
Selecting your Niche,
Blogging do’s and don’ts,
Online Forums,
Mini Websites,
Online Stores,
Coywriting,
Outsourcing,
SEO Basics,
Oursourcing,
Linkbaits,
Keyword Research and Competitive Analysis,
Traffic Generation,
Social Media,
Advertising,
Email Marketing,
All you ever wanted to know about PPC,
Landing Pages,
and finally selling your products.

Phew!

All of the above AND video tutorials, six month membership to private forums.  And what is special about this particular course is that it is put together by the very established people in these areas of expertise.

Michael Gray,  Neil Patel,  Yaro Starak,  Hamlet Batista,  Tamar Weinberg, Daniel Scocco,  Zac Johnson,  Courtney Tuttle,  Nathan Rice and Skellie Wag

I’m very familar with all of the above names except Hamlet Batista so I was really looking forward to signing up but felt the course was a bit expensive for me.  Afterall, I haven’t made my first $100 in adsense from this blog in all of the time I’ve been blogging – which is since April of 2007.

It sucks I know but then I haven’t had the time or circumstances conducive to take my blogging to the next level and couldn’t find any one place to get all the information until now.  So, I thought of signing up for the course at 50% off  ($48 per month) that is running until January 16th. I have been tempted but have still be thinking about it and then came the kicker

Today Daniel announced that the first 10 people blogging about Online Profits on their blogs,  would get this membership for FREE..  And if 20 people blog about the course, you still have a chance to win a free membership.  This left me no reason to think any more as I want that free membership. Wouldn’t you?

The post Online Profits Course is half-off just this week first appeared on Interesting Observations.

You’ll see many different perspectives in this week’s carnival as Holistic Healing “addresses all parts of the individual, not just the physical aspect of a person where manifested illnesses are most apparent. Holistic healing is not intended to serve as a band-aid or a one time fix. It is an ongoing journey of discovery in search of more answers and ultimately; living better, being healthier, and striving for wholeness.” as described in Phylameana’s blog.

I hope you enjoy visiting and reading the following informational articles in this carnival.

Russ presents Eat Healthier at Work posted at Open Road Open Mind.

Surfer Sam presents NEW !! Vitamins for Good Health posted at Surfer Sam and Friends.

Dr. Davon Jacobson presents Easy Dental Care with Highly Sensitive Teeth posted at *Health and Nutrition Facts*.

Phil for Humanity presents Overcoming Fear posted at Phil for Humanity.

Pregnancy Advisor presents How to Exercise Safely During Your Pregnancy posted at Pregnancy Hut – Week By Week Pregnancy Calendar.

Dean Moyer presents Sciatica and the Saline Story posted at The Back Pain Blog.

praveen presents Make New Year’s Resolutions For One Day Only posted at Tao of Simplicity.

Adam Donkus presents Goals for 2009 posted at Link Building and SEO tips from Pixelhead explaining how he is going to start out the year right by making and monitoring his goals throughout 2009.

Ross presents Are Natural Cleaning Products Worth It? posted at Energise Alkaline Diet & Natural Health Blog.

Peter Murphy presents How to Stay Motivated In The Face Of Office Politics posted at Get Motivated Stay Motivated.

Life Regained presents Dismissing The Detox Myth posted at Your Life Regained.

Kelly Sonora presents The Health Policy 100: The 100 Best Health Care Policy Blogs – Radiology Technician Schools posted at Radiology Technician Schools.

Aparna presents Home remedies for hardened palms posted at Beauty and Personal Grooming.

Xquisitlife presents Who Am I? posted at The best is yet to come!.

Naren Ghimire presents Meditation: The Ultimate Transformation posted at Spiritual Pub.

MBB presents MonaVie Acai Berry Health Benefit Scam posted at Money Blue Book Blog.

Browse the archives for more articles on healing and empowerment.

Last week this carnival was hosted Carnival of Healing #170 at How I Healed

For the next week’s carnival, visit Well Being and health

PS:  Please note that any articles that I felt were not in conformance with the overall theme of this carnival were not included.  To learn more, please visit holistic healing home page.

The post Carnival of Healing #171 – Positive Perspectives first appeared on Interesting Observations.

So, if you have been thinking of participating, and if you have recently written anything on any of the topics related to:

Wellness
Holistic health
Spirituality
Personal Empowerment, or
Healthy Lifestyle

Get Your Blog Post Included in the Carnival by submitting here.

Here is an upcoming schedule of carnival of healing.

• #171 – Jan 10 2009: hosted by Pearl, Fresh Perspectives
• #172 – Jan 17 2009: hosted by Evan Hadkins (theme: Authenticity), wellbeingandhealth.net
• #173 – Jan 24 2009: hosted by Elizabeth Harper, Sealed with Love Blog
• #174 – Jan 31 2009: hosted by Nina Dixon, On the Path
• #175 – Feb 07 2009: hosted by Joe Lasiter, Massage 101
• #176 – Feb 14 2009: hosted by Clara Myers, Mind Mart
• #177 – Feb 21 2009: hosted by Pamir Kiciman, Reiki Help Blog
• #178 – Feb 28 2009: hosted by Margarat Nee, La Vida Fresca
• #179 – Mar 07 2009: hosted by Cari Campbell, Your Joyous Life

The post Next carnival of healing first appeared on Interesting Observations.

My only wish for the year 2009 is that it be more peaceful and prosperous than 2008.

This year we had no extravagant celebrations, just watched the ball drop in Times Square (on TV).

How about you?

Do you like to stay at home on New Year’s or are you the type who absolutely has to be out of the house this day?

The post Happy New Year – Welcome 2009! first appeared on Interesting Observations.

I use Justin Tadlock’s Options theme which was recommended and set up by my lovely friend Mig who writes Online Public Relations and I’ve been loving the ease to use this theme.  So naturally I visit Justin’s site often to see the showcase of how other people have tweaked the theme.  I don’t thing any of us keeps up with the premium themes business but I am sure most you will find this discussion at Justin’s site on Automatic pulling premium WordPress.org theme directory interesting to follow.

Don’t know if Abraham Piper followed Jim Estill’s advice in a Copyblogger article – Shorter is better – but with this post he has proven that it doesn’t always have to be a  How To or a Best 101 List to get huge number of comments ^_^

When I visited Jonathan Fields’s blog via reader, as I loved the title mba-shmemba, I found Seth Godin’s Squidoo lens post Instead of getting an MBA, consider spending six months in my office.  In Seth’s words:

If you’re stuck in a dead end job in publishing, or if you made a not-so-great choice in getting your career started, or if you thought Wall Street would be a different place, or if you just got laid off, or if you’re not crazy about fretting away the next six months waiting to get fired and you’re not quite ready to start your own gig… this might be the turbolift you were hoping for. Yes, it’s free.
It’s a chance to get off that track and onto a new track, faster and cheaper than most of the alternatives. And it might even be fun.

The only caveat is that you have to apply before December 14th – which is tomorrow!  That offer by Seth Godin got me very excited and for few hours I was playing in my mind how nice it would be if I applied and got chosen for his course..  I’m telling you, that kind of opportunity doesn’t come often.  I live close enough to the city and could definitely see myself enjoying this rare opportunity except I can’t leave my dead end job yet. So I’m willing to wait for the digital version.  

The different perspectives on the comment thread are interesting and a 17 year old guy Cyrusmassoumi also put together an ongoing list of links to people’s Squidoo lens ‘resumes’  who have applied for this guided 6 month apprenticeship.

If you are like me, I am sure you are visiting tons of social media sites all day long but have not seen consistent traffic to your site, then you want to read 10 ways to improve your results with Social Media today. 

Oh, have you been checking out Google’s Countdown to 2009 Search Tips to make your holiday search easier? 

If you have anything interesting to share, feel free to send me the link and I’ll try and publish it here in next Interesting Links post.

photo by thethi

The post Interesting Posts Around the Web first appeared on Interesting Observations.

Heartwarming Usability

Breathtaking Beauty

and

Thrilling Flexibility”

Need I say more?   We’ve come a long long way from 2.2 when I started blogging.

My heartfelt thanks to hundreds of talented people who make up the WordPress team.  We are indebted to you guys for making it a breeze for us to express ourselves and make connections.

The post WordPress 2.7, Coltrane first appeared on Interesting Observations.

Now this:

Just a few days ago, I received an email from Luciano Passuello of Litemind that he was running a project/contest for his readers to submit their best personal excellence tips.  This did not require a blog post as you would just need to send in a tip to Luciano’s email.

As I am still in need of some good ideas on how to get over my depression, I thought of sending in a few lines that may not be the best advice out there but they have become my mantra to get through my sadness, check out #28 in the list.  Luciano has published ALL personal excellence tips submitted to him, 66 tips so far. Great ideas given by Litemind readers and great blogs to discover.

The best part.

Since there are prizes worth some $800,  Luciano has asked his participants to vote by commenting on this post listing at least their favorite 5 tips/entries,  and as many as they like (no voting for their own entry of course).   This part is going to take some time for me to choose as I am in a position where I could use most of these tips to improve my life.   If you didn’t get a chance to participate,  you are not eligible to vote but I’d still encourage you to head over to Litemind and share your own very best personal excellence tips.

And I’d be delighted to hear your comments here too on what gets you through depression and sadness.

The post Personal Excellence Tips at Litemind first appeared on Interesting Observations.

It was truly a very proud and emotionally thrilling moment as in times like these, you forget the differences and divide and stand united, for each other, not just for ourselves. Very inspirational as greatness and intelligence is once again rewarded tonight. Here’s to the new beginnings and much needed change..

The post President Obama gives America a night to remember forever! first appeared on Interesting Observations.

Welcome to yet another great edition of carnival of healing .

Let me start by thanking all who submitted useful and practical advice filled articles to this edition of the carnival. I noticed a lot of the articles submitted were on physical well being and that is rightfully a huge part of our healing but I also feel that binge eating and not exercising and not taking care of our bodies etc. stem primarily from the way we are on the inside, how we feel about our current situations.

So, one of the major steps towards healing is to continuously be open to learning new skills for the changing circumstances throughout life :

Skills

• to stop the negative thinking cycle and calm the storms on the inside,
• to forgive people as well as circumstances that are beyond our control
• to break free from limiting beliefs
• to love ourselves

I am sure there are many more skills that help with healing and without further ado, here is some great reading material this weekend.

Dr. Ben Adkins presents Why Some People Are More Successful Than You posted at Dr. Ben Adkins.

Nicholas Powiull presents Conscious Flex: How to Easily Experience Lucid Dreams: by Nicholas Powiull posted at Conscious Flex, saying, “The more you can improve on your dreams, the more you can improve in your life. It is a reflection upon each other. Lucid dreams are a state of empowerment.”

Donald Latumahina presents 7 Winning Character Traits That Create A Lifetime Of Success posted at Life Optimizer.

Alvaro Fernandez presents Brainy Haikus for brain training posted at SharpBrains, saying, “Enjoy this collection of fantastic haikus on brain and mind topics, and contribute yours!”

Grace Young presents Please Be Seated! posted at Grace R Young OT, saying, “Prolonged standing is stressful. Sitting while performing tasks takes 25% less energy.”

Erin Pavlina presents 2012 and the End of the World posted at Erin Pavlina’s Blog, saying, “I’m sure you’ve heard about it. The Mayan calendar ends in 2012, and there are signs in so many places … the world is going to end in 2012. I get at least 3 or 4 emails per week asking if I believe the world will really end in 2012 or if there will be a spiritual awakening, or if God is coming down to select his top 100 people to take to Heaven while the rest of us go to Hell.”

Daylle Deanna Schwartz presents Law of Attraction in Action: “Too Blessed to Be Stressed” posted at Lessons from a Recovering DoorMat, saying, “When you regularly focus on appreciating your blessings, use the mantra, “I’m too blessed to be stressed” to attract relaxation during stressful times.”

AndrewB presents How to Stop Binge Eating posted at Stop Binge Eating, saying, “How I lost weight, overcame food addiction, and kept all the weight off.”

Kara-Leah Grant presents On the power of paying attention to your words posted at Prana Flow NZ, saying, “One of the most powerful actions we can take in our day to day life is to pay attention to our words. The language we choose to use reveals much about what we truly believe, and by choosing words that reflect our dreams and goals, we can change ourselves for the better.”

Kelly Turner presents Bulimic To Personal Trainer: Can Too Much of a Good Thing Be Bad? posted at Grounded Fitness.

AndrewB presents How to Stop Binge Eating posted at Binge Eating Forum, saying, “A post where everyone shared their best advice on how to stop binge eating or stop overeating, many great free tips to stop binge eating.”

Louis Burns presents Presuppose Greatness posted at NLP Marketing Blog.

fitnchic presents Diet food ? Weighing the Pros and Cons :: FitNChic.com – Get in Shape Fashionably :: posted at FitNChic.com – Get in Shape, Fashionably!.

Patricia Turner presents 5 Free Kettlebell Video Sites – EKG Classes posted at EKG Classes.

BoH presents Fat Chance! posted at buddha of hollywood.

Margaret Garcia presents Give your Children the Gift of Good Health – Radiology Technician Schools posted at Radiology Technician Schools.

Nancy Miller presents Bitter Pill to Swallow – Antidepressants and Weight Gain – Becoming A Radiologist posted at Becoming A Radiologist.

mag presents Heal yourself naturally by balancing your pH with acid/alkaline foods posted at The Magenpie.com, saying, “Many health problems that people suffer from these days are due to an imbalance of the body’s pH. The human blood pH should be slightly alkaline, at 7.35-7.45 pH. Anything below or above this range spells trouble.”

Mary@SimplyForties presents My Summer of Cancer posted at SimplyForties.

myln presents Simple Ways to Manage Stress posted at ManageYourLifeNow.com, saying, “Stress is not something that we cannot manage. There are ways to manage stress and reverse the negative consequences to our mental and physical health caused by stress. When we feel that stress is dominating our life we should take action immediately to find ways to manage our life and stress better.”

FitBuff presents How to Form Good Eating Habits posted at 3rd Chance Fitness Blog, saying, “We all wish we had good eating habits, but it’s hard. The good news is it’s also largely mental, and the following mindset will set you in the right direction.”

AndrewB presents Stop Emotional Eating Tips posted at Stop Binge Eating, saying, “why emotional eating is probably keeping you fat and how to instantly conquerit with these quick tips.”

AndrewB presents Courage – The World is Yours posted at Personal Hack, saying, “When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers. – Ralph Waldo Emerson”

Ray Dotson shows us How to Deal with Disappointment posted Freshblogger, saying, “I’m no psychiatrist, but I do believe there are stages that a person goes through in dealing with disappointment just like when grieving. In fact, disappointment could be seen as a loss of opportunity that certainly could trigger the grieving process.”

Caffeine Junkie presents Caffeine Content | My Caffeine Addiction posted at Caffeine Addiction, saying, “How to figure out the caffeine content in your drink.”

Pastor WD Favour presents Do You Have An Addiction? | wdfavour.com posted at wdfavour.com, saying, “Do you have an addiction? Do a personal check right away. Is there a specific activity, or a set of activities, that you are engaged in to the detriment of your health, mental state or social life? You might be blinded by the positive effects of that activity – probably you are making money from it or whatever: but if it’s hurting your health, mental state, or social life, its an addiction.”

Fiona King presents Top 100 Men?s Health Blogs posted at Massage Therapy Careers.

Khan presents Harmless or Deadly: A Personal Story About Asthma posted at Higher Education and Career Blog.

Steve Beisheim presents Free and Unlimited Exotic Massages posted at HowIHealed.com, saying, “A great resource for free massages”

Dean Moyer presents Microdiscectomy and Herniated Discs posted at The Back Pain Blog, saying, “Could the simple act of bending forward cause you to develop a herniated disc? What are the risk factors and what precautions should you take to avoid injury? And what about everybody’s favorite exercise; the sit-up? Is it really good for building core strength, or is it a dangerous practice? Since most health and fitness-minded people insist on “working those abs,” is there a way to perform sit-ups and crunches that minimizes the risk factors while actually enhancing results?”

FitBuff presents How Colon Cancer Warning Signs saved his life… posted at 3rd Chance Fitness Blog, saying, “Another 4 months of feeling winded and drained and he said “uncle” and called his doctor. It turns out, he HAD stage 2 colon cancer and was severely anemic from internal bleeding…”

Lizzie discusses Why Do Diet Fail on her FatLadySingz blog that just about everyone can benefit from

Vish presents The Illusion of Great Work posted at The Power To Realise God Through Self Enquiry.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of healing using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Previous Edition: Yourjoyouslife
Next Edition: howihealed

Technorati tags: carnival of healing, blog carnival.

The post Carnival of Healing #161 first appeared on Interesting Observations.

With both of my computers now slowing down, I started to panic a bit today as I hadn’t been backing up my drives lately!  Actually, I don’t even remember ever backing them up.  While researching different things that are going wrong with the pc and laptop, I came across an article on Lifehacker about online backup services.   I’ve been contemplating buying an external hard drive for some time as this seems to be a cheaper alternative but other ‘more important’ stuff always gets in the way and this gets put on the back burner.  I’ve also been thinking about online backup as that seems more secure than an external hard drive.  One of the major drawbacks I find with the external hard  drive is that it can also fail or get stolen and you could lose your important information.

Online data backup on the other hand seems to be more reliable as you can access it from anywhere, and can easily share your data / information with others.  Although I find it difficult to trust another company keeping my data!  We spend so much time thinking about privacy and protecting it, and then trust someone else’s computer to keep our life’s information… something I am not comfortable doing!  How about you?

The post Back up your computer now! first appeared on Interesting Observations.

The restore shuts the pc and even restarts but the message comes up saying No changes have been made to your computer.  And a strange thing I noticed is that there are restore points only for the last three months, nothing before that.  I’m running Windows XP, SR2.   I also have a Dell laptop that is starting to heat up to temperatures beyond 200 degrees!   So, I haven’t been turning that one on fearing it’ll just blow up on me one of these days.

So, frustrated with the situation, I decided to start painting again (again, coz I had completely stopped painting when I started blogging).   Here are a couple unfinished oil paintings I did this week.  Of course every time I spent some time on these, the fever went up to 102°F but it definitely eased my anxiety.

This is a copy of course from a very famous French Artist 1841-1919) Renoir’s painting of a woman reading.  Here is the original

The flowers in a vase is also a famous painting but I couldn’t find who it is from.  I am copying it from a single sheet that’s been cut out from a magazine.  These are far from finished yet but something I thought of sharing.

This exercise also brought back memories of the days when we didn’t have computers to communicate with each other, or internet to do research on just about every topic.  I thought about expanding this article into a list of things you can do when there is no pc or internet available, but truthfully? I get tired of those instructional posts in just about every other blog.  On this blog, we will stick to informal conversations about things to do when there is no internet or when your pc doesn’t work. And of course if you know how to get rid of that ugly agoga.com thingy, please please let me know.

I’m writing this from my brother’s laptop as my pc continues to freeze with every click,  so I may not be able to reply to your comments right away but would love to read them.

Reminder:  The 161th edition of carnival of healing will be posted this upcoming Saturday (Oct. 25th).  So if you want to submit your post to be published, please send it it before Friday (Oct 24th).

The post When the going gets tough, tough feels like quitting first appeared on Interesting Observations.

How selfish I was.  With blog action day theme, as I was reading more and more on poverty, I couldn’t believe I had done that to her.   It is so easy to act like I did and ignore this problem but just imagine if we had to beg someone for every meal, day after day!    I know my heart is at the right place but on this day, I pledge to make conscious efforts to make a difference in whatever small ways I can.

We humans are so strange in that when in United States someone talks about poverty,  they mostly refer to it or think about it as a condition that exists only in some remote 3rd world, under-developed section of the society.  So not true.  America has it’s share of poverty as detailed in this website.    Imagine this for a second, according to the GlobalIssues, almost half the world population – that is over three billion people – live on less than $2.50 a day!

If these numbers on the chart above don’t really do anything for you, I am sure the following video certainly will move you.

As for me, I went over the list of 88 ways to take action against poverty now that Easton Ellsworth made on Blog Action Day blog yesterday, from people’s contributions.   I am going to try to do as many of those things as possible – some I already do, like eating vegetarian meals twice – I’ve been a vegetarian for a couple of years (well I do eat fish, but just that, no mammals and/or even chicken), signed up with kiva to make loans, clicked on the hunger site to give free food to the poor.  I can’t say I am ready to go homeless for a day and night yet but that would be quite a lesson.

But I want to get started today, NOW, with this post.  So, I pledge to donate $1.00 to Kiva.org for each comment on this post.

There are tons of websites to get inspiration from and get involved.   I have met a lot of great people via blogs, who are spending a whole lot of time to make a difference.  Head over to Train for Humanity and see how you can get involved while getting healthy yourself.

The post Think of Poverty on Blog Action Day 2008 first appeared on Interesting Observations.

I logged into their site and thought of removing my site from the system as I thought I didn’t really understand how it worked but upon hitting the delete button, I was taken to the following screen that says that I can’t delete the site since it contains an advertisement that has been payed (PAID) for.

Well, I found that interesting as I hadn’t been writing anything in the last couple of weeks and someone still found my blog worth buying an ad on!   But the reports screen revealed a different story, that a booking was made on my blog but I wasn’t getting paid for it.

Of course, this is not the first time it has happened, in the past also there were a few ads that appeared on this blog but I never got paid for them.   It’s crazy that some ads appeared on my blog for a week or two, for free!

So, today I decided to remove PerformancingAds code and instead stay with much reliable Scratchback, the Fancy Tip Jar!   ScratchBack is a way for the readers to say thank you to the content producers by giving them a small tip and in return gain a link back to their site and get exposure.  Simple and Brilliant!  So go ahead, tip me and get in my list of links.

So, here’s the question.  Have you used PerformancingAds and has the system worked for you?  If you use another ad-network for buying/selling square ads, which one and how is it different from PerformancingAds, good/bad..  your opinion matters!

The post Off with PerformancingAds, On with ScratchBack first appeared on Interesting Observations.

The Carnival of Healing is a weekly round-up of blogs across the Internet featuring information about healing, self empowerment, and spirituality.   This carnival is organized by Phylameana who writes about Healing on About.com.  My thanks go to Phelameana for letting me host this edition on my blog.

As I was reading through the articles submitted for this edition, I couldn’t help remember a quote by Helen Keller

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
— Helen Keller

No matter how big and difficult challenges we face, from illness, grief, losing a job, loss of loved ones, fear of failures in our relationships, or financial matters, no matter how difficult to overcome these challenges might be, we all find ways to get through them and survive but the hurt remains.  The articles that are submitted to this carnival are geared towards emotional, physical and spiritual healing.  They have been helpful to me in my struggle to overcome my challenges and I am sure you will find something to help you as you begin your healing journey.

So here comes:

Sonora presents Top 50 Medical Professor Blogs posted at Nursing School Search Blog.

Daphne presents Joyful Days » Laugh A Lot posted at Joyful Days, saying, “Laughter cures many ills in life. Doctors are starting to admit that patients who decide to think positively and laugh a lot have higher chances of surviving diseases including cancer. There are powerful biological processes that take place when we laugh that we are only just starting to understand.”

Anna Farmery presents Behind the Smile…. posted at Widows Quest, saying, “I try each day to smile, I know that the world lives on and that they have troubles of their own. So I try and listen to people, I try and be there for them, often to the detriment of myself…

SeanBissell presents Even Dogs Get De-Motivated posted at Yummy Fitness | Fitness For Fun People saying, “It’s very easy to get de-motivated if you get off track for too long, and one of the best ways to get back into your routine is just to make it fun for yourself in any way that you can.

Alvaro Fernandez presents ABC Reporter Bob Woodruff’s Spectacular Recovery From Traumatic Brain Injury posted at SharpBrains: Your Window into the Brain Fitness Revolution, saying, “You have may have seen a few weeks ago the interview between former US presidential contender John Edwards and reporter Bob Woodruff. All the resulting media coverage centered on Edwards’ declarations. However, there is something much more remarkable that surfaced at that interview: Bob Woodruff’s spectacular recovery.”

Donald Latumahina presents A Guide to Finding Your Life Purpose posted at Life Optimizer.

Joshua Seth presents Fast Weight Loss Tips | posted at Joshua Seth Blog, saying, “Everyone seems to want to lose weight fast. I’d rather show you how to lose weight permanently. Not all fast weight loss methods are healthy and most of them don’t work long term. Still, a few methods do make the cut. So here is how to lose weight fast…”

AndrewB presents How to Overcome Overeating posted at test, saying, “Do you engage in overeating? Overeating is eating too much. We all do it to some degree, however it can lead to developing an eating disorder.”

mag presents Breathe your way to better health! posted at The Magenpie.com, saying, “Breathe better”

Grace Young presents No slouching! posted at Grace R Young OT.

Sam presents NEW !! Relief for Stress, Anxiety and Tension. Symptoms and Relief. Cope and Manage Stress posted at Surfer Sam and Friends, saying, “Relief for Stress, Anxiety and Tension Symptoms and Relief to Cope and Manage Stress Stress is the plague of the twenty-first century. Pressures at work and demands at home leave us feeling tension, anxiety and stress.
Akemi Gaines presents Heroes Of Healing: Gary Craig posted at Yes to Me.

Astrid Lee presents Pope’s Mass in Paris Brings Focus on Practical Spiritually posted at World Healing, saying, “Yesterday morning, together with a quarter million French people, I managed to participate in the public mass held in Paris by pope Benedict XVI. It was an unusually calming and healing experience…. (pictures)”

Marcus Ryan presents Top 3 Anti Aging Diets posted at Wrinkle Creams Review, saying, “If you want the top 3 anti aging diets for healthy skin, then have a look at this blog entry by Marcus Ryan where the anti aging diets full of superfoods for skin are featured.”

Ginsburg presents Supplement Boosts Immune Function & Helps Diabetic Blood Sugar posted at Live Immune, saying, “well-researched dietary supplement to boost NK fraction”

Brain Blogger presents HIPAA Doesn’t Exist For Doctors posted at Brain Blogger, saying, “Recently a very popular colleague of mine was hospitalized. His frequent visitors coming into the room began to hamper his recovery and his family was forced to try and enforce privacy rules and HIPAA.”

NickIrons presents Exercise — The Fountain of Youth! posted at Get Results! Fitness Blog, saying, “Exercise is the only proven way to drastically combat aging and to regain your youthful body. In fact, most people are able to regain up to 1/3 of their muscle strength and mass after participating in an exercise program for just a couple of months.”

Ginsburg presents Kabbalistic Speech & New Year posted at Live Immune.

photo:eye of einstein

Chris Edgar presents What’s Really Holding You Back: “Morality” Or Anxiety? posted at Purpose Power Coaching, saying, “When we feel anger, fear, or some other emotion we see as unpleasant, we tend to assume “morality” requires us to feel how we do. If someone else is the object of our irritation, anxiety, or something else, we tend to see them as immoral. In this article, I discuss how becoming aware of how we confuse our emotions with morality can help us transcend our fears and gain valuable self-understanding.”

Aanga presents How to Have a Healthy Autumn posted at Ananga Sivyer’s Living by Design Blog.

Bob Crawford presents Aligning with Success posted at Growing Your SELF Blog – Bob Crawford Online, saying, “Learning to become aligned with your inner self is crucial to manifesting your goals and dreams.”

Sagar Satapathy presents Top 100 Health and Wellness Sites for Seniors posted at RN Central.

Pastor WD Favour presents Supernatural Healing posted at WDFavour.com, saying, “A true life story of a miraculous and life transforming healing.”

Alex Blackwell presents 10 things you wish you had never learned

Evelyn created a movie: My Abundance Mind Movie [don’t forget to vote for her wonderful movie at YouTube)

And last but not the least, our very own Phylameana wrote about “Follow Your Heart”

That concludes this edition.

Past Edition: Sept. 13, 2008 Grace in Gravity

Next Edition: Sept. 27, 2008 Natural Pain Relief

Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of healing using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

The post Carnival of Healing #156 first appeared on Interesting Observations.

A few days ago, I reviewed a software called Universal Document Converter, that has the ability to convert any type of documents to PDF, JPEG or other image formats with it’s powerful virtual printing technology.

I recently had to send an organizational chart created with Visio software to one of my colleagues in a different building and they did not have the Visio installed on their machine. UDC came in handy.

For those of you who do not know, Visio is a software by Microsoft that is useful for creating business and technical diagrams. These drawings created in Visio are only viewable within Visio.  But not everyone is going to have Visio installed on their computers.  In such instances, you would need to convert it to either .PDF or some type of image format since these programs are available on most types of computers. PDF files can be opened on Mac as well as on Windows systems. Converting the original drawing into an image or PDF file also keeps the original diagram secure in that it remains unaltered.

So, in order to convert a Visio chart or drawing, follow the easy steps outlined here.

After downloading and installing the UDC, Open the Visio drawing that you want to convert into a .JPEG. Click on File -> Print

Now select the Universal Document Converter from the pull-down list of printers available and click on Properties

From the available choices in the settings -> current profile, select the Drawing, Chart to JPEG, Color choice,

This will open up the following screen. Now select JPEG (or any other image format if you like) and click OK

Now you are back to the main Microsoft Visio Print dialog. Click OK to start converting. When the JPEG file is ready, it will be saved to the C:\UDC Output Files folder by default.

The converted drawing will then be opened in Windows Picture and Fax Viewer software or another viewer associated with JPEG files on your computer.

If you have tried UDC for converting any documents, we’d love to hear from you.

The post Convert Visio Drawings to an Image file for easy distribution first appeared on Interesting Observations.

From the carnival home page:  Carnival of Healing is a weekly roundup of posts on topics of holistic health, wellness, spirituality, and self empowerment or healthy lifestyle.

I encourage ALL my readers who write about any of the above topics, to participate in this carnival and submit your most recent posts.  Once you have written the post that you want to submit, click on the image or go here and click on the orange box in the upper right corner to get to the submission form.

Please make sure your articles are related to the topics that are acceptable to this carnival.  Any posts that are not related will not be accepted.  If you would like to host this carnival, check out Carnival of Healing Home Page

The post Carnival of Healing Coming to this blog first appeared on Interesting Observations.

In the online world, we are meeting new people and developing connections on a daily basis so it is all the more important to use discretion, stay alert and trust our instincts.  On the Internet, all we know about some stranger is what he or she tells us and have no way of knowing if they are genuine, telling the truth or just trying to con us.  I don’t mean to say we need to be paranoid about trusting others, but keeping our ears and eyes open, watching for the gaps in the information they provide can save everyone tons of misery, time, energy, heartache and many times even money! This is true whether you are dealing with someone on a personal level, in the Internet marketing arena, shopping or anything else you are doing on the Internet.

To reiterate why it is important to trust our gut and intuitions, I want to share with you a post that one of my very good blogging friends teeni wrote on how Appearances can be deceiving, in which teeni has provided links to stories and other people’s posts when some good intentioned and otherwise intelligent, compassionate people fell pray to online frauds.  Teeni’s post stirred up some of my own emotions from a recent online experience in which I forced myself to trust someone despite having a very strong feeling that everything this person was telling me was a lie of some sort.

I am pretty careful in giving out my personal information to someone I have doubts about but upon finding this person was on a different continent,  I sort of relaxed and gave out some information I shouldn’t have.  Over time though, I couldn’t deal with deceiving, and clever conversations any more and stopped all contact.  Now, this person didn’t do any harm to me and I doubt they are out to harm anyone but who knows?   Pretending to be what you are not, you are playing with other people’s emotions and that is not forgivable.  I was on guard most of the time and that did not sit well with this person as they showed frustration that I wouldn’t ‘open up’ with them but it goes to show how many of us are vulnerable and readily trust the outside world than our own selves.  Like teeni points out in her post, a lot of people have self-esteem issues and this is their only avenue to get attention, by trapping innocent folk for their own benefit.    So Be Careful.

Here are some more resources to check out on Internet Fraud

Would love to hear your take on this issue and if you know of any such incidents.

photo: Neil Phillips

The post Your Instincts and gut feelings are mostly true – Trust them first appeared on Interesting Observations.

I went to a restaurant the other day with a few of my colleagues from work.  It was lunch time and this restaurant offers buffet for lunch. We have gone to this place many times before but recently there seems to be a new management and new crew.

At buffets, as you know, everyone gets their own servings and we all did.  The waiter came and filled our glasses with water but then after his first appearance, the waiter couldn’t be seen anywhere the entire time.  At one point we ran out of water and the food being very spicy and hot, we really needed it, the only thing that was not on the buffet table otherwise we would have gotten the refills ourselves.  This particular restaurant is quite famous in my town and gets filled beyond capacity during lunch so I understand that the staff usually gets busy (with what? I’m not sure) and cannot attend every customer individually.

The hot and spicy food was getting to us and in the absence of water,  we decided we were not going to tip them. (blame it on dehydration).

We finished our meal somehow and after paying at the front desk, headed to our cars while talking about how once this place used to be a very nice but the service was going downhill lately.   All of a sudden we heard someone calling us from behind: “Miss… excuse me ma’am..”  All four of us turned around and found that one of the waiters was walking towards us, with a smirk on his face.   Not understanding what his problem was, we stood there waiting to hear what was his problem. The guy walked up to us and told us that we had forgotten to pay him the tip.

Huh?  We were stunned and furious at his audacity.  How could he follow us in the parking lot asking for money?   All he did was fill our glasses with water one time at the beginning.   We wondered what that smirk was for… did he really think we were going to feel embarrassed and end up paying the tips in the parking lot?   Not to mention how suspiciously stupid the scene would have looked to someone – each of us handing over some money to a strange guy!

This is the first time in my life I’ve come across such behavior. No waiter in the world should be chasing customers in the parking lots to demand tips! We of course refused politely and said we didn’t think a gratuity was warranted as no service was provided, the guy insisted a couple of times but we just walked away!  Phew!   What has the world come to?

As ridiculous as it sounds, we recently also started noticing that this place has started to include the tip in the check when it’s first given to you so if you do not notice it, and end up giving 15% to 20% on top of that, it’s your fault and they will gladly take the money, knowing fully well that you didn’t notice the tip had already been added.  Not to mention, some restaurants charge you tip on the take-outs too!

So, here are my questions:

Do you always pay tips even when they don’t provide any service?

I mostly do but this one time we collectively decided not to and the waiter came after us!

How would you have handled this?  If you are not from United States, I’d love to know the custom and expectations in your country.

photo: Digital Plus Art & Photo

The post To Tip or Not to Tip the Nutty Waiter? first appeared on Interesting Observations.

I realize I should have announced it on my blog a bit earlier as he had weekly drawings and even early bird draw where if you entered early and secured 20 points, your points would be doubled but still there is one grand prize draw that will be on August 31.. The prizes for this coming week and the rules are listed below but first, check out Chee Wee’s video about his contest..

Prizes for 24 August draw

1st prize – 4GB Sandisk Micro Cruzer skin flash drive
2nd & 3rd – a 125×125 ad book for 7 days (from 25 – 31 Aug) with PerformancingAds on my sidebar

Prizes for Grand draw on 31 August (one winner)

A 2GB Creative Zen MP3 player with 2.5? TFT LCD for videos & audios & SD card expansion slot. Click for specification.

A 125×125 ad book for entire month of September 2008 with PerformancingAds on my sidebar

Early Bird Bonus
The first 25 submissions with minimum of 20 points each will have their total points doubled!

So here is the deal, if you want to win one of the prizes, then here is what you need to do to gain those points:

* Registration and 1 point –> Subscribe to our RSS Feed via email (mandatory) and comment below that you are registered to win. You can use the subscribe option in the sidebar or at the end of this post.

* 1 point: Stumble or Stumble Review this contest

* 2 points –> Follow me on Twitter and Twitt about this contest with link to this contest page.

* 5 points –> Make a *New* blog post on a publicly accessible blog (cannot be on a password protected page such as myspace or facebook) and link to this page and the homepage. Additional 5 points given if you embed the above video(found in this post) in your post.

Earn Bonus Points
15 points –> Make a *New* blog post (separate from above post) and embed anyone of my videos found in below posts with a short writeup and link to the respective posts. That’s 15 points for each new post with a video.

Video post #1: Singapore Toys & Comic Convention 2008

Video post #2: A Prelude To F1 Grand Prix

Rules:

* This contest is all in good fun and is open to anywhere that snail mail goes.

* Participating blogs must be 90 days old and consist of at least 10 posts.

* Comment must contain link to twitter posts and blog posts, Twitter id and StumbleUpon id, so they can be verified.

* Winner must have an active subscription to Betshopboy.net when selected.

* Winners of ad spot must supply your own 125×125 image, which will run during the period stated above.

* Winners will be selected by random draw and will be contacted by email and you have 7 days to response. If there’s no response, a new winner will be drawn

* Contest ends on August 30th at 11.59pm (GMT +8).

* The organizer (that’s me!) reserve the right to reject any entries from websites that are generally offensive or pornographic, and any websites that can be classified as spam.

* The organizer (me again) reserves the right, at my sole discretion, to modify or replace any part of this contest, e.g., depending on the participation rate, additional prizes and/or early bird bonus may be thrown in if my subscription target is hit.

Submit your entries early to qualify for the weekly draws and to double your points for the first 25 submissions with minimum 20 points!

Congratulations Chee Wee

The post First Anniversary Giveaway Contest – Betshopboy first appeared on Interesting Observations.