Top 10 psychological and emotional reasons to quit smoking

To stop smoking, smokers need strong motivation to drive them to kick the nicotine habit. Indeed, there can be strong personal reasons, pressure from peers and family members or due to social stigma attached with smoking to give up the habit.

The following list tries to address the psychological and emotional side of benefits smokers can derive when they take the arduous journey of quitting smoking.

1. Smoking is no more 'cool'

Cigarette smoking no more considered cool compared to 70s and 80s when everyone smoked. The smoking habit considered unhealthy. Cigarette companies generated the ‘cool’ image due to cleverly designed commercials. For someone intelligent, the appeal of coolness is diminishing given the health hazard the smoking habit carries. There are mandatory ghastly looking images on cigarette packs in some countries not only horrifying, but also a revelation.

2. Stop buying packs of cigarette saves you lot of money

For a moment, imagine how many cigarettes a smoker smokes in a year on an average 20 cigarettes a day. Cool 7000 cigarettes a year! Astounding, right? No! Try the numbers if one smoked for the last 10 years. That totals to 70,000 cigarettes. Now, that is worrying. We have not considered special occasions, weekends; jaunts to nightclubs where one tend to smoke more than usual, sometimes two times the average. This puts the numbers even higher.

Just do the math and see how much cigarette one has burnt in her life. Interestingly, the amount of money one spends just to satisfy addiction is staggering. It is fraction of a dollar, no doubt, for each cigarette. However, how much money one spends on buying cough medicine, breath fresheners, throat fresheners, teeth whiteners, and visiting dentists just because one wanted to be normal?

3. Increased Confidence levels once one stop smoking.

You look like a rock star to others who are trying to quit smoking. Apparently, almost every other smoker wishes to stop smoking one day. However, how many honestly stop smoking and never become a smoker again in their lives? You will be surprised to find out how people expression can change when one mention that she quit smoking. It is shocking for most of smokers and pleasant surprise for many of her not smoking friends. Just imagine how tall she can walk!

4. Worry no more about how bad your breath smell in front of clients or customers

The cigarette smoke smells nasty. Smoking creates bad odor in your mouth and few feet around you. The smell lingers longer if you smoke in an air-conditioned room. You make every other not smoking person to suffer because of your habit. Does it sound selfish? Perhaps, yes. Stop smoking and never worry about the stink again.

5. Save astounding amounts of time

Can you imagine how much time one save by stop smoking? If you are a busy person and a smoker, you can gain lot by stop smoking. It is a simple arithmetic.

One may argue that he or she is smoking the cigarette while working. The smoker while smoking unknowingly idle away productive minutes. How much time you end up wasting just for smoking every year? You be the judge.

6. No embarrassing stares at you

Nowadays, many public places are out of bounds for smoking. However, when smokers lit a cigarette in places with children, senior citizens, pregnant women, and sick persons, for example, invite cold stare from others. It is embarrassing for both the guilty smoker and others. You can walk guilt free when you quit.

7. Feel healthier and fresh day after day

We know there are nearly 2000 types of chemicals produced while smoking and some are hazardous and carcinogen! Smoking can cause irreparable damage to mouth, gums, teeth, and lungs. We are wise enough to stay away from death inviting sticks.

8. Help your society to become smoke free and earn good karma

Leading by example, you can help others to quit smoking. You can motivate others who are trying to quit smoking. You will earn good karma by doing this.

9. Make your family members happy and healthy

Do you know how happy your friends, family members and others feel for you when you stop smoking? It is certainly a feel good factor for you. You help them to eliminate passive effects of smoking. The whole environment becomes healthy. You will love it.

10. Develop cleaner and healthier living environment

Imagine the cigarette butts, empty boxes that thrown around on the street by un-mindful smokers. By quitting smoking, you are helping to keep the clean environment and smoke free. Our world beset with global pollution. By quitting, you can contribute positively to the global cause.

Health, Happiness, and Relationships Magazine

Why quitting smoking is difficult

There are many reasons that makes you quitting smoking difficult. Some of major reasons are as follows,

1. Environmental Influence

2. Determination and Willpower

3. Social and peer pressure

4. Substitutes for smoking

Environmental Influence

Environment has major influence on a cigarette smoker. Let us take, for example, your office. In your office, you have many smoking co-workers, and your boss smokes too. Naturally, you feel comfortable to smoke a cigarette and smoking gets uncontrolled. On the other hand, you feel isolated when none or hardly anyone smokes in your office, you will feel the pressure and it may reduce your consumption at least at your office. In this environment, you feel less motivated or encouraged to smoke.

If you surrounded with smokers, your cigarette intake can go up substantially. If you are working in an office where smokers abound, you have little encouragement to stop smoking. You do not have much choice either. Indeed, you will find it difficult to stop smoking.

Further, smokers normally prefer to hangout with other smokers. Out of office, you hangout in bar, club, or associations regularly and many of your friends are smokers in those places. You will be tempted to smoke anyway once you are with your pals. Again, you tend to smoke more in the presence of other smokers. Moreover, you have little or no motivation to stop smoking. Indeed, this gives power to your addiction!

Therefore, when you are surrounding yourself with other smokers, you have all the reasons to smoke to your hearts content. Places you work, play, and live are encourage you to smoke and it is, indeed, makes it more difficult to quit smoking.

Determination and will power

Determination and will are the top two traits that can help you to stop smoking. Unfortunately, most of the smokers lack these two qualities badly. If you highly determined and strong will power, you can kick the habit any moment. Nevertheless, many smokers neither highly determined nor strong willed. Therefore, it is difficult to quit smoking on your own.

Social or peer pressure

Social and peer pressure can act as a major deterrent to smoking. Imagine, if you are constantly reminded of your nicotine addiction, goaded, coerced, and cajoled to quit smoking. This way, you can come under substantial pressure to quit smoking. This, indeed, can be a strong motivating factor for you to stop smoking.

Sadly, there is no widespread coordinated network of peer groups to abstain you from smoking; in office, club, restaurant, for example. Unfortunately, you find it difficult to quit smoking.

Substitutes to smoking

You may finally decide to quit smoking and bid adieu to your debilitating habit. You use nicotine patch, gums, over the counter de-addiction medications, or seek professional counseling to ease from your addiction. It is good to find alternative solutions and these surely help you to stay away from smoking. Notwithstanding, can we truly say this is your complete withdrawal from your nicotine addiction?

Nevertheless, the ex smoker is still addicted and she might revert to smoking again. Although it is of no concern for many about the amount of money one spends to seek professional help, or buy alternative solutions. One may consider smoking is cheaper or less troublesome than buying patches, gums or seeking professional help. Relying on substitutes, indeed, requires a serious commitment to quitting the habit. For all practical purposes, you are still addicted, even when you are not smoking.

There are cases that anti smoking drugs produce depressive thoughts when consumed. There are side effects to these alternatives. They cannot and will not offer you safe way to withdraw naturally from nicotine addiction. They need continued efforts and focus. There are strong economical reasons make it difficult to quit smoking.

Therefore, the question is what is the best way to quit smoking? What makes you stop smoking completely regardless of place you work and kind of friends you have?

What can give you a safe and economical way to quit smoking finally?

Luckily, the world-renowned Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) method can help you to overcome your strong rooted addiction without the use of drugs, nicotine patches, or gums whatsoever. Further, NLP, a form of hypnosis, brought to you by Rob Mellor, a Neuro-Linguistic Program expert and an ex-smoker himself.

At a measly price of $47, the program offers a complete de-addiction and relives you from your smoking habit. Remember, as a smoker you spend thrice that amount month after month. By smoking, you are losing your health, money, and importantly, peace of mind over your unshakable habit!

Take your first step today, for a cigarette free life. You will not regret your decision.

Okay, here is the answer

How to Face Personal Problems and Find Solutions

Everyone in their life one time or other would face challenges and difficulties. There are no exceptions to this rule. We would have problems in finance, job, family, and friends.  How one faces those debilitating situations depends on ones mental makeup and experience. 

If you happened to be less experienced, you will feel the burden more than others. However, each situation you face makes you wiser and stronger time and again.  There are no two words about it. You will always learn something new and it is important to consider a problem as your teacher.

Albeit, a solution can be found for a problem provided you accept the situation as it is and take responsibility of it. Stop blaming yourself and others and take a decision to face the problem head on and deal with it once for all.  For example, if you are currently under any kind of financial problem, it is imperative that you must start analyzing about your current situation.  

The hard reality for many of us is to find ways to solve the problem. Fortunately, we have many ways to solve problems in life. You need not to reinvent the wheel. In other words, you can always find someone who is more experienced and wiser than you. The benefit is you not only feel confident that you have someone to support you and you are not alone. Further, two minds is far better than one mind. Combination of two minds forms a third formidable invisible mind or force that will guide you to find solutions faster.

Therefore, if you happen to be in a problem either you take a help of a close friend or a family member to sort out your financial issues, for example. You should not only acknowledge that you have problems in your life, but also accept that you need someone to help you. Isn’t it that you landed up in trouble because of your own actions?

There is a saying that one who creates a problem cannot solve it by herself. Only a more intelligent person who is detached from your situation can give you the solution. Unless otherwise this is done quite honestly, having ego to come under way of you accepting the past and present mistakes, would only make your matters worse. Just accept your situation and seek out help to eradicate the burden once for all.

Most importantly you have to start believing in yourself. Believe that you will find solution to overcome any or all of your personal problems. There always is a solution. You have to have a plan and consistently apply it with patience and perseverance. No sweat no rewards.

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Where There is Smoke There is Fire

Do you know that symptoms or smaller teething issues in our daily life are indicators of bigger problems. Minor symptoms are like smoke, and real problems are like fire. You are aware that where there is smoke there is fire! 

For example, let us take a small exercise to tease you a little bit.

Do you agree that two or more of the situations that are listed below applies to your life?

1. Are you withdrawing cash from your credit card without thinking about how much interest you pay?

2. Are you finding difficult to pay minimum credit card payments? And, you are already in revolving credit?

3. Is your expenses are either increasing or remaining same and while your income is reducing?

4. You have borrowed from your family & friends and finding it difficult to repay them

5. You started smoking more or drinking more just to avoid your debt related stress?

6. You are losing tempers and seem you are being loved less or isolated from your family?

7. It seems everyone else is enjoying their life and you are feeling dejected?

8. You see no future in your life?

9. You feel unlucky and feel misfortune has befallen you and seems no end for the misfortune in your life?

10. Your life seems stuck and not moving at all?

11. You had a very good life and it seems all those good years have just vanished from your life?

12. Are you wondering can you ever overcome the negative spiral of your life?

Then you have personal issue to handle that need to be addressed without delay.  Unfortunately, the symptoms are mostly ignored by many of us.

If you happen to agree to my reasoning, do something about it. I suggest you discuss and confide your problems with someone that you trust and, most probably, he or she can provide you required support or guidance to your problems.

The problems can come in many forms such as financial, personal, familial, with siblings, children, and professional sphere to name a few. Procrastination can only make the matters more difficult to manage or may lead to complicating the problems or creates other related issues in your life.

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Taking Risk And Self Confidence

I take risks everyday, many of them known and some of them unknown. When do I know I am taking a risk? When I fear the outcome! It is as simple as that.  In other words, when I am involuntarily taking risks, I assume that is just my routine. For example, when I am

1. Riding a cycle, I may fall from it or hit accidentally by others.  Still, we do not consciously consider this a risk.

2. Driving a car, in spite of our driving skills, car may breakdown, or car can skid on the muddy road, still we do not generally consider driving a risk. Rather, we consider driving a car a necessity or a need.

3. Walking out in the rain, a thunder bolt may hit any of us. Still we enjoy walking in the rain.

Most of human activities carry risks of something or the other. However, mostly we are not aware of those risks as they are faced every moment of our lives. Our mind is trained to ignore the inner warning bell when we do our routines.

Now, explicitly taking a risk, we are afraid because of unknown factors. We are always afraid of unknowns. You may understand why we are afraid of dark. Because, we don't know what lurks in the darkness; a thug, a snake, a rat, a cockroach and list goes on.

For some, unknown always excites. They are called risk takers, pioneers, for instance. They feel the rush when they think of taking a new risk. They think positive of the outcomes and rewards the risk carries. They possess positive qualities and never afraid of failures and consider each failure a stepping stone to success. They never look back and they make their own class. They think differently, act differently and by doing so, they differentiate themselves from others. They possess high level of self confidence and espouse positive outlook about their lives.

In contrast, those who are afraid of taking risk, they always think the outcome in negative light. They are afraid of facing consequences. Lest, they forget to remember that taking risk has its rewards and only then they can grow beyond their current existence.

Every time we take a risk, we are putting ourselves out of comfort zone. Each such excursion out of our comfort zone teaches us something new. Every time we take action that we fear that will make us stronger and prepares us to take bigger and bolder risks. This is the secret of successful people.  

 It is always our fears that have driven us to survive and achieve monumental tasks.  In addition, fear also prevents us from reaching our full potential.  The fear in the form of emotion triggers our bodily mechanisms that make us to act instinctively. Some of the human brave acts surprises, even shocks, our educated minds for what they achieved were thought impossible or improbable.

In summary, reflect what you are afraid of, and think of reasons why you fear what you fear and take a decision to overcome them one by one. One day you will be glad that you have become a different person by facing your fears. You would have become positive and self confident.

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Beginners Tips On How to Earn Money Online

Everyone has the right to be happy, and, off course, to have plenty of money to enjoy life. However, many struggling young entrepreneurs have problems due to lack of proper guidance and right experience. Many budding entrepreneurs who have no formal education in Business Management or Entrepreneurship may find it difficult to get into their own business. Nevertheless, even experienced ones may fail to build their business online and eventually turn to their old jobs.

Many people try their own to earn money online and mostly burn their fingers before giving up on their dreams. It is sad to see so many new comers, especially,  are missing to see and utilize the immense potential of Internet. Indeed, Internet creates a level playing field for all. I am not exaggerating by saying that you can start and succeed in your business even if you have little or no capital to start a business. By daily spending few hours on internet, and off course, with pure efforts and determination in understanding online tools, you can start earning money online. Your investment is probably paying internet cafe for browsing hours, planning and persistence. You may even borrow couple of tens of dollars from your friend or mom to start your online business.

To succeed, the aspiring online entrepreneur must have a good understanding of the internet business i.e. affiliate marketing, article marketing, email marketing etc., and have good grasp of many free tools and online services that are available and necessary to build a successful internet business. Nevertheless, nothing can replace the hard work and determination to produce success.

Do not assume anything online and spend your money wisely. It is easy to lose lots of money online. For example, some of internet guru offered programs promises you to copy and paste their campaigns, voila, the money starts flowing. Be aware of the small print disclaimers from the same gurus that  give no guarantee of earning income and you may even lose your money trying to imitate their systems. Notwithstanding, even if it can earn you money as promised, you cannot sustain that system long term. Only way to long term success is learning to hold the rope and building your own system to earn money.

Do not be discouraged if you do not get the kind of result you expected working online for couple of weeks, or even months before raking in money.  Take your time and never try to rush. Keep your head down and work up to making online business an income generator.  Try to cut thru the hype online and find your own niche and dig out the hidden gems on the field of your interest and expertise. If you are smart and willing to learn, you can virtually sell anything online; there are plenty of things to sell online for profits. Do not give up and just march on, the victory will be finally yours.


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How to Overcome Smoking Habit

For many quitting smoking is mostly one of the top items in list of yearly resolutions. Many people struggling with quitting the debilitating habit somewhere in their lives, give up the hope of kicking the habit successfully. A Smoker who is smoking for decades may think it is impossible to quit smoking since the habit has become so ingrained in his or her life that it has become inseparable part of their everyday life.

As an ex-smoker myself, I know how it feels like. I cannot separate my smoking habit from my psyche. It seems the habit has reprogrammed my mind in order to obey to smoke whenever the desire arises. For a smoker, he or she does not need an occasion to smoke a cigarette. She can be waiting in traffic, taking a walk, talking to someone, at work, with friends etc. Every occasion is right for smoking. The mind and body are so well trained to pick up a cigarette and light it with such precision that the act does not even register the smoker’s conscious mind. It all happens automatically; this way, without her knowing, she could have smoked tens of cigarettes in hours.

Smoking habit creates nasty illusions, indeed. Most smokers claim smoking helps them to clear their minds of worries or stress, inspire them with ideas, make them think clear, and so many other gazillion reasons. I wonder how anyone can give a reason that cigarette help them to solve problems. How can anyone explain how so many discoveries, inventions, and great thoughts came into existence without smoking a cigarette? Do we need a magnifying lens to see a non smoker is as good a problem solver, an inventor, researcher, manager as a smoker? The only difference is one thinks without smoking a cigarette and another strongly believes the smoking is the reason for his enhanced, if at all, ability to solve the problem at hand, for example. Why smoking is such a strong habit as to it can hamper one's reasoning faculty to reason that cigarette does not anyway create competitive edge over non-smokers excepting generating smoke, littering ash, and a health spoiler.

To quit smoking, one should as well strongly believe that one can live with his decision without smoking at least for extended periods at a stretch. Moreover, it helps to identify a strong reason or a motivation such as health, children, or family and friends. Take emotional support from your well wishers and your non smoking wife or husband can be your indomitable support. It again requires reprogramming one's mind and reaffirming his mental strength and believing that his will power is strong enough to hold the habit at bay and win over it completely. One must have faith and rest follows.

To quit smoking, it does not matter how long or how short you have been smoking. It takes one decision to call it a day. For anyone who wants to quit smoking, my advice is even while you are smoking, nurse a idea that one day you would stop smoking and think how your life would be like without smoking. Believe me; just such a thought itself can provoke a strong protest from your mind. Keep pushing the idea everyday to quit smoking completely, and reaffirm the decision every morning and evening. Create strong images of your life as to how it looks like when you are not smoking anymore. Preparation can take weeks, if not months. For a smoker, it is almost impossible to imagine a day without cigarette. Nevertheless, with this exercise you have begun a journey to smoke free life. Nothing is impossible; with your will power nothing can stop you achieving what you want.

To quit smoking, one should be very persistent in his journey to cigarette-less life. There would be disappointments along the way for having weak will power. It is alright to fail many times over. Just keep pushing on and try stop smoking for extended periods consistently and continue the exercise to increase the period of non smoking.  Increase the period gradually; from hours to days, day to weeks and weeks to months, and months to years. You have two benefits in this approach. One, you can stop smoking for an indefinite period, and two, you have developed a strong will power that would help you in other areas of life. Nevertheless, smoking is one tough habit to stop!  Fortunately, there are ways to kick the habit.

When I stopped smoking for the first time after almost 10 years of smoking, I did not smoke again for 3 years! Second time, I picked up smoking for couple of months and stopped completely. Second time it was much easier to stop, just like flipping a switch in my mind.  To top smoking, I did not use any nicotine patch, nor availed any counseling or treatment. Once I decided to stop smoking, I just stopped! My mind protested, craved, and cried.  I just lent my deaf years, after sometime the craving just waned away! You can stop smoking too, if you believe so.

You may find Quit Smoking Resource Helpful

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IT Managers Guide to Manage User Expectations

For IT Managers it is always challenging to balance between her own internal department's needs and users requests with available human resources such as programmers, System Analysts, and Database Administrators. Usually, IT managers tend to give high priority to internal requirements since the manager's performance is measured mainly on the basis of Service Levels. For example, email server, database server, and web server uptime, and application response time are noticed immediately by users. If the downtime is not addressed properly, the manager can be flooded by user complaints. In case of downtime, the personnel at your department can get stressed to handle not only user calls, but also to get the failed system up and running. Many IT personnel feel theirs is a thankless job. So is every other service department.

On one hand, users demand more applications or new reports from IT department and expect it available immediately! The user's expectation has gone up exponentially since the developments in technology have been tremendous. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to keep up with all the technology developments. Every six months there is a new, advanced development tool released into market by software vendors.

For example, just look at how rapidly Visual Studio versions are released with so many new functions. By the time you start to feel comfortable in one release, there is already a new release announced.

On the other hand, due to technology obsolescence, the IT department has to manage both old and new hardware/software technologies. For instance, the brand new web server, become outdated in technology in couple of years, however, due to heavy investment on the server, the IT Manager will have to continue to use the server. Within no time, your department can have range of technologies both old and new.

Give the pressures the IT Manager faces, it is indeed, important to prioritize his functions and manage user's expectation levels.

What an IT Manager can do in the given situation, for example,

1. Meet with user’s department heads and discuss their IT needs, perhaps, once quarterly. This will limit the number of ad hoc requests from the users and help you, the IT Manager, to schedule the development and delivery. Moreover, asking people to about their IT needs and making them to write their requests will help you to get clarity on their needs

2. Make IT personnel to record all requests to IT department and issue support tickets. If possible, use web based ticketing system, and make sure all the requests are channeled through a single window of service. Don’t have all your personnel to answer user calls; it is waste of time and unproductive.

3. Document the daily, weekly, and monthly IT tasks and ask your personnel to log their activity either on a log book or online log systems. So this will help to assess the amount of work done.

It is very important to use tools to automate your IT related tasks. Enable your IT personnel to learn and develop new time saving design/development/management skills.

Nevertheless, your personnel need to keep ahead of your users in terms of technology knowledge. Otherwise, your users look way smarter and IT savvy than your people.

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Goal Setting and Planning

There are times we are confused about the direction of events in our life. Then it is relevant to emphasize on our goals and purpose

Not having a goal in life is equivalent to not knowing where to go when we hit the road. For some it may look adventurous. Nevertheless, on a worst case scenario, we may reach a place where there is no way back and you have to contend what you get for rest of your life.  Many of us do not want to reach this kind of situation in our lives. Unfortunately, many people see no way out of their present less than desirable lives and go on to suffer throughout their lives.  Albeit, little they know they can always can come out of the misery and lead a life of abundance and happiness.

Imagine that you are planning a trip to a sunny beach; you will start preparing everything that makes the trip not only pleasant but also memorable. Your entire family or friends who are going to accompany you would be excited about the while trip and anticipate the merriment at the beach. You might even notice that the time fly off like; hours look like minutes and minutes look like seconds.

In contrast, imagine you and your friends leave on a road trip without planning as to where to go. Like your worst nightmare coming true, you may end up nowhere and you lost your way and stuck in a place where there is nothing you can do. Your friends start cursing you to bringing to this dreadful excursion. You feel helpless and ashamed!

Everyone needs planning and should have a definitive goals in their life as to what they intend to achieve in short term and long term. Imagine where you want to be in five years from now and start dissecting your five-year plan into chunks of one-year short term plans.  Having shorter plans helps you in monitoring your progress and take necessary and appropriate corrective measures along the way.

As an Entrepreneur, you must focus on setting your goals and doing everything in your capacity to reach those goals. Moreover, you must also abstain from doing anything that can halt or reverse your progress. Entrepreneurs must develop habits to continually monitor their progress almost daily basis and continue to do what is working and discard what is not working.

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Safeguarding Your Car From Thieves

The cases of stolen cars have been increasing at alarming rate. Due to tight economic situation, people are losing their lively-hood by losing jobs, and going bankrupt in business. Therefore, crime rate is going up and is not expected till the economy turn around and provide means to earn a living. It is important that vehicle owners safe guard their assets aggressively.

A recent event during a night happened to me that should have deprived me of my brand new Toyota Innova. It seems the car thieves have been keeping tab on our movements for quite some time. Indeed, the modus operandi of thieves is the target a certain car and keeps a watch on it for some days or weeks before they get into their act. The obvious fact is that they had opened the front gate lock without much effort. In other words, they had even observed what kind of lock I had used to lock the front gate. In fact, we do not have the garage and park our car in front of our house and off course, within the compound. Many people park their cars out side their homes due to non availability of garage.

Apparently, car thieves had stuck at our house around 2 AM! Many people are fast asleep and people rarely are on the street. We live in a residential area and the people movement becomes sparse after 12AM till 3AM. Mostly people return home late till 1AM and other early birds start preparing by waking up at 4AM. The time in between is very ripe for thieves to get and run off with their booty. Two people had broke into our compound by opening the gate lock and one of them could successfully disabled the car alarm by cutting wires by reaching from below the car. It seems the people involved here are expert mechanic(s) and they knew what they were doing. Luckily, our car had another horn hidden beyond for anyone to access without opening the bonnet. When thieves thought they had quietly disabled the horn, and they tried to open the car lock, apparently, by using a duplicate key, the second hidden horn beeped twice loudly as if the car lock was to open. This unexpected event startled thieves and forced them to take to their heels. Our car was saved to live another day.

When our thieves were thick in their action, the early bird rag picker got suspicious of the persons who were in our compound and saw a car parked near our house in the shadows and another person was inside. It was obvious that the person inside the car was ready to whisk away his partners in crime if anybody spotted them. In fact, we had a security guard patrol our street and couple of streets in our area. Unfortunately, the security guard failed to notice the thieves and got to know only when the rag picker told him about the people in my compound/fence. By the time security guard reached our home, thieves had got wind of their grave situation and fled the scene. The wide open gate welcomed the security guard when he arrived at the "crime scene!" The hapless security guard was speechless; thieves could have gotten away with the car right under the nose of the security guard had the alarm not went off.

Indeed, when the car horn beeped twice around 2AM, my wife woke me up from my slumber and asked me to check out our car. I casually peeked out from the front window and saw none. I returned and told my wife about no one being seen outside and we thought the car alarm might have been set off by a cat. We did not know about the incident till the security guard woke us up at 3.30AM and reported. We were shocked. Our casual approach to our car's security would have cost us the car.

I cannot imagine and no way accept that someone stealing my car. I have an emotional attachment with my car. If someone steals my car, it is like I have lost something very important in my life. My car has very important place and role in my day-to-day life.

Many of known people have lost their cars and motor bikes, they were all shocked and traumatized and scar has never left them ever since they lost their vehicles. From what I have heard from people, more often than not, the car once stolen is mostly never found. There are set of groups who are specialized in dismantling the stolen cars and distribute the parts in the second’s market, or transport the stolen car to far off place and change the number plate to sell it at very handsome profits. The stealing a car is very much an organized crime and any car or bike owner can succumb to it.

It can happen to anyone, anytime. It is in our interest to secure our lives during these tough times. If you own a car or bike, remember, a little precaution can save you lot of headache.

What we did to save our vehicle from thieves:

Once we realized we were lucky due to unsuccessful attempt to steal our car, we took the incident seriously.

First and foremost was to ensure safety of our car, second, to tighten the security around our home, and lastly, improve the security around our locality as preventative measure.

How to improve the security of the car:

1) Make sure that the car alarm is always active and get it repaired moment you see it not functioning. Every night before you retire, check the car is locked and security alarm is active. For older models, thieves have found a way to get around the alarm system, make sure that the alarm system is placed beyond the reach from below your vehicle. Talk to your mechanic to see the alarm is tamper proof.

2) Use the steering lock and position the longest part to face to the wind shield. This will delay the thieves for few precious minutes and discourage them from breaking the lock. This will create a physical warning and discourage the scheming thief from even attempting. This is good measure that works well even you park the car in the public places either in day or night.

How to create security around the car during dark or in the night time

1) Do not Position the car near to the fence or compound to block the view of the gate, so that you have a clear view of the gate in the night.

2) Use hardened chain locks to lock the gate

3) Car parking area should be well lit during nights. Cars parked in dark are prime and easy target.

How to improve security in the locality

1) Talk to the local representative or the leader and bring the security issues to her/him

2) Make the municipal office to fix and improve the lighting systems in the street. Dark streets invite thieves!

3) If possible, get the municipal office setup barricade during night in the main entrance and exits of your locality that can be manned in the night

4) Talk to your neighbors and make them aware of the risks and encourage them to do what you have done to safe guard your vehicle (as in point 1 and 2)

Other personal measures to prepare for the unexpected situation:

Do not take the car thieves lightly. They are prepared for the worst and they are increasingly becoming violent. They may even carry firearms!  So be careful when you notice someone or some people are trying to steal your car. Do not open the front door and immediately rise alarm by shouting loudly to alert your neighbors and foil thieves’ attempt. Call the local security guard on his cell phone. So do not forget to carry the emergency number(s) with you in case you need it most.

If anyone save our loved and well looked after cars from being stolen, it is only we the car owners. Nobody else can replace you in saving your car. Even police force has its own limits. So better be prepared when thieves strike you when you least expect them!

For more articles visit My Experiment With Life

Persistence

Budding Entrepreneurs almost always face many obstacles: lack of experience, lack of funding, lack of unconditional support from family and friends. Nevertheless, experienced Entrepreneurs are mentally attuned to those obstacles and find ways to overcome them. Indeed, over period one can overcome obstacles and one may even enjoy obstacles. However, this is not necessarily the case with budding or new entrepreneurs.

Young entrepreneurs especially that normally start their business from scratch would be facing most challenging situations. Unless one has a family support, or already have a family running business, upcoming entrepreneurs would have to navigate through toughest terrains of business mostly alone.

Entrepreneurs should develop mental skills to overcome any situations and able to think clearly. Especially, when under stress one should be able to take appropriate decisions keeping both short term and long term needs of the business.  Being persistent is an essential attribute of a businessman. Without this attitude, one can hardly survive in the tough world.

I have come across many situations in my life when I started new businesses and struggled with it. One thing is common for all business startups. It is always hard to take a business from startup to self sustainable venture. By the time a business become break even let alone profitable, if at all, the business owner could have tried to abort his mission and shut down the business. Frustrations and obstacles are common thing in a new business. Most bow down to the pressure of a new venture.

This is where seasoned professionals standout as successful business builders. A seasoned professional is hardened to the grind of managing a budding business. An upcoming business is essentially resource hungry and it demands lot of attention from its owner in terms of capital, personnel, personal time, marketing, materials, management structure and system to name a few. To be successful one should develop right mental attitude of persistence and perseverance. By persistence means going forward even in the face of failures and opposition, or criticisms from others.  It is easier said than done. Nevertheless, one can develop those qualities and become successful in building a successful business venture.

How should one even begin a journey to develop these characters?  Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet that can instantly change you into tough, confident business man woman. Rather, one must begin a journey of self exploration and by creating self awareness that creates a strong character base upon which a new belief system can be build by replacing obsolete, dysfunctional belief system. Remember, unless you change yourself internally no measure of external changes would make you what you wanted.

I recommend that Outrageous Mastery can help you to begin your inner exploration and developing strong self awareness.

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Negativities of Mind – Spoiled Garden

Many learned masters say our mind is like monkey. I prefer to call our mind is filled with little nasty gremlins! Jumping from on thought to another, our mind never ceases to circle in infinite loop! Such a mind obviously takes control of our daily existence and overpowers every effort to stop the never ending loop. Metaphorically, if a software program inadvertently enters into infinite loop, soon the memory becomes full and program crashes and in older operating systems the computer was said to freeze or crash.

Surely, our mind is occupied with trivial and unnecessary chatter with barrage of information flowing from our senses and, indeed, from our memories. Our mind is a very fertile ground. Without conscious efforts, our fertile mind is only growing weeds that are of no value whatsoever. For example, if a farmer is growing paddy in his farm, then he would naturally remove any weeds that crop up in his paddy field. He knows by experience that if weeds are left to grow along with paddy, soon after weeds destroy his paddy crop, therefore, financially destroying the farmer. Similarly, if we leave the mind to its own function, we only expect weeds to grow and inherently bring us nothing but poverty! Indeed, it is hard to believe though, you will have a better understanding if you read the timeless book 'Think and Grow Rich' written by Napoleon Hill. So, we must remove uncontrolled, trivial thoughts from our mind and fill it with productive thoughts. It means one should indulge in conscious thinking and become continuously aware of one's own thoughts.

By becoming aware of our own thoughts, we can analyze and understand what is going on in our mind and thereby effectively eliminate destructive mental chatter. We should let good, creative thoughts to develop in our mind by being self aware. For many who have not developed awareness of their thinking, their mind is like a black box. They are completely ignorant of their thoughts and they unconsciously let the weed to grow in their minds. For someone who is trying to break the cycle of poverty, it is like an untouchable fire. To break from poverty, one must develop conscious, and apparently, controlled thoughts and consistently free his mind of weeds. Developing self awareness is critical to achieve one's goals in life. Unfortunately, many people fail to understand the simple, yet powerful fact of life. Many people are blind to the fact that they should look inward for their failures in achieving worldly success instead of finding external reasons for their failures. Answer lies within them not without. One must conquer the world within before going onto to conquer the world outside!

Developing self awareness is a continuous journey. One must undertake it in any point in life and discover the true potential or power within. Without self realization we are not reaching anywhere in our lives.

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Life Driven By Ego

I can say without hesitation that my life so far was driven by my ego. Thus far, I was always under the impression that I can control what I can become and how my life runs or what I wanted in my life. I wanted to become an executive in a large multinational company, have big bank balance, own a house, buy a luxurious car etc. Nevertheless, I am only reflecting what most people want in their lives since we are driven by almost similar needs.

To achieve my dreams of making big in the corporate ladder, I built up a impressive resume by working in different corporations to acquire good experience, attended seminars, earned professional certificates to name a few. I spent most of my career in trying to beef up my resume with good credentials. I was under the impression that nothing would go wrong in my career or life in general. I was totally unprepared for changes that have unsettled my life completely and put the life in totally a different path. It only meant whatever I did for the last 20 years to build up my career, did not really put me where I wanted to go. On the contrary, I am shown an entirely new path that possibly is the right path and, perhaps, I could do better. Nevertheless, my ego was deeply hurt as the circumstances did not satisfy its needs.

I realized that I cannot control my destiny and I am only an actor on stage. It took some time for me to understand a meaning behind life and I also come to understand that most of our desires were ego driven. It was indeed the cause for my fears, stress, and worries. I was not able to feel happy and always chasing my desires without seeing an end to it. One day it dawned to me that I can be free from stress, worries, and disappointments, if and when I decide to go with the natural flow of life, instead of chasing my ego driven desires. There is a universal force that takes care of our physical and psychological needs. Having faith in the power would not only bring happiness but also contentment. One must learn to unlearn and ready to accept new and unexpected. Be spontaneous, accept the life as a gift, and live in present moment, and finally enjoy every moment of your life.

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Life is a gift – Celebrate and Live.

Life is a gift

What GOD has giveth

We squander it squarely

Because we understand it barely

When we understand it finally

We know we lived in illusion

Live it fully and celebrate daily

For everything GOD has given us

In Abundance

Somehow I was inspired or rather told to write the above poem about life being a gift to us. How surprisingly everyone is missing it. Incidentally, when I was taking a morning walk, I was full of thoughts, albeit, I was trying to enjoy the present moment by being aware of my surroundings. Masters call it living in 'Gaps.' In one of such gaps, a thought appeared in my mind that told me that life is a gift and I should celebrate it for what the universe has given me and an assurance that I was cared by it.

One of the learned masters said, my thoughts are my guests and silence or gaps between such thoughts are representing me. In those gaps, we can listen to life changing messages that are delivered to us in our silence. Moreover, when we can voluntarily put a thought in such silence; our thoughts are manifested in the physical realm!

I was surprised for the message and I realized at that moment that the universe is telling me to relax, live in the present moment, and trust in universe’s way of providing us everything in abundance. Indeed, most of us neither have courage nor patience to relax in our ultra competitive world for the fear being left out or considered a loser or a failure. This is real. We all feel this way. Practically, no one can escape this mindset that easily. Perhaps, this is what we are all told about the way the world operates. It seems there is no obvious escape for our never-ending race of life.

Just like I mentioned in my poem, so is our life is an illusion and if we can look beyond the curtain of 'Maya' or illusion of life, we can finally understand the beauty of life! When we realize this, we can learn to relax and go with the natural flow of universe to attain everlasting peace within, and happiness.

So free up your mind, relax and get ready to receive divine messages to come into your life. If you practice this you will never feel lonely, depressed, and unhappy.

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Power of Mind

Mind is a very powerful creator. It silently manifest whatever is fed and kept focused in your mind. Most of us most of the times keep worrying thoughts in  our mind. So what would you expect? All those things that we wanted to avoid starts happening to our horror. I did not realize the massive impact my thoughts had in influencing in my day to day lives. It is like we are creating our own problems and we are using our own mind to create troubles. I could hardly imagine I was directing the fateful events in my life that I hated to live. I was self-destructing!

Interestingly, all thoughts are treated equally by our mind. Both good/Positive and bad/Negative thoughts are treated equal and are not differentiated. All the thoughts that are fed freely into our conscious mind are piped freely into subconscious mind. Once any thought that enters into our subconscious mind will be taken up for execution. In other words, whatever thoughts that can get into our subconscious mind it takes shape in real, material world. So be careful what you allow yourself to think.

Be aware of your thoughts and allow only positive thoughts. Develop mental strength to allow what makes you happy and simply disallow any kind of worries and thoughts. Like there is a popular saying 'What you don’t mind, does not matter.' If you are not thinking of something it does not materialize on the physical realm of life.

Mind is an extremely powerful machine, it has the capability to build beautiful things or bring destructions. We are the masters and creators of our destiny. If we allow our mind to wander freely without reigning, we blame our life on unknown punishing force called fate. Fate is nothing but our own unconscious creation. Everyone can create a life one wants by just practicing good and constructive thoughts. Just practice this, and simply see how miracles start happening in your life.

One book that immensely changed my perceptions is (OM) Outrageous Mastery by Sasha Xarrian

Defining Happiness

Happiness, I am told, is the state of mind. Then how to define it? Indeed, definitions vary from person to person as each hold different ideas about being happy. If we ask someone to define what happiness means to him or her invokes widely varying answers from each. Therefore, in my understanding, there is no common or generic definition for happiness.

I could wildly guess what happiness means to an adult. It is about satisfying ones immediate or long held desires. For example, I feel happy to meet an old friend, or get salary or income hike, or when I go trip with family and friends. However happy we feel for a moment, the happiness is short lived! The reason is simple. If we observe, we mostly attribute our happiness to external factors such as events or objects of desire or pleasure. Thus our 'superficial' happiness takes efforts to reproduce and effect of such happiness diminishes over a period. Interestingly, if we keep doing what makes us happy, over a period we get tired of such happiness and we try to seek other ways to being happy. Notwithstanding, we are constantly in search of happiness externally.

In addition, we may also conclude that we cannot create happiness when we want or desire it. The reason being it is hard to create situations that are mostly beyond our control to make us happy. For instance, we cannot get ourselves a salary hike, or arrange an unexpected meeting with an old friend, to name a few. Therefore, our happiness is controlled by external factors, thus, is unpredictable.

Finding eternal, un-ending happiness needs different mindset than what we have learned since our birth. Old habits die hard and hard to change and not easy, so is creating perpetual happiness. Nevertheless, there are many ways to achieve the bliss.

To feel happy, we must understand the source of our worries, sorrows, or dissatisfactions in our day to day life. We, perhaps, safely consider the negativities in our thinking are some of the enemies of our much sought after, though rarely met, perpetual happiness or bliss. Further, we must find what is really bothering us and find ways to change our thinking. For me, true happiness is not found anywhere externally. Indeed, it is found within each one of us.

Recommend Outrageous Mastery that teaches you how to discover your inner power

Dust Allergy and role of Air Conditioners

The air conditioner, A/C does a wonderful job to provide relief in soaring heat of the day. Nowadays most households use it and many households have more than one A/C. Especially with young kids at home, we use the A/C to put them to sleep. We bought the split A/C when our first kid was born; had excellent cooling effect and did not have problems for couple of months.

We live in a quite neighborhood away from hustle and bustle of vehicle traffic. Nevertheless, we are just 5 driving minutes away from the city main road where the vehicular traffic never comes to end. Naturally, we thought, since we live away from main road, the amount of dust in home is almost non-existent. How far the dust can travel from the main road or even from far off location? It seems very unlikely! However, we were proven wrong! Read on to know how we found out.

Especially living in the city, the dust is a chronic problem. The microscopic dust can create allergies in young kids, and seriously we did not want our kids to get allergic to dust due to constant exposure. Long term exposure to allergens may lead to Asthma! That is when we decided to install A/C in our bedroom since young kids i.e. below 3 years, spend most of their time sleeping and playing. Moreover, cooling systems can also control humidity in a room that can limit growth of microscopic germs that thrive in certain humidity levels. So the cooling system takes care of two things. First, prevent dust from outside and, second, limit the growth of other microscopic organisms in the room.

Day by day, the cooling effect of the A/C was reducing and our kids were finding it difficult to sleep as they have used to certain temperature (24C) while sleeping. We do not use A/C in our living room and our kids are comfortable in room temperature when they are awake. I live in Indonesia and day temperature can soar up to 30C i.e. 90F. We called in an A/C service guy and asked him to check why our A/C unit is not cooling as it should be. We use split A/C i.e. there are two separate units: one unit is fixed inside the bedroom and other is outside the room.

The service man opened the filter case of the indoor unit and he showed us the amount of dust, heavy black color, in the filter. We were taken aback! The dust was undermining the performance of our A/C. The A/C was stressed to pump cooled air through blocked filter and consuming more power! On one hand, we were not getting our room cooled at the desired temperature. On the other hand, the A/C is consuming more power.

We found out there are two reasons for A/C to work below optimum levels,

1. Dust is blocking the air circulation system

2. Freon, the coolant, for the A/C is not enough

I am no expert on A/C system, however, the reasoning made by our service guy made sense to me.

We were curious to see how the A/C was cleaned. Basically, the A/C units are cleaned using pressurized spray of water through a micro nozzle. When he started to clean both units, we are astounded to see the amount of dust carried away by the water. The cleaning water turned almost black!

After the cleaning the A/C system, it was less noisy and cooler!

The fact is that, we should get our A/C cleaned at least once in three months to keep them at the optimum levels of operation. Further, do not assume that if something is not visible means it does not exists. This is very much true for dust. Dust particles are so small they fly through the air even for kilometers before settling. The amount of dust you can find in your home is astounding. Unless completely enclosed home, your living place is the safe heaven for dust to settle. Moreover, dust can sneak in from tiny openings even through gaps of closed doors and windows. Notice that dust is one of the main reasons for allergy in children.

In summary, keep your living space free of dust by using dust filters wherever possible in your home. The dust causes nasty problems that we are least aware of. Remember that prevention is better than cure. So act today and see how to make your den safe place to live for you and your family.

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