Wednesday, March 31, 2010

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.

Friday, March 12, 2010

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.

Help yourself now. Check Outrageous Mastery program that can change your life for better.

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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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Thursday, March 11, 2010

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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Wednesday, March 10, 2010

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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Monday, March 8, 2010

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.