Free Tips To Increase Self Confidence

1. DRUNK!

At the age of sixteen I was invited out for the evening on a Saturday night to celebrate a friend's birthday. This for most people would be something to look forward to, for me it was something to dread. Socialising and ordering drinks for somebody who has a stutter is bad enough, but I regularly seemed to bare the brunt of the evening's jokes about me height, weight and occasionally my bald patch. Even though my friend's were not doing this to be cruel, I was very paranoid about myself at that age and this banter would hurt.

I had often been out for evenings where I drank alcohol, however up to this point had never been drunk. On this particular night the drink flowed and before long I found myself a little worse for ware. The results of which would later change my life.

I found myself talking to lots of different people, some of which I did not know, even girls! My whole character and personality started to change, I was telling jokes and when someone made a comment about my weight for example, I laughed and even came back with a derogatory comment about him, joining in the banter and seemingly enjoying it.

My attitude changed, for example instead of thinking that a certain girl might not want me because of my weight, stutter or height, I thought to myself, she will want me, I'm a good person and could make her laugh. My whole outlook was far more positive and my confidence was buzzing. It was a superb and very enjoyable night.

The next morning I awoke not feeling the best with a bad hangover. One of the highlights of the previous night was that I had been given a phone number from one of the girls I had met. I told her that I would phone her to arrange a date, however I was now sober, back to my normal self and no did not have the confidence to ring. This girl thinks I am fluent, how would she react if I stutter, I wondered.

I went to bed most disappointed with myself but started to analyse the differences between when I had been drunk to when I was sober. The conclusion was obvious, when drunk I can talk, I don't care about my weight, lack of height etc. When sober I have a lack of confidence and am paranoid about certain aspects about my person. I knew that I could not be drunk 24/7 and that what I needed to do was to become a harder person, less paranoid etc. I had to be mentally drunk all of the time without being physically drunk. I knew this would be hard to achieve but in the future possibly when I was older would be a must.

This attitude is hard to achieve, however using some of the following methods became a reality for me a number of years later.

2. YOU HAVE TO START TO LIKE YOURSELF!

At the age of twenty-two I decided to as already stated deal with and try to overcome some of the issues in my life. I started to read various books, like mind over matter and positive thinking type books.

In one such book it had a line which read:

"You need to start to like yourself"

I put the book down and starting to think and realised that I didn't actually like myself. I hated being overweight, shorter than average, having a bald patch and especially having a speech impediment.

I carried on reading and it went on to say:

"There are various things about one's self which even though we don't like we are unable to change, therefore we have to accept them. Other aspects we can change therefore we have to work extremely hard with determination to eradicate them.

Once again I put the book down and thought about this. Firstly my height, am I ever going to grow any taller? The answer is no, there is nothing I can do to increase my height at the age of twenty-two therefore I have to accept it. From reading more of the book later I realised that I was being over-sensitive about this and some of my other issues. There are a lot of people out there a lot worse off than I am. Does my current height hurt me in anyway or affect my life in any major negative way, again the answer is no.

Secondly, the bald area on my head. As with the above hair is not going to start growing in that area of my scalp, I have had the bald patch since birth and therefore have to accept the fact and even try to like it.

Then there is my weight. This is something that I could change, therefore I have to work hard to lose the weight. I have to accept certain sacrifices; such as to eat less fatty foods and be disciplined to reach my target weight, however long it might take.

Finally there is my speech impediment. I had had a stutter since the age of four and for me this was the most important of all of my issues. I was not sure if I would be able to achieve fluency, however in my mind believed I could. If I can talk when I am drunk I should be able to talk when I am fluent. I was not going to accept having a stutter for the rest of my life until I had worked hard to eradicate it. Work hard I did and eventually I overcome this major issue in my life.

I advise people that the above were my own personal issues and that each individual has to identify there own. It is then a case of accepting the issues which can not be changed and working hard to overcome the ones that can.

3. ATTITUDE

I was somebody who wanted to be like by everybody. If anybody criticised me or called me names, I would easily be offended and my confidence would drop. As an example from the age of about seventeen I would go out with my friends most Friday and Saturday nights to public houses and sometimes to a night club. I remember one Saturday morning, aged about eighteen, waking up feeling quite ill, very hung over. I had consumed far too much alcohol on the previous evening. I looked in my wallet and had also spent far too much money. I decided that I would stay in on the Saturday night, just for a change. During the afternoon I had a phone call from a friend called Phil. He asked me where we going that night. After telling him that I was not going out, he called me boring on numerous occasions, offering to lend me money, saying that I had changed etc. I didn't want him to think of me in this way however stuck to my guns, eventually he put the phone down on me in a mood. Within a few minutes another friend phoned asking why I was not going out, also calling me various names including boring. I ended up going out.

At this age I did not have enough respect for myself, I was too concerned what people thought of me and was easily persuaded into doing things and going places that I in didn't want to.

After reading some of the books as mentioned above I realised this and asked myself a question:

"Am I boring"

I have lots of interests, theatre, cinema, eating out, chess, football, snooker, golf, horse racing, tennis, music to name a few. By this age I was becoming bored of going out drinking alcohol. I decided to be strong and stated to my friends that I was now only going out drinking once a month. Originally, every Friday and Saturday night people would phone asking me if I was going out, if I declined I was criticised, your so boring for example. My new found attitude, though hard at first to adopt and follow through meant that I didn't really care and I certainly didn't bow to pressure.

One particular friend, Phil, was particularly verbally aggressive and demanding, calling me different names. He was seemingly in shock that someone was standing up to him. On one afternoon I fought back and said to him:

"Whatever you say, whatever you call me, I am not going out tonight, however I will go out with you on Tuesday night if you want to"

He agreed to this so I asked him if he wanted a game of snooker, or golf, or a trip to the cinema or theatre. He thought all of these options were "boring". I mentioned other interests of mine such as chess, again all of the options I mentioned he didn't find interesting. I said to him:

"OK, where would you like to go?" "What about the pub for a few beers?"

I laughed at Phil and said:

"I'm sorry mate you're the one who is boring not me".

I then put the phone down on him for a change.

My attitude was beginning to change for the better. I was becoming harder and stronger mentally. A few years later I met my present fiancee and I soon realised I was a long way off the level I wanted to be. Her name is Sharron and a couple of weeks after we had met she invited me to a night out with some of her friends who she said wanted to meet me. I knew I had to go even though in reality it was the last thing I wanted to do. I was worried what her friends might think of me etc. I did attend and managed to cope, however I was very quiet, felt uncomfortable throughout the evening and felt very nervous. I was glad to get back to the safety of my own home! A couple of weeks later I was invited to meet her parents and immediately I had the same feelings as above and the night passed in a similar way with me having a distinct lack of confidence etc.

About a month later Sharron agreed to accompany me to a wedding in Birmingham where I was born. On this day she would meet most of my friends and family for the first time. As we were driving on the motorway I thought she must be a bit nervous. I asked her if she was OK and if she was slightly nervous. She replied:

"What have I got to be nervous about?"

"Well your meeting my family and friends later. Are you not concerned what they will think of you?"

"Steve, I don't care what they think of me. It's what you think that counts and I know you like me!"

This was not a front she was putting on. Suddenly I realised how far I was away from the attitude to life and attitude to people I wanted to have. Sharron has helped me to reach that level. Being around positive people at this stage was very beneficial to me.

Personal Development Power Tips

Personal Development, at its basis, is anything that allows us to grow into an ordered life that is of our choosing. This is one of the most cherished of goals among self improvement practitioners. There are some excellent methods available for achieving it. However, it is easier said than done. Here are a few hints and tips to get you started.

Clean the clutter from your life. There is an excellent saying in the personal development field,  "a tidy desk is a tidy mind". Often times your outer environment is a reflection of the way you think and feel. Is your living or working space always cluttered?  It's important that you start to order your environment to reflect the ordered life you are building. Clear away unnecessary clutter from your surroundings. This may sound like a meaningless task but you are sending a very clear message to your subconscious mind that you intend to get organised. 

When you begin to organise your living and working environment it allows you to develop the basic skills needed for organising your life. This can be achieved through goals. You should structure your goals in such a way that each one builds on the other and ensure that they are not in opposition to one and other.

Don't be too set on achieving your goals in exactly the manner you intend to. A major factor in the non-attainment of goals is the inability to restructure plans and change direction when circumstances dictate these should be done. Remain flexible. 

You learn from your mistakes and from hardship! This may be something that you do not want to hear because the very point of self improvement and personal development is to eliminate the suffering we feel in our lives and make to create a life we want to live. However,  challenges and failures have a tendency of bringing out the best in us as we rise to the challenge and learn from our mistakes. You can't truly know success unless you have failed! Learn from the failure and move on.

Don't focus on the mistakes. Simply analyse them and learn the lesson they are trying to teach you. By staying focused on your failures, problems or toils you are actually creating more of them or at least keeping them in your experience. Focus on the solutions or at least focus on the fact "your still in the game". Consider any mistakes you've made as life lessons. Apply what you have learned from them and use them as references (of what not to do) in the future. 

Always set goals for yourself that are realistic yet will stretch you beyond your current "comfort zone". Each goal should be an aid to progressing to your next. 
 
Make sure you follow through on your plans. Persistence can accomplish things that nothing else can. How many times were you close to the end of the rainbow, and without even knowing how close you were, you quit? You may be someone who has drive at the start of a venture but find your enthusiasm waning as you progress, lacking the motivation that is needed to "keep you keeping on" during times of hardship. Those who persist, especially in times like these, are those who ALWAYS win! 

Never, ever, ever give-up! 

The only true failure occurs when you quit. If you keep trying then obviously you haven't failed because the final verdict isn't in yet. But by quitting there is no more chance of success and you have failed!

Recreation is a must! You should aim to spend time with family and friends as this will offset any stress you are feeling and give you a balanced outlook. Human interaction is natural, healthy and enjoyable. Most goals will come to you through other people. This is a simple fact! No-one achieves anything worthwhile and worthy without some type of help or interaction from and with others. By keeping your social network open, alive and healthy you will open up avenues that you never knew existed.

Bring Love Into Your Life

So many people are complaining about the lack of love in their life. They act as if some stranger decided one day to take away the love out of their lives. They hold on to lovers already gone since eternity, or they dream about a partner coming into their life to give them everything they are not able to give themselves. They balance between hope and desperation. They look for love outside themselves and believe one day a charming prince on a white horse will knock at the door and take them away to live for ever happy in a castle for away from reality.

Other people are trying to survive in a bad relationship that holds their greatness hostage. They live in fear and anger every day but don't know how to get out of this prison.

Do you know such people? Does this sound like you? Do you feel lonely, are you dreaming of the right one who will show up one day and end all the misery you're going through now? 

The bad news is this will not happen.
The good news is YOU can do a lot yourself to feel loved.

Let me explain.
Life is like a building. There are a lot of floors : the ground floor, the cellar, the first floor, second floor and so on. The higher you go in the building, the more light there is, the easier and lighter things are, the more friendly and energetic people are, the higher are the vibrations and most of all : the more love there is.

Picture this building of life in your mental eye. In the cellar you will find people like rapers, thiefs, harassers, killers, people who beat their children or companion and others who made a life out of hurting others. 
On the groundfloor you will find a lot of people. In fact most of humanity lives here. These are the ones who content themselves by vegetating instead of living. They don't think by themselves, they undergo life. They do nothing. They live like robots. They go to their job every day, come home every day, watch the same television program every day with a beer in one hand and a hotdog in the other hand. They do not dream. They are stuck in their lifestyle and think everything will always be the same.

Then you go up. As I said, the higher you get, the easier, the lighter life is. Life IS easy, life IS light. The cellar, groundfloor and lower floors are creations from the human mind. We created these lifestyles by our heavy thoughts, thoughts about scarcity, fear, death, anger, sadness, revenge and so on. Here are the lives of those who choose to think low energy thoughts. Those who live in fear, hate, jealousy, doubts, low self esteem, troubles. Those have bad relationships, where struggle and anger and negativity set the tone. They are not happy. They maintain the illusion everything is someone else's fault and they have either to wait for the other to change, so their life will change, or they have to destroy the other one to have a better life (think of the one who kills the husband of the woman he wants to live with, or those who kill other minded people in order to be free to live like they want). This will never give freedom or love.

So what to do if you want to move up in that building of life and live free and in love?

First you have to make a decision. Yes, you have to decide WHERE you want to be. On which floor do you want to live your life now?

Is it the cellar? No, I don't think so. Is is the groundfloor? I don't think it either. Let's say you want to be at the 17th floor. But you feel you are at this moment in your life at the 3rd floor only. You hate your job, you have a lousy relationship with your partner, you're in bad shape and your energy is low. 
So you decided you wanted a life in the vibration of the 17th floor, where there is love, real friendship, positive expectations, inner strength, power, a job you like, health and wealth.

What to do? You decided where you want to be. What you will do now? Should you wait until someone will knock on your door to take you there? No way! Will never happen! Even if you would meet someone with an energy level of 17, he will never carry you from the 3rd to the 17th floor, because he will be exhausted. It needs to be YOUR decision and YOUR action!!

So YOU have to move yourself up. How? Read! Read more! Read how you can create your life by changing your thoughts and your behavior! Go to workshops where you can learn how to unleash you inner power. Use the wonderful information bank which is called Internet and which offers you a bunch of positive information and e-courses (often for free). Surround you with loving people. Learn how to love yourself.

So first you decide where you want to be. Than you do whatever you can to get there, on your own. You may ask help of course, you may find yourself a coach (which is really a good decision!) but don't look for somebody to carry you. You will fall down immediately the moment he puts you down. If you didn't get there by yourself, it won't last, it is not worth anything because you moved yourself up with somebody else's energy and you are depending on his energy.

Once you get at the floor of your choice, let's say 17, you will meet automatically people who vibrate at this level of energy. Energy-17 people. Loving, caring, wonderful people. People who feel good about themselves and who don't need others to steal their energy. They learned how to generate energy by themselves. They are not slaves. They are not dominators. They love and respect others.

Do you want to meet someone like that? Do you want to share your life with somebody who has a 17-energy (or more)? Go there! Go at their level and you will meet them, that's a guarantee!

Move yourself up.

If you live in a bad relationship right now, and you do whatever you can to get yourself moving higher, you will see what will happen. Your partner, who is still vibrating on energy 3 or 2 or on cellar-level won't be able to follow you and you will take separate roads.

Don't make the mistake of trying to pull someone up who wants to stay at his low level. You will never succeed. Especially women should be aware of this : don't spoil your energy at trying to get others moving up with you. It's a waste of time. Everybody should decide for himself. Don't carry others on your back, you will crack down! Decide for yourself, go for it, and see what happens. The higher you get in energy-levels, the better it will be. There you will agree with me : life is wonderful!

How To Increase Self Confidence

Are you looking into ways to help you to gain more confidence? Have you a lack of self-belief? Do you think that you are a weak person? Would you like to be more care-free person? If you have answered yes to any of these questions, this article may well be worth a read. I am going to write about how people can go about increasing their self-confidence. This advice is what I have used to help myself turn from an often depressive person to a now happy and relaxed young man.

My name is Steve Hill and I have to admit that for the first twenty-two years of my life, I did not exactly live life to the full or in the correct manner. I was basically like a scared rabbit, I worried about almost all aspects of life and was a very negative person. I needed to change this approach as I was not exactly a happy chap. Ten years ago I went about making this change by reading literature about self-confidence and by trying to learn how other people coped with their problems compared to me.

One of my many weaknesses was that I was very paranoid about what other people thought of me. I was desperate for people to like me and would easily get upset if people criticised me or made fun of me etc. In a way, I tried to hard to earn this type of respect and would do things and attend functions which I did not really want to, just to please other people of course.

I have now realised and accepted that it is important for me to be truthful to myself. I should be doing what I want to do and if people do not like me for whatever reason, then that is fine, I have enough people who do.

I have also decided to stop worrying about things like the future, money, relationships and work. Stressing about these and other things does not make life an easier, in fact it makes it a lot harder. There is no time in life for this type of fear, I should be spending this time trying to improve and enjoying my life. If something goes wrong which of course it will from time to time, I will deal with it when it happens, in a very positive and dynamic way.

As an example of my new found inner confidence was something that happened during a recent evening out I had with some friends of mine. We were all drinking quite a lot of beer and it was clear that most of my friends were intent on becoming very drunk. I like a drink but not half as much as what other people seem to. At around nine o'clock I had basically had enough of drinking alcohol and started to drink diet coke. My friends gave me some funny looks and made some comments, they were suggesting that I was not a true male. I did not care what they thought of me and told them so. If I want to drink diet coke then I will.

I am happy with my latest approach to life and am determined not to go back to the way I used to think and live. I do stress at times but quickly attempt to snap out of it by thinking in a more positive way.

Keep Thinking Positive For A Happy Life

I have met many people in my life who are very negative. They moan about seemingly everything and walk around with the weight of the world on their shoulders. I was also like that until the age of twenty-two, at this age I decided to have a new approach to life.

For those first twenty-two years, I was forever feeling sorry for myself. My friends all appeared to have so much more than me, and my life was one long hard struggle, compared to theirs. I was caught up in a web of negativity and needed someone or something to help me to escape.

During an afternoon at work one day, aged as I say twenty-two, a colleague I was working with started to talk to me. What he said was a shock to me, however would have a profound effect on my future. He said to me:

"Your are somebody who always thinks in a negative way, you a right depressive person, aren't you?"

"Am I?"

I said in a shocked voice as I believed I was no different to anybody else. He continued:

"Yes you are. You very rarely smile, you are negative about most issues and you always seem to be carrying the world on your shoulders".

This man was aged around fifty three and continued:

"I used to be like you and then I was given some advice, of which I am now going to relay to you. When you feel down, depressed or sorry for yourself, read the newspapers or watch the news on the television. You may then realise that you are in fact one of the lucky ones."

I had a long think about what he had said. I had never been a big reader or watcher of the news, but decided to give it a go. The advice he gave me was totally correct, the news from around the world and even my own country was quite shocking. I realised that the worries I had were actually quite trivial and that I needed to cherish everyday and start to look on the bright side of life.

Stephen Hill

Achieve Your Most Elusive Goals

Everyone has something in their life that they would like to change. Some really big goals include overcoming addiction, achieving and sustaining weight loss, attaining inner peace, manifesting health, or becoming more successful. We are born to continuously expand our abilities. The beginning of most goals are exciting. Visions of triumph flourish in the minds of those starting a path of change. Each new day brings energy to chase down the most elusive of goals. But what if you've been working on manifesting the same dream for years? And one day, despite your optimism, despite the effort of applying the tools of empowerment, you realize that you have not acquired the goal which you set for yourself.

Encountering a obstacle, even a seemingly insurmountable obstacle, doesn't mean you are on the wrong path. We all experience despair and doubt. Times where we question the worth of what we do. Moments of temptation to give up. I have them, as does each person I work with. I would wager that everyone striving to become more than they were before, reaches a critical time of choice. Feeling sorry for yourself is not a wrong action. What we often fail to see is the value in this pit of despair. This experience of despair is precisely what is necessary for the breakthrough to occur.

BELIEF SYSTEMS AND INTERNAL TAPES

The dark experiences of despair are not logical, nor solved intellectually. These moments of darkness mean we have brought ourselves back to the core of what we believe about ourselves. Deep painful beliefs that we would rather keep hidden from ourselves and from others. The pain of not yet achieving our goals forces us to look at what we believe to be true about ourselves. Limiting beliefs are varied, but can include the following:

"Something is wrong with me."

"I never get what I want."

"I cant' get what I want, no matter what I do. It's hopeless."

"Who I am is not enough."

"I don't belong."

When we are undergoing change, the realization we must make is that is it not what faces us that is the problem, but how we are reacting to it. How we react to the situation is based on our inner beliefs about ourselves. The despair is felt because you have increased inner conflict. Conflict of what you want to believe versus what you actually believe. This conflict must either be suppressed (by giving up the goal) or the conflict must be resolved (goal is attained or a new belief system becomes integrated.).

It is at this very pressure point, giving up or moving forward, that allows the choice to step into a new belief about yourself or to reinforce an old belief. Just because things seem insurmountable right now, doesn't mean you shouldn't be following this path. It only means you are face to face with what you believe. And an inner belief system being threatened can result in a variety of symptoms, the most common being negative thoughts, suicidal thoughts, hopelessness, low energy, panic or anxiety, or worrying about small details.

DARK PITS

With great change comes the risk of facing the darkness of what we believe about ourselves. Sometimes it's fairly easy to face the darkness and bring light. But sometimes we fall directly into the pit. If you fall in, take a breath and know this experience has great value. You are only here because you are ready to explore and encounter a horrible idea that you have about yourself. An idea that you can't have what you want, that your best isn't good enough, or that no matter what you do things remain hopeless. Inside the dark hole are ideas you made up about yourself when you were a child as an attempt to explain the experience of growing up. Your spirit is hiding in the darkness, waiting for your return. So if you are in the dark pit of despair you are in a place of blest fortune. You have reached the place in which you have hidden your spirit. Only you can choose to bring you spirit back into the light. As you face the darkness, will you decide to heal your spirit by offering it encouragement? Will you reassure your spirit and bring new information?

Let's say you decide to be with your darkness? Now what? You must sit with it. Sit with the pain of what this darkness represents. Yes, it feels overwhelming. Confusing. Hopeless. In the darkness there are only dark thoughts. Do not fight the darkness with more darkness (anger, frustration, threats, hopelessness . . ). It would only create a larger darkness. ACCEPTANCE alone is the key. The darkness and despair fights with all it's might to keep us believing that we are weak and defective. Not because it is evil, but because we put these beliefs into place to keep our spirits safely hidden in the dark. As an adult, you now hold the key to accept the darkness, to accept all the dark thoughts, and offer it love and light. Listen to your spirit. Let it speak its words of fear. Then offer your spirit comfort and acceptance. After all, your spirit went through some pretty tough times that it deciding hiding was the only safe option.

You have traveled quite a distance, only to come to a dead end. Accept that you do not have what you want. Accept this. Not with anger, not with frustration. Simply breath and accept. It doesn't matter why you are at this point. It is as it is. Now go more deeply into it.

This point of transition can provide opportunity to strengthen your spirit and not let outside circumstances throw you off balance. This is a pivotal occasion to choose empowering thoughts, practice gentleness and reassurance, and reinforce your belief that you can have what you want. Accept the experience as best you can. It will lead to insight. Acceptance of what is, even though it might feel terrifying, is the way out. Acceptance is not apathy. Use acceptance to allow you to go deeper. A journal, a therapist, or a trusted friend may help as you sit with these questions:

1. What am I experiencing right now?

2. What are my thoughts concerning this experience?

3. What am I feeling?

4. What do I believe about myself, my place in the world, as I encounter this dead end?

5. Is this similar to how I felt in certain situations as a child?

5. What does my spirit need to feel safe and trusting?

6. If I was wise and loving, how would I comfort myself?

WHICH PATH TO CHOOSE

Go forward or give up? There are no wrong choices. At this point of transition, do not force yourself. Do not inflict judgement upon yourself. Realize that you have invited yourself to question an essential belief you hold to be true about yourself. Maybe the time is right to sit with this, maybe the time is not yet right. If it is your destiny to allow yourself to have what your goal represents, you will create the opportunity once again. Relax. Recognize how terrifying this moment is and find compassion for yourself. What path should you choose? Carlos Castaneda wrote in, "The Teaching of Don Juan", "Does the path have heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has heart and the other doesn't. One makes you strong; the other weakens you." Perhaps the real transition at this choice point is the courage to open your heart to yourself as you witness yourself experiencing what you fear most.

SITTING WITH WHAT IS

To move through this doubt and despair, sit with what you feel. Speak the words of frustration and anger. Write them down. Often times what we most need is someone else to allow us to fully be in a place of utter hopeless. For them to say, "I see you there, and it's okay." And to know they won't attempt to fix it or make it better.

We need to offer ourselves the same compassion. To look at ourselves in our moments of despair and say, "It's okay that I feel this. It's okay that I am experiencing this." To offer ourselves the love and compassion of not trying to fix ourselves. If confusion is what you feel, fully feel confusion, with love for yourself as you feel it. Open your body and let confusion and expand within you. Experiment (with a therapist if this is too difficult) with not being afraid of your own emotions. Avoid the temptation to retreat into old patterns of starving, overeating, bingeing, or numbing out with other addictions. The fact that you are feeling such confusion is not a sign of failure. This is a sign of growth and courage.

Even though the feelings are difficult, recognize the value of being exactly where you are. Attempt to be with your feeling without judgement. Feel what you feel with acceptance. Accept that you are experiencing despair, hopelessness or frustration. No need to judge it. No need to defend it. No need to analyze it and figure out where this came from. It is acceptable to feel misery. It is acceptable to want to give up. We've all felt that at times. Your task at this critical point is to find a way to open your heart and receive to your own despair. Cry the tears, shout the anger, give witness to the unfairness of it all. Then decide. Even though you are at a dead end, what can you do right now? It might seem so much easier to go back to food, bingeing, alcohol, starving, exercise, or diversions for comfort. But is that what you really want? Refocus your thoughts away from the future and bring yourself back to right now. Bring words of power and encouragement. "I possess the gifts of inner belief, patience, conviction and discipline. I can choose my goals and I have the strength and stamina to reach for them. I am a working and viable part of the world and I have an important job to do. I am not afraid to believe in my inner strength or my power."

GREATER FAITH

As I continue on my journey, I have learned that achieving greater faith is an ongoing journey. and not just a one step process. Each of us have many limiting belief systems within that must be faced, accepted, and released. Faith in anything, including myself, is an infinite and ever expanding experience. There is a passage in Betty Eadie's book, "Awakening the Heart" where she describes faith as an ongoing process. First we have knowledge. Then belief. We practice belief over and over again, and eventually faith begins to develop. Whether you are talking about faith in a god, or faith in yourself, it is not something you wake up with one day. At least that is not my experience. It takes going back to the dark places to re-establish faith. Learning to be kind to our spirit that may be scared, stubborn, and even defiant.

Although it is painful and we may desperately want to run from what we feel, only by sitting with our spirit that is hiding in the darkness and bringing it love that we can re-establish faith. I have often wished at times it weren't so. It is excruciatingly painful to uncover what hurts within us. But we eventually discover truth: it is only our own misconception, our own belief, our own judgement and punishment, that we are not worthy. The reward is deciding, to our amazement, that it really is okay to open our own heart to all aspects of our self.

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It can take days or weeks to contact all these directories and fill out each submission form.

For the time you spend submitting to these directories, you could have spent it writing more articles.

When you don't have the extra hours in a day to contact each directory and submit them by hand, you can use article submitters to automate in part or in full, the article submission process.

The Article Submitter allows you to automatically submit your articles to hundreds of article directories with a few mouse clicks. 

Basically all I You to do is input an article criteria into the software, ONCE! Then, the program would automatically fill in all of the required data at each of the submission websites. 

Pretty Amazing Useful and .…WHAT a TIME SAVER.

You simply click the submit button and your article is instantly submitted to the directory. 

Then, you can move to the next directory, go through the list, and by the time you're finished you'll have a hundred one way links pointing to your website.

...Not Just "Holidays

As time has gone by, the idea of holiday has undergone deep changes depending on the fast development of our modern lifestyles.

Lignano Sabbiadoro bloomed in the Sixties and Seventies as a seaside resort and it was then considered to be among the most exclusive holiday destinations favoured by VIPs. 
Nowadays, however, it would be unthinkable to offer the same kind of holiday people used to look for thirty years ago: all holiday resorts and facilities had to adapt to the requirements of modern tourists, just like the Hotel Bella Venezia Mare did in order to be able to offer holidays which could actually turn out to be real "experiences" thanks to the many available activities and sports.

The a Hotel Bella Venezia Mare was founded in 1968 in the new location of Lignano Pineta. 
This district of the town Lignano Sabbiadoro was developed from an innovative urban planning according to which all the streets were built as being part of a whirl starting from the central "Rosa dei Venti square" and stretching until the outer arches reach the beach. 
As consequence of this peculiar urban plan, every house and every hotel in Lignano is located in the middle of a peaceful Mediterranean pinewood but, at the same time, not far from the town centre and the beach. 
The favourable location of the hotel Bella Venezia Mare has turned out to be the linchpin of all evolutions and updates this structure has undertaken.

Recently refurbished, this hotel has decided to focus on the high quality standard of the services it offers. 
Since now is unbelievably easy to get everywhere around the world, business competition in the tourist sector has exponentially increased and, in order to remain competitive and to be a match for far away exotic paradises, the best solution is to keep very high the quality standard of all services offered to tourists. 
That actually means making use of the experience acquired in the past, when only few people could afford flight tickets and some countries were not accessible at all.

The solid family management of the Hotel Bella Venezia has made it possible to establish the right balance between consistency and evolution: modern services, like WiFi Internet connection and on-line bookings are here available side by side with old traditional Mediterranean cuisine and customer care , which has remained the same.

Today's lifestyle has turned comfort into a basic requirement, therefore a stay has to offer a lot more than this in order to be considered a true holiday: besides the comfort of baby-sitting services, of bicycles and baby buggies rentals the Hotel Bella Venezia has decided to put at its guests' disposal swimming courses for free, useful presents for all those who stay at least one week and it makes it easier for them to practice several sports: tennis courts and golf green lie nearby while courses of scuba diving, kite-surf, wind-surf and sailing are offered at unbeatable conditions to the hotel guests.

The strategy chosen by the Hotel Bella Venezia Mare proofs that professionalism enables firms to offer very high quality services, thanks to which they are competitive on the market, but due to which they are bound to update constantly their services.

7 Surprisingly Quick And Easy Ways To Feel Happier

All of us have days when we're out of sorts. You just wish you were in a better mood.  

You've had days like that, haven't you? Perhaps you tried to get yourself into a better state of mind but struggled to achieve it.

Sometimes we get stuck in our own emotional dumps and forget how easy it is to feel happier, so here are seven simple ways to lift your mood. 

Many people have found them useful. Some of them may surprise you!

1. Go for a walk.

Most people know that going for a short daily walk is one of the best forms of exercise. 

When you are feeling down it is even more beneficial. If you can, go into a natural environment with plants and birds. 

Can you think of such a setting not? 

What do you notice first? The different shades of greenery, the fresh  smell of country air, the sounds of birds, or the sunlight shining through the trees? 

Make it real by taking a short stroll.

2. Listen to quality music.

Music can shift a listener's state within moments. It's effect can be nearly magical. Dig out that CD you haven't listened to in ages or tune in your radio to something you've never listened to before.

3. Open yourself to discovering something new.

Read something (printed, not on line) different than what you would normally watch. There are a ton of different types of magazines can you get these days. Visit your local library or browse through a magazine rack.  Pick up or buy a magazine you wouldn't normally buy. You may discover something wonderful.

4. Find something to laugh at.

Laughter is one of the best ways to lift your spirits. 

Find a humorous book, or watch a comedy. 

Even better, try to learn a few new jokes and tell them to others.  

5. Simple breathing meditation.

Breathing meditation is a great exercise that you can do anywhere.  

Simply allow yourself to sit comfortably with your back straight. 

Now close your eyes and become aware of the flow of air into and out of your nostrils. 

That's all there is to it. Do this for 10-15 minutes. Notice how pleasantly surprised you can be at how you feel afterward.

6. Doodling for the fun of it.

Most people can remember when they were young and used to doodle for hours. 

Kids love drawing silly little pictures. 

Drawing is not just for kids or artists.  

Whoever you are get some pens, pencils, crayons or whatever you have and just draw for the fun of it. Notice how your state of mind shifts.

7. Think of others less fortunate.

The fact that you are reading this article suggests that you are probably much better off than most people on this planet. 

At times this may be hard to believe, but if you can read and have access to the internet, just those two things alone means you are better off than most people in the world.  

There are many human beings that barely have access to the basics of survival. 

There are people in lots of pain. Allow your compassion for them to grow.

These are all pretty simple. There's nothing profound or life changing, but when all you need is a quick pick me up these may be just the thing you need. 

Putting simple ideas, methods, tools and techniques into action will help you achieve change more quick and easily--surprisingly so at time-- than you imagine.

Who Is Your Audience?

Understanding the type of people who visit your site is a very important task because you can use that information to enhance your site to suit them. 

As a result, you will gain more loyal returning visitors that come back again and again for more.

What is the age level and what kind of knowledge does your audience have? 

A layman might linger around a general site on gardening, but a professional botanist might turn his nose at the very same site. 

Similarly, a regular person will leave a site filled with astronomy abstracts but a well educated university graduate will find that site interesting.

Take your audience's emotional state into consideration when building your site. If a very irritated visitor searches for a solution and comes across your site, you will want to make sure you offer the solution right up front and sell or promote your product to him second. 

In this way, the visitor will put his trust in you for offering the solution to his problems and is more likely to buy your product when you offer it to him after that.

When you design the layout for your site, you have to take into account the characteristics of your audience. 

Are they old or young people? Are they looking for trends or are they just looking for information served without any icing on the cake? 

For example, introducing a new, exciting game with a simple, straightforward black text against white background page will definitely turn prospects away. 

Make sure your design suits your site's general theme.

Try to sprinkle colloquial language in your sites sparingly where you see fit and you will create a sense that your audience is on common ground with you. 

This in turn builds a trusting relationship between you and your audience, which will come in useful should you want to market a product to your audience.

Blind Date vs Internet Date

Your friend has decided that you need help with your social life so she sets you up with a blind date….a friend of a friend of a friend.  

You, foolishly, accept.  Now there you are. It's less than one hour since you were introduced.  

You are sitting in a Thai restaurant and you hate Thai food.  The entrée has not yet been served.  

His idea of enlightened conversation is who will be in the final four…you aren't into sports. 

He knows the weekly TV schedule verbatim….you haven't sat through a movie in months because you run marathons and volunteer at the local food bank. 

He says, "Volunteering is a waste of time because you can't help 'those people' anyway." 

You look at your watch; see that it's only been 10 minutes since you last looked at it the last time and wonder how long it is before you can gracefully remove yourself from the situation.  

Been there?  

Now imagine a date with someone you met through internet dating and have been chatting online with and exchanging emails with for quite some time. 

First, you don't need to be introduced.  

You already know this man.  

You are sitting in an Italian restaurant enjoying a delightful meal because you both know that the other's favorite is Italian. 

The conversation flows easily as you discuss common interests.  

He runs marathons and loves history just like you do. You happily discuss the volunteer work that each of you is involved in. 

You look at your watch and discover that it is late…very late…where Has the time gone. 

There is a big difference between a well-intentioned friend "setting you up" and choosing a man for yourself who shares your interests and tastes, isn't there?  

Now which one would you rather have?  

Investing Mistakes to Avoid

Along the way, you may make a few investing mistakes, however there are big mistakes that you absolutely must avoid if you are to be a successful investor. 

For instance, the biggest investing mistake that you could ever make is to not invest at all, or to put off investing until later. 

Make your money work for you – even if all you can spare is $20 a week to invest! 

While not investing at all or putting off investing until later are big mistakes, investing before you are in the financial position to do so is another big mistake. 

Get your current financial situation in order first, and then start investing. 

Get your credit cleaned up, pay off high interest loans and credit cards, and put at least three months of living expenses in savings. 

Once this is done, you are ready to start letting your money work for you.

Don't invest to get rich quick. That is the riskiest type of investing that there is, and you will more than likely lose. 

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it! Instead, invest for the long term, and have the patience to weather the storms and allow your money to grow. 

Only invest for the short term when you know you will need the money in a short amount of time, and then stick with safe investments, such as certificates of deposit.

Don't put all of your eggs into one basket. Scatter it around various types of investments for the best returns. 

Also, don't move your money around too much. Let it ride. Pick your investments carefully, invest your money, and allow it to grow – don't panic if the stock drops a few dollars. 

If the stock is a stable stock, it will go back up. 

A common mistake that a lot of people make is thinking that their investments in collectibles will really pay off. 

Again, if this were true, everyone would do it. Don't count on your Coke collection or your book collection to pay for your retirement years! 

Count on investments made with cold hard cash instead.

Grab the 2nd Edition of Milkowitz' Bipolar Disorder Guide for Patient and Family Members

Books are generally widely available in many different places. A lot of people spend countless hours in bookstores trying to find good quality reading materials that can help in enriching their minds with fresh and new ideas or knowledge that they may find useful in their everyday lives.

Finding a good book is not that hard, especially if you know what you're looking for. And besides, if you're a book-lover you already have a wide range of choices when it comes to authors.

Everyday, a huge number of people are diagnosed with different diseases or illnesses. Perhaps, you're one of them, or maybe a family member is afflicted. It's hard to tell when a person will get an illness, or when he's already suffering from it. And this is true with bipolar. If you have no idea what bipolar is, then you'd better purchase the book written by David J. Miklowitz.

The second edition of the book entitled ' The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide: What You and Your Family Need to Know' is a very good addition to your book collection. Not only that, it can be of great help to you and your family.

Before, people diagnosed with bipolar don't have much choices to help them in their daily struggle. But at present, because of sharper diagnosis, better medicine, and a lot of support groups, there is a bright future waiting for bipolar patients.

The author of the book mentioned is a Psychology Professor in Colorado University since 1989. He conducted a valuable research funded by MacArthur Foundation and the NIMH which was recognized and awarded by various organizations. His book's second edition is a great resource for bipolar patients because it provides information on:

- early signs and warnings on mood swings caused by normal day to day experiences

- medications available for bipolar patients and their possible side effects

- things to do when you're descending into mania or depression

- how to get support and help from friends and family members

- how to inform co-workers about the illness without losing your career

The abovementioned information is clearly discussed on the book. David Miklowitz wrote the book's second edition intended for the use of the patient. It is a comprehensive guide that tackles different information and other related questions that the patient may have in mind. It will help them to take charge and reclaim their life from bipolar. Since Miklowitz is a specialist and a researcher, he is considered an expert in his own field; and therefore, he is able to provide proven tools that can help bipolar patients to balance their life emotionally and financially.

Don't lose your life to bipolar, make a move now and purchase the book by Miklowitz. It has garnered high ratings in many editorial reviews. The book deals with exclusive patient issues like overcoming the diagnosis, the right person(s) to confide, and recognizing your mood swings. The book is not only useful for patients, but for their therapists and family members as well. Many editors claim that the book is humane and impressive. It promotes stability, explores multidimensional management techniques, thorough, well-written, and full of great advice to re-organize the patient's life. People having the illness, as well as non-sufferers can find the book very useful.

The book is also a great addition to large libraries because it is rich in materials to demystify bipolar. It explains methodically the disease, symptoms, diagnosis, and cogently explains possible causes; and at the same time offers advice to manage it. There are also logs and worksheets provided to help patients better understand bipolar. All in all, the book is interesting, informative, and compassionate.

Your life is full of ups and downs. It is a natural occurrence that all people must be able to cope with; but not all people are strong enough to face the hardships of life. And so a great number of them end up with certain illnesses like bipolar. Don't despair because it's not the end for you of your family; there are many resources to turn to like this book. Open your mind to the many resources that can help you in your suffering. Purchase the book now and see the difference. 

2 Surefire Ways To Maximize Your Adsense Earnings

Most webmasters know that Adsense generates a sizeable source of additional advertising income. That is why most of them use it to go after high paying keywords. They have with them the lists that tells what the keywords are and have already used various methods of identifying them. And yet, after putting up these supposed-to-be high paying keywords into their pages, the money they expected to come rolling in is not really coming in. 

What is it that they are doing wrong?

Having the pages is with the proper keywords is one thing. But driving visitors to those pages is another matter and often the factor that is lacking. 

The thing is, to get visitors to your high paying keyword pages, you need to optimize your site navigation.

Stop for a moment and think about how visitors are using your website. After a visitor has landed on a certain page, they have the tendency to click on another page that sounds interesting. They get there because of the other links that appears on a page that they initially landed on. This is site navigation. It is all about enabling visitors to move about your site. And one way of maximizing your Adsense earnings.

A typical website have menu links on each page. The wording on these links is what grabs a visitor's attention and gets them to click on one of the links that will take them to another page of that website. Links that have "free' or "download" are oftentimes good attention-grabbers. 

This navigation logic can also be applied to driving traffic to your high paying pages. 

There are some websites that are getting a lot of traffic from search engines, but have low earnings. 

The trick is to try and use come cleverly labeled links to get the visitors off that pages and navigate them to the higher earning ones. 

This is one great way of turning real cheap clicks to real dollars.

Before you begin testing if this same style will work for you and you website, you need to have two things. 

Something to track and compare and some high earning pages you want to funnel your site traffic to. 

An option is to select a few of your frequently visited pages. This is ensuring fast result to come by.

Now, the next thing to do is think of ways to get visitors viewing a particular page to try and click on the link that will take them to your high earning pages. 

Come up with a catchy description for that link. 

Come up with a catchy and unique description for the link. 

Think of something that people do not get to see everyday. That will trigger their curiosity enough to try and see what that was all about. 

You can also use graphics to grab your readers' attention. 

There is no limitation to what you can do to make your link noticeable. 

If you are after the success of your site, you will do everything it takes just to achieve that goal. 

Just be creative. As far as many Adsense advertisers are concerned, there are no written and unwritten laws to follow regarding what they write. 

Just as long as you do not overstep the guidelines of the search engines, then go for it.

Also remember that it is all about location, location and location. 

Once the perfect attention grabbing description has been achieved, you have to identify the perfect spot on your page to position that descriptive link to your high paying page.

There is nothing wrong with visiting other websites to see how they are going about maximizing their site navigation. "Hot pages" or "Most read" lists are very common and overly used already. 

Get to know the ones that many websites are using and do not try to imitate them. 

Another way of doing it is to try and use different texts on different pages. 

That way you will see the ones that work and what does not. Try to mix things around also. 

Put links on top and sometimes on the bottom too. This is how you go about testing which ones get more clicks and which ones are being ignored.

Let the testing begin. 

Testing and tracking until you find the site navigation style that works best for your site.

Generating Revenue With Good Planning

For anything to work well, care must be taken to make firm, workable plans to execute it and the same goes for website designs. 

With a well thought out website design, you will be able to create a site that generates multiple streams of revenue for you. 

In fact, may websites turn into online wasteland because they are not well planned and do not get a single visitor. 

Gradually, the webmaster will not be motivated to update it anymore and it turns into wasted cyberspace. 

The crucial point of planning your site is optimizing it for revenue if you want to gain any income from the site. 

Divide your site into major blocks, ordered by themes, and start building new pages and subsections in those blocks. 

For example, you might have a "food" section, an "accomodation" section and an "entertainment" section for a tourism site. 

You can then write and publish relevant articles in the respective sections to attract a stream of traffic that comes looking for further information. 

When you have a broader, better-defined scope of themes for your website, you can sell space on your pages to people interested in advertising on your page. 

You can also earn from programs like Google's Adsense and Yahoo! Search Marketing if people surf to those themed pages and click on the ads. 

For this very reason, the advertisement blocks on your pages need to be relevant to the content, so a themed page fits that criteria perfectly. 

As Internet becomes more widespread, advertising on the Internet will bear more results than on magazines or offline media. 

Hence, start tapping in on this lucrative stream of profit right away!

When Is the Right Time to Redesign?

If you run a website, chances are you often wonder whether it is the right time to do a total redesign of the layout of your website. 

Here are some points to consider:

Are you thinking of a redesign just for the sake of it? If you answered yes to that question, it is not yet the right time to do a redesign. 

Remember, a design serves a specific purpose. If you are not sure whether to do an overhaul of your site, keep in mind that your current design might have a specific purpose that you might not know about. You will lose that function if you do a redesign.

On the other hand, if your website has had the same website design since 1990, perhaps it is high time to do a redesign. 

The last thing you would ever want to happen to your site is when visitors leave your site without taking a look at your content just because the design is old fashioned. 

If this is your case, here are some points to ponder before doing a redesign.

Redesigning your website is like performing plastic surgery on it. 

Your website loses its current identity (for the better or worse) and your regular visitors might not recognize your new design at first glance. 

You risk losing them just because they thought they landed on the wrong page. 

Hence, it is very important that you retain a characteristic feature from your old layout. 

Perhaps it is the logo of your site; perhaps it is the same text style for the title for your site.

To play it safe, put a poll on your site to let your visitors do the talking. 

If they think it is necessary for the website to have a fresh look, give it to them!

Investing Basics – What Are Your Investment Goals

When it comes to investing, many first time investors want to jump right in with both feet. Unfortunately, very few of those investors are successful. 

Investing in anything requires some degree of skill. It is important to remember that few investments are a sure thing – there is the risk of losing your money!

Before you jump right in, it is better to not only find out more about investing and how it all works, but also to determine what your goals are. 

What do you hope to achieve with your investments? Will you be funding a college education? Buying a home? Retiring? 

Before you invest a single penny, really think about what you hope to achieve with that investment. 

Knowing what your goal is will help you make smarter investment decisions along the way!

Too often, people invest money with dreams of becoming rich overnight. 

This is possible – but it is also rare. It is usually a very bad idea to start investing with hopes of becoming rich overnight. 

It is safer to invest your money in such a way that it will grow slowly over time, and be used for retirement or a child's education. 

However, if your investment goal is to get rich quick, you should learn as much about high-yield, short term investing as you possibly can before you invest.

You should strongly consider talking to a financial planner before making any investments. 

Your financial planner can help you determine what type of investing you must do to reach the financial goals that you have set. 

He or she can give you realistic information as to what kind of returns you can expect and how long it will take to reach your specific goals.

Again, remember that investing requires more than calling a broker and telling them that you want to buy stocks or bonds. 

It takes a certain amount of research and knowledge about the market if you hope to invest successfully.

Web Design Elements You Should Avoid Having on Your Site

As a web designer, you should design your websites to give your visitors the greatest ease of use, the best impression and most important of all a welcoming experience. 

It doesn't matter if you had the greatest product in the whole world -- if your website is poorly done you won't be able to sell even one copy of it because visitors will be driven off your website by the lousy design.

When I'm talking about a "good design", I'm not only talking about a good graphical design. 

A professional web design will be able to point out that there are many components which contribute to a good website design -- accessibility design, interface or layout design, user experience design and of course the most straightforward, which is graphic design.

Hence, I have highlighted some features of the worst web designs I've come across. 

Hopefully, you will be able to compare that against your own site as a checklist and if anything on your site fits the criteria, you should know it's high time to take serious action!

1) Background music

Unless you are running a site which promotes a band, a CD or anything related to music, I would really advise you to stay away from putting looping background music onto your site. 

It might sound pleasant to you at first, but imagine if you ran a big site with hundreds of pages and everytime a visitor browses to another page on your site, the background music starts playing again. 

If I were your visitor, I'd just turn off my speakers or leave your site. 

Moreover, they just add to the visitors burden when viewing your site -- users on dial up connections will have to wait longer just to view your site as it is meant to be viewed.

2) Extra large/small text size

As I said, there is more to web design than purely graphics -- user accessibility is one big part of it too! 

You should design the text on your site to be legible and reasonably sized to enable your visitors to read it without straining their eyes. 

No matter how good the content of your website or your sales copy is, if it's illegible you won't be selling anything!

3) Popup windows

Popup windows are so blatantly used to display advertisements that in my mind, 90% of popup windows are not worth my attention so I just close them on instinct every time each one manages to pass through my popup blocker (yes, I do have one like many users out there!) and, well, pops up on my screen. 

Imagine if you had a very important message to convey and you put it in a popup window that gets killed most of the time it appears on a visitor's screen. 

Your website loses its function immediately!

In concluding this article, let me remind you that as a webmaster your job is to make sure your website does what it's meant to do effectively. 

Don't let some minor mistakes stop your site from functioning optimally!

A Woman's Guide to Writing a Great Profile

OK…the time has come. You have joined an online dating service or two. 

Now you must write that all-important profile… the one that will attract attention and reel in the man of your dreams… but where to start? 

Maybe writing isn't even something you think you do all that well. Even so, you can do this.

The first thing is to be absolutely honest about yourself. You are looking for that man who will like…maybe someday love…YOU….THE REAL YOU! 

Examine past relationships and list the things that you liked and the things you did not like. 

If he smoked in the house and you hated it, you won't like it any better the next time. 

If you love cats and will always want to own one or more, say that you are an animal lover and want indoor pets. 

Someone who hates cats or is allergic to them is not the guy for you.

Accent the things that make you unique. If you play the piano well, you really want Mr. Right to appreciate it. 

If you run in marathons, a couch potato is not a good match. 

If you love art, you really don't want a man who thinks Picasso is an ice cream flavor.

Describe the things that are vital in your life. 

If volunteering is the one thing that makes you feel useful and worthwhile, you want someone who would, at the very least, support you if not join you in your volunteer projects. 

When you get beyond superficial things, you will attract men who share your values.

Invest in your online profile by hiring a professional photographer for your first online picture. 

This is so important. The picture is the FIRST thing men see. 

The second thing is that they read what you have written about yourself. 

Some online dating sites even provide you with a list of photographers in your area that specialize in online dating site photos. 

Investing for Retirement

Retirement may be a long way off for you – or it might be right around the corner. 

No matter how near or far it is, you've absolutely got to start saving for it now. 

However, saving for retirement isn't what it used to be with the increase in cost of living and the instability of social security. 

You have to invest for your retirement, as opposed to saving for it!

Let's start by taking a look at the retirement plan offered by your company. 

Once upon a time, these plans were quite sound. 

However, after the Enron upset and all that followed, people aren't as secure in their company retirement plans anymore. 

If you choose not to invest in your company's retirement plan, you do have other options.

First, you can invest in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, certificates of deposit, and money market accounts. 

You do not have to state to anybody that the returns on these investments are to be used for retirement. 

Just simply let your money grow overtime, and when certain investments reach their maturity, reinvest them and continue to let your money grow.

You can also open an Individual Retirement Account (IRA). 

IRA's are quite popular because the money is not taxed until you withdraw the funds. 

You may also be able to deduct your IRA contributions from the taxes that you owe. 

An IRA can be opened at most banks. A ROTH IRA is a newer type of retirement account. 

With a Roth, you pay taxes on the money that you are investing in your account, but when you cash out, no federal taxes are owed. 

Roth IRA's can also be opened at a financial institution.

Another popular type of retirement account is the 401(k). 401(k's) are typically offered through employers, but you may be able to open a 401(k) on your own. 

You should speak with a financial planner or accountant to help you with this. 

The Keogh plan is another type of IRA that is suitable for self employed people. 

Self-employed small business owners may also be interested in Simplified Employee Pension Plans (SEP). 

This is another type of Keogh plan that people typically find easier to administer than a regular Keogh plan.

Whichever retirement investment you choose, just make sure you choose one! 

Again, do not depend on social security, company retirement plans, or even an inheritance that may or may not come through! 

Take care of your financial future by investing in it today.

How to Know When to Sell Your Stocks

While quite a bit of time and research goes into selecting stocks, it is often hard to know when to pull out – especially for first time investors. 

The good news is that if you have chosen your stocks carefully, you won't need to pull out for a very long time, such as when you are ready to retire. 

But there are specific instances when you will need to sell your stocks before you have reached your financial goals.

You may think that the time to sell is when the stock value is about to drop – and you may even be advised by your broker to do this. 

But this isn't necessarily the right course of action.

Stocks go up and down all the time, depending on the economy…and of course the economy depends on the stock market as well. 

This is why it is so hard to determine whether you should sell your stock or not. Stocks go down, but they also tend to go back up.

You have to do more research, and you have to keep up with the stability of the companies that you invest in. 

Changes in corporations have a profound impact on the value of the stock. For instance, a new CEO can affect the value of stock. 

A plummet in the industry can affect a stock. Many things – all combined – affect the value of stock. But there are really only three good reasons to sell a stock.

The first reason is having reached your financial goals. 

Once you've reached retirement, you may wish to sell your stocks and put your money in safer financial vehicles, such as a savings account.

This is a common practice for those who have invested for the purpose of financing their retirement. 

The second reason to sell a stock is if there are major changes in the business you are investing in that cause, or will cause, the value of the stock to drop, with little or no possibility of the value rising again. Ideally, you would sell your stock in this situation before the value starts to drop.

If the value of the stock spikes, this is the third reason you may want to sell. If your stock is valued at $100 per share today, but drastically rises to $200 per share next week, it is a great time to sell – especially if the outlook is that the value will drop back down to $100 per share soon. 

You would sell when the stock was worth $200 per share.

As a beginner, you definitely want to consult with a broker or a financial advisor before buying or selling stocks. 

They will work with you to help you make the right decisions to reach your financial goals.

The Importance of A Good Design

Your website is the hub of your online business; it is the virtual representation of your company whether your company exists physically or not. 

When you are doing business online, people cannot see you physically like how they could if they were dealing with an offline company. 

Hence, people do judge you by your covers. 

This is where a good design comes in.

Imagine if you are running an offline company. 

Would you allow your salespersons to be dressed in shabby or casual clothes when they are dealing with your customers? 

By making your staff wear professionally, you are telling your customers that you do care about quality. 

This works simply because first impressions matter.

Similarly, the same case is with your website. 

If your website is put together shabbily and looks like a 5 minute "quick fix", you are literally shouting to your visitors that you are not professional and you do not care for quality.

On the opposite, if you have a totally professional looking website layout, you are giving your visitors the perception that you have given meticulous attention to every detail and you care about professionalism. 

You are organized, focused and you really mean business.

On the other hand, you should also have anything related to your company well designed. 

From business cards to letterheads to promotional brochures, every little bit matters. 

This is because as you grow your business, these items become the face of your business. 

Once again, think of the "salesperson dressed shabbily" analogy, and you will get my point.

3 Online Dating Mistakes to Avoid

While you search the internet for that special lady…the one of your dreams…your soul-mate…the other half of yourself, you can do a lot of things right.  

Sadly, you can, also, do a lot of things wrong….things that will guarantee failure and a broken heart.   

Out in the "real" world, being aggressive, demanding perfection and even little white lies are all ingredients for success.  

However, those same qualities are killers when you are dating online and off line, too, for that matter. 

There is a big difference between being aggressive or confident and being too aggressive, over-confident, or just plain sleazy or slimy from a woman's point of view. 

If you push too hard for a face-to-face, you will come across as too aggressive…maybe even, scary.  

Try to remember that you are not trying to close a business deal and keep the relationship progressing at a slow but steady pace.  

Patience is the key. 

Nobody is perfect.  We are all flawed in some way or another…and that includes you, as well.  

If you expect the woman to be absolutely perfect and demand that, you will always be disappointed.  

Demanding perfectionism in your work is one thing.  

Demanding perfectionism from a friend, co-worker or a lady you are interested in is not just fine.  It won't happen.  

Expect flaws and just deal with them.  

Decide the ones you can live with and those you can't. 

Little white lies and false fronts won't work.  

Be honest from the beginning of a relationship.  

Write your profile.  Make it interesting but don't make false statements.  

The truth will come out eventually anyway.  

If you say you are a lawyer who makes a million bucks a year and you are really an electrician that makes $75,000, you have set yourself up for failure. 

Remember…don't be too aggressive, expect to ever find perfection or put on a false front.  

A Woman’s “Don’ts” of Online Dating

There are some things that women should never do while engaged in an online relationship with a man.  

These things are certain to put a quick and final end to any further communications with him. 

While chatting online or by email do not write your life story.  

His eyes will glaze over and he will fall out of his chair.  

Keep it short and sweet until he asks for details…then provide them slowly and only answer the questions he asks.  

For instance:  If he asks how many siblings you have, he is NOT asking for the details of your interaction with them.  

He really just wants to know how many you have. 

Say you have 2 (or whatever is true) and then ask how many he has.  

For every question he asks you, you should ask one of him.   

Nothing turns a man off like a long- winded woman who just doesn't know when to shut up or how to listen. 

Never, ever, EVER lie.  I really believe that lies will catch up with you sooner or later.  

Many women (and men) lie about their age, marital status, employment, height, weight and a host of other things in their online profiles.  

That is a huge mistake.  

If you find a man who you are really interested in, he will find out you lied and there goes any possibility of the relationship progressing.  

So, just be honest.  

There is someone out there who will like you…even come to love you…for exactly the person you are. 

Don't be too eager.  It makes you look desperate and it really puts a man off.  

They are first and foremost conquerors and if getting the person of their desires to like them too is just too easy, they will quickly lose interest.  

I don't mean play "hard-to-get".  

I mean, don't push for a face-to-face meeting.  

Don't email them or IM them too frequently.  

Play it safe and play it cool.  

Ways To Improve Sales Through Your Website

Anyone who has been marketing online knows that the lifeblood of a business is the traffic of a site. 

More visitors equal more sales. 

However, here are some ways that you can tweak your sites with to improve sales without the need to get more visitors.

The first method is to weave in your personal touch in your sales message. 

Nobody wants to be sold to by a total stranger, but many people will buy what their close friends recommend to them. 

If you can convince your audience that you are a personal friend who has their best interest at heart, they will be convinced to buy your products. 

Remember to speak to an individual in your salesletter, not to your whole audience.

The second method is to publish testimonials and comments from your customers. 

A good idea would be to publish both good and bad comments; that way prospects will be really convinced that these testimonials are real. 

When prospects see testimonials on your website, they will have the confidence to buy from you because human beings follow the herd mentality; when others have bought and proven it authentic, they will jump on the bandwagon and buy too.

Use visual representations for the problems and solutions that your product offers. 

Not everyone will read your text copy from the head to the tail, but most people will pay attention to images on your website.

Offer quality bonuses to accompany the product. 

When you offer bonuses that complement your product, your prospects will feel it's a very good deal and it would be stupid to miss it. 

Be sure to state the monetary value of your bonuses so that people will be even more compelled to grab your good bargain.

Lastly, ask for the sale! 

Many people entice their prospects with the benefits of their product, sell to them with stories of how it has solved many problems, even offered killer bonuses but forget to ask for the sale. 

Give a clear instruction on how to buy your product (e.g. "click the button to buy now!").

Search Engine Friendly Pages

There is no point in building a website unless there are visitors coming in. 

A major source of traffic for most sites on the Internet is search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista and so on. 

Hence, by designing a search engine friendly site, you will be able to rank easily in search engines and obtain more visitors.

Major search engines use programs called crawlers or robots to index websites to list on their search result pages. 

They follow links to a page, reads the content of the page and record it in their own database, pulling up the listing as people search for it.

If you want to make your site indexed easily, you should avoid using frames on your website. 

Frames will only confuse search engine robots and they might even abandon your site because of that. 

Moreover, frames make it difficult for users to bookmark a specific page on your site without using long, complicated scripts.

Do not present important information in Flash movies or in images. 

Search engine robots can only read text on your source code so if you present important words in Flash movies and images rather than textual form, your search engine ranking will be affected dramatically.

Use meta tags accordingly on each and every page of your site so that search engine robots know at first glance what that particular page is about and whether or not to index it. 

By using meta tags, you are making the search engine robot's job easier so they will crawl and index your site more frequently.

Stop using wrong HTML tags like <font> to style your page. 

Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) instead because they are more effective and efficient. 

By using CSS, you can eliminate redundant HTML tags and make your pages much lighter and faster to load.

Online Dating Safety For Men

Almost everything you read about online dating safety is directed at women but men need to be concerned as well.  

Perverts, sexual predators and weirdoes come in both sexes, all sizes, and all ages…as do, liars and cheaters.  

So men need to stay on guard, too. 

It is common knowledge not to readily give out personal information to strangers.  

The reason for not doing so is as large as the number of strangers who want that information.  

If you come across a person who is giving out personal information and asking others to do the same, don't do it.  

You don't know what they want to use it for….and you had better believe they want to use it for something.  

That "something" will not be for your benefit.  Men, also, need to guard their real names, addresses, phone numbers, and place of employment.  

Do not give that information to anyone online until you are confident that they are who they say they are.

Men, be wary of women who seem too financially needy.  

If they ask for money, in any of a dozen ways women can ask for money, cut the relationship off immediately.  

They are not looking for love or even friendship….they are looking for financial help. 

If a woman gives you a contact number but you cannot ever reach her at that number, beware.  

If you always have to page them or text them and have them call you back, this could be a sign that what they are telling you is not the complete truth. 

A need to get married and insecurity are other signs men should be very wary of.  

If the woman is pushing too hard for a commitment you aren't ready to make, it might be a good time to head for the nearest exit. 

How Much Money Should You Invest?

Many first time investors think that they should invest all of their savings. 

This isn't necessarily true. To determine how much money you should invest, you must first determine how much you actually can afford to invest, and what your financial goals are.

First, let's take a look at how much money you can currently afford to invest. 

Do you have savings that you can use? If so, great! However, you don't want to cut yourself short when you tie your money up in an investment. 

What were your savings originally for?

It is important to keep three to six months of living expenses in a readily accessible savings account – don't invest that money! 

Don't invest any money that you may need to lay your hands on in a hurry in the future.

So, begin by determining how much of your savings should remain in your savings account, and how much can be used for investments. 

Unless you have funds from another source, such as an inheritance that you've recently received, this will probably be all that you currently have to invest.

Next, determine how much you can add to your investments in the future. 

If you are employed, you will continue to receive an income, and you can plan to use a portion of that income to build your investment portfolio over time. 

Speak with a qualified financial planner to set up a budget and determine how much of your future income you will be able to invest.

With the help of a financial planner, you can be sure that you are not investing more than you should – or less than you should in order to reach your investment goals.

For many types of investments, a certain initial investment amount will be required. 

Hopefully, you've done your research, and you have found an investment that will prove to be sound. If this is the case, you probably already know what the required initial investment is.

If the money that you have available for investments does not meet the required initial investment, you may have to look at other investments. 

Never borrow money to invest, and never use money that you have not set aside for investing!

Getting Your Feet Wet – Begin Investing

If you are anxious to get your investments started, you can get started right away without having a lot of knowledge about the stock market. 

Start by being a conservative investor with a low risk tolerance. 

This will give you a way to making your money grow while you learn more about investing.

Start with an interest bearing savings account. You may already have one. 

If you don't, you should. A savings account can be opened at the same bank that you do your checking at – or at any other bank. 

A savings account should pay 2 – 4% on the money that you have in the account.

It's not a lot of money – unless you have a million dollars in that account – but it is a start, and it is money making money.

Next, invest in money market funds. This can often be done through your bank. 

These funds have higher interest payouts than typical savings accounts, but they work much the same way. 

These are short term investments, so your money won't be tied up for a long period of time – but again, it is money making money.

Certificates of Deposit are also sound investments with no risk. 

The interest rates on CD's are typically higher than those of savings accounts or Money Market Funds.

You can select the duration of your investment, and interest is paid regularly until the CD reaches maturity. 

CD's can be purchased at your bank, and your bank will insure them against loss. 

When the CD reaches maturity, you receive your original investment, plus the interest that the CD has earned.

If you are just starting out, one or all of these three types of investments is the best starting point. 

Again, this will allow your money to start making money for you while you learn more about investing in other places.

Online Flirting – A New Art Form

Many of the same things work for online flirting that work for "brick and mortar" flirting and all relationships begin with successful flirting.  

Flirting is an art that requires oozing confidence without being OTT.  

If you go too far, she will label you "slimy" If you don't go far enough, she will label you "wimpy".  

So how do you achieve that point half way between slimy and wimpy and do it online without using eye contact or body language?  

All you have is a computer an internet connection and membership in an online dating site, right? 

1.     Have fun!  Be light-hearted, funny and entertaining.  Make her eager to talk to you again.  Flirting is playful. 

2.     Ooze confidence.  Successful flirts have a positive outlook on life.  You need to transmit the "feel good" factor.  An optimistic attitude attracts females like honey attracts flies. 
 
3.     Compliment her…and do it often and sincerely.  Nothing opens doors like making her feel good about herself.  She will want to spend more time with you and if she pays you a compliment say "thank you".  Do Not be self depreciating. 

4.     Listen…listen….listen.  Pay attention to what she says and ask appropriate questions.  Get her to open up and talk about herself.  Make her feel like she is interesting and that you are interested in her.  Works wonders!

5.     Don't be rude.  Flirting does not include being sexually explicit nor taking offence if the lady isn't responding to you. If she isn't interested, take the hint and move on to the next prospect.  If you get a lot of rejections, you should probably consider a different approach. 

6.     Send an email after you chat.  This ranks right up there with sending a thank you note for a gift and it is vital to successful flirting. 

Don't try to go too fast.  Flirting is the first step to a successful relationship.  

Reducing Load Time Through Image Optimization

Even though more and more Internet users switch to broadband every year, a large portion of the web's population is still running on good old dialup connections. 

It is therefore unwise to count them out of the equation when you're designing your website, and a very major consideration we have to make for dialup users is the loading time of your website.

Generally, all the text on your website will be loaded in a very short time even on a dialup connection. 

The culprit of slow-loading sites is mainly large images on your website, and it is very important to strike a delicate balance between using just enough images to attract your users and not to bog down the overall loading time of your site.

You should also go to a greater length and optimize every image on your site to make sure it loads in the least time possible. 

What I really mean is to use image editing software to remove unnecessary information on your images, and thereby effectively reducing the file size of your image without affecting its appearance.

If you own Photoshop, it will be obvious to you that when you save an image as a JPEG file, a dialog box appears and lets you choose the "quality" of the JPEG image -- normally a setting of 8 to 10 is good enough as it will preserve the quality of your image while saving it at a small file size. 

If you do not have Photoshop, there are many free image compressors online that you can download and use to reduce your image's file size.

On the other hand, you can opt to save your images in PNG format to get the best quality at the least file size. 

You can also save your images in GIF format -- the image editing software clips away all the color information not used in your image, hence giving you the smallest file size possible. 

However, saving in GIF format will often compromise the appearance of your image, so make your choice wisely!

Online Dating For Single Men

No matter what your age, height, weight or physical appearance, there are thousands of women out there eager to meet you and eager for your company…whether short-term or long-term relationships are what you want.  If you have found yourself suddenly "on-the-market" again after a relationship has dissolved or are just too busy with your work to spend a lot of time looking for a lady to keep you company, online dating can open the door to the dating scene for you. 

The good news is that all you need is a computer and an internet connection to get started.  

The first thing to do is find an online dating site that fits your needs.  

There are the large sites that offer many extras like live video chat and even match you up with ladies using your profiles and, also, a lot of sites that cater to special interests like religious preferences, outdoor enthusiasts, gays, etc. 

You need to choose one or two that will meet your needs.  

I don't recommend the free sites.  

The paid sites have a money back guarantee if you aren't satisfied and the investment is small.  

A whole month costs less than one dinner and movie date. 

The next thing you need to do is write a killer, but honest, profile and upload a recent but flattering picture of yourself.   

Now you are all set.  

Start contacting ladies whose profiles sound interesting to you and answer any lady who contacts you…and do so promptly…not, however, on holidays or weekends.  

You don't want to appear that desperate.  

Don't give up after a month and think you will never find the right lady for you.  

New people join online dating services daily and at least half of them are ladies many, of whom, will want to meet you.  

Pros and Cons of Flash-based Sites

Flash-based sites have been a craze since the past few years, and as Macromedia compiles more and more great features into Flash, we can only predict there will be more and more flash sites around the Internet. However, Flash based sites have been disputed to be bloated and unnecessary. 

Where exactly do we draw the line? Here's a simple breakdown.

The good:

Interactivity
Flash's Action script opens up a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and designers have used Flash to create interactive features ranging from very lively feedback forms to attractive Flash-based games. This whole new level of interactivity will always leave visitors coming back for more.

A standardized site
With Flash, you do not have to worry about cross-browser compatibility. No more woes over how a certain css code displays differently in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. 

When you position your site elements in Flash, they will always appear as they are as long as the user has Flash Player installed.

Better expression through animation
In Flash, one can make use of its animating features to convey a message in a much more efficient and effective way. 

Flash is a lightweight option for animation because it is vector based (and hence smaller file sizes) as opposed to real "movie files" that are raster based and hence much larger in size.

The bad and the ugly:

The Flash player
People have to download the Flash player in advance before they can view Flash movies, so by using Flash your visitor range will decrease considerably because not everyone will be willing to download the Flash player just to view your site. You'll also have to put in additional work in redirecting the user to the Flash download page if he or she doesn't have the player installed.
 
Site optimization
If your content was presented in Flash, most search engines wouldn't be able to index your content. Hence, you will not be able to rank well in search engines and there will be less traffic heading to your site.

Loading time
Users have to wait longer than usual to load Flash content compared to regular text and images, and some visitors might just lose their patience and click the Back button. 

The longer your Flash takes to load, the more you risk losing visitors.

The best way to go is to use Flash only when you absolutely need the interactivity and motion that comes with it. 

Otherwise, use a mixture of Flash and HTML or use pure text if your site is purely to present simple textual and graphical information.