Note: This is a guest post by Adam Curren of Character Development Blog

Life can be a grind…. in fact, most of the time it is. In between working 40-50 hours a week, mowing the lawn, cooking dinner, cleaning the house, taking the kids to soccer games, well..… you get the idea. At the end of it all, we’re toast! The body reacts negatively to consistently high levels of stress and many times lead to things such as burn out, anger, depression, and even physical illness. The body wasn’t made to go “Indy 500” all day long.

Our bodies need to regenerate as well as our minds and spirit. Many people are drinking 3-5 cups of coffee a day just to get by. Our culture tends to treat the symptom and leaves the root of the problem alone. The result is never fixing the problem and in many cases, making it worse. Illness can generally be traced to one or more of three sources: environment, diet or genetics. Stress lowers the immune system, making you more susceptible to disease. Combining this with a poor diet and toxic environment could potentially create a disaster!

Improving the quality of your life increases your return from it. It also has a direct impact on our relationships, how we perform at work and our health and well being. I challenge you to inventory the different aspects of your life in order to determine its quality. Here are 10 Simple Ways to Reduce Stress and Improve the Quality of Your Life…..Today!

1. Evaluate: your current situation. Most situations that we perceive as stressful really aren’t a serious threat; if we reassess our situation we can reduce our stress significantly.

2. Breath: When our bodies become tense, we temporarily stop breathing. Our bodies naturally regulate the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide it needs by breathing naturally. Become conscious of this and take longer rhythmic breaths; this will both calm your body and help to focus your mind. Take 15 minutes each day to close your eyes and clear your mind.

3. Expenses: Lower them and consider working one less day per week. Imagine that! :)

4. Exercise: Do at least one if not two cardiovascular workouts per week. I like to swim and bike, because I’m fairly sure my running days are over.

5. Debt: Think of debt as in-laws that’ve been at your house for a month; it’s something you should consider getting rid of. If you don’t have the money, don’t spend it. This is the simplest way to stay out of financial trouble. Learn to use cash and keep a credit card for emergencies only. Build an emergency savings account if you don’t have one already.

6. Diet: Consider it and choose a healthier one. A trick that I use is to plan my meals in advance; this way I have a plan and it’s easier to stick to it. I also eat raw foods for one meal every day. For example: at least one meal every day consists of raw vegetables, fruit, or nuts. Your body’s getting more nutrition and it’s easier for your digestive system to break down, giving you more energy.

7. Relationships: Like your bones, you want em’ strong and healthy! We were built for relationships. A void is created when we aren’t investing in healthy relationships. Key word being healthy. As a result we fill that void with things like work, sports, pornography.…you can fill in the blank.

8. Passion: If what you’re doing every day from 9-5 isn’t your passion, consider making a change. If you’re not sure what it is you’re passionate about, create a little time and figure it out.

9. Love: Probably my favorite one. Give and receive love, know and be known, real, true, unconditional love; it’s the Greatest Power on Earth.

10. Spiritual Life: Cultivate one and learn to connect to the source of life, something greater than yourself.

I’ve been writing and editing since April 2008 and I specialize in Personal Development/Educational Articles. My goal is to improve the quality of life for my reader through the written word. Please feel free to view more of my work through the following links: http://charactergrowth.com/ —– http://www.ehow.com/ —– www.christianmagazine.org

Note: This is a guest post by Ali Hale of Aliventures

Have you ever had one of those mornings where you woke up filled with energy and fired with enthusiasm, and got straight into your day? Chances are, you raced through a stack of work before lunch, and kept up that sense of momentum in the afternoon. In the evening, you felt happy and relaxed, pleased with what you’d accomplished.

Or … have you ever had one of those mornings where you dragged yourself out of bed, downed a mug of coffee, and pried your eyes open whilst surfing the web or watching television? Chances are, your day didn’t really pick up from there: you found yourself procrastinating, wasting time, and making mistakes. In the evening, you felt like you’d wasted the day.

Getting your morning off to a great start lets you have more good days and fewer bad ones. There are a few simple steps and routines you can put in place to maximise your chances of an energised, productive morning – and a great day to follow:

Get Enough Sleep

If you find yourself extremely reluctant to part from the duvet in the mornings, it could just be that you’re naturally lazy … but it’s more likely that you’re not getting enough sleep. Some people are fine with six or seven hours, others need nine: so don’t assume that your current sleep quota is enough for you.

Ways to maximise your chances of a good night’s sleep include:

• Going to bed earlier (set an alarm to remind you to go to bed, if necessary!)
• Avoiding caffeine and alcohol in the evening
• Switching off the computer and television and reading for an hour or so before bed – bright screens can prevent you from getting sleepy

Drink Water and Eat (a Healthy) Breakfast

Many people swear that they’re not human until they’ve had their morning coffee. I’d suggest holding off on the coffee for at least a little while after waking up, and drinking a big glass of water instead: being slightly dehydrated will knock your concentration levels right down.

Don’t forget the importance of eating breakfast: your brain won’t run well without fuel. If you don’t feel hungry in the mornings, you’re probably eating too much at dinner. A healthy breakfast like baked beans on wholewheat toast, or oatmeal, will give you slow-release energy to see you through the morning.

Pray, Meditate or Write

Starting off the day with some quiet, inward-focused time really helps you to think about your priorities and goals, and to decide how this day is going to contribute towards your general purpose and aims in life. Depending on your religious beliefs, you might find prayer a helpful way to do this – or you might prefer to meditate.

If you find your mind wandering during prayer or meditation, try writing instead: taking the time to work through your thoughts in a journal will pay dividends, as it often helps you to work out solutions to problems, or to articulate worries that have been nagging unvoiced in your mind.

Get Straight Into Your Day

The first part of the morning is often spent either idling (catching up with friends on Twitter, watching the news on television) or rushing around (finding the kids’ school books, packing lunches, hurrying to work).

Try to set up your morning so that you can get straight into the important part of your day. That might mean doing your work first and saving distractions for when you really do need a break. If your mornings are often fraught and busy, get into the habit of putting as much as you can ready the night before.

Tackle a High-Resistance Task

All of us have jobs on our “to-do” list which we really don’t feel like getting on with. Perhaps we’ve been putting off a particular phone call or email for weeks. Maybe we’re writing a book or a dissertation, but can’t ever seem to get started.

If you tackle one of these high-resistance tasks right at the start of your day, you’ll get a huge sense of achievement. It doesn’t need to be time-consuming – just something that you feel a strong reluctance to do. When you overcome this, you set yourself up for a great day when everything else feels like a downhill ride!

Ali Hale runs a blog, Aliventures, about getting more from life – not just from your mornings! (Grab the RSS feed here.) She also writes for several personal development blogs, including Dumb Little Man and Pick the Brain.

Photo by McPig

When people talk about productivity, one term that often shows up in their conversations is time management. There are countless books that talk about time management. But there is one less-popular term that may actually be more important when it comes to productivity. That term is energy management.

The importance of energy management is discussed thoroughly in The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. The book argues that managing your energy, not time, is the key to high performance.

Looking at my own experiences, I agree with them. If you want to be productive, managing your energy is more important than managing your time. To see if it’s true, just look at your experiences. Have you ever been so productive that you can accomplish a lot in little time? On the other hand, have you ever felt like you can’t accomplish anything despite having a lot of time?

These experiences show that the quantity of time you have isn’t necessarily related to your productivity. What makes the difference is your energy level. In the first situation, your energy level is high and that’s why you can accomplish a lot in little time. In the second situation, your energy level is low and because of that you can’t accomplish much.

So how should we manage our energy? Here are four proven principles discussed in The Power of Full Engagement:

1. Maintain your four sources of energy

There are four sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. You need to maintain all of them so that you can draw energy from them. Miss one of them and your performance will suffer.

Here are several things you can do to maintain your four sources of energy:

• Physical
  • Have breakfast.
  • Have between seven to eight hours of sleep every day.
  • Do regular workouts.
• Emotional
  • Spend time with your loved ones.
  • Allocate time for your hobbies.
• Mental
  • Have positive self-talk.
  • Learn new skills.
• Spiritual
  • Define and follow your purpose in life.
  • Pray or meditate.

2. Increase your energy capacity

Rather than just maintaining your energy sources, you need to build your energy capacity. This way you can improve your performance over time.

To build your capacity, you need to expose yourself to more stress while giving yourself adequate recovery. For example, you may learn new skills in unfamiliar fields to expand your mental capacity. Or you may increase your workout duration to expand your physical capacity. In short, you need to move beyond your comfort zone.

Just don’t forget to give yourself enough recovery periods. Otherwise you may experience burnout.

3. Build positive rituals

Negative habits deplete your energy. To overcome them, you must replace the negative habits with positive rituals. Rituals are precise actions you consistently do in specific times to achieve certain objectives. Waking up at 5am every day, for example, is a ritual. Drinking water instead of eating whenever you are tempted to overeat is also a ritual.

The key thing about rituals is you have to make them automatic. Why? Because by making a ritual automatic you don’t need to push yourself to do it. Instead, you will be pulled to do it. Doing the rituals will be as effortless as brushing your teeth.

Of course, you need to train yourself to make a ritual automatic. The acquisition period lasts between thirty to sixty days.

4. Be a sprinter, not a marathoner

Effective energy management requires you to balance stress and recovery. In your daily work, one good way to apply that is by working like a sprinter rather than a marathoner. It means that you should have an intense work session (called ultradian sprint) for about 90 to 120 minutes followed by a shorter rest period. The rest period recovers your energy and prepares you for the next intense session. This is a much better way to work than working continuously because it follows your body’s energy cycle.

Photo by jam343

Note: This is a guest post by Winston Cole of Plan My Cruise Vacation

As we go into the holiday phase, I was looking at how we celebrate the holidays. We often throw parties have big feast with plenty of food and drinks. I love to have an occasional glass of wine especially when dining. This led me to look at recent studies about the positive effects of wine on a person’s health.  For those who enjoy a glass or two of wine daily, the news is good.  Dr. Joy Bauer, a contributor to the Today show on NBC TV, says that drinking wine in moderation is beneficial for a person’s health.

Dr. Bauer states that wine, as part of an individual’s overall diet, reduces the risk of heart disease and certain types of cancers.  Additionally, drinking wine in moderation can slow down the debilitating effects of neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

The intake of moderate amounts of wine delivers cardiovascular benefits that raise your good cholesterol and thin out your blood.  Wine contains resveratrol that prevents blood clotting and the formation of plaque in our arteries.  It has also been shown in animal studies to reduce tumours in animals.  Red wine contains larger amounts of resveratrol than white wine, and red wine from cool climates has the largest amounts of resveratrol. So, drink moderately and keep your heart healthy and strong.

What Constitutes “Moderate” Wine Consumption

There is some debate as to how much wine constitutes a moderate level of wine consumption.  Dr. Bauer feels that levels of moderation are different between men and women.  For men, a moderation level consists of no more than two 5 ounce glasses of red or white wine; for women, the moderation level maxes at one glass per day.

Weight gain is another reason you should drink in moderation.  One 5 ounce glass of wine contains about 120 calories.  One bottle of wine, or 4 glasses, is the equivalent of drinking 40 ounces of a soft drink, such as Coke or Pepsi.

By consuming too much wine, you risk elevating your triglyceride level, which could induce diabetes and other health-related diseases.  Also, over consumption of wine can cause migraine headaches.

Tips for Wine Selection

The selection of the right wine is really a subjective judgment on your part.   Gary Vaynerchuk, wine connoisseur and spokesman for Wine Library TV, reinforces this point on his video on Wikihow.

Gary states that the information on wine selection is so scattered and unreliable, that the best way to select appropriate wines is to develop a relationship with someone in a wine shop or a restaurant.  You need to tell these people about your eating preferences, and ask that they recommend a dozen different wines, depending upon your food selections.

Here are some general rules that apply when you are selecting wine for consumption:

• Select your wine based on the weight and texture of your meal.  For example, spicy foods go better with white wine.
• Red wine is more suitable for heavier meals, such as meats and heavy sauced entrees, while white wine is more suited for lighter fare, such as chicken and fish.
• Select a dry wine to complement a sweet meal, and a sweeter wine to complement food of a more acidic substance.
• Don’t sweat the small things.  There is no wine that will ruin a meal!
• Variety is the spice of life.  Experiment with a wide range of wines, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the results of the variations of your wine selections.
• Enjoy, enjoy, and enjoy!  Wine is nature’s gift to us, so savour the taste.

Expand Your Knowledge of Wine

Some ways to expand your knowledge of wines are:

• Take a course on wines
• Attend wine tasting parties
• Ask for wine recommendations when ordering in restaurants and bars, and ask why the certain wine recommendation was made.

Now that you know the benefits of drinking wine in moderation, and have some tips on how to select a bottle of wine, I hoist my glass of Napa 2005 cabernet sauvignon in your honour, and wish you the best!! Remember state laws about drinking and driving.

Winston Cole is an avid traveller, wine connoisseur and an advocate of healthy living. Winston believes wine enhances good food and pleasant conversation. Holiday cruise travel is perfect to celebrate the holidays. You can go on cruise ship vacation soon. Visit Winston’s website for help planning a cruise ship vacation.

Photo by jenny downing

Who doesn’t want to have a sharp mind? Having a sharp mind is something we all want. I recently read a thought-provoking article about it entitled Cognitive Fitness in Harvard Business Review. The article talks about how the minds of people like Warren Buffet and Alan Greenspan stay sharp even in their old age.

What is the secret? The secret is brain workout. They exercise their brain continuously and that makes their minds sharp.

One way to exercise your brain is playing:

Play engages the prefrontal cortex, responsible for your highest-level cognitive functions – including self-knowledge, memory, mental imagery, and incentive and reward processing… Activities like bridge, chess, sudoku, role-playing games, and challenging crossword puzzles all provide rigorous neural workouts.

Looking at myself, I must admit that I do not play as much as I should. So I went around the web and searched for places where I can play games to have fun and exercise my brain. What I want are places where I can play for free and – whenever possible – play alone without having to find partners first. This way I can easily exercise my mind whenever I want.

Here I would like to share what I found along with resources to help you play those games better. But, first of all, here are some tips to get the most out of the games:

1. Set aside time to play
   Though not everyday, you need to allocate time to play. This is not just playing anyway; this is time investment to sharpen your mind.
2. Start with a game you are familiar with
   If you found it difficult to understand how to play a game, you might not be motivated to play. So start with the games you are familiar with. This way you can soon train your brain without being distracted by the game rules.
3. Choose a new game later
   After you have played a game quite often, you should try a new game. It gives your brain a different kind of training that enriches it.
4. Increase the level of difficulty
   Just like you should increase the weight you use in weight training to build your muscles, you should also increase the difficulty of the games you play to build your brain muscles. This way you stretch your mind beyond its current boundary.

With those tips in mind, here are 10 free mind games to exercise your brain:

1. Sudoku

About the game

Sudoku is a logic-based number placement puzzle. The objective is to fill a 9×9 grid so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3×3 boxes (also called blocks or regions) contains the digits from 1 to 9, only one time each (that is, exclusively). The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid. (source)

Where to play

• Sudoku Daily on Yahoo! Games
• Sudoku – Miniclip Games
• Super Sudoku
• BrainBashers: Daily Sudoku
• Brain Games: Sudoku

Resources

• List of Sudoku terms and jargon
• Sudoku Tips: Learn How To Solve Sudoku Faster
• Killer Sudoku Tips and Strategies
• Sudoku tips: How to solve Sudoku

2. Chess

About the game

Chess is played on a square chequered chessboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight square. At the start, each player (one controlling the white pieces, the other controlling the black pieces) controls sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns. The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent’s king, whereby the king is under immediate attack (in “check”) and there is no way to remove it from attack on the next move. (source)
For more information, see the rules of chess.

Where to play

• Play Against the Computer – Chess.com
• Chess – Games for the Brain
• Simple Chess

Resources

• Ten Tips to Winning Chess
• Chess opening

3. Bridge

About the game

Contract bridge, usually known simply as bridge, is a trick-taking card game of skill and chance. It is played by four players who form two partnerships; the partners sit opposite each other at a table. The game consists of the auction (often called bidding) and play, after which the hand is scored. (source)
For more information, see the rules of bridge.

Where to play

These sites require you to log in and play against other human players. I couldn’t find free sites that allow you to play bridge online against computer.

• Yahoo! Bridge
• Bridge Base Online

Resources

• Contract Bridge Glossary
• Bridge Scoring
• Bridge Strategy

4. Crossword

About the game

A crossword is a word puzzle that normally takes the form of a square or rectangular grid of black and white squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the answers. (source)

Where to play

• Daily Crosswords on Yahoo! Games
• BrainBashers: Crosswords

Resources

• Crossword puzzle solving tips

5. Go

About the game

Go is played by two players alternately placing black and white stones on the vacant intersections of a line grid. The objective of the game is to control a larger part of the board than the opponent. (source)
For more information, see the rules of Go.

Where to play

• Computer-Go Online

Resources

• Sensei’s Library: Beginner Study Section
• Seven Steps to Shodan

6. Checkers

About the game

Checkers is a form of the draughts board game played on an 8×8 board with 12 pieces on each side that may only move and capture forward. (source)
For more information, see the rules of checkers.

Where to play

• Checkers – Mind Bluff

Resources

• Checkers Strategies
• Checkers in a Nutshell

7. Reversi

About the game

Reversi are names for a board game which involves play by two parties on an eight-by-eight square grid with pieces that have two distinct sides. The object of the game is to make your pieces constitute a majority of the pieces on the board at the end of the game, by turning over as many of your opponent’s pieces as possible. (source)
For more information, see the rules of Reversi.

Where to play

• Reversi – Games for the Brain
• Reversi – interJEUX.net

Resources

• Reversi Strategy
• French Othello Federation Booklet

8. Connect Four

About the game

Connect Four is a two-player board game in which the players take turns in dropping alternating colored discs into a seven-column, six-row vertically-suspended grid. The object of the game is to connect four singly-colored discs in a row — vertically, horizontally, or diagonally — before your opponent can do likewise. (source)

Where to play

• Brain Games: Connect Four
• Connect 4 – interJEUX.net

Resources

• Connect Four Tips & Tricks
• Connect Four – Wikibooks

9. Chinese Checkers

About the game

Chinese checkers is a board game that can be played by two to six people. The objective of the game is to place one’s pieces in the corner opposite their starting position of a pitted 6-pointed star by single moves or jumps over other pieces. (source)
For more information, read the rules of Chinese checkers.

Where to play

• Chinese Checkers | Thinks.com
• Brain Games: Chinese Checkers

Resources

• Chinese Checkers – Wikibooks
• Chinese checkers: Strategy and tips

10. Mastermind

About the game

Mastermind is a simple code-breaking board game for two players (source). For more information, read the rules of Mastermind.

Where to play

• Mastermind – NLVM
• Super-Mastermind

Resource

• Mastermind Algorithms

***

The ten games above are enough to improve your brain fitness. But, in case you got bored, there are plenty of other mind games you can find on these sites:

• Mind Bluff
• interJEUX.net
• BrainBashers
• Brain Games – Sheppard Software
• Games for the Brain

Whatever game you choose, play it and boost your brain’s performance.

If you liked this article, please share it on StumbleUpon or del.icio.us. I’d appreciate it.

Photo by apesara

Note: This is a guest post by Albert Foong from UrbanMonk.Net.

What is the biggest obstacle most people face in achieving personal mastery?

Your mind; your thoughts. When you master your mind, everything else begins to fall into place.

But the moment we look at our mind, we begin to see how wild it is. Modern psychology estimates that we have 40 to 60 thousand thoughts a day, and most of them are repetitious, useless – and often, unhappy.

In my quest to control our monkey mind, I’ve taken from the best systems – from modern Cognitive Psychology, to the ancient spiritual systems – in particular, the Buddhist Sutra on the Removal of Distracting Thoughts.

Here are the results – five levels, arranged according to how unruly your thoughts are. First a warning – it is easy to get anxious and jump ahead to the more advanced levels, thinking that your mind is wilder than it really is. Please don’t, and give each level an earnest effort over a few days.

The first level – Reflect on the positive counterpart

It stands to reason that the thoughts you most want to remove would be negative: fears, anxieties, anger, lust, revenge, pride.

And therefore the easiest way to counteract them is to reflect on the opposite. What is the positive counterpart to your affliction?

Just a few examples then: If you hate someone, then reflect on love. Think kind and loving thoughts about them. If you lust after someone, or something, then reflect on their bad points, or their ugliness. If you are just agitated and restless, then reflect on peace and harmony. Visualise yourself in a calm environment, a mental “happy place”.

On the deeper level, feel the counteracting emotion completely. Simply drench yourself with it. Imagine it as an energy, a light, a waterfall – anything that works best for you – and imagine yourself being surrounded from the inside and outside with it. This might be hard initially, but that’s normal. Keep trying, and you’ll get it.

Often, it is good to get your body into it as well. Get some exercise, put on some music and relax, or take a break from whatever you have to do.

The second level – Reflect directly on the misery

The next level goes a touch deeper. Look past the thoughts themselves, and see what they are costing you.

Perhaps you are distracted at work by hatred for your colleague. Perhaps you are tempted to cheat on your lover because you feel lust for your sexy neighbour. Then reflect on it – instead of trying to fight it, turn around and face it. What would happen if you didn’t stop, if you indulged in your thoughts?

Maybe you would get fired for doing a bad job. Maybe you would actually go and punch your boss in the face. Maybe your wife would divorce you if you slept with your neighbour.

Simply realise how much misery it is already causing you, and how much it can cause you if you kept on doing it. Feel it. Feel the hatred or the lust or the jealousy or the fear totally.

The Buddha used the metaphor of a well-dressed young person, who finds him or herself with the carcass of a snake around their neck. The disgust is sometimes enough to make them throw the dead animal off them.

The third level – Letting them slide

This level is about simply letting your thoughts slide by without attaching to them. Thoughts are just thoughts. You are not your thoughts. You don’t have to believe them; you don’t have to fight them; you don’t have to cling to them. They are just thoughts, and they only have power if you give them power.

Visualise a large blank screen, and see your thoughts as little ants scurrying across. Prodding or playing with those ants make them lose their way and they can’t find their way off the screen. So: don’t judge, don’t analyse, don’t hate. You don’t have to believe them, if they are saying you are stupid, or weak. You don’t have to cling to them, if they are saying you are brilliant and handsome. These are all forms of playing with your ants.

Think of a spoilt brat who is jumping up and down, trying to make you angry while you are trying to watch the television. The more you get affected by it, the more he enjoys it, and the more he will do it. Just tune it out and enjoy yourself. Or smile at the child, let him know he can’t affect you, and after a while he’ll give up and find something else to do.

The fourth level – The source of the thoughts

The first thing we have to realise is that thoughts always have a source – our emotions. The two are inextricably linked; they feed each other in one giant cycle.

What is causing your thoughts? If your mind is filled with images and thoughts of lust, then there is the emotion of lust behind it. If you think a lot of cruelty and hatred, then the emotion of anger is right there underneath it.

Emotions are your body’s reaction to your mind. At this level, one of the most powerful, we shall simply cut to the root of the issue.

How do we deal with our emotions? The most simple way – and yet no one ever says it! Simply feel it. Bring it to the surface, find the emotion, and feel it.

Feel it, simply as an emotion, a sensation. Emotions and feelings are not wrong or right, good or bad. They simply are. They are just emotions. Even the most murderous rage is not wrong – it is only bad if you act on it. Just embrace it, let it be there. Don’t push it away or judge it. Relax into it, loosen any tightened muscles, and remember to keep breathing normally. Ride the wave, and let it pass. Don’t think about it – thinking about it will make you want to act on it.

Often times, these emotions run deep, and can take a lot of work to uncover and heal with your conscious embrace. But the journey is worth it – it is one of the best ways, perhaps the only way, of dealing with your emotions.

Heal the emotions, and the thoughts they cause will disappear.

The fifth level – Beating down the bad thoughts

This level is the hardest, and draws upon the techniques of modern psychology. It is hard and painful, and should be reserved for the most extreme cases. Think of this level as a big strong man beating down a weaker man, with pure brute force.

At this level, simply force yourself to stop thinking about it.

1. The Howitzer Mantra. Any time you catch yourself with a thought you don’t want, interrupt it with a prepared mantra. Make it a forceful phrase, one that works and feels right for you. “Stop!” “Enough!” “No more!”

2. The Rubber Band. Wear a rubber band around your wrist. And every time you catch yourself with a negative thought, snap the rubber band. It hurts a little bit, and you are telling your system that such thoughts hurt. Like a puppy that has been punished, it will eventually stop.

3. Filling in the gap. An important thing to note is that once you stop your thoughts, a space is created. If you don’t fill that gap in, the distracting thoughts will return to fill it. So find something nice to think about. A pleasant memory or perhaps an affirmation to fill that hole. A final option would be to simply focus on the gap, enjoying the pause in your thoughts, the silence. Doing so will slowly expand it – making the next gap, when it comes, even longer.

Thank you, Donald, for letting me have a guest post. Controlling your mind is one of the most powerful things you can ever do for yourself, and these represent the best techniques I’ve researched and practiced. I’m grateful that Donald is giving me a chance to share it with his audience.

About Albert Foong
Albert runs UrbanMonk.Net, a practical personal development blog that has enhanced the lives of many readers, moving them out of suffering and into a life of joy, love and success. It draws upon ancient spirituality, modern psychology, real life experiences, and everything in between.

What do you have in mind when you hear the word “prosperity’? Many people associate it with being wealthy, and there is nothing wrong with that. But I believe prosperity is more than just being wealthy. Recently, I found a helpful concept on prosperity. C. Peter Wagner in his book The Church in the Workplace wrote that prosperity has four facets:

1. Material prosperity
2. Spiritual prosperity
3. Physical prosperity
4. Social prosperity

While the book is a Christian book, I believe these four facets of prosperity are applicable to everyone. By being able to see prosperity as multidimensional, we will able to truly prosper. Otherwise, there is a danger that we only experience an illusion of prosperity while we actually live in “poverty”.

Just think about this: someone may have wealth (material prosperity), but at the same time he could have a meaningless life (spiritual poverty), not being healthy (physical poverty), and have few real friends (social poverty). If we only take the narrow view of prosperity, we may think that he is prosper because of his wealth. Only after looking deeper and use a broader view will we realize that he more likely lives in poverty rather than prosperity!

On the other side, if we want to truly prosper, we must aim for prosperity in all four facets. The balance between them is important. Achieving prosperity in one aspect while ignoring the others is still poverty.

Now let’s take a deeper look at each of them:

1. Material prosperity

Financial abundance is the traditional measurement of prosperity, and with a good reason: it’s indeed important. Financial abundance allows you to live high-quality life, while at the same time having tremendous capability to help others.

There are basically two things you need to learn to achieve material prosperity:

1. How to make money, and
2. How to reduce unnecessary expenses

Here are some articles to help you get started:

• If You Take Home Anything At All… Seven Fundamental Tips
• Personal Finance Boils Down To Just Two Things…

And some books:

• What Color Is Your Parachute?
• The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing

2. Spiritual prosperity

The standard here is different from person to person since everyone has his or her own belief. But in general it can be said that you achieve spiritual prosperity when:

1. You have a satisfying spiritual life
2. You know your life purpose
3. You do things which matter to you

Here are some articles to help you:

• 37 Lessons to Help You Live a Life that Matter
• 23 Practical Things You Can Do to Make Your Life More Fulfilling

And some books:

• Success Built to Last
• The 8th Habit

3. Physical prosperity

Physical prosperity means being physically healthy. Sometimes it takes us being sick to appreciate how precious it is to be healthy. Your effort to maintain your health boils down to three things:

1. Having good rest
2. Exercising
3. Having good nutrition

Here are some articles to help you:

• Get Healthy and Fit, Part 1
• Get Healthy and Fit, Part 2

And a book:

• You: The Owner’s Manual

4. Social prosperity

Relationships make life wonderful. Love is perhaps the most important human need, and we can only get it through genuine relationships. So invest your time in building rich relationships with others to be socially prospered.

Here are some articles to help you:

• 106 Tips to Become a Master Connector
• 33 Tips to Become a Well-Liked Person

And some books:

• How to Win Friends and Influence People
• Never Eat Alone

This four-facet concept is very helpful for me. It gives me a complete picture of prosperity: a fulfilling and healthy life, with meaningful relationships and financial abundance. Now that’s what I call prosperity!

The key to living your life to the fullest is balance. How can you live your life to the fullest if one or more areas of your life suffer? For example, maybe you are successful in your career. But will it matter if your family life is not happy? Or maybe you are a very knowledgeable person. But will it matter if your body is sick?

To live your life to the fullest, I believe there are five areas of life you need to develop in balance. Those five areas are spirituality, mind, body, relationship, and work. Here are the details:

1. Spirituality
   This area deals with your conscience, values, and principles. It also deals with your relationship with the infinite. Your spirituality is where your life purpose and meaning comes from. In my opinion, the fact that it gives meaning to your life makes it the most important of all five. But it doesn’t mean that you should focus on only developing your spirituality. Even if your spirituality is strong, you won’t live your life to the fullest if you do not develop the other four areas in balance.
2. Mind
   This area deals with your desire to learn. In this fast-changing world, your ability to absorb new skill and knowledge become increasingly important (in fact, I think this is the most important skill you should master). To have a strong desire to learn, be sure to develop your intellectual hunger.
3. Body
   This area deals with your physical health. Since your body is the mean through which you conduct your actions, it is important to keep your body in tip-top shape. Not only you should prevent yourself from being sick, you should also thrive to have the high-level of energy you need to accomplish your tasks with speed and enthusiasm.
4. Relationship
   This area deals with your relationships with your family, friends, and colleagues. As I wrote in 5 Reasons Why Relationships Should be Your Top Priority, relationships are what make your life beautiful. The greatest feeling of fulfillment doesn’t come from your achievements; it comes from your relationships.
5. Work
   This area deals with your career and achievements. This is the output of your life; your productivity is measured here. If you want to be a productive person, you should increase your output in this area.

These five areas serve as a framework for me to build my life on. What I want is strong and balanced growth in all these areas. To grow my life in all of them, I allocate my daily time around them. I have my blocks of time for spirituality, mind, body, relationship, and work. Whenever I feel that I under develop one area, I will put more effort to it.

I have used this framework for months and I do feel the benefit. Again, the key is balance.

I’m interested to Stephen Covey’s concept of 4 intelligences in his book The 8th Habit. While there are other concepts on multiple intelligence such as Howard Gardner’s, Covey’s concept is interesting for me because it deals with all four parts of human nature: body, mind, heart, and spirit.

Here are the 4 intelligences:

• Physical intelligence (PQ)
  Our ability to maintain and develop our physical fitness. It corresponds to body.
• Mental intelligence (IQ)
  Our ability to analyze, reason, think abstractly, use language, visualize, and comprehend. It corresponds to mind.
• Emotional intelligence (EQ)
  Our self-knowledge, self-awareness, social sensitivity, empathy and ability to communicate successfully with others. It corresponds to heart.
• Spiritual intelligence (SQ)
  Our drive for meaning and connection with the infinite. It corresponds to spirit.

I like this concept of intelligence because it clearly shows that we need to develop and balance all parts of our life, something I firmly believe.

Do you know which of the 4 intelligences is considered the most important by Covey? The answer is spiritual intelligence. Why? Because spiritual intelligence “becomes the source of guidance of the other three”.

I completely agree with him. It is our life purpose and meaning that inspire our other areas of life. Ironically, it may also be the least talked about among the four.

Appendix 1 of The 8th Habit outlines an action plan for developing the 4 intelligences. I can’t get into the details, but here is the summary of how to develop the 4 intelligences:

• Physical intelligence (PQ)
  • Wise nutrition
  • Consistent balanced exercise
  • Proper rest, relaxation, and stress management, and prevention thinking
• Mental intelligence (IQ)
  • Continuous, systematic, disciplined study and education
  • Cultivation of self-awareness (by making assumptions explicit)
  • Learning by teaching and doing
• Emotional intelligence (EQ)
  Applying the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People which consists of: be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek first to understand then to be understood, synergize, and sharpen the saw.
• Spiritual intelligence (SQ)
  • Making and keeping promises
  • Educating and obeying your conscience
  • Asking questions to yourself and living the answers

As Covey said in the book, “Though you may find some of it to be simple common sense, remember, common sense is not common practice, and I guarantee that if you will focus your efforts in these areas, you will find that great peace and power will come into your life.”

I always believe that balance between all aspects of our life is crucial if we are to live our life to the fullest. As such, I urge you to start working on these 4 intelligences. It’s a good framework to ensure that your personal growth is balanced. Furthermore, I urge you to give special attention to spiritual intelligence. Though it is the most important of the four, I’m afraid that it is also the one we least develop.

While I talked about life optimization in this blog, there is something I miss: physical health. I usually just talked about learning, thinking, time management, and things like that. All those things are important of course, but still we do all of them through our physical body. To think and to learn we use our brain, to do works we use our hands, and so on.

So health is certainly an important part of life optimization. If there is something wrong with our health, all other activities will be disturbed and there is no way we can optimize our life. On the other hand, by maintaining our health not only we can prevent something wrong from happening in our body, we can also increase our energy level. Increased energy level means that we will have more energy to do all our activities which will in turn increase our productivity.

For those reasons, I’ve decided to put a new category in this blog: health. Hopefully we can learn together how to live a healthy life.