ARE YOU WASTING OR INVESTINGYOUR TIME?

Time is the most precious value we have. Time is the greatest equalizer of human beings. If we don’t ant to admit his and to treat time with respect then we will only have to lose. It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, healthy or sick, you will only have 24 hours a day either way, and you should try to use them wisely.

Most of the times, we waste our time and energy worrying and thinking about things like how to win more money and how to leave a better life. Well, when we do this we usually forget about the most important think – the time to live our life in. A wise man will always tell you: “You can always make more money, but you can never buy more time”.

How many times are we aware of the ways we invest our time? And the word “investment” is the most accurate because the way we choose to spend our time is a true investment in ourselves and our own lives. And you will never find the true value of time in the way people around you act and talk.

People usually spend time for hours in front of the TV, or they spent a lot of time browsing the net with no purpose whatsoever. Some of us even try to steal more time with the cost of many healthy sleep hours. If you wake up earlier in the morning just to smoke a few cigarettes and to fill your self up with coffee so you won’t feel sleepy it doesn’t mean you won quality time. Also, inefficient work or spending more hours at work that you have to is equal to borrowing your life to someone else.

Everyone always says things like: “I’m just counting the hours to go home” or “I wish it were Friday” on a Monday and so on. These are just signs that those persons usually waste their time. If you organize our time efficiently and if you choose to do only activities that motivate us somehow, then we will find ourselves able to work everyday without feeling tired or sleepy.

At any moment that you just let time pass by you think about what Romans said:”Carpe Diem” – it has a great meaning for our everyday life, it means “Live the day” or better said “Organize your day”. Make more time to analyze the way you invest or waste your time. And never forget that you can’t tell anything about tomorrow so “Carpe Diem!”

THE 12 COMMANDMENTS FOR PARENTS....

In a child’s education an important factor is the parents’ expertise for this “job”. No one is born holding all the knowledge, but we can learn and understand some things from books or advice from qualified persons.

Amongst the commandments a parent should strictly follow are the following:

1. Do not underestimate your child – he can understand more than you think he does and if you make him believe you think poorly of him this might affect his development.

2. Don’t use threat – a child loves a challenge and once threatened he might probably go on and do what he wasn’t suppose to just to see if he can escape the punishment.

3. Do not bribe your child – if you are trying to get him to learn for money for example, he will fail to understand the importance of learning, all he will get from this is the importance of money.

4. Do not make a small child promise something – small children can’t hold promises so don’t force them to lie and then punish them because they did that.

5. Do not keep them under a short leash – to grow up normally children need some space, some freedom.

6. Do not use big words or too many words when you are talking to your child – keep your ideas simple and concise so he can understand every thing you have to say.

7. Do not expect an immediate and blind obedience – it is not recommended, the child has to be learned to think for his own not to follow orders.

8. Do not indulge him too mush – he can develop compartmental disorders.

9. Do not compromise when it comes to the rules of a game – the trick for a game to become educative is too have its initial rules respected.

10. Don’t impose rules that don’t go with the age of your child.

11. Do not try to inflict quilt – quilt is not an appropriate feeling for children, especially if they are little.

12. Don’t give your child orders that you don’t take seriously – your child will try to please you and giving him an order is drastic, and it becomes cruel if that order is a joke.

All these “commandments” are addressed first to the parent. But they are to be referred to by teachers and educators as well. Along with the parents, they will settle upon an attitude and strategy for the education and growth of the child, so that they can give him all the things he needs to properly develop emotional and physically. 

HOW TO SAY NO.

Sometimes in life we stumbled across situations in which we should’ve said no, but because of various reasons such as being shy, ashamed or afraid we cannot firmly refuse and later we regret our weakness.

No matter what the circumstances, how can we say no without having to hurt the other person’s feelings? Although it is possible not to succeed, we can at least try to ease the pain for the person involved. Any answer that sounds like: “No, I won’t give you what you want” means a great disappointment and a feeling of failure for the one that came to you with the proposal. Remember that the idea of not getting what they want is hard for everyone.

If in your mind and heart you can foresee the possibility to accept a proposition, choose carefully the answer. Under no circumstances use lines like:” What do you mean? Me and You? Are you out of your mind?” Think a little bit and you will realize that the person you are about to hurt so rudely made you a compliment by waiting your company or your help. Even if not interested, you should answer in such a manner that won’t make him or her regret taking the risk to ask.

Some help might be the following list of advice combined with your personal experience.

Think hard before giving an answer. Ask yourself if there might be any circumstances that could make you take that proposition. Express yourself as clearly and friendly as possible. Use sentences as: “If only you didn’t live that far…” or “The thing is I’m not feeling well now”.

Use “I feel” instead of “You make me feel”. There is no need for the other party to feel guilty. Try and entertain a positive conversation. Show and tell what you like about him or her.

If you just know the other isn’t for you, don’t give desert hope. You have to refuse firmly, but elegantly.

If you are tempted to accept but still have doubts then you can give some hope and the next step will have to be yours.

Any situations that become a threat and the person is too pushy and makes you feel uncomfortable is a situation that requires a drastic approach. Then forget about manners and stop being polite, act firmly and set boundaries.

Many of us encounter difficulty whenever we have to say no. If you are in this situation, practice and learn about this because it is better to refuse than to regret later.

FIVE TIPS TO SAVE YOUR TIME.

1. Do certain things fewer times

Things that can be done less or things that can be done once instead of twice are those things that will help us save a lot of time. Clean your house once every ten days instead of every 7 days – you can do that, it’s normal and the house won’t get dirty in those three extra days.

Make a work report every six week not every four weeks if possible.

Keep meetings to inform yourself on ongoing projects twice a month not every week. And the list of things that can be done fewer times can go on forever.

2. Compete with yourself!

Watch the clock and settle to finish an activity by a certain hour. Focus, get rod of anything that could distract you and work more efficiently.

3. Ask more out of 15 minutes.

Can you find 15 minutes a day that you could use more efficiently? Is there lost time in your activities? Or maybe a less important activity you can give up on? If you manage to save 15 minutes every day, you will win in fact 91 hours every year!

4. Do a list of little activities that don’t take you more than a couple of minutes.

Of course, we usually want to deal with the important problems first. But when we feel tired, stressed, in a bad mood, we find it hard to concentrate and we lose our time forcing ourselves. A list of simple activities will help you finalize something and push up your productivity. And obviously it is always better to know you did something, even is it is small, than to realize you haven’t even started anything.

5. Work on a certain project over a certain period of time.

Rather than to try and finalize an activity at once, it is better to tell yourself: “ I will work on this for 15 minutes and see how much I can get done during this interval”. Focus and try to do all you can during those 15 minutes. This is an excellent advice to solve problems or projects you avoided lately.

DOES MONEY EQUAL HAPPINESS.

The truth is that we human beings require each time more that we already have. So, rich people complain that money has stolen their happy days and those who are not so financially fortunate say that only money could complete their life, that they would surely get everything else on their own if only they had the means to do that.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

It is not accurate to say money brings happiness, because it doesn’t. But at the same time one can not claim money has nothing to do with it. We are never really happy, maybe just for the brief moment when we reach our purposes or complete one of our dreams. But then, very soon after that, a new totally different problem or desire arises to take that happiness away. It’s human nature to be unsettled and uncertain and it is not a bad thing.

Whether we want to admit it or not, we all are happy at certain moments in life, but all we say is that we are never happy. There’s always something to inflict with our self-assurance or way of living that makes us nervous, sad or depressed.

And money is indeed one of those factors. Many people need it just to pay for food and shelter and they are happy if it’s enough to provide just that. But others, and I’m not talking here about rich people, they already have some living assurance and need more money for other desires or things they want to buy. And the list can go on and on as we climb social and financial levels one at a time. Everyone wants something, and once they have it it’s not enough or just too much and too stressful to deal with.

In fact, we should be happy just with what we have and stop thinking about money so much. Money is an important factor in achieving stability and eventually even happiness because we let it, we even push it up to that pedestal. Money does not equal happiness, it’s even worse than that: because money exists happiness is harder to reach.

But then again, if not for money, we’d come up with something else that we would let interfere with our life and cause us an infinite diversity of problems…It’s just human nature.

BATTLING WITH TOSSING AND TURNING.

We've all had those nights that we just couldn't find the comfortable part of the bed and spent hours tossing and turning till the break of dawn. Why does this happen?

Well, your desire to “toss and turn”, really isn't the result of you not being comfortable, it's the result of you not feeling relaxed. On a deeper feeling our mind wants us to relax, but most of the times we interpret the message as “find a comfortable spot on the bed.” True relaxation comes from within you, and has to be triggered by your inner thought process.

For example: You could be in a hammock on a hot summer day in Hawaii, but if you're thinking about whether the stock market will rise or fall, and you've got a 100 million dollars on the line and it's REALLY bothering you, it won't matter what position you're in that hammock, you won't relax!

If you're lying in bed and you get the urge to toss or turn, wait it out, you'll be surprised how quickly it fades! When you get the urge to toss and turn, ask yourself “How can I focus on something else right now to feel more relaxed?” As you lie there for about 15 seconds, you'll be surprised at how the urge to toss and turn simply fades, and you realize that all you really want to do is relax.

Understand that if you do start tossing and turning, it will not end with just ONE toss or turn, because of the momentum effect, you will just keep tossing and turning till the break of dawn!

Sometimes the urge to move is really intense, or maybe you really are in a very painful position on your bed. If you absolutely MUST move, do it in this way:

1) Move, but move very slowly. Remember what it feels like when you wake up in the morning and you're very sleepy, do you move very quickly then?

2) As you move very slowly, put a big bright smile on your face, and take a deep breath.

Another reason why tossing and turning keeps us awake is because we do it very quickly, and the more we do it, the more it agitates us! So do it very slowly, and make sure to smile and breath deeply, you will feel the difference :-)

Avoiding Tossing and Turning

Tossing and turning is an often experienced phenomenon for most of us. There are nights when we are just not comfortable on the bed and keep tossing and turning all over, all through the night. What bothers us?

Tossing and turning is not a feeling of discomfort, it is actually an offshoot of our mental equilibrium that is not relaxed. Irrespective of our mind wanting us to relax, our bodies want to find a more comfortable spot on the bed, a result of misinterpretation. Relaxation has to come from within you and should be a result of your thought process.

Lying in a hammock on a hot summer day, on a Hawaiian beach would sound very relaxing. If you keep thinking about millions invested on the stock market that could take a beating, if and when it crashes, the hammock will not work wonders in relaxing you.

When you feel the urge to toss and turn on the bed, give it time, wait. It will go away faster than it came. Lie there and think about focusing your mind elsewhere more relaxing than where it was and the urge to toss and turn will be out of your system in about 15 seconds. The best part of this exercise is that you will realize that you need to relax and not try finding a comfortable place on bed.

If you start tossing and turning it becomes a never ending process for the night and will not stop till the morning.

At times when you feel that the urge to toss or turn is very high and you have to move, try it the following way:

Move very slowly, as though you are just getting up from sleep in the morning.

While moving try to smile at yourself and take a deep breath.

Tossing and turning keeps us awake because we tend to do it quickly and impulsively, the more quickly we do it, the more agitated we get. Try it in the way said above, you will feel the difference and probably get out of the habit in no time.

DEPRESSION- PREVENTION

Depression is a serious illness that can affect the work power, family and social life of a person. This is why we don’t have to ignore it and hide it. It is important to know the symptoms, the causes and what possibilities we have to prevent it.

Each one of us had at some point a depressing sad moment. Depression is a normal human reaction associated to a loss, with the tumult of everyday life or with an agitated sentimental life. Sometimes the sadness sensation passes but sometimes it doesn’t, it becomes more persistent and it can conduct to nervous breakdowns. The diseases of the nervous system are very serious and that is why it is important not to pass them by without proper help when we realize we can’t handle them by ourselves. Getting help is not only normal, but required also.

Here are some of the symptoms of depression:

sadness

loosing energy

loosing hope in life and others

not finding pleasant anymore the things you used to love

having trouble concentrating

uncontrolled crying

headaches, other types of inexplicable aches and itches

needing to sleep a lot or on the contrary not getting any sleep at all

loosing appetite and loosing weight at the same time

These are just some of the symptoms of depression and if more of them are associated they are not to be ignored and a discussion with a close person or a specialist has to happen very soon.

What causes depression? There is not a single source that causes depression. This is a complex disease that can appear as a result of multiple causes. Depression can also be transmitted among persons that are close to each other, by influence.  

 There are proofs that say persons suffering of depression suffer brain changes. There are also proofs that explain how depression can also be genetic. Children affected by the depression of their parents or parents whose children suffer from chronic depression are more likely to be affected themselves by this illness.

 To try and prevent depression we have to know ourselves very well. Although treatable depression can be hard to prevent once we are already melancholic. The best method to avoid another crisis after a chronic depression is to keep and eye open to its symptoms and its causes. And also get professional hope whenever we feel like we need it.