Our values are handed to us; passed off as a form of religion from the church of common sense, branded, promoted in the media by institutions, tradespeople, family members and others we encounter, and we embrace this one-size fits all answer a continual neurotic response from a society adverse to happiness and self-realization.
http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=999567
The primary motivating objective with success authors is to sell books, seminars, and speaking engagements, not to help humanity. We live in an environment of success peddlers. The reason success books dont work is that no matter how successful the author or promoter, the years of accumulated fears, compulsions, and doubts cannot be erased for the reader or audience. What is being sold is hope in some ideal future, but if you cannot erase your past, you will continue to rely on the same kinds of patterns in thought and behavior that keep you stuck in the unpleasantness that you are seeking to improve upon.
How do you know if hes the one? Hell be there for you on your worst day. If you cant see him there on a bad day, such as a death in the family, he isnt the one. According to Star Jones Reynolds, here are four other ways you can tell if hes the one: Does he keep you company? Does he gentle his criticisms? Does he push buttons to get you mad and hurt your feelings? Does he love and respect his mom or the women in his life? You may disagree with me on this one, but a man who treats other women kindly, especially his mother, is usually a nice person. Thats important to Star. I checked on the Half website to see what the book is selling for, 75 cents (the minimum) in all conditions. My guess is that it isnt worth much to the reader but here are some tidbits so you can save time and avoid reading the book.
Relationships: If I can get it right with God, I sure ought to be able to get it right with anyone I care about. “God, I have not always done the best with the resources that you have provided me. Ive made poor decisions in my finances. Ive allowed my desire for pretty things to overcome my desire to take care of my long-term needs, but I finally put myself in such a position that I have gotten my credit in order. I have another opportunity, a second chance, and this is a blessing. Please bless me again and help me to learn from my mistakes.”
Do we have to be perfect to find that perfect peace?
I know Im not there yet. I have so many weaknesses that block the way to that kind of spiritual completeness. For example, I know God is still working on me getting out of my own way. (Thats a great comment. Becoming the best you is a noble endeavor but even celebrities dont have the answer.)
The happy route to change: Fail safe-ways to rev up your lifestyle
According to Star Jones Reynolds, the following are fine ways to become the best you can be and truly get ready to meet love and romance around the next corner. If youve gotten this far in the book, youve changed your life already: you now know how to assess yourself, look deeply inward, and figure out places you can change for the best. (I dont see how she drew this conclusion, there is nothing life-changing or compelling to speak of becoming the best.)
Make a decision to change one thing – only one at a time – write down your intention, give yourself a time span in which to accomplish your goal. (There are too many people pushing goal setting as a solution, it might work well in business but it doesnt work well with personal life if all people had to do was set goals and achieve them wouldnt the world be so much better for everyone? Or perhaps it wouldnt matter because mega-success, life-changing super-performance doesnt arise from goals.)
Follow through with action. Just do it. When youre satisfied that youve made a change that will probably last, tackle another area. Keep track of your progress in a journal. Date each entry.
Bring in a second or third party, a trusted witness to your action. (I dont know if this works well, if you surround yourself with people that you know well, theyre stuck in the same kinds of situations you are in. Wouldnt it be better to get direct help from someone already doing well in the area you want to improve?)
Reevaluate yourself in three months. (If you wait that long, youve waited up to 89 days too long to see that you have failed. People probably need a daily or weekly review
isnt that what the journal is for? When you get homework it gets checked the next day
thats how performance is measured.)
Fail-safe ways to rev up your lifestyle:
1. Take a calculated risk
2. Trust your intuition
3. Practice mindfulness
4. Choose your friends: dont settle for being chosen
5. Give back
6. Meditate
7. Find an intercessor – Someone to pray for you, a double prayer approach.
8. Celebrate yourself – If you dont love you, who will? So bask in the glory of who you are and who you will become.
9. Finally- the premarital solution – Doesnt it make sense to spend a little more time before the marriage ceremony finding out how to discuss differences in ways that actually strengthen a relationship and make intimacy-well, more intimate? Heres a statistic: the number one predictor of divorce is the constant avoidance of conflict. Couples who dont know how to handle conflict eventually just shut down. (What statistic? Where is Star Jones getting this? Conflict is an inherent part of life. A girl approached me as I had the book open. She wouldnt bother reading it and said that Star was caught up in love and now shes divorced.)
Marital absolutes:
A wife is like a mirror in which a man sees himself.
A woman finds security is a mans consistency.
A woman wants a man to be decisive, strong, and consistent.
A woman determines a mans strength by his gentleness.
A mans kindness is what makes him attractive to a woman.
Id found the best me. If youve read this book, you will be ready soon. I know it. I feel you fulfilling your potential. I feel you growing. You can be so fine if you just put your mind to it. You will shine. (I dont think you will. The group of people selling the book online for less than a dollar speaks for itself. Becoming the best you is a noble endeavor but lets refrain from paying celebrities to show us their wisdom.)
Success may be a chain reaction once you can efficiently move through your fears. If you are able to bypass yourself, you greatly speed up your progress. But each day we are met with advertising of bold claims of almost instant success in various endeavors, especially monetary gain. If any of it were true, everybody that could buy the answer would be “successful” and wed be immersed in an ever-growing world of success. The instant success answer, or instant cure for financial distress cannot be sold because it doesnt exist. Success does not come all at once; even for masters it comes in stages, separated by years.
The good struggle we must take up isnt with person, place, or circumstance, but with our level of consciousness on a continual basis we remain confined or imprisoned in our thoughts. Conditions have no authority over us. No event or circumstance has any power to make us feel one way or another. Our attachments place values on what happens in our life while all conditions, events, and circumstances are neutral, neither for you, nor against you. Without practice, it isnt possible to see outside yourself often. And yet, knowing what not to value and knowing when to disregard ourselves seems to be the only thing we can do to increase the quality of our existence.
Want a natural approach to reducing acne? Eat more tomatoes. The high levels of lycopene can cut prostate inflammation, say Swiss researchers, according to Mens Health magazine, pg. 36, May 2008.
Creatine can reduce the appearance of fine lines. The combination of topical creatine and folic acid protects skin from UV stimulated DNA damage, increases the firmness of skin, reduces wrinkle volume, and regenerates the skin, according to a study in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology. Look for a cream that contains both ingredients. This appeared in Best Life magazine, pg. 54, May 2008. Also noted on the same page was to protect your skin from UV damage with products that contain green tea. The studies werent cited but it was claimed that studies have shown compounds in green tea, including flavonoid EGCG, make it a powerful antioxidant and an anti-inflammatory agent, so it inhibits UV damage and photo aging.
Oh yeah, sure, catchy title, but can you deliver? Heres a bit more info:
Zero cash (well, maybe not no cash, but the ability to avoid using your own cash)
Zero risk
Zero time (a systematic process after it has been set up)
Zero job related function
Books come out with bold promises all the time but promises dont pay the bills. So while the advertising may be interesting, the content usually isnt. If you are interested in this kind of enlightened way to wealth stuff then take a moment to send an email and get informed. I give out information all the time via a newsletter/e-zine/magazine. It could save you hundreds or thousands of dollars. There are so many so-called business experts offering products, but, if you could pull information from multiple sources and put it together, you could realistically know what they know without the hype and excessive fees.
7. Being open to receive all that you are meant to have.
8. Understanding the ebb and flow of the money cycle. It is so important to learn to accept that your own money will also have its ups and downs, no matter how carefully you plan I see what the author is getting at; however, you reduce the compounding effect of your money when you have a losing year or period of losing years. Investment selection can be critical, the way to reduce that underperformance factor is to invest very early in life, meaning that compounding, even at a low rate is so powerful, it allows one to surpass having to save more later on in life. All you need is a steady return, your money should not have ups and downs, simply choose an investment that has a fixed rate of return and is not taxable to move ahead of those investors that prefer mutual funds. Suze Orman misses out on the main point of investing; time is your greatest asset, with enough time on your side you dont have to worry about picking the best stocks or funds. Charles Schwab did a study of investments by asset class performance from 1972 to 2002 (to me that is not a sufficiently long enough period of time) which he published in his book. On page 82 of his book you will see that the most conservative combination of asset class, 50 percent bonds, 30 percent cash, and 20 percent stocks produced an average return of 8.7 percent, with the worst loss year of -1.4 percent. If you can get a guaranteed rate of return of around 7.9 percent with no risk to your capital you will be ahead of the majority of investors that allow their money to participate in down cycles. If you want to allow your money to be risked for a potential reward of one or two percent higher than a guaranteed return of around 7.9 percent you dont understand the value of time or risk-reward. Dont follow what Suze says, common sense should tell you that your best bet is to never have a losing year with your long-term investments. Why give Wall Street or professional money mangers a chance to take from you? What Suze will tell you in this chapter is: Please think about your entire financial history. All the worst things, how you felt, remember the entire sequence of events. I say, a steady return without any losing years takes full advantage of compounding and is better than losing investment capital. Capital that is lost must be regained with the luck of even higher returns.
9. Recognize your true wealth. True financial freedom lies in defining ourselves by who and what we are, not by what we do or do not have. I disagree, it cannot be disputed that a steady rate of return over long periods of time is a measure of true wealth and achieving even a low rate of return is all that is necessary, but she goes on We cannot measure our self-worth by our net worth. But this book alone will not make you financially free. I couldnt agree more with that last statement. This book is a let down; it certainly doesnt give me the energy to feel like He-Man and raise my sword and shout, “I have the power!”
4. Being responsible to those you love. That includes a number of things, such as wills and trusts, durable power of attorney, life insurance, long-term care insurance, and estate planning using a revocable living trust. A revocable living trust is a document that states who controls your assets while you are alive and what will happen to them after you are gone.
5. Being respectful of yourself and your money.
6. Trusting yourself more than you trust others. She discusses an example of a client buying stock, IBM, and it went from $85, to $40, to $120. Some clients lost, some clients made money. She also discusses another stock example, $6, to $12, to $4. She goes into a discussion that it was the attitude with which the client went into an investment that helped to determine whether he or she would make money or lose money and stated that there are good investments and bad investments, but however solid the investment, the investor has to be solidly behind his or her investment as well. Did she make any of her clients rich? I dont see any examples of that.
If the clients are rich already, they dont need to make money from the stock market. Thats the difference when you have wealth. Also, there is only one reason to buy a stock; you are betting others will be willing to pay more for it. So while the clients attitude changed as the stock went up or down, it was due to the fact that her clients had no protection, the stock purchases werent hedged, so of course if the stock price goes down the client will have some concern and be tempted to sell. If the client was properly protected it takes the pressure off, but without a system to manage the uncertainty of price changes, youre likely to be stuck in an uncomfortable situation with an investment that you bought at a higher price now being offered in the market at a much lower price.