The Subconscious Mind

While most of us are aware that we have something called a subconscious mind within us, there are very few of us who know much more than that about it, let alone how to harness it. This is unfortunate, for your subconscious mind can and should be a great ally in achieving success in your life.  All you need do is to establish a working relationship with your subconscious mind. In order to do this, one must become conscious and familiar with this hidden, mysterious aspect of ourselves, and the role it plays in our life.

One of the ways we can do this is by affirming to ourselves for several minutes each day, “My subconscious mind is my partner in success.” By doing this we are re-educating ourselves as to the fact that we possess a second powerful mind, and that it is our partner in success. Becoming conscious of our subconscious, and moving beyond thinking of it as some abstract concept or figment of our imagination is an important step.

The second step is to be aware of how our conscious and subconscious minds work together, to learn the functions and roles of each. The subconscious has two main functions in our life. The first function is to attract to us conditions and circumstances according to the predominant thought patterns that reside within it. My reoccurring mantra is, “What you focus on you attract.” Now with this new subconscious information, you can begin to understand why this is true. Your subconscious mind is not limited in any way and will forever attract to you according to your thoughts. It has no volition of its own and will simply act upon what resides and vibrates within.

Further to this, your subconscious mind will act upon any request or instruction you give it. Any thought that is repeated over and over again will take an imprint within the subconscious, which cannot distinguish between what is real and what is imagined. This is why visualizations, affirmations and repeated images can have such a powerful effect in our life. By doing these exercises we are creating images within ourselves which the subconscious then acts upon.

Our conscious mind is the guardian to the gates of the subconscious. It is the conscious mind’s role to make sure that only the highest quality thoughts gain entrance to the subconscious. When we fully understand that whatever thoughts and beliefs gain entrance to the subconscious will eventually manifest in our life, we become very diligent in monitoring and directing our thoughts.

You have to work to see results with Mind Power. It’s not a magic wand. Mind Power is a practice not a philosophy, and there are very few practices that will guarantee you results from just twenty to thirty minutes a day, so we’re fortunate to have these techniques.

Some exercises can be general and others specific. For example, you could have a general exercise on abundant health and a specific one to help with your sore back. Or a general one on an abundance of money and a specific one on closing an important deal with one of your customers.

Designing your own personal Mind Power program is like painting a canvas. There are a few basic rules of composition and color, but after that each artist paints in his or her own particular way. The paintings of Picasso and Rembrandt are radically different from one another, yet both are recognized as masters of their craft. So too can you be a master of Mind Power in your own unique way; all you need are the desire and a willingness to put time in every day thinking in this new and exciting way.

Having personally taught this system to over two million individuals, I have a great deal of firsthand experience with the different ways people use Mind Power. Each person is different, and this is one of the strengths of Mind Power—it will suit your particular style and character. Some people use a diversity of techniques, while others use only one or two. I know individuals who have achieved great success using only the affirmation technique and nothing else. While using just one technique would be too restrictive and limiting for me, it worked for them and that’s all that counts. I am a big believer in RESULTS! So feel free to design your own system.

I personally like to spend approximately five minutes on each exercise I give myself. So if I devote between twenty to thirty minutes, that’s four to six exercises daily. I also like to assign myself a weekly program, whereby I stick to the same exercises all week. At the end of each week I review my exercises and alter them as feels appropriate. The mind likes diversity, and changing exercises week by week often spurs one on. The important thing is to make sure you’re doing some exercises every day.

Let’s assume you’ve chosen an appropriate goal and you’ve committed yourself to doing twenty to thirty minutes a day for a ninety-day period. A possible Mind Power scenario might look something like this:

WEEK 1
5 minutes visualizing your goal
5 minutes affirming your goal
10 minutes on subconscious exercises for guidance
5 minutes acknowledging your strengths and creating a success vibration

WEEK 2
5 minutes visualizing your goal
5 minutes affirming your goal
5 minutes contemplating the importance of success
5 minutes on self-image
5 minutes acknowledging your strengths

WEEK 3
5 minutes visualizing your goal
5 minutes imprinting new beliefs
5 minutes contemplating your personal power to create
10 minutes on self-image
5 minutes of affirmations

So while your goal remains the same, the exercises can vary week by week. Each new week becomes a new work in progress, and our life is our canvas. The key is to keep doing the exercises, remembering that what you focus on you attract. Mind Power gives us techniques to focus on our goals.

8 Reasons Why Reading is So Important

Why is Reading so important

 Everyone knows reading is important, but have you ever asked yourself why is it so important? Here I list out 8 reasons why reading is important. Hope you can really find out the reason why reading is so important for you, so you got a brand new will to explore the world of reading.

1. Explore Yourself to New Thing 
Through reading, you explore yourself to new thing, to new information, new ways to solve a problem, new way to achieve one thing. Who knows you might find your new hobbies within it? Who knows you might actually explore to one thing you really like and thus it become your career and success in the future? Exploration starts from reading and understanding.

2. Self Improvement
 Reading does help you form a better you, isn’t it?  Through reading, you understand the world more; through reading you get to understand more on a topic that interest you, for example: How to build self confidence, how to make a better planning before action; how to memorize things better and more. All these self development start from the reading; through reading, you structure the path towards a better understanding and better actions to take in the future.

3. Improve Understanding 
The more you read, the more you understand one thing, the A to Z of a thing. Let me give an example here: reading allows you understand about crocodiles and its habits that you need to beware of places it usually appear, in the purpose of stay away from being harmed or bitten by it. Or perhaps you can try by real life experience, in approaching the crocodile, to see what happen. It does help you find out the truth of something right? Reading also increases the understanding of the rules of life, in order for you to adapt, adopt and accommodate into the society better. To play well in a game, you first need to understand the rules well enough. 

  4. Preparation to Action
 Before you take action on anything, where do you seek for help and guidance? Reading is essential way which can help you out. In today’s world, getting reviews and feedback from other people is a big impact on what your next decision, the pros and cons of one thing. Read about how to cook a meal; how to play chess; which place is nice for the holiday family trip; read the menu before ordering food, read the manual before using a new gadget. These all can help you become more prepared before really get into it. 

5. Gain Experience from Other People 
When you are reading, you are actually gaining the knowledge and experience of someone. It can faster up your success towards one thing, as you don’t need to repeat the same mistake while focus on the right path in achieving one thing. It’s like a mountain of gems for you to discover in books, of people’s success, failures and advices. Life is too short for you to keep repeating the mistakes that had been done by other people in the past, in order for you to reach the results that someone might already reached. There are four thousand plus billionaire and 12 million millionaires today. To become one of them, the first thing is to learn and get to know their past, what they did in the past that makes them where they are today. Reading is a great path to get to know them, and learn from these great people. 

6. Tools of Communicating
 It is the most important tool of communicating, through reading, you communicate, through reading, you understand more, and thus you can communicate better with people. As if a person that know nothing, he hasn’t had anything to share, and he probably don’t even understand what people are sharing. Through reading, you build a more solid bridge of communication. It is one of the most important tools we use every day to connect with each other. Whereas if you don’t read, you can’t even connect with the world and what people are talking about out there, including understanding what this article is all about. Reading connects you with the world. 

  7. Connecting Your Brain
 When reading, you’re in full silence, where reading connects directly to your brain. In silence, you seek for more; in silence, your brain is clear and focuses, thus you learn and grow, and therefore you feel and see from the point of view of the author, about everything in life. Hence you shape a better self.

8. Boost Imagination and Creativity
 Reading exposes you to a world of imagination, showing you nothing is impossible in this world. By reading, you are exploring a different angle to see a thing you’ve known, on how different action leads to different results. Books are beyond imagination, it’s like a huge spider web, where you keep linking to more and more, to things you knew, and things you just learn, structuring a new solution and answers

Facts About the Human Body

Can you feel the pulse in your wrist? For humans the normal pulse is 70 heartbeats per minute. Elephants have a slower pulse of 27 and for a canary it is 1000!

If all the blood vessels in your body were laid end to end, they would reach about 60,000 miles.

Abraham Lincoln probably had a medical condition called Marfans syndrome. Some of its symptoms are extremely long bones, curved spine, an arm span that is longer than the persons height, eye problems, heart problems and very little fat. It is a rare, inherited condition.

In one day your heart beats 100,000 times.

Half your body’s red blood cells are replaced every seven days.

By the time you are 70 you will have easily drunk over 12,000 gallons of water.

Coughing can cause air to move through your windpipe faster than the speed of sound – over a thousand feet per second!

Germs only cause disease, right? But a common bacterium, E. Coli, found in the intestine helps us digest green vegetables and beans (also making gases – pew!). These same bacteria also make vitamin K, which causes blood to clot. If we didn’t have these germs we would bleed to death whenever we got a small cut!

It takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile.

That dust on rugs and your furniture is not only dirt. It’s mostly made of dead skin cells. Everybody loses millions of skin cells every day which fall on the floor and get kicked up to land on all the surfaces in a room. You could say, “That’s me all over.”

It takes food seven seconds to go from the mouth to the stomach via the esophagus.

A human’s small intestine is 6 meters long.

The human body is 75% water.

Your blood takes a very long trip through your body. If you could stretch out all of a human’s blood vessels, they would be about 60,000 miles long. That’s enough to go around the world twice.

The strongest bone in your body is the femur (thighbone), and it’s hollow!

The width of your armspan stretched out is the length of your whole body.

The average human dream lasts only 2 to 3 seconds.

The average American over fifty will have spent 5 years waiting in lines.

The farthest you can see with the naked eye is 2.4 million light years away! (140,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles.) That’s the distance to the giant Andromeda Galaxy. You can see it easily as a dim, large gray “cloud” almost directly overhead in a clear night sky.

The average person has at least seven dreams a night.

Your brain is move active and thinks more at night than during the day.Submitted by: Christina & Jessica

Your brain is 80% water.

85% of the population can curl their tongue into a tube.

Your tongue has 3,000 taste buds.

Your forearm (from inside of elbow to inside of wrist) is the same length as your foot.

A sneeze travels at over 100 miles per hour. Gesundheit!

Your thigh bone is stronger than concrete.

Your fingernails grow almost four times as fast as your toenails.

You blink your eyes over 10,000,000 a year.

There were about 300 bones in your body when you were born, but by the time you reach adulthood you only have 206.

The smallest bones in the human body are in your ear!

Your mouth uses 75 muscles when you speak!

When you wake up in the morning you are at taller than when you go to sleep, because you have let your spine straighten back out after all the bending, sitting, and moving you have done!

It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

The average growth of hair is half an inch per month.

If hair remains uncut, it can grow up to 5 feet long.

Your tongue, eye, and jaw muscles are among the strongest muscles in your body.

Hitler Facts

Hitler's Family

• Despite becoming the dictator of Germany, Hitler was not born there. Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria on April 20, 1889.
• Hitler's parents were Alois (1837-1903) and Klara (1860-1907) Hitler.
• Hitler had only one sibling that survived childhood, Paula (1896-1960).
• However, Hitler also had four other siblings that died in childhood: Gustav (1885-1887), Ida (1886-1888), Otto (1887), and Edmund (1894-1900).
• In addition to his sister Paula, Hitler had one step-brother, Alois (b. 1882) and one step-sister, Angela (1883-1949), both from his father's previous marriage.
• Hitler was known as "Adi" in his youth.
• Hitler's father, Alois, was in his third marriage and 51 years old when Hitler was born. He was known as a strict man who retired from the civil service when Hitler was only six. Alois died when Hitler was 13.
Artist and Anti-Semite
• Throughout his youth, Hitler dreamed of becoming an artist. He applied twice to the Vienna Academy of Art (once in 1907 and again in 1908) but was denied entrance both times.
• At the end of 1908, Hitler's mother died of breast cancer.
• After his mother's death, Hitler spent four years living on the streets of Vienna, selling postcards of his artwork to make a little money.
• No one is quite sure where or how Hitler picked up his virulent antisemitism. Some say it was because of the questionable identity of his grandfather (was Hitler's grandfather Jewish?). Others say Hitler was furious at a Jewish doctor that let his mother die. However, it is just as likely that Hitler picked up a hatred for Jews while living on the streets of Vienna, a city known at the time for its antisemitism.
Hitler as a Soldier in World War I
• Although Hitler attempted to avoid Austrian military service by moving to Munich, Germany in May 1913, Hitler volunteered to serve in the German army once World war 1 began.
• Hitler endured and survived four years of World War I. During this time, he was awarded two Iron Crosses for bravery.
• Hitler sustained two major injuries during the war. The first occurred in October 1916 when he was wounded by a grenade splinter. The other was on October 13, 1918, when a gas attack caused Hitler to go temporarily blind.
• It was while Hitler was recovering from the gas attack that the armistice (i.e. the end of the fighting) was announced. Hitler was furious that Germany had surrendered and felt strongly that Germany had been "stabbed in the back" by its leaders.
Hitler Enters Politics
• Furious at Germany's surrender, Hitler returned to Munich after the end of World War I, determined to enter politics.
• In 1919, Hitler became the 55th member of a small antisemitic party called the German Worker's Party.
• Hitler soon became the party's leader, created a 25-point platform for the party, and established a bold red background with a white circle and swastika in the middle as the party's symbol. In 1920, the party's name was changed to National Socialist German Worker's Party (i.e. the Nazi Party).
• Over the next several years, Hitler often gave public speeches that gained him attention, followers, and financial support.
• In November 1923, Hitler spearheaded an attempt to take over the German government through a putsch (a coup), called the Beer Hall Putsch.
• When the coup failed, Hitler was caught and sentenced to five years in prison.
• It was while in Landsberg prison that Hitler wrote his book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle).
• After only nine months, Hitler was released from prison.
• After getting out of prison, Hitler was determined to build up the Nazi Party in order to take over the German government using legal means.
Hitler Becomes Chancellor
• In 1932, Hitler was granted German citizenship.
• In the July 1932 elections, the Nazi Party obtained 37.3 percent of the vote for the Reichstag (Germany's parliament), making it the controlling political party in Germany.
• On January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor . Hitler then used this high-ranking position to gain absolute power over Germany. This finally happened when Germany's president, Paul von Hindenburg, died in office on August 2, 1934.
• Hitler took the title of Führer and Reichskanzler (Leader and Reich Chancellor).
Hitler as Führer
• As dictator of Germany, Hitler wanted to increase and strengthen the German army as well as expand Germany's territory. Although these things broke the terms of the Versailles Treaty, the treaty that officially ended World War I, other countries allowed him to do so. Since the terms of the Versailles Treaty had been harsh, other countries found it easier to be lenient than risk another bloody European war.World War II began.
• In March 1938, Hitler was able to annex Austria into Germany (called the Anschluss) without firing a single shot.
• When Nazi Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, the other European nations could no longer stand idly by. 
• On July 20, 1944, Hitler barely survived an assassination attempt. One of his top military officers had placed a suitcase bomb under the table during a conference meeting at Hitler's Wolf's Lair. Because the table leg blocked much of the blast, Hitler survived with only injuries to his arm and some hearing loss. Not everyone in the room was so lucky.
• On April 29, 1945, Hitler married his long-time mistress, Eva Braun.
• The following day, April 30, 1945, Hitler and Eva committed suicide together.

How to Increase your Productivity

Heuristics are rules intended to help you solve problems.  When a problem is large or complex, and the optimal solution is unclear, applying a heuristic allows you to begin making progress towards a solution even though you can’t visualize the entire path from your starting point.

Suppose your goal is to climb to the peak of a mountain, but there’s no trail to follow.  An example of a heuristic would be:  Head directly towards the peak until you reach an obstacle you can’t cross.  Whenever you reach such an obstacle, follow it around to the right until you’re able to head towards the peak once again.  This isn’t the most intelligent or comprehensive heuristic, but in many cases it will work just fine, and you’ll eventually reach the peak.

Heuristics don’t guarantee you’ll find the optimal solution, nor do they generally guarantee a solution at all.  But they do a good enough job of solving certain types of problems to be useful.  Their strength is that they break the deadlock of indecision and get you into action.  As you take action you begin to explore the solution space, which deepens your understanding of the problem.  As you gain knowledge about the problem, you can make course corrections along the way, gradually improving your chances of finding a solution.  If you try to solve a problem you don’t initially know how to solve, you’ll often figure out a solution as you go, one you never could have imagined until you started moving.  This is especially true with creative work such as software development.  Often you don’t even know exactly what you’re trying to build until you start building it.

Heuristics have many practical applications, and one of my favorite areas of application is personal productivity.  Productivity heuristics are behavioral rules (some general, some situation-specific) that can help us get things done more efficiently.  Here are some of my favorites:

1. Nuke it!  The most efficient way to get through a task is to delete it.  If it doesn’t need to be done, get it off your to do list.
2. Daily goals.  Without a clear focus, it’s too easy to succumb to distractions.  Set targets for each day in advance.  Decide what you’ll do; then do it.
3. Worst first.  To defeat procrastination learn to tackle your most unpleasant task first thing in the morning instead of delaying it until later in the day.  This small victory will set the tone for a very productive day.
4. Peak times.  Identify your peak cycles of productivity, and schedule your most important tasks for those times.  Work on minor tasks during your non-peak times.
5. No-comm zones.  Allocate uninterruptible blocks of time for solo work where you must concentrate.  Schedule light, interruptible tasks for your open-comm periods and more challenging projects for your no-comm periods.
6. Mini-milestones.  When you begin a task, identify the target you must reach before you can stop working.  For example, when working on a book, you could decide not to get up until you’ve written at least 1000 words.  Hit your target no matter what.
7. Time boxing.  Give yourself a fixed time period, like 30 minutes, to make a dent in a task.  Don’t worry about how far you get.  Just put in the time. 
8. Batching.  Batch similar tasks like phone calls or errands into a single chunk, and knock them off in a single session.
9. Early bird.  Get up early in the morning, like at 5am, and go straight to work on your most important task.  You can often get more done before 8am than most people do in a day.
10. Cone of silence.  Take a laptop with no network or WiFi access, and go to a place where you can work flat out without distractions, such as a library, park, coffee house, or your own backyard.  Leave your comm gadgets behind.
11. Tempo.  Deliberately pick up the pace, and try to move a little faster than usual.  Speak faster.  Walk faster.  Type faster.  Read faster.  Go home sooner.
12. Relaxify.  Reduce stress by cultivating a relaxing, clutter-free workspace.  
13. Agendas.  Provide clear written agendas to meeting participants in advance.  This greatly improves meeting focus and efficiency.  You can use it for phone calls too.
14. Pareto.  The Pareto principle is the 80-20 rule, which states that 80% of the value of a task comes from 20% of the effort.  Focus your energy on that critical 20%, and don’t overengineer the non-critical 80%.
15. Ready-fire-aim.  Bust procrastination by taking action immediately after setting a goal, even if the action isn’t perfectly planned.  You can always adjust course along the way.
16. Minuteman.  Once you have the information you need to make a decision, start a timer and give yourself just 60 seconds to make the actual decision.  Take a whole minute to vacillate and second-guess yourself all you want, but come out the other end with a clear choice.  Once your decision is made, take some kind of action to set it in motion.
17. Deadline.  Set a deadline for task completion, and use it as a focal point to stay on track.
18. Promise.  Tell others of your commitments, since they’ll help hold you accountable.
19. Punctuality.  Whatever it takes, show up on time.  Arrive early.
20. Gap reading.  Use reading to fill in those odd periods like waiting for an appointment, standing in line, or while the coffee is brewing.  If you’re a male, you can even read an article while shaving (preferably with an electric razor).  That’s 365 articles a year.
21. Resonance.  Visualize your goal as already accomplished.  Put yourself into a state of actually being there.  Make it real in your mind, and you’ll soon see it in your reality.
22. Glittering prizes.  Give yourself frequent rewards for achievement.  See a movie, book a professional massage, or spend a day at an amusement park.
23. Quad 2.  Separate the truly important tasks from the merely urgent.  Allocate blocks of time to work on the critical Quadrant 2 tasks, those which are important but rarely urgent, such as physical exercise, writing a book, and finding a relationship partner.
24. Continuum.  At the end of your workday, identify the first task you’ll work on the next day, and set out the materials in advance.  The next day begin working on that task immediately.
25. Slice and dice.  Break complex projects into smaller, well-defined tasks.  Focus on completing just one of those tasks.
26. Single-handling.  Once you begin a task, stick with it until it’s 100% complete.  Don’t switch tasks in the middle.  When distractions come up, jot them down to be dealt with later.
27. Randomize.  Pick a totally random piece of a larger project, and complete it.  Pay one random bill.  Make one phone call.  Write page 42 of your book.
28. Insanely bad.  Defeat perfectionism by completing your task in an intentionally terrible fashion, knowing you need never share the results with anyone.  Write a blog post about the taste of salt, design a hideously dysfunctional web site, or create a business plan that guarantees a first-year bankruptcy.  With a truly horrendous first draft, there’s nowhere to go but up.
29. 30 days.  Identify a new habit you’d like to form, and commit to sticking with it for just 30 days.  A temporary commitment is much easier to keep than a permanent one. 
30. Delegate.  Convince someone else to do it for you.
31. Cross-pollination.  Sign up for martial arts, start a blog, or join an improve group.  You’ll often encounter ideas in one field that can boost your performance in another.
32. Intuition.  Go with your gut instinct.  It’s probably right.
33. Optimization.  Identify the processes you use most often, and write them down step-by-step.  Re factor them on paper for greater efficiency.  Then implement and test your improved processes.  Sometimes we just can’t see what’s right in front of us until we examine it under a microscope.

Perception and the Perceptual Process

What is Perception

The perceptual process allows us to experience the world around us. Take a moment to think of all the things you perceive on a daily basis. At any given moment, you might see familiar objects in your environment, feel the touch of objects and people against your skin, smell the aroma of a home-cooked meal and hear the sound of music playing in your next door neighbor's apartment. All of these things help make up our conscious experience and allow us to interact with the people and objects around us.

In this overview of perception and the perceptual process, we will learn more about how we go from detecting stimuli in the environment to actually taking action based on that information.

What Is Perception?

Perception is our sensory experience of the world around us and involves both the recognition of environmental stimuli and actions in response to these stimuli. Through the perceptual process, we gain information about properties and elements of the environment that are critical to our survival. Perception not only creates our experience of the world around us; it allows us to act within our environment.

Perception includes the five senses; touch, sight, taste smell and taste. It also includes what is known as preconception, a set of senses involving the ability to detect changes in body positions and movements. It also involves the cognitive processes required to process information, such as recognizing the face of a friend or detecting a familiar scent.

The perceptual process is a sequence of steps that begins with the environment and leads to our perception of a stimulus and an action in response to the stimulus. This process is continual, but you do not spend a great deal of time thinking about the actual process that occurs when you perceive the many stimuli that surround you at any given moment.

The process of transforming the light that falls on your retinas into an actual visual image happens unconsciously and automatically. The subtle changes in pressure against your skin that allow you to feel object occur without a single thought.

In order to fully understand how the perception process works, we'll start by breaking down each step.

The process of perception begins with an object in the real world, termed the distal stimulus or distal object. By means of light, sound or another physical process, the object stimulates the body's sensory organs. These sensory organs transform the input energy into neural activity—a process called transduction. This raw pattern of neural activity is called the proximal stimulus.These neural signals are transmitted to the brain and processed The resulting mental re-creation of the distal stimulus is the percept. Perception is sometimes described as the process of constructing mental representations  of distal stimuli using the information available in proximal stimuli.

An example would be a person looking at a shoe. The shoe itself is the distal stimulus. When light from the shoe enters a person's eye and stimulates their retina, that stimulation is the proximal stimulus. The image of the shoe reconstructed by the brain of the person is the percept. Another example would be a telephone ringing. The ringing of the telephone is the distal stimulus. The sound stimulating a person's auditory receptors is the proximal stimulus, and the brain's interpretation of this as the ringing of a telephone is the percept. The different kinds of sensation such as warmth, sound, and taste are called "sensory modalities.

1. When we encounter an unfamiliar target we are open to different informational cues and want to learn more about the target.
2. In the second step we try to collect more information about the target. Gradually, we encounter some familiar cues which help us categorize the target.
3. At this stage, the cues become less open and selective. We try to search for more cues that confirm the categorization of the target. We also actively ignore and even distort cues that violate our initial perceptions. Our perception becomes more selective and we finally paint a consistent picture of the target.

According to Alan Saks and Gary Johns, there are three components to perception.

1. The Perceiver, the person who becomes aware about something and comes to a final understanding. There are 3 factors that can influence his or her perceptions: experience, motivational state and finally emotional state. In different motivational or emotional states, the perceiver will react to or perceive something in different ways. Also in different situations he or she might employ a "perceptual defence" where they tend to "see what they want to see".
2. The Target. This is the person who is being perceived or judged. "Ambiguity or lack of information about a target leads to a greater need for interpretation and addition."
3. The Situation also greatly influences perceptions because different situations may call for additional information about the target.

How to WIN with high Self-Esteem

What Is Self-Esteem?

Esteem is defined as appreciation, worth, estimate of value. Self-Esteem is the package of beliefs that you carry around in your head, that you have accepted to be the truth about yourself, whether it is or not.
Two Examples of Self-Esteem : One of low Self-Esteem , One of high Self-Esteem.
        Everything you do is determined by your value judgement of yourself.
Commitment. "The quality of person's life is determined by his commitment to excellence." (vince lombardi)
                 People with high Self-Esteem can and do make a commitment to a cause that's equal to or greater than themselves. Make your motto "The greatest use of life is to so live your life that the use of your life outlives your life."
        People with low Self-Esteem cannot make a commitment to anything . They are filled with fear, doubt, and anxiety.
Relationship. we must love people and use things, not love things and use people.
    

Emotional conduct of                                                                                        Emotional conduct of 
   those with                                                                                                           those with
Low Self-Esteem                                                                                               High Self-Esteem   
1. Critical of others                                                                                1. Accepts others as they are
2. Pessimistic                                                                                          2. optimistic
3. Complains about                                                                                3. Looks at circumstances 
     circumstances                                                                                        with acceptance
4. Short temper                                                                                       4. seldom loses temper
5. Never enough money,                                                                         5. Plans life positively 
    time, etc.                                                                                                  around money and time
6. Reject help from others                                                                       6. Does not ask for help, 
7. Expects perfection in self                                                                        but welcomes it
    and others                                                                                            7. Expects things to go well
8. Carries heavy guilt                                                                              8. Loads no guilt on self 
9. Unloads guilt on others                                                                          or others
     as control                                                                                             9. Never uses guilt as control
10. Tries to manipulate                                                                          10. Never manipulates ; does  
      others                                                                                                       persuade
11. Has rigid rules of                                                                             11. Has developed reasonable 
      conduct                                                                                                   character guidelines 
12. Easily addicted to alcohol,                                                              12. Has control over impulses 
      drugs                                                                                                       has own inner highs that 
                                                                                                                          are Self-generated

A Self-Esteem Evaluation Exercise
 (Pick those that best apply to you.)

CONDUCT
1. My conduct is usually beyond reproach.
2. When i get in trouble with others, it's usually not my fault.
3. I usually can influence other to do that which benefits both of us.
4. I cause trouble with my family members.
5. I am good at the things I do at work, home, etc.
6. I never measure up to what I really want to be or do.
7. I treat other people in a way so that they feel important and of value.
8. My family and some of my friends are disappointed in me.
9. I an basically a good person.
10. I can really be Mean to others people.

MENTAL ACHIEVEMENTS

1. I am smart.
2. When I reach my Goals, I will be Known As an important person.
3. I am well-behaved in all the things I do.
4. I am an important and valued member of my family.
5. Other people at work, school, or home think I am smart and interesting.
6. I have trouble remembering things.
7. I have never used but a small fraction of my mental capabilities
8. I am dumb about things other than the very small world I live in daily.
9. I would fear having to converse with someone with a good education.
10. I really am not very smart.

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE 

1. My looks never please me.
2. I am strong
3. I can never get my hair the way i want it.
4. I really am good-looking.
5. Nothing in my wardrobe suits me.
6. I am popular with most everybody I meet.
7. I do not feel like my figure is as acceptable as I want it to be.
8. I do have beautiful eyes.
9. No one ever compliments me about my looks.
10. I am improving in strength and looks.

FEARS

1. I am often sad and unhappy.
2. My looks bother me.
3. I really worry a lot.
4. I am often afraid.
5. little things worry me.
6. I face my Problems and overcome them.
7. I have learned that the things you worry about never happen anyway, so I don,t worry.
8. Fear is coward. When you face it with facts action, fear flees.
9. I have learned that i can be happy by expecting to feel happy.
10. I put joy and happiness in my life by doing the things that make me feel good.

GETTING ALONG WITH OTHER PEOPLE

1. I feel other people are making fun of me behind my back.
2. It's hard for me to make new friends.
3. I am quite popular, because i care about people.
4. If you feel good about yourself, you will treat other people the same way.
5. I feel left out of things.
6. people often pick on me.
7. I have many friends and enjoy their companionship.
8. My fellow workers or classmates include me in their conversation and activities.
9. I don,t know how to meet new people and it'snot pleasant.
10. I am one of the most accepted and popular people I know.

HAPPINESS

1. I am a happy person.
2. I live a cheerful life.
3. I wish things were different for me.
4. most other people I know are unhappy also.
5. I really like the life I live.
6. My family life is the greatest.
7. I am unhappy most of the time.
8. Life really is the pits.
9. I am easy to get along with.
10. most days I'm sorry I got up.


ANSWERS TO SELF-ESTEEM EVALUATION EXERCISE

Positive answers receive a +1 ; Negative answers receive a -1.

CONDUCT: 1, 3, 5, 7, and re Positive statements; 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 are Negative statements.

MENTAL ACHIEVEMENT: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 are Positive; and 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 are Negative.

PHYSICAL ACHIEVEMENTS: 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 are Positive; 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 are Negative.

FEARS: 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 are Positive; 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 are Negative.

GETTING ALONG WITH PEOPLE: 3, 4, 7, 8, ans 10 are Positive ; 1, 2, 5, 6, and 9 are Negative

HAPPINESS: 1, 2, 5, 6 and 9 are Positive; 3, 4, 7, 8, and 10 are Negative.


                       SCORING FOR SELF-ESTEEM EXERCISE

30--50 +'s                   Super, confident, high Self-Esteem.

10--29 +'s                    Well defined high Self-Esteem.

1--9 +'s                         A shade more high Self-Esteem than low Self-Esteem.


1--9 -'s                          Low Self-Esteem greater than high Self-Esteem.

10--29 -'s                      You really don,t like yourself; work to change this attitude. 

30--50 -'s                       You have a serious condition of low Self-esteem; see a counselor for 
                                        growth or try to change your negative attitude.


POSITIVE SELF-ACTION STATEMENT TO ENHANCE MY
SELF-ESTEEM

1. I am my final authority for everything I do.
2. I accept full responsibility for all my actions.
3. I allow myself the freedom to make mistakes.
4. I make my own decisions and willingly accept the consequences.
5. i think for myself and speak and act with deliberation.
6. I stand up for my own opinions and convictions.
7. I do not vacillate , I make the best choice I can at the time.
8. I do not accept condemnations, "put-downs," or insults.
9. I do not condemns or belittle myself for my mistakes and shortcomings.
10. I do not blame others for my problems, mistakes, defeats, or handicaps.
11. I do not lean on others for unjustified financial or moral support.
12. I take deep satisfaction in doing my work conscientiously and well.
13. I face reality and resist nothing i cannot change.
14. I refuse to accept any condemnations, blame, shame, or guilt.
15. I refrain from no endeavor out of fear of unsatisfactory results.
16. I do not procrastinate; I do first things first.
17. I give precedence to my own needs and desires as I see fit.
18. I accept every problem and goal as a challenge to my awareness.
19. I purge myself of any blame, shame, guilt, or remorse.
20. I do not accept advice against my better judgment.
21. I do not depend on others for confirmation or approval.
22. I am patient, kind, and gentle with myself.
23.I discipline myself in line with my life objectives.
24. I do nothing to excess, I avoid self-indulgence.
25.I fulfill all commitments, both to myself and others.
26. I follow all undertakings through to emotional satisfaction.
27.I follow all undertakings through to a logical conclusions.
28. I take the initiative in personal contacts and relationship.
29.I freely express my emotions i see fit.
30. I readily admit mistakes and shortcomings.
31. I walk erect and look everyone in the eye with a friendly gaze.
32. I do not deny my needs, feelings, or opinions to please others.
33. I am warm and friendly toward all I contact.
34. I recognize everyone as innately "good".
35. I feel warm and loving toward myself.
36. I choose my words carefully, convey and express freely.
37. I accept and realize that we are the products of our thoughts and words.

Note: We learn by Doing

How to develop your Reading habit

There are some people who like reading as a habit, and there are some people who only read because they’re told to. There is another kind of person who wants to make reading a habit,     but just can't do it. Well, here’s a way to start developing your reading habit and make you a true book lover!

Pick up a book. If you are nowhere near a book, how are you supposed to read? Try finding something to read. That can be anything, including newspapers, magazines, novels etc. The important thing is that the book you choose should be at your level. Don’t choose a book too high for your level because it will just waste your time.

Practice your reading habit. Now that you have found what you like to read, you can set a goal of 15 minutes a day of reading. During this time, you’re not supposed to care about anything except your reading. After 15 minutes, you can close your reading material and do something else. Practice this every day. Make it a habit. After you have gotten used to this habit, you can increase the time you need to read in a day to 20 or 30 minutes.

Don’t give up. If you find that you cannot complete the task in the first place, don't be ashamed and hold your chin up! Remember, winners never quit! You just have to try again and again until you achieve it.

Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. No kidding. If you find yourself being stressed while reading a book, don’t continue reading under pressure like that. Reading is for pleasure, not pressure, so don’t push yourself too hard until you might quit reading forever, or even if you can read, the outcome won’t be so good either.

Before you start reading a book, browse the table of contents to form an idea of what the book is about. In storybooks or fictional books, there will usually be a short description at the back. You can look at the description to get a better idea of the book's contents.

Decide what you want to read about. You'll be much more motivated to read if you choose a book or magazine that you actually have some interest in. Check out the staff picks at some local bookstores, read book reviews in a magazine that interests you, ask some friends and family what they recommend and why, or pick your favourite TV genre and ask a librarian to recommend a book in a similar style. Make sure the subject is interesting to you.

Don't allow public or peer pressure to choose your reading material. It doesn't matter if "everyone's reading it." If you have no interest in a vampire love story, don't choose to read one. If you have no interest in football, don't choose a football player's biography. Choose what you are actually, personally interested in. If you try, but find that you don't care that much for fiction (novels, such as "Twilight" or the Harry Potter books), try biographies or informational books. You can read about political personalities, Hollywood celebrities, royalty; you can read about World War II, or Genghis Khan, or the Civil War. You can read about how to prune trees, how to cook, different dog breeds. Or you can choose to read classics such as "A Christmas Carol" or "Moby Dick." There are all sorts of books to choose from. Choose one you want to read, not one all your friends are reading (unless you really are interested).

Give yourself a time and a place to read. It should be quiet, comfortable, and designed to make you feel relaxed.

Make yourself comfortable. Some people like to lie on a couch. Some people like to sit in a chair. Some like to use an ottoman to prop their feet up, some like to sit at a table and lay the book down when they read. Whatever makes your reading effortless and comfortable is what you should do. There are little laptop tables with swiveling tops that you can angle for a reading surface. Sitting in a chair with your book on a table at a comfortable angle and distance can help you focus on the book rather on your arms getting tired from holding the book at the proper angle, or your hands going to sleep.

Take care of other priorities before you sit down to read. If you've never been able to settle into reading easily, you will make it that much more difficult if your mind is blazing over errands you still need to run today, work you need to do, or calls you need to make. Accomplish these things first, then read. A quiet mind will have more resources to dedicate to imagination.

Give it a really good try. If you have trouble imagining what you're reading, practice closing your eyes and describing a daydream to yourself while you picture it in vivid detail. If you only have trouble with this one book, ditch it. There's no point torturing yourself. Every book is not for every reader.

Sprint, rather than marathon. Read in bursts if this is more your style. Rather than try to read a book from cover to cover over a weekend, take a break every now and then to stretch, snack, listen to a song, sleep, and think or talk about what you're reading.

Join a book club. When others are reading the same book you are, the group always needs to slow down to accommodate all schedules and all reading speeds. This way, your group may read a chapter or two per week - or maybe you will agree to meet in a month, after you have all finished the book you've agreed to read. Then you can discuss things you liked, disliked, were confused about, and also talk about the meanings and significance of the things you've read.