To succeed in the Corporate Environment

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step - Lao Tzu.

As we look at the path in front of us, it can be quite daunting. It can be intimidating and hopefully, it is incredibly exciting. But it is a step by step approach. Sometimes the step is so small, you ask yourself whether it is worthwhile or not. It is. Trust me. We all have long lives to live and we need to always focus on being better people and doing things that make others around us better or more confident people.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Anonymous

Wow, how true is this? Only twice this year have I felt any real pain and both times, I have suffered for a few days and then friends have been so wonderfully supportive that they remind me that it isn't worth the energy or the pain I may be feeling. To be honest, I am such a deeply emotional person and that often goes hand in hand with being creative, but with that, when I feel pain, I really feel it. But it is optional. We can always look at both sides of what created that pain and find the positive in it in some shape or form.

How you do one thing, is how you do everything. Beware.

Some people have great poker faces and they can put on the charm better than anyone. But in the next instance they can be a bully or they can be dishonest. It's all the same. So trying to be a good person in every circumstance and to ensure consistency of personality, is everything. One of my best male friends always says to me, that myself and one other friend of his are the only two people he knows that are always consistent. We don't change. And for that, he appreciates our friendships. It also has alot to do with personal brands. If you are nice socially and put on the charm, then in business, be nice and charming. Never try and take something away from someone, just because you feel you can. Do unto others, as you would like done unto yourself.

Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, define yourself. Harvey Fierstein.

One part of me says, that you should always take the higher ground in life and never say anything and never hold any person to account. But if someone is never held to account, do they never learn that what they are doing is sometimes not acceptable, may hurt others or does not show good values? I am 38 years of age, and I still see bullying occur. You think it only happens in high school - right? Wrong. Bullying is around us and hopefully, we don't see it or experience it. I tend to say to bully's that I don't want their view on someone because you give them power by listening. Bully's are just scared individuals who have had something happen in their life whereby they feel they have to fight and get in first. They are all going through their own stuff and unfortunately, only if we react to that bullying do we play to their web of destruction.

Accomplish Your Objectives

Accomplish Your Objectives By leading the Highway



If you want to start playing a bigger game, you'll want to carefully read this short article. I'm going to share with you some simple, yet profound principles to help make some amazing changes.

If there is any area of your life that is in a state of lack, you are simply missing some information. Once you gain enough knowledge on any subject, you become capable of handling that particular area.

If you're having a hard time with increasing your net worth or accumulating wealth, you're missing information on the subject of wealth accumulation.

If you're having a hard time with your business or career, you're missing information about improving your business or career.

If you're having relationship problems, you're missing information about how to find and maintain better relationships.

And, the list can go on and on.

Our company is committed to providing information on a wide variety of topics to help individuals diminish their confusion and gain more control over their lives. Isn't it funny, there really is information that will help you play a bigger game with greater success, and yet, many good hearted people will not take the action necessary to get it?



Confusion and chaos are not part of a normal life. Confusion and chaos are indicators of disorder in life. If a person is experiencing disorder, they simply need to learn how to put the pieces together to gain control.

Life doesn't improve on its own. The only way a person's life improves is by the person stepping up and declaring I've had enough--now I want more. At that point, our products and programs can help you gain the necessary information to live more prosperously.

Is it time to extend your limits and create a better version of yourself?

I've dedicated my life to serving people with my research, discoveries, books, and programs. All I have done was accumulate worthless information until it is in the hands of people using it to improve their lives.

Learn well. Learn quickly. Live Better.


Sex is a stress buster. It relaxes and re-energizes you. Sex frees one from the strain and tension that one might go through in one's professional or personal life, naturally.

During the sexual act, the body produces neuro chemicals called endorphins. One benefits from their release during the point of orgasm. The body produces this 'natural morphine' that alters one's mood, thereby ensuring that it switches to a relaxed mode.

But, there is a flip side. Some use sex as a device to relieve stress as opposed to enjoying the act which is the real purpose. As sexologist Dr. Rajendra Sathe explains, "People use sex or even masturbation as a stress buster. It does work well, and allows you to get over the tensions and relaxes you. But this is not why you should perform sex." He adds, "The real idea behind sexual intercourse should be enjoyment and the pleasure of being with your sweetheart rather than releasing tensions. It is not beneficial in the long run. Many use alcohol as a stress-buster, and end up getting addicted to it. A similar thing can happen with sex."

Inner Peace

Inner peace is the result of a quiet mind. An inner quietness that allows you to see yourself and the world around you as it is, without any aggression, desires, frustration or stress you can feel content simply just to be.  You do not need to be rich, successful, pretty or popular to feel this inner calm all you need is to be able to take control of your mind and stop the constant thoughts that repeat themselves over and over again.

Inner peace is not a fleeting emotion it is a state of mind. However people who find this peace do not simply live every moment with a smile on their face, They still get ill and feel sorrow as they are still human! The only difference is that there is a vast comforting space around such difficult times and an inner knowing that such times will pass. There is also a very light uplifting and joyful feeling towards others and yourself which makes you feel complete. People who achieve this inner quietness generally show a kindness towards all living things and a deep appreciation for the natural world around them.

Finding peace of mind is not something you can buy over the internet or achieve over night. It is a gradual process of self discovery and understanding. It is the most important journey you could ever set out on. It takes great dedication and a genuine thirst to want to be peaceful not only for yourself but for others as well. The good news is that anybody can achieve a peaceful mind if they wish. In fact you already have a peaceful mind it is just covered over in layers of disturbing and repetitive thoughts.

The first step is the most important and that is a genuine feeling to want this peace, this wanting needs to be more than a mere curiosity as the spiritual journey ahead is a long path that demands a great deal of inner strength and determination but it can be achieved by anyone whose thirst for inner contentment is strong enough. It does not matter what religious background you come from our needs as human beings are the same.

Democracy and Concern for Others in the Society

Many pundits and politicians from both sides of the aisle have raised all the usual and obvious issues and priorities: get our economic house in order; control debt and entitlements; reduce unemployment; stop foreclosures; reverse staggering inequities; invest in infrastructure; simplify the tax code; establish energy security; trim military spending; address climate change; protect social programs; tighten financial regulations; invest in skills and technology; resolve immigration issues; encourage innovators and entrepreneurs; incentivize new businesses; support scientific research and advancement; encourage saving and investment; curb the growth of entitlement programs; provide a basic safety net; and more. If you follow the game, you’ve heard or read it all before.

Why haven’t our leaders accomplish these tasks? That is their responsibility. That is why they are elected, paid, and pensioned. These are not terribly complex issues. It’s truly not rocket science, as the saying goes. Many solutions abound from expert and diverse sources. The problem is not with the difficulty of the issues, the difficulty lies in intransigent partisans. Too many think that only their watch tells the right time. It’s the arrogance and utter failure of rigid ideology. It’s the ignorance of partisan politics and partisan politicians.

Rigid ideology is one of eight structural, systemic, or procedural problems that plague our country, have decimated our decision making process, and thereby our democratic form of government. Our process is defunct. The combined impacts of our modern self-created obstacles have distanced us from that which was envisioned for America. If the source is polluted, the stream cannot be pure. Our source and our stream are polluted. The issues below are long overdue for common-sense solutions if we are again to have a government of, by, and for the people that nurtures shared responsibility and shared prosperity.

1. Get the Founder’s Vision Back

Our forefathers, at the gravest personal risks, established the extraordinary form of government that we have inherited. It is a process that emanated from humankind’s natural instinct to be free and evolve – an irrepressible force. The ideals of democracy are the ideals of humanity. Out of the freedom afforded by that foundation grew a strong and prosperous nation.

Rather than respect the integrity of our democratic process, we have drifted away from it and damaged its potential. We have eroded that which has given us our strength.

We have forgotten – if we were ever aware of – the vision of shared prosperity and how to achieve it. Those lawmakers who don’t understand this live in the wrong country and have no business being involved in making laws.

Our form of government, democracy, is one in which political power resides in all the people. As described by Abraham Lincoln, it’s “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” not government of some people, by some people, forsome people. It recognizes the value of widespread participation, broad-based input, and shared opportunity. It invites the richness of diversity.

Democracy implies responsibility. Those who benefit from its opportunities must share in the protection of its integrity. Democracy implies concern for others. It is within the mystery of giving that the human spirit is set free to soar to its highest levels. Democracy represents an appreciation for life, a celebration of diversity, an acceptance of oneself, a rekindling of the human spirit, and the road to peace, freedom, and security.

Democracy says, “Do not look only to yourself and like-minded for answers, rather avail yourself of that which others have to offer, for life is diverse.” Democracy says, “Do not be rigid or inflexible, be open and adaptable for life is dynamic and alive.” Democracy says, “Do not compete with each other, cooperate for life presents challenges enough.” Democracy says, “Do not make participation exclusive, make participation inclusive, for life is all-encompassing.” Democracy says, “Do not gravitate toward extremes, seek moderation for life requires balance.” Democracy says, “Do not represent only those who have influence, represent all for life demands equality.” Finally, Democracy says, “Do not tamper with this process for it is your lifeblood.

Seven Words That Can Change The World - Part 1 from Joe Simonetta on Vimeo.

”

Babies are smarter than you think

In the past 30 years we've learned that babies and young children know more and learn more than we would ever have thought possible.
Philosophers and psychologists, even the great Swiss child-development theorist Jean Piaget, once thought that babies and young children were irrational, solipsistic, illogical and amoral -- unable to take the perspective of others or understand cause and effect. But new scientific techniques have taught us that even the youngest infants already know a great deal about objects, people and language, and learn even more. In fact, they have implicit learning methods that are as powerful and intelligent as those of the smartest scientists.
They can unconsciously do complicated statistical analyses and their everyday play turns out, remarkably, to be very much like a set of scientific experiments. And I, at least, think that they may actually experience the world more vividly than we do.
Here's just one example of this new research:
One of the hardest problems for all of us is figuring out what other people want, think and feel. It's especially difficult when what they want is different from what we want ourselves. Traditionally, psychologists thought that children couldn't take the perspective of other people until they were 8 or so. But my student Betty Repacholi and I gave 15- and 18-month-olds two bowls of food, one of raw broccoli and one of goldfish crackers.
The children, even in Berkeley, liked the crackers and didn't like the broccoli. With the children watching, Betty tasted a little food from each bowl and made either a disgusted face or a happy face. Then she again gave the babies both bowls of food, put out her hand and said, "Can you give me some?" The 18-month-olds, just barely walking and talking, gave her the crackers if she had acted as if she liked the crackers and the broccoli if she had acted as if she liked the broccoli.
TED.com: Learning from a barefoot movement
These very young children had the profound understanding that someone else -- Betty, in this case -- might have a different perspective on the world, or at least on broccoli, and they helped her get what she wanted. The 15-month-olds, on the other hand, only gave her the crackers. This suggested something even more remarkable: Babies somehow learned this deep fact about human nature between 15 and 18 months. Other studies have shown that this kind of learning is the result of statistical analyses and the everyday experimentation we call play.
This work was inspired by purely scientific, and even philosophical, questions. How can we human beings ever learn as much as we do from the few photons hitting our retinas and the air disturbances that hit our eardrums? How is it that the few genes that separate us from chimpanzees could lead to such big differences in the way we think and live? How can we ever know what someone else thinks or feels?
It turns out, surprisingly enough, that studying babies and young children can hold answers to those big questions. In fact, from an evolutionary point of view it seems that our exceptionally long childhood may play a crucial role in many of the abilities that make us distinctly human.
But this basic science also has implications for what we do. Science has demonstrated just how crucially important the very early years are. And yet more than 20% of American children still grow up in poverty, and preschool teachers are paid less than dogcatchers. We have fewer programs of parental leave or subsidies for childcare than exist in almost every other civilized country.
TED.com: John Hunter on the World Peace Game
The programs we do have to help support and encourage early childhood learning, like Head Start, are facing cuts, even though studies show that in the long run they have the best payoffs of any public investment. The scientific work on the way babies learn demonstrates that neglecting our youngest children is self-destructive. Our moral intuition ought to tell us it's just plain wrong.
On the other hand, when parents, or even policy-makers hear about how much babies learn, they often conclude that what we need to do is teach them more. Parents spend literally millions of dollars on "educational" toys, videos and programs, that they hope will somehow give their children an edge.
Parents and policy-makers pressure teachers to make preschools more and more academic, with more reading drills and less time for play and pretend. But the science suggests this is also wrong. Very young children learn best from their everyday experiences of people and things, and from being able to playfully explore the world in a safe setting with people who love and care for them. Those settings can't be mass manufactured or provided on the cheap, and the learning they lead to can't be simply measured on standardized tests.
The science of early childhood is constantly surprising -- who would guess that 2-year-olds can use statistics to test hypotheses? But actually the policy implications fit what most preschool teachers know intuitively: Children thrive when they are loved, and they learn when they explore. The real mystery is why we can't get the politicians to see it, too.

Why computer voices are mostly female

Why computer voices are mostly female

To most owners of the new iPhone, the voice-activated feature called Siri is more than a virtual "assistant" who can help schedule appointments, find a good nearby pizza or tell you if it's going to rain.
She's also a she.
Siri answers questions in a part-human, part-robot voice that's deep, briskly efficient and distinctly female. (At least in the U.S. and four other countries. In France and the UK, Siri is male.)
People describe the app using female pronouns. Her gender has even prompted some users to flood blogs and online forums with sexually suggestive questions for Siri such as "What are you wearing?" (Siri's baffled response: "Why do people keep asking me this?")
The fuss over Siri's sex also raises a larger question: From voice-mail systems to GPS devices to Siri and beyond, why are so many computerized voices female?
One answer may lie in biology. Scientific studies have shown that people generally find women's voices more pleasing than men's.
"It's much easier to find a female voice that everyone likes than a male voice that everyone likes," said Stanford University Professor Clifford Nass, author of "The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships." "It's a well-established phenomenon that the human brain is developed to like female voices."

HAL, the homicidal artificial intelligence in "2001: A space Odyssey," may have scared manufacturers away from male automated voices.
Research suggests this preference starts as early as the womb, Nass said. He cites a study in which fetuses were found to react to the sound of their mother's voice but not to other female voices. The fetuses showed no distinct reaction to their father's voice, however.
Another answer lies in history. According to some sources, the use of female voices in navigation devices dates back to World War II, when women's voices were employed in airplane cockpits because they stood out among the male pilots. And telephone operators have traditionally been female, making people accustomed to getting assistance from a disembodied woman's voice.
When automakers were first installing automated voice prompts in cars ("your door is ajar") decades ago, their consumer research found that people overwhelmingly preferred female voices to male ones, said Tim Bajarin, a Silicon Valley analyst and president of Creative Strategies Inc.
This may explain why in almost all GPS navigation systems on the market, the default voice is female. One notable exception has been Germany, where BMW was forced to recall a female-voiced navigation system on its 5 Series cars in the late 1990s after being flooded with calls from German men saying they refused to take directions from a woman.
"Cultural stereotypes run deep," said Nass, who details the BMW episode in his book.
Voice casting
Most companies that produce automated voices hold auditions for voice actors and collect recordings of them speaking. Then they invite focus groups to listen to the recordings and rate the voices on how well they convey certain attributes: warmth, friendliness, competence and so on.
"It's casting," Nass said. "It's something Hollywood has known for a long, long time."
Look no further than examples of automated or artificial-intelligence voices in sci-fi movies and TV shows. Voices of authority or menace tend to be male: the homicidal HAL 9000 computer in "2001: A Space Odyssey," the computer program in "WarGames," or Auto, the spaceship's autopilot function in "Wall-E." More subservient talking machines, such as the onboard computer from the "Star Trek" TV series, skew female.
Bajarin, the Silicon Valley analyst, believes that more computerized voices would be masculine if not for the associations with HAL, whose malicious intent in the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film was made even creepier by his soothing tone.
"A lot of tech companies stayed away from the male voice because of HAL," he said. "I've heard that theory tossed around multiple times." (One prominent exception: The chipper "You've got mail!" voice from AOL's dial-up days.)
What Apple did is absolutely brilliant. They took Siri and gave it more of a personality.
Norman Winarsky
When it comes to consumer applications of computerized voices, the sex of the voice is usually determined by what service or product is employing it. For example, transit systems such as the San Francisco Area's BART often use higher-pitched voices because they are easier to hear over the clatter of the train cars.
Nuance, a Massachusetts-based company that develops speech technologies for Ford vehicles' SYNC system, Amazon e-readers and other clients, creates both male and female voices. It's then up to the client to choose which voice, and gender, best fits their product, said chief creative officer Gary Clayton.
"As these products become part of our everyday lives, there's a huge opportunity for personalization," added Brant Ward, the company's director of advanced speech design. "I could have an approximation of my wife's voice read me a text message in my car."
Siri: Brilliant or sexist?
Siri, the iPhone 4S's voice, grew from a five-year research project that was funded by military agency DARPA and led by SRI International, a Bay Area research institute. The project spawned a company, also called Siri, that launched an iPhone app in February 2010 and was acquired by Apple two months later.
That original Siri voice-to-text app -- powered in part by Nuance's technology -- also worked by people speaking commands into their phones, although it didn't talk back. And it had no gender. In fact, the app was originally conceived to speak in a gender-neutral voice, said Norman Winarsky, vice president of SRI and a co-founder of Siri.
"What Apple did is absolutely brilliant," said Winarsky, who calls speech "the most natural of all human interfaces."
"They took Siri and gave it more of a personality," he said. "It's the first real artificial intelligence working in millions of people's hands."
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on why the company gave Siri a female voice in the U.S. Nor would she say why Siri speaks like a man in the UK, where iPhone 4S owners have swarmed online forums to request a female voice instead. "Eww!! Hope UK gets female voice soon," wrote one commenter. "I don't think anyone in the US cares about male voice option."
Many GPS devices and computer text-to-speech programs now offer multiple voice options. And someday soon, voice-technology experts say, Siri will probably speak in a variety of voices, too.
Until then, some bloggers have wondered: Are computerized female "assistants" sexist?
Not necessarily, said Rebecca Zorach, director of the Social Media Project at the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality.
"I think they have to be understood in a broader context in which they're one small piece," she wrote in an e-mail to CNN. "Voices intended to convey authority (such as voice-over narration in films) tend to be male. So yes, probably these compliant female robot voices reinforce gender stereotypes, not just because they serve the user but because the technology itself is about communication and relationships (areas that women are presumed to be good at).
"I wouldn't automatically claim any sexism in individual companies' choices, though. Most such decisions are probably the result of market research, so they may be reflecting gender stereotypes that already exist in the general public."
Zorach listened to some sound clips of Siri online, then e-mailed back again.
"What's interesting to me is how they seem to intentionally make her speech sound artificial -- they could choose to make her speech more seamless and human-like, but they choose instead to highlight the technology," she said. "That makes you aware of how high-tech your gadget is."

5 Things to Enjoy in Life

1. Shake Things Up 

"Awe is a response to things you don't have a mental template for," says psychologist Michelle Shiota. "You have a mental template for getting up in the morning, drinking your coffee, and driving to work, but not for listening to a piece of music you haven't heard before or sightseeing in Thailand."

2. Go Outside 

Nature is the ultimate source of awe. "Just being outside can conjure up feelings of wonder and give you perspective," says psychologist Dacher Keltner. "Or better yet, plan a hike or a camping trip in a spot that's known for its vast spaces or natural beauty." 

3. Crowdsource 

Spending time in large groups, whether at rock concerts or political rallies, often stirs feelings of awe. "Ecstatic social experiences have a way of lining everybody up emotionally, and that's very powerful," says Keltner.

4. Turn Your Gaze Upward 

Whether you're checking out Mars Rover images at NASA.gov or just looking for constellations in the backyard, "if there's anything that illuminates just how much we still don't know about the universe, it's looking up at the nighttime sky," says Shiota. 

5. Find a Daily Dose of Inspiration 

Maria Popova, known by her Twitter followers as @Brainpicker, posts a stream of awe-inspiring images on her feed: slow-mo footage of a lightning strike, a sunset seen from space, sculptures carved into a pencil point. "I want people to stop a second and go, 'How amazing is that,'" she says. 

Stay Inspired

Recognizing a Failed Person

Recognizing an Immature Person

By immature people, I mean those who are willfully irresponsible and unable to conduct themselves with any sense of maturity and responsibility. I am not taking about those who are "young at heart," like to have fun, have playful spirits or those who like to watch cartoons and play with Legos. I am talking about grownups who cannot manage their own lives.

Immature grownups are people who:

• fail to honor their commitments
• pout when they don't get their way
• refuse to be professional in a workplace setting
• stop talking to you even in an emergency or critical situation
• crave your negative attention
• think of themselves as "special" and believe that regular rules do not apply to them
• cannot be depended upon to complete any task

What Can You Do?

It can be very frustrating to have to deal with people on a regular basis who are very immature. Working with an immature person means you cannot count on him/her to complete a job. Living with an immature person means that you will be making the bulk of all the decisions and doing all of the work to maintain the household.

Immature people are not going to grow up and start acting mature just because you want them to grow up. They have to decide to do that on their own. Maybe when they see that being immature is not getting them anywhere in life, then they may decide to change. However, there are no guarantees that this situation will ever happen.

Meanwhile you have to learn to deal with the immature. Here are some tips on how to deal:

• Ignore them. Never entertain their attempts to get your negative attention. Once you start playing their game, it will never end.
• Never cover up for them at work or in life. If you are always covering up for them, than you are okaying their behavior. People will never learn their own life lessons if you are always protecting them.
• Try not to sink to their level. Continue to be who you are and don't stoop to their level. You will only end up exhausted.
• Don't let immature people make you feel bad about yourself. Don't take their actions personally and internalize their actions. They are not even mature enough to acknowledge your feelings.
• Distance yourself from people that continue to hurt your feelings and disappoint you.

Life is full of immature people who may or may not ever really grow up. They depend on the responsible to get them through life. Spare yourself the grief. If you really care about an immature person, allow them to mess up, learn lessons and develop room to decide for themselves to change.

30 Things to stop doing yourself

 “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”  Nothing could be closer to the truth.  But before you can begin this process of transformation you have to stop doing the things that have been holding you back.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. Stop spending time with the wrong people. – Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you.  If someone wants you in their life, they’ll make room for you.  You shouldn’t have to fight for a spot.  Never, ever insist yourself to someone who continuously overlooks your worth.  And remember, it’s not the people that stand by your side when you’re at your best, but the ones who stand beside you when you’re at your worst that are your true friends.
2. Stop running from your problems. – Face them head on.  No, it won’t be easy.  There is no person in the world capable of flawlessly handling every punch thrown at them.  We aren’t supposed to be able to instantly solve problems.  That’s not how we’re made.  In fact, we’re made to get upset, sad, hurt, stumble and fall.  Because that’s the whole purpose of living – to face problems, learn, adapt, and solve them over the course of time.  This is what ultimately molds us into the person we become.
3. Stop lying to yourself. – You can lie to anyone else in the world, but you can’t lie to yourself.  Our lives improve only when we take chances, and the first and most difficult chance we can take is to be honest with ourselves.  Read The Road Less Traveled.
4. Stop putting your own needs on the back burner. – The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.  Yes, help others; but help yourself too.  If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do something that matters to you, that moment is now.
5. Stop trying to be someone you’re not. – One of the greatest challenges in life is being yourself in a world that’s trying to make you likeeveryone else.  Someone will always be prettier, someone will always be smarter, someone will always be younger, but they will never be you.  Don’t change so people will like you.  Be yourself and the right people will love the real you.
6. Stop trying to hold onto the past. – You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading your last one.
7. Stop being scared to make a mistake. – Doing something and getting it wrong is at least ten times more productive than doing nothing.  Every success has a trail of failures behind it, and every failure is leading towards success.  You end up regretting the things you did NOT do far more than the things you did.
8. Stop berating yourself for old mistakes. – We may love the wrong person and cry about the wrong things, but no matter how things go wrong, one thing is for sure, mistakes help us find the person and things that are right for us.  We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past.  But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future.  Every single thing that has ever happened in your life is preparing you for a moment that is yet to come.
9. Stop trying to buy happiness. – Many of the things we desire are expensive.  But the truth is, the things that really satisfy us are totally free – love, laughter and working on our passions.
10. Stop exclusively looking to others for happiness. – If you’re not happy with who you are on the inside, you won’t be happy in a long-term relationship with anyone else either.  You have to create stability in your own life first before you can share it with someone else.  Read Stumbling on Happiness.
11. Stop being idle. – Don’t think too much or you’ll create a problem that wasn’t even there in the first place.  Evaluate situations and take decisive action.  You cannot change what you refuse to confront.  Making progress involves risk.  Period!  You can’t make it to second base with your foot on first.
12. Stop thinking you’re not ready. – Nobody ever feels 100% ready when an opportunity arises.  Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones, which means we won’t feel totally comfortable at first.
13. Stop getting involved in relationships for the wrong reasons. – Relationships must be chosen wisely.  It’s better to be alone than to be in bad company.  There’s no need to rush.  If something is meant to be, it will happen – in the right time, with the right person, and for the best reason. Fall in love when you’re ready, not when you’re lonely.
14. Stop rejecting new relationships just because old ones didn’t work. – In life you’ll realize that there is a purpose for everyone you meet.  Some will test you, some will use you and some will teach you.  But most importantly, some will bring out the best in you.
15. Stop trying to compete against everyone else. – Don’t worry about what others are doing better than you.  Concentrate on beating your own records every day.  Success is a battle between YOU and YOURSELF only.
16. Stop being jealous of others. – Jealousy is the art of counting someone else’s blessings instead of your own.  Ask yourself this:  “What’s something I have that everyone wants?”
17. Stop complaining and feeling sorry for yourself. – Life’s curveballs are thrown for a reason – to shift your path in a direction that is meant for you.  You may not see or understand everything the moment it happens, and it may be tough.  But reflect back on those negative curveballs thrown at you in the past.  You’ll often see that eventually they led you to a better place, person, state of mind, or situation.  So smile!  Let everyone know that today you are a lot stronger than you were yesterday, and you will be.
18. Stop holding grudges. – Don’t live your life with hate in your heart.  You will end up hurting yourself more than the people you hate.  Forgiveness is not saying, “What you did to me is okay.”  It is saying, “I’m not going to let what you did to me ruin my happiness forever.”  Forgiveness is the answer… let go, find peace, liberate yourself!  And remember, forgiveness is not just for other people, it’s for you too.  If you must, forgive yourself, move on and try to do better next time.
19. Stop letting others bring you down to their level. – Refuse to lower your standards to accommodate those who refuse to raise theirs.
20. Stop wasting time explaining yourself to others. – Your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe it anyway.  Just do what you know in your heart is right.
21. Stop doing the same things over and over without taking a break. – The time to take a deep breath is when you don’t have time for it.  If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.  Sometimes you need to distance yourself to see things clearly.
22. Stop overlooking the beauty of small moments. – Enjoy the little things, because one day you may look back and discover they were the big things.  The best portion of your life will be the small, nameless moments you spend smiling with someone who matters to you.
23. Stop trying to make things perfect. – The real world doesn’t reward perfectionists, it rewards people who get things done.  Read Getting Things Done.
24. Stop following the path of least resistance. – Life is not easy, especially when you plan on achieving something worthwhile.  Don’t take the easy way out.  Do something extraordinary.
25. Stop acting like everything is fine if it isn’t. – It’s okay to fall apart for a little while.  You don’t always have to pretend to be strong, and there is no need to constantly prove that everything is going well.  You shouldn’t be concerned with what other people are thinking either – cry if you need to – it’s healthy to shed your tears.  The sooner you do, the sooner you will be able to smile again.
26. Stop blaming others for your troubles. – The extent to which you can achieve your dreams depends on the extent to which you take responsibility for your life.  When you blame others for what you’re going through, you deny responsibility – you give others power over that part of your life.
27. Stop trying to be everything to everyone. – Doing so is impossible, and trying will only burn you out.  But making one person smile CAN change the world.  Maybe not the whole world, but their world.  So narrow your focus.
28. Stop worrying so much. – Worry will not strip tomorrow of its burdens, it will strip today of its joy.  One way to check if something is worth mulling over is to ask yourself this question: “Will this matter in one year’s time?  Three years?  Five years?”  If not, then it’s not worth worrying about.
29. Stop focusing on what you don’t want to happen. – Focus on what you do want to happen.  Positive thinking is at the forefront of every great success story.  If you awake every morning with the thought that something wonderful will happen in your life today, and you pay close attention, you’ll often find that you’re right.
30. Stop being ungrateful. – No matter how good or bad you have it, wake up each day thankful for your life.  Someone somewhere else is desperately fighting for theirs.  Instead of thinking about what you’re missing, try thinking about what you have that everyone else is missing.

Love and Long Lifespan

- Ten things to know about love and romance, from why we fall hard to why we cheat.

What Rules Attraction?

In general, you gravitate toward people like you. Good-looking people tend to go for similarly good-looking types, and those from a particular socio-economic background favor their own. Experts believe this happens because perceived equality contributes to a stable union. Well-known actresses pair up with rock stars, for example, because such men tend to be as rich and famous as they are. But once you get past the bone structure and bank account and into personality attributes, opposites often attract.

"We're apt to fall in love with those who are mysterious and challenging to us," says Helen Fisher, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and the author of "Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love." "This pull to another biological type could also be adaptive," says Fisher. "If two very different people pool their DNA, they'll create more genetic variety, and their young will come to the job of parenting with a wider array of skills."

How Much Do Looks Count?

Physical features are important to both sexes, but a bit more so to men. "During attraction, the parts of a man's brain associated with processing visual information are more active," says Louann Brizendine, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and the author of "The Female Brain." "That's true for women too, but they also show activity in the brain regions that integrate decision making, which suggests they're thinking about a little bit more than just how he looks."

Is Love Blind?

Not exactly, but once you're hooked, your vision gets cloudy. "When you're in a relationship, you're aware of the other person's flaws, but your brain is telling you it's OK to ignore them," says Lucy Brown, Ph.D., a professor of neuroscience at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in New York City, who specializes in the brain's response to love.

Studies at the Wellcome Department of Neuroimaging at University College in London found that when romantic partners look at each other, the part of the brain associated with social assessment and negative emotion is relatively dormant and critical judgment is dulled. According to Fisher, this mechanism may have evolved to help people stick together through early, sometimes stressful child-rearing stages.

Can Love Be Addictive?

Love plays havoc with your body chemistry, causing you to act like an addict bent on scoring her next fix. Studies have found, for instance, that serotonin levels decrease by up to 40 percent in the newly smitten, causing some to show signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder, a condition associated with low serotonin -- which is why you can't seem to get the other person out of your head. Additionally, cortisol, a stress hormone linked with the fight-or-flight response, is released, so you're constantly on high alert. Sound familiar?

Research published by a team that included Brown and Fisher found that people who had recently fallen in love showed strong activity in the area of the brain that produces and receives dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with addictive behavior whose activity increases when you expect to receive a reward. Gamblers and drug addicts experience similar dopamine activity. "You're not supposed to be satisfied," explains Fisher. "You're supposed to be driven so that you can win the person and eventually stabilize your internal chemistry."

When a relationship ends, you experience symptoms that are similar to an addict's withdrawal. Your dopamine levels go down, so your mood suffers. Your serotonin levels remain low, so your obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms may not go away. In response to these imbalances, some scientists believe, risk-taking tendencies go up. "When you can't have someone but you're not willing to accept that, you try harder and become more extreme about it," says Fisher. Paradoxically, she says, this compulsive behavior may help you move on faster: "Either you win the person back or you drive him away."

What Makes People Commit?

Humans are hardwired to stick together. Intimate relationships trigger the production of oxytocin and vasopressin, chemicals that scientists have nicknamed "cuddle hormones." A mere touch from a loved one can elevate their levels, and after sex they flood the system. "We think of these hormones as playing an important role later on in the relationship, when you really know the person's flaws," says Brown.

Why Are Some More Reluctant to Commit Than Others?

Gene variation may be partly to blame. Scientists at Emory University, in Atlanta, looked at the effect of vasopressin in two closely related kinds of rodents -- the prairie vole and the meadow vole. Like humans, the prairie vole is one of the 3 percent of mammalian species that form monogamous pair bonds. The meadow vole doesn't. But when male meadow voles were injected with a gene responsible for releasing vasopressin receptors, they immediately lost their wanderlust, paired up, and settled down.

The study's researchers think the number of vasopressin receptors an individual has could lay the foundation for his propensity to commit. "There's something at work with a couple that stays together for 50 years, bad years included," says Melvin Konner, M.D., a professor of anthropology and behavioral biology at Emory, who wrote a commentary on the experiment. "It's hard to imagine that it's just a question of compatible personalities or strict beliefs."

Does Love Make You More Trusting?

Lovers do tend to see the world through rose-colored glasses. In one experiment, researchers devised a game in which subjects were given a sum of money to invest with a trustee, either in a lump sum or piecemeal. Anything given to the trustee would triple in value, but it was up to the subject to decide how much to turn over. Half the participants used a nose spray before the experiment that was a placebo; the other half used one with oxytocin.

Subjects who took the oxytocin were nearly twice as likely to turn all their money over to a trustee. A subsequent experiment at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), in Washington, D.C., found that subjects who inhaled oxytocin before looking at pictures of threatening faces had markedly lower activity in their brains' fear centers. "These results suggest that oxytocin increases trust," says Thomas Insel, M.D., director of the NIMH.

Why Do People Cheat?

Attraction, romantic love, and attachment involve three overlapping but separate brain systems. "It's not hard for somebody to sexually desire one person, be infatuated with another, and still want to spend the rest of his or her life with a third," says Fisher. Because each kind of love serves a unique need and exists in a different context, cheaters are able to divide their emotional resources.

What makes one person more likely to cheat compared with another? The answers are both inconsistent and varied. Fisher suspects the propensity to stray may be stronger in people who have novelty-seeking, dopamine-sensitive personalities. But factors unique to the relationship -- a need for attention, a desire to get out of the situation -- are just as likely to fuel infidelity.

Can Love Affect Your Health?

Research has found that couples in good relationships tend to be healthier and happier. "Happily married couples report lower stress than single people, in part because they provide each other with emotional support in difficult times," says Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, a professor of psychiatry at Ohio State University, in Columbus. "Lower stress translates into better health and immune function." For example, people who are in conflict-ridden relationships might see cuts and bruises heal more slowly -- by as much as 40 percent, according to a 2005 experiment at the Ohio State University College of Medicine.

And breakups have been shown to cause physical pain. A 2003 study looked at people playing a virtual ball-tossing game. Those people rejected during the game showed activity in the pain area of their brains. "In evolutionary terms, exclusion can be as bad for survival as a real injury, and our bodies automatically know this," explains the study's author, Naomi Eisenberger, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles.

What Keeps People Together?

Hormones and hard work. Restlessness sets in one to two years into a relationship, according to new research from the Universities of Pavia and Pisa, in Italy. That's the period in which the chemical activity associated with new love (high dopamine, for example) dies down.

Fortunately, there are ways to keep the spark alive. Sexual contact drives up dopamine levels. Novelty does, too, which is why you tend to feel so good about somebody after taking a trip or going through an unusual experience together. Frequent physical contact is most likely to maintain elevated oxytocin levels, which is why holding hands, stroking your partner, or any other kind of touch can create feelings of attachment.