True Peace

True peace can be experienced only when

we stop giving and taking sorrow.

In order not to give sorrow we need a clear heart

that has no ill feelings and for not taking sorrow

we need a big heart that can tolerate and

help other souls to get over their weaknesses.

Another Chance

How often we wish for another chance

To make a fresh beginning.

A chance to blot out our mistakes

And change failure into winning.

It does not take a new day

To make a brand new start,

It only takes a deep desire

To try with all our heart.

To live a little better

And to always be forgiving

And to add a little sunshine

To the world in which we're living.

So never give up in despair

And think that you are through,

For there's always a tomorrow

And the hope of starting new.

101 ways to reduce Stress..?

1. Get up 15 minutes earlier
2. Prepare for the morning the night before
3. Avoid tight fitting clothes
4. Avoid relying on chemical aids
5. Set appointments ahead
6. Don't rely on your memory ... write it down
7. Practice preventive maintenance
8. Make duplicate keys
9. Say "no" more often
10.Set priorities in your life
11. Avoid negative people
12. Use time wisely
13. Simplify meal times
14. Always make copies of important papers
15. Anticipate your needs
16.. Repair anything that doesn't work properly
17. Ask for help with the jobs you dislike
18. Break large tasks into bite size portions
19. Look at problems as challenges
20. Look at challenges differently
21. Unclutter your life
22. Smile
23. Be prepared for rain
24. Tickle a baby
25. Pet a friendly dog/cat
26. Don't know all the answers
27. Look for a silver lining
28. Say something nice to someone
29. Teach a kid to fly a kite
30. Walk in the rain
31. Schedule play time into every day
32. Take a bubble bath
33. Be aware of the decisions you make
34. Believe in yourself
35. Stop saying negative things to yourself
36. Visualize yourself winning
37. Develop your sense of humor
38. Stop thinking tomorrow will be a better today
39. Have goals for yourself
40. Dance a jig
41. Say "hello" to a stranger
42. Ask a friend for a hug
43. Look up at the stars
44. Practice breathing slowly
45. Learn to whistle a tune
46. Read a poem
47. Listen to a symphony
48. Watch a ballet
49. Read a story curled up in bed
50. Do a brand new thing
51. Stop a bad habit
52. Buy yourself a flower
53. Take time to small the flowers
54. Find support from others
55. Ask someone to be your "vent-partner"
56. Do it today
57. Work at being cheerful and optimistic
58. Put safety first
59. Do everything in moderation
60. Pay attention to your appearance
61. Strive for Excellence NOT perfection
62. Stretch your limits a little each day
63. Look at a work of art
64. Hum a jingle
65. Maintain your weight
66. Plant a tree
67. Feed the birds
68. Practice grace under pressure
69. Stand up and stretch
70. Always have a plan "B"
71. Learn a new doodle
72. Memorize a joke
73. Be responsible for your feelings
74. Learn to meet your own needs
75. Become a better listener
76. Know your limitations and let others know them, too
77. Tell someone to have a good day in Latin
78. Throw a paper airplane
79. Exercise every day
80. Learn the words to a new song
81. Get to work early
82. Clean out one closet
83. Play patty cake with a toddler
84. Go on a picnic
85. Take a different route to work
86. Leave work early (with permission)
87. Put air freshener in your car
88.. Watch a movie and eat popcorn
89. Write a note to a far away friend
90. Go to a ball game and scream
91. Cook a meal and eat it by candlelight
92. Recognize the importance of unconditional love
93. Remember that stress is an attitude
94. Keep a journal
95. Practice a monster smile
96. Remember you always have options
97. Have a support network of people, places and things
98. Quit trying to fix other people
99. Get enough sleep
100.Talk less and listen more
101.Freely praise other people

Am I Happy..

If there is any sadness I make a strong

effort to be free of it quickly,

otherwise it grows like a vine in the

rainy season:

by midday I will be confused, by evening

a whole jungle of weak, wasteful and

negative attitudes will have taken deep

roots in my mind.

The result equals chaos.

Sometimes I reach a stage where the

attitude is:

"So what if I feel the blues today?

It is my life, no one else will be affected".

Firstly, the more I allow myself to

experience sorrow, the less time I have

available to be happy and contented.

It sounds ridiculously obvious, but

am I aware of the value of happiness?

It is an extremely rare commodity,

and the cost goes sky high.

Secondly, is it my life?

Yes, I am living it, but am I not a member

of a family or a co-worker with others,

and am I not part of society?

If so, then every movement affects and

is affected by those around me.

Law of the Garbage Truck

One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport.
We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us.
My taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us.
My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean he was really friendly.

So I asked, 'Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined
your car and sent us to the hospital!'
This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, 'The Law of the Garbage Truck.'

He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment.
As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they'll dump it on you. Don't take it personally.

Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don't take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets.

The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day.

Life's too short to wake up in the morning with regrets,
so ... Love the people who treat you right.
Pray for the ones who don't .
Life is ten percent what you make it and ninety percent how you take it!
Have a blessed, garbage-free day!

Reality

Every reality begins as a possibility.

The most wonderful, enjoyable,

fulfilling things you can imagine are

possibilities for you, and when you

live your life in such a way as to

bring about those possibilities,

they become reality.

Today you are going to take a certain set

of possibilities and turn them into reality.

Those possibilities that indeed become

real are the ones you choose to follow

and to support with your time,

your attention, your commitment.

There is really no limit to the possibilities

from which you can choose,

but there is a limit to how many you can

follow at any given time.

So it pays to choose the very best of them.

Is that what you're doing?

Are you choosing and giving your energy to the best of your possibilities,

or are you just settling for the ones that fall into your lap?

Right this moment there are some certain, specific possibilities that are

being made real as a result of what you're doing, or what you're neglecting to do.

This is your opportunity to choose and

to create the life to which you aspire,

right now while the possibilities are being transformed into reality.

Give your time and your energy to the

very best of your possibilities,

and take delight as your life follows

right along.

Forgiveness - An Asset

"Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge." I saw this wonderful old saying again in a
book recently. It got me to thinking about all the times that I have been able
to forgive others in my life and all the joy that it has brought me. One memory
stands out particularly well. I was a young boy spending a week at 4-H camp
during the Summer. I was having a great time and enjoying everything about it
except for another young boy about my age. To say we didn’t get along would be
an understatement. We spent most of the week irritating, insulting, and picking
on each other. Words finally came to blows on the next to last day of camp. We
got into a fist fight which I lost. Thankfully, older boys broke it up before I
was hurt too much. I spent the rest of the day alone, sulking and stewing in my
own anger.

The next day my spirits were lifted, however, when my Mom brought the boys in
our cabin some of her delicious homemade pizzas. I was enjoying a few slices of
it when I saw the other boy sitting by himself at the bottom of the steps
outside. He seemed very lonely right then. I am not sure what moved me to do so,
but I took my pizza down and shared it with him. It made all the anger and pain
inside me go away. We became friends after that. I never got into another fist
fight either. I had found out that sharing and forgiving were way more fun and a
lot less painful.

Forgiveness truly is the sweetest revenge. It can turn an enemy into a friend.
It can free a heart from the chains of anger, hatred, and pain. It can open a
soul to the sweetness of love and joy once again. It can help you to live by the
Golden Rule and to create a Golden Life. It can bring you back to oneness with
God in everything you think, feel, and do. That is why I often pray, "God help
me to forgive, help me to give, and help me to love." May your life always be
full of sweet forgiveness then. May you always delight in its Heavenly charms."

20 Great Ways to Find More Free Time

Are there a hundred different things you wish you could do with your life someday anything from exercising to meditation or yoga to writing that novel you always wished you could write to reading more to relaxing and watching the sunrise? But perhaps you never have the time, like most people.

The truth is, we all have the same amount of time, and its finite and in great demand. But some of us have made the time for doing the things we love doing, and others have allowed the constant demands and pressures and responsibilities of life to dictate their days.

Its time to move from the second group back into the first. Reclaim your time. Create the life you want and make the most of the free time you lay claim to. Its not hard, though it does take a little bit of effort and diligence.

Not all of these will be applicable to your life choose the ones you can apply and give them a try:

1. Take a time out. Freeing up your time starts with taking a step back to take a good look at your life. You need to block off at least an hour. Several hours or half a day is better. A whole day would be awesome. A weekend would be even more ideal, though not necessary practical for many folks. With this block of time, take a look at your life with some perspective. Is it what youve always wanted? How would you get to where youve always wanted to be? What do you enjoy doing, but dont have enough time to do? What things actually fill up your day? Are there things you could drop or minimize to make more time? Well look at some of these things in the following items, but it starts with taking a time out to think and plan.
2. Find your essentials. What is it that you love to do? Make a short list of 4-5 things. These are the things you want to make room for.
3. Find your time-wasters. What do you spend a lot of your time on that isnt on your essential list? Take a close look at these things and really think about whether theyre necessary, or if there are ways to reduce, minimize or eliminate these things. Sometimes you do things because you assume theyre necessary, but if you give it some thought you can find ways to drop them from your life. Figure out what you do simply to waste time maybe surfing certain sites, watching TV, talking a lot at the water cooler, etc. Youre going to want to minimize these time-wasters to make room for the more important stuff, the stuff that makes you happy and that you love to do.
4. Schedule the time. As you sit down and think about your life and what you want to do, versus what you actually do, you will be looking at ways to free up time. Its crucial that you take a blank weekly schedule (you can just write it out on a piece of paper, or use your calendar) and assign blocks for the things you love the stuff on your essentials list. If you want to exercise, for example, when will you do it? Put the blocks of time on your schedule, and make these blocks the most important appointments of your week. Schedule the rest of your life around these blocks.
5. Consolidate. There are many things you do, scattered throughout your day or your week, that you might be able to consolidate in order to save time. A good example is errands instead of running one or two a day, do them all in one day to save time and gas. Another example is email, or any kind of communication batch process your email instead of checking and reading and responding throughout the day. Same thing with meetings, paperwork, anything that you do regularly.
6. Cut out meetings. This isnt possible for everyone, but in my experience meetings take up a lot of time to get across a little information, or to make easy decisions that could be made via email or phone. As much as you can, minimize the number of meetings you hold and attend. In some cases this might mean talking to your boss and telling her that you have other priorities, and asking to be excused. In other cases this might mean asking the people holding the meeting if you can get the info in other ways. If so, youve saved yourself an hour or so per meeting (sometimes more).
7. De clutter your schedule. If you have a heavily packed schedule, full of meetings and errands and tasks and projects and appointments, youre going to want to weed it out so that its not so jam-packed. Find the stuff thats not so essential and cancel them. Postpone other stuff. Leave big blank spaces in your schedule.
8. Re-think your routine. Often we get stuck in a routine thats anything but what we really want our days to be like. Is there a better way of doing things? Youre the creator of your life make a new routine thats more pleasant, more optimal, more filled with things you love.
9. Cut back on email. I mentioned email in an earlier point above, regarding consolidating, but its such a major part of most peoples lives that it deserves special attention. How often do you check email? How much time do you spend composing emails? If you spend a major part of your work day on email, as many people do (and as I once did), you can free up a lot of time by reducing the time you spend in email. Now, this wont work for everyone, but it can work for many people: choose 2-3 key times during the day to process your inbox to empty, and keep your responses to 5 sentences.
10. Learn to say no. If you say yes to every request, you will never have any free time. Get super protective about your time, and say no to everything but the essential requests.
11. Keep your list to 3. When you make out your daily to-do list, just list the three Most Important Tasks you want to accomplish today. Dont make a laundry list of tasks, or youll fill up all your free time. By keeping your task list small, but populated only by important tasks, you ensure that you are getting the important stuff done but not overloading yourself.
12. Do your Biggest Rock first. Of the three Most Important Tasks you choose for the day, pick the biggest one, or the one youre dreading most, and do that first. Otherwise youll put that off as much as possible and fill your day with less important things. Dont allow yourself to check email until that Big Rock is taken care of. It starts your day with a sense of major accomplishment, and leaves you with a lot of free time the rest of the day, because the most important thing is already done.
13. Delegate. If you have subordinates or coworkers who can do a task or project, try to delegate it. Dont feel like you need to do everything yourself. If necessary, spend a little time training the person to whom youre delegating the task, but that little time spent training will pay off in a lot of time saved later. Delegating allows you to focus on the core tasks and projects you should be focusing on.
14. Cut out distractions. What is there around your workspace that distracts you from the task at hand? Sometimes its visual clutter, or papers lying around that call for your attention and action, or email or IM notifiers on your computer that pop up at the wrong time, or the phone, or coworkers. See if you can eliminate as many of these as possible the more you can focus, the more effective youll be and the less time youll waste. That equals time saved for the good stuff.
15. Disconnect. The biggest of distractions, for most people, is the Internet. My most productive times are when Im disconnected from the grid. Now, Im not saying you need to be disconnected all the time, but if you really want to be able to effectively complete tasks, disconnect your Internet so you can really focus. Set certain times of the day for connectivity, and only connect during those periods.
16. Outsource. If you cant delegate, see if you can outsource. With the Internet, we can connect with people from all over the world. Ive outsourced many things, from small tasks to checking email to legal work to design and editing work and more. That allows me to focus on the things Im best at, the things I love doing, and saves me a lot of time.
17. Make use of your mornings. I find that mornings are the absolute best times to schedule the things I really want to do. I run, read and write in the mornings three of the four things on my Essentials List (spending time with family is the other thing on the list). Mornings are great because your day hasnt been filled with a bunch of unscheduled, demanding, last-minute tasks that will push back those Essentials. For example, if you schedule something for late afternoon, by the time late afternoon rolls around, you might have a dozen other things newly added to your to-do list, and youll put off that late-afternoon Essential. Instead, schedule it for the morning, and itll rarely (if ever) get pushed back.
18. The Golden Right-after-work Time. Other than mornings, I find the time just after work to be an incredible time for doing Essential things. Exercise, for example, is great in the 5-oclock hour, as is spending time with family, or doing anything else relaxing.
19. Your evenings. The time before you go to bed is also golden, as it exists every single day, and its usually completely yours to schedule. What do you want to do with this time? Read? Spend time with your kids? Work on a hobby youre passionate about? Take advantage of this time.
20. Lunch breaks. If the three golden times mentioned above dont work for you, lunch breaks are another good opportunity to schedule things. Some people like to exercise, or to take quiet times, during their lunch breaks. Others use this time to work on an important personal goal or project.

The 10 Biggest Mistakes People Make Managing Organisational Performance

The 10 Biggest Mistakes People Make Managing Organisational Performance

Mistake #1: rely just on financial statements

Profit and loss, revenue and expenses these are measures of important things to a business. But they are information that is too little and too late. Too little in the sense that other results matter too, such as customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, customer advocacy. Too late in the sense that by the time you see bad results, the damage is already done. Wouldn't it be better to know that profit was likely to fall before it actually did fall, and in time to prevent it from falling?

Mistake #2: look only at this month, last month, year to date

Most financial performance reports summarise your financial results in four values: 1) actual this month; 2) actual last month; 3) % variance between them; and 4) year to date. Even if you are measuring and monitoring non-financial results, you may still be using this format. It encourages you to react to % variances (differences between this month and last month) which suggest performance has declined such as any % variation greater than 5 or 10 percent (usually arbitrarily set). Do you honestly expect the % variance to always show improvement? And if it doesn't, does that really mean things have gotten bad and you have to fix them? What about the natural and unavoidable variation that affects everything, the fact that no two things are ever exactly alike? Relying on % variations runs a great risk that you are reacting to problems that aren't really there, or not reacting to problems which are really there that you didn't see. Wouldn't you rather have your reports reliably tell you when there really was a problem that needed your attention, instead of wasting your time and effort chasing every single variation?

Mistake #3: set goals without ways to measure and monitor them

Business planning is a process that is well established in most organisations, which means they generally have a set of goals or objectives (sometimes cascaded down through the different management levels of the organisation) . What is interesting though, is that the majority of these goals or objectives are not measured well. Where measures have been nominated for them, they are usually something like this: Implement a customer relationship management system into the organisation by June 2006 (for a goal of improving customer loyalty) This is not a measure at all it is an activity. Measures are ongoing feedback of the degree to which something is happening. If this goal were measured well, the measure would be evidence of how much customer loyalty the organisation had, such as tracking repeat business from customers. How will you know if your goals, the changes you want to make in your organisation, are really happening, and that you are not wasting your valuable effort and money, without real feedback?

Mistake #4: use brainstorming (or other poor methods) to select measures

Brainstorming, looking at available data, or adopting other organisations' measures are many of the reasons why we end up with measures that aren't useful and usable. Brainstorming produces too much information and therefore too many measures, it rarely encourages a strong enough focus on the specific goal to be measured, everyone's understanding of the goal is not sufficiently tested, and the bigger picture is not taken into account (such as unintended consequences, relationships to other objectives/goals) . Looking at available data means that important and valuable new data will never be identified and collected, and organisational improvement is constrained by the knowledge you already have. Adopting other organizations' measures, or industry accepted measures, is like adopting their goals, and ignoring the unique strategic direction that sets your organisation apart from the pack. Wouldn't you rather know that the measures you select are the most useful and feasible evidence of your organisation's goals?

mistake

Mistake #5: rely on scorecard technology as the performance measure fix

You can (and maybe you did) spend millions of dollars on technology to solve your performance measurement problems. The business intelligence, data mining and 'scorecarding' software available today promises many things like comprehensive business intelligence reporting, award-winning data visualization, and balanced scorecard and scorecarding and an information flow that transcends organizational silos, diverse computing platforms and niche tools .. and delivers access to the insights that drive shareholder value. Wow! But there's a problem lurking in the shadows of these promises. You still need to be able to clearly articulate what you want to know, what you want to measure and what kinds of signals you need those measures to flag for you. The software is amazing at automating the reporting of the measures to you, but it just won't do the thinking about what it should report to you.

Mistake #6: use tables, instead of graphs, to report performance

Tables are a very common way to present performance measures, no doubt in part a legacy from the original financial reports that management accountants provided (and still provide today) to decision makers. They are familiar, but they are ineffective. Tables encourage you to focus on the points of data, which is the same as not seeing the forest for the trees. As a manager, you aren't just managing performance today or this month. You are managing performance over the medium to long term. And the power to do that well comes from focusing on the patterns in your data, not the points of data themselves. Patterns like gradual changes over time, sudden shifts or abrupt changes through time, events that stand apart from the normal pattern of variation in performance. And graphs are the best way to display patterns.

Mistake #7: fail to identify how performance measures relate to one other

A group of decision makers sit around the meeting room table and one by one they go over the performance measure results. They look at the result, decide if it is good or bad, agree on an action to take, then move on to the next measure. They might as well be having a series of independent discussions, one for each measure. Performance measures might track different parts of the organisation, but because organisations are systems made up of lots of different but very inter-related parts, the measures must be inter-related too. One measure cannot be improved without affecting or changing another area of the organisation. Without knowing how measures relate to one another and using this knowledge to interpret measure results, decision makers will fail to find the real, fundamental causes of performance results.

Mistake #8: exclude staff from performance analysis and improvement

One of the main reasons that staff get cynical about collecting performance data is that they never see any value come from that data. Managers more often than not will sit in their meeting rooms and come up with measures they want and then delegate the job of bringing those measures to life to staff. Staff who weren't involved in the discussion to design those measures, weren't able to get a deeper understanding of why those measures matter, what they really mean, how they will be used, weren't able to contribute their knowledge about the best types of data to use or the availability and integrity of the data required. And usually the same staff producing the measures don't ever get to see how the managers use those measures and what decisions come from them. When people aren't part of the design process of measures, they find it near impossible to feel a sense of ownership of the process to bring those measures to life. When people don't get feedback about how the measures are used, they can do little more than believe they wasted their time and energy.

Mistake #9: collect too much useless data, and not enough relevant data

Data collection is certainly a cost. If it isn't consuming the time of people employed to get the work done, then it is some kind of technological system consuming money. And data is also an asset, part of the structural foundation of organisational knowledge. But too many organisations haven't made the link between the knowledge they need to have and the data they actually collect. They collect data because it has always been collected, or because other organisations collect the same data, or because it is easy to collect, of because someone once needed it for a one-off analysis and so they might as well keep collecting it in case it is needed again. They are overloaded with data, they don't have the data they really need and they are exhausted and cannot cope with the idea of collecting any more data. Performance measures that are well designed are an essential part of streamlining the scope of data collected by your organisation, by linking the knowledge your organisation needs with the data it ought to be collecting.

mistake

Mistake #10: use performance measures to reward and punish people

One practice that a lot of organisations are still doing is using performance measures as the basis for rewarding and punishing people. They are failing to support culture of learning by not tolerating mistakes and focusing on failure. It is very rare that a single person can have complete control over any single area of performance. In organisations of more than 5 or 6 people, the results are undeniably a team's product, not an individual's product. When people are judged by performance measures, they will do what they can to reduce the risk to them of embarrassment, missing a promotion, being disciplined or even given the sack. They will modify or distort the data, they will report the measures in a way that shows a more favourable result (yes - you can lie with statistics), they will not learn about what really drives organisational performance and they will not know how to best invest the organisation's resources to get the best improvements in performance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQLP_6C9qzA&feature=player_embedded

Be at peace

You spend most of your life

Running after things, doing things.

You forget that being comes before doing.

Those who remember this secret

Make an effort to "be" and

Discover that when they stop and observe,

Life helps and brings whatever is needed.

Learning to be is learning to be at peace.

It is our most fundamental nature.

The Secret of Happiness

The secret of happiness is to be free of fear.

Fear is like a toxin that runs through much of our thinking.

It feeds on insecurity, feeling of loss, loneliness,

inadequacy and attachment.

You are loveable and loving. Accept this as Truth.

Appreciate and care for yourself - truly, deeply, intensely,

in a way that reflects your real value.

Then you will automatically have the same regards

for all other living beings and things.