Healthy Living

As you probably know from reading and watching TV, Asthma is one of the most common diseases in the world and the amount of people diagnosed with it are growing. One in eight American children have Asthma. On the average the rate is doubling every 10 years. Many adults and children die from Asthma each year, these deaths could be prevented by treating the disease properly.

First, Asthma, is a chronic respiratory condition causing the obstruction of the airways due to bronchial inflammation and contraction and increased mucus production, resulting in causing the patient to have problems breathing. When the airways narrow it causes a lack of fresh air from reaching the bronchial tubes. Treating Asthma involves reducing the patients symptoms such as the shortness of breath, tightness in the chest, wheezing and coughing.

Second, knowing what triggers an Asthma attack is important, two main factors cause the muscles surrounding the airways to spasm. The effect is usually immediate and short lived and reversible thanks to the use of inhalers and and other devices that open up the passages by reducing the inflammation. These symptoms can be caused by: variations in temperature, dust, odors, smoke, exercise and emotional upsets. Other things may cause the lining of the bronchial tubes to become swollen and red they may not be as easily remedied and should be avoided, such as: pollens, severe colds and infections, animal dander, mold, and food allergies.

Lastly, Asthma affects both children and adults and can appear at any stage in life. There is no cure for Asthma and if not taken seriously and treated properly can cause death. The best way to live with Asthma is to take the disease seriously and avoid those elements in life that may cause an episode. If you are having an attack make sure you take and use all the medications your doctor has prescribed for you. Life with Asthma does not have to be terrible, just find a good doctor and follow their advice. You can live a long full life.

Over the weekend my sister and I were busy clearing out our houses and offices since we are both moving. (She to North Carolina and me to Colorado.) I am always amazed at how our lives run so parallel even though we live on opposite sides of the continental divide! We were talking on the phone and taking a break from all the cleaning fumes when she mentioned an email I sent to her two years before.

The email was about handling your different negative emotional states. How to identify what it is you need to change in your life depending on the emotion you are feeling at the time. I got this list as a compilation of many resources the primary one being, "Resonant Leadership: Renewing Yourself and Connecting with Others Through Mindfulness, Hope and Compassion", by Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee.

This was a handy book for me to read since I was changing my business model and knew there were areas of my own personality that needed some renewal if I was to increase my effectiveness as a president of an organization.

First evaluate where you may be in theses 5 emotional states:
1. Frustrated
2. Bored
3. Unfulfilled
4. Burned-out
5. Stressed, Anxious, Depressed

Depending on your state, work on the following:
--
1. Frustrated (Deal with the Manager Self) Capitalize on your Uniqueness
2. Bored (Deal with the Leadership Self) Work harder on your vision then implement changes
3. Unfulfilled (Deal with Romantic Self) Work on your love life and romance needs
4. Burnout (Work on Personal Self) Stop doing what you don't like! Create change!
5. Stressed (Work on Mission Self) What is the one thing only you can do in the whole world?

But what do you do if you are unsure exactly what you want, what your mission is?

Answer the following questions to the best of your ability.
1. What do I want?
2. What do I need to learn?
3. Who do I need to help me?
4. What do I need to feel?
5. What do I need to do?
6. What do I want most right now?
7. What do I NOT want?

By answering these questions and understanding the area of your life that needs help to pull you out of your negative state, you will feel better immediately. I have used this exercise five times in the past three years to pull me out of a negative state of mind. Once I was feeling depressed, another time I was burned-out and this last time I was extremely frustrated. Every time I use these questions to center my thinking and refocus my energies. I always come away a sharper focus on what I need to be a better person.

By : Janine Bolon

Article source : http://ezinearticles.com

Why do you want to manage your emotions? If you are reading this, it is probably for one of the following reasons:

• You don't like some emotions you experience because they are 'negative' and/or uncomfortable
• Your emotions 'lead' you to do or say things you wish you hadn't said or done
• You feel 'out of control' in some way
• You don't experience some emotions

If any of the above applies to you, the information in this article can help although the caveat is that, in general, you consider yourself an 'emotionally healthy' person who has 'blips' in specific areas. If you suspect you are depressed or have had a long-term problem with your emotions that is severely impacting your life, you need professional help.

Firstly, it needs to be said that your emotions are here to stay. Welcome or not, they are along for the ride and you are going to need to learn how they work, and how to work with them. They are part of the everyday process of you living your life, and no matter how you have stuffed them, ignored them, or covered them up they are like the arcade game where the gnome pops out of the hole and you hit it down with the hammer, only to have another pop up somewhere else.

So what are emotions to you? You might say 'they are my feelings' but actually they are much more than that. When someone strokes your arm or pinches you - that is a feeling. An emotion is more complex and occurs in your mind-body at the point your expectations of the world meet the world. Read that again.

In other words, an emotion arises when you get back a response from the world outside your head (or from within yourself) and you compare it with your version of how things do or should work - according to you.

For example, if you have just come back from a surprise party (and you love surprise parties) you got more than you expected from that evening and you may feel happy in response. Or if you just got unexpectedly fired you certainly got less than you expected and accordingly could feel miserable (or liberated if you hated your job!)

Both of these are the result of responses to the world. You also have responses to yourself - if you did something that violated your standards then you might feel guilty even though no-one else knew about it!

Emotions are information about your ongoing experience of life and how it matches up to your beliefs, values, expectations, and so on.

They are not:

• Instructions
• Guidance
• The TRUTH
• Reliable interpreters of experience
• In control

The above may seem rather harsh and there are certainly cases to be made for some exceptions but, in essence, having any of the above as a dominant way of thinking about your emotions will lead you down the wrong path.

Ironically, emotions whilst emotions are neutral in a moral sense they are always 'right' because they confirm or disconfirm something YOU believe. But if you believe that Santa is real at age 32 and you find out he isn't (sorry) then your feelings of betrayal, loss etc will be appropriate - given your beliefs. It doesn't mean you were right to believe he still existed...

Emotions are information purely about YOU although they sometimes don't seem that way. He made me feel that way. When she gave me that look, I felt so angry. It's the economy I feel depressed about. Even this is just you projecting onto someone else the results of how YOU responded.

However, at other times, they seem so strong that we feel overwhelmed. So, what can we do to manage or tame them? The process is quite simple and also quite paradoxical: you will need to do exactly the last thing you may want to do. You need to accept those emotions. THIS is the key.

Some people will have pushed back their chair and shouted at the screen at this point that they don't WANT to accept feeling this way. But consider this - 'whatever you resist, persists' and that includes the discomfort. It is in accepting your emotions that you are welcoming them in on YOUR terms - and that puts you in the driving seat.

When you bring feelings of acceptance to your feelings and your thoughts about your feelings, you take away their insistence and clamour because you are opening the dam on the stream of feelings, and letting the water flow again.

How do you do it?

The process is fairly simple and it helps if you have someone to talk you through it:

1) Identify the emotion you want to tame or neutralize

2) Imagine a situation in which you last felt it, and take a mental snapshot of how it feels

3) Step out of that (you can physically take a step back if you want) and think of something neutral - where do you want to go on holiday most?

4) Think of something small and simple that you accept*

5) Imagine feeling acceptance towards that fully and completely: breath the breath of those feelings, adopt the posture of that emotional state, and speak with the voice that you use when you accept and acknowledge something.

6) When you feel that fully, think about the emotion to 'tame' whilst feeling this feeling and notice how it changes things, how does it transform that?

7) Walk around a bit, holding this acceptance state about the lower emotion.

8) Think of something neutral again, and after a couple of minutes, think about the original emotion.

*The kind of acceptance that works best is the sort that acknowledges that something exists without having to like it:

• It's a rainy day
• The color of your front door
• How water feels on your hand

You will find in many cases a substantial lessening of the impact of the emotion and your ability to think about the situation more clearly improves. You may want to repeat the exercises several times to increase the effect.

It is important to not that accepting an emotion as existing is not the same as saying you are going to leave it alone forever. If you feel strong feelings for someone (positive or negative) at some point you might need to tackle the source of those feelings (your thoughts) and once you change them, so will the resulting emotion change. But getting a clear head is a good start.

What if there was a way to improve your vision and get rid of your glasses without surgery and without resorting to wearing contact lenses? Well there is, with a cutting edge energy therapy known as Emotional Freedom Techniques or EFT. A few years ago, Master EFT Practitioner Carol Look conducted an experiment to see if vision could be improved using this remarkable therapy. What she found was that for many of the participants in the study, emotional upset was causing their vision problems. And, of the 120 participants who completed the experiment, 75 percent reported a significant improvement in their vision, with many no longer needing to use reading glasses.

Traumatic Memories Affect Vision

Believe it or not, memories of traumatic events can affect our eyesight. On a subconscious level, there is something that we don't want to see and so our vision is affected. By addressing the traumatic event and neutralizing the negative emotions, we can improve vision with EFT.

Secondary Benefits

Sometimes, there is a benefit to having a physical disability of some kind. The client is unwilling to let go of the physical problem because of the fear that they will lose something such as disability payments, attention from others or a part of their personal identity. These types of issues can be successfully addressed with EFT provided that the desire to improve vision outweighs the loss of the benefit.

Limiting Belief in One's Ability to Improve Eyesight

Oftentimes, people don't believe that they can improve their vision with EFT and so are reluctant to try it. They believe that their failing eyesight is due to other factors such as age or heredity and therefore unavoidable. The good news is that limiting beliefs can successfully be addressed with EFT and in this case resulting in improved vision.

Unfortunately, we are not perfect. We have billions of people we can blame for our own shortcomings and failures. We do not get endless good times. When disappointment, failure or hopelessness attacks, we need to fight back. Here are some weapons:

How big is this problem, really? Don't sweat it if it is small.
Life is too short. The universe will continue to evolve. In the whole scheme of things in the entire universe, we are almost insignificant, yet we make big deals out of petty stuff.

Be humble.
Remember that if, some day, they discover the center of the universe you will probably not be in it. Even you have to experience failure or loss maybe for a long time but things will eventually change!! You just don't know when. Don't get so low and down that when things start going up again you won't be able to get up. You are not alone though. We will all secretly feel for you.

Discuss with somebody and get it out of your system. Purge.
Hearing yourself talk about difficulties sometimes throws new light on the problem. As well, if you talk about it long enough, you will find you get so bored of hearing yourself saying the same things over and over again that the problem becomes just a silly thing - at times.

Good and bad surprises are natural occurrences!
You will always have some form of life coming at you - good and bad. When you get lemons, learn to make lemonade! Both sunshine and rain helps flowers grow.

If you ask yourself: "Why me?", your honest response should be: "Why not me?"
It's your turn to use the gifts of talents, skills and abilities given to you to confront and solve your problem or issue. Would you wish your situation on anybody else? No. Then you deal with what you get and do it with your head high. Be dignified in doing your best.

Don't take a lot of things personally. View most things from a spectator point of view.
It helps you keep your cool when you distance yourself. It also helps you see things from a different perspective. It might not be as bad as you think. It's not your fault sometimes. Don't accept it and instead leave it with the other person to stew about. It's not being emotionless. It's accepting life the way it is.

Explore your feelings and hurts openly and honestly with yourself. Learn from them.
This is tough. Don't deny your feelings but go with them. Wallow through the misery and come out to the other shore. Next time is easier. Drive to a secluded spot in a large parking lot. Close the windows in your car, turn up the music, and then yell and scream anything and everything until you purge the hurt and other related feelings.

Take responsibility for being the cause and/or effect of disappointments in your life.
Admit your behaviour to yourself honestly. Temper? Bubbling rage? Ready to blow? Looking for a fight? Can you say: "I got jealous, angry, greedy, vindictive, enraged or whatever and caused something to happen to me."

Change anger into feeling sorry for who/what disappointed you.
Feeling compassion is easier on the system. Forgiveness is for the giver, not the receiver. Letting go is healthy. It stops the formation of acids and toxins that ruin health. Forgiveness gets the person or event out of your head where he/she/it is preventing you from thinking effectively. Why waste your time being angry when the person isn't even there in front of you to receive it?

Negativity will always be there in life. Get used to it. Rise above it.
Sometimes not getting what we want is a stroke of luck! Toxic people can depress us and alter mood but we also have the choice of staying away from them or immunizing ourselves from their harmful effects.

Find something good that can possibly come from what may be the worst of situations or happenstances.
From great loss can come great strength. There is a saying that God doesn't give you more than you can handle. I beg to differ. Sometimes we get more than we can handle. That's the time to get others to help carry the load. About 7 billion people were provided to you, from which the right one to help you is just waiting for the two of you to meet.

Do a reality check.
Are you just looking for trouble? Do you make silly, stupid, risky, dangerous decisions knowingly? If so, you take chances and not the potential loss. Too bad. That happens to the rest of us too!!

Have a positive attitude.
A little story emphasizes this point. For their birthday, twins were put in an empty room except for a big bucket of manure in the middle. One looked in, gave a scowl and walked away disgusted and mad. The other put on a big smile, started sneaking around, bending and bobbing to peek out of the windows, checking and listening at doors. When their parents entered, the one with the smile said gleefully, "Okay, I know there's a pony around here somewhere!!"

By : Otto Schimdt

Article Source : http://ezinearticles.com

I came across a cute little cartoon that said, "If there's no chocolate in heaven, I'm not going." Can you relate to this or is chocolate no big deal for you and your soul?

How likely do you think it would be for you to go into your kitchen to get a piece of chocolate and find yourself back at your computer munching on a carrot? Seems pretty incongruent and unlikely, doesn't it? Well, that's exactly what happened to my friend Colin, and to this day he loves telling the story of how it happened.

During a teleclass called "Eliminate Cravings With EFT In 4 Minutes Or Less", the topic of chocolate came up, as it often does. It turned out that chocolate was the #1 craving many people on the call were having. While I was having fun guiding the group through the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) with the appropriate scripts, Colin was also on the call as my audio technician and he was consciously listening to everything being said.

In EFT there's something called Borrowing Benefits. This is how it works. While one person is focused on what they want to eliminate, the rest of the group can set their own individual intention. For example, they might choose to eliminate a craving for red licorice, cinnamon buns, ice cream, or M&Ms. Even though the words they use will be different, their unconscious mind is paying close attention to their specific goal and therefore, they benefit by receiving the welcomed side effects of the EFT process. Borrowing benefits is great and everyone wins.

Apparently Colin's unconscious mind had been listening very intently, because the next day he went into his kitchen to get some chocolate and you guessed it...he and the carrot ended up being a perfect match. The chocolate was left behind in its wrapper. He was extremely amused.

Over the next few months, Colin made several conscious attempts to eat chocolate and each time, he felt extremely neutral about it. His body literally didn't want any. Choice gives all of us a sense of freedom-we become the complete opposite of being the obedient slave to a craving. Having the freedom to choose is an amazing gift we can give ourselves.

Of course there's really nothing wrong with chocolate or ice cream; there are even some healthy brands on the market to choose from. It does, however, get troublesome when in the middle of the night you find yourself putting your coat on over your jammies to make a quick trip to the corner store to get your fix. That's when you know it's time to eliminate the craving, get back in the driver's seat, and rejoice with the sense of freedom and self-control. From that place you can have anything you want...it's all a delicious choice.

Using EFT has many other benefits besides eliminating cravings. When coaching I use it with women entrepreneurs who want to:

• release business stress and anxiety

• increase their confidence

• release resistance to marketing

• speak in public with ease and grace

• tap into their soul's purpose and let their creative spirit soar

• attract more clients and get paid what they're worth...amen sister, let's tap to that!

You can use EFT to enhance any area of your life. Use it on anything, and everything! I highly recommend it.

So...are you ready for a breakthrough? I hope you are because you can learn how to use EFT starting this month. I'd love to have you join me in one of my upcoming teleclass series.

By the way I heard somewhere that one of the reasons planet earth is so special is because it's the only planet in the galaxy that has chocolate. Gotta love that!

Chances are you believe that happiness truly improves your life. One of the best ways to create true happiness is through laughter. In just 7 days you could find yourself laughing more often and enjoying your life more fully!

Day 1: Take the Positive from the Negative

Most people focus on the negativity and therefore create more negativity in their lives. Once you are able to take positivity from negativity, more positivity will enter your life. So, how do you do it? Start by asking yourself, "What is the opposite side to my belief?" Then ask, "Would thinking that way make me feel better?" If yes, then ask yourself, "What is preventing me from thinking that way?" Once you determine what prevents you from thinking positively, you'll be able to address it and overcome it. From that point forward, you will be able to use the same questions to take positivity from any negative situation.

By focusing on positivity you are welcoming more of it into your life. Even if you do not believe that, you are still creating a momentarily positive state of mind for yourself. You get what you want is the easiest way to understand this. The more you think about positivity, the stronger you desire it. So remember, when you focus on positivity on a regular basis it will regularly enter and improve your life.

Now that you've welcome immense positivity in your life, it's important for you to share it with others. Talk with people, laugh at the humor, and remember the positive points. Share stories that made you laugh, smile, and happy; not ones that were unpleasant. Remember the events which impacted your life in a positive way. Most importantly, be enthusiastic when you're telling a story and when you're listening to one. When you show excitement for someone else's stories, it creates even more excitement for that person, and also for yourself!

This will allow you to share positivity on levels you did not expect. When you surround yourself with good hearted people, it brings out the best in both parties. Good hearted people will further your happiness, excitement, and laughter. Having trouble finding one? Just look for the person that encourages, cares, and appreciates without reason and without fail.

You will inevitably become a good hearted person after time. This transition produces a positive attitude in you that was unseen before. It enables you to laugh when something does not go as planned; as opposed to becoming angry or upset. You begin to laugh more because an understanding is gained that the more you laugh, the happier you become.

You will find yourself laughing at the negative because you understand the principles of where to focus your attention. You understand negativity is just a test and with your laughter and positive outlook, you will pass with flying colors. The true character of an individual is shown when that person is faced with a challenge. By laughing at it, you show the positive person which defines you.

By now, you have probably figured out additional ways to laugh more and enjoy your life. A great way is to laugh as much as possible. Laugh when you feel the urge, when something goes wrong, when something funny happens. Before you realize, your life will be filled with laughter, positivity, and happiness. So, laugh more and a live a lot!