Archive for the ‘Motivation’ Category
Empowering Women A Review of Ticket To Freedom
February 7th, 2009
by Renee Pullman
There is a great book about empowering women at www.NancyWylde.com. The book chronicles the authors transformational moments in moving from a life structured by other peoples ideas for her to one of freedom, to a life that she has created. Nancy compels all women to examine the beliefs the are living with and the effect of those on the life you are living. She also explores self improvement technologies that she has employed to advance her life.
The book teaches women, really anyone, to build self-esteem and create a vision of and move toward the life they want. Here is a short video about the book:
Nancy’s story in Ticket To Freedom is compelling and I had the following thoughts after reading the book.
At the heart of empowering women is getting them to a level of self-esteem where they know that they just don’t have to take all the crap anymore. This is true of men too – so don’t run off if you are a man – this book is for you too.
Self-esteem is a core identity issue, essential to personal validation and our ability to experience joy.
Once achieved, it comes from the inside out. But it is assaulted or stunted from the outside in. A woman with low self-esteem does not feel good about herself because she has absorbed negative messages about women from the culture and/or relationships.
The reign of youth, beauty and thinness in our society dooms every woman to eventual failure. Women’s magazines, starting with the teenage market, program them to focus all their efforts on their appearance.
Many girls learn, by age 12, to drop formerly enjoyable activities in favor of the beauty treadmill leading to nowhere. They become fanatical about diets. They munch, like rabbits, on leaves without salad dressing, jog in ice storms, and swear they love it! Ads abound for cosmetic surgery, enticing us to “repair” our aging bodies, as if the natural process of aging were an accident or a disease. Yet with all this effort, they still never feel like they are good enough.
Get better everyday
Plan to do one thing that will help you improves physically, intellectually, emotionally, even spiritually. Making just one change for the better will boost your attitude from the inside out. You can actually chose what you want to change in this category first. Things you do most are the ones you need to focus on. A simple task wont take that long.
Little things add up
It’s amazing, really. The seemingly meaningless things you do for yourself may not have immediate results, but after just a short period of time they’ll have you looking and feeling better. So add those bubbles to your bath, make sure you eat your vegetables, get enough sleep, think of doing something nice when you have nothing to do, and the results will be worth it.
Mirrors don’t lie
Catty acquaintances can. Well-meaning friends might out of kindness or fear of hurting the friendship, but if you’ve got spinach in your teeth, your mirror will point it out. These things can be bothersome when you thought you were in your best but end up like this, so keep in mind about how to look best every time and enjoy its benefits.
Just go
If you just can’t get rid of that cowlick in your hair, that pimple on your nose, or those extra three pounds from yesterday’s buffet, just throw some gel in you hair, conceal that pimple the best you can, and wear something that’s not too clingy.
Appreciate
To get that attitude going the right way, you need to appreciate your face and body for what it is. It may be unrealistic to tell you to love it, but you certainly shouldn’t hate it. You definitely need to value what life has thrown you. That’s easier said than done in this society of model adulation and unrealistic standards.
If you take a look at any success story and grasp the one element of similarity between them, you’ll notice that virtually every self-made, successful person has this one super-important object of success in their mind- a burning desire to succeed. What counts is your frame of mind. Age, location, ethnic origin, gender, or any other individuality have absolutely no part in your attitude to become what you desire.
If you are a woman this is a must read book. If you are a man, you have some of the same issues and again, it is a must read book. You will both learn from, be transformed by, and enjoy Ticket To Freedom.
Nancy Wylde, Empowering Women, Ticket To Freedom – you will not be disappointed.
The author of this post counts herself a friend of Nancy Wylde and and was happy to receive a free autographed copy of this book from the author.
Posted in Motivation | 
Tags: empower women, empowering women, motavation, nancy wylde, Self Help, ticket to freedom, women empowerment | 
1 Comment »
The Will Power Myth
January 16th, 2009
If you have been fighting the battle of the bulge for any length of time, you have undoubtedly been told to just suck it up and use a little bit of will power. If it were that easy, we wouldn’t have an obesity epidemic in this country. In this article, we’ll explore why using “will power” is usually so ineffective.
According to a fascinating experiment published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, “Just one act of self-control depletes your ability to have self-control in another unrelated area.”1For example, when subjects were told not to eat chocolates sitting right in front of them, their persistence in puzzle solving deteriorated.
This is not just related to food, When subjects were told to suppress an emotional reaction to a movie, they had problems solving an easy anagram. It turns out that you only have the conscious resources to exhibit willpower on one (or at the most two) fronts at one time. The research is overwhelming in this area.
This is why it is SO HARD to stay disciplined with eating and exercise. This is true for any form of will power, which is why we often don’t do the things we tell ourselves we are going to do.
In short, any self-regulatory strategy has costs with respect to depleting a person’s general resources for self regulation.2
To make it worse, according to research on information processing, your conscious mind is only able to process approximately 50 bits of information per second, while your unconscious mind processes approximately 11 million bits per second.3 This means your unconscious mind processes information about 220 THOUSAND TIMES FASTER than your conscious mind.
Going back to the willpower research, it makes more sense now. The part of your experience that you are aware of has very limited resources, while the part of you that you are NOT aware of, is extremely powerful.
Further evidence of this comes from the famous study done by Dr. George A. Miller of Princeton University. He proved that the conscious mind can only handle 7 (plus or minus 2) chunks of information at a time.4
So you can see what a drain it is trying to use willpower to follow a healthy diet, exercise regularly, etc. on a daily basis. This is also why when people try to quit smoking AND lose weight at the same, they are bound to fail!
Now you understand that the trick is to somehow get the part of you that you are not aware of (the unconscious mind) to make the changes for you.
So how do you get your unconscious mind to naturally desire healthy green foods, water, healthy portions, exercise, etc. without having to think about it consciously?
The trick is a combination of positive association, priming and ritual.
With positive association, think Pavlov and the dog (you remember how Dr. Pavlov was able to get dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell). You need to set up an environment where every time you take an action that leads to your goal, you will reward yourself. Your brain will quickly learn to create this behavior without you having to think about it.
With priming, you need to put in place cues that lead to your desired behaviors. The research is solid that environmental cues determine a great percentage of your behaviors. Every time you see a fast food advertisement, you are receiving a prime (in this case for a behavior you don’t want)!
So level the playing field by putting pictures of healthy foods in your home and office. Eat off of smaller plates so you are primed to eat smaller portions. Remove “bad” snacks from your sight as they call for you to eat them! The point is to set up your environment for success.
Finally, use the power of ritual. It takes 21 days to change a habit. Pick one ritual that you can easily do every day that will lead to your weight loss goals. One powerful, easy thing you can do is to change your morning ritual.
Prepare a healthy meal every night before you go to bed, and pick any 20-minute form of exercise you can do in the mornings. When you wake up, do 20 minutes of exercise (even if it is just walking), then eat your healthy meal. This is easy to do and because it is the first thing you do every day, the stresses of the day will not prevent it.
References
- Source: RE Baumeister et al. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 74, 1998.
- Moraven, M., et al. (1998). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74. 774-789.
- Zimmerman, M. (1989). In R. F. Schmidt & G. Thews (eds.), Human Physiology, pp. 166-173. Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag.
- Miller, G. A. (1956). Psychological Review, 63, 81-97.
[Ed. Note: Michael Lovitch, M.A., Founder of The Hypnosis Network, is a social science researcher and a connoisseur of effective psychologists. His company publishes the best selling hypnosis program for weight loss available today, independently verified to help 92% of those who use it. Find out how to put your weight loss on auto-pilot by clicking here.]
This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise’s Total Health Breakthroughs which offers alternative health solutions for mind, body and soul.
If You Need A Little Extra Something Today – Watch This
October 31st, 2008
A reminder for all of us that it is not our perceived short comings that hold us back.
Tony Robbins – Invisible Forces That Motivate Us
October 24th, 2008
Tony Robbins at TED — a great piece!
Why do you do the things you do? What internal resources can you marshal to help you follow through on the things you already know to do. Eating well, exercising, or any other area where you failed to take action. Someone once said, “To Know And Not To Do Is Not Yet To Know.” Tony helps you get hold of the thing within you to get yourself to take action.
About Ted:
- 1. This website is provided as a public service to promote the spread of good ideas. It welcomes anyone willing to join us in this pursuit.
- 2. You are encouraged to view as many talks as you wish for free, and to share what you learn with others both online and offline.
- 3. Anyone can join TED.com by providing basic contact information (name, email address, country of residence). Once registered, please feel free to set up a profile and add comments and ratings to talks.
- 1. American self-help writer,
- 2. Professional speaker
- 3. He became well known through the use of firewalking in his seminars. He initially studied Neuro-Linguistic Programming but went on to develop his own methods.
When you click through for this presentation your browser will open into a new page for the presentation.
