Self Improvement Information

Managers talk with the people on their teams every day. Whatever the topic, most of these conversations happen with no stress, little anxiety, and minimal tension. But when the conversation is about an employee’s performance, anxieties often abound. Here are four ways to reduce the tension and defensiveness that too often surround performance evaluations.

1. Don’t wait for the meeting to deliver the performance appraisal form.

I worked for large corporations for fifteen years before beginning my consulting career. Every one of those companies — GE, United Airlines, PepsiCo — took performance appraisal very seriously. And my bosses at those companies also took their responsibilities for performance evaluation seriously as well. But all of my bosses kicked off the appraisal discussion in a way that was guaranteed to get it off to a bad start. How did they begin? They set up the time for the meeting and then waited until I was sitting across the desk to hand me their completed appraisal form.

At the start of the meeting my boss would give me his appraisal form and I would engage all of my speed-reading skills, whipping through the document as fast as I could to see what he had said about my performance. While I was reading the evaluation (and probably missing some key points in my haste to take everything in) my boss would be behind his desk, pretending to work, but in truth trying to gauge how I was reacting to the evaluation he had written.

What a terrible way to begin! Don’t wait until the meeting starts to give the employee your performance appraisal document. It’s far more effective to go up to the employee an hour or so in advance of the meeting, and say something like this: “Mary, you know we’re getting together at two o’clock to go over your performance appraisal. Here it is. Why don’t you take some time between now and then to review it? Read it carefully and jot down any questions that you’d like to ask.”

Giving the person the appraisal to review in advance of the meeting can lessen defensiveness. It allows her time to think about what you’ve written and prevents spur-of-the-moment reactions. You’ll usually find that giving the person a chance to read what you’ve written in advance produces much more effective business discussions.

2. Set a time frame (and give yourself an extra fifteen minutes).

Your discussion of a person’s performance evaluation may be one of the most important interactions you’ll ever have with that individual; make sure you’ve allowed enough time. In most cases, an hour should be sufficient to review the appraisal document itself as well as discuss many of the other subjects that often pop up during performance reviews — development activities, career plans, and future goals and projects. Make certain that the very next activity you’ve scheduled after finishing the review isn’t one that must begin at a set time. If you provide yourself with a little flexibility at the end, you can take the time to wrap up the discussion comfortably.

3. Don’t start by discussing the form itself.

Yes, the form is important, but the form simply serves as the formal record of your assessment of how well the individual has done over the past year. Rather than beginning with the first entry on the appraisal form and moving lockstep through the document item-by-item, it’s more effective to start by asking a general question that requires the employee’s thoughtful consideration: “Tim, you’ve had a chance to read the appraisal. Why don’t you start by telling me how you feel the past year has gone?” Then listen as the individual responds and continue the discussion from there.

4. Don’t fixate on getting the employee to agree with your performance appraisal.

One of the most common questions managers ask me during training sessions involves how they can gain an employee’s agreement with what they’ve written in the performance appraisal, particularly when what they’ve written isn’t entirely favorable. “Don’t try!” is my advice to them.

What is a performance appraisal? It is a formal record of the supervisor’s opinion of the quality of the employee’s work. Pay attention to the key phrase, “. . . the supervisor’s opinion . . .”

Of course the employee is going to have a different opinion — all of us believe we’re above average. The goal in the performance review discussion is not to gain the employee’s agreement, although it is nice if that happens, the goal is to gain the employee’s understanding. As long as the employee understands how you came up with the evaluation, you’ve done your job. Of course, he may disagree (particularly if you’ve set the bar high and have tough, demanding standards). But don’t waste time trying to convince a person that you’re right and she’s wrong. The important thing is that she understands your expectations and how her performance was assessed.

There’s a lot more to conducting good appraisal discussions, of course. But these four tips should make a tough job just a little bit easier.

Dick Grote is one of America’s best-known consultants on groteapproach.com employee performance management. He is the Chairman/CEO of Grote Consulting Corporation and developer of the GroteApproach web-based performance management system at groteapproach.com groteapproach.com

The possibilities of Human Software Engineering continue to amaze me. Just today I was debugging some friends for the TB miasm (see an article about this here) and a fascinating related issue came up. I was telling my friend Dona and her daughter and granddaughter about helping a young girl a couple of years ago with an issue of not being able to see things in her mind’s eye and Dona said, “I can relate to that. I have trouble envisioning things. And because of that it’s hard for me to envision and manifest the things that I want in my life. In fact it even makes it difficult for me to know clearly what it is that I want my life to look like!”

I was immediately fascinated both because of the instant recognition of the potential application for the kind of issue that she was raising and because I was pretty sure that I have a simple HSE solution to this problem. So I tested her and sure enough there was a way to upgrade her inner human software to correct this problem. With a little more questioning it was clear that this had been a life long problem. I asked her to envision something that she really liked. She said there was a house in Hawaii that she really liked so she tried to imagine it in her minds eye. She could sort of see it but it wasn’t very clear. She said, “I can’t really get a sense of it.” And the muscle test was weak.

The young girl who I had worked with a couple of years ago had not been able to read books without pictures and she also had a lot of trouble with math problems. She just couldn’t see things in her mind. At the time I had a flash of intuition to combine one of the ampoules from the Earth Element test kit that is for upgrading vision with one of the special beta test ampoules that Martin Keymer had made from a vital unfertilized human egg cell. These ampoules seemed to me to be like energetic stem cell therapy. When I had tested this young girl, I asked her to try to envision her favorite thing which she said was Disneyland. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t see it in her mind and she muscle tested weak for the ability to see with her mind.

So I muscle tested to find the right ampoule for vision and the right ampoule from the seven versions of the egg cell beta test kit that Martin calls “Basic Life.” Then we upgraded this girl’s system using these ampoules and retested her. Now her nervous system tested as strong and when I asked her to envision Disneyland, not only did she test strong she said, “I can see it!” I looked over at her mother. Both she and I had tears streaming down our faces we were both so moved by the experience.

What I had learned from doing this upgrade was that by combining with Basic Life Ampoule with the proper ampoule for the senses that it might be possible in some cases to enliven latent abilities that had been suppressed or never enlivened. This young girl had experienced some significant birth trauma. Her current mother had adopted her. Her original mother was apparently a drug addict and the children of such mothers can have quite some trauma at birth.

What I had not realized until today was the potential that this kind of upgrade could have for “normal people” who simply wanted to improve their ability to envision things. If you have seen the movie the Secret you know that your thoughts and intentions are what you tend to manifest in your life. If you can’t clearly envision what you want then you may have trouble bringing it into being! Now there’s a way to improve your ability to more clearly envision what you want.

Of course you may still want to work with a WaveMaker Coach to debug the Core Dynamics and all of the conditioning that causes inner conflicts. But being able to upgrade the basic ability to see things in your mind’s eye may just be an important part of having the life you really want.

When I tested Dona after doing a similar upgrade using a Basic Life ampoule and one of the ampoules for stabilizing the energy of the sense of sight she tested strong and she said that she could see and feel the house in Hawaii now much more clearly.

Wow! What an incredible possibility for helping people envision their lives the way that they really want to see them be! All the seminars and affirmation in the world won’t help you manifest your vision if you can’t even see it. It would be like trying to install video viewing software on a computer with an operating system that isn’t enabled to access the video card. It’s just not going to work!

At the moment this special “Basic Life” test kit is only in the beta stage. I am on Martin Keymer’s beta test group list so I have one of the beta test kits. But this certainly gives me the idea to explore this more as a way to help people optimize their ability to envision what they want in their life and be able to see it and manifest it.

If you would like to have this done, I have some amazing news. We can now imprint the Upgrade signal in to special “bioresonance oil and mineral drops” that we can make in our office and send to you anywhere in the world. I’m interested in having people do this who will give me a report in two weeks and two months with a description of your experiences. I’d like to document what happens with this. So if you’d like to participate and clarify and optimize your ability to envision your life the way that you’d like it to be, call or (arrange to come on in if you are local) and we’ll help you Upgrade Your Inner Vision!

Of course upgrading your inner vision is only one small part of what can be done with Human Software Engineering. You can debug the conditioning and the habits at the basis of just about every kind of problem in your life. GLT is packaging different HSE applications such as the Be Smoke Free Now program, the Peace of Mind, Happiness, Focus and Productivity program, the Inner Vision Upgrade Program, the Core Dynamics Coach Training program, the WaveMaker Mastery Program, the Advanced WaveMaker Mentoring program and many others. I hope that you enjoyed this brief story about the origins of HSE and that you will also read and enjoy the other articles in this article section of our web site as well as learn about the many other HSE applications described throughout the site.

Tom Stone is the founder of Great Life Technologies and is an expert in the application of biophysics and changing patterns of energy in the human body. Tom is pioneering the new field of Human Software Engineering.

To learn more visit greatlifetechnologies.com greatlifetechnologies.com.

Did you know that there is a simple, two-step process by which you can know God’s will for your life?

Think about it! According to Ephesians 2:10, the God who created you has prepared good works for you to accomplish:

Ephesians 2:10 NASB

(10) For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

Now, here’s the key to a fulfilled life:

Find those good works that God has prepared for you, and do them! Those good works are often referred to as God’s will for your life.

Jesus said that the thing that nourished Him was to do the will of the Father who sent Him (John 4:34), how much more is this true of us?

I honestly believe that we are born with an innate sense of purpose. I believe God puts into the heart of every person the knowledge that He exists and intends to have a relationship with that individual. It’s up to us to seek Him out.

So how do we go about discerning God’s will for our lives? Look at Romans 12:2:

Romans 12:2 NASB

(2) And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

Notice the two-fold method for proving God’s will:

Do not be conformed to this world This world is that over-all life-attitude that is contrary to the Spirit of God and is best described in 1John 2:16:

1 John 2:16 NASB

(16) For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.

Paul admonishes us to not allow ourselves to get caught up in this worldly mindset. It’s difficult to keep one’s mind and attitude right when we are bombarded every day by sinful appeals to the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. It permeates nearly every song we listen to and every television show we watch.

So how does one keep his or her self from being conformed to the world?

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind You see, Christianity is so much more than avoiding the wrong things. It’s about doing the right things. As you immerse yourself in the Word of God and delight in obeying His commands, your mind is renewed. You find that the sinful attractions of the world system have less and less affect on you because your mind is occupied by the things of God. In short, to change the way you live, change the way you think.

And so, in fulfillment of the promise in this verse:

as you grow in your relationship with God . . . . . . and your mind is renewed . . . . . . and you resist the corrupting nature of the world . . . . . . you will have a greater understanding of His will for your life!

Kip Keith is a Christian writer, speaker, and musician with over 20 years in the ministry. He is the Youth Pastor at Cornerstone Church of the Roanoke Valley.
Contact him to speak at your next event.
theemptyhole.highpowersites.com theemptyhole.highpowersites.com

1)Excessive worry

No, I’m not saying “don’t worry, be happy.”

Well-used worry can alert us to areas in our lives that need attention and change. It’s just that most folks don’t use worry very well. Turning worry into action takes care of the worry.

2) A sedentary life

Would you send your kid to a summer camp that made the campers eat a continual diet of unhealthy food, allowed them to move as little as possible, made them stay inside and watch meaningless junk in their spare time?

Of course not.

Yet many of us volunteer for that lifestyle on a continual basis. Get up. Go outside and move. Human beings feel much better while living life instead of watching other people live.

3) Procrastination

Four words that virtually guarantee failure are “I’ll do it later.”

Every time we say we’ll do it later, that thing runs around in our head taking up space. That’s too much stuff to carry around.

Practice doing it now. Do it now. Do it. Now.

4) Excuses

We seem to be the most creative when we need to find an excuse, usually for why we did or did not do something.

It’s been said that when we set a goal, there is only one of two outcomes:

We either achieve the goal, or have excuses why we did not. To free yourself from excuses, take responsibly for your own. Make sure you are doing all the necessary things to get you where you wish to go.

Visit secretsofgreatrelationships.com SecretsofGreatRelationships.com for tips and tools for creating and growing a great relationship. You can also subscribe to our f*r*e*e 10 day e-program on how to enrich your relationship today, from relationship coach and expert Jeff Herring.

Most people have no idea how much clutter effects their lives. We accept closets stuffed to overflowing, papers strewn about and tasks left undone as normal, and don’t connect them to feelings of anxiety, confusion or fatigue. On a larger scale, clutter can keep you stuck in the past and influence the way people treat you.

In this modern information age, clutter is a natural byproduct. Junk mail, special offers, reading material, even e-mails can overwhelm us. You are not alone! Mention the word “clutter” and most people will roll their eyes, break into a sheepish grin or launch into a story about the garage, their home office or kid’s room. Couple this with an economy that relies on our consumption and its no wonder that storage lockers are bursting at the seams.

In general, clutter can be defined as anything you don’t use or love, too much stuff in too small a space, anything that is disorganized, or my favourite, anything unfinished. My experience is that we surround ourselves with so much “stuff” that it creates a physical barrier which prevents what we really want from coming into our lives.

If you want a promotion, new relationship, improved health or more money, consider organizing the space around you. Apply the universal law that suggests that if you want something new to come in, you have to let something go. I find the shift in energy to be almost addictive: I roam around my apartment looking for things to get rid of!

Although the concept of clearing out clutter is a simple one, it is by no means easy. Our clutter has usually taken years to accumulate, so it won’t disappear with an afternoon of concerted effort. Set aside time to sort and organize your belongings as you would for a yoga class or hair appointment. Pace yourself! The process of clearing out clutter involves shifting both emotional and physical energy; listen to your body, drink lots of water and recognize that it may take several Saturday afternoons to make your way through your possessions.

Be prepared to take a trip down memory lane, and if it helps, get a friend to help you make decisions about what to keep and what to let go. Having an objective opinion can help you decide to donate that old bride’s maid dress to the local thrift shop, or organize a garage sale to bring in some extra cash. Consignment stores are another option for quality clothing that is in good condition.

Once organized, you will spend less time looking for lost items, be more inclined to have friends over for coffee or dinner, and will be inundated with more energy, creativity and vitality. Clutter, however, has a habit of creeping up on us so get in the habit of filing papers, recycling old newspapers and magazines and putting things back once you have finished using them.

After completing a volunteer placement in rural Kenya, Alison Roberts returned to Canada with a new perspective on the consumer culture in which we live. She shrugged off her materialistic lifestyle and became an advertising critic. As a professional organizer, Alison shares her enthusiasm for a more simplistic lifestyle and helps others to transform their home and office space.

clearoutclutter.com” target=”_blank www.clearoutclutter.com

cluttersdirtysecret.com” target=”_blank www.cluttersdirtysecret.com

Millions of people suffer from stress related diseases each year. A recent search of the internet turned up over 4 million items containing the phrase “stress and disease.” Stress never seems to end in modern society as we encounter situations at work, in driving, in our relationships and more.

Medical research has found a steroid produced by the body to deal with stressful situations. But this steroid has a secondary effect that shuts down the body’s immune system to concentrate the body’s resources on survival. Stressful situations trigger a “fight or flight” response, either of which require large amounts of energy. Stress in more primitive times demanded the need for that response. For example, if you met a hungry lion you could be eaten. This stressful situation produced the steroid and your body would have the energy to get away. After escaping, the body would stop producing the steroid and the immune system would return to normal.

Today’s society seldom demands that response. Not meeting a deadline will cause stress, but there is little immediate danger of being eaten by your boss! But the body doesn’t realize that and responds to the stressful situation by pumping out the stress steroid.

The result is the immune system never returns to its full functionality. This causes deterioration in the general ability of the immune system and diseases can get a foothold and prosper.

Knowing all this doesn’t help get rid of the stress. To get rid of the stress we must get rid of the true source of the stress. Stress comes from upset in our life. Why do we get upset? Because some expectation we had did not get fulfilled. These broken expectations lead to our upset.

We expect ourselves to be able to do something, and when we can’t, for whatever reason, we get angry at the person we think is at fault, never actually blaming ourselves for having broken expectations. When several similar events, such as failure to accomplish something, set up a pattern in our life we begin to expect, consciously or unconsciously, for that pattern to repeat itself. when a similar situation comes along we act in the same manner that we did before and, doing the same thing over again, we fail, get angry, and wind up with more stress than we had to start with.

To get rid of stress we must get rid of those expectations. Those expectations are attached to our images of the past events in our lives. All of these expectations and images constitute a kind of “mind” with a life of its own that controls our daily life.

In Maum Meditation this mind is called the “False Mind” because it is not the real true individual’s mind. It is just a framework of expectations, judgments, images, attachments, and so on that we have accumulated in our life. The “True Mind” is the real individual. This True Mind is the original mind that we are given before we are born. From our birth we begin accumulating images and the False Mind starts growing.

Look at the average two year old. He has very little False Mind in relation to his True Mind because he has not lived long enough to have stored up much. He accepts things as they are. Every day is a new beginning. If he is hungry, he eats. If he is sleepy, he sleeps. He doesn’t worry about whether or not it’s time for supper, or bedtime; he just does as he wants to.

According to psychologists by the time he is three his personality traits will be formed. what happens in that single year? He begins to push the limits of his world. His life experiences increase and he ceases to be able to do as he wants. He learns right and wrong. He has failed expectations and attaches to the things that make him happy. The False Mind begins gaining strength. Little by little this False Mind takes control, dulling the True Mind with the promise of “this is how we did it before, this is how we should do it now.”

Soon the True Mind begins to give in until the False Mind is completely in charge. When that happens stress and the diseases that come from stress can start.

Now we know the true source of our stress. What can we do about it? Everything in nature follows the simple laws of nature that we often overlook in favor of a more complicated solution. That search for more complex is our False Mind’s method of trying to explain things. There is a simple solution to the problem of the False Mind and the stress it causes.

The simplest solution of all is to just get rid of our False Mind, but how do we do that? We get rid of the judgments, experiences, images, and attachments to these things.

Woo Myung, founder of Maum Meditation, found that when we get rid of attachments to those images we actually are getting rid of the False Mind. When all the attachments are gone then there is nothing to cause the stress that is responsible for the diseases.

If we close our eyes many people can see the events that happened in the past as a series of images. Day to day things such as eating and brushing your teeth are not remembered, but the events that have an impact on us are actually retained as images. Those images are not the memory itself, but only a record of the event stored by the False Mind. The true memory resides in our True Mind and even when the False Mind is gone these memories remain.

Through the simple process of eliminating these images an amazing thing happens.We still retain the memories, but without the emotions tied to the image of the event. When those emotional attachments are gone, the stress disappears. With the stress gone the immune system can rapidly heal the body in most instances.

For more information about Maum Meditation go to: maum.org maum.org

I’m always amazed at how easy it is for most of us to slip into the Christmas spirit. Each year from the middle of November until the beginning of January most of us act a little cheerier, speak a bit gentler, and smile a bit more at each other. We all enjoy the spirit of the season and benefit from this new-found attitude toward one another. Why then do we leave it behind so quickly? I vote that we stay cheerful, respectful, and helpful all year round! Unfortunately this probably is not going to happen. The problems and pressures of life conspire to bring us down and wipe the smiles off our faces. Reality hits and it’s back to the grindstone. Or is it? What’s the purpose of having a season like Christmas if it doesn’t affect our entire life? Maybe it’s not supposed to be a “season.” Maybe the Christmas message is more profound than greeting cards and smiles can convey.

The central theme in the Christmas story is the intervention of God in our history. If you read through the Bible you’ll find that God is constantly trying to get our attention, communicating in various ways that He in fact cares about us, and our situation. The birth of Jesus (the Incarnation) is the story of this consummate form of communication: He came himself in the form of His Son. God, it seems, wants to be a part of our history. He wants to touch us using the best means possible. I have on my wall a detail of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam. The detail shows the hand of God and the hand of Adam separated by only a centimeter, the weak, almost lifeless hand of Adam reaching out to touch the strong and empowering hand of God. It’s an inspiring image and thought. But it is more than just a thought; it’s a reality for many millions of people. God has reached out and touched us, forever changing our lives.

Something else we learn from the Incarnation story is that God values us as a race. If God himself chose to be one of us, then it stands to reason that He thinks we’re worth something. These are times when everyone is seeking worth. We look for it in our jobs, relationships, and leisure pursuits. But as we dig deeper into these areas of our lives we usually find that the value they bring us is fleeting. The fact is that if something is going to validate my life it needs to be larger than myself, or my pursuits. It has to be something outside myself as well, if it is going to be an objective validation. The maker of heaven and earth provides this validation when He becomes one of us. He is, in effect saying, “It’s worth being a human being.” Secular humanists are trying to say the same thing, teaching me that I have worth within myself. But when we look into the whole of their message we find a different story. Their definition of a human being is very mechanistic. We are the sum of the chemical, evolutional, and biological processes affecting us, they say. Not much worth there since the total cost of the chemicals in the human body are calculated to be less than $50 US. For a movement that is ostensibly giving me worth it is falling far short of its goal. The Bible, in its telling of the Incarnation, actually gives us a higher validity and worth than the loftiest human philosophy.

No matter how you look at its value the Incarnation story has affected all of us. From evidence as simple as our calendars taking their starting point from the event, to the spread of a spirit of peace throughout the earth, the Incarnation story has pervaded our world. I think it is interesting to note each Christmas the attempts to offer other stories that contain similar elements from other cultures by those that, for one reason or another, are not comfortable or satisfied with the Biblical story. Each time there is a small movement and a few adherents but ultimately the Incarnation story holds sway and its import remains steadfast. It’s hard to beat the idea that God has been born into our world through Jesus. No other story gives us as much hope, joy, and peace with ourselves, and our creator. We are calmed by the thought that the maker of heaven and earth has come down to us to show us the way to freedom and peace. While a few would like to concentrate on the ills that have been wrought in the name of Christianity, I like to dwell on the progress and achievements accomplished in the name of Jesus. There is no doubt in my mind that a measure of the peace and justice in which we live was brought by the pursuit of Christian principles within our societies, governments, and cultures. It is with this thought in mind that I approach the Christmas season and give thanks to the one in whom thanks are due, sharing joy, hope, and peace with those around me.

Paul Peixoto is an author, speaker and trainer with a background in Pastoral Ministry and Communications with 25 years of platform experience. The bulk of that time he spent in the non-profit sector, where he honed his ability to communicate and motivate. Currently as the founder and president of The Serra Group he leads a team of communication consultants that work with the group’s pharmaceutical clients. He is a member of ASTD, and a certified NLP practitioner, trained by its co-inventor, Richard Bandler. He has led 100s of professional development workshops and presented scores of keynote addresses throughout the USA, Europe, and Asia. You can reach him via email at mailto:paul@paulpeixoto.com paul@paulpeixoto.com or visit his website paulpeixoto.com paulpeixoto.com

I’ve recently noticed the number of people who say that they are hopeless when it comes to studying and passing exams. As there are so many opportunities for improvement now it seems a real shame if a limiting belief is holding you back. Steve’s story is a good example of this and how it doesn’t have to be that way.

When I first met Steve, he was extremely upbeat about all of his recent achievements, but when it came to a course that he still hadn’t finished, you could hear the energy draining away as he described the home study involved which included various assignments and a thesis. He had set himself a 6 months deadline and had in fact managed to get the assignments done, but the thesis was a challenge that he hadn’t been able to overcome and it was stopping him finishing the course.

I asked him to tell me about other studying situations and how easy or difficult he had found them. It transpired that when he was at school, his father had told him in no uncertain terms exactly what he expected Steve to achieve in his exams. The pressure Steve felt under resulted in him failing every one.

Years later he managed to pass various exams because he wanted to do it for himself, but although he ultimately did well, he said that he always found them difficult, and had a belief that he would always struggle with studying.

Talking through a strategy to get his thesis finished, he decided to write down his thoughts and feelings about his school days, and remember the successful results he’d had since leaving school.

He also decided to come up with an affirmation to be repeated morning and night such as “I thrive on my learning achievements” to start changing his thoughts around studying, and then visualise his family and friends congratulating him on finishing his course.

Steve felt so inspired, that he got his thesis finished within a week and felt a great sense of achievement. When we analysed why it had been so difficult to finish, he became aware that the real problem had been the thought of spending all of that time at his PC, which had made him feel under pressure, just as he had felt when he was at school. He then realised that passing the course was really important to him and worth the time, but he had to find ways of making it a more enjoyable process. By having regular breaks and giving himself little rewards, he successfully completed his thesis and decided to go for another course, but this time with the belief that he could do it!

Pam Stokes is a Business & Personal Development Coach. Besides coaching, she provides interactive online courses for busy people, mentors newly qualified and trainee coaches, and runs workshops in stress management and NLP. Free downloads are available at pamstokesassociates.co.uk pamstokesassociates.co.uk

The cause of panic and anxiety attacks relate to the functioning of the brain. More specifically, these attacks are caused by the Amygdala’s reaction to anxiety provoking situations or thoughts. A person can be diagnosed with three types of panic attacks; namely, spontaneous panic attacks, specific panic attacks and situational predisposed panic attacks. A myth that has existed for many years surrounding panic and anxiety attacks is that it is a mental illness where in actuality, these attacks are frequently behavioral conditions with specific symptoms.

Persons suffering from panic and anxiety disorder may experience symptoms such as shaking, sweating, palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness and hot flushes to name but a few. A common statement by panic attack sufferers is that they feel like they’re dying or suffering a heart attack. Naturally, these symptoms may occur with many other ailments and are not necessarily related to panic and anxiety disorders, therefore treatment and diagnosis from a specialist is therefore of great importance should you be worried that you may be suffering from panic and anxiety disorders.

Panic and anxiety attacks are not necessarily both experienced at the same time. In other words, some people may suffer from anxiety attacks and never experience a panic disorder. When suffering from spontaneous panic attacks, they can strike at any time or in any situation. For example, these forms of panic attacks may occur while one is asleep or even during the day while at work. They are unpredictable and can cause a lot of stress for the person whom is experiencing the attack.

The second form of panic attacks, namely, specific panic attacks, are caused when a person is confronted with an anxiety provoking circumstance that he or she has experienced before or that relates to a previously anxiety experienced situation. Situational predisposed panic attacks relate to having a panic attack in a particular situation or in a particular place, for example, some people will only experience panic attacks while doing their weekly grocery shopping. This does not necessarily mean that they have a fear for the activity; it simply means that they are predisposed to experience panic attacks in that particular location.

Persons who suffer from panic and anxiety attacks tend to suffer from fatigue and may experience aches and pains in various muscles of their body. When a person suffers from anxiety, the most common places for muscle pain are in the areas of the neck, shoulders and chest area. When a person’s muscles ache, it leads to tension within the given area. For example, a person suffering muscle tension in the chest area may experience shortness of breath, persons experiencing tension in the shoulder and neck area may experience migraines and headaches through the restrictions caused by the blood vessels.

Therefore, before treating the symptom it is important to know the source, what is causing the specific ache and pain. Various treatments for anxiety and panic attacks are available; they range from natural home remedies to prescribed medication. The advantage of these attacks is that they can be treated and cured permanently.

TreatAnxietyDisorder features expert articles on treating

Due to the social conditioning and the slide towards socialism in the United States many people believe that ego is a bad thing. Folks even go out of their way to hide it, but why? A strong ego from a friend, associate, family member, celebrity or business person might annoy us now and again, but one should hold back judgment until they know if that ego being projected is earned or false.

Indeed, I have a strong ego, more than most people I have met, but it is an earned ego from doing. It helps me win, innovate, achieve and that is a good thing. Nothing wrong with that. If one does not believe in themselves and their abilities then they will achieve very little. The negative ego issue is invalid often and we should think twice.

What really changed me to the ego thing was reading the Introduction to “A New Type of Science” by Stephen Wolfram. There was an “I did this” or “I did that in every sentence, sometimes two. I thought, wow, what an ego turn-off, this must be hype, this guy is all ego and I just paid $68.00 for this book? Well, I was not going to waste my purchase so I kept reading.

Then eventually, I read the whole book he wrote. Took me a month, it is huge 1200 pages of small print, calculations and heavy reading, it took me another 2-months part-time to follow all the references that I had highlighted. Now then, although the man has a tremendous ego, his work is still Excellent. I call this an earned ego. Nothing wrong with that.

He deserves credit for his 10-year project. And no one is better qualified to write a book review on that book than the man who wrote it and created this New Type of Science. If someone wishes to label this gentleman ego-centric, fine. But you cannot discount his work and if it takes an ego like that to perform and produce such a work, then we need more people like that, not less.

I certainly hope this article is of interest and that is has propelled thought. The goal is simple; to help you in your quest to be the best in 2007. I thank you for reading my many articles on diverse subjects, which interest you.

“Lance Winslow” - If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; WorldThinkTank.net/ WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is a guest writer for ourspokanemagazine.com/ Our Spokane Magazine in Spokane, Washington