By success I mean any success, any small victory or achievement

We all need to celebrate our success even if they start out as is small victories.

Remember this.

Oprah Winfry started with one viewer.

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This time of the year can bring about a brain overload which can result in burnout, exhaustion, and fatigue. These may arise from the mental pressure of the focused concentration necessary to arrange all matters that have to be done to make this holiday time a success. What with the business closing down all reports, ordering etc have to be finished before you can have that break. All of the arrangements for the break, food, travel, presents the list just goes on and on. Then there are the functions, why oh why has no one realised that there are only three weekends in December to have the Christmas functions? Brain overload, if gone unchecked, can result in depression, stress, and even anger if you continue to push after the drain has set in. So even though you need to keep your things going non-stop, you would be much more productive if at the first sign of brain overload, you took a break and did something about it.

Here are some of the signs you might be suffering from brain overload.

* Mental exhaustion.
* Annoyance when thinking about what you have to do.
* Putting off certain tasks because they are “too hard to think about.”
* Snipping at other people who are not moving fast enough.
* Feeling as if the harder you work, the farther behind you get.
* Feeling depressed, stressed out, or as if you can’t keep up mentally with your task list.

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Motivation

Pain may often be the reason why people change. Getting poor grades make us realize that we need to study. Debts remind us of our inability to look for a source of income. Being humiliated gives us the ‘push’ to speak up and fight for ourselves to save our face from the next embarrassments. It may be a bitter experience, a friend’s tragic story, a great movie, or an inspiring book that will help us get up and get just the right amount of motivation we need in order to improve ourselves.

With the countless negativities the world brings about, how do we keep ourselves motivated? Try on the tips I prepared from A to Z…

A - Achieve your dreams. Avoid negative people, things and places. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

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BREATH IS LIFE

Life is absolutely dependent upon the act of breathing. “Breath is Life.”

To breathe is to live, and without breath there is no life. Not only are the higher animals dependent upon breath for life and health, but even the lower forms of animal life must breathe to live, and plant life is likewise dependent upon the air for continued existence.

The infant draws in a long, deep breath, retains it for a moment to extract from it its life-giving properties, and then exhales it in a long wail, and lo! its life upon earth has begun. The old man gives a faint gasp, ceases to breathe, and life are over. From the first faint breath of the infant to the last gasp of the dying man, it is one long story of continued breathing. Life is but a series of breaths.

Breathing may be considered the most important of all of the functions of the body, for, indeed, all the other functions depend upon it. Man may exist some time without eating; a shorter time without drinking; but without breathing his existence may be measured by a few minutes.

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Frozen By Fear

The Little Engine That Could is a children’s story. It tells of a small train that was faced with a steep climb up a very large hill. Half way up the hill the little engine started to feel as though it was an impossible task. Fear set in.

“Will I make it?” the train wondered. “What if I don’t? What if I run out of steam before I make it? What if I’m not equipped with a strong enough engine to handle this?”

The fear grew inside as his speed slowed with the climb. Soon he crawled to a stop. “I can’t make it,” he thought.

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How Strong is the Power of Place?

Recently I was thinking about the extent to which we as human beings are affected by our environment and how we can also be independent of it.

On the face of it, it’s easy to believe that we will generally feel better if we are in a beautiful place, close to nature, away from the noise and pollution of the urban sprawl. And perhaps that is generally the case when we are on vacation, ‘getting away from it all’, when we are not only in a more pleasant environment but are also away from the stress of the workplace. But life’s not that simple, and there’s not necessarily a direct link between the place where we are and how we feel, especially if all is not right in our internal world.

I clearly remember a conversation I had with a European couple a few years ago. They had left their high-stress careers in advertising in a crowded capital city to run a dive centre on a small Indonesian island near Bali, a real paradise of white sand and palm trees.

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Developing Personal Resilience

Last weekend, I attended a day-long personal development
workshop in a meditation and retreat centre down by the
River Cam here in Cambridge.

There were about 20 participants, so the atmosphere was very
different from some of the big-ticket personal development courses
I have attended in the past. The small number of people
made for some good discussions within the group, and I’d like to
tell you a bit about our conversation on the subject of
resilience and dealing with adversity.

Difficult situations affect all of us at various points in our
lives, and for some people they get to crisis point. At these
times, such strong emotions are swirling around that it is often
difficult to be sufficiently in control of ourselves to take the
actions required to best manage the situation. I know from my
own experience that it be really hard to meditate or do
relaxation exercises to ‘calm down’ under such pressure.

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