Appreciate Your Own Backyard

How often do we look longingly toward others' backyards - to what we believe are greener pastures? In doing so, we often fail to see the riches that are in our own surroundings. The failure to bring our focus to our own backyard can generate frustrating or devastating consequences... as it did for the subject of this story.

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An old priest told an ancient Persian farmer, Ali Hafed, that if he had a handful of diamonds he could purchase a whole country, and with a mine of diamonds he could place his children upon thrones through the influence of their great wealth.

After Al Hafed heard all about diamonds and how much they were worth, he went to his bed that night a poor man -- not that he had lost anything, but poor because he was discontented and discontented because he thought he was poor. He said, "I want a mine of diamonds!" "I want to be immensely rich."

So he decided to leave his farm to seek his fortune. He sold his property, took the proceeds, left his family with neighbors, and set out to seek his fortune. He wandered throughout the region and on into Europe, but never once found the diamonds he was seeking. One day, destitute, disappointed and disheartened, he threw himself into the ocean and finally ended his suffering.

Later, the same old priest who told Al Hafed about diamonds came to visit the new owner and he saw a flash of light from the mantel. He rushed up and said, "Here is a diamond --here is a diamond! Has Al Hafed returned?" "No, no; Al Hafed has not returned and that is not a diamond; that is nothing but a stone; we found it right out here in our garden." "But I know a diamond when I see it," said he; "that is a diamond!"

It did not look like a diamond because it was in its raw, uncut state. In fact, upon closer inspection, they found that the farmland was rich with diamonds. And thus were discovered the diamond mines of Golconda, the most magnificent diamond mines in all the history of mankind.

From Russell H. Conwell's "Acre of Diamonds" lecture that he delivered over 6,000 times. The full text of lecture is here, www.temple.edu/about/AcresofDiamonds.htm

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The sad irony of this story is that Ali Hafed wasted his life seeking what he already had in his own backyard. His wealth and fame were right beneath his feet, but he did not recognize diamonds in their raw form. This story holds a wonderful lesson for us. Often, we spend so much time searching "out there" for our happiness, wealth, and fame that we miss so many golden opportunities that are right in front of us.

Using our talents and abilities in our current workplace may be the right opportunity, if we would only ponder the possibilities. Many wonderful opportunities have been lost as we look for "greener" pastures. But beware, as Erma Bombeck once wrote, "The grass is always greener over the septic tank."

Affirmation:
"I survey the backyard of my life to find that which I am eagerly searching. I look around me with new eyes and a more receptive attitude. I appreciate those situations and conditions in my life that I may have dismissed because I failed to see the good that they hold for me." 
 
By Mary Rau-Foster

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Everyday Tips for Living With Excessive Gas

Don't Be Embarrassed – Here's How to be Proactive!

 

8 Ways to Get Rid of Gas!

If you've been feeling overly gassy or you've been experiencing bloating and abdominal pain, a simple change in diet may help relieve your symptoms.

Different foods produce different amounts of gas, which varies from person to person. The only way to know your own limits is through trial and error. These are some foods that cause gas:

• beans
• vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts, onions, artichokes, and asparagus
• fruits such as pears, apples, and peaches
• whole grains such as whole wheat and bran
• soft drinks and fruit drinks
• milk and milk products, such as cheese and ice cream
• packaged foods that have lactose (the primary sugar in milk) in them, such as bread, cereal, and salad dressing
• dietetic foods and sugar-free candies and gums

If you try changing your diet and still have problems with gas, consult your physician. He or she may be able to prescribe medications that will reduce discomfort.

Got Gas?

You Can Modify Your Diet and Eating Habits to Prevent the Discomfort.

You often can prevent flatulence by modifying your eating habits and diet:

• Eat and drink slowly, in a calm environment. Chew your food thoroughly before you swallow.
• For a few days, avoid the foods that most commonly cause flatulence, such as beans, high-fiber foods, cruciferous vegetables, carbonated beverages and sugar-free products containing sorbitol. Then gradually add them to your diet again, one by one, while keeping track of your symptoms. This should let you determine which foods trigger flatulence for you. Then you can avoid them.
• If you need to add more fiber to your diet, increase your fiber slowly over a period of days or weeks. A sudden increase in dietary fiber often triggers flatulence, but a gradual increase may not.
• If you eat beans, try a nonprescription product, such as Beano, containing enzymes that break up the poorly digested sugars found in beans.

Will Carbs Make You Gassy?

A Few Dietary Changes Could Bring Much Needed Relief.

If you suffer from the discomfort and embarrassment of excess gas, check your diet for the following foods.

• Sugars: The sugars that cause gas are raffinose, lactose, fructose, and sorbitol.
  • Raffinose: Beans contain large amounts of the complex sugar raffinose. Smaller amounts are found in cabbage, brussels sprouts, broccoli, asparagus, other vegetables, and whole grains.
  • Lactose: The natural sugar in milk, lactose is also found in milk products, such as cheese and ice cream, and processed foods, such as bread, cereal, and salad dressing. Many people, particularly those of African, Native American, or Asian background, normally have low levels of the enzyme lactase needed to digest lactose after childhood. Also, as people age, their enzyme levels decrease. As a result, over time people may experience increasing amounts of gas after eating food containing lactose.
  • Fructose: Known as a healthy sugar, fructose is naturally present in onions, artichokes, pears, and wheat. It is also used as a sweetener in some soft drinks and fruit drinks.
  • Sorbitol: This sugar is found naturally in fruits, including apples, pears, peaches, and prunes. It is also used as an artificial sweetener in many dietetic foods and sugarfree candies and gums.
    
• Starches: Most starches, including potatoes, corn, noodles, and wheat, produce gas as they are broken down in the large intestine. Rice is the only starch that does not cause gas.
  
• Fiber:  Many foods contain soluble and insoluble fiber. Soluble fiber dissolves easily in water and takes on a soft, gel-like texture in the intestines. Found in oat bran, beans, peas, and most fruits, soluble fiber is not broken down until it reaches the large intestine, where digestion causes gas. Insoluble fiber, on the other hand, passes essentially unchanged through the intestines and produces little gas. Wheat bran and some vegetables contain this kind of fiber.

Because many foods on the list are healthy, you might need to work with a dietician to learn how to fit them into your diet without causing digestive trouble or find suitable replacements to ensure you get the nutrients you need.

3 Easy Cures for Gas

Is Gas Causing You Pain and Embarrassment? You Don't Have to Just Live With It.

One of the most common ways to reduce the discomfort that comes along with gas is to take an over-the-counter medication.

Many nonprescription medicines, including antacids, are available to help reduce symptoms. Digestive enzymes, such as lactase supplements, actually help digest carbohydrates and may allow people to eat foods that normally cause gas.

If you have gas in your stomach, try antacids such as Mylanta II, Maalox II, and Di-Gel. These products contain simethicone, a foaming agent that joins gas bubbles in the stomach so that gas is more easily belched away. However, these medicines have no effect on intestinal gas. Dosage varies depending on the form of medication and your age.

The enzyme lactase, which aids with lactose digestion, is available in caplet and chewable tablet form without a prescription. It's called Lactaid or Lactrase. Chewing lactase tablets just before eating helps digest foods that contain lactose. You can also buy lactose-reduced milk and dairy products at many grocery stores (sold under brands such as Lactaid and Dairy Ease).

Beano, an over-the-counter digestive aid, contains the sugar-digesting enzyme that the body lacks to digest the sugar in beans and many vegetables. The enzyme comes in liquid and tablet form.

By Everyday Health Network

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Disarm and Conquer With Magnetic Moves

PTC's and Magnetic Statements are essential for mental domination, but they need the support of the Magnetic Moves.

The Magnetic Moves give it the final touch. Others may overlook many drawbacks you have, but not your failure to perform the Magnetic Moves.

These sweep everybody off their feet. It is obvious how tremendous they must be for mental domination.

The Magnetic Moves are easy to learn. Even people with below average intelligence can study them, apply them with little trouble, and gain phenomenally from them.

With these, women with ordinary minds and looks have won choice husbands. Men of inferior birth have become the associates of presidents, kings, and queens. Nothing will make you more welcome anywhere. With these moves, con artists have pulled off amazing frauds, and men have been elevated to positions of affluence over men with far more ability.

How the Magnetic Moves Affect Others

The Magnetic Moves disarm the other person, lower his defenses, and throw him into rapport with you. If he is your superior, he favors you because he can't help himself. If he has to reprimand you, the words choke in his throat.

With the Moves you appear as if you harbor no evil in you. That alone usually stifles resistance against you. The Moves may be called The Great Disarmer, the great neutralizer of hostile feelings against you.

There are 10 Secrets of the Magnetic Moves

Secret 1: The Non-Analytical Look
When about to be introduced to anyone, show no shyness or unwillingness. Show respect and admiration for the person, instead, by envisioning him nobly and respectfully. Overlook everything detracting about him.

Completely ignore Bob's lesser height, irregular features, unsymmetrical figure, poor clothes, uneven teeth, poor dental work, missing limb, prominent mole, ugly scar – in fact, anything and everything about him which does not add to his appearance. Stay neutral and establish instant rapport with him.

If he believes you are not aware of his imperfections, he might conclude that you are not observant. But he will relax with you, and you need that for mental domination.

Nobody enjoys the psychoanalytical look when it is directed at him. It is an antisocial look and arouses resentment. It may be pardonable in a doctor because he has to diagnose, but in everyday life people prefer to hide their deficiencies.

Stare only at Bob's eyes to suggest to him that he has captured your full attention. That banishes the rest of him from view and stops you from studying him.

Secret 2: Drawing the Other Person Out of His Shell
After expressing your pleasure in meeting Bob, flatter him with a Magnetic Statement. But don't usurp the conversation after that, unless he is tongue-tied or the silent type. Induce him to do most of the talking, particularly about himself, and give him your undivided attention.

You can't do this for long because it grows boring. But do it long enough to establish complete rapport between you and him.

Secret 3: Subtle Probing
As stated in a previous section, don't embarrass the other person with intimate questions. Praise something about him and let him elaborate on it if he is so inclined.

If you praise him for possessing broad shoulders, he might scoff and "admit" that he acquired them from playing sports in college. At once, exhibit interest in his education and ask him what college he attended. You would soon discover what he studied. From that you can guess his occupation – even his probable income.

Secret 4: How to Take Graceful Departures From People
Don't abruptly march off from a person you are conversing with. Say to Bob, first, "Will you excuse me? I'm late already. Good meeting you. See you again." If another group has already gathered around him and has eclipsed you, withdraw inconspicuously.

Secret 5: Retain Your Equanimity
Never give vent to rage or anger in social company. Slight or humiliate no one, even if he is unpleasant. Don't be a social sadist. Don't wound people's feelings.

Don't hit back by embarrassing others for slights, either actual or imagined, which you suffered at their hands. Revenge thinking, besides, changes your general demeanor to the unfriendly.

Secret 6: Show a Democratic Attitude Towards Others
At work especially, look down on no one in a subordinate position, even if he belongs to another department. Some day, he might be able to do you a big favor and save you a lot of hassle. An antisocial attitude, besides, gets talked about; and, once you are known for bad manners, people expect the worst of you and act aloof towards you.

Secret 7: Don't Brag
Don't brag about your income, as if your co-workers were paupers. If you are a woman, don't brag about your beauty. If others don't notice how attractive you are, forget it – there are others who will.

Secret 8: Be – Or Pretend to Be – a Good Listener
Don't adopt a know-it-all attitude. Appear always ready to listen. Don't pass for a simple-minded idiot who believes anything he is told; but don't act stubborn, nor as if impossible to influence either. People want you to listen to what they have to say. Don't turn your head when the other person presents his side of the question.

Even if he is misinformed, don't insult him by being rude. If he is long-winded, interrupt him with something he likes to hear about and then abruptly change the subject. If that is not easy to do at the time, turn pleasantly to someone else and ask for his or her opinion of the matter. Never start a quarrel with a person who is monopolizing the conversation.

Secret 9: Retain an Impartial Attitude
Don't turn, tongue in your cheek, to someone beside you and mutter sarcastically about the person who is monopolizing the conversation. It puts your listener in an embarrassing position. You compel him to take sides, and that is not sociable, even if he secretly agrees with you.

Refrain from all personal discussion. Mention nothing to your companion about his own private life, character, or ability to reason. Confine yourself to the subject being discussed and raise no controversial issue that could lead to a heated argument. Arguments incite people and curtail your power to influence them.

Secret 10: Reply to People with Words, Not Gestures
No mannerism antagonizes people more, nor labels you with a supercilious attitude sooner, than to reply to their statements with nods or shakes of the head. They wonder if you view them as animals or slaves. No slave would answer his master with nods or shakes of the head, but many a master might reply to his slave like that. So, don't insult others by replying to them with gestures instead of words, unless they are insufferable, and you wish to drive them away from you. Reply in words, even with "yes" or "no", or you will lose your mental domination over others fast.

Secret 11: Don't Push Your Way In and Take Over the Stage
Don't swagger up to people who are conversing and, with a booming voice, take over the stage. To those of sensitivity and refinement, such behavior is enraging.

By Hamilton Miller/ Author of Elite Social Control

 

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Always Give 100 %

A boy and a girl were playing together. The boy had a collection of marbles. The girl had some sweets with her. The boy told the girl that he will give her all his marbles in exchange for her sweets. The girl agreed.

The boy kept the biggest and the most beautiful marble aside and gave the rest to the girl. The girl gave him all her sweets as she had promised.

That night, the girl slept peacefully. But the boy couldn't sleep as he kept wondering if the girl had hidden some sweets from him the way he had hidden his best marble.

Moral Of the Story: If you don't give your hundred percent in a relationship, you'll always keep doubting if the other person has given his/her hundred percent. This is applicable for any relationship like love, employer-employee relationship etc., Give your hundred percent to everything you do and sleep peacefully.

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13 Most Annoying People to Work With

Most of us have had colleagues over the years who turned annoying into an art form. Well, now it's a classifiable art form. Career experts Christine Lambden and Casey Connor, authors of the new book, "Everyday Practices of Extraordinary Consultants," have compiled a list of "The 13 Most Annoying People to Work With." How many of these does your company still have on its payroll?

• Pontification Person — This person goes on and on, telling you what he or she is going to say, saying it, and then telling you what he or she said.

• Um Person — To avoid losing control of the conversation, this co-worker fills every pause with "Um," not realizing he or she might be able to think better when not talking.

• Too Much Detail Person — The authors could elaborate on this one, but then, of course, that would be contributing to the problem.

• 50,000-Foot-Only Person — He or she is eloquent when you talk about the big picture, but refuses to allow anyone to get into the details, which we all know is where the real work gets done. "Unless you're the CEO of a multinational corporation," say Lambden and Connor, "you have to be willing to work at any altitude."

• Hypnotized-by-E-mail Person — Wireless technology can be a lifesaver, but there's something defeating about presenting to the tops of people's heads because everyone at the conference table is hunched over his or her laptop.

• Buzzword Person — "This employee is annoying in meetings, team rooms, and in cubicles," say Lambden and Connor. "In fact, this person is just plain annoying all the time."

• Foul Language Person — Much like Buzzword Person, this co-worker is too lazy to think of the right words to express what he or she is thinking, if, indeed, he or she is thinking at all. This person isn't trying to impress you with his or her knowledge. "They aren't trying to impress you at all," Lambden and Connor note. "They don't care what you think of them." Refreshing on some level, but probably not a person you'd want on your team.

• Reiteration Person — The only contribution this person makes is to restate what already was said. So, basically, he or she actually has no contribution to make.

• Too Busy to Be Prompt Person — He or she always is late to work and every meeting, clearly lacking time management skills. Nobody can be working on something important all the time, after all.

• Can't Control the Meeting Person and arch-nemesis Wants to Take Over the Meeting Person — There has to be some balance between the out-of-control ditherer and the maniacal meetings dictator, doesn't there?

• Secondary Conversation People — Your best material often isn't riveting, but staffers at least could pretend to care. But Lambert and Connor point out these workers "only are annoying if their conversation is less interesting than the meeting."

• Disagrees With Everything Person — "This co-worker honestly believes he is just being practical, or serving as the voice of reason, or playing devil's advocate," the authors point out. "This may be true sometimes, and even helpful occasionally, but when it becomes a habit, everyone else just tunes them out."

• Obscure Metaphor Person — This employee is as annoying as "the fool in a troupe of Morris dancers," say Lambden and Connor. "See? Wasn't that annoying?"

Thanks to Inside Training Newsletter

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