Getting Your Toastmasters Club Online

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Getting Your Toastmasters Club Online

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Being Happy: Enjoyable Activities Beat Improved Life Circumstances

Being happy and staying happy is all about our day-to-day activities according to this theory of sustainable happiness. Research suggests that the contributions to our happiness are 50% genetic, 10% from our life circumstances and fully 40% determined by our day-to-day activities. But what evidence is there for this theory?

One prediction from this theory is that engaging in new activities should increase our happiness more than an improvement in our circumstances. This is exactly what Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2006) tested in three related studies.

New activities vs. new circumstances

Two different signs were put up around a university campus asking for participants. One asked for participants who had recently seen an improvement in their circumstances while another asked for those who had recently taken up a new activity.

The study also tested how much these changes had been affected by hedonic adaptation. And variety. This was to make the comparison fair, so that both groups had not yet adapted to their new circumstances or activity and it was still providing variety - both factors thought important in sustainable happiness.

The results showed that those who had recently engaged in a new activity felt happier than those whose circumstances had improved. This provides some preliminary evidence but data collected over a period of time (longitudinal) is more convincing, so that is what Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2006) did in their second study.

Here they recruited participants in the same way but this time measured their happiness at three time-points. The results again supported the theory with the effects of improved circumstances increasing happiness, but the boost from a new activity being more lasting. Finally a third study along the same lines also found similar results.

The power of randomisation

A problem with both these studies is that participants in both groups were self-selected. This creates problems for the interpretation of the results. For example, perhaps the type of people who take up new activities are also prone to stay happier for longer periods. If that is the case the results aren't really showing the benefits of activities over circumstances.

This is exactly why experiments using random allocation to groups are so useful for psychologists. Once people have been randomly allocated to groups, the counter-argument about self-selection is ruled out.

Sheldon and Lyubomirsky are, therefore, currently carrying out a study with random allocation which will soon be published (Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2007). Early indications bode well for their theory as the results support their previous studies. So, it looks like their previous results are not the result of self-selection.

Activities win

These studies emphasise that new, enjoyable activities have more potential for making us happy than improvements in our circumstances. Indeed activities may have as much as four times more power to make us happy.

Is Happier Always Better? Socially Yes, Financially No

People around the world value happiness - that is, feeling good - above intelligence, success and even material wealth. This makes sense because happiness is associated with so many positive outcomes: satisfaction with personal relationships, better jobs, better performance in those jobs and a higher income.

But happiness is much more complex than this. For example dissatisfaction with our current job probably helps motivate us to get a better one. A person who is happy with their job is less likely to strive for a change. In our relationships, though, less happiness might encourage us to chop and change our partner, perhaps leading to a less satisfactory social life.

What, then, is the optimum level of happiness?

Some of the first hints at the answer to this question are provided by a new study carried out by Oishi, Diener and Diener (2007) who have analysed an impressive amount of data. Thousands of people in almost 100 countries answered questions about their happiness, income levels and relationships over decades of their lives.

To give you an idea of where the data came from, in one dataset freshman students were asked how cheerful they were at the start of their courses. Nineteen years later they reported their income. Other similar datasets were obtained in Australia, Germany and the UK.

Across all the studies, the data revealed two very interesting findings:

1. Happiness and income
Overall, higher levels of income and education were associated with higher levels of happiness, but with one important exception. At the highest levels of happiness, educational attainment and income started to decrease.

In fact the relationship between achievement and happiness is curvilinear - the graph looks like a hill with the peak at about '7' or '8' on a scale of 1 to 10 where '1' is very dissatisfied and '10' is very satisfied. Up around 10, where people report the highest levels of satisfaction, their income and education have significantly dropped compared to those who peg it at 7 or 8.

2. Happiness and relationships
There's a subtly different story for satisfaction with relationships. Instead of seeing a curve there is a straight line. So the happier we are, the more likely we are to be satisfied with our relationships. Those scoring a '10' on the happiness scale are also the most satisfied with their relationships.

Varying effects of happiness

What I like about this study is that it begins to show the complexity of happiness: that it can have different effects on different parts of our lives.

It also challenges the idea that more happiness is always better. It's difficult to be much more specific than that because this study measures people's happiness in a very general way.

Happiness is, of course, bound to vary from day to day. These variations certainly have important effects on other aspects of our lives. For example, dissatisfaction with our job may prove a powerful motivation for us to make an improvement. After that change is made, our happiness increases.

Studies such as this one clearly cannot tell us much about these dynamics but what they can do is hint at overall patterns. They emphasise the fact that extremely high levels of happiness are not always 'a good thing'.

How to Develop Emotionally Intelligent Leaders - Six Leadership Styles

Do you have a flexible leadership style? Are you able to exercise good judgment and display the appropriate leadership style in the right context?

Emotionally Intelligent Leaders:

• Create a great work atmosphere

• Do not have one style of leadership but several

• Know when to use the appropriate style of leadership

• Know exactly what their role is in the team

The Hay Group identified six styles of leadership. By understanding more about styles you will be able to put your own predominant style into perspective. You will be more flexible in the way you lead your team. You will engage your team more by using the most appropriate style for the situation.

Visionary

The visionary leader inspires and is able to explain how and why the efforts of employees contribute to the dream. Through empathy and clarity they are able to move people towards shared dreams.

Affiliative

The affiliative leader creates harmony that boosts morale and solves conflicts. A very useful style for healing rifts in a team or motivating during stressful times.

Participative

The participative leader is a superb listener, a team worker, a collaborator, and an influencer. By valuing input of people, the participative leader gets commitment through participation.

Coaching

By listening and helping people identify their own strengths and weaknesses, the coaching leader encourages, delegates and improves performance by building long-term capabilities.

Pacesetting

With a strong drive to achieve, high personal standards and initiative, pacesetters get results from a competent team. Do too much of this and your employees will feel stifled and have less room to grow.

Directive

The directive leader is too inclined to say do it. It is a style that demands compliance, and is most effective in a crisis situation when you need to kick-start an urgent turnaround! It is least effective when used with capable and self-motivated employees.

What leadership style is your greatest strength? Working with a seasoned executive coach as part of a comprehensive leadership program can help you increase your emotional intelligence, and adapt your leadership style to the appropriate situation.

17 Ways to Stop Being a Perfectionist and Get More Done

Although sometimes it may seem like it, no one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes and has at least a few faults. And while it may seem like a noble goal, striving to be a perfectionist in your work or personal life can actually be more of a hindrance than a help in making you successful. Focusing on making every detail perfect can end up making you get less done, not to mention leave you in a constant state of anxiety. These are a few ways you can stop worrying so much about being perfect, enjoy your work, and still get plenty done in a day.

1. Set realistic expectations. While it might be wonderful to finish your current project, start another, get new clients and keep up with all your household chores, the reality is that expectations like that aren’t always realistic. There’s no sense in making yourself feel bad by setting yourself up to fail. You don’t have to be perfect to be productive, so give yourself expectations that are something you can actual accomplish, you can always add on more later if you get ahead of schedule.

Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing. ~Harriet Braiker

2. Give yourself credit. When you set goals for yourself, it’s easy to let yourself concentrate on the things that you haven’t accomplished instead of those you have gotten done. Give yourself some credit for the milestones and small parts of projects that you get done along the way.

3. Accept that you will make mistakes. While it might be hard for the true perfectionists out there, you can get a lot more done if you recognize that no matter what it is you’re doing, there are going to be some mistakes that you’ll make along the way. Accept this, and use these as valuable learning experiences to be better in the future instead of beating yourself up over them.

4. Ask for help. Though you might feel it’s a blow to your pride, asking for help doesn’t make you weak or incompetent. Sometimes having an outside perspective or a little extra help can make all the difference.

5. Focus on the present. It can be easy to get caught up in worrying about past mistakes or things that are looming in the future that may never even happen. Instead of trying to perfect your past and future, concentrate on doing what you need to do now to make yourself happy or get more work done.

6. Just get it done. Getting things done perfectly is great, but just getting them done period isn’t too bad either. Focus more on the action of getting things done instead of putting so much effort into worrying about doing each thing perfectly.

7. Relax. When you tense up because you’re worried or nervous about being less than perfect, you can make work a completely miserable and stressful experience. Just relax instead. Even if things don’t turn out perfectly, chances are good that things won’t be nearly as bad as you imagine.

8. Focus on the big picture. Perfectionists tend to focus on the little details, nitpicking every tiny aspect of a project, making it take much longer than it should. Let go of the small things so you can focus on the bigger aspects of your projects.

9. Give yourself permission. It can be hard to stop looking at things through the eyes of a perfectionist. You can start by giving yourself permission to be less than perfect and stop thinking of yourself as a failure when you don’t meet your own expectations.

10. Silence your inner critic. That nagging voice inside your head that tells you your work isn’t good enough can drive you to work harder, but it can also drive you crazy trying to achieve impossible perfection. Replace those negative comments with with positive encouragement instead.

11. Realize that someone can always find fault. You could spend hours tweaking a design, website or paper and no matter how much you do to it, someone can still come along and find fault. Everyone’s idea of perfection is different, so understand that no matter how perfect you make something it will never be safe from criticism. Realize this and you’ll be more willing to give yourself a bit of a break.

12. Use it as a motivational tool. Perfectionism doesn’t have to be totally bad. Sometimes it can be a great motivational tool in pushing you forward. The trick is knowing where to draw the line between productive thinking and destructive thinking. If you find your work making you more miserable than happy, then chances are you’ve crossed the line and need to take a step back.

13. Stop comparing yourself to others. It’s fine to have someone to look up to, but constantly comparing yourself to others can ultimately be self destructive behavior. Do the best you can do, not the best someone else can do.

14. Don’t overanalyze. Planning, preparation, and going over your work can be good things, but when you start overanalyzing things to the point that you don’t get started or finished with anything is counterproductive. Remember that it doesn’t matter how great something is if it’s only half done.

15. Lighten up. Your work may not be a joke but that doesn’t mean you have to treat it as a humorless endeavor. Lighten up and you will be less willing to get bogged down in making everything perfect.

16. Learn to take criticism. No matter how perfect your work may seem, you’ll likely get some amount of criticism from users or clients. Learn to take these kind of comments as ways to make your work better, not as attacks on you personally.

17. Stop procrastinating. Though it might seem odd, perfectionism can often lead to procrastination. If you find yourself reluctant to start projects until you can do them just right or until you have the perfect idea you’re likely letting your perfectionism get in the way of getting things accomplished. Just get started, you can always go back and revise later if you don’t like what you’ve gotten done.

Taming your inner perfectionist can be a long and hard fought battle, but it can be worth it in the end if you feel better both about your work and yourself. You’ll avoid loads of frustration, self imposed guilt trips, and maybe even get more done.

8 Ways To Develop Persistence

One of the greatest keys to success is persistence. So many people quit in this world moments away from when they would achieve a breakthrough.

You may not realize it, but I bet this has happened to you at least once in your life. You were probably so close to accomplishing what you set out to do, but fell short because you quit at the last moment.

The best story of persistence that I know comes from Thomas Edison. He failed over a thousand times before finally perfecting the light bulb.

Having the persistence to go after what you truly desire can get you many of the things that, up to this point, have only dreamed of.

The following is eight ways that you can build up your persistence. Read this list. And remember these ideas the next time you find yourself giving up on a goal that you really want to achieve…

1. Knowing What You Want

It’s pretty simple. If you don’t know what it is you want, there is no reason to read the rest of this page. Come back at a later time when this article will be of more use to you.

To have anything great in this world, you must know exactly what it is you want.

Perhaps you want to be the CEO of your company. If that is the case, don’t let a day go by where you aren’t constantly thinking about becoming the CEO.

If you want a million dollars, picture in your mind you checking your bank account and seeing one million dollars.

If you aren’t sure what you want most, the time to start deciding is right now! Search for as long as you need to until you find exactly what it is that you most want in life.

Spend the next few days, weeks, and even months if you have to. Because…

You can’t get anywhere great in life unless you know where you are going.

Know what it is you want. Because if you are aiming at the right goal, you will have plenty of persistence. Especially if you combine that with…

2. Having A Burning Desire

Make sure that you have a goal that you want really badly. It has to be something that you would absolutely destroy everything in your path to achieve!

If you have something that is that meaningful to you, it will be very easy for you to be persistent.

Think hard. I’m sure there is something out there that you want really badly. Whatever it may be, the more desire you have, the more you will stick with it when the going gets tough.

3. Believe In Your Own Abilities

Fear is the ultimate killer of persistence. To avoid fear, you must have confidence in yourself and your abilities.

After all, if you aren’t confident in yourself, nobody else will!

I have to admit, I have struggled with confidence in myself over the years. Especially when it came to starting this site. Here are just a few things that constantly went through my mind when I first started this site…

• there are better writers than me out there
• they are much smarter
• I will never have the time to make it work

It was hard for me to get going until I realized this…

The only limitations you have are the one’s that you put on yourself.

I figured out that none of these things were really true. I had and always will have the ability if I set my mind to it. I can get past any competitors I may have by simply outworking them.

If you get stuck in having a negative mindset, ask yourself this, “Maybe these thoughts aren’t true. Maybe I do have what it takes.”

I promise that if you put enough time and effort into anything, you will be able to do anything that your heart desires. Have confidence in yourself. And your persistence level will go way up!

4. Having Organized Plans

This is a very underrated part of persistence. If you want to have the ability to stick with a goal, you must have at least a basic outline of how you are going to get there.

When you get side-tracked, reevaluating your plans can help get you back and headed in the right direction.

If you haven’t yet, take a look at the biggest goal you want to achieve. What steps do you plan on taking to get you there? What mini-goals do you have to achieve that will help guide you to your ultimate goal?

The more organized you are in your plans, the more confidence you will have in them. Speaking of which…

5. Confidence In Your Plans

What is the point of having detailed plans to reach your goal if you don’t think those plans will work?

If there is even a 1% doubt in your mind that your plans won’t work, modify them until you have complete confidence.

This happened to me with one of my previous sites. I had a plan of writing one new page every single day. Now, this might sound good and all but it didn’t work out. Here’s why…

I figured out that my writing was getting worse and worse because all I was doing was writing as quickly as possible so I could finish a page and be done for the day. I realized I needed to modify my plans.

So instead, I had a goal of writing 1000 words per day. This took the pressure off from having to complete a page. If it was a long article, I could finish it the next day if I had reached my word limit.

The articles I was producing started to be much better and my site began to receive much more traffic.

I’m asking you to constantly look at and update your plans if you feel the need to. Your persistence will absolutely crumble if you have any lack of confidence in your plans.

6. Help From Others

Once again, another overlooked factor in persistence. Sometimes you need a confidence boost from others. Whether it be someone you look to for advice. Or perhaps you just need someone to listen.

Don’t try to get through everything on your own.

This site is filled with confidence boosters if you need it. But don’t stop there. Having people in your life that you can turn to for advice is incredibly important. Especially if it is someone who has been in a similar situation as you and came out on top.

Have conversations with people that are higher up in your company. They probably went through very similar situations that you are going through right now.

Persistence is something that you must fight with sometimes. And having a mentor and help from others can help you with that fight.

7. Willpower

Sometimes you need help from others. And sometimes you just need to suck it up and get through it!

Willpower is something that I struggle with everyday. You must have somewhere to turn to for constant inspiration. For me, I can always turn to my journal.

My journal is filled with motivating stuff that I have picked up from hundreds of books that I have read. All I need to do is read a few pages and my batteries instantly start to get recharged.

I recommend that you carry around with you at least a page or two of quotes or thoughts that you find inspiring. If you get down about something, you can pull out this sheet of paper and re-energize yourself.

If you need a place to start, try going to Google and typing in “jim rohn quotes.” Quite frankly, nobody explains things as well as Jim does. You might even want to pick up his Treasury Of Quotes at Amazon. It’s worth every penny!

8. Improve Your Habits

Ahh, of course. I had to throw in one of my favorite things to talk about. It is so valuable…

Getting into good daily habits makes becoming persistent almost automatic!

Take a good hard look at what you do everyday. Start eliminating some of the bad things you find yourself doing every day. The things which waste your time and make your days less useful.

Start adding things to your day that will help you reach your goals faster. Think about it this way…

If you do twice as much work as you are currently doing now, you will reach your goals twice as quickly.

Think about that the next time you are thinking about your big goals. If you want to achieve them quicker, start doing twice as much.

It’s really not that hard to work hard once you get in the habit of doing so. When it’s habit, you won’t think twice about doing some of the things that you dread doing now.

If you want lifelong persistence, practice these eight things and you will travel on a straight path toward reaching your goals.

How to Turn Persistence Into Dynamite

Ever noticed that when you're working feverishly on a new idea you hit a point where it looks impossible? Its easy to become discouraged when you hit that wall, but that's not the place for discouragement.

Many entrepreneurs only see the obstacles at this juncture. They lose sight of their original vision.

They give into discouragement, opposition and obstacles. Not knowing a breakthrough was on the horizon. If only they were persistent.

A persistent mindset enables you to continue firmly down the path.

In the words of Thomas Edison, "Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.... Reverses should be an incentive to great accomplishment. Results? Why, man, I have gotten lots of results! If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is just one more step forward.... There are no rules here, we're just trying to accomplish something."

Thomas Edison envisioned a safe, mild and inexpensive light bulb. Did he succeed on his first try? No it took 1200 experiments and an investment of $40,000 to see his vision come true

When he hit the Discouragement Barrier, what if he had quit? The world would be sitting in the dark!

Before you can have success, you will definitely have obstacles. Even the dictionary puts the word obstacle before success.

When you overcome struggles and obstacles, they will strengthen you. They show you how far you've come. Their main purpose is to help you grow. Understanding this purpose will keep discouragement in perspective. If you stay focused on obstacles, you question your vision and self doubt takes over. That lack of confidence leaves you vulnerable to fear and criticism. Causing you to stop pursuing your dreams and ideas.

Make a conscious decision to become persistent. Train yourself and develop this vital trait.

Napoleon Hill gives eight factors that persistence is based upon:

1. Definiteness of purpose: know what you want.
2. Desire - strong passion for what you want
3. Self-reliance -the belief to carry out your plan
4. Definite plans - written organized plan.
5. Accurate knowledge - your plan is based on experience or observation.
6. Cooperation - being with others who will help you develop persistence.
7. Will power - concentrate your thoughts on obtaining your goals.
8. Habit - persistence is a direct result of making it a habit.

Four Steps on Developing Persistence

1. A written purpose is a must along with a burning desire to obtain it.
2. Write a plan of action. What steps do you need to to make it happen?
3. Watch your self talk. Negative self talk causes a lot of damage. Get rid of all negativity and discouraging influences in your life.
4. Form or join a mastermind group of positive minded people who encourage and hold you accountable on completing your actions.

More than 60 years ago, on October 29, Winston Churchill gave a speech. His words are still vital today: "Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yielded to force; never yielded to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."

Believe in yourself. Believe in your goals. Stay focused. Never change your goal, only adjust your plans. You can replace the plan if necessary, but not your goal.

If you want to succeed, persistence must be at the core of your life. When you learn to break through the Discouragement Barrier, you are on the path to greatness.

WaterFalls

A waterfall is usually a body of water resulting from water, often in the form of a stream, flowing over an erosion-resistant rock formation that forms a nickpoint, or sudden break in elevation.

Some waterfalls form in mountain environments in which the erosive water force is high and stream courses may be subject to sudden and catastrophic change. In such cases, the waterfall may not be the end product of many years of water action over a region, but rather the result of relatively sudden geological processes such as landslides, faults or volcanic action. In cold places, snow will build up in winter and melt and turn into a waterfall in summer.

Niagara Falls

Earliest human habitation of the Niagara region was some 12,000 years ago, about the same time that the falls were born. At that time, Clovis people lived in simple tent-like dwellings on the tundra- and spruce-covered land. Over the next 3,000 years the southernmost Ontario area was covered by a deciduous forest. The woodland period lasted until about 300 years ago. It wasn't until the 1620s that the name for the area was first recorded: Father Gabriel Lalemant recorded the Iroquois name for the river Onguiaahra — meaning "the Strait" — which later evolved into "Niagara." Not long afterwards, in 1678, Father Louis Hennepin became the first European to write of the falls in a book describing his travels to the New World.

The huge falls which flow into the Niagara River are divided by Goat Island into the Canadian Horseshoe Falls and the American Falls. Although they aren't the highest waterfalls in the world, the volume of the water that flows over the falls combine with their height to make Niagara Falls exceptionally spectacular. They originally were located at Lewiston-Queenston, 7 mi/11.2 km downriver from their present location. Erosion of the brinks — sometimes as much as 6 ft/1.8 m per year — have caused the falls to recede to their present site.

9 Salty Snacks Under 100 Calories

Glenny's Soy Crisps, Salt and Pepper Flavor

The Lowdown: (about 1/2 bag) 70 calories, 1 g fat, 190 mg sodium
Anytime we can eat a half a bag of something without guilt, we're happy. When we also get 20 percent of the 25 grams of soy protein recommended per day to lower cholesterol, we're ecstatic. Try Cheddar, Barbecue, and even Fancy Fudge flavors as well.

Pumpkin Seeds in Shell, Dry-Roasted with a Dash of Table Salt

The Lowdown: (1/4 cup) 71 calories, 3 g fat, 247 mg sodium
Save some after carving out your jack-o'-lantern or just buy 'em from the store -- either way, they're packed with protein, iron, and magnesium, which aids calcium absorption.

Guiltless Gourmet Spicy Black Bean Tortilla Chips

The Lowdown: (13, with 2 tablespoons salsa) 88 calories, 1.3 g fat, 342 mg sodium
Bored with regular baked tortilla chips? Scoop your salsa (full of cancer-fighting lycopene) with something a little more flavorful.

Edamame

The Lowdown: (1/2 cup in shell with a dash of coarse salt) 90 calories, 4 g fat, 168 mg sodium
Whole green soybeans eaten out of the pod are a great source of cholesterol-lowering soy protein. A half-cup serving provides three grams of fiber and seven and a half grams of protein, plus a little calcium, iron, and vitamin C.

Reduced-Fat Triscuits

The Lowdown: (6) 98 calories, 2 g fat, 135 mg sodium
These whole-grain crackers offer a bonus three grams of fiber to keep you feeling full until dinner. (And you'll never detect the difference between the regular and reduced-fat versions.)

McCain 5-Minute Fries

The Lowdown: (19, with 1 tablespoon ketchup) 99 calories, 3 g fat, 310 mg sodium
Trans fat-free and made-to-order in your oven, these beat droopy fast-food fries any day.

Pringles 100-Calorie Pack Potato Crisps

The Lowdown: (1 package) 100 calories, 6 g fat, 110 mg sodium
Everyone knows: Once you pop, you can't stop. So grab a preportioned 100-calorie container instead of the standard, full-size tube for built-in binge prevention.

Snyder's of Hanover Sourdough Hard Pretzels

The Lowdown: (1 ounce) 100 calories, 0 g fat, 240 mg sodium
Okay, so they don't count toward your daily whole-grain servings, but they're naturally fat-free and they'll satisfy even the worst case of stress-induced munchies.

Pop Secret Light Butter Premium Microwave Popcorn

The Lowdown: (5 cups) 100 calories, 4 g fat, 242 mg sodium
It's got more flavor than the 94 percent fat-free kind, and you can still scarf down nearly half of a 12-cup bag! You'll also get three grams of heart-healthy fiber.

What was the world's longest engagement?

Next time your fiancée starts to bug you about the wedding date you can comfort her by telling her about Octavio Guillen and Adriana Martinez who hold the record for the world's longest engagement and quite possibly, the world's coldest feet.

Octavio Guillen and Adriana Martinez were engaged in Mexico in 1902 but kept putting the wedding off over and over again.

After 67 years, in June 1969, Octavio Guillen must have run out of excuses and the world's longest engagement ended with their vows.

They were both 15 years old when they were engaged and 82 years old on their wedding day.

Avoid These Typical Causes For Divorce

It's been noted that one of the main things that leads to divorce is marriage. Ridiculous statement, but true. And, as ridiculous and true as it may be, people will continue to marry and will continue to divorce.

Perhaps, you say to yourself, if we live together before marriage and get to know each other and iron out all our problems, then the marriage will be perfect. According to studies, this is not true. Couples who practice cohabitation before committing to marriage are more likely to divorce than those who don't.

But you tell yourself that your parents divorced and you're from a broken home, so you know the pitfalls to watch for and avoid. You've witnessed what happens when two people fall out of love and the arguments that ensue. Since you've been there and done that at least from an affected bystander point of view you're a pseudo expert on the subject of divorce.

Wrong again! Couples who come from broken homes are more likely to get a divorce. Studies show that these people who've seen this view divorce as no big deal rather than something they must avoid at all costs. It's almost as though they've had on job training and know exactly the steps to take to end a relationship.

The reason for a dissolved marriage is unique to each. What may cause one relationship to crumble may seem perfectly natural to another. But, it seems the number one cause for divorce is lack of communication.

This could be coupled with a lack of commitment. When there is no talking with each other and no dedication to make the marriage work then there is little or no hope to save a marriage. Lack of communication with a little commitment is one of the easiest causes to avoid. Sit down and just talk with each other and be open to other points of view.

Infidelity is another cause high on the list and one of the most difficult to resolve. If both of you work to care for each other's needs and build a perfect home life then maybe no one will stray. It would seem so, but it still happens.

The term abuse encompasses so many causes including alcohol, drugs, emotional and even sexual abuse. If either partner is guilty of administering or succumbing to these abuses, it's likely only professional help will prevent a divorce. Seek help as soon as the problem is observed. It's not often a person can cure him or her self.

The list for divorce causes is long. Sex and money rank high on the list as well. If you have too little of either of these things it could cause problems. These two things are best discussed before marriage but feelings and needs can change after living together.

We've only scratched the surface on typical causes for divorce. Briefly, a few of the others are personality and cultural differences, lack of maturity and different views on children and division of labor, such as who's supposed to do what around the home.

Marriage is like walking through a minefield - one wrong step and the whole thing blows up. It's likely the best way to avoid a divorce is to be aware of the main cause and communicate.

8 Ways To Show Your Husband You Love Him

1. Respect Him
   

   The most effective way to make a man feel unloved is to disrespect him, especially in front of others. If you have any desire at all to take good care of your husband, and make him feel loved, do not ridicule him, overrule him, or dismiss him in front of someone else. It's bad enough to do it in private (you really do NOT need to use these methods... find another way to convey your message), but in public you might as well slap his face.

2. Admire Him
   

   This is related to the first, but from the other side. Respecting him is more about avoiding disrespect than in overt display of respect. Admiring him, on the other hand is explicitly about conveying to him, by words or gestures, what it is that you like about him. This can be body language, like giving him "elevator eyes" when he's watching, if you like his body, or it can be words, like telling him that you love his sense of humor. You should always make sure that you use something appropriate to the circumstances, however... telling him you love his sense of humor while you're at his father's funeral together might not be a good idea.
   
   You also need to vary this, finding new (or infrequently used) little things to tell him you like on a fairly regular basis. If you have trouble coming up with stuff on your own (are you sure you're with the right guy for you?), then just instantly tell him when he takes an action you like... if he comes around and opens you car door for you, and you like it, tell him so. Always hearing the same thing, like "I love your sense of humor", makes it lose its power for this. It gets to the point where he won't really believe you, thinking you're just saying it to manipulate him.

3. Let Him "Overhear" You Praise Him
   

   This works wonders, but has to be used infrequently, and with caution. It doesn't work, and can feel manipulative, if you pretend like you don't know he's there, but he can tell that you do. It's much better, and safer, to ACTUALLY praise him to others, and occassionally he'll be nearby when you do so, and overhear it. This technique actually works if you do it outright, too, as long as you don't over do it. That is, you can flat out say to someone "My husband is great, he does X for me", with him sitting beside you, and it will make him feel like you respect and admire him (see above).

4. Drop Everything
   

   This is a little thing that has major effects. One of the most effective ways of showing someone you love them is to make them top priority, to the point where you stop everything you're doing, whatever it is, to focus on them. That is, you step away from the computer, let the baby play by herself, turn off the TV, stop cooking dinner, whatever it is you're doing, and go to that person and specifically show them that they are your central focus RIGHT THEN. This is particularly effective when you first see them after a separation (ie when you or they get home from work, etc.).

5. Notice His Strengths
   

   This is similar to admiring him, but specific to his strengths. That is, if it's hard for you to get the lid off the jar, and you know he can, go ask him, telling him something like "I'm not strong enough to open this. Can you do it for me?". If his strength is math, ask him to calculate the price per ounce of something (or a similar feat of arithmetic), telling him it's too hard for you. Don't lie in this... he'll know. Just make a point of asking him to help anywhere that you know is a strength of his that complements a weakness of yours. As noted, this can be physical or mental... "Can you move this for me, I can't do it?" or "Can you help me figure out how to word this?". Just like admiring him, though, overuse of this in one area tends to lower its effectiveness, eventually becoming more annoying than complementary.

6. Forgive His Weaknesses
   

   Your husband has his weaknesses. All men do, and all women, too, for that matter. Do NOT use his weaknesses against him. If you use them to try to manipulate him, if you bring them up any time it's not absolutely necessary, he will start feeling like you don't respect him in that area. This applies to showing off areas where you are noticeably stronger than him, too, unless it's somewhere he feels he doesn't need to (or can't) compete, which is generally areas that are not considered masculine, or areas where it is widely acknowledged that special talent is required, like singing.

7. No Comparisons
   

   One of the worst things a wife can do is compare her husband to an ex, whether husband or boyfriend. Doing so is bad even if you are saying that your husband is better in some way. Men understand that they were not necessarily the first person you were with, the first person you loved, but that doesn't mean they want it brought into their conscious awareness. And if you compare your husband poorly, as in he's not as good at this or that, then this is multiplied. You are disrespecting him, pointing out his weaknesses, AND reminding him that you were with other men before him. That's just asking to bring up negative emotions and associate them with you.

8. No Guilt Trips
   

   It's a classic, portrayed in uncountable movies and television shows... the wife gives her husband a guilt trip until he does what she wants. Manipulating someone is a bad idea. Clumsily manipulating them is even worse, but manipulating them at all is bad. This has two sides, in that it's bad for both the person being manipulated and the one doing it.
   
   The person being manipulated, by definition, feels like he is having his power of choice taken from him. If you feel that it's still completely your choice, then you are not being manipulated. That doesn't mean that someone isn't TRYING to do so, but if you still feel like it's entirely your choice, then they are not succeeding. Now, for someone who DOES feel like their choice is being taken from them, they will resent this strongly. One of the most powerful motivating factors in a human life is the desire to be free, to prove that you can make your own decisions, and that those decisions matter. Messing with this desire is playing with fire... if the person you are manipulating notices it, even later on, after the fact, they will resent it. Since, in this case, we are talking about your spouse, that means that resentment is likely to be there, even if it eventually fades, as a factor when he thinks about you for the rest of your lives together. It may be small, maybe even so small that he's not consciously aware of it, but it will, none the less, be there.
   
   Manipulating someone is bad for the person doing the manipulation, also. When you attempt to manipulate someone, you attempt to take some of their humanity from them. They will, as mentioned above, resent this, generally resenting even an unsuccessful attempt. But it's just as bad for the person doing it, especially if they are doing it to their spouse, because it takes away from your concept of the person you're trying to manipulate as a person, an individual, and instead turns them into more of an object. Objects can be generally counted on to have the same output when given the same input. Thinking of people in this way robs them of their humanity, their power of individual choice, making you respect, and love, them less. Presumably, if you're reading this article, that's not exactly what you have in mind.

So there you have it, 8 ways to show your husband that you love him. Some are things to actively do, some are things to actively make sure you DON'T do, but when they are all put together, and included with the things that all people need to feel loved, your husband will know, and feel, that you love him.

Strengthen Your Family’s Bonds with These Ten Tips

Happy families have strong family bonds. Parents, as the leaders of the family unit, have to be responsible for strengthening and protecting these bonds. It doesn't happen naturally in our hectic day-to-day lives. You can create this firm foundation by committing to these ten essential practices that will strengthen your family’s relationships.

1. Schedule in family time. When you have teens, you will need to take a look at everyone’s schedule. We try to get together with our weekly schedules every Sunday night here in the Witmer household. But when I schedule something big for all of us to do, like a day trip, I do it one month in advance and put it on the calendar that hangs on the refrigerator.

2. Eat meals together as much as possible. Studies have shown that eating meals together helps with reinforce communication. If you unable to get together as a family for dinner because of busy schedules, try breakfast.

3. Do family responsibilities together. Make cleaning your home a responsibility of the whole family. Create a list of chores and have everyone sign up. Set a weekly time to either have the chores completed or do the chores. This gives your teen some flexibility for his/her own schedule.

4. Create a family mission statement. Place it in a predominant place in your home. Read it and talk about it often. Learn how to create a family mission statement.

5. Have family meetings. These can be scheduled events or you can make them impromptu, where any member of the family can call a meeting if they feel the need. Start each of these meetings by reading your family mission statement.

6. Encourage support for each other. Share when something goes well at work. Ask your teen how his/her test went. Commiserate when your teen’s team loses a game. Celebrate good grades and reward good behavior by doing something special together.

7. Take time out for yourself. Parenting is a huge responsibility that you are required to fulfill every day. Even the Department of Labor requires companies to give two 10-minute breaks during a work day. Shouldn’t you do the same? The reality is that you will be a better parent when you take some time for just you.

8. Volunteer together. Giving your time to make someone else’s life better is always a powerful learning experience. Learning important life lessons together will strengthen the relationship you have with your children. (See: How to Promote a Positive Volunteer Experience)

9. Become involved in your teen’s interests. You don’t have to be the coach, but you can help out with a fundraiser or by being in charge of snacks for the bus on away game night. Ask where you can help, it will show your teen you care about what he/she is interested in.

10. Join something with other families. It could easily be done within your community being with other families will strengthen your own family bonds.

7 Quick Tips On How To Make Your Wife Happy

One thing to keep in mind with all of these tips is that they only work if you do it without being asked. That being said, most of them will work on any woman, a few depend on how the household labor is split up. In any event, here we go, 7 quick tips on how to make your wife happy:

1. Do The Dishes
   

   Some might call me sexist for this one, since it seems to be making the assumption that it's the wife's job to do the dishes. I don't necessarily think that, but it IS normally my wife who does the dishes (or my son if he's in trouble), and she really appreciates when I do the dishes. Make sure you get them clean, though, or it can be worse than not doing them!

2. Plan A Whole Night For Her
   

   There are a few women who would not appreciate this at all... but if you're married to one of those, I'm quite certain that you know it, and you can skip this one.
   
   Plan a whole night for her... including making sure the kids are taken care of (find a babysitter that she trusts). Plan dinner, and any events, and how the night will end... personally I like being at the beach for sunset, or a little later with the stars out.
   
   Oh, and a word of advice... stick to the plan unless something considerably better comes up, you'll likely be happier over all.

3. Take Her Surprise Shopping
   

   I've heard there are women out there who don't like shopping, but I've never actually met one. This one is fun, as you get to see her get all excited like a kid. How much you can afford is up to you, as is where you take her, though it's pretty hard to go wrong with shoes.

4. Write Her A Letter
   

   This one is cheap, and if you are the writing type, easy. If you're not the writing type it can be hard, but it may be appreciated that much more, if she knows that you went to extra effort to write it.
   
   A note on this one... I'm NOT talking about email or a text message. I'm talking about an honest to goodness old fashioned pen and paper sent through the post office letter. Many women, and men for that matter (though men are less likely to admit it), are sentimental enough that they will keep a letter that you write to them for the rest of their lives.

5. Take Care Of Everything For One Night
   

   Take care of everything around the home for one night... this can be to allow her to go out with her girlfriends, or just to allow her to relax and unwind at home. And I do mean take care of everything... dinner, the kids, cleaning, making the bed, whatever else you can think of... do it!
   
   Unless she has "her own way" of doing it, where you can't do it right... my wife doesn't like me to fold laundry.

6. Celebrate An Unusual Date
   

   This one is fun, too. Pick a date that means something (and that you remember, of course), but isn't a "normal" date to celebrate. That means a date OTHER than your anniversary, your birthdays, or any other holiday. It could be, but isn't limited to, any of the following:

   • The day you met
   • The day you proposed
   • The day she conceived
   • The day you moved in together
   • The day you got your wedding rings
   
   Or you can choose another date of significance to the two of you... like September 15th for me and my wife.
   

7. Do That Thing You've Been Promising To Do
   

   We pretty much all have something we've been saying we would get to but haven't yet actually done. Do it... and let her know. Don't brag about it, just tell her "Honey, I finally did -------" (you fill in the blanks). This one isn't as much of a direct happy inducer as the others, but it takes something off the overhead of stuff that she associates with you. That makes it easier for her to be happy, and especially it makes it easier for her to think good things about you.

So... there you go, seven quick tips (quick to write, not to do) to make your wife happy. Don't do them all at once, she won't appreciate it as much. Don't even do them all one day after another... pick one and do it once every two weeks or even once a month. Number six, of course, can't be done just any day, and most of them shouldn't be done twice in a row (ie don't send her a letter, then two weeks later send another one... instead send her a letter, and then two weeks later take care of everything for one night, or something like that).

What are you waiting for? Go make your wife happy!

A Simple Way To Strengthen Your Family

Do you want a really simple way to strengthen your family? It's really not complex, and it doesn't have to cost much, financially... it just takes your time and attention. Do I have your attention?

One of the simplest ways to strengthen a family is to plan dates. This includes, of course, your spouse... but isn't limited to them. It could and should include everyone in your family, at least once a month (if possible... some families are HUGE, it might have to be less often if yours is one of them).

Here are the with whom you should plan dates, in this simple way to strengthen your family:

1. Your Spouse
   

   This one should be obvious, but for some reason it isn't... the fact that you're married doesn't mean you should stop dating. In fact, if you want your relationship to be great, go back to thinking of your spouse as someone that you have to woo, someone you have to win over. An absolutely huge number of couples forget the importance of making each other their significant other. If you are one of those couples... change. Fix it... go back to thinking about your spouse and how important they are to you and win them over... again and again and again.
   
   This is one person whom you should NOT let slip to less often than once a month... if you can do more, go for it! Once a week would be great... you wanted to see your spouse at least once a week before you got married, right?

2. Your Children
   

   It's less obvious that you should plan dates with your children than that you should plan them with your spouse, but it's not less important! Planning specific times to be with each child, and ONLY with that child, gives both you and them something to anticipate, hopefully eagerly. If you start this when they are young enough, it is something that will keep you close to them, and something they will remember, for the rest of their life.
   
   If they are old enough, it's nice to let them choose what to do... it makes them feel more like it's their date, too.

3. Your Self
   

   Probably the person most forgotten when it comes to scheduling exclusive time, your self still needs it. It can be really difficult, especially if you're one of those people who identify with your family and helping others, to remember that you need time to yourself, too... and I'm not talking about ten minutes before bed, although that can be very helpful, too (see How To Make Your Life Happier In One Simple Change). I'm talking about an honest-to-goodness solid block of time for yourself, at least three or four hours in a row... uninterrupted.
   
   You can use this time to do whatever you enjoy, but don't use it to do something that "needs" done. Do something that you want to do, something you enjoy, but not anything that you have to do.

If you follow this plan, you should notice basically everything about your family life getting better over the next few months. If you want it to happen faster, you can plan the dates more often... but don't make it overwhelming. It's good to have a date with your wife once a week, and certainly wouldn't hurt to have time to yourself each week, but you don't want to feel like all of your time is scheduled to death, either. After all, dates should be enjoyed, not forced, or they pretty much lose all effectiveness.

So, get started and actually enjoy something that strengthens your family.

Family Quotes

Recently as my parents started to get old.. I have been dealing with a strange feeling of the Family's importance. So I thought I share with my favorite family quotes..

~ You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them. ~ Desmond Tutu

~ In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future. ~ Alex Haley

~ A happy family is but an earlier heaven ~ George Bernard Shaw

~ I don't care how poor a man is; if he has family, he's rich. ~ Dan Wilcox and Thad Mumford

~ Important families are like potatoes. The best parts are underground. ~ Francis Bacon

~ The family is one of nature's masterpieces. ~ Paul Pearshall

~ The only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution I know that works, is the family. ~ Lee Iacocca

~ Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to this country and to mankind is to bring up a family. ~ George Bernard Shaw

~ Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city. ~ George Burns

~ Unconditional love is loving your kids for who they are, not for what they do ... it isn't something you will achieve every minute of every day. But it is the thought we must hold in our hearts every day. ~ Stephanie Marston

~ The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

~ In family life, love is the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds closer together, and the music that brings harmony. ~ Eva Burrows

~ The family with an old person in it possesses a jewel. ~ Chinese saying

~ The best inheritance a parent can give to his children is a few minutes of their time each day. ~ M. Grundler

~ The family is the school of duties - founded on love ~ Felix Adler

~ A man travels the world over in search of what he needs, and returns home to find it. ~ George Moore

~ I can get up in the morning and look myself in the mirror and my family can look at me too and that's all that matters. ~ Lance Armstrong

~ The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home. ~ Confucius

~ The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. ~ Richard Bach

~ Good family life is never an accident but always an achievement by those who share it. ~ James H.S. Bossard

~ Your family and your love must be cultivated like a garden. Time, effort, and imagination must be summoned constantly to keep any relationship flourishing and growing. ~ Jim Rohn

~ Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation. ~ Margaret Mead

~ When you look at your life, the greatest happinesses are family happinesses. ~ Joyce Brothers

~ In some families, please is described as the magic word. In our house, however, it was sorry. ~Margaret Laurence

The Mercator Projection

The Mercator Projection is a way of showing the earth on a flat map. With the equator at its center, the spacing of parallels of latitude increases with the distance from the equator, so areas closer to the poles are shown in a disproportionately greater size. The Mercator Projection is named for its creator, Gerardus Mercator, the Flemish cartographer who was born on this date in 1512. Mercator was the first mapmaker to divide America into two separate continents, naming them "Americae pars septentrionalis" (northern part of America) and "Americae pars meridionalis" (southern part of America).

How to overcome Emotional Fear?

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the difference between reckless fearlessness and Intelligent Fearlessness .

And what I have come up with is that so simply put, the outcome and the consequence of a Recklessly Fearless decision is mostly to be brutal failure. And one the other hand the highly predicted outcome pattern of a Intelligent Fearless decision is obviously huge success.

I won’t address lots of examples and illustrated patterns of what’s (a Recklessly Fearless decision). However, I’m going to talk about Intelligent Fearlessness in general..

First of all, let’s be 100% clear that “Fear” itself is the problem. Being afraid of failure IS the problem. Not the failure itself is what we should be working on. It's simply idiotic to fear something *if* it doesn't have severe negative consequences. For example:
Being afraid to ask your boss about a raise or even a promotion. Or being afraid to suggest a "nerdy" idea about something you truly believe is for the greater good.

Because let’s say, you fear to apply for a certain job, that’s in your model of reality, is so likely to turn you down. Now if you are in the present unemployed. What are the odds that they will hire you?. Let’s 5%. Very low, right?. Alright, so you go and apply and get turned down. Did you actually lose anything?. NO, you simply stayed where you were. So, did you actually gain anything?. YES, you gained several things. First off, is that the “false hope” you were so clingy on is gone. And it’s off your mind.

Secondly, by applying, you have mostly known why?. Why did they turn you down, Most companies WILL give you a very clear and specific reason on why they turned your application down. Well, you need a minimum 2 years of experience. Great!. Come back in two years with the required experience in the field. So as you can see, fear will always limit/block your clarity.

So now first thing you should do is to recognize “the fear of the consequences occurrence” as the problem.
Secondly, you have to start resisting your fear. In other word, build up your courage. Or what's also called Resistance Training.

One of the very effective theories which I like to apply here is:

Comparing this "Resistance Training" to weight lifting/training. You firstly start by lift light dumps and progressively you start growing muscles and thus become more and more capable of lifting heavier weights. The very same theory is applied here as well as in Self-Discipline

"which I'll write about later".

The more you do this training, the more fears are going to be lifted off your life. So for example:
If you want to speak publicly, like giving a speech in a seminar or on a stage, you don't go jumping on a stage where 50.000 people sitting in front of you, and start giving your "awesome" lecture. That's too much “weight” for any average person.
So how to tackle this problem?. Well, as explained above, you start off by gathering some close friends/relatives, and start visualizing that you are actually standing on a stage whilst giving aspeech on something you are truly passionate about. And you also convince yourself or rather your subconscious, that you are giving the speech to complete strangers, not your close friends, not some distant relative but COMPLETE strangers..

As you go on in this training, and with a lot of practice, you will feel that this is nothing. That your "muscles" need heavier fears. Only then, when you are totally fearless at this level, you jump to a higher level, in which you bring your friends' friends. Or some people you have only had a very superficial relationships with. (Of course, tell them what are you up to before you jump into the role of a lecturer). One very important things you must keep in mind BEFORE starting this kind of training, is that your audience must be very understanding, and willingly participating to this. And finally, they must be "specially in the early sessions of training" very upbeat and supportive.

Tackling the problem from a higher level:

Well, I got to admit that this part is much more complicated, much more difficult to understand, so read carefully.

Firstly, we need to identify from where does fear come anyway!. Well, it comes from your own perception of reality. From your own belief system. For example, you have been asked by your boss to be the representative of your division, and he asked you to give a presentation to other " potential " partners of the company. The presentation itself is a piece of cake. It's merely "on the level of words" a screen with a few slides and a couple of brief information, and being an expert with a great deal of experience regarding the assigned mission, there "must" be totally nothing to fear there. However, the anxiety, the nervousness, or “the emotional fear” is basically coming from the fear of “presenting” whatever mission you are assigned to accomplish.

Now let's say you have misheard your boss, or the assignment has been cancelled, you will feel a great deal of relief. Yet you were so afraid of something that didn't even exist, didn't even manifest.. So, why were you afraid anyway?. What causes the kind of fear. It's so obviously your mental perception of reality, not the consequences, but your own way of looking at it, is what causes the emotional pain, It's not reality itself.

It's also believed that if you ever feared anything, anything at all, then it's because of an inaccurate mind identification of reality. In other words, your thinking, your brain just made an illusion, an error message.

Also one of the very effective methods, is to listen to the signal, the signal of fear. It's NOT a signal to avoid what you fear, no it's the complete opposite. Actually it's a signal to tackle the thing you fear and start growing even better from past that point. So, the ultimate purpose for fear signals is that they serve as mental triggers for expanding your intelligence and self-growth.

For example: let's go back to the same "fear of public speaking" example, let's say, you fear that if you made a mistake or even several mistakes while speaking in front of a group that you will feel embarrassed or even humiliated. And of course the mere thought of this "potential" embarrassment causes you pain, it makes you nervous and stressed. So what do you do in this case?. You simply go back seeking the roots of the problem, as you go trackbacking the thought chain.

Now look at the problem from a higher level, a higher perception, and break down the problem into small pieces.

So, for a starter, tell me, isn't it incredibly predictable for even the most experienced public speakers to make a few mistakes?. Then what's the big deal of you making a few as well?.

Now to the embarrassment part; Well, most people will tell you making a mistake causes embarrassment. But what if that's simply not true?. What if that's where your mental role model of reality made a mistake?. I mean, people make mistakes all the time and don't feel embarrassed by it. So why do you?.

The Control of the other:

The real cause behind such a scene is the desire to control the other, if we identified the fact we are giving a lecture to "other" people, other human beings, then immediately we will be at a stage of I Vs You. Or Us Vs Them. This also will instantly lead us to the perception, that I need to control the audience thoughts, or negative opinions of me. Which again leads to the feeling that they cause a threat to me, they are capable of harming me. Of course this will make us feel powerless. And this particular thought will eventually lead to the feeling of anxiety, stress, nervousness and even embarrassment.

The fundamental belief behind this, is duality, it's the mere belief that others are our competitors, and they are a threat to us, and can even harm us at least "emotionally wise".
If you simply dropped that idea. And subjected this as a dream, if you could only go beyond your perceptions. And that everything happens there is simply in your mind. And that you and audience are one, and parts of the same whole .

If you truly mastered this technique, you are going to be so motivated by curiosity, and will simply go out and do something you always wanted to do. Like asking your boss for a raise, and simply get rejected, and go like, oh ok. So this causes rejection, I'll try something different next. Basically everything will seem so easily done. There's no resistance, no fear of rejection.

It won't make you do foolish things, instead, you will start making intelligent proactive decisions.

So, is this a truly accurate role model of reality?. Maybe yes, Maybe not. I won't try to convince you whether or not this is true. However, people who follow this philosophy, get positive results. They live peacefully, happily with no fear at all. On the other hand, what if this is the true nature of reality. What if this is right, and that your fundamental nature of reality is corrupted .

And the only way to tell whether or not, this belief is right. Is to simply drop your current belief and install this new one. And see for yourself ..

Written by
Mustafa

What Is Fear?

Fear is "an unpleasant and often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger."[1] Fear is completely natural and helps people to recognize and respond to dangerous situations and threats. However, healthy fear -- or fear which has a protective function -- can evolve into unhealthy or pathological fear, which can lead to exaggerated and violent behavior.

"The common thread that weaves violent political movements together is fear. It is not the only motivating factor behind political violence, nor necessarily the most obvious, but it is virtually always there. Whenever we ask why people hate, or why they are willing to kill or die for a cause, the answer is invariably fear." -- James F. Mattil

Dr. Ivan Kos lays out several different stages of fear. The first is real fear, or fear based on a real situation. If someone or something hurts you, you have a reason to fear it in the future. Second is realistic, or possible fear. This is fear based in reality that causes a person to avoid a threat in the first place (i.e. waiting to cross a busy road for safety reasons). Next, exaggerated or emotional fear deals with an individual "recalling past fears or occurrences and injecting them into a current situation."[2] This type of fear is particularly relevant to conflict. Emotional fear affects the way people handle conflictual situations.

Causes of Fear

Conflict is often driven by unfulfilled needs and the fears related to these needs. The most common fear in intractable conflict is the fear of losing one's identity and/or security. Individuals and groups identify themselves in certain ways (based on culture, language, race, religion, etc.) and threats to those identities arouse very real fears -- fears of extinction, fears of the future, fears of oppression, etc.

For many people, the world is changing rapidly and their lives are being altered as a result. For some religious people, this change leads to the fear that young people will abandon the Church or Mosque, that the media will become more important and influential in the lives of their children, and that they are losing control of their own future. These threats to identity result in fear.[3]

Similarly, in many ethnic conflicts, a history of "humiliation, oppression, victimhood, feelings of inferiority, persecution of one's group, and other kinds of discrimination" lead to a fear of similar wrongdoing in the future.[4] These historical memories shape how groups and people see each other. As a result, historical violence between Israelis and Palestinians, Hutus and Tutsis, and Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland affects how these groups look at one another and often leads to fear of one another. Group fears often translate into individual fears, as group extinction is often associated with individual extinction.

These examples illustrate the important role that history plays in the development of fear. Memories of past injustices lead individuals to anticipate future oppression or violence with a sense of anxiety.

Full Article

Top 15 AdSense tips!

Google AdSense is a pay-per-click (PPC) program that can give you advertising revenue from each page on your website with a minimal investment in time and no additional resources.

AdSense delivers relevant ads that are targeted to the content people find on your site.

In many advertising networks and websites, including AdSense, the advertiser is charged for advertising their ad only when a user clicks on their ad. How much they pay (for that click) is called their Cost Per Click or CPC.

Here you will find some simple and effective AdSense tips that will increase your revenue. If you haven't already joined AdSense program, you should sign up first.

Now it's time to show you some tips and tricks that will optimize your AdSense ads.

Top 15 AdSense tips

AdSense Tip #1: Find your keywords

Before serving ads on a web page, check its keyword density. A free and advanced tool for finding the most prominent keywords in a page can be found here: SEO Density Analyzer. Copy the most important keywords to a text file ([web page name]-adsense-keywords.txt).

AdSense Tip #2: Improve your keywords

Get keyword suggestions from Overture Search Inventory and from Google AdWords Sandbox. Get new keywords that can help you improve your ad relevance. Enter the keywords from [web page name]-adsense-keywords.txt and save the suggestions to [web page name]-adsense-suggestions.txt.

AdSense Tip #3: Keep your website focused on a theme

Use the keyword suggestions to enhance your web pages and to build theme-based content. And also try to get your keywords into the anchor text of your incoming links as much as possible. Don't forget that Google AdSense is keyword-targeted advertising: Google AdSense bases its advert topics on your websites content, this means that content-rich websites of a popular topic should attract a large amount of ads.

AdSense Tip #4: Write a new page every day

One of the best tips is to add a new page to your web site every day. The more content you have, the more visitors you will get. Put an Adsense unit on each and every content page of your site. But where? You will find more about that from the next AdSense tips.

AdSense Tip #5: Choose the right AdSense format

Wider formats are successful because the ads are compact, easy to read and are complementary to the content. The top three AdSense formats are:

1. 336x280 large rectangle
2. 300x250 medium rectangle
3. 160x600 wide skyscraper

Another successful format is the 468x15 horizontal ad links, that can be placed under your navigation bar.

The next AdSense tips will show you the importance of positioning the ads and how to increase your revenue by adding multiple AdSense units.

AdSense Tip #6: Color tips

When creating your Google AdSense ads it is recommended to use the color scheme and style of your website so that the ads blend in well. Ads without background color and borders perfom better than ads within borders with background color.

Create a custom AdSense palette:

• border color = background color of your web site
• background color = background color of your web site
• link color = blue, color of your links
• url color = black, #999999
• text color = black, #333333, color of your main content

You can also rotate your color palette: select multiple color palettes that blend with your site to create variety.

AdSense Tip #7: Position tips

Visitors tend to look at the big headlines to see if your page is worth reading. If you get them interested, they will read the text and look for your navigation links.

Place the AdSense ads in a prominent place around the top/left part of your page or under your headlines, where your visitors are most likely to look at.

If you have an article page with a long body of text, the bottom of that article is a good place for AdSense ads because your visitors read the text and then they want more resources.

AdSense Tip #8: Increase the number of ads, but not too much

If you have a lot of text on a page, use multiple AdSense units. You can use up to three AdSense units on a page, two AdSense search boxes and one unit of ad links.

Link units allow the user to refine what they're interested in. So if they may not be interested in specific ads on your page, they might be interested in a particular topic, and by clicking on a link unit and a link in the link unit, they'll be able to specify that they're interested in that specific topic and get a lot more options and variety on the ads that might appear.

AdSense for Search allows visitors to search Google.com or your sites (up to 3 domains). You earn money whenever they click on the ads that come up on the search results. If you click the Open search results in a new browser window checkbox in the AdSense for Search settings, you won't lose your visitors.

AdSense Tip #9: Preview Google ads

You can find out what ads will be served by Google AdSense if you install Google AdSense Preview Tool, a very simple tool available only for Internet Explorer 6.0. Click to advertiser sites without generating invalid clicks, and easily add their URLs to your URL filter list. Because AdSense uses geo-targeting, Google serves different ads for other countries. Instead of faking your IP or travelling abroad to test your ads, use this AdSense tool to see what ads see your visitors from France, Germany or other countries.

There may be no Google AdSense ads available for your webpage, so Googlw will display Public Service Ads. You can hide them using alternate colors or images. Make sure you include the image in a simple html file as a link (use target="_top"). The image size should be the same as the dimension of AdSense units. In the alternate url box, enter the absolute url of the html file.

Read more about alternate ads.

AdSense Tip #10: What not to do

• Don't click on your own ads
• Don't ask others to click on your Google ads
• Don't manually change AdSense code
• Don't place Google ads on sites that include prohibited content (e.g.: adult sites)
• Don't employ cloaking, hidden text or farm links
• Don't use AdSense ads on the same page with similar ads (e.g.: Yahoo Publisher Network)

AdSense Tip #11: Show images above or next to your ads

Placing images above AdSense ads is not necessarily prohibited by program policies. However, depending on the method of implementation this could be considered encouraging users to click on ads. So you should include a border line between the ads and the images. Don't show specific products in your images, in order not to mislead the visitors. Just use generic images that will increase the visibility of your ads.

AdSense Tip #12: Use section targeting

Use section targeting to emphasize some content in your page. On your site, place this code where you want to emphasize.

Content you want to emphasize.


If you want some content to be ignored, use

AdSense Tip #13: Alternate the colors of your ads

AdSense allows you to have up to 4 color variations for each variable for which you can specify color. You should do that if you put AdSense ads on pages that receive many impressions from the same visitors (for example forums) to reduce ad blindness. For example:

google_color_border = ["628098","628098","000000","000000"];
google_color_link = ["000000","BBB90C","BBB90C","628098"];
google_color_url = ["000000","628098","000000","000000"];
google_color_text = ["628098","628098","000000","000000"];

AdSense Tip #14: Your Google ads should be visible

Make sure your text ads are visible to the surfers in all screen formats. If you put the ads in a table, give sufficient breathing room, i.e. proper cell padding and cell spacing to make the ads stand out from the rest of your content.

AdSense Tip #15: Use AdSense channels

You can categorize the content of your website into channels and then track your performance. This way you can experiment with different types of ads and see which is performing the best. Instead of buying an AdSense tracker, you can enter the most important pages in your site and see how they are doing. Create up to 200 channels for AdSense.

Let's recap our AdSense tips

• create interesting to read pages, focused on a theme
• integrate AdSense in your layout
• put yourself in the shoes of your visitors and experiment with the ads

Top 7 blog mistakes to avoid!

Here I give you the top 7 blog mistakes that I’ve made since October 2006.

Mistake #1 – not using a self-hosted blog

The first mistake I made was to begin blogging using WordPress.com, as opposed to WordPress.org. The former involves hosting your blog on the WordPress website, rather than self-hosting your blog for full control. My first ever blog post was on October 8th 2006, and I’ve kept my WordPress.com blog alive at this address: Web and Graphic Design (please excuse the cringeworthy photo, forced articles and zero interaction).

The problem with hosting a blog through WordPress.com is that you don’t have full control over customisation. WordPress owned and stored my content. I was also showing my blog’s web address as being www.wordpress.davidairey.com rather than www.davidairey.com.

On top of all that, I was using a blog template that thousands of others were using. That’s no way to stand out from the millions of blogs that are online. Since then I’ve launched a new blog design which I’m much happier with.

In Jakob Neilsen’s 2005 article on the top 10 blog mistakes, he had this as number 10:

Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service
Having a weblog address ending in blogspot.com, typepad.com, etc. will soon be the equivalent of having an @aol.com email address or a Geocities website: the mark of a naïve beginner who shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

Whilst I agree with how it can be a mistake, I disagree that the author shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Some of my favourite blogs are on weblog service sites such as these three on TypePad:

• Noisy Decent Graphics
• David the designer
• Ace Jet 170

There’s also Lorelle on WordPress.com, who’s a guru on everything WordPress-related.

Douglas Karr of The Marketing Technology Blog has this to add:

I personally like to host my own blog because of the flexibility it provides me in design changes, adding other features, modifying the code myself, etc.

I wouldn’t discourage anyone—even a corporation—from using a hosted solution like Vox, Typepad, Blogger or WordPress just to start out and experiment.

Mistake #2 – expecting people to visit

The blog world is amazing because of the reader interaction. It’s why I continue to publish on a fairly consistent basis. When I first started out I had no idea how to attract new readers, commenters, interaction etc. I had the impression that if I published new content I’d automatically find readers in my niche.

How wrong I was.

Successful blogging involves time, effort, and reaching out to fellow bloggers / publishers / authors (whatever you prefer). In fact, there’s a whole psychology behind blog publishing and I had no idea how it would change my way of thinking. Now if I see or hear something of interest I wonder how it can be incorporated into a blog article.

Mistake #3 – not writing as if I’m talking

My first blog on WordPress.com includes articles that are more like lectures. I don’t want to read, nor write a one-way lecture, and I know that’s not why you visit. I want to become involved in a discussion with you. I want to teach you something you don’t know and to learn those many things you can teach me. At the beginning I was killing the blog conversation, instead of making use of my comment section.

One of the best things about blogs is that they enable conversation between people with shared interests. It’s vital to be involved with relevant blogs in your niche (and don’t neglect those outwith your niche). I regularly visit a host of other blogs and leave comments that add to the conversation. This takes time, obvioulsy, but keeps the interaction flowing. Matthew’s asking if blog comments matter. People appreciate comments on their own blogs… a lot. I certainly do.

You have to find your personal brand and deliver it through your blog. The way you write, the words you use, your tone of voice, how you respond to comments, the design of your blog, the topics you cover… it all shows who you are.

Mistake #4 – changing the location of my blog

When I moved my blog’s location, from davidairey.com/blog to davidairey.com, I knocked my Google Page Rank from 5 to 4. The mistake wasn’t moving, which I’m glad I did. The mistake was not doing it sooner, or not starting out with my blog in the root directory.

Daniel at Daily Blog Tips has this to say on the subject:

Unless your blog is a secondary part of an existing website you should always install Wordpress on the root directory. When I created my first blog I used an automatic Wordpress instalation that my web hosting company offered, but the standard installation was done on “www.domain.com/blog”.

I was not sure how this would affect the blog therefore I decided to leave things as they were. A couple of months later when I started studying SEO I realized that this was a bad move.

When I launched my first website about two years ago, I wanted my portfolio to be its primary purpose, and the blog a secondary aspect. Then last year I found out about blogging. It didn’t take long for me to realise the number of clients I could attract through my blog content first and foremost, and then directing them to my portfolio. It’s the content I publish that attracts visitors before the work in my graphic design portfolio.

Mistake #5 – neglecting my article headlines

Most people new to blog publishing will spend all their time writing the article, and not thinking too much about the headline. Here’s the thing, if your headline doesn’t catch my attention, the chances are I won’t read the article.

This is something Brian Clark, CopyBlogger gives advice on, and Ben’s article on writing eye-popping headines when exhausted is a good read too.

It’s not easy coming up with headline after headline, and the more you practice the easier it becomes. If you’re pushed for time, Lyndon at Cornwall SEO offers a killer headline writing service that’s worth considering.

Mistake #6 – not linking to others as I’d like them to link to me

I still see it every day, people linking to others using the anchor text ‘here’ or ‘click here’. You wouldn’t be linking to people unless you thought they had something worth saying, so give them a link they’ll truly appreciate. I touch upon the subject of using anchor text that your readers will appreciate in this article: graphic design Edinburgh and keyword search ranking.

Andy Beard says it better than I can with his article, linking mistakes frequently encountered on blogs.

Mistake #7 – underestimating the time commitment

When I first started out, I had no idea how much time blog publishing would take. I don’t spend all my time around here. Far from it. A work-life balance is essential and I find myself posting articles less and less at the weekend (and when I do they’re often time-stamped from a week-day).

There are many hats to blogging - something I think many of us don’t appreciate when we take that first step. I wonder how many of us jumped right into the world of blogs without doing much research. I did, and you can see the results through my relatively dead WordPress.com blog mentioned above.

Involvement with blogs is a learning experience and I wouldn’t change the way I set out. Learning from others is the short-cut, but learning from experience engrains those mistakes deeper in the mind.

Other people writing about their blog mistakes

Rob at Yack Yack recently published an article describing five things to avoid when blogging. Marc Andreesson tells us 11 lessons learned about blogging, so far. Engtech reflected on a year of blogging, as did Wendy Piersall.

What blog mistakes have you made?

Can you relate to any of the errors I’ve made along the way? I’ll leave you with a quote that reflects my outlook on blogs:

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

Goethe

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BUY TRAFFIC TO YOUR WEBSITE!

There are thousands of sites out there that will sell you hits to your website. The big ones you may know are Google, AltaVista, Overture etc. However, these are mostly overpriced as they work on a bidding system where you bid against others on keywords. For example, if you type "Christian Web Hosting" on Google you get all those links on the right and the top. These are paid advertising links. Every time you click a link, the advertiser pays ... up to $50.00 for a click! I don't know about you but I certainly won't pay that kind of money for a click. The more "valuable" the word or phrase, the more you have to bid in order to get your site near the top. Crazy huh?

Then you get the smaller advertisers. These are usually small companies or individuals that run some kind of paid advertising scheme. In my opinion, this is where you will get the best value for money. But beware, some are good and some are outright crooks! Be very careful!

Examples of this kind of advertising include those who sell you paid niche market indices, pop-under ads, pop-up ads, pay per click ads, banner adds and redirected traffic. From experience, we have found only some of them are worth it. The rest are dodgy investments at best.

niche market indices

There are several Christian sites -- big and small -- offering this kind of advertising for a price. Shop around to find the best one for you. They come in two flavors:

• Pay per click

• Pay per month/year etc. (Recommended if the site has qualified traffic and enough hits).

Pay per month is obviously much easier to budget for as your cost is fixed but it will depend on how much traffic a site gets. You may find the one better than the other. It's very much a trial and error thing and you have to try it for a month with a given advertiser to see which works best. We offer this type of [button/banner] advertising on some of our high traffic sites here.

This kind of advertising, although it can be a little more expensive, if often the best since you will be drawing your visitors from a source that is related to your site. For example, advertising your yacht business from a banner on a large yachting message board will guarantee your visitors are mostly yacht enthusiasts.

pop-under and pop-up advertising

The name is exactly what it sounds like. The first one hides the popped-up page behind your current browser window and the second is a more "in your face" approach where the popped-up page is on top. Many people use pop-up killers these days and the trend is for more and more people to use software that blocks them. It's a good form of advertising and the cheapest but shop around to find the best one for you and read the general warning below.

redirected traffic

A relatively new development is redirected traffic reselling. How it works is that people buy up old domain names -- sometimes by the thousands. These are all kinds of domains. For example, companies that went bust, old websites that were abandon by the original owners etc etc. These domains still get traffic simply because they are listed in the search engines and they come up from time to time when people search for certain words.

You go to a company or individual who bought a whole bunch of these domains and they set them up to redirect the traffic that would have gone to the old domain to your site instead. In principle this is a great idea but in practice it's a failure. Don't buy this kind of traffic.

Why not? You ask. Simple - you have no idea what kind of traffic is being sent you you. Let's say you have a site which sells second hand antique furniture. What value would traffic intended for a manufacturing company specializing in the manufacture of rocket fuel have for you? No matter how many rocket fuel visitors you get, it is highly unlikely any would be interested in your furniture. Traffic must be targeted if it is to be of value.

General Warning: Regardless of which type of traffic you buy, be very careful of who you buy from. There are several companies and individuals out there who will send you thousands of unique IP address hits to your site (which you can verify in your logs), but no one will ever see your page/s! There are several techniques for doing this and you could land up being scammed. (Some of the techniques involve things like opening your whole page in a 1 * 1 pixel window for example. You get the unique hit but no one saw your page ... not unless they had x-ray vision like superman!)

What works best?

It depends on several factors -- your site, the sellers site and many more. Fixed text link and fixed banner advertising are always the best. Why do I say that? Two reasons:

• Because you are not only getting the traffic from the sellers site but you are also getting a fixed link from the sellers site. This will boost your ranking in all the major search engines and will do so for as long as your link/banner is on the sellers site. If the seller's site is highly ranked in the search engines, your site will benefit greatly! Read what Google has to say about this here.

• Provided you have some means of knowing how much traffic the page gets your banner/link is on it is also the safest form of advertising -- you can go to the sellers site anytime to see your link or banner. With any of the other methods, you have no guarantees at all that anyone even went to your site.

Bottom line: You get what you pay for. If someone is offering you 100,000 hits for $25.00, think carefully before you spend your money because that is a price that is way too low and it might just be a scam. For pop-up/pop-under advertising expect to pay around $0.01 to $0.10 per page view and for banner advertising in the same order for monthly advertising and $0.20 and up for click through advertising.

30 Traffic Generation Tips!

Now, without further delay, the 30 Traffic Generation Tips�:

1.
Keep track of blogs and leave comments on them. A good way to keep the conversation going is to install a MyBlogLog widget and visit the blog of people visiting your site.

2.
Nothing creates long-term traffic more than value. Consider writing posts with resources or explaining how things work. Useful things get linked to and they get onto del.icio.us, which is far better long-term than a digg front page.

3.
Inform search engines and aggregators like Technorati (using the ping functionality) when your blog is updated, this should ensure maximum traffic coming from those sources. (check the List of Ping Services)

4.
Simplify. Pay attention to complex issues in your field of work. It may be a big long publication that is hard to wade through or a concept that is hard to grasp. Reference it and make a shorter “for dummies” version with your own lessons learned and relevant tips. When doing this, I have been surprised to find that the simplified post will appear before the more complex version in search results. Perhaps this is why it results in increased traffic; people looking for more help or clarification on the subject will land on your blog.

5.
Try to be polemic. I write obsessively about all-things political from the left-wing perspective in the form of humorous, sarcastic one-liners.

6.
A simple tip that will probably boost your page views: install a translator plugin. I decided to use a paid plugin for this, but if I am not wrong there are some free ones as well. The translation is not very good, as you can imagine, but it helps to attract readers that are not fluent in English.

7.
Submit articles to blog carnivals (http://blogcarnival.com) that are related to your niche. Your article almost always gets posted, and it must generate a handful of visitors, at least.

8.
Newsgroups. I always see a spike when I post a review to a newsgroup.

9.
Create new design for your website. Not only will it be more attractive to your regular readers, but you can submit it to some CSS gallery showcase sites that feature great designs. This will give you exposure on those sites while generating a lot of traffic and backlinks from those types of sites.

10.
Participate in conversations on related blogs. Start conversations on your own blog. Don’t just post about a story and leave it at that, engage your audience, ask questions and call to action.

11.
Comment on blogs, write useful content and make good friends on forums.

12.
You must be active to generate traffic. I post comments on other blogs that are related to mine, and I post my site link in my signature at the forums. Spread the word about your blog and it will certainly attract readers.

13.
Just browse around MyBlogLog.com and you will surely get visitors to your blog. Also try to join as many communities as possible that are related to your topic.

14.
A great tip for generating traffic is off-line by including your url in all your off-line liturature from business cards, letterheads, pamphlets, adverts through in-store signage if applicable. I even have our website on my vehicle.

15.
Read lots of other blogs. Leave trackbacks. Make sure your blog is optimized for search engines. Leverage social bookmarking sites like digg (both for new ideas and for traffic).

16.
Leave comments on other blogs. If you’re already reading them, it takes
just a couple of seconds to leave a message agreeing or disagreeing
with the author, you get to leave a link to your site, and you will almost
ALWAYS get traffic from your comments.

17.
Post 3-5 times a day. Use ping services like pingomatic or set up wordpress to ping some of the ping services. Engage your readers. Put up polls, ask them questions, give them quizes, free tools, etc. Make them want to come back and tell their friends about you.

18.
Community. It’s one word but it is the most important one when it comes to blogging. The only “blog metric” that makes sense is the vibrant community of readers it has. Building a community around your blog will bring you increased traffic, but how do you start? The boilerplate response to building traffic is always “SEO, social networking sites, and commenting on blogs” but it can be simplified to “be part of a community”. The easiest way to seed your blog is with an already existing community. But the only way to do that is to be part of the community yourself.

19.
Squidoo Lenses are a good way to generate traffic. By using a lense,
you can generate your own custom “community” of webpages, including some
of the more popular pages in your “neighborhood.” Including your own
webpage in such a list is a good way of generating traffic.

20.
I’ve had good success writing articles and submitting them to EzineArticles. Articles that have been written from well-researched keyword phrases and accepted by EzineArticles tend to rank very high in Google for that search term. Placing anchor text in the footer of those articles so the reader can visit my relevant website has always increased my site traffic.

21.
I came upon some unexpected traffic when my blog popped up on some css design portals like www.cssmania.com and www.webcreme.com. If you can put some time into the concept behind and design for your blog, I’d recommend submitting your site to a design portal not only for
additional traffic but to build an additional community around your site.

22.
I’ve recently gotten involved with several “MySpace-like” community sites that focus on my target audience. I share my thoughts in their forums, post intros to my real blog on their system blog and I’ve even created a group for my specific niche. It’s been very, very successful for me.

23.
Well, obviously everyone knows that social bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, etc. bring lots of traffic. But I’m now submitting some of my articles to blogg-buzz.com (a digg like site for bloggers), and I always get not a bad traffic from there.

24.
Participate in Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers where you can demonstrate your expertise, get associated with relevant keywords and put your URL out there.

25.
Be the first to write a post about the ‘Top Ten Blogs’ in your niche. The post will rank highly in any general search for blogs in your niche and other bloggers in your niche write about the post and link to it.

26.
Participating in forums is a great way to get loyal readers. Either link baiting people in your signature or posting great advice and tips will give you high quality traffic, which will result in return visitors.

27.
A simple trick I’ve used to increase traffic to my blog is participate in group writing projects. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now.

28.
Don’t forget your archives. I just posted a roundup of all interviews I did over the past seven months. One of them generated a new link and a big traffic spike from a group of users that look like they will be loyal readers now.

29.
Write something controversial. I don’t think it’s good to write something controversial just for the purpose of getting traffic necessarily (especially if it’s only for that purpose and you’re being disingenuous), but it works.

30.
Find the best blogs on your niche and contact the authors. Introduce yourself and send a link of your blog. This might help them to discover your blog, read it and possibly link to it.

How Much Money Do Bloggers Make Blogging?

Over the last two months I’ve had a sidebar poll running here at ProBlogger that asked readers to tell us how much their blog earned in October of 2008.

This is an annual poll that we’ve run for a number of years now so it is always interesting to see the results.

As usual - the poll revealed that most bloggers either don’t try to make money blogging or earn very little from their blogs but also that a smaller (but still significant) number of bloggers are making at least a part time living from the medium and a few bloggers beyond what most of us would consider ‘full time’.

Of course this is not a scientific poll and it relies upon people interpreting the question correctly and voting honestly - I’m certain that there are inaccuracies in it (particularly with some voting in the top category just for ‘fun’) but the results are actually quite similar to previous years which does make me think that there is at least some level of truth to them.

Take it or leave it - here are the results of this year’s earning poll:

• 37% of those who voted said that they do not make money from their blogs. This category would include both those who don’t want to make money blogging, those who didn’t realize that it was possible, those who don’t have a blog and those who have tried but failed to make money blogging.

While this is a significant and important result I’ve removed category from the charts below so that we can concentrate just on those who make at least some money from their blog.

• 1162 people said that they make under $10 a month. This is a total of 29% of those who make money blogging. This category was 26% in 2007 and 30% in 2006.
• 477 people made between $10-$29 in the month (12%)
• 505 people made between $30-$99 (12%)
• 686 made $100 - $499 over the month (17%)

So to this point we can say 70% of those who make money from their blogs make less than $500 a month and 30% make $500 or more.

• 262 made $500 - $999 (6%)
• 150 made $1,000 - $1,499 (4%)
• 128 made $1,500 - $2,499 (3%)
• 130 made $2,500 - $4,999 (3%)
• 95 made $5,000 - $9,999 (2%)
• 45 made $10,000 - $14,999 (1%)
• 35 made $15,000 - $19,999 (1)
• 373 made $20,000 or more (9%).

The top category probably has some skewing but has always been in this vicinity (9% in 2007 and 7% in 2006 - although in these years the top category was $15,000+). While I’m sure there is some skewing here it is an open ended category so we could expect it to have people earning not only $20,000 a month but also those earning quite a bit more (of which I’m aware of quite a few).

Here’s another chart with the same information:

Once again these figures hammer home to anyone wanting to get into blogging for money that it is not a foregone conclusion that you’ll make a lot of money from the medium. It is possible to make at least a part time income from blogging and for some to make quite a bit of money from it - but over half are earning less than $3 a day (or $100 a month).

For those interested in the comparisons to previous years - let me finish with charts from 2006 and 2007. First here are the 2006 results:

And now the 2007 results:

As you’ll see the results are remarkably similar from year to year although each year we’ve done it the sample size has grown.

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