The morning routine seems to always be up for debate. Who has time to half the stuff we are supposed to do, or should do, before we even get the rest of the family up to start the day. No family, just you? Well you want to sleep just one more hour and hitting the snooze button has become extremely habitual for you now. It’s gotten to the point now where you aren’t just hitting it anymore, you are now slamming it.

The bed is a great place. Comfortable, cozy and warm. I think some days we could stay in there forever. I wonder, though, if you have a different routine in the morning, would it interest you in getting up earlier and looking forward to the day instead of dreading it? Let’s see if any of these simple things might get you moving a little earlier.

1. Say thank you.

Even before you open your eyes. You’re stirring, slowly but surely, immediately say thank you for another day. you are alive and made it through to the next day. Express gratitude for that.

2. Fling open the curtains and a window.

Get some fresh air in your house. If it’s too cold to open the window definitely get those curtains open and bring in some of the powerful energy of the sun and a new day.

3. Meditate.

Even if only for 5 minutes. You can do this while your coffee is brewing. Go sit by the window, close your eyes (careful not to fall back asleep) and take some nice breaths in and out. Welcome in the new day and breathe out the fog.

4. Splash cold water on your face or better yet, jump in a cold shower.

This will surely invigorate you and get your blood circulating much faster than you can even imagine. Think of it as booster cables on your car battery on a cold wintery day. You’ll be more apt to get stuff done, and more of it, more effectively.

5. Exercise.

Get out of bed, get a drink of water and get your heart pumping. You can do simple full body exercises or you can jog on the spot. Whatever your exercise of choice is, try to get in at least 15 minutes of it.

6. Stretch or do yoga.

Stretching is great for loosening up those limbs that have been sleeping for 7 hours.  Get out of bed, and start limbering up those muscles and get those joints moving again. This doesn’t have to be long or arduous. 10-15 should do it.

7. Journal.

Get your thoughts out on paper or maybe even do a gratitude journal. Write out all the things you are grateful for before the day even begins and you will surely attract more things to be grateful for throughout the day.

8. Pray.

Clearly not for everybody though praying could be just as simple as a small gratitude blessing or affirmation to the universe or your higher power, whatever that is for you. It could be a small wish to make today a good day.

9. Drink water.

Before your coffee or tea and before you do anything, get rehydrated. Your body has been without any fluids for probably up to 10 hours. It is dehydrated and needs some lubricating. Get two glasses of water into you immediately upon rising. You will instantly feel this hydration.

10. Put some music on.

Whatever your music of choice is, put it on an d crank it up if you can. Or perhaps you like to listen to soft Zen like music. Wake up your brain, get some music into your soul and get your groove on. Music is definitely a source of all happiness.

These are just a few simple ways to kick your body into high gear in the morning. If you are one of those hit snooze all the time people you may want to put your alarm in another room or very far away from you so you literally have to get out of bed to turn it off. This in itself may deter you from going back to bed after the alarm goes off. Whatever the case and whatever you might choose to try, you should always try to be embrace each new day with vigor and a smile. Expect good things to happen to you each and every day.

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There was a day when you used to walk past a playground or park and it would be fill ed with giggling children and parents. You could hear the excited shrieks two blocks away. It was constant activity. Moms and dads playing with their kids. The streets would be lined with joggers and power walkers. People everywhere. Getting fresh air, bonding with the family and simply enjoying life. It really was such a delightful sight.

Sad enough, that visual doesn’t exist anymore. The parks still have kids, a few of them, but the guardian is busy on their cell phone, paying little attention to Sarah or Johnny. Not all, but many, too many. What happened to those good old days of interacting with each other, with nature, with life? Wireless devices took over our lives and we are now slaves to this. It’s about time we unplug and get outside more and here are a few reasons why.

1. Vitamin D is really good for you.

This vitamin is vital in our keeping our bones and teeth healthy. The only two ways to get proper levels are either through the sun, in moderation, or in supplements. For many, depending on where you live, supplements might be the predominant way to get D but others should gladly step outside and let their skin absorb some Vitamin D.

2. Fresh air is good for you.

Provided you aren’t living in an industrial smog town, where the air actually might be really bad for you, the best way to clear your lungs and get some great oxygen flowing through you is none other than the great outdoors.  Many of us are stuck indoors working too many hours surrounded by electronic pollution. Get out and take a walk on a nice hiking trail, or head on down to a lake or river.

3. Clear your mind.

We’ve been plugged in for 8 hours, maybe even up to 12 hours, and our minds desperately need some decompression. The only way to clear your mind and dump all that information is to unplug, leave your device at home and get outside. Watch some butterflies, listen to the birds, get in tune with nature.

4. Nature’s exercise.

No phones, no iPod, just you, your running shoes, a bottle of water and the sound of nature. Get out and embrace it, listen to it, take it all in while you are walking, running or simply sitting down by the river. Go mountain climbing and see how far you can challenge yourself. The exercise possibilities outdoors are endless. Try one.

5. Make new friends.

Yes, even something as simple as getting outside and walking can lead to great new relationships and friendships. The man sitting on the bench you see daily probably has some great stories. The lady you see walking alone every day maybe would like some company. Real time people, real time relationships. There is nothing better than that, really.

6. Find your passion.

You already sort of know what it is but you don’t have time to explore or develop it because you’re too busy being plugged in all the time. Get outside, get fresh air, clear your mind and let new and refreshing ideas flow through you. There might even be something outside that fires up your passion. Go find it, allow it to come to you. Be open to it.

7. Spend real time with family.

Get everyone in the house to get their runners on and go for a walk. Make it a weekly date if you want. Go to the park, go hiking, a picnic at the lake, whatever tickles your fancy but get the whole family to unplug and enjoy the great outdoors. Make memories, bring a camera (not a cell phone camera but a real one).

8. Take in your surrounding area with a new eye.

Go see what’s around. Find a trail. Get down to that river you’ve been admiring on your drive home from work. Embrace nature and the world around you. Go to that new ice cream parlor. So much to do and see. Start doing and seeing it.

We get so wrapped up in our online worlds we forget the world around us, outside. The great outdoors. Unplug and go see it, embrace it, enjoy it. You’ll have a whole new love for life.

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Bill Gates is quiet and bookish, but apparently unfazed by others’ opinions of him: he’s an introvert, but not shy.

Barbra Streisand has an outgoing, larger than life personality, who also battles with a paralyzing case of stage fright: she’s a shy extrovert.

Shyness and introversion are not the same thing. Shyness is the fear of negative judgment, and introversion is a preference for quiet, minimally stimulating environments. Some psychologists map the two tendencies on vertical and horizontal axes, with the introvert-extrovert spectrum on the horizontal axis and the anxious-stable spectrum on the vertical. With this model, you end up with four quadrants of personality types: calm extroverts, anxious (or impulsive) extroverts, calm introverts, and anxious introverts. (Excerpt from Susan Cain’s blog post Read it here)

Being an introvert is much more understood, but did you know there are different types of introvert.

As an introvert I found this test a great one and really accurate.

The Introvert Test – Which Type of Introvert Are You?

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Leave a comment below to let me know how accurate this was for you

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“Have a mind that is open to everything, and attached to nothing.” ~ Tilopa

Great quote? You bet!  Easy to pull off?  Not always!

We live in a time and in a society that promotes the collection of things.  We can wrap our minds around this when we talk about physically collecting things such as baseball cards, coins, shoes – you know…stuff!  We can even think about our collection in terms of ideals, opinions, beliefs and preferences. Every new day gives us another opportunity to collect.

Much of our lives are spent grabbing on to things as they come, but how much of our time is spent letting go of things that we no longer need or no longer serving all parties equally? How much time do we spend cleaning out our closet or letting go of old and outdated ideas? How many hours a month do we spend shedding energy no longer serving us? How easy is it for us to release things like sending our kids out into the world or letting go of a job that doesn’t work for us anymore? We tend to get very attached to things, and many times, without even knowing it, we find ourselves holding on to things too tightly or for too long.

I did a meditation earlier this Spring and asked to be shown something in a way I’d never experienced it before. Being a meditation coach with a consistent meditation practice, it didn’t take too long for a beautiful image of a stream to appear in my mind’s eye. It was a beautiful stream that meandered, wound around and twisted just as it wanted to. It had all the freedom in the world to move without someone blocking it off or shoring it up.  It was a beautiful, free-flowing stream with wonderful and effortless momentum. A few moments later, a phrase kept running over and over in my head; “Everything has the freedom to come and go – Everything has the freedom to come and go – Everything has the freedom to come and go.”  It was such a peaceful and centering meditation.

It got me thinking about why we tend to hang on to certain things so tightly. It made me wonder why we try to control the flow of our lives, many times by blocking it or shoring it up. Just then, an old saying from Aristotle came to mind – nature abhors a vacuum. Is that why we don’t release things even though we know they are no longer serving us? Because we’re afraid of the void? It made perfect sense to me.

We see examples of life filling in voids everywhere. When we loose a tooth, a blood clot rushes in to fill the space. A retired man will fill his time by taking up a new hobby.

So, what’s the lesson here?  Instinctively, even if we don’t like it, we know that everything, just like the stream, has the freedom to come and go. We’ve all heard the saying, “if you love something, set it free.” We also know that we have a tendency to hold on to things, sometimes well past its time. If we can use the lesson of filling up the empty void with something else that will excite or nourish us, doesn’t it make sense to use this to our advantage?

Our Higher Power is often talking to us – our stream always seems to be nudging us to find momentum in a particular flow at any particular time. We, on the other hand, love to tell a river where to go by piling up rocks and redirecting traffic.

But, today is a new day. And let’s face it – even for the controliest of control freaks out there (we know who we are), even being a control freak is a belief that we collected about ourselves in the past.  For those of us who identify with that label, I say it’s time to release the term “control freak” and say to ourselves, “I used to try to control every little thing, but that label doesn’t serve me anymore.”  Even the term “control freak,” just as it had the freedom to come into our lives has the freedom to leave just as easily.  While we’re at it, we can release a few other labels that no longer serve us. We can tell ourselves that letting go of those old jeans that we’ll never wear again will make room in our dresser for new jeans that are more comfortable and therefore more likely to be worn rather than collecting dust.  We can release guilt by replacing it with a lesson. We can release anger by replacing it with forgiveness. We can throw out the sour milk that is stinking up our refrigerator and replace it with fresh milk that will be delicious. We can give up an old job that is making us sick to do something we are passionate about.

All in all, we can take this knowing that everything has the freedom to come and go and embrace it. We can begin to view ourselves as fluid and agile and excited to see what will come into our lives once something is released.

Everything has the freedom to come and go – Everything has the freedom to come and go. Isn’t that amazing…..

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The past. For some, it was such a horrible time. For others, it was pretty decent. For those of us, however, who didn’t have a fabulous past, this article is for you because we know, you are still hanging on. Why we hang on is anybody’s guess really. Is it a comfortable place? Are we still trying to analyze what happened and play the what if game? Possibly. For whatever reason, we are still clinging to it.

For many of us, however, letting go is a very complicated thing to do. We simply can’t. We hang on to this part of our life and we don’t want to let it go. It doesn’t make us feel any better. It does nothing for our self worth or love. So how do we get rid of all these dreadful memories of the past? Here are a few questions to ask yourself that just might help you get over this and past this.

1. What purpose is it serving today?

All those horrible memories. How are they serving you today? Are they making your life any easier, better, simpler, happier? In what way are they contributing to a healthy and happy life right now? Past memories that are painful serve no purpose. They do no good whatsoever. We are here to live a life of joy, peace and happiness. A life for today because of today, not from yesterday. Leave it be.

2. Can I solve today’s problems because of it?

Probably not. Unless you have a recurring negative event in your life, you will not be able to handle today’s situations with yesterday’s toxic memories. In fact, they will probably only do more harm than good. Keep in mind, you cannot fix today’s problems with yesterday’s troubles. It just won’t work. Get rid of them.

3. Are they thinking of me?

Most likely not. Whoever it is that is causing your pain has long since moved on and are probably not thinking about you or the pain they caused you. As a matter of fact, they probably couldn’t care any less about you or your feelings. They are probably really happy in their new life without you. Move on. Why should you let them stay in your head and pollute it, rent free, when they don’t give you even one split second of a thought? Think about that for one second.

4. Do you have weighted shoulders?

Do you have a heaviness in your heart and feel like you are carrying extra weight on your shoulders? If you are hanging on to the past, then the answer to those two questions is probably yes. You don’t need or deserve to carry any extra weight or baggage. It is keeping you from a life of peace and happiness. If you sometimes feel a stab of pain in your chest or your upper back, it’s probably your past. Let go, feel free.

5. Is it keeping you from happiness today?

Do you feel constant sadness and misery because of whatever happened in the past? Go back to question 1. How is this sadness serving you today? It is only getting in the way of you living a life of joy. You will not find joy or happiness if you are hanging on to something that no longer serves you. You are blocking happiness from entering your life. It really wants to come to you but you aren’t making any room for it. There is no room for it.

Always remember that whatever you are desperately hanging on to, for whatever reason, if it’s negative, you are blocking any and all good from coming to your life. There is no satisfaction or joy in hanging on to the past, anger, hurt or grudges towards people who hurt us. Having this mentality is only going to continually hurt you and keep you from love. Forgiveness is a powerful act. Use it. Forgive everybody who hurt you. Do it for you, not for them, and move on.

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No one likes to think their home has toxic energy. We try to keep it clean and happy and fresh but unbeknownst to us, toxic energy really does lurk. Unfortunately, for longer than it should. Surprisingly enough, we aren’t even aware it is but it’s definitely there. So how do we remove toxic energy from the home?

Fear not, we aren’t calling in any exorcists just yet. There are very simple ways to remove this toxicity that is hiding in places we didn’t even know of. What most of us don’t realize is that even after you and your partner just had a big argument, that toxic energy is still hanging around the house. Here are a few simple ways to remove it.

1. Open the windows.

Sounds simple enough, right? You’re probably wondering why you never thought of that. It’s ok. Most people think that opening the windows is to bring in fresh air only. Well it does do that but it also escorts the bad energy out. Especially if you have opposite windows open. If it’s not possible to open or keep windows, you can also open your door even if only for 10 minutes. The toxic energy needs to be let out through some opening whether it be a window or a door. Use one or both if you can. Let all that air flow through and carry the toxicity out.

2. Burn sage.

Keep your windows open for this one if you aren’t fond of smoke. Sage is an extremely powerful space cleanser. The energy of sage effortlessly clears the air and the negative energy. Make sure you get a high quality sage stick and hold a plate under to catch the ashes. Sage has a very peculiar scent and isn’t for everybody. Unfortunately, there isn’t scent free sage but trust me when I tell you the energy of your space will shift almost instantly and you will feel it. Also make sure not to miss any areas in the house.  If you are saging because you and your partner just had a fight, you have carried all that negative energy in every room you entered. Get them all.

3. Spritz lavender and lemongrass oils.

Or you can burn them in a diffuser. Lavender is great for neutralizing all stress and negativity in our space and lemongrass adds some refreshing and energetic vibes back into the room. You can mix the oils in a spray bottle with distilled water and spritz your whole house or you can burn the oil in a diffuser and let the scent fill the room. Careful not to forget it burning though. Lavender first, lemongrass to follow. The two work hand in hand so keep them both close by.

4. Salt lamps.

Soft, subtle, warm and perfect for any room in the house. These are natural air cleaners. They also have multiple health benefits. You can leave the soft light burning all day or turn it on only when you are in the room. Many people even sleep with their salt lamp on. The salt lamp is extremely effective also in clearing the air of dirty electricity from computers, microwaves, and other electrical appliances we have plugged in all day. They are beautiful, can be inexpensive and very powerful.

5. Crystal healings.

Crystals and gemstones, from mother earth, have brilliant healing properties and if you are already a crystal collector you know exactly what I’m talking about. You can google information or go to your local new age store and inquire about them. These little gems can heal you physically, spiritually and emotionally and also help clear your space of any toxic energy lying around from a recent upset, any stress that has been lingering, an illness or death.

These are only a few simple ways to clear toxic energy from your space. If you have any other ways not listed above, please share them with the others. Sharing is caring.

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I sat on my bed with my legs folded. A large piece of cardboard covered my bed and upon it was brand new box. Inside this box was – to my delight – a 2,000 piece Victorian puzzle. My heart skipped a beat as balmy hands dumped the delicate pieces out of the box, and I began to sort.

The adrenaline that charges through my veins to see a masterpiece come together is the same driving force that influences the broken pieces in my life. Perfectionism. Pretense. Approval addiction. Obsessive compulsions. Anxiety. Just when I think I’ve conquered an area, and I can see the picture coming together, life happens, and the puzzle fall apart leaving me to put the pieces back together.

Do you ever feel that angst of defeat? Does your M.O. come in the form of over-achievement, cynicism, self-reliance or pride? Does it manifest itself in the form of self-indulgence, depression, anger or addiction? If so, it’s no wonder you may feel tired, alone and frustrated.

If you are ever going to experience triumph over your trials and tribulations in life, you have to let go of your fears of failure, disapproval and disappointment. Then you have to step into freedom, forgiveness and fortitude. Discard the pieces that belong in your life and embrace the ones that will complete the perfect picture designed just for you.

Find Yourself

My ten-year-old self looked forlornly into the bathroom mirror with my shoulders slumped. Why, oh why can’t I be fun and popular? Wistful, shy and reserved, I practiced smiling. It needed to be bigger. I forced my eyes to open wider and made them twinkle. From now on I’m going to be outgoing and people are going to like me.

It took two decades for me to realize that I can’t be someone else. Have you lost yourself? Stop competing for attention and comparing yourself to others. Don’t allow one more moment to steal the precious gift of your unique personality, gifts and talents.

Control Your Emotions

Slowly I entered the board room and lowered myself onto the cold chair. Two quivering hands found each other under the table. The previous week at work I had let my emotions get the best of me. In one hot moment I had undermined authority and stirred up turmoil with my coworkers. I felt so ashamed of what I’d done and the hurtful words that had been spoken. I had made a spectacle of myself.

Learning how to manage your emotions takes a lot of work. But what happens when you do flub up? When you completely lose your cool? Make a scene at work? Yell at your kids? Bad-mouth a friend? Do you feel unworthy to remain friends, to be called a good mom, to keep your job? You don’t have to bury your head in the sand, pay penance or live in condemnation. Just reflect on how you can gather the strength to reign in your emotions and use them in a better way next time.

Have Patience

Sometimes it feels like time stands still. The world is spinning around, and you are left standing in the center of it all still waiting for that one thing or several things. What are you waiting for? Financial freedom? Peace in life’s storms? Children to listen and obey? Relationships to be restored? Better results at work? A clear medical report?

How you respond while you are waiting is important. Your attitude and behaviors reveal your character and integrity. Cares and concerns can cloud your mind and affect the way you handle yourself, your children, your spouse, your friend and your work. You may have to remind yourself daily, sometimes hourly, to transform the way you think. Just because you feel a certain way – stressed, worried, or emotional – doesn’t mean you have to let that feeling take over your day. Pinpoint what is causing those negative feelings and deal with them.

Think Positively

Why is it so easy to love your children and cheer them on? When they were learning to walk, you clapped your hands and waved them to the other side of the room. When they fell down, you helped them back up and enthusiastically said, “You can do it!”

Yet when it comes to your own life, are you that optimistic or are you constantly putting yourself down with negative thoughts? What you have become is because of what you have been thinking.  Your current behaviors are a result of your thought life. Are you living in freedom or are you focused on your fear and failures? Transform your mind by thinking of the positive opposite you want to see in your life.

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Can we even begin to image that? The world with no money. No exchange, no currency, no trading, dealing, buying or selling. Or would there still be? Can we even begin to imagine what it would be like to not have to carry a wallet or always have money for our morning coffee? We could just walk in the coffee shop, tell the clerk what we want and he just passes it to us and we cheerfully exclaim, have a nice day and don’t give him any money.

What a strange world it would be indeed. But what would happen to the world and the people in it, if we had no money and never did have any money. What would life be like? Here’s what I think it might be like. Feel free to add your two cents, pardon the pun, in the comments section.

1. Homelessness will end.

There will be plenty of homes still, but you won’t need money to live in them. You can live in them for exchange for little chores. As a matter of fact, you will be able to just build your own home, anywhere you’d like because you won’t need money for materials either. There will be no homelessness.

2. There will be no theft crimes.

You won’t have to lock your stuff up so no one will steal it. No one wants to steal your things, they can just go get their own. They can have as many or as few of the things as they want. And they won’t be luxuries. They will just be every day things.

3. Nothing will be a luxury anymore.

Go do what you want, where you want, when you want and as often as you want. You won’t need money to buy, travel, visit, acquire things. just go get them. They aren’t only for the rich or elite anymore. We’re all rich now.

4. We’re all rich in different things.

Like love and kindness. There is no separation between rich and poor. We all have the same amount of things and the only thing we are rich in is kindness and love. When you take money out of the equation there is no more prejudice.

5. Racism and prejudice no longer exist because really they only exist now mostly because of greed.

When we take money out of the equation it wipes out greed and racism. It wipes out hate crimes and religion, which are all based and fueled by money and greed.

6. There will be little to no marriage breakdowns.

Most marriages breakdown for financial reasons. Stress due to finances will be non existent. Couples will no longer have those arguments, no more money stress or worry. And more love, way more love and peace.

7. Life will be less complicated.

Money is the root of all evil. You’ve heard it a thousand times. It’s not really but we still think like that. Take money away, take away the evil. Take away the evil and suddenly life is simple, easy and enjoyable.

8. More peace and happiness.

What will there be left to stress about? What to cook for dinner? What to wear to the movies? When we live in a world with no money, we live far more relaxed, no money tension or worries and more happiness.

9. Countries will all get along.

There will be nothing to trade, barter, kill off or fight about. What’s yours is yours, what’s mine is mine and if you run out, we’ll gladly share what we have. You won’t even have to pay us.

10. The world works in unison.

We all get along. We all help each other out. We all love each other and treat each other with respect and kindness. It’s a simple loving and kind world where we are all friends and we all get along.

Imagine a world like this. What are your thoughts on a world with no money? How do you think it would work? Or do you think it would? Share your thoughts with the rest of us.

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Yum. Wait, one more, yum. Who doesn’t love chocolate? You know it never ceases to amaze when I come across people who don’t like chocolate. That just baffles my mind. How can that be? There is even a wonderful delicious variety to choose from. Did you seriously try them all and still hate chocolate? I’ll never understand this but for those of us who do love chocolate, listen up. I found some interesting tidbits of information letting us know that we should be eating chocolate daily.

For me, chocolate is that happy treat. It’s that one thing I reach for that makes all my troubles seem so far away. Imagine how thrilled I was to discover that it’s actually good for you too (within reason of course). Here are a few reasons why you should be eating this delectable treat every single day.

1. It really is good for you.

Can you imagine? Chocolate with a high percentage of dark cocoa in it is very high in antioxidant properties and is the claim to reducing your risk of heart disease, stroke and heart attacks. The cocoa bean is very high in flavonoids, which means, healthy.

2. Comfort food.

It certainly is. No one has ever gotten over a broken heart eating broccoli. The best remedy for heart break or sadness is still a nice big moist piece of chocolate cake or your favourite chocolate bar. Maybe even chocolate chips cookies?

3. Mood enhancer.

There is a reason why men bring a lovely little box of chocolates to women on their dates. They know. Chocolate is the secret little love drug. Chocolate seems to instantly make us smile and happy. It also happens to be a little bit of a romantic treat. Sweet.

4. Jazz up your dinner.

You can add chocolate to a lot of the mundane meals you cook for your family and get them excited to eat that boring chicken again. Use your imagination, google different recipes and get some heart healthy sweetness into dinner.

5. It’s a great sunscreen.

A sunscreen you can actually eat? You bet. Recent studies showed that people who eat dark chocolate daily have more protection on their skin from harmful UV rays from the sun.

6. Study better.

The flavonoids in chocolate not only protect your heart and enhance your mood, they are also great brain boosters. According to research they increase mental functions in order to help you perform well on tests and school work. Who knew?

7. Zen out.

If you are stressed or agitated, grab a nice piece of chocolate or maybe even make yourself a nice big steamy mug of hot chocolate and watch while you suddenly relax and calm down. A great alternative for those who have a hard time meditating. Chocolate can definitely put you in the Zen zone.

8. Happy kids.

Need to calm down some angry youngster or wipe away upset tears? Chocolate will surely do that. Another situation where broccoli just won’t work. Sometimes it’s just hard to understand why our child is upset and unfortunately it’s not always so easy to calm them down and make them feel better. If a hug won’t do, chocolate will.

9. Headache be gone.

In some cases. Careful though because in some cases chocolate can cause headaches but those of you who suffer the latter know your triggers. The caffeine in chocolate can really do the trick when a pounding headache has taken over. Not everyone likes to drink coffee or tea or get their caffeine that way. Chocolate to the rescue. Don’t overindulge though. It may backfire because of the sugar.

10. It’s really just a fun food that just about anything can be dipped into .

Fruits, chips, bacon (why not?) you name it, you can dip it in chocolate and make it better while cheering you up. Sounds like a win win to me.

There’s no doubting that chocolate really just is a healthy happy food. For those who don’t like chocolate, we don’t understand you.

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Many of us complain about how less time we have. We are cluttered with projects, work at home and doing things which brings in more frustration.

It goes on for days.

Chances are you wondering how the top performers do it.

Today is your day. Learn these awesome tips. Evaluate your daily work and make changes. Be brave and don’t forget to stay awesome.

Outsource Repetitive Work

We miss thing a lot of time. Our day is packed with activities to do. Some of it adds more value than others, however each of them is important. You need to do the stuff which only you can do. Rest can be automated by outsourcing.

Outsourcing is the important step to freeing time…

For example, I need to cook dinner each day. Instead of buying vegetables and cutting them, why not buy already cut vegetables?

Maybe you can plan your dinner a week in advance so the week’s vegetable are already there and you should need to do the cooking (the most important value added task)

Another example, You need to write 3 blog post each week. then edit it, add a photo and then publish.

How about hiring an assistant to do all that and you focus on the most important task, writing creative, quality and awesome content.

Have A Standard Planner

There are some things which you need to do daily. This can be converted to list which we need to follow religiously. For example, brushing your teeth, eating breakfast and checking kids homework.

These activities are blended in with our habits, so it comes naturally.

For other things, we tend to forget and get lost. Write down your standard planner which list down all the major value added task you need to do. Like below

Write 1 blog post

Check email for 30 minutes and respond

Work on NEW project for 1 hour

Read your subscribed feeds

Exercise for 1 hour

When you have such list, you tend to follow them and it brings in the result in the long run. The best part is you don’t miss anything valuable. You finish them and not wander what to do next.

Cutting down the thinking process of what to do next brings in some extra time. Try something new.

Overcome Mental Barrier

This is something which most of us ignore.

There are some common phrases which we think and stop us.

It’s good business idea, I can’t do it. Maybe I had more money.
I really want to lose weight, I wish I had some more time.
It’s not for me. I am not that capable.

Yes, we may have some constraints, however we can work on that. When you want it badly, you work somehow to ACHIEVE it.

Giving up is easy, TRYING is tough…

Don’t let these mind-blocks come on your way to success. Believe in self, don’t dismiss anything challenging as impossible right away.

BONUS TIP : Skip TV and social Media

Yes, you read that right. It happens with most of us. We tend to start giving excuse, we don’t have enough time. Let’s put this excuse aside and look at real reason.

The truth is we all have limited time, we just need to set our priorities straight. Social media and television sucks up most our time (Game of Thrones anyone?)

I hardly spend 1 hour combined for television and social media. I haven’t posted or interacted on Facebook for long time. My twitter posts are automated and I watch television or listen music while I am eating food or exercising.

This had given me extra time so I can accumulate new projects, learn a new language or spend more time with my family.

What if you can’t avoid an activity like reading a book?

Switch to audible so you can listen to book while you are driving. This is the best use of your time instead of simply listening to music. Learn something every moment. Don’t worry, it won’t drain you out.

Conclusion

New projects, learning new skill or spending valuable time with family. These are few things you can utilize when you get some extra time.

The most productive people have access to same resource, limited time and restrictions like we do. You just have to shift your mindset and there you have it. You don’t have to look for magical bullets to fill in the success road. It is there, it is hard and you need to start to accomplish the goals.

Since you learnt the above three tips to get more time, take action. The only thing stopping you is you.

Go ahead and make some time for your next valuable thing. Good luck.

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