Self-Improvement|Self-Improvement Reviews|Spiritual Development Reviews » Self Improvement Reviews

The Laws Of Success And Peak Performance

RogerR — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 11:53:57 +0000

Even though I am a personal fitness instructor to elite athletes like NASCAR's Kasey Kahne, I am actually a student first. It might be surprising to hear me tell people that a majority of my learning takes place in studying success and personal development.

One of my favorite guys in the personal development arena is Brian Tracy. Brian has a teaching style that I prefer. He focuses on universal laws of achievement and self improvement that are easy to understand and implement. His tape series "Psychology of Achievement" stands in my opinion as the starting point for any person looking to turn their mind to a calm, alert, clutter-free state. He starts with the idea that self actualization, or a feeling of becoming the best person you can be, is a need as important as food, water and shelter.

Brian authored 7 rules for living in the 21st century that I thought perfectly captured the basics of grounded mental reality and foundation for anyone who prefers simplicity over complexity. Rule 1 is that for anyone, things will only get better, when a person gets better. My racers and other elite clients must always do two things in their minds to see any meaningful difference in their results. First, they must be honest about where they are vs. where they want to be and second, they must accept that they are wholly responsible for the results.

In short, by changing their behaviors (changing yourself because you are your behavior), they change their results. Better behaviors through habitual consistent action, means better results. If they start there, the workout from a physical standpoint is secondary.

Russ Bohaty, The Racers Trainer, is the Personal Fitness Trainer for NASCAR's Kasey Kahne and The Kasey Kahne Racing Team. His Free 6-Week Mental Fitness program geared toward peak performance is available at www.racerstrainer.com.

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Tips For Self Improvement – Easy Ways to Help Yourself

Roger — Tue, 18 May 2010 21:16:36 +0000

By Wendy Pan

There are many tips for self improvement, and it is a challenge that should be ongoing throughout one's life. Where you begin depends on where you think you want to go. Sometimes where you think you want to go may not be where you end up either.

First, try to determine your goals. Write down a dream sheet of everything you think you want or want to be. From this list of goals, divide them up into those that you can achieve in the short term, mid term and long term of time. Then think about your goals, are they self centred or other centred? Divide up the lists into those sub categories. Rank them in order of priority. If you like to see fast progress, put them in order of ease of achieving, so you get the reinforcement and positives from accomplishing tasks. If you put them in the order of importance to your life, they will probably be the hardest choices on the list and will take longer to achieve. You will need patience and perseverance for those. Now, select one or two from the top of each list and those are the goals to start with.

Next in tips for self improvement, make a short list of self affirmations you can put up on the bathroom mirror so you see and say them aloud a couple times a day. Do this daily. As you say them, envision your self being or having them. Over time, you will gradually see the improvements happening.

Look at your body lifestyle. Are you eating proper balanced foods? Do you exercise at least twice a week? Are you and your clothes neat and clean, in other words, cared for? Or are you sloppy and careless? Put some effort into caring for yourself and your environment. A messy life will lead to a messy mind and emotions. If you eat right, you will feel better all over, be more healthy and alive. If you have pride in your looks and home, you will feel happier being there, more organized in order to tackle your lists of goals.

Try to learn something new, read books or magazines, or study something in class or independently. Having factual knowledge about subjects brings more confidence into your life. You can practice something like an instrument or game and gain confidence that way. All this will improve your self confidence.

Two final tips for self improvement are to laugh and help others. A good laugh can actually improve your health, and a lighter look at life will also help you feel better about yourself. Helping others is even better than doing for yourself. You gain confidence, and a sense that you matter, that you are making a difference in life. And you are!

There are many tips for self improvement. Some are tangible like food and health, others more indistinct, like your self affirmations or helping others. They all build your self image, and that is self improvement.

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Self Improvement Advice – Do the Opposite of What Your Demons Tell You to Do

Roger — Mon, 17 May 2010 20:42:30 +0000

By Steve Hill

I am sure that I am not alone in the fact that I have a large army of demons in my head. These demons are always talking to me and trying to advise me about how to react to different situations. For many years I listened and took their advice, these years were not exactly happy ones and I have now come to realise that these demons are not my friends but are actually my enemy.

I had many issues in my life that had a negative affect on my levels of self-esteem. The demons used these issues to get to me and to play their mind games. For this article, I am going to describe my stuttering demons and how I eventually destroyed them. The advice can be used for whatever type of demon you may have.

At the age of four, I developed a stutter which would continue to affect my speech for the next eighteen years of my life. I was aware of what I could and could not say and was also aware of the social situations in which I was more likely to stutter.

If I was asked a question by for example a friend, I would think of the answer but before I would have a chance to say it, a voice would appear. This voice or what I call my demons would advise me not to say that word and to substitute it for a different word.

If I was invited out to say a party, my demons would advise me not to go, as there would be a lot of people there that I did not know. They would remind me that I found it difficult talking to people which I did not know.

At one stage in my life, I decided that I wanted a career change as I was not happy in the role that I was in. My demons reminded me, that to find alternative employment meant going through the whole interview process again. They continued that I had always struggled to talk fluently at interviews, due to the pressure factor.

I would be able to speak quite well when I was drunk and this is when I would have the confidence to talk to the ladies. On several occasions a woman has given me their phone number and I would tell them that I would call them to arrange a night out. The next day though, when sober, the demons would remind me that making a phone call is what I find the hardest form of speech task and to simply not bother.

As previously stated, I used to listen to these demons and suffice it to say I did not go on my first date until I was eighteen years of age.

Things had to and were about to change. After reading many self-help books, I realised what I had been doing wrong. I should not be listening to these demons, in fact what I need to do is the opposite of what they tell me. Steve don't go to that party, OK then I will. Steve don't phone that lady up, OK I will, etc.

I am not trying to say that this is easy to do. I am happy to say that I have eradicated my speech demons and am now fluent, however I do still have demons in other areas of my life. There are not nearly as many as there have been in the past and I am slowly hopefully killing them all.

I treat it like a war. There are many battles and I have to say that I do not win them all. I talk to my demons all the time and especially when they win one of these type battles. I tell them that they may have won this particular battle but that I will win the overall war.

You may possibly think that I am a bit of a freak after reading this article. I frankly do not care, I am happier now than I have ever been.

Good luck in your quest to improve your own life.

Games & Puzzles

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Simple Steps to Self-Improvement and Success in Your Life

Roger — Sun, 16 May 2010 22:16:13 +0000

By Leon Edward
It is easy to stay inside a shell, existing but not letting anything or anyone touch you in anyway. You can convince yourself that because of past events in your life that you are protecting yourself against further heartache, or you can use those experiences to strengthen as self improvement tools to gain success in your professional as well as personal life.

The movie called Patch Adams is the perfect example of a person who failed at the one thing he wanted to do most. After suffering from severe depression and hospitalization, his eyes were opened.

He realized that there were different types of psychiatric illnesses and that with the power of positive thinking, he could heal himself and others as well.

With a positive attitude he was able to help not only himself, but also the patients around him. Using these techniques also brought him the success he always wanted. He became an excellent doctor and changed the way the medical community treated its mentally ill patients.

In order to use self-improvement methods you have to sit down and take a good look at yourself. You need to understand, really understand that you are not a failure. Everyone has limitations, and being aware of that is strength, not a weakness.

The models and actors with perfect bodies that you see on television and movies are a result of strict exercise routines that often include starvation diets and hours upon hours at the gym. This is not what real life is all about. If you want to get in shape or improve your self, then sign up at a fitness center. Personal trainers are available to assist you with a routine that is right for you. Dont try to become a size one because you see it on TV. See the beauty within yourself even if you are a size ten, everyone else does.

No matter how you are how down you are feeling about yourself, if you find someone who is in the same situation, try and cheer them up. You will not believe how good you will feel about yourself when you help others.

When you make mistakes it is important that you do not feel like you are stupid or a failure. Everyone makes mistakes, some bigger than others. What is important is that you take the experience as a learning experience.

If you feel that there are several areas in your life that need improvement, it is important that you take them one at a time. You have to be realistic, if you try to change too much at once, you are bound to fail and throw yourself back into depression.

In order for self-improvement techniques to work, you will need to be strong. Self-confidence and self-esteem are very important factors when you are trying to build a positive image.

You need to set goals for yourself. Be realistic; dont set your goals so high that they are not attainable.

The old adage little things mean a lot holds true in everyday life. Letting someone at work know that they did a good job on a project, or a simple hi with a smile on your face can do a lot for the morale of your co-workers.

Take the time to appreciate all the things around you. Stop and smell the flowers once in awhile, you will be surprised at how the sweet fragrance cheers you up.

In order to be respected, you need to respect others. The world is full of people with different likes and dislikes, and different tastes. When you respect someone elses rights, then it is more likely that you will be respected in return.

Educational Aids

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Fear + Self Esteem = Your Success

Roger — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 19:23:57 +0000

By Ingrid Cliff

Have you ever wondered why some people seem more successful than others? Yes, there are lots of external techniques that can be taught to improve your outcomes ... lots of processes and strategies that once applied help to give a foundation for success.

But ...by themselves, these skills will only get you so far. Have you seen people who seem to be headed for stellar success only to shoot themselves in the foot? People who know every trick, every technique, every theory but still can't get ahead. There is something more at play. A little something I call my hidden success equation.

People will only ever rise as far as their fear lets them and the determinant of whether or not they are even on a particular ride at all is their level of self-esteem. The level of success you reach is the result of these two internal factors combining.

The universe does not create your success level, it merely reflects back to you what is already inside you. Everyone in life and business is presented with opportunities - whether or not you see them and how you respond to them is purely a function of your fear and self-esteem at the time.

Lets explore this a bit further. Your self-esteem is your personal belief of your worthiness and deservedness for good things in your life. It is your belief of whether you deserve the great things that happen to you. It is the value you place on yourself, your skills, your needs and wishes.

If you believe deep inside your core that you don't deserve good things, that somehow you are bad or less than other people, then your self-esteem is not as healthy as it could be.

If your self-esteem is not healthy, then you will often not see the opportunities presented to you. You will discount flashes of insight, great ideas and suggestions as "pie in the sky - I could never do that". You will procrastinate, delay and self- sabotage. You will wait for others to take action and then blame them if they act in a way that doesn't match how you would normally do it.

Intuition and self-esteem are linked. The more you discount your intuition because your self-esteem is low, the more you turn down the volume on your radar of opportunities, and the less opportunities you will see. You feel stuck - with no chance to succeed. You stay in the same old routine, wishing your life were better, but not stepping up to make it so.

I see this with businesses all the time. If the CEO or Manager has poor self-esteem then the business will struggle.

Conversely, if you have healthy self-esteem you have an internal compass that tells you that generally you are successful at things you try ... so your internal radar is tuned to more opportunities to find even better things to try. You will see more possibilities around you, more chances to succeed. Your success level will be that much greater than people around you as a result. Successful people all have healthy egos.

Where does fear come into the equation? The level to which you lack confidence is the level to which you will experience fear (paraphrasing Mark Douglas).

Fear is a highly debilitating emotion. When your body is in a state of fear, your senses close down except towards the trigger of the fear. You literally can't see past the fear-inducing trigger. You can't see other options or find other solutions.

Each opportunity in life carries its own risk - no opportunity comes risk free. If you are fearful of the negative result that may occur, then you will not be willing to fully accept the risk and take the opportunity when it presents itself. If you are afraid of being wrong, then you will do something that will end up making you wrong.

If you are afraid, even if you do see an opportunity in front of you, you will be too scared to take it - worrying that you may fail. You will go out of your way to talk yourself out of the opportunity - looking for all the evidence to support why you shouldn't do something. You will interpret every bit of data as telling you the reasons why the opportunity wouldn't have worked. You talk yourself out of success.

So what does success feel like? Have you ever been "in the zone"? Athletes talk about times when they just knew they couldn't fail and everything was happening smoothly.

Have you ever experienced a time when everything just fell into place ... you just responded instinctively to whatever came along, you were fully in the moment and fully present, doing what needed to be done and as a result you were successful? Think back to that time. Did you feel any lasting fear or were you just totally focussed on what you were doing?

When you are in the zone, you are totally aligned - your belief in your capability matches the opportunity in front of you. Fear may be present, but it is put to one side while you focus on what is in front of you.

Athletes don't just talk themselves into a state of alignment - they combine training, techniques and visualisation with repetition and testing of their limits. They take the data from each test and then build on the data to improve their performance. Each successful athlete takes each success and uses it towards building a belief they can succeed. The belief builds their self-esteem. They know they can fail, but the fear is of failure is less than the will to succeed. That is how success is built.

So ... how strong is your self-esteem? How afraid are you of failing? Shift your mental radar upwards and you will experience greater success both in your personal life and in business.

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Self Improvement – Challenge Your Comfort Zone and Build Confidence With 4 Exercises

Roger — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 19:48:48 +0000

By Luke Blaise

Building your confidence by challenging your comfort zone can be a lot of fun. For many people they get stuck in a rut in life and when that happens you can't build confidence because you never try anything new.

There are many simple steps you can take that will build your confidence and challenge your comfort zone. Here are 4 steps or exercises you can do this week to build your confidence.

1. Make eye contact. Many people today don't make eye contact as much as they should, and many people won't even look at you in the eye, much less your face. A great way to build confidence is by trying to hold eye contact with someone longer than you are used too. This may sound easy but you need to try it. You will find out it is hard to leave your comfort zone, but once you get into the simple habit of holding eye contact longer you will feel more confident.

2. Sitting up front in meetings. Most people sit in the back of every place they go. From classrooms to boardrooms, it seems like people are obsessed with sitting the back of the room. Next time you have to go to a meeting, sit in the front row, get used to sticking out of the crowd. At first when you do this exercise it will seem like everyone is staring at you, but this is good. It gets you out of your comfort zone and will build greater confidence.

3. Speak up more often. Many people at meetings don't say a word and only speak when spoken to. This exercise is another great way to get out of your comfort zone. Nothing makes you feel more vulnerable than putting your personal ideas on the table for discussion.

4. Smile big. This is one of my personal favourite confidence building techniques. Not only do you feel better when you smile, but people will start to wonder what is going on with you. Not only will you stand out by doing this, people will start to talk about why you are smiling all the time. No one needs to know the real reason, just you!

These four exercises are all simple to do but will build your confidence. Once you try these exercises to challenge your comfort zone you will feel your confidence growing automatically.

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4 Basic Ideas For Self Improvement

Roger — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 16:07:57 +0000

By Hope Wilbanks

Self improvement will not come if you just sit back and wait for it. You must set yourself into motion. To improve yourself, you have to act on the things you want improved.

Women are often among the majority of those who long for positive changes in themselves. Yet, as women, we often neglect ourselves most. If you are among those numbers, here are four basic self improvement ideas you can use:

=> Be kind to yourself. We take care of our families and work hard to provide their needs. At the end of the day, we're all given out. When was the last time you were kind to yourself? Do you attend to your own needs as well? Take some time each day to give back to yourself. If you're having a bad day, don't berate yourself for being in a bad mood. Practice positive self-talk and be kind to yourself.

=> Change one thing. You've heard it said, I'm sure, that you have to start with baby steps. This is so true. To reach greater change, you have to start changing one thing at a time. I was unhappy for several years because I had started college classes a few times, but never followed through and completed college. I finally got tired of that hanging over my head. While my husband was deployed in Iraq, I took advantage of that time alone. I completed classes, that I started years earlier, at my local technology center. If you desire self improvement, change one thing at a time.

=> Be proud of who you are. This is one thing women are horrible at. For some reason, we always feel like we're not good enough. Change that today! Be proud of who you are. Acknowledge your accomplishments and stop focusing on your failures.

=> No more negative self talk. This is key to self improvement. You have to stop the negative self talk. Stop telling yourself how incapable or incompetent you are. You have everything you need to start your self improvement journey today. You will learn as you start this journey. Cancel out the negative self talk with positive affirmations every day.

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Can Imaginary Exercise Make You Fit?

Roger — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:14:49 +0000

This article is by Jonathan Fields (Source: JonathanFields.com)

Breakthrough research in the field of exercise physiology has yielded stunning revelations about the way we get fit. The big surprise, though, is not what we “have” to do, but what we might “not” have to do.

Our thoughts can literally redefine the size, shape and strength of our bodies.

For decades, exercise scientists have worked to discover how we get fit. Getting stronger, we were told, was about creating enough resistance in a muscle to create millions of micro-tears that would, over days, weeks and months, rebuild themselves, bigger, leaner and stronger. So when we lift weights, sprint or engage in pretty much any kind of exercise, we set this whole process in motion.

The entire cycle is known as hypertrophy and it’s always been considered a pretty mechanical experience. Weight loss has been tossed off with similar assumptions. Regardless of he method used for short-term weight loss, sustained loss always comes back to calories in and calories out.

Nothing foofy, just hard work. Thus, the famed old coach’s chant, “no pain, no gain!” But, what if we could make a change to that slogan?

No pain…huge gains.

It seems there may be a giant kink in this system. And, it has to do with the brain’s role in whole process.

Mind Over Muscles

Building muscle, it turns out, is not nearly as mechanical as we thought. And, in fact, a recent study by Erin M. Shackell and Lionel G. Standing at Bishop’s University reveals you may be able to make nearly identical gains in strength and fitness without lifting a finger!

That study measured the strength gains in three different groups of people. The first group did nothing outside their usual routine. The second group was put through two weeks of highly focused strength training for one specific muscle, three times a week. The third group listened to audio CDs that guided them to imagine themselves going through the same workout as the exercising group, three times a week.

And, the results blew everyone away.

The control group, who didn’t do anything, saw no gains in strength. The exercise group, who trained three times a week, saw a 28% gain in strength. No big surprises there. But, the group who did not exercise, but rather thought about exercising experienced nearly the same gains in strength as the exercise group (24%). Yes, you read that right!

The group that visualized exercised got nearly the same benefit, in terms of strength-gains, as the group that actually worked-out.

All of which leaves us with two big questions:

* How in the word did this work? And,
* Does this mean I can really get totally buff without ever working out?

Question 1 – How can your brain make you buff?

Okay, the answer to the first question—how does this work—is…we don’t really know, with certainty. We do know, however, that muscle conditioning and, in fact, all aspects of fitness and performance, are not nearly as purely mechanical as we once thought.

Your mind plays a massive role in at least two distinct ways

Through it’s connection to the endocrine system (the body’s chemical plant), different thoughts and mental states release hormones that can dramatically accelerate or retard muscle growth. In fact, some people, in search of a way to speed the process, ingest or inject extra amounts of these or similar chemicals. We all know what these are—steroids and their various derivatives. Not the smartest choice.

Other chemicals work on different organs to either fire-up or slow-down your metabolism in the blink of an eye, causing your to either burn a ton of calories lightning-fast or nose-dive into a slow burn.

In fact, a Harvard study reported in February 2007 further bolstered the impact of your thoughts on calories burned.

In that study, the housekeeping staff in a major hotel were told that what they did on a daily basis qualified as the amount of exercise needed to be fit and healthy. They made no changes in behavior, just kept on doing their job. Same as always.

Four weeks later, those housekeepers had lost weight, lowered blood pressure, body-fat percentage, waist-hip ratio and BMI. A similar group of housekeepers who had not been led to believe their job qualified as exercise saw none of these changes.

Simply believing their jobs were exercise caused their bodies to change. Unreal!

But, there’s something beyond the link between thoughts and chemistry, when it comes to the specific quest to gain strength. Chemistry may help accelerate the growth of muscle, but, it turns out…

…strength may not be nearly as much about muscle size or hypertrophy as we thought.

In addition to its chemical system, your body has at least one major electrical system—the nervous system. The signal that makes a muscle contract begins as an electrical impulse in your brain. That impulse is transmitted through your body’s electrical circuitry or nerves to your muscle.

How efficiently that impulse is delivered and how receptive your muscle is to that impulse determines, in large part, how forcefully that muscle can contract. The more fully and the faster it contracts, the stronger we say it is. We call this process neuromuscular facilitation.

Now, here’s the rub. You can turbo-charge your body’s electrical impulse system by repeatedly “visualizing” a muscle contracting, without ever actually contracting it. Based on this knowledge, we’ve known, for years, that visualization is a great way to slow down the loss of strength during recovery from an injury.

But, the big news is that simply visualizing an exercise may provide a nearly equivalent strength-building benefit as actually working-out.

More studies will go along way toward confirming this. And, if it’s for real, wow, can you imagine the opportunities. Now, what about that second question…

Question 2 - Does this mean I really can get totally buff without ever working out?

The short answer is—probably not…yet! Exercise, gains in muscle size and weight loss are all extremely complex processes. There is a ton going on all at once, which is why almost every study done on exercise is causative, not correlative.

It’s much easier to say weight loss and strength gains are “correlated” with exercise, than to say they are “caused” by exercise. Because, it’s nearly impossible to isolate what elements of exercise or “thinking about” exercise are doing what.

So, for now, a really well conceived “visualized” workout may yield similar gains in strength. But, we are not yet able to say it is possible to think your way thin or think your muscles bigger. The key phrase in that sentence, though, was “for now.”

I am incredibly excited about the potential of highly-efficient, virtualized workouts in the near future.

Applications include everything from accelerating rehab to slowing disease-related muscle degeneration, and, yes, even delivering the ultimate, sweat-free, lazy-man/woman’s workout.

A final word of caution, though. Exercise, actual body-moving, sweat-drenching, joint-freeing breath and movement are not only mission-critical to keeping your joints, muscles and connective tissue healthy, but, when chosen with the right criteria, can actually be a source of a lifetime of fun. And…

…if fun and exercise don’t sound like they belong in the same sentence together, hold onto your hat!

This article is just the first in what will soon grow into an ongoing series on creating, choosing and enacting an approach to exercise that is so fun and effective, it’ll have you reworking your calendar to find ways to exercise more.

--Jonathan Fields

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10 Simple Ways to Massively Improve Your Memory Part 1

Roger — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:55:29 +0000

This article is from Mind Power News

Did you know that people compete every year to win the U.S. Memory Championship? To attain the rank of grand master of memory, you must be able to memorize 1,000 digits in under an hour, the exact order of 10 shuffled decks of playing cards in under an hour, and one shuffled deck in less than two minutes.

To this day, there are only 36 grand masters of memory in the world.

And while you may not be interested in memorizing digits and playing cards, I’m sure all of us would like to increase our mental brain power. Whether you want to quickly memorize the periodic table, learn a new language, recite the names of each president forwards and backwards, or cut down on your studying time, the following memory techniques will help you do it.

The brain wasn’t designed to remember abstract symbols like numbers and miscellaneous facts. However, if you can translate those symbols into vivid visual images and associations, even the dullest list of dates can become as memorable as your own telephone number. The key is to develop a system that allows for quick encoding and easy recall.

We’ll start with the basic techniques and then move on to the more advanced ones. Although the more advanced techniques do take a bit more practice, they also deliver bigger benefits, so don’t write them off too quickly. With practice, you can become a memory master.

1. Acronyms

One of the most common memory techniques is the use of acronyms. This technique uses an easily remembered word whose first letters are associated with the list of items that need to be remembered. Pilots use these extensively to run through essential checklists during flight time.

An example would be: ROY G. BIV: the colors of the visible spectrum Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet

Keep in mind that associations which are exaggerated, absurd, humorous, and involve all five senses are much easier to remember than normal ones. We remember emotionally charged events much better than boring ones.

2. Chunking

Chunking is one of the oldest memory techniques. Using this method, the items to be memorized are divided into small chunks or groups. Chunking is especially helpful for memorizing telephone numbers, ID numbers, etc.

For example, if you want to memorize the number 411645754, then split it up into small groups: 411, 645, 754. You can then memorize each group by rote. By dividing the larger number into smaller subsets, it will be much easier to commit the number to memory.

When using this technique, it is also helpful to make connections and associations among the different chunks and numbers.

For example, if you want to memorize a grocery list, you should group each of the items into related categories. So, one chunk or group might be composed of oranges, apples, and pears, while another chunk is made up of vegetables.

3. Acrostic

An acrostic is a memory technique that uses a made up sentence or poem with a first letter cue. The first letter of each word is a cue to an idea you need to remember.

One example is: Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally (PEMDAS).
This acrostic represents the sequence in solving or evaluating math equations. Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction

4. The Method of Loci

The Method of Loci is a memory technique that dates back to ancient Greek times when orators, philosophers, and others had to rely on memory for memorizing speeches and knowledge in general. This was essential seeing that the printed book wouldn’t come around until approximately two thousand years later.

Therefore, they invented the Method of Loci. This memory technique involves associating information you want to remember with specific locations, also known as loci.

These locations can be points along a journey or objects in a room. The ancient Greeks not only created rooms, but entire palaces and cities to remember lots of information.

According to Wikipedia, “In ancient advice, the loci were physical locations, usually in a familiar large public building, such as a market or a church.

To utilize the method, one walked through the building several times, viewing distinct places within it, in the same order each time. After a few repetitions of this, one should be able to remember and visualize each of the places in order reliably.

To memorize a speech, one breaks it up into pieces, each of which is symbolized by vivid imagined objects or symbols. In the mind’s eye, one then places each of these images into the loci.

They can then be recalled in order by imagining that one is walking through the building again, visiting each of the loci in order, and viewing each of the images that were placed in the loci, thereby recalling each piece of the speech in order.”

To create your own mental journey, you must first select the path you wish to use. Be sure to choose a location that has the same number of locations as the number of chunks in the information you wish to memorize.

Take a mental journey through the selected path. You should be able to recall the specific order of the locations without trouble.

Now it’s time to associate this new information with each location along your chosen path. If you want to memorize the presidents, then you might take a mental journey through your school. In the first room, you could have George Washington in an astronaut suit and cutting firewood. In the second room you could have John Adams break dancing in front of the classroom. And on and on until you have completed all 43 presidents.

Remember, emotion and exaggerated associations are the key to memory.

5. The Image-Name Technique

Here’s an excellent (but simple) memory technique for remembering names.

All you have to do is make up a relationship between the name and the physical characteristics of the person’s name you are trying to remember.

For example, if you were trying to remember a person by the name of Tom, you might associate their name with the person you went to prom with who was also named Tom. In this instance, you are making the connection between Tom and prom (rhyming) and between someone you previously knew from high school.

If you want to remember the name Sally, you might imagine them in a ballet. This association will help you remember their name because of the visual imagery and the connection between the “closely related” words that almost rhyme: Sally and ballet.

By making connections, you are instantly more likely to remember their name the next time you see them.

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Self Improvement – Build a Strong Foundation

Roger — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 20:26:21 +0000

By John Tebar

The purpose of self improvement is to help people to lay down the platform of a better life. This better life is built on strong fundamentals. It is like building a home; a strong foundation will guarantee that the house will stand for a long time.

Generally to build a strong foundation you must grasp the different principles that are involved with self improvement. Integrity being one of these principles, without integrity your self respect will always be called into question if not by others then by your own self. Knowing that you are ethical, fair and working without deceit, gives you the edge on the principle of integrity.

The next principle would be education. One does not have to have a full formal education, but must be in a program of self education. Education also being a core value, you should never stop learning. It just isn't learning your main profession either. It is learning about allied professions and other interest that you may have. All leaders are readers, they excel in self education. Formal education is also very useful in the area of anyone's career. The main theme is simply education, improving what you know and the application of what you have learned and will be learning.

People skill's, such as simple manners, is necessary since we interact with people all the time. In your own relationships, whether at home or at work, we need the skills to interact and communicate with each other in concise and coherent fashion. Good manners, smiling, a great handshake will always go far in any business or social situation. Manner of dress dependent of the event is also a key reflection of one's character.

Communication skills are one of the most important of them all. We communicate through our writing, talking on the phone and even our body language. Communication involves listening and not just hearing the other person. You must receive the communication, understand what is being said and at the same time, keep you answers relevant to the subject at hand. This is a key skill that needs to be worked on daily if possible. Vocabulary, diction and written communications must be understood by those that the communication is being directed towards.

In self improvement you are working on the skills that you have to master. Remember self improvement is not about the other guy it is about you. No matter what profession or career that you are in, one can always improve. We do not have the option of ignoring the future, it is here and it is now. There is a whole new language when we come to technology, understand that most of this new technology like the internet did not exist 25 years ago. You need to stay on top of this.

Studying the fundamentals of business and relationships are really important if one wants to have a great future. The fundamentals don't really change, but without them, your chances of success, is hampered. If you have children, you need to stay on top of what they are studying and learning, which can help you to help them with their studies and growth as responsible individuals.

Remaining ignorant of the future, current events regarding anything that interest you will be fatal, if you are not up to date on those subjects of concern. Self Improvement is a matter of choice and if you do not take advantage of a continuing and never ending study of those subjects that do affect you, ignorance will not do as an excuse. Though you must also look at your spiritual and physical self, ignoring your own growth intellectually will leave you behind while others are moving ahead.

All these things will help to build a strong foundation for you to achieve the goals and dreams that you have in mind. Communication, people skill's, manners and constant education whether formal or informal are vital to anyone's growth and success. Build a strong foundation, by holding true to the fundamentals of living.