To Busy To Take A Walk In Nature? Try This 1-Minute Tool.

How are you feeling right now? On a scale of one to five stars, how would you rate how you feel right now? If you rated yourself at three stars or less, you are not alone. According to a report by the Conference Board, 49% the US workforce is unhappy. What makes them the most unhappy about their work? According the the report, the three at the top of the employees list are: the company’s promotion policy, the bonus plan, and the performance review process. Add to that a constant workload that forces many employees to cut back on vacation time, and the lack of on-demand education/job training programs that helps the workforce keep pace with a rapidly changing workplace. So what will companies have to do to improve the worklife of their employees especially millennials? Smart, resilitant companies that are able to pivot the fastest will begin to assemble a suite of accelerated learning tools that offer both on-demad actionable advice, and a moment of clarity like a walk in Nature so the user can take a moment to decide on the next steps to take. Here’s What Happens When You Walk in Nature Do you feel more relaxed, upbeat and happy? Yes. Here’s why. When walking on a trail in Nature, your left brain, logical brain is busy concentrating on the trail to keep you upright. It is focused on challenges or obsticles that lie just ahead: a stick on the path that might cause you to trip and fall; a pothole. Your right brain is also fully occupied. It is busy taking in all of the surroundings:...

FINE DINING ON $5-A-DAY – For Life, Health and Happiness

FINE DINING ON $5-A-DAY  23 Ingredients to eat and repeat, twice daily, for Life, Health and Longevity. Dr Longevity.org: a HEALTHY LIFESTYLE AND LONGEVITY REPORT – 1/14/19 Mother Nature gave us so many wonderful ingredients to enjoy, why limit yourself to just 23? Here’s why: When you eat and repeat this same meal twice a day, it will both simplify your life and save you money, while lifting you to a higher level of health, fitness, and happiness. FINE DINING on $5-A-Day offers a shopping list of 23 ingredients that combine to create a 5-Star dining experience. First, it looks like a meal you might be served at the best restaurants in town. Second, it’s low cost, with off-the-shelf produce and local products that give a boost to the local economy. Third, every bite is delicious. It offers a burst of pleasure that turns your dining experience into pure joy. I’m saying this from personal experience. As a person who has spent a lifetime dining out 80% of the time, I’ve now switched to dining at home, enjoying the same meal twice a day for the last 50-days. Over the years, our kitchen as been the test kitchen for Dr Joel, who has been dining alone, most of the time, because the dishes he prepared were too spartan for me. Finally, after 50 years of experimentation, he has finally come up with a recipe that I love and enjoy every day, twice daily. For me, these 23 ingredients have become the GOLD standard for a good meal. It is the meal that I compare with all other meals, and...

OWN Your POWER: How Happiness and Truth Are Linked

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the Greek philosopher Aristotle believed. He went so far as to call happiness “the whole aim and end of human existence.” But what if you are so unhappy that you don’t have time to focus on being happy? One fix for this problem is called: TRUTH. Truth cuts a path through a forest of distractions. It is the sum total of our words and actions that define us. It’s the bundle of habits that define our character. Truth, when expressed as kindness, compassion and respect for others, never wanders. It guides our actions, like a lighthouse in a darkened sea. Situational rhetoric is different. When your happiness depends on situational rhetoric, it means that your words must match the different types of people you talk to, or groups you join. With situational rhetoric you must learn to talk differently and act differently each time you talk, depending on the person or group you are with. This takes practice. Remembering what you said, when, and to whom, wastes your time and wears down your happiness. Telling the truth takes practice. When it becomes a habit, it will save more than your time, it could save your life. Mark Twain got it right when he said: “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember...

What Is Your Biggest Stress This Holiday Season: Finances, Food, or Relationships?

Approaching the holiday season, try to imagine it as an obstacle course — an annual game of life — that offers both challenges and rewards that can bring you both joy, happiness and gratitude or inner anxiety, stress and depression. Your challenge, if you accept it, is to study your calendar of holiday events ahead of time and then train for them, like training for a marathon. Here are three challenges you may face this holiday season, and here’s how to plan for them. A tight budget. A bounty of holiday foods. Relationship challenges. A tight budget. To avoid the endless shopping that comes at this time of year, think instead of the hand-crafted gifts that you can make, a favorite book or music you can give, or up-cycle an item that you never use that you know they would enjoy. A bounty of holiday foods. Anticipate the events you will attend and the traditional holiday foods that will tempt you to overeat or over indulge, along with the offer of too many sweets or alcohol. Then use this “healthy habits” strategy to help you overcome the food challenge: (1) Don’t drink with the meal. A sip of water or wine to help with swallowing food is fine. Just saying “No” to beverages or soup at the start of a meal can help prevent digestive turbulence after the meal is over. Instead, (2) Eat protein first. Start by turning your plate so that the protein in your meal faces you and is eaten first. Then (3) Go for the most fiber rich foods next along with healthy fats such as butter, avocado, high...

China’s Social Credits Are Disrupting the $834 Billion (U.S.) Dollar Airline Industry

Countdown 11.25.18: Trump will face a new G-20 trade challenge with China this week. In an effort to reshape public behavior, China is rolling out a new top-down “Carrot and Stick” approach to the public education of its 1.4 billion citizens. China’s new “social credit system” – already affecting millions of Chinese – is a way for the government to reward or punish people or organizations based on their “trustworthiness.” According to news reports: “If you’re the kind of person who volunteers or donates blood, you’ll be awarded credit points. If you’re getting speeding tickets, charging “under-the-table” fees, posting “fake news” online, smoking in non-smoking zones, or buying too many video games, you’ll be punished.” Will China’s public education program extend to shape individual energy use, the extraction of natural resources such as coal, and the country’s growing air pollution problem? The Chinese government’s analysis of its citizens also includes how they act on buses, how they drive, and how the customers of local businesses rate them. Alexia Parks 10TRAITS offers 1-Minute conflict resolution tools, research, and trait-based training programs for improved decision-making and organizational success. This blog is Day 39 of a series called Countdown: A 50-Day Personal Leadership...

Free Your Mind of Negativity With THIS Simple Action

Countdown: Day 40 of your personal leadership challenge.  Did you know that the average brain processes from 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts a day. Of these daily thoughts, 80% are negative; and 95% of all thoughts are repetitive, that is, they are the same thoughts we thought yesterday. Negative thoughts and repetitive thoughts that don’t lead to positive actions can lead to stress, anxiety and depression. Long term stress can break down the body’s immune system. The opposite is also true. When you learn to consciously free your mind of negative thinking and actively pursue ideas that challenge you to think and act more creatively, you are actually strengthening your immune system. Positive thinking uplifts your life and mind. For example: If you find your impatience or anger rising because you suddenly find yourself in a conversation with someone who doesn’t seem to value your time, use this as an opportunity to put the conversation on hold with a simple request: “Can we put this conversation on hold for (a few hours) or (another time) because I need to (be somewhere else) or (attend to another matter). When you learn to consciously set boundaries around your time – at the start of a conversation for example -you are saying to yourself and to them “I value both your time, and mine.” It can be as simple as saying: “I’m happy to talk for a few minutes, and then I’ve got to get back to a project I’m working on….” When you learn to place a HIGH value on your time and mind, others will too. Alexia Parks 10TRAITS offers 1-Minute conflict...