Maya’s Own

I have joined various sites when I acquired my laptop a year ago, but did nothing further. Fear stopped me, I had to overcome this feeling of being inadequate and just get on with it. This can be a little daunting when you read about those internet millionaires, you know the ones, they claim to make X amount in 3 days and they can retire in a week! They are not necessarily the best ones to follow and learn from, they probably make money, but it will be your money if you get sucked in.

I blame it all on Tim Ferriss and hisThe 4-Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, there are many others but somehow the idea of working for one morning a week and enjoying the rest of my time chilling out really appealed to me.
My start was so very timid, I set up an account with Blogger but then again did not go further, Squidoo followed. It took six month of serious nail biting until I set up my first lens on Squidoo. When you want to build your first lens there are so many ideas floating around, what are my interests? Which of those interests could make a lens that someone else wants to read?
It took a while but my very first lens is “Ten steps to develop your psychic intuition”,.I did not know anything about HTML, and I still don’t.
Since then I discovered Blogger and I haven’t looked back, Blogger is so much more user friendly even I could use it without any trouble. With Squidoo you need to add your own HTML to change fonts, add colored backgrounds, change picture size etc. Blogger does it all for you and the beauty is you can learn to tweak the templates and personalize them as you wish all from the user friendly dashboard.
If you are starting out as a blogger and you wish to monetize your blogs, try one of the many free courses available, the web is a giant community and there are a lot of people wanting to help out the newbies, also join one of the many forums and get immediate feedback on just about any difficulty you may encounter.

All in all, I am grateful to all those internet giants who are willing to help people like me for free. I am in the process of doing the 30 Day Challenge with Ed Dale again, I find that there is so much to take in that it is very easy to give it all up.

The trick is not to get discouraged, if Tim Ferriss can do it so can I.

Recently questions arose in a discussion about lies in business; more specifically when is it ok to lie in order to get sales, not big lies, just itty bitty ones. Is it OK to lie to keep the peace, or to avoid an argument?
A while back I went with someone to purchase a used car, the salesman assured us that this particular brand and model was such a good car even his wife drove one! The following day a friend was also told the same story about a different car, maybe the salesman had more than one wife!
Knowing this I hesitated and thought to myself that if he is so desperate to sell a car maybe his cars are not very reliable.
Look, it was a very small lie really, we made good fun of it but I did not buy a car from him.
How small is a small lie and how do you differentiate it from a big lie?

Someone suggested that small lies don’t hurt anyone but big ones do, this sounds fair, but say that you have a lot of small lies and those lies become huge:
“no I did not have sexual relations with that woman” comes to mind.

I would like to say I never lied, or never will lie again but I can’t, I may lie to save myself from some sticky situation or because the truth could be too hurtful, let the one who never ever lied cast the first stone.

What I can make sure of is that I will endeavor to be as honest as possible without compromising my safety, “Do I look good in this?” one question I would rather answer with a lie if I have to.
We all tell lies, small itty bitty ones on a daily basis, if someone asks you:
“How are you today” do you answer
” I feel awful, my head hurts and I just don’t really want to talk to you, also I think my boss wants to fire me…” no, you wouldn’t dump like this on anyone, you just smile and say:
“I am very well, thank you”.
In this case are you an awful liar or just being sociable?

We seem to accept that it is OK for some people to lie to us, politicians, people in the media and advertising, after all you can’t really believe that you will end up looking like Paris Hilton if you buy her perfume, or that you will be dating that super model what’s her name if you use a certain deodorant. We are sold lies and we know they are lies, but we like to pretend otherwise.

I remember laughing while watching Star Trek when Captain Kirk would speak into what looked like a wrist watch and say the famous words:” Beam me up Scotty”
Things have improved from the early mobile phones in the nineties when they were the size of a brick and weighed as much. Now I see people of all ages walking down the road seemingly talking to themselves, one arm bend holding their ever smaller cell phone to their ear.

If people want to talk and walk I have no issue, I get a little steamed up if in the middle of a conversation with someone their phone rings and they proceed to talk at length. I never hang around and just walk off, it would be common courtesy when in a conversation to ignore the phone or if it is important to make it brief, after all it usually is not urgent. Most people would be happy to ring back or leave a message. Is there any etiquette specific to mobile phones? What are good manners when it comes to using a mobile to talk or text?
Maybe we just have lost all notions of courtesy being so wrapped up in being electronically connected. Recently a cafe owner complained of the number of people walking in, holding up the queue whilst talking on the phone, what is it with people, can’t get coffee without telling someone about it? Maybe they just want to look important and busy: “Look at me, look at me, I talk on the phone, I am a shmuck, but I am important!”

Please turn off your phone while in a theater, a restaurant or at the movies!

Leaving a mobile on to ring while at a performance or in a restaurant is the height of bad manners, you not only will spoil it for your companion [s] but also for everyone else, it is definitely uncool. The right thing to do is to show good manners and switch off the phone or alternatively put it on vibrate, if you must answer it, excuse yourself and step outside.

Do not talk on the phone while driving

Unless you have blue tooth or a hands free device, driving while talking on a mobile phone is totally stupid, you have one hand holding the phone and you are driving at speed, you will be distracted. This is illegal in most countries, and so it should be.
This of course goes also for texting while driving
I recently was on the city bus when i could not help but overhear a phone conversation, a young woman was telling her friend about her antics of the night before, it was very entertaining, it should have been Xrated but all the bus passengers got a good earful and a good chuckle. What shocked me the most is that she was totally oblivious to the effect her phone conversation was having, when she got off the bus many people commented on her conversationin a very unflattering way. Nobody told her to keep her voice down, this would not do and I suppose most thought that maybe she wanted us all to hear it!
The young woman may have thought she was so cool.
We have become so dependent on our mobile phones, I know a few people who just panic when they misplace their phone, all the phone numbers and addresses are in there as well as a lot of other information.
I have slowly been weaning myself off, no mobile on the week end and I switch it on silent most of the time unless I expect a call.
Phones are becoming smaller and have so many more applications, there is always the push to get the latest and most expensive device, why?
I traveled in Vietnam and mobile phones were everywhere there too, I even saw an older lady in the traditional peasant dress carrying a long bamboo pole and her two baskets of vegetables, when out of nowhere i heard a Xmas jingle [Rudolf the reindeer], she pulled her mobile out from under her vegetables and started talking.

It is a few month now since I got my got my own website, I am a little ashamed to admit to having been a little slow at doing anything with it. Here I was, my head full of retiring and just living off the proceeds that my soon to be famous blog would bring me. Ha!!

Not so easy, I has taken me months to have the courage to post anything more than other peoples quotes [they are famous, so what] and I am at the point of getting royally pissed off with all those get rich quick schemes found on the internet. Everywhere I look someone has made millions in a week and is living the high life on some exotic island, drives a huge car and is raking in the big buckaroos. How do they do it?
They get people like me to buy their programs, you know the ones I mean: join and the money will just fall into your lap, the only lap the money falls into is theirs!
Why pay someone hundreds of dollars every month when all the information you need is available for free?
There are a few internet coaching programs out there that give good value, but it is a little bit of hit and miss finding the right one.
If like me your internet knowledge could fit on the head of a pin read on. I am more than happy to share how I go about it, just don’t follow me too closely as I don’t know where I am going either.
There are literally thousands of internet coaching programs out there, I would love to be able to say this one is good, this one is a stinker but alas, my funds will not stretch to check them all out. Some promise fortunes to be made in a day, or a week, or a month, most of them will guarantee you a fortune and early retirement, be wary, approach it all from the point of view that if the offer sounds too good to be true it generally is.
Start of your internet marketing [IM] journey by exploring the various free options found on the net, one I would recommend is the 30 Day Challenge , it is run by Ed Dale, a very engaging Aussie. The whole 30 days program is totally free and you get a chance to learn all you need to know to become a marketing guru, the program has just stated again and this is my second go, the first time around I slacked off and by week 2 I thought I knew it all. My daughter continued on and as a result she is doing quite well and has been making some money through her websites.
By joining the 30 Day Challenge you get access to all the videos and transcripts of the course as well as access to the forum.
All for free, and the beauty is you can opt out whenever you want, just as I did when I did it the first time around. It has cost me nothing but I have learned a lot about the internet marketing business.
P.S: the 30 day challenge can now be accessed via Facebook, I can’t wait to check it out.

What To Expect In The Thirty Day Challenge

“Money isn’t the most important thing in Life, but it is reasonably close to oxygen on the “gotta have scale”

Zig Ziglar

It is so easy to blame fate or God or the Universe for something not quite going the way we would wish it to go, but how can you tell that this life and this moment is not the very best for you?
A while back I was on my way to meet friends for the week end and I had to drive quite a distance when my car just stopped: all the electrics went and I had to call the NRMA [ roadside assistance here in OZ]. My poor car was put on a tow truck and taken back to town, my week end was canceled. After moping around for a minute or two I decided that there was absolutely nothing I could do, no car and no public transport, so I stayed home with some videos and a tub of ice cream, things were looking pretty good already.
I was well ensconced in my sofa when my door bell rang, a very old friend I had not seen in years tracked me down,we had not seen each other in a couple of years and lost touch as we both moved house. Had I been away I would not have seen him again as he was only in town for a day. My week end in Byron Bay was postponed, but I did catch up with a dear friend. This could not have happened if I had been away.

I came across this following story a few years ago and I wanted to use it to illustrate a very simple Life principle: you make your own luck.

Good luck, bad luck

There is a Chinese story of a farmer who used an old horse to till his fields. One day, the horse escaped into the hills and when the farmer’s neighbours sympathized with the old man over his bad luck, the farmer replied, “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?” A week later, the horse returned with a herd of horses from the hills and this time the neighbours congratulated the farmer on his good luck. His reply was, “Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?”
Then, when the farmer’s son was attempting to tame one of the wild horses, he fell off its back and broke his leg. Everyone thought this very bad luck. Not the farmer, whose only reaction was, “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?”
Some weeks later, the army marched into the village and conscripted every able-bodied youth they found there. When they saw the farmer’s son with his broken leg, they let him off. Now was that good luck or bad luck?
Who knows?
Everything that seems on the surface to be an evil may be a good in disguise. And everything that seems good on the surface may really be an evil. So we are wise when we leave it to God to decide what is good fortune and what misfortune, and thank him that all things turn out for good with those who love him.
Author Unknown
Create your own luckClick Here!

Here are some tips and ideas I have used to lose weight, most of those tips are common sense but it pays to repeat them. A good way to use this list  is to  print it and keep it as a reminder, it is easy to feel you already know all of that but it is quite a different thing to implement it. Print it on a nice color paper and put it where you see it first thing in the morning, I would suggest the bathroom mirror, read through it at least twice a day and  use those  tips.

• Move around more, take the stairs when ever possible.
• Try to walk 10.000 steps daily, this may be hard but you can build up to it.
• Cut out all soft drinks and flavored milk drinks.
• Cut out all fast foods
• Cut all fried foods
• Keep a food diary, this way you can see what exactly you eat each and every day.
• Exercise for 20 minutes each day, this could be a brisk walk or dancing, swimming, whatever gets your heart rate up.
• Change to wholemeal and wholegrain bread and pasta.
• Cut out all sugar, replace with stevia  or honey if you must have sweetener. remember that honey is full of cals but it is better for you than sugar.
• Eat a healthy breakfast; fruit with muesli or oatmeal, a good breakfast will stop those mid morning snack sessions.
• Drink more water, 2 lts a day aqt least.
• Replace one of your main meals with  homemade soup.
• Drink green tea, it is full of anti oxidants and helps to curb the appetite.
• Select one day a week when you can indulge in cake or ice cream, in moderation of course and try to stick to reasonable portions.
• Cut back the amount you eat, just a little bit less food could amount to a few hundred calories and get you used to eating less in one session.
• Eat apples, they are full of vitamins and fibre, try to eat an apple half an hour before a meal, this will make you less hungry and make you feel full faster.
• Don’t do it alone, start a group and build a network of people wanting to lose weight.
• Read the labels, avoid trans fats and modified sugars like high fructose syrup, in fact stay away from anything modified.
• Find out what the healthy alternatives are to your favorite foods, if you like burgers make your own without all the fats using a plain bun and adding a lot of salad.
• Avoid bottled sauces which contain too much salt and/or sugar, try the sugar and salt reduced variety.
• Don’t weigh yourself too often, I found it a little discouraging to weigh myself daily, once or twice a week should give you a good idea on how you are progressing.
• Be easy on yourself, eat and exercise in moderation, avoid the burnout many go through if exercising too much on a calories restricted diet.
• Set yourself a realistic goal, you may not get your 21 year old body back but you can be a lot healthier and fitter in a slimmed down version of yourself now.
• Use positive affirmations.
• Keep a weight loss journal.
• Have a good night sleep, if you are well rested you may have less tendency to reach for the sugar snacks and coffees during the day.
• Snack on carrot and celery sticks or apples, keep them handy to stave off hunger or the desire for a sugar hit.
• Eat more fiber, add some bran or psyllium husk to your morning oatmeal.
• Keep alcoholic drinks to a minimum, better still cut them out if you can, a glass of wine can become a treat.

Getting on the weight loss journey should not be a chore but something you want to achieve for overall health and well being. Forget about all the quick fix diets and magic pills, take a more holistic  view and change your life, because no matter how old you are if you are overweight and unfit you are heading towards some serious health issues.

Start today , ” A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step“

Be grateful for the kindly friends that walk along your way;
Be grateful for the skies of blue that smile from day to day;
Be grateful for the health you own, the work you find to do,
For round about you there are men less fortunate than you.

Be grateful for the growing trees, the roses soon to bloom,
The tenderness of kindly hearts that shared your days of gloom;
Be grateful for the morning dew, the grass beneath your feet,
The soft caresses of your babes and all their laughter sweet.

Acquire the grateful habit, learn to see how blest you are,
How much there is to gladden life, how little life to mar!
And what if rain shall fall today and you with grief are sad;
Be grateful that you can recall the joys that you have had.

~ Edgar Guest

Affirmations are the perfect tool to reprogram your subconscious negative thought patterns and bring about a desired change toward a more positive outcome.
This can work in many areas of your life:
• Relationships
• Health
• Ageing
• Weight loss
A very common mistake in using affirmations is to give up to soon, after all think about it: you had those negative thought patterns for probably most of your life, they are deeply engrained and dare I say, they feel comfortable!

Take the issue of weight for example: at some stage in your life you started to believe that you were unloved and maybe unlovable, it felt safe to eat and the extra weight just kept things rolling along nicely. This is not necessarily a conscious thought, all you know is that for some reason you crave food in times of stress, in particular the rich calories laden meals. Very soon eating becomes an emotional outlet.
Once you start on affirmations you will encounter some resistance to some affirmations more than others, I suggest you persist with those resistant ones as they may be the most important and effective ones. Often the strongest objections are the ones that hit on the root cause of negative thoughts.

Try with 2 or 3 key affirmations that will appeal to you or seem to have the biggest relevance and start by writing them down on a piece of card, make several of them and keep one with you at all times and place the others in prominent positions around the house, in your bedroom, bathroom and in your car.
Make the affirmations you chose as personal and relevant to you as you possibly can, this way they become YOURS and will have a lot more power.

For affirmations to work you will need:
• Passion = really wanting that result
• Strong emotion= feel the excitement and thrill at bringing this result into your life
• Conviction= you know already that positive results are imminent
• Faith= you totally trust the process

Affirmations are always in the present tense, your mind is very accommodating, a statement always in the future tense will stay that way: in the future.

1. Make your affirmations positive:
“I don’t want to be fat” is negative, your mind will pick up on “fat” and “want” and duly oblige. A better affirmation would be: “I am slim and trim” or “every day and in every way I am getting healthier and trim”, note that by adding “healthier” I make sure that I don’t get slim by getting some nasty disease! Cover your bases, you want to be healthy and fit, so add this to your affirmation. Keep your affirmation positive and in the present and your mind will start to make the necessary changes to accommodate to the truth of this statement.

2. You know already that you have the power to create your own reality; affirmations are the road signs to this new reality.
3. Be as clear and precise as you possibly can and keep a clear focus by affirming that your desired result is in the present.
4. Make sure that you mean it when you say your affirmations, you could make up a song or a rhyming poem, include your name to make it even more powerful. Write your affirmations on your computer desktop and/or draw a picture and keep it where you will see it daily. You could also record them and play your daily favorites on your iPod.
5. Visualize the result and see yourself having achieved your desired outcome.
6. Keep it light, once an affirmation starts to feel stale, move on to a new one.

Make procrastination work for you

If it weren’t for the last minute, I wouldn’t get anything done.

~Author Unknown

Are you a master at procrastination and wouldn’t you like to see some recognition?

After all procrastination isn’t so bad, never mind all the doers out there that will try to get you off your butt with all kinds of enticements about getting the job done, doing today what you could very well be doing tomorrow or the day after or never. I mean if you wait long enough several things could happen:

- The job won’t need doing anymore

- Someone else [probably a uber efficient doer] will do it for you

- Some disaster hits and then who will care anyway

- Better still you could win the lottery [if you did buy that ticket].

Procrastinators are smart, why would you do today what really you may never have to do at all?

Procrastinators are very chilled out people, and are easy to recognize by their vocabulary, they may use phrases like:

- Yeah, whatever…

- Will be done tomorrow…next week…

- Hey, relax, there is no rush

- Take a chill pill

- Didn’t I do it last week?

- I’ll get on to it right away [well sometime soonish]

- It will be done by Friday [and I am Robin Crusoe]

- I’ll have a rest and then I’ll get onto it

- What Friday already, time flies

- This job is too hard

- I have an allergy

- Men/women were not put on this earth to work

- Adam and Eve had free apples

You see really procrastinators are easy going, relaxed and some take the long view on life:

- Why do today what you could put off indefinitely? After all whatever isn’t now is in the future, right? That means that if I don’t do it this instant it doesn’t mean I won’t do it later.

Procrastinators live really in the now:

- Right now I sit here staring into infinite space

- I am contemplating

- I breathe therefore I am

- Is this pencil really made from a tree?

There’s nothing to match curling up with a good book when there’s a repair job to be done around the house. ~Joe Ryan

There is a certain frisson in putting off jobs and urgent task, isn’t there feeling of power to know that you could do something right now but you choose not to? You can observe everyone getting very agitated because you are so masterful at being a great procrastinator. You see procrastination takes immense skill at not doing something, sure we all know you really think about it a lot, you mull it over: will i, wont i, should I and then you perform an absolute miracle, you will put it out of your mind altogether, that is until someone reminds you that the letter you meant to write three years ago to your uncle in Italy wont be needed anymore and he left his mansion to the cat society.

You know that procrastination works for you, most of the time. When it stops to work for you it may be that you are getting too old for it, you may then just have to get on with it and try to join the doers.

I strongly suggest that you reconsider, old age is the perfect excuse! The Universe has finally granted you your wish: you are now too feeble to do anything!

Procrastination is something best put off until tomorrow. ~Gerald Vaughan

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. ~Mark Twain