 In times of stress, science shows focusing on breathing can really help. ..
By Moran Cerf Breathing is traditionally thought of as an automatic process driven by the brainstem—the part of the brain controlling such life-sustaining functions as heartbeat and sleeping patterns. But new and unique research, involving recordings made directly from within the brains of humans undergoing neurosurgery, shows that breathing can also change your brain. Simply put, changes in breathing—for example, breathing at different paces or paying careful attention to the breaths—were shown to engage different parts of the brain. Humans’ ability to control and regulate their brain is unique: e.g., controlling emotions, deciding to stay awake despite being tired, or suppressing thoughts. These abilities are not trivial, nor do ...  People are not just “self-actualizing” physically. Psychological well-being is just as popular a pursuit. By Michael Coren
Life coaches’ careers are taking off. The occupation, which hardly existed a few years ago, has now become indispensable to the careers of everyone from Oprah Winfrey and members of the (formerly wildly dysfunctional) Metallica, to average professionals trying to improve their lot. While the US Bureau of Labor Statistics does not collect data on life coaches just yet (it groups them with other types of trainers and counselors), the International Coach Federation estimates (pdf, p. 8) that there are now 17,500 coaches (outside of sports) working in North America alone as of 2015. Working with a mix of business and private clients, they earned an average income of $61,900—nearly twice the US median annual wage. Since the late 1980s, Google’s Ngram index shows the mention of life coaches growing exponentially. Google Ngram estimate of frequency of “life coach” in books scanned by Google Life coaches help their clients identify goals, remove barriers, and encourage regular progress for days or years. Most clients, according to the ICF (pdf), are managers who use coaches to help them in their career, but the number of clients using coaches in their personal life is growing as well.
Early in the The Path Made Clear, the media mogul describes the moment she discovered her purpose. It was August, 1978, and she was working as a news anchor and reporter on People Are Talking, a Baltimore talk show—but it didn't feel right. "I knew I was not my authentic self," she writes. "And my bosses certainly made no secret of their feelings. They told me I was the wrong color, the wrong size, and that I showed too much emotion."
 “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it” - Charles R. Swindoll Learning how to respond to a situation rather than just reacting to it brings huge rewards. Needless to say, it is one of those behaviour changes that is easier said than done. However it can be achieved.
Responding rather than reacting means you will have taken time to consider the situation and which response and consequent outcome best suits you. The difference between reacting and responding:
To react means you are not able to influence your emotions and you act full of emotion rather than from a place of clarity. What you gain by stopping knee-jerk reactions is a sense of strength, achievement, power to  When anger rises to the surface, they don't react -- they respond. by Marcel Schwantes Anger is one powerful human emotion. It is also a very normal human emotion that needs to be expressed in a healthy way. But there's a place and time for appropriate anger, and we all have to learn how to manage it before it escalates. That takes emotional intelligence -- the ability to exercise self-awareness to understand the situation from multiple angles and self-control to see things through other filters before pulling the anger-trigger. When anger comes knocking, and it will, we have to know how to deal with it appropriately. If mismanaged, it can take down company morale and sabotage your ability to lead and collaborate well. Here are six habits of people that manage theirs remarkably well. 1. They put boundaries on people who make them angry. Having healthy boundaries means you're assertive enough to confront and set limits on a particular  Like peer pressure, habits can make you do stupid things or spur you on to achievement. By Ilya Pozin An entire industry has sprung up around the pursuit of success, full of self-help books, motivational conferences, and decorative Etsy items with uplifting messages. But self-improvement doesn't require shelling out tons of cash for a patented and trademarked formula for success. Your best self is just a few slight adjustments away. I, for one, know I could add quality and productivity to my day just by eating breakfast. There's no big cost. There's no formula. It's just a bowl of cereal to kickstart my mind and body each day. Too often I rush out in the morning, living on repeat, never correcting my bad habits. Breaking (and Making) the Habit Loop Every repetitive action that we take in our daily lives, good or bad, is a habit we've built up over time. According to Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, this is due to a three-step pattern he calls the "habit loop." The decision-making part of the brain goes into a kind of sleep mode when the habit loop kicks in, which is why we continue even problematic behaviors.  A few small tweaks can completely change your year. FYI: this is a very long article.
by Benjamin P. Hardy, Author, husband, father According to the British philosopher, Alain de Botton, “Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.” How different is your life, right now, from where you were 12 months ago? If it’s quite similar, then you haven’t been learning very much. To learn, by nature, is to change and evolve. In order to change and evolve, you need to regularly create peak experiences — those moments which create deep awe, gratitude, and a shift in how you see yourself and the world. When was your last peak experience? What was the last time you flexed your courage muscles? When was the last time you tried something that might not work? If you’re ready to make wild progress during 2019, you need to make some tweaks. This isn’t anything to be upset, distraught, or frustrated about. Life is, inherently, a learning experience. Life is beautiful. You get to have fun with it. One thing that is really beautiful about moving forward intensely in your future is that, simultaneously, you change your memory about the past. The past, regardless of what it has been — great or disappointing — will change in meaning as you make new decisions in your future. Your future is flexible. Your past is also flexible. What you have is now. You get to decide what you’re going to do. You get to decide how you’re going to live. Look around… No one is stopping you. Want to make a shift? Here are 30 behaviors to get you started: 1. Wake Up Earlier “You’re more likely to act yourself into feeling, than feeling yourself into action.” —  by Suzie Doscher, Executive and Life Coach, Zurich, Switzerland In the Oxford Dictionary, the definition of a “control freak” is “a person who feels an obsessive need to exercise control over themselves and others and to take command of any situation.” The Merriam Webster dictionary says that a control freak is “a person whose behavior indicates a powerful need to control people or circumstances in everyday matters.” One way or another, control freaks are not always easy to be around. I understand this personality trait could stem from a chaotic childhood. Such experiences can make it hard for people to trust others or relinquish control to others. The fear of falling apart pushes them to control what they can. As their emotions are all over the place, they feel loss of control. For this reason, control freaks will micromanage whatever they can with the belief that this makes them strong. People who feel out of control tend to become controllers. I imagine each and every one of us is a control freak, or takes on the behavior of such, at some point or another. The fear of failure is what makes it so important to control everything when you do not trust anybody else to do a good job. One difficult aspect of being around a control freak is accepting that he or she does not understand how their behavior and choice of words affect the people around them. Another difficult aspect is not to take it personally. This behavior comes from deep inside and the person is actually quite unaware of the need to be controlling. The attempts to control a situation or environment are intended to offer the controller a feeling of safety. This is a sign of low self-esteem. One of the areas they often manipulate is conversation. A control freak is most comfortable if he or she decides what is talked about, for how long, and how deep or detailed a topic can be. This manipulation is achieved by constant interruption, finishing the sentence for the person, not listening with attention, doing distracting things like getting up and walking around, or even walking out of the room saying, “I am still listening.” A control freak does not consider that he or she is being controlling, but is convinced his or her way is the right way. He or she will have an opinion about almost everything and will disagree with most suggestions that he or she does not instigate. Controllers also control themselves; you might observe obsessive habits in them – whether in a private relationship or at work. Here are helpful tips to consider when dealing with a micro-manager:
A control freak has the ability to bring you down a couple of notches and take the wind out of your sails. They can make people feel insecure. You may want to distance yourself if it is possible. If not,because the person is a member of your family or work colleague or boss, then consider what choices you do have based on the points raised above. Raising your awareness to the fact that the person is micro-managing frequently already helps to make the situation easier to handle. The benefits of establishing a manner of communication where you do not allow the control freak to rob you of your energy or drown you with negativity is that you become stronger, more assertive, and empowered. In summary, here are helpful steps for handling the moment:
Being in the company of control freaks can feel like being with Energy Vampires. Their ability to endlessly bring the attention backonto themselves is draining and exhausting. Knowing what to expect can help you choose how to interact and take care of yourself at the same time.
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