Back Be Better

There’s no question: if you are a smoker, it is hard to quit. But recent research shows that using nicotine replacement therapy can help you succeed.

In fact, even if you’re only trying to cut back on smoking, using nicotine replacement therapy can help you quit.

Until recently, medical advice for stopping smoking was simple: just stop. While that advice is easy to give, it is far from easy to follow.

Nicotine is an addictive substance, and stopping any addiction is difficult, especially when the addiction has a variety of components, including physical, mental, emotional, and social. [nicotine addiction]

Medical professionals were reluctant, however, to encourage people to cut back on cigarettes gradually, fearing that encouraging a reduction wouldn’t actually get people to quit.

New research is showing that that isn’t the case. In fact, even smokers who don’t think they are ready to quit often find themselves quitting when they use nicotine replacement therapy to help themselves cut back gradually, according to the new study.

In a recent study twice as many people were able to go for 6 months without smoking when they used nicotine replacement. Studies also show that people who can make it 6 months without smoking seldom take up smoking again.

Chances are you didn’t become a smoker with the very first cigarette you smoked. You tried several cigarettes over a period of time and then you become hooked.

Stopping smoking is the same way. On average it takes between 6 and 11 attempts at quitting before you are successful. Now you have a new tool in your arsenal, one that has been proven to be successful.

According to a new study, people who get married and stay happy with their married life enjoy better health than those who are constantly single.

Many researchers have long thoughts that happy married life is good for health.

However, it has been less clear about how you will fare if you lose your spouse to either death or divorce.

Researchers found that middle-aged and older Americans who were currently married tended to give higher ratings to their health than their never-married counterparts.

They also reported fewer depression symptoms and limits on their mobility.  Alternatively, divorced or widowed individuals fared worse than the never married on certain health measures, including the number of chronic health conditions reported.

Source: Reuters

Unless your talent has absolutely no marketability, stick with what you are the best at.

Sure, it is a good idea to build some fall-back skills. But the secret to job security and success is to master something.

Given the troubling economic times, many of us might feel that our skills aren’t in demand. Fads might come and go, but as long as your skills are not obsolete, you will always be able to find clients willing to pay well for your skills. Just be sure to deliver.

The key is knowing yourself

You must take the time to get to know yourself. This might seem nearly impossible when there is work to do and bills to pay, but you will never truly know what path you should take in the first place until you know who you are.

You might be ill-suited for the career path that you are currently on and there might be a far better for your career that you are simply missing. Do not let your talents slip out of your grasp.

Discover your strengths and then figure out how to utilize them in a way that will bring you success.

Discover your talents

Pay attention to what you are interested in. The things you are interested in might be the things that you will have a great success in. Also, if you are interested in something, you will have an easier time staying motivated.

Explore life and experiment with as many things as possible early on in your life. Many times, you never know what you will truly enjoy until you try it. Also, pay close attention to what others say about you.

If you notice that many people comment on your communication skills, try to determine which careers need workers with good communication skills (there are a lot).

Train

Once you have discovered what you might be good at, you must go through what is called “the dip.” The dip is the long period of time when you must train your skill to near-perfection. This arduous journey is time-consuming and you might find it difficult to make money during this period.

This is the point where many people give up on the skill that they are practicing. The tricky part is that many people are actually right for giving up.

There are times when you will simply never master a particular skill. The key is to know when you are actually making progress and when you are simply repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

Realize when it’s easy

Eventually at some point, you will begin to realize that one particular skill is easy. This is a fantastic milestone. Now it is time to take your skill to the market.

Be prepared for some self-promotion. Also, remember that this skill comes easily to you. Keeping this in mind will help you fight off procrastination and utilize your skill to the best of its ability.

If you want to be healthy, you probably eat nutritious foods and exercise regularly.

You do things to keep your mind engaged and active. But do you exercise your spirit?

Studies have suggested that people who have a strong spiritual foundation tend to live longer and have a better quality of life than people who have no spiritual or religious beliefs.

It doesn’t matter whether these beliefs are Catholicism, Wicca, Judaism or Islam, or even if they are a part of an organized religion; what matters is that you have spiritual beliefs that are meaningful to you personally.

When you have a belief in something larger than yourself, you can more easily handle day to day stress because you are more likely to believe that life has meaning, and that you are not alone in your struggle.

Having a religious faith also allows you to become part of a social network of other nurturing and supportive people. You become part of a community, and develop important social ties which can be difficult to form otherwise.

You may even find that you have the opportunity to become involved in volunteer work.

Having spiritual beliefs can not only keep you healthy, but it can make your life happier and more rewarding as well.

We might find it difficult to accept, but hard work is not always the source of success.

For some people, there is a temptation to clock in and work our mind and body to the point of exhaustion.

This seems much easier to do than participating in a complex world where we are expected to market ourselves and network effectively in order to get ahead.

But recently, experts such as behavioral scientists George W. Dudley and Shannon L. Goodson have found that the most successful people are the ones who spend a good part of their time promoting themselves. Then what happens to the rest of us?

Fear of self promotion

There are some people of which self-promotion come naturally. Without hesitation, these people can start bragging about their accomplishments at the drop of the hat.

This bothers many of us because we fear that by promoting ourselves, we will come across as arrogant and self-centered. Therefore, we try to remain humble about our skills and accomplishments.

Put your mind at ease

There’s one thing that might make you feel more at ease about promoting. Whether you are promoting your book or your data entry skills, you are not really promoting you.

Few people will give you money in order for you to just be you and these people are often close friends or family. But a lot of people might need your skills or talents. When you promote yourself, you are not promoting you, but what you have to offer.

No matter how talented you are, no one will be able to get their talents out there unless they can engage in a healthy amount of self-promotion.

Ways to promote yourself

There are plenty of ways that you can promote yourself for free. You can write articles for free in which you use your expertise to provide advice to others in the field you are in.

This is relatively easy since many websites will be very happy to take free articles that are high-quality and informative. You can place videos on various multimedia sites in which you promote your talents.

Offer to give speeches for free at different functions. This will require that you get some practice in public speaking in order to be effective. Consider offering training or consultation for free or for a fee. Finally, get used to using business cards and email signatures.

Business cards are classic tools for self-promotion and email signatures are great ways to remind others about what you are all about.

Most important – build a reputation for quality

Whatever you are delivering, always deliver to the best of your ability. This way, you will have plenty of past clients to affirm that your services are quality.

Also, be sure to inform all potential clients of your strengths. If you can build a reputation for providing a particular service better than anyone else, customers will naturally seek you out.

— Next Page »