Are You An Emotional Packrat?

Confession time, until a few years ago I was an emotional packrat. While I would tell others to let stuff go, forgive and forget, and just move on, I would keep adding to my emotional baggage and never dealing with it.

I would hang on to these thoughts and feelings continually replaying different scenarios in my head. Each time I would think of things I should have said (or perhaps should have avoided saying). I would think of what I should have done differently, as if this replay would change the outcome.

There is a lot of damage that can come from hanging on to, storing, and replaying all of these past issues. It can cause an enormous amount of stress, anxiety, and even depression in some cases. [read]

Do you trust Apple’s App Store with the future of ‘print’?

Richard Branson and Rupert Murdoch have begun battling it out to create a superior subscription-based magazine in the iPad iPublishing 3.0 race, but Apple’s [AAPL] recent move to ban an iOS magazine dedicated to the competing Android smartphone OS shows that Apple’s app store approvals team could begin an age of censorship…

On the surface the moves by Murdoch and Branson to field new iPad titles are interesting. Both have committed extensive resources to the project, and initial feedback suggests both have a lot going for them, though Branson’s is described as a little “buggy”. [read]

Ten Life Lessons from Richard Branson

Richard Branson clearly knows a thing or two about success. At 20, he started a mail order shop, and opened a recording studio a short while later. Now, the Virgin brand boasts dozens of companies and Branson’s net worth is estimated to be more than 3 billion pounds sterling.

As well as immense business success, Branson has personally broken a number of world records for high-speed boat and balloon journeys.

Often witty, always insightful, here are some choice Branson quotes to ponder. Motivation often comes from unique places so if one of these strikes a chord, use it! [read]

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie

Dale Carnegie wrote some great books back in the 30′s and 40′s, and this book is one of them- Carnegie fans won’t be disappointed.

The writing style is classic Carnegie. To put it simply, the guy just writes like he talks. This makes for a very friendly and easy to understand book, rather like a good friend giving you a piece of advice.

And a lot of advice he gives. The book is divided up into ten sections, each one tackling some aspect of worrying. I could give you a rundown of the topics, but you don’t really need me to repeat the table on contents to decide if you want to read the book. Rather, let me just say that book covers just about every major “worry issue” that might be causing a troubled mind, such as your work, your finances, other people’s criticisms- and them some.

While there are no earth-shattering, never-before-seen tips in the book, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to recommend it to anyone who is looking to ease their mind a bit. That’s because it does a GREAT job of conveying simple wisdom that really make you think good and hard about why you’re worrying and if those things are really worth worrying about at all.

In short, its a bestseller because it makes a lot of sense and its advice can do a lot to re-frame your thinking about things. And if you can re-frame your thinking, well, you’ve about found the best “Compound-W” for worry warts.

Order from Amazon – How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

How to Turn Exercise Into Something You Love

Exercise. Not the most alluring word in the world, is it? (I think “chocolate” is a lot more enticing, myself…)

Perhaps you know you should be doing some exercise – all those hours sitting at a desk are taking their toll on your health – but it’s really hard to get motivated. You might have tried the gym in the past, only to fork over a lot of cash for a membership you barely used.

The truth is, exercise can be a lot of fun. It’s just a case of tweaking a few things to suit you. [read]

The Monsters Of High Gain – 13 amp heads demoed

Premiere Guitar Dot Com have a really cool series of videos going through 13 high-gain amps being played by Misha ‘Bulb’ Mansoor of Periphery and Ty Dietzler of Thousand Foot Krutch.
Click here to view all 13 videos.

Why Was This Boy Stripped at Airport Security?

The TSA has become the new darling of the news.  Arguably, our ‘security’ is a laughing point for much of the world.  We are supposed to be an advanced, cutting-edge nation but we are light years behind in airport security.  Here is one of the fastest growing viral videos.

This is getting way out of hand: The TSA wanted to pat down this little boy, who first went through the metal detector without setting it off. Here’s what happened, as told by the person who filmed this video:

This video was filmed at Salt Lake City International Airport on November 19 around 12:00pm.

Before the video started the boy went through a metal detector and, while he didn’t set it off, he was selected for a pat down. The boy was shy so the TSA couldn’t complete the full pat on the young boy. The father tried several times to just hold the boys arms out for the TSA agent but i guess it didn’t end up being enough for the guy. I was about 30 ft away so i couldn’t hear their conversation if there was any. The enraged father pulled his son shirt off and gave it to the TSA agent to search, that’s when this video begins. [read]

“Thank You” Goes a Long Way

Here is what I know about Thanksgiving: It’s less about focusing us on giving thanks than it is about gorging on turkey and stuffing. Ironically, perhaps, during the same week as our Thanksgiving, the British mark National Thank You Week. It’s not just about this vague notion of thanks — it’s aimed at helping us thank the people we encounter every day.

Thanking people isn’t simply a matter of common courtesy. A 10-year study by leadership experts Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton of 200,000 managers and employees showed that saying “thank you” correlates with bigger profits. This isn’t surprising, because giving thanks is a great motivational tool; who doesn’t like to be thanked? What is surprising is how hard it is to do the thanking. (Even the Brits, with their thank-you week, apparently still aren’t good at saying those two words; in another survey, 30% of respondents said they don’t even bother anymore, instead opting for a much less gratitude-filled “cheers.”)

As a not-for-profit CEO, I say lots of thank-yous — to sponsors, donors, staff, volunteers. So in this season that purports to be all about the giving of thanks, let’s muse on who to thank and how to do it effectively. [read]

End of the CD?

No matter where you look you see the same dismal numbers – sales of CDs are down 50% since 2000, and down 15% just this year alone. “The CD is over.” “The CD is dead.” “Nobody buys CDs anymore.” The writing is on the wall; at some point in time, the sales of CDs will be right down there in the depths of inconsequential sales with cassette tapes.

But not quite yet. There will still 350 million CDs sold this year. Let me say that again. “There will be 350 MILLION CDs sold this year.” Someone’s still buying those suckers.

And one of the reasons why they’re still selling is that some sanity has finally come into the market. With the price now between $6 to slightly less than $10, people don’t feel ripped off if they buy something with only a few good songs anymore.

Read more: http://music3point0.blogspot.com/#ixzz15YY3zy00
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5 Rules for Mindful Creativity

Necessity may have been “the mother of invention” back when Plato dropped the famous phrase, but necessity alone is no longer a sufficient reason for creation. Inventions that seem to embody a forward-thinking approach at their inception often appear backwards in their thinking given a few years (or decades) of reflection. Take, for instance, the advent of individually packaged goods, which made food conveniently transportable at the expense of using more materials and creating more waste for landfills. [read]