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November 25, 2005
For When You're Depressed, Defeated, Downcast...
I remember coming back from vacation in Canada earlier this year and I had an insight as I was flying out of my old hometown of Edmonton, Alberta.
Let me preface this by stating that I live in Phoenix, Arizona, the land of the virtually eternal sun. I'm used to the sun now after living here for over a dozen years. And after living in Canada until I was 30 I was used to the dreary, depressing, dark days up there. Virtually all year round.
Anyway, after being on vacation there for a few days, where it was basically overcast and cloudy virtually all the time - I had grown used to not seeing the sun for that period of time. I hadn't seen it for days.
But as I was flying out of Edmonton and back home to Phoenix I saw the most beautiful sight. As I said, Edmonton was overcast for the past few days that I had been on vacation and I hadn't seen the sun for a while.
But as the plane lifted off of the ground in Edmonton and rose up into the air, it also rose up into the overcast sky. Pretty soon all I could see was the ground disappearing into grayness as we rose into the clouds to begin our ascent to Phoenix.
All of a sudden we broke through the layer of clouds that was enveloping Edmonton and all I could see was bright blue cloudless sky all around the plane. Everywhere, except beneath us.
And what really struck me was the intensity of the sun as it shined in the cloudless sky that we were now in.
It was really beautiful.
But what was really insightful to me was not the beauty of the sun and the warmth it shared, rather that the sun was always there. I just couldn't see it through the clouds.
Let me restate that.
Just because we can't see it doesn't mean the sun isn't there.
So how does this apply to our lives here on this sometimes overcast world?
Just because you're in a funk because you're getting divorced, your best friend died, you were fired from your job, your pet ran away, your daughter's pregnant, the waitress buttered your toast on the wrong side -- doesn't mean that the sun isn't there shining.
Your world may be overcast, grey, dreary, and depressing. Yes, we won't deny that. Because when it's that way, it is that way.
But just because it's like that doesn't mean that brightness isn't there waiting to break through the clouds and brighten up your world.
Think about this the next time the clouds get in the way of you seeing the sun.
And remember, the clouds ALWAYS disappear, the clouds are NEVER the same, but the sun is ALWAYS shining. Somewhere.
You just have to be aware enough, and awake enough to see it. And feel its warmth.
Enjoy.
Thank you kindly.
Written by Andre Best
President, Ultimate Results, Inc.
http://www.andrebest.com
'Learn About Life From Another Perspective'
(Author's permission is granted to share this full article with others. Just leave the signature line intact, please.)
Posted by Andre Best at 5:59 PM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2005
A Review of Article Submitter Pro Article Submission Software
Anyone who is serious about doing business online knows how important it is to use software to automate one's business efforts. And doing this wherever and whenever one can will only serve to increase one's productivity and potentially allow for gainful benefits.
One such software that automates a very tedious process is Article Submitter Pro. This software is designed with the sole purpose of submitting articles for article writers and online authors. This is not a complicated process by any means. But it is very repetitive and has great tendency for submission errors. This is especially true for authors who routinely write articles and do many dozens of submissions for each article to online article directories.
(read the entire review of Article Submitter Pro at ArticlesandAuthors.com)
Posted by Andre Best at 8:31 PM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2005
Exercise Tips to Live By
As most people have no doubt read in some form or fashion online or offline, obesity in developed countries, in an epidemic.
And it never used to be this way.
I remember when I was in high school in the late 1970's that there were two kids in school who were considered to be different than the rest of us because they were 'heavier'. Of course they were taunted, joked about, and ribbed. All because they were considered as being 'fat'.
But today, one barely has to turn a street corner where their favorite donut shop is located without bumping into or seeing someone walking on the sidewalk who is nowadays considered to be morbidly obese.
No more taunting allowed, because this size proportion of most people is so common that it wouldn't be funny (as if it ever was) to joke about someone's large(r) size.
But there is a solution to most of this epidemic of the increasing girth and waistline of the vast majority of adults, mostly in North America.
Use up more calories than you take in.
Now, I am not supposing that this simplistic solution applies in every single instance. The true, and genuine out-of-whack thyroid conditions come to mind.
But for the large majority of adults, it has simply become a case of we are eating too much and exercising too little.
But the word 'exercise' scares most folks.
Visions of bulge-revealing grey sweatpants and armpit showing sweatshirts come to mind for most people when they recall history's recent exercise crazes.
But in today's world, one has to get 'exercise' where they can.
It doesn't have to constitute a three-year membership and daily trips to the local neighborhood gym, be it LAFitness, Golds Gym, Bally's, or 24hour Fitness.
Exercise can be as simple as walking to that co-workers desk across the office, instead of phoning them.
Or, yes, walking those two flights of stairs up to that next meeting at work, instead of taking the elevator.
Or, parking your car at the FAR end of the parking row and walking in to the store.
Exercise can even be as simple as taking the groceries in from the car and carrying them into the house - one bag at a time.
You see, in today's world we are all busier than ever. Even though we have all the tools, gadgets, and devices that were designed to make our lives easier.
So we have to seek out exercise where we can find it in our lives. Why? Because we all need to continue eating.
And as long as we're going to continue doing that, we're going to continue taking in the calories. And if they aren't going to be used, they're going to be put away somewhere in our body. Yes, they're going to be stored as fat.
Can we all say 'Hello love handles'?
So you see, exercise for most people does not have to consist of a monthly membership fee and pumping iron with the rest of the gronks in the gym. Of course, if that's your deal, like it is mine, than go for it because that'll do you a world of good.
But if you're like most folks and you barely have enough time to change your mind, never mind your lifestyle, don't worry.
Just change how you do the things you ALREADY are doing. Change them so you make yourself work more and subsequently burn more calories.
And you might realize that you're actually, gasp, 'exercising'.
Written by Andre Best
President, Ultimate Results, Inc.
http://www.andrebest.com - Learn About Life From Another Perspective
(Author's permission is granted to share this full article with others. Just leave the signature line intact, please.)
Posted by Andre Best at 1:03 PM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2005
Why Live?
Perhaps I'm just reaching the age of mental maturity where I'm beginning to question things but today, and for several weeks now, I find myself questioning why we all exist.
Now, before you think I've fallen into an esoteric blackhole and am being sucked into the abyss, don't worry. I can assure you I haven't been. I'm still here with you.
But I still do question why we all exist as we do.
Let me explain.
I remember watching the movie 'Gandhi' that was released in 1980 (I think). I was too young to watch it then so I just rented it on DVD about a year ago.
For those of you who don't know who he was, Gandhi was born in the mid 1800's and lived until he was murdered in the early-mid 1900's. I think he was shot in the 1940's, according to the movie.
He had tremendous influence over his country as a spiritual leader. He didn't plan on becoming a leader to over 300 million Indians at the time. It just turned out that way as he grew older, matured, and his influence spread throughout the country during its tumultuous time of civil uprisings and revolts.
Without going into personal opinions and discussions about 'passive resistance' and all that, I was most struck by and remember most vividly one aspect of his life that, to me, will forever change my view of existence.
Here we have a man that was incredibly influential, and to this day has changed the lives of several hundred million, if not over a billion, people's lives through his existing on this plane.
One would think that a person of this stature who could just about walk on water most certainly had incredibly important business to attend throughout the days of his existence as a spiritual leader of his country, right?
But do you know what Gandhi did during his spare time, according to the movie, when he wasn't leading the passive revolt movement?
Was he attending meetings with the country's political leaders to hammer out an agreement to end the differences in the leading parties and stop the civil uprisings?
Was he travelling throughout the world, teaching spiritual leaders and other influential world leaders, how to end their civil wars through passive revolution?
Was he writing books, giving lectures, teaching his 'followers' and in general becoming a spiritual guru of his time?
No. None of the above.
What DID he do?...
...He sat around and spun wool.
That's it.
Now, think about that. This man...this incredibly influential, passively powerful human being, who was amazingly small in stature yet struck awe and fear in many others, spun wool in his 'spare time'.
What does that tell you about 'existence' and one's purpose for living?
What does that tell you about what we can do with our lives, no matter if we're a Gandhi, Buddha, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, or Jimmy Stewart? Or Martha Stewart for that matter.
We can go out and earn all the millions, or billions, of dollars that we can.
We can go and influence the lives of billions of people around the world through revolutionary technology, or being seen on every television set or movie theater around the world.
Or we can live as a human being who espouses principles that the world wants to adhere to and admires enough to follow for centuries to come.
But in the end, even if we do that, we still -- in our own way -- are only left with sitting on a mat, in a building, and spinning wool to bide our existence away.
----
It's all pretty simple isn't it?
But at the same time I find it rather disturbing.
I guess because, like most of us, I've lived my life thinking that there must be something vitally important for us to do with our life. You know the old line - 'find your purpose in life', right?
You've also heard the cry 'Set goals or you'll get nowhere in life.'
'Have a gameplan!' others espouse to the masses.
Well, with my recent insights into all this life/existence stuff...none of that works for me.
How can one think that setting goals and having a 'life purpose' is going to fulfill them?
Ever wonder why so many business executives don't live too long after retirement? Because their 'life's purpose' - their work, didn't exist for them anymore.
They had reached the golden carrot. And they found they couldn't eat it.
The man who founded UPS when he was a teenager and was actively involved with the company until he 'retired' in his early '90's died only a few months after he retired. Did HE lose his purpose for living? Curious.
But, getting back to the title of this article - Why Live?
Why do we live? Why do we exist? Why are we here as individual human beings?
Why are there so many more questions that are begged than answers that are provided?
Perhaps I'm at the age now where I'm realizing that life is not going to be blindly fulfilled by 'activities' and 'functions' throughout one's day. And days. And years, decades, and life.
Perhaps I'm realizing that the only purpose, the one true purpose, in life is to enjoy one's existence as one walks along their own path of existence.
Awake.
Aware.
Alive.
Hmmmm....
More to come on this as the words continue to accumulate in the 'ol gray matter at the top of this vessel called me.
Stay tuned.
Thank you kindly.
Written by Andre Best
President, Ultimate Results, Inc.
http://www.andrebest.com - Learn About Life From Another Perspective
(Author's permission is granted to share this full article with others. Just leave the signature line intact, please.)
Posted by Andre Best at 10:03 PM | Comments (0)
November 4, 2005
Article Submissions - What To Know BEFORE You Submit Articles
If you're even remotely serious about doing business online then you have no doubt heard that it's critical to a websites success to have lots of incoming links into it.
Now there are two popular ways to go about getting links into a website. Buy links. And exchange links.
Buying links is just as it sounds. You pay a link broker or a website owner to post a link to your site. You don't have to mention them on your site at all.
Or you can do the reciprocal link method where you exchange links with another site. That is, you and the other webmaster agree that you will each post a link to the other person's website on your site. Essentially, you've traded or exchanged links with each other.
Both of these methods fit within the main intent of the Internet. that is, a massive interlinking of websites that share commonalities with each other.
But there is another way to get links into one's website. And that way is to write articles that have an embedded link to your website and have other webmasters freely post your articles on their websites.
But in order to do this method effectively one has to write a fair number of articles and have many of them posted at many different websites.
And to do this effectively one needs to submit their articles to many different article directories like http://www.ArticlesandAuthors.com so that other webmasters can find their articles.
But the good thing about all this is that software like Article Submitter Pro exists to do the vast majority of the article submitting to several hundred directories for you.
It's a wonderful piece of software that to-date has saved me hundreds of hours of effort. Seriously.
I had previously tried submitting articles a couple of years ago and I gave up in frustration because it was too hard finding the article directories, cutting and pasting my articles, logging in to the directories, and hoping that I didn't get an error window that made me start all over.
But with Article Submitter Pro one has pretty much all of this taken care of for them. One can click here to be taken to the developers website to learn about all the advanced features it has since this article can't do justice to the vast amount of features this software has.
But as with any automating software there are some minutia and details that are worthy to know before delving into intense use of a process such as article submissions.
And I only learned about these details through usage of Article Submitter Pro over the last couple of months and through already obtaining almost 1000 links to my sites during that time. Cool.
So here are some of the subtle nuances you need to know about using article submission software like Article Submitter Pro, and with doing article submissions in general. They are listed in no particular order of importance. Just make sure you implement each of them fully before delving into submitting articles anywhere.
1) Make a specific text file of your entire article upfront. Include the entire article from title, by (your name), article content, signature line WITH URL link to your site, and copyright information.
2) Some article directories require submitting your article via an autoresponder. Make an autoresponder containing all the information mentioned in item one above. Test the autoresponder before using.
3) Make a text file containing all the information in item one above AND a <250 character summary of your article, all keywords you want to use related to your article, and the URL of your article on your website.
4) Make sure you have your article posted on a webpage on YOUR site before submitting to any article directory. Some directories grab your article from your website or want proof that it's there before posting it.
5) Have a login name and password that you can remember. You will have to create many login name/password combinations when submitting to many article directories. You'll have to have this information easily accessible somewhere.
6) Have a version of your article created in HTML formatting to accommodate some of the article directory submission policies
7) Do not, I repeat, do not go against the Terms of Service and Terms of Submission and the Submission Guidelines of any article directory. It's someone else's site and you're playing by their rules. Make them your friend and keep them you friend. If the directory says it only accepts Business-Related articles, and yours is about creating dress patterns then don't submit to them.
8) Be prepared to sign up as an author with many article directory services. This is better than being an 'anonymous' poster and in some cases offers you more editing options with your articles.
9) Read each directories article categories FIRST. This way you won't waste time submitting to a site that will outright reject your article. There are literally hundreds of directories to submit to. Just say 'next!'
10) Use only YOUR articles or articles that you have the copyrights to. Do not use articles you scraped off someone else's site or don't have the rights to. Play nice if you want to make money submitting articles to article directories.
Basically, if you follow the ten tips I've provided above, then you will be well ahead of the article submission game. You'll have ready before even doing your first article submission all the details in the right order to make your article submitting as seamless, and painless as possible.
And by submitting to an article directory like http://www.ArticlesandAuthors.com and using software like ArticleSubmitterPro you'll be well on your way to having many, many incoming links into your websites during the next few months.
Written by Andre Best
President, Ultimate Results, Inc.
http://www.andrebest.com
'Learn About Life From Another Perspective'
(Author's permission is granted to share this full article with others. Just leave the signature line intact, please.)
Posted by Andre Best at 5:39 PM | Comments (0)