PCADSL BLOG

Our emotions will make us win or lose with our 2007 new years resolutions.

It is our emotions that are behind every decision, every act of laziness or effort that we do.

So how do you feel about your 2007 resolutions? How do you feel about maintaining them over the long haul? Are you scared or anxious? Are you strongly motivated to win? Are you already feeling guilty about breaking your resolutions even before January’s end, with over 11 months yet to go?

Can you stir the passion and commitment to build a lasting new behavior that upholds your resolutions? One of the main emotional battles you will fight with your resolutions is between optimism and pessimism.

Pessimism says that you’ll fail, why bother, don’t even try, it’s too hard, it’s unrealistic, it’s not worth it, etc.

Optimism says that it is indeed possible, even quite likely, certainly if you apply yourself and focus on the resolution.

Between being doubtful and determined, you probably have a mixture of emotions about winning or failing with your 2007 new years resolutions.

I have found working with clients for 6 years as a Professional Organizer that the most important emotion is one that most people don’t have. So perhaps that’s why winning with new years resolutions generally fail.

That emotion is what I call Positive Expectation. If you emotionally expect something positive, then that thing has a far greater chance of happening than with any other one factor.

And Positive Expectation comes from 3 key areas:

1. Your past experience.

2. Your confidence in the possibility of the things achievement.

3. Your confidence in the preparation and planning done towards the desired achievement.

If your past is full of failures (as you see them) then your Positive Expectation for future achievements will be low.

If you are not confident in the possibility of the achievement then Positive Expectation will be low. If you have not got much of a plan or done much preparation for the achievement then your Positive Expectation will be low.

So how does knowing all this help you actually achieve your resolutions? Simple: Develop those 3 parts of Positive Expectation.

Find ways to win small achievements, so that your history begins to fill up with more and more achievements.

Learn about how achieving the resolution is possible. Learn about how others achieved it. Learn what it would take to achieve it and develop the confidence that you could do it yourself. And develop a very carefully laid out plan of specific action steps that you can take to achieve the resolution.

Combined together, those three areas will bring all your emotions into the right direction and support you in achieving your resolutions through emotional positive expectation.

I was about to wish you good luck, but you don’t need it if you have a confident plan and gradually develop your track record of smaller to larger successes.

2007 New Years Resolutions are important. And they are achievable through managing your emotions. So go get ‘em tiger!

The good sounding mp3 is one of the most exciting sound pieces of equipment today. I am amazed at how much high quality product they can put in that little piece of equipment. The surest bet is that the great ideas of today will be even better tomorrow.

For now the ipod audio book phenomenon of today is the star of the show. The mind of man, when inspired, will find new and better entertainment equipment to modify and invent forever.

For suppliers, distributors and manufacturers to stay in business they have to keep making better products for us to give us more benefits like fun, education and entertainment. Simple inventions from great minds spawn eternally new products and more innovative ways to use them.

As long as we keep buying them, inventors will come up with new ways to get desirable new products on the markets like the mp3 and of course the ipod audio book.

The ipod is one of the hot new technologies that is shooting up in consumer use. It allows you to take downloads of audio book discount products almost everywhere.

Young people like to listen to music as they wish. When they get older they will have to pay more bills and their mental outlook will change. They will want to listen to fiction book products and training oral books.

You can tune into your vast vault of sound product while doing many things. Do not get into trouble doing this while working or you could get in trouble with your boss.

Many listen to audio products while jogging though I wish they would walk, wish is safer and healthier for them. Listen to Dale Carnegie life training while you exercise at home without street noise distracting you because of your head phones.

The loaded ipod audio book comes with convenient and comfortable carrying devices for you. They are not as klutzy as some product of the recent or distant past, like the big boom boxes of yesteryear.

Sure you can still listen to your valued music but guess what my friend? The pen is still mightier than the guitar? I know, I know, if you are sixteen this sounds like a big lie.

If you have time for musical instruments and musical voices that is swell. Please keep in mind that there are limits to the value of music and rap.

Please also keep in mind that there is unlimited value to audible training you can get from your ipod mp3 player. If you are not reading you are seriously limiting your personal growth.

I realize your mind, eyes and physical body get tired after work and even play. Let me ask you something though? Have you ever listened to the creative writing genius of Stephen King in, Green Mile or other of his great works?

I promise you your mind will connect to his brilliance when you listen to his abridged or unabridged book stories being told. You will get smarter and more creative because this is how the human mind works. Silly sounding but true.

When you are depressed and bored sometime, like the next time, try clicking onto an audio book website. You will see thousands of tales and training and just plain fun stories all spoken to you by good speakers and even celebrities and original authors.

Any good audible web site will have free samples of almost all their presentations. Click on ones that appeal to you. Try some free downloads and eventually buy one that you like the looks of and make it your own forever.

This technique is called making time when you all along thought you do not have time. Like reading a book. Remember when a loved relative read you stories while you sat by them as a little shaver? Try and believe me that the warm satisfaction of this great experience is still there when you listen to an audio book being read to you.

The ipod audio book will have a magic solution to some of your problems. You can learn how to load them up and download them from my other articles and of course from your favorite web site that carries these audio goods.

It is fairly easy to learn how to do this and to load them onto your ipod mp3 player. This will expand your brain and concentration and listening power to the point of improving them. Sound good? I thought so!

Listen to Carnegie and Stephen while doing routine chores. Keep up to date and get up to date with your favorite foreign language training and dieting advice. Keep alert while driving your F-150 or semi with trailer. Know that you are doing this while keeping up with the rest of your life.

Your depression and loneliness will lessen. Your brain power will grow and make you feel better about yourself and give you more to talk to others about.

While there are lots of sites available for you to shop in you will soon develop your own favorites. Your listening desires will direct you to the areas you feel drawn to the most. You will find fiction book, true stories, training, education, self development and virtually everything else that has ever been printed.

So here you are. Are you ready to be a little happier? Are you ready to be a little smarter? Are you ready to meet the great minds of today and yesterday? Then my friend, the ipod audio book is surely for you and I do mean you.

It is not enough that good and proper food material be provided, it must have such preparation as will increase and not diminish its alimentary value. The unwholesomeness of food is quite as often due to bad cookery as to improper selection of material. Proper cookery renders good food material more digestible.

When scientifically done, cooking changes each of the food elements, with the exception of fats, in much the same manner as do the digestive juices, and at the same time it breaks up the food by dissolving the soluble portions, so that its elements are more readily acted upon by the digestive fluids. Cookery, however, often fails to attain the desired end; and the best material is rendered useless and unwholesome by a improper preparation.

It is rare to find a table, some portion of the food upon which is not rendered unwholesome either by improper preparatory treatment, or by the addition of some deleterious substance.

This is doubtless due to the fact that the preparation of food being such a commonplace matter, its important relations to health, mind, and body have been overlooked, and it has been regarded as a menial service which might be undertaken with little or no preparation, and without attention to matters other than those which relate to the pleasure of the eye and the palate.

With taste only as a criterion, it is so easy to disguise the results of careless and improper cookery of food by the use of flavors and condiments, as well as to palm off upon the digestive organs all sorts of inferior material, that poor cookery has come to be the rule rather than the exception.

Methods of cooking.

Cookery is the art of preparing food for the table by dressing, or by the application of heat in some manner. A proper source of heat having been secured, the next step is to apply it to the food in some manner. The principal methods commonly employed are roasting, broiling, baking, boiling, stewing, simmering, steaming, and frying.

Roasting is cooking food in its own juices before an open fire. Broiling, or grilling, is cooking by radiant heat. This method is only adapted to thin pieces of food with a considerable amount of surface. Larger and more compact foods should be roasted or baked. Roasting and broiling are allied in principle.

In both, the work is chiefly done by the radiation of heat directly upon the surface of the food, although some heat is communicated by the hot air surrounding the food. The intense heat applied to the food soon sears its outer surfaces, and thus prevents the escape of its juices. If care be taken frequently to turn the food so that its entire surface will be thus acted upon, the interior of the mass is cooked by its own juices.

Baking is the cooking of food by dry heat in a closed oven. Only foods containing a considerable degree of moisture are adapted for cooking by this method. The hot, dry air which fills the oven is always thirsting for moisture, and will take from every moist substance to which it has access a quantity of water proportionate to its degree of heat.

Foods containing but a small amount of moisture, unless protected in some manner from the action of the heated air, or in some way supplied with moisture during the cooking process, come from the oven dry, hard, and unpalatable.

Boiling is the cooking of food in a boiling liquid. Water is the usual medium employed for this purpose. When water is heated, as its temperature is increased, minute bubbles of air which have been dissolved by it are given off. As the temperature rises, bubbles of steam will begin to form at the bottom of the vessel.

At first these will be condensed as they rise into the cooler water above, causing a simmering sound, but as the heat increases, the bubbles will rise higher and higher before collapsing, and in a short time will pass entirely through the water, escaping from its surface, causing more or less agitation, according to the rapidity with which they are formed. Water boils when the bubbles thus rise to the surface, and steam is thrown off.

The mechanical action of the water is increased by rapid bubbling, but not the heat; and to boil anything violently does not expedite the cooking process, save that by the mechanical action of the water the food is broken into smaller pieces, which are for this reason more readily softened.

But violent boiling occasions an enormous waste of fuel, and by driving away in the steam the volatile and savory elements of the food, renders it much less palatable, if not altogether tasteless. The solvent properties of water are so increased by heat that it permeates the food, rendering its hard and tough constituents soft and easy of digestion.

The liquids mostly employed in the cooking of foods are water and milk. Water is best suited for the cooking of most foods, but for such farinaceous foods as rice, macaroni, and farina, milk, or at least part milk, is preferable, as it adds to their nutritive value.

In using milk for cooking purposes, it should be remembered that being more dense than water, when heated, less steam escapes, and consequently it boils sooner than does water. Then, too, milk being more dense, when it is used alone for cooking, a little larger quantity of fluid will be required than when water is used.

Steaming, as its name implies, is the cooking of food by the use of steam. There are several ways of steaming, the most common of which is by placing the food in a perforated dish over a vessel of boiling water. For foods not needing the solvent powers of water, or which already contain a large amount of moisture, this method is preferable to boiling.

Another form of cooking, which is usually termed steaming, is that of placing the food, with or without water, as needed, in a closed vessel which is placed inside another vessel containing boiling water. Such an apparatus is termed a double boiler. Food cooked in its own juices in a covered dish in a hot oven, is sometimes spoken of as being steamed or smothered.

Stewing is the prolonged cooking of food in a small quantity of liquid, the temperature of which is just below the boiling point. Stewing should not be confounded with simmering, which is slow, steady boiling. The proper temperature for stewing is most easily secured by the use of the double boiler.

The water in the outer vessel boils, while that in the inner vessel does not, being kept a little below the temperature of the water from which its heat is obtained, by the constant evaporation at a temperature a little below the boiling point.

Frying, which is the cooking of food in hot fat, is a method not to be recommended Unlike all the other food elements, fat is rendered less digestible by cooking.

Doubtless it is for this reason that nature has provided those foods which require the most prolonged cooking to fit them for use with only a small proportion of fat, and it would seem to indicate that any food to be subjected to a high degree of heat should not be mixed and compounded largely of fats.

Have you ever considered selling products at a flea market to make some extra cash? Many people find having a stall at their local flea market gives them a steady source of extra cash. For others, however, they take the concept one step further and turn selling things at flea markets into a full time income. That’s great news if you want to get out of a job you don’t like, and are looking for something different. In order to do that, however, you need to discover how to turn your flea market stall from a hobby into a business.

This article will outline some general suggestions for improving your flea market business profitability. Each flea market has its own character and shoppers, so your tactics may need to change slightly for each market you attend to allow for that. So take these more general strategies and apply them, testing out slightly different methods of application until you find the approach that is most profitable for you.

Firstly, always make sure you have plenty of products available at your stall. This gives you more chance to catch a passerby’s eye, but also reassures them that they’ll have plenty of choice if they shop at your stall. At the end of the day, however, it may actually be a good idea to clear some items from your stall, to make it look like you’re selling out. People will think your stuff was so good that it’s selling out, and so be tempted to have a look so they don’t miss out on something amazing.

Remember, too, that shoppers at flea markets are looking for things that they can’t necessarily find at stores. So it’s important to provide a wide variety of options. If you’re selling soap, don’t just selling one type. Have a range of fragrances, colors and even shapes. Having a wider variety of items also means you have more chances of having something that will catch a shopper’s eye and make them come over for a closer look.

Once you’ve set the price for your items, there’s no need to change it. After all, you don’t want to cut your profit margins so much that you don’t make any money. However, it’s often a good idea to offer discounts for multiple purchases. It’s up to you whether you advertise the discount on your stall, or just mention it when people are browsing. Perhaps try both approaches and see which one works best. Shoppers at a flea market are looking for bargains, you just need to work out how you can offer a bargain and still make money.

Another good idea is to have a flyer printed for your business. Include what types of items you sell, contact details and also the location of your flea market stall. Have a pile of flyers at your stall, and also include one in the bag with every purchase. Giving people information about yourself makes it easier for them to contact you again if they want to buy more products, and also makes it easy for them to refer their friends to you.

Flea markets can be a great way to make money, and it can also be a lot of fun. If you want to make the best return for your effort, it’s important to present your stall and yourself professionally. Give it a try, and you might be surprised to find how much more successful you can be.

Recreational vehicle (RV) insurance policies are more complicated than either car insurance or homeowner?s insurance policies. RV insurance policies blend aspects of car and homeowner?s insurance to guarantee that all aspects of the RV are covered. There are different types of RV insurance policies that provide different amounts of coverage. Some basic policies mainly cover the vehicular aspects of the RV, such as collision and liability. Other RV insurance policies also cover items within the RV, such as plumbing and appliances. It is important that RV owners get as much coverage as they can afford since RVs are both vehicles and living spaces, and both aspects need to be insured.

RV drivers are required by law to have liability coverage, just like people who drive conventional vehicles. This protects other drivers that the RV may collide with, ensuring that if the RV inflicts damage on another vehicle, that damage will be paid for out of the RV driver?s insurance. Liability coverage is the bare minimum required by most states.

Collision insurance covers any damage to the RV if any type of collision occurs. Another important type of coverage is uninsured driver insurance. This type of coverage protects the RV driver from having to personally pay for any damages to the RV done by uninsured motorists. Total loss coverage ensures that if the RV is damaged beyond repair, the insurance will cover the cost of its replacement. This type of insurance protects the RV owner from any liability for injury or damage that may occur in the direct vicinity of the RV in a campsite.

Since RVs can be dwellings as well as vehicles, the property inside the RV should also be covered. The law does not require this coverage, but it is a good idea, especially for people who live primarily in their RV. RVs contain items that cars don?t have, such as furniture and appliances. If the RV is damaged extensively, these items could require repair or replacement. Other items such as plumbing and electrical components of the RV can also be insured. Many people store things like clothes, TVs, computers, and camping gear in their RVs. Just like in a home, these items can be damaged or stolen while on the road, so it is a good idea to purchase insurance for them. Many RV insurance policies are designed for people whose RV is their primary residence. These policies cover all vehicular and home aspects of the RV.

RV insurance policies are complicated, but it is vital that RV owners purchase the right coverage. The bare minimum is not enough for people who live in their recreational vehicle.

It’s no big secret, the trick of how to start a record label definitely involves some cash and most definitely involves some talent. If you want to know the secret to how to start and run your own label then here it is, talent. You have to have something to sell your business pitch with. It doesn’t matter what your particular genre is, you need to get out there and discover your first million. Yep, I am talking about dollars.

If you are just sitting around trying to figure out how to start you own independent record label then you are wasting your time. Get out there and try to find the band or the person that is worthy of a record deal. Go to clubs, rummage through MySpace, hang out at bars with live music, there is talent all around you so find it.

Do you have friends or a band already in mind? If you do then you are one step ahead of the “how to start a record label” game. Two or three bands would really be optimal when beginning your own record label. For those of you who don’t have someone in mind, then you have some work to do.

A good way to search for talent is to have an idea of what you are looking for. If you are going to learn how to start and run your own record label then you must be able to find the gap. There is a gap somewhere and you need to find it. Keep in mind, you are searching for someone who is marketable, a true money maker.

If you can’t quite pinpoint a gap, then identify a target market you think you can penetrate and go for it. Who would have thought that the Backstreet Boys or 98 Degrees would have made it big? Well, the guys from their record label were definitely on to something. Teenage girls were where it was at and boy did those guys stumble on to something big and man did they make a profit! Believe me, that is your first step in how to start a record label.

Just like with any other business, you are going to have to sell your product. And you can’t sell your product until you have your product. So, this is your first lesson in how to start your own independent record label. In this business, you are going to have to think outside the box and when you do that, you will be ready to start your own record label.

Country music (also known as country and western music or just country western), is a blend of popular Southern US musical. With its roots deeply set in folk music, Celtic tunes, blues, and gospel music it evolved rapidly in the 1920s. The term Country Music began to be commonly used in the 1940s and was fully accepted and embraced by the mass in the 1970s, while the use of terms like country and western declined. However, country music is actually a one-size-fits-all category that embraces several different genres of music like the Nashville sound, bluegrass, a fast mandolin, banjo and fiddle-based music popularized by Bill Monroe and by Flatt and Scruggs; Western, which encompasses traditional Western cowboy campfire ballads and Hollywood cowboy music made famous by Roy Rogers, The Sons of the Pioneers, and Gene Autry the list can go on forever.

Whatever be the style, each is unique in its execution, its structural chord and its use of rhythms and many songs have been adapted to the different country styles and cater to different tastes and palates. One example of one tune used by many in different styles is the tune Milk Cow Blues, an early blues tune by Kokomo Arnold that has been performed in a wide variety of country styles by everyone from Aerosmith to Bob Wills to Willie Nelson, George Strait to Ricky Nelson and Elvis Presley.

In the 80 plus years of country music history, the chords, sound and style has changed dramatically, at least in some respects. In its infant years, it was the honky-tonk sound from the likes of Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams that made up the genre of country music. It was a crowd puller in roadside pubs and meeting houses throughout Oklahoma and Texas that were packed every Friday and Saturday evening with fans and curiosity seekers alike, anxious to listen to the fast-rising sounds of steel guitars and drums. Those pubs were popular not just for the latest craze in American music, but the repeal of prohibition in 1933 also relaxed the minds of many when it came to public drinking; now the audiences could enjoy their favorite music and alcoholic beverages at the same time.

Although Tubb and Williams had their share of popularity with the honky-tonk tune, it was Al Dexter who cut the first label with the words honky-tonk in 1936. Tubb’s single, Walking the Floor Over You, released in 1941, would go on to sell more than one million copies quite a feat in any form of music even now. Your Cheatin Heart, cut by Williams in 1953, is perhaps one of the best-known records of the honky-tonk era. It was not his only hit though; in his lifetime Williams went on to record more than one hundred songs.

While honky-tonks were filled with its fans, theatres were filled with fans of the cowboy songs made popular, again, in Texas and Oklahoma. The often-romanticized and thrilling life of the cowboy; heroic but lonely, drifting, fit in perfectly with this style of music that took its sound from the hills of Tennessee and the bayous of Louisiana. Those days, more often than not at least one part of the western song would include a lonesome whistle from the flute or other mellow sounding wind instrument. This went on to be known as the country western style.

Some of those famous for this western style were Gene Autry, Americas singing cowboy, and Roy Rogers, who later teamed with wife Dale Evans to become a famous due of the genre. Rogers also had been a part of The Sons of the Pioneers, a band that brought the frontier sound to over 80 westerns between 1935-1948.

Mix n Match of these styles always resulted in something interesting. Country music morphed once again in the early 1950s with a sound that became known as rockabilly a mix of the southern hills music and the blues. This sound was made popular by many performers who developed staying power in the country music industry. They include the Everly Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis, Conway Twitty, Carl Perkins, and, of course, the king himself Elvis Presley.

This form of country, with its faster paced sound and constant rhythm, quickly worked its way up the record charts as Americans, too, found themselves living a lifestyle that was a much quicker pace than the generation of their parents.

Today country music is perhaps at its highest peak of popularity the road to success paved by Cline, Tubbs, Williams, Wells, and others is now treaded upon by mega-stars like Garth Brooks, the team of Brooks and Dunn, Reba McIntire, Vince Gill, and dozens of others who are quoted with their thanks and gratitude to the pioneers of the sound of country music. The Sound of Music goes on and on.

Last year, I was assisting a trial lawyer with jury selection. After the voir dire, we caucused to discuss our strikes. This lawyer vehemently insisted that one of the jurors was lying and had to be struck. He knew in his gut that the juror had lied and there was no way he was going to keep her on the jury. She went, and we will never know whether or not she was telling the truth.

Is it possible to tell if a juror is lying? Over the years, a great deal of psychological research has been conducted to see if there are behaviors that correlate with lying. To very briefly summarize this research, the following behaviors have been found to be associated with deception:

- Vocal behaviors: A raise in the pitch of the speaker’s voice, decrease in rate of articulation, hesitation in speaking, and brief responses.

- Micro expressions: Brief head shaking, decreased or increased eye contact, breaking eye contact by interfering body movements (like adjusting one’s glasses), the covering of one’s mouth, or briefly covering one’s face.

- Body posture: A rigid and generally frozen posture and/or a defensive posture (backward lean, arm crossing, and leg crossing).

This would make it appear relatively easy to detect deception, but the evidence from a number of studies points in exactly the opposite direction. In 1999, Paul Ekman and Maureen O’Sullivan published the results of one seminal study, “Who Can Catch a Liar”, in the American Psychologist (Vol. 46, No. 9, 913-920). They recruited 509 people and tested their ability to detect people lying. Among their subjects were members of the CIA, FBI, DEA, NSA, and the Secret Service as well as professional polygraphists, judges and psychiatrists. The sample did not include jury consultants. One might expect that these people more than anyone would be able to figure out who was lying (for as the authors describe them, they are “professional lie catchers”). They were each shown videotapes of ten people in which half the people were lying and half were telling the truth. Only the Secret Service agents performed significantly better than chance in pointing who the liars. Even these agents classified some liars as truth tellers and vice versa. All the other subject groups performed no better or worse than chance. Ekman and O’Sullivan hypothesize that the Secret Service agents were trained to pay more attention to subtle facial expressions–that, in fact, there are some special people who may be better at detecting deception than others. However, Ekman, O’Sullivan and other researchers have found additional “buts”:

There is no relationship between a person’s confidence in her ability to detect lying and her actual ability.

- There is some evidence that those who are more experienced are less able to detect lying than novices.

- Many of the behavioral traits associated with lying are also associated with anxiety; a feeling many honest jurors have during voir dire.

- It is easier to detect deception over time in a controlled setting (not in a courtroom).

- And, some people are better at lying than others. After all, people are more practiced at deceiving than in detecting deception.

So where does this leave the trial attorney? Beware consultants who tell you they can pick out jurors who are lying (however confident they are); question your gut instincts; stick with the profiles you have developed; and, most importantly, stick with the evidential story you will tell. Or, you could hire a Secret Service agent.