Self Improvement - Leisure Time, Retirement Time

You've worked all your life and now you are looking forward to retirement. How will you spend your time?

Many people have not created balance in their lives between work and play, so when it comes to leisure time or retirement, they don't know what to do with their time.

If you no longer have to work, or you are working less, here are five areas that you can attend to regarding how you spend your time.

Physical Health

Consider joining a gym, getting on a regular exercise program, taking up a sport, taking dance lessons, and/or learning yoga or tai chi. Leisure years can be filled with aliveness if you take excellent care of your health.

Do some research on nutrition and learn how to create healthy meals. There are many excellent books on achieving a high level of health, even in your later years. You might have years to live so you might as well learn how to live them in a vital and healthy way!

Emotional and Spiritual Growth

If you had not given much attention to your emotional and spiritual health - to the journey of your soul - now is a good time to do it. Now you have the time to read the excellent and inspiring books on achieving inner peace and joy. You have the time to attend lectures, workshop and seminars on healing the beliefs that may be limiting you, on connecting with your personal spiritual Guidance, and on taking loving care of yourself and sharing your love with others.

If you have never been introspective and taken the time to get to know your self on the inner level, now is a great time!

Giving to Others

The most fulfilled people in life are those who find ways of giving to others and to the planet. If you have had to work hard all your life, you might not have had the time to volunteer or find other ways of helping. Now you have the time to explore what ways of giving really bring you joy. Would you enjoy volunteering at a day care center, sharing your love with little ones? Would you enjoy becoming part of a peer counseling group, supporting others in being all they can be? Would you receive satisfaction from becoming involved with groups that are helping the environment, helping the homeless, helping battered women and battered families, or helping abused children? Perhaps you would love to be involved with supporting the arts?

There are many fulfilling ways of giving and now you have an opportunity to discover which ways bring you joy.

Creativity

Being involved in creative activities is one of the most fulfilling ways of spending time. What have you always wanted to learn to do? Do you want to learn to draw, paint, or make ceramic pots? Do you want to learn to work in wood, carving or making furniture? Have you always wanted to try your hand at writing, perhaps writing poetry, a novel, or a screenplay? Do you want to become an excellent chef? Maybe you want to learn more about interior design and home decorating? Perhaps you want to create a beautiful garden or learn about flower arranging? Have you always wanted to learn more about jewelry making, weaving, needlepoint, sewing or knitting?

Now is a great time to discover what creative activities being you inner peace and joy.

Play

You might find that your physical activities - golf, bowling, and so on are the ways you play. Or your creative activities may be the ways you play. You might also want to find other ways to play, such as playing board games, card games, or doing puzzles. You might enjoy computer games or the many games that are available through TV.

Don't let your leisure years be boring and unfulfilling. If you do not have to work, you have great opportunities to develop yourself in so many ways!

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?" and "Healing Your Aloneness." She is the co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Learn Inner Bonding now! Visit her web site for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or email her at margaret@innerbonding.com. Phone sessions available.

What Is Personal Development

Personal development is as old as Plato and Aristotle. In fact, personal development was considered by many societies as the only true vocation. They also believed that the study and application of philosophy was the best method to achieve personal development.

Various cultures and various individuals throughout history have discussed and studied the need and ways to achieve personal development. At times it has been called "virtues", or "moral character", and in others it is referred to as "ethics". Christianity has been concerned with the "moral development" of individuals and took their "virtues" from the Bible. These are: Faith, Hope, and charity or love/agape.

Virtue as defined by ancient Greeks was: The commitment to "habitual excellence".

In most cases the major concern was, "personal development". Each defined ways and means of achieving this development. Aristotle believed that it was necessary to achieve the "golden mean" between a trait and it's opposite. Take Aristotle's example of courage. "Courage is the balance between cowardice (deficit of courage) and foolhardiness (excess of courage)". So Aristotle's Golden Mean would lie in the middle between these two extremes but lying closer to "foolhardiness than cowardice".

Benjamin Franklin developed a 13 week system in which he concentrated on one character trait per week. Listed below are traits he considered most important for him to work towards to be successful.

Character Traits

Self-control: be determined and disciplined in your efforts.

Silence: listen better in all discussions.

Order: don't agonize-organize.

Pledge: promise to put your best effort into today's activities.

Thrift: watch how you spend your money and your time.

Productivity: work hard-work smart-have fun.

Fairness: treat others the way you want to be treated.

Moderation: avoid extremes.

Cleanliness: have a clean mind, body and habits.

Tranquility: take time to slow down and "smell the roses."

Charity: help others.

Humility: keep your ego in check.

Sincerity: be honest with yourself and others.

These are just brief examples of the history of "character development", or "personal development". It is beyond this article to provide a history of personal development, but I can give a brief discussion of what personal development means to me.

Stephen Covey in his books on "7 Habits of Highly Effective People", discusses the evolution of "personal development". In one section he talks of his study of personal development and makes a significant observation. He maintains that prior to the 1920's and 1930's, personal development was defined as "Character Development". Ben Franklin's list of character traits highlights the idea that a person needed to develop their "character".

However, in the 1920's and after, he states that the focus of personal development changed from character development to "personality development". The focus of development changed from inner development to focus on the outer traits of a person or personality traits, such as a "pleasing personality", or "having a positive personality". With this as a guideline, it isn't important if we truly have a positive personality or if we have a pleasing personality, it is more important to "act" like we have them. Mr. Covey maintains that this translates into other virtues and traits and what we end up with is all flash and no substance.

Mr. Covey provides several examples of this and used the then President Clinton and other politicians, as example's. Instead of "being" honest or committed to excellence and integrity, they decided that "acting" honest or acting as a person with integrity is more important because they then appeal to the broadest possible voter base.

I went through treatment for alcoholism in 1977 and again in 1978. This March, I celebrated 30 years of being clean and sober. When I first sobered up in 1978, the self-help groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous exploded on the American scene.

Since then we have numerous groups which fashioned themselves after Alcoholics Anonymous, adopting and changing A.A.'s Twelve Steps to fit their particular problem.

However, at the base of all of them, is "personal or character" development. Bill Wilson, co-founder of A.A., says in his book, "As Bill See's It", "the main purpose of the 12 Steps of A.A, is "character development". He goes on to say, "but who wants to talk of or work on their "character"? He also maintains that A.A., is a spiritual kindergarten. While the primary purpose of A.A., is abstinence of alcohol, Mr. Wilson maintains that the only way to obtain that goal is by committing, one day at a time, to the development of our character.

This is true of the other self-help programs which use Alcoholics Anonymous as their foundation.

On a personal level, couple months ago, my son, who is 14 years old, was teasing me about the "self-help" books I read. I told him that he should be thankful that I have continued reading and using those books, because if I hadn't, his life and mine would be entirely different, and not in a good way.

Personal Improvement, in my experience encompasses all areas of our lives. Mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. There is an old saying in A.A, which says, "if you're not going forward in your life, you're going backward". This means that there is no status quo. We can't rest on our laurels or what we did yesterday. As Ben Franklin showed, personal improvement is a life time activity and if we are not actively pursing excellence we are at the mercy of mediocrity.

As one person pointed out, "if we are not pursing our own goals, we are working towards somebody else's goals".

Personal development, for me, provides meaning to my life. It gives me a yard stick to measure my progress in life. What is personal development? When I first sobered up, I went to a meeting where on the wall behind the speakers were two boards.

On one board was listed about 20 different positive character traits such as courage, integrity, patience, gratitude, determination, persistence, etc. On the other board was listed their opposites.

During the meeting, at least once a week, my sponsor would lean over and quietly ask me, "which side of the board are you on"?

A commitment to personal development insures I stay on the right side of the board!

http://rblacketer.ipower.com/

Personal and Business website

10 Best List

This is not a Letterman list. These thoughts could change your life. This is what you should be thinking of when you wake up, and before you go to sleep.

Your thoughts are your life. From the first thought of the day, to the last thought of the day, that is your life. The way you think influences your life. Your thoughts are very powerful. It is hard to control a lot of your thoughts. Many people and events of your life created the way you think. The way you think affects not only your life, but many others. If you are not happy with something in your life, you can change it simply by changing the way you think.

How you start your day and how you end it does matter. Your morning thoughts will have a lot to do with how good your day will go, and set the mood.

Your thoughts at the end of the day, before you go to sleep will determine how well you sleep more than likely. A good night's sleep will determine how well your next day goes, thus the cycle of your life.

So what I have put together is a list of thoughts you should try to achieve. One for the morning to set the mood for the day, and one for night so you may get a good nights sleep.

Please give it a try for 21 days strait and see how it affects your life. Tests show that after doing something for 21 days strait, it then becomes a habit.

The morning thoughts:

1) Today is going to be a great day.

2) Good things are going to happen to me.

3) I am going to have a great opportunity to advance my life happen to me today.

4) I am going to accomplish many things today.

5) I feel real good today. I feel alive and full of energy.

6) I am so happy for what I possess now, my wonderful family, all my possessions, and my life in general.

7) I am going to help someone today and make them happy.

8) What I achieve today is going to get me closer to achieving my long term goals.

9) Today the universe is on my side and working for me.

10) Today nothing is going to bother me and ruin my day.

The bedtime thoughts:

You have to think about how your day went. If for some reason it was not a perfect day, your first thought should be: I am not going to let that bother me and ruin a perfect day.

1) I am thankful for the people in my life and all that they do for me.

2) I accomplished many things today.

3) Good things happened to me today and I am thankful that they did.

4) I helped someone or many people today and made them happy.

5) I am so happy for what I posses now, my wonderful family, all my possessions, and my life in general.

6) I am closer to reaching my goals today because of what I accomplished.

7) The universe was on my side today and working for me.

8) All the things that happened today happened for a reason and will make my life better.

9) My life is a wonderful adventure and I love it.

10) I enjoyed today, and today was a good day, but tomorrow will be even better.

What do you want your legacy to be? The person who accomplished everything they set out to do, or the person that sometimes remembered to take out the trash.

Author Mike True successfully motivates people to truly have a better life with motivational and educational information. http://www.truellybetter.com

How To Create Your Content Management Systems-Based Website In 2 Simple Steps!

Step 1. Get a Webhosting Account

For those of you who are totally new to website or working online, website hosting is basically something everyone MUST have in order to have your website running online. You are basically renting a piece of internet space.

Personally I strongly recommend BlueHost. BlueHost charges only USD6.95 per month where you can host UNLIMITED websites on just one plan. That is indeed a great deal compared to other webhosting companies which can easily charges USD 20 to 40 per month. Furthermore, I have installed hundreds of websites with little or no problems with BlueHost. It's been a wonderful experience working with them as they have group of great and professional staff and incredible support if you ever need it.

Step 2. Install Joomla! using the Fantastico Script in your Webhosting Account

Fantastico script is actually a commercial script library which automates the installation of web applications (such as Joomla!, Drupal) to a website. It's usually executed from the admin area of the webhosting account control panel (such as cPanel). When it's executed, it normally create tables in a database, install software (such as Joomla!), adjust files permissions, and modify web server configuration files, and etc.

This is really simple especially you sign up webhosting account from BlueHost. In BlueHost, it has a fantastico script which simplifies the installation of the Joomla!. By following the instructions, within a few clicks, your Joomla! website is up and running!! That's really simple.

That's it folks! Enjoy your very own Joomla! Website now :)

Visit here from more information now!!

3 Steps to Create Drupal Sites

Drupal is one of the most easy to use and powerful content management system in the world. It's open source and a lot of people contribute to it from application development, theme development and module development perspective. And the most important one to us is that they are all free.

Want to setup an Drupal site, below are the 3 steps you can follow.

1. Find a Reliable Affordable Web Hosting

If you have chosen Drupal CMS for your website, it is very important to find a reliable Drupal-specialized host which will tend to provide expert hosting services. Usually, as for a beginner, a charge lower than $7/month should be good enough for your hosting. You can consider to upgrade them to VPS or dedicated server once your site gains enough traffic.

2. Installation

Installing an Drupal instance is not hard. You can go to Drupal.org, download the installation scripts, and upload them to your web hosting directory. The installation process can be done via Web. So you need to type in the URL in the Browser where you upload the scripts to, and system will automatically guide you through how to create the site. One thing you need to do ahead is to create a Database instance which will be used during the installation

Right now, Drupal has become more and more popular that some web hosting service providers start to include the installation scripts in their service package, by which you can it setup by just some simple clicks.

3. Choose an Appropriate Theme

Theme is used to decide the outlook of your site, everyone want to get an attractive theme for it. If you are technical enough (some CSS and php knowledge), you can create your own theme. Or you can download the theme the other open source contributors have built. A more realistic way is that you can download a free theme and make some adjustment to theme to make it work better to you. You can go to drupal.org/project/Themes/ to find a list of great and free template.

Congratulations! You have owned a Drupal site now. Considering there are many other great features haven't been included in the initial scripts, in order to better leverage the functions of it, some knowledge of the modules will be needed, you can get to know more about addition modules at drupal.org/project/Modules, but for a beginner, above 3 steps will good enough for you to own a powerful CMS site.

Reference:

Best Drupal Web Hosting

Top 10 Web Hosting

Reliable Affordable Web Hosting Review, Guide and Awards

Sean.Raymond is an expert on online business. He has more than 10 years working experience of guiding people to create their own online business. webhostingclue.com is his web site where he shares the knowledge about how to find appropriate web hosting solution for a small online business and promote it online.

And you can contact sean.ray@webhostingclue.com if you have any question about this article.

Website Builder - Quick And Easy

You've just decided to get a website, congratulations! The only problem will be just how to do this. You've gotten a domain name for your site and have a space to put it online but how on earth do you actually make it work?

HTML can be like an entirely new language. Finding the answer can be really hard and take a lot of time. HTML stands for hypertext markup language provided in the form of a code that will instruct your computer on how to make a web page.

Remember that in many ways, a web site is actually writing a program. Even minor changes like bold and italic require an alteration to the source code. Things that are familiar from word processors such as formatting spaces, rows, or adding pictures add a level of complexity. For someone new to the world of hypertext markup language, the learning curve may seem impossible.

By using a website builder one no longer needs to devote time and energy to learn cryptic HTML statements. With a professional and easy-to-use tool like a website builder, you can easily set up your web site and later convert it into HTML or XHTML which is used very extensively now-a-days.

A website builder lets you to design your website by a simple right click and it easily places images, vides and music directly on your website. You do not have to write codes since it does that for you. Editing is also easier compared to the old method. You can make corrections directly instead of having to search mistake through the code, if something does not seem OK for you.

Creating a website using a website builder, as long as you are good at following directions, doesn't take very long and is relatively simple. After only an hour or two, but maybe not even that long, depending on how simple your pages are, you'll be finished and your site ready to go.

You can buy a website builder in any computer store or from an online source, but some internet service providers offer a free web space and have site builders and templates that are also free. Some are easier to use than others, but it may be worthwhile to try free software before making a purchase. Site building software packages will usually allow you to do much more than the free ones. Knowing how to create your website without knowing HTML will make you a webmaster in no time at all!

Salutations! You have taken the first step toward your online presence. However, what will you do next? You have an Internet address, a domain name, and a provider with space for your site. How do you start the actual work of building your pages? If you are able to follow instructions, it is fairly simple to design web sites using a website builder, and you do not have to invest much time. Depending upon the intricacy of your pages, you can build a complete site within an hour or two. With a minimal investment in time, you can have your ready for display on the Internet!

Free Template Editing for Low Budget Would Be Webmasters Seeking Income Online

Everyone should know by now that Adobe Photoshop is the de facto standard for any kind of image editing, but it also presents a rather high barrier to entry for most of us. Then a few years ago Adobe came out with Photoshop Elements to lower the bar a little and now even have an online version you can use free, if you can stand it.

Another truly amazing windfall to anyone wanting a website of their own for any reason, is to learn about all the free website templates available online. But be careful, as soon as the demand started rising, so did the booby-traps set to snag as much of your money as they possibly could. You can still find plenty of free ones that are high quality if you look.

Then once you find a really good free template site, the template you pick is probably going to have hundreds (if not thousands) of downloads already and many more to come soon after that. So do you want your website to look just like all those?

Well the good news is you don't need to spend hundreds on Photoshop, or even $150 for Photoshop Elements. There are plenty of copies of older versions of Elements around for a LOT lower investment and you still get all the power you need for just about any website graphics job. Websites only display 256 colors anyway, so who needs millions? Even resolutions need to be lower so they can load fast.

I just finished a website of my own at diykiss.com (that stands for Do It Yourself and Keep It Super Simple) and all I did was grab a free template and use Photoshop Elements 4 that I got on Ebay for $20 to edit the graphics. I used a free HTML editor to change the copy to my own, and in one afternoon I had it up and running!

Don't be afraid to give it a try yourself!

The risk you run is low, because Photoshop Elements is only around $20 and everything else is free. If you totally flop, you can probably sell it on Ebay to get most of your money back and if it turns out good, you have a new skill that will pay you for a lifetime. Believe me, it gets better every time you use it, but like Wayne Gretsky (the hockey player) says, you miss every shot you don't take!

The real bonus comes when you discover there are all kinds of ways you can make your website pay for itself. Then you'll have enough to go start up another one! Even a little trickle of extra money each month can make a difference and you can add to it over and over.

Well if that gets your juices flowing, I'll see you online!

Warren Contreras is a old retired guy that's having fun making money online. You can meet him at http://OnlyMy2CentsWorth.com