Change How You Say It, Change Your Attractiveness

Language, whether it’s emerging from our mind, our heart, orour lips, says a lot about ourselves. It tells others whatstate we're in at the time, actually where we are in ourlife, as well as how we dress our self, our body and oursoul. It also tells us what we will do now, what we did inthe past, and what we will do in the future. Yet, we are socomfortable with our own voice and too busy to hear itsvoice that negative expressions escape constantly. Doeswhat you say and how you say it count? U-betcha.
For those of you who are students of the laws ofattraction, also known as manifesting what you desire withthe power of energy, this is another way you can use the lawfor your benefit. Let me expound on this in the simplest ofways.
What you say is how you are. There are usually many ways tosay what you say. Many ways will not attract, others will.Let’s journey together on this with an example. Let’s usean expression we tend to use more mindfully and lessexpressively, "I could care less."
"I could care less," taken literally means "I care more thanI might seem to." You are saying that you do care some andthat isn't what you intended to mean which was not caring atall. The true way to state your feelings would be, "Icouldn't care less." It may sound harsher, yet it’s thetruth. It is important to be true to your words.
Being true in your language is a vital step to being in aplace of truth in yourself and in the world. As a I child,my Dad drummed the expression into me, and probably to you aswell, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't sayanything at all." Practicing the laws isn't about sugarcoating your feelings or your language. It’s aboutexpressing them from your own truth. But what the sayingtells us is that, even though we can acknowledge this as ourtruth we don't have to express that truth verbally.
Because we are so comfortable with our language, we havestopped hearing what we are saying 90% of the time. Theonly way to catch your language is to use this exercise.
Here is a practice that will help you begin your journey inhow to uncover the truth to your language. It will alsochange your hearing process anytime you speak. Afterlistening consciously to your words, then and only then, canyou begin a strong path to attractiveness. Also, hearing andacknowledging what you said takes courage. Is it easy tolisten to yourself? Heck no. To me, my voice sounds likechalk squeaking on a blackboard. Focus on the outcome tomove past the squeal. The shift in attractiveness is wellworth the practice.
Audio record your telephone conversations. Just your sideof the conversation. There isn't any country or state lawsthat affect you since they are one sided as there is inrecording two-way conversations or in-person conversations.And you don't have to ask the other person’s permission.
Extra tip: This is also a great way to improve yourmarketing and telephone skills as well.
Listen to the recording. Listen for the incompletesentences, unfinished thoughts, and vocal expressiveness orflatness. Did you really say what you meant? What wasn'tsaid that you thought you said? What wasn't finished andyou thought was finished? What words were slung together thatattracted the opposite of what you wanted?
Extra tip: Tape record your conversations with yourchildren. We become so comfortable with those we love thatour language sabotages our relationships frequently.Especially with teenagers.
Awareness and acknowledgment are the first two steps tochanging anything. We can't do either without hearing itfirst. And you can't change what you don't acknowledge.Attractive language allows you to walk a different paththrough life. Take the leap, find just enough courage topractice this exercise, it may be painful at times, but itwill rewrite your life and all those that touch it.

Be Selfish and Save the World

Why do we help others? There is a whole lot of pain and poverty, illness and despair in the world. I can't speak for you but I would like to make a difference and improve the quality of life for others. Volunteer work is a great way to begin.
No single person can change the entire world but you can have an impact on the lives of others in your own corner of the universe. That, in a small way, changes the world ever so slightly. Multiply that by a billion and it is a brave new world.

How many times have you heard people say " You can't change the world. You are just one person?" It begins with one. Forget all that nonsense the defeatists choose to fill there heads with. That's their business. The contents of your head is all that matters.
Your happiness counts. How can you share your happiness if you have none to share? You can't be happy if you put others happiness ahead of your own. You have to put yourself first in order to have the tools to affect change.
I don't know how many people I have met that speak of all the hungry people of the world living in poverty. And how they dream of helping them. These are people that are wallowing in consumer debt, the working poor, just inches away from bankruptcy. They want to help others when they cannot even dream of themselves living in prosperity. Such noble nonsense.
If you want to help your family, help your community or change the world, you have to help yourself first. You have to be selfish for pete's sake! It's not a sin or a crime to put yourself first. You have to lead by example. Nobody chooses to follow the disempowered.
Make your happiness and peace of mind your number one priority. Once you have that you have the power to really affect change. Helping others is a wonderful thing. Look at the global efforts to help the Tsunami victims and affected areas. You could rationalize it and say that helping is the right thing to do, that contributing to any good cause is the right thing to do. I agree.
But, we are not motivated by our intellect or rationalizations. It is emotion that moves us to act. Helping out makes us feel good and inversely we know that watching others suffer and not helping when we know we can will make us feel miserable. We don' t want to make ourselves unhappy.
If you can truly be honest with yourself you will see that beneath all the sentiment is a need to tend to our own happiness. I like to volunteer because it makes me feel good. That is the bottom line. The rest is just window-dressing. I have a selfish desire to feel good and so do you. There is nothing wrong with that.
Yoga, meditation and prayer make me feel good, too. Can you call those selfish pursuits? How about attending church or worshipping your higher power? Do those things make you feel good? Of course they do or you would not do them. If pursuing your own emotional well-being and feeling good is not what you would consider selfish, than I think that the term "selfish" is highly misunderstood.

China Travel Tips

Survival China Travel Tips and Tricks

These China Travel Tips, Survival Techniques, will help you get around and make your trip to China easier, so you will be able to experience the real China with a little less stress.
China is an odd beast that needs to be respected; the major cities, Beijing, Shanghai, and Xian, all have their own personalities.
Some complex situations that you think would be an organizational disaster turn out to be great and you wonder afterward what all the fuss and worry was about. Then the simplest of tasks can turn out to be a major calamity.
This is when you have what we call here a “China day”.
These days come and go and are part of the experience of everyday travel in China. One needs to have an open mind when travelling China. It is a place with thousands of years of history and culture that is trying overnight to adapt to Western ways of living.
You need to have a very open mind when you Travel in China.
I have listed below a few China Travel Tips that will make life that wee bit more bearable on your Travel China experience.
China Travel Tips – Be Toilet Wise
• Never expect a clean toilet 100% of the time.
• Be prepared; Carry some tissue.
• You may have to use a squat toilet, again if you know this before hand it is not a shock. If you don’t know how to use a squat toilet, try the following experiment at home.
While holding onto something for support with both hands, lower your body down into a low squat position, so that the cheeks of your bottom is almost touching your heels or the back of your calf. Now, let go with your hands. See if you stay in this position for at least 1 minute. If you fall backwards or you cannot get up, then a squat toilet could be a problem for you! Practice, you will be happy you did.
• If you see a clean toilet, Go… it may not come again for a while.
• There are many public toilets around the cities, usually the ones you pay for are OK, (RMB .5), the others best to stay away from if you can. You will soon notice them as you walk around the cities.
• Be warned that public areas like bus and train stations are usually what I class as “tough toilets”, however if gotta go you gotta go.
• Outside of the major cities, the toilet systems are old or have very narrow plumbing /pipes and get blocked easily. In these cases a small basket is usually beside the toilet, this is for your used toilet paper.
One of the best China Travel toilet Tips I can give you, is use hotel lobby toilets; these are everywhere and are always clean. Still they may not always have toilet paper. It depends on the class of hotel that you are using.
I do not wish to scare you. However, of all the China Travel Tips in all the other web sites I have read, this is a topic not often mentioned, but it is very important to us all.
So outside of the major cities conditions can be tough. But most of the time everything will be fine, especially if you book a tour; everything will have been checked out before hand. However even the best laid plans can go wrong, so be prepared, the toilets in the smaller cities, towns and villages can be scary.
China Travel Tips – The Food
• The food is great and the variety is overwhelming. Most of the time you get to choose what you eat, or you can recognize what you’re eating, however sometimes you do not get a choice. Carry a chocolate bar or something; this will keep you going until some food that you can recognize turns up. Drink bottled or boiled water, as the tap water is NOT safe to drink, this is for the whole of China. Even boiled water, while sterilised can contain a lot of minerals and iron deposits that you probably do not want in your system. The safest bet is to drink bottle water. Tap water in most big cities is OK for brushing teeth.
• Eating habits - Most Chinese people have a great habit of being very noisy when they eat and lunch and dinner times can be a wonderfully noisy celebration, food tends to go in all directions, its just part of being in China.
• People also smoke at the table while everyone is eating, so some restaurants get very loud and smoky.
• If you get stuck what to order as most of the menu’s are in Chinese just look at the table next to you and point to the dish you fancy and ask how much it is, this system works really well and know seems to mind.
• I have a basic menu that will help you order safe food, (no Cats or Dog) this will enable you to visit a larger selection of restaurants, not just the tourist ones with high prices. You can carry it with you and use it in the local restaurants where most will be able to serve what is on it. This way you will know what you are eating.
These local places are very cheap and the food it great. Contact me if you would like me to send it to you.
China Travel Tips – Taxis
• China Travel Tips- Taxis - Taxis are an experience that can have you griping the seat and gasping for breath; however you soon get used to it, after the first few rides, you’re an old hand.
• The taxis in Shanghai are, overall, quite good. Try to get the Blue, Blue’ish Turquoise, Gold and White taxis, these are the best… these are the four major taxi companies and are generally recognised by their single colour paintwork. The others are OK, just older and a rougher ride (the others also may have faulty metres). No drivers will speak English.
• Carry your hotel or accommodation business card with you, written in Chinese, this helps if you get lost walking around town.
• In all the taxis around the country you will see the drivers name and taxi registration number in plain sight. If you have any problem, or if you think you have been over charged etc, just take this number down, make a big fuss about it, and the driver then should wake up and fix whatever problem you have. Even better is to take the receipt. This has all the trip details on it and you can ring the taxi company if you want to take things further or if you’ve left something in the taxi.
• The government takes rip-off drivers in all cities, Beijing and Xian especially, very seriously and if you complain they will lose their license. This is their livelihood. So far I have had not one driver in 3 years that has not backed down and we have then agreed a price for the trip or solved our problem.
• In Shanghai, it is common practice for taxi fare increases after 11pm. However, one can usually bargain for a 20% discount, which will get the fare back to the pre-11pm rate.
Be strong with the taxi drivers, never-the-less, keep your cool, smile and negotiate.
China Travel Tips – Shopping
• China Travel Tips - Shopping - China is a shopper’s paradise, Markets, Bargains; Top labels… anything and everything if you have the time. With clothes, the larger (Western) sizes can be quite hard to find, however in the major cities where you get a lot of tourist traffic, you can find them.
• Electrical gear, DVD’s, Cameras, stuff like this is not worth buying in China, Hong Kong is still the best place for this.
• Store hours in the major cities are from 10am to 10pm, 7 days a week.
• Visa card is still the best card to carry, with ATM’s in good supply all with PLUS access etc.
There is usually a surcharge for use of VISA, MasterCard or other forms of credit card.
• Wait on purchasing if you can, look around to get a feel for the prices. The Chinese are VERY experienced at selling and know that we halve the opening price when bargaining.
In the markets go for 25% of what they first ask; go so low that they let you walk away. This will give you an idea of the bottom price. The resulting end-price will probably be around 40% to 50% of where they started.
Whatever the market people say, they are used to pushing and haggling for best prices. Do not worry about being too hard, they are used to it and will not sell you an item unless they make a profit. Don’t be concerned with the apparently hurt body language when you go low – it is all part of the game. As soon as they have wrapped up your first purchase, they will try to sell you something more. Remember to keep smiling and having fun while bargaining.
China Travel Tips – Medical Treatment and Records
• Most hotels will have a doctor that you can see. In the major hotels English will be spoken.
• Always take a small first aid kit, cold remedy, headache tablets at the very least. WATSONS is a very large chain chemist. Most of the remedies, tablets etc, that you may require should be in these shops. These shops are all over China.
• There is a great network of pharmacy type shops; these are indicated by a Green Cross. There will always be a 24 hr Green Cross pharmacy in the city you are in. It is handy to carry a Phase book, as no one will speak English, however you will end up with something that will help.
• INPORTANT POINT – for most of the mass produced packet type medicines, the packaging will be written in Chinese on one side, English on the other. However in the shops you only see the Chinese side. Have a good look, turn the packs over, it gives you a lot more confidence knowing you can read the package.
• If you have a specific medical issue, take records, most of the Doctors will have OK written / reading English, even though their oral English will be poor.
China Travel Tips – Telephone
• Using the phone is as easy as at home. However the person picking it up will not speak English or have very broken English… the Major 4- or 5-Star Hotels will all be OK.
• What is worth doing is buying a Chinese Telecom SIM card, they are about RMB100 and with this you get RMB50 in calls, the other 50 is for the price of the SIM card; this SIM card will go into all major brand phones and work OK.
By doing this, people can reach you within and out of China if there is an emergency. If you have a couple of phones, you can short (txt) message each other (SMS). Also you are able to call your tourist guide, hotel etc if you have any major problems. It is a cheap way to keep in touch.
NB.Before you buy a Chinese SIM card, check that it will work in your Cell / Mobile phone. There are plenty of China Telecom shops that can help.
China Travel Tips on when NOT to move around China.
• Spring Festival, this would be the Chinese New Year time, around the end of January / Early February
• Early May; Labour day Holidays
• Early October; National Day Holidays
Of all the China Travel Tips National Day is the biggest one. Millions of Chinese travel at these holiday times of the year. Most are travelling back to home towns or visiting family. Hotels, trains, planes, cars, buses, and roads are all crowded to the maximum. Major congestion, everywhere.
Also travel fares are at their full price. No discounts are offered!
Stay in one place and enjoy where you are. It’s best and causes fewer hassles.
China Travel Tips – TV
• If you want to watch TV, most of the major hotels will have cable and if you are in the smaller places, the national channel, CCTV9 is in English. Over the last couple of years it has got a lot better, with some great China Travel Tips programs, news and views on people and places around China.
China Travel Tips – Airport Tax
• There is a “construction fee” at almost all airports.
Domestic flights RMB 50
International flights RMB 90 – which is to be paid in local currency.
Just recently, tickets are being tissued with the Construction Tax included; however make sure you have the Tax money with you just to make sure.
I hope some of these China Travel Tips will come in handy and will make your trip to China that little bit easier.
If you have been to China and wish to share your China Travel Tips, please feel free to contact me anytime.

10 Essential Steps to Developing a Successful E-Mail Marketi

Developing and executing a successful e-mail marketing campaign is becoming more challenging. The SPAM problem isn't improving and laws are tightening their grip on e-mail marketing. So, you need to carefully develop your e-mail marketing campaign with great care. Here are 10 steps you can use to develop a successful e-mail marketing campaign: Step #1 - Define the purpose of your e-mail campaign Whilst this step may seem pretty obvious, you will be surprised at how many e-mail marketing campaigns are carried out without a clear purpose or goal. This is especially prevalent with online newsletters or e-zines - many don't provide the reader any valuable or useful information. So, start your e-mail campaign right - by first defining a clear purpose or goal. Step #2 - Develop a clear call to action A call to action is a specific set of instruction(s) contained within the e-mail with the sole purpose of leading the reader to take a specific action. Here's an example of a call to action: "Click here to download your f~ree Special Report" With the introduction of the CAN-SPAM act and advancement in SPAM filter technology, it is difficult enough these days to get your e-mail pass SPAM filters, yet alone opened and finally read. It would be a sheer waste of time for both your reader and yourself if you didn't create a clear call to action in your e-mail. Step #3 - Personalize your e-mail message Use your full name in the From: field rather than your company's name. And use your recipient's name in the subject line. This will increase the "open rate" of your e-mail (The "open rate" is the percentage of e-mails opened against e-mails successfully delivered), because recipients will more likely open and read e-mails from people they recognize. Personalization will also reduce the probability of the e-mail being mistaken as SPAM. Step #4 - Develop an interesting subject line It's true. First impressions DO count in e-mail marketing! If you have an important e-mail you want your reader to open and read, you need to develop an interesting subject line to woo your readers attention. The reason's really simple. If your subject line does not appeal to the reader, your e-mail will not get opened and your e-mail campaign will fail miserably. And remember not exceed 40 characters when developing your subject line. Step #5 - Remind your subscribers where and when they opted-in If you do not e-mail your subscribers very often, say once every fortnight, it would be good to remind them where and when they opted-in, right at the top of your e-mail. In e-mail marketing, the popular axiom, "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" bears much truth. Don't expect your subscribers to remember where and when they opted-in to receive information from you if you're not in frequent contact with them. If they can't recall when they opted-in to your list and you fail remind them - don't be surprised if they scream "SPAM"! Step #6 - Provide an unsubscribe link In e-mail marketing, you should never ever hold anyone hostage. You'd rather settle for happy unsubscribers than angry subscribers, right? So, provide your readers with an easy and convenient method to unsubscribe. They'll sleep more soundly at night and so will you. Step # 7 - Check and test your e-mail You've spent a great deal of time crafting your e-mail. So it is a good practice to check through your e-mail to make sure you do not overlook the following: 1) Spell check your e-mail 2) SPAM check your e-mail 3) Test all e-mail links 4) Double-check mail merge codes (if any) e.g. $firstname$ vs. {FIRSTNAME} (especially if you're sending out the same e-mail using different autoresponder software) Step #8 - Use fixed-pitch font and proper formatting Use a fixed-pitch font like Courier and perform a hard carriage return at the end of each line at 60 characters to avoid formatting problems. Step #9 - Track all e-mail links This is an often over-looked step. Tracking your e-mail links will allow you to gain valuable insights and discover what works and what doesn't. Use the tracking information to refine your future e-mail marketing campaigns. Step #10 - KISS (Keep It Simple and Short) Lastly, keep your e-mails simple and short. The more e-mail content you create, the higher the chance of triggering the SPAM filters. If possible, use e-mail marketing to Pre-Sell, not Sell. Follow these 10 steps in your next e-mail marketing campaign and watch your campaign results skyrocket!