New Insight Articles

Writing For Weight Loss Success
By: Anne Baugh

Weight loss really does begin in your head. Every successful athlete understands that his thinking process is either working for him or against him. The same holds true with weight loss. If your internal dialogue is negative, your results will eventually manifest the same result! You can't degrade yourself to a healthy new you! You must change your thinking to work for you, to build your resolve, and to maintain that all important motivational factor.

Writing is an exercise that will help your mind change its thinking! It allows you to process the negative emotions and helps to instill the positive changes. Start with these simple exercises:

1. The Negative Emotions Daily Dump: Many success coaches advocate writing out your negative thinking on a daily basis. Simply spend approximately 15 minutes writing out all the frustrations, bad feelings, and discouragement. This helps you to process these bad feelings out of your system so that you can make room for positive affirmations. Do not reread the entries and do not keep them. Write it out, and then throw it out.We call this the Negative Emotions Daily Dump.

2. Affirm Your Goals: Prepare a list of affirmations that will help your subconscious work with your conscious brain to make those all important behavioral changes. Then write your affirmations at least twice a day. Write them once after you have written your Negative Emotions Daily Dump.

Don't do the Negative Dump without filling it with the positive affirmations. You should always end with this. Write the second set of affirmations either right before you go to bed or first thing in the morning. Read your affirmations several times a day.

3. Understand your Motivations: In order to stay motivated you must understand your real reasons for losing weight. In other words, understand why YOU want to lose weight. Not why your spouse or friends want you to lose weight but why losing the weight is important to you. Do you really want more energy? Do you just love skinny clothes? Do you want to participate in an activity that would be easier if you were slim and healthy? Write these motivations out in detail so that you can solidify them in your head and they can continue to motivate you through the entire weight loss journey.

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7 Positive Ways to Turn Complaints into Assets
By: Allyn

1. Be Prepared...Let's face it...you can please some of the people all the time, but you'll never manage to please all of the people all the time. There will be unhappy customers...that's the way life is. There's not a lot you can do about it...or is there? Being prepared to take a loss to keep a customer happy may seem like poor business sense at first glance, but think of it this way...if you make him happy today, he'll reward your efforts by returning to your store time and time again. Yep, taking a loss today, will pay off in the long run.

2. Be Ready with a "Quick Fix"...Dissatisfaction multiplies at a rapid rate! Have you ever complained and waited...and waited...and waited for someone to get back to you? Yeah, the whole time you're impatient and disgruntled the problem seems to grow bigger. Let your unhappy customer know that you are getting right on the problem. Even if it can't be fixed immediately, he'll know that it's important and a high priority.

3. Be Professional...One angry customer plus one angry salesman doesn't add up to a great solution. Forget about the mannerisms of the ticked customer, and keep your cool. Often a professional and calm response will in turn calm and quiet the tirade of the unhappy customer. And that my friend, is much more likely to get the results you are looking for.

4. Be Responsible...Go ahead...take the responsibility for the problem...even if it wasn't your fault. Hey, an "I'm sorry," goes a long way toward fixing the problem. Once you've apologized for the inconvenience your customer has experienced, you can get down to the dirty business of fixing the problem. It never pays to fix the blame or make excuses.

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Inviting Children to a Wedding
By: Lee Asher

If you wish to include children in your wedding as either a ring bearer, a flower girl or by assigning them a task that helps them to feel included. Children can make a wonderful addition to any wedding but they also have the potential for livening up the wedding with unexpected antics. It is important to consider the age, maturity level and predictability of the child before deciding to include them in the wedding. Take care to follow these tips to help things run as smooth as possible and to make participating in your wedding a pleasurable experience for the child.

Let’s be honest about this. To the average small child, weddings can be a complete bore. They have to spend hours hanging around in formal clothes. All this makes them very receptive to the general air of excitement around them – and this is when high spirits can take over. Certainly, inviting children to a wedding can cause problems. After all, a church service is not exactly designed as children’s entertainment. The events of the day hardly fit in with their usual routine, their demands for attention are ignored and they’re meeting strangers and people they haven’t seen in years.

If you choose a very young child or a child that is particularly shy you may want to consider having their parent accompany them down the aisle so that they are not overwhelmed on the day of the wedding. Also, be prepared for the child to completely forget what they are supposed to do and don't allow their mistakes to put a damper on your wedding day. The odds are that if the child does not perform well, the other guests will simply laugh so feel free to laugh along with them and enjoy the pleasure that comes with including a child in your wedding.