But this isn’t the case. We hide our emotions from the world so well, that we end up hiding our sentiments even from ourselves. Often, I’d talk with a friend or colleague and ask them how they felt. I’d get an honest answer saying, “Uhmm… I don’t really know.”

Wow. People who are out of touch with their true feelings often lagged in self-esteem. I’m sure you’ve notice that. Are you one of them?

I urge you to check your feelings throughout the day. Every hour, take a breather. Ask yourself “How am I feeling right now”. Then discern the reason why.  Often we find that there’s no basis for feeling depressed or anxious. In this case- ask yourself “What’s the worst that can happen for xxxxx”. You’ll quickly realize it’s easy to leap into a blazingly constructive frame of mind with this technique.

Take inventory of your feelings. Be true as to the cause. Then make the conscious effort to choose a better frame of mind if it isn’t serving you well.

You’re ready to scream.

Whenever a particular sequence of unfortunate events  conspire to bring you down, how do you cope? I’m sure you’ve gone through hell like this and you’ve been farthest from sentient. Were you rational? Maybe you hit suicidal. Stress eventually leads to volcanic eruption and the poor fella you finally yell at had nothing to do with your day’s misfortunes.

Before you reach the point of no return, try the following tactic to unwind in a second:

• Seek out a quiet, private spot.
• Lock the door.
• Stretch out your mouth really wide and flex your entire body.
• Throw your fists to the heaven and scream- to your heart’s content.
• Relax.
• Rinse and Repeat.

Ah…. didn’t that feel better? Now you’re in control once again.

Take a step back and ponder on all the big stuff that happened to you. Did you notice that some small tweak in your plans often drove it to amazing completion? Or how one small decision brought about earthshaking rewards?

Here’s how to use the rule to save more time and maximize your life’s bottomline:

• Make it a habit of jotting down your top daily priorities. If you find yourself stuck in nonessentials, get back on track!
• Learn to procrastinate on procrastination.
• Cease focusing on your inadequacies- just do what you do best.
• Halt trying to be perfect- you gain more by spending time on a few relaxing and self-indulgent activities (like having a sauna or extra sleep). This revitalizes you to achieve more.
• Forget about worrying… have more fun!
• Live in the present. The future will take care of itself.
• Learn to trust in what you’ve done. Second guessing slows you down.
• Have faith in your intuition- it’s your lifeline to wondrous things beyond your logical mind. This often leads to “eureka moments”

Have you been maximizing your life’s bottomline?

1. Press down your thumb over your right nostril.

2. Exhale fully. Inhale slowly through the left nostril for 10 counts. Make sure your mouth is closed.   Feel all your tensions worries and fears flood away as you exhale. Absorb all the love and pleasure you can get as you inhale.

3. Press down on the left nostril. Exhale fully and repeat.

Studies show that physiological and psychological temperaments are reflected in the manner of our breathing. When you control which nostril is functioning, you tune into the two hemispheres of your brain. Breathing into the left nostril activates awareness within the right brain. The opposite occurs with the right nostril. This exercise rapidly floods your mind with endorphins- pleasure drugs that often lead to euphoria.

 Ready to feel high? Start breathing.

Yogis like to teach that to attract prosperity, we myst first create room to allow the new abundance. It’s this principle that drives the success of runaway bestseller The Secret. Realize now that by grasping at redundant and useless baggage that surround us, we spiritually tie ourselves to old limiting beliefs and past limitations. My mom long hammered this fact into me; it’s done wonders for my personal growth.

 To work! Peek into your garage. Is it full of old tools and parts you no longer need? What about your wardrobe. Are there clothes that have gotten mothballed? Take an inventory of the sentimental attachments you have to these mere physical objects. Each time you look at clothes that no longer fit or love letters that remind of heart wrenching moments, you start reaching for the ice cream and get fat.

Release the hold of the past. Trash them. Then you can move forward.

Flashback 2001. While I didn’t look as bouncy as Mr. Canine here, I certainly felt just as  bloated as he looked.  The reason? I was about 10 pounds overweight. My dietician blamed a slow metabolism. I simply blamed Ronald McDonald for setting up shop next door.

I felt lousy when guys in muscle shirts strode past. Here I was, clad in flashy Prada but my physique made me sag like a duck next to these lean dudes in tattered Levis. Something had to be done. So I did what every fat slob was doing: popped the Hydroxycut, did the Atkins and hit the iron. It didn’t work.

Six months and 8 bottles of Hydroxycut later, I dropped a whopping two pounds, landed in the hospital twice and still felt like that same fat  dog- only lazier. My grand fatloss scheme certainly wasn’t working. So I consulted a few more diet experts. Their advice were suspicious carbon copies of each other. The general suggestion was that I  can boost my metabolism by eating enough (not too little, like most slobs on a diet), chowing more frequently (5-6 small meals a day), and slapping more protein and fiber to the  diet. Throw in weight-training, and high-intensity cardiovascular exercise and I should theoretically reach a lean ripped mass.

Yeah right. I’ve been on an ephedrine high, bland water diet and bone jarring exercise regimen six months… and all I had to show for it was a lightened wallet from gym membership and a GNC recurring bill. Plus, I was cranky as a cop without his doughnuts. There had to be something else.

There was.

By accident I heard of a queer practice called solarhealing invented by Mr. Hira Ratan Manek. This fine fellow claimed that by gazing into the sun a few seconds at sunrise and a few seconds at sunset ultimately eliminates the need for physical nourishment. He likened the human body to a solar battery. The act of gazing this way for 40 days ultimately charged the human body with energy and liberated anyone from the need to eat. Check out the fantastical documentaion on this guy. Allegedly, he’s stopped eating since 1995 and US Universities appear to back up his claims.

That was good enough for me…so I tried this sungazing thing. Armed with light tinted shades and an alarm clock, I gazed into the sun as prescribed. The exercise exhilarated me! I literally felt electrified with new found energy.

Day ten into the regimen, I abruptly noticed that cravings for fatty foods had permanently stopped. My gym workouts extended up to 3 hours without winding me. Weight dropped about one pound. No Hydroxycut included.

Woah… I was on to something.

I kept it up for six months straight. Either the sungazing rewired my actual need for chemical nourishment or it effected a constant psychological satiation becauseI found myself eating a quarter of what I used to per meal. That’s a far cry from Hira Ratan Manek’s claims that eating will be totally eliminated. I was still eating, period. But, miraculously, I was eating very little and feeling explosively powerful.

I don’t know if sungazing or my workouts or my recent immersion in hatha yoga affected my metabolism, but I do know this: I no longer looked like the droopy dog. My schedule forced me to abandon sungazing after six months, but the benefits persist till today.

And I have a muscle shirt to show for it.

The secret’s really simple. Next time a pile of work piles and you’re tempted to delay, simply stop. Then ask yourself:

“If I delay this today, am I being kind to myself tomorrow? Will tomorrow’s Me be mad at today’s Me for leaving an even larger pile of hell tomorrow?”

Analyzed from this viewpoint,  you may suddenly realize that there’s no payoff for delaying the inevitable. Might as well be done with it.

Do you have a pile of stuff gathering dust on your desk?

Your life each day can be viewed as a stream of connected events – some positive and some not so positive. The not-so-positive or negative events can cause great stress, but they have only the stress-producing power over you that you assign to them. Separate your perceptions, opinions, and value judgments of a negative event from the event. Affirm to yourself, “It’s just an event” and you will avoid triggering stress reactions.

Because time proceeds in one direction only, you do not have the power or the option to change the outcome of an event. But you have total power to choose how or whether you will respond or react to the event, thereby influencing succeeding events and outcomes. It is likely that, because of different beliefs, values, and opinions, four people who see exactly the same event will relate and react to it totally differently. But beliefs, values, and opinions are always in the mind, not in the event. Use that knowledge to separate your emotions from the events that occur in your life.

Probably 80 percent of the stress you experience during your life is created solely by how you use your mind. Learn to use your mind correctly, and your stress level will be automatically reduced. Use your mind as you always have and as those around you do, and your stress level will continue to build up until your body breaks down. Therefore, your goal is to stop reacting mentally and emotionally to what is going on around you, to perceive each new situation as just a neutral event. Then you can choose unemotionally what response to make. Your life stays under your control.

Daily life in today’s world is full of potentially stress-triggering events. The more active you are in your life, the busier you get, the more challenges you accept, and the more goals you set, the greater your potential for stress. Yet your stress level is something over which you can exercise almost total control, should you choose to.

To reduce stress, don’t make value judgments about people or events. A value judgment occurs when you inject strong opinions, beliefs, or feelings into or about an event. Value judgments include: good or bad, just or unjust, right or wrong, pleasant or sickening. None of these value judgments exists in the event itself, but only in how your mind chooses to perceive the event. The moment you begin to inject negative opinions, feelings, or beliefs into the event, you automatically stir up negative stress-producing emotions. Make a negative value judgment about the outcome of an event, an experience, or even another person and you end up upset and full of stress.

How many families have you observed in which there seem to be no shared interests or little interaction or quality time spent together? They’re not a family; they are just roommates. If you want roommates, find tenants who will pay rent but will not get involved in your business or personal life. Family members should not be treated as nonpaying tenants who just happen to occupy the same house.

Make dinner each evening with your family a commitment. Set an automatic business cutoff time. If you like to work late at the office, then schedule dinner at 6:30 or 7 p.m. Be there every time, no matter what you leave undone at the office. Don’t worry, it will still be there tomorrow. Ensure that your family spends at least thirty minutes together at the table each evening with meaningful discussions, a lot of humor, a lot of fun. Make it a family tradition.

If you want to spend quality time with your family at dinner without one of you being stuck in the kitchen cooking, serving, and cleaning up, then bring home take-out or have someone cook and deliver. Or share kitchen chores as a family, making that part of the quality time you spend together. Get creative – it’s your life.

If you become a slave to either office worries or to household chores, they will have power over your life. If, on the other hand, you treat your personal time as the most important time of your life, you will end up refreshed, less frustrated, and less stressed out, and you will have more positive energy each time you tackle new business situations and problems.

Schedule all of your personal activities on a “Daily Activities List.” Your daily business activities are scheduled on that same list. Compare the two schedules. Is there a conflict or the potential for conflict? If so then reschedule to avoid it. And remember, a scheduled personal activity, like a scheduled business activity, is an appointment that you are committed to keep. Don’t lose sight of why you work so hard – to be able to enjoy your personal life and to finance your personal dreams and goals.

Work: What tasks at work have been left without being finished? Is your work schedule manageable? Is your office a mess? Do certain jobs seem to wait stacked up on your desk forever? When was the last time you cleaned out your files? How orderly is your desk? What changes can you make at work, to create an ideal place where you can live your dream? Have you been intending to ask for a raise?

Are your travel and expense reimbursement forms up-to-date? What about other records you are responsible for keeping? What meetings need to be scheduled? What equipment needs repair? What improvements would you recommend? What have you been wanting to communicate to your employer, your employees or your coworkers? Any letters that could be written? Make a plan to do these things now.

Relationships: Consider each person in your life. What truths have been left unsaid? What messages need to be delivered? What regrets, resentments, hurts, criticisms and apologies have been withheld? What stands between you and this person? What prevents you from being completely open and honest with him or her? What keeps the two of you from meeting each other’s eyes unguardedly? What lies, half-truths and withheld truths need to be cleaned up? What broken promises and agreements need to be acknowledged and resolved, either by keeping them or by making a new agreement?

What can you do to repair or resolve any damaged relationships? Do you need to forgive someone? What amends do you want to make, if your actions have hurt or damaged someone else? Is there a relationship that has died or become injurious and needs to be ended? What acknowledgments do you want to give to people who have made special contributions to your life? Make a list of letters you will write, phone calls you will make, and talks you will have in person.

Finances: Is your current income enough, or do you need to find a way to increase it? What will you do? Is your check-book balanced? Is your money being handled the way it will need to be handled when you are living your dream? There’ll be no time for interruptions from creditors then, and worrying about how to make ends meet. Better get in practice right away: plan a budget and stick to it. Pay all your bills. Contact everyone you owe money to, and make arrangements you can keep, to pay them. Also, collect any money that is owed to you or your company.

Are your tax records current? Do you owe any taxes? Do you need some help figuring or managing your taxes? Are your tax files organized and accessible? What else needs to be done to organize your financial records and bring them up to date?