Achieving Your Goals: How To Go From Spinning Your Wheels To Incredible Traction

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• Achieving Your Goals: How To Go From Spinning Your Wheels To Incredible Traction
• Mom's Stress Before Conception Linked to Infant Mortality
• Seeing with the eyes of compassion
• Mindfulness: Can it make parenting easier?
• Decline of Buddhism in Thailand
• After struggling with PTSD, Navy veteran uses meditation, counseling to help others overcome trauma

Achieving Your Goals: How To Go From Spinning Your Wheels To Incredible Traction Posted: 25 May 2013 11:00 AM PDT The brutal truth of achieving your long term goal is this: It's hard to get the traction you need to succeed. There are so many things you need to get done it can be completely overwhelming. You get paralyzed, you get distracted, and instead of chipping away at our dream, you let it go. Unless you find a way to make significant headway on your long term goals, you'll never reach them. I want to show you how Riley Dallas went from spinning his wheels and overwhelmed with to-dos to a successful software service launch in just three weeks using my quarterback method. The problem with being productive Riley is an ambitious guy. He dreams of bootstrapping a software business and escaping the corporate world once and for all. He has a crystal clear vision. He has concrete goals. He has a plan to attack his dream daily. And if that's not enough, Riley is extremely organized and productive. He maintains an orderly to-do list in a premium tool, and he regularly checks things off. From the outside, Riley seems poised for a huge breakthrough with his dream. There's only one thing missing: Results. Week after week, month after month, Riley just hasn't made progress towards his dream. He checked things off his list and busted his butt, but the results never came. Something had to change. Read more » Read More @ Source

Mom's Stress Before Conception Linked to Infant Mortality Posted: 25 May 2013 12:00 AM PDT CREDIT: Pregnancy photo via Shutterstock Babies born to moms who faced a stressful event in the months before conceiving may be less likely to survive their first year of life, according to a new study. Although the risk of dying remained low for all infants in the study, babies whose mothers faced preconception stress were 53 percent more likely to die before their first birthday than those whose mothers had not been stressed before conceiving. The results suggest that the period immediately before conception may be a sensitive period that can affect an infant's mortality risk, said the study researchers. In the study, researchers at Indiana University and Sweden's Karolinska Institute looked at records of more than 3 million births in Sweden between 1973 and 2008. The researchers identified 8,398 cases of infant mortality. Nearly 21,000 of the children were born to mothers who had faced a stressful event — defined by researchers as the death of an immediate family member — in the six months prior to conceiving. Ninety-three of those children died as infants. "We tend to focus a lot on the pregnancy period, but the preconception period is really important too," said Whitney Witt, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison who was not involved in the study. "We are just starting to understand how different exposures during that time period might affect a pregnancy." Preconception stress was also associated with an increased risk of preterm birth and low birth weight — two other known risk factors for infant mortality. "This finding is really important, because these factors may partially explain the results," Witt said. The researchers found no association between maternal stress during pregnancy (also defined as the loss of an immediate family member) and infant mortality. The link between preconception stress and infant mortality held even after the researchers accounted for other factors that may raise an infant's risk of dying, such as the mother smoking during pregnancy, or the infant being born prematurely or at a low birth weight. However, the researchers noted that there might have been other unknown factors that influenced the results. In the United States, six or seven babies out of every 1,000 infants born die within their first year of life. Congenital disorders and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) are the leading culprits. Studies have suggested that maternal stress during the preconception period  change the body systems responsible for delivering hormonal signals and nutrition to the fetus, which could affect the very early stages of pregnancy, when the organs begin to form. Witt said future studies should look at how stress prior to conception, and throughout a woman's life, may affect the health of both a mother and her children. The death of a loved one isn't the only type of stress to watch out for — personal illness, financial worries and fertility issues — are all stressors that can take a toll on the body. "Like any other big event in life, it's important to prepare for a pregnancy," said Dr. Jill Rabin, an ob-gyn at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York who was not involved in the study. Rabin recommended that women see a health care provider for preconception counseling to address any lingering health or diet issues before they get pregnant. About 40 percent of patients seek prenatal care only after they have entered the second trimester of pregnancy, she said. "If you are taking a long car trip across the country, you'd take the car to the mechanic to get the brakes checked, get the oil changed, make sure the car was in as good of shape as possible before taking the trip," Rabin said. "Pregnancy is the trip. Once pregnant, the window of opportunity to make real changes is limited." The study was published in the May issue of the journal Psychological Science. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on LiveScience. Read More @ Source

Seeing with the eyes of compassion Posted: 24 May 2013 10:00 PM PDT We can see beings with the eyes of compassion, or with the eyes of utility. We almost literally live in different worlds depending on which eyes we use to see with. When we see with the eyes of utility we gauge beings by their usefulness to us. If the checkout clerk performs smoothly we'll remain neutral, maybe even friendly, but if he or she has trouble looking up the code for an item, or — heaven forbid — have to call in a supervisor for help, we'll quickly become irritable. This person has become an obstacle to the smooth functioning of our life. When the child is slow getting ready for bed, succumbing to a seemingly endless stream of distractions, we yell, because the child being awake is an impediment to us getting on with our next activity. If there's a insect buzzing around in the house, this is an impediment to our living in a relatively annoyance-free zone, and offends our sensibilities, since bugs are dirty. The bug's very existence is an impediment to our well-being and so we're quick to reach for a newspaper or can of fly-spray. The lambs in the field are cute, but we like the taste of meat. The lamb dead is of more utility to us than the lamb being alive. If you benefit from this work, please consider supporting Wildmind. Click here to make a one-time or recurring donation.   Seeing with the eyes of compassion changes everything. With the eyes of compassion, we only see one thing. We see that others' happiness and suffering are as real to them as our own are to us. We see that others want and seek happiness, but don't find it as often as they would like. We see that others want to be free from suffering, and yet keep suffering. We feel for the checkout clerk because, for all we know, they are just learning the job, or are under-trained, or the systems have been changed, or they're having to deal with someone else's errors, or they have personal problems that are making it hard to stay focused. We don't know that any of these things is the case, but we're open to the possibilities. We may feel the frustration of being in a slow-moving queue, but we don't just jump to blaming the clerk. He or she is a human being. When we see, with the eyes of compassion, the child getting distracted while getting ready for bed, we may recall that self-control is one of the first cognitive abilities to go when we're tired. So the child is literally unable at that point to control him or her self. What, then, is the point of getting mad? More kindly directing is needed. The fly turns out to be just a fly. Sure, it has a dubious sense of hygiene and likes to walk over our food, and it makes an annoying sound, but it's another living thing. Many an insect has been given safe passage to our front porch with the help of a glass and an envelope. And the lambs? I'd rather have tempeh or tofu. After 31 years of vegetarianism I can no longer think of animals as food, any more than I can think of people as food. With the eyes of compassion we see the most essential thing about any being: their deepest drives for life and wholeness and safety. With the eyes of utility we see only our own need. We don't really see anything beyond ourselves. With the eyes of compassion we see beyond ourselves and are open to the magical and mysterious reality that is another life. When we see with the eyes of compassion, recognizing that others' happiness and suffering are as real to them as our own are to us, we don't want to do anything to obstruct their happiness or to cause them harm. It just doesn't happen. And when we see in this way, and connect in this way, and respect in this way, every connection becomes a source of joy, for self-preoccupation imprisons and limits us like a birdcage, while leaving behind self-preoccupation is like flying free. It's more than flying free, it's like soaring with others. Of course we can't just switch from seeing with the eyes of utility to seeing with the eyes of compassion all at once. We'll bounce from one perspective to another, perhaps many times in a day. Perhaps we'll only see through compassion's eyes for a few minutes or a few seconds, before we start to see the world in utilitarian terms once again. But it's a training. It's a practice. Just keep coming gently back to the thought: "This person suffers just as I suffer. This person, just like me, doesn't want to suffer." And if we keep gently reminding ourselves to see with the eyes of compassion in this way, that perspective will more and more become part of who we are. Read More @ Source

Mindfulness: Can it make parenting easier? Posted: 24 May 2013 09:00 PM PDT Carla Naumburg: There's no question in my mind that mindfulness can make us all better parents, both by helping us to stay tuned in to our own thoughts and feelings so they don't unconsciously dictate our actions AND by giving us the skills and tools to truly connect with our children so we can best respond to their thoughts and emotions with kindness. I have found that my own meditation and informal mindfulness practices have made a noticeable improvement in my ability to stay calm and choose how I want to respond to my girls, rather than reacting to them out of… Read the original article » Read More @ Source

Decline of Buddhism in Thailand Posted: 24 May 2013 08:00 PM PDT Lucky Severson, Religion and Ethics: There's a struggle going on inside Thailand. It's between two powerful influences. One side can be found in places like this; the other in crowded spaces like this. For now it seems that one side is falling behind. This is Professor John Butt, senior advisor to the Institute of Religion at Payap University in Chiang Mai. PROF. JOHN BUTT: It's a real clash with modernity, with social change, and it's been very intense. The changes that took place in America and in Europe have been extended over a couple of centuries; here it's been a couple of decades… Read the original article » Read More @ Source

After struggling with PTSD, Navy veteran uses meditation, counseling to help others overcome trauma Posted: 24 May 2013 07:00 PM PDT Free Speech Radio News: This Memorial Day weekend, veterans, families and communities across the US are taking part in events to honor soldiers who have died while serving in the armed forces. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America is calling for a moment of silence on Monday at noon eastern when officials will lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. For many veterans and their families, it's also a time to find ways to confront their past experiences and to heal. It can be a long process marked by trauma but one that… Read the original article » Read More @ Source

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