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Learn New Skills To Keep Your Mind Sharp!

 

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***THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS PROVIDED BY: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/267716.php DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT DID NOT WRITE THIS ARTICLE WE ARE JUST LINKING YOU TO SOME GOOD STUFF!***

 

Learning new skills keeps aging minds sharp

Monday 21 October 2013 - 8am PST

 

We are constantly reminded to "use it or lose it," and new research from the University of Texas at Dallas shows the same is true for keeping your brain up to speed.

No one likes the idea of slowing down as they age, but a new study suggests that challenging yourself to learn a new skill can bring noticeable benefits to an aging mind.

The Administration on Aging predicts that there will be 72.1 million Americans aged 65 and over by the year 2030 - 19% of the population. And the new research provides insight into how everyday activities contribute to cognitive vitality as we age.

Lead researcher, Denise Park, PhD, from the University's School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, says:

"We need, as a society, to learn how to maintain a healthy mind, just like we know how to maintain vascular health with diet and exercise."

To read more visit: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/267716.php

 

The Path to Personal Integrity

 

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***THIS ARTICLE IS FROM: http://experiencelife.com/article/walking-your-talk-the-path-of-personal-integrity/ WE AT DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT DID NOT WRITE IT.  WE ARE JUST SHARING IT!***

 

Walking Your Talk: The Path of Personal Integrity

Do you walk your talk? Say what you mean and mean what you say? Or does your language take you down roads you’re not willing to follow? Taking a closer look at how your words and deeds connect – or don’t – can help you see where you really stand.

EXPERIENCELIFE.COM

By Cat Thompson / March 2004

How’s that New Years Resolution coming along? Were you able to stick to it? Are you still putting in the same kind of committed energy that you started with back in January? Or did you get off to a running start and then find yourself petering out six weeks later?

If you’re not where you wanted to be, you may be wondering why. There are lots of reasons why we run afoul of our intentions. Sometimes we make a too-ambitious plan we simply don’t have the skills or energy to execute. Sometimes we find ourselves facing emotional roadblocks that we don’t know how to get through, so we run out of steam. But often, the forward movement comes to a screeching halt because we simply don’t keep our word to ourselves. We make promises (“Tomorrow I’ll get up early and go to the gym”), and then break them (“Awww, it’s raining, I think I’ll stay in bed. I’ll go to the gym on my way home”) – often for reasons we don’t even understand. Which brings me to what might be an uncomfortable question: How good are you to your word?

Words are powerful forces of creation. They take our dreams and goals and put them out there for all the world to witness. Florence Scovel Shinn, a metaphysician of the 1920s, said, “There is always plenty on man’s pathway; but it can only be brought into manifestation through desire, faith or the spoken word.” Every time we speak, we create a road of some sort. The quality of that road, and how far it goes, will be directly related to the integrity of our word.

Speaking With Integrity

What exactly is integrity? According to the dictionary, integrity is “the quality of possessing and steadfastly adhering to high moral principles or professional standards, and the state of being complete, undivided, sound or undamaged.” Integrity, then, is having high principles and keeping those standards consistent throughout all the different parts of the self.

One of the first places integrity issues show up is in our language patterns. When we are “in integrity,” we speak from a place of wholeness. Our words match our actions. As Dr. Seuss put it, “We say what we mean and we mean what we say.” When we break from this pattern and say things we don’t really mean, we move “out of integrity.”

Can you identify someone in your life who uses language carelessly, who agrees to things readily but then never seems to be able to show up for his or her agreements? Do you know individuals who spend a lot of their time speaking about things they have no experience with – who have plenty of opinions but little real, applicable knowledge to back it up? Do you have friends who frequently gossip or who say disempowering things about themselves? These are some of the common ways that people deprive themselves of the potential power of speech.

Language is meant to power our dreams into physical reality. When we “spend” our language on half-baked ideas, or passionate views we may have heard about but have no direct experience with, when we use language destructively or we say things we don’t really mean, we lose personal power. Personal power comes from being in integrity and diminishes whenever our integrity is undermined. Unfortunately, very few of us are taught the skills of using language as an integrity-building force.

Where Does Innovation Come From?

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***THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE COMES FROM http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-28248286/where-does-innovation-come-from/ AND WAS NOT ORIGINALLY WRITTEN BY THE DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT TEAM - WE JUST WANTED TO SHARE IT WITH YOU!***

Where Does Innovation Come From?

By 

STEVE TOBAK / 

MONEYWATCH/ August 29, 2011, 9:00 AM

Innovation is definitely a hot topic these days, but the one thing that's fuzzy for most people is where does it actually come from?

I mean, what makes one guy innovative and another, well, just a regular guy? Before we get into that, let me explain a few things about innovation.

For one thing, it's not the same as invention, although folks often confuse the two. Invention is a unique discovery or finding; innovation is introducing something new.

That may sound like semantics, and maybe it is, but at least in my mind, there's one big difference: innovation can be an application of someone else's invention in a new and practical way.

In Innovators Don't See Different Things - They See Things Differently, we talked about whatMalcolm Gladwell calls the Creation Myth: that an innovator may not be the guy who comes up with the idea but the guy who turns that idea into something people can use.

Indeed, innovation isn't a supernatural event, a preordained occurrence that only happens to certain people. And great innovators don't go from zero-to-great in a heartbeat. More often than not, they stand on the shoulders of giants, see things a little bit differently, or benefit from timing, opportunity, or luck.

For example:

• Steve Jobs didn't invent the GUI or the computer mouse, but when he saw them demonstrated, his mind was probably racing with practical applications.
• Howard Schultz didn't invent coffee, espresso, or cappuccino, but he has certainly been an innovator in bringing all that to the masses through Starbucks.
• McDonald's was the fast-food innovator, but I seriously doubt there are any real inventions under the golden arches.
• Bill Gates didn't invent the PC operating system and he certainly didn't come up with the idea of licensing technology, but his business model - combining the two - made Microsoft one of the most valuable and powerful companies in the world.

Having spent my entire career working with entrepreneurs and innovators in the high-tech industry, these are the 10 characteristics and methodologies that I think define innovative people:

Where Does Innovation Come From?

1. Standing on the shoulders of giants. Contrary to popular belief, innovation is often far more evolutionary than revolution, more practical and crafty than breakthrough invention. Most of the time you're repurposing somebody else's idea.
2. Left brain - right brain balance. The whole left brain - right brain thing is a myth, but metaphorically speaking, I think innovation often springs from a combination of inspirational thought (right brain) and practical need (left brain). They say necessity is the mother of invention; it's probably more true of innovation.
3. Belief that you're special. Many, if not most, innovative people have this sort of childish belief that they're special, destined for great things. The thought of doing something new and different - changing the world, as it were - can be daunting. Unless you truly believe it's your destiny, you'll probably be too scared to even try.
4. Questioning conventional wisdom, the status quo. If you even mention how things are doneor should be done to a true-blue entrepreneur or innovator, it's like nails screeching on a chalkboard.
5. Vision. Oftentimes, people just have a vision of how they think something should be. It's really that simple. But they're also driven to see it through, as in the next bullet ...
6. Driven by the need to prove something. Innovative people are definitely on a mission to prove something to somebody and half the time I don't even think they know who.
7. Problem solving. If you're not a problem solver, you're probably not going to come up with anything that anybody will find useful. Control freaks are natural problem solvers - they can barely walk down the street without seeing all sorts of things that can be done better.
8. Passion. Without passion and genuinely loving and caring about what you do, you simply won't have the resilience and stickwithitness to see innovation of any magnitude through. It's never just an idea - you have to actually do stuff with it.
9. Focused brainpower. Athletes will tell you success is all about focus: you can't hit a 100 mph fastball or catch a 30 yard pass with defenders all up in your face without it. It's the same with innovation. Ironically, people who appear to be all over the map with ADD-like symptoms can have rare moments of clarity when it all comes together.
10. Work stamina. There's loads of talk these days about working smarter, not harder, taking more breaks, etc. While I'm a big believer in not killing yourself with work, if you don't enjoy working and work stamina isn't in your blood, you're not likely to innovate a thing.

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3 Facts about dreams that you maybe did not already know

 

DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT: LIFE'S COSMIC EQUATION

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***THIS ARTICLE COMES FROM: http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/10/09/3-fascinating-facts-about-dreams/  DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT DID NOT WRITE IT***

3 Fascinating Facts About Dreams

By MARGARITA TARTAKOVSKY, M.S. 
Associate Editor

“The biggest myth about dreams is that they are frivolous manifestations reflecting basic occurrences of our daily experiences,” said Chicago psychotherapist Jeffrey Sumber.

But dreams are actually an important part of self-discovery. (More on that later.) Below are a few fascinating facts and findings about dreams.

1. People with disabilities dream as though they don’t have them.

The following is an excerpt from a person who participated in a dream study:

“I was supposed to and wanted to sing in the choir. I see a stage on which some singers, male and female, are standing… I am asked if I want to sing with them. ‘Me?’ I ask, ‘I don’t know if I am good enough.’ And already I am standing on the stage with the choir. In the front row, I see my mother, she is smiling at me… It is a nice feeling to be on stage and able to chant.”

What’s particularly curious about this dream is that the dreamer was born deaf and doesn’t speak. Recently, two studies published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition have found that people with disabilities still dream as though their impairments don’t exist.

 

One of the studies explored the dream diaries of 14 people with impairments (four born with paraplegia and 10 born deaf who can’t speak). Thirty-six able-bodied individuals served as controls. August 2011’s New Scientist featured the research, stating that findings showed that:

About 80 percent of the dream narratives of the deaf participants gave no indication of their impairment: many spoke in their dreams, while others could hear and understand spoken language. The dream reports of the people born paralyzed revealed something similar: they often walked, ran or swam, none of which they had ever done in their waking lives.

Even more interesting, the article states that: “…there was no difference between the number of such bodily movements in the dream reports of the people with paraplegia and in those of the deaf and able-bodied subjects.”

The second study found similar results. Researchers looked at the dream reports of 15 people who were either born with paraplegia or had it later in life (because of a spinal-cord injury). They also included 15 able-bodied controls. Their reports revealed that 14 of the participants with paraplegia had dreams that they were physically active. And they dreamed about walking just as often as the able-bodied participants.

One of the researchers, Ursula Voss at Germany’s University of Bonn, believes that “dreams are tapping into representations of limbs and movements that exist in the brain and which are independent of our waking reality,” she told the New Scientist. She and researcher Alan Hobson at Harvard Medical School speculate that the key is genetics. According to the magazine:

The pair say the recent dream studies suggest that our brain has the genetically determined ability to generate experiences that mimic life, including fully functioning limbs and senses, and that people who are born deaf or paralysed are likely tapping into these parts of the brain when they dream about things they cannot do while awake.

What Causes Those Freaky Dreams You Have At Night?

 

DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT: LIFE'S COSMIC EQUATION

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***THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS FROM WEBMD.COM : http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/freaky-dreams-what-do-they-mean***

Freaky Dreams: What Do They Mean?

Whether it’s falling off a cliff or public nudity, find out what may be causing those vivid, crazy dreams.

By Suzanne Wright
WebMD Feature

Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD

Consider this freaky dream. You're at a black-tie gala in a fancy hotel banquet room with lots of other people. You're all having a good time eating dinner, dancing, and talking. When it's time to go, you look for your purse, but it's gone. As you anxiously search for it, a fast-moving river appears out of nowhere, bisecting the room. Your purse is floating on the river, but you can't reach it. It is moving too swiftly. When you awaken, you're filled with a sense of panic.

Now if you plugged the dream into an online dream analyzer, such as you might find at Freakydreams.com, you'd learn that a purse is a symbol for wealth and resources, a hotel represents transition, and a river connotes emotion. Since you have been living through a kitchen remodeling -- with its attendant financial stresses and upheavals -- this dream echoes and amplifies what's going on in your waking life.

Causes of Fatigue and Sleepiness and How to Fight Them

What Are Dreams?

Human beings dream, and so do, scientists believe, most mammals and some birds. On the most basic level, a dream is the experience you have of envisioned images, sounds, or other sensations while you sleep. They are an internal mental process. But dreams are actually much more than that.

Sigmund Freud's theory was that your dreams are an expression of what you're repressing during the time you are awake. And Carl Jung believed that dreams provide messages about "lost" or "neglected" parts of our selves that need to be reintegrated. Many dreams simply come from a preoccupation with the day's activities. But some offer rich, symbolic expressions -- an interface between the conscious and the unconscious that can fill in the gaps of our self-knowledge and provide information and insight.

In his book The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination, Robert Moss writes, "Dreams are open vistas of possibility that take us beyond our everyday self-limiting beliefs and behaviors. Before we dismiss our dream lover, our dream home or our dream job as unattainable -- 'only a dream' -- we want to examine carefully whether there are clues in the dream that could help us to manifest that juicy vision."

Why Do We Dream?

Everyone dreams every night -- even if we don't remember our dreams.

Tom Scammell, MD, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, says no one knows why we dream. "There is a strong movement in the research community to research how sleep improves memory and learning," Scammell says. "One speculative possibility is that dreaming allows you the opportunity to practice things you may or may not ever have to do, like running away or fighting off a predator."

Three or four times a night, you have a period of sleep that lasts approximately 90 minutes called REM -- rapid eye movement -- sleep. It is during REM sleep that your brain is more active. And according to Scammell, it's then that conditions are right for "story-like" dreams that are rich in action, complexity, and emotion.

"You are most likely to recall dreams if you wake at the end of a REM episode," says Scammell. "Americans, who are chronically sleep-deprived, probably miss out on some REM sleep. This builds up pressure for REM sleep. So when you're catching up on your sleep, you may have more REM sleep with more intense dreams."

 

What is Your Dream?

 

DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT: LIFE'S COSMIC EQUATION

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***THIS ARTICLE COMES FROM http://www.success.com/articles/642-what-is-your-dream WE JUST WANTED TO SHARE IS WITH YOU!***

 

What is Your Dream?

Excerpt from Put Your Dream to the Test

What is your dream? Will you achieve your dream in your lifetime? I'm certain that you desire to. I'm sure you hope you will. But will you actually do it? What odds would you give yourself? One in five? One in a hundred? One in a million? How can you tell whether your chances are good or whether your dream will always remain exactly that—a dream? And are you willing to put it to the test?

Most people I know have a dream. In fact, I’ve asked hundreds, if not thousands, of people about their dream. Some willingly describe it with great detail and enthusiasm. Others are reluctant to talk about it. They seem embarrassed to say it out loud. These people have never tested their dream. They don’t know if others will laugh at them. They’re not sure if they’re aiming too high or too low. They don’t know if their dream is something they can really achieve or if they’re destined to fail.

Most people have no idea how to achieve their dreams. What they possess is a vague notion that there is something they would like to do someday or someone they would like to become. But they don’t know how to get from here to there. If that describes you, then you’ll be glad to know that there really is hope.

Know the Answers Before You Take the Test
When you were a kid in school, do you remember a teacher doing a review before a test and saying something like, “Pay attention now, because this is going to be on the test”? I do. The encouraging teachers who wanted to see their students succeed said things like that all the time. They wanted us to be prepared so we could do well. They put us to the test, but they set us up for success.

My desire is to be like one of those encouraging teachers to you. I want to prepare you to put your dream to the test so you can actually achieve it. How? I believe that if you know the right questions to ask yourself, and if you can answer these questions in an affirmative way, you will have an excellent chance of being able to achieve your dreams. The more questions you can answer positively, the greater the likelihood of success!

The Right and Wrong Picture of a Dream
I’ve studied successful people for almost 40 years. I’ve known hundreds of high-profile people who achieved big dreams. And I’ve achieved a few dreams of my own. What I’ve discovered is that a lot of people have misconceptions about dreams. Take a look at many of the things that people pursue and call dreams in their lives:

• Daydreams—Distractions from current work
• Pie-in-the-Sky Dreams—Wild ideas with no strategy or basis in reality
• Bad Dreams—Worries that breed fear and paralysis
• Idealistic Dreams—The way the world would be if you were in charge
• Vicarious Dreams—Dreams lived through others
• Romantic Dreams—Belief that some person will make you happy
• Career Dreams—Belief that career success will make you happy
• Destination Dreams—Belief that a position, title or award will make you happy
• Material Dreams—Belief that wealth or possessions will make you happy

If these aren’t good dreams—valid ones worthy of a person’s life—then what are? Here is my definition of a dream that can be put to the test and will pass: A dream is an inspiring picture of the future that energizes your mind, will and emotions, empowering you to do everything you can to achieve it. A dream worth pursuing is a picture and blueprint of a person’s purpose and potential. Or as my friend Sharon Hull says, “A dream is the seed of possibility planted in the soul of a human being, which calls him to pursue a unique path to the realization of his purpose.”

What Do You Have in Mind
Dreams are valuable commodities. They propel us forward. They give us energy. They make us enthusiastic. Everyone ought to have a dream. But what if you’re not sure whether you have a dream you want to pursue? Let’s face it. Many people were not encouraged to dream. Others have dreams but lose hope and set them aside.

I want you to know that there’s good news. You can find or recapture your dreams. And they can be big dreams, not that all dreams have to be huge to be worth pursuing. They just need to be bigger than you are. As actress Josie Bisset remarked, “Dreams come a size too big so we can grow into them.”

If you’ve given up hope, lost sight of your dream or never connected with something that you think is worth dreaming and working toward, perhaps it would help you to learn about the five most common reasons why people have trouble identifying their dream:

1. Some People Have Been Discouraged from Dreaming by Others
Many people have had their dreams knocked right out of them! The world is filled with dream crushers and idea killers.

2. Some People Are Hindered by Past Disappointments and Hurts
Disappointment is the gap that exists between expectation and reality. All of us have encountered that gap. When something goes wrong, we say, “I’ll never do that again!” What a mistake, especially when it comes to our dreams! Failure is the price we must pay to achieve success.

3. Some People Get in the Habit of Settling for Average
Columnist Maureen Dowd says, “The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.” Dreams require a person to stretch, to go beyond average. You can’t reach for a dream and remain safely mediocre at the same time. The two are incompatible.

4. Some People Lack the Confidence Needed to Pursue Their Dreams
Humor columnist Erma Bombeck observed, “It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.” It takes confidence to talk about a dream and even more to pursue it. And sometimes confidence separates the people who dream and pursue those dreams from those who don’t.

5. Some People Lack the Imagination to Dream
How do people discover their dreams? By dreaming! That may sound overly simplistic, but that’s where it starts. Imagination is the soil that brings a dream to life.

Are You Ready to Put Your Dream to the Test?
OK, you may be saying to yourself, I’ve got a dream. I think it’s worth pursuing. Now what? How can I know that my odds are good for achieving it? That brings us to these questions:

1. The Ownership Question: Is my dream really my dream?
2. The Clarity Question: Do I clearly see my dream?
3. The Reality Question: Am I depending on factors within my control to achieve my dream?
4. The Passion Question: Does my dream compel me to follow it?
5. The Pathway Question: Do I have a strategy to reach my dream?
6. The People Question: Have I included the people I need to realize my dream?
7. The Cost Question: Am I willing to pay the price for my dream?
8. The Tenacity Question: Am I moving closer to my dream?
9. The Fulfillment Question: Does working toward my dream bring satisfaction?
10. The Significance Question: Does my dream benefit others?

I believe that if you really explore each question, examine yourself honestly and answer yes to all of them, the odds of your achieving your dream are very good. I truly believe that everyone has the potential to imagine a worthwhile dream, and most have the ability to achieve it. And it doesn’t matter how big or how seemingly outrageous your dream appears to others if your answers are yes to the Dream Test questions.

Speechwriter and comedy author Robert Orben asserted, “Always remember there are only two kinds of people in this world— the realists and the dreamers. The realists know where they’re going. The dreamers have already been there.” If you have defined your dream, then you’re ready to put it to the test and start going after it.

Can You Answer Yes to the Question: What Is My Dream?
If you are unsure of what your dream might be—either because you are afraid to dream or because you somehow lost your dream along the way—then start preparing yourself to receive your dream by exploring the following:

1. Mental preparation. Read and study in areas of your greatest interest.
2. Experiential preparation. Engage in activities in areas related to your interests.
3. Visual preparation. Put up pictures of people and things that inspire you.
4. Hero preparation. Read about and try to meet people you admire and who inspire you.
5. Physical preparation. Get your body in optimal shape to pursue your dream.
6. Spiritual preparation. Seek God’s help for a bigger-than-self dream.

Once you do these six things to put yourself in the best possible position to receive a dream, focus on discovering your dream. As you do, keep in mind the words of my agent, Matt Yates, who says, “A dream is what you desire if anything and everything is possible.”

 

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How to be Patient

 

DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT: LIFE'S COSMIC EQUATION

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***THIS ARTICLE COMES FROM: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTCS_78.htm***

 

How to be Patient

Learning to Stay Calm

The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it open. 
– Arnold Glasgow, American humorist

Here's the problem: You're waiting for someone to finish compiling a report that you need for a meeting. Because of an issue that came up, you're already 15 minutes late.

You can feel your body getting tense, and you're getting quite cross. You start sweating, and suddenly you yell at the person for being slow and putting you behind schedule. You can tell she's hurt, but you can't help it. She's making you late!

Does this sound familiar?

Many of us are impatient at times. Losing control of our patience hurts not only us, but those around us. Impatience raises our stress level and can even cause physical harm to our bodies. Being impatient can also damage relationships.

In this article, we'll examine strategies that you can use to be more patient.

Why Practice Patience?

Others often see impatient people as arrogant, insensitive, and impulsive. They can be viewed as poor decision makers, because they make quick judgments or interrupt people. Some people will even avoid impatient people, because of their poor people skills and bad tempers.

People with these personality traits are unlikely to be at the top of the list for promotions to leadership positions. Impatience can even affect relationships at home.

The more patient you are with others, the likelier you are to be viewed positively by your peers and your managers, not to mention your family and friends.

Signs of Impatience

How do you know when you're being impatient? You will probably experience one of more of the following symptoms:

• Shallow breathing (short breaths).
• Muscle tension.
• Hand clenching/tightening.
• Jiggling/restless feet.
• Irritability/anger.
• Anxiety/nervousness.
• Rushing.
• Snap/quick decisions.

Finding Your Causes

If you experience the symptoms of impatience, your next step is to discover the true cause. Many of us have "triggers." These could be people, phrases, or specific situations (like rush-hour traffic) that regularly cause us to enter an impatient frame of mind.

Make a list of things that cause you to become impatient. If you're having trouble identifying your triggers, use these tips:

• Stop and think about the last time you were impatient. What caused it? You can narrow this down to the root cause by using the 5 Whys technique.
• Ask your family, friends, and co-workers about your impatience. Chances are that they know what gets you "wound up".
• Many people become impatient due to physical factors such as hunger, dehydration, or fatigue. Analyze your body the next time you start to feel impatient. A simple remedy might be a snack and a glass of water!
• Keep a journal with you to record when you start to feel impatient. Write down what the situation is, and why you're getting frustrated.

Identifying your triggers helps because it forces you to examine your actions and uncover why you're doing what you're doing. This knowledge also helps you devise strategies to avoid becoming impatient.

Of course, it would be great if you could avoid the triggers that make you impatient. But for most of us, that's just not possible. So you have to learn to manage impatience instead.

Managing the Symptoms

When you feel impatient, it's important to get out of this frame of mind as quickly as possible. Try these strategies:

• Take deep, slow breaths, and count to 10. Doing this helps slow your heart rate, relaxes your body, and distances you emotionally from the situation. If you're feeling really impatient, you might need to do a longer count, or do this several times.
• Impatience can cause you to tense your muscles involuntarily. So, consciously focus on relaxing your body. Again, take slow, deep breaths. Relax your muscles, from your toes up to the top of your head.
• Learn to manage your emotions. Remember, you have a choice in how you react in every situation. You can choose to be patient, or choose not to be: it's all up to you.
• Force yourself to slow down. Make yourself speak and move more slowly. It will appear to others as if you're calm – and, by "acting" patient, you can often "feel" more patient.
• Practice active listening and empathic listening. Make sure you give other people your full attention, and patiently plan your response to what they say.
• Remind yourself that your impatience rarely gets others to move faster – in fact, it can interfere with other people's ability to perform complex or highly-skilled work. All you're doing is creating more stress, which is completely unproductive.
• Try to talk yourself out of your impatient frame of mind. Remind yourself how silly it is that you're reacting this way. People often don't mind if a meeting is delayed, just as long as you let them know that you're running late in advance.
• If your impatience causes you to react in anger toward others, use anger management techniques to calm down.
• Some people become impatient because they're perfectionists. However, in addition to causing impatience, perfectionism can actually slow productivity and increase stress. Learn how to stop being a perfectionist with our Coaching Clinic I'm a Perfectionist!

Remember that, although many people are naturally patient, the rest of us need to practice patience for it to become a habit. Becoming more patient won't happen overnight, but do persist – it's so important!

Key Points

Many of us struggle with impatience. But if we want healthy work relationships and a successful career, then we need to spend time making patience a habit.

Start by identifying your triggers. Often a specific person or situation can immediately cause you to become impatient. When you identify the specific causes, you're better able to discover why it's happening. You can then use strategies to overcome your impatience.

- See more at: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTCS_78.htm#sthash.6tNHHdhZ.dpuf

 

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A Tale of Great Courage

 

DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT: LIFE'S COSMIC EQUATION

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***THIS ARTICLE IS FROM: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1525980/Courage-under-fire-of-teenage-medic-who-saved-life-of-sergeant.html DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT DID NOT WRITE IT, WE ARE JUST SHARING THIS AMAZING STORY WITH YOU!***

Courage under fire of teenage medic who saved life of sergeant

By Nick Britten

12:01AM BST 10 Aug 2006

A teenage medic is in line to become the first female soldier to be decorated for bravery in Iraq after saving her commander's life during a fierce gun battle.

Pte Michelle "Chuck" Norris, who is just 5ft tall, braved heavy sniper fire for three minutes when she climbed on top of a Warrior armoured vehicle to pull her sergeant to safety after he was wounded in the head.

One bullet from an AK47 rifle ripped through her rucksack as she came under fire from five different positions.

She said last night that the incident had "brought home" the reality of war to her.

How to be Courageous

 

DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT: LIFE'S COSMIC EQUATION

"Because Your Life is Worth it!

 

Photo From: www.photos-public-domain.com

 

***This article is by Adam Khan - the original website that we found it at can be reached here: http://www.youmeworks.com/how-courage.html***

COURAGE IS NOT the absence of a thumping heart. It is the absence of cowering. Courage is taking actions that need to be taken regardless of how scared you are. "Courage" is what we call it from the outside, but what it is on the inside is simply responsibility.

A soldier in battle jumps on top of a live grenade that has just landed in his foxhole, saving the lives of the three other men in the foxhole with him. We hear of his action and say it was a tremendous act of courage. But what does he say? Someone who lived to tell about it says he was only trying to protect his buddies. He saw the grenade first and felt responsible for the lives of his friends.

Whenever you see heroes interviewed, they almost always say the same thing: "I only did what anyone else would do in the situation." They saw what needed to be done and felt responsible — responsible for their buddies, or their mission, or human decency, or whatever.

Their courage was a result of their feeling of responsibility.

How to Bring Compassion into Your Life - 7 Steps

 

DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT: LIFE'S COSMIC EQUATION

"Because Your Life is Worth it!"

***THIS ARTICLE IS NOT FROM DANCE WITH THE ELEPHANT IT IS AN ARTICLE THAT WAS FOUND ON WIKIHOW: http://www.wikihow.com/Cultivate-Compassion-in-Your-Life***

 

How to Cultivate Compassion in Your Life

Edited by Flickety, Lillian May, Krystle, Eric and 10 others

 

Why develop compassion in your life? Well, there are scientific studies that suggest there are physical benefits to practicing compassion.[1] But there are other benefits as well, and these are emotional and spiritual. The main benefit is that it helps you to be more happy, and brings others around you to be more happy. If we agree that it is a common aim of each of us to strive to be happy, then compassion is one of the main tools for achieving that happiness. It is therefore of utmost importance that we cultivate compassion in our lives and practice compassion every day.

How do we do that? This guide contains 7 different practices that you can try out and perhaps incorporate into your every day life.

1.  Develop a morning ritual. Greet each morning with a ritual. Try this one, suggested by the Dalai Lama: “Today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others, I am going to benefit others as much as I can.” Then, when you’ve done this, try one of the practices below.