Phoenix Education

6 Ways to Live Your Life with Purpose

Finding your purpose in life can turn everything around. It can make your life immediately more meaningful, giving you a reason to bound out of bed in the morning instead of grouching your way to the coffee pot.

Living with purpose helps to make the tough times easier to deal with, and the good times even better.

Know Your Beliefs

Living with purpose starts with understanding your own personal system of values and beliefs. What is important to you? What really matters?

When you understand your beliefs, you can start to live by sticking to what is really important in your moral universe. You have an inbuilt list that you can use to guide the way you make decisions and priorities. It is the bedrock of integrity and how others will judge you. Living in alignment with your beliefs will earn you respect and trust.

Get Clarity on Your Priorities

Your priorities are shaped by your purpose. Once you know your life purpose, it becomes easier to work out what you want to do and how to achieve your goals. This clarity means that saying no to some things and a hearty yes to others becomes more natural, and you’ll get ahead much faster.

Aim for Balance

Once you’re comfortable with your life purpose, some of the striving and anxiety of life can ease off. You don’t have to work 24/7. You know how important it is to stay healthy, emotionally, and physically. People living with purpose make sure to connect with the people they love, and they don’t forget about self-care.

Follow Your Passion

Knowing your passion will help you find and nurture your purpose. Passion means energy and motivation; it means being really engaged with life and focusing on getting the most out of it. A new day is full of opportunities and promise, and you’re ready to go for it!

Feel Your Contentment

This might sound a little surprising, but living a purposeful life gives you time to smell the roses. Knowing your life purpose takes the anxious edge off things and allows you to feel grateful for where you are now, as well as excited for the future.

Live in the Present

Perhaps the best gift of a life of purpose is that you relish every moment. There’s no room in your life for regret because everything you do is part of the big adventure. Challenges and setbacks become easier to ride out because you’re not letting failure define you. Being plugged into the present allows you to feel the abundance that’s already in your life.

5 Ways to Weed Weakness Out of Your Life

Controversial?

Everyone has weaknesses. We’re born with them. We grow with them. We lose them, develop them, and lose them all over again. It’s part of the growing experience.

So, if you’re trying to pass off your life as one with no weaknesses, you may be having a tough time. It takes time to get to a point where you graduate your attributes from weak ones to strong ones, but it is 100% possible. Start with a few solid ways to weed weakness out of your life.

Make it a Game

When you zoom out and think about your weaknesses, you can make a list out of it. Write them all down. Then, attack your list as if it were a to-do list. These are definitive attributes that can be improved or changed, so why not go for it?

Learn from Others

You are not alone here. You’re certainly not the only person who has had/will ever have this weakness. You have tons of people to look up to and learn from, so use this to your advantage. Find someone who has similar weaknesses or similar habits as you. Ask them questions. Learn from them. Then, apply it to your situation.

Think About What You Cannot See

Have you ever received criticism from someone and been completely shocked? Sometimes we don’t realize our weaknesses until it is brought to our attention. If you’re starting on a self-improvement project, try asking your friends and family what they think you can improve about yourself.

Take it a Step Further

Weaknesses are not surface level, so they shouldn’t be treated that way. If you have a hard time speaking in public, there is likely a deeper-seated issue causing that surface-level weakness. If you don’t like to do your work on time, there’s probably something triggering that. When you analyze your weaknesses, don’t just think about how you want to improve them. Think about why they are there in the first place. Ask yourself questions like “Why do I really feel this way?” or “Have I always felt this way?” Get to the crux of your weakness, and then work to crush it.

Recognize that Strengths Always Trump Weaknesses

No matter what your strengths are or what your weaknesses are, the good always trumps the bad. Don’t be too hard on yourself throughout this process. You have so many good things going for you, so don’t let yourself forget about those. When you’re asking your loved ones about your weaknesses, ask about your strengths. When you’re making a list of things you want to improve about yourself, make a list about the things you pride yourself on. Keep up the morale and push through!

5 Ways to Add Self-Care into a Busy Day

Where do you fit into your day?

If you’re like most people, you’re pretty busy. You’re already dealing with work, relationships, and a whole lot of day-to-day actions. You’re running in every direction at once. How in the world are you supposed to fit self-care into a day like that?

Thankfully, it’s easier than you think. Try these five ways to add self-care into your busy day.

Ask Some Important Questions

Self-care isn’t always about over-indulging yourself. Truly, at its core, self-care is more practical than you might think. You start by asking yourself what you need right now. Meeting these basic needs should be at the center of self-care.

Map it Out

Self-care is never going to just happen. Unless you are intentional, you will never make time for it. By making use of your calendar and scheduling time for yourself you are more likely to succeed in meeting your basic needs. Start small by building in the habits which will help you the most. You can begin by adding in regular exercise date several days a week, or by making a meal plan to help you eat healthier. As you achieve one goal, add in another. The key is not to overwhelm yourself all at once.

Figure Out What Comes First

How are you when it comes to priorities? If you’re like most people, just deciding where to begin can be difficult. Here you need to figure out the difference between important and urgent. If something is important and not urgent, you can add it to your schedule. If something is urgent and not important, give it to someone else to do. But if something is urgent and important, do this first.

Learn to Say “No”

You should never feel like you have to say “yes” to everything. Sometimes the best form of self-care is learning how to say “no.” By setting solid boundaries, you protect yourself from activities which will only leave you drained and give you no benefit at all. If you never say ‘no’ what is the value of your ‘yes’?

Do the Small Stuff

We think the little things don’t matter, but they do. By ensuring you take care of the basics such as making sure you get enough sleep, practicing good hygiene, eating right, and exercising, you will keep your body in tiptop form. These things also have a solid impact on your mental health.

When we get busy, we tend to forget all of these things so easily. When you’re making an effort to take care of yourself, you have to be intentional in what you do. Remembering these 5 tips will go a long way toward keeping you healthy and happy no matter how busy you get.

5 Ways Exercise Helps You Become More Successful

Am I a personal trainer?

No.

But…

You have a lot of energy and are full of visions of dreams fulfilled. You want to succeed in life. But how can you when you’re not moving?

Oh, sure, you’ve got some great ideas about what you want to do. You’re probably even working toward them. You might even have the entire future laid out in a precise roadmap and are busy ticking off each item on the list. But consider this: you’re still failing if you’re not fit.

In short, you need to exercise.

Why is exercise so important to success?

Exercise Helps You Practice Skills You Need Elsewhere

You’re never going to succeed if you haven’t set up some serious goals and added them to your schedule. People who exercise are used to doing both things already. In fact, this kind of dedicated planning is probably already second nature.

Exercise Invites You to Go Deep

Feeling a little burned out, or bogged down by bad habits? Both of these problems fade with exercise. When working out, you give your mind a chance to rest. Better yet, the healthy brain chemicals triggered by activity, such as dopamine, replace malaise with a feel-good kind of reaction instead. You get into the zone and can let your mind run free, exploring new thoughts and ideas while growing more fit and healthy with each step. Many a knotty problem has been worked out while working out.

Exercise Drops Stress

No, you can’t tell the people around you what you really think of them. Exercise gives you a safe outlet to burn out anger, rage, frustration, grief or a host of other emotions aroused by others throughout the day. This clears your mind to get you back on track with what’s important.

Exercise Builds You Up

When you’re working out, you can’t help but feel better about yourself. After all, the very act of exercise makes your body feel good instead of lethargic and heavy. As a result, your self-talk shifts. You become more positive in what you say, and even more optimistic about outcomes, especially as you see yourself realizing exercise goals. You visualize success.

Exercise Keeps You on Schedule

When chasing goals, it’s really easy to keep working without stopping. This will eventually kill you if you’re not careful. By taking an exercise break, you put a stop to the day and remind yourself there’s a lot more to life than work. This helps keep you in balance so you can return to your hopes and dreams with a more rested mind tomorrow.

Without your health, you’re never going to truly be able to achieve anything. In the end, the most significant benefit to your future success through exercise comes from the fact you’re healthier overall. Period. So, get moving, be consistent, and have fun. Success is out there waiting for you.

5 Tips for Being Your Best at Work

Being your best at work means not only putting your best foot forward but also continually working to better yourself. This doesn’t always mean turning in the best project or attending all the professional developments. Keep reading to learn basic ways you can show up with your best at work every day.

Get to Know Your Colleagues

Learning about your colleagues has many benefits. You don’t have to be out to make friends, but learning about others can benefit you in many ways. First, it shows you care, and people like it when people are considerate. Second, it will help you find things in common that you can come back to when work gets tough. Finally, getting to know people will help you learn how to work better. Derek prefers exact instructions and asks lots of questions, while Suzy is a big-picture type of person who tends to skip over minor details. Getting to know means learning how to work better.

Don’t Be a Gossip

No one likes an office gossip, except maybe the other office gossip. Getting caught up in drama can be a distraction and can earn you a bad reputation with your coworkers and supervisors. You want to be someone that can be trusted with information. Keep your business to yourself and remember, loose lips sink ships.

Stretch Your Skill Set

Stretching your skills as well as learning new ones allows you to continue growing your tool bag. This will make you a more valuable team member and will help you if you ever decide to look for a new position elsewhere.

Become a Mentor

Mentoring can be done in and outside of the office. The new intern that is lost? Take that person under your wing and help them find their way. You will be a valuable friend and show that you are willing to help others. You can also do outreach in your profession in schools and other community programs.

Be a Friend

You don’t have to be BFFs with every person in the office but be friendly. Ask how others are doing, encourage, start a meal train if someone is sick or on parental leave. Not only will others appreciate and remember your kindness, but they will be willing to return the favor if the need arises.

Being your best at work is not something that you can achieve in a day. It’s a constant stream of small and conscious decisions that you will make daily. These decisions will build upon each other and allow you to create a work culture and life that will be fulfilling and beneficial.

5 Benefits of Becoming More Comfortable Expressing Your Emotions

“How are you?” has shifted from a point of conversation to a meaningless reflex. If you think about how many times you ask that question every day, you may realize it’s no longer achieving its point. “How are you?” could open up a can of worms. It could allow for meaningful discussion. It could give you the opportunity to talk about your psyche.

But so often, people respond like robots: “I’m good. How are you?” It becomes a pointless conversation –a mere exchange of wasted words. Instead, we could use it as an opportunity to get to know someone better or to express how we’re really feeling. There are many benefits of being comfortable with expressing your emotions; here are five of them!

Be Free (and Free Others, Too)

You don’t realise it, but when you stifle your emotions, you stifle your freedom. You should feel free to express yourself at every phase of life. As soon as you allow yourself to be comfortable with your true self and your true feelings, you open up the door for others to be comfortable with you, too.

Tear Down Your Fears

If you’re afraid of showing your emotions, stand up to them. Tell them that you’re not scared of them. Those feelings may be new and utterly foreign to you, but by confronting them, you’re tearing down the sense of fear.

Be Authentic to Yourself

The real “you” comes with all of the feelings and emotions you’re experiencing. Be true to that, and don’t let the feelings get in the way. You may feel like your true self is one that doesn’t come with baggage – that would be great, but no one is like that! We all come with good and bad points, and in order to honour the authentic “you,” you need to be able to express your emotions openly and honestly.

Add Flavour to Your Life

Believe it or not, being more honest and expressive can help you live life to the fullest more. It allows you to be you and to enjoy who you are more. If you’re stifling your feelings or being ashamed of them, you’re not living life to the fullest. Add flavour to your life by showing who you really are.

Get Closer to Others

Everyone feels emotions on different levels. No one knows precisely what you’re going through, but people can relate to some degree. When you open up to others, you get closer to them. You can bond over shared emotions, or you can ask them for advice on your situation. Either way, intimacy, and friendship is always enhanced when you’re able to open up more.

The next time someone says, “How are you?” think twice about your answer. Your reflex may be to say you’re good, but maybe if you tell them how you really are (exhausted, over-the-moon, nervous, excited, etc.), you’ll have a more in-depth conversation with them – and you’ll free yourself to be able to talk about how you really feel!

4 Powerful Ways to Imagine Your Success into Reality

Everyone has big dreams. Everyone wants to be successful. Maybe you see yourself making an Oscars acceptance speech or winning the Nobel Prize. Perhaps you want to be a successful entrepreneur or an elite athlete.

Whether you want to be winning an Olympic medal or making your first million, you can use the power of visualization to make your dreams of success a reality.

Picture Yourself Winning

Just wanting to be successful isn’t enough. You have to be able to taste your success. Picture yourself being offered that promotion, being congratulated by friends and family, seeing your new business cards.

Make your success as real and detailed as you can. How good does it feel?

Find Your Trigger

Finding your own personal success trigger can be a powerful way to keep the momentum going and your energy high. Write down your big goal, whether it’s winning an Oscar or scholarship, or running your own business. Make it a positive statement that is straightforward and concise. For example, “I will be promoted to Vice President next year.”

Look at your trigger statement every day. Maybe make it your computer wallpaper or your smartphone’s lock screen. When Jim Carrey was a young actor trying to make it big, he famously wrote himself a $10million check dated far into the future. When that day came, he was offered $10million for his role in Dumb and Dumber.

Remember that story when you see your trigger statement and think of how good it will feel to achieve your goal.

Create A Vision Board

Vision boards help to make your dreams concrete. You can use pictures, photos, affirmations, and quotes to create a picture of the life you want.

A vision board can be a poster, a Pinterest board, a whiteboard, or a journal. Make you sure you keep your vision board where you can see it every day and add to it when you need to or when you find a new photo or quote that really speaks to you.

Feed Your Dream

You can make your visualization even more potent by nourishing it with positivity. Don’t put all the good feelings in the future but feed your dream with happy memories. Think of times when you felt happy, successful, and content with your life.

These positive images reinforce to your mind that you have already proven you can have a happy, fulfilled life. Keep negativity at bay by reminding yourself that you have done it, you are doing it, you can do it!

3 Truths About Being Kind We Need to Re-Remember

It might surprise you to hear that being kind isn’t just good for the other person, it’s good for you too! Skeptical? There is good scientific evidence to show that living up to the adage of doing unto others as you would have them do to you is one of the best things you can do for yourself! It lowers your blood pressure, improves your mood, and acts as a natural anti-depressant by boosting the serotonin levels in your brain.

So, what can you do to stay in the right frame of mind to be kind? After all, being kind isn’t always easy. Some days you want to grit your teeth and just grouse at the world. And there are some people it’s tough to be kind to. How can you change your approach to life to be as kind as you can? Here are three truths to remember when you’re tempted to be unkind.

Remember what you can control and what you can’t

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

It’s a fact of life that other people can be rude, thoughtless, irritating, and even mean. They have opinions you don’t agree with. You can’t change or control any of that. But you can control how you react. Kindness is always the best option for you and the other guy. Take a deep breath, count to ten, and bite back that retort or putdown. Practice being kind, and soon it will be second nature.

Anger doesn’t help

Reacting with anger doesn’t do anything to resolve a bad situation. Anger makes you feel terrible. It’s likely to escalate things and won’t get you the result you want. Even worse, anger can lead to all sorts of physical problems, from headaches to high blood pressure, sleep problems, and digestive issues. A lifetime habit of anger can even lead to a stroke or a heart attack. Recognize the potential to get angry and take a step back.

Kindness is always the right option

Whatever the situation, you will never go wrong if you’re kind. Kindness also makes you an inspiring leader, a role model for others. Making the choice to be kind in the face of frustration, even provocation, shows that conflict is not inevitable. Giving in to childish feelings of needing to be right or get what you want all the time is easy. But it breeds discontent and won’t win you any friends.

Kindness breeds a more detached attitude to life, it encourages positive emotions and will help to make you and the people around you calmer, happier, and more energized.

Build Your Own Mailing List… Even Though You’re an Affiliate!

Today, I want to share with you one of the biggest mistakes affiliates make. I want to share this with you so you won’t make the same mistake:

The one major mistake many affiliates make is NOT setting up a list!

Affiliates will often send traffic that they generated to affiliate links, rather than a list. When they do this, they are unknowingly making a bet that visitor will buy on first contact. Unfortunately, this is generally not the case.

Visitors often need to be warmed up to a product – through the course of multiple visits and additional information – before they are willing to purchase from a person or a business. This is where building a list comes into play.

By building a list, affiliates can fix this problem. Additionally, they can retain traffic, warm it up, and then direct it to different purchases in the future. This means that it isn’t a one-shot deal: instead, they can attempt to sell the same person multiple products over the course of time.

Now, in order to do this successfully, the affiliate in question must purchase the necessary tools. I personally suggest using http://www.aweber.com for the actual auto responder service or mailchimp.

Aweber is relatively inexpensive ($20/mo.) and comes with a formidable range of services, including spam checkers and macros. Best of all, it is whitelisted by many email clients and boasts a delivery rate of 99%.

This service will not only manage your list, but it will also help you build it. It includes free tools that allow you to create web forms, pop-ups, and hover-ins – all of which can be used to increase your opt-in rate.

Now, in addition to purchasing the auto responder service, you will need to setup your own site if you do not already own one. If you already own a related site, you can simply add your opt in form to a page on your existing site. If not, I suggest purchasing cheap domain and hosting and using this to host your list forms. http://www.27hosting.com currently offers some of the cheapest hosting available on the market.

Once you have your site and your auto responder setup, there are only two steps left: the first is building a course of some sort that is related to the affiliate products you will sell; and the second is creating an opt-in form that converts.

The first part is relatively easy. Start by determining your topic and then outline it over the course of five to seven days. Remember that everything should be written as if you are talking to a person, rather than as if you were writing a formal article.

If you don’t feel comfortable writing these articles yourself, you can always hire a ghostwriter at http://www.elance.com or Fiverr.com for $5-15 per issue, depending on the size.

Once you have created your auto responder series, you will want to feed it into your auto responder, setup advertisements in the text for the affiliate product you are planning to sell, and then create an opt-in form for your list.

Once you have setup your opt-in form, the only remaining step is to drive various traffic sources to your opt-in list, collect their email addresses – and then wait for the commissions to roll in!

Generate Traffic and Affiliate Sales with Free Viral Reports

Did you know that the free viral report is quite possibly the most deadly weapon in an affiliate marketer’s arsenal? Get some free PLR here.

It allows him or her to quickly multiply his or her efforts while slashing down on marketing costs. All the marketer has to do is develop a viral report for little or no cost, embed an affiliate link in said report, and then find various avenues of distribution that will ensure that the report is perpetuated as far as possible – from group to group to group.

Now, with this being said, when it comes to developing free viral reports, a considerable amount of precise calculation and back-end system setup is needed. Simply jotting down garbage, tossing in an affiliate link, and then attempting to send it to everyone you know in .txt format isn’t likely to gain you anything; nor is it likely to multiply your efforts by inducing other marketers to redistribute the report for you.

Instead, you must start from a different point. You must determine what topic people are looking for related to your specific affiliate product.

For instance, do they need more information about the product itself? Do they need to know how to use that product effectively? Whatever your angle happens to be, make sure that it lines up with the wants of your customers and also ties in nicely with your affiliate product.

Next, create the actual viral report and embed your affiliate link in multiple places. If you have a site and a list, you may want to instead post a link to your list – and then use back-end mechanisms to make the sale.

Your last step is to actually ensure that this viral report:

Gets into as many people’s hands as humanly possible; and
Gets into the hands of people who will definitely redistribute it to others without charging any fees. This is where the art of free viral report distribution comes into play.

A good way to distribute your viral report is to create a buzz on forums. You will want to discuss some specific experience you had related to the topic you will cover in the report – and you will want to do it well in advance of your release date.

You will then want to start talking up your release – and also explain that the report will be completely free. Furthermore, you may want to even start locking people in for immediate distribution via email by getting them to join a list. To learn more about viral marketing through this method, you may want to check out some of the case studies at the following URL: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/.

Once you have begun building a forum buzz for the report, you will want to go to e-zine owners in your particular niche and ask them if they are interested in getting a free report on whichever subject you are marketing. The distribution effect will multiply, subsequently multiplying your sales.

Additionally, you may want to check out http://www.viralPDF.com, which is an excellent tool you can use to create the actual viral reports.