December 7, 2007
Passion is a feeling of excitement and intensity. The energy of passion fuels a fulfilled life, and supports the growth and development of our personal purpose and potential. When was the last time you felt pure passion? Do you even know what you’re passionate about? Would you recognize an opportunity to reconnect with your personal passion if one presented itself?
In childhood, you were filled with passion. You knew instinctively what you loved, and you probably approached each day with joy and anticipation. You were truly connected with your passions, and you were living authentically. Then, you grew up. You got responsible, and your passion was replaced by the multitude of “shoulds” and “musts” thrust upon you by an adult world.
In my work as a coach, I’ve had the opportunity to help many people rediscover and reconnect with their passion. The process I use involves identifying and aligning with personal values. While much of our culture equates values with a sense of morality, in the coaching world values are referred to as those qualities or interests which you’re naturally drawn to or inclined to experience. They’re the feelings or experiences in life you truly appreciate, and both passion and fulfillment live on the other side of their discovery and integration.
When you know what is passionately and excitingly important to you, you will become very clear. You will begin to approach life differently, and set goals with more vision and intensity. You will embrace both success and failure with a greater level of acceptance and insight, and you will enjoy the process of living more fully.
The process of rediscovering what your values, and thus your passions, are is fun and easy. You can begin by asking yourself a few questions.
What Are Your Favorite Past Times?
If I were to give you one free day - meaning you would get paid, everything on your “to do” list would be accomplished, and everyone in your family would be taken care of, what would you do? Would you spend the day in the sun reading a good book? Would you cook a gourmet meal? Would you go antiquing, or take in a matinee? Would you spend the afternoon with your spouse, or with friends? Would you spend the day working out, or being pampered in a day spa?
Once you’ve determined what you’d do, decide why that would be so satisfying. What about these activities interests you? For example, if you’d prefer to spend the day with friends, it might be that you really appreciate the connection and communication you give and receive when you’re with people you care about. If you chose to go antiquing, discovery may be exciting to you. If working out or spending the day at a spa sounded heavenly, it could be that health, fitness, and wellness are potential values.
The things you love hold significant clues to unlocking your values. Once you’ve identified the specific activities that attract you, the key to defining your values lives in identifying the feelings within those activities that fulfill you.
When Do You Feel Most Natural?
When do you feel most natural? Where are you most at ease? When your competence is so seemingly effortless that others recognize you for your abilities, it’s likely you’re near a natural aptitude, and these abilities will frequently lead to your values.
For example, do you effortlessly create systems to organize tasks or physical items? Order may be a value. Do you easily spend quiet time with yourself? Perhaps you value solitude. Does creating something where nothing existed before thrill you? You might consider building or manifestation for your values.
Nature has purpose. The more closely aligned you are with your natural abilities; the closer you will be to defining your values, and the more likely you will be to experience great passion and fulfillment on a recurring basis.
What Could You Teach?
Do you have substantial knowledge about a specific subject? Have you ever been told you should write a book or teach a class? What would your book or class be about? Our interests, those things we are drawn to spend time learning about or talking about, are related to our values.
I worked in Corporate America for ten years before becoming a coach. On “the side” I read book after book about self development. I went to ten seminars per year, and I worked with my own coach. I loved talking with others about human development, and I invested a great deal of time and energy mentoring my staff. I was naturally gravitating toward one of my highest values - growth.
Your inherent interests will help you define your values. Pay close attention to the experiences and topics you’re naturally drawn to, and you will discover the passion at the source of that intrigue.
Intentional Integration
The passion living within you can fuel your life. You can jump out of bed first thing in the morning, excited to take on the world. You can stretch yourself beyond personal limits which may have held you back in the past. You need only connect with the source of inspiration and enthusiasm inside of you. Once you do this, your whole life can change.
Life and Business Design Expert Kim Fulcher is the founder, president and CEO of Compass Life and Business Designs, a professional coaching, training, and publishing company. Her work as an entrepreneur, company leader, author, speaker, and business coach has resulted in her national recognition as an expert in personal and professional success.
Kim works with her clients to maximize their business results while balancing their busy lives, and speaks to organizations throughout The United States on subjects ranging from leadership to life balance. She is the author of the upcoming book “Remodel Your Reality; Seven Steps to Rebalance Your Life and Reclaim Your Passion” and co-author of “Lead With Purpose. Live With Passion. A Femalepreneur’s Guide to Small Business Success”.
For a weekly dose of inspiration and a host of Free tools and products, visit our website at http://www.CompassLifeDesigns.com
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Whether a competitive swimmer or you just swim for fitness, you may have been advised to do exercises designed for your sport. Sports specific training is currently very popular. You may have seen movements that claim to be a swimming exercise. But if it is not an exercise you do in the water, beware! You may be wasting your time. Bicep curls, bench presses and reverse fly’s may appear to work the muscles you use for swimming, but not in the same way you will use them in the water. Even some movements in the water may not be helping your sport. Muscles developed for performing one activity, such as the bench press, will not necessarily perform any better when in the water. This is the phenomenon know as state-dependent learning which dictates that in which the retrieval of newly acquired information is possible only if the subject is in the same environment and physical state as during the learning phase.
By far the most effective way to improve you swimming is to ..swim! Attention to how well and efficiently you move in the water is more beneficial than spending time doing a swimming exercise. You need to work on your swimming fitness and this is best done in the water. Your muscles and coordination will develop and condition themselves during the act of swimming without the need for a separate swimming exercise. However, it is important that your action is efficient. It is common for swimmers to try too hard when training for speed resulting in inappropriate actions - ultimately wasted effort. Let’s see what Aleksandr Popov, Russian Olympic Swimmer has to say
The water is your friend…..you don’t have to fight with water, just share the same spirit as the water, and it will help you move.
If you think this sounds a little too touchy feely for your swimming style have a look at what Pieter van den Hoogenband said after winning the gold medal at the Sydney 2000 Olympics
I was so surprised. Then again, I was so relaxed
in the water, it felt amazing.
When you can learn to move efficiently in the water and use it to work with, amazing things can happen. You don’t need a swimming exercise to improve you front-crawl if you can swim in The Zone like van den Hoogenband. How you perform a technique and how much effort you use depends on how you have done it before. The process of repeating a technique many times lays down the pattern at a subconscious level until it can be executed with minimal thought. You may be developing poor movement habits by doing your swimming exercise.
But can you be sure that what you have learnt is the most efficient? Once it’s a habit not only is it difficult to change, it’s almost impossible to see it for yourself. Time spent on a swimming exercise program with weights can re-enforce the habit of trying too hard. I believe The Zone is a place where you can discard such habits and participating in your sport becomes almost effortless and enjoyable again.
Ian Thorpe Australian Olympic gold medallist said,
People ask me “what was going through your mind in the race?” and I don’t know. I try and …let my body do what it knows
Ian Thorpe Australian Olympic gold medalist.
Thorpe has shown again and again that his body does know what its doing. We can assume, due to his phenomenal success, his learnt movement patterns at a subconscious level are efficient so he can let [his] body do what it knows. Of course this does not prevent him from continuing to learn and develop his skill.
In common with most sports, the top swimmers often attribute some of their best performances to being in a relaxed state. Pieter van den Hoogenband’s experience of winning the Sydney 2000 Olympic gold medal perhaps shows us how best to perform. When the body is relaxed in the water, or put another way, absent of inappropriate muscular tension, the reflexes that control coordination of the limbs are able to function unimpeded. We share many reflexes with water-bound creatures, in fact one is called the ‘amphibian reflex’ which aids movements such as swimming, crawling, walking and running.
If you are ‘fighting the water’ it is possible you will be adding unnecessary tension to your neck and shoulders. The muscles at the base of the skull (sub-occipitals) are the most sensitive in the body and carry messages to the central nervous system to help coordinate movement. If the head is pulled back by excessive tension, caused by your attempt to push harder, it prevents the muscle spindles in the deeper sub-occipital muscles giving feedback on the changing position of the head.
Why should the position of the head be important? Dr David Garlick, the late medical scientist and Alexander teacher explains
The effect of neck muscle inputs [on movement] are comparable in importance to the inputs from the organs of balance in the inner ear (semi-circular or vestibular canals). The head contains the important special sensory organs of sight, hearing, smell and taste. As stimuli act on these senses, the head is turned to detect better a particular stimulus. Any movement of the head is detected with exquisite sensitivity by the neck muscle receptors. The strong inputs from the neck muscles then affect the muscles of the trunk and limbs to prepare the person to respond to the stimulus.
When you next swim or do a swimming exercise see what you want to do with your neck and shoulders. Do you build up tension in anticipation of swimming?
Work on your coordination and develop you fitness in a way directly beneficial to your sport without compromising your health. When you are in the water see if you can maintain an awareness of where your head moves on your spine. Ask yourself, whilst swimming, am I allowing my skull to move from that point (obviously the movement will depend on your stroke) or am I stiffening the neck and twisting unnecessarily. Try to remove some of the effort you are applying and see if you can imagine moving through the water without fighting it. Maintain an awareness of the location of the shoulder and elbow joints; the hip, knee and ankle joints and see if you can keep them free to move.
If you were going to ‘cheat’ to make it feel easier, what could you do? Experiment and don’t be afraid to slow down or do less whilst learning in the water. If you can focus on the efficiency and economy of your movements the speed will come. All this can help to improve your body awareness and ultimately improve your performance with the need to do a swimming exercise
I’ll leave the last word to USA swimmer and Olympic medalist, Scott Goldblatt who wrote
Mainly, I like to have fun. Swimming is all about having fun, and I am firm believer that you should keep swimming as long as you are having fun, but I can say that it becomes much more fun as you get older and learn more about the sport, life, and especially more about yourself.
Roy Palmer is a teacher of The Alexander Technique and has studied performance enhancement in sport for the last 10 years. In 2001 he published a book called ‘The Performance Paradox: Challenging the conventional methods of sports training and exercise’ and is currently working on a new project about The Zone. More information about his unique approach to training can be found at http://www.fitness-programs-for-life.com
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Ok there’s no shame in it by now, you want to lengthen your penis and you think Vimax might be the way to do it. Here is a review that covers some of the main concerns about penis enlargement in general and in particular the use of Vimax.
Do penis enlargement treatments work
Basically in terms of penis enlargement there are 3 main methods that are popular.
1. Surgery
2. Extension equipment
3. Oral treatment in the way of pills and supplements.
Surgery obviously has guaranteed results but is far too scary and expensive for most of us. What most of us want to know is whether non surgical methods can actually work with any level of consistency.
Both extention products and supplements/pills like Vimax have been shown to have success in increasing the length and girth of the average male penis. While you will see some hyperbole with some subjects gaining inches in just weeks the average gainer is shown to grow between 1 and 4 inches over a four month period of taking Vimax. Unfortunately some people achieve no results at all but there are specific things you can do to ensure you are not at that end of the scale.
These tests have spanned some years and thousands of subjects before the products being released to the market and can usually be further verified with visual evidence from satisfied users being displayed in the promotional material on the web.
So in short, to the question of do these supplements work, the answer is Yes. Not always and not for everyone but, yes they are successful in increasing penis size and girth considerably.
Is it safe?
Thankfully being a natural supplement Vimax has no side effects. All ingredients are herbal, naturally occuring substances that have not been modified in any way in the production process. In fact some of the substances already exist in the human body and Vimax simply works to increase their release or better their circulation through the body.
How long will it take me to see results?
Unlike some of the exaggerated stories you might hear it generally takes a full course of 3-4 months to achieve maximum results. You will first notice increases in girth and ‘hang’ around 3-4 weeks. From 4-8 weeks you will see more gains in length and notice stronger more powerful erections and from weeks 8-16 you will notice more of the same up until the penis reaches its genetic limit.
How long must I take Vimax for?
Only until you receive the results you desire. There is no minimum or maximum timeframe. Since results are permanent, you can stop when you reach your ideal goal size.
How much does it cost?
Generally Vimax will set you back around $59 per bottle with discounts for ordering in larger quantities. Reputable companies will offer a money back guarantee so that there is no risk to the purchaser and they may return the product if not happy with the results.
I hope this has further educated you to the pros and cons of Vimax. Ultimately, remember that there is nothing you can’t change. If you want to make a difference to your manhood and your sex life, a reliable option like Vimax is certainly there.
Gary Stephens runs an informational website on male enhancement products and endorses Vimax as the ultimate solution for penile enhancement. For more information on Vimax please see http://www.vimaxsolution.com.
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