Wednesday, March 9, 2011

6 Great Ways To Motivate Yourself To Exercise

At this point, everyone is pretty much aware of the huge upside to exercising regularly. The reason that there aren’t more people doing it, is the sheer lack of motivation. There is nothing that pushes them enough to go out there and exercise. Fortunately, there are some very useful ways which you can use to motivate yourself to become a more active individual. Let me elaborate on each one of them a bit more:

Change from a “maybe” to a “must”
The first thing you need to do is to categorically include exercise into your lifestyle without any maybe’s or but’s. Exercising should be a must within your daily routine. Within your time management, there should always be time allocated to exercising. I can’t stress enough how important this is. For example, a few years ago I decided to go for a bike ride every day and allocated 1 hour of my time to it per day. Before I did that, I was always putting everything else before it, and I never could find the time for it. So instead of trying to fit exercise into your tight schedule, make it a permanent part of it which is non-negotiable, and make other non-productive activities such as watching television secondary to it.

Surround yourself with fitness-oriented people
If you are not exercising, have a look at your close unit of acquaintances. Chances are that most if not all of them are just as non-active as you are. If you want to be successful at not only starting but staying active over time, you definitely need to have friends that share this same goal with you. Having a training partner is one of the best ways to get yourself the proper motivation to keep at it day in and day out. Someone with whom you can discuss the good and the bad, the positive and the negative, and that understands you fully is extremely important to your success at staying active. The bottom line is, if you are trying to be active, your non-active friends will never understand what you are going through and they are certainly not the right people that will motivate you to keep going.

Want to be better looking?
I have found that most people will pretty much do anything to become more attractive and more desirable. The good news is that you do not have to subject yourself to grueling & potentially dangerous plastic surgery to get the job done. With a little patience and a strong will, you can literally reshape your entire body via exercise. Use this desire of seeking to be more attractive to your advantage and turn it into pure motivation to exercise. Sure, there are tons of reasons why people exercise, but I am certain that 100% do it partly to be more attractive. Looks matter in our current society, and we associate looks with success. Play that card to your own benefit and you will see that you will possess plenty of motivation to keep exercising over time. To motivate you even more, take pictures of yourself on a weekly basis. I guarantee you that the change you will notice in the pictures over a few months will make you want to keep exercising for the rest of your life!

Think long term health benefits
As I mentioned in my previous point, physical appearance is a huge motivating factor, but your health should be an even bigger one. The thing with health, is that we do not “see” it. It’s hidden, and thus in a very visual and superficial society such as our current one, it becomes secondary to looks. Luckily, people are becoming more and more concerned with being healthy and living a better quality of life as they get older. Use this to your advantage as well to motivate yourself to exercise. The list of health benefits that exercising provides you with is just enormous. By thinking about maintaining a high quality of life for years to come, you are thinking long term and thus you can find the proper amount of motivation to stay active even during times that you feel like giving up. We all want to be healthy, and going through health concerns brings about much stress to our life as well as to those that we love. When I hear of fathers or grandparents that are changing their lifestyle and becoming more active to be around to see their children grow up, I am so proud of them. That’s one of the strongest motivation you could ever have to turn your life around with exercise.

Work towards a goal
Do you have a reunion to go to in a few months and you want to look your best? Do you have a vacation planned and you want to look fantastic in a bathing suit? Do you idolize a certain person and want to look just like them? These types of goals are extremely powerful, and can provide unrelenting motivation that can then carry you towards those very goals. The key is to always have such a goal, because you don’t want to go back to your old ways once you have reached that goal. I’m sure you’ve seen people flip flop over and over again with their fitness, and this is due to the fact that once they reach their goal, they do not have another one to aim for. Always have something to work towards, and every time you reach one, create a new one. You will not only be amazed at the amount of motivation this creates, but you will astound yourself at how much you can accomplish that you never thought possible before.

Simply start
As hard as it is to get yourself to start, you will be happy to know that things get much better as you keep going. The steepest hill to climb over is to start. Once you start, you have conquered the biggest obstacle. This is something that you should be proud of, in and of itself. Once you start, you put the wheels in motion to create momentum, and this momentum is crucial to bring you towards the finish line. But for that to happen, you need to start. So stop finding excuses and ways to delay your start. Choose to start exercising today, and never look back. You will be thankful that you did ;)


Original source here at www.ineedmotivation.com

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

100 Benefits of Meditation

I started doing meditation, thought it would help me in my everday life, since i been having sleeping problems, from anxiety im guessing. So here's a list of benefits for meditation i found

Physiological benefits:
1- It lowers oxygen consumption.
2- It decreases respiratory rate.
3- It increases blood flow and slows the heart rate.
4- Increases exercise tolerance.
5- Leads to a deeper level of physical relaxation.
6- Good for people with high blood pressure.
7- Reduces anxiety attacks by lowering the levels of blood lactate.
8- Decreases muscle tension
9- Helps in chronic diseases like allergies, arthritis etc.
10- Reduces Pre-menstrual Syndrome symptoms.
11- Helps in post-operative healing.
12- Enhances the immune system.
13- Reduces activity of viruses and emotional distress
14- Enhances energy, strength and vigour.
15- Helps with weight loss
16- Reduction of free radicals, less tissue damage
17- Higher skin resistance
18- Drop in cholesterol levels, lowers risk of cardiovascular disease.
19- Improved flow of air to the lungs resulting in easier breathing.
20- Decreases the aging process.
21- Higher levels of DHEAS (Dehydroepiandrosterone)
22- prevented, slowed or controlled pain of chronic diseases
23- Makes you sweat less
24- Cure headaches & migraines
25- Greater Orderliness of Brain Functioning
26- Reduced Need for Medical Care
27- Less energy wasted
28- More inclined to sports, activities
29- Significant relief from asthma
30- improved performance in athletic events
31- Normalizes to your ideal weight
32- harmonizes our endocrine system
33- relaxes our nervous system
34- produce lasting beneficial changes in brain electrical activity
35- Cure infertility (the stresses of infertility can interfere with the release of hormones that regulate ovulation).

Psychological benefits:
36- Builds self-confidence.
37- Increases serotonin level, influences mood and behaviour.
38- Resolve phobias & fears
39- Helps control own thoughts
40- Helps with focus & concentration
41- Increase creativity
42- Increased brain wave coherence.
43- Improved learning ability and memory.
44- Increased feelings of vitality and rejuvenation.
45- Increased emotional stability.
46- improved relationships
47- Mind ages at slower rate
48- Easier to remove bad habits
49- Develops intuition
50- Increased Productivity
51- Improved relations at home & at work
52- Able to see the larger picture in a given situation
53- Helps ignore petty issues
54- Increased ability to solve complex problems
55- Purifies your character
56- Develop will power
57- greater communication between the two brain hemispheres
58- react more quickly and more effectively to a stressful event.
59- increases one’s perceptual ability and motor performance
60- higher intelligence growth rate
61- Increased job satisfaction
62- increase in the capacity for intimate contact with loved ones
63- decrease in potential mental illness
64- Better, more sociable behaviour
65- Less aggressiveness
66- Helps in quitting smoking, alcohol addiction
67- Reduces need and dependency on drugs, pills & pharmaceuticals
68- Need less sleep to recover from sleep deprivation
69- Require less time to fall asleep, helps cure insomnia
70- Increases sense of responsibility
71- Reduces road rage
72- Decrease in restless thinking
73- Decreased tendency to worry
74- Increases listening skills and empathy
75- Helps make more accurate judgements
76- Greater tolerance
77- Gives composure to act in considered & constructive ways
78- Grows a stable, more balanced personality
79- Develops emotional maturity

Spiritual benefits:
80- Helps keep things in perspective
81- Provides peace of mind, happiness
82- Helps you discover your purpose
83- Increased self-actualization.
84- Increased compassion
85- Growing wisdom
86- Deeper understanding of yourself and others
87- Brings body, mind, spirit in harmony
88- Deeper Level of spiritual relaxation
89- Increased acceptance of oneself
90- helps learn forgiveness
91- Changes attitude toward life
92- Creates a deeper relationship with your God
93- Attain enlightenment
94- greater inner-directedness
95- Helps living in the present moment
96- Creates a widening, deepening capacity for love
97- Discovery of the power and consciousness beyond the ego
98- Experience an inner sense of “Assurance or Knowingness”
99- Experience a sense of “Oneness”
100- Increases the synchronicity in your life


Original source from here at www.ineedmotivation.com

Thursday, March 3, 2011

6 Steps to accelate your animation career

Do your best work

It doesn’t matter if you’re animating at school, at work or at home on personal projects – but practising with the intention of doing your best work is the fastest way to get better.

George Leonard’s brilliant book Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment says it’s not enough to practise. You must practise with the intent of perfecting your craft – regardless of the outcome.

Update your reel

Your reel is a living document, and if you still have a demo reel that hasn’t changed in a year – you need to address that as a matter of priority.

As a start: Why not focus on adding one thing, and removing one thing.

Progressively culling your worst animation and adding more awesome shots is a must if you want to keep moving forward.

Meet some new people

It’s a simple fact that jobs get offered to people that studios already know. Especially in an industry as small as ours.

Take the opportunity to expand your circle of friends: go to an industry night, volunteer at a film festival, attend a guest lecture or a panel session.

The more people that know you, the easier you are to hire.

Connect with people in your network

Haven’t given your animation school buddy a call in a while? Jump on the phone, email, skype, facebook – whatever.

There is nothing worse than someone who only reaches out to contacts when they want something.

Don’t be that guy.

Keep in touch. Ask about their work and their personal projects. Offer your help. You know – be a friend.

That way when you do need a favor, you’re not cold-calling random people in your network hoping they remember you sufficiently to help you find work.

Revamp your website

Ahh … you have a website, right?

If not, then don’t put it off. Setting up a personal website is something you can do in the next few weeks that will greatly increase your exposure and improve your ability to advance your animation career.

You can start with a free service like Blogger, Tumblr, or WordPress. Or if you’d prefer to have your own domain name, grab it before it gets taken and create your own site to host your reel.

Personally – I use PowWeb because they’re cheap, reliable and have great customer service, but there are tons of great web hosts to choose from.

And if you haven’t updated your site in a while, spend an hour adding some new information about you and your work.

Animate

Yes really. (Did you think I was going to miss that one out?)

Make a film. Enter a competition. Experiment with a new medium.

Unless you’re working in your absolute dream job, chances are you have some ideas and techniques you’d like to try out, but can’t do in your regular work.

Adding to your set of skills is not just valuable – it’s marketable.

Best of luck! Looking forward to what you come up with this year.


original source of this article at www.animationideas.com