The secret to finding happiness is to first understand what happiness is. It is not the elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It is more to do with your state of mind, rather than your situation. Your ability to focus on the positive, no matter how small, in spite of the negative. Remember, you can only think one thought at a time.

The happiest people in the world surround themselves with family and friends, don’t care about keeping up with the Joneses next door and lose themselves in daily activities. This is the truth of Vanuatu, with a low ecological footprint, voted the Happiest Country on Earth, in 2006. A South Pacific tropical island nation where the GNP was rated 207, out of the 233 countries around the world. Money, or lack of, is not the key to happiness. Neither can happiness be bought.

Martin. E.P. Seligman, Pennsylvania psychologist says, “The happiest people judge themselves by their own yardsticks, never against what others do, or have.”

Others claim the happiest people are the ones who forgive easily. Psychologists now say gratitude has a lot to do with life satisfaction and a feeling of well being.

Western society commonly perceives happiness as the outcome of what you achieve and what you acquire. These people live by the ‘If only…’ syndrome. Most people agree that you can have everything in the world and still be miserable. Or you can have relatively little and feel unbounded joy.

Another perspective of happiness was quoted by a young man in danger of losing his eyesight. “An eyeball is worth at least five million dollars. You have two of them? You’re rich. If you really appreciate your eyesight, then the other miseries are nothing. Yet if you take it all for granted, then nothing in life will ever truly give you joy.”
The experts agree it is possible to intellectually understand how to attain happiness, yet not put it into practice, for happiness is an attitude of choice.

It is a fact that some people prefer to be comfortable and unhappy, rather than endure the discomfort of changing their habits in the search of true happiness.

For some people the key to happiness is based on being considerate to the people around them, as we unconsciously mimic those around us. Try this simple experiment. Walk into a roomful of people with a smile on your face. Half an hour later walk into the same room with a frown on your face.  Watch the instant reaction of those around you.

It is now widely accepted in the scientific community that happiness is becoming more scientific and a field of vital exploration. Though one researcher states: “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness,” American social philosopher, Eric Hoffer.

Perhaps happiness in January 2009, is not having lost a fortune on the stock market in 2008.
Here are a few quick tips that may assist you in your quest for happiness:

• Realize bad times are an inevitable part of the life cycle
• Rationalize and adjust to the low times as quickly as possible
• Visualize current and future events in isolation
• Trust in your own resilience – you can always go a lot further than you think you can
• Always remember tomorrow is new day. A chance for a new beginning.

A simple formula to happiness is to sit down with your spouse, partner, or roommate every evening and discuss one pleasure that each of you had during the day. If you are a family, incorporate this into your family routine so that your children also learn to appreciate their daily pleasures.

Life is full of those once in a lifetime Blue Moon Opportunities, that can make or break you. Success it not happiness, but failure to try, leads to a life full of regrets.

Here’s wishing you all the happiness you can find in 2009.

Take a few minutes to browse Win A Resort, where someone is going to find a special kind of happiness in owning a tropical island property.

New Year is the time of a new beginning, that once a year blue moon opportunity to make a real change. A time when many people, make New Year resolutions…but forget them by January 15th.

Here are 9 ways to ensure your success this year and make 2009 your personal year of success, in spite of the doom and gloom around you.

1.    Take a long hard look at what it is you would like to change. Keep it simple and achieve one goal before you attempt another. The biggest key to this is to be brutally honest with yourself.
2.    Take another long hard look at yourself and assess if the benefit of what you would like to change is really worthwhile.
3.    You need to have a really good motivating reason to want to make the change. Without that you will never succeed.
4.    Write down some major and minor goals. Make sure your goals are realistic and achievable.
5.    Make a large sign for yourself, of what you would like to achieve and place it where only you can see it, e.g. “I must learn to be more of a negotiator instead of a confrontationist. (This means having more patience with those around me on a day to day basis.) Because we unconsciously influence those we are in close contact with, I must choose to influence them with my patience, instead of confrontation. This in turn will impact my life in a major way and lead to a greater success in 2009.”
6.    Place your sign where it is private, e.g. your drawer where you keep your underwear.  You alone can keep a check on your progress.
7.    Put some real effort into the sign so you will daily remind yourself how important this is to you. Or write it on a distinctive piece of paper, so it will stand out in its hiding place.
8.    Remember it takes three weeks to make or break a habit, so put a date on your sign. Make yourself a graph of 21 days. At a set time each day pause for a few minutes to note down your progress. Adjust your goals if you need to as you go along.
9.    Your reward will be in the end results. However, there is No Gain Without Pain, that is why it has to be a really worthwhile goal.

My personal Goal: 2009 is not going to be an easy year for anyone. Only those who have learned to bend with the winds of change will succeed in the coming year. Everyone needs space to adapt, be it in business or personal relationships. I need to give others more time to adjust to my ideas, or vice versa. You can gain the whole world, but end up the loneliest person in it.

Good luck in your New Year.  Make 2009 work for you. No matter what the future holds, someone will succeed in it. They always have. Make sure that someone is you.

It has been revealed that the Somali Pirates operate a world wide information gleaning network. In particular they look for illegal cargo, such as the 33 tanks being carried on the MV Faina, hijacked a few months back.

A  Somalia expert at Purdue University in Indiana, Michael Weinstein says “The huge Somali world wide diaspora (200,000 living in Canada alone), have taken to piracy as they would to any other business enterprise. Just as you would buy shares in any syndicate, you get a cut of the ransom dollars, when you buy in.”

The world piracy capital, Eyl, an outback, run down fishing village in Somali, where numerous hijacked ships are docked, receives only a small portion of the millions being paid in ransom.

Suleyman, one of the pirates  said, “We have negotiators, translators and agents in many areas of the world.” Acting as money changers and agents for the pirates, they earn a percentage of the ransom payments. Many are Somali expatriates.

They have agencies in Mombasa, Piraeus, Naples, and Rotterdam.  Information is received through spies working at shipping and marine insurance firms in the Gulf, East African and European ports. Anywhere the merchant vessels heading for the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean dock.  The pirates are briefed on the number of security guards and weapons available on board the vessel, a well as the cargo.

Though the pirate leaders are known by sight and by name, rather than exposing themselves and their exact location, they use their proxies to negotiate the ransom and terms for releasing hijacked vessels. These front men also are the buyers of the latest in navigation equipment, GPS, speed boats, communications gear, food, fuel and any other supplies needed by the pirate community.

As Somalia is a bank-failed state, only cash and an informal transfer network, called ‘hawala’ is used. In ‘hawala’ an operator receives the money at one end and then instructs a relative, friend or another agent to hand a like amount to someone else. This has created a paperless system, based merely on trust and oral agreements.

More and more however, the pirates are opting for cash settlements, in an attempt to bypass government surveillance. They warn strongly against anyone using false money on them. Early in the year the pirates asked for money delivered to the Gulf. Strangely, no one would volunteer to carry it.

The ultimatum for the ransom payment of $25 million for the MV Sirus Star, the Dubai owned oil tanker, taken on Nov 18th, carrying $100 million in crude oil, is drawing to a close. “We do expect a favourable reply,” said the leader of the group Mohammed Said.

Armed private-security agencies from Dubai see this as a once in a lifetime Blue Moon Opportunity to make a score. They are now offering their highly paid services to protect vulnerable shipping. However in a recent brazen attack on a Liberia-flagged oil and chemical tanker, three men jumped overboard and were fished out of the water by a German helicopter. They were former British soldiers providing security for the MV Buscagalia.

Crew aboard the MV Faina line the ships rails. Somali Pirates surround them.

To learn more about a genuine, once in a lifetime  Blue Moon Opportunity that may change your life take a quick visit to Win A Resort.

The more you drive on the roads the more you realize it is like playing Russian Roulette, simply because you do not know what anyone else will do. However, when the signs are confusing as well, what chance do you have?

This is a Blue Moon Opportunity for someone to begin collecting ‘crazy’ motor signs. Add them to the above collection. Let’s see who can come up with the craziest one of all.

Without successful com munication there is no success. Communication is a skill you have to learn and constantly work at if you are to succeed, either in the physical or in the world of Cyber Space. As communication defines who and what you are, you need to be constantly working on your communication skills.

5 Keys To Successful Communication

• Use the KISS formula –Keep It Simple, Stupid

• Don’t be afraid to graciously retract, alter, or completely overhaul if necessary

• Use only grade 8 level English when writing for the Internet

• Write quality not quantity

• Communication can become tired and boring - refresh your content frequently.

“Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

If you would like to know more about the author take a few minutes to look at a Blue Moon Opportunity

We waited for our Sunday lunch to be served on the tropical island of Vanuatu, cooled by the gentle tropical breeze. We sat watching the rays of the sun dance and sparkle off the brilliant blue-green waters of the South Pacific. As we sipped a delicate Australian Sauvignon Blanc, Just a few feet away three young Ni-Vanuatu boys cast a net in the time honoured traditions of their forefathers.

Slowly and with great care the boys trawled their net onto the white coral shore, in their minds retracing the images of having watched their brothers, fathers and grandfathers before them enact this timeless custom. Searching incredulously for the smallest of fish caught between the folds of the net, the delighted beams on the boys faces told it all. Victoriously they caughts each tiny fish between forefinger and thumb before being deposited into an awaiting 300ml green Tusker beer bottle (the locally brewed and well accepted beer).

Watching the young boys acting out the traditions of their people was a relaxing and enjoyable pastime for us. A welcome break after our 25k eco-tour bike ride, snorkelling over the reef admiring the numerous coloured fish, enjoying an early morning kayak paddle up the lagoon, or lazing in the warm sun at the resort’s swimming pool.

We thought these industrious young boys were gathering the fish in hope of catching enough to make a meal, just like some people gather whitebait. We did wonder though if the fish would be ‘cooked’ in the bottle long before the boys managed to get them home.

Time and again the young boys repeated the process, as the water glistened off their fit brown bodies. Each drag of the net managed to gather at least a couple of the tiny creatures.

Finally, one of the boys produced a plastic bottle around which was wound a long length of fishing line. It took several minutes for him to extract a fish from the bottle. With great care he attached the tiny ‘catch’ to an equally tiny fishing hook.

At last satisfied, he plunged out towards the deeper water, where he cast his fishing line for the real task at hand – catch a good size fish for the family’s evening meal.

This was not a game to these young men, but a real-life endeavour, that would sustain them in the years ahead. Education in Vanuatu is not free and over 25% of the children never have the opportunity to go to school. The ingenuity of taking hold of opportunities that present themselves on a daily basis, such as a discarded glass beer bottle, turns the ordinary into something special, (a Blue Moon Opportunity). This combined with the traditions of their parents, will keep these children alive. Our challenge is to help them move into the 21st century without losing their rich heritage.

To learn more about the author and take a few minutes to look at a Blue Moon Opportunity (one that could completely change your life) check out Win a Resort

Time is an unstoppable dictator that dictates your life from the moment you are born to the moment you die. Yet it is something you don’t really give much thought to and often have very little understanding of. Yet time is the most precious commodity you have. You need to be aware of the ROI (return on investment) you are getting on your time, if you are to make the most of any Blue Moon Opportunity (one that could change your life) which comes your way.

The Measure of Time:

There are two measurements for immediate time - the calendar and the clock. The calendar is based on the phases of the moon and is the measures for periods which are longer than a day. The clock is used to measure less than a day. Then there is a third time measurement, known as geologic time. This measures past events which have shaped life on earth.

Local daytime was first measured by the shadow from an upright bar, cast on a simple sundial. Then the Egyptians produced the water clock which was able to measure the hours of darkness.

Time has since been measured in a wide variety of ways which include sand-through-an-hourglass and the burning of incense sticks, or candles.  There have been clocks which were driven by gravity, springs, electrical power, pendulums. Now we have the most accurate clock of all, the atomic clocks, which are based on the spin property of caesium atoms.

World Time:

The world is equally divided up by time zones, separated by exactly one hour apart. A Global Positioning System synchronizes time-keeping systems around the world, keeping you in touch with everyone else.

Enough Time:

Ancient cultures speak of before time began, while others speak of the dream time and the wheel of time. It is important you know exactly what you spend your time on. King Solomon wrote:

There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven–
A time to give birth, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to uproot what is planted.
A time to kill, and a time to heal; A time to tear down, and a time to build up.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance.
A time to throw stones, and a time to gather stones; A time to embrace, and a time to shun embracing.
A time to search, and a time to give up as lost; A time to keep, and a time to throw away.
A time to tear apart, and a time to sew together; A time to be silent, and a time to speak.
A time to love, and a time to hate; A time for war, and a time for peace. – Ecclesiastes 3:1–8

Your Personal Time:

Time is your most valuable commodity and a vital component of your everyday life, while having an entirely different meaning for everyone. There is so much you can do with time, these are just a few:

• Find time
• Waste time
• Use time wisely
• Save time
• Kill time

However, you often only see time through the confused filters of your mind and well being. When you close your eyes at the end of the day, however, it is what you did with the time you had. Man has been able to create numerous ‘time saving’ devices, yet time is the one thing you never have enough of and once spent cannot be regained. Successful entrepreneurs are always on the look out for Blue Moon Opportunities, but as time is limited, you need to choose carefully what you do with your time. Always check out the ROI on your time. Like all successful people, learn to work ‘at’ a business not ‘in’ it.

You can learn more about the author  and a genuine Blue Moon Opportunity at http://winaresort.com

The financial world is in crisis. There has to be ways to deal with it, after all no matter how many bullets fly in a war, there is always someone who survives. That someone has to be you in this War Of The Finances.

Everyone is trying to scare the living daylights out of us. Banks want you to put your money in a savings account so they can make themselves secure, promising you that extra % of interest. But at the same time they put up the interest rates, which will put even more pressure on you through your mortgages.

Some people say the banks are not going to give you loans to get a new car, buy a house, or extend a business. They are locking us in, so as to look after themselves and make us pay for their past foolishness.

Make up your mind to be a survivor in this Financial War. Fight back and keep going. Remember self doubt leads to failure. It’s time for positive thinking, not accepting the doom and gloom being spouted by people like the Lord Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg. He may have done some great things for New York, like school reform and tighter gun control, but it’s easy for him to spout off, from his 30billion dollar ivory tower, as the 8th richest man in the world. It’s you, the ordinary person, who will wear the brunt of what is happening in the financial crisis. Don’t give up. Make the most of what ever you have and you too will come out the other side of this crisis a winner.

This could be you living on the tropical island of Vanuatu, in the South Pacific - Exotic flowers, lobster, french bread. No taxes. No mortgage!

And of course there’s Leo the Lion and a turtle or two. It’s a really great way of life!

(Rick just doesn’t like having his photo taken. Here’s a much nicer photo of him.)

We moved to Vanuatu and love the people, the way of life and of course the weather.There’s room to develop - a luxury in most developed countries. There are Blue Moon Opportunities (ones that will totally change your life) readily available, if you have the courage to accept the challenge. Don’t settle for the mediocre - stretch for the impossible.

Not too many around us thought it was a great idea at the time we decided to move. Most said, “Why Vanuatu?” Our answer. “Why not?” It’s the best decision we ever made and we’re in our mid 60’s.

Don’t be afraid to look outside the box in these days of crisis. There are other things that are worth giving a try. A lot of people will say you’re crazy. So what? It’s crazy to take everything lying down.

You have strengths you haven’t even begun to tap yet. When things get tough, the tough get going. Would love to hear from you if you have some crazy idea that could help you get out of the hole you’re  in. Self doubt kills more people than anything else.

You can contact us on email: admin@youmesupport.org or simply add a comment. Share your idea with others, to encourage them to walk through this financial crisis, no matter how long it lasts for.

Check out our latest challenge at win a resort. You might just find it a little Ray of Sunshine.

It is everyone’s dream to succeed, either on the Internet, or in day to day living. You come across Blue Moon Opportunities, but you are too afraid to pick up the challenge, or you are ham-strung by what other people think. It’s time to think outside the ‘box’ and dare to be different. One of the great keys to success is to understand why you can’t accept criticism.

Feedback is the life blood of a thriving business and an ongoing development. Criticism however, is the proverbial axe to the tree. It cuts you off at the ankles. Criticism is like bread crumbs in the bed. You simply cannot ignore it, no matter what the source is, whether it is good or bad.

So how do you learn to take criticism, be it intentional, said in ignorance, or foolishly? How do you turn a negative into a positive (the key to all successful entrepreneurs)?

Here are 11 reasons why you can’t accept criticism:

1. The critic assumes the position that there is a universal standard, or method on which the criticism is based and the critic is the sole possessor of the ability to form that measurement
2. The critic makes you feel you are an idiot and therefore deserve to be ridiculed
3. The critic has the attitude of being superior and smarter than you
4. The critic wants you to believe that the criticism must be accepted
5. Criticism that is destructive points at you, rather than to the any short fall of your project, or performance
6. Destructive criticism is always one sided, looking only at the negatives
7. It informs you of everything the critic believes is wrong, because you don’t have the ability to see it yourself
8. The critic shreds your self-esteem, leaving you feeling inadequate, hopeless and plain stupid
9. Criticism can be delivered in a snide, sarcastic, snarky, mocking, cynical, thoughtless, mean, spiteful, flippant, arrogant, dismissive, jealous, curt, or annoyed manner
10. The critic’s motives are not always clear and shows no understanding of your aims and goals
11. The criticism will ‘put-you-in-your-place’ because you are getting ‘too-big-for-your-boots’

It is a normal reaction to attempt to first defend yourself, then to hit back, when you have been hurt. When someone throws a spear, it is a natural reaction to throw it back.

Is There Such A Thing As Constructive Criticism?

Now, let’s take a quick look at constructive criticism, but remember you need to have established a healthy relationship with the person offering the criticism:

1. A good critic spends more time telling you what is right, than what they believe is wrong with you, or your project, or performance. Rather like a sandwich with the negative as the filling
2. An effective critic will have a true understanding of the intent and purpose of what has been done and what your aims and goals are. They will look at it from your point-of-view
3. Good criticism is an act of respect and careful communication, looking at your project, or performance, not at you as a person
4. Good criticism is heavily laced with compassion, not arsenic and strychnine
5. Good criticism will show up any slapdash, or laxness in your performance, or weakness in your project
6. Constructive criticism will help you to make the absolute best of your next set of choices
7. Constructive criticism leaves you room to move with dignity, not slavishly follow what the critic has to say
8. Constructive criticism uplifts you mentally, morally, emotionally and spiritually.

Good feedback you can trust is almost impossible to find.

Here are some golden rules that will help you work your way through criticism.

1. Know that criticism is much harder to receive than it is to give it out.
2. Take time out to validate what angle the critic is coming from.
3. Give yourself time to assess if there are some grains of truth in the criticism. Usually there are.
4. Your first reaction will be illogical and if you instantly respond to the criticism, it becomes a negative on your part.
5. Don’t wander down the no-exit road of self pity. That’s a luxury you can’t afford and will gain you nothing.
6. Learn lessons from professional boxers. When you have been hurt, go to the ropes and regroup.
7. The danger is when you react to one kind of criticism, you lay yourself open to being vulnerable to another kind of criticism.

In the end, criticism is a Blue Moon Opportunity to take stock, improve where possible, then climb on to even greater heights. If you are succeeding, criticism WILL come your way. The successful entrepreneur takes time out to turn Negative criticism into a Positive.

Please add any other reasons as to why you feel you can’t accept criticism. It may help us all to come to a better understanding of ourselves and others.

You can find  out more about the author and a genuine Blue Moon Opportunity at http://winaresort.com