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.

If you see a fat man who’s jolly and cute,
Wearing a beard and a red flannel suit,
And if he is chuckling and laughing away,
While flying around in a miniature sleigh,
With eight tiny reindeer to pull him along,
Then let’s face it Your Eggnog is TOO STRONG!

Have a great Christmas and holiday period and lets keep smiling and pray that 2009 will be a year of better news than 2008.

I know we have some exciting news coming up in the New Year, with great once in a lifetime Blue Moon Opportunities.  Keep tuned to Win A Resort

It’s official. Laughter is extremely contagious and can  elevate the entire mood of a group of people, with more being achieved through laughter, than any other method. Stress levels are lowered and social interaction and connectivity improved. Laughter is also one of the few commodities left in a world that is in financial crisis, that is free.

Laughter plays a very important role in our society and never more so than when the world is crashing down around our ears. Laughter takes the focus off more negative emotions such as anger, guilt and stress. It is therefore, important that as human beings we learn to embrace both tears and laughter.

Logic is boring, while it is the illogical situations that causes us to laugh. Laughter can make the difference between choosing to look at a situation as a threat, or a challenge and completely alter our perspective.Often it is laughter that can point us to once in a lifetime blue moon opportunities that can completely change our life. into advantages. After all, many a catastrophic circumstance has been turned into gales of laughter as an incident is repeated as entertainment, at a later date, to friends and relatives. It is truly a case of ‘look back and laugh’. It is when we learn to laugh at ourselves that a disadvantage can often be turned into an advantage.

Have you ever noticed how infectious a happy person is? In a recent study it was found that knowing someone who is happy makes you 15.3% more likely to be happy yourself.

“Did you know that we often mimic a person we are talking to and mirror their behavior?”says Sophie Scott, a researcher of University College London. Maybe some us should practice talking in front of a mirror, to see what kind of an effect we are projecting and lighten up our general presentation.

“Your emotional state depends not just on actions and choices that you make, but also on actions and choices of other people, many of which you don’t even know,” said Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, a physician and medical sociologist at Harvard.

It is well recognized that laughter has many healing properties and finding laughter in daily life profoundly enhances healing and the quality of life.  Laughter can help reduce symptoms of allergies, abdominal pain and digestive problems, as well as helping you manage anger and fear. A good belly laugh exercises the diaphragm, contracts the abs and even works out the shoulders, leaving muscles more relaxed afterward. It even provides a good workout for the heart and a good ten minute laugh is considered better than a 20 minute jog.Perhaps the old saying should be changed to: ‘a laugh a day keeps the doctor away.’

Laughter is something you can catch without even asking for it, or even wanting it. Try to stay serious while everyone around you is cracking up with laughter. As a stress reliever laughter is high on the list along with sex, music therapy, prayer and meditation, and progressive muscle relaxation. Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.

Here are some people’s private views on laughter.

Diane Bodein Walters “There is a fine line between laughter and tears I think one can flick into the other. I’m sure that we’ve all experienced that. There’s a quote of Oscar Wilde “Where there’s sorrow there’s holy ground” so we have to be prepared for people to want to cry rather than laugh and for me they come from the same place. They come from a deep place within the heart .”

Bill Beagley, Anglican Priest “I think humour by its nature asks you to look beyond the logical realities. I mean a joke is funny because you suddenly realise it’s impossible.”

Laibl Wolf, Rabbi and educational psychologist “Laughter is perhaps one of the most mystical expressions of a human being. We say laughter takes place when the soul tricks the mind, bypasses it, short circuits the process. True laughter that flows from the intuitive self, is the most beautiful expression of joy and purpose of creation.”

Lama Choedak “Laughter in many ways brings us closer to the basic values of existence. That is to experience happiness.”

Narr “The idea of subverting reality through humour met its ultimate challenge in the horror that was the Holocaust. For Auchwitz survivor Abraham Ckyiert humour was not only a way of enduring the moment but it ultimately became the means of his survival.”

Jenny Thompson Richards (working in a terminally ill hospice) “I think here people do really value laughter because of this very special situation where people are knowing that their life is limited.  The kind of humour that we are interested in is the humour that actually allows people to embrace the deep things and to be connected together with each other. It is still the best barrier breaker in town.”

Dr Fry, a psychiatrist at Stanford Medical School, “Children laugh an average of 300 times per day.” However children cry at least as often as they laugh, if not more. To many people there is no closer link to the innocence of childhood than that evoked by the vision of a clown”

It is definitely time to concentrate on having more fun in your life.

If you would like to know more about the author and a genuine Blue moon Opportunity take a few minutes to check out Win A Resort.

For any business to be a success, particularly on the Internet, you have to put in the long hours.
The problem is that most people overestimate the short term effect of their website and underestimate the long term effect. Therefore they get discouraged and give up just about the time things were ready to get up and run.

The key is, never give up, even when you begin to feel like this picture. Success only goes to the stayers.
Have a great Christmas and New Year and come back in January with lots of wonderful new ideas.

We are going to launch a wonderful new Blue Moon Opportunity product in the New Year. Keep an eye on this space.

To take a look at a genuine Blue Moon Opportunity take a few minutes out to check out Win A Resort

Olive Riley, from Broken Hill, Australia, the world’s oldest blogger died in July, at a massive 108 years old. Too weak to get up from her bed, she was still able to tap the keyboard of her computer. Olive said “It doesn’t take much exertion to be a blobber”.

The Life of Riley had more than a million hits since its launch last year. Olive was the only resident in the retirement home with a website and a ‘blob’. “Olive was introduced to blogging by and an older friend who had taken up blogging”, says Mike Rubbo, filmmaker of a documentary on the life and times of Olive Riley.

Olive’s fans came from all over the world. Unfortunately Olive did not have the strength to speak on a US talk show, when invited to do so.

Perhaps Olive calling her blog a blob was a lovely accident we can all learn from. Unlike Olive, maybe we all take Google rating and the number of hits we get, and ourselves, all too seriously.

Olive seemed to have found the magic key of doing her thinking just before she dropped off to sleep. Experts (whoever they may claim to be), say our brain works better and clearer at night than during the day. So perhaps like Olive, we could be more successful if we ‘blobbed’ at night. Or at least got our ideas for blobbing, in the night hours (which a lot of us do).

The other point we can all take on board from Olive is that if you are blogging now, how many blogs can you put out by the time you are 108? Olive managed to put out 70 entries on her life experiences in just on eighteen months. Experiences that cover a world-wide depression and two World Wars, being a station cook in outback Queensland and a barmaid in Sydney.

Now you are a lot younger and much more energetic, so say you write 5 blogs a week, for 50 weeks of the year. That is a total of 250 per year, or 2500 in 10 years, 5000 in 20 years, and 7500 in 30 years.

If each blob received just 500 hits that would be a total of 3,750,000 hits in 30 years. If those hits could average you an income of $1 per blog you could become a $3.75 millionaire in thirty years.

The moral of the story is: Hang in there, you never know when your once in a lifetime Blue Moon Opportunity will bring home the bacon, (or is that meant to be the groceries).

Olive found a once in life time Blue Moon Opportunity to make her mark. You can do the same.

If you would like to know more about the author take a few minutes to check out a Blue Moon Opportunity that could change your life, at Win A Resort.

The world’s biggest fraud in history was revealed when Bernard Madoff, 70 year old Wall Street guru and trader and ex chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market was arrested last week. He allegedly masterminded a $US50 billion fraudulent Ponzi scheme. Madoff’s arrest and liquidation of his company adds further fuel to the spiraling costs of a financial world, already in crisis.

Madoff, who was said to be of ‘impeccable reputation’, headed a firm which was supposedly a market-maker for around 350 Nasdaq stocks.

“Madoff’s investors included captains of industry, corporations, (some publicly traded),  that used Madoff ‘s company as if it were a high-yielding cash management account, including endowments, universities, foundations and many high-profile funds of funds,” said Douglas Kass, head of the hedge fund, Seabreeze Partners Management.

A Ponzi scheme is an illegal investment vehicle, that pays off old investors with money from new ones. Like any pyramid scheme it is totally dependent on a constant stream of new incoming investment. Because the invested capital is not able to earn a sufficient return on its own, such schemes eventually collapse under their own weight, as investors are paid with money that isn’t there.

Prior to the arrest, some investors had questioned how Madoff was able to generate annual returns in the low double digits in a variety of market environments, come rain or shine. Many wondered how US regulators were able to ignore the numerous red flags, in regards to Madoff’s operations. However, such niggling doubts were not enough to stop the high-profile organizations, individuals and companies from continuing to take the high return offered by Madoff. A case of grinning all the way to the bank, until you get your fingers burnt.

Continuing in the style of his grandee nature, Madoff is accused, by prosecutors, of wanting to distribute as much as $US300 million to employees, family members and friends, before turning himself in. Just too bad if you are not on the receiving end of such a deal.

Charged with one count of securities fraud, Madoff could face up to 20 years imprisonment and a $US5 million fine. The US Securities and Exchange Commission have filed separate civil charges.

A hearing was scheduled for Friday afternoon in US District Court in Manhattan on the SEC’s request, in order to grant powers to the court-appointed receiver to oversee the entire operations of the advisory business known as Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securites LLC.  It is believed that at least $15 billion has totally disappeared before the firm’s assets were frozen.

“The hearing was cancelled after the matter was resolved,” said a deputy for US District Judge Louis Stanton. No other details were immediately available. Madoff was released on $US10 million bond.

Billions of dollars were entrusted through the firm’s clients by high-profile organizations and individuals. Believing it to be a once in a lifetime Blue Moon Opportunity,  such charities as set up by Hollywood director Steven Spielberg used the company’s services and invested money with Madoff.  Other victims were a foundation set up by Mort Zuckerman, one of the world’s richest media and property magnates in the US, Frank Lautenberg’s foundation, besides dozens of Jewish organizations, sport team owners and a senator from New Jersey. The tragedy is that those charities will now suffer along with everyone else’s financial misery.

US authorities are presently liquidating the company.

If you’re intersted in a genuine Blue Moon Opportunity, take a few minutes out to check out Win A Resort.

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.

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The legendary Koh-i-Nor diamond was lost for quite some time, after the handover from the Sikhs, to British rule, in 1849. It was only after repeated requests from Britain to Sir John Lawrence, Governor General of India, that the diamond was found again. Finally the gardener asked if they were looking for “The bit of glass in the old tin in the tool-shed?”

Sir Lawrence had been handed the fabled diamond as part of the spoils of war, without being aware of what he had been given. Perhaps it is just as well, as any male owner, or wearer of the diamond was said to possess the world, but also a world of the worst misfortune. Only a woman (or god) may wear or possess the diamond in safety.

The Koh-i-Nor diamond weighed around 793 carots when it was mined in India, some say 4000 years ago. The first cut took it to an undistinguished diamond weighing 186 carots. It was not until Queen Victoria ordered a further cut, that the brilliant 108.93 Koh-i-Nor we  know today, was revealed.

For 213 years the fabled stone was in the possession of Delhi Moguls. It was held by Tehran for 109 years and in Afghan’s possession for 66 years. All claim the stone back from Britain, who has held it for 160 years.
It is a diamond that has never been bought or sold, though it has changed hands many times and long been the eye of the storm. It has left a trial that involves war, greed, power, murder, mayhem, brutality and torture, not to mention deceit, double dealing and mountains of unhappiness. The curse-legend was so strong there was some talk of Queen Victoria returning the stone to India. Instead though, she placed it in a tiara, along with 2000 other diamonds.

In 1911 it was placed in the centre of a crown for Queen Mary to wear for the coronation ceremony.

Again in 1937 it was transferred to another coronation crown, for Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. The only other time the crown was taken from behind its high-security armoured glass in the Tower of London, was in 2002, when it was placed on the top of the Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother’s coffin, as it proceeded from St James Palace to Westminster Abbey. There it remained on public view, as people filed past to pay their respects to the last Empress of India. One can only imagine the security that would have surrounded the crown jewel during this time.

Whether we believe in the curse of the Koh-i-Nor or not, it is doubtful that any man in the British realm, will have the courage to wear the fabled diamond.

Only now is there a possibility that the round Koh-i-Nor may be dwarfed by a new rough diamond found in a tiny nation of South Africa. A diamond that as yet remains unnamed and unvalued. A diamond that has the highest rated colour and clarity. Analysts, using high tech computers, estimate the diamond will cut into a modern round at about 150 carats.

To find out more about the author take a few minutes to check out Win A Resort and a genuine Blue Moon Opportunity

All is doom and gloom in the world of finance, yet things are vastly different to the days of the Great Depression in the 1930’s. On one hand we have Somali pirates holding shipping companies to ransom for millions of dollars, while a world away, million dollar rock stars are being recovered from the murky depths of the earth.

The world’s 20th largest rough diamond ever found, weighs in at a mere 478 carats. It was recently recovered from the Letseng Diamond mine, in the tiny South African kingdom of Lesotho.

This new gem is a baby compared to the Cullinan diamond that weighed in uncut, at 3,106 carats. From the Cullinan diamond the Great Star of Africa was cut, besides 104 other diamonds. The Great Star of Africa adorns King Edward’s scepter and can be viewed among the British Crown Jewels, in the Tower of London.

While the new found, still unnamed diamond, also remains unvalued, its sister stone,  the Letseng Promise sold for $12.4 million dollars. An early recovery from the same mine, the Letseng Legacy sold for $10.4 million.

Analysis at Antwerp revealed that new gem has the highest colour grade and because of its round shape has the potential of being cut to become the world’s largest round flawless diamond ever found. In a polished state it could be valued at tens of millions of dollars.

The potentially largest new round, flawless, diamond, weighing 150 carats, would dwarf the cursed, 103 carat Koh-i-Nor diamond, which is the centre piece of the Queen Mother, the Queen Elizabeth’s coronation crown. The Koh-i-Nor diamond is said to be a curse for anyone other than a woman.

“Preliminary examination of this remarkable now-found diamond indicates that it will yield a record breaking polished stone of the very best color and clarity,” says the CEO and  Chairman of Gem Diamonds.

From 1977 to 1982 the Letseng mine was operated by De Beers Mining Company. It is the highest diamond mine in the world, being 3,100 metres above sea level, though it only reaches to around 645 metres deep. Only reopened in 2004 in a joint venture between Gem Diamonds and the Lesotho government its yield is 90% of jewel quality. This makes the Letseng a unique mine.

Three of the world’s top diamonds have been recovered from the Letseng mine – the 601 carat Lesotho Brown in mid 1960, the 603 carat Lesotho Promise, August 2006 and the Letseng Legacy recovered in Sept 2007.

Find out more about the author and a once ina lifetime Blue Moon Opportunity that changes lives.

If you book an ocean cruise that goes through the Suez Canal and the Gulf Aden, past the pirate-infested coastline of Somalia, you will find your ticket entails a lot of extra expenses.

Hapag-Lloy, the German Hamburg-based cruise operator, announced on Wednesday that its 246 passengers, from the MV Columbus, would now disembarked at the Yemeni port of Hodeidah. The passengers would be flown by charter plane to Dubai, where they will spend three days in a five-star hotel, waiting for their 150-meter ship to arrive. Should the MV Columbus manage to survive running the gauntlet of the pirate-infested waters, the passengers will re-embark at the Omen port of Salalah. They will then continue their around-the-world tour, which commenced in Italy. In this way the company hopes to minimize the piracy risk to the passengers.

Abdul Haasan has led the Central Regional Coast Guard, formed only three years ago. This group has unleashed a storm of terror and fear on one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. They claim: “We are eco-warriors, or marines defending Somali waters from foreign exploitation.” Yet the Saudi Arabia, state-owned Sirius Star, the world’s largest oil tanker, was hijacked on November  18th 833 km off the Somali coast.

The remote decrepit Somali fishing outpost, Eyl, has become the piracy capital of the world. Secondary school kids education and head for Eyl, enticed by the alluring promise of making big dollars.

“Armed guards will now be posted on vulnerable cargo ships using the Gulf, in the first such deployment of military personnel, in the international fight against piracy,” says the European Union’s anti-piracy mission in a statement yesterday. Warships from Greece, Britain and France, plus two maritime surveillance aircraft from France and Spain will police the area. It is expected that a German war ship will join the anti-piracy mission mid December.

Merchant vessels owned by Indian shipping companies will place armed guards on vessels moving through the Gulf of Aden. “Once the ships are out of the danger zone, the armed guards will disembark. This will be a very expensive exercise,” stated Captain Anshul Rajvanshi of the Mumbai-based Ebony shipping company. “However, once the pirates have boarded a vessel, negotiation is the only safe way left open to us.”

Armed with information from relatives in custom offices, a typical ‘day-at-the-office’ for the 350 Somali pirates, with their mother ships and 100 small crafts, it is merely a matter of deciding which ship to attempt to hijack next. With the world in financial crises it seems the Somali pirates have created their own ‘pot of gold’.
40 ships have been hijacked, of the 90 attempted attacks this year. To view the full extent of world-wide piracy it is worth taking a few minutes to Google a live IBM Piracy Map.

To learn more of the author take a quick look at a genuine once in a lifetime Blue Moon Opportunity at Win A Resort