No doubt you have heard the old saying, “Change happens”. This is true,
change happens every minute of our lives. In fact, one of the best
things about life is that no two days are ever the same. Yet for many
of us, we have a difficult time dealing with change because we are observers of change, and not participants of change.Change is often rewarding, exciting and dynamic – for those that are making
it happen. How can you take control and shift your life from being
merely an observer who has to deal with change happening around him to
a participant who is the catalyst for change in their life and others?

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: You can make change happen by simply changing your way of thinking.

Don’t believe me? Try this for one week, seven short days, and then
come back and read this article again. I think you will be surprised at
how you made a shift in your life, but also have helped make a shift in
the lives of others around you.

For the next week I want you to put aside every obstacle that gets in your way. Don’t ignore it, but just resolve to deal with it
without being frustrated or thinking that it is insurmountable. For the
net seven days I want you to approach every problem, challenge and
opportunity with a smile and find a creative solution for it. Some of
it will be easy, for example if the boss wants to give you a raise
(yes, that’s a change!), and some won’t be as easy – you have a project
a co-worker dumped on you with only two days to get it done. All I’m
asking is that you try.

You are going to discover something
happening here. By shifting your way of thinking, you are not becoming
a participant of change. Your positive attitude is going to influence
not only you, but everyone around you. Your family will notice, you
coworkers with notice – even the guy who sells you your morning coffee
is likely to notice! You have had a paradigm shift and all it took was
for you to approach ever situation with a positive attitude. Now let’s
take it farther than that – let’s be a participant in change in life
all around us.

What is a one-year goal in your life?
Don’t have one? Well get one! Think of something you would really like
to change in your life within the next year – be it something about you (weight loss, smile more, work out at the gym) or something around you (get a new car, find a job in a field you love). Now here is something that most people don’t know and why so many people fail at making change happen in their life – they try to do it without a shift in the way they think and act.
I’m here to tell you right now that you aren’t going to lose weight by
eating at McDonald’s every day and you are certainly not going to land
that dream job by sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.
Everything in your life requires you to be the catalyst of making it
happen. You have to lead the revolution!

So
you want to lose weight – who doesn’t? How can you be a participant in
making that happen instead of someone who sits around hoping that the
magic weight loss fairy comes and visits in the middle of the night?
You can start by changing your way of thinking! Are you the type of
person who just has to go out
with the gang at lunch every day? How about if you put that energy to
better use – using that lunch hour to visit the local library, work out
at the company gym, or just get outside and explore the city. Believe
it or not, this is how you start changing – by modifying your behavior.
I guarantee you that if for one month you changed your lunch behavior
you would see the weight dropping. Before you now it, CHANGE has
happened!

You have the power to generate huge shifts in your life — whether it is financial, emotional, personal or career wise. Even more, you have the power to help others change
as well. When people see you making changes in your thinking or actions
and shifting your life in the right direction they naturally want to be
a part of that change. You could be the catalyst to creating a change
revolution in your own house!

So, now it’s your turn. What are
you going to do today, right now, to facilitate a shift in your life?
Don’t just nod your head and leave – take some time to write down what
you want to do. Change happens – are you going to be part of the
revolution?

Your focus determines your reality.

It’s something we don’t think about much of the time, but give it some consideration now:

• If you wake up in the morning and think about the miserable things you need to do later in the day, you’ll have a miserable day. If you wake up and focus instead on what a wonderful gift your life is, you’ll have a great day.
• If we let our attention jump from one thing to another, we will have a busy, fractured and probably unproductive day. If we focus entirely on one job, we may lose ourselves in that job, and it will not only be the most productive thing we do all day, but it’ll be very enjoyable.
• If we focus on being tired and wanting to veg out in front of the TV, we will get a lot of television watching done. If, however, we focus on being healthy and fit, we will become healthy and fit through exercise and good eating.

This may seem simplistic, but it’s completely true. This is the magical power of focus.

Let’s look at some of the ways you can use focus to improve different aspects of your life.

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.” - Buddha

Focus on a Goal
In my experience, focus is the most important determination of whether you’ll achieve a goal or stick to creating a new habit. Not self-discipline, not rewards, not sheer willpower, not even motivation (also an important ingredient, however). If you can maintain your focus on a goal or habit, you will more often than not achieve that goal or create that habit.

If you can’t maintain your focus, you won’t achieve the goal, unless it’s such an easy goal that it would have happened anyway. It’s that simple.

Why does focus matter so much? Let’s say you decide you want to declutter your house — that’s your goal for this month. So the first day, you’re completely focused on this goal, and you get boxes and trash bags and fill them up with junk. The second day, you’re still focused, and you fill up a bunch more boxes and you’ve cleared most of two rooms with progress on another. This goes on for a few more days, with your focus being on this goal, and lots of progress made.

However, let’s say that a week into your decluttering, you decide you want to become a runner. You are now focused on running, and not only do you go out to jog for a few days, you buy running clothes and a Nike-equipped iPod and read running blogs and magazines. However, you’ve lost your focus on decluttering, and soon you aren’t doing much of it, because your focus is on running. In fact, you’ve added more clutter because you’ve bought all the running equipment and magazines and books.

Meanwhile, I have maintained my focus on decluttering the entire month, and by the end of the month, I have a nice, simplified house. I did it through focus.

This is why I am constantly advocating focusing on only one goal at a time. Having multiple goals spreads out your focus, and makes it less likely that you’ll complete any of the goals. It’s possible, but with a diffused focus, it’s much more difficult.

Even with only one goal, maintaining focus can be difficult. You need to find ways to keep your focus on that goal. Some good examples that work for me:

• Read about your goal as much as possible, on websites and blogs and in books and magazines.
• Post up reminders on your wall, refrigerator, and computer desktop.
• Send yourself reminders using an online calendar or reminder service.
• Tell as many people as possible about it, and post your progress on your blog.
• Have a time each day to work on the goal, with a reminder in your schedule each day.

Maintain your focus on your goal, and you’ve won half the battle in achieving it.

Focus on Now
I’ve written about this before, but focusing on the present can do a lot for you. It helps reduce stress, it helps you enjoy life to the fullest, and it can increase your effectiveness.

Focusing on now, rather than the past (”I can’t believe she said that to me!”) or the future (”what am I going to say in the darn meeting today?”) isn’t easy, and takes a lot of practice.

Focus on the Task at Hand
Have you ever completely lost yourself in a task, so that the world around you disappears? You lose track of time and are completely caught up in what you’re doing. That’s the popular concept of Flow, and it’s an important ingredient to finding happiess

Having work and leisure that gets you in this state of flow will almost undoubtedly lead to happiness. People find greatest enjoyment not when they’re passively mindless, but when they’re absorbed in a mindful challenge.

How do you get into flow? Well, it takes a bit of practice, but the first step is to find work that you’re passionate about. Seriously — this is an extremely important step. Find hobbies that you’re passionate about. Turn off the TV — this is the opposite of flow — and get outside and do something that truly engages you.

Next, you need to clear away distractions and focus completely on the task you set before yourself. This is the part that takes a lot of practice. I’ll write more about this later.

Focus on the Positive
One of the key skills I’ve learned is how to be aware of my negative thoughts, and to replace them with positive thoughts. I learned this through quitting smoking and running — there are many times when you feel like giving up, and if you don’t catch these negative thoughts in time, they’ll fester and grow until you actually do give up.

Instead, learn to focus on the positive. Think about how great you feel. Think about how other people have done this, and so can you. Think about how good it will feel when you accomplish what you’re trying to do.

Also learn to see the positive in just about any situation. This results in happiness, in my experience, as you don’t focus on the bad parts of your life, but on the good things. Be thankful for what you’ve been given.

Regards
Fahad Adam Thakur

Recycling doesn’t have to be limited to helping the environment: it can also be a challenge and opportunity to ingenious designers who work with materials most people would consider waste to create amazing things. Some of the following designs serve multiple purposes: illustrating the material possibilities of what most would consider trash while also maximizing the aesthetic potential of what would otherwise be considered waste objects. Clothes become rugs, airline trolleys become furniture, cardboard becomes bridges and sewage turns into building blocks!

The Volksware designers have provided an interesting alternative way of recycling clothes that may not even bit fit for the Salvation Army. By stitching them and rolling them they have created a simple carpet system that can be cut to length and fit to a space. Something to think about the next time someone tells you to pick your clothes up off the floor!

Ever wonder what happens to those oddly shaped airplane trolleys when the airlines are done using them? Well, so did Bordbar before they began appropriating and adding splashes of design to them and reselling them to the public as useful (if odd) multipurpose mobile furniture. These are highly customizable have have a surprising range of possible functions once they are recycled into use.

There are few things being produced as rapidly, regularly and in such volume as newspapers. Many of these are, of course, recycled by traditional means, but what if they could serve another purpose that didn’t require the some amount of reprocessing? Sumer Erek has been working on one such alternative: reusing newspaper as interior decoration and insulation in a house.

The Remarkable product design team has created a series of colorful and useful versions of traditional products made out of unusual recycled materials. Their approach is quite simple yet compelling: they brand individual products with information about their origins. This makes for conversation pieces but also raises awareness about the origins and potential of composite recycled materials.

Architect Shigeru Ban is well known for a number of high-profile architectural designs but perhaps less so for his artistic and ecological side projects such as the cardboard bridge pictured above. This bridge is composed over over 250 recycled cardboard tubes with recycled paper and plastic comprising the stairs. Amazingly, this recycled bridge can hold up to 20 people at once!

The BituBlock may interesting and almost artistic … until you realize it is made from post-consumer recycled products including ash, glass and, yes, sewage. Still, it doesn’t smell and ultimately it is an incredibly strong and durable building block that rivals other materials such as concrete that would be used in similar situations – and does so using almost entirely reused and recycled materials.

The Remida Center appropriates scrap materials from all kinds of local businesses in order to gain raw materials ranging from wood and metal to plexiglass and plastic that students can use in art projects. The idea is both to facilitate art but also to raise awareness about the origins of materials, essentially recycling otherwise unused materials and putting them toward the production of art.

There are all kinds of approaches to garbage gardening that appropriate trash items and reuse them for decorative or practical purposes in gardens. The example shown above is just one of many including colorful mosaics from broken dishes and assorted other ideas. Not extreme enough? Try guerilla gardening instead!

Italian designer Marcella Foschi has developed a quite clever way to recycle cassette tapes: a product material that exists in abundance but is associated with a dying (or dead) technology. Her coin purses are at least cute (if not collectible) and appropriate a material we all know, love and have stopped using.

Marcella Foschi isn’t the only one with ideas on how to reuse audio tapes. Some clever designers have taken it to the next level and begun to weave sonic cloth from the actual tape within the cassettes.

Want To Live A Beautiful Life? Start by Creating the Perfect Environment

It’s been known for ages that the types of people we surround ourselves with have a lot to do with how we’re going to think, feel, and grow as individuals. As important as people are, and I’ll talk more about this soon, there are other factors that greatly contribute to the quality of your life.

Here I will guide you through a few of the things that I do to help me see my life in a beautiful light.

1. Sunlight. Being in constant sunlight does much for your body, mind and soul. Contrary to common believe, sunlight can actually help to prevent certain types of cancer. The vitamin D that it will generate in your body will strengthen your bones. The chemical reactions that will happen inside of you will actually make you happier. That’s why there is a huge benefit to ‘early to bed, early to rise’. You’re spending more of your waking moments in sunlight.
2. Flowers (via Gardenweb). They say ‘flower power for a reason’, and this is the reason.
   • Increase energy with red roses: Because red has the slowest vibratory rate and longest wavelength, it stimulates adrenal glands, boosting energy.
   • Enhance alertness with sunflowers: Yellow light waves stimulate the brain, making one alert, clearheaded and decisive. And because people generally associate yellow with the sun’s rays and daylight, helps people feel more optimistic.
   • Relax with bells of Ireland: Green affects the nervous system, allowing people to breathe slowly and deeply, slowing the production of stress hormones and helping the heart relax.
   • Boost confidence with irises: The color indigo stimulates the brain’s pineal gland, which is the regulator of sleep patterns. Indigo also helps to free the mind of worries, fears and inhibitions.
   • Get a good night’s sleep with delphinium: Blue triggers the production of melatonin, a brain chemical that helps with relaxation and sleep. Blue also stimulates the thyroid gland to release thyroxin, a hormone that regulates metabolic rate.
   • Prevent allergies with orange daisies: Orange strengthens the immune system and the lungs, which can ward off spring allergies. Orange also has a strong beneficial effect on the digestive system and can stimulate the sexual organs.
   • Relieve stress with lilacs: Violet has a cooling effect, alleviating “hot” conditions like heat rash and sunburn, and suppressing hunger and balancing metabolism. It also stimulates the pituitary gland, the part of the brain that releases tension-fighting beta-endorphins.
3. Healthy Food. This is absolutely vital because the stuff we put in isn’t just fuel, it isn’t just pleasurable morsels of food, it’s actually the building blocks from which our body is constructed. Would you want your body built from the ground up using potato chips, cup cakes , and chocolate shakes, or with lean cuts of protein, with fresh nutrient dense vegetables?
4. Friends to Play. You’ve heard laughter is the best medicine? Well friends are the best source of that. There is a good time and place to be introverted, particularly when you’re trying to focus and get things done. On the other hand, being extroverted, making lots of friends and socializing with amazing people is one of the best ways to live, love, and grow.
5. Person to Love. Having a person to love, such as a significant other, or a family member can all the motivation you need to create ambitious goals and have big dreams for yourself and your loved ones. Having intimate relationships in your life makes everything seem better than it really is. After all, our perception is our whole reality, so we might as well fill it with beautiful things, people, and thoughts.
6. Room to Grow. We all need room to grow, physically, mentally, and spiritually. If we confine ourselves to a static definition, instead of a possibility, then we are greatly limiting ourselves. That is to say-by staying open minded, we put unlimited options before us. For example, by saying we are only good at math, we are limiting ourselves from excelling in other areas. By saying we are smart, and able to learn new skills quickly, we are able to take on and accomplish anything.
7. Exercise. Exercise makes you feel good in so many ways. You feel good because you’re working towards a goal, doing something good for your body, and being proactive in your future. Since your brain is part of your body, your strengthening your physical brain, as well as building fortitude by keeping at it when it gets tough.
8. Integrity. An environment of integrity is one that you create for yourself when you become your word. Be genuine. Give power to your words! This means saying who you are and being that person with yourself and with others. We are not perfect, but by having integrity, we can recognize times in which we are not being our word and objectively evaluate our actions. This can be so empowering because it dismisses denial in favor of understanding.
9. Respect Those Around You. One way of creating a great atmosphere around you is by co-creating an atmosphere of respect with the people around you. By respecting the people around you, you will generate a cascade of respect from one person to another. This is going to come back to your 10 fold as you go about your life.