Stress at Work and Best Practice

There are many myths and misconceptions about stress, so I thought that I would write a summary for you.
Q: Is stress is good for me? A: No! Pressure is good for you but stress is not.
Q: What is the difference between pressure and stress? A: Pressure motivates and is within your control and you can usually manage it. Stress is the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure or other types of demands placed upon them.
Q: What causes stress? A: Fundamentally, it is the way that we think about a
situation rather than the situation itself, that causes stress.
Q: What is a stress 'carrier'? A: People who exhibit stress-producing behaviour but are unaware of the impact of their conduct upon others.
Q: What are some of the physical reactions to stress? A: Dry mouth, anxiety, rapid breathing, moist palms.
Q: What are some of the symptoms of prolonged stress? A: Sleep problems, headaches, anger, indigestion.
Q: What are some of the causes of workplace stress? A: Long working hours, lack of autonomy, excessive expectations, uncertainty, work under-load / overload
Q: What are some of the effects of workplace stress? A: Poor performance and productivity, low morale, reduced commitment and increased absenteeism
Q: What can the organisation do to manage stress? A: Introduce Best Practice with primary, secondary and tertiary levels of intervention.
Q: What is the primary level intervention? A: The primary level deals with the assessment of risk and its prevention by introducing appropriate interventions, reviewing the needs of the organisation and implementing an anti-stress policy.
Q: I am the CEO of a pharmaceutical company and want to assess the risk of stress in my organisation. How can I do this? A: You will need to ensure that:
a) Demands upon employees are realistic.
b) Change is managed effectively.
c) Procedures for dealing with grievances are introduced.
d) Teams are allowed some control over their work
e) Role conflict and ambiguity are avoided
f) Published support is available within the organisation.
Q: What is the secondary level intervention? A: This includes training, education and implementation
Q: I am a training director of an IT company? What training initiatives have been proven to work? A: There are two training initiatives that will help reduce stress in your organisation:
a) Stress awareness and resilience training for all employees. Many organisations cannot eradicate stress but they can strengthen the resilience of their employees to manage it effectively. Individuals can be taught how to increase their capacity to tolerate excessive demands and learn how to 'bounce back' from challenges.
b) Stress Management training for all Managers. Managers need to recognise the signs and symptoms of stress in both themselves and in others and know how to deal with it quickly and efficiently so that team performance is not impaired.
Q: What is the 3rd level intervention? A: Dealing with stress-related problems in the workplace by timely interventions and by offering coaching, counselling, mediation and regular staff appraisals.
Q: I am a Manager and I assume that you would say that I have a fundamental role
in managing stress in my team? A: Exactly so. Your role is to manage people and you need to communicate, 'walk the talk', be approachable and value individual and team effort by recognition.
Q: What are the benefits of taking action to manage work stress? A: The organisation will benefit from reduced absenteeism, improved staff morale and increased productivity.
Q: What is your key message? A: Create a healthy workplace culture where you have motivated and resilient teams who love what they do! Engage, involve and inspire them and lead by inspiration and motivation.
Q: What do I do next? A: You could buy a copy of my new book, Show Stress Who's Boss! and put these interventions into practice.
Is this all difficult to do? No! Is it costly to implement? No! Then how many companies
are actually committed to doing it? Now that's another question for another time!
Keys Points

1. Excessive pressure = stress
2. Anti-stress interventions, work!
3. Resilience is the key to beating stress!

This article was written by Carole Spiers and originally published by her with Gulf News.

Choose Keywords for Your Articles

So you've started a blog or a niche website and you'd like to start writing content but you don't know where to begin? The thing is that, even though you'd like to think that you could start anywhere, it just isn't true. You can't publish posts that will not bring traffic to your site... unless you want to write and keep those articles just to yourself, but then what would be the point? You need to make sure that the keywords you will target have enough people searching for them on a daily basis. That will mean that those keywords are viable. But that's not all...
How to Choose the Perfect Keywords?
As I said, the keywords you go after should be words or sentences that people will be typing in Google, Yahoo or Bing, and the more people per day, the better for you. Unfortunately, it's not as easy as I make it sound. Why? Because if it was, we would all be targeting keywords such as "payday loans", "make money online" and "buy Viagra"... then rank for them and rake in the big money! You also have to check out the competition for those keywords, so you can see if it will be easy for you to earn a spot in the top 3 or just near impossible.
Yes, the perfect keywords are those that show the perfect balance between high searches and low competition. Your job now will be to find them.
Finding Your Keywords
Finding your keywords is a two-step program that starts with you sorting out between the potential winners. The way to do that is to open Google Keyword Tool (you'll need to register to be able to use it well) and type in the topic, the general subject of your blog (i.e. make money, writing, dog grooming, and so on). Before you press enter, you want to make sure that in the match types option you've selected [Exact] as you only want Google to give you the number of people looking for those exact terms and nothing else.
OK, so now you have your list that should be around 800 results long (that's the maximum number Google will return). Click on the Global Monthly Searches element in the menu to sort the keywords by their volume of searches. Don't even look at those results that bring in hundreds of thousands of searches; it would cost you too much time and money to rank for those... and I can't even guarantee that you could as those keywords are generally already taken by old authority sites with high PR and A LOT of backlinks. What you should pay attention to are long tail keywords from 1,000 to 10,000 exact searches per month. Don't go lower than one thousand as, even if you placed 1st for those keywords, the resulting traffic would not justify all your efforts. Now, copy and paste those results in Word and go to the second step.
Determine the Competition for your Keywords
Now that you have your list of keywords, you need to check whether you have a standing chance to rank for them or not. There are 2 ways to go about it, the fast and the not so fast. If you want the process to be automated, you can get your hands on a piece of software like Market Samurai or Traffic Travis... There are Free Trial versions for the both of them so you can test for yourself if you like them or not (personally, I have a preference for MS as its SEO competition tool tells you exactly what you need to know in a clear and concise manner).
If you prefer to do the checking manually, here's how to go about it:

• Install SEO Quake: first of all, install SEO Quake plugin in your web browser.


• Check the PR: type in your keyword in Google and, with the help of SEO Quake, check the PR of the 10 first sites. Are they all high PR? Do you see any PR0-3? The less sites with a high PR, the better.


• Check the Backlinks: once again, for the first 10 results, you want to see how many backlinks they have and how strong those are. Why only the first 10? Because it doesn't matter whether you have 1,000,000 competitors for that keyword or just 10,000, as the money is on the first page of Google, you're only interested in the strength of those as they're the ones you're trying to beat. Now, the easiest way to check the backlinks of your competitors is to make a search on websites such as BackLinkWatch. You put the URL in and they'll tell you exactly how many links this site has.


• Check the Age: the older the sites, the worst news it is for you. Websites that have been around for a while will be harder to beat as they've proven their worth through the years.


• Any .edu or .gov?: if the sites on the first page are educational or government, it's going to be that much harder to outrank them. Google and the other search engines give them more weight than regular com/net/org. So that's another thing to watch out for when you choose keywords for your site.

You see, deciding which keywords to use and which to avoid is not an art, it's a science. It means that there are certain rules to follow and that, if you do, you can rest assured that your website will rank for them and bring traffic back. So put these tips into practice and watch your website rise to the top!

Global Warming: Save Your Planet, Act Today

The oxford dictionary defines global warming as the increase in temperature of the earth's atmosphere that is caused by the increase of particular gases, especially carbon dioxide.

So how does it work? How nature intends for the sun to heat the earth is for the sun to shine UV rays down on the earth. These rays should then bounce off the earth and back out into space. To keep the Earth's temperature in balance some of these rays are blocked by the atmosphere from making it to outer space. The heat from these rays are then used to keep the earth at the temperature nature intended. However we are messing with nature's intentions. What is happening now is a severe increase in the amount of greenhouse gases being sent into our atmosphere due to advancements in technology and our huge dependence on heavy industry and fossil fuels. These gases act as a shield so that when UV rays bounce off the earth now the majority of them are trapped by these gases instead of continuing into space. The result of this is that these trapped rays end up heating the earth beyond the desired temperature.

Since the early 20th century the earth's temperature has increased by 1.4 degrees. The majority of this increase has occurred since the 1980s. 1.4 degrees that's not so bad, right? Wrong. The majority of the environmental disasters you hear about on the news every evening, scientists are attributing to this increase in temperature.

Critics will argue 'that's rubbish there have always been natural disasters, before we ever even heard about global warming'. OK so, I guess their right, the increase in weather related natural disasters from 120 per year during the 1980s to roughly 500 per year now is just a coincidence (insert sarcasm here). That is an increase of around 400% since the 1980s. If you look closer you will notice the number of natural disasters started to increase right about the same time the earth's temperature started to increase but that's probably just another coincidence as well. Remember this is the result of 1.4 degree increase in the Earth's temperature. This figure is set to reach 8 degrees in the next hundred years if current trends continue you can do the math on that one.

Scientists have also noted a rapid melting of the polar ice caps due to global warming. When an ice cube melts in a glass it turns to water and will increase the volume of water in the glass. Imagine this on a scale so large that the ice cube is a continent and the glass is the world's oceans and then guess what happens. That's right our ocean's levels rise and swallow up coastal areas all over the world. At the moment, we can see evidence of it happening in Thailand and this is one of many examples where hundreds have died and millions displaced because of severe flooding. In the future, low lying countries, such as The Netherlands, could be completely submerged and cease to exist if this trend is left to continue.

The whole point of this article was not to leave you with nightmares but to educate you into action. There are so many steps we can take on our own and as a society to help reduce our carbon footprint and leave a safe environment for our future generations.

'In life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action', Tony Robbins

Protecting Veterans From Mesothelioma

In recent news, a San Francisco-based chemical risk assessment company claims that the United States Navy was ahead of the game when they attempted to protect veterans and civilians from mesothelioma back in the 1960s. At that time, U.S. Naval ships were heavily laden with asbestos, making Navy servicemen among the most common victims of mesothelioma.
Mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer that affects the mesothelium, which is a protective layer surrounding the organs of the body. It has since been determined that there is a direct correlation between asbestos exposure and a person's likelihood of developing mesothelioma.
Understanding the Risks Associated with Asbestos
Researchers, Kara Franke and Dennis Paustenbach, examined dozens of published and unpublished documents on asbestos knowledge between the years of 1900 to 1970, and were able to determine that the Navy actually understood the health hazards of asbestos as far back as the 1930's. However, despite the known risks and dangers of asbestos, the Navy continued to require its use on ships. The Navy also recommended that certain precautions be taken in order to handle asbestos-laden materials more carefully. After mesothelioma was clearly linked to asbestos in the 1960's, the ChemRisk researchers claimed that the Navy "attempted to implement procedures that would minimize the opportunity for adverse effects on both servicemen and civilians."
Too Little; Too Late
Despite precautions taken by the U.S. Navy, countless U.S. Naval veterans have subsequently developed mesothelioma. Part of the inherent danger associated with mesothelioma stems from its latency period where it can take as long as 40 years to even become symptomatic after asbestos exposure. For many Naval veterans, this meant that they had already set themselves up for the likelihood that they would develop mesothelioma based on their previous asbestos exposure during the 1940's and 1950's. Additionally, thousands of people working in other non-Naval industries were also exposed to asbestos and have the potential to develop mesothelioma either because their employers were unaware of the dangers, or simply because they mindfully chose to ignore the growing evidence of the material's toxicity and carcinogenicity.
The results of Franke and Paustenbach's study was published in the journal Inhalation Toxicology, and stated that, by as early as 1930, "it was clear that occupational exposure to asbestos caused a unique disease (asbestosis)". Understanding of asbestos increased steadily between about 1938 and 1965 during which time "a considerable amount of exposure and epidemiology data was collected" by private and government scientists. Franke and Paustenbach's study was recently presented at the 21st annual International Society of Exposure Science meeting in Baltimore. Maryland.
Treating Mesothelioma in the U.S. Today
Today, in the United States alone, more than 2,000 cases of mesothelioma are diagnosed each year. And while the treatments for some forms of cancer are improving, the prognosis for those who are diagnosed with mesothelioma is still challenging. Today, multi-modality treatments, immune therapies and gene therapies are being investigated as potential therapeutic modalities for mesothelioma victims.
Disclaimer: The information in this article is for educational and informational purposes only. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read in this article.

Families That Eat Together Experience Improved Health

In North America today, obesity has become the national health crisis. It has risen to near epidemic proportions not just amongst adults but also amongst children. Many households are so busy with work, school and childcare responsibilities that the notion of having a regular family meal together has all but gone by the way side. Because of this, more and more families eat meals out either in fast food establishments or other restaurants and it is estimated that the average family spends more than 40% of its disposable income on restaurant meals of one sort or another. This practice has become so prevalent in North American households that a family meal is most often relegated to a holiday dinner or some other special occasion. As the children move into their teenage years, this becomes even an even more common practice.
Studies indicate that families that take most of their meals out suffer more negative consequences than just those associated with poor nutrition. Eating most meals away from the home leads to markedly poorer overall health and poorer nutrition. It is also leads to higher risk for obesity.
Trying to convince busy working parents of this notion in such a way that will encourage them to take more time planning weekly menus, grocery shopping and preparing family meals has been a difficult process for physicians and dieticians alike.
Recently, research scientists at Rutgers University began looking at this issue with a goal of developing a model that could be implemented to teach parents about the importance of sitting down with their family for a meal. They looked at reports on 68 previously published studies that had looked at the relationship between children's health and whether or not the family regularly had family meals together. They looked closely at how often those family meals were occurring and what kind of food was being presented at them and consumed by the family members. They were trying to determine if families who sat down for a family meal together on a regular basis had lower obesity rates when compared to those which did not have family meals together regularly.
At first glance at the literature, they determined that children who had regular family meals had higher intake of three important food groups: fruits, vegetables and calcium-rich foods. They also noted that these children consumed more fiber in their diets. Additionally, the more often a family ate their meals together, the less frequently children consumed food items that are considered harmful to a person's health. They found only a weak link between obesity risk amongst children who ate more family meals but they noted that those children tended to have much lower body mass index levels than those that did not.
From this research, the scientists were able to develop a simple to understand conceptual image which presents their findings in a way that is easy to understand.
The scientists were able to glean a great amount of valuable information which can be used to teach parents how to make better decisions when it comes to the food choices they make for their families. Although many people already know most of this information intuitively, most do not have the time or education needed to interpret scientific reports of this nature. They instead rely on headlines which are broadcast through the media which detail individual studies many of which do not accurately present the information which is contained in the study. The Rutgers University scientists hope that their study of the way in which family meals and children's health is impacted and their creation of a user-friendly image which summarizes their findings visually will eventually lead to health interventions which benefit many children.

How to Check Your Timing

As economic news points to continuing weak growth, many more citizens are turning to less traditional methods of earning money, and multi-level marketing business opportunities hold the promise of a profitable career. Most home-based businesses are legitimate, so reps sign up relatively quickly, sometimes over objections of friends and family who've all heard horror stories about someone else they knew who had zero success in spite of taking recommended action by their upline, paying for monthly auto-ship and calling on their warm market.
Research really IS your friend, so go slow
One of the enduring truths about work from home businesses is that many people decide to start a home business when they need money RIGHT NOW. Others join an income opportunity because they heard a presentation from a friend. But in either case the decision isn't made based on confident, well-researched, proactive business-building actions. It's based on the timing of their need or their friend's need to fill chairs in the hotel meeting room.
The timing that is critically important to building a successful downline and generating the coveted residual income that is the dream of network marketers across the globe is timing in the targeted company AND their particular niche in the industry. MLM companies come and go, though there are a handful that have been household names for many years. More likely there have been hundreds even thousands that have started and ended with barely anyone ever hearing of them.
You just graduated last week, Doctor?
Timing in the company means that, because of the likelihood that most new businesses whether MLM or traditional brick & mortar fail in a short period of time, it's a dicey proposition to hitch your wagon, your future and your reputation to a brand-new unproven (or prelaunch) home business. Just think how much money you could lose and how many relationships you'll have to try to repair when it goes south. Think about your aunt who was on auto-ship for your skin-care lotions and helped you host in-home parties at her condo and invited all of her friends. Then there's your best pal from college whom you sold on the idea that she had to get into your opportunity so you could meet your sponsoring goals and she'd soon be able to buy that BMW she's always wanted. Handling the fall-out of a failed company is much worse when it affects more than just you. Companies that are less than two years old should make you think REALLY hard about joining.
Another big consideration relating to timing is the status and health of the industry in which a company operates. For example, technology-related companies can seem like definite winners given the productivity of that market as well as the seemingly endless numbers of potential customers and distributors that are available to ramp up your bonus check. Just remember that businesses that rely on the latest technology for their services or products can change virtually overnight and what once appeared to have unlimited upside can lead from profitable strong legs to money-losing, disappearing downlines. A health and wellness home-based business that sells supplements and potions can still fail, but it doesn't rely on cutting-edge gadgets to turn a profit and adhere to its compensation plan.
Like all other aspects of being an entrepreneur and building a profitable residual income, an MLM opportunity requires education. Do your homework about the work from home industry before thinking about getting in on the groundfloor. Being your own boss means doing your research first.

Learn French And Speak Fluently Like A Native

English is a Germanic language, while French is a Latin language. Despite this, English speakers might find it easier to learn French than to master other languages, such as Korean. Both England and France had a lot of influence over each other throughout the years. One of the first steps when determining how to learn French is to learn the major differences between French and English.
Accents are one thing found on French words that are not found on most English words. Accents can change how a word is pronounced. French conjugations are different for each grammatical person, while they are different for third person singular in English.
Another thing that English speakers might find strange is that all nouns and most pronouns have a gender. Many adjectives, nouns, verbs and articles have different forms depending on the gender of the noun. English speakers might also have a hard time remembering how silent consonants at the end of words are pronounced at the beginning of the next word.
In the early stages, French students should learn basic French vocabulary and learn the differences between French and English grammar. Doing so will lay the groundwork for the student's education. The good news is that there are many words that are shared between English and French. There are also many words that are similar to English, but not identical. However, English-speaking students should be careful, since many words might sound like an English equivalent, but mean something completely different.
As students become more comfortable with learning how to write and speak French, they should try to get into a conversation with someone about French. Two English-speaking students can practice French together. However, if either student makes a mistake, they might not notice the mistake. For this reason, students are better off either taking a class and receiving assistance from a qualified instructor or having conversations with native French speakers.
Those who wish to become fluent in French will eventually want to find an opportunity to have conversations with native French speakers. Only a native speaker would be able to determine if a non-native French speaker is pronouncing French correctly. Students also can develop more confidence when speaking to native French speakers, since they will then know for sure that they are using French correctly.
The best way to practice French is to spend a lot of time in a country that predominantly speaks French, a technique known as immersion. Those who are immersed in a culture will be forced to develop competency as a French speaker. Those immersed in a French culture should make sure to consume anything they can in French. They should not visit English language websites and should spend most of their time speaking to French speakers in their native language. Non-native French speakers should also practice thinking in French. For example, when creating a list of things to do, the non-native speaker should think about the things that must be completed while using the French words.
Not everyone can visit a French-speaking country. Fortunately, there are many online services that will teach people how to learn French by setting them up with a language exchange. Language exchange services have students take turns speaking their native language and the foreign language that they wish to learn. This can be done face-to-face or online.