The Colloid Base

Between frequent monthly bills and unexpected expenses, it seemed I was constantly behind on my budget. As soon as I got my pay, it was already spent. I got a lot of bills every month and put them off to the last minute, then dealt with them all in a flush. This results in me taking over money from the next pay just to make it through. The problem was not related to how much money I made, it’s that I didn’t know how to manage mybudget. Worse yet, any emergency left me even deeper in debt.

Most of us have been in this position. We try to be cautious with our money, but long before month-end, the money is gone. Paying bills is a juggling act that we don’t have the time or energy to comprehend. There’s always one bill that was forgotten or delayed, one more expense we weren’t consenting for. With school supplies and fees for the kids, groceries, new tyres for the car, and the raising cost of petrol, just making it from paycheck to paycheck is difficult enough; saving money is out of the question. Meantime, debt is slowly building up. How can I get mybudget under control?

I was fortunate to have found a service which will help me budget my money more wisely and take away the stress of paying monthly bills, allowing me to focus on the things that really matter to my family. No more distressing over where the money will come from; I can finally relax, knowing that my finances are in good hands.

The financial planning process:
During your initial consultation, your budget consultant will look at all of your present debts and monthly payments to come up with a program that works for you. They will set aside money for savings, emergencies, and long term investment, ensuring your family’s financial security. If you are planning a major purchase, this will be factored into your budget so that when you are ready to buy, the money will be there for you.

Your paychecks are typically deposited with your financial planner, and a separate account is set up for your living expenses. Bills and repayments are diverted to your budgeting specialist for payment. Some budget services will even negotiate with your creditors to lower your monthly payments and reduce your outstanding debt. A low monthly fee is assessed for all these services.

For me, the greatest monthly service mybudget specialist provides is peace of mind. No more fuss with bill payment; I know my bills will be paid on time, and that I’ll have money in reservation for life’s little emergencies. My budget is finally under control, thanks to my financial planning service.

A modern job hunting campaign is by nature pretty complex. While the net has offered a variety of new channels, it also creates increased competition for choice jobs and potential challenges for job hunters.

Job search needs to be thought of as a personalized, highly directed marketing process where you are the product. Your resume is an advertisement. Your extended network of colleagues is your inside source for information and job leads.

So where does the net fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on a popular job board and got 600+ responses in a calendar week. For one position. That’s increased competition.

Had a suitable candidate contacted us ahead of our posting that ad, they could have gotten the position prior to running in to all that competition. How? By finding someone who knows someone at our office who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew of the job for at least 10 days before it was posted. Who in your network might know of a job that’s coming available soon?

Be careful to check your application materials thoroughly before submitting them. When we did an analysis of the 650 resumes, we found a large number of errors. 63% of the applicants were easily taken out with a speedy triage process. How? The same way any hiring manager would. By eliminating resumes where the objective didn’t match our job description. By eliminating candidates whose cover letters gave us causes not to engage them, like "I know I’m overqualified but I really need a job". By eliminating job hunters whose documents that didn’t open properly. And by eliminating job hunters who didn’t trouble to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.

So the good news is that job sites give you a sense of what companies are hiring, and for what kinds of positions. But once those positions are posted, the competition is intense. You can still compete, if you have a well thought out resume, designed to appeal directly and clearly to the recruiter. And if you have practiced interviewing – so you don’t stumble at a critical point.

Another thing to be aware of is how quickly and easily you can be checked on on the web. As we Googled several job hunters, we ran into some personal web pages that were in questionable taste. Nothing crazy, but enough to swing our thoughts about who to choose.

AA-Careers provides a all-inclusive set of services for Bay Area job seekers, providing our clients a personal career consultant, a managed job hunting campaign, modern tools like a personal website, video, highly targeted resume, and much more. Let us know if we can help you.

Be careful out there, and good hunting!

If you are reading this, you’re probably looking for a way to gain control of your finances. The best way to do this is to formulate a monthly budget and sticking to it. Having a solid budget is fundamental for managing your finances, one that has allowed me to get on with my day to day life even on limited funds. Monitoring my monthly budget is one of the most crucial things I do every month, and it has allowed me to consistently meet all expenditures, grow my savings, and control debt.

I usually plan my budget for the coming month on about the 20th of the current month. This will prepare me with my expenses in the coming month. It’s not a good idea to develop a budget after getting paid because, too often, that flush feeling of receiving a paycheck leads to uneccessary and impulsive spending before the paycheck ever reaches the bank.

Managing my personal budget includes outlining all the things that must be paid that month like mortgage/rent, utilities, and other essentials like insurance, car loan repayment, transportation costs, and phone. These are the things I have pay to keep a adequate roof over my head and continue earning money. I like to pad these necessities to make “money back” after paying the bills and, if costs increase unexpectedly, I’m always covered.

Next, my budget is subjected to a list of discretionary things I need to cover but could live without if absolutely unavoidable. An example are monthly savings deposits, credit card repayments and donations. Don’t get me wrong, some of these things are also essential, but in case of emergency they can be excepted. By giving credit card companies the maximum instead of the minimum, I keep my credit score high and my debt low.

My budget will not include the cost of food, clothing, or entertainment. Ultimately, these items get covered by what’s left in the budget. Some months involve lots of beans and rice, slow-cooker meals, free or cheap entertainment, and only one inexpensive piece of clothing . This strategy of overseeing my monthly budget has worked out very well over the long term as long as I observe it religiously.

The questions that arise and the responses to them are pure magic. They come from Spirit, they come from Infinite Possibility. That becomes clear to me, over and over again. They come from our Divine Heritage. It’s so magnificent. It’s not something outside of us, it is the Spirit of God radiating from the Heart of our Being. I think what’s so wonderful about the promise of this is that, as I deepen in my practice and others join me. The world becomes more compassionate, and characterizes my interactions with other people, and the world changes.

Value judgment becomes discernment. And discernment is just being aware of where somebody’s hand is. Discernment is just being aware of the wind blowing differently through each branch of the tree. That’s discernment, and that’s beautifulit’s not just anything. It’s really magnificent.

Because I’m not placing a value on it, I’m open to experience more and more and more of ita greater diversity. Swami Vivekananda loved the phrase, “Unity within Diversity.” It’s really important to understand that all of these aspects of self that we’ve been talking about can end up becoming the Wrathful Deities and Peaceful Deities in our after-death state. They are really diverse aspects of ourself. What we’re really working to do is integrate those diverse aspects, so that we have Unity within Diversity. We are not trying to erase them, nor to run away from them, but to help them become part of our voice so that we can sing our Soul’s Song. Unity within Diversity. I hope all of our listeners realize that the promise of singing their Soul’s Song is very real and palpable. I’m certainly doing it. With the gentle wisdom of The Everyday Sanyasin, and with the practices and insights that we’re learning here in The Living Bardo series, I feel like we can do it. I feel confident.

Yogi Sean is the student of Swami Ramananda and a principle officer of the Sadhana Society.

One of the most difficult affairs for any household is handling the budget and making sure that your expenditure is in line with what you’re bringing in. Most people are not used to managing finances under this much scrutiny, and they can let things get out of hand. It is particularly true when you are balancing a full time job and also trying to care for a family in these hard economic times. But it’s not alright to let the family’s resources go to waste, which is why you need to seek out some budget assistance. How do I get my budget back in control? It’s all about spending wisely.

The importance of managing my budget

Many people don’t get this until it’s too late, but having a budget and sticking to that plan is the most important thing that you can possibly do. Many folks find themselves questioning why their budget do not work over the long haul. In summary, if you do not plan your expenses and know where your pay is going, then you will start to stress at the end of the month. What each family need to do is to pay a visit to mybudget in order to come up with some conclusive responses on their financial position. When I think about my budget, I want it to be as organised as possible. As the head of the household, you owe it to yourself and to your family to be a reliable steward.

The challenges associated with planning my budget

As you have learned, putting a budget together is not an simple task. How much should we put aside for food? What about funds for emergency situations? These are questions that you need to ask yourself to to factor in all the monthly costs. This is where building my budget can get so tough, and I’m sure it’s the same with you. With all of the stress affiliated with working a job, it can often be easy to let these things slip by the wayside. After all, how important is just one bill? It is obviously very important, and if you want your family’s finances to be in order, then you should most certainly use a great programme like the one found at mybudget.

In summary, budgeting is a serious challenge and it’s something that can make you want to pull your hair out. With the resources at your disposal today, you can put your household’s finances into an organized plan and you can follow through with that plan entirely. It’s helped with my budget, and it should do the same for yours.

With age comes wiseness, so the old saying goes, but unfortunately for the majority of us, age also comes with hair loss. Alopecia is the scientific term for hair loss, and for a long time scientists have been attempting to figure out why typical, healthy people sometimes lose their hair in specific areas or shapes. At Present, a new genetic test has been developed to define the chance of hair loss or thinning in those who have not yet experienced the discouraging signals of alopecia. This genetic test is called HairDX, and it’s changing the way men and women deal with hair loss.

Currently the only FDA authorised treatments for hair loss are successful in clinical trials at persevering existing hair rather than re-growing new hair. Based on your HairDX results, you can easily preserve your existing hair rather than anticipating for the first signals of hair loss, then hastily trying to re-grow hair at a lower success rate.

Available only at Advanced Hair Studio, HairDX can give at-risk patients for hair loss a head start at preserving their existing hair. The HairDX test is pain-free and is perfect for men and women at least 18 years of age. A trained professional at Advanced Hair Studio simply collects a genetic information sample from the inside of the patients cheek via a swob. The results are analysed and returned to the doctor in a secure, private manor.

Results from HairDX are invaluable to those who are concerned about losing their hair. Test results show whether or not your genes show a specific variant in the androgen receptor gene (AR), which is the cause for alopecia. Test results are clear and easy to understand: Men who test positive for the variant AR gene have an approximately 70% chance of developing Male Pattern Hair Loss (MPHR). Conversely, men who test negative for the variant AR gene have approximately a 70% chance of not developing MPHR. Test results are determined differently for women.

A professional at Advanced Hair Studio will be able to provide you with next step solutions based on your individual test results.

Dont wait for the warning signs of onset MPHR, alopecia, or hair thinning ” Talk to the staff at Advanced Hair Studio about the simple, painless HairDX test. You can save an abundance of time, money, and energy in the future, and give yourself a fighting chance at preserving and keeping your natural hair.

One of the things that we do to not feel uncertain is, we create consistency in our lives, and we hold tenaciously to our pattern of consistency. And that could be anything, from when we have our meals, when we go to sleep, when we watch television, when we read, when we take a bath, all those kinds of things. Or how I hold a fork or how I kiss someone. It’s really interesting because we’ve got all these strategies that basically are supposed to bring a sought-after result, and all the strategies are layered, one upon the other in our lives. We do this so that our lives are predictable, and we’re not confronted by massive uncertainty. And for most of us, we’re not confronted with that until we’re breathing our last breaths, and we suddenly realize, “Oh my God, I’m dying.”

Now another aspect of this wildness, and I’ve been heading us this way, is change. Now we’re going to go to the Vedas, and in the Vedas we have ‘Shiva’. Shiva’s action has been translated by our wonderful British translators as ‘the destroyer. It’s more than that. It is ‘Shiva is change.’ And again, if you look at Shiva, Shiva is kind of wrathful.

Shiva’s not a particularly friendly looking deity.

Shiva is change without propriety. It’s change, it is wild change. And so we have the picture, or the stature of Shiva dancing, with the fire around him, which is the fire of the end of the Universe. It is the all-consuming fire in which we all turn into ash. And Shiva is dancing in it.

And the key of this image is that change is happening. The fire is the transformational aspect of physical manifestation of change. So what we’re dealing with is that the Wrathful Deity, first of all, is wild, that it has no propriety, that it’s not going to make adjustments for us because we’re really a nice guy, or we wear the right clothes, or we say the right prayers.

Usually, I bottle things up inside, but its hard to date at my age. I finally bottomed out, this week I ate a whole bag of Oreos. On a weekend while being single, of course. I pretend to be ashamed about it. Am I crazy? Actually, that’s when I seriously considered joining a dating service in Denver or Dallas.

No problem. Figured I’d boost my dating life with Great Expectations Denver. Probably isn’t a bad idea. Loneliness bites, heres why. After practically choking down some of grandma’s potato salad at my boy’s t-ball game in Denver last week, Jim wanted to know if I’ve met my one and only. They always bring this up, every year. My response was, “I’m eating here, and no.”

Can you believe that even Cousin Terry kept pressing me about my personal matters. I said to the family gang: “Dating isn’t for me, but what do you know about dating?”

Can you believe this? They all laughed at me. Irritated, I called Dave because the dating pressure was too much. What a waste of time! It was more useful listening to my dad, which is never the case. My cousin, who was just deployed on military commission suggested that I enlist in Great Expectations. I said, “That’s what I was going to do.” See, everything always works out. I especially enjoy Great Expectations Denver.

At the time, dating services were a novel thing as I am a simple guy. I showed up already a little anxious, that my hands started sweating. This slight disaster didn’t bring an end to us from enjoying ourselves. That night I enjoyed was a great way to start at Great Expectations. The gems of the occasion had to be the other members, some who are my new friends.

There’s something great about going to these amazing Dallas singles events, I bumped into quite a few winners who clearly share a like-minded spirit when talking about real-world dating. Now I can stop letting anyone get me down about living the bachelor’s life after all these years. Surprisingly enough, doing things with Great Expectations is a good time and a remarkably refreshing dating experience.

Denny

Loneliness is Temporary

“You have a herniated disc. You are going to have to live with this pain. I don’t recommend surgery.”

That’s what my doctor said to me after looking at the results of an MRI that I agreed to have due to excruciating back pain. He offered me nothing, not even hope. As soon as I heard this man coldly inform me that I would live a life filled with chronic pain, I silently refused to accept his words as my truth.

I Must Heal!

I set a strong intention to become pain free and my journey toward healing began. Weekly chiropractic adjustments and therapeutic massages became the norm for me. While working, I often found a flat surface to lie on during my lunch hour. This was the only way I could manage to sit behind a desk all day. (so much for packing errands and eating into that short time frame!) During the evenings, I often soaked in a hot bath and used heating pads to relieve my pain. Even though my chiropractor suggested ice, I loved the way heat soothed the muscles spasms I frequently endured. Meditation, yoga and deep breathing also helped me manage the pain and the stress it added into my already stressful life.

Pain encouraged me to slow down so I did. Along with changing my lifestyle, I also entered into an intimate relationship with my back, neck and shoulders. These parts of my body that had been taken for granted now guided me in almost every move and choice I made.

A Blessing?

My herniated disc is one of the best things that ever happened to me. It set me on a path toward learning about the mind, body, spirit connection before I reached my thirties. I began to realize that my choices greatly impacted my health. Now I have learned to listen to my body through my experience with back pain. If my back pain flares up, I know it is time to examine my choices, get a massage, sit in hot water, stretch or simply rest.

Tuning into the Body

It is easy to take the body for granted and forget that it is truly a miraculous container for the mind and spirit. Try getting mindful about your body. Tune into it and listen to what it is saying to you. It’s likely that your body can serve you in more ways than you may realize.

Tips for Tuning In:

Check in to see how your body feels when you are making a decision. A tight feeling in your stomach might tell you which options are not in your best interest. Pay attention! Your body is trying to point you toward the best choice for you.

Honor pain. Often, we curse pain. What good does this do? Try viewing pain as your ally and look for ways it might guide you toward healing.

Notice when you feel good in your body. What are you doing? What feels right about the moment? How can you bring more moments like this into your life?

Practice love and gratitude for your body. Instead of focusing on the body’s imperfections, focus on all that it does for you. Send your body love and connect with it more fully in a positive way.

Suggested Reading to learn more about the mind, body, spirit connection:

Heal Your Body by Louise Hay

Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom: Creating Physical and Emotional Health and Healing by Christiane Northrup, MD.

Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power by Caroline Myss, Ph.D.

(“Listening to the Body” is about the mind, body, spirit connection. This article is based on my personal experience and opinions. It is not intended to be medical advice. ~Beverly Keaton Smith)

(c)2006 Beverly Keaton Smith

Beverly Keaton Smith, CPCC owns and operates Embrace Your Gifts and Soar! She is a certified life coach who offers individual life coaching, group coaching, workshops and retreats to women who are ready to discover and embrace their unique gifts so they can live more athentically and joyfully. She is also co-author of The Book of Druthers. To learn more about Beverly, visit http://www.embraceyourgifts.com.

Copyright 2005 Writer’s Eye Advisory Service

Percolating over a creative process isn’t procrastination,
though it may look like it from the outside. Percolating over a
chosen creative project, happens at any point along the
creativity continuum, from choosing an idea, developing plans,
creating the product to displaying the project. Sometimes you
will need to take a break from your project, life events
interrupts. If you’ve set up a break schedule, then you don’t
have to worry about taking a permanent break. Taking breaks will
allow you to concentrate on other parts of your life, while your
brain processes what you’ve just completed in your creative
session. If you are prone to procrastination following
percolation time, then set and share your goals with another
artist. This will help you return to your creative work at the
consistently. Percolation time can be short or long. An example
of a short percolation time is when you write a portion of a
chapter during your creative session. Take a walk. Start working
on a new chapter at your next session. Here are some fears that
you may encounter as you experience your percolation time:

–You may doubt your ability to return to your original creative
pace. –You may not be comfortable experiencing a strong
positive reaction when you complete a portion of your project.
–You may run out of ideas. –You may not have completed any
part of the project perfectly. –Others might reject your work,
which means that they may be rejecting you. –You may be afraid
that once you stop, you won’t be able to start again.–You may
feel too powerless to finish this project, so you decide to give
up on the project completely. What can you do when you feel too
powerless?

Remember to:

–Listen to all of your reactions. –Schedule a working personal
break. –Talk, write, act (exercise or dance, etc.) or pray out
your feelings. –Put away your feeling work for 24 hours.
–Reread your feeling work. –Choose one new idea. –Write or
pray about this idea for five minutes. –Identify your feelings
now. –Create one new short-term goal for your project. –Take
the first action listed to complete your goal. –Check in with
yourself. (feelings, thoughts and physical responses)

If you experience a strong positive reaction, then resume your
previous creative process.

If you experience an ambivalent reaction, you may be
experiencing the natural discomfort of learning a new set of
skills. This is a temporary situation. Resume your previous
creative process as soon as you can.

Finally, if you experience a strong negative reaction, repeat
the exercise until your experience a positive reaction or decide
to work on a different project. Percolation time can be both
exhilarating and frustrating. Discipline yourself to keep on
creating your unique product, while putting your strong
reactions to work for you as you put them in their proper place.