A young artist Liu Blin age 35 painted himself to camouflage himself into the background.

In my two previous posts, I've presented the data--gathered and analyzed in the paper "The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness"
--revealing the surprising and dreary fact that, over the last 40 years, women's happiness has trended downward as compared to men's, this despite gradual increases in power and prosperity.

Many of you have offered explanations for this decline, some of you have rejected it as inconsistent with your own lives, and a couple of you have even questioned whether the trend-lines are big enough to bother about.

Regardless of your views on the data, you know better than anyone whether you're happy. You know whether you feel you're living the life you were supposed to live. So, to those of you reading this and thinking "I can be happier. I want to be happier in my life," here's the prescription. Here's what you can do to find your strongest life.

Who we studied

The frustrating thing (from a researcher's perspective) is that happy, successful women look so very different from each other. Some have broken through the increasingly cracked glass ceiling at work and are now running countries, companies, newsrooms. Some are happy clambering up the corporate ladder, while others have long ago jumped off the ladder and found fulfillment in running their own business or devoting themselves to charity work. Some are employed full-time and have their kids in daycare. Some stay at home. Some used to stay at home while their kids were young but now have on-ramped back into the workforce.

To focus our research we polled thousands of women on the following five questions, and interviewed in-depth those women who could respond "everyday" to four of the five. If you want to self-diagnose the kind of life you're living, try them out on yourself:

1. How often do you get to do things you really like to do?
2. How often do you find yourself actively looking forward to the day ahead?
3. How often do you get so involved in what you're doing you lose track of time?
4. How often do you feel invigorated at the end of a long, busy day?
5. How often do you feel an emotional high in your life?

What We Found

Martha Washington, the first first lady, said that, "The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our disposition and not on our circumstances." Our research certainly confirmed this. The women who could answer positively to the questions above had, on some level, simply decided that they were going to be happy. They made that choice.

However, more specifically, they:

Focus on moments, more than goals, plans or dreams. Certain moments in your life create in you strongly positive emotions--let's call these "strong-moments." Not all moments are strong-moments--some moments spark negative emotions, while some don't spark any emotions at all. But when you do experience a strong-moment, it is authentic. It is true, in the sense that the emotions you feel are true. You may not know exactly what you should do with your emotions, or what label you should give each emotion, but you know how a specific moment made you feel. You know this more certainly than you know virtually anything else in your life.

It could be that moment yesterday when, as you again sat hunched over the year-end results, you found a revealing pattern in the financial report you were reading; or the snuggling of your grandson into the crook of your shoulder as you read him the last chapter in The Magic Tree House book, or that glorious sentence you wrote last night on your blog, or the way you managed to calm down your colleague after your boss changed everyone's schedule.

Whatever you are picturing, it will be a vivid, detailed moment, and as you think about it now, you feel yourself change. You are sitting up a little straighter than you were even a minute ago. Your shoulders are back. You've slowed down your breathing just a hair. Perhaps you are smiling. This moment, and the emotions you feel as you relive it in your mind, is you, in truth.

When you commit your life to being true to yourself, you are not committing to some far-flung destiny, some grand dream, or some disembodied list of values, no matter how worthy. Instead you are committing to the truth embodied in this strong moment, the truth that this specific moment, for no rational reason, energizes you.

Accept what they find. When you search your life for strong-moments, you don't always like what you find. In the words of one of the interviewees: "It's hard to admit, but I don't like playing with my kids. My daughter would come up to me and say 'Mom, you play the mommy, and I'll play the baby' and I would think 'Not again. I am the mommy, you are the baby.' The moments I love with my kids are when I'm teaching them something, helping them learn, but I'm bored silly by playing another game of dress up. I got my life back on track only when I rejected the idea of being the 'perfect' mother, and accepted the reality of which moments energized me and which didn't."

Acceptance doesn't mean resignation, giving up on your dreams. In fact, more often than not, accepting which moments strengthen you and which don't reveals to you exactly how you can live out your dreams, whether at home or at work. It means not only being comfortable in your own skin, but also being creative in your own skin.

Strive for Imbalance. When someone tells you to try to have greater balance in your life, your immediate and appropriate reaction is a spasm of disbelief. "Balance?" you ask yourself. "How does that work? For every extra hour at work find another hour at home? For every extra kid at home, reduce my workload by exactly the amount my new child requires? For every school play I should attend, cut out a presentation on the road? For everything I say yes to, say no to something else? Is that it?"

Not according to the people we interviewed. They didn't talk about balance much at all. They seemed to realize that not only was a perfect equilibrium nigh on impossible to achieve, but also that even if they did manage to achieve it, it wouldn't necessarily fulfill them anyway--when you are balanced, you are stationary, holding your breath, trying not to let any sudden twitch or jerk pull you too far one way or the other. You are at a standstill. Balance is the wrong life goal.

Instead, do as these women did, and strive for imbalance. Pinpoint the strong-moments in each aspect of your life and then gradually target or tilt your life toward them. This means being as deliberate as you can about making them happen. It means investigating them when they do happen, looking at them from new perspectives, and celebrating them. Above all, it means giving them the power of your attention.

Learn to say "Yes." So often you are told: "You must learn to say 'No.'" But, to live your strongest life, do the opposite. Learn to say, "Yes." Yes, to the strong-moments in each part of your life. Yes, to the people who help you create these moments. Yes, to your feelings as these moments happen. Say "Yes" with enough focus and force, and yours will not be a balanced life, but it will be a full life.

The Strong Life Test

There are so many voices in your life demanding your attention, so many "have-tos" and "shoulds," that it can be hard to hear the sound of your own voice. To help you cut through the clamor and find your strongest life, we designed the Strong Life Test (right). Think of it as an internal compass. It measures you on nine life roles-- Advisor, Caretaker, Creator, Equalizer, Influencer, Motivator, Pioneer, Teacher, and Weaver. More than likely, your life calls on you to play all nine roles some of the time, but, even so, you are not a blank slate--your personality doesn't shift and morph according to the demands of every unique situation. Instead, as we all do, you have some consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving, patterns that are distinctive and that remain stable across time and situations. These patterns come together in a Lead Role, a role you return to time and again, a role that you and your closest family and friends recognize as the core of who you are. Your Lead Role will help you to know where to look, in any domain of your life (as a spouse, relative, mother, or employee), for the kind of moments that will strengthen you the most, invigorate you the most, bring you joy, excitement, and fun. The Strong Life Test doesn't give you all the answers, but it tells you where to start.

***

Marcus Buckingham is the bestselling author of five books, with more than 3.7 million copies in print, and the world's leading expert in personal strengths. An internationally renowned consultant and the founder of TMBC, a management consulting company, he has been hailed as a visionary by corporations such as Toyota, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and Disney. Buckingham has been featured on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," "Larry King Live," "The Today Show," "Good Morning America," and "The View," and profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Fortune, Fast Company, and Harvard Business Review. A Senior Researcher at Gallup Organization for nearly two decades, Buckingham addresses more than 250,000 people in live audiences each year and leads management training initiatives in organizations worldwide. His most recent book is Find Your Strongest Life (Thomas Nelson).

You can adopt a flower bed in Lynchburg Va. Call the City Horticulturist for information at 434-455-4410.

WASHINGTON – Regulators on Friday shut down Atlanta-based Georgian Bank, the 95th U.S. bank to fail this year as loan defaults rise in the worst financial climate in decades.

In coming months, more banks are expected to buckle under the weight of commercial real estate and other loans that go sour. Those failures could imperil the insurance fund for deposits, already at the lowest point in nearly 20 years.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over Georgian Bank, with about $2 billion in assets and $2 billion in deposits as of July 24. First Citizens Bank and Trust Co., based in Columbia, S.C., agreed to assume the assets and deposits of the failed bank. Georgian Bank's five branches will reopen Monday as offices of First Citizens Bank.

In addition, the FDIC and First Citizens Bank agreed to share losses on Georgian Bank's roughly $2 billion in loans and other assets.

The failure of Georgian Bank is expected to cost the federal deposit insurance fund an estimated $892 million. The fund has been so diminished by the wave of collapsing banks that some analysts have warned it could sink into the red by year's end.

The fund fell 20 percent to $10.4 billion at the end of June. That's its lowest point since 1992, at the height of the savings-and-loan crisis. The FDIC estimates bank failures will cost the fund around $70 billion through 2013.

FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said last week she is "considering all options, including borrowing from Treasury," to replenish the insurance fund. The FDIC is weighing several costly, and never before used, options for shoring up the fund: borrowing billions of dollars from healthy banks, imposing a special fee on the banking industry or tapping the agency's $500 billion credit line with the Treasury.

Another option would be for banks to pay their normal insurance fees in advance. But U.S. Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan said Thursday he was "very concerned" about the effect of such an upfront levy on the strained banking industry.

The FDIC is fully backed by the government. That means depositors' money is guaranteed up to $250,000 per account. And the agency still has billions in loss reserves — including $21.6 billion in cash — apart from the insurance fund.

Meanwhile, Treasury Department officials and federal bank regulators are weighing a fresh round of bailouts for banks that were deemed too small or too risky to qualify for earlier aid under the government's $700 billion financial rescue program. Representatives from Treasury, the FDIC and the House Financial Services Committee discussed the plan by phone Thursday, officials said.

Bank failures have spread nationwide, but the 19 in Georgia this year are the most of any state. That's a reflection of the depressed real estate market and of a glut of small community banks in the state.

Hundreds more banks are expected to fail nationwide in the next few years largely because of souring loans for commercial real estate. The number of banks on the FDIC's confidential "problem list" jumped to 416 at the end of June from 305 in the first quarter. That's the highest number since June 1994, during the savings-and-loan crisis.

On Aug. 21, Guaranty Bank became the second-largest U.S. bank to fail this year after the big Texas lender was shut down and most of its operations sold at a loss of billions of dollars for the government to a major Spanish bank. The failure, the 10th-largest in U.S. history, is expected to cost the insurance fund an estimated $3 billion.

The sale of most of Austin-based Guaranty's operations to the U.S. division of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA, Spain's No. 2 bank, marked the first time a foreign bank has bought a failed American bank during the current financial crisis.

And on Aug. 14, Colonial Bank, a big lender in real estate development, was shuttered and became the biggest U.S. bank to fail this year and the sixth-largest in U.S. history, with about $25 billion in assets. The government approved the sale of Montgomery, Ala.-based Colonial's $20 billion in deposits and about $22 billion of its assets to BB&T Corp. Colonial was a major lender to developers in Florida and Nevada and was hit hard by the collapse of the real estate market in those states.

It is not over yet folks. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but be proactive. There are another 350 billion dollars worth of adjustable rates mortgages that more than likely will be foreclose upon in California alone.

It goes without saying that when you set off on your travels you pack clean clothes, toiletries and other essentials – such as headache tablets – into your chosen luggage type. But, to get the most out of your time on the move on in your hotel, what else should you take with you? Here’s a top ten of useful items and gadgets:

1. Universal plug – If you are planning to use anything electrical, such as a hair dryer, travel iron or mobile phone charger in your hotel room, then make sure the universal plug is one of the first items you pack.

2. Travel Iron – Unless the grungy, crumpled look is really your thing, pack away a handy little travel iron. You never know when you’ll need that groomed, suave and sophisticated look when on your travels.

3. Archos portable media player – Even on the longest trips you’d be hard-pushed to run out of options with this player. The 160GB memory version holds a staggering 450 full-length movies, 1.6 million photos or almost 80,000 tunes.

4. Laptop with WiFi – Most of the world’s big hotel chains and indeed a lot of the quality independents are now fitted with wireless allowing easy and convenient log-in to your own laptop.

5. Mobile phone and charger – Unless you resolutely refuse to be contactable on your travels, don’t forget your phone and charger! Remember to ensure that your provider has enabled you for roaming before you go! It can also act as your camera!

6. Beer bottle goblets – Even if you can’t get your hands on your favourite ale while away you can always think you’re drinking it. With upended Stella and Sol beer bottles presented as goblets, these are an inventive and novel way to hold your drinks!

7. The Good Book – no not an actual printed bible, but a very cunningly disguised lookalike in which you stash away a 4oz stainless steel flask inside. It’s a great place to hide you booze, as even the most hardened criminal is unlikely to look in the bible for goodies!

8. Hairdryer – this article is not just for the ladies. Most hotels may have their own version but make sure that you pack your 1600watt monster if you want more than a gentle breeze to cross your barnet in your hotel room.

9. Washing up powder and sewing repair kit – Look after your clothes in a cheap and cheerful manner by washing them yourself in the hotel sink! It saves an absolute packet on hotel fees and keeps you sparkling and fresh. Any repairs can be patched up with your sewing kit!

10. First aid kit – Can literally be a lifesaver depending on to where you are traveling. For example if visiting tropical countries serious consideration should be given to taken items like malaria tablets, anti-biotics and sun creams. Even non-tropical travels should include at least headache and gastric relief tablets!

About the Author
Daniel Johansson is an Internet specialist and keen traveller who writes on a wide variety of subjects. For people wanting to visit London and sample something a little different, staying in a townhouse hotel could offer a quite unique experience. http://www.montagu-place.co.uk/

Article source:
Ten Desirable Travel Gadgets

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@Facebook Launching Status Tagging for All Users Today

September 14th, 2009

Last week, Facebook announced that it was launching “status tagging,” a new way to tag friends, Pages, groups, and events in status updates much like mentions on @twitter work. Now, the feature is live for all users.

Here’s how it works: when writing a status update in the publisher, you can tag connections by using the “@” operator to select any friend, Page, group, or event in a dropdown menu. When a connection is tagged, its name is automatically linked, and your post also shows up on their wall. When you’re tagged, a notification is sent to you as well, and you can remove tags of yourself in others’ posts. It’s a very engaging and powerful way to include friends and connections in status updates.

It’s important to note that Facebook is enabling status tagging for all of a user’s Facebook connections – not just friends, but Pages, groups, and events as well. This means Page managers will now have a major new channel for tracking comments and feedback about their brand or business.

Until today, brands have been able to track posts and comments made on their Facebook Page directly by fans, as well as search public comments made by Facebook users through Facebook’s new real time search. However, starting today, all @ tags will appear on the wall of the Page as well, even though users never visited the Page. That’s a big deal for Page administrators hoping to gain more insight into how they’re being talked about inside Facebook.

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Check out The Facebook Marketing Bible: 40+ Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook

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Cool new feature of facebook!