The Refresh Orlando Heirs

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What Should I Be When I Grow Up?

I don’t have a job.

Miserable place to be isn’t it? I don’t think you have the
privilege to write about a subject this intense unless you have
been there. I’m here to tell you: I’ve been there.

It’s humiliating, discouraging, frustrating, demoralizing,
maddening, embarrassing, and on and on. Well, here’s the bottom
line about losing your job: You were supposed to move on. It’s
time to open yourself to new possibilities. They are everywhere.
Unfortunately, none of us can move on until we go through the
following stages:

Stage 1: Complete Shock. “I don’t know what I am going to do.”
Stage 2: Denial. “I can’t believe this is happening to me.” Why
me? Stage 3: Anger. “The nerve of them to do this to me.” Stage
4: Depression. “It’s going to take forever to find another job.”
“I don’t have that many marketable skills.” Stage 5: Acceptance.
Ok. Next chapter. It’s time to move on.

Now all of us who have been in this position vacillate from
stage to stage. The lucky ones get to Stage 5 sooner than later
and live happily ever after. However, if you are one of the
normal “laid off” individuals who lost your job, you find it
quite difficult not to be angry. You probably also will say
things like, “I will never forgive him or her for doing this to
me.”

My motto through life has always been “It’s not what happens to
each of us that matters, it’s how we handle it.” Some of us stay
down way too long while others skip right through the stages and
never look back.

I know you are reading this and that someone is saying, “But you
don’t know my circumstance!” No, and you don’t know mine. We
could exchange war stories and even get pleasure from doing it,
but I do know this: It doesn’t matter how it happened, where it
happened or even why it happened; it’s so important to deal with
the fact that it did happen and to know that you are supposed to
be somewhere else to learn other valuable lessons.

For those of you who are still out of work while reading this, I
would guess you are either angry right now or depressed.
Understand that finding a job is a numbers game. The following
is an excerpt from one of my books on interviewing, “Hire Me!
Secrets of Job Interviewing.”

Interviewing is a numbers game, so know your numbers

Anyone making a career change needs to know the statistics of
interviewing. (If we were gamblers, we’d call them odds and tell
you that this book stacks them in your favor, but I prefer to
look at it as keeping the chance-taking to a minimum.)

Understanding these “facts of interviewing” may release some of
the pressure that goes along with the game, and who wouldn’t
like less stress in their life?

First of all, what is a game? According to a popular dictionary,
a game is “a competitive activity governed by specific rules or
the total number of points required to win the game.” That
definition makes it clear that interviewing is indeed a game.
The rules are already established before you start, even though
most people don’t know them.

Imagine playing any game and not knowing the rules! How could
you possibly expect to win, or if you did, how would you even
know?

If interviewing is a numbers game, then being aware of how many
interviews, resumes, handshakes, buildings and companies you
must encounter before you find the right job is an important
rule in this game. The following numbers, based on a large
metropolitan area, have been studied for several years. They do
change depending on the time of year, economy, etc., so what you
see are averages:

You have to send out 32 resumes to get 1 response You have to
send out 47 resumes to get 1 live interview You have to go to 21
interviews before you get an offer

At our company, employers pay us to find the perfect match. We
usually interview 85 people a week to send 20 to our client
companies. Of the 20 candidates sent out, approximately eight
will get a job offer.

These numbers could discourage you, but my hope is that they
will help you better understand rejections. Most “no thank
you’s” aren’t personal; you just have to do your numbers.

Just remember that the greater the numbers in your networking,
the better your chances of having a “choice” when it’s time to
make your career decision.

Good luck to us all who have been fired, laid off, downsized or
right sized. There is a wonderful new career out there waiting
to embrace you. Be grateful for the push in the right direction.

(Article reprinted by permission from Today’s Arizona Woman:
Celebrating Success, December, 2001, p. 16)

-30-

Patricia Noel Drain is the co-founder of MAXIMIZING SUCCESS,
INC. The next Life changing Wealth Building Bootcamp will be
held in Phoenix AZ Oct 28-30 2005. For more information go to
www.maximizingsuccess.com and tell them Patricia sent you. Ms.
Drain is an international author and speaker living in Arizona.
Visit her at HREF="http://www.buildagreatbusiness.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.buildagreatb
usiness.com and check out her new book, “”HIRE ME! Secrets
of Job Interviewing” at http://www.patriciadrain.com

Are You Finding What You REALLY Need?:
Internet Searching Techniques
By: Janet L. Hall

Remember the game Hide & Seek? Just like the game,
websites can be hiding from you on the Internet while you try
to seek out particular information, services, or products.
How do you find what you are seeking?

The Internet is like the KING of all Libraries. Among the
stacks you seek. Among the librarians (search engines and
directories) you perform a query. But if you don’t know the
language, the search criteria, or your way around, you can
get lost playing endless hours of hide & seek.

In order for you to locate the information or site you’re
seeking, several things must have happened:

>> The site owner must register or submit their site with the
directory in which you are doing a search. Then a real
person goes and checks out their site and decides if the site
is worthy of getting listed in their directory.

>> The site owner must register or submit their site with the
search engine in which you are doing a search OR the
search engine’s robots or spiders must have * crawled
through * their websites which will rank them by many
different factors. The most important factor is the use and
weight of the site owner’s use of keywords.

When you do a search or a query, you type in a word or
phrase of words, right? Here is where you might not find
what you are looking for because the site owner or
webmaster didn’t put in the keywords you are typing in the
search window.

Therefore, the site owner or webmaster must determine
what keywords are important for each page on their website
and what word(s) you will type in a search window to find
their site. The words you type in might not be the
webmasters keywords, so you don’t find what you are
looking for.

To make matters worse, each search engine and directory
can have their own search criteria; however, most are very
similar.

Using particular search strategies can help narrow your
search and hopefully find the stuff more relevant to what you
are seeking.

Seven Searching Techniques to try:

>> Read the help section of the search engine or directory

>> Put word(s) in quotation marks; tells most search engines
you’re looking for that exact term

>> Type in lowercase letters; many search engines are
case-sensitive

>> Be specific - instead of typing in organizers, type in professional
organizers

>> Type in the plural form of the word

>> Type in the word(s) misspelled, such as organizers or
organisers or orgnaizers

>> Type in a longer variation of the word, instead of
organize, type in organizing.

Anthony Muller, President of Web Mercs, said in his article,
* How to Avoid the Most Common Myths and Blunders of Search Engine
Optimization *:

* There are hundreds of search engines, but only 20-30 main
ones, and just four-five of them account for 60-75% of the
total search engine traffic. For example, Altavista gets about
17% of the total engine market and it equals roughly 40
million searches a day; as opposed to Lycos or HotBot which
each get 2-3% of the market. It would shock you to know
Yahoo only gets about 24%! *

My two favorite search engines to locate what I’m looking for
is dogpile.com and alltheweb.com

dogpile.com allows you to search through 14 search engines
at the same time! Type in your word(s), click on FETCH,
and WaLA! You’ve just worked a little smarter, not harder.
At dogpile.com you can choose to search through images,
audio, auctions, news, FTP, Discussion, and Small Biz.

At dogpile you can use advanced searching techniques, by
using additional syntax, that will help * you gain added
control over your search and weed out any unwanted
results. *

Additional Syntax for Searching Techniques:

>> Type AND between words or the symbol + before a word
thus allowing a specific combination of words to be present
in all search results.
Example: Home AND Clutter or Home + Clutter will result in
different search results.

>> Type NOT between words or the symbol - before a word
Example: Dogs NOT Cats or Dogs - Cats will result in sites
when only dogs appear but not cats.

>> Type OR to include both words.
Example: Office OR Clutter

Not all search engines support these syntaxes in dogpile;
therefore, dogpile will only search the engines that support
the syntax you use, allowing a more tailored result.

alltheweb.com searches for documents on the Internet that
contain your search word(s). They offer a pull down menu to
the left of the search window where you can choose from
different syntaxes. They also offer an advanced search
where you can perform word filters, word(s) that should be
included or excluded from your search.

Here’s to finding what you are looking for!

Smiles, not Piles,

Copyright (c) 2001 by OverHall Consulting
P.O. Box 263, Port Republic, MD 20676
All Rights Reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce,
copy, or distribute this article so long as article is kept intact,
this copyright notice, and full information about the author is
attached.

About the Author

The Organizing Wizard, Janet L. Hall, is a Professional
Organizer, Speaker, and Author of ‘Secrets of a Professional
Organizer and How-To Become One.’ She is the owner of
OverHall Consulting and Organizing By Phone. Get the ebook,
How-To Clean and Organize Your Computer at
http://www.overhall.com/clean_computer.htm
Subscribe to her FREE organizing newsletter at
http://www.overhall.com/newsletter.htm or visit
her web site at http://www.overhall.com

Want to help the victims of Katrina? Try distant healing!

Distant healing is a simple, effective way to impact someone even if they are miles away. The beauty about utilizing distant healing is that you don’t need extensive training to do it. All that is needed is intent, a sincere desire to help people and a willingness to sit or lie quietly.

The founding president of the American Holistic Medical Association, Dr. C. Norman Shealy, tested distant healing with Richard Gordon (author of “Quantum-Touch, The Power to Heal”). Dr. Shealy discovered that Mr. Gordon’s distant healing was able to affect other people’s brainwaves as measured by an electroencephalograph machine. Upon further testing with his most difficult chronic pain patients, Dr. Shealy found that it brought about significant pain relief. This suggests that people can improve the power of their prayers and affect healing from a distance.

Here is a simplified version of Mr. Gordon’s approach that you can use to send healing to the victims of the hurricane:

1. First, find a quiet space and begin by taking a few deep breaths. As you breathe, imagine that you can actually feel energy moving from your feet to the top of your head on the inhale, and then circulating down to the feet as you exhale.

2. As you continue to breathe, cup your hands and see yourself sending energy to your hands as you exhale. Imagine that you are holding the people that you want to care for between your hands.

3. You can “see” or feel the energy that is running through your body as light, Divine Love, or however you choose to define it. The important thing is to feel it moving with your breath. Feel the Spirit, as energy, coursing in and through your body and then sending it to those in need. Keep breathing!

4. As you breathe, imagine that there is a Divine orchestration which is providing solutions quickly, easily and powerfully in a state of wonderful grace. See that the people being transported to safe places are reunited easily with their families. Envision peace, love and light flowing into the minds of those that are suffering, so that not only will their bodies be cared for, but their minds will become unburdened and touched by joy. FEEL this as you breathe.

Remember that the purpose of this activity is to envision abundance continuing to arrive miraculously to assist, feed, nourish and heal the people in the Southeast. It is an alternative to focusing your attention and energy on everything that is not going well. Knowing that the past cannot be changed, envision creative and supporting solutions beautifully created from the greatest good in people.

5. As you continue with this exercise, holding the residents of the damaged areas in the cup of your hands and extending love to them, allow for any number of healing miracles to occur. Allow inspiration regarding any other actions you can take to help (donate time, money, supplies, hold a fundraiser, etc.).

6. Pray for the highest spirit to take over in their lives. See that nothing is too big for Spirit… for that which created the entire Universe can certainly intervene and bring ease to this situation.

More tips for doing distant healing:

* Connect with the people of the Southeast and surrounding areas, to whomever or wherever your awareness is attracted

* Connect with your own spirituality (whatever that may be)

* You can use a surrogate object to help focus your energy if you choose; besides the cupped hands, you can use a pillow, blanked, or some other physical object

* Experiment with using distant healing when watching the news- allow the loving energy to flow into the news that you are witnessing as you exhale.

* Remember to breathe and feel the energy moving through your body

* Combine different techniques

* Allow your love to grow stronger each time you practice distant healing

* Take action on the inspirations you receive while doing distant healing

You can learn hands-on healing by reading Richard Gordon’s new book, “Quantum-Touch: The Power to Heal,” by watching a video workshop, or by attending a workshop in your area. For more articles on healing, visit http://www.quantumtouch.com

Contextual Advertising is, by definition, text-based advertising. As opposed to search engine results which show up when a user types in a specific request, contextual ads appear alongside text on all websites that opt to show them.

The market leader in contextual advertising is Google. Through its AdWords™ program, advertisers can choose to syndicate their ads on relevant websites. On the other side of the equation, website owners can join Google’s AdSense™ program to serve these ads.

Google is not the only company that allows website owners to serve contextual ads. There are a host of others such as Searchfeed.com and Revenue Pilot that also do this. The problem with using these other firms is that the price-per-click you receive will most likely be less than the price that Google pays you. This is because advertisers generally bid/pay on an auction basis. Since Google has so many bidders, the price that the advertiser pays is greater than they pay on lesser search engines (classic supply/demand economics).

There is one search engine, Overture, which also serves large volumes of advertisers, and as such, has keyword bid prices that are as high as, and often higher than Google’s. While Overture does offer contextual advertising, it has strict limitations which prevent the vast majority of websites from enrolling. Specifically, Overture limits its contextual advertising program to websites generating more than 1 million web searches a month.

Overture clearly is missing out on a huge revenue source by limiting program participants. The rational behind its selectivity is most likely the fact that its contextual advertising program relies heavily on Overture’s editorial team to avoid poor matches that a technology-dependant approach inevitably produces. As an example, according to statements released at the time of the program’s launch by Bill Demas, Overture’s Senior Vice President, without editorial intervention a story about a person stabbed to death could easily carry knife advertisements.

While Overture is missing out on significant revenues, web publishers are also missing out by Overture’s non-participation. This is because, if more web publishers were able to choose between AdSense and Overture’s programs, Google would be forced to become more aggressive with the percentage split that it gives AdSense publishers. While it has been reported that big Google partners such as AOL.com receive 80% of the revenue per click generated by Google ads, AdSense publishers report figures in the 10% to 50% range.

So, web publishers should really begin pushing Overture to open up its contextual advertising program as web publishers, and potentially Overture/Yahoo!’s shareholders, could reap significant financial benefits.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

As President of Growthink, Dave Lavinsky has helped the company become one of the premier business plan development firms. Growthink clients have collectively raised over $750 million in financing, launched numerous new product and service lines and gained competitive advantage and market share. For more information please visit http://www.growthink.com

Relaxation Music can comfort the soul if you let it in. Relaxation Music can only be thoroughly enjoyed if you loosen up and let go. Although relaxation music will help you relax, you need to really enjoy the moment to appreciate the experience.

When you loosen up and let go you are able to breathe and have the time to experience the longevity and vibrancy of life.

Let me explain.

You may want to loosen up and let go but something stops you.

Working as a volunteer, I teach relaxation by the bedside to heart, stroke and cancer patients in hospitals.

I noticed that there was a myth that was stopping people from loosening up and letting go. The myth is that relaxation music is from the outside.

Here is an example of what I mean.

One older gentleman who had had a stroke told me that in the past (when he was much younger) he had found relaxation by pleasing his dad. This desire made him forsake his own family because to please his dad, he was always attempting to change the world. Changing the world meant that he got his dad’s approval.

When his dad finally acknowledged his effort (giving him a pat on the back) he felt relaxed. Now after having a stroke at the age of 67 he has decided it was time to spend some time with his own family.

It took a stroke for this gentleman to become aware that his relaxation music was within him. He is now more aware of the need to breathe and have time to experience the longevity and vibrancy of life.

Relaxation Music is part of your environment (Classical music, the many sounds of nature and your favorite music). It is a part of you.

One exercise you may consider would be to decide to allow relaxation music in on a daily basis. When you decide to loosen up and let go so that relaxation music can come into you, you will also provide the music within you a chance to play with music of a similar resonance. This resonance will now allow you to breathe and have time to experience the longevity and vibrancy of life.

In conclusion:

Relaxation music is always available. However, your busy lifestyle, combined with the myth that relaxation music is from the outside, make it near impossible to loosen up and let go.

If you were to consider letting in relaxation music wherever you notice the feeling of the sounds on a daily basis, then you will find it easier to loosen up, let go, breathe and have time to experience the longevity and vibrancy of life.

About the Author

Cecil McIntosh, President and founder of Change Perspective, is a hypnotherapist, NLP Trainer and energy worker specializing in teaching practical relaxation techniques. He works with individual clients and companies teaching them how to cope with stress. For a free 7 day relaxation course visit this site now. http://www.emptyyourcup.com

Unless you live alone you are probably well aware that the noise
from one family member can easily be heard beyond the walls of
the room they are in. Even worse is hearing loud stereo systems,
the washing machine and dryer or children who don’t want to
settle down for bed seeping through your flooring and into the
rooms below. There is a solution to noise overflow within your
home and one of the best preventative measures is floor sound
insulation.   Where To Install Floor Insulation   It may seem
obvious that floor insulation should be installed in the floor.
It’s not rocket science, right? Well, there is a little more to
it than that. Ideally, floor insulation should be installed
during the construction phase of a home to be the most
effective. Your choices in materials include regular fibreglass
insulations that have been used on your exterior walls, ceilings
and in the attic. You can also install corking or rubber based
floor insulations at this point.

Floor sound insulation installed during construction allows the
materials to be placed between the flooring layers. The joists
between floors support and plywood base and then additional
sub-flooring. By adding insulation here, you are able to add
thicker materials that may offer better sound proofing.

You can still improve the noise level in an existing home. The
best time to install it is if you are replacing the carpet or
other flooring or need to repair the flooring in a specific
room. Many home improvement projects will wield better results
if some updating in what is not seen is done at the same time as
the cosmetic updates. Floor sound insulation addition is one
such example.

When old floor coverings have been removed, new floor insulation
can be added directly to the top of the sub-flooring. This can
be placed under, carpet, vinyl floors, wood, or ceramic tile. It
doesn’t matter what type of flooring is going on top. What does
matter is what type of insulation you use to sound proof.

The best, meaning the thinnest insulation with the most noise
reduction capabilities is going to be some sort of self
contained material. Fibreglass insulation is that loose pink or
yellow fluff that has a paper backing. It is best for walls and
ceilings. For floors a rubber or cork insulation will provide
the most durable under lying material. It will also not raise
floors significantly and will allow such materials a vinyl to go
down smoothly.   Why Go to the Trouble   As a house ages, the
creaks and noises seem to increase - not too much differently
than an aging body! By adding floor sound insulation as part of
your next DIY project you are giving the floors more stability
that will not only reduce the amount of noise seeping from the
rooms above, but will help quiet squeaky floors that have had
their screws come a little loose over the years or whose boards
may have warped a bit.

Consider soundproofing an investment in your house. The value
will be increased as you improve the quality of noise control.