Finish What You Start

By Glynnis Whitwer

"'My food,' said Jesus, 'is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.'" John 4:34 (NIV)

I excel at starting projects. Especially those that include a trip to the office supply store, where I can stock up on new notebooks, file folders and pens. Optimism abounds at the beginning of something new. Then reality hits.

What seemed fun at first is actually hard work. Discouragement sets in. Perfectionist tendencies stifle moving forward. And it's easy to give up rather than finish what I start.

One of my problems is a lack of focus. There's so much I want to do that my thoughts are often scattered. I allow myself to be pulled in multiple directions, intrigued by the possibilities of a new and exciting project. Plus, sometimes I do things just because I can. This approach often leaves me with a to-do list that's seriously un-doable.

How to curb your envy What to do when the green-eyed monster bites

By Olivia Yao, Three Moons | Yahoo! SHE


Do you catch yourself lusting after the designer bag your officemate just bought with her bonus? Or wishing your friend would show up to a dinner looking less than perfect—for once? Why is it that you can’t shake these negative feelings? You like these girls and you get along with them, but deep down, you can’t help resenting their seemingly good fortune while you suffer from just plain bad luck.

But have you ever considered that, instead of bad luck, you could be suffering from envy? Former guidance counselor Nympha Banzon says, “Envy stems from a dissatisfaction or discontent of what one has and who one is.” Why not ask yourself: Why do you begrudge your officemate her bag? Is it just because she can afford it while you can’t? Or is it because she works harder and puts in more hours, thus deserving her bonus, while you feel you can’t be bothered? It’s time to stop the envy. Here’s how to do that:

1. Get to the bottom of the problem.
And believe me, it’s not your friend’s perfectly put together look or your officemate’s designer handbag. It’s something in yourself. Are you unhappy about something greater than not having what your friends have? Is there a bigger problem gnawing at your insides? Identify it and you’re on your way to fixing it.

2. Know yourself.
Banzon suggests listing down your strengths and weaknesses. Once you’ve made your list, take a good look at the items and accept each and every one. Then, focus on your strengths and how you can enhance them.

Preacher and bestselling author Bo Sanchez, in his book Don’t Worry, Be Happy, suggests forgetting about what you aren’t good at and making your talents grow instead. If you aren’t good at baking, don’t waste your time trying to perfect a soufflé. If you channel that time into improving your already pretty awesome singing skills, who knows what recording label you might land next year?

However, weaknesses that are detrimental to your growth must be worked on as well. If you’re always late or perennially procrastinating, overcoming these flaws will surely up your productivity and potential for success!

3. Know that you are unique, and embrace that.
It’s easy to envy people we want to be like. Sometimes, you can put a positive spin on it by taking the qualities you admire in someone else and making them your own. But things will go downhill if you fixate on the fact that you aren’t like the person you envy—and even hate her for it. Because this really just means the person you hate is yourself. For not being like her.

Once you realize that everyone is unique, you’ll start to see that there’s no reason for envying someone else. One trick you can use is to think about your goals in life. It’s possible that you and your friends may act the same and even look the same, but do you want the same things out of life? Probably not. Keeping this in mind will help you remember that life is not a competition. At the same time, it will be easier to celebrate what’s special and unique about you.

4. Be thankful.
Oprah was right when she encouraged the world to keep a gratitude journal. She even suggested starting with your breath if you feel there is nothing to be grateful for. Slowly, you’ll be looking at life through a totally different perspective, wanting to find reasons to be grateful rather than focusing on what’s lacking.

5. Distract yourself.
If you can’t seem to get all the negativity off your mind, get out of there! If you’re holed up in the office, at home in front of your computer, or at a suffocating family gathering, make an excuse and take a breather. Then find something to take your mind off it. A yoga class, an art class, or even a movie! You’ll need something to remind you that there is so much more to life than the envy eating you up inside.

6. Do something for someone else.
The best way to battle a lack of something in yourself is to focus your energies outward. Doing something for a person who needs your help will direct your attention away from yourself. You’ll be more concerned about someone else, making you forget about your imperfections and even feel good about yourself. Banzon adds, “There is blessing in giving.”

http://ph.she.yahoo.com/how-to-curb-your-envy.html;

Prices Are People: Why Things Cost What They Do

By contributors@theatlantic.com (Derek Thompson) | The Atlantic

Introducing the 2012 Atlantic Money Report, a month-long project on the history of breadwinners and pricetags

Wikimedia

In the mid-twentieth-century vernacular, the word "bread" means money. But in most years before the twentieth century, people spent so much of their figurative dough on literal dough that breadwas functionally synonymous with cash. As late as the 1850s, the typical British family spent 80% of its income on food, Bill Bryson wrote in his entertaining domestic history At Home. The majority of that 80%? It went to bread. 

The last 150 years have experienced all sorts of tumultuous economic revolutions. But the revolution in food and agriculture was perhaps the most important to the family budget. At the end of the 19th century, more than 40% of families lived on farms. By 1950, the farm economy had fallen to a tenth of the labor force. Oh, but the decline wasn't nearly done. This year, farmers account for less than 2% of all workers. 

In a century's time, farming has gone from the dominant occupation in the United States to an job whose share of employment equals Tennessee's share of the national population.

And yet, we're not all starving. In fact, most Americans are better fed than our ancestors could possibly be. Today we spend as much on home-cooked food as we do on home-used utilities (see the graph below). The price of feeding ourselves has gone way down in the last century. But the price of heating ourselves -- and driving ourselves, and housing ourselves, and educating ourselves, and insuring ourselves, and treating ourselves with health care -- hasn't gone down. It's gone up. 

Over the next month, we're putting together a special report about the money we spend. Economics is so often the economist-eye view of the world. We're out to recreate the consumer-eye view of the world. We're interested in what things cost, why they cost that much, and why they're getting more expensive and less expensive. If you've got awesome and surprising stories about prices, costs and the flow of money, leave us a tip in the comment section. 

To kick things off, we'd like to very briefly introduce one of the themes of the Money Report: Prices are people.

PRICES ARE PEOPLE

Across the 20th century, the labor force has shifted from farmers and foresters to manufacturers and then to professional and service workers. In 1900, we spent much of our manpower growing food and feeding ourselves. By 1950, the major economic industries were manufacturing and construction. But today's labor economy revolves around services, not products. Service industries grew from 31 percent of all workers in 1900 to 78 percent in 1999, the BLS reports.

Here's a snapshot of the employment story since 1939. I'd direct your attention to about 1975. In the same time span that our education/medical sector has quadrupled, and our business service sector has increased by the same four-fold rate, total manufacturing jobs have fallen. As multinational companies have made better use of global supply chains, manufacturing and other so-called tradable occupations have been in decline. But retail jobs have increased because selling cars and food and furniture is still a face-to-face business that's hard to do anywhere except at the point of sale.

Economist Stephen Rose, writing for The Atlantic this month, surveyed that same half-century period between 1947 and 2007. But instead of looking at people, he looked at prices. It's the same story. Rose reports that spending on items that could be manufactured or produced globally -- food/drink and clothing -- fell the most. But the categories with the largest employment gains in the graph above -- education and health care -- also saw the largest gains in consumer spending in the graph below.

There is more to prices than employment figures, of course. Productivity and technology matter. Scarcity matters. Demand matters. But labor is such an important cost that it can appear almost determinative.

Across the economy we can see that items that require fewer and fewer American workers per completion (think: socks) get cheaper, while services that can't find similar ways to replace American workers (think: health care, education, government) don't get cheaper at all. In fact, they sometimes get more expensive. 

This isn't bad news, necessarily. A rich economy that needs fewer people to make things can employ those people doing other important things. We should want workers to move into new industries that serve our needs. But too many workers serving a need leads in one direction: Up. It is only a small exaggeration to say that prices, for lack of a matter word, are people.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/prices-people-why-things-cost-172207704.html;_ylt=AhYN.R.940EZ43.4OzYhYbCiuodG;_ylu=X3oDMTIzNDF2amZtBG1pdANGaW5hbmNlIEluZmluaXRlIEJyb3dzZSBTcGxpdARwb3MDNgRzZWMDTWVkaWFJbmZpbml0ZUJyb3dzZUxpc3Q-;_ylg=X3oDMTJ0NzhqN2FwBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDNTIzNWFlNDktYzlkYS0zMGIzLTkxOGUtNWFlY2IyODYzYTg5BHBzdGNhdANuZXdzBHB0A3N0b3J5cGFnZQR0ZXN0Aw--;_ylv=3