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Introduction

At its most basic, confidence is knowing what you’re good at. It’s knowing the value you provide and conveying that value to others. But don’t make the mistake of confusing this with arrogance which involves believing that you’re better than others. On the other end of the spectrum, there is low self-esteem which involves believing you're less valuable than you think.

Building self-confidence is aiming for the middle way without going too far.

Whether it’s personal life, career or social scenarios, confidence is something everyone needs in any given situation. It is how successful people overcome daily obstacles. But it doesn’t happen by accident. If anything, it comes from repeated practice and small successes which then build into larger accomplishments.
The secret to building confidence is to include it in your life as a habit. It may be difficult because people are naturally inclined to

fall back into old habits and feel insecure of taking on a new one. But it is by no means impossible. Even being short of confident is a habit in itself. So the only way to become more confident is to build it as a habit and then become comfortable with it.

This habit formation involves making changes, adopting new behaviors and takes time and energy. At the same time, the process also involves breaking away from old habits and developing new, productive ones.

Expert opinion holds that the best way of doing so is to start small. This makes any task seem easy to handle. So take a look at these seven hacks given here to get you started.

Hack #1

Present Yourself with Confidence

A lot of how you feel about yourself is reflected in your appearance. And a large percentage of how others perceive you also comes from your body language. This can include, posture, gestures, facial expressions and eye movement.

That’s why taking care of how you dress in front of others is important. The point here is not to impress others so much as to feel good about yourself. When you know you look good, you end up feeling good about yourself as well. Dressing well is much more than donning the trendiest clothes. Instead, it’s all about looking poised and feeling self-assured with a confident posture in any situation. When put together, this whole package sends a positive message to others around you.

Expert opinion states that there is a direct correlation between what you wear and what you think of your potential. Looking good and dressed sharp is a powerful way to boost self-confidence. This little bit of effort goes a long way and as you notice the difference, you can bring your confidence into other areas of your life as well.

Even science backs up the idea that dressing well increases performance. Besides feeling good about yourself, being well groomed also encourages others to take you seriously. This means you can make yourself appear more confident based on your clothes alone. A change of wardrobe can help you land the job you want, the deals you want, the recognition you desire, and even the partner you want.

The other important aspect of presentation is posture. There is a lot of power in posture. If you tend to slouch, straighten up. If you tend to fold your arms, open them up. Along with dressing event-appropriately, your posture and body language say a lot about your confidence levels. Research shows that when you have a confident posture during an activity, you actually feel more confident.

How you carry yourself speaks volumes about your confidence level. In fact, if you’ve ever paid attention, you’ll see that confident

people have a confident walk, with a powerful stride. They refuse to hide by slumping their shoulders or looking down as they talk.

You want to be able to express this body language confidently. Make a conscious effort to stand tall, talk with your hands, make eye contact and practice active listening. Engaged body language also uses open gestures, nodding and smiling. It may even involve mirroring the movements and expressions of others. This can make you seem not only more confident as you engage in dialogue but also more approachable.

When you shake hands, remember that a firm, solid handshake is a universal sign of confidence. Although, make sure that while it’s strong, it’s not crushing.

On the other hand, actions like fidgeting, avoiding eye contact, tapping your foot or biting nails are all tell-tale signs of nervousness and uneasy body language.

Hack# 2

Use Positive Affirmations

When life gets tough, it’s great to seek advice from others around you. But perhaps the best person who can counsel you is you. For many people, the natural way to relieve anxiety is to engage in some self-talk. But it is the way you speak to yourself during this pep talk that makes real difference.

There is a two-pronged approach to this. First, think positive thoughts and pair them up with positive affirmations. Second, remove any negative thoughts holding you down.

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Introduction

There is an almost overwhelming amount of information with regard to how to succeed in the world of online business. Unfortunately, you have finite resources and must manage your business as efficiently as possible. Which is why you should focus your strategy on the models that work.

Every business model will have distinct advantages and disadvantages, but remember to choose a business model that suits your lifestyle and your personality. It is going to take a while to pay off, and the initial choice of business is critical. Below are 5 of the better online models to use when creating your new business.

Business Model #1 - Blogging

Blogging is possibly one of the oldest online marketing methods. It is also one of the best and has stood the test of time for a reason. The blogging model is very straightforward.

Simply find something you are passionate about and blog about it every day. Many people are saying that the days of starting a blog and making money are over, as it has become too competitive. But this is just not the case.

The vast majority of people give up after a few months, and they stop posting as consistently. Eventually, they just stop altogether. To be successful at blogging, it is necessary that your post every day and don’t give up. This is the only way forward. If you are passionate about your blog and post consistently, then you will make money. For this reason, it is important to really commit before starting a blog. It is equally important to make sure you are passionate about the topic and that you can write about it every day until it pays off.

Once you have a large amount of traffic, there are a wide variety of monetization methods. You can insert affiliate links to pages or products. You could also have sponsored advertisements on your blog pages. While it can be difficult to keep blogging for a year or so with nothing to show for it, in the end, you have a site that makes money without actually supplying the product itself. Blogging is a slow method but it definitely works. Once you have made it to the other side then it requires little maintenance. You can even train a high-quality freelancer to replicate the work while you derive the benefits of the traffic. At this stage, you can also syndicate content on your site and feature guest posts.

Even if you don’t have a blog as a full-time source of income, it is still a good idea to have a business blog post. It is useful for generating discussion and for some extra links. Keep in mind that you will also need to promote your blog. The “build it and they will come” approach does not work with blogging. You can be writing the best material but if it is not promoted, nobody will know about it.

Business Model #2 - YouTube

Youtube is a great way to reach an audience. Most of the newer generations prefer video as compared to written content. While this applies to the wider population, it especially applies to millennials and those of Generation Z (people typically born between 1995 - 2005). With the proliferation of video games consoles and other kinds of devices, YouTube and other video platforms are increasing in prominence. They are usually easily integrated into such devices.

Video content also results in increased sales in comparison to written content, which is another great reason to use the platform. A video is far more effective than a blog post and is much easier to digest for a modern audience. Consider that time is the most valuable commodity, and a video can get your message across far quicker. People may not even bother with a long blog post.

YouTube can be an exclusive business model or something that you do on the side to promote your business. If YouTube is to be used exclusively, then it can be similar to blogging. Identify yourself as a subject matter expert by releasing videos and you will gain subscribers over time. You can them monetize your videos. The difference is that while blogging might take a while, with YouTube you can build up a following very quickly. Additionally, YouTube channels will most often contain a link to the business page. This will result in increased site visits and help with SEO.

YouTube is now home to influencer marketers who have tens of thousands of followers. They are paid well by companies to market to their followers and it is now an industry in itself. If you happen to be knowledgable about a particular industry and are also good with videos, then YouTube marketing could be incredibly profitable right now. It’s free, quick to upload, has a huge audience, and people love video more than other kinds of content.

As there are over 1.5 billion active users on YouTube, the audience is massive. While over 90% of businesses now have their own Facebook pages, less than 10% have their own Youtube channel. This means that companies who engage in YouTube marketing may have a competitive advantage as it is an underutilized tool.

Business Model #3 - Physical Products and Amazon FBA

While Amazon FBA is often marketed inaccurately as a get rich quick scheme, it can be very lucrative if it is used correctly. Amazon FBA (“Fulfilled by Amazon”) is simply the sale of products using Amazon’s world-class delivery system. Here is how it works -

1. Ship your products to Amazon.
2. List your products on Amazon.
3. Customer places an order through Amazon.
4. Amazon handles delivery, storage, and even customer support.

Amazon does take a sizable chunk of your earnings. Moreover, it can be difficult to establish your brand when it is listed on Amazon. However, they are handling the delivery, product listing, storage, and customer support. It is still a remarkably effective business model that can take a lot of stress out of the entire process.

Another way to sell physical products is to use dropshipping. This is where you process the orders on your website but the distributor is responsible for the delivery of the product. The main advantage of this is that you don’t have to keep stock of any inventory, you just promote and sell the product, acting as a middle man.

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Let’s get one thing clear. For the most part, selling gigs on Fiverr means you trade your time and effort for money. A lot of people have no reservations about this. Most people don’t have a problem doing this.

If you think about it hard enough, this is a problem. How come? First of all, there are only so many hours in a day. Also, there’s only one of you. If you are not careful, you might end offering services that everybody can pretty much do.

What do you think happens in that situation? That’s right. The price keeps dropping. The customers that you get expect a lot more for the $5 that they are willing to pay. In fact, a lot of people, believe it or not, expect a Ferrari while paying only the price of a beat up Toyota. It’s crazy!

It gets old quickly and it’s no surprise that a lot of people who offer gigs on Fiverr end up quitting. It’s only a matter of time. Even if you make decent money by doing volume work, you get burnt out quickly. This is not a surprise. In fact, it’s completely predictable.

The good news is there are at least 5 ways you can make real money from Fiverr without trading your time for money. Here are brief overviews of these 5 different methods.

Resell the services of others

If you have access to buyers of analytical work, Wordpress, theme installations or writing for SEO and other purposes, you may want to try reselling the services of people who provide these types of work. You save time and money. You’re just the middle man.

Basically, you find buyers and you charge them a lot more money than what you’re paying Fiverr service providers. Sounds awesome, right? Here’s the drawback. You can’t use this buy low and sell high strategy for certain types of services.

For instance, Fiverr does automatically watermarks drafts of graphics works. If somebody’s doing a logo for you and they send in a draft, when you download that draft, it will say “Fiverr” right in the middle. Fiverr does this because in the past, people would resell graphics services to their clients.

Their clients would ask for revision after revision then after all this process and waste of time, the customer demands a refund. Everybody loses. Fiverr caught wind of this and effectively discourages graphic work reselling.

Also, this watermarking system prevents customers on Fiverr itself from ripping off service providers. As long as you can find buyers, there’s a wide range of services you can resell. Just make sure that you’re not going to run a file of the watermark system.

Bundle services and sell newly build online assets

Believe it or not, there are quite a number of people who would buy websites that do not contain anything. These are website shells also called turnkey or starter sites. These websites generally either have very little content or have only “starter content” or absolutely no content.

All of these are in demand as turnkey websites. The idea is for somebody to buy them and just pump traffic to them and make money off the ads or their mailing list. The reason why people buy this type of asset is because they simply do not have the time or expertise to create a new website from scratch.

When you place orders with different Fiverr service providers for website development or Wordpress installation, you tap into different sources of talents of the different sources that you need to put together a turnkey website.

You then spend very little money putting together this turnkey website and then you sell it right after you have put in enough content, or in many cases, no content at all. This is actually quite lucrative if you know where to sell.

If you want to figure out the secret of how to make money off Fiverr using this technique, click here.

Bundle services and sell sites with traffic

This technique basically builds on the previous technique. You contact many different cheap service providers to develop a turnkey site. You got somebody to design the banners and the headers. You get somebody to install the Wordpress theme. You get another person to write the content. You get another person to modify the theme.

You then put everything together and you stock it with content. There are plenty of writers and video producers and audio developers on Fiverr. If you’re looking for content, Fiverr is the place to go. This is especially true if you’re looking for affordable custom content.

Once you have stocked your turnkey site with content, the next step is to go to the traffic providers on Fiverr and hire them to work their magic. All told, expect to spend less that $200 to $300 on this project. If everything goes well and your turnkey website actually generates a little bit of cash, you can flip that website to sell for possibly hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

It all, of course, depends on your niche, target audience as well as the overall quality, traffic volume and conversion ability of the turnkey asset you have built. If you want a blueprint on how to do this right so as to actually make a profit, click here.

Buy services that help you buy re-sellable high value assets

There are many online assets that can fetch quite a bit of money. I am, of course, talking about domain names. Did you know that domain names like sex.com, business.com, shoes.com and many others fetch not hundreds of thousand of dollars but millions of dollars.

Domain names are big business. Even if you were to buy and sell lesser value of lesser known domain names, you can still make quite a bit of money. In fact, if you buy the domain name of a website that has expired, it can fetch you 4 to 6 figures. Amazing, right?

Introduction

Every time you run for a bus, go out dancing, pick up a baby, throw a ball, climb some stairs, play tennis, drive a golf ball, take a jump-shot, crouch on your knees while gardening, exercise at the gym, write a letter or just go for a walk, you’re using your joints.

So when you stop and consider all the different joints you have in your body... your knuckles, wrists, elbows, ankles, toes, shoulders, neck, knees, hips and spine; you begin to realize that joint pain, stiffness, reduced flexibility and decreased range of motion are not just minor inconveniences. They can become debilitating, and lifestyle is altering health problems.

Few health issues affect as many people as joint pain. A recent report estimates that 21% of the adult population is affected by some form of joint-related pain. And that number is expected to rise even higher as baby boomers age, so that by 2030, almost 67 million people will suffer from joint problems. And joint pain does not discriminate; it affects whites and blacks equally. Although, joint pain and stiffness can begin at any age, traditionally it becomes more prevalent and persistent in your 50s.

Are you suffering from chronic pain? Joint aches in the hips and other areas can make you feel like your entire body is a mass of agony. Unfortunately, conventional doctors simply don't have the kind of answers that will truly solve your problem.

Regardless of whether they recommend surgery or painkillers, you can count on months of frustration, pain, and long recovery periods. Before you go through all that heartache, you might as well try Joint Advance, or some other natural joint regrowth formula.

Have you decided to do something about your chronic pain? Joint problems can often creep up on you over the years. As may be expected, you will always want to ignore them and pretend then don't exist for as long as possible. That said, eventually, there will come a day when you cannot walk or even open a refrigerator door. Once you reach that stage, there won't be much that a doctor can do for you. Today, you can stave off that outcome for as long as possible when you use dietary supplements that support joint health.

When was the last time you didn't wake up in pain? Joint problems can easily rob you of a good night’s sleep, as well as make your mornings a nightmare. Why go on suffering when you can make use of a dietary supplement that will restore the blood circulation to your joints, as well as help rebuild the vital cushion that keeps your bones from rubbing together?

Do you want to wear your bones down to the point where the only option left is surgery? If not, then you should start to get the basic knowledge to help you fight joint ache.

This informative and content-filled guide will give you the adequate message you need to fight joint ache.
Natural Treatment to Prevent Joint Stiffness in Older People

Joint stiffness and muscle aches are very common during old age. In this article, we are going to see some of the safe, natural treatments to prevent joint stiffness in older people. Let's start our topic with aloe vera.

It is a common ingredient used for the preparation of herbal medicines. You can use this medicine both internally and externally. If you are suffering from knee pain, try to apply aloe vera juice directly on affected area. It relaxes muscles and prevents the risk of pain.

Also, if you are in search of a natural remedial measure to get relief from health issues like joint pain, feel free to add this remedy. Consuming Boswellia tea is an effective remedial measure to cure severe joint pain. How does it function?

This query is frequent from people. Generally, Boswellia tea functions by treating the actual cause of the problem. It blocks leukotriene and reduces the occurrence of inflammations.

Today, Boswellia products can be easily obtained from the market in the form of capsules and tablets. Similar to Boswellia tea, cat's claw tea is another great herbal remedy to get relief from joint pain troubles. Pain and swelling due to arthritis can be easily cured by making use of this tea.

Eucalyptus oil is another cure for treating health issues like joint pain and inflammations. Try to apply eucalyptus oil directly on affected area. Massaging with eucalyptus oil is a safe remedy for treating muscle ache. If possible, feel free to massage and apply gentle strokes on the affected area with eucalyptus oil.

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If you think that you are performing at a substandard level in any area of your life, it's very easy to just blow it off! It really is! It's very easy to think of it as another bad day or a series of bad days. It's tempting to think that you're just going to get out from the under, whatever it is that's holding you back and things will go back to normal.

Unfortunately, your definition of ‘normal’ starts to slide and can you end up settling for less than optimal existence.

You get used to frustration. It's easy to get accustomed to a lot of disappointments.

Sooner, rather than later you let go of your earlier ideals and you just settle for a life that's really not worth living! That's really quite far from the kind of life you'd like for yourself.

Sadly, by that point, you feel like you really can't do much of anything.

You need a reboot.

You need to know when to perform a personal reboot, so you can get your life back on track. Otherwise, it's too easy for this pattern to play out in your life, and you end up frustrated, stressed out and powerless at some level or another.

You deserve so much more!

Here are the 10 signs that you need a personal reboot.

If you find yourself thinking about just one person or just one issue in your life, over and over again, it means that there's something wrong. This means that a lot of your mental and emotional energy are being drained by that one element in your life.

You're definitely not living a balanced life, this is a clear indication of that. You need to make certain changes to ensure that your focus goes to balancing your life's needs.

If it doesn't take much for you to react in a very negative or overly emotional way, you might want to sit up and pay attention. You might be possessing the worlds stimuli in all too personal way, it's very easy for you to put yourself in the middle of something that you see her touch, smell and taste.

This is a serious problem because we all know that the world is not about us, it definitely doesn't revolve around us!

Unfortunately, if you feel that everything is about you and you respond emotionally to a lot of things and it doesn't take much for you to go off on the deep end as far as your emotions go, this may be your assumptions. You may have assumed at the deepest level that the world is all about you, that's why you're reacting so emotionally.

According to research studies, behavioral psychologist found out that people actually make most of their decisions impulsively. Only when they are asked to explain their decision, they'll come up with seemingly rational or reasonable explanations for doing so.

Pay attention to your decisions, are you active and conscientiously weighing a lot of factors before you make a call?

Or are you making these decisions based on how you feel? If that's the case, then ask yourself, if you are emotionally overreacting or have a tough time by keeping your emotions under control. If this is the case, then it may well turn out that a lot of your decisions are impulsive and emotional in nature. This may lead to you regretting, a higher than normal amount of those decisions.

This doesn't seem like any kind of memory or concern that enters your mind is enough to get the better of your emotions. You find yourself feeling sad, overly concerned or upset easily when you think about certain things. If this happens pretty much across the board, you may want to view this as a red flag.

In the span of a day, how many things on your "to do list", have you actually completed? Pay attention to your "to do list" over the course of several months, because it seems like you're able to achieve less with each passing day. Is your attention span getting shorter and shorter? This doesn't mean that you're lazy, this doesn't mean that you're not putting time and effort. Assuming that's the case, you still see this pattern. If you see this pattern, then this is a serious red flag.

Do you watch videos or movies and it doesn't take much for you to get really sad? Do you think back to certain things that happened in your past and you can't help but feel sad, victimized, or pressed or otherwise abused. Even if something good happened to you, you tend to focus on what's missing, do you focus on how things could have improved, or could have been better?

Do you find that when you keep thinking about how things could be so much better, then you start getting sadder and sadder?

If you get easily depressed, then this means something is off balanced in your life. You're not seeing the big picture. You're not looking at things from the right perspective. It doesn't seem like you see a healthy connection between a lot of things that's depressing you and other things that could actually make you happy.

Instead, you just focus on the things that are bad and you only see the negative, you don't see the context. If this is the case, you might want to start unwinding. You might want to adapt a personal routine that will enable you to head off depression. It's very easy to assume the very worst. It's definitely very easy to feel the things are the worst that they could be.

The good news is, it's all a choice, you do have a lot of say in the matter.

I know that you're feeling sad, I know that you feel that your life has, somehow, someway spiraled out of control at some level or another. But please understand that you have a lot more choice than you give yourself a credit for. You don't necessarily have to automatically feel upset, sad or angry when you remember certain things or when you see certain things or people say stuff to you. You can choose to respond differently, you don't have to react with automatic depression, sadness, rage or insecurity. To learn how to retake your control over your mental and emotional resources and processes, click here.

Do you oftentimes stop and look at the great things that's happening in your life, but somehow, someway can't quite feel 100% positive about what's going on. Because it seems like, regardless of how awesome things are going for you in many areas of your life, you feel that it's about to end or the best days are behind you.

Do you think that if you allow yourself to celebrate or feel really good about the good times that they will somehow be cut short? Have you often warn yourself that you don't want to "jinx" your good fortune?

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Let’s face it. If you're not achieving the kind of results you had hoped to get with your life, maybe the reason doesn't lie with other people. Put simply, you cannot blame other people for your lack of success. Maybe it's not a situation out of your control. Maybe it's not the fact that you weren't born with advantages, maybe it has nothing to do with with any of the common reasons you give yourself. Instead, it may have everything to do with the excuses you choose to believe in.

You have to understand that you are always in control of your life. The only person who is truly responsible for your life is yourself. Stop giving yourself any of the common excuses below. If you want to live a more consequential and yes, effective life.

People who think this way believe that the world, and all the goodness in it, is like a giant pie. For a person's slice to get bigger, somebody's slice has to necessarily get smaller. You have to remember that if you want to achieve the best, ‘the best’ is largely defined by you. The outcome that you get out of any effort is ultimately going to be judged by you.

When you say that the best is already taken by others you're just giving yourself an excuse not to try.

You are assuming that there's only a fixed amount of "the best things in life." That's not true.

You may come in third place and still think you did your best. That is good enough.

Stop robbing yourself of opportunities for victory by refusing to even try. Ultimately, whether you came in first place or not, what matters most, at the end of the day, all boils down to whether you selected a vision for yourself and did everything you could to achieve that vision.

That's going to be the measure that you're going to have to live with. That's how you determine ‘the best.’ Sadly, thinking that ‘the best’ has already been taken is just an excuse to not even try.

When you constantly compare yourself to other people, don't be surprised if you come out looking like a loser most of the time. This happens quite a bit. Why? You compare all the best things they have going for themselves with the worst things in your life.

Otherwise, you wouldn't be comparing.

If you feel that you're in any way lacking or inadequate in a certain part of your life, you wouldn't be comparing that part of yourself with other people. There would not be any need to.

This is why it's a bad idea to think of ultimate outcomes in terms of comparison. Instead, you should run a race with yourself. You should ask yourself, "Did I try hard enough? Did I believe in something badly enough to get off my ass and make something out of myself?”

Those are the things that you should be asking instead of constantly comparing yourself to others. If you keep comparing yourself to others, then most things that you do wouldn't matter because you always come out on the losing end.

Part of what makes life fun and exciting is the fact that there are no guaranteed outcomes. There is no assurance of victory. If everything was guaranteed and success was dished out on a silver tray to anybody who showed up, there would be no point to life. There wouldn't be life at all as we currently define it.

What gives life value, excitement, and beauty is the fact that there is nothing you can take for granted.

Everything is up in the air. Everything is up for negotiation and everything can unfold at any time.

That's why when you think that you should be guaranteed success for you to try, you're just fooling yourself.

It doesn’t make any logical sense: if life success can be guaranteed, then it wouldn't matter whether you tried or not. It will be delivered to you anyway. You see how this ‘logic’ works? Stop giving yourself this excuse for failure and mediocrity.

Your past does not define you. Just because you've failed 100 times before doesn't necessarily mean that you are doomed to fail today. You have to understand that there are a lot of very successful people who have failed many times before they made it big.

Andy Grove, the genius behind Intel semiconductor chips, started a lot of businesses and ultimately all went belly up. But ultimately, he came up with Intel and the rest, as they say, is history. Similarly, ‘Colonel’ Harlan Sanders of KFC fame failed with almost all the projects he tried in life. Later in life he started a chicken restaurant and once again, like they say, the rest is history.

Just because you have experienced disappointment and setbacks in the past doesn't mean that they have to define you. The only way to lose is to quit. If you keep trying to keep springing back up and you give it your best, you are still in the game. You can still turn things around and achieve your dreams.

A lot of people are under the impression that they have to cheat for them to become rich. Many of them believe the poisonous idea that they have to somehow become perverted or degraded for them to achieve victory in their lives. These people have a very dismal view of victory. They think that becoming rich, powerful, and respected, all involve dirty tricks.

A lot of these people are under the impression that there's only so much wealth in the world and all of this is basically inherited or pass from one generation to the other. If you were to disturb this process or come up with something new, it's because you somehow someway cheated. Well, not so fast.

When you look at most of today's billionaires, the vast majority of them are self-made. Most of them came up with companies that produce solutions that didn't exist before. They earned their money. To think that you will somehow have to become somebody worse so you can become successful is really giving the whole idea of success a black eye. Because if you think that way then you automatically cast a negative light on everybody else was able to achieve natural success.

I'm talking about people who didn't cheat their way to the top. They didn't hurt other people to get what they wanted. Please understand that you can remain true to yourself even if you achieve success. In fact, if you develop integrity and make it your life’s focus, this makes success all the more probable.

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Introduction

Yoga, it’s the magic word, which has guided humans all over the world towards better health, peace of mind and even prosperity. Yoga has the power to transform one’s life and takes the person to an amazing feeling of serenity and calmness. Not many are aware of the powers of yoga and the asana recommended by this unique therapeutic science.

There are also many who don’t even know what yoga is and have their own notions about it based on what they have heard or seen. Before you start practicing yoga, it’s important to understand what it means and its basic facts. This will make sure you imbibe the goodness of yoga into your soul and are able to practice this science in the perfect way so as to gain maximum benefits.

What comes to your mind when you hear the word “Yoga”? Well, you may think of some images of women in a few seemingly impossible poses. If this is what you think yoga is all about, then you may just have an inkling of this amazing science. And yes, that's it - just inkling. You got to go a long way before fully understanding Yoga.

This book will focus on the following:

- Reasons you should practice yoga
- Benefits derived
- Yoga poses and the mistakes to avoid

It’s my firm belief that it will provide you with all the answers to your questions.

Yoga and Your Life

There are seven primary forms of yoga: Hatha, Vinyasa, Power, Ashtanga, Bikram, and Iyengar yoga. Hatha is the most common and easiest form of yoga. It combines breathing techniques and basic movements. Vinyasa yoga combines multiple poses that smoothly transition into one another.

Power yoga is an intense form, designed to build muscles quickly. Ashtanga is similar to Vinyasa yoga in that it combines multiple poses that smoothly transition into one another; it is unique in that the poses include special breathing techniques. Bikram is a collection of 26 yoga poses designed to be performed in very hot temperatures. Finally, Iyengar yoga utilizes objects like blocks or chairs to align the body in the proper position. In this book, we will focus primarily on the first form, Hatha Yoga.

If you are already a committed practitioner of yoga, you probably will use established routines and will have successfully worked yoga into your life.

Yoga For Any Lifestyle

Is yoga the right type of workout for you? I would assert that yoga can accommodate any lifestyle. There are aspects of yoga that can be implemented in the office, on a plane, at your desk, pretty much anywhere. Because yoga doesn’t require special equipment, it is easy to maintain your daily yoga practice when you travel. Even if your life is hectic, you can (and should) introduce yoga into your daily routine, if only for five minutes at a time.

If you already have a solid workout routine, all the better; Yoga can easily be tacked on to either end of your workout. You can regularly practice yoga whether you have a set schedule or one that varies wildly. It makes no difference whether you live in the mountains, on the beachfront, or in between. Whether you live in a studio apartment or a 20-bedroom mansion, you can still find space for yoga! In other words, there’s really no excuse not to include yoga as part of your life. It’s so beneficial, why not give it a shot?

When and Where

If you already have a regular workout routine, you can easily introduce a single yoga position into your cool-down. Use a single pose for several days, before moving on to anything else. This gives your body time to adjust to the new positioning and truly learn its process, which can be more challenging than it appears on the surface.

The “when” and “where” of yoga don’t matter as long as it’s consistent. The consistent practice of yoga is what makes it effective. Many people find that waking up a half-hour earlier than usual to incorporate a yoga routine into their lives produces noticeable results.

Yoga is a great way to get your day started. Other people rely on yoga in the evening, claiming it helps them fall asleep easier. Don’t have time to wake up a half hour early? You can also practice yoga at work if your environment allows. Many of the poses can be performed while sitting on a chair. You can execute others while standing or waiting in line. The only restriction: do not practice yoga within a couple hours of eating.

To make it easier to practice yoga whenever and wherever opportunity presents itself, I recommend keeping a yoga mat and a set of comfortable workout clothes in your car. You never know when it’ll come in handy.

Even though you can do yoga everywhere and anywhere, I recommend that you set aside a comfortable space in your home just for yoga. One of my friends was fortunate enough to have an extra room in her home that she set apart for yoga. Dubbed “The Yoga Room”, it was carpeted, the walls were uncluttered, and the room contained only the items she needed for her yoga work. I found it clean, open, refreshing, and relaxing – the perfect place for yoga. If you don’t have the space to devote a whole room to yoga, you can at least clear a portion of a room – preferably with a wall, as it will come in handy for occasional support.

Your Yoga Plan

The next step is to establish a plan. If you are just beginning to explore yoga, it is important that you enter the practice gently. Your body needs time to ease into the changes you are introducing to it. At the same time, your body needs to experience yoga on a regular basis, so you can begin to discover its benefits in your body, your mind, and your spirit.

A gentle introduction to yoga would be to give yourself five minutes a day to enter into one or two of the poses. Yes, five minutes is all you need at first. Tack it onto one of your existing routines. For example, if you have a set routine you follow for the start of your day, five minutes of yoga added on can help you clear your mind and rev up your body, preparing for action. On the other hand, if you have a series of activities you normally follow before you go to bed (and if you do not, I highly recommend you start), five minutes of yoga can help you relax and can prepare your mind and body for a good night’s rest.