Students Of Success

When I was 17 old I started working at an asbestos mine in the Yukon. I had the excitement of youth and looked on the thing as a big adventure.

The mine was located about 7 miles from the Alaska border on the banks of the Forty Mile River, which emptied into the Yukon River some 5 miles or so north.

I first arrived in August and started working on the Surface Crew. This was the group responsible for outside maintenance of all things on the surface. This was fine when we had those few relatively warm days in summer, but later it was a bit more difficult to be working outside in minus 55F.

One of my first duties was to keep clear the conveyor that took the unused asbestos out to the tailings piles. Tailings piles are basically the dregs of what’s left over after milling the asbestos and is run out of the mill on conveyor belts to large piles behind the mill. At that time they were about 100 feet high.

I was given a shovel, and a small mask (kind of like the little paper ones that painters use) and told to go shovel off the conveyor belt on the tailings piles. Dutifully I climbed up with my little shovel to clear any blockages of asbestos from the conveyor. I remember clearly at one point standing literally knee deep in asbestos on top of this 100 foot high pile and looking inside my very poor quality mask and seeing the inside (where it’s not supposed to be) all grey from the asbestos dust. I then took out my hankerchief (yes, I carried one) and blew my nose. Sorry for the rude, graphic description, but it was all grey. And that was my introduction to work at an asbestos mine.

Even back in the early 1970’s it was becoming known that asbestos caused problems. Working in the mine we’d get brochures handed around periodically with propoganda about how it was never proven that asbestos was actually harmful. They were beautiful glossy brochures. I wish I’d kept one.

Though I had occasion to go into the mill for various reasons I was glad I didn’t work there. There were employees that worked in the mill whose sole job was to sweep up the dust that fell on the floor. There was so much of it that this was a constant ongoing job. The asbestos dust in the mill actually fell almost like snow and covered the floor completely. Without sweepers there would probably have been several inches of asbestos dust on the floor within an hour or so. In fact, I remember seeing sweepers go by pushing their wide brooms and the new dust settling onto the floor behind them as they walked.

The Yukon itself was absolutely beautiful. Stunning in fact. I had many great experiences there and saw some natural wonders I couldn’t have seen anywhere else. I had hitchiked up the Alaska Highway with a friend. In those days the highway was unpaved. Most of the trip was provided by a nice family who were travelling in an old converted school bus. Rattle and dust. Rattle and dust. But we made it finally to Whitehorse, and then on
to Dawson City. I loved Dawson. It was like stepping into the past. Not just the architecture and homes but the people had that old fashion friendliness and charm, though tempered by a resolve that one must have to live in such a fierce environment.

The Yukon has a peacefullness to it. Almost a serenity that one can feel. I’ve found that only those who have been there and experienced it fully understand what I mean by this.

In all of this beauty I suppose the asbestos mine was a blight, or cancer on the environment. Fortunately closed down now for many years nature is recovering it’s territory, but unfortunately asbestos mining has left a legacy of asbestosis and Mesothelioma with some of it’s previous employees. There are many resources available with information, legal, and personal (www.mesothelioma-listings.com) but one shouldn’t let something that consumes the body, also consume the soul. Being human is to be somewhat fragile to the vagarities of life as it is. There’s plenty of ‘drama’ going on without us spending all of our energies on blame. Be calm. Remember your duty in life is to help others. Be happy and try to improve life around you.

As I type this I am looking out the window, watching my grandchildren learn to fish off the seawall out back. It just doesn’t get any better than this.

Phil Jones is a freelance writer, who now lives in sunny Florida, about as far as you can get from the Yukon and still be in North America. He set up the website www.mesothelioma-listings.com to provide personal legal firm law mesothelioma asbestos info for those who may need it.

Are you considering adopting an older or rescued dog? Older dogs
are great family members and need homes. Depending on the breed,
senior dogs are often are more subdued than a puppy and
therefore easier on your home. But what about behaviors learned
or tolerated by a previous owner? Senior dogs can be still be
trained using a few tried and true ideas! Just as with puppies
it will take time and patience but the outcome is worth it. A
trained dog will be a happier dog because he will know what is
expected of him.

5 TIPS for Teaching NEW Tricks to Older Dogs

1. Use the proper tone when communicating with your dog:

High/Enthusiastic–Use for Praising (i.e. “Good Dog!”)

Demanding/Authoritative–Use for Commands (i.e. “Sit!”)

Growly/Low–Use for reprimanding (i.e. “Bad Dog!”)

2. Give a command only once. This teaches your dog to listen
the first time.

3. Hands Off when giving a command. Touching or petting
distracts from training.

4. Recall (or “Come”) is the most pleasant of all commands for
your dog. Never reprimand a dog that finally comes to you…even
if you had to chase him through the neighborhood before he
obeyed. He needs to know that you will lavish praise and pet him
when he comes to you!

5. Training not to jump up on people and furniture is best done
with a metal can or box with 10 pennies, stones or marbles taped
inside. For convenience, it is a good idea to have several cans
located in various areas throughout your home. Shake the can up
and down once or twice whenever your dog jumps up. Remember to
reprimand with the low tone at the same time. The noise will
startle the dog and eventually the behavior will stop.

Life is a journey which means there are no straight roads but twists, turns, crossroads, hills and valleys for us all to experience. We have to have the lows in life to appreciate the highs, besides, the lows can teach us invaluable lessons and help us to grow. But what happens when we end up lost in the wilderness with no visible way out? It happens. All of us at one time or another will experience our own ‘walk in the wilderness’ and when it happens we fall and fall fast. We fall fast into chaos, confusion and despair. Everything we have ever thought solid melts, everything we have ever learnt gets forgotten and everything we have ever held onto disappears.

We stand alone as those around us can only sympathize but not help us get out of the darkness, we have to do it by ourselves because we have just encountered our biggest life lesson, our most intense test and yet our most heavenly gift. If life were a straight forward journey, what would we actually learn? As emotional and highly-intelligent creatures would we be bored, stifled or just dull?

When you are in the wilderness the one thing you crave is normality and a desire to go back to how things were, even if it wasn’t right just so you can feel ok again. It’s a very scary place to be. How many of us try to go back to how things were and how many stick it out to learn and move on? What would you do? What have you done in the past?

The truth is we only find ourselves in the wilderness because we were on the wrong path in the first place. Understanding that is the first stage to finding your way out. The next stage is to be ok with where you are. Sit it out, accept your feelings, and know that you are on a roller-coaster ride of emotions which can be uncomfortable and sometimes very painful. Go with it but never ever believe that all hope is gone.

Hope springs eternal is a true old saying. You can find it if you look for it. And of course there is always old father time which heals everything. So look for hope because the worst thing you can do in any emergency (like being in the wilderness) is panic. Panic makes us act like headless fools and we become blind and separated from our common sense, our intuition and self-love.

Talking of which, let’s revisit the reason why we have found ourselves in the wilderness. I said it is because we were on the wrong path to begin with which can only mean one thing - a lack of self-love. That’s right. The whole purpose of life is to learn to love yourself so you can love others and make the world a better place. If we our missing the point of life, then we will go off the rails as it were. No matter what got you in the wilderness, behind it will be self-neglect.

Commonly, this causes us to stay in unhealthy relationship with a person, a company or whatever because we fear the alternative. This lack of self-love is what makes us feel so bad.

If you put your faith into the fact you are deserving and that your life can and will be great, no matter what, then you will be out of the woods in no time at all. In the meantime, be courageous, love yourself and look forward to the future because no matter how grim it may seem right now, it will get better. I promise!

Alexandra Watson has helped countless women create happy and fulfilling lives through her happiness system. She has developed a fool-proof, easy-to-follow seven step system to happiness that any woman can use and see results fast. John Gray, author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus calls Alexandra’s book The Happiness System for Women ‘a vibrant and exciting journey to the centre of your soul’. Alexandra has featured internationally on TV, radio and in many publications. She can be contacted by email on: HappinessAuthor@aol.com or visit her website at http://www.AlexandraWatson.com

No sales force can truly be considered a “best practice” unless it meets the test of measurement. If the ‘practice’ works, you should be able to visualize, define, and measure the results. There is no easier way to prove the ‘measurement’ theory than with sales.

In the past 15 years, strategic management has focused more and more on measurement. Strategic management was revolutionized in the early 1990’s by Drs. Robert Kaplan (Harvard Business School) and David Norton when they created their measurement system, the ‘balanced scorecard’. Other approaches adhere to the same rule of accountability by recognizing some of the weaknesses and vagueness of earlier management approaches.

Measurement provides a clear prescription as to what companies in all areas, from sales to marketing should measure in order to reach their financial goal. You often hear the expression in sales, ‘what gets measured gets done’, but in recent years I have expanded this statement to, ‘what gets measured by the individual, creates accountability and therefore gets done’.

For instance, as a sales manager you may give your sales force a specific sales target, a measurement if you will. At the end of the month or quarter if the sales person did not reach that target, you may question them on it. Chances are you have heard every variable and excuse in the book; ‘Our product or service has no name brand recognition’, ‘Our product was too expensive’, ‘I cannot get anyone to meet with me’. Giving the sales force a ‘target’ or a measurement, still leaves a window of accountability. In fact, what gets measured still may not get done.

Measurement alone is not enough to create accountability. You also need a commitment or buy in from the sales person. Commitment is internally motivated while compliance is external. Compliance is following a rule, commitment is something you believe in. If you empower your sales force to create their own set of measurements, they are going to be more motivated to meet them. Often when measurements or targets are instituted and monitored by someone else, the responsibility can easily be diffused to other external forces.

There are various ways to create accountability and commitment in a sales force. For example, in the weekly sales meeting, you can ask your sales person to quantify each and every prospect and opportunity in his or her sales cycle. If they are given a target of X amount, ask them to determine the number of appointments they will need to reach that goal, take it a step further by asking them to determine the amount of calls needed each day and week to make the specified number of appointments. Once they have created their own set of measurements, ask them to rate each prospect. Which ones have a greater chance of closing? Why?

Accountability and ownership is the first step in establishing legitimate return measures. With systematic assessment and ongoing evaluation, an individual can become more and more committed to reaching his or her own personal goals.

Copyright 2005 Thomas Baskind

April 7, 2004

Rapid Satellite provides the best selection of Sirius Radio satellite equipment

RapidSatellite.com was one of the first web sites I found offering satellite radio satellite equipment. They only carry Sirius satellite radio products, but they have a good selection.

Right now RapidSatellite.com is having a great special programming offer. For $129 you can get a Sirius satellite radio system for both the home and car. Pay $179 now and get a $50 rebate from Sirius Radio. I bet they won’t be continuing that offer for long as they’ll get sold out overnight! That is one heck of a deal. I was pricing XM Radio for car and home and the prices were significantly higher on other websites. But for $129 getting satellite radio for car and home? That’s what I call a no brainer. Click the link here to see for yourself. What a deal. I still can’t believe it.

Almost forgot to mention that if you pay for a year’s service of Sirius satellite radio they’ll throw in three months free. That’s not a bad deal folks.

Ok now on to review what satellite equipment RapidSatellite.com has to offer for Sirius Radio buffs.
Audiovox Sirius Satellite Radio Receiver (requires Plug-n-Play Module)
Audiovox Sirius Satellite Radio Shuttle Portable Tuner. This package includes just the Sirius tuner & remote. Requires a Home Adapter Kit and/or Vehicle Adapter Kit. $99.99

Kenwood Sirius Satellite Radio Tuner (Requires Home or Car Module)
Kenwood Sirius Satellite Radio Here2Anywhere tuner. This package includes the Sirius Tuner and Remote. Requires a Vehicle Adapter Kit and/or Home Adapter Kit. $99.99

Kenwood Sirius Satellite Radio System w/ Plug & Play Home Use Kit
Kenwood Sirius Satellite Radio Here2Anywhere tuner. This package includes the Sirius tuner, remote and home adapter kit. $149.99

Audiovox Sirius Satellite Radio System w/ Vehicle Plug & Play Kit
Audiovox Sirius Satellite Radio Shuttle Portable Tuner. This package includes the Sirius tuner, remote and Vehicle Adapter Kit. $149.99

Audiovox Sirius Satellite Radio System w/ Home Plug & Play Kit
Audiovox Sirius Satellite Radio Shuttle Portable Tuner. This package includes the Sirius tuner, remote and Home Adapter Kit. $149.99

Kenwood Sirius Satellite Radio System w/ FM Wireless Vehicle Plug & Play Kit
Kenwood Sirius Satellite Radio Here2Anywhere tuner. This package includes the Sirius tuner, remote and FM Wireless Vehicle Adapter Kit. $149.99

Audiovox Sirius Satellite Radio System w/ Both Home & Vehicle Plug & Play Kit ($129.99 after $50 Sirius Rebate)
Audiovox Sirius Satellite Radio Shuttle Portable Tuner. This package includes the Sirius tuner, remote, Home Adapter Kit and Vehicle Adapter Kit. ($50 Sirius Rebate) $179.99

Kenwood Sirius Satellite Radio System w/ Both Home & FM Wireless Vehicle Plug & Play Kits (149.99 After $50 Sirius Rebate)
Kenwood Sirius Satellite Radio Here2Anywhere tuner. This package includes the Sirius Tuner, Remote, FM Wireless Vehicle Adapter Kit & Home Adapter Kit. $199.99

As you can see I really like RapidSatellite.com for their package selections at reduced prices. They really know how to entice someone to buy!

RapidSatellite.com is a member of the Better Business Bureau Online and #1 in consumer satisfaction among cable and satellite TV suppliers as rated by J.D. Power and Associates. Basically, you can trust this company that when you order you’ll get what you ordered with no problems.

After you put the item in your shopping cart and decide to checkout you’ll need to create an account. Just the usual of name, address, username, password which speeds up the checkout process later and allows you to not type it all back in the next time you purchase from them. They cannot ship to P.O. boxes, so you’ll have to use a real address. The not shipping to P.O. Boxes is from credit card fraud. People steal credit cards and then get items shipped to P.O. Boxes. Cutting out shipping to P.O. Boxes cuts out that fraud.

After you enter your delivery address they’ll run it past the USPS to make sure there are no problems delivering your item. That’s a really nice feature that they double check your address. Shipping was only $9.99 for a receiver shipped to my zipcode in the middle of nowhere. They accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover.

Their toll free phone number that is staffed 24 hours 7 days a week is always visible at the upper left corner of every page. I don’t know about you but that inspires confidence in them for me.

About the Author

Christine Breen is the successful owner of the website 1Stop-Satellite-Radio.com which educates consumers about satellite radios.

Female Aphrodisiacs and Why They Bring Women More Intense Sexual Pleasure

Low sex drive, or libido, is a common problem facing millions of women today. While it can be fairly common in older men, it is more prevalent in women at a much younger age, whom by all rights, should have a healthy sexual appetite.

The expanding occurrence of low female libido is slowly being answered by the sexual enhancement industry with newer and better female aphrodisiacs that not only revive your libido, but also enhance your overall sexual experience from beginning to end and help to dramatically intensify the female orgasm.

These natural aphrodisiacs come in several forms including oral supplements and external oils containing stimulants that increase circulation and blood flow for more sensitivity and more intense and gratifying interludes.

I personally prefer externally applied libido enhancers, since oral supplements can take an hour to several hours to take effect in the female body, and this definitely tends to take the spontaneity factor out of the sex act.

The external oils, gels and creams also work almost instantly and prepare a woman for sexual activity immediately. Most of the common ingredients used in sexual pleasure enhancement oils help to further swell the delicate tissue and make it more highly sensitized. These ingredients make include L Argynine, which is a precursor to the chemical reaction that helps produce the female orgasm, menthol, and various other amino acids.

Too many women suffer lowered sex drive today - largely due to the high stress levels of today’s society, and increasing burdens on women in general. It’s time for us women to take more control over our sexual satisfaction. After all, what better tension reliever can you think of?

For more information on an excellent female aphrodisiac as mentioned in this article, you can visit Natural Female Aphrodisiacs for More Intense Pleasure
Danna Schneider is the webmaster of Herbal-Therapeutics.com

Have you ever heard the term load and no load in the financial
service industry? The loading of an insurance product usually
always involves the agent’s commission and the company’s
expenses. Some policies have what they call front end loads and
back end loads. These loads are normally associated with
permanent insurance policies. The cost of doing business is all
wrapped up in the loading of a policy. No load term life
insurance is probably the least expensive form of life insurance
in the market. You often wonder what makes one company so much
cheaper than the other and it usually has to do with the type of
goods and services provided. Those goods and services are what
make up the loading aspect of the life insurance policy. The no
load term life insurance policy usually indicates that you are
primarily purchasing direct from the insurance company and with
little or no professional advice or opinion.

The life insurance professional is still very important to a
great number of people. Buying life insurance direct from a
company without an agent may be less expensive but it also may
leave you wanting when it comes to professional counseling and
service. Term life insurance is very simple and so the purchase
of term life insurance may be something that you can handle on
your own without a professional. These are individual choices
and preferences that each of us must decide upon before we buy
life insurance.

Term life insurance is inexpensive to begin with and so
researching the market place for a no load product may or may
not have a major affect on the premium. Ask about loading when
you shop for term life insurance. You may be surprised at what
you learn about the insurance companies and how they come up
with their rates. It will also help you when you inevitably
begin to shop for permanent life insurance.

How do you know whether you can trust online casinos? Will they pay up when you win? How do you know that the games aren’t fixed? After all when the games are digitised they don’t have to be random to appear random. Online casinos could fix it so that the odds are much more favourable to them than they appear. What might seem like bad luck could be a complex algorithm generating the results that the house needs to win based on your choices.

Obviously though, if as a company you are intending to be in business for the long term then you must have the trust of your customers. If you operate a casino that no-one trusts then you’ll have no gamblers. And no gamblers means no profit, which means your business goes under. To these ends the majority of online gambling sites, including online casinos, utilise random number generating software from well known and trusted companies like Wager Works, Micro Gaming, Play Tech and Cryptologic. If you are gambling online for the first time or looking for a new site to join then it pays to do some research into the company. Find out how long they’ve been established for if you can. A site that has been operational for a while will probably be legitimate because it doesn’t take long to lose your customers or get shut down if you’re not. Check what random number generating software they use.

Having said this there are a small number of rogue casinos out there. They are generally short-lived, aiming for the ‘quick kill’ and then disappearing as quickly as they arrived. There have also been allegations of cheating made against larger online casinos such as Casino Bar. Allegations of cheating have also been made against some of the random number generating software companies, however they have never been confirmed. Series of random events do occasionally generate apparent patterns, it is to be mathematically expected.

There are online casino blacklists containing lists of rogue casino sites to avoid. However it should be noted that different authors of these blacklists have different opinions on why casinos have made their lists. Read the reasons given for each casino’s blacklisting and decide for yourself if you want to play there.

The Wizard of Odds’ blacklist
Casinomeister’s list of rogue casinos
Casino Man’s Blacklist

A final consideration is that many casinos are licensed out of foreign countries and are therefore not subject to the scrutiny of the UK regulatory bodies. The majority of online casinos are safe, and fun, and if you win you could win a lot of money. Perhaps enough to hit the tables of Monte Carlo or Las Vegas with style!

Jean De Plume also writes articles at Casino Lagoon, a casino gambling blog.

Struggling hard to save your money? Cheap used car usually mean to inexpensive per-owned automobile although most of inexpensive used car can be cheap. With cheap used car you can save lots of your money on buying.

Good deals come and go incredibly fast. You may find out fast where you can get the cheapest deal on a used car only to realize that it is no longer available by the time you to get to the dealership.

But inexpensive can mean something different to different people. You will find different rates for every car as it’s according to there model and use you have to select the car which will satisfy your need in your budget, it means getting a reasonably good dependable car for as little money as possible.

There is also risks in cheap used cars unfortunately, the older the used car and the less it costs, the higher the possibility that the buyer will encounter problems and expenses that were not anticipated.

To reduce your tension after you have purchased your used car, it’s even more important to follow the suggestions in our Used Car Buying Guide. It means the older the car, the more effort you should take to make sure the car is in good condition and will be reliable for the time you intend to own it.

Before you decide to purchase a used car it important to get that car inspect by the technical person who has good knowledge about the automobile parts and its performance. While you wouldn’t need to check a relatively new car’s engine compression, this should be on the “must” list for an older car. Otherwise, you could be replacing the engine in a short time.

Anna Josephs is a freelance journalist having experience of many years writing articles and news releases on various topics such as pet health, automobile and social issues. She also has great interest in poetry and paintings, hence she likes to write on these subjects as well. Currently writing for this website Best Cheap Used Car . For more details please contact at annajosephs@gmail.com

This article is written by Anna josephs, writer of the website www.bestcheapusedcar.com/“> Best Cheap Used Car . This article is published only for the educational and information purpose.

When Joe Gandolfo, a life insurance salesman was asked how he had sold over one billion dollars of life insurance in 1975, he said that all it takes is “understanding people.” Although Joe’s response makes selling seem simple, his formula for success is one that can be recommended to you without hesitation, because it will work well for you as it does for insurance agents or for any sales representative for that matter.

In the insurance industry, as you may be aware, members of that profession get excited about someone who sells in excess of one million dollars in life insurance each year. In fact, they have an elite group of sales representatives they call the million dollar round table where individuals are recognized for their outstanding sales performance. To put Joe’s accomplishment into better perspective, it would take an average million dollar round table producer one thousand years to equal Joe Gandolfo’s production figures for 1975 alone.

Joe’s performance is almost unbelievable from any perspective. However, from his sales productivity, we see he is one of an elite group of superstars who have discovered the secrets to sales success. Therefore, when Joe suggests that it is the ability of a sales representative to understand and work with people, rather than technical skills or product knowledge that produce sales, you really should pay attention to what he has to say. Joe’s sales philosophy is simple if you don’t learn and use the techniques that will help you to get to know and understand your prospects, you will never be able to effectively use your product knowledge or skills of persuasion to produce a steady flow of sales.

In out Sales Success Strategies self-directed learning series (http://www.TheSellingEdge.com/manual1.htm), we explore some vital techniques that will help you to set the stage for getting to know people better. The first and most important step in the sales process is to build rapport with the people you serve. This is a vital step because if you fail to build trust, your prospective customers will never reveal enough about themselves to give you the inside track to help them meet their needs through the purchase of your products and/or services.

VIRDEN J. THORNTON is the founder and President of The $elling Edge®, Inc. a firm specializing in sales, customer relations, and management training and development. Clients have included Sears Optical, Eastman Kodak, IBM, Deloitte & Touché, Bank One, Jefferson Pilot, and Wal-Mart to name a few. Virden is the author of Prospecting: The Key To Sales Success and the best selling Building & Closing the Sale, Fifty-Minute series books and Close That Sale, a video/audio tape series published by Crisp Publications, Inc. Menlo Park, California. He has also authored a Self-Directed Learning series of sales, coaching & team development, telemarketing, and personal productivity training guides.

Check out the listed books and manuals at http://www.TheSellingEdge.com/books1.htm Virden teaches for the Center For Professional Development, Texas Tech University at Lubbock, Texas and in the School Of Entrepreneurship, J. Willard And Alice S. Marriott School Of Management at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. You can contact Virden at: Virden@TheSellingEdge.com.