There are times when I shake someone’s hand, where I feel the person is trying to establish superiority over me.  Sometimes a person’s strong grip will give me this message.  Other times, their hand comes swooping from above with their palm down.  These are direct or indirect ways when someone is expressing dominance in their body language.

It is especially evident to me when they want to establish themselves as superior, when subtle verbal statements go along with their dominant body language.  If your temperament is like mine, you don’t really care if they think themselves as dominant because like me, perhaps you are a secure person.  But the actions of the controlling person can be annoying. 

What’s one to do?

Regarding handshakes, there are ways to reverse the dominance in body language.  If a person has a strong grip, try to hold their hand a second or two longer than necessary.  This may be a little awkward for the other person, but they will quickly know you are not easily lorded over.  The Hand swooping from above with their palm down to shake your hand is a little trickier.  One option if possible, is to remain a distance away from them as they close in then, quickly swoop down from above with your palm down.

I personally know a very tall individual who I’ve had differences in philosophy with.  Publicly we try to keep a peaceful persona but we are not really friends.  Every time we see each other in public, he makes a grand spectacle of saying hello to me and immediately patting me on the back while holding one of my shoulders.  This is quite annoying because he is so tall and I know he is trying to establish who is superior - even if it is unconsciously.

However, the last time my tall friend tried to show dominance in body language, I reversed it on him.  Because he is so tall, I had to put my arm under his then I placed my other arm around him.  I gave him a big hug.  This surprised him.  It must have especially surprised him when I held on to him for a few seconds.  He seemed a little more hesitant to continue talking with me after that.

Dominance in body language can also be expressed with walking.  People that want to show superiority while walking in a group, will try to get ahead of the pack.  They have to be first.  They prefer to be in the middle.  Especially when there are three people walking, the one that wants to show dominance in body language will strive to be in the middle.  But, if we all wanted to reverse this dominant body language expression, everyone will eventually be racing each other to the front.  This would look ridiculous.  A good way to show dominance in body language in this context when walking in a group is to stay behind.  Let people go in front of you while you touch their back, helping them to move along.  Feel strategic and important, and you will come across as being in charge.  Let the guy in front take the first bullet.

If you are constantly worrying then you are harming your body and mind, and eventually your emotions will explode into anger. Worrying often leads nowhere, since most times, the things that people worry about are out of their control. For example, if you have bill due tomorrow and do not get a paycheck until Friday and no one has the money to lend you then you have to wait until Friday to pay the bill. Why worry about it until Friday arrives, since there may be nothing you can do. Of course you should check your resources to find out if something is available to you, but if it isn’t do not stress your self, rather patiently wait until payday arrives. If you are constantly worrying then eventually your emotions will crumble and an anger outburst may occur. Worry is a distress to our mental status, or aggravation that results from concern over something impending or anticipated therefore worry is anxiety. When you are worrying, your nerves are affected and when the nerves flare, your temper is subject to flare. The British Dialect for worry is to strangle or to choke. Therefore, we see that worry is not healthy, since strangling and choking can kill. In short, if you are constantly worry or anticipating then you are causing your body harm. Your heart, nerves, and other portions of the body are affected as you worry. The body signs are there when you are worrying. You often feel the pit of your stomach in knots. You might feel your arms and legs shake, or your heart stressed to its limit. If you cannot change it do not worry about it, it is out of your control anyway. Sufficient for each day for no one knows what tomorrow will bring. Taking it one day at a time is the best strategy for dealing with stress. If you remember that you can change something’s, but other things are out of your control you will fare better in life. Anger is an intense emotion that can make or break a person. If you are angry and blow a fuse, more than likely added trouble will come your way and then you will worry constantly trying to figure out a way to escape.  You already have enough problems in your life, so why increase your flow. Emotions are nothing to toy with, since emotions control our joy, anger, happy, sadness and so forth. Emotions are designed to help us manage our lives. However, if you are not in touch with your emotions then you emotions will not be in touch with you. Usually what follows with worry is depression, which is a state of sadness. Now if you have anxiety combined with depression your nerves are affected tremendously. This means that you are weighing heavy on your emotions and when triggered you are most likely going to explode. If you are screaming, shouting, yelling, or cursing at the other person then this will add to your existing problems and will affect your nerves more so. It makes sense to let go and think carefully about your situation, finding a way to control your emotions and anger. If you think before acting, it often opens new doors and you will find a resolve for your problems. Remember no one can predict what tomorrow will bring. Therefore, the control is out of your hands and the only resource then is to relax and think of the potential resolves available to you. Your mind is a tricky area and if you let your mind take control of you then you are heading for a disaster. Being in charge of your own life is taking the road to success and minimizing your problems. If you feel that you are centered out from the rest of the world, remember someone else has more problems than you have and few of us have very little resources to resolve the problems. No one is excluded from problems in life and we all have our share of turmoil to face each day. If you seem to explode every time your anger arises then you might need to seek help at anger management, mental health or medical experts. 

DISCLAIMER:

This information is not presented by a medical practitioner and is for educational and informational purposes only. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read.

Since natural and/or dietary supplements are not FDA approved they must be accompanied by a two-part disclaimer on the product label: that the statement has not been evaluated by FDA and that the product is not intended to ?iagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.?

Are you focusing on the big picture when you are managing your time? If you are focusing on the smaller picture rather than the bigger picture, you might want to sit down and review your time management scheme, plans and actions again. There are two types of goals in time management. There are short-term goals and long-term goals and both require planning, action, and timeframes. Our short-term goals are often what we want to achieve in two or five years, but our long-term goals are our ultimate destination to success. Of course, we must look at our short-term goals through out the process of time managing our way to achieve our goals, but the big picture is where it is. Your can’t ignore one or the other. Goals are something set for our self, and strive hard every day to reach those goals. Notice I said “every day.” I am a firm believer of standing up for what I believe in. If we do not take that stand, no one else is going to do it for us. Therefore, if you want to achieve your goals, then you better be looking at the big picture, while you are working hard every day to reach the smaller picture. This means you will not slack. I am not saying you can’t take a break, but that break had better be a rejuvenation to get back on track. Time management is tricky in most cases, yet it is simple in all cases.

If you are aware of your goals and abilities to achieve those goals, you have two main elements to obtaining those goals. If you are slacking in an area that delays your goal, then you have to find a solution to meet those goals requirements. For example, if your goal is to be a successful business owner over the course of ten years, and you are lacking knowledge, education and skills to obtain that goal, you know what you have to do. When you create that time management solution, then you will need to consider all aspects of life. This means you will factor in the good and bad in that time management scheme.

All right, now we are on a journey to open our own business in the next ten years. What do we need to meet those goals requirements? We need to focus on finance, time, energy, plans that work to meet the goals deadline, and what we need within to get what we will not from that goal. Let the journey begin!

Time management starts with goals, which is the terminal point of a competition. Keyword: Competition: we must strive very hard each day to reach our goal since we are in constant competition. If you have laid out a business plan, as the years progress you might find that the competition level has increased. We must also consider competitive price increase-decrease. In other words, you are saving money to reach a goal and realize that you have competitors. In your time management scheme is your plans to meet that goal, and your financial savings and budgeting is listed in this plan. Did you factor in increase in advertising and marketing? How about the overhead of your business in the next ten years, once your business is up and running. What about the financial expenses to run your business smoothly, which will almost certainly increase over the next ten years as well as the expenses of providing for your family, and other need that may increase through this timeframe.

Now we can look at skills and education. Do you have the skills and education required to run the type of business you intend to open in the next ten years? If not you should deduct the cost and time of education in your time management scheme, and increase it by including productivity as a result of putting forth the efforts of meeting your goals.

How much energy and time are your willing to invest in meeting your goals deadline. If you are wasting time in one area of your life, you might want to add a year or two to your goal, and deduct money and time from your time management scheme.

Joanne “Jo” Rowling writes under the pen name “J. K. Rowling”, and, as of 2008, has a personal net worth of just over $1.1 billion USD. The public knows her best as the author who gave the world the character Harry Potter. Though she makes her living telling stories of magical fantasy, her own story is no less amazing.

Joanne Rowling was born July 31, 1965, in South Gloucestershire, England, to parents Peter James and Anne Rowling. Together with her sister Dianne, the family moved to the village of Winterbourne, England, when Joanne was four. She was educated at St. Michael’s Primary School, and the settings and faculty of the place is said to have been her inspiration for many of the characters and places in the later Harry potter novels. Her secondary school was Wyedean School and College, and then she moved on to the University of Exeter where she acquired a BA in French and Classics.

Her first career was as a teacher. She moved to Porto, Portugal, to teach English as a second language. In 1992, she married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes, with whom she had one child, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes, in 1993. The couple separated in that same year. She moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, to be near her sister Dianne, and fell on hard times as a single mother with no support. She is probably the only billionaire in the world to have received public welfare. Throughout this period, she suffered from clinical depression, which was also spurred by the tragic death of her mother from multiple sclerosis.

Her one outlet was writing. Even as a young child, she had had a vivid imagination and had written stories to read to her sister. Throughout her early adulthood, she was working on her first novel, often writing it in cafes after a long walk during which her infant daughter would fall asleep. She even used her grief over her mother and her depression as material to draw writing inspiration from.

She finished the manuscript of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” in 1995 and began shopping it around to publishers. Ironically, her book was rejected, by an astonishing twelve publishers, before the lucky thirteenth publisher gave her her chance after a year of struggling. That was Bloomsbury Publishers, a small publishing house in London, England, who had recently branched out into children’s books. The editor at Bloomsbury advised Rowling to get a day job, because “she had little chance of making money in children’s books”. The book was at last printed in 1997.

This little book went on to sell an estimated 120 million copies worldwide, as well as winning too many awards to list in this article. Rowling received a grant from the Scottish Arts Council to allow her to continue writing. She began to publish a new novel in the series every year from 1998 to 2000, and every couple of years since. The series is now up to seven novels, each of them getting longer than the last.

To say Harry Potter took the world by storm is still putting it lightly. Each of the novels has their own movie either released or scheduled, the series has its own lines of merchandise and video games, and the mere brand of Harry Potter is worth $15 billion USD. Rowling is the highest-earning novelist in history. The series has been translated into 65 languages, making her one of the most-translated authors in history. Fans camp all night to keep their place in line when a new novel is released. Finally, the word “muggle”, which in the Harry Potter universe means a mundane person not gifted with magical powers, has entered the Oxford English Dictionary with that definition. No less an accomplished novelist than Stephen King has praised the series. Meanwhile the fame of her series has actually inspired a backlash from religious groups seeking attention, and has prompted others in the United States to proclaim that Joanne Rowling singlehandedly revived literacy there.

What is the inspiration that Joanne Rowling can provide us with? Certainly, she has followed her own muse and faithfully followed it, but even those of us without such an equal inner guiding voice can take this away with us: Follow your dream.

Getting enough quality sleep is one of the best weapons in the stress-relief arsenal. There are numerous strategies for ensuring that you sleep like a log each night, and this article discusses a number of them.

First and foremost, regular exercise is conducive to good sleep, among many other health benefits. A thirty-minute walk or jog, a swim, a bike ride, or some other form of aerobic exercise that gets your heart rate up is one of the best ways available for ensuring that you get to sleep easily and stay asleep. It is important to bear in mind, however, that exercising around your bedtime is counterproductive, since this provides an energy burst that will serve to keep you awake.

Caffeine and sugar are big no-nos when it comes to sleep. These are chemical stimulants that will act on your nervous system and leave you staring wide-eyed at the ceiling for hours on end. Nicotine is another stimulant, so smoking a cigarette before bed should also be avoided. You may have heard that alcohol is a depressant, and you may therefore think that alcohol before sleep is harmless at worst or quite helpful at best, but you would be wrong. Although alcohol may indeed make you drift off to sleep faster, you are bound to suffer from a night of sleep characterized by twisting, turning, sweating, toilet breaks, and overall poor sleep. Eating a heavy meal within a couple of hours before bed will make it hard to enjoy quality rest. On the other hand, going to bed on an empty stomach may cause you to experience hunger pains throughout the night. Your childhood glass of warm milk with light snack is a timeless sleeping remedy.

If you like the occasional afternoon nap, be aware that, depending on your body, this may make it difficult for you to fall asleep at your proper time. Consider substituting a brisk walk for a nap.

Take control of your sensory stimuli. For hearing, if there is too much ambient noise in your area, consider purchasing a set of soundproof headphones. For sight, if too much light is making it hard to sleep or waking you too early in the morning, consider purchasing an eye mask, the type people wear on airplanes. For feeling, ensure your room maintains a comfortable temperature, neither too hot nor too cold. And leave the door or window open so that you are getting adequate ventilation.

Discover ways to slow your body and mind down in preparation for sleep. Ensure that you have taken care of all the nagging problems of the day that you can. Perhaps listen to some classical or New Age music. Read a book that does not require too much mental strain. Have a warm bath with essential oils. Do some yoga or Pilates. Meditate. Imagine peaceful scenes. Do what works for you.

Do not spend your time looking at the clock, counting the hours, and causing yourself additional anxiety and stress. Each time you look at the clock may add half an hour to the time it takes you to fall asleep.

Invest in a good mattress and pillow. There are too many considerations in this regard to discuss here, so your best bet is to seek advice from a knowledgeable friend or relative or discuss your options with a salesperson you can trust.

As a last resort, many insomniacs resort to sleeping pills. Nothing is stopping you from this approach if you feel you need it, but before you start taking sleeping pills, see whether a natural herbal remedy such as Valerian offers relief.

Finally, keep in mind that the old guideline about eight hours of sleep every night is only that, a guideline. You yourself can tell the difference between five hours of deep sleep and eight hours of light sleep. Listen to your body and you will not go wrong.