Achieve Better Reading Skills

 

 Don't think that you are a good reader just because you can read everything on this page.
A definition of 'read' is "to utter aloud written matter;" if utilizing this meaning alone, naturally you are reading. There is another definition, though, which says "to understand or interpret". You must be able to explain what you've read and answer questions. Otherwise, you're merely reciting words on a page. Yes, you must know the words, but you also have to understand the author's message. Only when this process happens are you really reading.

Reading comprehension incorporates a number of specific abilities. Make it a point when reading to your children to ask them specific questions about what you've just read. This will strengthen their understanding of the subject. Practice this exercise especially during school vacation times to help reinforce their reading skills.. Below are a few questions you could ask:

1. Primary Topic - Describe the primary idea in the story just read. Often the main idea of a story or article can be found in the beginning sentence. The following sentences detail the main idea.
One example: I like school. My teacher is very nice. I have some good friends at school. My favorite period is recess.

In the above example the sentence that is first relates the topic of the rest of the paragraph. The following sentences go into more detail.
2. Inferences - To infer means "to determine by reason from something established or presumed." In other words, use your previous insights to figure out something.

Here's and example: An event of historic proportions happened when the Eagle spaceship touched down on the moon. Boulders and craters cover the landscape. In a few minutes I will suit up in my special space gear and take mankind's first step on the moon.

From these signals, you can deduce that a man will shortly step on the moon. Based on history, we know that Neil Armstrong was the first man to achieve this.

3. Projecting Outcomes - By understanding what you've just read you'll have the ability to guess the next thing to take place. TV is a good time to improve this skill. Try doing it when you watch commercials.
Example: I had a bedtime snack then washed my hands and scrubbed my teeth and jumped into bed. Mommy sat on my bed and read me a book. When she was finished, she kissed me goodnight.
The logical conclusion is the child will fall asleep.

4. Fact or Opinion - Facts are based on proof and truth. Opinions are based on feelings and beliefs.
As an example: I am in the Bank Atlantic Center. Faith Hill and Tim McGraw are going to perform a concert. They are the finest singers of all!

As you can see, the factual sentences are the first two and the opinion is the third sentence. Your opinion does not have to agree with anyone else's because it reflects what YOU think. The author will give you clues into his thoughts by using comparison words that end in "er" or "est". Examples are funnier and funniest.

In summary, in order to read, interpretation is as important as knowing each word. Reading comprehension skills include identifying the main topic, inferring what was meant, forecasting what will happen and picking out fact vs opinion.

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How to Develop Goals: Using an Action Plan Template

There is no single action plan format that defines how you should do it. What I find is that usually the best way to choose one that works for you is to look at a few examples.
When you look at the web, there are thousands of different templates available. Are they all good? I guess most of them are. But most importantly, are they suited to what you needed to do?

A good action plan is usually one that allows you to track your progress and has clear milestones. Here are some elements that I would normally include in mine.

• action to be done
• action assigned to
• target date
• actual completed date
• possible obstacles
• priority

Action to be done is the actual action step to be taken. It can be for example if you are buying a house, saving enough deposit.

Action assigned to is who actually is responsible for the task. It could be you, your partner, a friend, etc. As long as the person is equipped to do it and knows the expectations to what is needed.

Target date is when you would expect the action to be completed. The target date provides a natural checkpoint to see how things are going.
Actual completed date is the date that your action actually completes. Hopefully this is not too far from your target date.

If you are interested in a more detailed way of tracking how you are progressing, we also have what we call an action plan tracker. You can create an action plan tracker by having a space to write down how you progress daily with your action plan.

Sometimes I find that it is very easy for us to set plans but it could be very hard to focus in doing it. So it would be handy to write down actions that we will be doing daily to take us to our goal. If the goal is to join a gym, what can be written as a daily task could be as easy as ringing a few gyms to check on what they offer.

An action plan tracker can help with our focus goals which can be a subset of any action plan item or general goal that we have. In this way, we can track what we achieve in each week. It is good to track our achievements in each week because it can either encourage us with what we have already accomplished or it can also highlight areas that needs more attention.

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Being Positive

 

Do Not Be Negative!
Living your life negatively will affect all of those that are around you as well as yourself. It's a viscous circle a catch 22 situation. You don't succeed because of your negative belief and when you don't succeed it strengthens your negative belief.

 Your mind is the fastest and most clever computer in history and there is no signs of that changing soon. Don't waste it because it is capable of some truly remarkable stuff. Being negative will only stop you from succeeding and you deserve better than that. Being negative will make you unhappy and in extreme times, being negative may even make you depressed, depressed with the thoughts that you are nothing, you have nothing to give and there is nothing out there for you. Honestly the amount of people who really should be more positive in there lives shocks me everyday.

These people have loving families, they have loving children, good health and some of them even have decent enough jobs, but still they are negative all the time and that makes them unhappy. I can put a bet on these people becoming depressed and alone sooner rather than later if they don't learn to be more positive.
So how can you learn to be positive? 

People learn everything that they do in their lives and the same is true with them being negative. So if you have learned to be negative could you not learn to become positive? Of course you can, but Rome wasn't built in 1 day and neither can your attitude change in 1 day. It takes time and it takes effort. But won't that be worth it in the long term? Won't it be worth it when you finally pluck up the courage to apply for your dream job, or when you decide to leave your current job to run that business you always dreamed of having and best of all won't it be worth it when you're finally happy?
Becoming Positive.

So it's now time to change your attitude and to become a more positive human being. So how can you do it? My 1st tip is to start to look for things you are good at but haven't really paid any attention to. The reasons for this is that we get so wound up on concentrating on what we are not good at, that we never seem to notice what we are good at.

How terrible does that sound? But it's true, now if you are a truly negative individual I can put my money on you thinking at this point that you're not good at anything. Well that's crap that's utter rubbish. Everyone is good at stuff, you just have to think harder or even better, why not try asking your friends and your family? Who knows you might be amazed at what you will find. Your friends and you family will probably be able to see things that you do differently than you can, that is because they are not looking through cloudy vision.

They will notice what you do and say more than what you will because we all tend to do what we are good at on auto pilot. Because we are so good at whatever it is, we don't have to think about what it is we are good at. Once you start to hear about the things you are good at your attitude will already begin to change because you now know that you are not that useless human that you once believed you were, now that belief has been proven to be false you can no longer accept it.

Get rid of the negative voice in your head and replace it with a positive one. Everyone of us has an inner voice, that same voice that tells us, 'not to be stupid, we won't succeed'. That voice comes from our unconscious and we all know how powerful our unconscious minds are don't we? But the fact is you are in control and if you truly choose to replace that inner negative voice with something that is in fact positive like, 'You can do this'.

That is what being positive is all about. So if you can learn to do these 2 thing's, you can learn to stop being negative and become a new positive individual. Remember it takes time and it does in fact take effort, but these are the 2 best ways that I used myself when I changed my own attitude from a negative one to a positive one, so I am living proof that they do work.

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Understand Your Energy - Optimise Your Life

Energy as defined in Physics is the capacity to perform work. With this awareness, now ask yourself, "How much energy do I have right now"? If you are feeling de-energised or tired, you obviously understand that you will not be able to perform the crucial tasks you need to carry out daily, at the level or intensity, you need to, in order to achieve the results you want. 

 

Energy is effectively the fuel in your tank and is the crucial element necessary for you to bring your skill and talent to life. Your energy is effectively made of four crucial elements, namely physical energy, spiritual energy, emotional energy and mental energy. I am focusing this article on optimising your physical energy as this is the core element and the one element of energy, which can positively or negatively affect all the other areas of energy in our body.

Physical Energy

The physical energy component of our energy is the one we probably understand the best, but is also the one we tend to neglect the most. We are all in sedentary type jobs and as such, we do not see the direct need for physical energy at all. The reality though is that, if you have insufficient physical energy, it influences all the other dimensions of energy and as such your performance is reduced. Your physical energy affects the way you feel, reduces your ability to focus and also affects your level of motivation as well.

 

 It is thus crucial that you get the physical energy component working effectively, before you can improve any of the other areas of energy and get them to operate at their highest levels.

Optimising your physical Energy

There are four crucial elements you need to work on, if you want to optimise your physical energy. These are sleep, nutrition, fitness and daytime rest and renewal. Optimising your performance is not about being able to expend as much energy as possible for extended periods. It comes from your ability to understand your body's rhythms and to expend energy in alignment with these.

This means that to optimise your performance, in alignment with its rhythms, you need to expend very high levels of energy for finite periods of time, followed by periods of rest and rejuvenation. This allows your body to perform at its best, as it is working optimally, aligned with the natural rhythms within the body. All the research I have studied clearly shows that the body functions best, when it works in a wave or rhythm, between expending and recovering of energy, as opposed to what a machine does, where it operates consistently and expends energy continuously.

Understanding the rhythms, which affect us.

We are designed to operate within the circadian rhythm, which means that we sleep when it is dark and to are awake during the day. There is however a second period of time when our bodies need to sleep during the day, to align with its natural rhythms and that is between about 1 and 4 pm every day. This period of the day is a time we go into what is commonly referred to as the circadian trough, which is the lowest point of energy, which we hit during any part of the waking day. As you know by your own rhythms, this is the time of day that your body is screaming at you for a short power nap.

As your current jobs and culture do not allow you to enjoy a power nap at this time of day, you override this natural need, by drinking copious amounts of coffee or taking other stimulants, to push through, this natural rhythm. All this does is drum up your stress hormones, like adrenaline, cortisol and noradrenaline, which cause you to operate well below your optimal levels of performance for the entire afternoon.

I know it flies in the face of everything you have been taught and seems counterintuitive, but if you can make time for a very short power nap, every afternoon, you will improve your performance dramatically every day. This nap should be no longer than 30 minutes and can even be as short as 10 minutes. This short nap supports your physiology and all the research I have studied, has clearly shown that there are huge productivity benefits, which flow from this practice.

In the three hours following a power nap in the afternoon, you are far more efficient and effective as you are vastly more cognitive, rested and awake.

Ultradian rhythm
The next rhythm, you need to understand and use to optimise your physical energy and performance every day is the ultradian rhythm. This is a rhythm, which operates in 90 minute segments throughout the day. You may never have heard of this rhythm, but I am sure you have felt it. As you know, you operate best when you are focused on completing one task at a time, working for a sustained but limited period of time. The reason why you operate best under these circumstances, means that you are aligned with the natural ultradian rhythm and so your body operates optimally.

Making the Ultradian Rhythm work for you
I know I have suggested that you plan your day the night before and that you tackle your most difficult task, first thing in the morning. This is not something I have intuitively come across and seen to work, it is based on the science of the body and a clear understanding how we operate at our best. Without going into too much detail, it should be clear that, our energy levels are at the highest, first thing in the morning, so this is obviously the time of the day, you should tackle, your most important or difficult tasks.

Selecting the most important activity
When selecting the activity, during your planning the night before, ask yourself this simple question
"What is the one most important activity, if I tackled it first thing in the morning and got it out of the way, would add the most value to my day"? This is the task I want you to schedule, first thing in the morning and get out the way, when your energy levels are at their highest.

To optimise the rest of your day, after using your first 90 minutes to get the toughest or most important task out of the way. Break your day up into 90 minutes segments with planned rests of about 5 - 10 minutes after each intense period of effort, focus and concentration. This will allow you to align with the ultradian rhythm and as such you will get the most from your physical energy every day. 

 

The 5 - 10 minute rest periods I am referring to are as simple as a chatting to a friend about trivial things, to relieve the tension, small bursts of exercise, like a walk or a few jumping jacks or just meditate.

Now that you have an understanding of how your body works best and the rhythms, which affect it, try to work with these rhythms and you will immediately see a huge improvement in your effectiveness and productivity.

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The Power of Stupidity

It is entirely possible to perceive the stupidity of another person as a special form of intelligence, for a while. While intelligence expresses itself in understandable, logical behavior, which makes it measurable, calculable, and controllable, the conduct of the stupid is senseless and therefore cannot be predicted or evaluated.

Stupidity can be amazingly effective: a stupid person may, for example, appear poised and in command of the situation in the midst of danger, simply because he does not have the imagination to realize the threat.

 A stupid person can appear to be decisive, merely because his inability to think abstractly leaves him with only one choice in a given situation - an instinctive one, and therefore quite possibly the right one. Being ignorant and therefore incapable of making comparisons, the stupid person is likely to be amazingly consistent in judging intellectual problems.

It may take months before one finally discovers the pattern behind the apparent lack of pattern, or system, in a stupid [...](individual)'s thinking, and is able to see behind the mask of self-assurance its true basis: an incapacity for abstract thought and a lack of sensitivity, founded on a lack of experience.

[Esther Vilar]

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How to Stay Healthy

Staying healthy in this day and age can be a challenge between fast food restaurants on every corner, unlimited entertainment options that promote inactivity, and a medicinal solution to treat most conditions, there is little motivation for taking responsibility for your health.

Making positive health choices can help you feel good on the daily basis, help you avoid nagging illnesses like head colds, and even prevent serious diseases. While living a healthy life cannot guarantee you from not getting lung cancer or pancreas cancer, you will be reducing your risk. In the long run, these positive choices can lead to a longer, healthier life that will require fewer medications.

Your first step for maintaining good health is eating right and getting enough exercise. This is probably one of the theoretically least challenging aspects of staying healthy, but it is often difficult to put into action. Making healthy food choices on the daily basis and finding time to exercise is easier said than done. Busy lives often lead to choosing foods that are quick and easy, and often prepared ahead of time.

 Exercising when there is work to be done, kids to be cared for, and other chores to handle is often a tough thing to prioritize. If you want to stay healthy and happy, work hard to make healthy food choices and try to fit exercise into your schedule at least three to five times each week.

Another part of a healthy life is keeping your stress levels under control. Exercising will go a long way in controlling your stress, but you may need to do more. If you experience stress on the regular basis, it can have long-term effects on your health. Be sure you take time to relax and do not let stress build up over time.
A great way to prevent bad stress is to be surrounded with positive people.

 If there are friends and loved ones you can talk with, it will help you to release a lot of the bad feelings and anxiety you feel. Surrounding yourself with positive people will boost your own mood and help you cope with the daily events you face. It will also give you a place for support when things are especially tough. A positive attitude and strong support system helps you maintain good health.

A final method for staying healthy over the course of your lifetime is to practice prevention. Instead of waiting until you get sick and searching for a cure, do the things listed above to prevent ever facing illness. If your goal is to keep your body strong enough to resist sickness and disease, you can avoid a number of illnesses that would otherwise be a problem.

 Have a healthy attitude, get plenty of rest and fresh air, and follow the steps above to prevent minor illness and serious diseases. A long and healthy life will be your reward, and you will save time, money, and a great deal of pain by adopting a preventative attitude toward your health.
Eat right, exercise, reduce stress, surround yourself with positive, supportive people, and practice prevention.

Connor R. Sullivan has been searching the term lung cancer New York in order to find the latest treatments because he is authoring an article on the subject for a major news magazine. A friend of Connor's has been diagnosed with pancreas cancer New York and is seeking treatment at a well known treatment center.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Connor_R_Sullivan

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6 Effective Tips On How To Read Faster And Comprehend More

It takes dedication and steadfastness to be a fast reader and assimilator. Every average student has a lot to read and comprehend. In order to cover up your work load for the semester or academic session and have a good grade in your exams, you need to abide by the rules and techniques you will learn after reading this article.

To equally help yourself read faster, you can equally acquire reading software that will help you to practice any technique you must have leant online or offline about reading faster and comprehension.
The best way to succeed is for you to always remember the gains of reading faster and understanding. This will help to motivate you towards building your reading abilities.

Knowing how to read faster and comprehension is not only good for students alone, researchers, office workers, lecturers, etc need to know the skills of fast reading because it will help in making your work finish on time and you will also have more time for family and friends.

WAYS TO READ FASTER AND COMPREHEND MORE
STOP WORD VOCALIZATION

Some people vocalize words as they read along. Vocalization slows down your reading speed. Research has proven that vocalization retards the assimilation capabilities of your brain. So, if your still in the category of readers that are still vocalizing, stop it right away.

IDENTIFY YOUR SPEED.

Identifying your reading speed will definitely help you to know how you have progressed in your endeavor to read faster. Therefore, take write ups with specified word count and try to know your speed via quantity of words read per hour.

LEARN HOW TO FOCUS.

Focusing on the content and subject matter you are reading will help you understand it faster. Therefore, stop thinking about unnecessary things like the romance date you had the previous day, financial problems, family problems and other things that will distract you from what you are doing at that particular time. It has been proven that most people do not understand or assimilate what they are reading just because of unnecessary distraction.
To also increase your ability to focus, you have to go to a quiet environment to read. Most especially if you have a great volume of work to do.

HAVE A GOAL.

You should have a goal on the quantity of material you need to read per day. Set a goal you are sure to achieve per day and try to increase the goal as time goes on. Within a short time, you will identify that your reading speed has increased.

LEARN READING SUMMARIZATION.

This technique should be applied when you have really improved in your speed of reading and comprehension. And you should also apply this technique when reading a material that is so large. Reading summarization is reading the topics and sub topics of pages, paragraphs and chapters.
Some authors call this technique skim reading. You just scan key words ad try to determine the contents through experience.

GROUP READING

Do not read words one after the other, rather read the words by groups. It's all about training yourself to be reading words in groups. Once you start it, you will see how easy it is.

The strategies stated in this article should be applied mildly when you are reading complex materials. Such materials are mathematics and engineering and other professional materials. You have to try and understand the what the complex material is all about because you will be solving some problems.

A speed reading expert from How To Speed Read, a website that provides tons of useful speed reading guides. Learn how to read better and faster now.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Norb_Winslow

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