Making A Difference

The Value of Encouragement by Phil Evans

We are lucky enough to live opposite a magnificent sporting complex (3 soccer fields and a cricket pitch); so we get entertained all year round with the presence of people of all ages playing to win! The most passion shown is when the kids are playing!

The other day I experienced a soccer coach working with his young teenage team just prior to them playing a match.

What a great time I had listening to his words of praise and encouragement as I walked just near them as I wandered home from one of my daily strolls beside our beautiful lake.

His words were so uplifting and supportive to this group of keen young sportsmen! They were about to go onto the field, and do their best to win their game, which they train so hard for every week.

After I got home I sat and observed his actions with the young guys just before they ran on to begin play. I couldn't hear his words now as I was inside our home and telling Sue what I had heard him saying; but I could distinctly see his supportive actions and energy as he spoke to every player individually. Pats on the back; hand shakes; high-fives; encouragement plus! Pure magic!

Every one of them lit up with enthusiasm and eagerness to do their best for him, for themselves, and for the team!

The coach of the other team was displaying the exact opposite behavior; he was yelling abuse and criticism 'at' his young players the whole time; and displayed an arrogant argumentative attitude towards the opposition team and the umpire for the entire game.

Yes - the team who received the nurturing and encouragement did win the game! And...they celebrated accordingly with their singing, dancing, and excited cheering!

The other team walked off the field with their heads hung down in disappointment.

The people in our lives; those people who we spend time and conversation with; are also experiencing either encouragement or criticism from us and others.

They also will be feeling those winning or losing emotions; just as we do from others in our lives!

It is important for us all to be aware of what we are 'putting out there' when dealing with family, friends, and work mates.

Yes, I do understand that "What other people do or say is their stuff; and how we react (or not) is our stuff"; however - this message today is about promoting the use of encouraging words and actions as often as possible.

Encouragement: We all need to hear it; see it; and feel it!

Best way for each of us to have that experience is to give it out freely; and it will come back freely!

Have a great week of doing your best to just be YOU!

(c) Phil Evans - People Stuff TM - 2011

Phil Evans is a Motivator, Business Coach, Life Coach and Inspirational Writer specialising in Relationship Dynamics and Adoption Issues. You can visit his website at: www.peoplestuff.com.au and join his newsletter.

Who are the 99 percent?
Posted by Ezra Klein

(Ramin Talaie - BLOOMBERG) “I did everything I was supposed to and I have nothing to show for it.”

It’s not the arrests that convinced me that “Occupy Wall Street” was worth covering seriously. Nor was it their press strategy, which largely consisted of tweeting journalists to cover a small protest that couldn’t say what, exactly, it hoped to achieve. It was a Tumblr called, “We Are The 99 Percent,” and all it’s doing is posting grainy pictures of people holding handwritten signs telling their stories, one after the other.

“I am 20K in debt and am paying out of pocket for my current tuition while I start paying back loans with two part time jobs.”

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These are not rants against the system. They’re not anarchist manifestos. They’re not calls for a revolution. They’re small stories of people who played by the rules, did what they were told, and now have nothing to show for it. Or, worse, they have tens of thousands in debt to show for it.

“I am a 28 year old female with debt that had to give up her apartment + pet because I have no money and I owe over $30,000.”

College debt shows up a lot in these stories, actually. It’s more insistently present than housing debt, or even unemployment. That might speak to the fact that the protests tilt towards the young. But it also speaks, I think, to the fact that college debt represents a special sort of betrayal. We told you that the way to get ahead in America was to get educated. You did it. And now you find yourself in the same place, but buried under debt. You were lied to.

“Married mother of 3. Lost my job in 2009. My family lost our health insurance, our savings, our home, and our good credit. After 16 months, I found a job -- with a 90 mile commute and a 25 percent pay cut. After gas, tolls, daycare, and the cost of health insurance, i was paying so my kids had access to health care.”

Let’s be clear. This isn’t really the 99 percent. If you’re in the 85th percentile, for instance, your household is making more than $100,000, and you’re probably doing okay. If you’re in the 95th percentile, your household is making more than $150,000. But then, these protests really aren’t about Wall Street, either. There’s not a lot of evidence that these people want a class war, or even particularly punitive measures on the rich. The only thing that’s clear from their missives is that they want the economy to start working for them, too.

“I am young. I am educated and hard working. I am not able to pay my bills. I am afraid of what the future holds.”

I don’t imagine that too many members of, say, the 97th percentile are writing in to this Web site. But imagine yourself as a young person who took out loans to go to college, got good grades, and has graduated into an economy that doesn’t seem to want you. You did everything you were told to do, and it didn’t work out. That hurts, of course, but it’s a bad economy, and everybody is suffering. At least, that’s what they say.

“i am a 19 year old student with 18 credit hours and 2 part time jobs. i am over 4000 dollars in debt but my paychecks are just enough to get me to school and back. next year my plan was to attend a 4 year college and get my bfa, but now i am afraid that without a co-signer i will have no shot at a loan and even if i can get a loan i am afraid that i will leave college with no future and a crippling debt.”

But you look around and the reality is not everyone is suffering. Wall Street caused this mess, and the government paid off their debts and helped them rake in record profits in recent years. The top 1 percent account for 24 percent of the nation’s income and 40 percent of its wealth. There are a lot of people who don’t seem to be doing everything they’re supposed to do, and it seems to be working out just fine for them.

“I went to graduate school believing that there might be some financial security afforded by a higher degree, and that with that security I could finally buy my mom her own house and take care of her. Instead, I have wasted six years of my life.”

Perhaps that’s part of the reason that the movement doesn’t have clear demands. It’s easy to explain how to punish the rich. You can tax them, or regulate their activities. It’s a bit hard to say how to make the economy work better for average people. There’s an intuition out there that part of the reason it’s not working better is that the rich hold too much political power, and so there’s a clear desire to reduce that political power, but it’s not clear how far that actually gets you in terms of bringing wages up.

“I am a 27 year old with a bachelor degree. I ran out of my student loans while trying to find a job. I am ‘living’ with my mother again to get back on my feet. So far, the best I can do is a part time retail job paying $8 an hour. I am hearing impaired with cochlear implant. My cochlear implant warranty expired. I do not have the money to renew it. How can I work at my new minimum wage job when my implant is broken? I need it to HEAR.”

But this is why I’m taking Occupy Wall Street -- or, perhaps more specifically, the ‘We Are The 99 Percent’ movement -- seriously. There are a lot of people who are getting an unusually raw deal right now. There is a small group of people who are getting an unusually good deal right now. That doesn’t sound to me like a stable equilibrium.

The organizers of Occupy Wall Street are fighting to upend the system. But what gives their movement the potential for power and potency is the masses who just want the system to work the way they were promised it would work. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans are really struggling. It’s not that 99 percent of Americans want a revolution. It’s that 99 percent of Americans sense that the fundamental bargain of our economy -- work hard, play by the rules, get ahead -- has been broken, and they want to see it restored.

【 frugal consumptive idea 】
Though you have a mulberry bag,you have to own the following conception.
Frugal consumptive idea is that people in the consumer should maximize the save material wealth, reduce or even eliminate waste of a kind of consumption. This is the earliest form of human history, most affected and longest a consumption. Can say, since when mankind produces to this day, the consumption are all more or less, or strong or weak affect people's consumption behavior and consumption patterns. Chinese and foreign economic history, the frugal consumptive idea thinkers and numerous school, but from the existing information, see, China's economic history that "the thrift thinkers and scholars seems to be some more. A Chinese history is said spending a Chu chung of history and extravagant spenders I'm afraid and much. Of course, this is not said China's consumer history have no other spending, but that advocates thriftily, against luxury, it is China's consumer the mainstream thoughts. In the 20 century before mankind overall production capacity still rather low, this makes the material wealth hard-won, support human life life data is very scarce. In order to seek survival and development, people can only leave no stone unturned to life of the economy of data. To do so we can make limited consumer material maintain more people's survival, to the production process and put more production material. Material determines consciousness, thought reflect the reality, thus they generate far-reaching consumer history, of enduring frugal consumptive idea. Frugal consumptive idea to the development of human society huge role, work not died. In the level of social productive forces rather low, it is extremely short time of the materials, it is with material material cost-effective use of that man had a long hard times, just be breeds and development to this day. If human ancestors, poor luxury desire, spend too recklessly, human would have for wealth drained and destroyed. As an example, once its of the ancient Greek is in people's arrogant excessive is high, the decline in crumble completely.
So value and maintain your Mulberry handbag, and save the resource.

TO LOVE
by Ranu khare

Love is a magic trigger
Catch it while it hovers
Else you’ll never figure
What has passed over

Love buries the hatchet of hate
Scales the tallest mountains
Unshackles the strongest chains
Reverses the lines of fate

Love builds instant communication
Is an ethereal priceless wonder
Stronger than magnetic attraction
Where romance begins to flower

Lost in dreamy surrender
No logic can appeal to a lover
Many a tragic tales are woven
For generations to remember