| 1 lb Del Monte Authentic Italian Gourmet Pasta
4 shredded carrots 1 green bell pepper (chopped) 4 Serving spoon Del Monte Fiesta Fruit Cocktail 2 Serving Spoon Boiled Del Monte Whole Kernel Corn ½ cup distilled white vinegar 1 cup white sugar 2 Serving Spoon Del Monte pasta sauces |
14 ozs sweetened condensed milk
2 cups mayonnaise 12 tsp black pepper (ground) |
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| 1 | Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain. | |
| 2 | In large bowl, combine Del Monte Authentic Italian Gourmet Pasta, Del Monte pasta sauces & carrot. In medium bowl, combine vinegar, sugar, condensed milk, mayonnaise, Boiled Del Monte Whole Kernel Corn, salt Del Monte Fiesta Fruit Cocktail and pepper. Toss salad with dressing and chill 4 hours in refrigerator before serving. | |
India’s performance so far in London Olympics 2012
5 and counting…..
As on 11 August 2012, India has won 5 medals including a silver and 4 bronze which is by far the best performance by India in terms of number of medals won at any single Olympic games.
Phobia – Slaying the three dragons
Fear, self-hatred and loneliness are fuelled by our mind and cause most of our miseries. The same mind, when made aware, can cure all these maladies, leading to self-mastery. An extract from Phil Nuernberger’s book The Quest for Personal Power (Full Circle)
There are three destructive conditions of the mind: fear, self-hatred and loneliness. They are like fire-breathing dragons that usurp the creative force of the mind and corrupt our resources, creating disease, unhappiness, and suffering. They seem to be so powerful that we feel helpless before them. We don’t realize that we ourselves are the source of their power, and that we can take it away from them.
Fear: a lack of self-mastery
The most dramatic consequence of self-mastery is the ability to live without fear. Fear, the most destructive of the three dragons, is the cause of much of our suffering and stress. While we may be familiar with fear, we often don’t realize just how pervasive this monster is. Much of our anger and resentments are rooted in fear. Greed most often begins with the fear of not having enough or of not being important. Then when we accumulate wealth, we become obsessed with protecting what we have.
Fear drives us to acquire political and military power, feeling that if we can dominate, we will be secure. But this kind of power can become perverse and feed our insecurities. The more powerful we become, the more we worry about someone else becoming powerful. The Cold War between America and the Soviet Union was a classic example of how fear drives entire cultures: so much power and intellect dedicated to servicing both individual and national egos leading only to an unending sense of insecurity, of not having enough, of not being ‘the best’.
There are many faces of fear but the most terrible is violence. Whether it is the homelessness and street violence in American cities, the horrors of conflict in Bosnia and Rwanda, sectarian violence in India or Ireland, or political murders in Haiti, all have their roots in fear. Terrorists operate in a culture of fear, intentionally using it to gain power and control.
Many of our fears are less dramatic, but not the less destructive. Some people spend their entire lives fearful that they will not meet someone else’s standards. Even gossip has its roots in fear. If we can make others look small, and by so doing make ourselves look better, we compensate for the fear of being unimportant. Religions, government, and communities use fear to control others, and parents use fear to control their children.
We usually don’t like to think of ourselves as being fearful. We use softer words, such as ‘worried’ and ‘anxious‘, which seem a little more acceptable. But worry is a form of fear, and being anxious is how we feel when we succumb to fear. Since we do it often, we get pretty good at it. Most of us become so skilled at worrying that it becomes part of our lives. And yet the only thing we accomplish by worrying is misery for ourselves and others.
What would life be like for you if you lost all your fear? What if you didn’t worry about what might happen to this or that, or you weren’t afraid of what others might think of you, or you didn’t have to worry about losing your job or paying your bills? Most of us think that if we were only richer, prettier, stronger, better-looking, more charming, safer, taller, slimmer-or if we had a better job, newer car, bigger house, more friends, better-looking lovers, more respect (the adjectives are almost endless)-then we wouldn’t worry, and we would be happy.
Worry and fear aren’t created by a lack of things, they are created by how we think. If you have the habit of worrying, it doesn’t matter who you are, what you have, or what you do, you will worry because that is the habit of your mind. This useless habit is one of the biggest causes of disease and unhappiness. And yet it has become so much a part of our lives that we even think that a little fear is helpful, and that fear is a natural part of being human.
There are people who live life without being afraid. They realize that fear is not a natural part of their being, but rather a product of the mind, a fantasy that grips and destroys, but a fantasy nonetheless. Through knowledge and practice, they conquer the mind’s habit of creating fear. This is one of the first goals of Tantra Yoga, as well as the martial arts. Tantra Yoga masters are called ‘Masters‘ because they have mastered their own minds and have conquered their fear.
The same is true of the samurai, the great sword and martial arts masters of Japan, or the great Taoist Masters of China. You can do the same. You can live life without the petty fears and worries that dog us from day to day, and without the great fears that every so often rattle our cages. Even the most desperate of situations can be faced without fear.
As a young man, my Master often walked through the mountains of northern India. The mountains were, and still are, rugged, forested, and untamed. Once, while crossing a very narrow footbridge across a deep ravine, a tiger started crossing the same bridge from the other side. The bridge was so small that only one creature could pass at a time. My Master knew that if he retreated, the tiger would attack. Instead, he raised his arms and rushed toward the tiger, giving a powerful shout. The tiger immediately backed off the bridge, turned tail and ran.
Through self-mastery, you mobilize your powerful innate drive for self-preservation and create both the energy and the focus to find a solution to any problem. But once you allow fear to paralyze the mind, you lose your ability to make choices and become locked into reaction. The greater our self-mastery, the greater our ability to face any situation without fear and to live our lives without worry.
Self-hatred: the other side of misery
At times it seems that we are masters of creating misery. When we aren’t worrying about whether or not something awful is going to happen to us, we remember all the hurts, mistakes, and failures in our past. In other words, when we aren’t preoccupied with someone or something attacking us, we turn around and attack ourselves. We seldom live up to expectations, we are never quite good enough no matter how good we get, and we keep making the same old mistakes.
We suffer from guilt, continually find fault with ourselves, condemn ourselves for not living up to our own or someone else’s expectations. These are all part of the dragon of self-hatred. After so many failures, mistakes, and broken dreams we begin to give up on ourselves and on life. Some of us become depressed, withdrawn, and passive, accepting whatever life gives as a cruel joke that we must endure. Others, angry with themselves, become angry at the world. They become cranky and hostile, taking out their own misery on others.
Like fear, self-hatred is a habit of the mind, an arbitrary way of looking at life and at oneself that leads only to further mistakes, poor performance, and unhappiness. When someone else attacks you, at least you have the opportunity to conquer your adversary by mobilizing the body’s defenses. But when you attack yourself, there is no outcome but defeat. You cannot win in a battle against yourself; you only create conflict and suffering. Instead of mobilizing your body’s systems to defend yourself, you become depressed, passive and withdrawn.
Attacking ourselves is only a habit of the mind, a consequence of the way we learned to see ourselves as we grew up. We can always find many reasons to punish ourselves for the mistakes we make and the expectations we fail to realize. Like fear, the dragon of self-hatred feeds on our lack of self-awareness and skill. We strengthen the dragon by constantly reminding ourselves of our weaknesses and mistakes.
But as long as we continue to feed this dragon of self-hatred by paying attention to it, it continues to breathe fire and create misery for us. The secret is to stop feeding the dragon by experiencing your own inner strength and beauty. You can’t create self-esteem by constantly telling yourself that you are a wonderful person.
Self-esteem and self-respect grow out of the experience of committed effort. Whether or not you succeed is not as important to your self-respect as when you know that you tried your best. And if you continue to make the effort, if you continue to work with your resources, you will eventually succeed. Self-mastery arises out of effort, the underpinning of success.
The tantrics have long known that depression and apathy damage the immune system and lead to serious disease. They also know that when you give up on yourself and become a victim, you deny yourself the power to grow and change. You stay stuck in your own ignorance. That’s why the tantrics believe that the only true sin is sloth, the unwillingness to make an effort. Mistakes are seen as a necessary part of learning, not reasons for punishment. But without effort, personal power remains undeveloped and unused, and the outcome is self-hatred.
Loneliness: in ignorance of spirit The third dragon is loneliness, the most subtle of all the dragons. It is the most difficult to defeat in part because it hides in our misunderstanding of its nature. Most of us think of loneliness as being apart from loved ones, having no one with whom to share our feelings, hopes, and dreams, our fears and concerns, and our experiences. The more unable we are to communicate our inner thoughts and feelings, the lonelier we feel.
To solve this problem, we gather loved ones, build friendships, even join clubs and organizations. We think that if we have friends and family, people around us who love and care for us, we will never be lonely. But it doesn’t work. As rewarding as family and friends are, they do not keep us from being lonely, they only distract us from our loneliness. In fact, the more we depend on our loved ones to keep us from being lonely, the lonelier we become.
Think about it for a moment. Are you ever lonely for your enemies? Do you miss having unpleasant people around you? No, we are lonely for our friends and family, for those people to whom we feel close. It is the absence of our loved ones that makes us lonely. We think that loneliness involves ourrelationship with others, but it really involves our relationship with ourselves. It arises out of our sense of individuality.
Our life experiences seem to confirm that we are truly alone. We are born into this world alone, we die alone. No one feels our pain or our joy, nor do they digest our food, breathe for us, or feel what we feel. Even though we may communicate and share these experiences, it is still ‘me’, the ego-sense of individuality that tells me I am alone. We don’t experience any ‘self’ that is connected to, or a part of, any other self.
As a consequence, we fail to understand the fundamental connection we have with each other and with the universe at large. Yet there are times when we experience a sense of wholeness, of completeness, of kinship with the universe at large. It may happen when we look up at the starry heavens, or watch the birth of a child, or participate with others in working through a crisis situation.
It doesn’t happen because we have expectations or make demands, we simply experience a strong sense of belonging to something greater than ourselves. At this moment, we lose our ego-sense of self, and experience being part of a greater identity, a greater ‘Self’, and all loneliness vanishes. Unfortunately, these experiences are fleeting, easily lost in the shuffle of our day-to-day distractions, pressures, and reactions. When we are genuinely loving, we also break free from our ego-sense of self but we confuse ‘loving’ with ‘being loved’.
Most of us engage in a desperate search for someone to love us, but we confuse the issue by saying that we need someone to love. We say we want someone to share with, someone we can love, but what we are really saying is that we need someone to love us, someone who will make us feel important and keep us from feeling lonely. This is not love, but emotional attachment, which leads us into dependency.
We believe that we need this person to be happy, to be content, to be fulfilled. So our loving becomes distorted by our emotional needs. When they don’t love us back, we feel miserable and unloved. When they aren’t around, we feel lonely. We all have a remarkable, unlimited capacity to love one another. There is a wide range of expression of our love, from brotherly and sisterly love to romantic,sexual love. But as long as we continue to confuse love and emotional attachment, we will continue to be lonely, even when we have someone to love.
We can conquer this dragon of loneliness, but we must turn to our deepest resource to do so, our core spiritual Self. The great spiritual sages of all traditions say that our loneliness lies in the ignorance of our spirit, the core of our being. When we become aware of this Self, we experience the mystery of life, the unbroken and unending connection we have with each other and with the universe.
We become fully conscious of the universal Spirit that flows within and through us. Picture life like a large oak tree filled with leaves, twigs, and branches. Our ego-sense of self makes us feel like we are a leaf of this tree. When the winds blow, the leaves rub against each other. Sometimes this is a pleasant experience and sometimes it is very unpleasant.
As leaves, we feel isolated and apart from one another, even though we can see that we all belong to the same tree. When we become conscious of our spiritual Self, we realize that we are far more than just the expression of a single leaf. We are more than even the branch and the trunk. We are the lifeforce within the tree. We cannot realize the power of this experience by analyzing it.
Intellectual understanding is not the experience of wholeness, nor does it put an end to loneliness. Those experiences of wholeness gained by watching a birth or gazing at the stars are not intellectual, logical events. We must go beyond the intellect and become conscious of the human spirit directly. This is the heart of the meditative traditions of self-mastery-to calm the mind so completely, to be so focused, that we experience this spiritual Self directly.
In Tantra, this experience is called samadhi, while in western meditative/spiritual traditions it is referred to as a ‘mystical experience’ because it takes us beyond our thoughts and emotions, beyond even our beliefs. The mystical experience is powerful and undeniable. In just one experience, our loneliness, our fear, and our self-hatred are diminished by half.
As we become more skilled in our ability to have this awareness, we gradually lose all sense of loneliness, all fears are vanquished, and all self-hatred is eliminated. Our ego-sense of individuality now becomes an instrument by which we express in our unique way our thoughts, our love, our joy, and our strength. We do not lose our identity, we polish and refine our identity until our spiritual Self shines through like a bright light, and we experience the real joy and freedom that are our true heritage.
Source : http://www.lifepositive.com/mind/psychology/phobia/mind-miseries.asp
How Do You Live a Life Without Fear?
I used to live in a state of absolute terror 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I always had a reason to be anxious and worried. If things weren’t going according to plan, I feared that my life would be destroyed and I would have no way of fixing things. If things were going according plan, I thought up every possible scenario that could ruin my state of serenity and I’d live in fear of each and every single circumstance.
Living in fear is not living at all. It’s barely surviving. Living in fear means that every second of every day, we’re tortured by what could happen, what’s going to happen, and how that might leave us in limbo. It’s living off of hypothetical circumstances. In hindsight, I see that I created a lot of my own chaos back then. It was my fault that I had such bad indigestion, back pain, and trouble sleeping. These physical symptoms were signs of an emotional, mental, and spiritual unrest in my life. I wasn’t dealing with several issues appropriately and they in turn, were dealing with me.
I think that fear is a healthy response to a dangerous situation. But in excess, living in fear becomes the dangerous situation. You don’t think clearly because you probably can’t think at all. You expend so much mental energy in worrying, sighing, fantasizing, and slowly deteriorating, that you have very little time to be productive at all. So when you eventually snap out of your fear, you look around and find yourself in the very situation that you were always afraid of: being helpless.
I believe that much of the behaviors, thought processes, and our interactions with our environment are shaped by our experiences as children. For me, living in fear was a learned behavior. I was taught to be afraid of every situation because it was constantly drilled into my head that I wasn’t quite adequate as a young person. One of the worst things that stuck with me from growing up around an emotionally unstable and verbally abusive mother was that she made me feel inadequate and helpless. When you feel inadequate and helpless, the world is quite incredibly scary place.
The enemy is a crafty intelligent little devil too. He picked up on my fears and anxieties and he exploited them at every chance that he could. I consulted friends about my endless worries, coworkers who Inever should’ve trusted, family members, church members, just about everyone. The only person that I did not consecrate my fear to was God. As soon as I started spending quiet time in the morning, my fear level decreased. I read the Word of God which clearly speaks about worry warts like me. Although we’re needy, sometimes unbearable, and mostly irrational, God looked out for His children that would be worry warts when He inspired the written word of the Bible.
In Isaiah 7:4, The Lord instructs Isaiah to tell Ahaz: “Be careful, keep calm and don’t be afraid. Do not lose heart…” This verse touches home base quite a bit with me because God instructs Ahaz to be careful first. One has to be careful in order to keep calm and not to be afraid. In other words, I felt like God was telling me that I would have to make a mindful decision not to be consumed by this overwhelming, heart-wrenching, and handicapping sense of fear. I continued to read: “….If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all” Isaiah 7:9 By living in fear, I was not living on my faith. Hence, I was not standing at all by crawling on my hands in knees as if a soldier in combat. Indeed I could not stand because I was rejecting my faith in God.
Even though these few verses were somewhat encouraging, God still challenged me not just to cast my fear aside but to completely overcome it. In Isaiah 35: 4, the Bible says: “say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, He will come with vengeance; with diving retribution he will come to save you.” Living in fear is actually breaking one of God’s commandments as He says in Isaiah 43:1 “…Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.” I am still in amazement to think that being fearful is actually disobeying the Word of God.
Especially since the recession had just occurred, I was living in fear of my boss. Even though they were rude, obnoxious, and mistreating me, I totally feared that they would fire me. “If they fire me, I wouldn’t be able to pay my rent and I’d have to live out the street” I would tell myself. Thank God (literally) that I stumbled upon Isaiah 51:12 that says: “I am the one who comforts you. Who are you that you fear mortal men, the songs of men who are but grass, that you forget the Lord your Maker…that you live in constant terror every day because of the wrath of the oppressor, who is bent on destruction?” Let me just tell you, after I read that verse, I said out loud: “Praise Him!” He was speaking directly to me. He was encouraging me and yet challenging me to let go of a frienemy that I’ve had since childhood. It’s been a few months now and fear and I still haven’t talked much. Occasionally fear will send me a text saying: “What’s on your mind?”. Armed with the Word of God, I quickly delete the message just so I can’t look at it later. I have officially moved on.
Write out a list of your worst fears and then pray to God about them. Warning: you may walk right into these fearful situations after you do but that is because God wants to walk you right up to your fear and deliver you for good. Now that when you write your list and bring it to God, He will mostly likely bring them to you but only to show Himself mighty.
Are you living in constant fear? Is it affecting your ability to trust God? What may be the causes of your fear? Do you really believe that God can do anything, even deliver you from your worst fears?
Source : http://www.revelife.com/723726001/how-do-you-live-a-life-without-fear/
100-year-old Robert Marchand sets cycle record
French cycling enthusiast Robert Marchand set a new one-hour speed record on Friday — at the age of 100.
The centenarian rode 24.25 km (15.1 miles) in 60 minutes watched by crowds of cheering supporters at the International Cycling Union(UCI) velodrome in Aigle, Switzerland.
Marchand kept a steady pace and was hardly out of breath when he finished, telling his fans: “I could have gone faster, I didn’t want to.
“I could have done a kilometre more.”
The feat does not threaten the 49.7 km (30.8 miles) achieved by Czech cyclist Ondrej Sosenkain 2005 at the age of 29, but it will be recognised by the UCI in a new over-100s category.
“It will be official,” said Frederic Rey, an official at the World Cycling Centre, the headquarters of the UCI.
Marchand, who marked a century in November, enjoyed cycling as a teenager but only returned to the sport at the age of 78.
He is a keen member of his local cycle club in Ardeche, south-central France, which helped co-ordinate the record attempt.
“Doing a little bit of sport every day, that’s the secret,” said the president of the L’Ardechoise clubGerard Mistler, who described Marchand as a role model.
“He’s someone who has always enjoyed working, who is always in good humour, and who has always been sporty.”
“He has never smoked and sometimes drinks alcohol but nothing to excess.”
Widower Marchand, who wore his club cycling gear for the attempt, said he would toast his record however.
“We are going to drink champagne,” he said. “Just a little bit — I don’t really like champagne.”
Doctors assessed Marchand before he hit the velodrome and were on hand at the trackside in case he got into difficulties.
Jacques Beaune, former president of the French Federation of Cardiology, put down his great shape to good genes and a healthy lifestyle.
“He’s never been ill in his life,” he said.
“He does regular physical exercise and his cognitive ability is exceptional,” said the doctor, who put the cyclist’s body age at between 70 and 75.
“I think he’s an incredible example for everyone.”
About 50 members of Marchand’s club travelled by coach from Ardeche for the attempt.
“He’s amazing,” said 60-year-old Gilbert Barailler, who said he hopes to achieve the same when he is 100, “only faster.”
The record attempt also attracted Sylvestre Marcluy from Monthey, near Aigle, who came along to watch after reading about it in the local newspaper.
“I thought it wasn’t possible at 100,” he said. “It’s incredible.”
Marchand has led a colourful life, spending several years in Venezuela and working for a time as a lumberjack in Canada. But he claims he’s nothing out of the ordinary.
“I’m not exceptional,” he said. “I’m just normal.”
Priya Kumar & fun and adventure based Experiential Learning
Priya Kumar is an eminent spokesperson, motivational speaker and corporate trainer who specializes in fun and adventure based Experiential Learning.
She is one of the first certified international fire walk instructors from India. Priya’s passion is contagious and the symbolic act of making people walk on coal ends up going a long way. The feeling of hope and belief that anything can be accomplished if you set your mind to it and focus on the goal could be seen in every person’s eyes that does the fire walk.
Priya has made her passion for helping people live happier lives into a successful profession. Right from the inception of PKTS, leading companies such as IBM, Deutsche Bank, Microsoft, HSBC, etc have approached t to enhance the performance of their staff.
She has been a keynote speaker at many global platforms including the AMCON conference held for 800 top surgeons in India.
She has been included in the 2007-2008 Princeton Premier Business Leaders and Professionals ‘Honours Edition’. The registry includes biographies of the world’s most accomplished individuals and is considered by many as the single highest mark of achievement.
Media:
Priya’s work been featured in several newspapers and her workshops have created a storm in the media not just within India but in the Middle East and South East Asia as well.
Priya is a weekly columnist with Mid Day, MSN on Corporate Lifestyle and a guest columnist with CNBC TV18 online on corporate makeover.
In her capacity as a motivational speaker, she has done several radio shows in India and Dubai.
Official Website : http://priya-kumar.com
Source : http://www.londonspeakerbureau.in/priya_kumar.aspx
Run David Run: 4,000km jog for a cause
Nothing, not even diarrhoea, internal bleeding or a sprained hip muscle could stop David Grier. The 52-year-old hotelier from South Africa, an asthmatic, who just completed a 93-day, 4,000-km run from Kashmir to Kanyakumari to create awareness on asthma and raise money for cleft-lip surgeries, was fired by the desire to reach his goal. “There was a lot of pain, but I kept telling myself that with every kilometre I was covering, I was bringing a smile to a child’s face,” he says.
Grier, who began the run along with Andrew Stuart and Nick Heygate on October 31 last year, ended it on February 12, was in the city on his way home. “We completed the first 300km quickly to leave Kashmir as soon as possible. We then touched Pinjar in Punjab, ran through Ludhiana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, the farming lands of Maharashtra before touching Tamil Nadu,” he says.
The lean and strong Grier is a far cry, by his own account, from the overweight (110kg) asthmatic chef who became a successful hotel manager in Cape Town. ” I was feeling lethargic, sloppy and useless mentally. I then went to a doctor and realized I had asthma. Two of my four children too have asthma. I then decided to do something for people around me,” he says. A chance meeting with a woman from ‘Operation Smile,’ an organization doing free cleft lip surgeries in Africa, changed his life. “Though I was doing small things for asthma awareness, I realized how a surgery could give a person his or her life. That’s when I decided to run along the 4200km Great Wall of China in 2006 to raise funds, and two years later along the entire South African coast.”
His runs, says Grier, have helped bring his family together. “One of my daughters was into substance abuse. Today she manages ‘Operation Smile’ across Madagascar and Swaziland,” he says. Grier, who has already raised around Rs 2.5 crore for cleft lip surgeries, says the money raised in India would be used exclusively for children here. His next destination? ‘Cuba,’ he says smiling.
