I have come across a new health and fitness articles directory.  While there are many article submission directories, this one focuses only on health, fitness and nutrition. While I think article marketing is great no matter what directory you use, I noticed that the bigger directories build page rank yet send very few visitors back to my blog.  I also found that many of the big article directories contain very spammy articles that don’t even attract readers.  I think niche article directories will be the new wave of article marketing since they can build page rank and send a stream of targeted traffic.

Basically article submission helps your promote your blog in two ways.  It builds a link back to your blog or website.  Most article directories let you do this by including links in the article you submit to them.  You can just have those links pointing back to your own site.  Building these so called back links is great for increasing your blogs search engine rankings which just means more search engine traffic.  Article submission also helps you get visitors to your blog or website.  Most article directories attract lots of traffic and many of the readers of your articles will click your article’s links and end up right back on to your blog or site.

I’ve always been a simple kind of guy.  I never really liked things that are too fancy, too complicated or too complex.  When I buy a new gadget I don’t go for the fancy ones that can do everything, I just go for the ones that satisfy my basic needs.  I found in the past that buying a gadget with 20 extra features I don’t need often makes the gadget more complicated to use.  From a marketing prespective features sell.  The more features you add the more money you can ask for.  However I’ve found that from my own experience simplicity is king.  Simplicity is efficient, fast, and straight to the point.

Today I’m having an “off day”.  For one it’s a Monday which might have to do with it.  But in general I notice that every week I have at least one or two off days.  Off days are those days when you don’t feel like getting out of bed, don’t feel like getting any work done, don’t feel like working out etc.  The only thing you might feel like doing is watching TV or movies but even that gets boring

Learning to manage an off day is important because if you don’t you could easily get stuck in a squence of lazy days.  Basically on an off day one just needs to go about their day as you normally would.  They wont feel like it, everything will feel like a drag but they need to do it anyways.  They just gotta push through it whether they feel like it or not.  When is your off day?

This is a great technique that I learned about from other bloggers.  Basically you use google blog search to find blogs that cover simillar topics to the ones you write about on your blog.  Pick a post they wrote and write your opinion on it, be honest, and if you don’t agree with their views state that in your post.  In your post make sure you link to their post, and also ping it (or do a trackback) if you can.  That way they will see your post and probably write about it on their blog linking to your post.  Their readers will be checking out your blog and will often become regular readers of your posts.

Starting a company can be a challenge.  In fact most startup companies fail or go bankrupt within the first year or two.  I’ve always been fascinated with startups.  In fact at one point I even had a blog where I focused specifically on web startups.  Since then I’ve gotten interested in how to start a successful business in general.  Through all of my research, experience, and talks with successful startup creators, I came down to the same conclusion.

The secret to startup success is hard work.  I know it’s obvious yet it’s easier said than done.  Web startups are a good example.  Many entrepreneurs who start a successful web startup often work 16 hour days for the first year or two.  Of course when their startup takes off it easily turns into the next google, youtube, or facebook and is worth millions if not billions.  At that point if the entrepreneur wants to retire for the rest of their life and live on an island somewhere they can afford it.  Of course many do take time off but they ofter go on to starting their next company.  Why?  Because vacationing is only fun for a month, two or six after that it gets boring.

So how can you work hard on growing your business?  Remember you wont have to work hard for the rest of your life, but you need to work hard to get your startup company off the ground.

Often when one wants to lose weight they focus on how to eat right and exercise more. While both are necessary to lose weight, they are the outer game of weight loss. There is a whole other aspect which is the inner game of weight loss. This aspect is often neglected and I believe it’s the reason most people never lose weight and keep it off.

If you take the average overweight person and magically make the extra 20-30 pounds he’s carrying disappear guess what will happen? Over the next year or two he will most probably gain back all that weight. How come? Because he still has bad eating habits and inconsistent exercising habits. So how do you replace bad habits with healthy ones? This is where inner game comes in.

The inner game has to do with building discipline. A practical example is exercising when you don’t feel like it. Understand that you wont always feel like going to the gym, so when you don’t feel like it just do it anyways push through it. The same with healthy eating. Often you wont feel like eating healthy foods yet you must do it anyways. After practicing exercising and eating healthy it will become habitual and will feel natural.

What is the meaning of life?  Isn’t that the ulitmate question?  Well let me ask you what if I knew the meaning and told you, would it make your life any better? any simpler?  would it make you any happier?  I don’t know but I’m guessing probably not.  The meaning of life doesn’t really change anything about the way life is.  It might give you a sense of purpose but that’s about it.  And if all you want is purpose it’s simple really.  Just take some meditation time out and do some deep thinking, decide what you want to do with you life, and that will be your purpose.  Often one’s purose revolves around either growing in a certain way as a human being or giving something to others or both.  Here is an example “I would like to keep evolving as a human being so I can offer others a lot of value”.

What is compassion?  The best definition I found is “a deep awareness of and sympathy for another’s suffering”.  Now compassion doesn’t always require suffering.  Compassion could be just a deep understanding.

The biggest inhibitor of compassion is ego.  Often we are so stuck in our own heads, in our own world, worrying aobut our own problems and issues that we never stop and sympathize with others.  Once you become aware of your ego having compassion for others will start taking care of itself.

There are a lot of benifits in having compassion for others.  For one you’ll develop much deeper more satisfying relationships and friendships.  Others will love to be around you because you’ll make them feel understood.  You’ll find out about a lot of opportunities through those kinds of social interactions.  How can you be more compassionate today?

The biggest inhibitor of creativity is fear of failure.  Often we don’t even let our creativity flow because we are scared of sounding foolish, or trying and failing.  When we suppress our creativity due to fear, our creativity goes away altogether.  Fear is a prerequisite to success.  To become successful at anything you must repeatedly fail at it at first.  Often failure is the best way to learn.  However we often want success without any failure which is kind of impossible.  So how are you going to let your creativity flow?

A broke genius is simply someone who has great ideas all the time yet is always broke.  The most common way one becomes a broke genious is by not implementing the ideas they have.  Simply being lazy, thinking it will be too much work, or doubting one’s self will leave them a broke genius.

Whenever I’m around people I always hear them coming up with business ideas yet very rarely do I ever see them implement the ideas or at least try them out.  Is it because the ideas are stupid?  No in fact many are great.  I think is because ideas are one thing and doing the actual work is a whole other thing.  Many people look at a successful business owner and say he’s a genious, that was a great business idea blah blah blah.  Often they say that because they never started a business themselves.  If they did they’d know that even if you have a great idea you have to work your butt off to make it work.  So what idea are you going to implement?  Please share in the comments.