I’ve heard the above statement about thousands of times. If you’re one of these people, who are struggling to start making money online,listen up carefully.

There is hope around the corner. It’s called the Thirty Day Challenge. What the heck? The Thirty Day Challenge will help you start making your first money online. It surely helped make mine!

Instead of telling you some boring details, I’ll tell you 5 (five) reasons why the site is every new money-maker dream:

1. It is designed for total newbie’s. Even my grandma can understand it. The guys made it clear this is the place for you even if you have no computer skills (geeks have incredible advantage here).
2. Ed Dale and Dan Raine are involved. Ed Dale is the guy who made (and is making) over 4 million bucks on the internet buying and selling websites. Dan Raine is making his full time income with niche marketing (and he’s making more than $10k per month, that’s for sure).
3. It’s for people who have little to do in August. Thirty Day Challenge starts on 1st August this year (that’s less than 5 days) so if you always wanted to learn how to make money online, August is your lucky month
4. The content there is worth over 10k IMO. I’ve never seen so valuable material shared in one place. If you download their 2007 archive, the information there will blow your mind. Some people say it’s valuable up to 10 thousand dollars. At the end, I leave you to decide.
5. Currently, over 20.000 people will take part. Yeah, 20 thousand people. Including me. So, come in and let’s hang out Here’s the link.

Peace,
Darren

Boy does the time fly. It’s 12th day already.

The good thing is that I’m already getting into a habit of exercising and eating ‘good’ food and I finally stopped eating after 7 PM, which results in a better night sleep and waking up easier in the morning. The bad thing is that I still can’t get into the habit of getting up and going to sleep earlier, which results in a chaotic daily work schedule.

So the next thing is to create a daily ritual, that is easy to implement and follow daily.

Now, this is not something that I pulled out of my hat, I actually spent a couple of hours going through my journals, that I keep and write to on a regular basis, and found some interesting things. It seems that few times a year I hit this “Ideal” schedule, that let’s me accomplish enormous amounts of work and still feel pretty energized and happy.

Of course, after a while it all vanishes as unexpected as it appeared, but since today I never been able to understand or at least to notice the pattern that puts me into this working state or what happens to make it all stop immediately.

I’ve been reading “The Power Of Full Engagement” by T. Schwartz and it’s probably the book that you want to read before getting started anything.

According to Tony S., our life is not a beeline. We are more likely oscillatory than linear beings in an oscillatory universe. Rhythmicity is our inheritance. So in order to function at our full capacity and still feel fully engaged at what we are doing, we have to find a balance between spending/using your physical and emotional energy, and relaxing in order to regain it.

But the problem with most of us is that we can’t totally disconnect from work, even when we are relaxing.

For example, do you when you take your dog for a walk, keep making phone calls? Do you keep thinking about things that need to be done when you are spending time with your kids or friends?

That puts us neither on the “working” side of the scale, nor on the “relaxation.” You are more likely in this “Grey Zone” where your work and relaxation productivity is almost equal to zero.

The interesting thing is that this “Grey zone” leads to the most amazing phenomenon that Japanese call karoshi – death from work.

To stress the importance of relaxation time, here’s some interesting fact — according to the National Academy of Sciences, medical errors, many of them at least partly caused by fatigue among doctors, account for nearly 100,000 deaths a year, more than from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer and AIDS combined.

Why do I tell you all this? It’s because I noticed that the thing that got me off my ideal working states, was that I couldn’t disconnect from all the work and tasks, and to-do lists, and goals, and missions, and notes, and other BS.

For me it was impossible to just spend time with my girl, without thinking that there’s still 4 tasks on my “to-do” list. And this, of course, always led to over-burn.

So all this theory about balance between work and play was a huge “A-Ha!” moment for me, around which I’m now building my all daily schedules.

But let’s get back to the topic. Like I said, the biggest problem for me is getting to bed and waking up early.

I’ve been trying to get into the habit to start my day at at least 6 AM for as long as I can remember and ironically I never managed to do that.

So this time I’ve decided to set my alarm at 7 o’clock. Still, the main problem is that I usually get to bet at 2-3 AM and wake up at 9-10 AM which is a habit that is pretty hard to break.

Still it needs to be break and in order to do that, I’ve decided to sleep only 3 hours today, the reason being that when I go to be at 11 PM I would be dead asleep, once my head touches the pillow. If I manage to do that AND wake up at 7 AM tomorrow, everything else would probably take care of itself.

That brings as to our daily ideal schedule.

Like you see the whole day is build around work-relax idea. Every 90 minutes of work I am making a break, where I get some snack, drink water and do some physical activity. By the way, building physical activity into my schedule appears to be the most amazing thing. I’ve been doing it for a week now and it helps to improve concentration massively.

Also, I’m adding a little half-hour walk into my daily schedule mainly to wake up my body and prepare it for physical HIIT activity, which will follow the brisk walk.

I’m still thinking about how, where and when would it be reasonable to relax.

But I’ll leave that for tomorrow.

This insight first crystallized for Jim when he was working with world-class tennis players. As a performance psychologist, his goal was to understand the factors that set apart the greatest competitors in the world from the rest of the pack.

Jim spent hundreds of hours watching top players and studying tapes of their matches. To his growing frustration, he could detect almost no significant differences in their competitive habits during points. It was only when he began to notice what they did between points that he suddenly saw a difference.

While most of them were not aware of it, the best players had each built almost exactly the same set of routines between points. These included the way they walked back to the baseline after a point; how they held their heads and shoulders; where they focused their eyes; the pattern of their breathing; and even the way they talked to themselves.

It dawned on Jim that these players were instinctively using the time between points to maximize their recovery.

Many lower-ranked competitors, he began to see, had no recovery routines at all.

When he hooked up the top players to EKG telemetry, which allowed him to monitor their heart rates, he made another startling discovery. In the sixteen to twenty seconds between points in a match, the heart rates of top competitors dropped as much as twenty beats per minute. By building highly efficient and focused recovery routines, these players had found a way to derive extraordinary energy renewal in a very short period of time.

Because lesser competitors had no comparable routines between points, their heart rates often remained at high levels throughout their matches regardless of their level of fitness.

The best competitors were using rituals to recover more efficiently and to better prepare for each upcoming point.

The performance consequences of instituting precise betweenpoint rituals were dramatic.

Imagine two players of relatively equal talent and fitness in the third hour of a match. One has been regularly recovering between points, while the other has not. Clearly, the second player will be far more physically fatigued. In turn, fatigue has a cascade effect.

A tired player is more susceptible to negative emotions such as anger and frustration, which will likely push his heart rate still higher, and likely lead to muscular tension. Physical fatigue also makes it far more difficult to concentrate.

The same phenomenon applies even for those of us who work in sedentary jobs. Imagine that you have been sitting for long and continuous hours at your desk, operating under very high pressure. Fatigue is a likely consequence, and so is susceptibility to negative emotions and to distraction, all of which ultimately undermine performance.

In tennis, Jim’s research proved this in measurable ways. The more linear or unvarying players’ heart rates became, the worse they tended to play and the more likely it was that they lost their matches. Too much energy expenditure without sufficient recovery caused their heart rates to become chronically elevated. Their performance was equally compromised when their heart rates remained chronically low — typically a sign that they were not committed enough or had given up the fight.

Even in a sport such as golf, which requires very little expenditure of physical energy, rituals that balance energy expenditure with recovery are critical. Jack Nicklaus was remarkable for his skill and consistency, but also for his remarkable ability to analyze the elements that contributed to his success:

I was blessed with the ability to focus intensely on whatever I’m doing through most distraction and usually to the exclusion of whatever else might otherwise preoccupy me. Nevertheless, I can’t concentrate on nothing but golf shots for the time it takes to play 18 holes. Even if I could, I suspect the drain of mental energy would make me pretty fuzzyheaded long before the last putt went down. In consequence, I’ve developed a regimen that allows me to move from peaks of concentration into valleys of relaxation and back again as necessary.

My focus begins to sharpen as I walk onto the tee, then steadily intensifies as I complete the process of analysis and evaluation that produces a clear-cut strategy for every shot I play. It then peaks as I set up to the ball and execute the swing when, ideally, my mind picture of what I’m trying to do is both totally exclusionary and totally positive. Unless the tee shot finds serious trouble, when I might immediately start processing possible recoveries, I descend into a valley as I leave the tee, either through casual conversation with a fellow competitor or by letting my mind dwell on whatever happens into it. I try to adhere to this pattern whether I’m playing my best or worst, but obviously have to work harder at it when things aren’t going well.

Balancing stress and recovery is valuable in any performance venue. In 1998, for example, the United States Army undertook a study to assess productivity during warfare. The measure was how many shells a gunnery crew could land on a target during a three-day period. One crew was told to shoot as many shells as it could manage over the entire three days. The second crew was told to take intermittent naps. For the first day, the nonstop shooters landed more shells on the target than their colleagues. By the second day, the accuracy of the nonstop shooters progressively waned and the intermittent nappers gained the lead for good.

Periods of recovery are likewise intrinsic to creativity and to intimate connection. Sounds become music in the spaces between notes, just as words are created by the spaces between letters. It is in the spaces between work that love, friendship, depth and dimension are nurtured.

Without time for recovery, our lives become a blur of doing unbalanced by much opportunity for being.

I feel like shit.

No, not physically, but rather emotionally. It feels like I hit the rock-bottom — financially, physically and emotionally. I can’t even remember when was the last time when I felt like this. The only thing that’s great right now, is that now it can only get better.

To make matter worse, this morning I woke up with some kind of skin disease. Either it’s an allergy or something else, I don’t have any idea, but I will find it out next week, since I’ve made an appointment with a dermatologist.

I’m starting to think that your body is like a car.

We drive that car every day and don’t even think about going to a garage to check if there is any little defects that could be fixed with simple tools. Usually we wait till the last day, when the engine doesn’t start or black smoke comes out of the exhaust. Then we start to think that it’s time to get it fixed.

And what happens when we do? We have to change shocks, exhaust, radiator etc. which totals in a pretty nice sum of moolah.

Same here with me. Thanks God I started this whole deal with my own intention, not pushed by the doctors and their “It’s either this or you die!” threats.

The worst thing is that this whole emotional meltdown, makes me not wanting to eat any food. So today I had only oatmeal and 2 oranges. I know it’s not healthy, but eating is not the thing that’s on my mind right now.

100 grams of oatmeal with half tea-spoon of honey

Wouldn’t it be funny if after all it would appear that these pregnant woman’s mood-swings are caused by nothing more but the diet itself?

Out of the sudden today I started to want something sweet. And I needed it NOW. I tried to cheat this craving with raisins, but that didn’t help. So I had 2 sandwiches with peanut butter.

Then again, this might be because I had quite a workout with kettlebell in the morning and it might be that my body just badly needed some carbohydrates, though I am not sure about that.

Despite that, everything seems to be going just fine. I love the food that I eat. I still don’t miss meat (it’s easy to say on the 4th day). The most interesting thing is that I feel more energized than eating regular food. And whole body is full of energy.

For example today I had a full plate of stewed vegetables: broccoli, spinach and green pepper. Though it was not as filling as yesterday’s fish with beetroot it still is pretty delicious.

Stewed vegetables: broccoli, spinach and green pepper.

Though the hardest part is night-cravings. I like to stay late and at 1 AM or something like that I start to feel hungry and as a rule there’s no fruits or anything that I could munch on.

Here are the products that are allowed to eat and those that are not Ok.

Allowed

Groats:

• Rye
• Millet
• Oat
• Rice

Vegetables:

• Asparagus
• Beetroot
• Cabbages
• Radish
• Peas
• Eggplant
• Zucchini
• Onions
• Spinach
• Broccoli
• Turnip
• Beans
• Tomatoes
• Pumpkin
• Garlic
• Avocado
• Cauliflower
• Horseradish
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Lettuce

Fish:

• Eel
• Herring
• Carp
• Pike
• Mackerel
• Pikeperch

Fruits:

• Lemon
• Pears
• Orange
• Apricots
• Tangerines
• Peaches
• Pomegranates
• Nectarines

Berries:

• Currant
• Plums
• Strawberry
• Cranberry
• Huckleberry
• Raspberry
• Blackberry

Other:

• Chili peppers
• Aspirin
• Mustard
• Honey

Not Allowed

Groats:

• Wheat
• Corn
• Buckwheat
• Barley

Vegetables:

• Celery
• Cucumber
• Artichoke
• Marrow

Fish:

• Trout
• Shrimp
• Sheatfish
• Tuna
• Squid
• Brill
• Lobster
• Crab
• Salmon
• Cod
• Sturgeon
• Flatfish

Meat:

• Duck
• Beef
• Chicken
• Goose
• Lamb
• Turkey
• Pork
• Rabbit

Fruits:

• Pineapple
• Watermelon
• Kiwi
• Apples
• Papaya
• Melon
• Grapefruit

Berries:

• Cherries
• Grapes
• Olives

Dairy:

• Cow milk
• Cheese
• Butter
• Yogurt
• Goat milk

Nuts:

• Almond
• Peanut
• Pistachio

Other:

• Chocolate
• Eggs
• Mushrooms
• Black pepper
• Green and Black tea
• Coffee
• Cinnamon
• Aspartame

Pretty strict, isn’t it? Anyway it is possible to make a delicious dishes out of these products and they are, really filling and tasty.

For example today I had 150 g. of Carp with beetroot. And it was amazing, seriously.

150 grams of carp with beetroot. Delicious and filling.

With health project well on it’s way, the time has come to take care of that, what this whole blog is concentrated on — money and business.

During the last day at my full-day job I’ve decided that I will not look for another job at least for at least another 8 months. If during that period I will not be able to move myself out of this financial hole, I will then look for some part-time job, that will provide me with the basic needs and still let me continue doing that what I love to do.

I still have 8 more months until that, so we better get to work fast.

So what’s the plan?

Currently I have one off-line business venture on my mind. And if everything goes according to the plan, during first days of June we will be visiting potential clients and selling them our service.

Also until the mid of June I have to finish the reconstruction works in my office.

But until then, I have one more unfinished business to take care of — Gary Halbert’s Copywriting challenge.

Since the time when I started it for the first time I’ve noticed that Copywriting skill is probably the most valuable skill that a human-being can learn. In fact, using my basic skills of copywriting, during these 2 months I’ve managed to make my 3 biggest sales ever (the sum of those accumulates to more than $3000), which motivates me to master this skill.

So here’s the list of books, that has Gary recommended:

“Scientific Advertising” - by Claude Hopkins
“The Robert Collier Letter Book” - by Robert Collier
“Tested Advertising Methods” - by John Caples
“How To Write A Good Advertisement” - by Vic Schwab
“The Gary Halbert Letter” (all back issues) - by Gary Halbert
“The Boron Letters” - by Gary Halbert
“The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches” - by Joe Karbo
“Break-Through Advertising” - by Eugene M. Schwartz
“7-Steps To Freedom” - by Ben Suarez

I’ve probably read half of those, but I have no problem re-reading them one more time, although this time I will start from the book that is not in the list. It’s “4 Hour Workweek” - by Tim Ferris.

If you haven’t read it yet — go and get it this instance! This book can change the way you think for ever.

Weigh-in stats and photos are here! And boy am I shocked…

Went today to weigh myself and make measurements of my body fat and water percentage and the results are pretty much not what I was expecting.

When I saw what the scale was showing it was as clear as a bell, that I wouldn’t be able to contest in a lightweight class. More likely it would be heavyweight class…

But I am where I chose to be, so there’s nothing to worry about and I’m glad that I had this weigh-in today and not later. At least now I know where I am starting and where I wanna go.

So here are my stats:

Body weight: 112.6 kg (248.24 lbs)
Body fat %: 28.4 %
H2O % in body: 52.5 %

Body fat % graph for men

According to the graph above (that’s for males) and my body fat percentage number I am obese. For comparison I can tell, that Brad Pitt had a chiseled and ripped look in the movie “FIGHT CLUB”. He weighed 150-155 pounds and his Body Fat was around 5-6% which is very low.

I am not aiming at that. More likely I’m reaching for a 8% of body fat and 67% of body water percentage.

A little bit about that: because fat in the body has a lot of water in it, you have first to know how much fat you have in your body before you can then figure out what your healthy water content is. That is, if you say have 33% fat in your body, then you only need another 37% of water alone, because you have water in the fat. The scales don’t count “fat water” as water, otherwise numbers would get very confusing.

So the key here is that as I lose fat, I need to have more water in my system to compensate. The body should tend to do this naturally for you. That is part of why it’s key, as part of any healthy diet, to drink a lot of water. You should never “lose weight” by losing water. That can cause dehydration issues, which can be quite serious!

Now to the most important and unpleasant part of this post — Before Pictures.

I was thinking about those and the way that it would influence me by putting these up. You see, somehow I tend to think that it will be really embarrassing to do so and my guess is that it’s because of the constant thought in my head that I will fail and this whole thing will be nothing more but just a huge flop…

But then again, think about what would happen if in a year or maybe even half-year I will reach that 8% body fat index? I would probably be able to sell any diet product that I could think of… But seriously, I think that putting these photos up here will be such a huge leverage that I will have no other way, but to succeed. And that’s why I’ve decided to put these up here.

Before pictures: May 24th, 2008

Front: 2008 05 24

Back: 2008 05 24

Tomorrow I’ll be posting a detail list of products that, according to my dietitian, are allowed or not allowed during the weigh-loss period.

Oh, one more thing. After I got the results, I thought NOT to make this Saturday a “Gone Wild” day… I’d rather wait for another weekend.

]]> http://www.incomehero.com/health/health-challenge-day-2/feed/ http://api.feedburner.com/awareness/1.0/GetItemData?uri=IncomeHero&itemurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.incomehero.com%2Fhealth%2Fhealth-challenge-day-2%2Fhttp://www.incomehero.com/health/health-challenge-day-2/ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IncomeHero/~3/296784738/ http://www.incomehero.com/health/health-challenge-day-1/#comments Fri, 23 May 2008 19:33:44 +0000 Adomas http://www.incomehero.com/?p=420

First day of my health plan. Rather strange, I’ll tell you…

Woke up at 6:30 and had an oat meal for breakfast. At 8:30 did my exercises. Then interesting started to happen.

First of all — belly aches. Whole day long… I have no idea if that’s because of something that I ate or because of the intense physical exercise. Then my head started splitting into thousand of pieces, I can’t remember when I had that kind of headache. So I thought it was about a time to call my dietitian and ask what the hell is going on with my body…

The first question that she asked, when she heard what I was complaining about was: “Do you drink enough of water?”

I haven’t had a glass of water until then. She told me that’s the main reason of those pains.

So right after that I grabbed a half-liter glass full of water and started sipping. In a few minutes the headache was gone, but I still have some problems with my belly.

To round up the whole day I must say it sucked. Half of the day I was laying in bed, screaming in pains, and then the other half I spent sipping water — and I hate consuming a lot of fluids.

Because of those pains I haven’t made two most important things in this whole challenge: before pictures and video blog.

Ether way, here’s today’s foodlog:

06:40 Oatmeal
15:00 One pear
19:00 One nectarine

Yeah, that’s not too much, I know. But that’s because of the bellyaches… Let’s hope everything will be OK tomorrow, which is “Dieters Gone Wild” day. Although it sounds like cheating (I’m only on Day 1 of changing my eating and fitness habits), but no way am I going to skip it and not enjoy a great outing with my friends, which we were planning about a week or so.

So tomorrow I will give you a little treat for your eyes: video blog post, “before” pictures and weigh-in results… Boy, am I not waiting for the latter.