12 Ways To Boost Your Creativity At Work

As workplaces continue to rightsize and downsize, we all find ourselves doing more with less. How do we stay ahead of the workload while staying sane? The key is to put your creativity to work for you so you can do more with less and shine like never before.

Just what is creativity? It is the ability to make, produce, cause to exist or bring into being; the ability to make something out of nothing or to make something better than it was before. Creativity is an inborn force that we all have: If you're alive, you're creative.

It needs to be said, though, that not everyone has the raw talent, creative vision and self-management skills to run out and make a living being an artist. But remember that artistic talent is only one way of potentially millions that you can express your creativity at home or at work.

In today's workplace, creative thinking, problem solving and innovation are at a premium. Here are 12 ways you can express your creativity more powerfully in any workplace:

1.) Use your values, interests, skills and aptitudes to express your unique perspectives, opinions and contributions.

2.) Take full advantage of the unique features of your personality to express your creativity in ways that are natural for you.

3.) Dress your body and your work space in ways that reflect your passion and energy.

4.) In what you say - either verbally or in writing - and how you say it, make sure you use word choice, vocabulary and communication style to showcase your uniqueness.

5.) Everybody works differently. Use your work habits, decision making and problem solving style to express who you really are.

6.) Everybody lives their lives differently. Use your personal habits, time management and outside interests to positively impact who you are at work.

7.) What are you passionate about? What kinds of things do you channel your energy into? What are you committeed to? Take all three to work with you and put them to work for you.

8.) Every creative act begins with a conception. Make sure you capture your workplace brainstorms in concrete ways.

9.) Every creative act develops through an incubation phase. Make sure you put safe boundaries around your own creative work time so it doesn't get overwhelmed with other responsibilities.

10.) Every creative act ends with a birth. Make sure you help each project grow to its next level.

11.) Celebrate your beginnings and your endings. Mark the big moments and look for reasons to play.

12.) Know when it's time to move on ? from ideas, projects and jobs ? then do it.

Still not sure you even are creative? Try reading the now-classic The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. If Julia can't convince you you are creative, then no one can! 

Cheryl Lynch Simpson is a Spiritual Director and Solutions Coach who helps women discover and create the life they've always wanted to live. Cheryl is the author of over 30 print/Internet articles and the founder of Coaching Solutions For Women, a coaching website that produces and showcases career, business, and life solutions that improve the life balance of today's busy women. For a complimentary copy of her latest e-book, Ten-Minute Stress Zappers for Women Service Business Owners, visit .

Warm Regard, Sara Pandian

BANANAS – very interesting

A professor at CCNY for a physiological psych class told his class about bananas. He said the expression 'going bananas' is from the effects of bananas on the brain. Read on: 

Never, put your banana in the refrigerator!!! 
This is interesting. 
After reading this, you'll never look at a banana in the same way again. 

Bananas contain three natural sugars - sucrose, fructose and glucose combined with fiber. A banana gives an instant, sustained and substantial boost of energy.

Research has proven that just two bananas provide enough energy for a strenuous 90-minute workout. No wonder the banana is the number one fruit with the world's leading athletes.

But energy isn't the only way a banana can help us keep fit. It can also help overcome or prevent a substantial number of illnesses and conditions, making it a must to add to our daily diet. 

Depression: According to a recent survey undertaken by MIND amongst people suffering from depression, many felt much better after eating a banana. This is because bananas contain tryptophan, a type of protein that the body converts into serotonin, known to make you relax, improve your mood and generally make you feel happier. 

PMS: Forget the pills - eat a banana. The vitamin B6 it contains regulates blood glucose levels, which can affect your mood. 

Anemia: High in iron, bananas can stimulate the production of hemoglobin in the blood and so helps in cases of anemia. 

Blood Pressure: This unique tropical fruit is extremely high in potassium yet low in salt, making it perfect to beat blood pressure. So much so, the US Food and Drug Administration has just allowed the banana industry to make official claims for the fruit's ability to reduce the risk of blood pressure and stroke. 

Brain Power: 200 students at a Twickenham (Middlesex) school ( England ) were helped through their exams this year by eating bananas at breakfast, break, and lunch in a bid to boost their brain power. Research has shown that the potassium-packed fruit can assist learning by making pupils more alert. 

Constipation: High in fiber, including bananas in the diet can help restore normal bowel action, helping to overcome the problem without resorting to laxatives. 

Hangovers: One of the quickest ways of curing a hangover is to make a banana milkshake, sweetened with honey. The banana calms the stomach and, with the help of the honey, builds up depleted blood sugar levels, while the milk soothes and re-hydrates your system. 

Heartburn: Bananas have a natural antacid effect in the body, so if you suffer from heartburn, try eating a banana for soothing relief. 

Morning Sickness: Snacking on bananas between meals helps to keep blood sugar levels up and avoid morning sickness. 

Mosquito bites: Before reaching for the insect bite cream, try rubbing the affected area with the inside of a banana skin. Many people find it amazingly successful at reducing swelling and irritation. 

Nerves: Bananas are high in B vitamins that help calm the nervous system. 

Overweight and at work? Studies at the Institute of Psychology in Austria found pressure at work leads to gorging on comfort food like chocolate and chips. Looking at 5,000 hospital patients, researchers found the most obese were more likely to be in high-pressure jobs. The report concluded that, to avoid panic-induced food cravings, we need to control our blood sugar levels by snacking on high carbohydrate foods every two hours to keep levels steady. 

Ulcers: The banana is used as the dietary food against intestinal disorders because of its soft texture and smoothness. It is the only raw fruit that can be eaten without distress in over-chronicler cases. It also neutralizes over-acidity and reduces irritation by coating the lining of the stomach. 

Temperature control: Many other cultures see bananas as a 'cooling' fruit that can lower both the physical and emotional temperature of expectant mothers. In Thailand , for example, pregnant women eat bananas to ensure their baby is born with a cool temperature. 

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): Bananas can help SAD sufferers because they contain the natural mood enhancer tryptophan. 

Smoking &Tobacco Use: Bananas can also help people trying to give up smoking. The B6, B12 they contain, as well as the potassium and magnesium found in them, help the body recover from the effects of nicotine withdrawal. 

Stress: Potassium is a vital mineral, which helps normalize the heartbeat, sends oxygen to the brain and regulates your body's water balance. When we are stressed, our metabolic rate rises, thereby reducing our potassium levels. These can be rebalanced with the help of a high-potassium banana snack. 

Strokes: According to research in The New England Journal of Medicine, eating bananas as part of a regular diet can cut the risk of death by strokes by as much as 40%! 

Warts: Those keen on natural alternatives swear that if you want to kill off a wart, take a piece of banana skin and place it on the wart, with the yellow side out. Carefully hold the skin in place with a plaster or surgical tape! 

So, a banana really is a natural remedy for many ills. When you compare it to an apple, it has four times the protein, twice the carbohydrate, three times the phosphorus, five times the vitamin A and iron, and twice the other vitamins and minerals. It is also rich in potassium and is one of the best value foods around So maybe its time to change that well-known phrase so that we say, 'A banana a day keeps the doctor away!' 


Warm Regard, Sara Pandian

Lifebuoy Hand Wash You Eat What You Touch Ads

Interesting Lifebuoy Handwash advertisements by advertising agency Lowe Jakarta that 

scares us into washing our hands more often. You eat what you touch - so before you eat something, think about what you have touched previously. Creative way to show how gross it can be when we dont wash our hands.








  

Animals Teach Us To Be People - Zoo Aquarium Ads

A series of advertisements from Zoo Aquarium in Madrid that compares animals to people with some thought provoking lines. The approach might be somewhat misleading since animals do have their own weakness but looking from the point of view that humans are much more intelligent beings, the animals fare much better in some areas of morality.

Warm Regard, Sara Pandian

INOVASI TOUR & TRAVEL SDN BHD: TRIP to St Anne Church in PENANG

INOVASI TOUR & TRAVEL SDN BHD: TRIP to St Anne Church in PENANG: "FEELING WANNA TO VISIT AND GET TO KNOW MORE Be free to contact below mention person MR RAJAN (+6 0196504595) For more details on trip St A..."

Warm Regard,Sara Pandian

SARA PANDIAN BLOG: Shop - Office for rental

SARA PANDIAN BLOG: Shop - Office for rental: "Shop - Office for rental at Cheras Megan Plaza Phoenix, Kuala Lumpur Property Type: Shop-Office Built-Up: 759 Square Feet Posted Date: 23..."

Warm Regard,Sara Pandian

GUIDE TO A BETTER LIFE

This is amazing, Randy Pausch 47 yrs old, A computer Sc. lecturer from Mellon Universityhe died of pancreatic cancer in 2008, but wrote a book ‘The last lecture” before then, one of the bestsellers in 2007. What a legacy to leave behind…
In a letter to his wife Jai and his children, Dylan, Logan , and Chloe, he wrote this beautiful "guide to a better life" for his wife and children to follow.
May you be blessed by his insight.



POINTS ON HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR LIFE 

Personality:
1. Don't compare your life to others'. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
2. Don't have negative thoughts of things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment
3. Don't over do; keep your limits
4. Don't take yourself so seriously; no one else does
5. Don't waste your precious energy on gossip
6. Dream more while you are awake
7. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need..
8. Forget issues of the past. Don't remind your partner of his/her mistakes of the past. That will ruin your present happiness.
9. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don't hate others.
10. Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present
11. No one is in charge of your happiness except you
12. Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.
13. Smile and laugh more
14. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

Community:
15. Call your family often
16. Each day give something good to others
17. Forgive everyone for everything
18. Spend time with people over the age of 70 & under the age of 6
19. Try to make at least three people smile each day
20. What other people think of you is none of your business
21. Your job will not take care of you when you are sick. Your family and friends will. Stay in touch.

Life:
22. Put GOD first in anything and everything that you think, say and do.
23. GOD heals everything
24. Do the right things
25. However good or bad a situation is, it will change
26. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up
27. The best is yet to come
28. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful
29. When you awake alive in the morning, thank GOD for it
30. If you know GOD you will always be happy. So, be happy.

While you practice all of the above, share this knowledge with the people you love, people you school with,
people you play with, people you work with and people you live with.
Not only will it enrich YOUR life, but also that of those around you. 

Warm Regard, Sara Pandian

Baby sister left alone in a bag

JOHOR BARU: A six-year-old boy, who was left alone to take care of three other siblings, decided to put his three-month-old baby sister in a travelling bag before leaving her at the void deck of an apartment block in Larkin.

The baby girl was left alone for more than half an hour before one of the residents saw her trying to crawl out of the bag.

The man immediately contacted police and rescued the baby.

Police brought the mother and her four children to the police station, located just a few metres away from the apartment block.

In safe hands: A policeman carrying the three-month-old baby girl and escorting her brother in Johor Baru yesterday. — Bernama

“Initial investigations revealed that the children were left under the care of their grandmmother while the mother was job hunting,’’ Johor Baru (South) OCPD ACP Zainuddin Yaakob said.

However he added, the grandmother had left the children aged between three months and six years at home as she had an appointment with a doctor at a nearby clinic.

ACP Zainuddin said the woman informed the police that her husband was away working in a resort at Pulau Sibu in Mersing, and she needed a job badly.

Warm Regard, Sara Pandian

Shop - Office for rental Megan Plaza Phoenix Cheras KL

Shop - Office for rental at Cheras

Megan Plaza Phoenix, Kuala Lumpur

Property Type:	Shop-Office
Built-Up:	759 Square Feet

Furniture: 

2.5 Air Con + 1.5 + one air con point.

Washroom + Toilet

3 telephone socket   

8 plug points

•Newly painted with new carpet

•24-hour security with lift

•Ready to move in as it has.. >>open concept + 1 pantry

•Private wash room

•Ample free basement car parks

•Easily accessible via Cheras main road that links to KL, PJ, Putrajaya, Cyberjaya, Shah Alam, Kajang, Seri Kembangan, Bkt. Jalil, Klang, etc.

•Under the newly launched Economic Transformation Program, there would be a MRT station nearby

•Nearby Plaza Phoenix would be refurnished to become a commercial centre inclusive of business travel hotel

•Monthly rental inclusive of maintenance fee

Below are photo attached

If you interested to view the UNIT you can email sarapandian@gmail.com or can reach me 0123611880 For appointment.

Warm Regard, Sara Pandian

The Simple Dollar: Some Thoughts on Balancing "Fun" Spending and Planning for the Future

Some Thoughts on Balancing “Fun” Spending and Planning for the Future Posted: 18 Mar 2011 07:00 AM PDT One of my biggest splurges each year comes in August, when I travel to Indianapolis with a few friends and attend GenCon, a gaming convention. During a given year, my wife usually goes on some sort of trip by herself as well, often to visit family in the Pacific Northwest. I usually pick up a new game and a new book about once a month, on average. Sarah’s more of a reader and tends to pick up two or three. We go out to eat perhaps twice a month as a family. Sarah and I tend to buy each other fairly nice gifts for gift-giving occasions. All of these things are splurges. Each of them are expenditures that are purely for personal enjoyment that would be easily cut out of our lives if we were to do so. I’m absolutely in favor of some degree of splurging in everyone’s life. The ability to freely experience the things we enjoy is a wonderful aspect of modern life, and eliminating it completely from our lives leads only to misery. The challenge comes in when the cost of splurging begins to interfere with other aspects of one’s life. It’s particularly dangerous if splurging actually makes it difficult for you to pay your bills, but it’s also an area of concern if splurging is keeping you from moving forward on your goals and plans for those goals. I’ll use my own life as an example. One of our biggest goals is to eventually buy a home in the country, hopefully before our children grow up. We’d like to build a home that includes a nice home office (rather than the small reconstituted bedroom I currently use) and a few other features, as well as a small barn in the back. In order to achieve that goal, we had to establish a savings plan that would pay for that home in eight or so years (ideally paired with a rapid payoff of our current home’s mortgage). It’s an aggressive plan, but it’s a big goal that both my wife and I want to achieve. Splurging is not allowed to interfere with that goal. Covering our monthly savings for that goal comes first before any splurging. In other words, we treat our financial goals as bills that have to be paid. Once those bills are paid, we can then focus on the splurges we want in our life. So, for example, I save slowly throughout the year for my GenCon trip. I put away about $20 a week all year long and when the trip arrives, I can easily afford the whole trip – the food, the travel, the hotel stay (usually, I’m in a room with several other people), and the event participation, often leaving myself with enough cash to pick up a game or three. How do we determine how much we have each week or each month with which to splurge?Sarah and I each have a “splurge” line in our effective family budget. We’re each allowed to spend a certain amount each month without question. If we don’t spend it (or aren’t saving it for some specific goal), it just rolls back into the general pool, helping all of us. Family-wide splurges usually come out of our excess money at the end of the month, as we constantly come in under budget (since I usually budget for the maximum for almost every bill). An important thing to note is that I could easily define things like cell phones, television service, and internet service as splurges. All of these services are useful to us, but all of them are also, in essence, splurges. Again, if splurges get in the way of your long term goals, cut back on them. Yes, that might mean your cell phone or your cable box. Another good rule of thumb I’ve found is that if a splurge no longer feels like a splurge – in other words, it no longer feels special – it’s time to cut back on it. My GenCon trip is a highlight of my year, so it always feels “special.” On the other hand, if I get a new book more often than once a month or so, it begins to feel routine (especially considering I can read public domain books for free quite easily or just pick up something onPaperBackSwap). In the end, splurges come around after your goals are taken care of. If you find yourself splurging without taking care of your goals first, your future won’t be what you want it to be.

Warm Regard, Sara Pandian

Your Past Is Not Your Future !

The ultimate purpose of life is to be accomplished and satisfied. You are the happiest when what you are doing on the outside is congruent with your goals and values inside. When you are living in complete alignment with that which you consider to be good, right, and true, you will automatically feel happy and positive about yourself and your world.

Know What You Really Want.
We see many people work hard every day to make money. They get no joy or satisfaction from their accomplishments. This happens when the outer accomplishment is not in harmony with your inner values. Don't let this happen to you.

Watch Your Behavior.
How can you tell what your values really are?
The answer is simple. You always demonstrate your true values in your actions and especially your actions under pressure. Whenever you are forced to choose between one behavior and another you will always act consistent with what is most important and valuable to you at that moment. Values, in fact, are organized in a hierarchy. You have a series of values, some of them very intense and important and some of them weaker and less important. One of the most important exercises you can engage in to determine who you really are and what you really want is to organize your values by priority. Once you are clear about the relative important of your values, you can then organize your outer life so that it is in alignment with them.

Determine Your Hearts Desire
The spiritual teacher Emmet Fox wrote about the importance of discovering - What is your heart’s desire?, What do you want to be famous for?, What words would you like people to use to describe you when you are not there?, What kind of reputation do you have today and would like to have tomorrow?

Remember, your past is not your future !

Warm Regard, Sara Pandian