Russia Warns Obama: Monsanto

Russia Warns Obama: Monsanto
Posted: May 28th, 2013 ˑ Filled under: Top News ˑ 14 Comments



The shocking minutes relating to President Putin’s meeting this past week with US Secretary of State John Kerry reveal the Russian leaders “extreme outrage” over the Obama regimes continued protection of global seed and plant bio-genetic giants Syngenta and Monsanto in the face of a growing “bee apocalypse” that the Kremlin warns “will most certainly” lead to world war.

According to these minutes, released in the Kremlin today by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation (MNRE), Putin was so incensed over the Obama regimes refusal to discuss this grave matter that he refused for three hours to even meet with Kerry, who had traveled to Moscow on a scheduled diplomatic mission, but then relented so as to not cause an even greater rift between these two nations.

At the center of this dispute between Russia and the US, this MNRE report says, is the “undisputed evidence” that a class of neuro-active insecticides chemically related to nicotine, known as neonicotinoids, are destroying our planets bee population, and which if left unchecked could destroy our world’s ability to grow enough food to feed its population.

So grave has this situation become, the MNRE reports, the full European Commission (EC) this past week instituted a two-year precautionary ban (set to begin on 1 December 2013) on these“bee killing” pesticides following the lead of Switzerland, France, Italy, Russia, Slovenia and Ukraine, all of whom had previously banned these most dangerous of genetically altered organisms from being used on the continent.

Two of the most feared neonicotinoids being banned are Actara and Cruiser made by the Swiss global bio-tech seed and pesticide giant Syngenta AG which employs over 26,000 people in over 90 countries and ranks third in total global sales in the commercial agricultural seeds market.

Important to note, this report says, is that Syngenta, along with bio-tech giants Monsanto, Bayer, Dow and DuPont, now control nearly 100% of the global market for genetically modified pesticides, plants and seeds.

Also to note about Syngenta, this report continues, is that in 2012 it was criminally charged in Germany for concealing the fact that its genetically modified corn killed cattle, and settled a class-action lawsuit in the US for $105 million after it was discovered they had contaminated the drinking supply of some 52 million Americans in more than 2,000 water districts with its “gender-bending” herbicide Atrazine.

To how staggeringly frightful this situation is, the MNRE says, can be seen in the report issued this past March by the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) wherein they warned our whole planet is in danger, and as we can, in part, read:

“As part of a study on impacts from the world’s most widely used class of insecticides, nicotine-like chemicals called neonicotinoids, American Bird Conservancy (ABC) has called for a ban on their use as seed treatments and for the suspension of all applications pending an independent review of the products’ effects on birds, terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates, and other wildlife.



“It is clear that these chemicals have the potential to affect entire food chains. The environmental persistence of the neonicotinoids, their propensity for runoff and for groundwater infiltration, and their cumulative and largely irreversible mode of action in invertebrates raise significant environmental concerns,” said Cynthia Palmer, co-author of the report and Pesticides Program Manager for ABC, one of the nation’s leading bird conservation organizations.

ABC commissioned world renowned environmental toxicologist Dr. Pierre Mineau to conduct the research. The 100-page report, “The Impact of the Nation’s Most Widely Used Insecticides on Birds,” reviews 200 studies on neonicotinoids including industry research obtained through the US Freedom of Information Act. The report evaluates the toxicological risk to birds and aquatic systems and includes extensive comparisons with the older pesticides that the neonicotinoids have replaced. The assessment concludes that the neonicotinoids are lethal to birds and to the aquatic systems on which they depend.

“A single corn kernel coated with a neonicotinoid can kill a songbird,” Palmer said. “Even a tiny grain of wheat or canola treated with the oldest neonicotinoid — called imidacloprid — can fatally poison a bird. And as little as 1/10th of a neonicotinoid-coated corn seed per day during egg-laying season is all that is needed to affect reproduction.”

The new report concludes that neonicotinoid contamination levels in both surface- and ground water in the United States and around the world are already beyond the threshold found to kill many aquatic invertebrates.”



Quickly following this damning report, the MRNE says, a large group of group of American beekeepers and environmentalists sued the Obama regime over the continued use of these neonicotinoids stating: “We are taking the EPA to court for its failure to protect bees from pesticides. Despite our best efforts to warn the agency about the problems posed by neonicotinoids, the EPA continued to ignore the clear warning signs of an agricultural system in trouble.”

And to how bad the world’s agricultural system has really become due to these genetically modified plants, pesticides and seeds, this report continues, can be seen by the EC’s proposal this past week, following their ban on neonicotinoids, in which they plan to criminalize nearly all seeds and plants not registered with the European Union, and as we can, in part, read:

“Europe is rushing towards the good ol days circa 1939, 40… A new law proposed by the European Commission would make it illegal to “grow, reproduce or trade” any vegetable seeds that have not been “tested, approved and accepted” by a new EU bureaucracy named the “EU Plant Variety Agency.”

It’s called the Plant Reproductive Material Law, and it attempts to put the government in charge of virtually all plants and seeds. Home gardeners who grow their own plants from non-regulated seeds would be considered criminals under this law.”



This MRNE report points out that even though this EC action may appear draconian, it is nevertheless necessary in order to purge the continent from continued contamination of these genetically bred “seed monstrosities.”

Most perplexing in all of this, the MRNE says, and which led to Putin’s anger at the US, has been the Obama regimes efforts to protect pesticide-producer profits over the catastrophic damaging being done to the environment, and as the Guardian News Service detailed in their 2 May article titled “US rejects EU claim of insecticide as prime reason for bee colony collapse” and which, in part, says:

“The European Union voted this week for a two-year ban on a class of pesticides, known as neonicotinoids, that has been associated with the bees’ collapse. The US government report, in contrast, found multiple causes for the collapse of the honeybees.”

To the “truer” reason for the Obama regimes protection of these bio-tech giants destroying our world, the MRNE says, can be viewed in the report titled “How did Barack Obama become Monsanto’s man in Washington?” and which, in part, says:

“After his victory in the 2008 election, Obama filled key posts with Monsanto people, in federal agencies that wield tremendous force in food issues, the USDA and the FDA: At the USDA, as the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto Danforth Center. As deputy commissioner of the FDA, the new food-safety-issues czar, the infamous Michael Taylor, former vice-president for public policy for Monsanto. Taylor had been instrumental in getting approval for Monsanto’s genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.”

Even worse, after Russia suspended the import and use of an Monsanto genetically modified cornfollowing a study suggesting a link to breast cancer and organ damage this past September, theRussia Today News Service reported on the Obama regimes response:

“The US House of Representatives quietly passed a last-minute addition to the Agricultural Appropriations Bill for 2013 last week – including a provision protecting genetically modified seeds from litigation in the face of health risks.

The rider, which is officially known as the Farmer Assurance Provision, has been derided by opponents of biotech lobbying as the “Monsanto Protection Act,” as it would strip federal courts of the authority to immediately halt the planting and sale of genetically modified (GMO) seed crop regardless of any consumer health concerns.

The provision, also decried as a “biotech rider,” should have gone through the Agricultural or Judiciary Committees for review. Instead, no hearings were held, and the piece was evidently unknown to most Democrats (who hold the majority in the Senate) prior to its approval as part of HR 993, the short-term funding bill that was approved to avoid a federal government shutdown.”

On 26 March, Obama quietly signed this “Monsanto Protection Act” into law thus ensuring the American people have no recourse against this bio-tech giant as they fall ill by the tens of millions, and many millions will surely end up dying in what this MRNE report calls the greatest agricultural apocalypse in human history as over 90% of feral (wild) bee population in the US has already died out, and up to 80% of domestic bees have died out too.

Source

Class of 2013: You Can’t Make a Living Just by Solving Problems

Class of 2013: You Can’t Make a Living Just by Solving Problems
May 21, 2013




It is now my great pleasure, graduates, to welcome you to the Real World – a world that is quite different from the Real World my own classmates and I first encountered a few decades ago.

When we graduated, finding a job and earning a salary was pretty much the only way to go. But today such jobs are no longer so easy to find. In fact, the data shows that by 2020 more people in the United States will be working for themselves than are drawing salaries, with most of the salaried employees being older, and most of the self-employed younger.

And then there are all the changes brought on by computerization. As highly interconnected and computerized as we are today, by the time you young graduates reach retirement age you'll be roughly a million times more interconnected and computerized. And what is it that computers do? They solve problems, that’s what. They solve any kind of technical or mechanical problem involved in creating the things that have economic value. So the more computer power we have – and we have twice as much of it every 18 months or so – the more problems computers will be capable of solving.

In fact, if you can state something as a technical problem that has a solution – a task to be completed – then eventually this problem can and will be solved by computer:
Finding a good restaurant in Topeka.
Running a cashier’s station at the grocery store.
Landing a plane.
Filing a sales and expense report.
Operating an assembly line.
Diagnosing a disease.
Making a profit through arbitraging a security or some other asset.
Driving a car.
Spotting a tax deduction.
Summarizing a news story or an academic article.

It shouldn’t be a mystery where all the salaried jobs have gone, because problem-solving jobs like these – jobs that pay perfectly good wages to human beings, or at least used to – are virtually all being automated away. It’s not a question of whether enough computer power will be available to solve these problems, only of when.

There are only two ways to “beat the clock” against the kind of galloping automation already consuming so many jobs. One way is to become very good at dealing with interpersonal issues – people skills. We are all much more interconnected, and our economic activities are more and more interdependent. So resolving the people-to-people issues that plague organizations and groups of cooperating people is a skill that is likely never to go out of style, and it's obviously beyond the capabilities of any conceivable computer.

The other way to beat the clock is not to focus on solving problems but on discovering them. Discovering new problems is something that computers can’t really do, and are unlikely to be able to do in your lifetime. Discovering new problems is otherwise known as “creativity.” Andcreativity, graduates, is one of the most important keys to generating economic value. By its very definition, creativity involves solving a problem that wasn’t there before.

Maintaining a creative and open-minded outlook and relating well with other people are likely to be extremely important skills in whatever career path you choose, bar none.
Launch a business on your own, even as a free-lancer, and you won’t be able to land a customer until you’ve discovered some problem you can solve better than a computer, and you have enough interpersonal skills to convince someone else that you can.
If you go into sales, your prospect will be able to use computer power to solve the problem of evaluating your product’s capabilities, but you’ll still be able to generate value if you can converse with her in such a way as to discover new problems to solve.
Go into finance, and your computer will solve the problem of making profitable trades based on trends and probabilities, but you can generate value yourself by thinking creatively about financial problems that haven’t yet been solved.
If you go into teaching, computers will take over more and more of the problem of basic instruction, but you’ll still be able to generate value as long as you can come up with new pedagogical perspectives, or you can creatively improve a student’s performance through your personal relationship.
Even if you’re graduating pre-med, you won’t be able to generate economic value for long simply by solving the problem of operating a scalpel or interpreting a CAT scan. Rather, you’ll need to discover new problems, perhaps by doing research, or perhaps simply by listening more creatively to a patient’s own description of her symptoms, human to human.

Gosh, I just wish I were your age! What a marvelous time it is to be alive, and to be joining an economic system that prizes originality over conformity, and relationships over transactions. It truly is a wonderful future you face, even though it will be radically different from the future my colleagues and I faced when we were your age.

There is one more extremely important piece of Real World advice I need to leave you with, however. Technology is advancing so rapidly that things have become a lot less predictable than they used to be. No matter how good you are at discovering new problems to solve and relating to people, there will be ups and downs, bonanzas and disasters, that you simply cannot anticipate. No one could.

So how do you prepare for such unpredictability? How do you increase your chances of success, and remain resilient in the face of the occasional reversal? There is only one sure-fire way to prepare for such a changing world, and it is one of the most time-tested, old-fashioned ideas known:

Always be trustworthy to others.

Live your life in such a way that others can trust you. Do this, and you’ll find that others will come to your defense when you need defending. Others will want you to succeed. It won't insulate you from failure, but it will make failures more tolerable, and recovery more achievable.

Technologies may come and go, problems to solve and the business models required to solve them may appear and disappear, but having the trust of your friends and colleagues – that is a genuinely timeless asset.

And, you’ll be happier. You can trust me on this.

Photo: Paper Boat Creative/Getty Images

The Art of Conversation

The Art of Conversation

by Meta Wagner / 10 April 2013 / for The Capital Grille

An hour cocktail party or two-hour business dinner can feel like a day dragging on if you aren’t silver-tongued or you wind up paired with someone who is less-than-outgoing. Even captivating public speakers or extroverted account executives can sometimes find themselves at a loss when the go-to topics (business, movies, weather, kids) are exhausted.

Fortunately, no matter where you are on the conversation comfort scale, there are techniques that can make any conversation engaging, meaningful, and memorable.
Banter like the Best Conversationalists

Conversation, as with any art from, has past masters that the rest of us can emulate. And, no group of gabbers is as renowned as the Algonquin Round Table. These writers, critics, actors and wits, including Dorothy Parker, met for lunch regularly at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 to 1929, producing linguistic gems that are still quoted to this day.

Not everyone can produce the perfect bon mot, but everyone has personal stories to share. And, storytelling, according to Paul Smith, author of Lead with a Story, is the basis for relationship building through conversation. This is especially true in the workplace, where, all too often, hallway chatter can seem predictable or even superficial.

Smith says that there are two types of stories you can tell that will be instant hits. “Be self-deprecating,” says Smith. “Everyone would love to hear about how you accidentally hit ‘Reply All’ to the company email and admitted something a little embarrassing to the entire organization.”

The other welcomed type of story is about when you learned something, or learned it in an unexpected way. “Talking about your medieval history class might only be interesting to other history buffs,” says Smith. “But if you tell a story about how you learned medieval history by watching Monty Python movies and cross-referencing the facts in Wikipedia, almost anyone will find that entertaining.”
Create a Genuine Connection

Storytelling can also take you beyond simple camaraderie and actually allow you to create a closer, more genuine bond with co-workers or clients. It all depends on how willing you are to be open and honest.

“The most effective stories are ones that create vulnerability by showing an insecurity, or describing a painful time in your life, or a costly failure,” says Smith. “They’re exactly the kind of stories people don’t want to tell to a bunch of strangers in the office—and that’s the point. It’s a vicious circle. We don’t tell our personal stories because we work with strangers. They remain strangers because we don’t tell our personal stories. You have to break the cycle. Tell your own stories and challenge other people to tell theirs, and you’ll never work with strangers again.”

Daniel Menaker, former editor at the New Yorker and Random House and the author of A Good Talk, agrees. “Take risks and confide in others,” he advises. “Those are the conversations that come from nowhere and develop into exchanges with more meaning.”
Treat Conversing Like a Task

Stimulating repartee, funny anecdotes, and personal disclosures are the stock in trade of a great conversationalist. But there are also times when you might feel shy or anxious about attending an upcoming dinner party or company outing. That’s where your project management skills will come in handy.

Debra Fine, author of The Fine Art of Small Talk, says to approach these occasions as you would any other project. “Most of us are great at tasks,” she says. “That’s one reason why we’ve succeeded, professionally.”

First step is a little reconnaissance. Fine suggests getting hold of the guest list if you can and reviewing everyone’s names, especially partners and spouses, so you can try to recall what you know about each person and, if you’ve met before, what you talked about the last time you were together.

Next, prepare three “conversation starters” that are broad enough to appeal to nearly anyone and are designed to elicit specific, and hopefully interesting, responses. “Bring me up to date with that project you were telling me about last time” or “What’s been going on with work for you since the last time I saw you? “ Or, Fine’s favorite when you’re speaking to someone you don’t know well, “What keeps you busy outside of work?”

Finally, come to any social event equipped with short answers to questions you’ll probably be asked, like “How’s your year been?” or “How are the kids?”
Listen Intently

With so much focus on what to say, it can be easy to forget that talking is only half of a conversation. The other half, of course, is listening. “One thing most people enjoy is when other people pay attention to them,” says Smith. This includes listening closely to what others have to say, asking questions to get them to say more, and genuinely appreciating what was shared.

Alex Lickerman, M.D., physician and author of The Undefeated Mind, also believes that the value of being a good listener cannot be overstated. He says that shifting the attention away from yourself and toward others--genuinely caring about what they have to say--“will lead to an approach and tone that people will notice and warm to. And it will make you less fearful in engaging with others.”

The benefits of being a good listener do not end there. As Smith observes, one requirement for any great conversation is to have at least one good listener. “And if that’s you,” he says, “you will be the one in the group people like because you were largely responsible for ensuring that those speaking were having a good time.”

The best news about becoming a better listener? As Smith points out, “You don’t have to be a great talker to be a great conversationalist.”

Meta Wagner is the “Vox Pop” columnist for PopMatters, an online magazine of cultural criticism. Her articles and essays have appeared in Salon, The Boston Globe Magazine, Chicago Tribune and The Christian Science Monitor.

More At The Table…
Master Class: Achieving Wine’s Top Honor
Private Dining Trends: A Twist on Tradition
The Art of the Guest List
Command(ing) Performances: The Triumph of a Great Toast
Turning the Tables: The Technology Divide
← At the Table Home

5 Leadership Lessons: Leading Any Team to Succes

5 Leadership Lessons: Leading Any Team to Success

Fistitude is a fable about a basketball team at a small private high school that is struggling through a rough season. The coach must take a leave and it is up to the interim coach to try to turn things around.


Through Fistitude—each finger representing a success attitude—author Sean Glaze presents five lessons to build leaders and teamwork. Glaze illustrates that leadership is taking personal responsibility for what happens, holding yourself accountable and setting an example for others. Here, described in brief are five success attitudes:

Frustration is a symptom of higher aspirations. It’s a gift. It lets you know that you are wasting your time and need to change something. Millions of people just tread water day after day and year after year because they never decide on the paradise they want to row toward. Too many of your friends think they have to wait for something to happen to them—they think that they are supposed to graduate from school and go find themselves. And the truth is, you can’t find yourself. You create yourself. And you create yourself by choosing what island you will row to.

Words create your reality. Think about your mind as a fertile field. Every day, you plant seeds on that field—and those seeds are thoughts and those thoughts are the words and ideas that you choose to accept from yourself and others. Your life will be the harvest of the seeds you allow to grow there.

Nothing changes until you start something. Results aren’t determined by what you are capable of doing—they’re all about what you are willing to actually do. If you start doing something different, it will eventually inspire others to join you because they’ll see the change in you and want it for themselves.

You have to let others know you’re committed to something special and share your enthusiasm, your vision, your words, your plan of action. When you share your goals and dreams, two things happen. First, you begin to build support and gather enough talent and effort to make something happen that you could never accomplish by yourself, and second, you advertise everyone’s commitment to accomplishing the goal because you promise each other to row together.

Obstacles are sometimes put there to test us, to see how badly we want to fight for what lies behind them. When you try anything difficult, you will have to fail a few times before you become ready to achieve it. You will be tempted by convenience, by distractions, by criticism, and by doubt, but you must stay committed to what you began.
* * *
Like us on Facebook for additional leadership and personal development ideas.


Posted by Michael McKinney at 07:54 AM
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) | Teamwork


TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.leadershipnow.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1036

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)






ABOUT
About LeadershipNow
Email Michael McKinney




Recent Posts
Rebooting Work: How to Make Work— Work for You
Where Winners Live
People are Job 1
Put Your Minutes Where Your Mouth Is
First Look: Leadership Books for February 2013
LeadershipNow 140: January 2013 Compilation
It’s Not About the Bike: A Lesson from Lance Armstrong
Remember, It Was Once Someone’s Good Idea
5 Things Smart Risk Takers Do Well
At Work, "Yes" is Great, but at Times "No" is Even Better


Archives
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006

Full site feed
Subscribe via RSS
What is RSS?






How to link to this web site.



Categories

Books
Books To Read Before You Lead
Change
Communication
Creativity & Innovation
Education
Elements of Leadership
Ethics
Five Lessons
Followership
General Business
Government
Human Resources
Interviews
Leaders
Leadership
Leadership Development
Leadership Nuggets
LeadershipNow 140
Leading Forum
Leading Speeches
Leading Views
Leadology
Learning
Lincoln's Lessons
Management
Marketing
Miscellany
Motivation
NeuroLeadership
NewsWire
Out of Context
Personal Development
Positive Leadership
Problem Solving
Teamwork
Thinking
Vision
Weekend Supplement
quickpoint


Powered by
Movable Type 3.2





Main Page | LeadingArticles | LeaderShop | Connections | Communicore | LeadingThoughts

Copyright ©1998-2012 LeadershipNow / M2 Communications All Rights Reserved
All materials contained in http://www.LeadershipNow.com are protected by copyright and trademark laws and may not be used for any purpose whatsoever other than private, noncommercial viewing purposes. Derivative works and other unauthorized copying or use of stills, video footage, text or graphics is expressly prohibited. LeadershipNow is a trademark of M2 Communications.

How to nurture relationships without being a pest

http://www.jibberjobber.com/blog/2013/04/26/how-to-nurture-relationships-without-being-a-pest/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=linkedin

How to Write An Irresistible C-level Executive Resume in 10 Steps

How to Write An Irresistible C-level Executive Resume in 10 Steps
by MEG GUISEPPI on APRIL 27, 2010 · 4 COMMENTS






When was the last time you used your executive resume? When was the last time you even thought about it or looked at it?

If you’re like many of the senior-level executives I work with you’ve either never needed a resume to get noticed and land a job, or it’s been many years since you’ve needed one.

You may be unaware of how much resumes have changed in just the past few years.

Your resume may be dangerously old-fashioned.

Before dusting off your old resume (if you have one), merely updating it with your latest contributions and career history, and expecting that, when you put it out there they will come, you need to get a handle on today’s resume 2.0 and what part it plays in the new world of executive job search.

And guess what? A great resume alone probably won’t get you into your next great gig. Your paper/digital resume will probably NOT be your first introduction to recruiters and hiring decision makers. Numerous recent studies show that the vast majority of them source and assess candidates through Google search, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media.

If you don’t have a strong online footprint providing them with plenty of on-brand information supporting your value proposition, you’re likely facing a prolonged job search.

All things being equal – skill sets, qualifications, relevant experience, education, etc. – job seekers with stronger web presence are the ones who are noticed and chosen over those who have little or no presence online.

Traditional personal marketing communications like resumes have shifted to short-form brand-supporting, value-driven writing, to accommodate hiring professionals’ use of PDAs to review materials and social media to source candidates, and their lack of time.

Then why bother with a resume at all? Why not go straight to your online personal and career marketing? Three good reasons:

1. You need to get your brand and value proposition together before moving them online, so that you send a clear consistent message across all channels. Slapping up online profiles (LinkedIn, Google Profile, ZoomInfo Profile, etc.), a VisualCV, websites, or web portfolios before doing the back end work is a mistake.

2. You’ll still need a paper/digital resume at some point in the hiring process – it’s still recognized job search currency. So make sure it’s a knockout.

3. The work you do defining your personal brand and developing your resume (and bio and other career documents) forms the foundation for all your personal marketing materials, online and offline, and offers many benefits:
Helps you develop messaging designed to resonate with your target audience.
Energizes you with what differentiates your unique promise of value from your competitors.
Prepares you to speak confidently and knowledgeably about the value you offer.
Provides a wealth of on-brand information to repurpose for each of your online profiles and any web pages you create.
Prepares you to interview well.

Understand that before you can write a great resume, you need to lay the groundwork with two critical first-steps – targeting and personal branding.

Here’s your 10-step executive resume worksheet. Remember, I’m using the word “resume” but, along with creating a paper/digital resume, what we’re doing here is developing your personal marketing messaging for all your brand communications, offline and online:
Information-mining and development.

1. Targeting

A generic resume that tries to cover too many bases will probably fall flat. If you don’t write to a specific target audience, your resume won’t speak to the recruiters and hiring decision makers reading it or help them connect you to the job they’re trying to fill. They don’t have the time or inclination to sift through irrelevant information to see if you warrant interviewing.

Everything in your resume has to align with what they’ll be looking for in candidates. Find several job descriptions that look like a mutual good fit to work from when writing your resume. Indeed.com is a good resource.

2. Personal Branding and Value Proposition

Branding is not optional anymore. Especially in a bad job market, personal branding is more critical than ever. In a nutshell, branding links your passions, key personal attributes, and strengths with your value proposition, in a crystal clear message that differentiates you from your competition and resonates with your target audience. What differentiates your unique promise of value from your job seeking competitors is what will sell you.

Companies are looking for vitality, good fit, and personal chemistry in executive candidates. Branding generates chemistry and makes you come alive on the paper, digital, and web page. To learn how to bring it all together, see my post, 10 Steps to an Authentic, Magnetic Personal Brand.

As you’re building your brand, create your brand positioning statement and a tagline to lead your resume and use elsewhere. An encapsulated version serves as your LinkedIn professional headline and can be used for Twitter and other social media bios.

3. Career Success Stories

When you explain how you make things happen – how you were able to capture profitable advances – you help your target audience zero in on what you’ll do for their organization. They can begin to picture you doing the same things for them. Follow a “Challenge – Actions – Results” framework to illuminate your critical contributions to employers. Concise C-A-Rs stories are especially helpful in preparing for interviewing. See my post, Storytelling Propels Executive Branding and Job Search.

Use your C-A-Rs stories to help you develop value proposition messaging that is monetized and linked to your personal brand. SHOW THEM THE NUMBERS! And show them how you accomplished those advances with specific examples.
Writing your executive resume.

4. Forget the Objective Statement

Employers don’t care that you want a “growth position that will utilize my expertise in XYZ”. They want to know what you’ll do for them. Objective statements waste valuable space and prime real estate, and don’t capture attention.

5. Real Estate and Strategic Positioning

Brand yourself above the fold – the top third or quarter of page one. Busy decision makers generally allow only 10 seconds or so for a resume to draw them in. They may go no further than that initial page view when screening web pages or digital documents. As much as possible, make this section stand on its own as your calling card. Search engines pay more attention to relevant keywords at the top of online profiles or web pages and rank web pages with better keyword density higher.

Some suggestions for above the fold branding:
Lead with your personal brand statement which should be loaded with your relevant keywords.
Add a powerful quote from a recent performance review or someone you work with.
Include 3 or 4 value-driven bulleted statements with numbers.
Put together your relevant keyword list of areas of expertise in an attractive graphic box.

6. Readability

Consider the Blackberry effect. More and more hiring decision makers review resumes on their PDAs. When they open a document or web page, it’s more likely to capture and hold their attention with concise on-brand, value-driven statements surrounded by plenty of white space. Avoid densely packed, hard-to-read information. Shorter chunks of information are easier to read and will draw the reader’s eye to continue down the page.

Keep it as close to 2 pages as you can. Obviously, a web page doesn’t have page breaks like a paper/digital document, but the idea is the same. Remember that this is a career marketing communication, not a career history. It needs to incorporate just enough compelling information to generate interest in you. Everything in your resume must be there for a reason. Nothing should be arbitrary.

7. Typos and Grammar

Doesn’t it go without saying that typos and errors in grammar are the kiss of death? They may also convey misinformation. Proofread several times and have someone else do it, too. Don’t rely on spellcheck. Make sure your contact information is correct.

8. Formatting

Keep the formatting attractive, consistent, and clean. Don’t use more than 2 different fonts (one for headings, another for content), and don’t choose frilly, unprofessional fonts. Use graphic lines sparingly, and avoid underlining text alltogether.

9. Blah Resume-speak.

Write your resume from your own voice. You’re not like everyone else. Find the precise words that describe what makes you unique and valuable. Keep the content interesting and don’t fall back on dull phrases that don’t differentiate you, such as results-oriented, visionary leader, excellent communication skills, proven track record of success, etc.

10. Passive Verbs and Repetitive Job Descriptions.

Avoid the over-used, boring phrase “responsible for”. Show your vitality with robust action verbs and explain your niche expertise with relevant key words. Use strong words like pioneered, envisioned, accelerated, benchmarked, incentivized, leveraged, etc. See my post at the Brand-yourself blog, 65 Power Personal Branding Verbs to Nail Your Executive Value Proposition.

Don’t waste precious space in the “Professional Experience” section reiterating obvious responsibilities. Readers will already know the basic duties for your jobs.

Bottom Line

Always keep in mind that real people with particular sets of criteria are reading your resume. Put yourself in their shoes and give them the information they’re looking for in a document or web page that’s easy to read and digest. Make it easy for them to assess your “fit” for the position and corporate culture. Make it easy for them to hire you.

To see how it all comes together, take a look at a sample executive resume I created for a Senior Acquisitions and Business Development Executive.

Related posts:

How to Write a C-level Executive Career Brand Biography

Does Your Online Identity Scream “Hire Me”?

2010 Top 10 Executive Personal Branding and Job Search Trends


PREVIOUS POST: How to Write a C-level Executive Career Brand Biography

NEXT POST: Microsoft Study Finds Online Reputation Management Not Optional



Welcome c-level executives and rising stars!
CEO, CMO, CIO, COO, CFO, CXO, CTO, CBO, CCO, CKO, CSO, President, General Manager, Senior VP, VP, EVP

I LOVE my work partnering with c-suite and senior-level executives in job search or contemplating one.

My clients know where they're going next. But they need help defining their personal brand and creating content that differentiates their unique ROI value, and strategically positions them online and offline for good-fit jobs. —Meg Guiseppi
Subscribe to this blog

Recent Posts
What a Personally Branded Executive Resume Does For You
Personal Branding and Executive Job Search Book — Second Edition
Your Email Signature: Another Personal Branding Tool
The New C-suite Jobs
7 Things Successful Executive Job Seekers Know
Social Proof: Where Online Presence Meets Personal Branding
Google Plus Profile, Personal Branding and Executive Job Search
How to Use Twitter: Multiple Resources
Does Your C-level Executive Resume Differentiate You?
Explore. Dream. Discover. Work Your Passion!

THE PROBLEM ISN'T JUST ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, IT'S LEGAL IMMIGRATION, TOO

Ann Coulter - April 24, 2013 - THE PROBLEM ISN'T JUST ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, IT'S LEGAL IMMIGRATION, TOOHomeMy LifeBook a SpeechLinksForumFollow Me on TwitterArchives 
THE PROBLEM ISN'T JUST ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, IT'S LEGAL IMMIGRATION, TOO
April 24, 2013

The people of Boston are no longer being terrorized by the Marathon bombers, but amnesty supporters sure are.

On CNN's "State of the Union" last weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham's response to the Boston Marathon bombers being worthless immigrants who hate America -- one of whom the FBI cleared even after being tipped off by Russia -- was to announce: "The fact that we could not track him has to be fixed."

Track him? How about not admitting him as an immigrant?

As if it's a defense, we're told Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (of the Back Bay Tsarnaevs) were disaffected "losers" -- the word used by their own uncle -- who couldn't make it in America. Their father had already returned to Russia. Tamerlan had dropped out of college, been arrested for domestic violence and said he had no American friends. Dzhokhar was failing most of his college courses. All of them were on welfare.

(Dzhokhar was given everything America had to offer, and now he only has one thing in his future to look forward to ... a tenured professorship.)

My thought is, maybe we should consider admitting immigrants who can succeed in America, rather than deadbeats.

But we're not allowed to "discriminate" in favor of immigrants who would be good for America. Instead of helping America, our immigration policies are designed to help other countries solve their internal problems by shipping their losers to us.

The problem isn't just illegal immigration. I would rather have doctors and engineers sneaking into the country than legally arriving ditch-diggers.

Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration act so dramatically altered the kinds of immigrants America admits that, since 1969, about 85 percent of legal immigrants have come from the Third World. They bring Third World levels of poverty, fertility, illegitimacy and domestic violence with them. When they can't make it in America, they simply go on welfare and sometimes strike out at Americans.


In addition to the four dead and more than 100 badly wounded victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, let's consider a few of the many other people who would be alive, but for Kennedy's immigration law:

-- The six Long Island railroad passengers murdered in 1993 by Jamaican immigrant Colin Ferguson. Before the shooting, Ferguson was unemployed, harassing women on subways, repeatedly bringing lawsuits against police and former employers, applying for workman's compensation for fake injuries and blaming all his problems on white people. Whom he then decided to murder.

-- The two people killed outside CIA headquarters in 1993 by Pakistani illegal immigrant Mir Qazi. He had been working as a driver for a courier company. (It's nearly impossible to find an American who can drive.)

-- Christoffer Burmeister, a 27 year-old musician killed in a mass shooting by Palestinian immigrant Ali Hassan Abu Kamal in 1997 at the Empire State Building. Hassan had immigrated to America with his family two months earlier at age 68. (It's a smart move to bring in immigrants just in time to pay them Social Security benefits!)

-- Bill Cosby's son, Ennis, killed in 1997 by 18-year-old Ukrainian immigrant Mikhail Markhasev, who had come to this country with his single mother eight years earlier -- because we were running short on single mothers.

Markhasev, who had a juvenile record, shot Cosby point-blank for taking too long to produce his wallet. He later bragged about killing a "n*gger."

-- The three people murdered at the Appalachian School of Law in 2002 by Nigerian immigrant Peter Odighizuwa, angry at America because he had failed out of law school. At least it's understandable why our immigration policies would favor a 43-year-old law student. It's so hard to get Americans to go to law school these days!

-- The stewardess and passenger murdered by Egyptian immigrant Hesham Mohamed Hadayet when he shot up the El Al ticket counter at the Los Angeles airport in 2002. Hesham, a desperately needed limousine driver, received refugee status in the U.S. because he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Apparently, that's a selling point if you want to immigrate to America.

-- The six men murdered by Mexican immigrant Salvador Tapia at the Windy City Core Supply warehouse in Chicago in 2003, from which he had been fired six months earlier. Tapia was still in this country despite having been arrested at least a dozen times on weapons and assault charges. Only foreign newspapers mentioned that Tapia was an immigrant. American newspapers blamed the gun.

-- The six people killed in northern Wisconsin in 2004 by Hmong immigrant Chai Soua Vang, who shot his victims in the back after being caught trespassing on their property. Minnesota Public Radio later explained that Hmong hunters don't understand American laws about private property, endangered species, or really any laws written in English. It was an unusual offense for a Hmong, whose preferred crime is raping 12- to 14-year-old girls -- as extensively covered in the Fresno Bee and Minneapolis Star Tribune.

-- The five people murdered at the Trolley Square Shopping Mall in Salt Lake City by Bosnian immigrant Sulejman Talovic in 2007. Talovic was a Muslim high school dropout with a juvenile record. No room for you, Swedish doctor. We need resentful Muslims!

-- The 32 people murdered at Virginia Tech in 2007 by Seung-Hui Cho, a South Korean immigrant.

-- The 13 soldiers murdered at Fort Hood in 2009 by "accused" shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, son of Palestinian immigrants. Hasan's parents had operated a restaurant in Roanoke, Va., because where are we going to find Americans to do that?

-- The 13 people killed at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, N.Y., by Vietnamese immigrant Jiverly Wong, who became a naturalized citizen two years after being convicted of fraud and forgery in California. Wong was angry that people disrespected him for his poor English skills.

-- Florence Donovan-Gunderson, who was shot along with her husband, and three National Guardsmen in a Carson City IHOP gunned down by Mexican immigrant Eduardo Sencion in 2011.

-- The three people, including a 15-year-old girl, murdered in their home in North Miami by Kesler Dufrene, a Haitian immigrant and convicted felon who had been arrested nine times, but was released when Obama halted deportations to Haiti after the earthquake. Dufrene chose the house at random.

-- The many African-Americans murdered by Hispanic gangs in Los Angeles in the last few years, including Jamiel Shaw Jr., a star football player being recruited by Stanford; Cheryl Green, a 14-year-old eighth-grade student chosen for murder solely because she was black; and Christopher Ash, who witnessed Green's murder.

During the three years from 2010 through 2012, immigrants have committed about a dozen mass murders in this country, not including the 9/11 attack.

The mass murderers were from Afghanistan, South Korea, Vietnam, Haiti, South Africa, Ethiopia and Mexico. None were from Canada or Western Europe.

I don't want to hear about the black crime rate or the Columbine killers. We're talking about immigrants here! There should be ZERO immigrants committing crimes.There should be ZERO immigrants accepting government assistance. There should be ZERO immigrants demanding that we speak their language.

We have no choice about native-born losers. We ought to be able to do something about the people we chose to bring here.

Meanwhile, our government officials just keep singing the praises of "diversity," while expressly excluding skilled immigrants who might be less inclined to become "disaffected" and lash out by killing Americans.

In response to the shooting at Fort Hood, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. said: "As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse."

On "Fox News Sunday" this week, former CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden said of the Boston bombing suspects, "We welcome these kinds of folks coming to the United States who want to be contributing American citizens."

Unless, that is, they have a college degree and bright prospects. Those immigrants are prohibited.

COPYRIGHT 2013 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL UCLICK

Worst Job In America Is ...

Worst Job In America Is ...
By Dan Fastenberg
Posted Apr 23rd 2013 @ 8:28AM
Filed under: Top 10 Lists, Employment News & Trends


What is the worst job in America? In a troubled economy, where unemployment is high and the employed are overworked and underpaid, the competition is surely stiff. But each year CareerCast.com, the employment website, ranks 200 professions in America to come up with the answer.

The list is based on five factors: physical demands, work environment, income, stress and hiring outlook. This year, the 25th year of the CareerCast list, technological advancements appear to have complicated -- if not threatened -- several once-comfortable and sought-after American professions.

Not all jobs at the bottom of the list pay badly. One even pays an average salary of $60,750, while the average salary for a full-time worker in the U.S is around $41,000. In fact, the list of the worst jobs includes gigs that might always be considered desirable -- that is, once you reach the top of the field. Below are the bottom 10 on the list of 200 jobs, along with average salary information -- with No. 1 on the ranking being considered the least desirable. But tell us, what do YOU think is the worst job in America?

The Worst Jobs of 2013:

10. Flight Attendant -- Average income: $37,740.

9. Roofer -- Average income: $34,220.

8. Mail Carrier -- Average income: $53,090.

7. Meter Reader -- Average income: $36,400.

6. Dairy Farmer -- Average income: $60,750.

5. Oil Rig Worker -- Average income: $37,640.

4. Actor -- Average income: $17.44/hour.

3. Enlisted Military Personnel -- Average income:$41,998.
​
2. Lumberjack -- Average income: $32,870.

1. Newspaper Reporter -- Average income: $36,000.

Do you agree ? What do you think is the worst job in America? Share your comments below.

See the 10 best jobs.

12 Most Underrated Jobs In America

Civil Engineer
Computer Analyst
Automobile Mechanic
Electrician
Plumber
School Principal
Economist
Legal Assistant
Accountant
Market Research Analyst
Biologist (Biochemist or Biophysicist)
Veterinarian

Automobile Mechanic

Median Annual Salary: $36,200

Want to Write a Book?

http://www.bestsellerblueprint.com/freetraining/

STRESSED & DEPRESSED AMERICANS 'SNAPPING' BY THE MILLIONS

STRESSED & DEPRESSED
AMERICANS 'SNAPPING' BY THE MILLIONS
Exclusive: David Kupelian reveals record fear, stress, suicide – and inspired way outPublished: 22 hours ago
DAVID KUPELIAN About | Email | Archive

Receive author alerts Subscribe to feed
Ads by Google


Terrorism. Chaos. Fear of the future. In the age of Obama, America is undergoing a “fundamental transformation” – that much everyone knows.

But what few seem to realize about this transformation is that the sheer stress of living in today’s America is driving tens of millions to the point of illness, depression and self-destruction. Consider the following trends:

Suicide has surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of injury death for Americans. Even more disturbing, in the world’s greatest military, more U.S. soldiers died last year by suicide than in combat;
Fully one-third of the nation’s employees suffer chronic debilitating stress, and more than half of all “millennials” (18 to 33 year olds) experience a level of stress that keeps them awake at night, including large numbers diagnosed with depression or anxiety disorder.
Shocking new research from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that one in five of all high-school-aged children in the United States has been diagnosed with ADHD, and likewise a large new study of New York City residents shows, sadly, that one in five preteens – children aged six to 12 – have been medically diagnosed with either ADHD, anxiety, depression or bipolar disorder;
New research concludes that stress renders people susceptible to serious illness, and a growing number of studies now confirm that chronic stress plays a major role in the progression of cancer, the nation’s second-biggest killer. The biggest killer of all, heart disease, which causes one in four deaths in the U.S., is also known to have a huge stress component;
Incredibly, 11 percent of all Americans aged 12 and older are currently taking SSRI antidepressants – those highly controversial, mood-altering psychiatric drugs with the FDA’s “suicidality” warning label and alarming correlation with school shooters. Women are especially prone to depression, with a stunning 23 percent of all American women in their 40s and 50s – almost one in four – now taking antidepressants, according to a major study by the CDC;
Add to that the tens of millions of users of all other types of psychiatric drugs, including (just to pick one) the 6.4 million American children between 4 and 17 diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Ritalin or similar psycho-stimulants. Throw in the 28 percent of American adults with a drinking problem, that’s more than 60 million, plus the 22 million using illegal drugs like marijuana, cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens and inhalants,and pretty soon a picture emerges of a nation of drug-takers, with hundreds of millions dependent on one toxic substance or another – legal or illegal – to “help” them deal with the stresses and problems of life.

By the way, things are no better over the pond – and may be worse, according to one major study that concluded almost 40 percent of Europeans are plagued by mental illness.

Note: This report is is excerpted from the April 2013 issue of WND’s acclaimed Whistleblower magazine, “STRESSED AND DEPRESSED: The unreported health crisis of the Obama era.”

What on earth is going on? Why isn’t medical science – and for that matter all of our incredible scientific and technological innovations in every area of life – reducing our stress and lightening our load? Why doesn’t the almost-magical availability of the world’s accumulated knowledge, thanks to the Internet, make us more enlightened and happy? Why is it that, instead, more and more of us are so stressed out as to be on a collision course with illness, misery, tragedy and death?

Most important, what can we do to reverse course? Fortunately, amazingly effective help is available – but more on that later.

‘He wants people to snap’

“Life is difficult,” wrote psychiatrist M. Scott Peck at the outset of his international best-seller, “The Road Less Traveled.” Stress, difficulties, disappointments, accidents, disease, misfortune, cruelty, betrayal – they’re unavoidable in this life.

Yet, during eras when society and families are stable, unified and fundamentally decent and moral – as, say, America during the 1950s – the stress level for each person is minimized, or at least not compounded by a perverse society. Conversely, when – as is the case today – we have widespread family breakdown, a depraved culture that mocks traditional moral values, a chaotic economy and disintegrating monetary system and a power-mad government dominated by demagogues and sociopaths, the normal stresses of life are greatly multiplied.

Thus it has come to pass that America, long the hope of the world, has grown increasingly dispirited and angry, which in turn breeds anxiety, fear, confusion, hopelessness and depression.

After all, let’s face the hard facts: We just re-elected perhaps the worst president in history, someone manifestly obsessed with dismantling traditional, free-market capitalist America and transforming it into a socialist nanny state. That in itself is highly stressful – at least for the roughly half the population that still understands socialism always leads to a profound loss of freedom and prosperity.

Then there’s today’s relentless economic pressures: high unemployment (the actual rate is at least double that of the “official” government rate), foreclosures and bankruptcies, a stagnant growth rate, 11,000 new people signing up for food stamps every single day, rising taxes for the entire middle class whose net worth is simultaneously shrinking, ever-higher prices for food, gas and other essentials – and overshadowing it all, a galactic national debt burden, courtesy of a wildly out-of-control government unrestrained by either the Constitution or common sense.

That, too, is very stressful. Top it all off with an administration continually abusing the public for the sake of enlarging and consolidating its political power – for instance, by purposely making the “sequester” cuts hurt Americans, even our active-duty soldiers, as much as possible.

Make no mistake: This sort of stress on Americans is not only intentional on the part of Team Obama – it is strategic. Remember, these people are revolutionaries (that is, engaged in “bringing about a major or fundamental change,” as Merriam-Webster puts it) and utterly committed to replacing one societal structure – America’s constitutional, limited-government, free-enterprise system – with another – a socialist, wealth-redistributionist system run by an all-powerful government.

Such a radical change cannot be accomplished while Americans are calm, happy, content and grateful for their blessings. Citizens must be unhappy and stressed out. Indeed, widespread popular discontent has always been the required fuel for leftist transformation.

Just reading a few pages into Saul Alinsky’s notorious “Rules for Radicals,” one encounters repeated confirmation that the very key to radical “change” is keeping the populace angry, encouraging their grievances, stoking their resentments and making sure they are continually upset. That is the primary psychological dynamic of “community organizing” – and America today is led by community-organizer-in-chief Barack Obama, a long-time master practitioner and instructor in Alinsky’s neo-Marxist agitation methods.

Top radio talker Rush Limbaugh recently picked up on this normally unspoken aspect of Obama’s modus operandi: “I think he wants people to snap,” opined Rush. “I think Obama is challenging everybody’s sanity. Obama [is] literally pushing people to snap, attacking the very sanity of the country.”

Commenting on Obama’s sudden obsession with employing every means possible to deny law-abiding Americans their constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms, Limbaugh exclaimed: “All of this is so in our face. Everything that people hold dear is under assault. Deliberately making people upset! This is not what presidents do.”


It’s not what presidents do – unless they happen to be leftist revolutionaries, in which case “deliberately making people upset” is precisely what they do to accomplish their intended “fundamental transformation.”

We need to realize that Americans could not have twice elected a leader as transcendentally unworthy of the presidency as Barack Obama without first having had their minds and hearts captured. Through constant leftist indoctrination, emotional manipulation, ruthless intimidation – and then being rewarded once they have “converted” – perhaps half of the American electorate has been programmed over the course of decades by a subversive school system and equally perverse “news” establishment. Truth be told, both institutions have become full-blown abominations, occupying as they do near-sacred stations of public trust in American civilization.

Of course, at the nuclear core of the myriad assaults on traditional America is the rejection (at least by society’s elites) of God and repudiation of the Judeo-Christian values that underpin Western civilization. This in turn has led to pervasive societal disintegration and a Pandora’s Box of almost unimaginable problems.

Unfortunately, despite our nation’s growing number of seriously troubled people, psychiatry provides little help. It has evolved in our secular, mechanistic culture to see virtually all mental, emotional and spiritual problems as genetic or physiological in origin. No longer is there any such thing as sin. Nothing is moral or spiritual. Good character, introspection, understanding, repentance and forgiveness, so vital to genuine healing, are now irrelevant. Just write a prescription.

Since the current research fad is to conclude (as the National Institute of Mental Health puts it) that “depressive illnesses are disorders of the brain,” psychiatry has come to rely heavily on altering our brain chemistry by (in the case of depression) tricking it into producing higher levels of neurotransmitters like serotonin and norepinephrine. But this forces us to ask an obvious question: What are you talking about? Do you really believe that the 23 percent of American women ages 40 through 59 currently on antidepressants ALL have defective or diseased brains?

Or, is it just possible that, rather than tens of millions of inexplicably damaged brains, much of today’s epidemic of “depression” and other “disorders” has a lot more to do with the prevalence of stress, pressure, confusion, cruelty, anger, injustice, temptation and corruption all around us – and our inability to deal with it without being infected and hurt by it?

Finding the way out

There are, of course, proven commonsense steps each individual can take to minimize the effects of stress. Chuck Norris’ personal list of “12 ways to avoid depression” is as good as any available online, and encompasses everything from diet and exercise to meditation and gratitude to God.

But boiling the matter down to core essentials, there are really three time-tested elements required for staying healthy physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. They are:

1) A genuinely healthful diet: Newsflash – eating the wrong foods (or eating too much) causes huge problems. Obesity is not only stressful, but has myriad adverse health effects, including depression. Likewise, eating foods that are heavily processed, high-sugar, adulterated, chemicalized, processed, artificially flavored, colored, sweetened and preserved stresses both body and mind. As WND columnist and orthopedic surgeon Lee Hieb, M.D., puts it, “If my great-grandmother would not have recognized something as food … I don’t eat it.”

Mountains of research and dietary wisdom can be boiled down to this: Eat a variety of fresh, natural foods, especially vegetables and fruits and particularly lots of enzyme-rich raw foods. Fish and chicken are fine, so is red meat in moderation, same with dairy (eggs, milk and butter – not margarine), but buy natural/organic whenever possible.

2) Regular exercise: A good exercise regimen not only helps keep our heart (and the rest of us) healthy, it confers untold benefits, tangible and intangible – plus it is, all by itself, a major de-stressor! Again, WND columnist Chuck Norris, who as a six-time undefeated world karate champion (and reputedly the world’s toughest man) knows a little about exercise, says this: “Exercise is a cure for so many ills; depression is one of many. Exercise is so powerful on our mind that Men’s Health calls it the drug-free depression cure.” Enough said. Just do it.

3) Personal quiet time for prayer and reflection, allowing us the opportunity to seek the Creator’s will while letting go of accumulated anger, frustration and resentment toward others. (In other words, renewing our love for God and our neighbor.) Anger in all its forms has long been shown to be at the very root of many serious problems and illnesses, both physical and mental.

Pause button. One all-important point needs to be made here: It is not the stress itself that harms us, but rather, the way we overreact emotionally to it. And primarily, that reaction is one of resentment, either overt or subtle.

Grasping this often-overlooked fact leads directly to the bottom-line principle for successfully coping with stress, whether it’s related to money, work, health, relationships or trauma: Learn to calmly endure the stress (or as the Bible expresses it, “trials and tribulations”) with genuine patience and faith instead of anger and frustration, and an amazing thing happens: The stress, rather than making us sick and debilitated, actually serves to make us stronger, more at peace and more whole.

Help with this all-important facet of stress management comes, ironically, from the occupation Forbes calls the “most stressful job” in America – namely, the U.S. military.

Despite the tremendous ravages of war stress – 22 suicides per day among U.S. military veterans (on average) and an epidemic of post-traumatic stress disorder and other war-trauma conditions streaming out of Iraq and Afghanistan – a quiet revolution in overcoming stress is nevertheless unfolding within the military.

Like the constantly inculcated attribute of “resilience,” the military has also found the practice of “mindfulness” to be extremely helpful in overcoming stress. And the gold standard in this growing field is “Be Still and Know,” a simple and time-tested awareness exercise that been used in all five armed service branches for many years.

Currently relied on by tens of thousands of soldiers and veterans, “Be Still and Know” is the key ingredient included in a compact disc titled “Coping Strategies.” In essence, the 30-minute exercise helps users discover genuine patience, mental clarity and (a word the Founding Fathers used a lot) equanimity. It has been highly endorsed by both the U.S. Army’s chief of chaplains, Maj. Gen. Douglas L. Carter, who calls it a “great resource for our Soldiers,” and Col. John Bradley, M.D., long the chief of psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

“Coping Strategies’” distributing organization, the nonprofit Patriot Outreach founded by U.S. Army Col. Antonio P. Monaco, offers the CD (or Internet download) free to all U.S. military personnel, veterans and family members upon request. It is also readily available to civilians, at a nominal charge to support the free grants to the military. Patriot Outreach’s program has been publicly praised by Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad as well as former GOP presidential candidate Sen. Rick Santorum.

Having written about “Coping Strategies” and the “Be Still and Know” exercise a couple of years ago, I recently checked in with a member of the Patriot Outreach team, Navy Special Ops veteran Lee Booton, for an update.

Booton, who experienced a lot of hand-to-hand combat, came home from Vietnam with a nice big fat case of post-traumatic stress disorder. (“In the middle of the night I was pounding on my wife, thinking I was still fighting the North Vietnamese,” he told me. “I felt horrible.”) Yet years later, when he was introduced to “Be Still and Know,” Booton knew it provided the answer he and other stressed-out soldiers were desperately seeking. Over the past five years, volunteering with Patriot Outreach, Booton has “met face to face with returning troops” and personally “handed out between 5,000 and 6,000″ of the “Coping Strategies” CDs to vets and encouraged others to download the exercises for free. (There are actually four exercises included in “Coping Strategies” – the main one, “Be Still and Know,” plus three others that focus specifically on “Overcoming Pain,” “Overcoming Fear” and “Overcoming Stress.”)

Does he ever hear back from the soldiers he helps? “Yes!” says Booton enthusiastically. “Sometimes they give me a big hug and say, ‘Boy, does that work,’ or ‘You helped save my life – this made it so much easier for me to deal day-to-day with all of my issues.’”

‘Cure stress’

“Be Still and Know” was developed by Roy Masters, who at 85 is the patriarch of stress experts, having taught this method since 1960 to millions, his fans including everyone from movie star John Wayne to Internet journalist Matt Drudge. He also hosts talk radio’s longest-running counseling show, “Advice Line,” on Talk Radio Network. The author of 18 books, Masters was featured on the Sean Hannity Show to discuss his newest book, “Hypnotic States of Americans.”


Recently, all four of the audio exercises on the “Coping Strategies” CD have been released in a new civilian version on a dedicated MP3 player called, “The Cure Stress Device.”

“In today’s high-tech, wireless world,” said Masters, “a little, self-contained audio device the size of a credit card seemed like the best delivery system possible.”


In a recent message he tweeted, Masters summed up more than 60 years of work in just 140 characters: “Learn to endure cruelty and injustice without resentment and after the stress has passed you will find the fulfillment you have been seeking.”

“Most stress,” explains Masters, “is simply cruelty, in one form or another, directed at us by other stressed-out human beings, who themselves have been victimized by cruelty and stress in their own pasts.

“Imagine, however, that someone said or did something cruel to you, but that you did not react in any way whatsoever – you did not become upset, resentful or even ruffled. You simply observed that this person was saying or doing something cruel, as though you were calmly observing the scene in a movie. You simply would not be stressed by what would appear to others to be a highly stressful encounter. Stress and cruelty affect us as profoundly as they do only because we react to them resentfully.”

The exercise works so well, he adds, because “it enables you to become objective, a little bit separate, detached and disentangled from all your troublesome thoughts, emotions, heartaches, fears and traumatic memories – and that, all by itself, is extremely helpful, and actually healing.”

‘You just be cool and calm’

“Stress” – our modern name for all the trials and tribulations the Good Lord in His wisdom deems necessary for us to grow in character and faith – is not the enemy. It is, however, the difficult but necessary part of life that tests us, proves us, and ultimately makes us better – or kills us.

Fortunately, in the loving sacrifice of his Son, not only did God make provision for the forgiveness of mankind’s sins, but He also gave us another priceless gift – the perfect example of how to deal with stress. Even while hanging on the cross in agony, Jesus did not resent his tormentors and even asked God to forgive them. That’s the essence of what we need to find.

In one sense, our task is simple: Since our past sins have been forgiven, and since the future is in God’s care alone, we just need to focus on discovering how to live right now, in this present moment, with faith, patient endurance and perfect integrity.

Now more than ever, it is essential that Americans get a handle on stress. The pressures of modern life are being greatly multiplied by the ever-present threat of terrorism and a socialist government that thrives on promoting everything dark, perverse and angry (and therefore stress-producing) in human nature. Remember, Winston Churchill called socialism “the gospel of envy.”

After Rush Limbaugh warned his listeners that Obama wants good Americans “to snap,” he added, good-naturedly: “You just be cool and calm. Everything’s going to be fine. I’ll tell you when it’s not.”

Indeed, to prevent Obama and company from completing their “fundamental transformation” of America, we are going to have to learn to stay cool, calm and collected – and not just on the surface, but deep down in our souls.

Know this: If you are upset at Obama and the maniacal left – if you’re angry, full of rage, feeling hopeless, frustrated, wanting to drop out, or wanting to lash out and act violently – believe me, that’s precisely what your adversary wants. Not only that, that’s how he wins, because when you’re upset and angry and overreacting – pardon me for putting it this way – you become stupid. That’s what’s wrong with the Republican Party. Its principles are magnificent (read the 2012 platform), but most of its leaders are intimidated by the ruthless Obama administration and the blatantly biased and abusive “mainstream media.” Thus, in their reactive, intimidated state of mind, they become ineffective, cowardly and contemptible (with a few notable exceptions, for which we are very grateful).

This is true not just of politicians, but all of us: No matter how smart, moral and right-thinking we might otherwise be, when we’re angry and upset we do not possess God’s grace, wisdom, courage and creative genius guiding our steps, and thus we are no match for the evil rising in America.

But if Americans would discover grace under pressure – hey, Ronald Reagan had it, why can’t we? – if enough of us found strength and resolve that were rooted, not in rage, but in righteousness and love of God and our neighbor, then nothing, and I do mean nothing, could stop us. Having regained our lost innocence, we would likewise see our beloved country restored to the noble land it once was.

“My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing,” James 1: 2-4 KJV.

The preceding is excerpted from the April 2013 issue of WND’s acclaimed Whistleblower magazine, “STRESSED AND DEPRESSED: The unreported health crisis of the Obama era.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/americans-snapping-by-the-millions/#rwYYAdjg8TUjf6EQ.99