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Summer is here – bring on the fun, sun and cookouts! As we celebrate our nation’s birthday, exercise your right to stay healthy and sneak in dessert (who can pass up pie?). Avoiding cookouts and all their glory may not be easy, but steering clear from BBQ extras (and weight) can be.

Here are 6 healthy BBQ eating tips to help you stick to your workout goals.

1. Don’t Go Hungry

Here’s a typical scenario: you wait all day to eat, you’re starving and immediately beeline for the chips, hot dogs and cold soda. When you’re hungry, everything looks good and choosing healthy options is much harder.

Save room by eating a meal before with fewer calories, so you don’t hit the barbecue with an empty stomach.

2. Find the Fruits and Veggies

Ever notice the fruit and veggie platters always go quick? Everyone loves fresh fruit, especially on a gorgeous day. Celebrate the freshest fruits and veggies of the season; and feel good about what you’re eating.

If you are hosting a BBQ, make sure you include at least one low-calorie option for guests. Get creative with your sides, try grilling out vegetables, offer turkey burgers or whip up fresh strawberries and cream for dessert.

3. Use a Smaller Plate — Take Control

For round one, go small — you can always go back for seconds. You may be surprised that a smaller portion satisfies your appetite. If you think you want to go back for more, wait a couple minutes after eating and see if you’re still hungry, or just mindlessly munching.

4. Watch the Sauces

So you’ve got your turkey burger with half the bun, salad and fruit – you’re proud and feeling good, but what about dressing and sauces? You’ve come this far, hold the mayo, heavy dressings and “special sauce.” Instead, try adding a healthy salsa for a kick and some extra veggies!

Go for a clear dressing, like balsamic vinaigrette, instead of creamy, high-calorie ones. Keep the salad dressing on the side and dip your fork in it.

Also, watch out for mayo-filled salads, like potato or macaroni salad. They’re typically filled with calories, so manage your portions.

5. Stay Active — “No Linger Zone” at Buffet Table

Pick a spot far away from the buffet table and curb temptations to go fill your plate. If you’re prone to snacking, engage in activities such as a group walk or tossing the football. You don’t need to work up a sweat, but you’ll get the blood pumping and muscles moving! Every calorie you burn helps, plus it keeps you away from the food.

6. Beware of Beverages

When getting together with friends, it’s easy to kick back and drink sodas or alcoholic beverages (which are both loaded with calories). Try and drink a glass of water in between every soda or alcoholic beverage, it keeps you hydrated and the calories down.

Best bet, limit to 1 or 2 drinks, and stick with water.

When grandma’s chocolate cake is calling, remember, so is your fit! Practice these healthy tips and you’ll be a cookout survivor. Want more wiggle room with your calories? Burn the calories BEFORE you go with a quick workout!

Article courtesy lffblog.com

When I was 17 years old I was inspired by an elderly man one night with one message for one hour who said it’s wise to set a goal for myself, my family, my community, my city, my state, my nation, the world and beyond for at least the next 120 years if I wanted to maximise my potential on planet earth. This message has remained with me for the last 39 years.

That was the beginning of me consciously setting inspiring goals that have led me to the global company I have today. Since then I have learned that you won’t make a difference in yourself unless you have a vision at least as big as your family. You won’t make a difference in your family unless you have a vision as big as your community. You won’t make a difference in your community unless you have a vision as big as your city. You won’t make a difference in your city unless you have a vision as big as your province or state. You won’t make a difference in your province unless you have a vision as big as your nation. You won’t be number one in your nation unless you have a global vision and you won’t make a global impact without an astronomical vision. Unless you have a truly vast vision you won’t achieve vast accomplishments.

In order to expand our vision we will need to expand our time and space horizons which means taking on ever greater levels of accountabilities or complexities of what we manage and we must be able to embrace both the supportive and challenging sides of life. A factory worker has a limited time and space horizon and lives from hour to hour, day to day. His supervisor has a slightly greater space and time horizon and lives from day to day, week to week. The lower management of his same company, who oversees the supervisors, lives from week to week, month to month. The middle manager lives from month to month, year to year. The upper manager thinks in terms of year to year, decade to decade. The CEO thinks in terms of decades to generations. The visionary, who manages many subsidiaries and CEOs, thinks in terms of generations to centuries. And the wise sage, who inspires the visionaries, thinks in terms of centuries to millenniums, giving rise to immortal legacies. The magnitude of space and time within our inner most dominant thoughts determines the magnitude of what we can manage and accomplish.

So in order to expand and grow our business, we also need to expand our vision, have patience with longer time horizons and not let immediate gratification stop us from our long-term objectives.

It is wise to remember that when we manage people, we must delegate and manage in terms of the time horizons in which they live in. It is unrealistic to give someone with a day to day, week to week or month to month vision a year-long project.

So how to do we expand our vision and space time horizons? It boils down to the basics of leadership with the key ingredient being congruency. Whenever a leader sets a goal that’s aligned and congruent with their highest values (what is most important to them), they become disciplined, reliable and focused, they walk their talk, they are more certain and they achieve. They give themselves permission to step up to a new level of accountability, responsibility, and management complexity and a higher leadership role. Whenever they don’t they stagnate. The greater the congruency between our intentions and our highest values, the greater the vision we will have for our business. So the key is identifying your highest values or priorities. Our highest values originate from that which is most missing in our life. Let me give an example:

I worked with the head of one of the largest paper manufacturer in Australia, who believed that the Asian market was starting to erode his company’s market share and he was battling to compete.

When I met with this 63 year old CEO, I asked him how the company was started and what his original vision and dream was. Initially, all he could say was that they couldn’t compete with the Asian market. He wasn’t answering my questions and was disassociating himself from the company because he was nearing retirement. Anytime a leader of a company is dissociating from their own cause or effect, they lose their vision and their company loses its power.

So I probed further by asking a simple question, ‘What inspired you to get into the paper business?’ He paused for a moment and I could see a whole lot of emotion well up inside him and this is what he said:

“When I was a young boy my family was very poor and I didn’t have simple school supplies like paper. I felt so humiliated that at the end of each day I went into the rubbish bins and literally grabbed any pieces of paper that didn’t have marks on them. I would take it home and make pads of paper that were perfectly trimmed so I could be like everybody else.”

This inspired this CEO to create his paper company to make sure that every child had paper. When I heard this story, all I said to him was, ‘Are you going to let the children down?’ He stared at me with tearful eyes and said no. I asked him why then was he retiring? He said, “I guess it is because it’s what I am supposed to do at 65.”

I asked him another question, ‘When you retire, what are you going to do, take your 40 years of experience and toss it around the golf course all day?’ He agreed that that didn’t sound like a very inspiring idea.

Within three months of reclaiming and expanding his vision, his paper company started to turn around. In six months, they were ahead. This turnaround had little to do with the outer world but everything to do with his heart being back in his inspired and expanded vision. Leaders in business who are inspired from within don’t respond to the outer world, they create the outer world.

Love and Wisdom,
Dr. John Demartini

For more from Dr. Demartini visit his website and Facebook pages.

Many people dream about launching a second career in a field they have always wanted to try. But the transition into an encore careercan be a long and costly process.

Most people earn a significantly lower amount of money (43 percent) or no money at all (24 percent) during the transition from one job to the next, according to a recent MetLife Foundation and Civic Ventures survey conducted by Penn Schoen Berland. The online survey of 253 adults between ages 44 and 70 who are currently in encore careers found that over half (57 percent) of these older workers had to tap their personal savings to make ends meet during the transition.

“That transition is not necessarily a very easy or a sure thing,” says Jim Emerman, executive vice president of Civic Ventures. “The financial hardship of the transition, while not really surprising, really jumped out at us as one of the big challenges.”

It often takes a significant amount of time for older workers to launch second careers. Three quarters of the survey respondents currently in encore careers experienced an employment gap of longer than 6 months. And a third (34 percent) of these older workers were unemployed for two or more years before they found another job. Some people used that time to volunteer (23 percent) or retrain by taking college courses (20 percent).

When Lisa Roger, 53, a former software engineering project director, was laid off in 2009, she faced a substantial reduction in income for about 14 months. She had to use her savings, collect unemployment benefits, and sign up for COBRA continuing health coverage to make ends meet. During the transition she participated in the Encore Hartford program in Storrs, Conn., a fellowship that helps experienced professionals transition to the nonprofit sector. She eventually found a new job as a family self-sufficiency services manager for the Norwalk Housing Authority. “Today I don’t make nearly the salary that I did as a software engineer and I am ok with that,” Roger says. “The work is incredibility rewarding. I know I am making a difference.” The new job has caused her to reevaluate her retirement plans. “I used to feel that I was going to retire at a really early age, before 65,” Roger says. “The career that I am in now, I see myself going beyond that because it is so rewarding.”

Older workers are motivated to make a career change by a variety of financial and personal reasons. Insufficient income (28 percent) and inadequate savings (25 percent) were among the top reasons for making the switch. But realizing that some lifetime goals have yet to be fulfilled (28 percent) and a desire to make a bigger difference in the world (21 percent) also play a large role in decisions to move on to something new. Sometimes the transition is sparked by health problems (15 percent), an empty nest (11 percent), or hitting a specific age such as 50 (12 percent). Some people also speak of a spiritual calling into a new line of work (12 percent).

Most people switched into new jobs at for-profit businesses (22 percent) or nonprofit organizations (20 percent). Education (19 Percent), health care (15 percent), and government agencies (6 percent) are also popular second career choices. “Some people will work longer in their current jobs, whatever they are, and other people will want a change,” says Emerman. Often the new job comes with shorter hours and a more flexible schedule. People in encore careers work an average of 30.5 hours per week, the Civic Ventures survey found.

Almost half of people who made a career change (47 percent) did so between ages 50 and 59. Only 3 percent of those surveyed changed careers at age 60 or older. The typical person in an encore career expects to continue working for an average of another 11 years and eventually retire at an average age of 69. They have an average of 24 years of work experience.

Many individuals need to keep working for the income (69 percent) and benefits (30 percent). Other people launch second careers to stay active and productive (58 percent), pursue a new challenge (6 percent), and because they simply enjoy the work (31 percent). Some older workers also want to give something back by helping others in the community (35 percent) and staying involved with other people (19 percent).

“People are living much longer and they are healthier, and so they want to stay engaged. People need and want and are able to work longer,” says Emerman. “If people are out of work now or worried about their current job, the idea of a next career that combines continued financial security with personal satisfaction and something that they are passionate about is very strong.”

To open the door to powerful business operations, ensure you have an affirmative answer to the following 10 questions. If you answer no to more than 3 of these then you would be wise to find a way to turn every no to yes to enhance your power as a business builder and leader:

1. Does your business provide a service you value and are inspired to deliver to the world?

2. Do you value yourself, your vision, your employees and your customer’s dominant buying motives?

3 . Do you provide your services at fees that offer true fair exchange?

4. Do you know how to determine your customer’s values and what makes them make decisions?

5. Have you developed the art of communication in terms of your customer’s highest values?

6. Are you setting your business goals congruent to your highest values so as to achieve and build momentum?

7. Is your life and business vision, model and strategy crystal clear?

8. Do you have a high value on building wealth and accumulating a fortune?

9. Do you know your own business strengths and areas or forms of genius?

10. Do you know how to govern your distracting emotions on your way to achieving your business dreams?

The Breakthrough Experience is a powerful 2 day program designed to assist you to clarify what exactly it is that you would you would love to do with your life and how to turn that into a meaningful career or a successful business. It is packed with valuable insights not only addressing how to manage and turn business challenges into opportunities but also the important principles and tools to assist you in managing and implementing the action steps required to get your business dreams and plans into motion and momentum.

Take action on your business idea today and join Dr. Demartini at the Breakthrough Experience and learn how mastering the principles of maximizing human potential, mastering the art of communication, appreciating and valuing all aspects of yourself, your teams and your customers can transform your business destiny. Discover how to see setbacks as stepping stones so that you can take your vision, your finances and your business life to the next level of wealth, power and influence. Remember the last event that changed your life? Get ready, there is another one coming!

For more from Dr. Demartini visit his website and Facebook pages.