Winning the War in Your Mind—Change your thinking, change your life?

“Your life is always moving in the direction of your strongest thoughts.” – Craig Groeschel, author “Winning the War in Your Mind”

This book by Pastor Craig Groeschel is about rewiring the way you think, breaking cycles of negativity, and fighting the battles and negative thoughts in your mind that you’d been losing without even realizing it. If you believe a lie long enough, you begin to live as if the lie was true.

Many individuals, young and old, deal with anxiety and toxic thoughts. Here are seven lessons that should resonate with you regarding anxiety and toxic thoughts—seven truths you can’t ignore.

1. Your Life Moves in the Direction of Your Strongest Thoughts: If you believe you’re stuck, you’ll stay stuck. If you think you’ll never change, you won’t. The mind is like a steering wheel—whatever dominates your thinking determines where you go. How many times have you let negative thoughts define your reality? Whether you realize it or not, the lesson is that your thoughts set the course of your life. And maybe, just maybe, you need to change the script.

2. Lies Become Truth If You Believe Them Long Enough: One of the most powerful moments in the book is when Groeschel talks about mental strongholds—deep-rooted lies we’ve accepted as truth. Maybe it’s “I’m not good enough,” “I’ll never be successful,” or “I always mess things up.” These lies start small but, over time, build walls around your potential. The way he explains it, you can’t just think your way out—you have to replace those lies with truth. Scripture. Affirmation. Anything that counters the false stories playing on repeat in your mind. Your strongholds are not going to disappear until you actively tear them down.

3. Reframing Changes Everything: Life doesn’t always change, but how we see it can. Cognitive reframing—a concept that means shifting how we interpret situations. The same event can be a crisis or an opportunity, depending on how you frame it. How often do you assume the worst? How frequently do you believe that setbacks are proof that things will never work out? This book challenges you to shift your focus. Instead of “Why is this happening to me?” ask, “How can this grow me?” Instead of “I failed,” say, “I’m learning.” It sounds simple, but the impact is life-changing.

4. Worry is a Waste of Imagination: Worry is a misuse of creativity—it’s imagining a future that hasn’t even happened yet, and usually, it’s the worst possible version. Realizing how much energy you waste on fear and uncertainty is essential. What if, instead of picturing everything that could go wrong, you started picturing everything that could go right? What if you trained your brain to expect good things instead of bad? That shift alone could change your life.

5. You Can’t Control Everything, But You Can Control Your Response: Most of life is out of your hands. The only thing you can truly control is how you respond. This lesson is that you always have a choice. Even when life feels unfair, even when people disappoint you, even when the unexpected happens—you still get to decide how you respond. And that, in itself, is power.

6. You Have to Rewire Your Mind Daily, Not Just Once: Winning the war in your mind isn’t a one-time fix. It’s a daily battle. You should compare it to training your body. You don’t hit the gym once and expect to stay fit forever. You show up consistently. The same goes for your thoughts. This is why change has always felt so temporary. You would get inspired, make a few mental shifts, but then drift back into old patterns. True transformation happens when you commit to the process—day after day, thought after thought.

7. Gratitude is a Weapon, Not Just a Feeling: Gratitude should be seen as a weapon, as a superpower against negativity, anxiety, and fear. Focusing on what’s good and actively searching for blessings drowns out the noise of everything going wrong. The next time you feel overwhelmed, force yourself to list five things you are grateful for.  Gratitude shifts your perspective faster than any pep talk ever could. It doesn’t erase your problems, but it will remind you that there’s good to be found even in the mess.

Book/Audiobook: https://amzn.to/3E0egpp

Green Tea Benefits

1. Helps Protect Heart Health

A great deal of evidence from randomized controlled trials suggests that consumption of flavan-3-ols and anthocyanidin antioxidants, the types found in green tea, is beneficial for metabolic and cardiovascular health. When it comes to preventing many of the risk factors for heart disease, such as having high blood pressure or cholesterol levels, some evidence shows that green tea contains 10 beta-blocking compounds, seven calcium channel blockers and 16 diuretic compounds. It also has more ACE-inhibiting properties than many other plant foods that are commonly consumed, which helps increase the amount of blood your heart pumps and lowers blood pressure.

2. May Help Prevent Alzheimer’s or Memory Loss

In 2004, scientists at the University of Newcastle studied the effects of black and green tea on Alzheimer’s disease. In laboratory studies, both teas prevented the breakdown of acetylcholine, the neurotransmitter strongly linked with memory. The teas also inhibited enzymes known as BuChE and beta-secretase. These enzymes are found in protein deposits found in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients.

Japanese researchers published a study on green tea and its effect on the beta-amyloid protein plaques found in Alzheimer’s disease in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry. The protein plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease increase brain cell damage and death due to oxidative stress. The researchers found that green tea catechins reduced the level of damaging free radicals in the brains of rats. The green tea rodents showed much less plaque-induced deficits in memory compared to rodents that didn’t receive green tea and those that were infused with beta-amyloid proteins.

Scientists have also discovered that the antioxidants flavonoids may also protect the brain from oxidative stress. The scientists extrapolated that a human would need to drink about three liters of liquid infused with 0.5 percent of the catechins to get similar effects. However, because humans ingest other antioxidants in the form of vitamins and plant polyphenols, it’s likely that a much lower quantity could be effective in protecting memory. (Ginger tea has also been found to help protect brain health.)

3. Helps Protect Brain Cells From Free Radical Damage

Salk Institute researchers found that the flavonoid epicatechin, found in blueberries, cocoa, grapes and tea, improved memory ability in mice. The researchers found that epicatechin seemed to promote blood vessel growth in the brain.

King’s College researchers found that epicatechin may protect brain cells through mechanisms unrelated to its antioxidant ability, as epicatechin is one of the few flavonoids that can cross the blood-brain barrier. The King’s College researchers reported that somehow epicatechin protects brain cells from the negative effects of beta-amyloid plaques, although the exact mechanism of how this works is still not entirely know.

4. May Help Prevent Diabetes or Insulin Resistance

Certain studies indicate that intake of flavan-3-ols and/or anthocyanidins found in green tea may improve glycemic control and help normalize blood sugar levels. Due to its anti-inflammatory properties, green tea is believed to be beneficial for those who are at-risk or diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Green tea’s catechins, especially EGCG, appear to have anti-obesity and antidiabetic effects.

5. Promotes Bone Health

University of Hong Kong researchers published a study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry concerning green tea and bone health. When the bone cells of rats were exposed to green tea catechins, EGC in particular stimulated an enzyme that promotes bone growth by 79 percent. The catechins also increased bone mineralization and weakened the activity of cells that reabsorb bone rather than form it.

6. Prevents Eye Disease and Protects Vision

One study that was published in the the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry investigatedthe effects of catechins on eye diseases and found that consuming more catechins may help protect the eyes from oxidative damage and vision loss.

Scientists involved in the study found evidence that catechins can pass from the digestive tract of rodents to the tissues of their eyes and reduce oxidative stress for up to 20 hours after ingestion.

7. May Reduce Your Appetite

Does green tea really burn fat, and will drinking green tea help you lose more weight? According to some research findings, consuming antioxidants found in green tea, especially catechins and the compound called EGCG, may promote metabolic health and modestly prevent weight gain. When 11 studies and articles were included in one 2009 meta-analysis that was published in the International Journal of Obesity, researchers found that “catechins or an epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG)-caffeine mixture have a small positive effect on weight loss and weight maintenance.”

Overall, EGCG’s effects remain somewhat controversial; some studies have found only modest effects on metabolism, while others have found that consuming more EGCG alone without other lifestyle changes does not do anything significant to improve body weight.

Source:  https://draxe.com/nutrition/benefits-of-green-tea/

Time is incredibly valuable because it allows you to do things that matter to you, such as learning, working, creating, enjoying, and helping others. It is finite and irreversible, and we cannot get back the time you have lost or wasted.

While people often say “Time is money,” time is actually the more precious resource and more valuable than money.

The value of money is based on its purchasing power of goods and services.  Furthermore, it’s value depends on how soon you can use it, and when time is the only differentiating factor, money received sooner is always more valuable. The intangible nature of time makes it one of mankind’s most priceless treasures.

According to James Clear, author of bestselling book Atomic Habits, “not all uses of time are equal, and this simple truth can make a big difference in life.”

“People who spend their time doing more profitable work make more money. People who spend their time investing in others build better relationships. People who spend their time creating a flexible career enjoy more freedom. People who spend their time working on high-impact projects contribute more to society,” states Clear.

“Whether you want more wealth, more friendship, more freedom, or more impact, it all comes down to how you spend and value your time.” And, time is finite and short

Source:  https://jamesclear.com/value-of-time

Modern management chronically suffers from too many meetings — and not enough time to get work done.

Middle management has suffered for decades under the heavy burden of too many meetings.

Meetings should support work; when they don’t, they become a time suck that wrecks productivity for companies and organizations. But the reason management is increasingly buried in meetings generally center on leadership wanting more control or believing (erroneously) that gabbing in groups clarifies and expedites.

However, Apple founder Steve Jobs observed the problem and knew what meetings to keep and which to cut. And he knew how to run them efficiently, according to Inc. Magazine.

Keep the invite list small — ideally, three to five people.
His reasoning? The more people you have in a meeting, the less productive it is. Too many voices become a sea of noise and it’s less likely you’ll get anything accomplished. In fact, Jobs famously declined an invite from President Obama to a tech meeting because, well, the guest list was too long.

Also, as you craft your invite list, know exactly what each person’s stake or role in the meeting will be. If they cannot or will not contribute, cut them. Anyone there for informational purposes can be sent a transcript or recording after the fact.

Keep the agenda short — no more than three items.
The goal here is focus. With more than three items on an agenda, you’re likely to get lost in a rabbit hole of unrelated topics and side conversations. It’s hard to know what conclusions to draw and what action items you have at the end when agenda items run amuck. Keep it short — and make sure all three agenda items are clearly connected to the core meeting purpose.

Keep the length to no more than 30 minutes.
You may think the substance of a given meeting demands a bigger time slot, but science tells us that largely ends up as a waste of time. Our attention span is shorter than a goldfish’s and our mental stamina is unable to sustain meaningful, analytical discussion for very long. If you keep meetings short (no more than 30 minutes) and parcel key pieces of information in digestible chunks (one- to two-minute segments), you’re more likely to leave the meeting with broad comprehension.

Sheryl Sandberg took this a step further, actually — she kept a lot of her meetings to 10 minutes.

There’s also the question of need. Do you really need to have a meeting? Ask yourself the following three questions; if the answer is no to all of them, don’t schedule one.

Does this meeting require feedback from others, or is it just informational?
If I do need input/feedback, is a meeting a more time-effective way to get it than a message or email?
Would a meeting provide anything that an email or message wouldn’t (such as in-the-moment feedback on problems that are constantly evolving)?
And finally, as a general note to CEOs just establishing business cadence, consider building a minimalist meeting culture. Following the “Rule of 3s,” keep this general guideline in mind: Management should aim to schedule no more than one minute of meeting time for every three minutes of work. In essence, no more than a quarter of a day should be spent in meetings.

https://www.inc.com/jeff-steen/steve-jobs-3-point-formula-for-leading-effective-meetings-was-brilliant-we-need-to-get-back-to-it.html

Never underestimate the power of a comprehensive financial plan to assist you in building wealth and achieving financial freedom.

Your financial plan is like a roadmap for you money. It’s your long-term guide to answer questions such as:

Will I have enough money to retire?

Do I have my expected health care expenses covered?

Once you have your financial plan laid out, following it becomes much easier. When you have a clear goal in sight, reaching it feels more achievable.

In order to help figure out how to set aside a significant amount of money for retirement, one first needs to get a handle on current spending. Set a plan, create milestones, and go after them relentlessly.

To help achieve retirement goals, it’s important for a person to understand a clear definition of needs as opposed to wants.

With inflation showing few signs of slowing down anytime soon, it is important to create and follow a financial plan.

https://trib.al/eFPyVFb