If you’re anything like most business owners, you’ve been plotting your business plans for 2009. Maybe you’ve been working on your marketing strategies, planning your budgets, updating your service or product offerings, and all while deciding what to do yourself and what items to outsource.

My virtual assistant of 3 years, Connie McVicker of Signature Worx, is offering my readers some pretty amazing deals to get you started off right in 2009. Connie is not only a great designer of logos, blogs, and websites, but also keeps your marketing plans in check by preparing your eZine for delivery, updating your blog and website, performing SEO maintenance, or even management your social media and networking sites. She really can do it all and is worth her weight in gold!

For a limited time, until January 15, 2009 to be exact, Connie is providing the following services to my readers for next to nothing!

To take advantage of these offers, Connie has set up a special page on her website just for you!

Check out her design portfolio – you won’t be disappointed and you may find yourself coming back for more like I do.

Also, you might consider signing up for her monthly Signature Specials newsletter while you’re there. Connie offers some pretty fabulous discounts each and every month on various services that help your business flourish. When you do, you’ll get a copy of her special report, Break the Chains of Running Your Online Business, where you’ll learn the benefits of outsourcing, easy tasks to outsource, and the mistakes to avoid when outsourcing. As a bonus, you’ll also receive Connie’s quick report, Branding Your Online Business: Set Yourself Apart.

Remember! This offer ends at 11:59 Central time on January 15, 2009 so get the services you want today before she gets over booked!

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Instead of stressing about those cookies this year, how about laughing instead?

Christmas Cookie Rules

1. If you eat a Christmas cookie fresh out of the oven, it has no calories because everyone knows that the first cookie is the test and thus calorie free.
2. If you drink a diet soda after eating your second cookie, it also has no calories because the diet soda cancels out the cookie calories.
3. If a friend comes over while you're making your Christmas cookies and needs to sample, you must sample with your friend. Because your friend's first cookie is calories free, rule #1 is yours also. It would be rude to let your friend sample alone and, being the friend that you are, that makes your cookie calorie free.
4. Any cookie calories consumed while walking around will fall to your feet and eventually fall off as you move. This is due to gravity and the density of the caloric mass.
5. Any calories consumed during the frosting of the Christmas cookies will be used up because it takes many calories to lick excess frosting from a knife without cutting your tongue.
6. Cookies colored red or green have very few calories. Red ones have three and green ones have five - one calorie for each letter. Make more red ones!
7. Cookies eaten while watching "Miracle on 34th Street" have no calories because they are part of the entertainment package and not part of one's personal fuel.
8. As always, cookie pieces contain no calories because the process of breaking causes calorie leakage.
9. Any cookies consumed from someone else's plate have no calories since the calories rightfully belong to the other person and will cling to their plate. We all know how calories like to CLING!
10. Any cookies consumed while feeling stressed have no calories because cookies used for medicinal purposes NEVER have calories. It's a rule!

December 2008

Welcome

These Holiday Gift Ideas Have No Cost, Bring Happiness

Holiday Humor – Just for fun

Health Halo Can Hide the Calories

Special New Years Offers from Signature Worx

I thought this was a really interesting article that just shows what almost all my clients tell me – they are very educated on nutrition and what they "should" be eating, they may even know too much! This article shows that too much information can cause confusion and possibly overeating!

By JOHN TIERNEY

If you’re a well-informed, health-conscious New Yorker who has put on some unwanted pounds in the past year, it might not be entirely your fault. Here’s a possible alibi: The health halo made you do it.

I offer this alibi after an experiment on New Yorkers that I conducted with Pierre Chandon, a Frenchman who has been studying what researchers call the American obesity paradox. Why, as Americans have paid more and more attention to eating healthily, have we kept getting fatter and fatter?

Dr. Chandon’s answer, derived from laboratory experiments as well as field work at Subway and McDonald’s restaurants, is that Americans have been seduced into overeating by the so-called health halo associated with certain foods and restaurants. His research made me wonder if New Yorkers were particularly vulnerable to this problem, and I asked him to help me investigate.

Our collaboration began in a nutritionally correct neighborhood, Brooklyn’s Park Slope, whose celebrated food co-op has a mission statement to sell “organic, minimally processed and healthful foods.” I hit the streets with two questionnaires designed by Dr. Chandon, a professor of marketing at the Insead business school in Fontainebleau, France, and Alexander Chernev, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University. Half of the 40 people surveyed were shown pictures of a meal consisting of an Applebee’s Oriental Chicken Salad and a 20-ounce cup of regular Pepsi. (You can see it for yourself at TierneyLab.) On average, they estimated that the meal contained 1,011 calories, which was a little high. The meal actually contained 934 calories — 714 from the salad and 220 from the drink.

The other half of the Park Slopers were shown the same salad and drink plus two Fortt’s crackers prominently labeled “Trans Fat Free.” The crackers added 100 calories to the meal, bringing it to 1,034 calories, but their presence skewed people’s estimates in the opposite direction. The average estimate for the whole meal was only 835 calories — 199 calories less than the actual calorie count, and 176 calories less than the average estimate by the other group for the same meal without crackers.

Just as Dr. Chandon had predicted, the trans-fat-free label on the crackers seemed to imbue them with a health halo that magically subtracted calories from the rest of the meal. And we got an idea of the source of this halo after I tried the same experiment with tourists in Times Square.

Read the rest of this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/science/02tier.html
?_r=1&emc=eta1

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I thought this article was perfect to include with the “Stay in the Moment” theme. It is written by Margaret Moore, the founder of Wellcoaches, the best wellness coach training company, who I am proud to be certified by!

Wellcoaches founder Margaret Moore says skip the stores and deals on Black Friday and give gifts of joy that have no cost and bring happiness.

Stretching your holiday budget will take on new meaning this year, and it can have nothing do with money.

Ben and Roz Zander, in their wonderful book titled The Art of Possibility, describe the delight we get from experiences that make our eyes shine. What makes our eyes shine most are our connections with people who matter the most, not from the material things we collect or consume.

“The best gifts to give and receive don’t have to cost a dime,” says Margaret Moore (aka Coach Meg), founder and CEO of Wellcoaches Corp., the leader in health and wellness coach training and certification. “Research shows that what people want most is to be happy and satisfied with their lives – and also that happy people are healthier people who live longer. Few things in life provide as much satisfaction as doing something meaningful for another person, such as finding creative ways to show gratitude.”

So this holiday season, indulge in something proven to have powerful health benefits, Moore recommends. “I’m suggesting you put your wallet away and really think about what makes you and those you love happy and how you can share that joy with others. I know it’s not yet a mainstream idea, especially considering how much money is spent to encourage you to shop, but it will be soon, and you’ll be ahead of the curve.”

Recent consumer research indicates that high food and energy prices combined with anxiety about job security have moved 76% of consumers to cut back on holiday spending this year, and 60% say they will give fewer gifts, according to a Consumer Reports poll just released.

Here are ten no-cost gifts that will bring happiness to others (and yourself). They can be delivered in the form of a special or handmade card, a handwritten or borrowed poem, or a photo. They can be accompanied by an inexpensive and meaningful token like a candle, a treasured book, or a favorite CD:

1. Express gratitude – The simple act of thanking people can bring happiness and well-being. Saying thank you, as it turns out, is not just good manners; it's good for you, too. University of California Davis psychology professor Robert Emmons has found that grateful people tend to be more optimistic, a characteristic that boosts the immune system.
2. Share precious time with others -- Your well-being is dependent on giving and sharing in ways that make a difference in the world. Your time is the most valuable thing you can share. Make someone her favorite home-cooked meal and don’t drop it at the door, savor it together. Give your time to see a movie, hike, walk, or visit a museum -- any fun outing together that is a simple pleasure and generates fond memories.

Read the rest of this article: http://www.huliq.com/1/73749/these-holiday-gift-ideas-have-no-cost-bring-happiness