The Human Person Is Unique
The mystery of the human person is seen not only in religion. Try to understand the nature of a creature who might become, on one hand, a mass murderer or, on the other, a Mother Teresa who left every comfort to live among dying derelicts.
What is the meaning of a creature that deliberately harms another and then, realizing that fault, turns around and asks for forgiveness, asks that the wrong be undone? On the other side, there is the person who has been wronged. He or she might react with a lifetime of seeking revenge or, alternatively, with total forgiveness. The human person is a creature of laughter and of tears, of astounding intelligence and of willful ignorance.
How To Add My “GIFs URL” In WordPress For Your Online Projects
Hello friends,
Getting started with your online projects.
When you get bored with writing then you need to figure out a way to spark your works. Adding Gifs to your online works can be fun and uplifting.
The Gifs on my blog free stuff page can be used for a blog cover. It is a way to get more notifications and attractions to your content.
As a designer, I know the importance of getting attention is and the branding points that a typical design must-have. I made an infographic about it you can use for free to stimulate your online projects.
How to add my URL Gifs?
Just watch my YouTube video where I explain 3 ways on how to add it. Furthermore, you can use the same steps for my other GIFs and other content.
Watch, enjoy, and subscribe.👍
Do…
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Benefits of music on health
by drjurisharma
Whether on purpose or without purpose, music has become a part of our lives. The day starts with a busy schedule, yet we happen to listen to music, maybe while driving to work, a shop, cafe, gas station or wherever we happen to pass by. After a day’s long work, we may intentionally listen to music to calm and rejuvenate our mind. Music is of varieties, loud, hard, soft, calming or with and without lyrics. It is all about individual choices and preferences.
Both in the past and in the present time, studies show the tremendous effect of music on all mental, emotional and overall health.
Ten effects of music influence on health:
1.Mood booster: Listening to music can stimulate the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine which gives a feeling of satisfaction and reward. It makes us repeat the behaviour, that is to continue listening to music. Therefore, it can elevate the mood to pleasure, motivation and enthusiasm. It can strengthen you emotionally by fine-tuning your emotional health.
2.Improves sleep efficiency: Listening to soothing music, stimulates the parasympathetic system, lowers the blood pressure and slows down the physiological functions. It relaxes the mind and body, making it ready to fall asleep. Music has been instrumental in treating sleep disorders.–
3.Exercise: Studies show that music increases the level of performance, strength, endurance level while exercising. It delays fatigue by boosting the stamina level.
4.Focus: Listening to fine instrumental music helps to capture attention and to focus. So, some people prefer listening to music while on work which allows them to concentrate and increase productivity.
5.Divergent creativity: We all have the same cognitive capacity to think original thoughts and ideas; it’s the area on the right side of the brain, the creative brain. Research shows that listening to lively, happy music helps to stimulate this area of divergent creative thinking.
6.Reduce stress: Listening to calming music of about 60 beats/min can stimulate alpha brain waves which can make you feel calm and conscious. It reduces the cortisol level and releases endorphins which helps you relieve stress. It has been used successfully by many as a stress-reducing technique.
7.Memory: The frontal cortex and hippocampus of the brain are associated with memory. So, revoking memories are challenging in person with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Sometimes, music with a particular tune or lyrics can help significantly to relieve some of the memories in such individual.
8.Immunity: Music stimulate the parasympathetic response in the body which elevates the physiological coherence and promote the immune response. It boosts the release of antibodies and natural killer cells which helps to combat infections and chronic conditions like cancers and autoimmune issues. 9.Improves vascular health: Music helps to ease the anxiety and stress level by bringing the blood pressure and heart rate to the average baseline level. It relaxes the arterial wall and enhances the blood flow, thereby improving vascular health.
10.Weight loss: Music has a visceral effect too. Listening to music helps you to eat slowly, with relaxation. This effect improves our chewing ability and promotes metabolism. As you are eating slowly, you end up eating in a lesser quantity. Moreover, music also helps your exercise performance. So, in the process, you end up losing weight too.
Delivering Happiness
Today, the net is abuzz with the release of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s book “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose”. I was fortunate to be selected as one of the bloggers who was sent an advance copy of Hsieh’s book to review on my site (as well as a second copy of the book which I will be giving away for free to one of my readers. More on that later).
In addition to being thrilled at the opportunity to read this book in advance of its release, I was also understandably curious to read the insights of an entrepreneur who was able to take a struggling online shoe retailer and transform it into one of the decade’s biggest success stories. A few chapters into Hsieh’s book, that curiosity soon transformed into one of delight as Hsieh revealed his need to move past seeking profits to finding some purpose and meaning behind his efforts.
Hsieh’s book begins by sharing some stories from his childhood, featuring moments where his budding entrepreneurial spirit propelled him to come up with all sorts of plans on how to make money. The tales are for the most part endearing, reminding the reader of the whimsical image of the makeshift lemonade stand children create to sell beverages to the passersby.
Though Hsieh shares stories going from his college days to the growing success of his first internet company LinkExchange, to help the reader understand where his drive to push Zappos to its current success came from, the story behind his sale of LinkExchange to Microsoft for over $200 million represents the first of many of the book’s more illuminating moments. For most entrepreneurs, the idea of creating a company that could be sold for hundreds of millions of dollars represents the pot of gold at the other side of the rainbow; a personal Shangri-La where we can experience the kind of freedom we all imagine comes with being financially independent.
And yet, as Hsieh candidly shares in “Delivering Happiness”, the sale of LinkExchange – and his new status as a multi-millionaire – left him more with a sense of listlessness and questions of ‘so what now?’, borne not from being driven or ambitious, but due to lacking a sense of purpose of what to do with his life. After spending a number of years using his new-found fortune to provide seed funding for various start-up companies, Hsieh was drawn to the passion and belief one company had that they could become something special – a start-up company called Zappos, which wanted to sell shoes online.
Through describing the development and growth of this company, Hsieh demonstrates the importance of nurturing a culture that not only exists within the company walls, but a culture that their employees embrace as part of their lives outside of work. Ironically, part of that culture was inspired by the insight Hsieh gained while attending a rave party, where he began to understand the importance of people not only sharing a common purpose, but in being a part of something bigger than oneself to truly feel that sense of happiness and joy we all long for.
Hsieh also realized from his experiences with his previous company LinkExchange that this culture couldn’t exist solely with those in charge. Instead, it had to be something that everyone in the company not only contributed to, but believed in as being their shared purpose; the reason why they were coming in to work everyday beyond simply cashing a paycheck. Reading the various company emails Hsieh sent out to the Zappos employees as their company dealt with financial challenges, layoffs and eventually, their acquisition by Amazon, it’s clear that Hsieh doesn’t simply view them as various cogs in the wheel. His open and honest messages reflect that moment he describes in the rave party, of all these different individuals coming together and moving as a collective toward a common goal. As Hsieh wrote in an email a few days after laying off 8% of their workforce:
Remember, this is not my company, and this is not our investors’ company. This company is all of ours, and it’s up to all of us where we go from here. The power lies in each and every one of us to move forward and come out as a team stronger than we’ve ever been in the history of the company.
Indeed, as the book progresses, the inclusion of stories from other Zappos employees makes more and more sense as it becomes clear that this isn’t just Hsieh’s story. Rather, “Delivering Happiness” represents the story of all the employees of Zappos – of their shared purpose of making others happy by offering the best possible customer experience and consequently, the company’s successes which each of them played a clear part in attaining.
In many ways, Hsieh’s book serves as a modern parable for today’s world, one where we follow him in his pursuit of riches that will lead to that life we all want to live, only to discover that the wealth that will provide us that life we all so desire is not one of material wealth, but one borne from building a community of people driven to fulfill a common purpose.
Perhaps the greatest lesson in “Delivering Happiness” is not how one man found his purpose and how that journey lead him to create a billion dollar business. Instead, it’s the unspoken one that looks out from the pages at the reader and asking them when will they start the journey of taking their passions and using it to find the purpose behind their lives.
The Three Phases of Transition to Achieve Change
by Rachel Salaman November 26, 2020
mindtools.com/pages/article/bridges-tra
The Bridges transitions model has three phases: the ending of the old situation; the neutral zone, when we’re unsure of what’s to come; and the new beginning, which sees the change fully implemented.
So often, we leap straight to phase three, the new beginning. It’s positive and forward-looking and feels like a natural starting point. But we miss out the first two steps at our peril, Bridges says.
Endings
According to the Bridges model, we can’t move on until we’ve faced what we’ve lost.
“Endings are very hard for people to understand and leaders want to start with the beginnings: ‘Here’s what we’re going to do now,’” Bridges says. “Endings is where you have to start when there’s a change. Whatever I knew to be true is now over, it’s gone. It’s not there anymore. What do I take from that? What do I learn? How do I identify what I’ve lost and what I’ve let go of?”
She shares a vivid story of what this can look like in an organization. One of her clients was going through an acquisition, a time of great uncertainty for the staff. Bridges worked with them to embrace the end of the status quo.
“They started to become really engaged in the endings,” she recalls. “They had two big buildings that were connected with a glass walkway, and people had to walk through that glass walkway every day because they needed to be in both buildings.
“What they did was they set up what they called a ‘Hall of Fame,’ and they brought out everything – they brought out all of the photos, everything that they had developed, T-shirts, mugs, awards, that kind of thing – and they just told the story of the company.”
Day after day, people lingered on the walkway, looking at this exhibit and thinking about what they were leaving behind. Eventually, when it was time to move on, they put the most treasured items into a company archive and gave everything else to charity.
“They had a celebration of who they were and who they had been and how to cherish that. It was very positive,” Bridges says.
Neutral Zone
The second phase, the neutral zone, is often uncomfortable, but it can’t be rushed. Everyone responds differently as they work out what the future might look like, and this needs to play out in its own time.
To help ease anxieties during organizational change, Bridges advises us to create temporary structures and teams. This provides short-term certainty, and can be fruitful, too.
“During that time there’s an opportunity to start to explore different ways of working, different ways of approaching a project, different ways of addressing an issue,” she says. “And if it’s presented in a manner where people feel that it’s safe to brainstorm ideas, whether they’re good or not, knowing that, sifting through, some pretty good possibilities may come, that’s what this time is about.”
Good communication is key to getting this right, and it’s fundamental to the final phase of transition as well.
New Beginnings
“As you move into the new beginning, don’t stop what you’re doing. Keep communicating, keep dynamic, keep talking about what’s happening,” Bridges says. “It’s a new way of living and it needs to be reinforced and it needs to be kept alive for people.”
COVID-19 has generated a lot of change this year. And at the same time – thanks to widespread restrictions on office working – it has made transitions more difficult. When teams shared the same workspace, casual conversations helped bring people together and spread resilience.
We need to find new ways to do that, Bridges believes, to survive and thrive.
“I think that finding new ways to stay in touch with people as they work virtually is going to be important, because [managers] may not see the visible effects of what people are experiencing in transition,” she says. “They want to, again, overcommunicate, and just be as honest as they can about what’s happening – even the things they’re not sure about. That builds trust.”
‘No pandemic can turn off the light of Christmas’, Pope Francis
POPE
vaticannews.va/en/taglist.chiesa-e-religion
Pope Francis invites Christians to open their hearts to the light of Christmas and reach out to those in need.
By Linda Bordoni
There is no pandemic or crisis that can turn off the light of Christmas, Pope Francis affirmed, as he greeted the faithful present in St. Peter’s Square and following through the media during the Sunday Angelus. Read also 30/10/2020
St Peter’s Square: Christmas tree and nativity scene to be inaugurated on 11 December
06/12/2020 Pope at Angelus: ‘Advent is a journey of conversion’
Noting that the Vatican’s Christmas tree has been erected in the Square and that the Nativity Scene will soon be unveiled, the Pope said that in many homes “these symbols of Christmas are being set up to the delight of children,” and also to the delight of those who no longer are children.
“They are symbols, or signs of hope, especially during this difficult time,” he said, and he invited Christians not to stop at the symbols, but to go beyond and understand their meaning: “Jesus, the love of God, who was revealed to us to reach that goodness which has been poured out on the world.”
And assuring us all that no pandemic or crisis can “turn off that light,” Pope Francis said: “Let us allow it to enter into our hearts and reach out toward those who are most in need.”
Thus, he concluded: “God will once again be born in us and in our midst.”
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Pope Francis to visit Iraq
POPE
vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2020-
The Vatican announces that Pope Francis will make an Apostolic Journey to Iraq on 5-8 March 2021, visiting Baghdad, the plain of Ur, Mosul, and Qaraqosh.
By Devin Watkins
Pope Francis is set to break a 15-month hiatus from international travel with what is sure to be a historic visit to the Middle Eastern nation of Iraq.
The Director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni, announced the news on Monday, adding that the Pope had accepted the invitation of the Republic of Iraq and the local Catholic Church.
It will be an Apostolic Journey covering four days and four Iraqi provinces.
According to the Press Office statement, “He will visit Baghdad, the plain of Ur, linked to the memory of Abraham, the city of Erbil, as well as Mosul and Qaraqosh in the plain of Nineveh.”
The Pope’s itinerary will be released at a later date, and will “take into consideration the evolution of the worldwide health emergency.”
Long-held desire
Pope Francis has long expressed his desire to visit Iraq.
Already on 10 June 2019 he told a meeting of Catholic aid agencies that he planned on traveling there in 2020.
“I think constantly of Iraq – where I want to go next year – in the hope that it can face the future through the peaceful and shared pursuit of the common good on the part of all elements of society, including the religious, and not fall back into hostilities sparked by the simmering conflicts of the regional powers.” Read also 07/12/2020
Cardinal Sako: the Pope comes to encourage Christians to remain in the Middle East
Years in the making
The Pope’s visit will come as the realization of a dream of his predecessor, Pope St. John Paul II. The Polish Pope had planned to travel to Iraq at the end of 1999. That trip never took place because Saddam Hussein decided to postpone it, after months of negotiations.
According to Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, the Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans, Pope Francis will receive an enthusiastic welcome to Iraq.
He told SIR news agency a year ago that “everyone in Iraq, Christians and Muslims, esteem him[Pope Francis] for his simplicity and nearness. His words touch everyone’s hearts because they are those of a shepherd. He is a man who brings peace.”
Preserving Christians presence
Preparations for Pope Francis’ visit seemed to be nearing completion early this year, when he met the President of Iraq, Barham Salih, at an audience in the Vatican on 25 January.
The Holy See Press Office said at the time that the two spoke about “preserving the historical presence of Christians in the country” and “highlighting the need to guarantee their security and a place in the future of Iraq.”
Amid difficult times
Christians’ presence in Iraq, however, has been drastically diminished in the past two decades.
In 2003, before a US-led coalition invaded to depose Saddam Hussein, there were around 1 to 1.4 million Christians in the country.
A drawn-out war and the 2014-2017 occupation of the Plain of Nineveh by the so-called Islamic State reduced their number to between 300 and 400 thousand.
Iraq’s president and prime minister have often invited Christians who have fled the country to return and help rebuild the nation.
Hope springs eternal
Yet, the dream of recovery has been impeded by an economic crisis, corruption, and the plight of 1.7 million internally displaced people.
UNICEF, the UN children’s aid agency, estimates that some 4 million Iraqis require humanitarian assistance, of whom half are children. Add in the Covid-19 pandemic and the situation remains dire in a country of over 38 million people.
In that context, Pope Francis’ visit to Iraq in the Spring will surely bring a breath of fresh hope to this long-suffering nation, as Cardinal Sako himself told Vatican News after Monday’s announcement.
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