Celynn Erasmus - Wellness Expert. Start managing your energy, not your time.

I once came upon a little piece of wisdom on the back of a sugar packet: ‘Life is about the journey, not the destination’. This got me thinking: When it comes to wellness and striving for better health or when losing weight, we often focus so much on the end goal that we forget about the journey!

Yes, it is important to have an end-goal in mind, but remember that there are many ways to reach that goal. When an aeroplane flies from one place to another it doesn’t fly in a straight line – the pilot is constantly adjusting the plane’s course. Despite the fact that it may be off course many times, it still reaches its destination.

It’s the same with making lifestyle changes or losing weight. Some days will be better than others. Sometimes you will feel confident about your efforts and sometimes you will feel like just giving up. But that’s ok. It’s not about where you are at that particular moment but rather that you keep on moving in the right direction. As the saying goes: All roads lead to Rome.

Here’s what The Journal of the American Dietetic Association has to say about weight loss:

“It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that successful weight management to improve overall health for adults requires a lifelong commitment to healthful lifestyle behaviors emphasizing sustainable and enjoyable eating practices and daily physical activity.”

So there you have it. Weight loss and wellness isn’t a destination. It is a lifelong journey. Everybody goes off-track from time to time, but the trick is to just keep going. Don’t panic if things aren’t perfect. Don’t let a little relapse lead to a complete collapse. As Dory would say: “Just keep swimming!”.

As with any journey, take one step at a time. Once you have made the decision to embrace wellness, don’t dive in and try to change everything at once! It’s impossible to scale Mount Everest in one go. To give yourself the best shot at success, just make one change at a time. Be specific about what you want to change, then set an easily-achievable goal for yourself. Developing a habit of eating more fruit may seem daunting, whereas merely eating two pieces of fruit per day is simple!

“Once you have a why, it is easy to find a how.” Nigel Risner

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Lewis Gordon Pugh. Often referred to as “Aqua Al Gore” and the “Voice of the Arctic”, the Cambridge-educated lawyer left his law practice in 2003 to campaign for the protection of the environment.

Yesterday I was asked “are there any companies or Governments you would not be prepared to speak to?

“Some, because of their environmental record,” I answered.

“So you would not speak to BP? Or a destructive mining company?”

“No. I really don’t think they want to change. The Gulf oil spill was not their first accident,” I pointed out.

“But surely it’s your responsibility to confront precisely those who deny, misunderstand or fuel climate change!”

Reluctantly I had to agree. Going head-to-head with oil companies might seem hopeless, or naively optimistic, but without a face-off there is no campaign – we’re just talking to ourselves. A lost cause is when you don’t have the nerve to face the opposition.

To book Lewis for your next event click here

Independent Political Analyst & Keynote Speaker Daniel Silke is one of South Africa’s leading Independent Political Analysts and Keynote Speakers.

A critical new Keynote for our times!

Current developments across North Africa and the Middle East point to a rapidly changing world. Authoritarian leaders are being overthrown. Dissatisfied populations are now encouraged and enabled to protest against the inability of their rulers to improve their lives. Younger people are using social media to organise and vent their frustrations. Are these protests coming our way? Is South Africa a potential target for this type of popular unrest and revolution? Are there signs that South Africans are disenchanted with their government – or will the country escape this type of popular uprising? Is South Africa’s democracy secure enough into the future? These critical questions will be answered in Political Analyst Daniel Silke’s challenging yet very topical address: Global Change: Will South Africa’s Future be like that of North Africa? This Keynote is controversial yet it follows Silke’s balanced, accessible and entertaining style that will appeal to all audiences. It will be crucial for business to understand the challenges facing South Africa – yet also asses the characteristics that exist that will either push the country to protest or pull it towards greater social cohesion & a more promising economic future. Understanding the political, economic and social complexities of the current global situation is essential for all future planning. This is one keynote for 2011 not to be missed.

To book Daniel for this not to be missed keynote address, click here

Why I love Twitter – Part Two

They get the news first.

We live in an information age; we trade with information every day; to stay ahead of the game you need to keep your finger on the pulse – globally. This can be an intimidating thought, until you get plugged into twitter.

One night last year as I was lying in bed I read a tweet about a stampede at a Love Fest in Germany. The next morning I went in to do a show on Kingfisher FM and shared what I had read on twitter, only later did I find out that the information I had read was coming live from the scene of the stampede! I got the news at the same time (if not before the local media)

You may recall in January 2009, US Airways flight 1549 hit a flock of geese shortly after take-off, stalling its engines. Pilot Chesley Sullenburger calmly glided the powerless Airbus and its 155 passengers towards Manhattan’s River Hudson and it crash landed in the water with minimal injuries – right in the centre of the city. (Only the 2^nd water landing in history with no fatalities)

Onlooker Jim Hanrahan broke news of the daring escapade on Twitter, a full fifteen minutes before mainstream news outlets. “I just watched a plane crash in the hudson,” he typed, with typical Twitter understatement. Other tweeters followed, including some posting the first images of the crash.

These are just some examples of how fast and efficient twitter can be in the spread of news, who know what will happen next?

What I do know is that I will be watching twitter and there is a good chance I will get the news, first.

Why I Love Twitter – Part 3

You can’t control it.

Perhaps the best example of this is the recent conflict in Egypt, I first heard about it on Twitter – granted from one of the major news houses I follow, but not from a news bulletin on TV or a printed newspaper. I did a search under #Egypt and found all sorts of news, commentary and even a bit of humour (Mubarak’s dictatorship status has been changed to “It’s complicated”)

The government’s solution?

Shut down the internet, which is not hard to do if you have military power. Of course that only made the world more suspicious, and was hardly effective. In fact it led to some creative thinking on the part of the guys from Twitter and Google and led to the launch of Speak to Tweet.

Since Egyptians had basically no Internet or SMS connectivity, Google and Twitter joined forces to give voice to the country’s people. Instead of connecting to the Web, people in Egypt could use a landline or cell phone (as service to those had been restored) to call one of three international numbers: +16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855. They could leave a voicemail, which would then automatically be tweeted with the #egypt hashtag and posted to twitter.com/speak2tweet. Other people could dial in to the same numbers or visit the Speak2Tweet page to listen to all of the voicemails.

This led to a constant, unedited feed of the real stories, Twitter gave voice to the cries of all those in the midst of the conflict – and allowed us to get involved.

Twitter once again served the global community, connected all the role players and brought us one step closer, to each other.

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Celynn Erasmus - Wellness Expert. Start managing your energy, not your time.

This low fat spicy tikka chicken recipe was shared by Latasha.

Ingredients for the marinade: plain masala; tikka masala, lemon juice; turmeric powder; crushed ginger and garlic; low fat plain yoghurt.

2 tablespoons of masala;

1 tablespoon of turmeric powder;

3 teaspoons each of ginger and garlic;

4 tablespoons of lemon juice;

6 tablespoons of yoghurt;

1teaspoon of salt

Use about 2 kgs of skinless chicken portions. You may choose to cut the chicken into strips. If you use whole chicken pieces then cut strips into the chicken meat to allow the tikka marinade to flavour the chicken. Add the chicken to the tikka marinade and ensure that each piece is well covered.

Allow the chicken to marinade in the fridge for at least three hours, ideally overnight .

Bake at 180 degrees or place under a hot grill for a few minutes under cooked and tender.

Serve with finely chopped tomato and cucumber. Super as a wrap filling or as a protein accompaniment.

Book Celynn to help get your business into shape.  Click here to book.

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Robin Wheeler is a transformation specialist, professional speaker, acclaimed author, and publisher, who coined the phrase 'being yourself for a living' as an intelligent response to the changing world of work.

Watch yourself as you go into love. Watch yourself.

Love blinds you, sweeps you into a sort of slumber, so stay awake. Love itself is wild and beyond control. Observe as it arises and takes you with it.

Do not tumble into it and fall, as, at some stage, you will have to get back out of it and up again. You have had this happen over and over. Watch this time. Stay a witness. Do not fall in love, let it take you up.

Do not lose respect for yourself or lose touch with your mindfulness. Your presence and impeccability are your responsibility, your hard-earned realisation of who you are. Stay with them.

Then you will not lose yourself in love but bring yourself to it. You will not get lost in love but be found. Yes, you will disappear in its depths, merging more and more with its magic and mysteries, but you will stay centred. It will add to your presence. You will really know what love is.

Watch yourself. Associated with love itself are many murky memories and unconscious catches. You have been badly bruised before and may easily flinch.

You have inherited cages from your parents and ancestors, assumptions and patterns that they lived with, struggled through, and inherited themselves. Watch.

Your insecurities will arise and you will want to blame the other. Yes, watch.

You have been born into an unconscious society where love is misunderstood and misrepresented. The marketing can mislead you. The socialised associations with love can cost you.

Stay with yourself. See the difference between the real and the rubbish.

Relish reality, release fantasy. Relieve yourself and others of the painful partition between expectation and experience. Let experience awaken you, let expectation go.

Let the gap close between what you see and what is. Let love bring you together, integrate you further, help make you whole. Let yourself and the other be. Stay mindful and meditative all the way. Watch.

Love can be the cream of your consciousness.

Robin’s full blog can be found here

To book Robin for your next event or conference click here

Dr Graeme Codrington is an expert on the new world of work and multigenerational workplaces. As a writer, speaker and strategy consultant, he has helped thousands of business leaders get more from their people and improve sales by understanding how to influence others.

The world changed forever, in the space of just a few months, in 1989. Decades of unrest and uncertainty burst into action around the world. In a few short months the world had changed – political, economic, social, cultural, corporate and private spheres dramatically – and irrevocably – took new paths.

Tiananmen Square (Beijing, 5 June), Ayatollah Khomenei’s chaotic funeral (Tehran, 6 June), the Baltic Way (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; 23 August), the Berlin Wall coming down (9 November), the Velvet Revolution (Prague, 17 November), the execution of Nicolae Ceaucescu (Bucharest, 25 December), and the banning of the Communist Party in Russia (Moscow, 26 December) – all political revolutionary moments that changed their countries, and the world.

The Lockerbie bombing had started something on 21 December 1988. And the release of Nelson Mandela (Cape Town, 11 February, 1990) book ends this dramatic year. 1989 also was the year of the invention of the HTTP that forms the foundation of the world wide web, the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and the debut of The Simpsons on TV.

A few weeks ago I attended a think tank session run by our friends and associates at Gatehouse Advisory Partners. Sir Jeremy Greenstock (a contributor on this blog) commented that he thought that what was happening in Tunisia “was the beginning of something for the whole region”. Just two days later, the protests started in Egypt. And a few days after that reports of change came from Jordan and Yemen.

Today there are murmurings in Iran and elsewhere.

Maybe history will look back and see 2011 as the Arab world’s “1989″ moment. (NOTE: I realise that Iran is not part of the “Arab world”, but then Tunisia isn’t part of the “Middle East”, and “Muslim world” is not the right geographic term either. I am sure you know which part of the world I mean, though). The world is certainly due another era defining event. They do seem to happen every 20 years or so (think 1989, 1968, 1945, 1929…).

Read Graeme’s full blog here

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Gerd Leonhard offers keynote talks, think-tank sessions and presentations on many different subjects, within many industries from music publishing to cultural policy.

This is a good one – loads of information in here, and pretty well recorded. More details and PDF with all slides, here. Enjoy and spread the word. Subscribe to my video RSS feed, here, if you want (download all videos directly to iTunes, watch on your iPod etc).

Watch the video here.

You can read Gerd’s full blog at www.mediafuturist.com

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Donna is a business and marketing innovator with a passion for assisting people and businesses build their brands.

By Donna Rachelson

This blog will bring the writings of our speakers who each offer something that brings value to your business.  We will also profile our speakers and so you get to know them a little better and what they can offer you.

See you around the blog!