Nobody should be afraid of trying out new experiences.

Often, we’re at our happiest when we have something to look forward to. These five ‘life-changing’ ideas are all about setting goals for yourself, working towards those goals and enjoying a sense of achievement when you reach them.

Sometimes the things we would like to try cost money. How often have you thought ‘if only I were a millionaire …’? Getting on top of your finances as they stand today is a good place to start working towards a wealthier lifestyle.

Go traveling

They say that travel ‘broadens the mind’. Sometimes a change of scene is all that’s needed to lift yourself out of the doldrums. If you don’t know where you’d like to go, ask friends and relatives about their travels and where they recommend. Borrow travel guides, watch documentaries and research countries and cultures on the internet. You don’t need to go around the world for new experiences – a simple city break may be all that’s needed for a change in perspective. Set up a savings account for your travel funds and watch it grow over the weeks and months.

Change career

If your career is leaving you unfulfilled, have you ever considered retraining in something else? You could volunteer in your spare time in a role that interests you. Perhaps you’ve always had a burning passion to work with children or animals, or to write a novel? If you’re in a steady job with a secure income, you’ll need to think very carefully before you do anything hasty like ‘jumping ship’. However, there is no harm in seeking career guidance.

Get (better) qualified

If your qualifications (or lack of them) are holding you back, look into government funding, bursaries or student loans for your chosen field of expertise. You might be eligible for government funding for teaching and nursing as well as for some other professions. Education can be for fun too – dark winter evenings can be brightened up with an evening class in something that interests you. Taking up a new course can be a good way to meet new people and get your grey matter working.

Repay debt and start a savings account

It’s always a good idea to have some savings in your bank account for a rainy day. If you have debts, it can be difficult to save – but repaying the money you owe is a worthy goal in itself.

If you have debts and you’re struggling to pay them off, you might be able to change your situation for the better on a debt solution like a debt management plan or an IVA (find out more about these here). These solutions are only for people who are really struggling to repay their debts – but anyone in debt can take a few steps to improve their situation.

The first step is to draw up a budget and address your spending. If you’re spending more than your income, try cutting back on spending where you can. If you’ve already tried this and it’s not making enough of a difference, it might be time to get some expert debt advice.

Volunteer

Volunteering for a charity that means something to you, or for a cause you believe in, is something probably everyone should try at least once in their lives. Whether you want to help other people or develop your career through voluntary work, volunteering is a worthwhile way to invest some of your spare time. If fitness is your goal, there are dozens of charities that need people to run, swim and climb mountains to raise money on their behalf.

There are dozens of ways to change your life for the better. You really need to think about your personal values and the things you want to achieve in your life. Think about what you would need to do to get where you want to be in life and use that as your motivation for change. Good luck!

Tags: health, lifestyle, Personal Finance, self-improvement, wellness

One of the things that I think is most important to learn how to do as an adult is to learn to take time out for yourself on a regular basis. I think it’s important to learn to take a few moments each day to just breathe and to be still with yourself. I think it’s important to learn to take a half day out of your week to do something alone that you truly enjoy. And I think it’s important to learn to take vacations or pursue long-term goals that allow you to take time for yourself in a bigger way throughout the year.

When you take time for yourself, you recharge your batteries. You get in better touch with yourself. You understand your needs and wants and emotions better. Taking time for yourself therefore allows you to give more to the people around you because there is more of you available to give. It allows you to be more productive while simultaneously allowing you to be more creative anmd flexible in your productivity.

Sure, it’s possible to fail to take time for yourself and to give your all to something in a productive way for awhile. Some people can even do this for long stretches of time. But you can’t do it forever. At some point, something’s got to give and then you burn out because your body and mind demand the attention that they need. Instead of doing that, we should take time out every day to be with ourselves and to be kind to ourselves so that we can keep going day after day without sacrificing our positive experience of life.

Tags: business, health, self care, taking time for yourself, time management, wellness

I always find it funny when people say that they don’t have the time to relax. It’s funny to me because of the irony of the fact that those people who have the least time are the ones who most need to relax and yet they don’t feel like they can. What I’ve discovered is that learning to take time away from your obligations is the single biggest thing that can allow you to be most productive in the times during which you are busy.

Learning to take time for yourself doesn’t mean that you have to give up any of your daily obligations. Take a look at my tips for ten ways to destress yourself in ten minutes or less. Each of these tips can be used throughout the day to decrease destress and yet none of them takes so much time that any part of your day should be hindered as a result of taking that time to chill out.

In fact, you will most likely find that the rest of your day goes much better because of the fact that you have taken a little bit of time to yourself. When we spread ourselves too thin, we don’t offer our full selves to anything that we are doing and everything suffers as a result of that. When we manage to take the time to care for ourselves, we do better in all that we do even if it technically seems like we have less time to give to things.

Tags: destress, health, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, life, relaxation, stress, stress tips, wellness

Anyone who is interested in yoga, meditation and general wellness should make it a point to check out the many different articles that were recently submitted to the Roundup of Yoga, Meditation and Personal Development blog carnival. There was a lot of useful information provided there!

My own post was on the many benefits of yoga was included in this carnival. Of course it was in the yoga section along with posts on bikram yoga, face yoga, yoga for beginners and the internal strength built by yoga. Also in the yoga section were two chakra-based posts on the root chakra and the heart chakra.

Another topic covered very well in this blog carnival is the topic of meditation and spiritual growth. This includes posts on the zen of clearing your mind, the law of attraction, consciousness and mysticism.

Additional posts in this blog carnival ran the gamut of topics including happiness, hypnosis, making the most of life through gratitude, forgiveness and optimism, making good eating choices (like papaya), your subconscious mind, having children, addictive drugs, anorexia, creativity and life goals.

Which of these posts made you feel most at peace?

Tags: best blogs, blog carnival, blogs, health, kathryn vercillo, personal development, spirituality, wellness, yoga

I believe that the key to living a healthy life is to live in moderation. I don’t always stick with this belief. I have some hedonistic tendencies. I like to indulge and imbibe. I like to revel and rejoice. But ultimately, I believe that most things work best when they are done in moderation rather than at the extremes.

I believe that this is true of both work and play. I definitely go through periods of being a workaholic. This is sometimes great since I really do love the work that I do. But ultimately the lack of moderation in my work causes me to dislike what I normally enjoy about it and to seek to regain that balance of work and play yet again. Likewise, when I play too much, I miss my work. When I am too social, I miss my solitude and when I stay home alone too much, I miss my friends. My life is constantly about trying to find balance and that balance comes with learning moderation.

One specific example of moderation that works is in dieting and weight loss. I don’t believe in fad diets. I don’t believe in rapid weight loss. I don’t believe in extreme weight changes. What I believe is that your body has a weight that’s right for it and that if you eat healthy and in moderation then you will naturally balance out at this weight, the right weight for you and the one at which you will feel your best. I don’t believe in over-indulging in treats but I do believe in indulging in what you enjoy on a regular basis. I believe, ultimately, in moderation – in weight loss, yes, but more importantly in life as a whole.

Tags: balance, being healthy, diet, eating right, ehow, happiness, how to, kathryn vercillo, life, moderation, weight loss, wellness

Yoga is a popular form of exercise, especially in California where I live. However, it’s more than just a form of exercise. Yoga is a means of connecting with yourself. It’s a tool that can be used to get away from the hectic pace of life and bring yourself back to the core things that matter for you. It’s a way to establish peace of mind, get to know what’s going on with your body and really heal yourself from the inside out.

I never thought that I would be a yoga person. I was always someone who couldn’t sit still for long. I was always someone who wanted to do hiking and indoor rock climbing and other activities that involved a lot of motion. And I was definitely never someone who enjoyed classes filled with people who were exercising together.

But then things happened in my life. My world crashed down around me. And the only thing that I felt capable of doing was breathing (although some days I didn’t even feel capable of that). That was when I found yoga. I signed up for a weekly workshop. I dragged myself there. I learned to do some basic poses. I learned to breathe more deeply. And I learned to settle my mind so I could just relax despite the chaos happening around me. The physical exercise is certainly an important part of yoga but yoga is about so much more than that.

Ever since I started that first workshop, I have felt that yoga must be an important part of my life for the rest of my life. I make time for yoga classes no matter what else is going on. When I was ill recently, the thing I missed most was being able to go to yoga. Although it’s not the right activity for everyone, it’s now the right activity for me.

Tags: ehow, exercise, health, how to do yoga, spirituality, wellness, yoga

I firmly believe that we choose whether or not to be happy. I am not saying that I always feel like this is true. Sometimes I, like anyone else, feel that life is throwing too many bad things my way and it’s impossible to be happy in the midst of all of it. Sometimes I, like anyone else, feel that if only certain people in my life would do certain things differently then I could be happier.

But these are just feelings. Emotions. When I can clear away the emotional reaction that I’m having to things, my honest underlying belief is that we can choose to be happy no matter what circumstances we are facing. Of course, this requires will power and a strong commitment to maintaining our own peace of mind. It requires inner strength. But isn’t being happy worth what it takes to develop those skills? I think so.

I wrote an article over at Helium about this topic – learning to stay happy despite what’s going on in your life. It’s a short article that doesn’t cover the entire breadth of this big subject but it focuses on the key thing that I think is important for a happy life which is learning to get control over your own thoughts so that you can develop peace of mind.

Tags: emotions, feelings, happiness, peace of mind, wellness

Earlier this week I did a lengthy article providing my tips for staying healthy during cold season. I believe that it’s really important to take care of ourselves properly when we are well so that our immune systems stay strong and we can avoid colds. After all, it’s almost always better to prevent a problem than to have to treat it and that seems to be even truer of health problems than other problems in life.

This is an important enough issue to me that I spent some time over at Yahoo Answers this week providing additional information to people about how to keep your immune system strong. One of those answers was chosen as the best answer to the immune system question that someone had asked. There were several other answers there as well and they were good too so check it out!

Note that my original article came from Bukisa. You can join my network there and earn money for articles that you write on almost any topic.

Tags: colds, health, immune system, kathryn vercillo, smartchick, wellness, Yahoo Answers

One of the things that has become really important in my life in the past year or so is the time that I give myself in the morning to begin the day on the right foot. I have found that if I just jump out of bed and start my day, I am stressed out and miserable before noon. In contrast, if I take time for myself in the morning to get my brain in a positive frame of mind, then I tend to have much happier and more productive days.

I’m lucky because I freelance and work for myself so I have a schedule that allows me to take as much time as I need each morning. I realize that other people don’t have that luxury. But I do believe that everyone can take at least a little bit of time each day to start things off right. My tips for doing that have just been published in the article titled How to Start Every Day Off on the Right Foot.

I do many, many different things each morning to bring myself to a place of peace. I journal every day including keeping a separate journal for the things that I feel thankful for that day. I spend time reading inspirational things; (right now I’m reading a book on the Tibetan approach to positive thinking). I work on creative projects like mini-collages or scrapbooks.

But basically, what this article is all about is that I take time for myself in the morning. I give myself the right to have a little bit of time alone, just for me, to create peace of mind for myself. Because really, peace of mind is one of the things that I value most in life. Don’t you?!

Tags: creativity, health, inspiration, life, living, optimism, start day off right, wellness