As an employee of famous fitness star Kathy Smith, personal trainer of many movie stars, and best selling author, it came to my attention of a few things that prevented Hollywood types from losing the weight they wanted. Here they are;

“Exercise Resistance” or ER means a conscious or unconscious block against participating in a regular active program. Studies show that some people have barriers built up from past experiences that give them a negative mindset toward exercise and food. In many cases, this prevents a person from starting or following through on an exercise program.

RESENTMENT

I thought the golden years were supposed to be filled with relaxing things to do, not more activities I usually put off before?

Not wanting to exercise is one thing, but resenting exercising can be paralyzing. There are only a small percentage of people that truly like to exercise. And most do it for a sport or profession. That’s usually not true for the average person.

Building up resentment toward exercise goes much deeper than just not liking the effort it takes to do it. Resentment brings out a rebellious attitude in us.

“It is down right maddening that our bodies are aging and we can not do what we used to do!”

Every say or think that? We feel it and we see it happening right in front of our eyes. Inside, we are like children. We stomp our feet, cross our arms and say, “You can’t tell me what to do; I’ll show you.”

The sooner you accept the fact that exercise is going to have to be a part of the rest of your life, the more likely you will start the more likely you will continue exercising. Resentment is usually fueled by his cousins: Denial, Pride and Laziness. The best thing to do is never let them play together. Resentment is a form of pride.

FAILURE

Why should I start exercising? I will not follow throughnever have. It will be just another failure of mine.

The only failure is not starting. Success is not measured in numbers. It is measured in your growth through the process. Just because your track record may show some ups and downs has no bearing on your future efforts. Plus, your self-worth is not based on how many times you started an exercise program. Fear of failure is an excuse to never try.

PERFECTION

Why am I not doing this the way I know I can do this? I might as well not do it at all if I cannot do it right.

If you think for one second that you are going to be perfect in sticking to a plan, forget it. It’s not possible for anyone. The truth is you will never be perfect. Once you reach a goal, you will have another one. It’s a repetitive cycle, like running on a treadmill that will never stop. Perfectionism is an illusion.

COMPARISONS

Why does Jane look like she does and I have to work so hard at it. It does not seem fair!”

Life just isn’t fair, is it? For some, it seems effortless to look thin and feel healthy. These people may even do the exact workout plan as you and get totally different results than you do. For you, it is a constant trip to the dentist’s office. You dread it. You know it’s going to hurt, and it may even cost a lot in the end. You are right that it’s not fair, but that’s life. You need to get beyond this. Comparing yourself to others and your past is a losing battle.

EXPECTATIONS

Why is it so hard to balance my fitness goals and lifestyle?

Unless you have such paralyzing health problems that you can’t move, there is NO reason in the world not to get some form of exercise. However, you have to be smart about it and you have to be realistic in what you choose to do.

If your expectations are too high, you set yourself up for failure and then begin comparing yourself to others. In some cases, ER sets in before you even start. This is hurtful. Setting expectations that are too high is self-defeating before you even start.

Here is what I told them and I will tell you the same -

One out of three of you will break a bone. Half of you are on the verge of obesity and diabetes. A third of you will suffer a heart attack. Half of you will end up in a nursing home. And most of you are not living a life filled with confidence, good sleeping patterns, high energy or happiness. Why now? You tell me…why not now?

Do the math! Numbers do not lie. You either accept the road less traveled or you face the consequences. It’s just that simple. This may resemble a scare tactic, but the bottom line is this is your reality. If you think for one second you are exempt, above reproach, or just relying on luck or faith, think again. Your best defense is a good offense.

Why now? Resenting the need to exercise is a waste of energy. Never starting because you are afraid of failure is a copout. Striving to exercise perfectly is a bit unrealistic for anyone. Comparing your present condition with how you used to
be is a losing battle. And setting expectations so high that your lifestyle prevents you from accomplishing anything is a “bad attitude ready to happen.”

Why now? Because these are all just plain excuses. The bottom line is, you will pay the doctor eventually if you allow any of the excuses to get the best of you. Exercising and eating right is the best thing you can do for your mind, body, and your heart. It will take work, but the benefits are priceless.

START LOSING WEIGHT THE RIGHT WAY FOR GOOD TODAY! FREE MINI COURSE click here http://www.resolutions.bz Discover the common sense way to lose weight with out dieting that the doctor’s DON’T want you to know. Greg Ryan is a best selling author, former employee of Kathy Smith, and high profile fitness expert.

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When people head out from New York and surrounding environs in search of weekend retreats, invariably they end up in western Connecticut, the Hudson River Valley, the Catskills and other upstate New York areas, the Jersey Shore, and the Hamptons.

As places where New Yorkers traditionally vacation, purchase second homes, celebrity watch and more, it’s understandable that these locales are top of the list.

But what about a place as close to Manhattan as any of the aforementioned hotspots that offers almost everything we find endearing about our destinations of choice for second and vacation homes – historic villages and towns, amazing countryside, outdoor activities, farmhouses, farm markets, artists, country restaurants – but doesn’t have the buzz or the name recognition, at least not yet.

There is an area within the New York Metropolitan region that is still overlooked by the masses. Where residents are already starting Friday night dinner in their stone farmhouses while weekenders are stuck in traffic on the way to Litchfield, or Rhinebeck, or East Hampton. Even places farther a field like Bucks and Pike Counties in Pennsylvania and Sullivan County in New York get more press. Well let me introduce you to the formerly depressed backwater turned beautiful and convenient countryside of Warren County, New Jersey.

Interestingly, Warren is surrounded by counties which consistently rank among the wealthiest in America: Hunterdon, Somerset and Morris. These are counties full of investors, a highly educated workforce, an abundance of so called McMansions, and quite a bit of disposable income. And to be sure, some of Warren’s eastern border towns have picked up developments and transplants from these ever more unaffordable neighboring areas. But for the most part, it’s the locals who know about or consider living in or visiting Warren County and even then, the western and northern reaches are still quite rural and untouched. For most of its history, Warren County has either been a mystery to those who have never seen it or a place to avoid to those who had heard of its largest town, Phillipsburg–a poor industrial city that had fallen on hard times.

A Pleasant Surprise

Four years ago, my partner Mark and I stumbled across the village of Finesville in southern Warren County completely by accident. Living in suburban Morristown New Jersey, we were contemplating a second home purchase in the country and saw a house in Bucks County Pennsylvania on a real estate Website that interested us. Always up for a weekend drive, we decided to find it. With map in hand, we took what looked like the most direct route to Upper Bucks County and found ourselves following the Musconetcong River, along Warren County’s southern border, past a collection of about fifty small but magnificent 18th and 19th century stone and clapboard buildings, known as Finesville, just before we crossed into Pennsylvania.

Although Warren County was barely on my radar screen, as a Real Estate Agent specializing in historic homes and neighborhoods www.gerrykasper.com , I was flabbergasted that there was a hamlet of this size and quality in Northern New Jersey of which I was unaware. Even more amazing, Mark grew up in eastern Warren County and we had attended an auction only three miles away from Finesville so I had some knowledge of the area.

With its roots in the mid 18th century, Finesville began as a collection of taverns, shops and a mill along the Musconetcong River run by the Fine and Siegel Families of Germany. The village was fairly prosperous for most of its history but declined during the twentieth century. Today, locals have bought and restored many of its buildings and, indicative of its burgeoning upscale nature, two vineyards, a winery, an antique store, and an alpaca farm have set up shop in the hamlet. Some of the restorations have been so impressive that two Finesville homes were recently featured in national home and garden magazines.

At the time we discovered it, a c.1825 stone Georgian colonial was for sale in the village. The exterior was in some disrepair, the stucco was cracking and peeling, and the original front doors were gone. But the setting in this pristine and unusual village was beautiful and the price, at $135,000, was irresistible. Once inside, we realized this was our dream house in the country. The interior was almost completely intact with a walk-in fireplace, cupboard stairs, beamed ceilings, wide plank floors, and original windowsa jewel box of a house that just needed some sprucing up. And so we bought and restored this house and received the Warren County Historic Preservation Award for our efforts. Even better, because of Warren County’s proximity to work, we were able to sell our primary house in Morristown and move to the country permanently.

The Villages and Countryside

Warren County is full of hidden and beautiful villages and towns like Finesville and since arriving, several of them have tempted us to consider moving again.

As testament to Warren County’s less than stellar reputation, the sign welcoming visitors into its county seat describes Victorian Belvidere as “New Jersey’s best kept secret”. Belvidere is a sleepy town located off the beaten path and layed out around a New England-style Village Green. Each September, the town celebrates Victorian Days, highlighting the prevalent 19th century architecture that lines its streets and forms the basis of the town’s small commercial district. Most of the grand homes have already been restored and there is a great sense of pride in this small close-knit community. Its location directly on the Delaware and Pequest Rivers also makes it a good base for outdoor activities.

Northern Warren County offers a scene that rivals the most beautiful in New England. Hope is a one-traffic light crossroads town, founded in the 18th century by a group of Moravians who left an impressive collection of stone dwellings now restored and converted to businesses and residences. One of which is a former gristmill turned into an inn and conference center. Stone and clapboard homes surrounded by cows and sheep dot a landscape that is reminiscent of the Litchfield Hills. With little commercial development, the pace in Hope is decidedly slow but that just adds to its appeal.

North of Hope lies the slightly larger village of Blairstown with its recently restored collection of shops and restaurants, currently under consideration for the National Register of Historic Places. Main Street is bookended by a prestigious prep school and the town’s venerable feed store. This is a walking village, good for an hour’s stroll with weekend guests and a poke around the stores and quiet streets.

Just west of Hope and Blairstown, outdoor activities exist in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area which includes part of the Appalachian Trail, Millbrook, a recreated 19th century village, and Peters Valley, an artists colony which offers regular shows and exhibits.

On the eastern edge of Warren, Hackettstown still retains its 19th century feel with impressive multi-colored Victorian homes, antique stores along Main Street and Centenary College in its midst.

Phillipsburg – An Industrial Town Reborn

As beautiful as Warren County’s countryside is, it’s the city that we originally tried to avoid that has captured our imagination and may eventually tear us away from Finesville. The county’s largest town is a small, formerly industrial city and transportation hub along the Delaware River that had been neglected for years. Think Hoboken New Jersey or Hudson New York before gentrification. Thankfully that neglect, as in most of Warren County, has kept much of its historic fabric intact and over the past 20 years, building owners have been peeling off old aluminum siding to reveal stunning architecture.

The town actively encourages restoration and business development — businesses in Phillipsburg charge only 3% sales tax with some of that money going to revitalization projects. Progress had been slow, but now there are several highly regarded restaurants in the restored downtown as well as antique shops and several specialty stores. Train rides along the Delaware River start downtown and are popular in the summer as well as for Halloween and the winter holidays. On Thanksgiving, Phillipsburg High School plays its rival Easton Pennsylvania in their annual football game. P’burg, as it is known by locals, is extremely convenient as Routes 78 and 22 run just outside of town as does the express bus to Manhattan, which stops at the Phillipsburg Mall.

There are several plans to transform Phillipsburg including the redevelopment of its underutilized waterfront into a residential neighborhood, with construction set to start in 2006, and the repurposing of a vacant industrial park into a new commerce center. Rumor has it that a bed and breakfast is slated to open in an historic stone tavern near the Delaware River bridge. Phillipsburg was named as the location for the New Jersey Transportation and Heritage Museum. Sadly, legislation to provide the funding to make it happen has been stalled and appears unlikely. However, the town is committed to building its own museum and has plans already in the works.

Just over the river, Easton Pennsylvania offers more restaurants, the Crayola Factory museum, a very popular local grocery store (a branch of which may hopefully pop up in Warren County), a thriving artists community, the State Theater, and the historic College Hill neighborhood. Even more exciting, there are several luxury condominium developments currently under construction or planned in existing historic Easton properties, such as the former Easton Hotel, which will bring wealthy people within walking distance of downtown Phillipsburg.

Phillipsburg has great bones and incredible architecture. South Main Street near the Delaware River Bridge is mostly restored and ready to become the next Cold Spring or South Norwalk or New Paltz. And prices are still a relative bargain. Last year we purchased two historic properties on Phillipsburg’s Main Street: an 1887 firehouse for $60,000 and a 19th century Georgian-style colonial for $90,000.

As the town continues to revitalize, we are considering a move into the colonial as our permanent home so we can wake up on Saturday mornings and walk to our favorite breakfast spot down the street. Although, we’ll probably keep the Finesville house as our place in the country.

Gerry Kasper is a Real Estate Agent with Weichert, Realtors, living and working in the beautiful Warren County Area

908 454 1717 x197 office
973 214 8701 cell
ask@gerrykasper.com

WWW.GERRYKASPER.COM

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Business houses always try to expand their operation through franchises. For that they are always on the lookout for talented and dedicated business entrepreneurs who will take their business forward. Business entrepreneurs always aspire to own and run their own business. That’s the ultimate goal for them. But starting a business can be a hazardous affair if you don’t have adequate knowledge of the nitty-gritty of a business operation. But here is your chance to become a successful business entrepreneur.

If you dream of taking complete control of your business and becoming your own boss, you should begin your own franchise business operation today. You will find various business houses selling franchises to entrepreneurs on the Internet. Franchise brokers are similarly energetic to find devoted business entrepreneurs. You may stumble upon lucrative business franchise opportunities as well. But you have to be careful while choosing the most suitable franchise offers. Before opting for a specific one, you have to make sure that business is viable enough to prove profitable in the long run. You should also check out the track record of the business to assess how it has been performing. You should avoid all types of fly-by-night franchise businesses.

The business must remain rock-solid irrespective of the market trend. If any business is constantly getting affected by the market fluctuation, its franchise will bear the brunt as well. So it’s in your best interest to steer clear of those dubious franchise business sale offers. Also, while searching for franchise business offers, you have to make sure that the offers interest you. It’s advisable to stick to the field you are familiar and comfortable with. Going for an unknown franchise venture is laden with risk. There is no harm in going for a business franchise. But, you have to be careful.

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Earlier this month, Realtor Magazine announced that they would be featuring an article about Tampa Bay Realtor John Mudd and the success he has been having in attracting prospects and media attention with his blog on real estate.

Since then, many others in the Real Estate market have been curious about how to implement similar strategies to capture leads in their areas.

This article is part of a series that provides insight to the unique ways that the strategy of blogging and the use of RSS and/or Atom feeds can be applied as part of your web promotion strategy.

1. Capture better search engine positioning for your local market with a blog.

By now it’s apparent that blogs with unique content can bring you better search engine rankings. This advantage is strengthened when you use a blog software tool that enables you to publish posts on your own server, which we’ll go over in more detail in part two of this article series.

RSS and Blogs bring you special web promotional opportunities that can help your blog and the site where it resides rank higher in search engines, due in part to the way they are organized. Particularly for narrow local markets, this can both widen and deepen your audience within 3 – 8 weeks with proper implementation.

By far, this is not the only benefit of blogging or RSS – though if you’re looking for better organic search engine ranking across a multitude of keyword phrases, this just may be the answer for you.

2. Dominate your local niche by becoming a resource for information for home buyers and sellers in your area

The ease of publishing content to a blog, coupled with one of the easier ways to implement RSS, its accompanying feed, gives you the ability to provide fresh and relevant information, often at the same rate of time it would take to write a short email.

With the proper blog publishing system, the speed at which you can now provide information means that you can publish updates more often, drawing more attention to your web site from search engines and visitors alike.

After landing in your blog, links to other relevant parts of your site can draw visitors to the areas you most want them to pay attention to, such as your updated listings – which can also be made available via RSS if you so choose.

Why RSS?

It can mean 100% delivery of your message to your prospects, in a fashion that they choose to have pulled to them. Rather than attempting to digest all the information at your blog in one visit, they can skim your headlines, read a summary or post, and then click through to your site upon finding information that draws them in.

You can supplement this with email for users who are more comfortable with receiving your information the traditional way.

While promotion and updates via email are not necessarily to be discounted, the use of RSS and other feed formats lend themselves to additional promotional possibilities.

3. Have yet another reason to remind prospects to return to your site – and shorten the sales cycle using a multiple feed strategy

With the combined power of blogging and RSS, you can construct multiple outlets for information that are each hyper-targeted to several segments of your market. Instead of attempting to force your static web site to capture home buyers and home sellers for your area, as well as provide the statistical information on your locale, you can build several focus areas and promote them side by side.

For example, if your local area is Frederick, Maryland, you can dedicate one blog and its accompanying feed to recent Frederick listings, and then have a separate feed that automatically provides updates on area schools, crime rates, cost of living and other statistical information home buyers consider when making purchasing decisions. Separate blogs and feeds on the same site could focus on the needs of home sellers in the area

The possibilities are truly as endless as the number of markets you wish to capture.

It is often said that it may take up to seven times for a prospect who comes across a marketing message to buy. Therefore, the faster the opportunity arises for you to contact your potential client, the closer they may be to a buying decision. If you are able to provide them with the information they need to make that decision with updates from your site, the likelihood that they may ultimately make that purchase decision through you increases.

Updates to blogs and RSS feeds can give you the power to make this transition happen at a faster pace, as the production cycle of the content takes only the time you would need to publish that information.

Rather than contacting your web content management department, forwarding content, and waiting for the page to be published, then picked up by search engines, with a blog, you simply log into your administration area, type and publish.

These pages can also get picked up by search engines faster through the power of syndication – those already following your feed receive your update instantly.

There are more ways that you can use RSS to draw more qualified prospects to your business which will be covered in part two of this series.

Copyright 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaul

Read part two of this series at http://rssapplied.com/rss-real-estate/. This will also give you access to a free guide to using RSS and Blogging to target prospects.

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