A Mama's Rant

Jack Canfield Needs Law of Attraction Stories

Jack Canfield, the author of the best selling Chicken Soup for the Soul books, The Success Principles(TM): How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, and one of the masters in the book and DVD, The Secret. He's working on three projects that you can contribute to:

1. A new book entitled "Effortless Success: Creating the Life of Your Dreams with the Law of Attraction"
2. He's compiling stories for a Chicken Soup for the Soul book entitled "Chicken Soup for the Soul Life Lessons on Living the Law of Attraction"
3. Jack's also creating an in-depth home study course entitled "Effortless Success: Living the Law of Attraction"

While Jack has many of his own personal stories to illustrate the points he wants to make, he's also looking for additional stories that illustrate the successful utilization of the Law of Attraction.

Your story could be about miracles that have occurred from reading the book or watching the DVD, The Secret, applying the principles and practices of the Abraham-Hicks work, or any other of the many books about the applications of the Law of Attraction.

A Biggest Bang contest winner

Karen from Mommy of Three won my Contest to Win the Rolling Stones DVD Set - A Biggest Bang.

Congrats Karen - the DVD set is in the mail!

Didn't win? Stop by Mommy of Three and check out her contests. She gives away lots of cool books, so maybe you'll have better luck over winning something over there.

Heck, if I wasn't in the middle of several tomes at the moment, I'd enter her contests myself.

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Angela wins!

I'm almost reluctant to send Angela the book she won at my For Moms Going Back to Work - A Contest. She wants a copy of  Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work??

Does that mean she'll blog and take pictures less? Boo hoo. We'll only know for sure if we stop by Angela Giles Klocke's most excellent blog. Do so and give Angela an big internet hug while you're over there. (She's having some medical issues and having lots of test done.)

And don't forget you have until midnight TONIGHT to enter my contest to win the Stone's 4-DVD set, The Biggest Bang.

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An Interview with Nordine Zouareg, author of Mind Over Body: The Key to Lasting Weight Loss Is All in Your Head

I recently had a chance to do a short email interview with Nordine Zouareg, a professional fitness coach at Miraval Life in Balance Spa and a former Mr. Universe

In his book Mind Over Body: The Key to Lasting Weight Loss Is All in Your Head, Nordine describes how everyone can find this mental motivation - what he calls our "core desire" - and then master the tools (visualization, meditation, affirmation) to keep on track with weight-loss goals. After readers develop this foundation, they move on to the inspiring nutrition and exercise plan, simple, effective program developed to help shed weight and keep it off forever.

A Mama's Rant: Many people are wary of "new age-y" and Eastern techniques like meditation and yoga, and feel these techniques go against their religious principles. What do you say to people like this?

Nordine Zouareg: Prayer is a form of meditation... and it's really not in me to try to change their mind. I'm much more interested in sharing my experience with like-minded people. There are enough folks who already do meditate - close to 50 million Americans.

AMR: You work at a beautiful spa, Miraval, where you bring people's lives into balance and teach them how to live mindfully. It's one thing being isolated at the spa and another being home with kids, work, noise and interruptions. How can one successfully bring your techniques into everyday life?

Nordine: Great question! You know people in China practice Tai-Chi outdoors surrounded by both the population and the traffic. They just manage to focus on what's important - their inner wisdom.

Identify the time that works for you - where you can be on your own in a calm and peaceful environment such as a specific room. And make sure that you actually set a specific time for YOU and honor the YOU that is taking care of everyone else around.

Take the step and acknowledge that only by taking care of you, you will better be able to improve your health, feel great, have the body you always wanted, and manage all the stress of everyday life. Build the Miraval you want in your own home. Poeple do it all the time.

AMR: When we think of losing weight, we think of diet and exercise, but never using the power of the mind. I'm seeing a few changes in this, namely your book, Mind Over Body: The Key to Lasting Weight Loss Is All in Your Head and The Beck Diet Solution: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person.

Is using the mind really the part we've been missing to losing the weight, keeping it off and getting in shape?

Nordine: Yes. The body is the servant of the mind. You conceive with your soul, you create with your mind, and you experience with your body. It is like that with everything we choose to manifest. So think, feel and manifest the body you truly desire. It is your birthright to do so.

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Calling all Rolling Stones fans - a contest to win The Biggest Bang DVD set

Are you a Stones fan waiting for the release of A Bigger Bang, a four-DVD set featuring seven hours of content including two full length concerts, two behind-the-scenes documentaries and classic favorites such as, “Honky Tonk Women,” “Sympathy for the Devil,” and “Satisfaction”?

Forget about driving to BestBuy on June 12 to pick it up or pre-ordering it on the BestBuy website. Instead enter my contest to win A Bigger Bang here at A Mama's Rant!

The Biggest Bang offers fans an all access pass including a behind-the-scenes look from the Rolling Stones’ recent tour, A Bigger Bang. The DVD set also features full length concerts from the Rolling Stones show on Rio de Janeiro’s famed Copacabana Beach, and a concert in Austin, Texas, which was a highlight of the U.S. tour.

“The Biggest Bang DVD set lets fans join us as we traveled around the world,” said the Rolling Stones. “They will go behind the scenes at the Super Bowl, see us play an intimate club show in Toronto and for 2 million people on the beach in Rio, as well as gigs in Shanghai, Buenos Aires and Japan. It features classics but also rarities -- songs we’ve never released before on DVD.”

Interested in winning the four-DVD Rolling Stones set - The Biggest Bang? Click here for the rules:

For Moms Going Back to Work - A Contest!

Are you a blogging SAHM or WAHM who's thinking about returning to work outside the home? Then you may want to enter my contest to win Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work, a book offering strategy and advice to women resuming careers after extended time at home with children by Carol Fishman Cohen and Vivian Steir Rabin.

Returning to the workforce can be a daunting job for full-time moms. It requires reigniting old contacts (including co-workers who were once their junior), marketing themselves strategically, and battling the diminished self-image that plagues most women who have been off the career track—whether it's been two, six, or 15 years. Carol Fishman Cohen and Vivian Steir Rabin understand, because they've been there.

As women who have successfully relaunched their careers, they know it can be done with careful planning, strategizing, and creativity. Now, in Back on the Career Track, they offer a prescriptive, seven-step program that covers such topics as building confidence, assessing career options, updating job skills, preparing for interviews, getting the family on board, networking, and much more. (For more information, please visit www.backonthecareertrack.com.)

Interested in winning a free copy of the book? See the rules below:

Writing invitation - Write About Your Name

My name at birth was Anne-Marie Rachel Barnett. I'm named after my mother's mother, Anne-Marie. If I was a boy, I'd be Bruce Marc Barnett. When I married my husband I changed it to Anne-Marie Barnett Nichols. I like Nichols because it's smack dead in the middle of the alphabet. However, I don't like when people spell it Nicholas or Nickels.

Over the years my first name has caused some complications:

Spelling - Does Anne have an "e" at the end? Is it Annie, Anne, Ann, or Anna. Is it Marie, Maria, or Mary? A-N-N-E-M-A-R-I-E.

The Dash - Yes, it's hypenated even if my second grade teacher said that there wasn't a hyphen between Anne and Marie and corrected my handwriting assignment. When I told my dad what she said, he replied that my teacher was an idiot. Pretty powerful stuff to hear from your dad when you're only seven years old.

Pronunciation - Being French, my mom says it with an accent. Wendy, my best friend from high school, loved to mimic the way my mom called me to the phone, "On, Marrrrrrreeeeeee."

But when I say it, people think I'm saying "Ann Murray" like the singer or even "Emery" like the thing you file your nails with. Must be my Jersey accent.

Usage - My dad used to call me AM. In high school, my friend Todd called me Man Array (The M and A are switched. He used to also say, "Your banging on my halls, man." You figure it out.)

My best friend Suzanne's brother called me, Annie Marie as did a boss who I especially liked. But mostly people call me by my given name though "Mrs. Nathan's Mom" is coming into popular usage these days.

My husband calls me hun.

I introduce myself as "Anne-Marie Nichols." But people still say, "Nice to meet you Anne." Or "Hi, Marianne." Now I'm bad with names as anyone, but I tend to forget someone's entire name, not make up a derivative of it.

Folks, if you learn one thing about me, it's that my name is unequivocally

(Inspired by the writing invitation in chapter 6 of Lisa Garrigues's book Writing Motherhood: Tapping Into Your Creativity as a Mother and a Writer and taken from scribblings in my Mother's Notebook. See my children's book blog A Readable Feast for a similar writing invitation for children.)

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Join me over at Celebrity Fit Club

No, I'm not going on the TV show. I'm hardly a celebrity, even in my own mind. I'm just starting the Extreme Fat Smash Diet by nutritionist Ian K. Smith of Celebrity Fit Club.

I'll be blogging about the experience at This Mama Cooks! On a Diet, my revamped food turned cooking and diet blog.

Stop on by and offer words of encouragement. See if I really can ride that exercise bike (that's been sitting in our living room gathering dust for the last couple of years) 45 minutes two times a day. Be amazed when I get a couple of yoga classes or an exercise video in, too. See if I lose it - mentally as well as physically.

Yes, I'm slightly freaking out, but I can do it with a little help from my friends (I have a couple of gal pals joining me...I hope) and those two 6 oz. glasses of wine I can have each week.

I'm planning to be at my goal by BlogHer and have an excuse to buy a whole new wardrobe for the event. If that's not incentive enough, I don't know what is.

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The inevitable data crash

You really need to back up your work at least once a week, if not every day. I have one of those portable hard drives, a Maxtor, which works pretty well - unless it decides to back up while I'm working. Then it's a total pain.

Plus if my house burnt down - god forbid - all my pictures, files, writing, etc. would be lost. A solution for this is online backup. Don't worry, backing up is easier than you think.

One such service for easy online backup that's secure and reliable is Data Deposit Box. For only $2 per month for 1 GB of storage space (that's a lot of space folks), you get all your hard work backed up online.

Data Deposit Box is offering a 14 day unlimted free trial to customers who sign up for their online backup software. You can install the online secure data backup software on as many PCs as you like and back up as much data as you like. Once the trial is over, you will only pay for the online data storage space you use.

Simple Pricing Plan

• Unlimited users
• Unlimited computers
• Unlimited 14 day trial
• Only $2/GB per month

Don't wait to have your computer crash before you realize, hmmmm, maybe I should have backed up my spreadsheets, tax info, artwork, photos, databases, marketing materials, employee records, etc. Check out Data Deposit Box today!

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