I am here to dispel a myth: While I am intelligent, I have not yet reached the level of Einstein. There you go. Now, could you please explain that to my family, friends, coworkers, and business associates.

I am not here to brag about how smart I am. This post merely exists to show you how you can look like a member of Mensa to the average American, with a minimum of effort.

1. Learn to use Google. Are you one of those people who Google stuff all the time, and yet never seem to find anything? What do you do? You go to a professional Googler, like me, and they find “used bungee cords” in a matter of seconds. How?

We know how to talk to Google. While Google is getting smarter, it still has a hard time knowing exactly what you want. If you type in the word “colour”, Google still does not recognize that it is the exact same word as “color”. Google can only process the information we give it.

How many of you have ever used the advanced search portion of Google? Probably 10% or less, and yet that is how you can drill down to what you really want. Is the page less than 10 days old, do you want it in a PDF or Word document? The more you tell Google, the better results you will get.

There are tons of resources online that will show you how to search more accurately. Just Google it.

2. Use spell check, but don’t depend on it. I wish I had dollar for every time I used “their” when I meant “there”, and vice-versa. Also, watch out for “too” and “two”, “who’s” and “whose”. It is also helpful to know the difference between “its” and “it’s”. Spell check will let all these past without a whimper, because they are all spelled correctly. A firm grasp of the meaning of these words will help you evade embarrassment, and give you a more polished image at work and play.

3. Know the difference between “i.e.” and “e.g.”. Want to see a film called “Revenge of the English Majors”? Misuse these, and I can guarantee you a front row seat. Many people use “i.e.” interchangeably with the term “for example”. This is technically wrong. The term i.e. translates from the Latin as “that is”. If you wanted to say “for example”, “e.g.” would be the appropriate abbreviation.

4. Have a basic idea of where things are in the world. When 50% of college aged kids can’t find New York state on a map, you know we’re in trouble as a nation. If you can tell someone that “Niger” is in Africa, then you will be considered a Geography genius.

5. Collect general knowledge, or as most people refer to it, “useless information”. “Useless information” is something of a misnomer. It is only useless if it is never used. You never know when you might need that obscure fact about the gross domestic product of Germany, or how to open a beer with your belt loop. So take great pains to obtain it, and use it to benefit your fellow man.

6. Don’t be afraid to break stuff. We are afraid to mess things up in our culture. You will find that you will accomplish much more than other people by overcoming the fear of screwing things up. Most people don’t build their own computers simply because they are afraid of damaging the parts. I babied every part as I gingerly put my first PC together. Now, I use “fragile” RAM as everything but a Frisbee, and it still works. Experience will teach you what you can and can’t do. So go ahead, take a plunge into the deep end.

7. Don’t be afraid to say “I have no idea”. If I could pass one thing on to you, it would be this. Once you know all this stuff, it becomes harder to admit that you don’t know everything. It’s even harder to watch a person who wanted an answer “right now”, go back to their cube with a dejected look on their face. In the long run, people will respect you for it.

It’s not like they can’t ask Google, right?

Kurt Hartman loves to collect obscure information. He puts it to use every day as an OTR Analyst. Trivia: What does OTR stand for? The acronym actually has two uses: In one usage, it stands for “old time radio”. The other usage is in the phrase “OTR Tires”, which stands for off the road tires . These are the types of tires that go on heavy equipment. Now you know.

Are you wondering if you simply like to eat, or have compulsive overeating disorder? Here are some symptoms of compulsive overeating disorder:

- Do you keep thinking about food all day long?

- Do you turn to food when you are sad, happy, stressed, or bored?

- Do you feel that food has taken control of your life?

- Do you buy a large amount of food and eat it in one setting uncontrollably?

- Do you feel embarrassed to eat with your friends or coworkers because you do not want them to know how much you eat?

- Do you eat very quickly, not even tasting the food anymore?

- Do you feel that you do not know if you are hungry anymore? You just eat until you are sick and feel extremely uncomfortable?

- Do you feel guilty due to your eating habits?

- Do you like to indulge on junk food, high fat food, and sugary food?

If any of the above symptoms sounds like you, you might have compulsive overeating disorder.

If you have compulsive overeating disorder, probably you feel alone and helpless. When you tell your friends about your problem, probably they just simply tell you to stop eating. Unfortunately, it is not that easy. Your mind and body just cannot control your craving.

Do not feel discouraged! There are more people who suffer from compulsive overeating disorder than you think. There is hope!

Here are some ways you can overcome compulsive overeating disorder.

1. Share your problems with other people.

Talking to your love ones and asking them to support you emotionally is extremely important for compulsive overeater. Explain to them it is important that they understand your problem and give you emotional support. When you go shopping with them and pass by an ice cream shop, they need to tell you “you don’t want that” when you start to walk over there.

If you live with your family and your house is full of cookies and candies for your brothers and sisters, explain to them that you do not want any junk food in the house. With someone who loves you to support you, you can stop compulsive overeating disorder a lot easier.

2. Find professional help.

Talk to your doctor about your problem. Many people who have compulsive overeating disorder also suffer from depression. Talk to you doctor about your problems, they can refer you to the right health care professional who can truly help you.

3. Get support from other compulsive overeater.

Like other addiction support group, you can find Overeaters Anonymous support groups in your area. You can find meetings in your neighborhood by going to oa.org. People who attend the meetings have the same problems as you. You can relate to them and they understand you. Getting support from them can make your recovery a lot easier.

4. Make a food journal.

Food journal is an effective tool to help you stop compulsive overeating. In the journal, write down everything you eat and drink, the amount you eat, what time you eat, how you feel before and after you eat. This will help you find out what triggers you to overeat. If you turn to food when you are stressed (which is very common), learn more about stress reducing methods such as listen to music, take a bubble bath, go out for a walk, or practice yoga. Once you find out why you overeat, then you are more likely to overcome it.

5. Change your food arrangement in your kitchen.

Throw away all the junk food you have in the house, do not go to the junk food isle in the supermarket, and rearrange your refrigerator so you can rich fruit and vegetables easily. These little changes will make it harder to overeat.

6. Do something you enjoy when you crave for food.

What else do you like to do besides eating? Watch scary movie? Read a novel? Find something you like to do instead of eating. When you are doing something you like, you will be completely distracted and not think about food anymore.

Don’t feel helpless and alone if you are suffering from compulsive overeating disorder. With your commitment and support from people who care about you, you can fight this disease and regain control of your life.

Chris Leung Are you suffering from compulsive overeating disorder? Feeling depressed, helpless, and losing self-esteem? Click on the link to learn how to overcome compulsive overeating disorder & regain your life. Get help from someone who successfully overcome binge eating disorder. Learn from someone who used to have the same problem as you and understand what you are going through. Don’t feel alone and helpless anymore…

Do want run but don’t feel that you can?

Do you enjoy walking but are looking for the added fat burning benefit of running?

Well if so, then the workout I’m about to take you through will make your day a happier one.

When most people start running (at whatever stage of their life) they usually cannot run for a very long period of time. That’s to be expected since the body hasn’t been trained to accommodate the greater demands imposed by running faster or longer. However, the desire to run is present for many people because of its fat burning and overall cardiovascular benefits.

One way to build up your running endurance is to simply run a little bit longer each time you run. A good rule of thumb is to increase either your distance or speed (not both) by no more than 10% per week. This progression allows your body to adapt to new running demands while minimizing your risk for injury.

This method of running at the same pace for a given distance or duration is known as steady-state cardio or running. Initially, this is a great place to start for most beginners but there comes a point when it becomes rather boring and its fat burning potential lessened.

Instead, you may want to consider interval training. Interval training, also known as HIT, is by far the most superior training method to improve your running speed and endurance while maximizing your fat burning potential.

HIT refers to a method of cardio training whereby you combine bouts of high and low intensity. So for our purposes, and since you are a beginner, you would be combining bouts of walking and jogging. Each bout would last a certain amount of time and would be executed at a certain speed.

For most people who have never run before (and who want to start) I usually get them to start with intervals that consist of 90 seconds of walking followed by 30 seconds of jogging. They would then repeat this sequence for a given amount of time – usually 10-15 minutes depending on their initial fitness level.

The wonderful thing about interval training is that there are thousands of possible interval combinations that you can use. And as you become fitter the amount of time at the low and high intensities would vary to give you more of a challenge.

Start with this interval training workout:

Assuming that you’re a complete beginner I’m going to suggest that you begin by following the workout I mentioned above. That is to walk for 90 seconds and then jog for 30 seconds. Repeat this sequence for a total of at least 10 minutes. If you feel you can go longer, then go for it.

The true value of interval training is that it allows you to exercise at a higher overall intensity because it is broken up. Starting off, it might be tough to run (without stopping) for a full 10 minutes but with HIT you can actually spend more time running at a faster speed because you have those lower intensity recovery bouts.

Working at higher intensities also means that you burn more calories and while maximizing your body’s ability to burn fat. Over time, your metabolic rate will increase and you will be burning fat even while your resting. When it comes to fat loss the key is intensity.

So start off with this walk and jog HIT workout and progress from there. For more great interval training workouts check out my Treadmill Trainer

All of us have desires we would be thrilled to see actualize in our lives but often can’t seem to make them happen. If you are taking action to make your wants happen but seem challenged in getting them, it maybe due to a lack of good receiving skills.

Let’s imagine a group of friends, Kelly, John, Larry, Julie and Rebecca, go out for lunch. Larry is just full of compliments…

a) Larry: John, congrats on your promotion at work.

John: Well, I worked 12 hour days for the last 6 months.

b) Larry: Rebecca, your new condo is really great.

Rebecca: Oh well, I am barely making it. Hopefully I can keep up with the expenses.

c) Larry: Julie, your garden is shaping up nicely.

Julie: Thanks and Larry, I love what you did with the living room paint.

d) Larry: Kelly, I love your new sweater.

Kelly: Thanks.

What kind of receiver are YOU? Are you like…

a) John? Do need to justify why you deserve what you got?

b) Rebecca? Do you need to diminish your success so others don’t feel smaller than you?

c) Julie? Do you feel like you need to reciprocate the compliment to be polite? Even if you really don’t feel what you are saying to them?

d) Kelly? Are you able to receive a compliment, no strings?

If you are like Kelly, you are probably a good receiver. What does this mean in relation to your life? Well, if you have been visioning what you want AND taking action, but not seeing results, you may not be a good receiver. How are you supposed to ACCEPT your good into your life, when you can’t even receive a simple compliment and feel you deserve it, no strings?

Let’s analyze the 4 types of receivers:

a) The Justifier: Often, something inside you doesn’t really believe you are worthy to receive and so you must find reasons why you deserve it. Sometimes it is because every time you have been giving something in the past, it was NOT unconditional. It was another person’s way of subtly manipulating you into doing what they wanted. And so you learned that you are not worthy to receive just for the sake of it. Now, to be cautious of receiving, you feel the need to justify.

b) The Diminisher: you want to be socially accepted. You would never want to make someone feel bad about his or her own situation because you have more. It may create jealously and affect your relationship long term. You respond by diminishing your own success.

c) The Reciprocator: You have been taught that when someone gives you something, you must give back. As a result, you go out of your way to return the compliment or favour. That is not to say that you shouldn’t give to others. Absolutely give and spread the joy BUT only give when it is genuine and unconditional.

d) The Receiver: You understand that the world is a balance of give and take. You are comfortable in receiving as you are confident that it will come back to the other in some form or another.

Now that you are aware of your receiving pattern, start noticing your reactions and focus on simply saying “thank-you” when receiving a gift or compliment. If you don’t already do this, it will feel really strange. But keep it up long enough and you will change your pattern and slowly start to receive your desires. Happy Receiving!

Cindy Ashton is an expert in helping people kiss their monsters & unleash their courage. Born with a 20% chance of living, Cindy’s life triumphs are a miracle. She presents keynote speeches, interactive seminars & motivational concerts across North America. http://www.cindyashton.com

A medical practice is more than just seeing patients. It is a business, and like all businesses, it has monthly bills to pay, and employees who want their paychecks. There are many different aspects to medical practices across the country.

A medical practice relies heavily on reimbursements from insurance companies to fulfill their financial obligations. However, filling out insurance claims for hundreds of patients each week can be very time consuming. The whole process can be a very frustrating experience.

A physician must either hire someone to perform this task, another expense that can be eliminated, or do it him or herself. Either way, it can be a grueling experience for the person filling out the forms. Often, filing the forms is another headache that can leave the person feeling a huge amount of stress.

If the forms are not filled out properly, the insurance company will reject them and the whole process is started all over again and often these claims are added to the stack of claims that are pending. This can cause financial hardships for many practices, especially small ones. Even when the claim is accepted, it can take several weeks or months for the insurance company to send the reimbursement check.

Many medical practices have found that by using a medical billing company, they have increased the efficiency in their office. The staff can concentrate on other areas of office work. Medical billing services have fast and secure methods of submitting claims to insurance companies electronically. This means that the claims are no longer lost in the mail or sitting in a stack on someone’s desk waiting to be put into the system.

When a claim is filed electronically, it is either accepted or rejected immediately. The billing service then will make the necessary changes and re-submit the claim. Because the claim is accepted electronically, payment is sent within days instead of weeks or months.

Another benefit to using this type of company is that the personnel are highly trained in all aspect of medical billing. They are familiar with all of the rules and regulations and when they are updated or changed.

The medical billing service will also track each of the payments to make sure that the transaction is completed and that a check was sent. They will contact the insurance company and follow up on each claim that is not processed.

This gives physicians the time they need to treat more patients and to concentrate on them and not worry about when they will receive their payments.

Any type of medical facility can use medical billing services. It does not matter how big or small, the benefits are the same for all.

Many physicians are skeptical about using this type of service, especially small ones, however, the benefits of these services far outweighs any fees that they may charge because the reimbursement time is quick and the success rate of submissions is over ninety percent. This makes it very cost efficient for any medical practice.

Peter Geisheker is CEO of The Geisheker Group marketing firm. One of the types of clients that Peter helps are medical billing companies