Study: 80 Percent of College Admissions Departments Stalk Your Facebook – TIME NewsFeed

Did you know that 82% of college admissions officers use Facebook in their recruiting?  What image have you portrayed on your social media sites?  Is it one that seals the deal and gets you that letter?  Many high school seniors are anxiously awaiting to hear what colleges they will be attending.  Some are just beginning to apply.  I hope for your sake that you have not put anything on Face-book that paints you in an unfavorable light.  For all of you middle school and high schoolers, be careful what you put out on the social media sites.  It could come back to haunt you.  And college students and everyone else must also be careful of the image they portray on social media sites.  You’ll be looking for jobs one day.  Remember info in the webisphere can hang out there forever. Consider the following:

“We all know that employers check out your online persona, but the trend is spreading. Now your dirty laundry on the Internet could keep you out of college, too.

A new survey from Kaplan Test Prep reveals that 82 percent of admissions officers use Facebook in their recruiting. While this sounds like a positive spin on having an online presence – meaning the college of your dreams can see your interests and your favorite books. And maybe yours jive perfectly with that of the college’s dream student.”  Click below to continue article.

via Study: 80 Percent of College Admissions Departments Stalk Your Facebook – TIME NewsFeed.

My Success Formula- Thoughts (continued)

What’s In Your Subconscious Program?

(Part 1 of Thoughts) Are you open to new ideas, thoughts, or perspectives?  Or, are you closed-minded? Your answer probably has a lot to do with your programming.   We have thought, accepted, and believed much of our early programming because that’s how the early programming mechanism works.  Children learn how to walk, talk, socialize, etc. in just a few short years.  Adults take years to learn a new language, a toddler learns it and more. It works this way because there is a lot to learn in a short period of time.  And, this would be great, if all the adults in our lives, our society, and the world had it together.  Unfortunately many people are negative.  Bruce Lipton states that 70% of our thoughts are negative.  Think back to the year you were born.  What was society like those first six years?  What influenced your parents and their thoughts back then.  What programming was likely downloaded into your infant brain?  If you want to know what you’ve been thinking consciously and subconsciously, examine your current reality.  What is manifesting?  What do you see around you?  What are you feeling?  What is your reality?

Understanding the Subconscious Mind

The subconscious is the seat of our information.  It stores everything that we  have thought, learned, taught, seen or heard.  It is powerful beyond measure and is neutral.  It outputs only what has been input from the environment.  There is no good or evil with it, there is just information.  I remembered about twenty years ago learning about the power of the subconscious mind.  I learned to do affirmations as a way of re-programming my subconscious mind. I believe that it was that programming that created the positive mindset I have today.  I remember as a child challenging the negative programming that I was receiving about my self-worth.  Race, gender, and my socio-economic condition placed me in a lot of self-limiting boxes.   When I would hear something devaluing, I would tell myself, “That isn’t true; I’m going to be somebody.”  I wish I had said, “I am somebody right now.”  That way I wouldn’t have had to waste years chasing that elusive day when I had worth.  Fortunately a spiritual transformation occurred in my life when I learned that I was “created noble.”  After that I tried to make that thought become a reality.  We have the power to re-program, but it is a conscious effort.  We can’t operate on auto-pilot and expect to change our programming. We are a result of our nurturing, environment, opportunities, and nature and we have the power to change these right now by our choices and our thoughts.  Part 5a of Formula: Expectations

I’m Barbara Talley, the poet who speaks and inspires.  To find out more about me check out: What Does Barbara Do? or visit  my website.

My Success Formula (pt 4)- Thoughts

(Previous on Beliefs)

We Are What We Think.

I have three favorite spiritual quotes that have greatly influenced my thinking on the power of  thoughts.  The first is from the Buddha.  “We are what we think, having become what we thought.” The second is biblical. “As a man thinketh, so is he.” The third comes from the Baha’i Writings.  “The reality of man is his thoughts.” If you want to know what you’ve been thinking consciously and subconsciously, examine your current reality.  What is manifesting?  What do you see around you?  What are you feeling?   We are above all creative beings, that is, we create our own reality.  The tool which allows us to do this is our thoughts.

Thoughts are things.

Thoughts are real.  Thoughts create reality.    I was just watching a video by Bruce Lipton that talked about the power of our conscious and subconscious minds.  He explained why positive thoughts alone don’t change our reality because our positive thoughts which come from our conscious thoughts only operate about 5% of the time.  He suggested that 95-99% of our thoughts are subconscious.  Most of our thoughts are a result of our programming which begins at our birth and for the first six years he says, are operating in a theta wave state.  We were in a state of automatic download which meant we were receiving the programming from our parents, environment, and influences (television, teachers, sibling, etc.)  Research shows children under six don’t have the capacity in the theta state to understand the difference between reality and fantasy.  That is why some experts on child development state that young children should not watch television at all.  They know that the children are being programmed and don’t have the capacity yet to challenge that programming which could potentially be with them for life if gone unchecked.   But, now we are adults and we must challenge or reprogram much of our old programming.  If life is working for you, then your programming must be working.  If it’s not than you need to reprogram! Continue: More on Thoughts.

I’m Barbara Talley, the poet who speaks and inspires.  To find out more about me check out: What Does Barbara Do? or visit  my website.

The Importance of Family Dinners

The dinner is more  than a meal.  Family dinners can even fight obesity.  But, that’s just one of the benefits of having a family dinner together says Dr. Mark Hyman.  He goes so far to say that “Eating at Home Can Save Your Life” and that “THE SLOW INSIDIOUS DISPLACEMENT of home cooked and communally shared family meals by the industrial food system has fattened our nation and weakened our family ties.”

Reconnect through the Family Dinner

Family dinner isn’t just an occasion to fuel  the body, it’ a time to connect and share its decline of it has astounding negative  social implications for our children and families.  If you want to bring your family closer and make them happier and healthier, the family dinner is the place to start.  Just as you schedule time for your work, favorite television shows and exercise,  in the same way, you must set aside time for the family dinner.  “Don’t schedule dinners into your life.  Schedule your life around your family dinners. ” It’s that important!   And, if done right with nutritious whole food, it can be a time of focused healing spiritually,  mentally and physically.  Fewer and fewer young adults even know how to cook anymore.  Food is our medicine and we can’t live without it.  And since we’re going to eat anyway, why not make a healing, educational, and connecting ritual of it?  It’s cheaper than therapy and a lot more enjoyable.

The Loss of Shared Family Meals Have Weakened Family Ties

via How Eating at Home Can Save Your Life by Dr. Mark Hyman

Research shows that children who have regular meals with their parents do better in every way, from better grades, to healthier relationships, to staying out of trouble. They are 42 percent less likely to drink, 50 percent less likely to smoke and 66 percent less like to smoke marijuana. Regular family dinners protect girls from bulimia, anorexia, and diet pills. Family dinners also reduce the incidence of childhood obesity. In a study on household routines and obesity in US pre-school aged children, it was shown that kids as young as four have a lower risk of obesity if they eat regular family dinners, have enough sleep, and don’t watch TV on weekdays.

We complain of not having enough time to cook, but Americans spend more time watching cooking on the Food Network, than actually preparing their own meals.”

If this excerpt interested you, check out the entire article.  You’ll be glad you did.

I’m Barbara Talley, the poet who speaks and inspires.  To find out more about me check out my promo sheet or visit  my website.

Who’s to Blame for The Violence?

What is it about specific tragedies that capture the attention, concern, and indignation of “good” folks?

Last week the nation was in shock because of another senseless killing spree in Arizona.  Everyone was looking for someone to blame.  Some  were blaming Palin; others were blaming Obama.  Some were blaming the lack of gun control and then there were those who blamed all of society for refusing to notice the obvious mental illness in the young man.  Bob Herbert in a New York Times article, A Flood of Murder wrote an extremely thought-provoking piece on not only the recent violence but our increasing violence.

He shared a conversation he’d had with the late Marian Wright Edelman, (who at the time was the president of the Children’s Defense Fund), a few days after the Virginia Tech tragedy. “She shook her head at the senseless loss of so many students and teachers, then told me: “We’re losing eight children and teenagers a day to gun violence. As far as young people are concerned, we lose the equivalent of the massacre at Virginia Tech about every four days.””  Herbert doesn’t believe we really care as a country, ” For whatever reasons, neither the public nor the politicians seem to really care how many Americans are murdered — unless it’s in a terror attack by foreigners. The two most common responses to violence in the U.S. are to ignore it or be entertained by it.”

What do you think?  Do you agree or disagree?

I’m Barbara Talley, the poet who speaks and inspires.  To find out more about me check out my promo sheet or visit  my website.