For the brain, remembering is a lot like doing. This is powerful! When
you realize this is how the brain works, you can use this knowledge to
your advantage. It has been believed that your brain does not know the
difference between an actual occurrence, a memory or specific thought
about a possibility.

In this new study conducted by a team of American and Israeli
researchers, they were able to pinpoint the location of mini-storms of
brain activity that occurred with the initial action as well as the
later recall of it. They were able to show that both occurred in the
same brain cells concentrated around the hippocampus region of the
brain.

It has been found in other research that the brain does not really know
the difference between an imagined action, a real one or the memory of
either. Similar to how you can affect your body and mind from input to
one or the other. It has been commonly known that you can train your
body to do specific motions through your thoughts, and it has been shown
that you can affect your thought by specific physical movement of you
body. In other words, an athlete can train their mind to control the
body by physically doing an activity in exactly the way you want and the
brain will learn how this is done.

All of this continues to build support for how you can direct your
thoughts and actions through visualization and affirmation. There is now
more proof that the memory of and the actual occurrence of something are
no different in your mind. This leads to your being able to pre-program
your mind to ‘know’ specific things without them actually happening yet.
Your brain will allow you to do something, which it knows, easier than
an unknown.

When you create a powerful vivid imagined scenario in your mind, backed
by appropriate emotions, you can program your mind much like it has
actually occurred. Your mind likes to do what it is familiar with, so if
you create this familiarity with clear emotionally backed thought your
brain acts as though it has happened. It is easier to do again what you
are familiar with. There is a natural hesitation to what your brain does
not know, so make it known and familiar through your imagination.

Familiarizing your brain with what you want through emotion backed
visualization and affirmations acts to program it for desirable
situations making them easier to do again and again. Also your
unconscious mind and inner self attempt to support and assist the
thoughts you hold. Just like the more you physically practice a sports
technique the more your mind helps you fulfill the desire, your mind
will attempt to help fulfill thoughts of any clear desires.

Learning how your brain works helps you to understand how you can use it
to your advantage. After all, it will be doing these things anyway, why
not direct them to your wants and needs? Use tools such as affirmations,
visualization, treasure maps, writing your story, act as though, or
anything that can help familiarize your mind with what you want.
Remember, use thoughts of what you DO want, not what you don’t want or
like. Your mind will act to support whatever you think about with
emotion and clarity - good or bad!

John Halderman, for more daily growth and self discovery tools and
methods - http://www.effectivepersonaldevelopmentblog.com

You see it all around how science keeps going, discovering more and more
about the world and universe we exist in. As technology improves, which
is change, science is able to understand more about our universe plus
obtain more ways to describe it all. For example, this picture of a
supernova remnant was not possible just a few years ago even though the
object was there.

This is how life is, ever expanding in its awareness of itself. Plus,
the increasing awareness of humans to what is already there. Much of the
change seems to not exist or that the change is very slow, but it is
there. Everything in the universe grows and changes we are certainly not
excluded. We have the ability to continue to change and grow throughout
our entire life, including our final change here, death.

But at the same time there are so many people who are ‘checking out’ so
early. Getting tired, feeling aches and pain, feeling beat down -
telling themselves they are wearing out -that it’s too late. I’m not
trying to tell you that pains should be ignored, but how you look at
them can have a huge affect on the power they play in your life.

The biggest factor to your growth is your thinking. What you think about
your life and your growth determines what you see, feel and do. If you
see possibilities - you will see them, and if you see the ‘end’ in your
mind, you will see it in your life. If you think you are too tired, sick
or whatever - you are.

Time to check yourself:

· How are you the same today as you were 10 years ago?
· How are you different?
· What are you doing that you thought were not possible for you a few
years ago?
· Do you look at things in the same way you did several years ago?
· Do you see possibilities for your life or feel hopeless?
· Do you feel that your life continues to move on or do you feel stuck?
· Are you open to new ideas and concepts or do you want to keep things
the way they are?
· Do you feel your problems hold you back, sap your energy and nix your
motivation?
· Are your dreams alive or have you given up on what you want in your
life?

Can you change any of this? Well yes you can - much of it. Many times we
let one thing affect all of our life. We allow our attitude and outlook
to be clouded when one thing has happened when we don’t need to.
Certainly there are situations where something may temporarily set you
back but it does not need to be for all time. Only you can determine if
you are temporarily off or if it has been too long. You will need to ask
yourself honest straight questions about it. The easy answer is of
course, “I will just suffer a little longer” but maybe not the best!

The truth is that a broken foot does not come with a bad attitude,
that’s our choice. A marital separation does not come with resentment
that carries through all of your life, that’s our choice. Because
something did not work out for us does not mean nothing ever will,
that’s our choice to think so. The thing to be careful for is that when
something that appears negative happens don’t allow it to affect all of
your life any more than is necessary.

Ask yourself some key questions that help enhance your self awareness so
you discover how you think and feel about everything. There is always
more out there for you if you allow it and if you are open to recognize
it. When you are clouded by negative reactions it may not seem so, but
you can always change and grow. Your outlook on life is a choice -
yours. You are never done, unless you choose.

John Halderman - More on daily life actions to support a better life,
http://www.effectivepersonaldevelopmentblog.com

And then there are those few that seem to be able to actively keep
moving forward on their life path. Why? They allow their thinking
to focus on their enlightenment, on how they think and act on a
regular basis, not just once in a while. They are able to let their
mind calm down and get quiet, allowing the chatter to fade away.
They are willing to allow their fears, doubts and worries to be
present in their thought, knowing that these thoughts can’t
actually harm them - knowing that avoidance just postpones not
eliminate.

There are different reasons why we all don’t actively participate
in our own personal enlightenment, but one of the main reasons is
due to distraction. The human mind can actually do only one thing
at a time, those of you that think otherwise are just good at
rapidly switching from one focus to another. So what we choose to
think about determines much of our life experience. In relation to
distraction, when we think about is something that helps us feel
comfortable or think we should be doing because of our life
responsibilities we are not focusing on growth and self
realization.

Now I’m not here to tell you what is and is not important in your
physical life, but I know that you need to apply some of your time
and attention to your inner growth which includes how you think and
act. So what keeps you from doing this you may not even be aware
of. Since it is normal for humans to seek happiness, which we
equate to comfort, we tend to avoid uncomfortable thinking and
feelings. And we do this in many ways, some are our daily
activities. We may not be aware of how our daily activities can be
getting the way of our growth and self-realization

Things you may do to avoid discomfort:

Listening to music
Listening to talk radio
Watching TV
Playing video games
Reading
Games
Hobbies
Cleaning
Tinkering
Socializing
Hold on! You say, “these are normal things.”

Yes they are, but they can all be used as a distraction. And only
you can know what role they play in your life. Like anything,
moderation is usually the best.

There are two situations you may be avoiding.

1)If you tend to go to any activity when you feel
uncomfortable, you are probably escaping. Sure you will feel better
doing something you are familiar with, but this behavior can just
postpone what you are avoiding or even make it worse. What I’m
referring to here relates to more discomfort than simple relaxation
and enjoyment.

2)One of the biggest things you may be doing without
knowing it is avoiding real thinking. This is when you are
uncomfortable with allowing your mind to run through the incessant
mind chatter, which shakes your worries and doubts in your face, to
the point where your mind is clear.

Life requires balance, and what I have found is that for most, any
self-growth is pushed into a small corner receiving only spare time
attention - sometimes. Are you running in circles doing the same
things each day and not seeing any change? Are you frustrated with
your life? There could be an initial feeling of discomfort when you
choose to allow yourself to think freely and not choose a
distraction, but this will pass. Using methods of relaxation and
meditation will help.

If you want more for yourself take a look at what you do and why
you do it. Take a look at what you do everyday towards your own
personal growth and development, to what you are doing towards
self-realization.  Only you can know if you are using activities to
avoid something that is actually more important. Choose to set
aside time to just relax and think - this is how you can get in
touch with your inner self on a more regular basis.

The choice of how you spend your time is yours and the result is
your life experience.
John Halderman,
Tips and tools for daily personal growth, increased happiness and
self-discovery. http://www.effectivepersonaldevelopmentblog.com

Spyware Doctor, an anti-spyware program decided that the Alexa Toolbar was spyware and removed it from my system. It didn’t do it the friendly way by running the uninstaller provided by Alexa; instead it entered the system Registry directly and went on the rampage, deleting all manner of data that it considered to be connected with the Alexa Toolbar.

Once I realised what had happened, I went back to Alexa and reinstalled their toolbar, but now it no longer worked. After several reinstallations and system restarts, it still wouldn’t work properly. Spyware Doctor had broken my PC.

So What Do You Do When Your PC’s System Files Get Messed Up?

Thankfully, Microsoft have incorporated System Restore into their most recent operating systems (XP and Vista), and I was able to reinstate my system and Registry files to how they were before I installed Spyware Doctor (which has now been banished from my PC).
I then reinstalled the Alexa Toolbar and it works just fine now.

How to use System Restore

Here’s what Microsoft say about System Restore: “System Restore works a lot like the Undo command in Microsoft Word. You can use System Restore to remove any system changes that were made since the last time you remember your computer working correctly. System Restore does not affect your personal data files (such as Microsoft Word documents, browsing history, drawings, favorites, or e-mail) so you won’t lose changes made to these files.“.

If you have System Restore enabled, every day that you use your computer, Windows saves the current state of the system files. This means that you can roll-back to any previous “restore point”. So if you install or run a program that affects the system files and makes the system unstable, you can undo those changes.

Here’s how:

1. Click Start, and then click Help and Support.
2. Under Pick a Task, click Undo changes to your computer with System Restore.
3. Follow the instructions on the wizard:

Select “Restore my computer to an earlier time” and click Next.

A calendar is displayed. Dates are displayed in bold if there is a restore point on that day. Click on a bold date in the calendar, and you will see a list of changes that the restore point incorporates. This includes software installed, Windows updates, and system checkpoints.

When you have found the day when you installed or ran the program that broke your system, choose that day or the one before it. I was fortunate enough to be able to find the day when I installed Spyware Doctor, and then selected the day before that.

Click on Next and you will see a confirmation page for the selected Restore Point.
Read this page. It is important to know what will happen next.

Click Next. Your system will shut down and apply the selected Restore Point to your system files settings.
Don’t worry about any other files that you have on your system, such as emails, Word documents etc. They will be unaffected. System Restore is not a time machine – it can’t save and restore everything that is on your computer to a previous time – only the system files.

When your computer restarts, you will see a message stating whether the restore was successful or not.

If you find that other software that you installed after the time of the Restore Point is no longer properly installed. You will need to re-install it. In some cases, you might even need to go into the Remove Programs control panel and remove the software and then reinstall it.

If it still fails

If your restore made no difference, or made things worse, you can even undo the change and bring the system back to today’s settings using the same System Restore mechanism.

A Final Word

It’s possible to switch off System Restore so that it doesn’t make daily backups of the changes to system files. I thoroughly recommend that you leave it switched on. You never know when it might get you out of a tight spot!

Phil Rogers is a professional software engineer who runs Phil’s Techno Talk.

Think about this, more and more Olympic athletes are over 30 and some over 40. The 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing China has more athletes over 30 participating than any time in history. Do you realize how difficult it is to make the Olympic team in a country with a lot of athletes trying to get on the team and where there are many young athletes competing for the positions?                     

Dara Torres, 41-year-old swimmer for the USA, just got two Silver medals and she out swam her much younger competitor during the last leg of the relay. She has successfully balanced the rigorous training needed with being the mother of a 3-year-old daughter.

Ekaterina Karsten of Belarus, competing in the women’s single skull rowing, brings home a bronze medal and she is 36. This is her 4th Olympics, she has won three gold’s and one silver in this event in those efforts proving she has remained in top shape for many years.

Romania’s Constantina Tomescu is 38 and just won the gold in the women’s marathon. In fact at the halfway point she was in 26th place before she gathered speed to end up finishing almost two and a half minutes ahead of the second place finisher. She finished 20th in the 2004 Olympics but has improved steadily in the last four years as she has gotten older in age.

Oksana Chusovitina the 33 year old German gymnast received a silver medal on the vault. My two daughters were both involved in competitive gymnastics, I know how physicaly brutal this sport is. She has stated that if she is able to qualify for the next Olympics she will, she will be 37. She said, “if I can I’ll do a sixth Olympics.” Is she giving up on what she loves? She says, “I don’t feel 33, I feel 18.” She not only made the German team, she took 3rd place amongst all competitors, most of which are about 16 years old!

Jason Lezek, the US swimmer who helped Michael Phelps win the two team relays, is 32 swimming against athletes 10 to 15 years younger. He has shown that he can still compete in finals in the Olympics as well as other international events.

The ability of athletes continuing to compete at such a high level as they age can be attributed to several factors; more financial support for athletes, better sports medicine, more understanding about diet, but mental perspective and determination is at the foundation of it all. It definitely can become more difficult physically to train as a person gets older and the drive to continue must be strong. But the decisions you make based on your perceptions are the determining factor to what you will motivate yourself to do.

These older athletes are redefining what is possible as we get older. Their success shows what we are capable of when we have the vision, motivation and determination. More importantly is shows that more people are able to see themselves in this role as they continue to get older. When you can see something as possible you are more likely to find the ways to bring it about.

The demise of ones abilities begins with their perception of what is possible and not possible. So often people fall into the mental trap of thinking they are too old for something or that it is not appropriate for an older person. This is just not the case in all instances. Your physical abilities and mental drive is governed by your perceptions of what is possible, what you ’should’ be doing and many times the influence of others.

This concept does not just apply to sports, any endeavor that you have stopped allowing yourself to see as possible is not necessarily dead, unless you condemn it in your mind. Take time to assess your deep wants and desires and rather than staying with restrictive perceptions, take a fresh look at it. You will discover that many times it is your own mental decisions that have stopped your progress and squelched your dreams, not your actual abilities.

Harland (Colonel) Sanders did not even start franchising his chicken until he was 65 years old, you may have heard of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

What is really possible for you ‘if’ you were to follow your dreams without telling yourself no?

John Halderman
More life changing concepts at Effective Personal Development Blog

Is your gratitude as potent as it can be? We know that thoughts are powerful, but what is even more powerful? Thought that has emotion added and focused thoughts are far more powerful than plain thought. This is why we tend to see more of what we fervently dislike in our lives, because there are strong emotions attached to the thoughts.

So how do we add emotion and focus to thoughts about gratitude? Write down your thoughts, in a gratitude journal, to engage more of your senses. Your mind is using many more brain cells with the act of writing, thus more of your brain is engaged.

First, Your emotions will greatly increase when there is more brain involvement. And your brain will better be able to link multiple related positive thoughts to your gratitude statements enhancing positive emotional feelings. The number and strength of the neural connections in your brain actually increase with the added activity with writing. The more attention given to anything, the more it will affect your life. The addition of positive emotions will supercharge your gratitude.

Second, your mental focus is enhanced as it takes more of your mind to do the writing. Your mind is pumping out thoughts all the time, how would it know that you want specific thoughts to be more important than all that chatter? You add this importance by giving the thoughts more attention. Writing down what you are grateful for and allowing your related emotions to develop clearly moves other thoughts out of your awareness. You can truly only think one thought at a time. The act of writing helps keep you from bouncing from thought to thought. Gratitude thinking is the kind of thought you want to spend your time with, it is positive and uplifting. 

Start a gratitude journal. It can be anything from a fancy hardbound journal to a simple spiral notebook, all you need is blank space to write. With a physical journal it is easier to set up a routine to use it, and it is easy to review when you want a little boost or motivation. You can establish a time of the day to pick up your gratitude journal and express your thoughts and feelings. This helps create a good habit that you will follow over time.
John Halderman

More on Gratitude, Effective Personal development Blog

Learning is one of the biggest stumbling blocks we have with eating and diabetes.

By learning when you should eat, how much you need to eat and what to eat, you can take excellent care of yourself. When making food choices, choose wisely so that you can lose unnecessary weight, lower you risk of diabetes complications and even feel good from day to day.

Our goal with diabetes is to keep our blood glucose levels at healthy levels and to prevent damage to our body caused by those unhealthy levels of glucose, cholesterol and blood pressures. This can be maintained with good eating and physical activity habits along with proper medications if prescribed by your health care professional.

When taking diabetes medications, it is best to follow schedules for physical activity, meals and snacks. Some medications allow for flexible schedules while others do not. Discuss your diet and medication routines with your doctor.

The risk of developing heart disease is two times that in people who have diabetes than in people who do not. High cholesterol levels raise that risk. Lowering the amounts of saturated fats and cholesterol and maintaining optimal body weight can help lower cholesterol levels in the blood and reduce your risk of heart disease. Eating and Diabetes definitely go hand in hand here.

With you doctors help and with monitoring results:

• Determine how many times you need to eat per day
• Determine how many snacks you can eat per day
• Determine your physical activity levels required to maintain

Remember that conditions can change as time goes by, never stop monitoring and never stop working with your health care professionals. Keep up with your diet and diabetes plans and follow them with care.

It is your life and you should make it as comfortable and as productive as you can. You can always take medications, but there is no substitute for self care.

by Randy Wood
www.diabetes-and-me.com | Randy Wood promotes Article Marketing

Tips from Diabetes And Me… Always Move - Keep It Physical

When actually, it’s not a matter of finding out ‘how’ to
have success in your life, but rather how and where to
direct your success. The problem is not, not being a
success. The thing is you actually already are very
successful every day, but maybe not at what you would like.

You are successfully living your life, your body is
functioning and you are thinking about something every day,
all day.  Now if you weren’t having any thoughts at all, I
would be concerned.  And since you are thinking about
something, you are receiving the fulfillment of those
thought requests without fail. 

The universe doesn’t fail itself, and since you are a part
of it you will not be failed either.  Just as a plant seed
always gets what it requests, so do you. So then why don’t
you get everything you think you want? You want it so you
must be requesting it right.

Well, again you actually are getting everything that you
are requesting.  I know it seems like I’m taking you in a
circle here but think about this for a moment, how do you
know what a tulip has requested from the universe? Well,
the tulip would not be a tulip if it had requested
something else. The way to tell what has been requested is
by the evidence that is present. 

Then, the other aspect you have is your mental capacity to
reason, think and choose.  Sure some other creatures have a
little of this aspect but nothing like we do.  A cat can
decide to seek out a warm sunny spot to lay in, but it
can’t learn a new trade or change the way it perceives
things like you can. This second mental ability is one
where you decide what is in the seed - your seed. You have
the ability to design what the seed will request from the
universe, let’s call it your ‘creative seed’. 

Now this part is important to understand, just like the
tulip seed and your physical body, your ‘creative seed’ is
always activated with the universe.  This means the
universe is constantly reading your request within your
‘creative seed’, thus it is always responding in kind. Here
is the scary part, your thoughts, all of them, are the
‘creative seed’ which is a continuous active request link
to the intelligent universe.  So everything you are
thinking is your ‘creative seed’ whether you are or are not
consciously aware of it. 

This is why it is so critically important to make it your
main objective all day every day to discover what you are
thinking and adjust it to be congruent with that which best
serves what you want in your life. When you may say that
you want something, but all the while your inner thoughts
are pointed elsewhere and your behavior is reinforcing
something else, your ‘want’ doesn’t hold much weight in the
request seen by the universe. Your predominant thoughts and
actions are so strong; the universe can’t hear what you
really want.

You are right now completely successful at what you have
invested your thoughts and energies to, even if you are not
totally aware of them. Your experience in life has a direct
correlation to what you think about and feel strongly about
most of the time. There is an exact relationship to the
percentage of time you allot to any thoughts and your life
experience.

So if you want to be successful at something other than
what you are successful at today, you will need to devote a
higher percentage of your thoughts, feelings and energies
in ways that are more in alignment with these desires. Just
occasional lip service will not do.

All of your thoughts combined are what is included inside
of your ’seed’ that the universe works to fulfil for you.
So ask yourself, “How much of the volume or space in the
seed is taken up with what I deeply want and how much of it
is what I don’t want, don’t like, put up with or just
complain about?” You are constantly creating this seed, and
from this you are completely successful based on what’s in
it.

To change this, you will need to take command of your
everyday thinking, choose to have more of your thoughts,
feelings and actions be congruent with your deep desires.
Using your valuable thought time to complain, ridicule,
doubt, worry, feel angry, resent someone, and many other
negative type thoughts, just steal time you can be filling
your ’seed’ with what you really want. Plus, you will just
get more in your life to complain, resent, worry about and
all the rest - is that what you really want?

Some people have actually kept track, in time, of their
thoughts all day long in order to discover what percentage
of time they devote to certain ideas. With this you can
discover what undesirable thinking you want to replace with
the aligned thinking you want.

Take command of your thinking now by aligning more of your
thoughts with your deepest desires, you will see your
feelings and actions follow suit, then your life experience
will too. Choose what you are successful at by redirecting
the same tools and power you now use to get what you now
have.  
John Halderman

Now, you don’t actually make anyone feel anything, which is
up to him or her, but you can contribute to how they feel
by doing something they appreciate or enjoy.  One of our
deepest human desires is to feel good so everyone is open
to any assistance with doing this. And I’m sure you are
aware of how it is so easy for people to focus on the
negative, everyone can use some assistance placing their
attention on what makes them happy.

What does it take to assist someone to feel happy? First
you want to discover what they would appreciate, which
requires a bit of attention to the other person. Do you
take the time to notice what others would appreciate or
enjoy? It really doesn’t take much effort, but rather some
attention. With our busy lives it can take some purposeful
effort to notice what others would like and do something
about it but it’s worth it. What you do for others comes
back to you in some way, so there is some secondary
motivation behind your kindness to others.  It doesn’t hurt
to remember that you get more of what you think about in
your life.

What can you do to help someone feel better and feel good
about it yourself as well? Can you make a positive comment,
praise or compliment? Who can you do this for? The people
close to you as well as people you just have casual contact
with. You never know up front how even something small can
lift a person’s day. Or how a small compliment can boost
someone’s self esteem. The thing to remember, no one
receives too much of what leads to happiness, so you can ‘t
over do it.

Make it a part of your daily life to be aware of other
people and what you can do to entice their happiness. Start
out with the intention to help just one person to feel
happy. And don’t forget how you will be increasing the time
you are happy as well, as just thinking about it increases
your happiness.
John Halderman
There’s more about life and happiness at
http://effectivepersonaldevelopmentblog.com

Passwords. We have them everywhere now. Whether it’s the PIN (Personal Identification Number) for your ATM card, the password that logs you into your email account, or to set up your Internet Router, we have this need for security that our money, our personal details and our private information is kept away from people we’d rather not let near them.

However, your choice of password can let you down and even though you think you are safe, you could be leaving the doors wide open to unsavoury characters who don’t think twice about stealing your identity and looting your bank account and credit cards for as much as they can get their hands on.

There are thousands of websites that let you register and sign in with an account; each of which requires another password. It’s getting to the point where it’s difficult to remember which password you used where. And this leads you to disregard security to make your life easier.
It’s too tempting to choose a password that is easy to remember, or even use the one supplied by the manufacturer. Unfortunately, that often makes them easy for other people to guess.

Believe it or not, when faced with the pressure to choose a password, people are not very creative, and statistics show that many people choose the same ones as everyone else. Here’s a list of top-10 passwords:

1. password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. link182
10. (your first name)

When they say “Enter password”, it doesn’t mean enter the word “password”! It means choose one and enter it!

If you use any of those passwords, you’ve fallen into the same trap as everyone else.

Don’t Keep Default Passwords
Here’s an example. My wireless Internet router is made by D-Link. To log in to the set up page, the account name is set by D-Link to be Admin, with the password set to “password”. Very easy to remember, and most people don’t bother to change it.
Now, I take my wireless laptop or PDA and go somewhere and find an open wireless network. What if the router being used is also by D-Link? What if the owner didn’t bother to change the account name or password? I can now log in and change the password, thus locking out the owner from their own router setup.
I can now come back at any time and browse the computers on that network. Who knows what personal information I might find on there?
And if “password” doesn’t work, I might try any of the ones from the above list.

Don’t Use Familiar Words
Instead of using one of the common passwords, some people resort to using the name of someone or something close to them, such as the name of their spouse, child, pet or street.
Here’s another example. When I was at university, my room-mate was a huge fan of the UK football team, Manchester City (also known as Man City). Just for kicks I thought I’d try and log into his university computer account. I knew his username, but needed his password. So I tried “mancity”. That didn’t work, so I tried the names of their star player. That didn’t work, either. Then I remembered the name of the team manager, and tried that. I was in to his account in just 3 tries.

Don’t use familiar numbers
Just like family names, some people use birthdates. Again, these are too easy to guess.

Use a Strong Password
A strong password is one that is more difficult to guess. Here are some suggestions for creating a strong password.

Don’t use words that appear in a dictionary. If you really must use a word to help you remember (but it’s not recommended), you could try replacing some of the letters with numbers or symbols that resemble the letter. For example, let’s say you wanted to use the word GUITAR as part of your password. You could change the G to 6, the I to 1, and the A to @ to make 6U1T@R.

Use numbers as well as letters. Very often, this is a requirement that is enforced when you choose a password, but looking at the list of common passwords, people are still using simple ones such as abc123.

Use symbols. Using punctuation and symbols makes passwords much more difficult to guess than if you had simply used letters and numbers.

Use upper and lower case letters. Passwords are usually case sensitive to increase the pool of letters available when choosing the password. This makes it much more difficult to guess.

Use longer passwords. It is now recommended that the minimum length of password that you use is 12 characters, using a mixture of character types as mentioned above, and preferably a non-dictionary word.
Example: 4doFg*lf /Y7s

Remember your password.
So now that you have chosen a totally random password, how do you remember it? Some browsers can remember them for you, but what happens if your browser loses that data, or you are trying to log in from somebody else’s computer?

One technique is to choose a password that looks random but has some mnemonic attached to it.
Here’s one example I just thought of:
4&20bBbIaP
This fits in with many of our criteria; it’s what looks like a random mixture of letters, numbers and symbols, with upper and lower case.

The mnemonic for it is a line from a children’s song:
“Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie”.

After the 4 & 20, the remaining letters are the initials of the words, alternating lower and upper case.
(Please don’t use this example – now that I’ve mentioned it, hundreds of people will start using it!)

If you still can’t think of a good password, have a program generate one for you. There are a lot of free password generators on the Internet. Personally, I wouldn’t use one of the online ones – they might be logging my IP address and the passwords I generate.

So, think creatively about your choice of password. Somebody could be trying to hack your PayPal account right now!