Motivation is one of the many keys to well-being and productivity.  It is likely the most important, with regard to productivity, because of it's ability to promote endurance.  When we are really motivated about something, we can stay "in the game" for longer periods than if we had no clear sense of purpose.  This allows us to easily locate a "leverage point" when we want to be more productive.  By increasing our motivation and drive, we'll naturally be more "in the moment" when it comes to our work.  We can then explore opportunities and creative ideas that can only be noticed when we are fully embracing whatever it is that we are trying to accomplish.  When we feel a lack of motivation, our mindset might be more directed toward what we could be doing than it is on what we are actually doing now.  Being open to new directions can be important, but if you know that you want to pursue something anyway, even if you lack interest in it at this point, upping motivation can be the turning point that allows you to innovate and improve on what you are doing.

There are many ways to feel more motivated.  One of them is to just find inspiring reasons for you to finish something.  This, if they really inspire you, will likely increase your sense of vitality and lead to better productivity.  For some people, though, finding truly inspiring reasons can seem difficult at times when we just want to quickly finish something that we lack interest in.

By taking tonic herbs, though, this can turn around without you having to think about it completely differently.  They naturally uplift and increase vitality to the extent that being more productive can become almost effortless.  You might find yourself doing something that you were avoiding before and finishing it with less effort than you thought it would take.  Or, if there a lot of effort needed, you won't be resisting it as much and you might actually have fun doing it.

In particular, Chaga is noted as being a powerful herb for increasing feelings of well-being and motivation.  Taking this can potentially increase overall drive and creativity toward various tasks.  Many people have found that taking Chaga consistently decreases stress and improves overall vitality and "motivation energy".  Author and nutritionist, David Wolfe considers Chaga to be a Jing tonic, which means that it increases the deep inner energy associated with adrenal, kidney, and reproductive power.

Another well-known and prominent Jing tonic is He Shou Wu.  This powerful root is known to increase adrenal and kidney function and promote a sense of vitality.  By taking this product, which is associated with youthening, a natural sense of well-being often results or at least shines through more profoundly.  He Shou Wu is noted to be so powerful that it has been found to radically increase reproductive ability for both men and women.  This can be something to take note of, whether or not you are trying to increase this ability.

Schizandra Berry is another tonic herb that can increase motivation and productivity.  While it does increase Jing and therefore kidney and adrenal function, it also has a unique alertness producing quality.  This, since it does not stimulate in any kind of depleting way like coffee is said to do, allows you to increase alertness and sense of vibrancy without having to feel more tired later on in the day as a result.  For staying motivated and alert so that you can feel more "ready" to finish whatever you are working on, Schizandra is a wonderful option.

Chocolate, for certain people, can be an effective weight-loss tool.  This is because it has a very high level of nutrition, which satiates faster than many other foods.  When you eat chocolate, particularly dark or raw chocolate, you "load up" your body with minerals and feel-good components that make over-eating less likely.  Because of this, it can be helpful to eat it before or after you eat what you would usually eat.  Do this and see if your desire to eat excessively or more than you really want to goes down considerably.

One thing to note is that chocolate does contain some amount of caffeine, or caffeine-like substance called theobromine.  This is generally much less stimulating than the same amount of coffee, especially if you eat raw cacao (raw chocolate), but some people might not react well to it.  Therefore, if you don't usually eat chocolate or drink coffee, it might be good to eat small amounts of chocolate at first to see if you feel well with it.

Still, for many, chocolate is an effective way to get a lot of the minerals that people are really "trying" to get through typical food.  When you are low in minerals, over-eating is likely to be more prominent.  Chocolate is one of the highest sources of some of the minerals that people are often lacking, such as magnesium and chromium, which makes it an incredible choice for weight-loss.

One of the quickest ways to become more empowered is to let go.  By letting go, you regain inner energy that was being held onto tightly and making you feel constricted.  In essence, you uncover what you were keeping from yourself.  By learning a letting go technique like The Sedona Method, you are able to become more "in the flow" by allowing your suppressed feelings to flow out.  This appears to give more room for your energy system to flow, increasing overall health.  When you feel more vibrant,  empowerment is more natural.  In the system of Taoist Tonic Herbalism, there are three treasures that are focused on for vitality and inner contentment.  They are Jing, Chi, and Shen.  Each of these corresponds to a category of inner energy which can be built or depleted over time, depending on lifestyle and dietary choices.  Shen is associated with spirit, while Jing and Chi are associated with inner vitality.  Specifically, Jing is associated with the deep reserve of energy that is connected with genetics and reproductive power as well as adrenal health.  Chi is more of our inner flow of energy that we use day to day.  When you increase these "treasures", you naturally regain a sense of empowerment.  Similarly, by letting go and increasing the flow of energy that was once constricted, you also increase overall empowerment.  By increasing chi, for example, you naturally have more energy and sense of ability to deal with situations.  This is likely the case when letting go, as more energy is allowed to circulate.

Therefore, by choosing to let go via The Sedona Method or another technique that works with you and taking whichever tonic herbs you feel well with, you can begin to radically increase overall empowerment and vitality.

Here are a few examples of tonic herbs:

Shen: Reishi Mushroom

Chi: Astragalus

Jing: Goji Berry

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Sometimes when it is difficult to let something go, we just need a little uplift in order to see "over" the feeling.  When we feel more empowered, it is easier to allow the feeling just to be there without trying to change it.  This gives more space around the feeling and let's it move, leading to letting go.  To do this, music can be very helpful.  By listening to music that we like, we can connect to a greater sense of ourselves and the world.  This allows for an increased ability to welcome our thoughts and feelings.  By just welcoming them a little more, we have more of an ability to let them go.  Music can become a tool for inner acceptance.

Music, however, is not the only choice available for letting go support.  You can also eat foods which lead to feelings of inspiration.  Some of these foods include raw chocolate, goji berries, and blue green algae.  Herbs can be very powerful as well.  These include tonic herbs like Reishi mushroom, Astragalus, and Asparigus Root.  All of these tend to increase feelings of well-being, which supports the letting go process.

Juicing, according to many raw food teachers, is an incredible practice that allows for the true power of raw food to be noticed quickly.  You obtain all of the incredible mineral content in green vegetables, for example, without having to digest the fiber.  This allows you to have a powerful "supplement" of energy, clarity, and overall nutrition without having to digest much of the "bulk" of vegetables and fruit.  Though fiber is beneficial in some ways, it can prolong digestion which for some people is not particularly needed at times.  When you want more immediate healing and energy, juices allow you to extract the power of raw vegetables and fruits with less effort.

Though juicing is incredible and delivers nutrition in a fast and efficient way, there are other ways to get similar benefits.  As suggested, one of the main benefits of juicing is digestibility.  Having to digest tremendous amounts of fiber can be difficult for some people.  Having a salad is one thing, but having to digest pounds of vegetables at one sitting is another.  Juicing, for many, allows this because the "digestive hold up" is removed leaving just the nutrient dense "water" or juice of the vegetable.  This lets you take in far more nutrition at one time.  With this understanding, using a blender can allow some of the same benefits.  When we blend vegetables or fruit, especially in a high speed blender, we increase the ability to extract nutrients from it as well as digest it more easily.  Liquifying our food, for the most part, makes it easier to utilize.  When we eat raw vegetables for example, we liquify it through our chewing.  This, however, is not always the case.  Some of it might not be chewed completely, which leaves some of the cell walls of the vegetable unbroken.  As a result, less nutrition is exposed as it is exited as fiber.  When we blend, or chew our food really well, we increase the nutrient availability of the food and also make digestion easier.  In this way, we don't have the same texture of "harsh" fiber moving around in our stomach.  It is broken down into a much smaller and easier to digest state.  This makes consuming high amounts of green vegetables a lot easier even though they have a lot of fiber that can sometimes be difficult to digest.  Blending, especially if you don't have a juicer or don't want to deal with cleaning it, can make a big difference in what you extract from the food you eat and how easy it is to digest.

Still, interestingly, many health educators recommend "chewing" juices and smoothies to ensure it is digested well.  This is opposed to just drinking it quickly like water.  Using a high speed blender, though, can turn blended drinks into juice like consistency even though it contains all the fiber.  You can still strain out the fiber if you want to obtain the "fiber-free" aspect of juicing.

Inspiration is the driving force behind many of the most powerful ideas.  It allows us to tap into our greater insight and "feel our way" toward success.  Sometimes, though, this quality is lacking in people's lives.  They seem to have "run out" of excitement and hope.  Luckily, there are many ways to start to turn this around.

First off, inspiration can be fueled by inner contentment and excitement.  You can feel more inspired about something just by choosing to focus on a few things that really uplift you and excite you.  This can lead you to noticing other things to be excited and hopeful about and eventually allow you to notice new opportunities and ways to innovate.  In essence, focus to some extent on whatever "brings up" your state and watch your energy and inspiration increase.

If this is not enough, however, there are other ways that exceed this process.  One of the most useful ways to really feel more inspired is to eat certain foods that uplift your overall "feeling state".  We all know that chocolate is associated with love and that is typically the type of emotion people feel when they eat it.  By eating chocolate, or whatever food uplifts you in a natural way, you can more easily "tune in" to you inner state and find things to be inspired about.  Meditation often becomes more easy as well, though it is not necessary to eat certain foods to meditate.  Still, chocolate and other foods that invoke feelings of inspiration can actually start to "bring you up" into a higher emotional state that is conducive to feeling more inspired.  You'll likely begin to notice more and more inspirational ideas as a result.  This creates more and more hope.

With regard to chocolate, the most natural is usually the better.  In particular, you should consider raw chocolate or raw cacao products first.  Second to that would be high quality dark chocolate.

Other foods that have this ability include Blue Green Algae and Goji berries, for some people.  Others include Reishi Mushroom extract and Chaga Mushroom extract.  You can even make a drink combining all of them, including raw chocolate powder, to create a powerful uplifting drink.  Be sure to add whatever sweetener you like, like raw honey, and a high quality fat source (like raw almond butter or hemp seeds) to make it more full and creamy.

When we start to include foods like this into our diet, feelings of inspiration often increase automatically.  Rather than looking for reasons to feel inspired, we just notice them.

With that said, you can still choose to focus on things that uplift you.  This can help even if you aren't eating those foods, though it is often easier to do when you are.

In addition to this, just choosing to let go of whatever is "blocking you" from feeling well is a way to naturally allow inspiration to increase.  You can use the Sedona Method or EFT for this.  They can both be learned for free on YouTube.

Feeling well is very important to health.  When we feel well, our outlook is often more health-oriented.  This allows us to further our health promoting decisions.  When we continuously feel down, however, our will and determination can decrease.  This can lead to excessive eating and other unwanted behaviors that can degrade health over-time.  This article will show you some ways that you can quickly reverse this trend and start feeling well from the inside out.  With this standpoint, staying on track with your health  goals becomes much easier.  Let's get started.

Our feeling state, to a big degree, can determine our level of will power with any diet or health strategy.  We do not need to be feeling down in order to become more vibrant, or lose weight etc.  We can start feeling great today, even before we reach our goals.  This will likely actually help us to reach them faster.

With regard to feeling well and using that as a mechanism for achieving even better health, we can turn to food.  Though food can sometimes be used as a distraction, certain foods can actually aid us in becoming more aware and in tune with reality and increase our focus on things that are productive.

Of all these foods, one of them that seems to have some of the most notable properties is cacao.  This is the original name of the nut (called a bean) that chocolate comes from.  This, and all high-quality chocolate foods, can be very powerful for offsetting feelings of doubt and apathy.  It is a food that can truly promote feelings of vitality and often does this very quickly.  With regard to this, raw chocolate or raw cacao contains the highest and purest feel-good attributes of all forms of chocolate.  This, however, is a general statement as some forms of raw cacao are not of very high quality and do not react well with certain people.  In that case, traditional dark chocolate might actually be a better choice.  Still, high quality raw cacao (usually heirloom varieties) that tastes somewhat like dark chocolate without strong or excessive off-tasting flavors (this can be an indication of quality and overall nutrition), is very nutritious and is an incredibly pure and true from of chocolate. This food, when eaten along with a strong motivation to feel well and increase your own health can be a very useful aid.  It can inspire dreams and ideas of hope which will encourage you to deal with potential setbacks.

While not wanting to use this article to detail chocolate's nutritional profile, it has an outstanding list of factors which influence our feeling state.  Particularly, it contains very high amounts of the mineral magnesium which is often deficient in many people's diets and is a very calming and centering mineral. It also contains PEA, which is known to create feelings of well-being as well as the endorphin anandamide which is also associated with feelings of well-being.  Furthermore, chocolate contains MAO inhibitors which increase the amount of time that dopamine and other feel-good neurotransmitters can flow before getting recycled.  Beyond that, chocolate might be the highest known source of anti-oxidents out of all commonly eaten foods.  This isn't usually directly related to well-being, but stress can result in the increased need for anti-oxidents.  Oxidative stress, for some people, might induce overall stress.

Chocolate can be incredible for this purpose, however, if you are just supplementing with foods to feel well without using them to define an empowering direction for yourself, they might only give short term benefits.  The key is utilizing them, in part, to increase your sense of empowerment that can be used to further your own success.

Here is a useful equation:  Drive + Direction = Destination

In this case, a lack of drive can be remedied by certain foods.  Chocolate, for many people, is one of these foods.  Use them to increase your overall drive and then regain your direction that you have determined to be correct for yourself.  Your drive will help you to stay with it.

Chocolate and other powerful foods or herbs can help to uphold you during perceived setbacks.  Where many people give up or faulter after they feel they went offtrack, some decide to find another way back on or change directions to a more useful destination.  One of the critical aspects that set these people apart is drive.  From a physical and even emotional standpoint, the right foods and herbs can support you in this area and allow you to remain elevated.  This elevated, yet clear, standpoint let's you be more observant of potential opportunities.  From there, your path becomes illuminated.

Here are some other potentially helpful foods and tonic herbs:

Goji Berries - Benefits the liver, kidney's and adrenals.  These are all connected to drive and decisiveness.  The goji berry is also known as "the happy berry".  This quality can increase your ability to stay hopeful and allowing when encountering setbacks.

Astragalus - Increases overall energy or chi.  This has an effect on overall health and vitality.  Astragalus is also connected to adrenal health.  These qualities can increase motivation and feelings of well-being.

Reishi Mushroom - Increases feelings of well-being.  Benefits the liver.  Reishi is known to be a powerful immune tonic and promote nervous system and neurological health.

Asparigus Root - Increases feelings of well-being.  Known to be a lung tonic.  Helpful for releasing stress.

These are just some of the many powerful tonic herbs and foods that can promote overall well-being.  Find one's that work well with you.

Weight loss is one of the most sought after benefits of increased health.  Many people even go to extremes with diet restriction and try to eat as little calories or "bad foods" as they can.  This often does not work very well.  While it can produce weight loss results, especially in the short term, it is very hard to rely only on willpower and restriction to do it.  Succeeding both short term and long term with weight loss requires a new way of viewing food.  When we look at food as something to avoid, this sets up a feeling of worry and guilt which can cause people to try to keep themselves from eating almost anything.  This is not a very sustainable lifestyle approach to weightloss.  Furthermore, it is not likely the best approach for overall health.  Food does not have to be limited by willpower in order to have wonderful weightloss results.  You can even eat until you are completely satisfied.  The key is to choose the foods that you both like and feel contribute to increased health and wellbeing.  This will eventually bring about a more normalized weight.  In the short term, however, there are foods that you can add to your diet for a likely quicker weightloss experience.  Again, by EATING these foods you can lose more weight.  This is because they both increase metabolism function and overall feelings of well-being, which contributes to weight loss.  They also begin to cancel out the foods that were causing weight gain.

Here are some incredible foods that can allow you lose weight more easily.  They might not work for everybody, as some people do not respond as well to certain foods, but they tend to work for a lot of people.

1. Fruit - Fruit can be an incredible satiating food when you eat enough of it to feel satisfied.  If you are craving carbohydrates and resort to eating less than vibrant types of foods, consider eating as much fruit as you feel like.  They contain moderate amounts of carbohydrate calories, but in a form that you can eat without experiencing health issues associated with processed carbohydrate foods.  Many people feel satiated by listening to their sweet tooth and eating an abundance of fruit in place of other options.

2. Astragalus - The amazing tonic herb Astragalus has incredible properties which allow us to feel more in balance and content.  It also increases overall energy considerably.  When you have enough energy, eating food that you really feel you shouldn't eat becomes less of an attraction.  You'll be more apt to go work on something than sit down and eat excessively.  Also, Astragalus is said to have metabolism increasing effects.

3. Goji Berries - This "happy berry' is known to increase feelings of well-being.  By doing that, it lessens the need to eat excessively because of emotional reasons.  It also contains high amounts of nutrition, including various minerals.  Since we often eat more food due to a lack of certain minerals, eating Goji Berries can help to satiate us.

4.  Cacao (raw chocolate) - Cacao or chocolate is an incredibly satiating food.  It contains very high amounts of minerals, especially the one's that many people are low in.  These are minerals that are often depleted due to stress and result in less of an ability to deal with stress.  When we eat raw cacao, as long as we respond well to it and don't completely overdo it, we are giving our bodies a food with the minerals to bring back more balance.  Cacao also contains powerful well-being qualities, including the endorphin anandamide and PEA which is known to increase concentration and contentment.  These qualities allow for an easier time transitioning to a better diet without feeling deprived.  When we feel well, we often eat better without as much willpower.  Certain types of cacao don't work well for some people.  Therefore, choose high quality cacao if you can.

5. Coconut Oil - This amazing oil that comes naturally in coconut products brings about quick weightloss results in many people.  It has powerful metabolism and thyroid function increasing effects, which allows for increased ability to lose weight.  It is also a wonderful food for a weightloss diet because it provides calories and a quick source of energy without being stored as fat. Unlike many foods, it is almost immediately used as fuel.  Rather than running low in energy, and being tempted for "pick me up foods" you don't really want to eat, you can have a more maintained state of energy by eating coconut oil during the day.

6.  Blue Green Algae - This amazing nutrient dense food contains high amounts of minerals, which satisfy appetite and allow for a greater feeling of balance and overall well-being.  In addition, it contains  PEA which is also in cacao (raw chocolate).  PEA is a mood balancing component that our bodies create more of when we are feeling in love.  It is known to increase overall contentment and concentration.  This allows for increased weightloss due to the emotional connection to food that many people have issues with and over-eat because of.  Blue Green Algae, for many people, satiates nutritionally and increases overall feelings of well-being to the point that over-eating naturally starts to fade.

7.  Raw Vegetables - Adding more raw vegetables to your diet will likely increase weightloss because they contain very little calories but have a lot of vitality inducing components.  They have a high water content, in a pure form, which increases our overall vitality.  Eat as many of these as you like and watch you start to transform your eating habits naturally.

There are many more foods that you can find that will help you to lose weight.  These are just some of them.

Experiment and listen to your body to find what you feel is right for yourself.