Competitive intelligence or CI is necessary ethical discipline for the taking of decisions based on the understanding of the competitive environment. Research shows that companies with established programs of CI get greater profits for action than those of the same industry that does not have programs of CI. It is so important for that they to take decisions in companies of small or average port to know what it is for coming, as is for the presidents of the great companies listed in Fortune 500. Thus,is possible to a company to be practising some form of CI and not perceive it. Any employee who visits an event, he reads a periodical, or talks with friends of the same economic sector, is making research (one of the components of the CI). But other components of the CI generally do not meet in the businesses. Currently the CI add value to the collection of information and the strategical planning when introducing a system disciplined not only to the collection of information, but also when carrying through analyses and spreading its “findings” of form that are useful to the necessities of the decision takers. The speed of the technological development and the growth of the global commerce, means that the current environment business-oriented is transforming more quickly than before. The entrepreneurs and average small professionals of the e companies, cannot more give themselves to the luxury to depend on the instinct or of the intuition when they take strategical decisions in its businesses. In much sectors (especially where the competition is each bigger time), the consequence to take a decision missed, can be to take the company to lose sales or to the bankruptcy. Research shows that competitive intelligence increases the “level of comfort” of the strategical planning of the direction of the company. But after all what it is same Competitive Intelligence? Many confuse with Emotional Intelligence, others with Management of the Knowledge, others with Business Intelligence and still others speak in espionage. Prescott and Miller, comment that the “work of Sun Tzu on military intelligence, continues being read and are considered the father of intelligence. For journalist Larry Kahaner, competitive intelligence is a systematic program of collection and analysis of the information on activities of the competitors and general trends of the businesses, aiming at to reach the goals of the company. Therefore, Competitive Intelligence or CI is one necessary ethical discipline for the taking of decisions based on the understanding of the current and future competitive environment.

Everyone wants to be beautiful, young, healthy and fit. There is no end to the diets, workouts and health plans. Yet the most important diet of all has been overlooked. This is a diet that releases stress, relaxes muscles, offers sound sleep, diminishes appetite, and makes you look and feel younger; it brings you new friends, a happy work environment, good relationships, and adds years to your life. This is the diet from anger– one of the worst plagues facing our nation.Anger is a serious problem for one in every five Americans. Road rage, workplace violence, school shootings, domestic abuse and addiction are just a few of its many outlets. The reason such a huge proportion of our nation is on anti-depressants, involved in alcohol, and drug addiction, overweight, in broken relationships and involved in all kinds of destructive behavior, can be directly traced back to the effects of anger, particularly the hidden kind. It has also been well documented that anger strongly affects physical health and is directly related to heart attacks, blood pressure, back pain and many other physical disorders. This is called symptom substitution. We also turn our anger against ourselves in other ways. We become depressed or experience mood disorders, hopelessness, passive aggressive behavior, promiscuity, domestic abuse and many other forms of general misery. Sometimes anger converts itself into obsessive-compulsive disorders and individuals become unable to make decisions or choices about their lives. Anger is ruthless in the course it takes, attacking and disrupting our body, minds and spirits. As school and workplace shootings rise, the divorce rate climbs, people are on increasing anti-depressants. Many are increasingly unable to deal with the stress of 9-11 and an everyday terrorist threat. It is clear that anger is a societal problem, which is only growing worse. It is time we paid attention to the #1 terrorist we face: the anger we live with every day. At the present time many of individuals in our society are dependent upon medication of all kinds. Anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs, weight loss supplements, low blood pressure medication, blood thinners and antibiotics of many kinds are taken to ease the many symptoms of unhappiness, unbalance and disease we suffer from. On the face of it the symptoms seem to differ from one another. If we look a little deeper, however, we can see that beneath the various forms of distress that appear, anger is quietly smoldering. Today we fear many external enemies. It is not so easy to realize, however, that the worst enemy we face is this anger that resides within, the terror it causes us, and the ways in which this poison dictates so much of our lives. Anger has many faces. It appears in many forms and creates different consequences. Anger that is overt and clear cut is the simplest to deal with and understand. When we or someone we know is openly angry, we know what we are up against and can directly address the cause. Most anger lurks beneath the surface, however. It often does not even come to our awareness and manifests in endless, hidden ways – as depression, anxiety, apathy, hopelessness, and in many, many other forms. It is crucial that we recognize anger for what it is, realize when it is appearing and notice the devastation it creates. Then we have an opportunity to root out this underground stream feeds our misery, and the misery we cause others. When anger is allowed to remain camouflaged it holds us in its grip and easily erodes the entire quality of our lives. What To Do: Just as we work out daily in the gym to strengthen muscles and attain flexibility, it is necessary to work out and strengthen the parts of ourselves that can recognize and release anger easily. We must learn to give up the various forms of anger and replace them with a healthy antidote. Some healthy antidotes to anger include: letting go of blame, forgiveness, generosity, seeing the best in others, letting the other be right, (just for today), giving others the benefit of the doubt. Choose one antidote and work with it for an entire day. Then choose another. You will begin to feel so good, you won’t want to go back to the old ways. As we daily eliminate the toxicity anger provides to our systems, not only will the results be reflected in our mental and emotional well-being, but in our environment and physical health as well. Eventually it will become impossible for anger to maintain the hold it once had upon them. All teachings encourage us to be forgiving, but there is little actual instruction on how to accomplish this. Each of the antidotes listed above will help you along the way. Anger is the great impediment to forgiveness. When anger is rooted out, love and forgiveness arise naturally. Our lives and the lives of those around us then become hallowed and become all they are meant to be.

Just because you have to deal with stage fright does not mean that you have to be a bad speaker. I don’t know anyone that does not have a difficult time speaking in front of an audience to one degree or another. In fact, a healthy amount of fear while giving a speech will help you to be a better speaker. So you have a choice to make, you can either fall apart because you are afraid to speak in front of an audience or you can use your fear to help you to be the best speaker possible. Here are some typical problems that many new speakers face that can make you a bad speaker and can easily be overcome with a little practice. Some people that have anxieties tend to take their problems to the opposite extreme. For example, if somebody is dealing with stage fright they may overcompensate by becoming overly relaxed. This will not come across as you being relaxed and poised to your audience. What it will do, however, is to make you a poor speaker. One classic example of this is that many new speakers that are nervous will overcompensate for their nervousness by leaning on the podium or becoming overly familiar with a strange audience. It is necessary to maintain your composure by standing up tall when you’re speaking and to build a relationship with your audience during the course of your presentation. Do not allow your nervousness to make you seem arrogant. Another problem that many people have is that they let their nervousness show up by using unnatural body inflections. I once heard a talk that was given by somebody that was supposed to be experienced yet the entire time that they were speaking they were jingling their keys in their pocket. This was not only distracting but it also showed that the person was nervous and was difficult to concentrate on the information that they were trying to convey. Nervousness can also show up in over gesturing or facial tics. One of the best ways to pick up on this kind of a problem is to have somebody videotape you giving the presentation in front of a group of trusted friends. You can then watch yourself for any body movements that come across as being unnatural. The most important thing in dealing with stage fright is that you do not allow your audience to know that you are nervous. Many speakers will feed off of the emotions of their audience and if they are able to control the situation they’re stage fright will disappear quickly after they began their presentation. This is something that is very important to remember because if you are dealing with severe stage fright you need to handle yourself correctly from the beginning in order to overcome it. Once you realize that you are in control of the situation it will be much easier for you to relax and to go through your information in a logical and comfortable manner.

Abraham Lincoln was a man that found himself smack dab in the middle of a fight he didn’t want nor create. But it was a fight he could not run away from; for it was a fight concerning a universal principle on which he should have remained inflexible. That principle was, that men and women are all equal and must be treated with the same respect; the principle of “Independence”. Now this universal principle was not a man made law at that time. No laws had been written concerning slavery. So how was one to know what the truth was? If it was so universal, why did half of all Americans at that time side with the South who wanted slavery? With no law to hang your hat on, it is very easy to side any way you choose for the moment for there is always the excuse one can make “I didn’t know sir. Is there a law that says we should not enslave our fellow man?” But Universal principle nevertheless exists and it does also demand a price even when no law states so. When we go against universal principle we sin against nature and our consciousness bears witness with us that we have committed a foul deed. There really is no place to escape. You know it as well as I. You may out-wit the law, but how do you live with yourself afterwards? How do you sleep at night knowing you have committed a wrong deed? Lincoln made a decision not based on law, but based on principle, a higher principle of the universe. When we discover the universal principles in life that may or should not be broken, we should wisely conform to those principles. It is when we try to ignore those universal principles that we eventually run into a stone wall or a world of trouble. I am a teacher and in my classes when I teach I usually use an exasperating example to illustrate how universal principles work. I stand in one place and drop a pen and then pick it up again. I repeat the action. I repeat it over and over again to the point of near irritation to the participants. I then stop and explain my point. The point is that it would be rather senseless if I kept doing the same old thing wouldn’t It? You just can’t fight gravity. It is one of those universal principles. So I would do well to obey the law instead of trying to fight it all the time. The correct thing to do is put the pen down on a surface and when you need it again you can always pick it up again. I would save time and energy and would seem a lot less stupid wouldn’t I? Well that is true with all universal principles. The example of the universal law of gravity is an easy one to acknowledge. There are no toes to step on, no greedy pockets to be robbed, and no human pain to be inflicted. But there are other principles, some not as easy to recognize immediately but they are nevertheless important for us to observe and obey. In the case of the universal law of independence, Lincoln chose freedom over slavery because it was the right thing to do. In the end it benefited mankind by creating a space for freedom to flourish. We may not have complete freedom but we created growth in this space for all kinds of things to flourish. The industrial era began leading to the technology of mass production, mass transportation, aerospace development, computer technology global marketing, the communication era we live in today. All of this came because of freedom. We must choose the right thing to do every day. When we come up against universal laws like “Love they neighbor as thyself”, we should obey that principle. There may be no law to define in detail what actions should be taken during a special situation, but there is always the universal principle that exists. Follow the principle. Obeying universal principles is empowering. It is empowering because the universe acts in harmony with those laws. Together you and the universe conspire together to bring about good things in the space where you are. Today as you go out to face the world, make it your priority to obey universal principles. Doing so will empower you to meet your challenges and who knows what might become of that!

Majority of us are hesitant to become aggressive environmental activists. We have our own occupations and activities that consume most of our time. At the same time, environmental ethical considerations (especially those linked to global warming) can not be ignored anymore. How should an »ordinary person« like you and me (assuming we are ones) incorporate eco-friendly thinking and habits into her/his own lifestyle and decision-making? There are lots of advice and messages on what to do and especially on what not to do to become more eco-friendly or to »go green«. With lots of imperatives one can become confused, suspicious or even downright hostile to the »environmental gospel«. Assuming you want to avoid this attitude but at the same time you are not willing to go lay down naked on the glacier in protest or block the airports with demonstrations etc. there are some important issues you need to think about. In ethical decision-making we are prioritizing our values within our value systems. Some concerns are more important to us that other ones. For most of us, for example, the immediate survival of our families is more important than glacier melting. Majority feels that one needs to survive with skills and opportunities one has at present, be ethical, yes, but thinking about environment usually comes only after other ethical concerns. If environmental imperatives (such as, “do not use a car if not necessary”) are directly in conflict with other imperatives we act upon (such as driving your children to specific school at the right time) and those imperatives are more important to us, then environmental concerns simply can not make it to our decision-making process that easily. We all have to face such dilemmas and there are no prescribed solutions. Few thoughts are helpful though. We can (we need to?) see the human race as a family that collectively struggles for survival and quality of life. Several authors including Martha Nussbaum argue for global ethics and »world citizenship« – as world citizens we have ethical obligations to humanity as a whole. Assuming that such obligations exist, it is still true that local and immediate (family-wise, ethnic, patriotic etc.) imperatives are more concrete and easily felt than global ones. We need some ways to connect with the awareness of global human family in order to give the environmental ethical concerns – which are a part of global ethics – any higher priority (I don’t mean higher priority than family concerns but »higher than zero« or »higher than we are used to«). Letting environmental activists to make us feel guilty all the time is not a very constructive ground for making changes in becoming more eco-friendly either. It is wise to make a slow but steady progress, to gradually incorporate changes into your lifestyle. Recycling and buying saving light bulbs does not, for example, cost much sacrifice and can be easily realized. Further down the road one might think about using public transport or a bike instead of a car at times, and switching off lights and other devices in your home and in your office when actually not using them. Majority of us though, are not at the stage where we would choose more expensive and several days long train and ship travel instead of a flight on a plane (although plane emissions are by far greater than those of any other form of travel). I assume that for considering such options seriously the negative consequences of air travel would have to be much more clearly present and also directly felt by us individual travelers. We need to be realistic and good to ourselves and at the same time gradually incorporate the eco-friendly thinking into our everyday life. The extreme positions tend not to last long. In the case of extreme environmentalist activism (like cutting the tyres of the big cars or pouring paint on them) it can do much harm and put off many people from actually taking appropriate action.