One defends when his strength is inadequate; he attacks when it is abundant. — Sun Tzu

We all find ourselves in situations where no matter what we do, we can’t make the progress we want to make. Maybe it’s because our strengths aren’t adequate for the task or the difficulties of the situation seem to exploit our weaknesses. Either way, we are stuck. If we continue fighting in this scenario, we’ll end up with years of wasted effort and relatively little to show for it.

If you find yourself in this situation, the best move you can make is to channel your energy outside of this situation. You have to look for another battle, a winnable battle, where you can make the fullest use of your greatest strengths. Find a battle that has opportunities and vulnerabilities that your strengths can easily exploit; you will achieve considerably more in a shorter span of time.

As you achieve more success in this new venture, you will gain more power, money, knowledge, or whatever else you have to gain from excelling in this endeavor. With this added strength, you might be able to resolve the original predicament that was causing you so much hardship. Or it may be most beneficial to retreat from the situation entirely to place yourself in a position of greater competitive advantage.

Regardless, the lesson is clear: when you find yourself in an unwinnable situation where all of your actions are of little use, go on the defensive instead to conserve your energy and resources. Go on the offensive elsewhere where your strengths will make the most impact.

Not only is this path easier but you will get more done in a shorter amount of time. You will achieve more by only choosing the battles in life that you can actually win.

He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious. — Sun Tzu

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In what ways will you focus on your strengths in the coming year? You’re more than welcome to share your thoughts in the comments.

Have you ever met someone who can captivate a room as soon as they enter it and instantly become the center of attention? You can’t help but hang on their every word and as soon as they leave, you’re left with feeling of adoration and respect that seems almost magical.

In this heightened state, you can’t quite find right words to explain this affect they have on you; most people can’t. That’s because charisma is one of the most mysterious topics there are and the most challenging to define. Charisma is composed of a constellation of factors and if it’s missing any of those essential ingredients, it ceases to be real charisma and becomes something else that is less spellbinding.

Some examples of highly charismatic people include the following:

• Al Pacino
• Marilyn Monroe
• James Woods
• Morgan Freeman
• Bill Clinton
• Sean Connery
• Dwayne Johnson
• Meryl Streep
• Joe Pantoliano

You may have wondered at one time what makes these people so charismatic and how you can attain this skill set for yourself. If you continue reading, you’ll find the answers to both of these questions and perhaps something else that is life-changing along the way.

These people are and were stars because people find them irresistible not to pay attention to. When they walk in a room, people can’t help but look at them. When they talk, people can’t help but listen. It all boils down to having an irresistible personality that draws people.

These people are and were amazing to observe but with dedication and practice, any of us can match their level of charisma or even higher. All of us have raw untapped power inside of us but we have to learn to be genuine with ourselves and release it freely and uninhibitedly.

The following are 12 fundamentals of charisma that you can add to your life starting today:

1. Become a symbol of what people most desire — Movie stars, musicians, and political leaders mesmerize their fans because they represent what their fan bases most idolize.  Establish yourself as a leader of a movement or lifestyle you are most passionate about that closely parallels what others desire and people will naturally gravitate to you and listen to what you have to say.
2. Practice your body language and facial expressions in front of a mirror — If you’ve ever watched a movie without the sound on, you can easily tell what emotion the actors are trying to convey without you even hearing them talk. That is because actors are masters of body language. Are you known as someone who can express their emotions this eloquently on a daily basis? If not, practice the eye-catching hand gestures, postures and facial expressions you are most likely to use in everyday life and you will heighten your charisma and personal magnetism considerably.
3. Make people feel special — The people in your life won’t admire you for long if you don’t make them feel better about themselves when they are around you. So compliment them, give them hope that they can achieve their goals, and treat everyone you know with fairness and dignity. If they respect you, they will look up to you as a person to go to for guidance.
4. Wear high-quality clothing — When I say high-quality clothing, I don’t necessarily mean a suit and a tie through it can’t hurt too much in some occasions if you are a male. Wear quality clothing that best fits your personality and style. Buy the best watches you can afford, the best shoes, the best pants, and the best shirts. If you look like someone important, people will perceive you as important and give you their attention.
5. Act like you’re the star of your own movie — If your life was a movie and you were the star, would people want to go see it? If not, start going to new places, start doing new things, and start saying things that would  make people find your life more interesting than theirs.
6. Associate yourself with quality — One of the fastest ways to raise peoples’ perceptions of you is the associate yourself with a higher life-style. Think about what you would do with your life if you had 10 million dollars in your bank account at this very second and converse about all the interesting things and people that would be in your life right now. You don’t have to mention the 10 million dollar part, just talk about what you know is interesting and desirous to the both of you. Take their mind to far-away places and they will find your view of the world to be highly seductive.
7. Develop a unique style or brand that others will want to imitate — Imitation is the strongest form of flattery. If you have a style or a way of doing things that people admire and find very difficult to surpass, they will want to be around you because they want some of that grandeur to rub off on them.
8. Be yourself: Don’t care what people think about you — In general, you shouldn’t be too concerned about what people think of you. Thinking too much about what people think puts you in a needy attitude where you compromise who you are as a person to cater to other peoples’ ideals instead. Don’t make this mistake; too many people do. That’s why there’s so little originality in this world. Follow your heart, describe life as you see it and stand up for what you really believe in. You’ll eventually find people who admire you for who you are instead of just a fabricated version of yourself.
9. Expect success in your relationships with people — A positive attitude is infectious. One of the best ways to keep yourself in a positive mood around people is to constantly think “what if.” Normally, when people think “what if,” it’s associated with some sort of fear or anxiety. Instead, think “what if” something good happens to put your mind in the mode of looking for success. Not only will you be more likely to succeed with people but they will pick up on that attitude, let some of it rub off on them and they will love being around you more as a result.
10. Appear completely confident in yourself — Indicate with your body language, voice, and your words that you are completely confident in yourself and where you are going in life. If you do this, you are more likely to put people at ease. They will believe that this confidence came about for a very good reason and they will want find out more about you to find out why.
11. Sell yourself and your ideas — You have to learn how to sell yourself and your ideas effectively so that the people you meet will have a favorable impression of you. Don’t be too bold about it but work it in your conversations carefully so that they’ll direct their attention considerably more to your good areas than your bad areas. Lightly talk about the benefits of your ideas and what they could mean to them and they’ll more likely be interested in hearing more.
12. Connect with people — You’ll never persuade someone to follow your ideas unless you first connect with them. Find anything that you have in common with people that they place high value on and use that as your starting point. From then on, it should be smooth sailing.

As you’ve probably realized by now, when most people write about charisma and the techniques we can use to increase it, they usually don’t put much thought into it. In fact, they are usually so far off the mark that we wonder if they’re talking about charisma at all. But I hope this article makes a real difference in your life. This one is the real deal.

Using these 12 fundamentals of charisma, you’ll see a difference in your relationships because I guarantee that any of us can clearly see these techniques in use by the charismatic people in our lives. Choose the one that most interests you and start your path on mastering it today. Once you’ve mastered that, start on the next one that interests you and master that. If you follow these basic steps, you will have a considerably higher level of charisma than most people in your life.

Let’s say you have an idea that you’re passionate about and you know it would prove beneficial not just to you but everyone else around you. You know deep down in your heart that it is the best way to go. You know with complete conviction that it is the most logical choice there is to make.

But no matter how valuable or helpful your proposition is, it will never happen unless you can persuade other people to support it and implement it. You’ll never make progress in life if you can’t gain the cooperation of other people. With so many distractions all around us, your ability to sway people to your ideas is equally as important as the quality of the ideas themselves. In many cases, the power to persuade is clearly the top determinant of success.

That is why I compiled a list of 9 persuasion techniques that, if used, will make a huge difference in your life and the life of others:

1. Focus on what’s in it for them — In 99% of all situations, people will care more about what they have to gain then what you have to gain. So direct most of your communication efforts on them and their needs.
2. Only give them two choices: your proposition or something less desirable — Though this is a well-known persuasion technique, it is frequently ignored by many of us. Instead of letting the person’s mind wander off and think about a million alternatives to what you are offering, give them two choices: your proposition or something less desirable. This tactic may seem blatant and obvious but it will work as long as you don’t overdo it and you are offering something valuable and unique.
3. Give an example of how your idea worked for someone else who’s just like them — People are more likely to be persuaded by your offer if they know it was beneficial to someone else who shares their characteristics. Once they know it’s helpful to others who are just like them, they will have adequate “social proof” to assume that it must be beneficial to them.
4. Emphasize things that you know they will agree with and then move on to your proposition — When you persuade someone to agree to enough small and safe ideas, they will gain trust in your bigger and more ambitious ideas. Once you introduce the proposition that you really want to talk about, they’ll be more likely to agree with it because they’ll already be in an agreeable state of mind.
5. Elaborate on its scarcity to inflate its perceived value — Elaborate on how easy it would be to find someone else who would take up on your offer. If their perceived value of your proposition is high enough that the pros outweigh the cons, they’ll have a greater sense of urgency in agreeing to your idea.
6. Focus on their needs and the void that only you can fill — In the most respectful and congenial manner possible, talk about what is missing from their life which they undoubtedly desire and then talk about the qualities that you possess that will fill that void. Though this is one of the most effective strategies you can use, make sure not to focus on their problems too much because you might hurt their feelings. Touch on their need lightly and then talk about why you’re the best person to resolve it.
7. First talk about what interests them — One of the best ways to persuade people is to first talk about what pumps them up. Ask intelligent questions about their interests, talk about why those interests interest you, and that person’s mind will be more receptive to what you want to express to them.
8. Use indirect communication — If the person you are trying to persuade is resistant or the proposition you are trying to propose is highly ambitious, being too direct with them may not be the best idea. Perhaps, it will be far more effective to give them several oblique innuendos that will gently guide their thoughts to the direction you want them to go. That way they will believe that they came up with the very ideas that you’ve been slowly feeding them over time.
9. Talk about the benefits and the advantages before you talk about the proposition — If you go straight to the proposition, people will naturally build resistance to what you’re saying because you’re expressing something that they haven’t gotten use to. Instead, talk about the benefits and the advantages first to build their curiosity and anticipation.

These techniques have been used for thousands of years (to great affect) and they’re all still in wide use today. Some of them are probably being used on you right now with you even knowing it.

But the most important thing to remember is to be honest and sincere with people when you use these techniques. Choose the tactics that would be most effective for the situations that most call for them. Combine them, use them in succession and the chances of people agreeing with your ideas will increase exponentially.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was a human rights icon, one of the world’s most renowned orators, and the most prominent leader in the African-American civil rights movement. He fought for a cause that he felt was worth dying for.

As a result, millions of people from diverse backgrounds were able to reach a level of harmony and unity that wasn’t possible at any other time in history. Life would be dramatically different if it weren’t for his timeless influence and decisive determination.

King’s major achievements:

1. In 1955, he led the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. Though King was arrested during this campaign, it led to a United States District Court ruling that ended racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses.
2. In 1957, he founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference which is an American civil rights organization. He served as its first president.
3. In 1963, he led a march in Washington D.C. where he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. It was there that he raised global public awareness of the civil rights movement and established himself as one of the greatest orators in U.S. history.
4. In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive a Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination.
5. As a result of King’s organized and led marches, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act were enacted into the law of the United States.

Despite his continual messages of nonviolent resistance to social injustice, King was assassinated in 1968. After his death, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal Freedom in 1977 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004. In 1986, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. national holiday.

Some of King’s greatest quotes of all time:

1. “Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.”

To my amazement, I have met people who will strike the fear of the afterlife in peoples’ hearts for doing things that are positive and they will endorse acts of cruelty and injustice and call those acts morally right. And just as this attitude permeated in the southern states of the U.S. so many years ago, it still exists today in various embodiments all over the world.

2. “The means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.”

There are people in the world who believe that the ends justify the means so that gives them free reign to destroy others peoples’ lives for something they consider just and moral. But ultimately, this kind of attitude usually leads to more harm than good. It’s what we do right now that counts. That is the reality. Our future ambitions have not manifested yet so our actions in the present moment more accurately define us.

3. “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”

By allowing evil acts to continue around us, we are actually showing approval for those acts. The same thing happened during the times of social injustice 50 years ago in the southern states of the U.S. and the same thing happens to this very day in our own lives and in our own communities. The only way to stop evil from spreading is to confront it and speak against it. Don’t allow wicked people to influence others and poison your communities without taking a stand against them.

4. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Hate only leads to more hate and violence only leads to more violence. This never ending cycle of revenge only intensifies and can only end with both sides being weakened and annihilated. This cycle can only be stopped by the conscious choice to put an end to the fighting and converse out of love and reason. Though this is easier said than done, it’s the only choice we have if we want to further the well-being and survival of us all.

5. “Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ But conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’ And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but because conscience tells one it is right.”

At some point in your life, you may find yourself in a situation where injustice is prevalent all around you but everyone acts as if it is okay. It is as if the good becomes bad and the bad becomes good. And the true becomes false and the false becomes true.

If you act and believe as they do, you would go against your conscious and you may one day lose that and the humanity that you once had in you. If you oppose them, you become an outcast and you may even be ridiculed for doing something that most people would agree is good and honorable. In a situation like that, be brave and follow your conscience. You have a conscious for a good reason: so that you’ll know the difference between bad and good and the difference between being misguided and righteous.

Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I Have a Dream Speech”

As an added bonus, here is Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I Have a Dream Speech” in its entirety. This has been considered by many to be the greatest recorded speech of all time. It is his greatest message to the world:

Although Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life was ended abruptly, his dream still lives on today.

He changed the world fundamentally but unlike many others in history, he did it the right way: he sought freedom and dignity for all people of all backgrounds through the means of peace and altruism. And those of us who honor those tenets will be forever grateful for a job well done.

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How did Martin Luther King, Jr. inspire you? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

There comes a time in our lives where we face problems and hardships that we don’t have any control over. A phenomenon larger than ourselves shapes almost impossible obstacles that we can’t overcome through normal and direct means. The more we try to resist them, the more power they seem to have over us and the more we try to accept them, the more complacent we seem to become.

If you’ve ever had to deal with a situation like this, remember that you are not alone. Sometimes bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. That’s the way it is and that’s the way it will always be. We all have to face setbacks that we have to learn how to overcome somehow.

“It is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.” — William Shakespeare

Sometimes unpleasant things just happen because of the complexity of the world. In an objective sense, it just is. There’s no guarantee that life will always be easy.

Of course we don’t always deserve what happens to us but one could argue that it has always been this way. The most we can do is find a way to make the most of our situation and move forward in life the best way we can.

Your problems contain opportunities that can’t be found anywhere else

What you focus on is what you give power to and will ultimately have the most influence on your thoughts and behaviors. When it comes to many circumstances, it’s how you react to them that matter more than the circumstances themselves. And some people unwittingly focus on negativity so much that they actually grow their problems bigger and more powerful than they were originally.

There’s a good side and a bad side to every situation, no matter who you are or what you’re going through in life. Just as no person has ever been all negative or all positive, no life situation is all negative or all positive. One may greatly outweigh the other, but it is never just one or the other. Even your most negative problems contain a valuable  life lesson that could benefit you and the people you come into contact with.

“Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit” — Napoleon Hill

No matter how much the negative outweighs the positive, ignore the negative side and focus most of your attention on the positive and beneficial side. Do this because the more you focus on something and give attention to it, the more it will multiply and expand. Even if the positive portion of a circumstance is unfathomably smaller than the negative portion, that advantageous component can still grow into something much larger and more eminent than the problem itself. It could even become your greatest strength.

It all starts in the mind. Remember that what you focus on most is the direction where you are going. All a captain has to do is steer his ship by an inch and the final destination will be greatly changed as time passes. If you focus all your attention on the positive side of your problems, there’s no telling how different your life will come to be.

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Have you ever overcome a setback and became a better person as a result of the experience? Please share your story with us in the comments.

I know that losing weight can be a difficult and arduous task if you don’t have the right facts. There’s so much information out there but most of it is either misleading or fails to get to the point. Eating less is good but how do you measure how much less to eat? Exercise is beneficial but what if you’re counteracting its affects without you even knowing it?

Basically, above all else, there is only one way to lose weight: Consume less calories than you burn. That is numero uno. Any diet plan that deviates from this basic point will inevitably lead to failure. And fortunately, there are only a handful of things you need to do to achieve that basic goal.

Losing weight is easier than most people think. And this article will cover how I lost 80 pounds and why anyone else, no matter who they are or how their life situation is, can do the same thing.

Use a Calorie Calculator

There are three basic questions you need to ask yourself if you want to start losing weight. If you can answer these three questions, your chances of losing weight are greatly multiplied:

1. How many daily calories should you consume to maintain your current body weight?
2. How many daily calories should you consume to lose one pound a week?
3. How many daily calories should you consume to lose two pounds a week?

The easiest way to answer these questions is to use a Calorie Calculator:

It was this tool and my knowledge of calories that helped me lose 80 pounds more than anything else. It is imperative that you use this tool because without it, your chances of losing weight are greatly diminished.

This tool requires you to enter and specify your age, gender, weight, height, and exercise level to accurately assess the approximate number of calories you need to eat to maintain your body weight or lose weight. After you enter that information and press the calculate button, it will generate three calorie ranges: Maintenance, Fat Loss, and Extreme Fat Loss.  If you eat the number of calories next to the Fat Loss field, you will lose about 1 pound a week and if you eat the number of calories next to the Extreme Fat Loss field, you will lose about 2 pounds a week.

You can use this tool to calculate how much weight you can lose per week because each pound of fat is equivalent to 3,500 calories. If you eat 500 calories less than your weight maintenance level each day, that subtraction will add up to 3,500 fewer calories a week—one pound.

It is extremely important that you use this tool so that you can accurately define how many calories you should eat each day to further your weight loss. This valuable and important tool can be found here:

http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm

Learn how to read and use Nutritional Labels to count your calories

When it comes to the subject of reading Nutritional Labels, you need to remember 5 basic points:

1. Calories are measurements of food energy available for digestion. The most common organic compounds that consist of calories are carbohydrates, fat, and protein.
2. One gram of carbohydrates equals 4 calories. The most common foods in nature that contain carbohydrates are vegetables and fruits.
3. One gram of fat equals 9 calories. Fat is more than twice as dense in calories as the other two digestible compounds. The most common foods that contain fat are animal fats and vegetable oils.
4. One gram of protein equals 4 calories. Protein can be found in all types of meats, eggs, and vegetables such as nuts.
5. On every Nutritional label, the grams of fat, carbohydrates, and protein add up to a little less than the total number of grams of the serving size at the top of each label. The grams left over are basically indigestible compounds and water weight.

If you eat at restaurants where Nutritional Labels aren’t provided with the food, you can easily look on company websites or somewhere else on the internet to find the nutritional information of what you eat.

Don’t worry about the difficulty of counting the calories of everything you eat, because over time, you’ll be able to look at any food source and accurately guess how many calories it contains.

Avoid the diet myths

There’s a common misconception which states that what you eat will determine how much weight you will lose. This has some merit of truth but this notion is more misleading than it is true.

When it comes to losing weight, it doesn’t matter what you eat or how unhealthy it is. If you plan to eat less calories than you’re use to consuming, you should focus on healthier food to enjoy the same nutritional benefits as before or better. However, simply eating healthy is not most important idea to focus on when it comes to burning fat. An average person who eats 5,000 calories of healthy food per day is still going to be overweight.

If I were to give an educated approximation based on years of personal experience and observation, I’d say that 98% of the time, consuming fewer calories than you burn (or burning more calories than you consume) is the main thing that matters when it comes to losing weight. That is the root of all weight loss. It’s all a numbers game—either you are gradually subtracting calories from yourself or you are adding them to you. If you consistently consume less calories than the calorie range that will maintain your current body weight, you will lose weight.

Another common misconception states that if you do sit-ups or some other exercise that focuses on a particular muscle group, you will lose fat in that particular area of the body. This is false. Fat doesn’t burn in only one area of the body all because you’re exercising a muscle group closest to that fat. Fat always burns indiscriminately throughout the entire body no matter how you exercise or what parts of the body you exercise the most.

Focus only on useful information

To be honest, losing 80 pounds 5 years ago was one of the easiest goals I ever accomplished. I wish every other endeavor in life was that easily achievable.

I studied how to lose weight for at least 3 months before I started to really lose weight. Because of that prior research, I knew exactly what I was doing. I narrowed down the most important information pertaining to weight loss and separated that from the information that wasn’t important until I accumulated a concentration of high-quality information originating from various sources.

My weight loss was rapid at first (around 10-12 pounds a month) but it slowed down gradually a few months afterwards as I was approaching my baseline. Within a year, I lost 80 pounds with far less effort than I previously expected.

If you want to lose weight, you can get the exact same results that I achieved as long as you rely on the facts and only the facts.

In summary, here’s what you need to do to lose weight:

1. Use a Calorie Calculator.
2. Count your calories on a daily basis and eat fewer calories than the calorie range for your weight maintenance level.
3. Exercise on a normal basis to burn more calories but keep track of how many calories you are burning.
4. Eat natural foods rich in fiber, protein, nutrients, protein, and omega fats because they usually have fewer and more substantial calories than processed food.
5. Continue educating yourself on the subjects of calories and losing weight. The links provided below will give you a fresh start.

http://www.nutritiondata.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_energy

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If you have any weight loss stories to share or you need advise on how to shed a few extra pounds, you’re more than welcome to leave a comment for us.

From time to time, we let experiences in our lives affect us too negatively. They catch us off guard, the mental pictures from those experiences repeat themselves in our minds, and we feel disheartened or worried about them all day, all week, all month or even longer in extreme cases.

These negative emotions can cause detrimental changes to the biochemistry of our bodies by releasing stress hormones. These stress hormones can slow down our rate of digestion, cause our blood pressure to rise, weaken our hearts, cause life-threatening diseases, and accelerate the signs of aging. According to some scientists, ongoing negative trauma can even alter the genes in our DNA causing adverse affects in our offspring two generations down.

What a heavy price to pay for something that is already torturous enough! But what if there was an effective way to stop negative thoughts from causing such inordinate damage to us? What if there was a practical way to stop negative thoughts from repeating themselves indefinitely? Keep reading and you’ll find the answer to those questions.

Negative thoughts and emotions give life to each other

In the renowned book, Mental Chemistry by Charles F. Haanel, Haanel explained the inexorable affect that our thoughts have on our emotions by comparing emotions to the fluidity of water. Suppose you have a tub of water and you stir that water in a circular motion. If you stir long enough and with enough force, that water will have enough force behind it to temporarily move whatever you’re stirring it with. And it will be noticeably difficult to stir that water in the opposite direction because of the initial resistance caused by the ongoing momentum.

Your emotions are like flowing water and your thoughts stir them toward the direction of either positivity or negativity. The intensity and the rate at which you repeat a thought determines the intensity and the strength of the emotion that correlates with it. And the more forceful your emotions flow in a particular direction, the stronger the initial resistance when you try to change the direction of that movement by thinking opposing thoughts.

Undoubtedly, you have heard that positive thinking will change negative emotions to positive emotions. And undoubtedly, you have tried this approach and it didn’t always work for you as well as you hoped. That is because the momentum of those negative emotions is too strong because of the constant punctuation of negative subconscious thoughts that are continually giving power to them.

Positive thinking will change the physical composition of your mind over time and should obviously be taken seriously. But it will not stop the cycle of negative thoughts and emotions as immediately as another approach will.

“Stop thinking, and end your problems.” — Lao Tzu

The most practical action you could possibly take to resolve this issue is to simply stop thinking. When you’re already in a negative frame of mind, you’re going to have the natural inclination to think along the same lines that those emotions are guiding you. You may think that trying to rationalize your problems while in this frame of mind will increase your understanding of them, but this approach will only lead to you feeling worse about yourself because you’d be focusing on your problems while negative emotions have their influence over you.

So break this cycle by stopping your thoughts entirely until this negative feeling goes away. With nothing to feed them, those negative emotions will gradually lose their strength like water that has ceased to be actuated.

If you do this, you will experience a new level of mental freedom.

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Some estimates state that as many as 75% of the population have a fear of public speaking. Other figures state that as many as 30% of the population have an exorbitant and debilitating fear of public speaking.

Even you might have fears of speaking in front  of large groups of people—possibly for the following reasons:

1. You’re self-conscious about what people may be thinking of you
2. You’re asked to speak in environments that you’re not used to
3. You’re insecure about how your voice sounds as you give your speeches
4. You’re scared of saying something inappropriate or disadvantageous
5. You think the audience might look down on you because they seem smarter or more successful than you
6. You’re forced to talk about things that you’re not used to talking about
7. You’re not sharing your honest opinions about your subject matter and it shows
8. You’re not passionate about what you’re talking about
9. You don’t know enough about your topic
10. You don’t know enough about public speaking

Thankfully, there are practical actions you can take right now that will weaken that fear so much that you could actually enjoy speaking in front of large groups:

1. Talk about what you love to talk about – One of the best ways to conquer the fear of public speaking is to find a topic that both you and your audience are passionate about. In this case, enthusiasm is contagious. When you talk about what you love most to people who share your same interests, your enthusiasm from within will make your audience feel that enthusiasm too.
2. Show praise for your audience – A good way to guarantee the cooperation of your audience is to show them your approval and respect. Thank them for showing up, compliment them for their values and tastes, tell them how intelligent they are, and wish them well in the future. Not only will you put them at ease, they’ll start to look at you favorably because you showed them that you respect them and you care about their well-being.
3. Provide useful information – You will feel more confident when you are providing information that you know is useful to your audience. Find a solution to a problem that your audience can relate to or find ways to improve an aspect of their everyday life. If you say things that are useful to your audience, they will want to listen to what you have to say.
4. Talk about ideals that people cherish and respect – Politicians are masters at this. Generally, you’ll want to touch on topics such as family values, justice, fairness, honor, and generosity. However, make sure you don’t embellish it. Stay within the realm of reality. If you prolong this lofty talk for too long, people will start to question your sincerity.
5. Don’t alienate members of your audience – Nothing would make most of us more nervous than to give a speech to a hostile audience. Try to stay away from topics that will divide or alienate members of your audience. If you absolutely have to talk about politics, religion or some other issue that everyone doesn’t agree on, make an effort to be tolerant of other peoples’ beliefs.
6. Record yourself giving the speech beforehand – Use an audio recorder to improve what your will sound like before giving your speech. Better yet, record yourself with a camcorder so that you’ll know what to improve about your body language and vocal variety before the presentation. Take note that it may be too inconvenient to record your entire speech each time you practice so try recording your speech in 30 second intervals for a more efficient and pointed approach.
7. Read books about public speaking – You may fear giving speeches in public because you don’t know much about giving speeches in general. But as Marie Curie said, “Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.” Just learning about the craft of public speaking can ease your fears tremendously. I recommend the following books:
   1. The Exceptional Presenter — Timothy J. Koegel
   2. Speak to Win — Brian Tracy
8. Join a Toastmasters club – One of the best ways to practice your presentation skills is to join your nearest Toastmasters club. You’ll dramatically improve factors such as speech organization, body language, vocal variety, staying on message and persuasion. Not only that, you’ll be in a friendly and pro-active environment where you’ll be encouraged to do your best and enjoy yourself while doing it. As an added bonus, you’ll receive thorough training manuals and a helpful magazine subscription after joining. You can find your nearest Toastmasters club by clicking this link: http://reports.toastmasters.org/findaclub

It makes perfect sense to fear public speaking because there are so many variables involved. It is understandable why most people feel overwhelmed when faced with all the pressure. But if you follow the 8 suggestions in the above list, you’ll be well equipped to handle any situation that may arise. You’ll take your presentation skills to new heights that were previously thought impossible.

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