Your story matters - nurture and share your story

Failure is the Line of Least Persistence

2017-04-03T16:01:00.000+10:00

There likely will be setbacks and occasional self-doubts on the road to maximizing your charisma. You're going to need patience and persistence. But it's important to keep moving toward your goal.

I'm reminded of a friend who had a life-changing experience in a cross-country ski race in Minnesota. He had moved there not long before. In an enthusiastic, if not realistic, effort to adapt to the local culture, he bought some skis, practiced a bit, and entered an advanced competition. He took off like a flash at the sound of the starter's gun. But after the first quarter-mile in near-zero temperatures, he knew he was in over his head, hopelessly outclassed by other competitors swiftly gliding past him. He was soon alone in a frozen wilderness, and his thoughts turned gloomily to fatigue and defeat.

He had initially hoped to finish in a couple of hours. But as the cold seared his lungs and the exertion weakened his arms and legs, he all but gave up on his goal. If there had been a way to surrender, he would have. But being in deep snow in the middle of the woods, his only way out was to ski out. So he pushed aside the pain and pessimism, and kept skiing.

He imagined a lodge with a roaring fire that might be just around the bend-but wasn't. He imagined a rescue vehicle slicing through the drifts to pick him up-which didn't. He even imagined a helicopter dropping down to whisk him away-but, of course, that never materialized.

So on and on he skied until, at last, he came to a sign: FINISH LINE, 1/4 MILE. He couldn't believe it! Energized, he sprinted that last quarter mile and finished in a time not far from his original goal.

My friend often repeats that story, the winds more frigid and his muscles more aching with each retelling. It's become a part of his self-identity, and the memory of his endurance and ultimate triumph has gotten him through other of life's difficult scrapes and struggles. The moral, as he sees it, is that if you keep slogging ahead, refuse to give up, and stay as positive as you possibly can, you'll accomplish your goal, or something very close to it.

I could hardly argue with that. So even if you have trouble imagining success, keep moving along that snowy path in the woods. And before you know it, you'll have success beyond your imaginings.

Dr. Tony Alessandra helps companies build customers, relationships, and the bottom-line. Tony has a street-wise, college-smart perspective on business, having fought his way out of NYC to eventually realizing success as a graduate professor of marketing, entrepreneur, business author, and consultant. Dr. Alessandra earned his MBA from the University of Connecticut---and his PhD in marketing from Georgia State University. He was inducted into the Speakers Hall of Fame in 1985

2017-01-24T20:21:00.000+10:00

We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them

Charles C. West

The Book of Joy : Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

2017-01-17T20:13:00.000+10:00

Two spiritual giants. Five days. One timeless question.

Two great spiritual masters share their own hard-won wisdom about living with joy even in the face of adversity.

The occasion was a big birthday. And it inspired two close friends to get together in Dharamsala for a talk about something very important to them. The friends were His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In April 2015, Archbishop Tutu traveled to the Dalai Lama's home in Dharamsala, India, to celebrate His Holiness's eightieth birthday and to create what they hoped would be a gift for others. They looked back on their long lives to answer a single burning question: How do we find joy in the face of life's inevitable suffering?

Both winners of the Nobel Prize, both great spiritual masters and moral leaders of our time, they are also known for being among the most infectiously happy people on the planet. From the beginning the book was envisioned as a three-layer birthday cake: their own stories and teachings about joy, the most recent findings in the science of deep happiness, and the daily practices that anchor their own emotional and spiritual lives.

Both the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu have been tested by great personal and national adversity, and here they share their personal stories of struggle and renewal. Now that they are both in their eighties, they especially want to spread the core message that to have joy yourself, you must bring joy to others.

They traded intimate stories, teased each other continually, and shared their spiritual practices. By the end of a week filled with laughter and punctuated with tears, these two global heroes had stared into the abyss and despair of our time and revealed how to live a life brimming with joy.

This book offers us a rare opportunity to experience their astonishing and unprecendented week together, from the first embrace to the final good-bye.

We get to listen as they explore the Nature of True Joy and confront each of the Obstacles of Joy—from fear, stress, and anger to grief, illness, and death. They then offer us the Eight Pillars of Joy, which provide the foundation for lasting happiness. Throughout, they include stories, wisdom, and science. Finally, they share their daily Joy Practices that anchor their own emotional and spiritual lives.

The Archbishop has never claimed sainthood, and the Dalai Lama considers himself a simple monk. In this unique collaboration, they offer us the reflection of real lives filled with pain and turmoil in the midst of which they have been able to discover a level of peace, of courage, and of joy to which we can all aspire in our own lives.

During that landmark week in Dharamsala, they demonstrated by their own exuberance, compassion, and humor how joy can be transformed from a fleeting emotion into an enduring way of life. His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have survived more than fifty years of exile and the soul-crushing violence of oppression. Despite their hardships—or, as they would say, because of them—they are two of the most joyful people on the planet.

The Book Depository or Amazon

2017-01-10T14:17:00.000+10:00

To better see, the eyes not expand they contract; these days are darker but a thousand fold the light they extract

Yossi Ghinsberg

Daily Routine Makeover - Morning Edition: Morning Tactics and Strategies To Get More Energized, Productive and Healthy All Day

2017-01-03T14:06:00.000+10:00

Do you often feel unmotivated?

Wake up with a feeling of anxiety that you should do many things but you lack of direction where to begin so you end up doing nothing?

Do you feel that you do self-sabotage after you wake up by doing nothing productive and waste your day?

If you respect only three tips of this book, I guarantee that your first wake up hours can become the best and most motivating part of your day!

Daily Routine Makeover Morning Edition teaches you every method how to be productive and energetic when your day starts.

This is an actionable book without any fake it til you make it, brush your teeth or wake up at 5 am advice.

It is a comprehensive psychology, biology and motivational manual that lets you know why are you an early bird or night owl, gives you the best practices how to bring out the most of them without overwhelming you with too many new habits.

Daily Routine Makeover Morning Edition has lots of real-life stories and examples, proven techniques of high-performers, and physiological explanations backed up by countless research studies, all of which will help you change your a mindset about the power of the first hours after waking up (be it 5 am or 11 am) with concrete and simple techniques.

The 5 am magic doesn't apply to all of us and it's borderline terrible advice for most.

During my endless months of nocturnal working, I developed special practices that don't require an early day start to boost your productivity and energy level to the sky.

By consequently following these 3 simple steps I could leave my night-shift job, finish University and start to be a full-time writer.

How will you become a productivity machine?

Learn the 3 simple exercise I did to boost my spirits and productivity.

Get familiar with 10 practices recommended by world leaders, high achievers, and top class artists.

Understand why does your body function the way it does on a biological level.

Learn to diminish the harm your body gets by nighttime, shift work or even jet lag.

And further ways to bring out the most of your day.

The right way to use caffeine as a wake-up booster.

How to eat nutritious food and lose weight.

Simple steps to detect when you are the most productive during the day.

Advice from a world class dietitian how to combine food to keep you energized all day starting in the morning.

Find out which of the 3+15 after wake-up habits could make the difference in your life.

The Book Depository or Amazon

2016-12-14T13:58:00.000+10:00

Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open.

John Barrymore

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

2016-12-10T11:52:00.000+10:00

A field guide to the twenty-first century, written by one of its most celebrated observers.

In his most ambitious work to date, Thomas L. Friedman shows that we have entered an age of dizzying acceleration--and explains how to live in it.

We all sense it―something big is going on. You feel it in your workplace. You feel it when you talk to your kids. You can’t miss it when you read the newspapers or watch the news. Our lives are being transformed in so many realms all at once―and it is dizzying.

In Thank You for Being Late, a work unlike anything he has attempted before, Thomas L. Friedman exposes the tectonic movements that are reshaping the world today and explains how to get the most out of them and cushion their worst impacts.

You will never look at the world the same way again after you read this book: how you understand the news, the work you do, the education your kids need, the investments your employer has to make, and the moral and geopolitical choices our country has to navigate will all be refashioned by Friedman’s original analysis.

Friedman begins by taking us into his own way of looking at the world―how he writes a column. After a quick tutorial, he proceeds to write what could only be called a giant column about the twenty-first century.

His thesis: to understand the twenty-first century, you need to understand that the planet’s three largest forces―Moore’s law (technology), the Market (globalization), and Mother Nature (climate change and biodiversity loss)―are accelerating all at once.

Due to an exponential increase in computing power, climbers atop Mount Everest enjoy excellent cell-phone service and self-driving cars are taking to the roads.

A parallel explosion of economic interdependency has created new riches as well as spiraling debt burdens.

Meanwhile, Mother Nature is also seeing dramatic changes as carbon levels rise and species go extinct, with compounding results.

How do these changes interact, and how can we cope with them?

These accelerations are transforming five key realms: the workplace, politics, geopolitics, ethics, and community.

To get a better purchase on the present, Friedman returns to his Minnesota childhood and sketches a world where politics worked and joining the middle class was an achievable goal.

Today, by contrast, it is easier than ever to be a maker (try 3-D printing) or a breaker (the Islamic State excels at using Twitter), but harder than ever to be a leader or merely "average."

Friedman concludes that nations and individuals must learn to be fast (innovative and quick to adapt), fair (prepared to help the casualties of change), and slow (adept at shutting out the noise and accessing their deepest values), and he explores how communities can create a “topsoil of trust” to anchor their increasingly diverse and digital populations.

With vitality, wit, and optimism, Friedman shows that we can overcome the multiple stresses of an age of accelerations―if we slow down, if we dare to be late and use the time to reimagine work, politics, and community. Thank You for Being Late is Friedman’s most ambitious book―and an essential guide to the present and the future.

The book is available from The Book Depository and Amazon

Make your own optimism come true

2016-11-28T08:24:00.002+10:00

Make your own optimism come true

Christian D. Larson

The Practicing Mind : Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life - Master Any Skill or Challenge by Learning to Love the Process

2016-11-13T18:07:00.000+10:00

In those times when we want to acquire a new skill or face a formidable challenge we hope to overcome, what we need most are patience, focus, and discipline, traits that seem elusive or difficult to maintain.

In this enticing and practical book, Thomas Sterner demonstrates how to learn skills for any aspect of life, from golfing to business to parenting, by learning to love the process.

Early life is all about trial-and-error practice. If we had given up in the face of failure, repetition, and difficulty, we would never have learned to walk or tie our shoes. So why, as adults, do we often give up on a goal when at first we don t succeed?

In his study of how we learn (prompted by his pursuit of disciplines such as music and golf), Sterner has found that we have forgotten the principles of practice the process of picking a goal and applying steady effort to reach it.

The methods Sterner teaches show that practice done properly isn't drudgery on the way to mastery but a fulfilling process in and of itself, one that builds discipline and clarity."

Book Depository or Amazon

2016-11-09T17:59:00.000+10:00

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful.

Alice Walker

On Fire. The 7 Choices to Ignite a Radically Inspired Life

2016-11-05T11:38:00.000+10:00

In the bestselling tradition of Brene Brown's Daring Greatly and Nick Vujicic s Life Without Limits comes a rousing 7-step plan for living a life on fire, filled with hope and possibility from an inspirational speaker who survived a near-fatal fire at the age of nine and now runs a successful business inspiring people all around the world.

When John O'Leary was nine years old, he was almost killed in a devastating house fire. With burns on one hundred percent of his body, O'Leary mustered an almost unimaginable amount of inner strength just to survive the ordeal.

The insights he gained through this experience and the heroes who stepped into his life to help him through the journey - his family, the medical staff, and total strangers changed his life.

Now he is committed to living life to the fullest and inspiring others to do the same.

An incredible and emotionally honest account of triumph over tragedy, On Fire contains O'Leary s reflections on being that little boy, the life-giving choices made then, and the resulting lessons he learned.

O'Leary very clearly shares that without the right people providing the right guidance, at the right time, he never would have made it through those five months in the hospital, let alone the years that followed as he struggled to regain mobility, embrace his story, and ignite clarity of his life's purpose.

On Fire encourages us to seize the power to choose our path and transform our lives from mundane to extraordinary.

Once we stop thinking solely on the big moments in our lives, we can begin to focus on those smaller opportunities that tend to pass us by. These are the events, the inflection points in our lives that can determine how we feel about life now, where we are headed in the future, and how many lives we can impact along the way.

We can't always choose the path we walk, but we can choose how we walk it.

Empowering, inspiring, remarkably honest, and heartfelt, O'Leary's strength and incredible spirit shine through on every page."

You can buy the book from The Book Depository or Amazon

Just to make one small difference

2016-11-01T10:41:00.001+10:00

I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference.

Ellen Goodman

Bloom : Navigating Life and Style

2016-10-28T18:26:00.000+10:00

'For me, the word "bloom" encapsulates the idea that anything is possible when you put your mind to it. It's a word that hints at becoming who you are meant to be.'

What makes you happy? What makes you you? What defines your style?

In Bloom, Estee Lalonde shares the moments, people and things that have made her who she is today. She reveals her life lessons, and offers her tips for surviving life and finding you.

Celebrate your bloom story and what makes you unique.

About Estee Lalonde
Estee Lalonde is one of the stand-out voices of the digital generation.
A beauty-and-lifestyle vlogger and social influencer, she has attracted a global audience of millions across her YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat platforms and is known for her friendly, honest and relatable personality.
Estee Lalonde won InStyle UK's Best Beauty Reviewer Award in 2015 and has partnered up with a number of key global brands, from Burberry and The Body Shop to the United Nations for their Global Goals campaign.
From a small town in Canada, Estee has lived in the UK for nearly a decade with her boyfriend Aslan and dog Reggie. Both feature across her channels and are also adored by her fans. www.esteelalonde.com @EsteeLalonde www.youtube.com/esteelalonde

Buy from The Book Depository , Amazon , or The Nile

The grand essentials to happiness

2016-10-24T18:26:00.000+10:00

The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

Joseph Addison

How To Break-Free From People Pleasing

2016-09-25T15:56:00.000+10:00

Have you ever truly felt "Approved"?

I won't be surprised if you answered "No" to that question. Because most of us don't feel "Approved" enough to cause us to believe it. And as a result we go through life feeling "wrong", "insecure" and "rejected" thereby losing our self-confidence and developing low self-esteem.

In fact, not feeling approved can leave us so empty and hungry inside that we may eventually seek to satisfy ourselves by doing things we think will cause others to like us, affirm us and approve us, thus becoming an "Approval Addict"!

I am sure you would agree that trying to impress others is exhausting! It minimizes your own importance and individuality, which could be very damaging to you in the long run.

The good news is that you no longer have to continue to find worth, validation or value in other people's approval. You don't need to suffer any longer with insecurity or rejection. You don't have to strive to please others while feeling miserable yourself.

There is a cure for the approval addiction. Here are a few quick and easy steps to get you started!

Give your opinion freely. Give your opinion, even if it makes you feel uncomfortable. Start with smaller things like what you'd like to eat or which movie you'd like to see or how you'd like to spend your time.

Avoid judging others. Check if you are constantly judging others in a variety of situations? Notice your thoughts. If you are overly critical of others, it's only natural that you assume others are the same towards you. By avoiding this type of behavior in yourself, you will drop the assumption that everyone else is judging you. Just allow others to be as they are. It makes life more interesting. Sit back and enjoy the differences.

Be aware that disapproval could be a manipulation tool. Knowing this can free you from seeking the approval of others. In many cases, they are just in the game for themselves.

"If you are an approval addict, your behavior is as easy to control as that of any other junkie. All a manipulator needs do is a simple two-step process: Give you what you crave, and then threaten to take it away. Every drug dealer in the world plays this game."- Harriet B. Braiker

Many people use disapproval as a means of getting what they want and trying to control others. They may disapprove of your opinion, clothing, hairstyle, or anything else to enjoy the fruits of your submission. If someone disapproves you, ask him or her to explain. Remember that most negative people are looking for a victim, not a fight. When you stand up for yourself, many of the bullies disappear.

Don't be bothered by what someone thinks of you. We seem to be born with an intense desire to "fit in". But just because someone does not approve of you it doesn't mean that you are undesirable. It could actually be more about them than about you.

It is true that you might suffer from a little bit of anxiety when feeling unaccepted but if you just hold your ground that too shall pass. "You will never gain anyone's approval by begging for it. When you stand confident in your own worth, respect follows." - Mandy Hale

Fill your life with things that are important. Spend quality times on things you enjoy to do or that are meaningful to you. This is sure going to make you very happy and content. You are going to absolutely love that freedom of being yourself!

Being overly concerned about the opinions of others is damaging to your self-esteem. Each time you seek approval, you are diminishing your own importance.

You are causing yourself pain.

Your opinion matters!

You matter!

Allow your individuality to be seen and experienced by others.

"A balanced inner calmness radiates from a peaceful center. It neither craves others' approval nor rejects others' presence. It neither pulls towards nor pushes away. It has a reverent attitude towards life and all its inhabitants." - Donna Goddard

I Look Forward To Hearing From You! Connect With Me At - http://nbvta.com

Author: Nidhika Bahl

I believe, "Life is too short to keep hitting the snooze button! As a certified coach and motivational speaker, my mission is to help you awaken to the possibilities in your personal and professional lives!"

Whether working one-on-one or with an entire organisation, I help people create the shifts necessary for positive change, getting them into action to achieve personal excellence in all areas of their life!

The life that is waiting for us

2016-09-21T17:32:00.000+10:00

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned,

so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Joseph Campbell

Nature RX Part 1

2016-09-17T14:33:00.000+10:00

Absolute discipline and absolute freedom

2016-09-13T10:43:00.000+10:00

I think there's some connection between absolute discipline and absolute freedom.

Alan Rickman

How Spiritual Principles and Brain Science Can Put an End to Bad Habits and Addictions Forever

2016-09-09T10:35:00.000+10:00

The Little Book of Big Change: The No-Willpower Approach to Breaking Any Habit

Little changes can make a big, big difference! In The Little Book of Big Change, psychologist Amy Johnson shows you how to rewire your brain and overcome your bad habits—once and for all.

No matter what your bad habit is, you have the power to change it. Drawing on a powerful combination of neuroscience and spirituality, this book will show you that you are not your habits. Rather, your habits and addictions are the result of simple brain wiring that is easily reversed. By learning to stop bad habits at the source, you will take charge of your habits and addictions for good.

Anything done repeatedly has the potential to form neural circuitry in the brain. In this light, habits and addictions are impersonal brain wiring problems that result from taking your habitual thinking as truth, and acting on that thinking in the form of doing your habit—over and over. This book offers a number of small changes you can make in your everyday life that will help you stop your bad habit in its tracks.

If you want to understand the science behind your habit, make the decision to end it, and commit to real, lasting change, this book will help you to finally take charge of your life—once and for all.

About the Author

Amy Johnson, PhD, is a life coach, public speaker, and author of two previous books. She works with clients worldwide, helping people see their habits in a way that ends them forever. To find out more, please visit www.dramyjohnson.com.

You can buy the book from Amazon , The Book Depository , Fishpond.com.au , The Nile.com.au

Act well ... for eternity

2016-09-05T18:33:00.000+10:00

What to Do If Your Potential Isn't Being Realized

2016-09-01T18:28:00.004+10:00

Today ...

Are you crushing it...knocking the ball out of the park...and off to a blazing start?

Or...are you repeating the same patterns as last year...barely squeaking by...and in serious need of more, better and faster results?

Regardless of your answer, I'm going to share with you a simple, seven-step strategy for taking your performance to an entirely new level.

I just used it to evaluate my YTD performance and implementing the feedback into my plans for the month of February.

It's called an AFTER ACTION REVIEW (AAR), and it's purpose is to...

1. Celebrate and sustain strengths as you must reinforce the tactics and strategies responsible for winning.

2. Identify and correct deficiencies as it is imperative that you analyze behaviors which are compromising performance.

3. Focus on opportunities to exploit and goals to pursue for the remaining 335 days of the year.

DO IT NOW

To best position yourself, your family and business for the remainder of the year, you NEED to perform an AAR and analyze what took place in the first half of the year, and...YOU NEED TO DO IT NOW!
You NEED to identify every nugget of knowledge your past performance offers and milk it for all it's worth.

Please note the special emphasis on the word NEED, as if you hesitate to do this exercise or simply choose to delete this message, you'll most certainly pay the heavy price associated with neglect, ignorance and immaturity.

Unfortunately the vast majority of people and companies don't learn enough from their mistakes or their accomplishments.

It's like everyone is simply plugging along with their heads down, and it's Ground Hog Day all over again.

But, instead of repeating the same day over and again, both companies and individuals continue to repeat the same undermining attitudes, the same unproductive strategies and keep getting the same under-performing results.

IT"S TIME FOR A REALITY CHECK

You and I both know that no matter how good or bad your results have been these past 30 days - you can always do better—MUCH BETTER!

Yet, the single biggest key to improving both your performance and your results seems to go ignored by almost everybody. If you want to perform at the top of your game you NEED to review, analyze, and learn from what has already happened.

MASTER THESE SEVEN STEPS

There are seven steps in the AAR process, and you must begin implementing the ideas that you are about to generate...IMMEDIATELY.

Step 1 - Identify Your Three Greatest Accomplishments in the year so far.
Even if the first month of the year has been a challenging one for you, odds are...if you look close enough, there's something to be proud of.

Step 2 - Analyze What You Learned from Each Accomplishment?
Now that you have identified your three greatest accomplishments, go back to each one. This time though identify exactly what you learned or were reminded of by each of them.

Step 3 - Identify Your Biggest Disappointments in the year until now.
Practically every company and individual resists analyzing their mistakes. That's a shame because this is where the best learning comes from.

Step 4 - Analyze What You Learned from Each Failure or Disappointment.
No matter how great everything in life is going -we all make mistakes. The trick here is to analyze them, what preceded them, what could you have done differently and determine how can you prevent them from reoccurring in the future.

Step 5 - Identify How You Limited Yourself and How Can You Stop It?
Were there certain actions you took or didn't take that came back to haunt you?
In order to make sure you don't limit yourself again - you need to bring these self-defeating actions and self-limiting beliefs to the surface,confront them, and most importantly determine what you must do differently to make sure you don't make the same mistakes all over again.

Step 6 - Pragmatically Review the Information You Have Gathered?
The goal of this exercise is not simply to know yourself and your business better, but to actually use the information to make certain that you are best positioned for a strong first quarter and year, and that you have an actionable plan that far surpasses anything you have done in the first 30 days of 2015.

HOW DID YOU DO?

What are the big takeaways from answering each question?
What do you know about yourself or your business that you didn't realize or weren't thinking about?

Obviously, having this list isn't going to do it all, you still need to take this new knowledge and USE IT!
Fortunately, that's what the last question is centered around.
And here it is...

Step 7 - Determine How to Use This Information to Astonish Yourself in the year that is left

The purpose here is to build into your schedule,your interactions, your management style or whatever else you've surfaced in the previous questions and build yourself a new, better approach.
Okay, now that we've uncovered a lot of useful information, the final step is to incorporate it into a game plan for crushing the first quarter of the year.

My goal is simply to help you achieve yours, and the single best thing I can do for you (now that the first half of the year is in the history books) is to impress upon you the importance and URGENCY of this AAR discipline.

Implementing the seven steps of the AAR before you get into work on Monday will go a long way in helping you making this the best year of your life.

I wish for you a lifetime of abundance, prosperity and ever increasing opportunity.

One where you make sure...

Everything Counts!

Gary Ryan Blair

Creativity is ... simplicity

2016-08-24T21:14:00.000+10:00

"Creativity is more than just being different.
Anybody can plan weird; that's easy.
What's hard is to be as simple as Bach.
Making the simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."

~ Charles Mingus

Gratitude - Everyone matters

2016-08-20T21:07:00.004+10:00

Begin your day as if it were your very first and your very last - beautiful video!

Change is the constant

2016-08-12T18:04:00.000+10:00

Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix.

Christina Baldwin

The element of surprise

2016-08-08T17:57:00.001+10:00

"A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless." - Charles De Gaulle

Michael Chang is in the record books as the youngest winner (17) of a grand slam, but his French Open triumph in 1989 is largely remembered for one extraordinary game changing moment against the top ranked player in the world, Ivan Lendl.

Injured and exhausted, near the end of the match, Chang broke two of the most basic commandments of winning tennis.

First, in a sport where powerful overhand serving is usually the key to winning, Chang served UNDERHAND, and the confused Lendl's returns went into the net.

Second, on the match-point, facing Lendl's 120+ mph serve, Chang moved CLOSER to the net and stood at the line of the server's box.

The bewildered Lendl double-faulted, producing one of the most memorable upsets in tennis history.

Challenging the conventional wisdom on these previously sacred aspects of the game - serving and returning serves - Michael Chang radically changed his strategy, surprised his opponent - and elevated his standing in the tennis world.

ACTION

As you prepare for the coming week, ask yourself...

"How can I use the element of surprise to break the rules of conventional thinking in order to make a breakthrough?

Think of every business and personal commitment you have in place for the week and determine how you can use the element of surprise to blow a few minds, and as Charles De Gualle so beautifully stated...

"keep your public excited and breathless."

Everything Counts!

Gary Ryan Blair

Gary Ryan Blair is a visionary and gifted conceptual thinker. As one of the top strategic thinkers in the world he is dedicated to helping his clients win big by creating focused, purpose driven lives.