Human Resources

How to Be Unique??

2011-08-27T20:39:00.000-07:00

Being unique results when one follows his or her own identity and doesn't give in to what society preaches as the "norm." Each and every one of us is born unique, but with time, society and culture tends to shape and form our opinions, styles and way of life. However, it isn't too late to break out of the mold.

Instructions:

1

Remain true to yourself. Nothing is as unique as your own opinion and own personality.

2
Invent your own personal style. Instead of going to the mall and local department stores, branch out to some niche boutiques or even your local thrift store. Mall-bought fashion is what everyone does. Go out on a whim and buy something different and unique.

3
Educate yourself on current issues, both locally and globally. This way, you can hold your own unique opinion when people ask how you feel about certain issues or current events.

4
Create a buzz with a new hair color or cut. Instead of getting the traditional bob, one-length hair trim or buzz cut, get a funky 'do with texturized layers. A dose of hair color or highlights can transform an average look into a very unique look.

5
Follow your heart when it comes to your hobbies or interests. So what if playing the accordion is viewed as "geeky." If that activity makes your heart sing, that can make you glow as a person and make you even more unique.

6
Release your personal insecurities. This is a key factor as to why many people conform-because they fear what others may think if they march to the beat of their own drums. Let go of the fear and embrace your own personal uniqueness.
Tips & Warnings:

In a work or school environment, you may have to sacrifice some of your own personal uniqueness in order to follow company rules for dress code and overall personal conduct. However, once that 5 p.m. whistle blows, it's up to you to unleash your inner uniqueness.

HOW TO BE DIFFERENT??

I don't know where you live, UK, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong or some remote town on a remote island, but I do know that whatever your age, size or lifestyle, you can stand out from the crowd, turn heads and win admirers. Anyone can do it, regardless of where they're from and where they're heading.

I'm not talking clothes, make-up and hairstyles - okay, maybe to a certain extent. What I'm really referring to is you as a person, your mannerisms, lifestyle choices and character.

Regarding appearance, if you want to be different, check out vintage, thrift and charity stores. They usually have one-off pieces that are not too way out, but will make you stand out. Choose unusual accessories. Shop in random stores and boutiques that few people have heard of. You may need to shop online if there aren't any where you live.

Remember - no one thinks completely alike so there will be aspects of your personality that are unique without you even trying. No two people look the same either - even identical twins are not completely identical. So your genetic make-up will always be unique.

When it comes to getting to know someone, simple but unusual questions are best. What's the scariest thing you've ever done? If money and circumstances were no object, where in the world would you live? What was the first record you bought? How old were you when ... you get the picture.

Big companies, in the name of branding, spend millions on market research to stand out from the crowd. You need to do the same but on a much smaller scale, and you don't need to spend a fortune. Mimic the traits of successful companies. Dare to be different. Take risks. Practice your 'customer service skills' i.e. people skills. Be kind, courteous, helpful, reliable, professional and polite. Everything you do has an influence on someone, somewhere. Build trust. Be loyal.

Finally, make unique lifestyle choices. Organise a one-of-a-kind stag or bithday party. Re-train in a field where there's a shortage i.e. priest, UFO specialist, nuclear medicine, ultrasonographer, belly dancer. Become a professional weight lifter. Drive an unusual car. Breed blue tits. Become known for a signature piece, such as hats, red lipstick or bow ties. The possibilities are endless.

Nobody will read your content unless it is exclusive.

You were meant to be different. Your online success depends it. Without something to separate you from the masses, you do not have the chance to break 200 subscribers or rake $5.

The problem is, you do not know where to begin.

Being different is difficult because there is no surefire A-B-C guide. It may be observed passively in hindsight, but it cannot be mimicked.

Being different is something you must invent yourself. It cannot be taught.

Writers achieve uniqueness by pure magic. They possess the “it” which carries them from the soiled, oily ground into clear blue sky. Their formula for success is self-invented and cannot be duplicated. If you attempted to copy their methods, your blog would die.

Online success is not a paint-by-numbers. It is not luck. It is magic. It requires talent. It requires gifts. It requires thinking. It requires a trusty keyboard and steady hands.

In order to be different and succeed, you blaze a trail in an untouched wood. You pioneer deep, turbulent waters unchartered by map and compass. You live a story so unique and thrilling that everyone is compelled to read your every word.

Remember those ads which promise, “Make $462.90 every day from home”? They lie to you. Success requires difference. You cannot follow a formula and be different. Ignore formulas. Ignore strategies. Fye and foresooth, time has come for you create real art.

And yet, and yet…

There are two basic building blocks which constitute the foundation of uniqueness. They do not guarantee difference, but difference cannot be attained without them. Let us see how well you are doing.

1. You must have a unique design

Does your blog have a design different from all others? If not, you simply are not unique enough.

I do not care if you have the best child theme from Studiopress. If your theme is unedited, it matches other blogs. If it matches other blogs, it is not different. Remember, just because it isprofessional does not mean it is different.

Here is an example. In the comments at the previous article, Stephen and I discussed how immaculate Copyblogger’s design is. Copyblogger is the best-looking site on the Internet. But what if Copyblogger were to offer their current design as a WordPress theme? Ten million people would install it and the theme would lose its uniqueness. Yes, it would be pretty as ever, but it would no longer be different.

See the drift? Your design must be different and professional. This leaves you with two options.

Spend a lot of time, learn how to code
Spend a lot of money, hire a good designer

Granted, you will find neither option very appealing. But if you truly want to take your blogging seriously, you must chose one of these resolves. If you want to be different and make money, it is unavoidable.

In order to succeed, you have to invest in yourself.

2. You must have something to say, and say it differently

Contrary to common assumption, having something to say is difficult. Unless you are Seth Godin, you cannot say something every single day.

Stop blogging so much.

Only publish content that could easily be approved as a guest post on the biggest blog in your niche. Easy? No way. Attainable? Absolutely.

I repeat. If you do not think a post would be approved on the biggest blog in your niche, do not publish it on your own blog. That is the whole reason you spend hours on each post you write. You write and rewrite until it is perfect.

But perfection is not enough. You must have more than something to say. You must say itdifferently.

This is where the magic comes in – the art. This is where all the blog posts in the world cannot help. You must go offline and write till your fingers bleed.

Unsubscribe from this blog if you must – that is the degree I value your concentration.

The process of creating art is powerful. It occurs in a mist that defies the acknowledgement of time and space. It transforms a laptop into a canvas and a writer into an ecstatic maniac.

Druggies call it getting high.

I wish I could tell you how to do this. But alas, it is impossible. Thou must learn to fly thyself. Here lies the deepest aspect of writing, the aspect nobody talks about. This separates the real writers from those wearing hockey pants.

The beauty of being different lies in the simplicity. Being different is not a 26-step algorithm requiring Einstein’s intellectual capacity. It is a combination of two rock-solid building blocks and an overdose of artistic integrity. It best occurs naturally. True difference is unforced, almost effortless. The difficulty lies in its initial achievement.

Do You Dare to Be Different?

I don’t know about you, but one of the things I’m afraid most in life is mediocrity. For me, life is too precious to be lived in mediocrity. Life is a golden opportunity, and we should use it as good as we can. Living in mediocrity means we do not use the opportunity as good as we should.

Unfortunately, many people are trapped in mediocrity. I believe one of the main reasons is they do not dare to be different. You need to be different if you want to be above the average. The question is:

Do you dare to be different?

This question might not be easy to answer, but how you answer it will make the difference between excellence and mediocrity.

Here are some more specific questions to help you check yourself and take actions:

1. Do you have a dream?

This is the first question you should ask yourself. I believe one of the main reasons people just follow the herd is they don’t have a dream. If there is nothing to pursue then why bother being different?

But a dream is what sets you above the average. Not having a dream means going to mediocrity on autopilot.

If your answer for this first question is “no” then start searching. I’m sure you have a dream deep inside of you. It might be something from your childhood. Maybe for long time you have been too busy to let the little voice of your dream be heard. This is the right time to heed that little voice.

If you have found your dream, the next question is whether or not you have the courage to follow it. Questions two through five will deal with that.

2. Are you doing what you want or what you should?

There are often implicit “rules” about what someone should do in a particular situation. For example, when there are two job opportunities, the “rule” says that you should take the one with higher pay.

But is that what you want? I mean, does it help you achieve your dream? Maybe the job with less pay will help you achieve your dream while the one with higher pay doesn’t. Do you have the courage to be different and follow your dream?

3. Do you worry more about being loved than being what you love?

Another reason why we don’t dare to be different is because we are trying to meet other people’s expectations. We often worry more about what other people say than about what matters to us. But living someone else’s life is a bad way to live your life. Why should you lose opportunity just because of what other people say?

4. Do you choose what is safe rather than what is right?

Maybe you are not trying to meet other people’s expectation. Maybe you just don’t want to take risks and therefore you choose to play safe. But this is exactly what many old people regret. When they were asked in a study about what they regretted most and what they would do differently, most of them answered: “I wish I had risked more.” Don’t let the same regret happen to you.

5. If you had only six months left to live, would you do what you are doing now?

You can only answer “yes” to this question if what you are doing matters to you. Doing what matters to you is a sure way to excellence since you will do it with all your heart. But you need the courage to be different and follow your heart. Do you have it? I hope your answer is yes. Life is too precious to be lived in mediocrity.

How to become millionaire in 5 years??

2011-08-21T16:37:00.000-07:00

Can someone become a millionaire in 5 years?
In Fact i already did that in less than five years.
When i was 23 years old i decided that i am going to become a self made millionaire and as a result i went through many business ventures but didn't find any luck.

Whenever one of the businesses i used to start failed i just used to feel bad for few days then in a matter of a week i usually find something else to work on. At the age of 28 or five years later i became a self made millionaire where i made my money from more than one different source including this site you are visiting now.

Its completely possible to become a millionaire in 5 years or even in three years provided that you first acquire the millionaire mindset.

Can you become a millionaire in 5 years?

Let me ask you an important question, what comes first, the millionaire mindset or the millions?

The mindset of course! because its the thing that brings the money.

You will never become a millionaire in 5 years or even in 20 years before you start thinking like one. 5 years ago I knew i was going to be a millionaire even though i started with a very small capital.

because i was sure that i was going to do it i managed to continue going in the face of the failures until i did it. A single limiting belief about your ability to become a millionaire can prevent you from withstanding failure and can stop you anytime.

If you managed to get rid of your limiting beliefs today than i can reassure you that you will become a millionaire within 5 years or even less.

To become a millionaire in 5 years you have to think like one

So how can think like a millionaire? in the Ultimate guide to becoming rich i said that self made millionaires don't have any false beliefs about money such as "I have to be dishonest in order to become rich" or "I will lose my friends if i became rich"

Self made millionaires also know that making money doesn't have anything to do with luck. Those people understand very well that reaching anything they want in life is all about the number of tries.

I became a millionaire in less than 5 years but during those 5 years i faced numerous failures. Had i didn't understand that becoming rich is all about trial and error i would have gave up early and would have never became a millionaire.

So why did i choose a 5 year time limit? While you can become a millionaire in 3 years still you will face a great deal of disappointment if the three years passed without reaching your goal. That's why setting a 5 year target is much better for you as its more realistic.

I have managed to become a self made millionaire at the age of 28. This didn't happen by chance because i already wrote that goal down five years before i accomplished it. Becoming rich is not about luck, starting big or being intelligent but its all about having certain beliefs about money and life.

How to attract someone who is not interested (Based on attraction psychology)

2011-08-15T20:40:00.000-07:00

Whenever someone thinks about something a lot he starts to become attached to it and he thinks about it even more. Large companies understand this fact and that's why they keep bombarding you with ads all the time.

The subconscious mind absorbs new beliefs by repetition and if something pleasant was repeated enough times the person will become attached to it.

So what does this has to do with attracting someone who is not interested in you?
actually if you managed to let someone think about you more often you will be only few steps away frommaking him fall in love with you even if he wasn't interested in you at all.

Love is nothing more than the state of being obsessed with someone and thinking about him a lot. If you want to attract someone who is not interested in you then you must first learn how to let him think about you more often.

Attracting someone who is not interested means occupying his thoughts

Don't confuse attraction with attracting attention. Its completely easy to attract someone's attention for few moments by doing anything extraordinary or even stupid but after he returns home he wont remember you anymore.

Successful attraction happens when you attract attention in such a way that the person thinks about you even after you leave.

The process of attraction starts by attracting the attention of the target, but not any kind of attention, you want to show him that you have qualities that he is desperately in need of. In such a case even if that person wasn't interested in you he will become attracted to you.

Every person in this world longs for certain traits and would become attracted to anybody who posses them. For example some women are attracted to ambitious men because its a trait that shows that this man might become somebody one day, some men are attracted to women who are demanded by other men because it makes them believe that they have high status. Now the reason someone might not be interested in you is that you didn't show him that you have these traits he is in need of.

Before you try to attract someone's attention try to first collect information about him and to find out the things that would impress him the most.

Does self confidence impress him?
Will perceived popularity impress him?
Can kindness impress her?
Will will power impress her?

In my book How to make someone fall in love with you i said that the biggest mistake people make when trying to impress others is that they use one size fits all strategies without understanding that what would impress a person might not impress the other.

Turning attraction into obsession

In the beginning you must be available a lot if not all the time so that you make sure that you don't get forgotten. After all the battle for attention is fierce and lots of other things will be competing with you for the attention of that person you are targeting.

You don't just have to be available but you have to keep displaying the impressive qualities you have each time you appear as long as the person is still not interested in you.

Once the person becomes attached to you and gets used to your existence in his life start sending mixed signals, for example become very interested in him one day then completely ignore him the other day.

Keep on sending mixed signals and the other person will start to wonder what are you up to or whether you really like him or not. At this point you can congratulate yourself because you are starting occupying his thoughts.

Keep on doing this and he will think about you even more until he will find it extremely hard to be without you and at this point he is the one who is going to chase you.

2knowmysef is not a complicated medical website nor a boring online encyclopedia but rather a place where you will find simple, to the point and effective information that is backed by psychology and presented in a simple way that you can understand and apply. If you think that this is some kind of marketing hype then see what other visitors say about 2knowmyself.The book How to make someone fall in love with you was released by 2knowmyself.com; the book will dramatically increase your chance of letting someone fall in love with you.

How to attract someone to you?

Disclaimer: The information i provide in this site should not be used for fooling innocent people, dating or playing around but instead the information is provided for those who are serious about a long term relationship that has marriage as its final goal, I am not responsible for the misuse of such information.

So how to attract someone you like?
and is there some kind of a method that could help you attract people?

Yes there is. The human mind is governed by certain laws that control its operation. If you managed to understand these laws correctly you will be able to manipulate it and use it to your side. In this article i am going to tell you how to attract someone you like by manipulating his mind.

Step by step guide to attracting someone to you

It starts with attention: Each day people are bombarded with events, advertisements, phone calls and thoughts. Each of these items usually occupy the person's mind for few seconds to few minutes before they are completely forgotten. The same happens with people, they usually forget those they were with few moments after they leave unless something catches their attention. The first step to attract someone to you is to catch his attention by showing him that you are different and unlike all other people. Don't confuse this with love or attraction, you just want to let the person remember you so that you occupy a little more of his thoughts
Turning attention to obsession After you manage to catch the person's attention you should then move on to step two. The human mind always fills the gaps by making conclusions about people and the larger the gap seems the harder will it be for the mind to fill it quickly. If you managed to give little exciting information about you then the person you want to attract will spend a lot of time trying to fill the gap. You should only give the person the starting point for his thoughts by displaying interesting information about you and then allowing his mind to fill the gap with his wide imagination.

Impressing the obsessed: If you did the previous steps successfully the person will think about you a lot (still he is not attracted to you) but he is trying to categorize you because you seem mysterious. At this point you can display all of the impressing qualities that you posses especially the ones that the other person is lacks. For example if the person you are trying to attract is shy then you should display self confidence
Play on his unmet needs If the person you want to attract lacks intimacy then provide him with intimacy, if he lacks confidence show him that you are confident or if he is afraid of life then show him that you have a lot of courage. In my book How to make someone fall in love with you i said that people are attracted to those who have great qualities that they themselves lack and to those who have similar traits to the ones they like about themselves
Turning obsession into need and desire: Once the person becomes obsessed with you the next step should be showing less often and agreeing with your best friends to talk about you positively in your absence in front of him/her. For example one of your friends might say "that guy is brilliant, no wonder all girls all chasing him" By doing so you aren't only providing social proof to the person but you are also igniting his passion as you are not always availble. Don't be predictable and declare your emotions right away because what's predictable is considered boring

At this point the person should have fell for you. Use this information wisely please.

How to attract people to you??

After using facebook for three years I realized that different people comment on my status update depending on the topic I am mentioning in the status

In the beginning I noticed that I am only attracting comments from close friends but as I started to mention completely different topics in my status I noticed that I am attracting people who were never attracted to my status before.

In my article Interpersonal attraction I explained how people get attracted to those who resonate with their beliefs, values and interests.

This brings us to a very important conclusion, in order to attract people to you you first need to understand how those people think, what their interests are and what do they believe in.

There is no general formula for attracting people

Based on these facts we can conclude that what would attract Sam won’t attract Bob and what Sarah would find interesting might be completely boring to Jessica.

Do you know how marketers attract people to buy their products? They first determine the type of people they want to attract then they customize their ads and campaigns to match the interests of those people.

In short, in order to attract people to you then you need to understand what makes them tick. I want you to remember how you met your current friends and what are the reasons that made you become friends

You will find that something was common between you both that motivated you to become closer to each other before you became good friends.

Practical steps for attracting people to you

So enough with theory and lets focus on the practical part, here is how to attract people to you:

Determine the type of people you want to attract: You need to know your target market just like marketers do
Understand them very well: You need to study those people well, understand how they think, behave and what they believe in (see Understanding people's personality)
Likes attract likes: As soon as you show signs of similarity those people you are after will get attracted to you

How to make people love you??

2knowmyself has always been the best place to learn the psychology of love and its main focus was teaching people how to make their partners love them. In this article I will talk about another topic that is related to love and that is as important as the ones I talked about before which is learning how to make people love you.
Whether you want to just make friends or to become popular in between them you must one very important skill, which is how to make people love you.

Why do we love certain people??

We don’t suddenly wake up one day then find out that we love a certain person but usually certain events trigger some thoughts in our minds that lead us to admire a certain person. The following are some of the reasons that are based on psychology and that explain why we fall in love with certain people:

Superior yet humble: Suppose you met a very popular person, who has a successful career and lots of fans yet you found that he was so humble, wont that make you at least admire him? Yes of course and admiration is the very step towards love. We tend to love people who have better qualities than us and who are in the same time humble

Complements that work: If a person has a self image problem or unsure of his looks then telling him that he look great will let him love you!! The point that lots of people don’t understand that complements become really effective when they touch an already existing emotional wound. If you complimented people that way they will surely love you.
Motivated to be with you: Love is nothing more than an emotion that motivates you to stay more with a person. Your mind always works for your best interests and will never motivate you to stay with a certain person before it makes sure that this person is of extreme importance to you. If you felt that someone is a God father, a person who teaches you skills that you need or someone who provides various benefits to your life then you will love him.

Support them when in need: Overly nice people are usually rejected because they appear to have no friends and appear desperate to win the love of anyone. In order to make people love you then you must support them when they are really in need and not all the time. If someone was stuck then you should offer him help at that moment because it’s the time he needs help the most.
Make him feel important: One of the best feelings you could experience is the ego boost you get when someone makes you feel important. If you made people feel their importance and made their achievements appear big even if they were small then most likely they will love. For example if a friend of yours was talking about a certain hobby he has like writing poems or playing guitar then give his story a big importance and make him feel that he is really talented.

How to Make People Admire Me???

Show them that you have what they lack: People usually admire others who have what they don't have. A person lacking self-confidence will usually admire and become attracted to a confident person. The weak is attracted to the strong and the coward is attracted to the courageous. Your goal should be finding out what your friends (or anyone else you want to admire you) lack. Then you should try to show them that you have that thing they miss. Even if you don't currently possess this thing,you should do your best to acquire it then show it to people and they will admire you
If you don’t know what they lack: The first point leads us to the second point. What if you don’t know what those people lack? That's not really a problem, because statistically most people are not brave, not very self-confident and not strong. All you have to do is build up these qualities in yourself then market yourself to others.

Success Success in any life field will probably let some people admire you since success is something that eludes many. You will also find some people becoming jealous of this success and you may make few enemies. But in the end you can't make people admire you without making some enemies along the way
Position yourself well in their minds What is the first thing that comes to someone’s mind when he hears your name? Will it be “respect” , “honesty”, “strength”, “will power” or will it be “loser”? Positioning yourself is simply identifying yourself with a certain image in the minds of others

Don’t Lose Your Identity

One very important thing you should take care of is not to lose your identity just to get accepted by others.

Don’t do things that are against your own beliefs and values just to get admired by others, because if you do, even if you managed to get millions of fans you will never feel self-confident.

2knowmyself is not a simple article website nor it’s a place where you will find shallow fixes, but it’s a place where you will find effective techniques that are backed by psychology and that are presented in obvious and understandable format.

TIPS ON MAKING PRESENTATIONS

2011-08-15T20:00:00.000-07:00

As part of an extended interview/selection centre you may be asked to give a short presentation. Usually you choose the topic from a list which may include your hobbies, a recent holiday, a current affairs topic or one of your achievements, or sometimes you may be asked to make a presentation on a case study you have previously done as part of the extended interview. The purpose is not to test your subject knowledge, but to see how well you can speak in public. Typically you will be asked to talk for five minutes, and will be given 20 or 30 minutes beforehand to prepare.

BASIC TIPS:

Dress smartly: don't let your appearance distract from what you are saying.
Smile. Don't hunch up and shuffle your feet. Have an upright posture. Try to appear confident and enthusiastic.
Say hello and smile when you greet the audience: your audience will probably look at you and smile back: an instinctive reaction.
Speak clearly, firmly and confidently as this makes you sound in control. Don't speak too quickly: you are likely to speed up and raise the pitch of your voice when nervous. Give the audience time to absorb each point. Don't talk in a monotone the whole time. Lift your head up and address your words to someone near the back of audience. If you think people at the back can't hear, ask them.
Use silence to emphasise points. Before you make a key point pause: this tells the audience that something important is coming. It's also the hallmark of a confident speaker as only these are happy with silences. Nervous speakers tend to gabble on trying to fill every little gap.
Keep within the allotted time for your talk.
Eye contact is crucial to holding the attention of your audience. Look at everyone in the audience from time to time, not just at your notes or at the PowerPoint slides. Try to involve everyone, not just those directly in front of you.
You could try to involve your audience by asking them a question.
Don't read out your talk, as this sounds boring and stilted, but refer to brief notes jotted down on small (postcard sized) pieces of card. Don't look at your notes too much as this suggests insecurity and will prevent you making eye contact with the audience.
It’s OK to use humour, in moderation, but better to use anecdotes than to rattle off a string of jokes.
Take along a wristwatch to help you keep track of time – the assessor may cut you off as soon as you have used the time allocated, whether or not you have finished.
It can be very helpful to practise at home in front of a mirror. You can also record your presentation and play it back to yourself: don't judge yourself harshly when you replay this - we always notice our bad points and not the good when hearing or seeing a recording or ourselves! Time how long your talk takes. Run through the talk a few times with a friend.
It's normal to be a little nervous. This is a good thing as it will make you more energised. Many people have a fear of speaking in public. Practising will make sure that you are not too anxious. In your mind, visualise yourself giving a confident successful performance. Take a few deep slow breaths before your talk starts and make a conscious effort to speak slowly and clearly. Research by T Gilovich (Cornell University) found that people who feel embarrassed are convinced their mistakes are much more noticeable than they really are: we focus on our own behaviour more than other people do and so overestimate it's impact. This is called the spotlight effect. If you make a mistake, don't apologise too much, just briefly acknowledge the mistake and continue on.
Build variety into the talk and break it up into sections: apparently, the average person has a three minute attention span!

Tips from Kent students making presentations at interviews:

Smile, make eye contact - the usual things. DON'T PANIC!
Take a hard copy of your presentation (printed-out) – they were impressed by this and it was a good idea as the laptop crashed anyway.
Before attending the assessment centre, details of a presentation which was to be delivered were sent to candidates.The subject of the presentation was very open-ended. Many chose to use PowerPoint, others on OHP. The presentation was given to one assessor: not in front of other candidates.
I was asked in advance to prepare a presentation entitled 'How can your degree contribute to the future prosperity of Thames Water?'. This was then presented to a panel of 6. They also asked several questions at the end of the presentation.
I practised the presentation a lot. I read aloud with slides as I would present it, until I was happy with it. After each “dress rehearsal” I would normally find something I needed to change. I ran through the whole presentation several times. When practising, use your notes and change slides as you would when you really present it. Make sure you practise your presentation as you will give it; Stand up, speak to the “room”, change slide etc.
I bought 3 “clip files”, one to hold my notes, and I printed out the slides for the selectors and put these in their own files. One selector used his copy to make notes during the presentation. I printed out a copy of my CV and my online application, to take with me (I read them when I was waiting in car and reception), I'm glad I did this as the selector had copies and referred to them when he asked questions
The selector said presentation was “good”; I must have done a lot of research and asked where I got all my information (company website, Wikipedia and Google).
Prepare thoroughly and ask the Careers Service to help you out because they are very helpful.

Answering Interview Questions

2011-08-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

Here are 11 of the most frequently asked interview questions. Make sure you take the time in advance of the interview to develop strong answers to each of them. It will be worth your time and energy.

1. Tell me about yourself.

The answer should give the interviewer a brief profile, history, 5 – 7 key sound bites, and should be answered in 5 – 7 minutes.

2. What are your strengths & weaknesses?

The answer should start with, “Let me answer in two ways, professionally and personally….” Strengths should include hard skills, soft skills and intrinsic skills. Although you should prepare three weaknesses, you should provide only one at a time, and use the others as back up if and only if asked for more. The weaknesses should always sound like strengths. e.g. – I can get overly passionate about my work at times.

3. What do you want to do?

Be clear yet realistic about your career goals and aspirations. e.g. - I want to become an expert business analyst.

4. Why are you interested in this job?
If you’ve done your homework researching the company and the job, answering this question should be a breeze. e.g. - I believe this job and/or company aligns well with my career values and would provide me with learning and development opportunities and experience.

5. What do you know about our company?

Be creative. Don’t simply repeat what you read about the company in the annual report. Research press releases and newspaper articles. If there is current topical information about the company in the press it will demonstrate you are interested and aware of what’s going on.

6. Why should we hire you?

The answer to this question makes a great closer if you are well prepared. e.g. - My strengths match up well to the job requirements. I have the knowledge and expertise to do the job well. I am highly motivated and I adapt easily and quickly to change and could be up to speed in no time.

7. What will your references say?

Determine in advance who your references will be. You should identify 6 - 10 references, i.e. - 2 subordinates, 2 bosses, 2 clients or suppliers, and 2 peers.

8. Why did you leave your previous employer?

Be honest without pointing fingers or blaming others. Make this about you. e.g. - I had an opportunity to advance my career, or I became aware of an opportunity that better matched my skills and experience.

9. What did you like most and least about your last position/company?

The key is to make what you liked least work for you. e.g. - I would have preferred to have more customer interaction.

10. Describe the characteristics of the ideal role for you.

This question is being asked to ensure you are a good match for the role you are being interviewed for. If you have researched the role and know you want it, then your characteristics should match up nicely. If they don’t–why did you agree to this interview?

11. The money question.

This doesn’t usually come up in the first interview. However, when it does come up you want to be prepared and be able to articulate your expectations.

Make sure you take the time in advance of the interview to develop some strong answers to each potential question. The better prepared you are to answer questions, the more likely you will make a strong impression on your interviewer. Be prepared and interview like a pro.

How to make your CV??

2011-08-10T08:19:00.000-07:00

You must be aware that a CV is the key that unlocks the gate of the company for you. You want the job, you are ready for it - but have your really got the right key? How do you make your CV an interesting document?

Always write a new CV for each job, specifically designing them to answer and highlight the relevant information about yourself with regards to the job requirements; never give a standard formal CV to one and all - in case you do, do not expect great results from such a delivery

Always draw the employers interest towards your best plus points which would show you as one of the most eligible for the job applied for

Collect enough information about the company and the job in question to know exactly what points the employers are looking for so you can match your best talents to those particular points of the requirement

Be aware of market trends regarding the latest technology, latest training, latest jargons that are relevant to the job. Use those in sufficient quantity to show you are abreast with the times

The formatting of the CV should be pleasant to the eyes: in alignment, typesetting (the font should preferably be Arial or Times New Roman with a size between 11 - 12 pt), margins, paper quality - each and every aspect should be chosen with the company and job you are applying for in mind. For example, for a computer professional a highly professional, latest technology and software CV would be very appropriate. For an advertising or copy writing job a colorful and innovative style would prove your credentials even before the employer read your CV.

Use the key aspects that employers are looking for correctly and throughout the CV - this will not only attract their attention, but also highlight your overall awareness

Keep the CV crisp and easy to read, using proper highlighting tactics for different areas you need to attract the employers attention to - often the employer has only a few brief seconds' time to glance through the CV and make his/her decision whether he/she is interested to know more or not

Keep it interesting with short sentences if you need to elaborate and with bullet points when you need to list - so a person can scan the contents without effort and also enjoy what they read

You need to build the expectations of the employer slowly but steadily so he/she will want to interview you; use the right formatting applicable to that company, region or country. Incorrect formatting often leads to rejection since the person cannot re-organize his/her way of thinking for a tailored CV

Highlight clearly what value you can add to the job and the company so they can appreciate the value addition you would bring in.

The above list is by no means exhaustive. Your CV should, generally speaking, invite the employer to know you better, create a good first impression, and open the possibility in their mind that you might be the right candidate for the job.

GENERAL ADVICE:

If you are a student, there is probably a career advice office in your place of study. They are there to help. They may have fact-sheets of advice on how to prepare a CV. Make full use of them. However, employers do not want to see CVs which are all written in exactly the same way. Therefore, do not just copy standard CV samples! Your CV should be your own, personal, and a little bit different.

A CV should be constructed on a word-processor (or at least typed), well laid out and printed on a good quality printer. Do use bold and/or underline print for headings. Do not use lots of different font types and sizes. You are not designing a magazine cover! Do use plenty of white space, and a good border round the page. Do use the spell-check on your computer! (Or check that the spelling is correct in some way) Consider using 'bullets' to start sub-sections or lists.

As you are using a computer or word-processor, you can easily 'customise' your CV if necessary, and change the layout and the way you write your CV for different employers.

Picture yourself to be a busy manager in the employer's office. He (or she) may have to read through 100 CVs in half an hour, and will have two piles - 'possibles' and 'waste-bin'.So yours must be easy to read, short and attractive.

There are two communication principles to remember:

*'Keep it simple,.

*'If they didn't hear it, you didn't say it'.

So, when you have written a first attempt at your CV, get someone else to look at it, and tell you how to make it better.
Ask your friends, your tutors or teachers, your career office, family friends in business. What you have written may seem simple and obvious to you, but not to an employer! Go through it again and again with a red pen, making it shorter, more readable, more understandable!

Before you start:

Sit down with a piece of paper. Look at the job(s) that you are aphe skills that the job requires. How much information do you have about the job description? plying for. Consider how your skills, education, and experience compare with t
Sometimes employers do not give enough information. Ask for more detail if needed. Spend time researching detail about the job(s) that interest you and information about the employer - their structure, products, successes, and approach - from:
Their own publicity, reports and publications
A library (business reports, trade papers)
College career office
Newspaper reports
The Internet

WHAT TO INCLUDE?

Personal details
Name, home address, college address, phone number, email address.
Do you have your own web homepage? Include it (if it's good!).

Education

Give places of education where you have studied - most recent education first. Include subject options taken in each year of your course. Include any special project, thesis, or dissertation work.

Pre-college courses (high school, etc.) should then be included, including grades. Subjects taken and passed just before college will be of most interest. Earlier courses, taken at say age 15-16, may not need much detail.

Work experience

List your most recent experience first. Give the name of your employer, job title, and very important, what you actually did and achieved in that job. Part-time work should be included.

Interests

They will be particularly interested in activities where you have leadership or responsibility, or which involve you in relating to others in a team. A one-person interest, such as stamp-collecting, may be of less interest to them, unless it connects with the work you wish to do. Give only enough detail to explain. (If you were captain of a sports team, they do not want to know the exact date you started, how many games you played, and how many wins you had! They will ask at the interview, if they are interested.) If you have published any articles, jointly or by yourself, give details.

If you have been involved in any type of volunteer work, do give details.

Skills

Ability in other languages, computing experience, or possession of a driving licence should be included

References

Usually give two names - one from your place of study, and one from any work situation you have had. Or if this does not apply, then an older family friend who has known you for some time. Make sure that referees are willing to give you a reference. Give their day and evening phone numbers if possible

Length

Maybe all you need to say will fit onto one sheet of A4. But do not crowd it - you will probably need two sheets. Do not normally go longer than this. Put page numbers at the bottom of the pages - a little detail that may impress.

Style

There are two main styles of CV, with variations within them.

Chronological

Information is included under general headings - education, work experience, etc., with the most recent events first.

Skills based

You think through the necessary skills needed for the job you are applying for. Then you list all your personal details under these skill headings. This is called 'targeting your CV', and is becoming more common, at least in UK.
But it is harder to do. So take advice on whether it is OK in your country and culture, and how to do it best.

Optional extra

It can be good to start with a Personal Profile/Objective statement. This is a two or three sentence overview of your skills, qualities, hopes, and plans. It should encourage the employer to read the rest.

Presentation

You may vary the style according to the type of job, and what is accepted in your country and culture. So a big company would normally expect a formal CV on white paper. But, just perhaps, a CV applying for a television production job, or graphic designer, could be less formal - coloured paper, unusual design, etc!Consider using a two column table to list your educational qualifications and courses taken.

Covering letter

When sending in a CV or job application form, you must include a covering letter. The purpose of the letter is:

To make sure that the CV arrives on the desk of the correct person. Take the trouble to telephone, and find the name of the person who will be dealing with applications or CVs, and address your letter, and envelope, to that person by name. (In a small company, it may be the managing director. In a medium size company, it may be the head of section/department. Only in a large company will there be a Personnel or Human Resource Department.)

To persuade the person to read your CV. So it must be relevant to the company, interesting, and well produced.

To clearly say what job you are interested in. If you are sending in a 'speculative' CV hoping that they may have work for you, explain what sort of work you are interested in. Do not say, 'I would be interested in working for Widgets Ltd', but say 'I believe my skills equip me to work in the product development department/accounts office/whatever'. When sending a speculative CV, you may try telephoning later to push your enquiry further.

To say why you want that particular job with that particular employer

To draw attention to one or two key points in the CV which you feel make you suited to that particular job with that particular employer.

Start your letter with an underline heading giving the job title you are interested in. (If you saw the job advertised, say where you saw it.)

Use the style and pattern of a business letter suited to your culture and country. Ask for advice about this. Try to find sample business letters so that you can follow style and layout.

Your career office may have a sheet about this, or show you a sample. The letter should only be on one side of A4 paper. It must be polite and easy to read.

Also mention when you are available for an interview. Ending your letter with a request for specific extra information may give a positive response.

Application forms

To apply for some jobs, the employer will send you an application form. You should still use a covering letter, and send your CV also unless told not to. Application forms need as much care to write as CVs. Remember the lessons earlier on this page. Here are some short guidelines:

Plan everything you will say on a separate piece of paper. Or make a photocopy of the form, and practice completing it first.
Only complete the real form when you are exactly sure what is the best thing to say.

It must be very neat and clear, and in black pen so that it can be easily photocopied.

You should 'angle' your answers to the company, in the same way as explained for your CV.

Do not say in answer to any question - 'see my CV'. They do not want to try to read both at the same time.

Take a photocopy to keep, so that you can remember exactly what you said. If you are called to interview, take this copy with you into the interview.

Other points

Keep copies of all letters, applications forms, and CVs sent, and records of telephone calls and names of those you spoke to.

The interview

Learning how to handle an interview is also very important. Your college career office or library may have a sheet or booklet on interview technique. Take as much advice as you can. Try and 'practice' an interview. Ask a friend, or college teacher, to pretend to interview you.

Be positive, and confident (if you can!) but not over-confident. Be well-informed about the company, its record and achievements, about the job and why you want it. Have questions ready to ask about the company and the job. If you are not accepted, some employers may be kind enough to look at your interview notes, and explain to you how you could improve your CV and interview technique. Ask - you can only be refused, and it shows you are prepared to develop and learn; they may make a note about you for future reference.

Four Steps To Know A Person Completely

2011-08-02T15:04:00.000-07:00

In our life, what is more important than knowing people who matters to us most? The number of such people may not be very high, yet they influence our lives almost completely. If we can know their minds and thoughts better, there is no doubt that we not only make our life better but also the life of the people around us. It is no secret that we can get what we want in life only by the proper understanding of the people. In our personal life, we can bring peace and happiness only by understanding our loved ones. In our professional life we can motivate our colleagues and team to achieve the goal of the organizations only by properly understanding them.

Yet understanding people is the most difficult knowledge to learn in real life. This knowledge is not taught in any school or college. Our understanding of man based on the bookish knowledge derived from the books of psychology, management, religion, culture etc. fails to help us in understanding the real life people. Which theory is to be applied on a person, when every person is different and every theory is different? Theories are much easier to use in material domain as every atom, every molecule and every material behaves in identical manner. How to deal with man, when every one is different and no two people are similar?

It gives us no respite, to know a person merely in terms of probability or statistic when the person is too important to you. You can't be satisfied to know that if you scold your children, he is 56% likely to perform poorly in exam. However, if you do not scold the child, his chances of poor performance are increased to 60%. These researches can't help you in exercising of either option. You are scared of using either option as you want your child to improve. You do not have thousands of children that you can be satisfied with a statistical probability. After all in the first case the chances of failure is 44% while in the second case, it is 40%. You have only one child and you want him to improve. You want the right solution and not a random solution.

The solution of all our problems lies in knowing the person as accurately as one knows himself. If that can be possible then you can be almost absolutely sure that you will get the desired result. Are there really such methods of knowing a person so completely?

One Person Four Personalities

We all bear many hats in our life. We are the simplest creature on earth yet the most complex human being. Who are we?

We are a different person at our home. We are so simple at our home that even our child knows us well. We play with them, enjoy the simple games and become a child itself. Our education, profession and knowledge do not seem to influence our dear ones like our children, souse, parents and even our dogs. They all seems to know us very well.

We have a different personality with our friends. They too know us well. We all know the mind of all our friends. The older is the friend; the better is our understanding of him. Friends not only know our personality but they become the integral part of our personality. After all it is wisely said "a man is known by the company he keeps". Thus, your friends are often a close refection of your personality.

Yet we are quite different on our job. The same person becomes different when performing his job. We are completely different person as a cop, philosopher, teacher, politician or a sweeper. Our actions and thoughts are shaped according to our job. There is a great similarity in all people of similar profession. All cops have similar traits, so have the traits of all teachers.

Finally, we are part of the society, nation and the world. We are affected by every thing that is happening anywhere in the society or the world. A man of India is different than a man of China or USA. A man of twenty first century is different than a man of tenth century.

However, man in not merely only a body i.e. the material entity but he also has mind, soul and spirit. The complete personality of the person can be known only by knowing his body, mind, soul and spirit. Once you know all four, there is nothing left in the person to be known as he has become your extended Self by the presence of the common spirit. The methods to know these four aspects of man have requires following four steps.

The Physical Self

The body of the person is the most obvious representation of his or her personality. Body represents the physical self of the person as an animal and represents the basic instincts or the natural instinct of the person. The first distinction in the body emerges from the sex of the person. The bodies of the males and females are as different as their basic instinct. The basic instincts of males and females are quite similar across the world. So if you know one, you know all. The second important thing which the body represents is the raw passion or sensual desire of the person. A man with uncontrolled passion would have uncontrolled, fat and disproportionate body while a man who has disciplined and controlled his desire would have a fitter and proportionate body. The movement of the body and limbs too represents the natural personality of the person. This is often called as "body language". A restless person must have a restless body and peaceful person would have a peaceful body.

The Mental Self

The mind of the person is the most important attribute in his professional life. The mind of the person is shaped on the basis of the education and experience of the person in his lifetime. One can know the mind of the person from his educational qualification, experience and profession experience as all goes into shaping the mind of the person. The mind of the person is the source of the reason and logic used by the person to interact with the world. One can also understand the mind of the person in the course of discussion and communication i.e. the way he answers or responds to your logic and reasons.

The Intellectual Self

The body, senses and mind apparently seem to be independent from each other. It is also possible to measure these attributes of human personality by suitable instruments and tests. Yet they are all controlled by the Soul of the person which represents the intelligence of the person.

The mind and body of the person are changing every moment. A person is happy in one movement but get worried on the very next moment. A person may be active in one moment but may become inactive due to illness or hunger or tiredness few moments later. Thus our assessment of the person may be totally wrong if it is based merely on the knowledge of physical and mental self. We have to know the force behind the body and mind which does not change.

The senses are superior to the body. Above the senses is the mind, above the mind is the soul (individual intelligence) and above the soul is God (Universal Intelligence).

Knowing the intelligence self of the person is, therefore, extremely important as it changes only little over a lifetime. Just like one can know the tree from its fruits, same is true for intelligence which controls the body and the mind. If a person speaks evil for everybody, it shows that his core (intelligence) too is evil. Jesus said, (Mathew 7: 15-20)

The real nature of the person is intelligence of the person. Body and mind are merely the tools in the control of the intelligence self. Just like a fire can be used to cook food or burn people, so does the body and mind can be used for good or bad purposes by the intelligence? The intelligence of the person has to be understood by the synthesis of the diverse traits and actions of the personality of the person using our own intelligence and reasoning.

The Spiritual Self

It is believed in scriptures and philosophies that every living being has the spark of the God or Spirit. No person is, therefore, independent from other beings as everyone is connected by the common thread of this spirit. It is due to the common spirit that we cry when we see people in misery and fell happy when give happiness to others. It is due to the spiritual self, that we connect ourselves with the rest of the world and enjoys or feel pain in our life.

The spiritual self of the person is the non-material aspect of the human personality. It is best known to our loved ones, when there are no material rewards or punishment for our actions. In your home, you get no reward or punishment in being nice or nasty to your children, your wife or your parents and elders. Yet the expression of our spiritual self is the sour of all our happiness and pain.

A spiritual person, therefore, highly value the nonmaterial realities of life and seek happiness in selfless activities. We are all spiritual to some extent else we can never get happiness in our life. If you donate one billion dollars to your computer or a lathe machine, it can never feel any happiness. Only a man can feel happiness even by wealth since he can use the wealth for distribution to others selflessly which , makes him and others happy.

The understanding of the spiritual self is purely based on intuition and requires no knowledge or reasoning. It is similar to the understanding that a child or a dog has to their parents or their master. The sign of spirituality is the peace, love and happiness. So when you meet a person and feel more peaceful, loving and happy, the person must be highly spiritual. You can therefore expect help and compassion from such person. If the feeling is otherwise, you have met a materialistic and devilish person, who can only seek material favour from you or seek pleasure in your pain.

The Complete Knowledge of A Person

Only by knowing all four aspect of a person which represents the body, mind, soul and spirit of the person, you can understand the real person. Such understanding of a person requires not only the logical mind but also the use of your basic instinct , intelligence , intuition and experience. You can then know the complete person using your intuition and know the real thoughts of the person. Once you have understood the thoughts and soul of a person, what is left unknown about the person.

5 Ways on How to Become Successful in Your Life

2011-08-02T14:55:00.000-07:00

1. You need to relax

Relaxation exercises range from traditional forms of meditation that have their roots in Eastern cultures to modern systematic relaxation exercises that have been scientifically developed and are more suited to the western way of thinking. They help to reduce the intensity of stress symptoms (headaches, migraines, anxiety, insomnia, etc.) but also in preparing the individual to recognize the symptoms from their initial stages. Their common characteristic is that the person with constant practice can acquire the habit of thinking and acting more calm and functional. Acting more calm can help you think and concentrate better and will help you to become successful in your life.

2. You need to use your time efficiently

People complain that they do not have enough time available. But more often the problem is not the time in quantity but in the way we manage our time. Important elements in proper time management are the do-to lists, prioritization, and the ability to focus on one task at a time, the ability to recognise and set targets. With proper time management you will have more time to think and plan how to become successful in your life.

3. Demanding Behaviour

Demand behaviour techniques aim to strengthen the capacity of individuals to defend their rights without denying the rights of others and without being aggressive or insulting. In this way you can face the appropriate interpersonal relations and also to learn how to say "no" where appropriate and when necessary, to express your feelings rather than been passive and inactive. Learning to sometimes say no will help you decide what is best for you and you can change your life by being selective on what to do and on what no to do.

4. You need to learn how to solve your problems

Being able to solve your problems is a major step on becoming successful. Problems are present in daily life and if you find ways to solve them then this will really change your life. Some techniques for problem management are:

1) Definition of the problem
2) Alternative solutions to the problem
3) Choosing the right strategy to address the problem
4) Proper design of the selected strategy (where, when, how)
5) Implementation of the solution
6) Evaluation

The problems never stop! The basic rule is this: instead of facing problems «automatically» with our usual style and approach, to begin to look reasonable and separately each problem, create alternatives and choose the best solution, according to the importance of the problem and our experience.

5. You need to be dynamic

In order to have a positive and dynamic presence you need to be able to frankly and directly express your feelings and ideas, both negative and positive. To do this you must create a good contact with yourself and with your feelings!

In conclusion, it must be noted that there are a lot of ways on how to become successful. This tips only server as a quick guide to help you get started. The whole process is difficult and sometimes it takes time. This is not always something bad. Instead, it helps us be alert, can warn us against possible dangers and helps us prepare better.

The Top 10 Ways to Start Living Your Life

Life either happens to us, or we take hold of life and live it. Here are 10 Ways to get a life and start living it.

Give yourself permission to claim your life. That’s right — permission. You’re the only one who can decide you are in charge of your life. Even though it feels like you’re not supposed to do so, turn off the internal editors, the old tape recordings, the “shoulds, have tos, and musts”, and the rules that didn’t come from you.
Define what living means to you. It’s not as hard as it sounds. Just picture yourself at the end of your life looking back. What words would you want to describe how you lived your life and who you are as a person?
Stop living in the future. Every time you think “someday” or “when I have time I will,” stop. Ask yourself, “Why not now?” Think about this sentence, “I always wanted to, but never did.” Start doing the things you always planned to do. Choose your life every morning. Plan one thing you will do that day to feel alive.
Surround yourself with people who enjoy living. They’ve obviously discovered how to have a life and live it. Why not hang with the pros?
Lay down your pain and your anger. Carrying them around makes living harder and less fun. It doesn’t bring anything, and it steals a lot.
Let the losers win. Don’t argue about things that you don’t care about. Unless there’s some real threat, let the folks who have something to prove, prove what they need to. Why waste your living time trying to fix what’s wrong with them?
Create energy. Jump to forgiveness and love, then figure things out.Most conclusions we jump to are not only wrong, they’re negative. Negative conclusions lead us to prepare a defense. Being on the defensive isn’t living. It’s hiding from life.
Learn the physical symptoms of when your head and heart become disconnected. We know when we’re having a knee jerk reaction, when we’re feeling sorry for ourselves, and when we’re being blind to people’s feelings. We can remember how it felt physically while we were behaving badly. Get to know those symptoms, and you can stop the behavior. Living life will feel a whole lot safer because you won’t be in danger of shooting yourself in the foot.
Take small risks that push your boundaries in every way. The joy of life is packed in learning that matches our skill set. When we stretch just a bit intellectually, physically, emotionally, we grow. Living is growing. Even your cells know that.
Value and protect the people and the places you care about. A job isn’t a life. It’s just a part of one. Let the people you care about come first, and let everyone know that you do. Re-read numbers 1 and2
10 Powerful Success Strategies
If you’re serious about creating lasting and significant change in your world – as opposed to merely thinking and talking about it for another year – there are a few things you might want to do in order to help make those intentions a reality…
1. Know what success is. If you don’t know what success is (for you), how can you possibly create it? Success is different things for different people and one person’s success (a pregnancy for example) might be another person’s catastrophe. That’s because success (or failure) is not so much about the situation, circumstance, event or outcome as it is about what that “thing” means to the person in the middle of it. In order to create success, you must first define it – and far too many people haven’t. Be very clear about what you want and don’t want for your life. Clarity produces excitement. Excitement produces momentum. Momentum produces behavioural change. Behavioural change produces different results and eventually, the internal vision becomes an external reality. Giddy-up.
2. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Some people will live a life of second-best, of compromise and of under-achievement simply because they are (1) controlled by fear (2) always looking for the magic pill or shortcut and (3) not prepared to do the tough stuff. People who always take the easy option are destined for mediocrity. At best. Constantly avoiding the discomfort means constantly avoiding the lessons and the personal growth. Pain is a great teacher. Not always what we want, but sometimes what we need.
3. Seek to be righteous, not right. The need to be “right” speaks of arrogance, insecurity, ego and stupidity. It’s also synonymous with failure. The person who constantly needs to be right will miss out on much of what life has to teach him and alienate himself from others. Arrogance repels, humility attracts.
4. Seek respect, not popularity. It’s been said that our nature is “who we are” and our reputation is who people think we are. When the two are synonymous, we’re usually on the right path.
5. Embrace mess. To embrace mess is to embrace life because life is messy, unpredictable, unfair, uncertain, lumpy and bumpy. So get used to a little chaos. Embrace it even. While others succumb to the messiness and unpredictability of the human experience, make a conscious choice to be the calm in the chaos.
6. Don’t become your parents. Or your boss. Or anyone but you. The enormity of conformity is a problem for the wanna-be success story. Sure, your parents are great and by all means respect them, love them and learn from them, but please don’t become them; that’s just plain ugly and a little bit tragic. Listen to, and learn from other people, but think, act and decide for yourself. And no, you don’t need anyone’s approval or permission; you’re big now. It’s okay.
7. Use more of what you already have. Imagine what you could achieve if you took all the knowledge, intelligence, opportunities, time, skill and talent that you currently have and absolutely milked it. What if you already have more than enough talent to become wildly successful? Well, you do. There go the excuses. And that voice that’s telling (some of) you right now that you don’t have what it takes to become successful, that’s called fear. Not logic, fear. Not reality, fear. Unless of course, you allow that to become your reality. Be mindful that the voice in your head (the very loud, annoying and persistent one) is rarely a reflection of your potential and mostly a manifestation of your insecurity. And no, you’re not alone in your self-doubt; it’s a universal condition. Many people fail, not because they don’t have what it takes, but because they don’t use what they already have. Successful people typically don’t have more innate potential, luck, time or opportunity than the next person, but they consistently find a way to use much more of what they have at their disposal. While the majority are rationalising their lack of decision making and action taking, these guys are finding a way to get the job done. The question is not “how much ability do you have, but how much will you use?”.
8. Be an innovator, not an imitator. Not too many sheep succeed. Baaah. Sometimes it’s a good idea to build your own team rather than join someone else’s. Don’t let your fear stand in the way of your potential to create, innovate or lead. When I set up Australia’s first commercial personal training centre, most people told me it wouldn’t work. Glad I didn’t listen.
9. Do what most won’t. If you want to achieve what most people won’t (happiness, joy, calm, wealth, optimal health, balance) then don’t do what they do. If you want to be like the majority, then do what they do. Producing different results comes from doing different things. Simple really. And effective. Most people won’t persevere, won’t finish what they start, won’t find the good, won’t do what it takes, won’t question their long-held beliefs, won’t be solution-focused, won’t do what scares them and won’t “be the change” they want to see in their world. Choose to be different.
10. Be like water. Powerful. Gentle. Adaptable. Ever-changing. Being static in a dynamic world – like the one you and I inhabit – is a recipe for disaster. If you can’t adapt, you can’t succeed. Our practical, three dimensional reality, and everything in it, is in a constant state of transition, while some of us are in a constant state of “same”. Statues don’t succeed, they just get crapped on.

How to Convince Someone to Believe in Something?

2011-08-02T14:08:00.000-07:00

Psychology of Convincing Someone

Convincing someone to believe you is all about convincing him to either accept a new belief or update his knowledge or beliefs about an existing idea.

Not all people will accept your ideas from the first attempt but the good news is that there are rules that if used correctly will increase your chance of convincing other people to believe you.

If the person you want to convince has prior knowledge or experience about what you're trying to convince him with then your primary goal is to shake his beliefs and to proof him wrong and after that you can present him with your own idea.

If the person does not have a previous idea about that thing then you can just start by telling him about your beliefs right away.

Why Can't I Convince Other People?

Before learning how to convince someone to believe in something or to accept your idea you should first know the reasons that generally make people oppose ideas and new beliefs:

Belief Conflict: If one of your friends told you that the earth does not orbit the sun, what will be your response? Of course you wont believe him since you already know that all nine planets orbit the sun. You already have an opposing belief and that's why you didn't believe him. So the first obstacle facing your friend when trying to convince you to believe in his idea is your belief system.
Knowledge: The greater a person’s knowledge about something the harder will it be to convince him. What do you think will happen if you tried to convince an astronomy professor that the sun is only 1000 km away from the earth? He'll never believe you because he already has deep knowledge about the subject and he might have scientific proves that go against your claims. Thus the second obstacle to convincing people is their level of knowledge about the topic. As you may have already noticed, the first two obstacles (old beliefs and knowledge) can be grouped under one thing which is having another belief that contradicts with yours.
Skeptics: Skeptics are people who doubt almost everything and everyone. They never accept anything unless they are truly sure of it. If you are dealing with a skeptic person then this will add further difficulties.

How to Convince Someone to Believe in Something

Based on the previous obstacles we can come up with counter techniques that can highly increase the probability of your success when trying to convince someone. Those techniques are:

Shaking His Existing Belief: The more assertive and confident you sound while talking about your belief the higher will be the possibility of shaking the other person's belief about that thing (provided that he does not have much knowledge about it). Speak in a confident way, useconfident body language gestures, use a confident tone of voice and you will find that the other person is starting to doubt his own beliefs.
Undermine His Knowledge Base: Even if you were confident while talking the other person's knowledge base could act as a barrier to convincing him with your ideas. That’s why convincing a person that you know more than him is more important than trying to convince him of your idea itself. If you managed to convince the person that you know more than he him then you will become a trusted source for his subconscious mind and it will become much easier for you to program him (see subconscious mind programming for more information on this). You don’t need magic to do this, you just have to be ready with proper documentation and solid facts. The more clear your evidence is and the more you will be able to undermine his own knowledge base the easier will it become to convince him with your point of view.(See the power of knowledge in negotiations).
Provide Proofs for the Skeptic: Contrary to common beliefs skeptics can believe in anything provided that you give them clear evidence to support your idea. The more clues you can provide to strengthen your argument the less skeptic the other person will be and the easier will it be to convince him.
Program His Subconscious Mind: The subconscious mind can be programmed by repetition: the more a statement is repeated the more it can shake an already existing belief provided that 1) either the conscious mind is absent or 2) that the source of the idea is trusted. For more information on programming someone’s mind check out this guide. You can even program someone to fall in love with you, in my book, how to make someone fall in love with you i pointed out how can repeating certain words or phrases result in making someone fall in love with you. Its no magic, beliefs are formed by repetition and if you managed to repeat a certain belief enough times, the other person may actually start to believe in it too
Believing in Your Idea: Did you notice that when a person strongly believes in an idea he usually manages to convince others to believe in it too? The entrepreneur who always believed that his idea is worthy usually succeeds in building a very good business. The more you believe in your idea the more confident and convincing you will sound when talking about it.
Repetition and the Law of Attraction: You can program someone’s mind over time. Each time you meet him talk a little about your idea then leave him. The phrases you have said to him will not be removed by his subconscious mind but instead they will be stored until something reinforces them. For example, if you kept telling your friend that he is a poor driver, he may not believe you until he happens to have an accident. When this happens he will remember all of your comments about his driving skills and will be convinced that you are right
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How to convince people by using the law of attraction??

every critical comment gets stored in your subconscious mind

Every scene that you see, every word that you hear and everything that happens around you is not discarded but instead it gets stored in your subconscious mind and this includes the critical comments you do received throughout your life.

How to use this information to convince someone

You can use this information to convince someone to believe in your ideas, dream or in yourself. All you will have to do is saw your comment in an assertive way and in a situation where the person is highly receptive.

Although this comment may do nothing at the current moment it will get stored in his subconscious mind where it will be recalled later.

Later on, in a different place and in a different situation say a different comment that is strengthens the same idea you want to convince him with. It will even be better if you can get someone else to do it for you.

By saying different comments in different situations they will get accumulated in the subconscious mind of that person. These comments will slowly erode his own opposing beliefs about that thing. yes it may not convince him at the moment but it will make him much more ready to get convinced.

Any small event could finish the task

If that person you were trying to convince was alone and if any small event happened to him that put additional weight to your idea then his beliefs may change and he may be convinced about your idea without your intervention.

And even if he didn’t believe in your idea still you reduced his strong resistance and made him reach a sate of confusion where he is much more receptive to your future suggestions.

final words about convincing someone

If you couldn’t convince someone from the first attempt then don’t be sad. Your efforts were not lost but it was stored in his subconscious mind.

The next time you talk to him about the same thing you will be resuming your work. Continue doing that gradually until you succeed in convincing the person with your beliefs.

2knowmysef is not a complicated medical website nor it’s a boring online encyclopedia but it’s a place where you will find simple, to the point and effective information that is presented in a simple and obvious way. If you think that this is some kind of marketing hype then see what other visitors say about 2knowmyself.The book How to make someone fall in love with you was released by 2knowmyself.com; the book will dramatically increase your chance of letting someone fall in love with you.

10 tricks How to convince anyone to do anything?

Here are 10 tricks to help you master the art of persuasion (which equals more money):

1. Start Things Off

People are more likely to be persuaded to complete a task if it’s already been started for them. For example, on my “Brand Yourself” page, Bruce Deery was the first to brand or promote himself, which will make it easier for others to follow his lead.

2. Help People Imagine

Imagine how relieved you’ll be if you get the job done before going to bed? Don’t pass off tomorrow what you can do today. This tactic paints a vivid picture in the person’s mind of the pleasure if she/he does — or the pain if she/he doesn’t — do what they set to complete.

3. Stress Their Loss

This is huge with internet marketing. We’re more persuaded by the thought of losing something than the thought of gaining (i.e. “this product will never be released in the future, obtain it NOW”).

4. Give First

People are instinctively trained to return a favor. And, thus, think of doing the initial good deed as an investment (promote other people, give advice without asking for coaching fees, etc ) in turn, people will feel compelled to do things for you.

5. Over-ask

People feel a sense of guilt when they refuse a request. If the second request is something they can afford to comply with, then typically they’ll grab the opportunity (i.e. adding a pop up on your website when one decides to leave without purchasing your offer)

6. Make Them Laugh

If I can get you to laugh with me, you in turn like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And if I can make you laugh at particular points I make, by laughing you acknowledge it as true. People generally laugh at things that identify with them. This backs the whole “Know – Like – Trust” theory!

7. Use “We”

The use of “we” immediately conveys a sense of belonging, commonality, support and community. (i.e. we’ve worked through this before; we can work through it again)

8. Majority Rules

When persuading, point to evidence of what others are doing that is similar to what you are trying to persuade the other person to do. For example, if promoting a product show feedback from others who have used the product and received stellar results (i.e. “Social Proof”).

9. Be Positive

People are more likely to be persuaded to behave in certain ways if they have acted that way before — and it has been noticed. No one wants to work with negativity or pessimistic people, always convey an uplifting and encouraging demeanor.

10. Have Good Timing

Sometimes it’s not what you ask for but when you ask for it.. People are more persuaded immediately after thanking someone, and they are at their most persuasive after being thanked, so it’s the perfect time to ask for a favor

How to be a leader??

2011-08-02T13:49:00.000-07:00

A profession is more than a job -- it is a community and a culture. Professions serve society by pooling knowledge among their members and creating incentives to synthesize new knowledge. They also help their members to build networks, find jobs, recruit staff, find collaborators, and organize around the issues that affect them. In a world without change or innovation, professions would not be so necessary. But in a world where change and innovation are ever more intense, every occupation needs more of the institutions and culture of traditional professions such as law, medicine, engineering, education, librarianship, public administration, business, and architecture.
Every profession has leaders. In a formal sense, the elected officers of a professional society are the leaders of that profession. Because a profession is fundamentally about knowledge, however, the true leaders of a profession are the thought leaders: the individuals who synthesize the thinking of the profession's members and articulate directions for the future. Sometimes a profession will elect its thought leaders to official positions. But often the thought leaders prefer to lead through writing and speaking, cutting-edge projects, conference organizing, and dialogue. Leadership means both talking and listening, both vision and consensus. A leader builds a web of relationships within the profession and articulates the themes that are emerging in the thinking of the profession as a whole.
In a knowledge-intensive world of ceaseless innovation and change, I assert, every professional must be a leader. This is not a universally popular idea. Some people say, "leadership is fine for others, but I just want a job". I want to argue that it doesn't work that way. The skills that the leader exercises in building a critical mass of opinion around emerging issues are the same skills that every professional needs to stay employed at all. In the old days the leadership-averse could hide out in bureaucracies. But as institutions are turned inside out by technology, globalization, and rising public and client expectations of every sort, the refuges are disappearing. Every professional's job is now the front lines, and the skills of leadership must become central to everyone's conception of themselves as a professional.
But how? It is well-known that simply declaring yourself a leader will not cause anyone to follow you. The process of becoming a leader doesn't happen overnight, but it is perfectly methodical. Here is a six-step recipe. Things aren't really this rigid in practice, but you'll have no trouble varying the recipe once you get used to it.
(1) Pick an issue. You need an issue that the profession as a whole is not really thinking about, but which is going to be the center of attention in five years. The issue could be technical, strategic, managerial, policy-related, or all of the above. It could be a problem or an opportunity or both. It could be a new method or a whole new area of practice. It should be fairly specific, though, and should directly address the day-to-day work of people in some segment of the profession. The word "technology", for example, is too big to be a workable issue. You can find an issue in several ways:

(a) Talk to dynamic practitioners and notice a pattern in what they are saying.(b) Talk to people at your school. One purpose of a professional school is to be the early-warning system for the profession -- the surveillance center where emerging issues are articulated, researched, and taught. Many issues that you take for granted as lecture and paper topics in your classes actually represent the farthest horizon so far as most practitioners are concerned. Who to talk to? Start with the people who are excited. They are excited because they have located a high-quality opportunity to do well by doing good.
(c) Talk to people in other professions to find issues that are going to be important for your profession. This could mean simply asking them what issues are important right now, or it could mean explaining the situation in your profession to them in detail and asking them to instruct you. For example, the people who first applied ideas from statistics to computer science became leaders, as did the people who first applied economic analysis to law. Alternatively, identify distinctive intellectual resources that you already bring with you, or that you are highly motivated to learn, and that people aren't really applying in your profession yet. Ransack your field to identify issues that you can transform by thinking about them in that way.
(d) Pick a topic within your profession that you would really hope to be working on someday, and read books and articles about that topic from a variety of other fields, professional and nonprofessional, even if they use different language for it. Be weirded out by the completely different coordinate systems that different fields use. Shake yourself loose from the accreted layers of presuppositions and assumptions that your profession has built up around the topic. Then set an agenda for reinventing that topic using language that people in your profession can understand.
(e) Redescribe one of your profession's existing functions in an abstract way, and then identify several other activities to which the same abstraction could be applied -- including activities that are currently performed by other professions. For example, library cataloguers are really specialists in "metadata services", and many other professions (e.g., publishing) are doing a bad job of things because they lack a serious professional understanding of metadata.
(f) Talk to the people who use your profession's products and services. And talk especially to the ones who are leaders in their own field, so that their situation helps you to predict the future of that field in general. How are their needs changing? What new needs will they have in five years? What are their values and long-term goals? What would it be like for your profession to be dramatically more useful to them? Is your profession really gearing up to maintain and expand its relevance? Now talk to them again. This time, tell them some of the surprising new ways in which your profession might be able to help them in the future, and invite them to think with you about how their own field might be improved as a result.
(g) Learn the arguments that your field's current leaders employ at budget time. Then devise some new arguments that the people with the money will understand. Use these arguments to start conversations with knowledgeable colleagues about what arguments the relevant people can in fact understand. Try to identify elements of their thinking that you hadn't previously known about. Then convert what is valid in their thinking into issues for the field. Once you stop thinking of the money people as opaque authorities, you will more readily notice opportunities to expand your profession.
(h) Assemble a group of ten other change-minded students in your school and spend two hours brainstorming at least a hundred new ways that your profession could provide people with useful products and services. Assume the technology of ten years from now. All of your ideas should be clear departures from past practice. Doing this in a group is useful because everyone's surprising ideas can help everyone else to think in original directions. Then whittle down your list to the few that are both radical and plausible.
(i) Draw on your own experience, values, and intellect to articulate an issue that nobody else is talking about. Maybe you are simply anticipating concerns that everybody else will be discovering independently in a few years, or maybe you are building something new that wouldn't have happened without you. In either case, if the issue is going to be important to your profession in five years, you'll be doing a public service by getting out in front of it.
(j) Cultivate your powers of being interested in things. Every time you succeed in becoming interested in something new, do three things: Google it, type it into the article indexes for your profession at the library Web site and read a few articles about it, and then have a conversation with someone who knows about it. A good way to convene such a conversation is, "I'd like you ask your advice". Do this for a year. Note that you are now interested in several important things that nobody else is thinking about. Assume that others in your generation will find them interesting once you explain them.
(k) Looking at your profession as it stands today, and perhaps by talking to some of its newer and more iconoclastic members, identify an aspect of current practice that is archaic. Pose the question of what the ideal reform would be.
(l) Write down all the difficulties that seem to recur in your experience of practicing your profession -- anything, however small, that often seems to go wrong. Or else become an anthropologist for a day, and hang out with some people -- students, immigrants, new customers, etc -- who are dealing with your profession for the first time. Experience consternation at the difficulties they run into. Collect a dozen difficulties. Then start making theories of what causes those difficulties. Big, pretentious theories are best, especially if they exaggerate how important the difficulties you've listed really are. Elaborate your theories in your notebook for a few more months until they are really grandiose. Then use the theories to start generating ideas for innovation and change in your profession. Many of your ideas will have advantages aside from fixing the difficulty that inspired them. Consult with dynamic people to determine which of these ideas (not the theories, obviously, but the ideas) might be plausible as issues for the long haul.
(m) Ask yourself, what is the big fashion in my profession right now, or in my specific area? Fashions usually edit reality, leaving out important issues that will come roaring back sooner or later. Don't be a reactionary by trying to roll back the current fashion to something that came before. Instead, identify those elements of the current fashion that are valuable, and articulate an agenda that remixes those elements with the elements that are being left out.
(n) Learn about a new family of technologies that will have great consequences for practice in your field once it becomes widely available. By a "family" I mean a broad category of technologies such as nanotechnology or grid computing around which new institutions of research and application are forming, rather than a single invention that may or may not build a critical mass of acceptance. In general, build yourself an intelligence system for learning what new research is in the pipeline, so that you can formulate the issues that will become important once the new methods become practical. If you're not interested in technologies, then try government policies instead. Government policies have an immense and generally non-obvious impact on society, thus creating opportunities for people who are aware of them. Keep yourself apprised, therefore, of the pipeline of new policies that fall even remotely within your field of competence, including seemingly small and obscure ones whose significance no one else recognizes, and identify the ones whose impacts are going to be issues for your field.
(o) Look at the history of your profession, identify a force that has been operating continuously to change how the profession works, and imagine what will happen as that force becomes even stronger in the future. A trend that senior practitioners have observed in the course of their careers, for example, usually reflects a force that can be expected to intensify. If the force is positive, spell out its consequences and the practical agenda they entail. If it is negative, issue a call to arms and define a viable alternative. If it is complicated, begin sorting the good from the bad.
(p) Look at the way that work in your profession is evolving, and see if a new "class" is emerging. This might happen, for example, if a new division of labor is creating a group of workers who have common interests that differ from the interests of people who are doing other parts of the work. If the new group hasn't yet developed a collective identity and collective institutions, then you can help by articulating the issues that affect them.
(q) Look at the different sorts of people who are entering the profession in contrast to twenty years ago. What interests, values, and concerns distinguish them from older generations? If you discover that senior and junior members of the profession regard quite different issues as important, and if the junior professionals' issues have not been properly studied, help articulate the agenda for the rising generation.
(r) Identify an issue that has arisen somewhat independently in different organizations or different countries, but where the relevant practitioners haven't yet formed themselves into a network, much less an interest group. More generally, discover two or more groups that ought to know one another but don't, and identify an issue around which the groups ought to be comparing notes.
(s) Identify an intellectual or political trend in the broader society that you generally agree with, and ask what its implications would be in the practice of your profession.
(t) Identify something that people in your field currently do in a haphazard way, perhaps because it is new. Put an impressive name on it, so that people interpret every example of it as particular species of some genus. Interview the people who are doing it, and make a list of issues that pools together everything they are thinking about when they do it. The result will be a theory that helps them to do it in a rational way. If your theory can be summarized in terms of a new idea, all the better.
(u) Work for a dynamic innovator -- that is, not someone who is famous for having dynamically innovated twenty years ago, but someone who is dynamically innovating right now. Learn how it is done. Then go out on your own. Suitable issues are really quite plentiful, and new ones will be easy to come up with once you once you start to understand the world in the way a dynamic innovator does.
(v) Collect people in your profession who have novel ideas. Combine their ideas with your own in novel ways.
(w) Analyze the processes by which people in your profession learn new things and use them to do their work better. Are these processes rational? What would better processes be like?
(x) Identify five important trends in the world in general, e.g., "China is becoming integrated with other countries" or "computers will be a thousand times more powerful within twenty years". What opportunities and challenges do these trends create for your profession?
(y) Ask yourself, what is the real purpose of my profession, or my particular subfield? What would be a completely different way to achieve that purpose? Brainstorm a list of twenty ways in which work in your profession can be changed to connect it more directly with its real purpose.
(z) Having done many of the exercises listed above, try to characterize your personal thinking style -- or, more precisely, your issue-discovering style. For example, you might discover best when immersed in a crowd of challenging people, or by trawling through large amounts of raw information, or by drawing diagrams. Then invent some methods that really amplify what works for you.

You will probably want to apply several of these methods, working back and forth between them until you have a clear picture of the issues that are emerging. Whenever you can articulate a candidate issue, ask people what counterarguments a tough audience would raise, then use them creatively to make your issue even better. Once you finally settle on an issue, put yourself in charge of raising the profession's awareness of it. If putting yourself in charge feels arrogant, that's just because you're not used to it. Focus on the issue and you'll be fine.(2) Having chosen your issue, start a project to study it. You might do this in the context of a term paper or an independent study, or you might organize it through the local student chapter of a professional association. Or you might simply do it on your own time. It's hard work, yes, but it's an investment. See if a local faculty member will sign on as an advisor to the project, and if you can use the faculty member's name in talking to people.
(3) Find relevant people and talk to them. First do your library work so you know any conventional wisdom that's out there. Then talk to some working professionals who are facing the issue, especially if they have spoken publicly about an aspect of it. You can find these people by asking the faculty in your school; it's their job to know everyone. If the faculty are reticent at first to unleash you on their contacts, then work your own contacts, for example through your fellow students or the professional society. You can also find relevant people by reading professional publications, attending conferences, and searching Web sites. Tell the people you seek out that your project is pulling together the profession's experience with the issue, and ask if you can interview them. Have a good, focused talk, make serious notes, ask if they want to keep anything confidential, give them your card, and promise to keep in touch. Why are they willing to talk to you? Because you're working on an important issue, and because you're associated with a professional school, which is a center of thinking and networking for the field. Use the symbolic power of the university while you're still associated with it.
(4) Pull together what you've heard. Nobody is expecting you to solve the problems. Real working professionals do have to solve problems, of course, but right now the emphasis is more on questions than answers. You will contribute simply by defining the whole scope of the problems that people are facing. Make a taxonomy and give examples. Talk about what people are doing to address the problems. Focus on practice: the actual decisions that working professionals will have to make, and the full range of considerations they will have to take into account. Most of these considerations will seem obvious taken in isolation, but many people will be grateful to have a complete list in front of them. Remember that professionals, no matter how creative and intuitive they are, have to justify their decisions in a rational way, giving reasons why they have made one choice rather than another. You'll do a service just by laying out the choices and reasons. Talk about the consequences people see for the future. Just impose some order. Faculty in your school can probably help you with this. Write clearly and concisely, and get someone who can write well to copyedit your work.
(5) Circulate the result. Send copies to the people who helped you. Call it a draft or interim report if you want. Give credit to the people whose ideas you've written down. Then follow up. Get further comments. Now write some short columns for professional publications. Describe your project and summarize the issue. Explain why the issue is becoming important. Concisely present the dangers and opportunities for the profession. Your goal is to lead: to present the profession with a valid issue that calls for action. Again, you don't need to specify what the right action is. You only need to give form to the issue. Make sure your published columns provide a permanent e-mail address where people can reach you, and ideally the URL for a Web page where you've collected materials related to the issue.
(6) Build on your work. Get invited to speak at meetings. Correspond with people who have contacted you after reading your work. Meet more people who appreciate the significance of the issue. If you hear about someone who is working on a similar issue, make friends. Show them that you've read their work, give them due credit, and explore how your projects complement one another. Expand your network to include your profession's clients and peers. As you take in everyone's perspectives, let your understanding of the issue grow and evolve. Come up with many honest ways of explaining the issue and clear answers to the standard questions you get asked. Don't try to convert people who don't get it. You may be a voice in the wilderness for a while, but keep building networks and synthesizing ideas. Your energetic and responsible approach will make you a magnet for intelligent people. As interest in the issue accelerates, build institutions around it. See if the people in your network want to start a moderated mailing list. Organize a panel discussion about it at a professional meeting. And so on. Keep going until the issue either matures or disappears. Then find another issue and start over.
That's the procedure. You should always have at least one issue that you are developing in this way. In doing so, you are helping the profession to think out loud about its problems and potentials, and you are also helping to knit the profession together by establishing connections among the people who are thinking about the issues on the horizon. You are also making yourself a strong job candidate. You are building knowledge, and you are building networks. One purpose of a professional school is to build such networks, and by helping you the school helps itself.
If you've spent your whole life going to school and toiling at normal jobs, then you might find the prospect of leadership nerve-wracking. Most schools and jobs are afraid of you, so they encourage a dependent attitude where you wait around for other people to give you things. Of course they don't entirely succeed; no institution can completely extinguish your human agency. Even so, few schools or jobs actively train their inmates to take the initiative by organizing people around emerging issues. Yet successful people have exercised leadership in this way for all of recorded history. The methods of leadership that I have described are not widely publicized, and many courses that supposedly teach leadership skills omit them entirely. But they are out there, roaring at full throttle just below the surface, and you can learn them by watching any successful person in action. I'm just hoping that by reading this you'll learn them a little faster.
As you advance in your profession, you will be organizing people in more sophisticated ways around more sophisticated issues. As such, it will be important to cultivate your intellectual life. Leadership is such a rare skill that it doesn't matter whether you are a genius in your own right. Leadership is process, and the whole point is that you're not figuring out all the answers yourself. Accordingly, you will need to build a brain trust -- smart and knowledgeable people that you can turn to when you need expert judgements. This is one reason to stay in touch with the faculty at your school, and with the smart people who pass through the school while you are there. Another good way to start a brain trust is to organize a speaker series. Fearlessly assess your intellectual strengths and weaknesses, and then make professional friends whose intellectual strengths complement your own. Your contribution is to facilitate a large-scale movement within the profession.
As you become a leader, you will also face ethical issues. Leadership has a bad name; people associate it with dishonesty, manipulation, and "politics". That's because so many "leaders" prefer to surf on issues, extracting the social energy around them for their own benefit, rather than being a positive and constructive force in the community. Once you've built a network and evolved some rhetoric, you can get away with a lot of selfishness. People will probably even praise you for it. You can settle down to a life of mutual back-scratching with your similarly-networked cronies, going through the motions and never giving a serious thought to the community again. But that's no good. Your job is to model positive leadership. You have no doubt heard it explained that true leadership is "selfless". I haven't emphasized that theme so far, for the simple reason that it's useless to demand that people be selfless leaders until they understand the six-step process that makes them leaders at all. Now that you do understand the process, and especially once you become accustomed to actually doing it, it's time to put some content into it. Use your connections to help people who deserve help. Promote all ideas that you find valuable, whether they reinforce your issues or not. Keep trying to understand your issues more deeply, and ask yourself whether the world is changing to make other issues more important. Don't be an ego freak. And write down what you learn along the way.
Why do I argue that the modern world requires all professionals to engage in leadership? Before the Internet, professionals had to be generalists. Problems would arise, and you had to solve them. Now, however, the institutions and infrastructures of your profession easily bring professional knowledge to bear wherever it is needed. To succeed in your career, you need more than the skills that you got in school -- you need to be the world expert in something. Knowledge is global, it's growing exponentially, and nobody can pack all of the necessary knowledge into their head. So everyone's going to specialize. Specialization doesn't mean narrowness: it means reaching out in many directions, talking to many kinds of people, and knitting together the elements that make your issue matter. "Leadership" used to mean something unique: the army had one leader and everyone else followed. Today, however, knowledge is multiplying so fast that we need more leaders than we can possibly produce. Every leader can feel important, and genuinely be important, and everyone is a leader, including you.

HOW TO BE LEADER AT WORK?

Most organizations have at least one person who is a natural leader. When it is announced she will be leading a new team, employees line up to join. When he asks for a volunteer for an assignment, people jump at the chance. Employees turn to her as a mentor, or look to him as a role model.

Meanwhile, others in the organization are struggling to do their job with too few human resources. So how do natural leaders do it? What is their secret to getting people to go the extra mile for them?Although many effective leaders are naturally charismatic, there are a number of leadership behaviours that can be adopted by anyone who wants to have greater support from other people. While some leadership techniques may sound manipulative, a wise leader knows the best results come from having people provide their support willingly.

Leadership is the art of getting someone to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

People naturally want to follow a good leader. After meeting with an effective leader it is not unusual to feel uplifted, inspired and motivated to work towards a common goal. Effective leaders make others feel good about themselves as well as the work they are doing. The leader has a vision of what she wants to achieve and can communicate that vision to others in a way that makes people want to be part of it.
One thing a good leader typically does is to communicate the big picture, so that each employee can see how the particular role he plays makes a contribution to the final result.
In a recent study of employees at all levels in companies of all sizes, Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans, authors of Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em, found that “meaningful work, making a difference and a contribution” was one of the top three reasons given by 90% of employees when asked why they remain at a company. (The other reasons cited among the top three were “career growth, learning and development” and “exciting work and challenge.”)
When someone understands why a job that might otherwise be considered menial is important, that person is likely to be both more committed and more productive.
People are also likely to follow leaders they see as positive role models. If a leader demonstrates a strong belief in something, it inspires others to work towards the leader’s vision, even when a situation might appear to be almost hopeless. An excellent example of a leader who faced this type of situation is Lee Iacocca. When Chrysler’s fortunes reached a low in the 1980s, he cut his salary to $1 per year to prove his conviction that things would get better. They did. Under his leadership, the company flourished.
Good leaders not only “walk the walk”, they “talk the talk”. When they speak about the future, they are positive and upbeat. Mark Victor Hansen, a successful motivational speaker and co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, said that even in the early days of his career, if someone asked how he was doing he always responded that he was doing fabulously. His enthusiasm won him plenty of supporters who helped make his vision a reality.
Yet some people feel the way to get support from others is by telling them how grim a situation is, hoping that will make them want to help turn things around. On the contrary, Eeyores (those who sound like the gloomy Winnie the Pooh character) may inspire people to start looking for another job, rather than work to improve the situation they are in.
If you have a tendency to be negative, but want to inspire others to support you in achieving a goal, resolve to focus on solutions rather than problems. If Plan A isn’t working, avoid bemoaning the situation and instead come up with a Plan B. If necessary, have Plan C waiting in the wings. Maintain a can-do attitude and you are likely to attract people who will support you in achieving your goals.
As well as communicating their vision, good leaders know they need to communicate “what’s in it for you” in order to have employees go the extra mile.
They also understand that different people are motivated by different things. For employees motivated by a need for achievement, a leader explains how the task offers an opportunity to take on a challenging but achievable goal. Those with a desire for power are told how their participation can bring them prestige and lead to greater opportunities. While employees who are motivated by affiliation need to hear how they will be part of a team of people working together.
Effective leaders also use techniques to communicate their belief that each team member is important, including remembering and using people’s preferred names (e.g. not "Rick" if someone prefers to be called "Richard"). As Dale Carnegie observed, “the average person is more interested in his or her own name than in all the other names on earth put together.” Keys to remembering names include paying attention when introduced to someone, mentally repeating the name and using it in conversation.
Good leaders will introduce employees by name first, rather than job title. They refer to employees as team members, associates, or colleagues – never as "subordinates" – and make no distinction between "essential" and "non-essential" staff or "professional" and "non-professional" staff. Words have power, including the power to make people feel whether or not they are important to the success of an organization.
Good leaders believe that every team member matters and foster an environment that makes everyone feel important. It is no wonder they attract all the support they need to help them achieve their goals.

How to manage your time??

2011-08-02T13:33:00.000-07:00

Step1Create a schedule or to-do list. Write down deadlines for accomplishing certain tasks.
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Step2 Plan to tackle difficult projects at the times of day when you are most alert.

Step3 Schedule time for people, including yourself. Create some personal time by waking up half an hour earlier or going to bed half an hour later than usual; plan a weekly date with Your spouse, or arrange to have lunch with friends.

Step4 Prioritize what you need to accomplish. "Pareto's principle" states that 80 percent of Your accomplishments come from 20 percent of Your efforts, so think strategically: Locate and isolate this valuable 20 percent, then focusYour efforts on the tasks that promise the greatest rewards.

Step5 Delegate as many chores as you can. Hand out projects to subordinates at work, recruit Your children to help with household chores, hire a gardener to maintain Your lawn.

Step6 Learn to say no to nonessential demands on Your time. Don't volunteer for a committee if you don't have time, and decline invitations to events you don't have time to attend.

Step7 Overcome procrastination.

Step8 Avoid perfectionism. Don't waste time obsessively perfecting a task when you could better spend the time on something else.

HOW TO MANAGE YOUR TIME EFFECTIVELY??

Why use time management skills?

It's important that you develop effective strategies for managing your time to balance the conflicting demands of time for study, leisure, earning money and jobhunting. Time management skills are valuable in jobhunting, but also in many other aspects of life: from revising for examinations to working in a vacation job.

Sometimes it may seem that there isn't enough time to do everything that you need to. This can lead to a build up of stress. When revising for examinations, or during your final year when you have to combine the pressures of intensive study with finding time to apply for jobs good management of your time can be particularly important. Once we have identified ways in which we can improve the management of our time, we can begin to adjust our routines and patterns of behaviour to reduce any time-related stress in our lives.

What skills are required for effective time management?

Some of these skills including setting clear goals, breaking your goals down into discreet steps, and reviewing your progresstowards your goals are covered in Action Planning.

Other skills involved include prioritising - focusing on urgent and important tasks rather than those that are not important or don't move you towards your goals; organising your work schedule; list making to remind you of what you need to do when; perseveringwhen things are not working out and avoiding procrastination.

Keeping a to-do List

You should have a reminder system to tell you of when you need to do what: don't try to remember everything in your head as this is a recipe for disaster! Carry a pen and paper or organiser wherever you go. At the simplest level your reminder system could simply be to use your diary to write down the things you need to do, including appointments and deadlines. Before interviews, it's fine to write down the questions you wish to ask on a small piece of card or notepad

A daily list of tasks that need to be done is an essential part of action planning. Refer to and update this regularly. Prioritise items on the list into important/not important and urgent/non-urgent. Such a list can take a variety of formats but an example is given to the right. Update your list daily, crossing off completed tasks and adding new tasks that need to be done.Urgent or important tasks can be highlighted with an asterisk.

Advantages of using a to do list

Focuses your mind on important objectives
You are less likely to forget to do tasks
Writing a list helps order your thoughts
It helps show the bigger picture
You don't need to hold everything in your head.
It saves time
It helps you decide on priorities: the most important and the most urgent
You are less likely to become sidetracked
You get the reward of ticking off your achievements
You feel more in control
You have a record of what you've done
You always have something to work on

Setting Goals

Set yourself specific and clearly defined goals, and make sure that these are realistic and achievable. To do this, you first need to examine your present situation and assess what goals are important to you and what action you need to take to achieve your target. Have a contingency plan or alternative route to your goal in case you have to change your plans, for example, taking a relevant postgraduate course if you can't get a job. See Action Planning

Prioritising

Efficiency and effectiveness are not the same. Someone who works hard and is well organised but spends all their time on unimportant tasks may be efficient but not effective. To be effective, you need to decide what tasks are urgent and important and to focus on these. This is called prioritising. It's important to list the tasks you have and to sort these in order of priority, and then to devote most time to the most important tasks. This avoids the natural tendency to concentrate on the simple, easy tasks and to allow too many interruptions to your work.

Differentiate also between urgent and important tasks: an urgent task may not necessarily be important! When jobhunting, you won't be able to apply to every employer. You will need to carefully prioritise those you wish to apply to, based upon factors such as closing date, location, degree class required, and chances of getting in.

Avoiding Procrastination

Procrastination is the scourge of action planning. It's important that you manage 'Your fear of doing things' you don't want to do and realise that the fear is often far worse than any possible negative results. Try to take decisions immediately when possible and when you don't need to gather more information pertinent to the decision. The best time to do something is usually NOW. Taking action generates the impetus for further action. Many applications to prestigious employers now need to be made in the first term of your final year and if you procrastinate you'll miss the deadlines.

Breaking down tasks

Break goals down into their components so that you can accomplish them one step at a time. Write these steps down, and try to be as specific as you can when you do this. Try to complete one task before you go on to the next.

Reward yourself for achieving these goals to maintain your enthusiasm. For example, when you are invited to your first interview, treat yourself to a good meal with friends. Regularly review your progress towards your goals and revise plans as appropriate to take account of unforeseen changes.

Persevering

Inevitably, things will not always run smoothly as you progress towards your goals. When things are not working out, you need to persevere and learn how to take a positive attitude towards frustration and failure.

Mistakes are a crucial part of any creative process and each is a lesson leading you towards the right solution. Fear of making or admitting mistakes is a major handicap to taking effective action. It is said that the people who have achieved the most have made the most mistakes! Try to be aware that satisfaction comes as much from pursuing goals as from achieving them.

Work at effective strategies to deal with pressure - these can vary from taking exercise, to relaxation techniques such as Yoga, to simply sharing problems with friends. Being assertive can also help here, for example, politely saying no to the demands of others when you are pushed for time. Sharing tasks and problems with others will spread the burden and will bring a fresh perspective to them.

Organising your time

Identify areas of your life where you are wasting time and try to reduce these. A good way to do this is to log everything you do for a week in meticulous detail and then examine your record to see how you use (or misuse!) your time.

Develop a regular work routine. Keep your work space tidy so that you can work efficiently - it's hard to do this if things you need to find are buried under a pile of paper! Work to schedule so that you meet deadlines in good time - don't leave everything until the last minute. If you have a difficult essay to write, start by drafting out the structure first- this will break the ice.

When applying for jobs keep copies of all the applications you have made and keep a log of the date you applied, result, and a record of all your interviews, plus you were questions asked. This will help you to keep track of your progress and spot areas where you could improve.

USING A TIME LOG

One useful way to eliminate wasted time is to use a time log. First you need to make up a chart for the next seven days divided into half hour intervals starting at the time you get up and finishing at the time you go to bed. Write down what you did in each half hour of the day for the next seven days. Choose a typical week. An example for one day is given to the right.

At the end of the week examine your time log and ask yourself the following questions:

Are there any periods that I could use more productively?

At what time of day do I do my most effective work? Some people are most alert in the morning, whilst others concentrate best during the afternoon or evening. Schedule your most important tasks for these times of day.

A time log can be particularly useful at times of pressure, for example, when revising for examinations or jobhunting during your final year.

By now you should have been able to identify ways in which you could manage your time more efficiently, and know some techniques to allow you to do this. You might like to look at the section on action planning which identifies other ways of organising your work so that you achieve your goals.

One way that employers may measure your time management skills at interview is via an in-tray exercise.

Revising for examinations

Have a regular venue for revision such as the library where you are free from distractions. You should after a while become conditioned to starting work immediately in this location. Plan out a revision schedule or timetable so you devote enough time to each subject.

Summarise your lecture notes and use diagrams and graphics where appropriate - a picture is worth a thousand words! Use a highlighter pen or underlining to emphasise key facts.For last minute revision, make minimal notes occupying no more than a couple of sides of A4 and record key facts, diagrams and formulae.

Use past examination papers when revising to familiarise 'yourself with the sort of questions that might be asked. When revising, take a few minutes break every so often to clear and refresh your mind and allow some time off for complete relaxation.

How to Manage Your Time

2011-07-31T13:41:00.001-07:00

Computers and the Internet were supposed to make life easier; instead, people are busier than ever. Whether you are single or juggling family responsibilities, learn to manage your time to get as much as you can out of each day.

Instructions

Create a schedule or to-do list. Write down deadlines for accomplishing certain tasks.

Plan to tackle difficult projects at the times of day when you are most alert.

What seems to separate those who find success in life from those who do not, is not a lack of talent, but rather a lack of action. This is not to say talent has no bearing. Nonetheless, if you are frozen by inaction, you will never realize the true extent of your talents. Why do you fail to get going? Perhaps you are scarred by previous attempts and their associated disappointments, thereby paralyzing any future attempts for fear of failure. Or maybe you lack confidence to make major commitments. It could even be the fact that you are just plain lazy. However, here’s a simple experiment that, if followed, will bring motivation, confidence and action into your life. I call it the 10-Day Experiment. The 10-Day Experiment is just that…an experiment. I based it off of my experience last year with the Lemonade Fast, a 10-day fast which aims at ridding the body of all the toxins it has built up over the years. Although initially difficult, I noticed that after the 10 days, it would have been fairly simple to continue with the fast if I wanted to. Since then, I’ve applied this same 10-day pattern to many different aspects of my life. For example, I’ve used it in regularly get up at 5AM every morning, in doing daily planning, to changing the foods I eat. Each of these “experiments” ended up turning into solidified habits. Last night, I just finished the latest application of this experiment. I used it to provide the impetus for the Body for Life program that I will be covering over the next 12 weeks in this blog. How it Works In a nutshell, you take something that you have wanted to try, improve, or change in your life, and for the next 10 days, you try it out. For example, if you have always wanted to be an early riser (say 5AM), you would over the course of 10 days get up at 5AM. It’s that simple. You make the decision that no matter what, you’ll stick to that decision for at least 10 days. It helps to think of it less as a commitment or lifestyle change and more like a trial run. The best part about this, is that it only lasts for 10 days. If after the 10 days, it doesn’t seem to fit in your life or you don’t find it beneficial, you can stop. This relieves the added pressure of “a commitment”. Even if you don’t decide to continue, at least you stuck with a goal that you made to yourself. That in itself builds personal trust and confidence. By sticking to something for 10 days straight, you will have the ability to make major improvements in your life. You will gain more confidence, personal trust, discipline and willpower to apply in all your life endeavors. Beyond the 10 Days It seems (at least for me and others with whom I’ve talked with) that the first 10 days are the most difficult. From there, I’ve noticed a definite progression that happens over 10-day increments, until the action becomes a habit. Let me explain this progression in terms of “levels”. Level 0 – The Launch You have entered this level when you begin to apply action to a decision. Just like a rocket being launched, 90% of the fuel is used in overcoming earth’s gravitational pull, while the remaining 10% will keep it going. So it is with your “launch”. You will be using much of your energy in overcoming the inertia of your previous way of life. Level 1 – The Tipping Point Now that you’ve made it to the 10-day point, you may have noticed something. What was previously a struggle, seems now to be a lot more bearable. At level 1, you have just begun to overcome the inertia that held you bound to your old way of living. This is the level I like to call The Tipping Point. Although you’re up and running, it still hasn’t begun to be automatic for you. You now have an idea of what it’s like and it’s here that you can determine whether to turn the experiment into something you’d like to do for life, or to quit altogether. Level 2 – Momentum After 20 days, you’ve reached level 2. Here is where you’re picking up speed and have gained momentum. You no longer struggle to keep your commitment, however it still requires a conscious decision. You now know exactly how it will fit in your overall life. You’re well on your way at establishing a habit. Level 3 – The Habit At the 30-day mark, you’ve arrived at the final level. Level 3 is the realm of habit. Your daily commitment is well established and you realize a sense of freedom because it has now become automatic. At this point, it is actually more difficult to stop doing what you’ve been doing then to keep doing it. Now it’s time to send this into autopilot and try a new 10-day experiment! Life Applications Here are some applications in your life that you can apply this to: Addictions Trying to overcome addictions like coffee, soda, cigarettes or even video games or television, can all be helped with the 10-day Experiment. Just try and see what it’s like to go without your favorite addiction for 10 days (the first 3-4 days always seems the worst for me). Health Getting involved in a health and fitness program is a perfect candidate for the 10-day Experiment. After 10 days, you’ve overcome the initial inertia and if you like how it makes you feel you can stick with it. Focusing on what you eat is also a great candidate. For example, try going without white flour, or eat fresh fruits and vegetables everyday for 10 days. If you’ve always wanted to see what it’s like to be vegan, try refraining from eating any animal products for 10 days. I’ve tried a raw food diet for 20 days straight and discovered that I loved the way I felt but disliked the inconvenience while traveling for my work. Time Management For the next 10 days, work on planning your day each evening and sticking to that plan the next day. During those planning sessions, it’s a good idea to review the day and see where you can make improvements the next day. Productivity Focus on being absolutely productive for 10 days. For example, instead of lying around watching the boob tube, work on tasks that have needed to be done but you just “haven’t had the time to do them.” Well, now you do slacker…so get to work. Relationships Work on being completely unselfish towards your partner. For 10 days, work on their needs and go above and beyond your normal actions. You’ll probably be amazed at how much comes back to you in return that you’ll never want to stop! Finances Work on sticking to a budget for 10 days. Or for 10 days, see if you can save 10 dollars a day. Random Acts of Kindness Try finding ways to ser

2011-07-29T13:05:00.001-07:00

10 Days to a Better Life

2011-07-29T13:02:00.000-07:00

What seems to separate those who find success in life from those who do not, is not a lack of talent, but rather a lack of action. This is not to say talent has no bearing. Nonetheless, if you are frozen by inaction, you will never realize the true extent of your talents. Why do you fail to get going? Perhaps you are scarred by previous attempts and their associated disappointments, thereby paralyzing any future attempts for fear of failure. Or maybe you lack confidence to make major commitments. It could even be the fact that you are just plain lazy. However, here’s a simple experiment that, if followed, will bring motivation, confidence and action into your life. I call it the 10-Day Experiment.

The 10-Day Experiment is just that…an experiment. I based it off of my experience last year with the Lemonade Fast, a 10-day fast which aims at ridding the body of all the toxins it has built up over the years. Although initially difficult, I noticed that after the 10 days, it would have been fairly simple to continue with the fast if I wanted to. Since then, I’ve applied this same 10-day pattern to many different aspects of my life. For example, I’ve used it in regularly get up at 5AM every morning, in doing daily planning, to changing the foods I eat. Each of these “experiments” ended up turning into solidified habits. Last night, I just finished the latest application of this experiment. I used it to provide the impetus for the Body for Life program that I will be covering over the next 12 weeks in this blog.

How it Works

In a nutshell, you take something that you have wanted to try, improve, or change in your life, and for the next 10 days, you try it out. For example, if you have always wanted to be an early riser (say 5AM), you would over the course of 10 days get up at 5AM. It’s that simple. You make the decision that no matter what, you’ll stick to that decision for at least 10 days. It helps to think of it less as a commitment or lifestyle change and more like a trial run.

The best part about this, is that it only lasts for 10 days. If after the 10 days, it doesn’t seem to fit in your life or you don’t find it beneficial, you can stop. This relieves the added pressure of “a commitment”. Even if you don’t decide to continue, at least you stuck with a goal that you made to yourself. That in itself builds personal trust and confidence. By sticking to something for 10 days straight, you will have the ability to make major improvements in your life. You will gain more confidence, personal trust, discipline and willpower to apply in all your life endeavors.

Beyond the 10 Days

It seems (at least for me and others with whom I’ve talked with) that the first 10 days are the most difficult. From there, I’ve noticed a definite progression that happens over 10-day increments, until the action becomes a habit. Let me explain this progression in terms of “levels”.

Level 0 – The Launch

You have entered this level when you begin to apply action to a decision. Just like a rocket being launched, 90% of the fuel is used in overcoming earth’s gravitational pull, while the remaining 10% will keep it going. So it is with your “launch”. You will be using much of your energy in overcoming the inertia of your previous way of life.

Level 1 – The Tipping Point

Now that you’ve made it to the 10-day point, you may have noticed something. What was previously a struggle, seems now to be a lot more bearable. At level 1, you have just begun to overcome the inertia that held you bound to your old way of living. This is the level I like to call The Tipping Point. Although you’re up and running, it still hasn’t begun to be automatic for you. You now have an idea of what it’s like and it’s here that you can determine whether to turn the experiment into something you’d like to do for life, or to quit altogether.

Level 2 – Momentum

After 20 days, you’ve reached level 2. Here is where you’re picking up speed and have gained momentum. You no longer struggle to keep your commitment, however it still requires a conscious decision. You now know exactly how it will fit in your overall life. You’re well on your way at establishing a habit.

Level 3 – The Habit

At the 30-day mark, you’ve arrived at the final level. Level 3 is the realm of habit. Your daily commitment is well established and you realize a sense of freedom because it has now become automatic. At this point, it is actually more difficult to stop doing what you’ve been doing then to keep doing it. Now it’s time to send this into autopilot and try a new 10-day experiment!

Life Applications

Here are some applications in your life that you can apply this to:

Addictions

Trying to overcome addictions like coffee, soda, cigarettes or even video games or television, can all be helped with the 10-day Experiment. Just try and see what it’s like to go without your favorite addiction for 10 days (the first 3-4 days always seems the worst for me).

Health

Getting involved in a health and fitness program is a perfect candidate for the 10-day Experiment. After 10 days, you’ve overcome the initial inertia and if you like how it makes you feel you can stick with it.

Focusing on what you eat is also a great candidate. For example, try going without white flour, or eat fresh fruits and vegetables everyday for 10 days. If you’ve always wanted to see what it’s like to be vegan, try refraining from eating any animal products for 10 days. I’ve tried a raw food diet for 20 days straight and discovered that I loved the way I felt but disliked the inconvenience while traveling for my work.

Time Management

For the next 10 days, work on planning your day each evening and sticking to that plan the next day. During those planning sessions, it’s a good idea to review the day and see where you can make improvements the next day.

Productivity

Focus on being absolutely productive for 10 days. For example, instead of lying around watching the boob tube, work on tasks that have needed to be done but you just “haven’t had the time to do them.” Well, now you do slacker…so get to work.

Relationships

Work on being completely unselfish towards your partner. For 10 days, work on their needs and go above and beyond your normal actions. You’ll probably be amazed at how much comes back to you in return that you’ll never want to stop!

Finances

Work on sticking to a budget for 10 days. Or for 10 days, see if you can save 10 dollars a day.

Random Acts of Kindness

Try finding ways to serve and help other people for the next 10 days. Randomly show acts of kindness to complete strangers.

Conclusion

One of my favorite things to do is carry out personal experiments. I love trying new things. Whether it’s living in a leaf hut out in the woods for a month straight, to seeing if I can clean my insides drinking nothing but lemonade for 10 days, if I feel I can benefit from it, I’ll try it. Sure, many of the things I’ve tried have not benefited me directly, but at least I’ve always learned something from it. And if nothing else, when I’m 100, wearing Depends, and confined to my rocking chair, at least I’ll have some cool stories I can tell my grandkids one day.

Experimentation is what all great discoverers have done. Edison ended up experimenting with thousands of filaments before he found the right one which would light up the world. In our personal development, it is no different. By applying the 10-Day Experiment to different facets of your life on a regular basis, you’ll be forced into action which will eventually light up your own world!

How to Read People: Preparing to Read

2011-07-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

Learning to read people is one of the most important skills you can have in your interpersonal life. Whether you’re focusing on professional success, friendship, romance, marriage, career or parenting, understanding How to Read People will give you the ability to make sound decisions and develop incredible insight into people’s lives. With practice, your ability to understand the core motivations, desires, and thoughts of others can become so accurate as to border on an invasion of privacy.

In this 3-part series I will be covering the following:

1. Preparing Yourself to Read People: this is the subject of this first post. I describe how to mentally prepare yourself to become an effective people reader.
2. Beyond Words – what people are really saying: The next post contains the techniques and mindset needed to develop the art of reading people.
3. How to Tell if Someone is Lying to You: In the final post I’ll explain the techniques professional interrogators and body-language experts use to catch someone in a lie.

Taken from skills I’ve learned over the years from animal tracking (yes animal tracking has a lot to do with reading people), techniques and ideas taught to me by a former interrogator for the CIA, as well as professional people readers like Jo-Ellan Demitrius – I will give you a concise step-by-step approach to accurately reading people.

Preparing Yourself to Read People

I’m sorry to burst your bubble here, but there is no quick fix in learning to read people. I know you want to get right into learning the latest body-language interpretation techniques and principles, but as with most things, you need to first build a proper foundation. And that is what this post is about.

The first step in learning how to read people is gaining a general understanding of the makeup of others and surprisingly…ourselves. Without understanding the walls people build up around themselves, as well as the barriers that we put in our own way, we will never be able to successfully read people.

People are Like Onions-

When it comes to revealing ourselves to others, people are very much like a four-layered onion.

The outermost layer is that part of our personality that we reveal to strangers – the most superficial aspects of who we really are. An example of this can be seen when we talk with a stranger sitting next to us on a bus. Trivial topics like the weather, current events, sights and sounds around us are typical things we feel willing to talk about.

Around our friends and some acquaintances we feel comfortable enough to peel back that outermost layer to reveal the next one. For example, if you were chatting with a coworker this time, you would probably feel more comfortable revealing more about yourself. Your attitudes towards work, certain emotions and your general thoughts about life are some of the things that might come up in conversation.

The third layer is reserved for those with whom we have an intimate relationship with, such as a close friend or spouse. In many cases, intimate relationships take time to develop, and with that time, trust is earned. Imagine now sitting on that same bus next to your spouse or significant other. The depth of what you reveal this time is much greater than any previous layer. Your goals, personal problems, and fears and so on, all fall within this layer.

The fourth and innermost layer contains that part of ourselves that we don’t share with anyone. It contains our deepest and sometimes darkest thoughts and secrets that we would rather not acknowledge. The fact that we are trying to come to terms with many of these things ourselves makes us not comfortable sharing them with others.

The extent to which you can ‘read’ someone is determined by how many of their layers you’re able to get them to reveal. And here’s a little secret: a person will reveal their layers in direct proportion to you revealing yours. This is the onion theory in a nutshell.

-Removing our own Barriers-

The second part of preparing ourselves to read people involves removing the barriers that keep us from accurate ‘people-reading’. The two barriers are our prejudices and ourprojections.

When people think of prejudice, mostly the racial kind comes to mind. Although a part of it, this is not entirely what I’m talking about here. Anytime you make an opinion, whether it is positive or negative, without knowledge or examination of the facts, you are being prejudiced.

Whenever you come up with some preconceived notion based on things such as race, color, political alignment, or even the way people dress, it taints your ability to accurately read others. Our prejudices can be based on our fears, feeling threatened, upbringing or a myriad of other things.

Closely related to prejudice is projection. In the late 50′s Leon Festinger coined a phrase called ‘Cognitive Dissonance’ which can basically be described as the human tendency to close ones eyes and minds to things that are uncomfortable or disturbing. We tend to ‘project’ our view onto a situation because it is easier to deal with.

For example, a parent noticing a child’s slipping grades, lack of appetite, and tendency to come home late, might try to shrug it off as puberty or new-found love when it’s clear to everyone else that it may be a drug problem – something that the parent is unwilling to accept.

When we are emotionally committed to someone or something it can blind us from the truth of a situation, leading us to an incorrect reading of someone.

-Waiting Patiently with an Empty Cup-

The key to effectively reading people is by being completely objective – having an empty cup so to speak. Overcoming our biases, prejudices and projections allows us to be completely objective.

The last important step is learning to be patient. Don’t fill your cup up so fast that you rush in drawing your conclusions. I’ve seen this with my experiences in animal tracking. In the beginning I was in such a hurry to interpret the trail and the animal I was following that I’d fail to see the big picture. One time I remember my friend laughing at me while pointing out that what I thought were perfect sets of deer tracks, ended up only being the heel of a sneaker. If I took my time to let the whole picture develop and not come to a conclusion so quickly, it would have saved me the disappointment and embarrassment I felt.

It’s the same thing in learning to read people. As you learn the techniques to interpret peoples’ body language and environment (I will discuss this in the next posts), resist the urge to jump to conclusions. If you think for example that they are defensive because they have their arms folded – well maybe they’re sitting under an a/c vent and they’re simply cold. Are they lying because they’re fidgeting and seem nervous? Well, possibly they need to go to the bathroom real bad. In other words, hold off until later to make your final decision.

In the next post, I’ll be covering the second part in this series: “Beyond Words – what people are really saying”.

How to understand people better??

2011-07-29T12:50:00.000-07:00

It is not necessary to have a degree in psychology to understand people. The tools are readily available to everyone. All that is required is interest, attentive listening and appropriate responses.

All talk is conducted for either obtaining or giving information or for psychological gain. It is important to understand the psychological needs that govern human communication.

People converse for satisfying four common needs: the need for attention (mattering), the need for connection (friendship, intimacy), the need for validation (being of value, increasing self- esteem), and the need for belonging (being a part of a group for safety and survival). Once we understand what drives interpersonal discourse, it is easier to understand what people need and how to provide it.

Most people enjoy the attention of being listened to. Attention confirms to us that we matter to the listener. It affirms our worth and creates a feeling of well being. We have all witnessed how some people vie for the opportunity to tell their story and have others focus on their every word. Some like to tell funny stories, jokes, or fascinating tales to hold the interest of their listeners. Others choose to recite their failings, misfortunes, or bad luck to capture not only attention; but compassion as well.

When we speak to establish a connection, we not only delight in the attention; but we search for a reaction of shared feelings, thoughts or experiences. Conversations with new acquaintances are often exploratory missions to detect areas of common interest. "Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school? Were you in the army, college or job environment similar to mine?" Once a point of convergence is found a kinship is established upon which a friendship may develop. As friendship evolves, intimacy may flourish as well.

Wanting to be validated, approved of, thought well of and impress others comes from the need to be liked. Positive regard from people reinforces our self-esteem and strengthens us emotionally. Even the most secure people still hunger for external confirmation of their internal self-worth. Some language is blatant in its' search for praise. "I just caught the biggest fish." "My boss says I am the best employee he has had in the past twenty years". Though these comments may sound like bragging, they are actually clear quests for admiration.

Belonging to a group is another strong human need. We feel safer, protected and cared for within our group. We create many sub-groups to help define us as uniquely connected. There are service groups, hobby groups, recreational groups, family groups, religious groups, national groups and more. Since historically man survived and thrived if he was part of a group, we became programmed to join and belong to feel safe and protected. Unfortunately, in order to strengthen one's belonging, some groups resort to developing a superior posture toward other groups. The language used by members of a group serves to enhance their strength, value and pride. "We belong together, we are the best."

People are quite transparent. They are open and divulging without even intending to do so. Since every person is only able to know himself, every statement made by each individual represents that person's ideas, values and personality.

All we need to do is be interested enough to listen and honor the speaker. Caring to hear what the person says affords the talker an opportunity to get his story told and his needs met. The better the listener, the more verbal the talker will be and the closer both people may become.

When we listen attentively, we will know the motivation for the conversation. Is the speaker telling us of his successes, (possibly asking for praise?) or about his woes (perhaps needing some compassion?) or asking about us (perhaps testing a connection?), or telling of his group (possibly affirming his worth or lovability?).

Listening, without judgement, for the need behind the words, prepares us to respond appropriately. We can affirm, be entertained, share our story, support a group connection, or validate the person's worth.

There are many additional clues people reveal about themselves while they speak. One example is the individual's view of life. Is he presenting a negative or positive story to obtain attention? Is he devaluing himself or exaggerating his strengths? Is his view of other people favorable or not? Does he seek distinction by discounting others? Though the need for the discourse may be identical, different people go about getting their needs met in their own personal way. The flavor of the presentation is indicative of each individual's personality.

To get to understand people better:

You need to know the common motivations for verbal exchanges.

® You need to be willing to listen carefully and respectfully to the speaker.

® You need to avoid criticism by accepting that this is this individual's chosen way for need fulfillment.

® If you can detect the need behind the words and provide an appropriate response, both of you will be enriched.

® The process of listening and responding well is an active process requiring complete concentration on the other person to the temporary abandonment of one's own needs.

® Through better understanding others, we better understand ourselves and can help create a more loving and receptive connection between people.

How to Be a Lovable Person?

2011-07-29T12:39:00.000-07:00

When you see your friend that has many friends and is loved by people around her, you start to wonder how she can become the centre of attention. She looks so interesting and every people feel comfort to stay near her. So, how to be a lovable person?

In fact, it is not too difficult to be a lovable person. Everything is started from you. Do you like to make friend with someone who is polite, kind, and friendly? I am sure you will answer 'yes' for that question. So, treat others like you want to be treated by others.

Basically, as human being, every body has positive and negative sides, including you. So just try to develop your positive sides and make up your negative sides, especially when you socialize with others. If you want to be treated well by your friends, just treat them well.

To be interesting person, you do not need to be other persons or act like others. Just be yourself. Life is too short for you when you try to be others. You also have many positive sides, so just show them.

First, try to be a good listener for your friends. Sometimes it is hard to listen to something that we do not like, so you will be very appreciated when you give your time for listening to what people talk to you, even though if you do not like what they talk about. Be patient to face people around you; try to understand them.

When they ask for any opinion or suggestion to you, give the best answer you can give. Try to be wise, since it means they trust you. But if they do not ask for anything to you, do not give your opinion or judge them, because sometimes people just need to be listened to.

Second, try to remember and call their names well. It is a small thing but has great effect and many people often forget to do. A name is something personal and someone will be so appreciated when you call them well as his name since it shows that you remember him.

Third, keep your words. People would not be interested to you if you speak harshly or negatively. Say something positive. It is better if you speak wisely and has inspiration for others to think or do something positive.

Next is being helpful. Whenever your friends need your help and as long as you are able to help them, why do not you help them? People will remember you for every kind thing you have done for them. And you also feel a special happiness after helping them.

Five is saying sorry when you make mistake. It is normal for human being to have any fault and doing some mistakes, intentionally or unintentionally. Do not worry or be ashamed to say sorry from the deepest of your heart to them. And of course, when people have some mistakes to you, try to forgive them, so you will live in peace with every one.

Last but not least, give your smile and try to be cheer up. A smile has positive effects for every body, so when you smile at them, you make them comfort and feel that they are accepted. You look full of spirit and it gives positive energy to people around you. Smile, then the whole world will smile to you.

Steps

Go for the cute look. Make sure you're clean (of course),and not smothered in makeup. A little lip gloss and mascara, and that's it. For clothes, just wear anything you want-but make sure your clothes fit you, are clean, and compliment your shape. Keep your nails, hair, skin and teeth in good condition, Remember to stay clean and take showers/baths.

Be the nicest you can. Treat everyone like you would treat your best friend. Don't insult people or pick on them, and stick up for people who are being picked on. Don't get into a punch-up - just tell people to leave them alone. Keep your promises, don't be rude, and never gossip about someone

Whatever you're feeling, put a smile on your face. Don't stop being nice to someone or ignore people because your laptop broke down yesterday-put on a sweet smile and act normal. If you absolutely can't act normal, at least explain to people what's wrong. "Sorry if I snap. It's just that my laptop broke down yesterday and it had all of my homework on it!" is much better than, "Just leave me alone!". People will understand. If you are the kind of person that always seems to have something wrong, force yourself to smile because people won't be understanding forever. Just like you, they want to surround themselves with "happy shiny" people.

Get on the right side of your teachers. Hand in your homework when you should, don't talk in class or pass notes, and try hard. If you actually concentrate you can end up learning some really useful or interesting stuff-and you have the weekends, break times, and before and after school to talk to your mates. So tone it down and listen.

Be sensible and level headed. This will earn you respect and liking from older people such as parents, teachers, older students and other adults. In an emergency just think about what the most logical thing to do would be, and do it. Stay calm and don't scream or rush about.

Have self-esteem. Easier said than done, I know. You need to realize that you are worth something. Read articles on here about getting confident and stop procrastinating. If you don't like something about yourself, change it straight away. You have the power to do that. Remember that in order to be loved, you need to love and respect yourslef.

be a great listener. This tip always works. People like to be the center of interest.just listen to them, even if it bores you, and you will be amazed.

Tips

Be loyal. Don't jump from one friend to another gossiping about them-- this will make all your friends dislike you, and will lose you your trust and give you a reputation.
Don't panic if you don't get it right away. Do each step thoroughly and carefully before moving on to the next.
Don't get excited and rush around.
Do not do something to someone that you don't want to be done to you!
Do not be mean to others even though people are mean to them.
If someone insults you or says something, respond to them kindly and politely, but stand up for yourself so they feel guilty about saying terrible things about you in the future. Spread love, not hate, and you'll be seen as a good person who'll be kind, but not take anyone's foolishness.
The most important thing is, accepting, loving and respecting yourself unconditionally. This is a very subtle phenomenon and when practiced steadfastly, it invariably sows the seeds of true love and respect for you in the hearts of others.

Warnings

You may still be disliked or envied by some. Don't let this get to you-just be nice and try your best. Remember that in general, the same amount of people will like you and hate you. If you're a horrible person, horrible persons will like you. If you're nice and follow these steps, you'll be loved by nice people.
Don't let one person let you down, there are plenty of other people out there.
Don't ask someone out just to make someone else jealous. Both sides end up getting hurt. It'snot like the movies.
Don't get taken advantage of, there's such thing as being too nice for your own good.
Its OK to say no to something you don't want to do just let people down gently!
Don´t change your personality too much, be careful not to push your feelings away.

How to Find Your Ideal Partner?

2011-07-29T12:17:00.000-07:00

Steps:
Get to know yourself. How can you expect someone else to know you when you don't know who you are and what you're looking for?

Think about what you really want. Are you looking for someone to date or to marry at this point in your life? These partners can have much different qualities. In particular, looks and adventure seem to go with dating, while maturity, stability, and honesty go with marriage.

Ask yourself, “Have I really ever tried to pursue happiness?" Instead of always picking on your partner’s faults and making life unhappy for both, have you tried looking at the other, beautiful side of them, their beautiful qualities? Appreciating what you have already got? Tried improving on yourself instead, to becoming a better lover; a more ideal lover? Willing to open up yourself, giving both yourself and others a chance? Remember, what you expect of yours or your future partner is equally what he or she expects of you.

Examine the people you love to hang out with and the relationships that give you the most enjoyment and satisfaction.

Think of a relationship as a long-term investment rather than a game. It is something which both of you will have to genuinely think through and plan for. This should help you to take your partner more seriously.

Make sure you are settling down with someone who has the qualities you seek in a lifelong mate. Just because you enjoy dating someone does not mean you will be happy marrying them.

How To Choose Your Life Partner?

2011-07-29T11:43:00.000-07:00

Choosing your life partner is one of the most important decisions you make in your life. Your future entirely lies on the threshold of the choice you make. With your future lying exposed to this decision, are you one amongst those who leave it to destiny? Would you settle for someone who does not fulfill your desires, because you think that your desires are way too specific? Worst - would you leave it to chance? Talking about choosing your life partner, the first thing would be on what basis would you make the choice. Remember, whatever be your choice, the person should be one with whom you can continue to grow, laugh, be surprised, share your interests and ideas year after year, without getting bored. Choose a person who is compatible with you and makes you feel loved and cared for. In the following lines, we have provided tips on how to choose your life partner.

Choosing Your Life Partner:

Determine Your Needs

Before choosing your life partner, you need to determine your needs. You need to find out what attributes you are looking for in your life partner. Pen down a wish list of all the things you are looking for - the most important ones as well as the seemingly unimportant ones. Right from physical looks, career, financial status to moral values, etiquettes and spiritual beliefs, make a list that covers all the sectors. This way you can limit your choice. For instance, if you are certain that your would-be should be a businessman / homemaker; your options would then be limited, as those who are in a job can be ignored.

Analyze Past Relationship

Many-a-times we are bombarded with the question - What did you learn from your past relationships? Though it might be embarrassing or hurting, the question is an important one to consider before choosing your life partner. Find out what was it that attracted you to your ex? Was it his/her smartness and looks? Was it his/her care and affection? Was it his/her financial status? You should also find out what went wrong in the once-so-rosy affair. This would help you find out your needs, which he/she could not fulfill.

Analyze People You Admire

Evaluating people you admire would also be a good option to consider before selecting your Mr. or Ms. Right. This would help you understand qualities that are important for you in life. You need to find out what is that you admire in them. Is it his/her sense of humor? Is he/she extremely loyal and trustworthy? Is it his/her family background? By determining the characteristics of the person you admire, you are unknowingly or knowingly setting the mark for your ideal mate.

Personal Characteristics & Values

Though one of the most ignored sectors, determining personal characteristics and values is extremely vital. Remember, personal character defines the future of a person. For instance, if he/she is a hardworking and persistent person, he/she is likely to be financially well off in future. A person with strong moral values is likely to be spiritual. Identify the characteristic that you are looking for in your ideal mate. Right from compassion, affection, determination, honesty to sexuality, self-discipline, vivaciousness intelligence and wit, there are a lot of things you need to consider. If you are sociable, ideally your partner should be one who loves talking or making friends.

Take Time

Limiting yourself to a specific date or a scheduled time for finding the right partner is an unreasonable demand. Remember, it a matter of your life and your future is based on your choice. One wrong decision and you would be regretting and repenting all your life. These things are sensitive and can take from a few days to several months. Make sure you give in all the time that you want, before pronouncing the judgment.

Trust Your Choice

Remember, a person should dictate his/her needs and wants and not the other way round. Do not think about what you 'should' want. Instead, focus on what you want and desire in life. Do not be concerned about whether your desires and needs are right or shallow or unpopular. Keep in mind, no two persons can have the same needs or wants. Once you have made a choice, trust it and give in your 100% in the relationship! Good luck!

Do you have an ideal partner sketched out in your head? Perhaps you have a shopping list of “must have” traits. If so, you are not alone. The most common characteristics people want in their partners include honesty, intelligence, sense of humor, openness to new ideas, stability, communication, common hobbies and interests, and willingness to work on the relationship to make it succeed. Though men and women might seek similar traits in a partner, research has demonstrated that each individual focuses on different qualities. Men typically want a relationship that allows autonomy, while women look for a sense of connection.

To begin your quest to find the right partner, think about the traits and behaviors you prefer. Most people automatically think of superficial traits such as “height” or “blue eyes.” Though these traits can be important, other traits are more important when it comes to having a healthy, long-term relationship. Here is a list of some important qualities to consider:

Commitment to personal growth

Is interested in learning how to be a better person and spouse.
Is aware of emotional baggage, blind spots, and weaknesses.
Has personal goals for self-improvement.

Emotional Openness

Is aware of his or her own feelings
Is able to express his or her feelings
Desires to share feelings with you

Integrity

Is honest with himself or herself
Is honest with others and you
Does not play games about wants and feelings

Maturity and Responsibility

Maintains a clean house, pays bills and handles finances
Is able to take care of himself or herself
Follows through on promises, shows up on time, doesn't let people down
Respects your boundaries, feelings, time, etc.

High Self-esteem

Takes pride in himself or herself without being arrogant
Takes care of body, living environment, car, possessions
Does not allow other people to mistreat him/her

Positive Attitude Towards Life

Focuses on solutions instead of problems
Turns obstacles into opportunities
Sees the good in situations and people

Now that your list is complete consider some flaws that are fatal to a relationship. Your partner might have one or more of these traits and still be capable of having a relationship. However, you may have a problem-filled relationship. According to Barbara DeAngelis, PhD the following is a list of fatal flaws:

Addictions
Anger
Victim consciousness
Control freak
Sexual dysfunction
Hasn't grown up
Emotionally unavailable
Hasn't recovered from past relationships
Emotional damage from childhood

Analyze Yourself

Next, turn the examination inwards. Ask yourself what is holding you back from having a loving relationship. Perhaps you are hurt from a previous break-up. Maybe you are afraid of commitment. Identify these issues and handle them . In addition, examine your previous relationships and learn from them. What mistakes did you make? What aspects of a previous relationship would you want to develop in future relationship(s)? Finally, examine other factors that might affect your partner choice: cultural norms, expectations of male and female roles, religious background, and socioeconomic needs.

Analyze Your Relationship

Once you are in a relationship continue to examine your compatibility with your partner. Do not overlook compatibility issues in order to be in a relationship. In other words, do not ignore warning signs of potential problems. Other mistakes include making compromises, such as eliminating activities you like because they don't interest your partner or reducing communication with family members your partner dislikes.

Talk to Your Partner

You should not be hesitant to ask your partner questions. You need to find out the behaviors and attitudes you can expect for later. It is important to learn not only about your partner but also about your partner's relationship with his or her family. Moreover, learning about your partner's family will provide insights about your partner. Here is a list of questions you could ask:

What do you like to do for fun? What did you do for fun when you were younger? How often do you get out and have fun? How much time per week do you take for leisure activities? What do you do when you want to relax? What do you like to do on vacation? What were your friendships like when you were growing up?
How do you handle tough times? How have you handled some of the difficult situations in your life?
What were your parents like when you were growing up? How did their opinions influence you, then and now? How did your parents get along? How have you changed over the years?
What are your plans for the future? What are your attitudes and what is your style for handling money? Do you like to help with household chores? What do you like to talk about? What conversations do you like to avoid?

Take Your Time

Overall, be patient. Take the time to get to know potential partners before jumping into a relationship. After all, you wouldn't select the first apple that caught your eye in the produce bin! Why be any less selective with your choice of mate.

How to choose a desirable partner and avoid a bad choice?

To be able to recognize a suitable mate, you have to know what actually constitutes a desirable partner. Many people don't have an idea of what truly satisfies them. They confuse what they need with what they want, and for what they'll settle. Many have no clue of what they really expect, and expectations can set the foundation for how gratifying you regard a relationship. The greater your expectation, the more frustrated you can be. Ultimately, you can reach a point where you can accurately determine what satisfies you through self-evaluation.
I have found that if you stopped many couples just before they headed down the aisle and asked them what satisfied them, many would have to think long and hard before they could answer. Yet, if they knew what they wanted and what satisfied them, and were able to communicate such information, I'll bet that the 50 percent divorce rate would drop significantly. Like being unprepared for a test, being unprepared for a relationship will very often result in frustration and failure. You can pick the wrong person.

You will not have an enduring relationship until you know what satisfies you. There are very different ways this can be ascertained.

Discovering what truly satisfies you is difficult for many people because it entails examining your inner self and acknowledging what it is that really matters most to you beyond your "ideal" wants list. This list is largely based on your life experiences. A baby responds immediately by crying when he or she is not satisfied. He or she can be easily satisfied by being held or fed. Therefore, a baby immediately learns that crying leads to being satisfied. As we grow, we learn that there are increasingly more things that satisfy us and we find many ways to achieve that satisfaction.
Not unlike your "wants" list, you will find that what satisfied you when you were in your twenties might be completely different than what satisfies you when you are in your thirties, forties or fifties. It also can vary because of external factors.
To know what satisfies you, you have to be able to see, hear, taste, and feel experiences in your life. You need to be aware of your beliefs and know what you are passionate about. When you can identify the pleasurable feelings that accompany certain activities, you can start to acknowledge the sensation of feeling satisfied. You can then repeat those behaviors that create satisfaction and stop doing things that create negative reactions. Your brain will tell you what looks good, smells good, tastes good, sounds good and feels good. So, listen to it.
Ironically, many people are unable to know what really satisfies them because they are much more in touch with what dissatisfies them. They focus on the negative rather than on positive experiences. They have not taken the time to become aware of what makes them feel good. Such negativity is, unfortunately, not uncommon today. Perhaps we take the positive aspects for granted, or perhaps the media has pointed out the negatives so often on news reports that we have become programmed to find flaws and recall bad experiences more quickly than good ones.
The point is, you may need to dig down and push yourself to think of what made you feel satisfied, physically, emotionally, spiritually, sexually and so on. And by satisfied, we mean feeling good inside, stress-free and happy.
When you figure out what satisfies you, you will have an understanding of the core factors that are necessary for you to have a lasting relationship. Most of the "wants" are nice to have, but are not essentials, unlike what satisfies.

It's sometimes difficult for many to just read the warning signs in front of them. When a relationship begins, you may wonder, "what will we ever fight about?" We tend to put on rose-colored glasses and make assumptions about the new partner. We like to hold positive illusions unless a person has trust issues. To avoid getting fooled again, you have to not discount what you are told and read what's in front of you. If she has a vanity license plate that says PRINCESS, understand that. If a person says they don't want to get serious, take them at their word. If they state that they are a bad person to get involved with, believe them. If they do something that indicates a substance abuse problem, they have significant anger issues or will have problems with fidelity( if this is important to you), don't put yourself in an "if only...but" situation. This relationship would be great if only but they didn't" ( fill in the blank with drink, spend carelessly, gamble, be abusive etc.)
Some really don't want to avoid poor choices because their actions, not words, indicate they get involved in co-dependent relationships. If you engage a person who has more problems than you, guess whom you don't have to focus on? Whose issues you can deny and avoid? In other words, some people act as if they want or need to make poor choices because it provides them with an excuse to sit on the pity pot and to feel victimized. Many self-sabotage themselves by making bad decisions.

Ten Steps to Interview Success

2011-07-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

Step 1 - Know The Company

Companies like candidates who know what they want. They are also impressed with someone who has done some digging before arriving at the interview. Make the effort to research your target organization, and you'll find yourself ahead of the competition. Given two equal candidates, the one who shows the most interest usually wins.

You can find out about larger organizations by using Web search engines or, even better, by going to your target organization's Web site. There are other Web-based sources, too. If your company is smaller or local, visit the library and ask the research librarian for help.

Step 2 - Know Yourself

In an interview, your job is to sell yourself . . . so you need to know precisely what you're selling. Once you define that, you can apply these insights to the needs of your target company. Connecting the two successfully is the best way to get yourself hired. Above all else, be authentic. Like a dog that can sniff fear on a person, an employer can intuit your sincerity and true level of interest and commitment.

You're "selling" your skills and yourself as a person. First: Your skills. An easy way to uncover yours is to list your accomplishments and then think of which skills it took to do them. Did baby-sitting require psychological sensitivity? Did selling kitchen knives require skills of persuasion? Review your list, and refine your skills into a "package" you can explain easily in a minute or two.

Next: You as a person. Most organizations want honest, smart, friendly, motivated, and responsible employees. Do you deal well with people? Are you flexible and open to learning? Did you, for example, show determination to get back on the slopes after you broke your leg skiing? Again, after you make your list, refine it so you can explain your personal "assets" in a minute or two.

Step 3 - Practice

You can make all the lists you want, but there's no substitute for rehearsing how you'd handle an interview. Ask your parent, sibling, or best friend to be the interviewer, and give her or him a list of questions to throw at you. There are ways to handle each of these. If you know what they are before you're in the "hot seat," your confidence going into the interview will soar. And remember, if you get a question that you can't answer, simply say you don't know.

Then say the question is something to which you would like to give more thought and that you are willing to learn what it takes. Again, an employer will respect someone who is honest and open about his or her limitations.

Body language is the other thing to be well aware of. If you have a video camera, use it for the practice; otherwise a mirror will do. Hand and arm movements shouldn't be too large. Don't fiddle. Your posture should be relaxed, but alert. Don't slouch; if you look bored in the interview why wouldn't the recruiter presume that you'd then be bored in the job too? Communicate interest and energy. Be yourself.

Step 4 - Dress The Part

You wouldn't wear a white suit to a funeral (unless you're in China, where it's expected), and you wouldn't wear cargo shorts to an interview. With any organization, the way to dress is the way you would dress if you got the job. If you don't know what that is, ask. If you can't get any information on the company's style of attire, dress a little more formally than you think you might need to.

Personal grooming is part of your "dress" too. A good haircut or trim will impress. So will clean fingernails, a fresh-scrubbed look, pleasant breath, and a white smile (a recent teeth-cleaning can't hurt). And please, no perfume or aftershave ... you might love how you smell with that scent, but others may not!

Step 5 - Get There Early

This may seem obvious, but if you're not on time for your interview, the game is over. Getting there early allows you to take a few deep breaths, organize your notes, refresh your memory on a few points that you've found difficult in your practices, and scan any company materials that may be available in the waiting room. It also allows you to answer the "call of nature" (if there is a call) and to make any last-minute appearance adjustments.

The result? You'll feel better about yourself, and you'll be more relaxed in the interview. So leave plenty of time, and get there early. It gives you a psychological edge.

Step 6 - Make A Good Impression

It may seem cruel, but first impressions can be deal makers... or breakers. The interviewer starts forming opinions from the moment the two of you shake hands. No kidding. And by the way, that handshake is critical. Here's how to do it correctly:

Look the interviewer in the eye as you offer your hand.
Shake his or her hand firmly ... but not like a vise.
Smile at the same time, and say something enthusiastic like, "Hello Mr. McGillicutty, it's great to meet you!"

As you walk to his or her office, make some small talk-- team or sports scores, how great the lobby looks, a recent storm... you get the gist. Establish positive vibes and the rest of the interview will feel more natural and less like you're being grilled at the Spanish Inquisition.

Step 7 - Answer Well

You're going to be asked some questions, but there are some tricks to answering them well:

Don't ramble. It's better to give a shorter answer with strong points in it than to babble on for five minutes in a disorganized fashion.
Look the interviewer in the eye when you're answering. If you don't, he or she may think you're fabricating your answer right there on the spot.
Gather your thoughts. If you need a minute to collect your thoughts in order to answer a specific question, feel free to say: "I need to think about that for a moment ... " or "That's a great question ..." The interviewer will respect your honesty and your desire to offer a thoughtful answer. If a question is a difficult one, try to remember how to approach it. If you blank out, be honest, but definitely put a positive spin on your answer. A little humor never hurts either.

Step 8 - Ask Questions

Usually at the end of an interview, you'll be asked if you have any questions. If you don't ask something, it can be taken as a sign of lack of interest . . . so prepare some questions before the interview. There are two areas to question -- the organization and the job itself. We recommend asking about the job first. Are you clear on the responsibilities of the job? If not, ask for clarification.

Do you see where the job fits into the structure of the organization? Do you understand whom you'll be working with, and what their expectations of your work are? By the way, do not ask about the salary or benefits -- vacation, holidays, sick days, etc. -- in the first interview. Leave that for after they have presented you with an offer.

Be sure you know what the next steps are after the interview. Are they going to contact you? When do they think they can do that? Would they prefer you to follow up with them? How is the best way to do that?

The end of the interview is also a good time to emphasize how interested you are in taking the process to the next step and why you think you'd be the perfect candidate for the job. Do not beg for the job, but let your positive energy and enthusiasm win the day. Upon leaving, make sure to shake the person's hand again and make sincere eye contact. And, of course, don't forget to thank him or her.

Step 9 - Be Yourself

This is the most important step. No matter what anyone says, you can't pretend to be someone you're not. In the interview, let who you really are shine through. Trained interviewers spot actors quickly. Be proud of that precious collection of talents, motivations, and skills that make you the individual that you are. Believe in your ability to learn, grow, and develop, and act accordingly. Show "the real you" -- sense of humor and all -- and you'll be well on the way to getting hired.

Step 10 - Follow Up

Your interview isn't over when you walk out the door. As soon as you get home, write a short thank-you note to your interviewer. You appreciated the time they spent with you and the chance to learn more about the job and the organization, so tell them.

If you promised to send something additional --writing samples or another copy of your resume, for example -- make sure to enclose it. Keep your note short, and restate your understanding of the next step. If you'd like to add something you forgot to say, this is the time and place.

You'd be surprised how many candidates never offer this simple bit of courtesy. Send a thank-you note, and you'll stand out in the crowd.

Here are the 5 steps to successful interview preparation:

1. Go through your resume - This seems like a pointless step, where you will say "I do not need to go through my resume, I made it and I know it verbatim". But, it is always better to go through your resume and try to understand it from the point of view of the interviewer. What was it that attracted the attention of the interviewer for you to get an interview call? When you do this, you may understand what it is that the company is looking for and what it is expecting from you. This puts you at an advantage during the interview.

2. Go online again - The Internet is your best friend. It helped you create the perfect resume and perfect cover letters, now it will help you understand the company. Visit the company website and understand everything about the company and its activities. The more information about the company you have the better equipped you are for the interview.

3. Study and learn - Try to study and learn all that there is about the company. The more you know the better you are going to feel about going in for that interview. Knowledge is your best friend during an interview.

4. Rehearse - Ever heard anyone tell you to make a script for an interview? Well, making a script for an interview makes sense. It helps you rehearse the kind of questions that you know will be asked and you can rehearse the answers to give the best ones possible. You will be asked questions on your past positions and achievements. You will also be asked to describe your strengths and weaknesses, what can you bring in terms of skill to the workplace. These are the kind of questions you can prepare the answers to. You can ask a friend to rehearse with you and make the preparation for your big interview fun.

5-Prepare a list of questions - Most people think that when they go for an interview, they have to answer all the questions and ask none. This is a mistake. Most interviewers appreciate questions. This shows that you have prepared and researched before coming for the interview, and that the job is important for you. Do not ask questions like "How much will I get paid?" or "What benefits will I get?" first. Save these for later. Ask questions that are more position and company oriented. Ask those questions relevant to information given by the interviewer.

6 Immediate Steps After Receiving An Interview Call:

It is obviously very exciting to receive a job interview call or email after you have been distributing your resume around like newspapers. Your heart jumps with a mixture of joy, expectation and apprehension. This is a good time to professionally prepare for that interview. Let’s examine what first steps we should take when the phone call bears that good news:

1. Write down day/ time: As soon as you receive the notification for an interview call, make a point to note down the exact day and time immediately. If it’s an email, you should separate it away in your ‘important’ folder so that it is not lost in your other emails by your friends telling you about their extended vacation in the Bahamas. Mark the day and date on a kitchen calendar if possible. It’s not unheard of about people mixing up their dentist’s appointment with a job interview. As an added insurance, tell someone close to you about the schedule. They might be able to remind you of it in the unlikely event of your overlooking the event.

2. Look up location on a map: Unless you are already familiar with the place of interview, please look it up as soon as possible on a map. It is a good idea to look it up on Google maps and I would go as far as visiting Google’s street view, if available in your country, to have a look at the office building. Not only this view gives you an idea of the place you will be going to, but you can also calculate the exact distance and time required to reach the place on the interview day. These simple steps give a physical shape to the whole interview process and are helpful in your preparation.

3. Set up transport: Unless you are already familiar with the place of interview, please look it up as soon as possible on a map. It is a good idea to look it up on Google maps and I would go as far as visiting Google’s street view, if available in your country, to have a look at the office building. Not only this view gives you an idea of the place you will be going to, but you can also calculate the exact distance and time required to reach the place on the interview day. These simple steps give a physical shape to the whole interview process and are helpful in your preparation.

4. Files and folders: Now that all arrangements have been made to reach your destination in time smoothly, you should turn to other important preparations. At first opportunity, go through that pile of papers on your desk or drawer and pull out all the relevant papers related to that particular interview. That includes the job ad, your certifications and relevant documents. Put them all in a file or folder and neatly arrange them in order. Do not leave this to the last day as your mom might have cleaned your drawer out for you and today she might be away to your cousin’s for overnight and might not remember where she put away your ‘pile’ of papers.

5.Clothes: It is only when you receive your call that you realise you have only two days or two weeks to prepare. So the first preference always is to keep a set of interview worthy formal clothes ready at all times when you start job hunting. If not, dive into your closet as soon as you finish the call informing you about the interview, and start making the required set of clothes. If a piece of clothing is to be given to the drycleaner, make double sure about the delivery times as the owner might decide to go away to Ukraine to visit his sick brother and the caretaker wouldn’t know anything about your clothes. At home, never assume that nice tie to be in its place in the drawer as your three year old might have used it to polish his dirty fire truck.

6.Employer research: Finally to the most important part after you receive your interview call. Pull out all the information about the company that has invited you for interview, including the job ad. Visit their website, if any, to learn as much about them as possible. Look up their staff page, if any, as many of them have pictures and designations posted. Make a mental note of them. You will be surprised how much this research is going to help you calm your nerves on D day and you will score high with the interview panel once they find out that you know a lot about their organisation. It will bring forth your passion to work for them and may lend you that coveted position.

Twenty-five Steps to a Good Interview

1. Interview in person or on the telephone? If convenient, it's best to do it in person. Then you can catch the essence of the person in their surroundings and home.

2. Call ahead for an appointment and indicate your publication. If you're a freelancer, then say so when scheduling the interview. Don't underestimate the time you'll need for the interview.

Where will you meet? Their home? Their office? I prefer a neutral location. It helps set the person at ease and cuts down on interruptions. I dislike using restaurants since taping is impossible. If you do interview at a restaurant, be prepared to pay.

Is your interview an exclusive or will it be shared with others? Find out ahead of time so you are not surprised.

3. Before the interview, know as much as possible about the person. Have a current bio sheet sent to you ahead of time.

4. Cultivate a relaxed atmosphere.

5. When you first arrive, utilize the informal moments to gather impressions--atmosphere of the house, details like flowers or cars in the driveway. Pay your subject a sincere compliment to set the person at ease from the beginning.

6. To tape or not to tape. In a number of states, the law requires that the subject knows you are taping. If it is a sensitive interview, you will want to keep that tape for your records.

Always inform the person, asking, "If it's all right with you, I'm going to tape this conversation because you may be speaking faster than I can write. I want to make sure it's right."

If you record the interview, also take notes since nothing is failproof.

7. On or off the record? I assume it is on the record, unless the person says that it is not. I prefer not to go off the record. When part is on and part is off, I mark my notes clearly.

8. Prepare your questions before the interview. Write out a short list but don't show the questions to your subject. The only exception is when you have to interview through the mail or email. Some times this is the only way to get the information. You can also interview by tape. Send a tape with the questions and get tape recorded answers from the person.

If sharing the interview with a competing publication, try to get a portion where you ask your questions in private.

9. Begin with the non-threatening, non-emotional topics. Usually this means you will begin with something about their life background. I check the information from their bio and the clips to see if there are any gross errors of fact.

10. Then move the interview to the person's achievements, ideas and beliefs. You will begin to ask and talk about areas which are more conceptual.

11. Catch the uniqueness, the mannerisms, and the feelings of the person. That's why interviewing in person better than on the phone.

12. Observe the person's features. Good stories will include this information in the article.

13. Let the person reminisce, but if time is limited, be aware that you may have to interrupt. The more limited your time, the more you have to keep the interview on track.

14. Here's some techniques to get people talking: "Tell me about..." Or "Did you ever..." Or "How did you feel when..." If you need to play the devil's advocate, instead of direct confrontation say, "Suppose a critic were to say..."

15. Know your market for the article. What would your readers ask? What would they sense and hear?

16. At the end of the interview, lay down your pen, turn off your laptop computer and have a little chat. This is where they may remember things they haven't before. Provided they aren't spooked, it's all right to open up your notebook and take more notes.

17. Use the feedback principle to restate the views of the person.Sometimes I'm not sure what they are after. "In other words, your theory is..." Sometimes I want them to say it better than they have but don't want to ask them directly. I use phrases like, "What I hear you saying is..."

18. Don't allow yourself to become the subject and tell your life story. When the subject says, "Tell me about yourself...," use something like, "The reason, I'm here is to talk with you."

19. Do you send a copy of your story to the subject beforehand?You may have to. I agree to send it after publication--and only if they ask for it.

20. I agree to check all direct quotes or factual matters, but I don't agree to their editing my story. An exception is when your publisher has already made such an agreement before the interview.

21. Ask ahead of time to call back for clarification or additional input. This paves the way for any possible gaps from your interview. Stress that you want to be careful and accurate.

22. Anticipate any possible objections and opposition to your story but go in with an open mind.

23. Don't argue or try to prove the interviewee wrong. This is not the forum for that. If the article is to include opposite views, tell the person that you're looking for diversity of views.

24. If your interview is refused, you can simply say, "Thank you anyway and that's that." Or "Thank you. But if you don't mind, I'll check with you again in a month. Or "The story will be more balanced and fair if your views are represented. I wanted to hear your side. Are you sure that you won't change your mind?" Or in a hard ball approach, "I'm writing the story anyway, so it will be a better story if your views are included?"

Ask if they will answer written questions. Or would they be willing to give a 15-minute phone interview or do it by tape?

25. Be genuinely interested in the other person. Thank them for the interview. They've given of their time about themselves. Remind them of the publication and the date. Make arrangements for the photos.

10 Ways to Achieve your Goals Quicker

2011-07-29T10:26:00.000-07:00

Make all your dreams real by first identifying and then focusing on specific, tangible targets for what you want.
Maintain at least one clearly defined goal for every major interest and role in your life.
Set your goals so they are directly aligned with your life’s mission, purpose and passion.
Create goals high enough to ignite your spirit and inspire you to take action.
Write down all your goals in specific, measurable detail.
Absolutely, unconditionally commit to hitting each of your targets.
Share your goals with others for mutual accomplishment.
Set a whole series of related daily, weekly and long-term goals, complete with starting times and completion dates.
Take 10 minutes every day to imagine how terrific it will feel when your goals are actually realized.
Take an action step toward the attainment of at least one goal everyday.

How to Accomplish a Goal:

Steps

Set a realistic but challenging/inspiring goal. Take a big dream, like "I want to be famous", and break it down into smaller, more manageable steps, like "I want to star in ascience fiction movie", "I want to go to three auditions a week", "I want to move to another city" and "I want to save $5000 so I can move." Make the goal big enough to challenge and excite you, but not so big that you hesitate to take the first steps
.
Plan ahead. Once you've broken down your goal into pieces, write down the steps on a piece of paper to make sure you have everything thought out. One of the worst things that can happen is you're almost to the point of your goal, but you're not sure what to do next. Also, give yourself deadlines for each step. Otherwise, you'll end up procrastinating and never achieving your dream.

Brainstorm ideas. Are there different ways to reach your goal? Write everything down that you can think of in three minutes, no matter how silly or impossible it may seem. For example, you could go to acting school, or maybe you could land a spot in a reality show that would get you started.

Ask. No one can tell you exactly what you should do to achieve your goal, but one of the best sources for guidelines is to ask those who have done what you hope to achieve. Learn from the experience of others without trying to imitate them.

Define and describe our goal. Write down when you want to achieve it. Write down the reasons why you want it. Write down what it would feel like after you have achieved it. Figure out exactly what it will take to get it. Be realistic about the time things will take. Many people don't allow themselves enough time, and give up too soon.

Be positive. Your goal should be written and have positive intent about what you want to bring into your life. This is very important, since the focus of your goal should not be centered around describing a problem you want to eliminate. Always believe that you will achieve your goal. As soon as you stop believing, you have already failed.

Leverage the power of small wins Bring to mind the small wins you have achieved in your life.Let them give you the feel and the motivation of a conquerer.Let these motivate you to set higher and hitherto unreachable goals,and the courage to achieve them.This will help you win many a battle in your life and ultimately the war.

Make contingency plans. Never forget about the problems that might come up on the way, and prepare for them. Positive thinking is important, but preparedness is better than being shocked or devastated when obstacles appear.

Learn from mistakes. Making mistakes should be a subject at school to teach all children how to learn from them, instead of trying to avoid them. In the pursuit of a goal, you are likely to make some mistakes. Don't see them as bad or get angry. They are important to correct you and to lead you to success.

Draw on all your past achievements that are relevant to your goal. No matter how small you perceive your achievements, list them anyway. It could be something small, such as joining a healthy eating mailing list, to coming home from work late, yet preparing a tasty nutritious meal for your family in under 30 minutes. Once you review your list, you will be amazed at how all those small achievements soon add up, and how much you are capable of doing.

Visualize. Close your eyes and imagine yourself accomplishing your goals. Where are you? How did you get there? How do you feel? Do this often. Don’t get swayed easily with the noise and happenings going on outside. Put your attention on what you are trying to achieve. Remember the goal, and you will have control over the discomforts and difficulties. A good way to visualize is to practice self-hypnosis.

Listen to your internal dialogue. What you are saying inside affects you physically, emotionally and mentally. Is your defense system inside trying to make you stick to your past, limiting beliefs and perceptions? Take over and challenge your inner critics. Monitor any excuses you might be making in relation to your goal. For example, saying, "I don't finish work until late and won't have time to cook!" You must recognize that if you are truly passionate about your goal, it is up to you to make time

Make a list of your personal strengths in relation to your goal. For instance, if you have a healthy eating goal you might want to consider strengths such as your level of commitment to eating healthily, or the fact that you enjoy cooking and experimenting with new recipes or even that you are an excellent cook. The list of personal strengths you can draw up is endless.
Seek help. Find the information, skills and knowledge that you need from other people, books, and audio or video programs. Speed up your learning process by emulating what other successful people have done. You save time and get results faster. Self-hypnosis audios are a powerful way to help you get fast, permanent results.

Create benchmarks or milestones. A benchmark is something you can use to measure your progress and know you're on track. For example, you can write "The first stage of reaching my goal will be done when I'm in the Entertainment section of the newspaper!" or "I'll know I've reached my goal of being famous when I'm a guest on Oprah."

Make a time line. Draw a horizontal time line with a dot at each end. The left end represents now, and the right end represents a point in the future. Specify what you want to happen and when, from now until then.

Be passionate. Striving towards a goal without passion is like a fire which slowly runs out of fuel to burn. Get excited; this will mean that you will love what you are doing. Methodically check your behaviors against impassioned dreams developed as a child. Always share the child within amongst your potential peers. This empowers the Law of Attraction that shapes the dreams of the child into the creative force of the adult.

Revisit, evaluate, and if necessary, adjust your goals. Keep a written record of your goals in a place where you'll remember to read them every day. They'll change and adjust over time as your life does, so keep them up-to-date.

Consider new opportunities and options that come your way. Sometimes, things have a way of unintentionally leading you exactly where you want to go.

Start working towards your goals today. Ask yourself, "What can I do today to get one step, however small, closer to achieving my goals?" Stay focused and believe in yourself even if others do not believe in you.

Persevere. Now that you have the momentum going, don't let it stop! Some steps may seem less exciting than others seem, but make sure to stick to your plan until the end! Avoid distractions and stay focused. Don't allow yourself to be distracted by other energy consuming efforts.

10 Tips to Improve Your Self Esteem

2011-07-29T10:02:00.000-07:00

Striving to improve our self esteem is on everybody's mind. It doesn't matter if you actively pursue this goal or you subconsciously working on improving your self esteem. The problem with this is that you really don't know exactly what you want to improve. You're acting intuitively on external signals.

Do you know how to improve your self esteem? Probably not. To make it a little bit easier for you and to achieve your goals quicker I put together 10 tips that you can utilize right away.

1. Build up your self-esteem. You must take an inventory. What do you want to improve or change about the way you interact with others? Try to make only one change at a time. Always check you progress before making another change.

2. Celebrate your journey, not your destination. Learn to always feel good about where you are now, and to exude self-confidence about anywhere you might find yourself tomorrow.

3. Set clear goals for yourself before every interaction. Know what you want. Think about how the people you will be meeting can help you reach those goals. Then decide how to approach each person accordingly. Apply this regularly and you will notice a difference.

4. Be proactive. Take the initiative. Be decisive. Let the other person know exactly how he or she can help you. Proactive people tent to be more successful in their career.

5. Treat each person you meet as if she or he is truly important. (You'll be amazed how this works.)

6. Give a firm handshake; look the other person straight in the eye. Practice both of these. Your handshake should be just right. Not too firm and not too loose. Train yourself to notice something you like or find attractive in the person.

7. Listen! Listen! Listen! Teach yourself to develop good listening skills. Learn a way to remember the other person's name. If in doubt simply ask for the name again 2 or 3 sentences into the conversation.

8. Visibly respond to the other person. Smile, nod agreement, and address him or her by name. Apply all you listening skills to visibly respond. The body language is the most important part of a conversation. Practice, practice, practice...

9. Pay more attention to the other person than to yourself. Are you responding to what may be going on in his or her life? Don't filter out bad news. Put yourself in the other person's shoes. Be caring.

10. Stay "in the moment." Don't mentally cut off the other person. Don't reload while he or she is speaking. What this means is that you need to focus on the other person 100% during a conversation. Anything less is considered rude.

Next time you meet somebody new look out for these behaviors. Put a mental checkmark on the each of the 10 tips and see how well this person scored. Chances are that the person scored very high if you tent to like her/him. On the contraire the person probably scored low if you don't seem to connect.

The more you practice the more likely you will create a positive aura which is commonly known as charisma. To step up to become a charismatic personality it takes more than just these 10 tips.

Creating a positive aura will benefit you in every thing you do. You will create a warmer ambience with your family. You will be more successful in your career. Even while trying to meet a partner of the opposite sex you will notice a difference on how people perceive you.

Unfortunately a small article can't do justice on the wide spectrum of creating a positive aura and developing a charismatic personality. You will get the complete picture and step by step explanations in Race Kale's new book "The Power of Charisma".

How to raise your self esteem?

Self-esteem reflects a person's overall evaluation or perception of her or his own worth. Our self-esteem is very dependent on factors within our environment. Because one's unconscious accepts all incoming information or interaction as reality, regardless if information is factual, one's self-esteem is continuously fluctuating. A person can learn how to have good self esteem by learning how have a positive self perception.

Instructions:

Research on self-esteem indicates that there are three factors that strongly correlate with self-esteem. Each of the factors are separate but interrelated. It is helpful to understand these factors in order to learn how to raise self esteem.
The three factors are: Internal Locus of control-belief that we have control over outcome of situations (cause and effect); Sense of belonging and acceptance-how much one feels accepted by others; Sense of competence-belief that person is not only capable but successful in endeavors
To raise self esteem, begin with internal locus of control. This is the most vital step. A person must be able to understand that actions cause an outcome. If a person believes their actions will produce a result, this gives a sense of power. When a person believes they are capable of deriving a positive outcome, then it raises self esteem. If the outcome is positive, the person takes ownership of the success, thus raises self esteem.
Example: A person sets a goal of buying a bigger house. The person works hard and makes and saves enough money to obtain the house of their dreams. This reinforces the belief that the person had control of the outcome.
Therefore: To raise your self esteem, set a goal for change, develop a plan and make follow through on plan. Monitor your progress. Even small success will lift self esteem.
The next step is to understand that most humans desire a sense of belonging and acceptance by others. To raise self esteem, you must learn to accept and like yourself. It is important to accept that you may feel down at time and others may not be happy with your behavior or situation. Accept your situation for what it is and then look at the positives you have in your character. Say, "I am smart", "I am a good person" etc. Begin to live by your strengths and remind yourself daily of these positive attribute. In the end, others will see these strengths and comment on them as well. The more you believe in yourself, the more others will believe in you
Lastly: Sense of competence-belief that person is not only capable but successful in endeavors. Look at what you have already achieved. Now look at what you want to do and your plan (see steps listed above). Focus on past success to promote idea that success can happen again
Accept that at times you may feel low self esteem given different life situations. Self esteem is fluctuating. Since it does fluctuate, you can control its ability have high or low self esteem by the way you think about yourself and how you go about strengthening it.

Human Resources

How to Be Unique??

Instructions:

Tips & Warnings:

HOW TO BE DIFFERENT??

1. You must have a unique design

2. You must have something to say, and say it differently

Do You Dare to Be Different?

1. Do you have a dream?

2. Are you doing what you want or what you should?

3. Do you worry more about being loved than being what you love?

4. Do you choose what is safe rather than what is right?

5. If you had only six months left to live, would you do what you are doing now?

How to become millionaire in 5 years??

Can you become a millionaire in 5 years?

To become a millionaire in 5 years you have to think like one

How to attract someone who is not interested (Based on attraction psychology)

Attracting someone who is not interested means occupying his thoughts

Turning attraction into obsession

How to attract someone to you?

Step by step guide to attracting someone to you

How to attract people to you??

There is no general formula for attracting people

Practical steps for attracting people to you

How to make people love you??

Why do we love certain people??

How to Make People Admire Me???

Don’t Lose Your Identity

TIPS ON MAKING PRESENTATIONS

BASIC TIPS:

Tips from Kent students making presentations at interviews:

Answering Interview Questions

How to make your CV??

Personal details

Education

Work experience

Interests

Skills

References

Length

Style

Chronological

Skills based

Optional extra

Presentation

Covering letter

Application forms

Other points

The interview

Four Steps To Know A Person Completely

5 Ways on How to Become Successful in Your Life

The Top 10 Ways to Start Living Your Life

10 Powerful Success Strategies

If you’re serious about creating lasting and significant change in your world – as opposed to merely thinking and talking about it for another year – there are a few things you might want to do in order to help make those intentions a reality…

How to Convince Someone to Believe in Something?

Psychology of Convincing Someone

Why Can't I Convince Other People?

How to Convince Someone to Believe in Something

every critical comment gets stored in your subconscious mind

How to use this information to convince someone

Any small event could finish the task

final words about convincing someone

How to be a leader??

How to manage your time??

HOW TO MANAGE YOUR TIME EFFECTIVELY??

Why use time management skills?

What skills are required for effective time management?

Keeping a to-do List

Advantages of using a to do list

Setting Goals

Prioritising

Avoiding Procrastination

Breaking down tasks

Persevering

Organising your time

USING A TIME LOG

Revising for examinations

How to Manage Your Time

Instructions

10 Days to a Better Life