The Dbottino Weblog

Perhaps the greatest single problem that people have today is “time poverty.” Working people have too much to do and too little time. Most people feel overwhelmed with responsibilities and activities, and the harder they work, the further behind they fall. This sense of being on a never-ending treadmill can cause you to fall into the “reactive/responsive” mode of living. That is, instead of clearly deciding what you want to do, you continually react to what is happening around you. Pretty soon, you lose all sense of control. You feel that your life is running you, rather than that you are running your life.

On a regular basis, take stock of yourself and what you are doing. You have to stop the clock and do some serious thinking about who you are and where you are going. You have to evaluate your activities in the light of what is really important to you. You must master your time instead of becoming a slave to the constant flow of events and demands on your time. And you must organize your life to achieve balance, harmony, and inner peace.

Sociologist Dr. Edward Banfield of Harvard University wrote a book titled The Unheavenly City, in which he described one of the most profound studies on success and priority setting ever conducted.

Banfield’s goal was to find out how and why some people became financially independent during the course of their working lifetime and others did not. He started off convinced that the answer to the question would be influential contacts or some other concrete factor. What he finally discovered was that the major reason for success in life was a particular attitude of mind.

Banfield called this attitude “long time perspective.” He said that men and women who were the most successful in life and the most likely to move up economically were those who took the future into consideration with every decision they made in the present. He found that the longer the period of time a person took into consideration while planning and acting, the more likely it was that he or she would achieve greatness during his or her career.

The key to success in setting priorities is having a long time perspective. You can tell how important something is today by measuring its potential future impact on your life.

Economists say the inability to delay gratification - that is, the natural tendency of individuals to spend everything they earn plus a little bit more, and the mindset of doing what is fun, easy, or enjoyable right now - is the primary cause of economic and personal failure in life. On the other hand, disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the high road to pride, selfesteem, and personal satisfaction.

So setting priorities begins with deciding what you want most in life and then organizing your time and activities so everything you do is the most valuable use of your time in achieving those objectives.

With your larger long-term priorities in order, you can much more easily decide upon your short-term priorities.

The process of setting short-term priorities begins with a pad of paper and a pen. Whenever you feel overwhelmed by too many things to do and too little time in which to do them, sit down, take a deep breath, and list all those tasks you need to accomplish. Although there is never enough time to do everything, there is always enough time to do the most important things, and to stay with them until they are done right.

Peter Drucker once said, “Efficiency is doing things right, but effectiveness is doing the right things.” And this requires thought.

Once you have listed your tasks, ask yourself this question: “If I were to be called out of town for a month, and I could finish only one thing on this list, which one thing would it be?” Think it through and circle that one item on your list. Then ask yourself: “If I could do only one more thing before I was called out of town for a month, what would it be?” This is the second thing you circle on your list.

Perform this exercise five or six times until you have sorted out the highest priorities on your list. Then number each priority according to its importance. With these priorities, you are now ready to begin working toward the achievement of your major goals.

Once you can clearly see the one or two things that you should be doing, above all others, just say no to all diversions and distractions and focus single-mindedly on accomplishing those priorities.

Much stress that people experience in their work lives comes from working on low-priority tasks. The amazing thing is that as soon as you start working on your highest-level activity, all your stress disappears. You begin to feel a continuous stream of energy and enthusiasm. As you work toward the completion of something that is really important, you feel an increased sense of personal value and inner satisfaction. You experience a sensation of self-mastery and self-control. You feel calm, confident, and capable.

Here are six ideas that you can use, every day, to help you set priorities and keep you working at your best:

1. Take the time to be clear about your goals or objectives so that the priorities you set are moving you in the direction of something of value to you. Remember that many people scramble frantically to climb the ladder of success, only to find that it is leaning against the wrong building.

2. Develop a long time perspective and work on those things in the present that can have the greatest positive impact on your future. Maintain your balance in life by setting priorities in the areas of your health, your personal relationships, and your financial goals.

3. Make the commitment to improve those aspects of your life that are most important to you. If you’re in sales, learn how to be an excellent salesperson. If you’re a parent, learn how to be an outstanding mother or father. The power is always on the side of the person with the best practical knowledge.

4. Be sure to take the time to do your work right the first time. The fewer mistakes you make, the less time you will waste going back and doing it over.

5. Remember, what counts is not the amount of time that you put in overall; rather it’s the amount of time that you spend working on high-priority tasks. You will always be paid for the results that you obtain, not merely the hours that you spend on the job.

6. Understand that the most important factor in setting priorities is your ability to make wise choices. You are always free to choose to engage in one activity or another, but once you have chosen, you must accept the consequences of your choice.

Resolve today to set clear priorities in every area of your life, and always choose the activities that will assure you the greatest health, happiness, and prosperity in the long term. The long term comes soon enough, and every sacrifice that you make today will be rewarded with compound interest in the great future that lies ahead for you.

In order to get your personal time under control, you must decide very clearly on your priorities, but at the same time you must also establish “posteriorities” as well. Just as priorities are things that you do more of sooner, “posteriorities” are the things that you do less of. It is just as important to know what to focus on as it is to know what not to focus on.

Some think that time management is only a business tool, like a calculator or cellular phone. It is something that you use so that you can get more done in a shorter period of time. In reality, it is not a peripheral activity or skill. It is a core skill upon which everything else in life depends.

The fact is, your calendar is full. You have no spare time. Every moment is extremely valuable. Therefore, to do anything new, you will have to stop doing something old. In order to get into something, you will have to get out of something else. In order to pick up something, you will have to put something down. Before you make any new commitment of your time, you must firmly decide what activities you are going to discontinue.

Time is your most precious resource. It is the most valuable thing you have. It is perishable, it is irreplaceable, and it cannot be saved. It can only be reallocated from activities of lower value to activities of higher value. The very act of taking a moment to think about your time before you spend it will begin to improve your personal time management immediately.

Personal time management and proper prioritization enables you to choose what to do first, what to do second, and what not to do at all. It enables you to organize every aspect of your life so that you can get the greatest joy, happiness, and satisfaction out of everything that you do.

Brian Tracy is one of the world’s leading authorities on personal and business success. His fast-moving talks and seminars on leadership, sales, managerial effectiveness, and business strategy are loaded with powerful, proven ideas and strategies that people can immediately apply to get better results in every area.

Brian Tracy’s audio programs are available at Nightingale Conant — title include: Psychology of Achievement, The Ultimate Goals Program, The Power of Clarity, The Psychology of Selling and other Other audio books available at Nightingale Conant include authors such as Dr. Wayne Dyer, Zig Ziglar, Deepak Chopra and many, many more.

If I was going to drive from Brisbane to Perth, and I’d never made the trek before, it would be easy for me to just think, ‘Yeah, I know where I’m going, and our road system is good enough, so I’ll just get in the car and drive, following the road signs along the way’. A few hours into the trip, when I’m feeling a little fatigued and distracted, I might miss a couple of signs and after a while, find myself at the back of nowhere heading north instead of west. I might panic for a moment, start to stress, and spend a lot of time, effort and energy getting back on track again. Sure, I’ll eventually make it to Perth, but it will have taken me longer and cost me more than it would have if I’d taken the time to plan the trip before I headed off.

We all need a good road map (yes, even the blokes!).

Many of us treat our personal and business lives in the same way - we head off in the general direction of where we want to get to, hoping that we’ll spot all the right signs along the way, and when we find ourselves off track, it can really throw us for a loop! Just like in our road trip example, we don’t make firm plans for where we want to go, how we’re going to get there, and where we should be at certain points in time…and then we wonder why we’re working so hard but not getting to where we want to be.

In my experience, the most common things that stop people from achieving their goals are:

Lack of planning and procrastination.

And sometimes we even procrastinate the planning! We all like to put off doing difficult or uncomfortable things, it is a perfectly human thing to do, but it often leaves us stuck on the road to nowhere.

If there’s anything that you want or need to do in life, realise that there will never be a more perfect time to start making it happen than right now, today. All you need to do is make the decision to just get on with it - stop thinking, worrying and stressing about it, and start doing it.

How? The fastest and easiest way to get from A to B, from Brisbane to Perth, or from where you are today to wherever you want to be, is to create a road map for yourself by setting goals. I’m going to walk you through how to do that, but before we get started, it’s important to point out the difference between dreams and goals. Dreams are just that, they’re fuzzy, feel-good fantasies that live in our imaginations, and that’s often where they stay. We all need to have dreams, but we also want to make some of those dreams a reality in our lives, and that’s what a goal is: something that we are aiming to actually make happen. Goals are the road maps that we create for our lives, they pinpoint exactly where we’re going and how we’re going to get there, and they help to give us a sense of purpose, direction and achievement in life.

So let’s start setting goals.

1. Make sure your goals light you up.
The things we usually put off doing the most are the things we don’t like doing; the things that bore us; that aren’t fun and that don’t give us a sense of satisfaction. So, if you set goals around doing things that make you feel that way, you won’t make a true commitment to achieving them. Sure, we can’t always spend our days doing our favourite things, but there has to be a great pay-off in it for you - your goals have to light you up from the inside; they have to ‘feel’ right for you.

GOAL BOOSTER

Because I am a natural health practitioner I use and recommend a lot of ‘natural medicines’ that can help in all areas of our lives. Ginger is a herb that is excellent for giving you a metaphorical ‘kick in the pants’! It’s brilliant for getting procrastinators into action. Anytime you need a bit of a push along:

Brew yourself a cup of fresh ginger herb tea (hot or iced). Take a knob of fresh ginger, grate or chop it, and infuse a teaspoon in a cup of hot water - drink it warm or let it cool and drink as a tangy iced tea.

Use some aromatherapy in your home or workplace. Vaporising some ginger essential oil, in combination with other energising essential oils such as May Chang and Grapefruit, will help keep you focused on the task at hand and lighten your mood when you’re feeling bogged down by it all. I have created an oil blend for this very purpose, it’s called Play More, just add 5-10 drops to an electric room vaporiser or car vaporiser.

2. Write your goals in language that excites you into action.
What impact do you think your language has on your mental, emotional and physical wellbeing, and on what you achieve in your life? We all know someone who is ‘Mr or Ms Negative’, they always have a problem, an excuse, and a reason for why they can’t do what they want to do, or why they aren’t getting the results they want - and it’s always someone else’s fault! In reality, it is that little voice that we all have inside of us that can make us doubt and question ourselves - and some people are better at managing it than others.

3. Be Positive.
You’ll never get that little voice to be quiet, but you can take control of what it’s saying and what you choose to pay attention to. The key to changing your self-talk is to first begin noticing it, and then to replace the negative commentary with a positive one. For example, you could replace existing scripts such as ‘I can’t do this’ with ‘I’m learning how to do this’, or ‘I am determined to become good at this’, or ‘I know I can do this’. So when you’re setting and reviewing your goals always use positive language, confident and inspiring words that describe you achieving your goals, and leave no room for negativity.

4. Shoot for the stars - one step at a time.

Goals are about stretching yourself to achieve the things you want in your life, but we still have to focus on taking manageable steps along the way - you don’t have to achieve a lifetime’s worth of goals this year! For example, if I were to write down a goal to buy a $1 million beach house, and I earn $50,000 per year, the stress that sits behind this goal will sabotage my achieving it. It’s called non-integrative thinking. So while you might set a big bold goal such as this, within a short period of time you will start to realise that the goal is way too hard at this point in time, and that you’re not likely to realise it within the timeframe that you’ve set yourself, so you give up on it and it ends up becoming a de-motivator that spreads into other areas of your life as well. Remember, goals are meant to inspire you, not to set you up for failure, so make sure they’re challenging but achievable.

5. Set goals for your personal and business life.
Setting goals in all areas of your life will help to ensure that you maintain a sense of balance, which in itself can help you to keep up the momentum needed to achieve your goals. Start by setting goals around:

Family and home life
Physical body and health
Emotional health
Spiritual health
Finances and career
Continued education
Social life and relationships

6. Write your goals in great detail.
The more information and detail that you put into your goals, the more efficient your subconscious mind will be at helping you to achieve them. You see, when you write down a detailed goal, your subconscious mind takes that as an instruction to make that thing happen. It’s like when you decide to buy a new car, and you suddenly start to see that same type of car everywhere - what we tune our subconscious minds in to, we bring into our lives. So, if you’re setting a goal to take an overseas holiday, put all of the details about that trip into your goal - who you’ll fly with, where you’ll stay, what you’ll see there and so on. The more detail, the better.

GOAL BOOSTER

Our memories are strongly linked to our sense of smell, you’ve probably had the experience when you smell a particular aroma and in an instant it takes you to another place and time in your mind. You can also use this memory association to help you focus on your goals. For example, this year one of my goals is to go to Turkey for the rose harvest (as an aromatherapist this is a very cool thing to do), so I have been vaporising rose essential oil and using a rosewater spritzer every day to help keep me focused on achieving that goal.

7. Keep them in your face.
Out of sight, out of mind. If you don’t remind yourself of your goals every day, it’s very easy to lose track of them and just get busy with the day-to-day demands of life. I keep my goals in my diary, so that I see them every day. Reviewing your goals daily is a crucial part of your success and vital to make sure that your conscious and subconscious minds are focused on working toward them. Take a few minutes each morning to read your goals and visualise yourself achieving them (really do a little daydreaming here, imagine what it would look like and feel like to have achieved your goals), this is a technique that sportspeople use all the time to help them stay focused and committed.

8. Monitor your progress and adjust your goals. Review your goals periodically and adjust them as you go - just because you’ve set a goal doesn’t mean you can’t make changes to it along the way, you’ve got to be flexible. As you look at your goals and plan your day, ask yourself if what you are doing is taking you toward your goals or not. If it is, you know you’re on the right track, and if it’s not, see whether it’s your goal or your actions that need to be adjusted to get you heading in the right direction again. When you do find yourself off track don’t give yourself a hard time for it (I did say ‘when’ not ‘if’ because we’re all only human and we all wonder off track now and then), just be glad that you realised it, and get back to what you know you should be doing.

GOAL BOOSTER

Learn to put up your hand and ask for help when you need it. You may never be able to achieve some of your goals without a little help or guidance along the way - but for some people (myself included), learning to put ego aside and ask for help can be a goal in itself! You’ll reach your goals, faster and easier and give other people the opportunity to be of service to you and to share in your success if you just learn to ask for what you need.

9. Share your goals with someone.
Sharing your goals with someone you trust can be a great way of making sure you stay on track, and it can give you someone to help celebrate your milestones with along the way. But you do need to be careful about whom you choose to share your goals with. It’s human nature that some people will be excited about what you want to achieve and be there with you every step of the way, while other people can feel threatened, or jealous, or just put out that you’re making an effort to change your life while they’re not, and they can react negatively and make you doubt yourself. So choose one or two trusted people, who are as positive and ‘can do’ as you are and help each other to achieve everything you want in your lives.

GOAL BOOSTER

Reward yourself! So often we focus on what hasn’t worked in our lives and what we’re yet to achieve, and we forget to acknowledge ourselves for what we do achieve. Make this the year of acknowledging and celebrating your achievements, and share that success with a friend. Within my own close network of friends, we have chosen this year to share all of our ‘Woo-Hoo!’ moments, whether by email, phone or in person, we connect with those people who share our vision and celebrate and encourage each other with some good-old positive reinforcement.

Everyone benefits from goal setting, without it, life can just seem to be happening to us, pushing and pulling us in all kinds of directions and we can start to feel powerless about what’s happening and where we’re heading. Remember to set goals for all areas of your life, it’s not all about what we want to achieve in our working lives, it’s also about ‘having a life’. Living a balanced life is about finding a way to have it all, without losing your health, sense of humour or sanity along the way! It’s about feeding yourself energy, not draining the life out of you - and simple goal-setting can help you to achieve just that.

Jennifer is a work/life balance expert with a prescription for modern living. Her powerful message is of work, life and balance - and how to have it all without losing your health, sense of humour or sanity along the way. Find out more about Jennifer’s 7 Steps to Sanity at http://www.jenniferjefferies.com

Whatever you do in this life, do it to the best of your ability. Whether you are in school, running for president, playing a game, or working on something, do it in a quality way. Don’t be someone who just does something to get by, or is waiting to clock out. Be at the top of your game, because even if nobody knows, you will know, and the universe will know, and usually someone higher up in your organization is noticing.

If something is challenging for you and you still do it well, the universe will promote you according to your ability. Time and time again, if you are pressing your boundaries and excelling at what you are doing, the universe is going to arrange a super opportunity to be presented to you. Whether you hold onto it, or let it slip through your fingers, is all up to you. If you are a mediocre worker, it is almost certain that you will not be able to perform to the level that is needed; but if all along you have been working to the best of your ability, and pushing your limits, you will quickly acclimate and excel at your new position.

Don’t take a promotion or opportunity for granted. Be like Michael Jordan, who was at the top of his game in basketball, even though he held numerous NBA titles, and MVP status, he was the ball player that spent the longest time on the court practicing his free throws and his lay-ups. He was the first on the court for practice and the last to leave. He has played at the best of his game for a very long time, and yet he didn’t take any of it for granted. He never tired of trying to excel, to challenge himself and his team members. He was always practicing his maneuvers, his passes and his ball handling, and even though he is the best, he is man without arrogance, and maintains himself as a gentleman.

Do not be like Bill Clinton, who became the president of the United States and then had an affair with an intern and afterwards said of it, “I did it because I could.” Every man can cheat on his wife, and every man can be in a position of power and abuse that power. But this is not working to the best of his ability. Bill Clinton is a mediocre person, because since he could abuse his position of power, he did.

Certainly you are learning what is right and wrong. You know that many people who are mediocre can become people of power and prestige, but just because they are there does not mean that they worked to the best of their ability to get there. Work where you are to your highest level of integrity and your talent, because God and the universe see you. When you are working to the highest level for which you are capable, you are like a shining bright star in this dark world. You become a clear example, a delight and inspiration to those that are around you, to your children and your friends, and even globally. You don’t know what door is being opened for you because of your work, your attention, the dedication of your time and energy.

Even if no one notices how you work, or your level of focus, at the end of the day you will know. You can sleep easily knowing that you did it well. If this is the last day on this planet for you or me, we will be satisfied, and we will hear these words from God: “This is my daughter, or my son in whom I am well pleased. Come on home for your party.”

Every one of us gets lazy sometimes and just wants to take it easy for a while, but consistently we have to strive to work to our utmost talent, energy and dedication. If you are working to the best of your ability, don’t belittle what you are doing, don’t pressure yourself to be perfect. Recognize that you are doing your very best. Remember you still have to live this life with balance. Your family, your relationships, your work, your school, and special events all need balance. You need to maintain your balance too. Deep within you will know if you are working to the best of your ability or not. You will know if you need to make adjustments in your attitude, your work ethics, your behavior, etc. If you are working to the highest level of your ability, then let the negative thoughts go. If you did the best you could for someone or something, and it doesn’t work out, don’t put all the burden on yourself. H/she has responsible for his/her life just as you have for yours. Just remind yourself, “I did the best that I could,” and then move on. Be yourself, and be incredibly kind to yourself and others.

Yoga Kat–aka Katheryn Hoban is a yoga teacher with twelve years experience. She teaches children’s yoga ages 3-6, and 7-12 and Adults privately in NJ. She is the author the book DAUGHTER BELOVED which will come out next year. She has created a children’s affirmation CD (ages 3-6) and an affirmation CD for adults. Yoga Kat is available for speaking or writing and can be reached at katscoolcorner@yahoo.com or 201 970-9340

COMING SOON http://www.thecircleofpeace.com

Let’s get started with the emotional part!

1. Take time out. Take some time and relax. You have been through a traumatic experience. Don’t worry about anything at all. Take a stroll in the park. Have an ice cream. Watch a movie. Cry if you want to.

2. Find someone you can talk to about what you feel. If you have no one to tell it to, take a piece of paper and write down everything you feel. Write down all the anger, frustrations, feelings … everything.

3. Do not indulge in intoxicating things like drugs and alcohol. The temptation is there, I know, but do not even try to drown your sorrows. All you will be doing is masking the problem and not dealing with it.

4. Be compassionate with yourself. If you cannot do this immediately, then find another person who needs your compassion. Help a child with open a packet of crisps. Help an old lady cross a road. Anything that constitutes an act of kindness on your part will go towards restoring faith in yourself.

5. Once you can, begin to laugh. Laugh at the stupidest things if you must but laugh! In time, you will laugh at the people who caused you such harm in the first place.

Now on to the financial part …

There are four characteristics you must have:
6. Begin with courage.

Have the courage to dream again. Do not tell anyone your dream in the beginning. Keep it to yourself. It will sustain you. Think of the one thing you want most in your life and hang on to it.

7. Plan on how to achieve this dream of yours

This takes perseverance on your part. Plan and plan your dream and how you are going to achieve it. The find people whom you think are qualified to help you. I do not mean find people who are going to encourage you - people who are qualified!

8. Determination

Isn’t there a saying somewhere, ’success is only 1 % luck and 99 % determination’.
Well that is true. This is YOUR dream. Not you mother’s, not your father’s, not your boss’s, not your friends’. It’s all yours and you alone can be determined about it.

9. Be compassionate.

If you hit a snag, take time out and be a little compassionate to yourself. Read motivational books. Surround yourself with people who will be of comfort to you. Learn new techniques of how to tell a story, if you want to!

10. Lastly, repeat this saying over and over again - ‘I Will Succeed … Soon!’

Aneeta Sundararaj, a storyteller, is the creator of the bestselling program “How To Tell A Great Story”. Aneeta’s technique and famed “R.P.I. Principle”© has been used by many people and offers simple, cutting-edge strategies applicable universally. She is also the author of two ‘traditional’ books The Banana Leaf Men and Mad Heaven: the biography of Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Dr. M. Mahadevan. Visit http://www.howtotellagreatstory.com to learn more.

1. Find The Obvious - Drucker looked for the obvious things in order to identify people’s greatest needs. It takes discipline to find them…and will lead to tremendous opportunities in your small business.

2. Help Employees Grow - Show the employees of your small business how to learn. In the knowledge economy we have today, Drucker believed continuous learning is the key for growth.

3. Teach - To become a better learner…teach. Drucker taught American history, Japanese art, religion and statistics during his career, because teaching requires learning new concepts, not just facts.

4. Measure Yourself - Whenever you make a key decision, write down your expectations of the outcome, then go back nine months later and see how things turned out. Drucker did this regularly in order to identify his strengths and weaknesses as a decision-maker.

5. Be Curious - “My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions,” said Drucker. Be sure to ask your employees lots of questions to keep them focused on your goals.

6. Seek Consistency - Look for inconsistencies between what is and what ought to be in your small business. Then, set out to align things in the way you know they should be.

7. Know How Customers Think - Seek innovation, not novelty. Innovation creates value, while novelty creates amusement. To determine the difference, ask yourself not “Do we like it?”…but “Will customers pay for it?”

8. Make Things Better - “The test of a leader is not what happens during his lifetime, but what happens when he leaves.” The only thing that matters is how leaders touch the lives of those around them.

9. Create Systems - “Efficiency is doing better what is already being done.” Look at all of the moving parts in your small business, then systematically determine how to do each of them better.

10. Manage Yourself - “Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.” Focus on “Genius Time” - those things that have the biggest impact on your small business.

11. Go All In - “Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes… but no plans.” Make sure your team commits to achieving each of your goals…and theirs.

Copyright © 2005 by Success Handler, LLC. All rights reserved.

The Coach, David Handler, is the founder of Success Handler, (http://www.successhandler.com), and specializes in helping small business leaders find clarity and take action. He understands the challenges of running a business, because he’s been there - as a small business owner, franchisee, franchisor, corporate leader and trainer. Much like sports coaches, his coaching will show you how to compete on a level playing field in your industry.

I remember the time that I swore to myself that I’d never be caught off guard again. I was in my new job on Capital Hill and it was the first week on the job. My new mentor at the office was the daughter of the other US Senator from Nevada so she knew everyone who was anyone. I tagged along with her one day to a meeting and I found myself in a mess!

She introduced me to the President of Zimbabwe! I shook his hand and all of a sudden about a thousand flashes went off! None of the photographers knew that I was just a newcomer on Capital Hill, but every single one got a picture of me …. And I’m sure what turned out was the “deer in the headlights” look. I completely froze, and looked up completely shaken up. I had NO idea that the photographers were even THERE and then on top of that, why would they want a picture of me?

I’ve since learned to take a great picture anywhere. You name it, the driver’s license, Sam’s Club to get a member card, at weddings or any function, I have trained myself that the second that I know a camera is around, I “eyeball the eye of the camera” and give my best smile; for as long as I need to!

But how do we handle situations in which we get caught off guard? Like asking to speak on a moments notice? What if someone yells at you at work for something that happens? What if you are asked to deliver a toast at an event? Or how about being asked to deliver a message or read a poem at a class reunion? That happened to me at my last reunion, and I told them that as a professional speaker, I never go anywhere unprepared. Therefore, at the encouragement of my husband, I turned them down.

But what if you can’t turn them down? What if you HAVE to get up and give a speech? What if you are lambasted in front of people at your workplace and can barely come up for air before you are supposed to respond?

I think that in any crisis situation, and these are DEFINITELY crisis situations, that it’s best to always have a plan. Here is what I recommend that my clients do:

1. Know that you are going to be caught off guard at some point.

2. Make a plan and memorize the plan.

3. When it happens, tell yourself to take several breaths and calm down.

4. Next, identify WHAT it is that the person wants from you. Do they want and need a response right then? Can the response wait?

5. If it can wait, then tell them thank you for expressing their views and that you’ll get back to them as soon as you have had a bit to think about it. Then, go to your office or get somewhere quiet and process what you need to do and say. Call a friend or mentor that you trust to help guide you through it.

6. If you have to address the situation right there, your plan is to come off as poised and confident as possible. Hold yourself together until you can respond without flying off the handle or saying anything stupid.

7. Address the situation. Ask yourself: What is the bottom line? What do you need to do or to say to make the other person or people happy?

8. Deliver your lines. Look the other person or people in their eyes as you deliver your lines. Do it with the most amount of sincerity as possible.

9. Be available to discuss it afterwards. Remain calm. You can always freak out later.

10. After the fact, reassess how you did. What would you have changed if you could go back? Store that in your memory bank and chalk one up to being ready!

A great example of someone being ready when they were caught off guard was Mayor Rudy Gulianni of NYC after 9/11. He went on TV almost immediately after almost being suffocated by the towers. He remained calm and showed sympathy to others even as the news of his good friends’ death was delivered to him.

Mayor Gulianni had been prepared. He had been reading about leadership and Winston Churchill the night before the tragedy. He was able to recall the story of how Churchill led his people in desperate times, and Guliani was able to call to memory this story as he himself had to present himself as a strong leader.

Being prepared takes time of course. But being prepared and ready for the unexpected can catapult you to the next level in your career. It can make people stand up and notice, and can teach you that anyone can survive and thrive, when they expect the unexpected!

Mary Gardner , The Charisma Coach! is an Executive Communications Consultant and Trainer. She works with, coaches and trains individuals, sales teams, executives, and celebrities. She owned and operated one of the first coaching institutions on the east coast, CCI, in NYC, Philly and NJ. Mary has appeared on ABC’s 20/20 and has self published a book on public speaking. Mary is married to Sway and is mommy to Jeremy 5, and lives in Orlando, FL.

For more information contact: mary@marygardner.com or Web: www.marygardner.com

Perhaps noted as one of the greatest United States presidents of all time, Abraham Lincoln’s early life may not have reflected his potential greatness. He failed in business. He lost election to the state legislature, Speaker of the House, nomination for Congress, appointment of land officer, U.S. Senate twice and nomination for Vice President. After those eight major failures, Lincoln was elected President of the United States. How many of us would have kept going like Lincoln did?

Many problems that we think of today pale in comparison to what happened in the late 1850’s and middle 1860’s. Lincoln dealt with eleven southern states that had seceded from the Union. Eleven states formed the Confederate States of America during his presidency.

Americans may think that there are divisions among our country today. There was an enormous division during the Civil War era. Americans literally died on both sides of the war: North and South.

There were several key challenges that Lincoln faced as U.S. President:

1. Lincoln was president during the American Civil War, which lasted four years

About five weeks after Lincoln was inaugurated as the 16th United States President, the American Civil War began. Lincoln was president when the country was literally falling apart.

Division may exist between families. Unfortunately, some family members may go years without talking to one another. Are problems within families really that terrible compared to the unrest during the Civil War? Some families were divided so much by the war that one son may have fought for the North while another son of the same family fought for the South.

2. The most American casualties happened during the Lincoln Administration

600,000 to 700,000 Americans died in the Civil War. The American Civil War casualties exceed the United States’ losses in all of its other wars from The American Revolution to the present.

Do any of us think that we have such an enormous responsibility? Lincoln had an insurmountable responsibility of having the most American casualties during his term as president. More Americans died from war during Lincoln’s presidency than all of the other American presidents combined.

3. Lincoln suffered from Depression

Lincoln, who lived in the nineteenth century, did not have access to antidepressants, such as Prozac, to take as prescription medication nor could he go to a drug store and purchase St. John’s Wort over the counter.

Lincoln never had the luxury of having access to modern treatments. Lincoln’s job was to deal with a country that was divided by war. At times, your problems may seem as monumental as Lincoln’s struggles, mainly because you are the one who is currently enduring a particular problem. All of us have common and unique problems. Can you imagine if you weren’t so lucky and had limited access to treatments like Lincoln? Fortunately, we do have the luxury of modern medicine.

4. Lincoln was assassinated

The North, The Union, defeated the South, The Confederacy. The South surrendered to the North on April 9th, 1865. Lincoln was assassinated five days after the Civil War ended and died the morning after he was shot.

Do you think you feel unappreciated by the work you’ve done? Lincoln united his country as president, issued the Emancipation Proclamation to end slavery, inspired numerous people while suffering from depression, was one of the most kindest and good-hearted presidents our nation has ever had and what was the thanks that he got? He was killed.

Numerous times, Lincoln was a leader. He kept America together so we could still be called “The United States of America.” He led by example. In his second inaugural address, Lincoln said that he wanted “malice toward none” and he wanted “to bind up the nation’s wounds.” Unfortunately, Lincoln never got to see any of his efforts and results implemented. The United States owes Lincoln a huge debt of gratitude.

Like Lincoln, every one of us has overcome problems and has achieved greatness in our own way. You may not remember some obstacles that you overcame, such as when you learned to walk or talk. There are challenges you overcame that you probably do remember very well, such as finishing a project, winning a race, graduating from school or establishing a career. Every one of you has a potential for greatness like Abe Lincoln. It is up to you to find the greatness within yourself.

Sean North primarily helps writers gain focus, motivation, remove mental blocks that help to unblock the writing process. EVERYONE who writes has been stuck at some point in his or her career. You do not have to accept these mind-boggling roadblocks!

seannorthstn@aol.com

(586) 216-7516

I am fascinated by problems. I like to think of myself as a solution oriented individual. However when problems creep into my life as they always do I know that I am in for a major learning experience.

I just finished reading a book this week that belongs on the bookshelf of every entrepreneur. It is called “Juice, The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors by Evan I. Schwartz.” This book allows you to take a peek inside the labs of the brightest minds and better understand how they relentlessly question and discover the infinite number of ways that we can imagine and create solutions. The book is an awesome expose on how world class inventors on the planet search for problems, seek to understand them and develop solutions that can only come about by perceiving the problem in a different manner. Every entrepreneur should read this book! It is chock full of wisdom that we can apply to our business lives.

Albert Einstein once commented that the most fundamental question we can ever ask ourselves is whether or not the universe we live in is friendly or hostile. He hypothesized that your answer to that question would determine your destiny. I feel that most people have decided that the universe is hostile. In so doing their immediate response to any problem only compounds the hostility. However, the great minds always teach us that regardless of the problem there is a major lesson to be understood if we only learn to look for it. The history of the world is literally the history of transformative breakthroughs.

In the book “”Juice, The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors by Evan I. Schwartz” the author clearly demonstrates that the one factor that separates world class inventors from wannabes is that they celebrate the feedback they receive from FAILURE. The most innovative minds recognize that within every failure lies the true and genuine information that is required to learn how to better understand the problem and overcome the obstacles that it presents. They are fascinated by the feedback they receive and are consistently focused on experimenting further because of the feedback that will provide.

A powerful lesson for all of us! Failure is feedback and within that feedback is the wisdom of incredible success. Or as Dr. Wayne Dyer as stated, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

Take for example the story of Dean Kamen the inventor of the Segway, the two wheeled personal electronic vehicle that is revolutionizing transportation in our major cities. One day in 1990, Kamen witnessed a wheelchair bound man trying to navigate a curb en route to a shopping center. He followed the man into an ice cream store and was astonished at how the man struggled to reach for the counter and grab his ice cream cone. Within that experience Kamen was both outraged and inspired. The seeds of the Segway were born.

Two years later after numerous disappointments Kamen slipped on a wet bathroom floor and realized that the real problem he was confronting in his technology was one of balance. He and his team of engineers honed in on the enabling technology of electronic gyroscopes that could provide “automatic balance.” It was only after years and years of failure and celebrating the feedback he received that they could focus on the successful introduction of the Segway prototype. Today, according to Kamen the Segway is the answer to the urban transportation problem. 43% of the world’s gas is used by cars and almost 20% of individuals’ disposable income goes to car payments and gasoline. The market for the Segway is several billion people! A fascinating creation brought about by someone who simply disagreed with limitations imposed by the status quo.

What is your greatest problem in life right now?

What is the greatest problem in your business?

The late Dr. Norman Vincent Peale was fond of saying that,
“When God wants to send you a gift he wraps it up in a problem and the bigger the gift that God sends you the bigger the problem.”

If the Segway can be born by witnessing a wheelchair bound man in pursuit of an ice cream cone what are the possibilities that can occur in your life if you learn to seek the lesson in your problems?

An Nathan Myrhrvold, the former Chief Technologist at Microsoft Corporation has prophesied “There’s never been a better time to have big ideas.”

Eureka! When you reinvent failure you design your own success.

Be Careful What You Agree With!

Harald Anderson is the co-founder of Artinspires.com a leading online gallery of
Motivational Posters and Inspirational Posters.”When Art Inspires, Dreams Become Realities. His goal in life is to become the kind of person that his dog already thinks he is. http://www.artinspires.com.

Most of us take it for granted that we know those or the things we are familiar with. We often say that we know someone, while we had come across that person just once. Our built-in recognition system can sometimes play tricks on us, given us the false impression of knowledge and recognition. On the basis of recognition and knowing a person, we are sometimes led to believe that we can trust that person more than others, to communicate with that person in a certain way, or to be off guard. However, this kind of knowledge is most probably the result of our prejudices of thought. During our lifetime, we accumulate a “wealth” of prejudices, some of them are useful and some are a nuisance to us and to others. These prejudices relate not only to what we think, but also to the way we think. On the basis of faulty mechanisms of knowing others, we choose, consciously or not, our style and method of communication with others. The effectiveness of this communication is thus bound to depend on factors that are not under our control. Effective and efficient communication with others definitely requires a fair amount of knowledge of the other. This is valid for people, but also for organisations and institutions. If you want to assert yourself or yours ideas you definitely need to adapt your communication style and method on the basis of fairly good knowledge of your interlocutor. Otherwise, effectiveness is left to chance and luck.

The instinctive ability to have insight into and to know what is in another person’s mind is known as ‘theory of mind’. The conceptualisation required to have such ability is complex. We now know that a particular region in the middle of the prefrontal cortex springs into life when we deal with questions that call for a calculation about another person’s mental state. We also know that this region has wide-ranging connections to many other areas of the brain, in particular those needed to pull in stored information and personal memories. This background information is required in order to be able to read between the lines of a story or do guess the real motives behind it, rather than taking the story for its face value. Another important ability relates to reading expressions and feeling emotions. The lack of understanding of emotional responses from a given person renders it difficult to connect with that person and to strike the right emotional cords. On the contrary, this lack of knowledge may elicit undesired responses. In the face of all this, it is fair to say the effectiveness of assertiveness is highly dependent on our ability to know what is in another person’s mind, to foresee his or her emotional responses and to read to be able to read his or her reactions.

Cutesolutions, a Belgium-based provider of innovative training, has compiled and categorised interesting assertiveness techniques. On the basis of this research a deck a cards has been developed with the objective of providing a practical tool and an effective learning method for boosting assertiveness. A demo is accessible from http://cute4u.net:8082/myfiles/demo/1.0 The assertiveness cards fall under four major categories. The last category relates to people. In this category, various techniques aim at enhancing awareness about the importance of the ability to have insight into another person’s mind and emotional system. These techniques relate to both the unconscious emotional system and the conscious emotional control centre. The effectiveness of communication involving greater assertiveness and self-confidence hinges on own ability to know the interlocutor. Otherwise, communication would amount to barking at a passing train. Yet, I really wonder if people take the time to challenge their knowledge of even their closest partner. Just ask yourself how well you know a close person. I mean try to describe the way he or she thinks, his or her emotional response patterns and his or her facial and other body expressions.

For further information on assertiveness, please contact us at:

Cutesolutions
30, rue Josse IMPENS
1030 Brussels - Belgium
Tel +32-2-2155157 Fax +32-2-2156416
Ibl.Belgium@telenet.be
http://cute4u.net:8082

M’Hamed CHERIF is a holder of a Ph.D in economics. He has assumed a teaching function at the Free University of Brussels, and he has worked as a country economist at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. Since 1989, he has been working as a consultant in the development field, with a major focus on preparation and negotiation of macroeconomic and sectoral reform programmes, as well as developmental projects. Recently, he teamed up with his daughter, Sarah CHERIF, a holder of an university educational science degree, to develop a business in training on personal development and business management.

In the field of leadership and management we are being constantly bombarded by new fads, some useful and some not so useful. In recent years we have seen charismatic leadership, transactional leadership, transformational leadership, level five leadership, emotional intelligence (EQ) and now spirituality.

These are all useful models and without them we would be hard pressed to make sense of the complexities of modern organisations and the people that lead them. But where do these models come from? Do they emerge from some sort of primeval soup, do people sit down in their offices and carefully construct them, or have they all appeared somewhere before?

How far have we really come with Leadership Thinking? If we go back to Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’, a 2,500 year old book on military strategy, we find that much of its teaching is still relevant to us today.What we do not see there, are the patterns and cycles to tell us what is next. Could it be that the next ‘great thing’ is sitting there on page forty two or is something big coming that we cannot see?

If you are interested, you should read the book for yourself. In a nutshell it has thirteen chapters ranging from Making of Plans to Espionage, all set in an Oriental context, many years ago. We need to use metaphor to draw out the learning. For instance the chapter Empty and Full provides lessons on leading from the front and leadership qualities that look like charismatic leadership. If you look carefully you can also find links to emotional intelligence and spirituality. So what’s next?

Derek Cheshire is an expert, speaker, consultant and facilitator in the areas of Business Creativity, Innovation and Idea Generation. He is creator of the Innovation Toolkit, and co creator of workshops such as Creating The Difference, Creativity as a Business Tool, Sticky Strategy and The Idea Factory. You can receive regular ideas and updates on Business Creativity and Innovation by visiting http://www.creative4business.co.uk and filling out the simple sign up form.