1. Get the audience to stop looking at the screen IMMEDIATELY.

There are times when you feel that you are losing the audience Рwhen ironically they are too busy checking out your wonderful slide! You are about to make an important point and you want the audience to focus on what YOU are saying and not look at the slide that you have put up! The solution is simple – press the key ‘B’ for the screen to go black or ‘W’ for the screen to go white. All heads will turn towards you! Hit ‘B’ or ‘W’ again to bring back the slide show.

2. Know how the slides will behave when you are making them!

When I am preparing a presentation, I do like to check how the slide will behave in the slide show mode. The fastest way to check out the slide is to hold down the CTRL key while clicking the slide show view button; this will open a tiny preview window showing that slide in slide show mode.

3. Draw on the screen for a dramatic effect!

Sometimes it can be valuable to be able to draw on the screen during your presentation to illustrate a particular point or item. Press the Ctrl-P key together to display a pen on the screen. Then, using the mouse, draw on the slide as you wish. To erase what you have drawn, press the E key. To hide pen, press the Ctrl-H key combination. This one is my favourite! It is simple, is very effective and it usually leaves the audience dazzled!

4. Insert YouTube Videos in your presentation

Inserting regular videos in presentations is simple, but how about YouTube videos? Using videos at any stage in your presentation can liven things up very quickly! Since YouTube is the biggest repository of videos, once you are able to insert YouTube videos you will never be short of an interesting video for your presentation. Here is how to go about it.

1. Identify the video and the url on YouTube
2. Go to www.mediaconvertor.org and paste the url
3. Follow the simple instructions to download and save the file (download it in the AVI format)
4. That’s it! Now you can insert this video like any other normal video. (Insert ‚Äì> Movie ‚Äì> “Movie from file” to put the YouTube video in the current slide)

5. Oh! But I never received the ppt.

If you are tired of people telling you that they never received the ppt file which you had emailed to them for the third time, probably the size is too high and cannot go through their mail box! If zipping up the file is not helping, try changing the BMP files to JPEGS. Sometimes, as you’re working on a presentation, you’ll notice that the file seems to get bigger for no reason. To get rid of this “bloating”, save the file using “File/Save As” and give the file a new name. ¬†This can reduce the file size up to 50%.

6. Use any symbol you want

Till recently I was not able to insert these and then I came across this simple solution!

• To insert the copyright ¬© symbol, enter (c).
• To insert the Trademark ‚Ñ¢ symbol enter ™.
• To insert the registered ¬Æ symbol enter (r).

You can make your own special symbol shortcuts in Tools > AutoCorrect (copy from character map and paste into replace with…).

7. Leave handouts when you finish but make them special

In ‘Avoiding Death by PowerPoint’ I recommended never distributing handouts before the presentation. In the same article I also pushed for slides with little or no text (only pictures). It may be a great idea though to leave a handout that would reinforce or strengthen your key points. Now, slides with no text are great for presentations but do not make good handouts! I like sending my PowerPoint slides to MS Word and then creating my handouts (if any). Here is how to go about it.

1. Choose Send To from the File menu.

2. Select Microsoft Office Word from the resulting submenu.

3. In the Send To Microsoft Office Word dialog, choose the Outline Only option to send only the content.

4. Click OK.

Once your content is in Word, you can apply formatting and printing options that aren’t available to you in PowerPoint.

If you use PowerPoint 2007, you can use the Publish command to send content to Word. Choose Publish from the Office menu and then choose Create Handouts In Microsoft Office Word.

8. Confused between different versions of the same presentation? Identify differences in a jiffy. (This trick does not work in PowerPoint 2002/XP)

Many times, I end up with multiple versions of the same presentation – modified for different audiences/occasions. So much so that I forget what were the changes made in each of the versions. This is the easy way out.

• Load both presentations into PowerPoint.
• Make sure you’re on normal slide view (edit mode).
• And both presentations are on page one.
• Set the page zoom to “Fit”.
• Here’s the interesting part . . . Hold down the CTRL key.
• Press the “Tab” key.
• Press it repeatedly or even hold it on.
• Any changes between the two presentations will stand out like a sore thumb!
• You can repeat for all slides.

9. A great looking summary or opening slide in no time!

1. Open your presentation in PowerPoint.

2. Click the “View” menu.

3. Select “Slide Sorter”.

4. PowerPoint will then display a miniature view of all your slides in your presentation. You may like to choose a smaller viewing size to display all your slides. This is done by clicking the “edit” menu, select “zoom” or by clicking the “zoom” button Then enter a really small number, like 25.

5. Select every slide that you would like to include in the summary slide:

To select multiple slides, press and hold: – use the “shift” key for PowerPoint 97 – use the “Ctrl” key for PowerPoint 2000 2002 XP while you select the slides you would like to include with the left mouse button

6. When you have selected all the slides. Click the “Summary Slide” button.

7. PowerPoint will then create a summary slide from all the “titles” of the slides you selected. It will be placed in front of the first slide that you selected.

Unfortunately, this feature does not exist in Office 2007. If you use office 2007, you will need to create a summary slide manually.

10. Changed you mind about the case (upper case/ lower case)? Avoid any rework.

I often start by using upper case in my presentations only to change my mind later and switch to lower case. But I no longer need to do any rework! To save rewriting all the text again in the correct case, PowerPoint has a handy function to help you cycle through various case settings of your selected text until your text is as you wish it to be.

To change the case settings of your text:

• Select the text.
• Press Shift+F3
• Continue to press Shift+F3 until the correct case settings appear on your text, for example, ALL CAPS, or ALL LOWER CASE, or grammatically correct text.

11. Oh! As I mentioned on slide 21…(which was 42 slides ago)

While making a presentation there may be occasions when you need to refer to an earlier slide. Usually that means pressing the back key many times till you reach the desired slide. This process is clumsy and not professional and can distract the audience. Here is the solution:

Hit the slide number you want to display and press ‘Enter.’ Note down the current slide number to use when you want to resume the slideshow (good idea to keep a printout of your slideshow for slide numbers).

12. Get rid of the irritating pointer

During a presentation, it is very annoying to have the pointer (the little arrow) come on the screen while you are speaking. It causes movement on the screen and draws the audience attention from the presenter to the screen. The pointer comes on when the mouse is moved during the presentation. To prevent this from happening, after the Slide Show view has started, press the Ctrl-H key combination. This prevents mouse movement from showing the pointer. If you need to bring the pointer on screen after this, press the A key.

13. Presenter view

PowerPoint has a great feature called Presenter View, which allows you the presenter to see a different view of the presentation from your audience. In Presenter View, your monitor shows not only the slides, but also your notes as well as the current elapsed time in the presentation. This makes giving a presentation far easier. To enable Presenter view, go to the Slide Show ribbon and check Use Presenter View. In that same section, you can also change the monitor which the presentation is shown on. (The Use Presenter View checkbox can only be checked if you already have a second monitor connected and enabled)

14. Become a super-presenter with these short cuts!

Some of these may be obvious for many of you but I hope you find something new here! Once you get used to them, these tricks will save you a lot of time.

• Ctrl +A: Select all
• Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V: Cut, Copy and Paste the selected object (respectively). Works even better when you use it together with Alt+Tab.
• Ctrl+Z: Undo.
• Ctrl+B: Make the selected text bold.
• Ctrl+I: Make the selected text Italicized.
• Ctrl +T: PowerPoint will bring up a Font dialog box, where you can easily change your fonts, style, size, color effects, and color.
• Ctrl+H: Go to the next hidden slide
• Shft+F3: Whenever you change your mind about using upper case or lower case, (I do this all the time) use
• Shift+F3 to switch case from UPPER, lower, and Initial Caps.
• Ctrl+Home, Ctrl+End (Function+Home or Function+End in some machines): In Outline view, move to the top and bottom of the presentation, respectively. Within a slide, move to the top or bottom of the placeholder text. In slide show mode, move to first or last slide.
• Ctrl+S: Save a presentation.
• Ctrl+M : Insert a new slide. It is automatically copy the layout of the current slide.
• Ctrl+D: Make a duplicate of the selected slide (or selected object). This command is much faster than a copy and paste.
• F7: Check spelling, prevent embarrassment I love it!
• F5: Run a slide show.
• Page Down: In a slide show, move to the next slide.
• Page Up: In a slide show, move to the previous slide.
• Esc: In a slide show, press Esc to end the slide show.
• F6: Switch to the next pane (clockwise)
• ALT+SHIFT+ ARROW KEYS: Promote a paragraph / bullet point, demote a paragraph / bullet point, move a bullet point up or down.
• F4 or CTRL+Y: Repeat your last action
• CTRL+BACKSPACE : Delete a word
• CTRL+K: Insert a hyperlink
• Ctrl+Shift+>: Increase font size
• Ctrl+Shift+<: Decrease font size
• Ctrl+Spacebar: Remove formatting from selected text

I hope you could find something useful from my bag of PowerPoint tricks. Do let me know your favourite PowerPoint trick in the comments below.

I don’t know about you but I can’t take it anymore. So I have written this piece to reassure others that they won’t be subjected to the same misery when I am presenting. See if you can find something useful for yourselves here.

I must say that I am equally fed up of the numerous ‘rules for making presentations’ that we stumble across every few days either in a presentation or on the net. When you google ‘rules for making presentations’, you get more than 8 million results! Most of them are standard clichés that irk me no end.  So I have created my own set of presentation rules. I follow my rules to the last detail and I have rarely been disappointed. I implore you, urge you and beg you to follow my rules as well.

Are you ready to see my rules? Are you sure? Do you promise to follow them? Okay, okay, here goes. The following is my list of rules:

Rule No. 1 There are no rules for making presentations. If you have some already, flush them down the toilet. Now.

Rule No. 2 Have your own (personal) set of guidelines for making presentations. Keep them flexible and change them often.

That’s it. That’s my list of rules. If you follow this you will never be in a situation where you torture others with your presentation. Okay, that is the end of the article. Move on to the next one.

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Oh! Wait. You are probably thinking, ‘If there are no rules, what do I do the next time I need to present?’  Well, sorry. I cannot tell you that. That is for you to figure out. But I can and I will share some ideas and guidelines that I have created for myself to help me prepare a presentation or deliver it.

But remember that while these ideas work for me, they might not work for you.  Ultimately you will need to have your own rules for presenting. All good presenters have them. Look at the following examples.

• Lawrence Lessig: He is a monster slider! He can use up to 200 slides for a 10 minute presentation and he makes them really good.
• Seth Godin: He follows a style which has a lot of visuals, little text and likes to surprise the audience.
• Guy Kawasaki: 10 slides, 10 ideas, one idea per slide, not more than 20 minutes.
• Takahashi: Super size font sizes (more than 120) and obviously very little text.

It’s okay if you don’t have your own ideas ready now. Work on this and develop them over time. Here are the ideas that work for me.

1. Don’t use too many words. Better still, don’t use them at all! I don’t like to use words in my presentations. I use pictures instead. If I have to, I will restrict the number of words to 3-5 (in font size 100+). If your slides contain the full text of what you want to say, you’ll be tempted to just read from them, rather than communicating with the people in the room, and most of your audience will be reading them instead of listening to you. My personal challenge is to go through an entire presentation without using any words at all! I will update this post when I am able to do that.

2. Don’t be professional. Get personal. I try to ‘connect’ with audience. I have found through experience that projecting a professional image that is workmanlike and stiff does not work especially if the presentation is long, say, a half-a-day program.

3. Don’t use PowerPoint templates. Use the blank screen like a canvas. I hate using ready-made PowerPoint templates. I feel that built-in templates are ‘tacky’ and most of them are not suited to my no-rules style of making presentations. If you use these standard templates you will necessarily end up with presentations that are clichéd, riddled with bullets (pun intended) and those that will induce yawns.  Most of the times, I do not use any template. I don’t need to since I mostly use pictures and big font sizes.

4. Don’t dress up. Strip down. Stripping down means removing all the fluff and padding to get to the essence of the message. How to strip down?

• Be present 100%. Do not think of the consequences of your presentation, or the preparation or anything else. Not being present 100% in every moment of speaking is cheating the audience.
• Do not keep the focus on your performance. Instead focus on trying to sell, inspire, help, inform, teach, persuade, train, motivate, provoke…
• Do not present in a dark room where the focus is on the screen. The screen is just one component of the presentation. The audience came to see you as well as hear you.
• Be as near your audience as possible. Let them feel your energy and passion. Use a remote.
• Be yourself. Your core personality should come through in the presentations. Do not pretend to be someone you are not. Your quirkiest habits could turn out to be your strengths.
• Cut out the jargon. You fail the test if you have anything remotely close to the following phrases:

Proactively create enterprise-wide e-services without turnkey systems. Seamlessly enhance resource maximizing technologies for premier infrastructures. Objectively matrix revolutionary meta-services via optimal architectures. Credibly promote adaptive e-business without prospective innovation. Globally visualize worldwide e-markets vis-a-vis business solutions. Assertively disintermediate scalable materials with B2B platforms. Uniquely re-engineer progressive solutions for B2B synergy. Compellingly empower visionary metrics and equity invested portals. Appropriately incentivize professional strategic theme areas through user-centric infrastructures.

5. Don’t love the audience. Provoke them. Your objective is to make them think. That won’t happen if they are not stretched, or if there are no areas of disagreement. The greatest learning happens when people think. It is as simple as that. You need to make them think. To be able to do that, you need to pull them out of their comfort zones.

6. Don’t encourage participation. Encourage co-creation. Rather than just have the audience make meaningful comments, get them to contribute creatively to taking your agenda further. In a presentation about training programs, you could ask the participants to contribute one idea that is not covered by you. Suddenly, a dozen participants will come up with an idea each and you have a dozen more ideas.

7. Don’t hide the nervousness. Share the joy. Presenters spend too much effort and use up every trick in the bag to ‘avoid’ looking nervous! Well, thinking, planning and preparing for not being nervous is a surefire way to ensure that you will be nervous. Instead focus on the positive side. Focus on how happy and thrilled you are to be making the presentation and to have this opportunity to share! Focus on what you have to share rather than your ‘performance’.

8. Don’t can it! Flow with it. I have been victim of over preparation. In such situations, I usually end up making a stiff, workman-like presentation. However, in situations where I am well prepared but not overdone, I seem to flow into the presentation naturally.

9. PowerPoint is not the presentation. You are. PowerPoint is just a tool to present. You are at the core of the presentation. Without you, a PowerPoint deck is just a bunch of facts and figures. You may as well email it and then cancel the meeting. Next time, someone asks you to mail the ‘presentation’, tell them, you cannot travel by email.  You can only forward the PowerPoint deck through email, not the presentation!!

10. Communication is not WORDS+BODY LANGUAGE+TONE. Communication is the transfer of emotion. Facts, numbers, data, charts and logic can be emailed, emotions cannot. Your job as a presenter is to add emotion to the presentation. You can do so by being passionate and by believing in what you are presenting.

11. Never give out handouts before the presentation. Give notes later. Don’t give the slides as handouts in the beginning or everyone will get down to looking at the stuff while you’re talking and ignore you. Instead, your goal is to get them to sit back, trust you and take in the emotional and intellectual points of your presentation. Also remember, since your slides now have only pictures, it may be a better idea to prepare a separate document to give as a handout rather than the slides with pictures.

12. Do not stick to your story. Make the story sticky. Try to follow at least 4 out of the 6 essentials that Chip and Dan Heath talk about in their book Made to Stick. Here is a quick summary.

a. Keep it simple! Find the core of your idea and focus on the core. Only. You cannot find the core of your idea by ‘dumbing’ it down. You can do so by finding what is essential to your message. Strip your idea down to the bare essential. A successful defense lawyer says, “If you argue ten points, even if each is a good point, when they get back to the jury room they won’t remember any.” To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize.

b. Violate people’s expectations by doing something unexpected. The objective is to

• Surprise people and GAIN ATTENTION.

• Create interest to SUSTAIN ATTENTION.

Make your ideas concrete by adding vivid images and sensory information.

c. Make people believe your ideas by making them credible. Vivid details boost credibility. Present statistics in a human context. Find a source of credibility to draw upon.

d. Get people to care about your ideas by adding emotion. Associate ideas with emotions that already exist in others. Bridge the emotional gap between your idea (that they don’t care about Рyet) with something they already are emotional or care about. Research shows that people are more likely to make a charitable gift to a single needy individual than to an entire impoverished region. We are wired to feel things for people, not for abstractions and extrapolations. Sometimes it can be tricky to find the right emotion to harness. For instance, it’s difficult to get teenagers to quit smoking by instilling in them a fear of the consequences, but it’s easier to get them to quit by tapping into their resentment of the duplicity of Big Tobacco.

e. Make people act on your ideas by telling them stories. Use stories as stimulation (tell people how to act) and as inspiration (give people energy to act).

Avoid clichéd presentations. Don’t bore your audience to death. Make your presentations worth their while.

Check out Shalu’s follow up article – PowerPoint is my slave!

To begin, you must expect your audience to drift on and off from time to time while you speak.  To bring them back to you, you will need to complement a strong visual image together with a variation in your speech delivery and interesting visual aids.  It is therefore important to realise that different styles of clothes or dress will be required for different audiences.

The business presentation

If your audience is small for example, a boardroom presentation, you will have to adopt a softer and less intimidating look.  A bright red suit just won’t do in such a scenario.  The key is to wear something that will relax your audience. So, women should go for neutral coloured suits and introduce more colour with blouses.  The accessories should be kept to minimum; a gold and pearl combination looks most elegant.   For men, don’t dazzle your audience with bright colours or wild patterns.  Keep your suit black or navy blue and instead of wearing a burning red tie, go for calming colours like green, blue or gray.  The trick is that if you concentrate the colour near your face, it will act like a spotlight focusing attention on you and what you are saying.

On the other hand, a large audience becomes ‘a theatre’ and therefore requires a ‘costume’.  Thus, a navy-suited speaker will not create much of an impact at a conference of 500 people.  This will call for the occasion of bringing more colours into your jacket if not the entire suit. Try brighter colours to win your audience’s attention. Remember, it is the colour of your suit and not the bold patterns of your suits.

It will be useful if you can check the lighting of the room before your presentation. If the area where you are speaking is dark, you will need to brighten up by wearing lighter or brighter shades.

When selecting the style of your suits, do take into account how your body reacts under the stress of giving presentations. If you are the type that moves around when speaking, then be sure your clothes allow plenty of movement. Avoid tight skirts or jackets. Always keep your jackets buttoned when speaking so as to avoid any unnecessary distractions (e.g. your bosom, tummy or waist).

Make sure you are well groomed. Women should wear flattering makeup that is not too heavy and have their hair done stylishly. Similarly, men should have a clean-shaven look with their hair neatly trimmed and styled.

Appearing on television

The idea of appearing on television can be very daunting. If we watch news interviews or panel discussions, often times, we take particular note of how badly the interviewee can come across in terms of his or her appearance. It is very difficult to concentrate on what is said by someone who is wearing a gaudy scarf, necklace or even tie. Nonetheless, accept the fact that you will look bigger when you appear on TV. So, do not worry when you see yourself on TV; it is the camera, and not you.  Read on to find out the following tips to look great for your TV debut.

Remember to wear simple outfits without any distraction from your face. This means you should wear solid colours avoiding black and white shirts or tops. Black tops cancel out your top half, and it makes you look formless. White makes you look pale and washed out. You should also avoid red which tends to ‘bleed’ on camera -  the edges run and look fuzzy. Stripes or herringbone patterns can appear to be ‘dancing’ or moving around the screen. A monochromatic blend of colours is the best! Plunging necklines are no-no and again keep your jewellery or accessories to minimum.

Makeup is a must when appearing on TV. Most TV shows would have a makeup artist. If not, you will have to put on foundation before you appear in front of the camera. Pl

The challenge is in uncovering the hidden self of a person by ways and means other than the obvious. One of the newer trends is in Mess Analysis. The human mind is very simple. It zeros in on the obvious. The guy whose drawer is in a mess is seen as having a disorganized pattern of thinking too. This is as crude as it can get. The human psychological make-up is rather complex and a given tendency may not reflect presumed truth. Take for instance the people who like cleanliness and order as predicted by astrology for Virgo people. My experience is that they are so concerned with cleanliness and order that they become a pain in the neck for everybody; there is very little left in their lifestyle to accommodate others.

A spic and span attitude shows them as intelligent, capable and of course better than others; so they really expect appreciation. Even the slightest hint that their decisions and methods may not be the best usually puts them in a defensive mode and they will then argue to justify themselves till they browbeat you into silence. Now if this were true, of what use is the orderliness? Perfection for perfection’s sake is difficult to digest in this imperfect world. I have lived with such people and found them to be intractable and difficult to make friends with. They are very intelligent but use their intelligence to find fault with everything and everybody around them. Order and cleanliness are wonderful things and we should live by the highest standards but they make one so predictable and boring.

On the other extreme of the spectrum is the unruly creative person who has so many possibilities jostling in his head and has many projects at any given time. Then it is not always easy or practical to complete every project in one go so it presupposes that he would have incomplete projects lying around that seem a mess to the uninitiated. If the visitor jumps to the conclusion that this man would not amount to anything then he would be totally wrong because he would have failed to see the genius behind it all. I am personally very comfortable with this kind of a person. I have this nephew who is rather a remarkably intelligent person. He is into quality control which means he is always learning new trends, techniques, technologies and processes. That keeps his mind sharp. Add to this his ability to converse well and get his point across. The flip side of all this is that he has many things on his plate at any given time and the chances are that whatever can be made to wait keeps going down on the list of to-do’s. So out necessity and somewhat by temperament he has become a ‘procrastinator’. He is kind-hearted to a fault and has not learnt to say ‘no’. So people make demands on him because they know that he would do the job well. The poor fellow has little time as he travels and is out of town quite often; then there are pressing needs of his own family when he does happen to be home.

I must admit that if I wanted my letter to be posted, I would certainly not trust him. But if I were seriously sick, he is the first person I would want around me.

Ask any homicide detective: the obvious is almost a worthless indicator of anything. Until we learn to go behind the veil that all of us create about us, the façade will mislead us every time. Predictable facades are the most misleading.

Marriage is team-work and this is an acquired trait which has to be learnt and practised with serious intent. Of course, we complement each other but most of us would be equally happy living alone, content in our own selfish balloons. Modern life has made that dream a real possibility and all are aware of it but there is a big BUT.

Our genes and hormones have a potent force of their own. Destiny which is still running our lives – we may accept it or not – keeps us throwing into contact with attractive people of the opposite sex which gets the desire centres humming.

The yin and yang principle is at work in nature. Opposites coexist and attract each other. Observe closely and you will see that by some quirk of fate, every couple is a pairing of two people with opposite tendencies. The law of creation takes us to our next level of evolution by the effort we put in to live with each other. We are each other’s teachers.

Clashes will be but we have to learn to see both ends of the argument and learn to go beyond the obvious and mundane, for there are always some common points as well. The creator has used the sexual energy well. There is a lure here which serves a dynamic purpose. It keeps repopulating the mother earth and also helps in realizing the merger of the opposite sides of the same coin in the form of two individuals. It should be best seen as a spiritual discipline.

At the other end of the spectrum is the fact that we cannot all make our bread, tailor our clothes, make our shoes, construct our house and make our cars; so we need other people in our lives. In extension we therefore need a society and if we wish to live within this society, the word teaming-up again appears and we have to accept certain confinements. Therefore it is plain to all to see that life is a huge compromise after all. It’s so galling!

The BUT I was talking about makes its splash here. We are on our best behavior most of the time; continuously adjusting to the pressures of people and circumstances. BUT the moment we enter the threshold of our homes, we find it difficult to make the same compromises in our marriages willingly with a singing heart. Why? It is very well and facile to live when we make short contacts and all go home at the end of the day to our own watering holes, alone in our comfort zones; with the option to keep or break a relationship if we wish to. In marriage we have to be with the same person day in and day out for ever and ever with no respite. Readjustments are in order.

It seems as if the partners are forever saying “Be reasonable, do it my way”. This when coupled with a tendency to overbear is a formula for disaster. At the back of the mind there is always the dormant thought that we can always part which is no help at all. I belong to the old school. No divorce for me; so a mutually acceptable path has to be found and if there are children from the marriage, no possibility of exit at all. Something was started and it has to be finished. We made our bed and now we need to lie in it. Do we have a right to hurt the person we brought home or run away from the responsibility of raising our children? I wish lawmakers would go back to the old ways and put it into an act soon. The effort that has now gone out of relationships would reappear and so much frustration and pain needlessly imposed by humans on themselves could be avoided.

There are even impossible demands when the partners are taken for granted. We need to wake up from this dream. The obvious solution is to adjust but we are not prepared to do so. Very good reasons are cited and all very tangible and real. Everything is taken into consideration except the fact that the first point of law is that the marriage has to be maintained at all costs as a garden of joy. It is our marriage and our life. Everything else pales into insignificance.

Discord is inevitable unless we are prepared to let go a bit and cross over into the other’s camp and live for the other person. This is said for both men and women and has to be a concerted effort. Personally I find this idea so wonderful. My life is no more a closed box. I let somebody in and a close partnership begins with of course an absolute interdependence. This is the beginning of happiness. I do lose a bit of the “I” but win the world. Putting up one’s feet is such a pleasure. We did marry for the small comforts of married life, did we not?

We live much harried lives. What we think, feel and speak are never the same things. We are hiding so much. There is an accepted perverse insincerity practised at all moments and at every level of our existence. In the outer world where every man is for himself and wolf eat wolf is the situation, there is much to be said for a bit of charade but not so in a marriage. Marriage has to be seen in the light of the common man’s yogic/spiritual journey.

It is, whatever you may argue, an evolutionary process in which both the parties as well as children grow into more matured beings. When you see it in this light, you have to allow the barriers to fall and sincerity has to pervade in the home. Thoughts, feelings and the spoken word will need to be in harmony at all times otherwise chaos and clashes will erupt. Lording over is absolutely out. Cleverness is a no-no. At least aim to reach this level. There will be stumbling blocks, yet wherever this spirit of candidness exists, there will be laughter and rarely any quarrels. The human spirit is a forgiving one. Whenever honesty seeps through, joy prevails.

The other factor which I have seen taking a heavy toll of the quiet life in marriages is the poor quality of communication. Poor language use, bad speech habits and worse, inadvertent habits like speaking from distances or changing the place of things and forgetting to tell. We are also plagued by the sense of right and wrong and get irritated in righteous indignation. This indignation turns easily into a scream like a cracker going off without restraint. Always forgetting that how we deal with the everyday world and how we need to deal in our marriage world are two different things. In marriage it is the team not the individual who matters. We forget it to our pain. Let’s never forget if the other party is grating on our nerves, then we are no angels. Have we ever tried to find out how we are grating on other people’s nerves?

We are constantly giving out wrong signals. Utter confusion prevails at the best of times. So first we need to begin by listening a bit more and not reacting to every word that one hears. Not only to words bit those intangible sighs as well and those inconsistencies in behaviour patterns. Consider that the other person may be thinking aloud or just uttering the wrong words because of other extraneous circumstances and so many other fears and complexes that run amok in our lives.

Just think it over for a while. Forgive and forget if you have been mildly wronged. Show your appreciation often and learn to remain silent in as many languages as you can. Along with this attitude, ask for favours and when the other person asks for them, do respond positively. We do make the mistake of asking for favours and wanting instant gratification but when the other person asks for something, we are always busy in our own world and cannot grant any. This will not do. Gratitude needs to be cultivated and practised a bit more, especially in small inconsequential things, which are really the ones which swell into tidal waves.

All that is needed is a little shift in our own orientation to our life and partner. Give and give and take some. Rather you will notice you will get without asking and much more than you could have asked for.

PK is a teacher of languages/communication, counsellor and a businessman active in 6 countries. He combines his knowledge of life with his education in management, applied psychology and occult psychology from his time in The Ashram in Pondicherry and assists aspiring managers to reach their next level. Please visit http://sites.google.com/site/pkcentreforchange/Home

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”

The operative word here is BELITTLE and SMALL PEOPLE. Following my trend of thought, I went to the next question – why do we feel the need to belittle anyone at all? This style of belittling others is a quaint little habit. You will notice it is a regular habit in some people. Their persona is wrapped around it. It is impossible to make a statement or ask these people anything and it becomes an opening for them to show their wit rather than answer the question in a down-to-earth way or give a plain unadorned answer. Every time they open their mouth some pearls of wisdom slip out which to me seem to be just witty sarcasm couched in the pronouncements of the-wiser-than thou.

The answer always carries 4 elements: 1) The actual answer, 2) the hidden emphasis on the stupidity of the question or statement, 3) the indication that the one making the answer/comment is from a higher realm of existence and 4) the invisible creation of a wall that you are never allowed to pierce. The beauty of the whole is that sometimes the comments and remarks come from total strangers who are not even privy to the exchange. In familiar gatherings, interrupting the conversations of others with witticisms of one own is often seen, but from strangers…? I find this a bit too much; especially when you are in public environment like the post office or a railway compartment. These people, who sometimes even go on to monopolize the conversation until they are forced to stop.

I have known some people for half my life time or more. They are part of the family or professional circle and cannot be totally ignored. Once in a while there is no avoiding them in a social way. Yet in all these years I have been unable to have a focused conversation of five lines with them. They never reply to the question directly. Even an innocuous question like “How is your health?” got me an answer like “Why, what is wrong with my health?” And this is the milder side of the coin. Quite often in the guise of a joke, they come down to downright ridicule; Ha, Ha, Ha. Why? What are they trying to prove? Or are they protecting themselves from exposure knowing fully well their own lack of depth and understanding?  They make it clear that we can be part of their entourage but never their equal.

All these write-ups that I pen, I wanted to put them into a collection and get them published in a book form for whatever they are worth. So I, requested a close friend of many years in the publishing line to see if he could find me an appropriate publisher. For two years I was given the royal lip service. Then one day I asked him point-blank if he would help or not. His answer came as advice that I should at least first read some other established writers and acquaint myself of how things should be written. Thereby clearly telling me what he thought of me. So I asked him if he had at least read any of my write-ups. The answer was NO. Well, I could not resist telling him off after that. He has been sulking all along since. So be it.

To me all this sounds very much like the childish behaviour of the immature snob who is inherently intelligent and successful in his field. It gets awfully bad when by some quirk of fate they have come into money. One has to then admit that in one’s own interest, not to spoil relations one allows them to get away with it. But the question is – what relations? They will never allow you to come that close anyway?

I for one have now decided enough is enough. I tick them off and enjoy seeing them sulk. If they can do without me so can I without them. Life is too short to worry of the consequences of falling into their bad books.

PK is a teacher of languages/communication, counsellor and a businessman active in 6 countries. He combines his knowledge of life with his education in management, applied psychology and occult psychology from his time in The Ashram in Pondicherry and assists aspiring managers to reach their next level. Please visit http://sites.google.com/site/pkcentreforchange/Home

Don’t make the mistake of assuming your employees are good communicators.¬† Just because you trained them on what to say doesn’t mean they know how to say it.¬† There’s a mighty fine line between efficient and rude.¬† Caring is what people want.

What kind of things do your people need to know about communication?  They need to really understand body language, especially making eye contact (with the other person, not their Blackberry).  Apparently people think they can just sneak a peek at their electronic device and no one will notice.  Are they insane?  Everyone notices—we have these crazy things called eyeballs that are drawn to furtive movements (and blatant rudeness).

They need to know how crucial facial expression is and how quickly other people can interpret theirs.  Do you want to lose customers because one of your new employees rolls her eyes and sighs whenever she has to operate the cash register?

Something many companies need to examine (or maybe need to develop) are their e-mail policies. What is considered an appropriate response time?¬† You might find that administrative people think it’s an hour while outside sales people think it’s a day.¬† How should the subject line (the most important part of an e-mail) be used?¬† And enough with the reply to all already!

Do your employees need presentation skills?¬† Don’t assume they have them.¬† Texting your friends all day does little to develop that skill set.¬† Your employees represent your company, if their communication and interpersonal skills are weak, how can they possibly do a good job?

And here’s an important question to ask yourself‚Äîdo you reward good communication skills?¬†¬† Let’s face it, if I don’t talk on my cell phone at work and I am treated the same as a co-worker who does nothing but talk on her cell phone all day, why shouldn’t I start calling my friends?¬† If, unlike my co-workers, I pay attention and don’t spend all my time texting during the meeting, but no one cares, why bother?¬†¬† Here’s the bottom line‚Äîdon’t assume anything.¬† Decide what communication skills your people need, get them the corresponding training, reward good performance and coach poor performance.¬† And make sure you maintain eye contact when you do it.

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Denise Ryan, MBA, is a Certified Speaking Professional, a designation of excellence held by less than 10% of all professional speakers.  She is a blogger http://motivationbychocolate.blogspot.com
Her website, loaded with more great articles, is http://www.firestarspeaking.com

Who Is A Procrastinator?

To overcome the habit of a procrastinator, you should first identify the common tell-tale signs. Because this is a habit shared by several people, sometimes you won’t even be able to identify that you possess these characteristics.

A procrastinator is someone who puts off task at a later time, thinking they have the ability to complete tasks last-minute. Plus, s/he likes to believe that they have things under control until confronted by the reality that time is fast running out and there are still loads of work to be done. Even though he or she manages to complete the task on time, the quality is questionable.

Reasons For Procrastination

There are several reasons why people procrastinate. Oftentimes, it is innate to an individual or it could be lack of self discipline. However, it is important to point out the reason for this unhealthy habit so as to know how to deal with it.

1.Desire for perfection. Aspiring for perfection is not a negative thing. However, you have to make sure that it is realistic enough for your own skills. If not, then you are merely finding an excuse to postpone tasks.

2.Frustration. When tasks become too difficult, an individual’s response would be to give up easily due to frustration. Aside from complaining about the task, you often decide to put it off until such time when you are at a better mood to attend to it.

3.Lack of belief in own ability. When you start doubting your own skills and abilities, you will find it of no use working on the task assigned to you. Hence, you will lose productive time and end up accomplishing nothing.

Finding A Cure

Only when you have been able to recognize the reasons for your procrastinating habits will you be able to arrive at a resolution to your problem. There could be several reasons for this, so you have to arrive at a specific angle to effectively address this unhealthy habit.

For some people, responsibility is a burden. Therefore, when they are obliged to do something, they initially resent it and look for ways not to deal with the responsibility. However, by embracing your task as something that you actually enjoy doing, then you’d become more productive in it. In order to do that, you must create a balance between work and recreational activities. Do not punish yourself by depraving your schedule with fun. Make room for fun into your schedule. This might seem unproductive but by doing this, you will realize that you become more productive.

As soon as you start work on a task, the amount of work you need to put in could readily discourage you. Therefore, you need to mentally condition yourself to appropriate this one large task into smaller tasks that are more manageable. Once you get started on one, you will find it easy to pick up the pace and before you know it, you are finished.

Benefits of Overcoming Procrastination

1. Peace of mind
2. Having a sense of accomplishment
3. Regaining control of your life
4. Increased personal freedom

Self discipline is essential in helping overcome the habits of procrastination. When you learn to identify the unhealthy habits you possess, you can be on your way to overcoming procrastination and increasing your productivity.

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Larry Rivera is a Internet Network Marketer who teaches people how to use the internet to start a home based business. Success University is the #1 Personal Development website on the internet. It gives you a place to earn while you learn. Having problems with relationship building, Learn the skills they never taught you in school.

http://www.profitonknowledge.com

It starts at the top. Too many times managers blow off the session because they don’t need it (of course). This sends a strong message to all their followers: this training is not worth my time. If leaders haven’t attended the training themselves, how can they reinforce the message? I see this in medical environments all the time – the nursing staff has to attend customer service training, not the doctors – they are way too important. Guess who treats both the nurses and the patients poorly? The doctors. What kind of message does this send to the nurses? No wonder they don’t want to go to training.

Make it better: If you are going to have training for your people, you should go through it yourself. When you are there, support the trainer and your learners.

Exception: The only time you may want to consider not attending is if you want your people to interact freely with the trainer without your possibly intimidating presence. This is a very valid reason for not being there. If that’s the case – tell your people. Tell them you think the training is important and why you are not going.

No one likes boring training. Make sure the training is good and has value for the attendees. I know this seems obvious, but something horrible has happened to people. They have had to sit through boring sessions and they hate it. There are enough good presenters out there that you can find someone with high energy, humor and great information. Take the time to check out your trainers. If you are using internal trainers, make sure they don’t get burned out and bored with their own material. Take good care of them‚Äîthey have a big impact on your employees.

Make it better: If you people are laughing, they are not in pain. Good training can help with morale and retention. Don’t settle for boring.

They don’t want to be embarrassed. Make it fun, but don’t make attendees feel stupid or uncomfortable. I do a lot of customer service training. Very few attendees are excited about coming. Leadership is seldom there and it’s often held after hours. People think they are somehow being punished for not doing their jobs. It’s a tough crowd and I know I have to win them over and get them to drop their defenses fast. That’s why I have my Elvis theme. Right away they know this isn’t going to be like any customer service training they’ve had before. And before they know it, they’re laughing. I do not make them do any Elvis impersonations; they are never embarrassed or made to do anything that would make them uncomfortable. It’s interactive without putting anyone on the spot. If anybody acts silly, it’s me.

Make it better: Most adults are terrified of looking like idiots. Training should be fun and safe or your people will dread it.

Attendees‚Äîyou are not off the hook! You should come with an open mind. Hey, if you have to be there, you might as well have fun! Most of us have never been to a class where we learned nothing. In this life, you’re either growing or you’re dying. Take the chance to grow and learn. It’s the best way to improve.

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Denise Ryan, MBA, is a Certified Speaking Professional, a designation of excellence held by less than 10% of all professional speakers.  She is a blogger http://motivationbychocolate.blogspot.com
Her website is http://www.firestarspeaking.com

In his book, Getting Engaged: The New Workplace Loyalty, author Tim Rutledge explains that truly engaged employees are attracted to, and inspired by, their work (“I want to do this”), committed (“I am dedicated to the success of what I am doing”), and fascinated (“I love what I am doing”).

Employees who have these essential traits within themselves, become the brand ambassadors of the company and make it an Employer of choice.

Different studies have been made inside and outside companies to know about the attachment/engagement of employees with the company and the results are like high current waves in a sea, which can lead to disaster.
Results show that only 29% of employees are actively engaged in their jobs. These employees work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. People that are actively engaged help move the organization forward. 84% of highly engaged employees believe they can positively impact quality of their organization’s products, compared with only 31% of the disengaged. 72% of highly engaged employees believe they can positively affect customer service, versus 27% of the disengaged. 68% of highly engaged employees believe they can positively impact costs in their job or unit, compared with just 19% of the disengaged. Engaged employees feel a strong emotional bond to the organization that employs them. This is associated with people demonstrating willingness to recommend the organization to others and commit time and effort to help the organization succeed. It suggests that people are motivated by intrinsic factors (e.g. personal growth, working to a common purpose, being part of a larger process) rather than simply focusing on extrinsic factors (e.g., pay/reward). [Ref: Blessing White (April 2008). 2008 Employee Engagement Report].

Advantages of engaged employees
•    Engaged employees are of mindset to stay with the company, and contribute to the bottom line of the business.
•    Usually they execute better and have smiles on their faces.
•    There is a significant link between employee engagement and fostering environment for creativity for sustained profitability.
•    It builds passion, commitment and alignment with the organization’s strategies and goals.
•    Increases employees’ trust in the organization and creates a sense of loyalty in a competitive environment.
•    Provides a high-energy working environment.
•    Makes the employees effective brand ambassadors for the company.
It shows how imperative is employee engagement for sustainable growth of the organization, especially in today’s aggressive scenario, where attrition rate is getting high.

Key drivers for engagement
Employees have different thought processes which drive them towards getting involved with the company. Here are some key drivers.
•    The importance they have in the company in terms of policy making, decision making etc
•    Their career matrix, along with the challenges of work
•    The monetary aspects/benefits
•    Other factors like health, safety, security
•    How open are they to put up their points in front of management
•    How happy they feel when they come to their respective offices
•    Reward and recognition program
•    Effective leadership; leadership by example
•    Motivation towards work, by means of mentors, coworkers
•    An assertive feedback of their work and clarity of responsibilities

Practices for engaging employees
1.    Meetings: Meetings are the best way to know about the gamut of the company we are working into. These days Intranet also helps a lot to break the ice. The more employees know their company, the more they feel involved. It has also been observed that sometimes, employees spend a good amount of time on the intranet and are taking things forward. Employers can set their default home page as their company’s portal, and see the difference it makes. In the same manner, in-house magazine also works. Inviting employees to write their own viewpoint make them feel involved with the company.
2.    Skill update: Technical trainings/soft skills trainings/certification programs/higher studies always make employees feel prouder of the company they are working with. In today’s competitive world, the skill enhancement is the only way to survive happily. That’s why when companies take care of their employees upgradation, employees also feel engaged.
3.    Reward and recognition: Another way for connecting employees and to bring a smile on their faces. On-the spot appreciation, which can be for anything advantageous for the work place or for the entire company, or the recognition award given at some very special day for the stupendous performance or contribution, are some of the ways which also add in to the value of employee-engagement.
4.    Developing organization culture: These days companies are doing a lot of brain storming for developing their culture. Celebrating events is one of the ways to do so.

We have acquired some very self-defeating habits. I will take up two that I feel are the worst. One is the fact that our impatience is so acute that we do not think twice to butt in a conversation and the second is that we do so without ensuring that anyone is listening to us or not. First we disturb two people at conversation and this shows the downside of our manners and then we expect to be heard first which shows the extent of our self-preoccupation. Then the worst part is that the person addressed is unable to resist the call and responds, thereby adding to the melee.

Here you are standing in front of the judge, frightened of the consequences while your lawyer is trying to make a point and the judge starts listening to some other lawyer. How would you feel under the circumstances?

We can’t sit still for a moment. With our laptops and mobile phones in hand we just have to be up and doing something. The brain and nerves are stretched out in hundreds of directions at any given time. If everyone is going a mile a minute, then who is sitting still enough to bother to listen to me? It is no secret that quite often we discuss and argue a project or subject into such a confusion that all that remains to be done is bury it.

Communications have now become incessant and we are all expected to be at our listening posts at all times. So the antidote is to shut off the process!

I give an instance from my personal life. Transpose this small incident into other areas and you will understand the magnitude of the point being made.

Yesterday, as I sat watching TV, my wife was talking to me in her usual style which means she would start saying something out of the blue and expect me to take it all in. As I listened to her, my child was playing nearby. Just then, it seems, the maid brought me a hot cup of coffee and placed it on the table within the reach of the child while I was looking away.

The child, all of 20 months old, lovingly and helpfully picked it up and started putting it in my hands – all this while I was not even aware of the coffee. As it turned out, my waving arm hit the cup and the poor child dropped the coffee in my lap. I shrieked and the child bawled in consternation. I was left nursing a burn. And God forbid if the coffee had dropped on the child. Gosh, I am scared now even to think of it. I asked the maid why she left the cup within the child’s reach without informing me. She replied that she did tell me! But I was so engrossed in listening to my wife that I did not register what she said.

She knew well that I had not heard and yet she did not try to ensure that I was made aware of the hot cup at my elbow. She said in all honesty that the possibility of a mishap did not enter her mind. So that was that.

The solution? Simple. First attract the person’s attention, then, when certain, then alone speak to him/her directly with eyes meeting. And for good manners’ sake please wait for your turn.

Pradeep Maheshwari is a Delhi-based author, personal growth trainer and marketing consultant.

The term outbound has been adopted from the Navy, where a ship is said to be outward bound when it leaves its shores to sail into the unknown, rough sea. Similarly when we go out in a camp, we leave our shore, i.e., the comfort zone of our home and work place and travel to a new, open place in a natural environment with minimum comforts.

Experiential learning is a process of transformation when, as a result of experience, one is inspired to apply in life, what emerges as a revelation or self-discovery. We generally follow the Kolb Cycle, which states that in life we have an experience, we think about it (reflection), then we talk about it or write it (recording) and finally we analyse (processing), leading to another experience where we may apply the learning. Therefore it becomes a spiral of learning. This can also be described as the whole learning wheel, from goal setting, to experimenting and observing, to reviewing, and finally action planning.

You remember how you learnt cycling? Someone helped you support the cycle. You fumbled, fell down several times till you ‘got’ it. That was how you learnt the balance. I call it the ‘aah’ effect. You discover it and then it stays with you for life. Whether it was a burn which you experienced as a child, or tasting of honey, or learning swimming or cycling, they stay with you for life. You do not need to relearn it. That’s not true for academics or subjects you learnt in the classroom.

Leadership and team building are two such subjects that are best learnt on the ‘experiential learning’ platform. You may read books on leadership and team building, but to be a good team player or an effective leader you have to experience it, just as a cook needs to cook in the kitchen. Reading recipes and learning by heart may help, but does not substitute the act of cooking.

In our camp we provide the experience in the form of a team activity. It is an interesting outdoor game. Participants enjoy a new experience, generally one they have never experienced before. After the activity is over participants reflect on the activity by writing down their emotions, their feelings, their sad, mad and glad moments. This is followed by a small group discussion in which teams go through the entire sequence and record what happened, what did not happen, and why. Then we facilitate the process of drawing out lessons from their experiences. What they learn from such experiences gets filtered into the subconscious mind and settles down as a way of life. To reinforce this we conduct a follow-up session after two to three months of the programme.

Experiential learning is extremely effective. We create an environment which lends itself to a new and interesting experience where all participants are at par in their knowledge about the tasks and projects that they face. There is nothing at stake. Your reputation, job security, promotion, a salary increase, nothing is affected. A unique set of projects and situations requires people to draw upon genuine team process skills as opposed to just functional ones.

Interacting in close proximity whilst working on new and unfamiliar challenges, makes the entire process very interesting. The interaction, communication and collaboration and efforts that are required to meet these challenges develop wonderful, everlasting relationships in a very short time. It engages people at a more personal level. People may get to know each other better in a single day within this environment than over an entire year of normal working conditions.

In these activities, one’s true colours emerge. One cannot pretend or put up a false front for long. The group projects their communication skills, problem-solving capability, organizing ability, and leadership style into the experience. The experience provides a unique opportunity to catch participants doing what they typically do, in spite of knowing otherwise. The learning arising from this is profound and revealing.

Teams are able to experience chaos, disorder, crisis and changing requirements for success in a safe environment where the consequences for failure are limited. The team can develop strategies and best practices for managing these issues both in this environment and back at work.

The experience allows participants to take new risks, try on new roles and make mistakes with no danger or cost. Each person taking a risk pushes others to take on something outside of their comfort zone. There are always individuals who shine in this environment – whose leadership ability hasn’t been noticed at work.

The team challenges and activities are designed to include a variety of elements that will challenge a range of team role skills. In other words input from all team members will be required to produce outcomes from projects specifically designed not to suit just one team role style or behaviour. One person cannot possibly succeed alone and so the interdependence of the team is highlighted along with the importance of diversity within the team.

The entire learning happens while having fun. We create a highly interesting and enjoyable learning environment in which participants learn about and develop team and management process skills with ease and in comfort.

Experiential learning is effective both indoors as well as outdoors. Yet, the outdoor environment with the terrain, weather and environmental challenges make it more challenging and therefore can result in more effective learning. Teachers in schools and colleges can reinforce their classroom teachings with experiential education. Learning is more effective and lasts much longer.
As stated by the ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius, “Tell me and I will forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I will understand.”
Brig. Sushil Bhasin is Chairman and Managing Director of Empower Activity Camps.

Be it in our professional or personal lives, we do find ourselves at our wits’ end, not knowing where to go, what to do. At times like that a kind soul comes along and through kind words, meaningful gestures or any kind of help that seems appropriate at that moment, aids us in sailing through that tough challenge. It is only when we anchor in safe harbors again that we reach out to that kind soul and say Thank You.

These two small words….Thank You….can carry a lot of weight. They express feelings of gratitude to somebody who has been generous with their words, affection, money or any other gesture. We use these words so often, but how many times do we really feel it in our hearts or do we just fall into the trap of saying it mechanically? Let us ask ourselves honestly how often have we really, sincerely thanked someone from the bottom of our heart and felt really grateful for that person’s presence in our life.

Those closest to us and who do so much for us without really being asked to are taken for granted. Never for a moment do we stop to think that by saying, Thank You in some way we are not only acknowledging their presence in our lives but also make them feel worthy of being who they are.

Thank You…. sometimes said very softly yet it contains a whole lot of heartfelt emotions, sometimes said with tearful eyes and sometimes said between sobs, but at all times these two precious words should carry a lot of weight for both the person expressing appreciation and the one receiving it.

Let’s look at the person saying Thank You. Now here is a person expressing gratitude to the other because the other’s actions have had an impact on his/her life. It does take a lot to say a heartfelt, meaningful, Thank You. Not only that, it also means the person acknowledging the kind gesture has the capacity to recognize qualities of kindness, giving, generosity and a loving nature in the person from whom he/she has received so much. Thus just that one expression of Thank You can have an enormous effect for both – the receiver and the giver.

In fact there is so much to be thankful for, from the Creator to our natural surroundings; from family and friends to our working colleagues. Every moment should be a moment of gratitude. But how often do we, in our fast-paced lives express or live the attitude of gratitude? Saying Thank You makes you feel lighter and better and in some way it is also an enriching experience for the person receiving the sentiments. Go ahead, think of all who have in some way or the other made a difference to your life…. reach out and say Thank You.

That uncomfortable silence after a friend has told you his bad news or a rant of how overwhelmed she is. Break ups and broken arms and melt downs. Even for our best friends we don’t always know what to say or do to make it better. We fumble to fill the space with salving words, or sometimes worse, with solutions. When really, all we need to do is ask: How can I help?

This phrase works for tragedies and boo boos and bad days. It quells panic. It can create urgency or buy time. It’s effective with strangers and lovers.

Everyone understands it.

I learned this from my friend Michelle, who’s a super-sensitive Irish Italian social worker (read: hardwired to be helpful.) And even though she’s full of bright ideas and anecdotes, she has the presence to just pause and ask, How can I help?

It creates a soft space to meet.
It invites collaboration.
It empowers everyone.

The singer, who had many melodious songs to his credit, then announced, with some regret I thought, that many youngsters did not like old songs. The difference, he argued, was one of rhythm and speed. He also offered to sing songs like Kaun Aya Mare Man Ke Dwaare. At this point there were loud moans of disapproval. He realized and so did I, that your truly was in a minority and the bulk of the audience was not interested in melody, preferring the kind of music that has made Himesh Reshammaya a rage.

The singer sang adhunik songs for the rest of the evening even as I reached for ear plugs and swallowed a headache tablet. I could not leave since I was among the ‘honoured’ guests.

I recall receiving a few rejoinders to my blogs telling me that the youngsters of today are not interested in politics or writings on social issues and to please restrict myself to fun stuff. I replied that if it is true that youngsters are not interested in political or socio-economic issues then the happiest people in the India and everywhere else in the world will be politicians. I can imagine the look of delight on the faces of the likes of Mayawati, Laloo Yadav Karunanidhi etc.

The top 5 religions in Facebook are Christianity, Islam, Atheism, Agnosticism, and Hinduism. It is too early to reach any conclusions but it is interesting to note that a preliminary analysis of the major networking sites reveals that youngsters are not keen to fill up the box item Religion in their profiles. A researcher says that youngsters do not want to be ‘judged’ and would prefer the vague term Spiritual rather than specifically state their religion in the box item.

Talking about my writings I started expressing my views in print in the form of letters to editors of papers and magazines. When I found the space inadequate, I wrote articles in some newspapers. When I found even that inadequate I wrote blogs. When even that did not suffice I started writing books—so far 4 have been published.

Now my young friends tell me that ‘we are the Twitter generation and Ravi will you please restrict yourself to fun stuff and that too in 130 characters?” Ten years from now some  cheeky youngster will tell me to say it in ’5 or fewer’ words. I will then have to do what a young journalist did when his editor advised him to be very brief in his telegrams — those were the days when journalists sent telegrams to their head office. The youngster was on the crime beat and had to report a rape incident involving an insane man who fled from the scene. His brief telegram read: NUT SCREWS AND BOLTS. Will I have to write in this style in the next decade?

But I’ve noticed that even shiny, sexy, wide-awake people don’t talk that much about sex. The general conversation starts and stops with whether you’re getting it or not. “It’s good.” “We need to make more time for it.” “Haven’t gotten around to it.”

If sex conversation is relegated to the cultural fringe, it’s likely reflecting where it lies on our personal list of priorities. And you don’t have to have a partner to have a sex life, BTW. Just ask Mama Gena who makes it, uh, pointedly clear that the clitoris has 8000 nerve endings of its very own.

You can be sure that your sex life is a microcosm of the macrosm of your entire life. Deep but quiet. Repressed. Rigorous. Loving but slightly aggressive. Playful and sweet. Dutiful. Whatever is going down in the sack is going ‘round in your life as a greater theme. So maybe we should talk about it more. At least to ourselves.

SEXY SHAKE UP
For the sake of shaking up mindsets, what if you gave your sexual well being the same weighty importance that we tend to give the other day-to-day stuff?:

What if we treated our sex lives with the same importance as our diet? Imagine counting orgasms like you counted calories. What if there was the same urgency to get funky with your lover or yourself as there was to get to yoga or spinning class?

What if we put as much effort into cultivating our sexuality as we did our intellect? Imagine a D-I-Y erotica degree based on the awareness of energy and breath and physiology and bliss. Where would you begin to look for knowledge? What would it take to earn and A++?

What if we talked about our sex lives like we talked about, say, our health, or our satisfaction with work? I’m not suggesting that you should chat up your hot night with Larry and Lucy at the water cooler. Because, yeah, sex is sacred, absolutely, positively, precious and typically private. BUT…what if, with the friend you trusted most, you let the conversation go deeper into the sensual part of your life. And you explored questions like, How do you feel in bed? What does womanly or manly really mean to you? Top, bottom, bunny, adventurer, priestess, kink-meister or athlete, what’s next in terms of being more fully you?

Don’t tell just anyone. But dare to tell yourself. The answer may have you grinning for days.

Speaking with good purpose means conversing with others in a way that is honest, straightforward, and with the aim of building better relationships.

Take for example the following phrase: “You’re so sloppy. Your work area is such a mess.”

This is likely to antagonise the person to whom it is directed who will most likely respond in the same manner (since behaviour breeds behaviour) or go on the defensive. Either way, your point will be defended or denied and the conversation, to say nothing of the relationship, will pretty quickly be over.

If, on the other hand, you worked out in advance that you really needed the other person to know how you felt and what you wanted them to do, you could phrase the same message in the following way which leaks no anger or put-down: “I find it really hard to share an office with you because we have such different ideas about organisation.”

Now, you have the basis for a much better working arrangement.

Bobby DePorter, the president of Quantum Learning Network, says that there are many ways we can learn how to speak with good purpose. Here are 3…

1. a “No Tolerance to Gossip” policy, since gossip is exactly the opposite of speaking with good intent.
2. letting people know your intent when you speak. So, instead of the slightly sinister-sounding “Have you got a minute?”, use visible communication and let them know what’s on your mind, as in “Have you got a minute to talk about the Jones’ contract…?”
3. avoiding shut-downs by turning the conversation from them to you. So, if someone is telling you about a problem they’ve got, don’t “me-too” them (“Yeah, I know what you mean. The same thing happened to me…”) and don’t give them your solutions (“If I were you…”).

Marshall Thurber, the real estate mogul, has a rule in his office: “If it doesn’t serve, don’t say it.” When he finds anyone breaking this rule, with gossip, negativity, or not thinking before opening their mouth, the culprit has to put a $20 in the charity box.

The result is not only that people stop saying things that are hurtful, malicious, or just plain unnecessary. They stop thinking them too.

In truth, this isn’t a problem just for new trainers. Us old ones also experience it from time to time.

My answer is that, if you are going to spend a day or more with people who perhaps don’t know you too well, you need to become a skilled rapport-builder.

On the ManageTrainLearn Customer Care courses, we put rapport-building at the top of the customer communication skills. It’s one of those skills that have lots of sub-skills, all of which can be practised on their own. These include:

1. finding something in common with your trainees
2. displaying empathy with their problems
3. using small talk to break down the barriers
4. dropping people’s names into the conversation in understated ways
5. using humour to bond with them
6. showing them you’re just like them through mirroring, resonance and pacing
7. respecting them.

My favourite story about building rapport comes from self-development guru, Anthony Robbins, and is called “Oops!”

It might serve as a reminder of how to click with your trainees, even if they start off in mischievous mood.

“A class of schoolchildren decided one morning to play a prank on their new teacher who was late in arriving. At a pre-arranged moment when she eventually came in and reached her desk, all the children dropped their books on the floor.

Noticing at once what was going on, and determined not to play the part assigned to her, the teacher put down her chalk, picked up her own book, and, as the children all waited to see what she would do, accidentally dropped it too.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said, picking up the book. “Let’s start at page 23.” And she continued as if nothing had happened.

From that moment on, she had the children eating out of her hand.

Now, let’s clarify what I mean by “love.”  That little four letter word has tons of different meanings in the English language.  For the purpose of today’s article, let’s go with “affectionate concern for the well-being of others” and “strong predilection, enthusiasm, or liking for anything.”

If you want to be successful, you have to genuinely care about others.

When I was a teen, I read the famous 1936 book by Dale Carnegie - How to Win Friends and Influence People. When you’re a teen, you REALLY want to win friends.  It resonated with me and I immediately began to implement the principles he outlined.

Six Ways to Get People to Like You As Recommended By Dale Carnegie:
1.    Become genuinely interested in other people.
2.    Smile.
3.    Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
4.    Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
5.    Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
6.    Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

Sound simplistic?  Believe me it’s not.  Watch how people talk to each other today and see if you can find people who do this well.  Better yet, start practicing yourself.  The practice of being curious about others (not nosy…. in a way to dig up their “dirt”) but rather a genuine curiosity about what makes them tick, what they long for, what are they proud of….combined with a love and enthusiasm for the service or product you provide –  to me, this is the most powerful business “secret” there is.

Start practicing this with the very next person you meet.  If it’s a brief encounter, perhaps at the market with a clerk –you can at least make eye contact, smile and say thank you.  If you have more time, try asking a question that gets a person talking about one of their interests and then… LISTEN.  This item four of Carnegie’s list, “be a good listener,” is an area in which most people need practice and reflection.

Through all the training I’ve invested in and received in coaching and ministry, I’ve had the gift of being listened to deeply and to in turn, given the gift of listening deeply to others.  What do I mean by listening deeply?  I mean giving them your FULL attention – when you’re in person with them – looking at them, staying focused on their words AND the tone beneath the words.  Keeping your mouth closed – both figuratively and literally – so many people are just chomping at the bit to respond with advice or a “that happened to me too story” or to finish the sentence with words that they think the talker is going to say.  Allowing them to completely finish what they were telling you and then to acknowledge what they’ve said – that’s honoring them and that’s a rare gift.

You can accomplish the same things on the phone – the difference is – you’re not looking at them. I often close my eyes when listening to a client on the phone – it helps me stay focused and allows me to really hear what’s going on beneath the words – whether there is genuine excitement in what they are saying, or some trepidation that needs to be addressed and supported…or perhaps resignation – it just might be time to let go of a direction that just isn’t right.

So, what’s love got to do with it?  Everything.  Start loving your clients/customers today and see what happens!

Ann Ronan, Ph.D. is an author, speaker, certified career coach and self employment expert, and vision generator.

Ann delivers smart, simple ways for people to acknowledge what they love to do and do more of it.  Her articles, products, and books have motivated and inspired readers in numerous print and online publications.  She regularly leads coaching programs, tele-seminars and live retreats, bringing the message to audiences internationally that living a passion-based life will bring prosperity and success.

She was recently selected from a nationwide search to be featured in Discover Your Inner Strength. The book features best-selling authors Stephen R. Covey (Seven Habits of Highly Effective People), Brian Tracy (Million Dollar Habits), and Ken Blanchard (One Minute Manager).

http://www.authenticlifeinstitute.com/selfemployment.htm

Tip #1:

Offer a class related to your business at your local community college and/or adult education center. There are two great advantages to this tip. One is that teaching a class can feel less scary than being a “presenter.”  Chances are that you are passionate about the services or products you offer.  When that’s true, it’s easy to create a class/workshop to share what you know with others.  For an hour to an hour and a half class, decide on 3 main points you want the audience to know about.  Think of some stories or examples related to each of the 3 points and write those down.  Finally, create some kind of interaction that can be done around each point (for example, share their experience with the person next to them for 5-10 minutes, or ask for examples from the audience that are shared with everyone, or have them do a written exercise).

A 2nd advantage of this tip is that these organizations print the catalog and have large lists of folks who receive them.  Check out other presenter’s listings, particularly those who have several classes listed, or who are regularly brought back to teach.  Follow the format they use to describe your class.  It’s typically about 3 sentences followed by 3 learning objectives (what you will get when you take this class) and a short 2-3 line bio.  You’ll need to remember that these folks need to hear from you early.  If you want to present in the fall, you need to contact them in the spring.  They have a several month lead time in order to publish their catalogs.

Tip #2:

Contact local networking and service groups to let them know you are available for speaking. Get online and research the groups in your area.  Create a list of 2-3 topics with learning objectives, along with your bio, and send it to all the groups you can find within the distance you’re willing to drive to speak.

For example, this fall I will be speaking at a chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO), at a Volunteer Center and at a Rotary Club meeting.  I don’t charge for any of these, but I do ALWAYS collect the contact information, including email as well as postal addresses, of almost everyone in the room.  You can do this by offering to email them a special report you’ve written in exchange for their information or you can hold a drawing for a book or one of the products you sell to those who give you their contact information.  Don’t forget to get testimonials!  Again, spring is a good time to contact these folks.  Their program officers are usually setting up a calendar of speakers for the following September through August.

Tip #3:

Offer to give a seminar at your spiritual home or local library. These organizations have plenty of experience in promoting activities to their members.  In the case of spiritual communities, it is common to share the workshop proceeds if there is a fee; however, you can also sell your books/products “back of the room” and make as much, if not more, from these sales as from the workshop fees.

Tip #4:

Get some free publicity. Most newspapers and radio stations have a “calendar” or “weekly section” that will list your workshop at no charge.  Craigslist is another great place to post your workshop at no cost. Appearing on radio talk shows to discuss your program builds great interest in your topic. Start to develop a network of contacts within your business and media communities.  Write and submit press releases about your workshops (that’s the topic for another article!).

About the Author:

Ann Ronan, Ph.D. is an author, speaker, certified career coach and self employment expert, and vision generator.

Ann delivers smart, simple ways for people to acknowledge what they love to do and do more of it.  Her articles, products, and books have motivated and inspired readers in numerous print and online publications.  She regularly leads coaching programs, tele-seminars and live retreats, bringing the message to audiences internationally that living a passion-based life will bring prosperity and success.

She was recently selected from a nationwide search to be featured in Discover Your Inner Strength. The book features best-selling authors Stephen R. Covey (Seven Habits of Highly Effective People), Brian Tracy (Million Dollar Habits), and Ken Blanchard (One Minute Manager).

I am painfully shy and a compulsive introvert. All through school and architecture college, I had successfully stayed away from all forms of public speaking to the extent of not raising my hand to respond to questions for which I had the answers.  If I had to make a presentation, I would strive extra hard on the content in the hope of my work speaking for itself. Alas that never worked and eventually I learnt to adjust  but lost out to peers who had the gift of the gab.

Moving on, like a conniving coward, as I was finally reveling in the smugness of ducking yet another obstacle of life, fate with its perverse sense of humour came and hit me bam in the face.

Who would have ever thought a design school would have mandatory public speaking classes?

So here I was, in my first public speaking class with a bunch of mostly gregarious and confident students.  The few that I suspected were stuck in the cold like me, gave such warm and lucid self introductions, I contemplated running out of the room and keep running to end of the earth. To squash all expectations at the very onset, I hammed through my introduction, thereby successfully displaying my complete lack of oratory skills. After several perusals of the course material, I realized class presence and quizzes alone could carry me through the class. Haha I had managed to dodge the bullet again!

However, that quirky little demon, “Bright Idea” which dresses in  black with cape and a wizard’s hat – I am convinced that it hates me to the bones – suddenly appeared on my right shoulder. Though I tried to fight its hypnotic spell, I finally capitulated to its absurd demand of giving the class an honest try.  So I spent the next few weeks reading the text book repeatedly, making bundles of notes, writing, re-rewriting and practicing my speech in front of the mirror until my throat hurt.

At last, came the day of my first speech. I walked up to the podium with a zillion butterflies in my stomach, my heart palpitating at clinically dangerous levels, my throat parched worse than the driest sections of the Sahara, to face a dozen disinterested faces, a few stifled yawns, the blessed bowed heads completing assignments and the beaming encouraging face of the professor.  My breath was coming hard and shallow, my knees were giving away and my head was spinning in sync with the Earth. And then I heard my own voice, strong and clear floating across the room, emphatically raising the bowed heads and wiping off the boredom. I was looking down at forty mesmerized strangers trying to catch onto every word coming out of my mouth.  What sheer power I held!

After the first speech, the next few came much easier and I finished the class with top grades. I subsequently enrolled for the debating class and won each one I participated in.  I took the basics of public speaking and nudged them into every crevice of my life.  Consequently, job interviews and presentations not only became a walkover but my social life suddenly exploded. From being the silent outsider, quietly sipping her drink in the corner, I abruptly metamorphosed into the confident, intelligent raconteur at parties.

Spontaneous public speaking isn’t yet one of my natural abilities. I still write my speech, practice, practice and practice till my throat hurts and I wrestle the butterflies. I know there are many more out there like me; languishing in the shadows, resignedly watching less competent peers march ahead by virtue of the elusive gift of the gab. Hey don’t surrender! Give public speaking one honest attempt and I promise you will soon be ruling the roost.  There are many good books on public speaking in the market but I know, if you are how I used to be, you will never open one of those.  However, I also know that once you have experienced the power of captivating your audience you will buy those books by the dozen and read them voraciously from cover to cover until your pores bleed oratory knowledge.

Here are some basic pointers to take you there:

- Write down the main points of your speech. These could be either just words or short sentences.
- Now format an essay with the words and sentences you have jotted down. There should be introductory paragraph, followed by two or three paragraphs of the body and a concluding paragraph.
- Read this essay aloud. Make necessary corrections. Keep repeating until you are moderately satisfied.
- Now add a suitable anecdote here and there, infuse some humor but please don’t overdo it. If you are not comfortable just skip this step.
- Stand in front of a mirror and read your speech aloud. After a couple of times, try practicing without actually reading your essay.
- Keep practicing until you know your speech almost by heart.
- Now concentrate on your facial expressions, voice modulation and hand gestures. Try to use your body to communicate.
- Keep practicing until you have perfected your speech. This may take many more attempts than you ever imagined. I had to practice my first speech close to thirty times.
- However never try to memorize your speech to the last word, pause and gesture since that will spoil your spontaneity.
- The time has come to deliver!
- Walk up to the podium confidently. Remember all the amazing speakers watching you also had to practice their speeches, felt a zillion butterflies in their stomachs and almost died from shortness of breath.
- Smile – it helps ease nervous energy.
- Breathe, breathe and breathe.
- Look down at your speech, look up at your audience and speak.  Don’t shut your eyes instead look them right in the eye. The adulation will egg you on.
- Finish to the thundering applause and bask in the glory!

Please take that first step and before long you will be progressing in leaps and bounds. Eventually you will master the art but until then keep practicing, smiling, breathing and speaking! Speak out loud.

We screw up. We trample over people’s feelings, we let our insecurities get the best of us, we make big fat unfair assumptions based on the past. If you’re interacting with other humans in even the slightest way, you will at some point have good reason to apologize.

But sorry is one of the most misused words there is. We’ve diluted it. We need to give it back its power. Sorry is a powerful word that sends a very particular vibe to your brain. I’m careful how I use it. And when I do, I mean it with all my heart and I’ll do what ever I can to make things right. But I rarely regret things. I rarely pity people. And I’m almost never sorry for how I feel (thanks to a lot of therapy).

sor⋅ry
1. feeling regret, compunction, sympathy, pity, etc.
2. regrettable or deplorable; unfortunate; tragic.
3. sorrowful, grieved, or sad.
4. associated with sorrow; suggestive of grief or suffering; dismal.
5. wretched, poor, useless, or pitiful.
6. (used interjectionally as a conventional apology or expression of regret): Sorry, you’re misinformed. Did I bump you? Sorry.

Do not say it if you don’t mean it. 
Sorry is often used as band-aid for social discomfort. It eases the blow when we say no to someone, decline, or back out. Sorry can actually complicate the exchange. It’s unnecessary gooey-ness. Just leave it out and stand by your truth with grace.

To the salesperson: “I’m sorry, I’m not interested today.” Why be sorry? You’re simply not interested. If you genuinely wish you could help them with a sale, then say just that.

“Sorry to bother you…” Why assume you’re a bother? How about, “I hope I’m not bothering you, but …”
“Sorry you feel that way.” This is a very tricky usage because ultimately, you’re not responsible for other people’s feelings. If you were a genuine jerk and you hurt someone’s feelings, then really step up to the plate with something like, “I’m so sorry that what I did made you feel that way. Yikes. I wish I’d been more sensitive. I won’t do that again.”

But thanks to psychobabble and supposedly useful “communication skills”, the “sorry you feel that way” phrase is often just a dupe – it’s not an authentic apology at all. It’s condescending placation that is supposed to disarm someone who’s pissed off. Someone tried to use this on me once. They’d gone behind my back on an issue. I confronted them and said it was completely uncool. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” she responded. Oh reeeally?

Your word is your wand. If the word fits – and ONLY when it  fits – use it with all your heart. When you’re sincere, there’s usually no apology necessary.

In my case I received a series of what might be called mild ‘attacks’ on my point of view (God is just a belief system), only one of which is posted on the site. The remainder were sent directly to me. Rather than be incensed as to why someone would dare to disagree with my point of view I began thinking and formulating a list of my own questions:

Did those commenting have the same viewpoint as myself regarding the questions? After all when we look at house property details we can all see different things when we look at a house from different directions.

Were comments coloured by beliefs themselves? Do readers and listeners filter what they want to see and hear according to their belief systems? Did readers see the set of questions simply as an argument for or against God?

Were those commenting actually aware of the context in which those in charge of the website formulated the questions or the context in which people answered them? Were the questions a starting point for debate or simply an excuse for a soapbox? Nobody knows.

As consultants, teachers, trainers or coaches we tend to base our approaches on sets of questions which provide a basis on which to work. How many people jump to conclusions based on these questions and how many use them to create a picture and then dig some more? A good listener does not let their own beliefs get in the way, nor do they jump to conclusions or pass judgement. We have all seen the consultant who is really just a man on a soapbox.

The point here is to look beyond the interview, read between the lines both when you are asking questions and when someone else is asking.

• Why are these questions being asked?
• What information/emotions are they designed to tease out?
• Am I biased in any way?
• Will I like the answers?
• What can I learn from this experience (will this change my point of view)?

There are others, but you get the idea. Don’t take everything at face value, be prepared to interpret and look beyond the obvious. Communication is based on message and meaning. Modern communication methods ensure that we usually get the message but they tend to help us to ignore meaning.

… and for the record, I answered the questions as if I were taking a psychometric test (read and answer in a short space of time) rather than using them as a springboard for an anti/pro God argument. This does mean that there could be one or two inconsistencies but knowing this, readers should be able to find out a bit about me and engage in a (friendly) debate down the pub.

What is it about speaking that makes it such a powerful marketing tool? Listed below are 3 benefits of public speaking.

Benefit #1: You build your Leads’ List quickly. People get an experience of YOU. They get to feel your essence – who you really are as an individual. That is how you earn their trust. When building your list of prospects (the MOST important part of creating your business!) people typically move through four stages:

1) From Suspect – they don’t know you and think you just want to take advantage of them.
2) To Prospect – they say “yes” to a free offer you’ve made and are interested in learning more about you.
3) To Client – they’ve spent money with you, even one dollar is a good beginning.
4) To Raving Fan - they buy just about everything you offer AND tell others that they must get to know you too.

When you go out and speak to a group, you will want to collect their email addresses and postal addresses. Offer to give them your free ezine or a special tip sheet or a CD of an interview that you’ve done, in exchange for their email address. My experience is that 95% -100% of folks will do this – after hearing you speak, they will want to get more from you. You’ve created a relationship and these folks aren’t Suspects, they are already Prospects! If they have purchased one of your information products, they are Clients and many will already be Raving Fans!

Benefit #2: Sales in the “back of the room.” I don’t know about you, but I always love browsing the information products (books, workbooks, CDs, home study courses) that are provided at seminars. I always buy at least one thing (usually more) because I am interested in the topic the speaker is talking about and hungry for more information.

A speaker is truly performing a disservice to her audience if she doesn’t give them more of what they want. AND, you can make a boatload of money selling these information products! You spend time to create them once, and then continue to make money with them for years to come.

Benefit #3: You are Living Your Life Purpose and Serving Others. You have good information to share (yes you really do!) and it would be a shame not to share that information with others. When you speak on a topic you are passionate about, you can literally change lives. One piece of information can encourage someone to take a baby step that leads to another and another – resulting in a positive life change.

Tom Antion is the man I go to for public speaking advice and tips. Check out his resource center, click here: http://tinyurl.com/lhusza

About the Author: Ann Ronan, Ph.D. is an author, speaker, certified career coach and self employment expert, and vision generator.

Ann delivers smart, simple ways for people to acknowledge what they love to do and do more of it. Her articles, products, and books have motivated and inspired readers in numerous print and online publications. She regularly leads coaching programs, tele-seminars and live retreats, bringing the message to audiences internationally that living a passion-based life will bring prosperity and success.

She was recently selected from a nationwide search to be featured in Discover Your Inner Strength. The book features best-selling authors Stephen R. Covey (Seven Habits of Highly Effective People), Brian Tracy (Million Dollar Habits), and Ken Blanchard (One Minute Manager).

Each of us has a different model of reality which is constructed with the words we use—these are called mental maps. Different languages represent concepts in different ways and the structural differences in languages impose unavoidable differences on our mental models of reality.

Even when we speak the same language we have different meanings for the same words. Meanings are not in the words but in our minds. I go one step further — the words we use to describe something, will influence our thinking about that subject without us being consciously aware of this influence.

We may believe that we think before we use a word but in reality the words we use determine our thinking—this is one of life’s many paradoxes. .

This last point was brought home to me when at a round table discussion in Washington DC, someone made the remark, “How can anyone condone gay marriages? This relationship is unnatural.” I requested the speaker to clarify what she meant by ‘unnatural.’
“Against nature,” she said.
I persisted, “Who determines what is for or against nature, and how does one determine what is against nature? Why should ‘unnatural’ mean ‘bad’? ”
‘”Look,” she said, “Most marriages from time immemorial have been between man and women. So gay marriage is unnatural.”
I continued, “Ninety three percent of people on the earth are right handed. Are the remaining seven percent left handers unnatural and therefore wrong?”
There was silence.

I am not taking any stand on gay marriages but merely drawing your attention to how the words we use, in this case the word ‘unnatural’, influence our thought processes. If she had said that gay marriages are uncommon as of now, then it would have been a cold statistical fact and the discussion might have been less emotional.

Recently some Hindus represented to Muslim leaders to consider not using the term ‘kafir’ to describe Hindus. This word immediately conjures up in the minds of many Muslims, negative stereotypes and emotions that cause conflict. I believe this is another instance of a word influencing the thinking process.

I have observed that the mainstream English language media in India such as the Mumbai/Delhi magazines, newspapers and television channels use the word ‘conservative’ in all references to Chennai. In my personal experience I have seen that there is hardly any consensus on the definition of the word ‘conservative.’ The definitions range from the disparaging to the appreciative! This is a classic case of a concept existing not in a dictionary but in the minds of people.

According Alfred Korzybski: “No two brains contain exactly the same ‘meaning’ for any word, expression, or concept and therefore there can be no universal true-for-everybody meaning of any verbal map.”

Reckless use of emotionally charged language can lead to wars, riots and ethnic conflict.

Use of words like ‘Untouchable’, for example can lead one down the path of degrading behaviour. The word ‘kafir’ can and does lead to another emotionally charged word ‘jehad’, and this leads to war.

The ongoing economic crisis in the US and other countries has led to a verbal skirmish. There was serious resistance to using the word “Depression” and every attempt was made to bring the word “Recession” into currency. Even the latter was used hesitatingly with subtle references to the ‘R’ word! It was as if using a word could in fact usher in a severe economic crisis. That is really an acknowledgement of the power of a word to influence thinking and behaviour.

Korzybski believes that language expresses our thoughts and also creates our thoughts.

The phenomenon of some cities in India changing their names: Madras to Chennai, Calcutta to Kolkatta, Bombay to Mumbai etc, is an attempt to assert local identity .

The power of words to attract or repel people can be seen in another phenomenon. Who would care to see a movie that had as its hero, a man named Thomas Mapother? But when he changed his name to Tom Cruise, it made a difference. Another unknown actor born as Goswami, when rechristened as Manoj Kumar was welcomed with open arms.

Whenever I hear someone referring disparagingly to a member of another community as ‘idiotic’ or ‘stupid’ – which is common in India, I suggest that he use the word ‘different.’ Often, this has the effect of changing the nature of the conversation to less emotional terms.

A wise man suggested that we treat life not as a ‘puzzle’ to be solved but as a ‘mystery’ to be lived. What he meant was that puzzles have a solution, perhaps only one solution. Life offers mysteries that can sometimes have no solution. Our desperate search for the answer to many of our dilemmas may in fact add to our miseries. Such is the hidden power of words.

My friend Ali, suggests that some mullahs need to use the term ‘Galatpheimi’ rather than ‘blasphemy’ when dealing with supposed insults to Islam. That way mullahs may actually present Islam as a religion of compassion – as it is usually viewed from their perspective. Again the power of a word.

However, how does one inspire others?

Here are some simple ways you can use to inspire people to be their best:

Be a good example: People watch what you do more than they listen to what you say. Be someone worth emulating.

Care about others: People don’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care. Ask questions. Take a genuine interest in people.

Encourage others: Everyone goes through tough times. When you support people and encourage them through these times, you’ll be inspiring them to see the best in themselves and in the situation.

Be inspired yourself: Look for people, ideas, environments and knowledge that you find inspiring and motivating.

Share from your own experience: You have more to share than you realize. Mine the rich experiences of your life and share your wisdom from your unique point of view. You may be the only one who can touch someone with your inspiring message.

Be vulnerable: Be willing to share your failures as well as your successes. Others will relate to you. They’ll understand that they’re not the only ones with challenges.

Tell stories: Facts tell and stories sell. They inspire, too. We learn best from parables and we all need to develop our own inspiring stories.

Be a good communicator: Increasing your ability to communicate effectively is a critical element for you to inspire others. Watch how you speak and what you say. Invest in your communication skills.

Challenge people: Many of us have had teachers who at times seemed more like tormentors than mentors. They challenged us to do our best, and we were better for it. Practice “care-frontation”. This means caring confrontation of others. Put care in front and life becomes much simpler!

Ask yourself these two questions every day.

1. Do I Ask?

2. Did I Ask?

Ask for what?

It could be anything, that you may be contemplating/struggling/yearning to find/learn about: Help
Answers, Advice, Counselling, Mentoring, Coaching or Teaching

Ask How? Ask What? Ask Whom?
Life is all about learning, unlearning and relearning. Learning happens through and within our minds.
The mind is always at work. It’s seldom “As still as a mill pond.” It throws up several ideas, thoughts,options and opinions all the time.

Knowingly and unknowingly we constantly mull over them, within our very own personal mind spaces and more often than not, we shelve them, as we do not have the right answers at that point of time.

We do communicate silently, within our minds in search of the best answers to the best of our capability.
If we succeed, we act and enact that thought into action. If we do not succeed we move on and drop that thought. As a result we fail to act on that impulse. In the bargain, we lose several ideas that may otherwise have turned into lucrative results as possible opportunities.

Why?
Because we failed to Ask, Ask, Ask.

The question is why don’t we ask others? Why do we hesitate to ask? Why don’t we ideate?
Like we used to do as children.

We don’t ask because we have an ego within us now, that stops us from doing so. We shy away from asking, despite the fact that God has gifted us with a very powerful tool – the ability to communicate with one another through one means or another.

We seldom if not ever, use that power effectively to find answers and solutions by communicating with others.

Why?

Well, we are Grown Ups now and we believe that we have all the answers. We hesitate, procrastinate or develop inhibitions. A few decades ago as children we would always Ask, Ask, Ask….even the smallest of the doubts. We would relentlessly seek an answer until we got it. We grew up that way until we were classified as Grown Ups.

Just sit back and peek into your childhood days. Remember how curious, vocal, and persevering you were back then? You would inquire like a live wire. And you would get the solutions too.

As you would relentlessly Ask, Ask, Ask as a child, you would at times, irritate the person being asked.
You did that until you grew up! And now, you don’t ask at all! As a result, you have either stunted your growth or have decided to not to grow. How ironic as such a silence is never golden!

No wonder then, those who don’t ask, stop growing. Growing in the real sense, as a complete human.
What a tragedy.

We all know that life’s learning curve moves linearly upwards, till our last breath. We also know that there are several humans on this earth who know more than we do.

Then why stunt our growth? Instead, why not continue to grow, by shedding our inhibitions and getting back to the basics of inquisitiveness. Why not Ask, Ask, Ask! No sane person on this earth will ever deny you an answer if he has it in him. Why not humbly reach out to him/her politely, with an open mind and noble intentions for a non commercial purpose.

Don”t believe me? Ask somebody now and see for yourself. Once you are convinced that it works, don’t stop.
Ask, Ask, Ask…until your last breath. Ask in person, through a mediator, or use the tremendous power of the internet. If you fail, don’t be dismayed! Ask, Ask, Ask.

Ask the Almighty. Yes ask God if humans have failed to give you the answer you sought.
Ask through prayer. Seek a solution that way and you will get it. Ask to Bask ….in a new found glory.

However, if we are talking a majority of the time, there are practices we can do to shift the balance toward listening more. The first thing is to notice ourselves talking and not listening. With this awareness, a number of options become possible. First of all, we now have the choice to decide to stop talking. There are many ways to accomplish this. We can ask questions such as:

“What are your views?”

“What’s on your mind?”

“I’m interested in your thoughts on the matter. Please say more.”

There are additional ways for passing conversations over to others as well. Smiling or nodding encourages others to talk. A simple statement like, “I have been doing most of the talking; I’ll stop now and listen.” Is a direct invitation for others to speak. The possibilities for gracefully shifting from speaking to listening are limitless. Make up any that you feel comfortable with and practice using them.

Become a skilful listener starts first with the intention to talk less and listen more. Learning to stop talking so much and to listen is a powerful step in loving ourselves and other people. In a world full of talkers, a skillful listener shines like the Hope Diamond.

Remember that we have two ears and only one mouth. So we are meant to listen twice as much as we talk!

Practice for the next few days. Identify someone with who you often do most of the talking. Now get really interested in them. Try to swing the balance toward them talking more.

Many times as we’re listening to another person, the things they say will emotionally activate us in some way. Their words may trigger excitement, sadness, fear or some other strong feelings in us. Such feelings can generate an uncontrollable impulse to speak, to override what the other person is saying in order to relieve our own internal pressure. This is an impulse that’s important to limit on the road to becoming a more skilful listener.

When we cut people off in mid-sentence or interrupt by finishing their thoughts out loud for them, we’re being disrespectful, and we could be harming our health! Dr. Paul Pearsall, the author of The Last Self-Help Book You’ll Ever Need, wrote, “Stop expressing, representing, and asserting yourself. Shut up and listen. Research shows that people who interrupt are three times more likely to die of a heart attack than those who don’t, and that (relationships) usually fail because of too much communication, not too little.”

When we interrupt, the message we send to the speaker is, “What I have to say is more important that what you have to say. It’s so important that I can’t contain myself enough to let you finish.” By learning to hold our tongue in daily interactions with people, and becoming genuinely curious about what others are saying, we greatly improve our listening skills and possibly our health.

I’ve seen that not only do masterful listeners not interrupt, they are in no hurry to speak even after the other has finished speaking! This gives people time to reflect and sometimes they find the have more to say. They feel that the other is really listening and their words now come from a deeper part of themselves. This spaciousness in conversation shows respect and interest in the other’s story and is a great gift we can give each other.

Practice for the next few days. Pay attention to how frequently you and other people interrupt one another in everyday communication. Take steps to reduce your own pattern of interrupting others. Try counting to ten in your mind after the person has finished speaking before adding your own comments. You might be surprised at how restraining the impulse to interrupt and speak helps deepen the connection.

Do you like to live your life your way? Then you must absolutely cultivate the art of not listening. Don’t be fooled by all these lectures on listening that will improve your life by making you more efficient and bringing in more value to your existence. It is absolute baloney. Listening never did any good to anybody. It only brings duties and commitments and who wants any of this?

 Look at this guy hogging the road or even that pedestrian walking merrily in the centre of the road. Both have been taught and told, I am sure often enough, to be a little more “giving” and considerate; if not for others at least for their own selves. From their behavior you would believe that they both acquired white hairs by standing under the sun. Then coming down to the immediate present, no amount of honking seems to affect them. Are they deaf? No sir, nothing of this. They are tax payers so they have rights and the roads are for public use; although I would keep my fingers crossed when making this statement.

The art of not listening has some techniques that can be mastered by anybody.

First obviously is to go deaf. Refuse to allow a certain level of higher frequencies to titillate your nerves in the ear. What will the other guy do? Hang you by the nearest tree?! There is really no point in being considerate and raising our blood-pressure levels, is there?

Second, learn to convert every exchange into an argument. Put the other guy in the position to having to clarify. Any stupid remark will do as long as it is made as an accusation. Keep this up till the poor other guy gives up and rearranges his life to cut you out. The problem is that this technique is used mainly in marriages where cutting out is not so simple. It would be better then to learn to grin and bear it.

Third, treat every question as an incriminating statement and answer accordingly with a lot of anguish and hurt in your voice and demeanor. Your words should show it by saying immediately in response something like: you are always shouting at me. The idea would be clearly to put the other guy on the defensive; the subject then getting conveniently brushed under the carpet. The other guy will eventually realize that he has been had but what can he really do except grind his teeth?

Fourth, be the nice guy. Grunt a yes sounding something and almost certainly do your own thing unless it is blatantly against your good health policy.

Fifth, is by changing the activity. Let us say you are watching the TV and your partner starts speaking to you. Immediately start fluffing the pillow with a loud noise then say sorry and then ask him to get you a glass of water. This does require a little presence of mind but practice makes perfect.

Sixth, just lose your temper. This will act as rumble-strips and slow the other fellow down and even embarrass him. Take advantage of the situation and accuse him of everything you can think of. It will not only take care of the present situation but make him downright scared for even daring to open his mouth in the future.

Happiness is in not listening.

I felt it shelter to speak to you.
- Emily Dickinson

We gather in a group to be witnessed, to be supported, and to be both equalized and elevated in our struggles, gifts and ambitions. Common ground is very fertile ground – it is, what Emerson calls, “…the common heart of which all sincere conversation is worship.” Where two or more are joined with the same intention, grace intensifies and solutions multiply. Belongingness heals and nourishes with its affirmative recognition that we are not alone. Simultaneously, we are able to experience our unity and our uniqueness.

Who hears you? Whose greatness do you foster in return?

It’s essential to have a posse.
I have my “Goddesses,” five of us who meet almost monthly with one purpose: to tell each other what’s really going on in our lives. We’re a mismatched gang that began when one woman said, “I’m having a potluck of cool chicas next week, whoever shows up, shows up.” It was just the five of us who made it – some of us already friends, some of us new to each other, and it was clear at the end of our first night together that we had to do more of this. And in just two years of homemade soups and desert and other bubbly things, we’ve gone through life-altering decisions, marriage melt downs, new babies, business epics, world travels, heart wrenching loss and amazing successes. We would move mountains to help each other. I love knowing that we happened by intention and by serendipity.

What constitutes nagging and scornful exhibition has not been documented yet. From the comic strip, it would seem that everything said or hinted in contradiction constitutes a scornful act which is absolutely unacceptable. In this comic strip the sentence “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” was being elaborated. The fuming woman was serving dinner and telling her husband –“After a whole day at my job I come back and bake you these potatoes. Saying no thank you will NOT DO!” The news item was more specific. The man had become so fed up by the nagging of his wife that he put her up for sale; we are to believe that they were newly weds too. And wonder of wonders, there were buyers ready too. The wife on her side had a simple explanation: “I don’t think I nag him. He just doesn’t do what I want him to”.

What a quandary this is. We all know what others are going through in marriages and we have all made efforts to find mates. The best that can be said about it all is that the chase is more interesting than the catch. I don’t know about the others because arranged marriages cut out the chase and fun and the joint family dampens the spirit. Yet this very dampening keeps the joy of finding your girl alone for yourself for a moment is akin to the chase which goes on and on so I believe the charm lasts longer.

In my case I was living alone in a place like Delhi, leading a very unusual life of a teacher of French at the YWCA. So romantic escapades were no problem and I was spoilt for choice. It just happened that I found books more interesting with my music system softly playing Mozart or Bhimsen Joshi.  Many of my attempts at wooing were more in the nature of experiments to see if I had in me to turn on the lights in a woman’s eyes. With my mobike I suppose I was a very attractive proposal because once or twice I had to worry more of shaking of pursuers rather than the opposite. But one thing is sure; it was not long before the nagging would start. And usually they left me because as some of them said – “they did not feel needed” or as I translated it “they could not overpower or control me.”
 
I remember one of my aunts wanting to pair me off with a certain young lady. I avoided the subject for many months. It soon became clear that I would have to forego entry to my aunt’s if I did not pay heed so I agreed to meet the young lady hoping that I would put her off and that would be that. I promised to take the lady out on a summer evening. It was 42 degree C (around 110 F) and I was a little fatigued so I was a little quiet. I was hoping to sit in a garden restaurant, order a cold coffee and then get down to a conversation. It is not easy to have a conversation on a mobike anyway and I was wearing a helmet. By the time we reached the restaurant the lady had already taken to the notion that she had been scorned and the first sentence she uttered was “You are avoiding talking to me and I don’t like it.” I began wishing being home alone in my flat and with my usual company of books and music.

The next two tries were also absolute failures. In the first case this was an arranged meeting. I found the young lady quite nice and nearly said yes. But in the next 24 hours, I panicked and said no. In the second try it was a chase and win situation. I asked the question and she said yes but then in the next 24 hours she panicked and went back on her words. There were other meetings, agreements and more meetings. But somehow or other I always ended up irritating the young ladies and even after saying yes, they would go back on their answer later. Honestly I must say there were moments where I felt more relieved than sad.

Jokes apart, there is a kernel of truth in the above pleasantries. Women are designed to be appreciated; she is to be appreciated and be seen as the centre of your little universe and forget the rest as crap. She is never wrong or at fault. Get this in your puny head. Any time you fail to give signs of unfailing praise, you have legally and literally scorned her. And that brings down the axe with all its dangerous aftermath. In a pique they may really even leave you so beware. But normally they are more pragmatic than that. They stay and keep you grovelling and making it clear what position you enjoy in the equation. You can run away but where will you go?

But things went further. My wife was more than just vexed and showed it. She called me psychologically unhinged and rued the day she hitched her star to mine and so on so forth. This was not simply getting annoyed and angry. I felt there was something else behind it. Again for the umpteenth time I noticed that this became an excuse for my wife to assert her independence as an individual and separate entity.

This will require some preamble explaining as to what I am getting to. I have had this thought floating for many years that though we want closeness, hunt for affectionate relationships and love affairs yet do not really ever open the doors to our whole selves. My education in an ashram made me sensitive to this issue early on but I have begun to understand it only lately after marriage and having to live with my mother after my father’s death.

I recognize this fact because I could sense it in me. So I made it a point to study myself and others more closely. It is obvious that what we consider to be our ‘self’ is a very egocentric persona and not very stable at that. Every time closeness would develop in a relationship I would get a funny, not-so-comfortable apprehension that by merging my self in the relationship I would lose my entity as a person. It was like an undercurrent of unexplained discomfort and I would then do some thing stupid that would ensure that the relationship did not cross a fine point and most often would then fade away.

This experience is explained in many philosophical and meditative techniques. Just imagine letting ourselves go and becoming one with the universe; will our ‘self’ still exist? But it is a fact that when we let our selfish selves go we do feel a release and a friendlier atmosphere builds up around us. But this is not an easy thing to experience or bring into being by mere thinking and wanting. A certain amount of self-transformation is required. Even people who go for it consciously through meditative and yoga techniques tend to falter at the crucial moment. So if my wife gets scared whenever a “closeness” begins to develop, I am not surprised. This is a very unconscious happening. Few would agree to it and would never admit to going through it. But the subconscious has many tricks hidden at its core. The newer generation is showing it more openly; laced with gadgetry they feel secure in their aloneness, even a bit superior, fully confident that they can manage perfectly by their lone selves as if enclosed in a block of ice.

I have seen this happening mainly with mentally advanced, city bred people, especially if they have the good luck to have succeeded by the material world’s standards and their egos have had the pleasure of getting inordinately inflated. These people are difficult at the best of times but transform into veritable hissing anacondas if crossed. Every little irritation is magnified into a show of opposition as if attacked then logically merits an exemplary retort and retaliation. In this mood every word uttered or gesture is calculated to cause grievous hurt. Often pots and pans fly.

I have seen that whenever they feel that they have been wronged and this happens ever so often, scorned women will bring out the “cat-o-nine-tails” and thrash you nice and proper. It is a good exercise to make you grovel and remind you of your place in the equation. You can forget peace, quiet and affectionate hugs. It is a grace that they don’t run away with another man there and then. When my wife is in this mood, all I wish to do is pick up my ‘kamandal’ and run for a cave in the hills and embrace monkhood. Had it not been for my daughter, I would have even done it in a fit of pique.

Handling a staff role is like skating on thin ice. Though the top management will give you full authority and support to do your staff role, you will face a lot of hurdles, sometimes from the same management and your colleagues.

I remember a couple of times when I functioned in the role of a training manager though my designation was otherwise. I had to constantly struggle and fight for resources and time.

I once asked a senior colleague Palani  with a lot of hands-on field experience, to help me in the training lab. He was too busy as, at the same time, he was also called to help a field engineer, a software engineer, or even the marketing team. But I put my foot down and said that I need his help till the lab session was over.

Even a layman can guess that a field request is high priority and is a line function. But sill a trade-off has to be reached as smooth functioning of a training session without interruption is also important. One of the marketing heads used to joke, “Have you released Palani? Can we take his help?” But you have to be firm, otherwise, next time you organize a training, people will think twice before they can attend one!

At times, when a department head is in a training session, he/she will be called by the director for a critical business meeting. Sometimes, I have got phone calls from department heads when their staff are held up in a training session that lasts for more than an hour. At times you will get a mild heartache when a training session is cancelled at the last minute due to project deadlines.

Thus a staff role is very delicate, as you cannot antagonize people who are at the front-end of the company’s business. At the same time you cannot act like a wimp.

Popularity across departments and company branches is something an employee in a staff role will get by virtue of his/her role. Sometimes his or her popularity may surpass and overshadow the popularity of line managers. This fame is again a sensitive issue, and has to be handled without hurting the sentiments and ego of senior colleagues. Acknowledging and involving senior colleagues in your decision making and communication will help in easing ego problems.

So a person handling a staff role has to have a firm will, determination, and also good people skills. Then your staff role is a boon and not a bane!!!

This is a rich country but still we are required to call ourselves a developing nation. Our society has affluent culture and tradition. People are open & broad-minded. They are helpful and co-operative, yet we suffer from distress & miseries. It’s an unusual combination of contradictions.

Responsibilities, roles, duties, tasks at multiple places – all make this society a small world of involuntary actions and motorized living. Let us think for a while and count for how many relationships we give time genuinely. It is indeed sad to say that many of us have no time for most intimate relationships. We are too busy to talk and share.

Do reach out to people. Hug children around, get a gift for your spouse, meet parents to say you care…and blow horns to announce, “Let’s get together.” That’s sharing.

Truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience. Do reach out!

–

Dr. Pratima Jagadeesh is currently working as HR Manager at Orchesys IT Services, Bangalore. She handles personal and career counseling and runs workshops on personality development.  Her other interests are writing, poetry, music and painting.

Janet assumes that Victor is angry with her or trying to avoid her. Janet feels neglected. So, in order to avoid feeling hurt or rejected, Janet decides to keep off from Victor. As a consequence of her decision, she does not invite Victor to her daughter’s birthday party. Victor now wonders why Janet, his favourite teammate, behaved aloof and invited everyone except him. So, Victor stops mailing her interesting forwards. And Janet is now convinced that Victor has her in his bad books.
 
Keith Clark, in his book, “The Skilled Participant – A Way to Effective Collaboration”, explains interpersonal hiccups in two stages, namely “first instance” and “second instance.”

Keith explains his interpersonal analysis with the help of a “Sometimes Useful Tool” as depicted in the diagram.

In the first instance something is perceived and interpreted on the basis of an assumption, which generates a feeling. Motivated by the feeling, one chooses a behaviour. Because of the mistake of assuming someone intended the perceiver to feel a certain way, the interaction moves to “second instance.”

In the “first instance” neither party meant what the other assumed or intended. In the “second instance” both parties wanted to do, what the other had assumed, he or she had intended in the first instance. A combination of incorrect assumptions and negative feelings leads to a wrong attitude.

A skilled participant, or an effective communicator, will identify his or her stage using the “Sometimes Useful Tool.” And a skilled participant solves problems at the “first instance” itself and does not move to “second instance”. So, the moment he/she reaches the feeling stage; they will ask questions, instead of moving to the decision phase.

So, in the example quoted, if Janet had been a skilled participant in the relationship, she would have asked Victor a few questions, the first time she felt hurt.

Janet: Victor, you seem to be avoiding me and chatting too much with your new team mate Kate. Old is gold. So, don’t you ignore me?

Victor: Hey Janet, Sorry. The whole of last week I was thinking about my son’s school admission and my mom’s illness. You are always my best friend. But why did madam not send invites for your family party?

Janet: Sorry Victor. I misunderstood you and was a bit angry with you. So I wanted to snub you. Please do come for my daughter’s birthday bash.

How pleasant the outcome is when we clarify our assumptions. So, be a skilled participant and use the tools of self-awareness, self-disclosure, and hearing or listening.

–

Anitha is an engineer with a masters in human resource management. She has conducted and been a part of syncronous and asynchronous training in technical and soft skills subjects. Her interests include reading, cooking, singing, and listening to music.

“Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.” These words of Christ express a natural law; mainly, the world responds to those who ask. Why then are we afraid to ask, to use those words.

During my school days, I used to dread competition, “what if I lose?” The habit continued, till about a year ago, when I did an inspirational speech. The speech was delivered, and I could almost see the winner’s trophy, when they announced, and winner is…XYZ. They didn’t announce my name. Sure enough, I had lost, or so I thought then.

A little while later an old acquaintance walked up to me. He put an arm around me and said, “Ritu, was what you said about your father having a near death experience, true?”

I confirmed it was. “You see, I have a special child, and I face a challenging situation at home every day, your speech fills me with hope.” I could see his eyes were moist.

A couple of days later, a friend called up, “Ritu, that speech of yours, the one about your father, well it inspired me so much, I hope some day I shall be able to inspire people like that.”

Another acquaintance had quoted the same speech for his icebreaker.

Then it happened! I realized that if I said something and someone made it a part of his/her life, I had touched a life. I hadn’t lost that contest. I had discovered something that worked. WORDS.

My favorite song by Boyzone runs, “It’s only words, and words are all I have…to take your heart away.” 

It is indeed a pity to hear someone say, “If she really loved me, she would know how I feel.” Or worse, “We have so many arguments, maybe we aren’t meant for each other.”

My advice for such couples is that your better/bitter half is not a mind reader. Humans are capable of expressing through words, and experiencing infinite emotions. If you are arguing, congratulations, you are on way to getting to know the other person through the art of expression. Expecting someone to read your mind, is like putting a newspaper out in the sun and hoping it will burn. Use words as a magnifying glass, to direct the sun rays, and the paper will burn. Still suffering from the “read my mind” syndrome? My remedy is, marry a mind-reader, or better still date a brain scan.

My father used to say, “Words are like arrows, once out of the mouth, they can never be taken back, one needs to be careful with what one says!” Another powerful saying goes, “be careful, what you ask for may come true” What if you never asked for anything, you would never get what you could have got had you asked for it. You would never know what you missed. As a child I loved a pair of pink shoes that I saw once at a store. Every birthday, I would secretly hope that my parents or someone would gift me those shoes. Every birthday, you’ve guessed it, I didn’t get those shoes…because I didn’t ask for them. Last year, Christmas time I walked into the store with my mother, looked at the shoes and spoke out loud, “Ma, may I have these pink shoes, please?” Today, the shoes sit in my shoe-rack as a gift from mom.

Percy Ross has aid, “The world is full of genies waiting to grant your wishes.” You need to use those words, to marry the girl of your dreams, to influence someone, to get your emotions across to the person you love, or to get the shoes that you want. To learn what you can get you need to ask for what you want.

Often, when a person is gone, we give long eulogies, but how many of us bother to tell a person how wonderful he/she is while he is still with us. Use those magical words… be it “I love you” or “I am sorry” or “Will you be mine” or “This is what I meant” or “May I have this” or “You mean the world to me” or “You matter” or “You made a difference to my life”.

Use the power of words. Keep talking. Keep writing. Keep influencing!

–

Dr. Arora is a freelance corporate trainer, Reiki master, feng shui consultant and aromatherapist. A periodontist by education, a Toastmaster by passion, she has been actively associated with radio, theatre and fine arts. Visit her websites www.mentalsparks.com and www.camelliastory.com.

Worse than having an unhappy employee is the fact of not knowing having one; this is a dangerous bug. If survival of your team is your responsibility, then you need to learn to locate the fuse and fix it before the grenade blows up.

The clues would be there. It is a matter of recognizing them. The first clue is uncharacteristic behaviour. This is something very difficult to hide. Very few people are good enough actors to hide their dissatisfaction if they are feeling it. If they are not happy, they want the world to know and share their grouse. There is self-pity here somewhere. Circumstances and their position may not be right and the employee would hopefully be intelligent enough to know this. So he will bide his time but small subconscious patterns will leak out from under the cloak. For instance, avoiding conversation and taking too long to finish a given job. Knowingly allowing mistakes to creep into the final work and having excuses ready for it, which can be construed as passive un-cooperation.

The company of this person somehow becomes uncomfortable. You have to sense it but it is difficult to describe. Things like forced laughter, missing out in conversation, daydreaming and increased arguing can be pointers. Unfortunately there are many who are made that way in their best self and it is my opinion that they rarely make good employees or partners anyway.

Another clue is dropping-out behaviour. Coming late and leaving early on some pretext or the other; reporting sick more often than would be normal. These are clues that one cannot argue about but should certainly raise some eyebrows.

Once the situation has been recognized the second step is to do something about it. So focus on the problem person. Does the job really interest him? Or is he passing time till he finds another? Losing interest in one’s job is normal. A new employment is a new challenge and comes with rosy pictures of advancement and who knows what. Once on the treadmill, it does not seem this way. Many others are already in the Q. People with overestimated self-worth are the first hit with negative surmises and easily persuade themselves that they are good but the system is bad. Soon they even isolate the ones they think are the source behind their delayed advancement. In this atmosphere they soon become a discordant note to every tune. They need ego boosts. Make them feel important. If this is difficult, I really don’t know what you can do except to ask them to leave.

Regardless of all the above, it would still be a good idea to wonder if you as the employer did not give your disgruntled employee wrong ideas about the job when employing him. Perhaps you dangled a too big a carrot. The employee therefore is quite right in feeling resentful. Your art would be in curing him of this feeling. Try to put in some effort to help him up the ladder otherwise he will only become progressively more resentful and unknowingly or knowingly he will surely hurt the organization sometime sooner or later; most probably sooner rather than later. Positive feedback can do wonders to morale.

An important factor is that the employee may really be right in feeling the way he feels. The job condition can very well dictate negative behaviour. For example take the complaint-box in a service provider company like the MTNL. The employee does not make the rules nor is he responsible for the service but he has to listen to the abuse day in and out. Obviously if his contribution is not appreciated and he is continuously treated as a mere employee of no importance, he is going to be a very unhappy person indeed. And, if you think he cannot hurt the organization in anyway, you have got a thing coming.

Besides all this, there may be other factors at play in his personal life. Like a mismatch in marriage, financial difficulties, illness, pressures in the family and so many other possibilities. Here wisdom dictates, some attention from the manager and wherever possible assistance to overcome difficult moments in life. Just listen to your employee as a friend without being the boss and you will be surprised at what he can tell you. Don’t ask leading questions, just sympathize and do not react. Very few human beings can really cope with everything that life throws at us. So, develop empathy and help your team and they will help the organization to grow in turn.

The answer to this predicament is in developing a stable persona which is true to itself. If you had felt that he was not doing his job, you should have said so in a normal way right at the first instance. If you kept silent, it means you gave tacit approval. After that if he began to take this as normal and took you for granted, why should he not? It never would have occurred to him that he was in the wrong. He most probably thought everything was just fine and that he was doing a good job because nobody was ever complaining.

This subject has been on my mind lately because my wife has the tendency to take the same attitude. She never shows her true feelings. She keeps silent and lets others do whatever they want at home and at work. Then one day (approximately after six months) she will burst out in anger not only complaining, but being abusive as well. I have been trying to drum this into her that she should not allow a wound to fester. Tackle it immediately. Never let an unsavoury situation to get off the ground. A stitch in time saves nine. So much heart break and ill will can be avoided by complaining softly before egos get involved. This can be called being tactful.

Some blame for such a situation can be laid on our upbringing and education. We are taught to be ‚Äònice’, polite and kind. We are taught that good manners are better than being truthful and straightforward. So, there is a gap between what we want to do and what we do; with a lot of suppressed irritation or guilt.

We humans, tend to gravitate between extremes, highly influenced by the weather, TV, neighbours and all that we hear and see. Our behaviour tends to be very inconsistent indeed. This is the entire focus of the teachings of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo. First integrate your personality into a cohesive whole and then you will know exactly what to do, what attitude and action to take.

What they often mean is “I love you as long as I get that warm fuzzy feeling inside when I’m around you or when I think of you. Just don’t ask me to demonstrate my love by asking too much of me.”

When we equate love with internal feelings of bliss, it becomes dependent on our “loved” ones pleasing us on a consistent basis and asking very little in return. It’s easy to feel “love” when it does not make many demands on us or our time.

Too often, we work harder to please relative strangers than those we say we “love.”¬† When we feel secure in our relationships, we tend to take them for granted and forget the importance of demonstrating our love on a day-to-day basis.

Love, in the truest sense of the word, is an action verb. We can say “I love you” and truly feel like we mean it, but the proof of our love is in our actions.

To see how our love stacks up in terms of action, we can ask ourselves these questions:

1.  How do I demonstrate my love through action?

2.  How do my loved ones experience my love?

3.¬† If I didn’t say the words, could they tell by my actions that I love them?

4.¬† Do I demonstrate my love even when I don’t feel “loving?”

5.¬† Do my loved ones have to please me to “feel” wrapped in my love?

6.¬† What actions from others do I experience as¬†¬†¬†¬†¬† “loving?”

7.¬† Do I only show love when I am “feeling” loved?

8.  Who in my life demonstrates their love for me through their actions?

9.  Are there people in my life who say they love me without providing any evidence of this love other than mere words?

10.  What can I do differently to demonstrate my love?

11.¬† Do I show love for myself in my actions – even when I don’t “feel” deserving of this love?

When we reflect on these questions, we can heighten our awareness of our own ability to put love into action- with others and with ourselves.  We can DECIDE to love when we see it as an active force rather than merely a feeling.  True love exists when our actions match our words!

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Holly Cox is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor, a Certified Dream Coach¬Æ, and a Certified Dream Coach Group Leader¬Æ.¬† She is committed to helping women design and maintain “dream-come-true” lives. Sign up for Holly’s “Transform Your Life” newsletter at http://www.mypersonaltransformation.com and get great tips to jumpstart your transformation.

Why do people smoke? Why do they continue smoking even though they know that this habit of theirs is slowly but surely eroding their health? According to a study more than 70% of tobacco users want to quit, but can’t. Why do they find it difficult to overcome this habit? As I understand it, there are two primary reasons for it.

First of all, it is a stubborn habit. Most people naturally connect this habit with many everyday activities (visiting the loo), times of the day (first thing in the morning; after meals), social interactions (smoking with friends; smoking while drinking), and emotional states (sad, stressed; happy, celebratory) etc. These situations continually trigger the urge to smoke. Since these triggers often work at the subconscious level, this habit becomes difficult to get rid of. It acts like a reliable, old friend you can turn to for relaxation, comfort and focus.

Secondly, it acts as an addiction. The body and the mind get used to the ‘adrenaline rush’ from regular nicotine fix. The very thought of quitting triggers strong and uncomfortable physical and psychological reactions, pressurizing the person into resuming smoking. Sometimes this discomfort of quitting may last for several weeks or months.

What are these withdrawal symptoms? People who have tried quitting are well aware of them. Typical withdrawal symptoms are irritability, restlessness, sadness, nervousness, coughing, sore throat, constipation, insomnia, fatigue, weight gain, difficulty in concentrating, decreased heart rate, and an increased appetite. No wonder most people have a hard time kicking up this habit!

In such a difficult scenario, what can a cigarette smoker do to drop this habit right away? The first thing a smoker should do is to get a physical examination done. They must learn the extent to which their health has been affected by smoking. This action puts the subsequent actions in perspective. Recommendations should be sought for reversal of the damage already done. This step is absolutely essential.

Then the smoker should seek support from family members and friends for emotional encouragement and listening ears. He will need all the support he can muster during this change process. He should not socialize with people who smoke (at least during the initial stage), as it is always hard to resist when someone lights up in front of you.

The third important action is to get a healthier lifestyle. The process of quitting can produce a temporary drop in energy levels. It can reduce concentration power and increased mood swings. To overcome these difficulties, one should improve one’s diet, exercise, and sleep patterns. One needs to take better care of oneself in order to replace the ‘nicotine highs’ with ‘natural highs’. All this requires a lot of self-control. However, there are no highs that nicotine can give but brain cannot generate through healthier means. You just need to discover these means. You need to plan in advance, be more creative and committed to the process.

In the absence of such a preparation, people often give up their attempt to quit smoking. How can these people stay motivated? Most people know that they want to quit smoking, but they do not know why? Most often the answer is that their mother/wife/girlfriend/doctor want them to quit. These external pressures can never be motivating enough. You need to genuinely want to quit, and know the reasons for quitting. If you are trying to quit smoking, you better have a list of reasons. This list can act as a kind of map you can turn to when going gets tough.

What are the common reasons for quitting?

• People want to add more years to their lives.
• They want to decrease their heath risks.
• They want to save the money they spend on cigarettes.
• They want to prove to themselves that they can meet the challenge of quitting smoking.
• They wish to improve their lifestyle.
• They wish to experience more natural energy.
• They want to be good role models for their children and grand children.
• They do not want to pollute the environment.

Take a look at these reasons and determine ‘your’ reasons for quitting. Whatever your reasons are, just write them down and keep this list handy. Read this list of reasons whenever you get the urge to smoke. This way you will lay a psychological groundwork to make quitting easier.

Clinical hypnosis works wonders in helping you keep your goal and the reasons for that goal continuously in your mind, 24×7. Since habits and addictions tend to be very psychological in nature, this is the most holistic approach to quitting. It can help you change and improve the way you think about yourself and your ‚Äòproblem‚Äô. However, it is your ‚Äòdesire to quit‚Äô, which is critical for taking an action.

Most smokers look for explanations and excuses for not quitting. Remember that you must hold yourself accountable for all that you do. Excuses are a dime a dozen and they don’t mean a thing. When all is said and done it is your choice whether to quit or not to quit. You can choose your convenience over a commitment or vice-versa. The fact remains that when you do not fulfill a promise, you let yourself down and regardless of your excuses you do not carry a high opinion of yourself. Don’t ever fall in this avoidable trap.

Are you wondering what made my son quit smoking? Well, the panacea for all ills: Meditation! I too had a small role to play in it. I had given him a book, ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ by Paramhansa Yogananda. This book has had such a profound influence on his young mind that he has started meditating regularly. It is this new found passion, spirituality, which did the trick.

Since the proof of the pudding is in its eating, may I cajole all those smokers, who are planning to quit smoking, to try this tried and tested formula. Start meditating; do it right now. You will not only get rid of your addictions, but also reap many other health benefits.

Rather, let’s look at why many people experience a challenge in communicating effectively from the verbal aspect:

1.    Self-consciousness

When I was a magazine editor, I was invited to many red-carpet events and cocktails where I had to rub shoulders with the rich and famous. Initially I dreaded those events, because I was not comfortable at making small talk with these people.

Then a great truth dawned on me – to be a good conversationalist, we simply had to be a great listener. We had to be genuinely interested in what the other person had to say, ask the right questions (because we genuinely wanted to know more) and presto, people will laud us as great communicators!

It’s often our own self-consciousness that makes us tongue-tied and awkward. We are so pre-occupied with what intelligent idea to share next, that we can barely concentrate on listening to and understanding the other party.

2.    Non-empathy

The other block to good communication is non-empathy. We are sometimes so intent on putting our ideas across that we forget to be sensitive or empathic to the other person. Is the person in a rush, or does he or she have other matters on his or her mind?

A good example is when we want to sell an idea to our boss: is he or she rushing for another meeting? Or perhaps he or she has just got some flak from his or her boss or a customer and is simply in a lousy mood.

My personality type tends towards being results-oriented, so this was an area that I was weak in. Now I’ve learnt to be more sensitive and to always ask: Is it a good time to talk? Or: Do you have half an hour to discuss… ?

3.    Lack of clarity

This comes from a lack of clarity in our thoughts as well as our verbal communication. It starts from our thoughts: are we quite clear in our minds what is the message we wish to convey? From there, we move on to effective choice of words. Some people may have a language problem: they may be thinking in their mother language, say Mandarin or Punjabi, and trying to express their ideas in a language they are not comfortable with, say English.

Learn to organize your thoughts. Before making an important presentation, list down the points you want to make in a logical sense. If language is a challenge, then I suggest you write your ideas down in proper sentences and ask a friend to go through for you. I’m not saying you should read from your paper or memorise the “speech” but just writing it down and reading it a few times will help you a great deal in putting your message across.

Many people think as long as they speak fluently, they are good communicators. Not so, as those of you who have had to listen to someone go on and on about themselves, will testify. They may be such eloquent speakers, and even entertaining at times, but there’s only so much we can take in a one-way communication. I’m sure some of you have been in a situation where you just wish you were somewhere else after 20 minutes!

The highest level of communication which I personally would strive for as a communicator is what is known as persuasive communication. This takes place when the person we are communicating with, 1) understands what we want to say, 2) feels what we are feeling and is then 3) motivated to take action on what we have said.  Effective communication may stop short at (2); the listener may not necessarily want to do something about what he or she has just heard.

One skill that can help you move from effective to persuasive communication is that of asking questions. This is a powerful skill that once you have mastered it, will indeed help you see immediate results in your daily communication – be it sales, presentation of ideas, talking to your friends or simply getting your child to do what you want! So the best thing you can do for yourself now is to pop into a bookstore and grab a book on this!

Jessica See, a Certified Professional Trainer and Coach (IPMA UK), conducts programmes on ‘Training as a Profession’ in Singapore, Malaysia, Shanghai and Beijing. She can be contacted at  Jessica@qscasia.com

Good listeners are becoming extinct among us. What is even more disturbing is that very few of us are concerned about our inability to be attentive listeners.

The ear is a radar that picks up frequencies created by any kind of sound and sends them to the brain. This is hearing. Hearing is an effect (of some sound or noise), while listening is an effort. Hearing is a natural biological function while listening is a choice on our part. Many of us have only heard and never really listened in our lives. Listening is an effort to receive all that comes to the ear in the form of speech or sound and understand it as well as if you have spoken it. A good listener tries to understand what is being said. In the end he may disagree sharply, but because he disagrees, he must know what exactly he disagrees with and that can only happen if he listens attentively. Listening is quite an evolved process within human consciousness.

When a knowledgeable man speaks, only a wise man has the ears, heart and wisdom to listen. The wisdom he possesses is not because he is wise, but because he listens. Out of the 5 senses, listening uses the least amount of energy. Perhaps that’s why sound (alarm) is used to wake up from sleep. Listening is a very sensitive process with complex psychological inputs. Let us explore some of them.

You don’t just listen to sound outside you. You can listen to your own voice. Try speaking your name, and it sounds like the crescendo of a concert. Try listening to your thoughts, they sound even louder and clearer because they are even closer to the brain. Try listening to the feelings of pain, relief, desire, joy, surprise etc. Each of these has a distinct sound associated with it. I would even go to the extent of saying that everything in this world is sound or has sound or makes sound. All you need is a set of ears that can catch, convey and comprehend these sound waves.

The one factor that will make you a genius listener is patience. There is no barter for patience. The second equally important intention is to get the message right, as exact as possible. Therefore what you need is a positive body language to make the speaker feel confident that he is making sense to you. This will help him to convey his idea better, so the eventual beneficiary is you, the avid listener.

Here are the thumb rules to being a good listener:
1. Listen to the speaker, instead of planning what you will say in return.
2. Listen as if you are listening to the cancellation of your death sentence.
3. When you speak, make sure that you have finished speaking before the audience has finished listening.
4. Interrupt only when the speaker wants it.
5. Remember, your ears will never get you in trouble.

I will sign off now with one of my favourite quotes on listening: I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. Robert McCloskey.