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So we’ve reached the end of the “Holiday Season” – radio stations have stopped playing Christmas music 24/7 and stores are now displaying stuff for Valentine’s Day. In the United States, this season starts with Thanksgiving and ends with New Year’s Eve. For some, like me, the big event is Christmas while for others it’s a different holiday such as Hanukah or Kwanzaa. If you’re heavily involved with the planning of activities related to these special days, you may have noticed yourself feeling a little bummed out once the big climax has happened.
When most people see the term “system” they associate it to something complicated or in the personal development world, something you need to buy. In reality, systems are simply a set of steps to follow and creating systems is a powerful way to become more efficient by minimizing the duplication of effort.
I have systems for a lot of the things I do professionally – and I’m always tweaking them and adding more. Sometimes my bigger systems have smaller ones within them. For example, I have a system for creating a new course and within that, there are systems for creating the audio program for the course as well as the course workbook.
Whether you’re trying to get a venture capitalist to invest in your business idea, an employer to hire you for a position, your neighbors to sponsor your for a charity event or your spouse to let you buy a new “toy,” you need to sell your idea to them. I’’s much easier to sell someone on something when their excited about it, so here are two easy ways to do just that.
Get really excited about it:
read full story of "How to Get Others Excited About Your Ideas"
Out of all the famous entrepreneurs of the last fifty years, Steve Jobs is perhaps the most iconic. The legendary founder of Apple and Pixar who brought us Toy Story, the Macintosh and the iPhone had a cult-like following that even his more financially successful counterparts were envious of. It seemed like no matter what Steve did, he did it with his own unique style – including giving speeches.
It’s no secret that most people associate some sort of discomfort with public speaking. In fact, many people flat out hate it. I believe part of the reason for this is that there’s a lot of advice on how to be a better speaker (and even how to get rich from public speaking) that is either only semi-accurate or in some cases, completely inaccurate. So when people follow it and it doesn’t work they get frustrated and think that there’s something wrong with them.
read full story of "The Real Reason People Hate Public Speaking"
While I recommend Toastmasters to my classes and clients, it’s not always the perfect solution for becoming a good speaker. It’s hard for me to not seem wishy washy on the subject because my four plus years in Toastmasters were mainly positive. Yes, there were those not so good moments, but in general I enjoyed being part of an amazing club and making some excellent friends.
I remember watching a video as a child about a kid who lived a miserable life because all he did was worry about things. We’ve all come across people like that and some of us are even guilty of it from time to time. As outside observers, we might see that things are often not as bad as people make them out to be. In general, unless someone is dying, there’s usually a way to recover from any tough situation and sometimes we can even come out stronger than ever.