Overnight Sensation - Public Speaking, Communication and Personal Development » Inspiration

What Inspires You?

James — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:53:39 +0000

What inspires you? Do you have a place that helps you think more clearly? Do you find a certain book, movie, song, video or sound clip helps you think more clearly? We all have our different sources for inspiration, but often we forget about them.

For me, I find being out in the woods inspiring – especially deep in the woods. For two and half years, I used to drive by Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts every day on the way to work. Over the years, I probably visited the pond about ten times and I can definitely see how it gave Henry David Thoreau inspiration. For me, I found Jordan Pond up in Acadia National Park in Maine to have a really profound effect. Jordan Pond is more remote (a somewhat busy road abuts Walden Pond) and you’re deep into the park when you reach it. It’s not a distant walk from the parking area, but it’s pretty far from any busy roads.

I remember the first time I went there. There was a guy with just an acoustic guitar playing whatever notes and singing whatever words came to him. I sat off in the distance listening in an effort to not embarrass or disturb him. I don’t know if he was trying to write a song or singing just because it made him feel good. But I could definitely feel the same “high” he was feeling. It’s hard to see such majestic beauty without allowing it to have a profound effect on you.

Here are some photos of me at Jordan Pond (you can click on them to see larger versions). This first one has the pond in the background – it was a beautiful day.

This second one shows some of the rocks you needed to climb over to get around the pond. I considered these the “easy rocks” – the more difficult ones required both your hands and feet to climb over.

These days, a lot of people seek drugs to feel better. While some use the heavy stuff that fall under labels such as “narcotics” or “illegal,” others find their drugs in caffeine, junk food or by consuming other things that are bad for their body.

For me, my drugs are exercise and nature. I am proud to say that I’ve never used any illegal drugs or prescription drugs that weren’t prescribed by my doctor. I’ve also never been drunk – in fact, all the alcohol I’ve consumed in my entire life combined would constitute one to two drinks. And if you think it makes me boring, I still have fun when I go out and one of my favorite nighttime activities is karaoke (which takes guts because I’m a horrible singer).

As much as I hate shoveling snow, the fact that I’m moving around and seeing the white blanket covering the ground makes it more bearable. The mile plus walk around Jordan Pond can be tough at times (and involves climbing rocks) but is definitely more intense and more fulfilling than walking a mile on a treadmill.

It’s no wonder that artists love nature. It’s hard to look at such beauty and not want to paint it, photograph it, write about it or sing about it. Your source of inspiration might be different. It could be the hustle and bustle of a city, watching cars come and go, people watching at the mall or just lying on the ground watching the clouds float by. Whatever your source is, identify it and use it help you get into the state you want to be in. We all face tough decisions and challenges, and the right surroundings can help your mind work more clearly. Try it out.

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The Problem With a Big Climax

James — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 13:31:29 +0000

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.

I first realized this when I was watching the Christmas concert that my church puts on the weekend before Christmas each year. I have a family member in the choir so I know how much work was put into it – they start practicing at the end of September and practice several hours a week until the concert is held. While I enjoyed the concert, I felt sad once it was over. I guess I just hate it when good things come to an end.

Life is full of situations like this. TV shows (including miniseries), vacations, school years, college – events in practically every stage of our lives must come to an end no matter how much we enjoy them. Life is about moving forward and that can be either a good thing or a bad thing. It’s really up to you. The trick is to use this to your advantage.

First, you need to understand yourself and the way you work. I absolutely love vacationing – it doesn’t matter where I go, I just find it exciting to be in a new environment creating new experiences. It’s not that I hate being home, I enjoy my normal life and long for times where I can sit on my bed or couch and just watch TV. But for me, I enjoy vacationing and planning the vacation so much that my emotional state steeply declines when it ends.

I’ve learned that when the anticipation is longer, the decline is steeper. When you spend months looking forward to a big trip and then it’s over in a few days, you tend to feel a bit down afterwards. Growing up, I used to go to ranch in New York with a big group of friends and family. We’d all be excited as that third week of July approached (we went the same week each year) and have a blast on vacation. We had so much fun, that we didn’t want to leave and I’d be lying if I were to say that there weren’t a lot of tears shed the morning that we all would leave.

You’ve probably experienced this with a vacation, party or other event. The anticipation just builds and builds and then it happens. And you have a blast. And in a blink of an eye, it’s all over. So what do you do? Not get excited? Not plan and think about it? No way.

The key here is to always have something big on the horizon. Weddings are the perfect example of this working automatically – for the lucky couple that is. Many brides spend up to two years planning everything out. There’s the showers, meeting with vendors, registering for gifts, rehearsals, dinners and the wedding itself. You will never plan for an event as much as you will for a wedding.

But after the wedding, there are still things on the horizon. So after the couple has their last dance and has left the hall, they have something big to look forward to. Get your mind out of the gutter (but I’ll give you the after-wedding night activities as something to look forward to), I’m talking about the honeymoon. This is usually a nice trip somewhere special that the couple has splurged on. It’s something to be psyched about. Then they get back from the trip and it’s time to get back to normal life, but even this is exciting. They get to return to their jobs and tell their colleagues and associates about the wedding and life as a married person. Then they start looking into their family goals such as whether it’s time to move to somewhere or start planning for a baby. So the natural progression of things gives you something to always look forward to.

So how can you do this? Try to always have a few things planned to look forward to and as soon as something you’re excited about is going to happen, start the planning process for something else. So if you have a big vacation planned, set a date for another one before the first one is over. You could also plan a special party with people you miss and haven’t seen in a while or plan a girls/guys night out.

It doesn’t have to be all pleasure either. Plan to attend or speak at a big conference. Set up a meeting or presentation with an important client. Plan an informal get together with business associates. Or even set a goal that you’re excited about achieving (and don’t forget to set a new one right before you get there).

Managing your mood is critical for your success and life is about making memories. So by always having something to look forward to on the horizon, you can have the best of both worlds.

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How to Deal with Your Worries

James — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 12:24:18 +0000

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.

There are a lot of systems out there that say they can help you stop worrying. Some take a psychological approach while others a motivational approach. I’ve found a three step approach that has worked for me:

Step 1: Identify what’s worrying you.

Write down “I’m worried about…” and finish the sentence. Sometimes things don’t seem as bad when you verbalize them or write them down. When thoughts are floating around your mind, they’re abstract, difficult to get a true grasp on and can appear to be more severe than they need to be. The act of putting it to paper (or your word processor) demystifies it – it gives you clarity (just like writing down a goal) and forces you to see it like it is. One trick that I like is to write it very small and very plain so it doesn’t look as intimidating.

Step 2: Determine why you’re worried.

Ask yourself what’s the worst that can happen. How will your life change? What are the consequences? Again, sometimes they’re not as bad as they seem. I remember once waking up in the middle of the night worried about forgetting to pay a credit card bill on time. It turned out that I had paid it, but I felt foolish about being up half the night worried about something that would have cost me $30 in fees.

One of the problems with worry is that it’s like garden weeds – if you don’t take care of them right way, they’ll grow and grow until they take over everything. Worry eats on your fear and by getting to root of what’s causing your worry, you’ll not only find it easier to resolve, but you may also learn something new about yourself such as you’re concerned about your health, your finances or a decision you made.

When I work with my public speaking and networking classes, I ask them what’s the worst that can happen if they give a speech or introduce themselves to someone new. This helps them put their fears in perspective and start focusing on their goals.

Step 3: Decide what actions you can take to rectify the situation.

Sometimes, this is a lot easier than you think. Let’s say you have a client that spends $10,000 yearly and you make a mistake that endangers your relationship with them. You could give them a perk that costs you $500 (which is probably less than it’ll cost you to get a new client), they’ll be happy and you can consider the experience tuition.

Asking yourself questions such as “what are my options?” or “what can I do to fix this?” will put you on the path for finding a solution. Putting them to paper either in the form of an action plan or a simple to do list is often enough to lift the weight off of your shoulders.

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Unfollowed and Unfriended – The Perils of Social Media Friendships

James — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 20:29:25 +0000

People are finicky. Doing something to please one person may upset another. You simply can’t please everyone and social media has made this quite evident. People unfollow on Twitter or unfriend on Facebook for no apparent reason. Maybe you said something that offended them or maybe you just sounded boring to them. There’s no rhyme nor reason and you can’t expect people to think or act the way you do.

I use both Twitter and Facebook and teach classes that cover both services. In general, I rarely unfollow or unfriend people. On Facebook, the few people I unfriended were people that I connected with early on (back in the day when I made the mistake of joining groups to increase my friends count) that overwhelmed me with dumb application requests. On Twitter, I only unfollow people that have either unfollowed me or never followed me back. That’s how I operate, but others operate differently.

My biggest pet peeve on Twitter are people that follow thousands of people figuring that they will be followed back. Once all these people follow them, they unfollow them all so they look like a celebrity with a high follower count and a low follow count. To me, it sends a message that they don’t care about interacting or making connections, instead they just want you to be a number. No thanks. There are also tools for managing your followers so you can automatically unfollow people that are too chatty, post too infrequently, don’t get enough retweets or fit a lot of other criteria that many could consider nonsense.

Facebook is better in this aspect. The challenge there is the limit of 5000 friends so people with large followings often purge some folks to make room for others. On both services, posting too much or posting things that are considered offensive or too much of a hot-button issue will frequently result in your friend count going down.

Now all of this fine if it’s someone you don’t care about, but what happens when it’s someone you thought you made a connection with? It can hurt because it’s a form of rejection. Every now and then I’ll lose a follower from Twitter that I had good conversations with months or years prior to their unfollow and it does cause me to wonder why. I’ve talked to a number of people who were devastated because of a single unfollow. It felt, to them, like losing a friend in real life. In some cases, the cause was an argument. In other cases it was because the person was quirky and in still other cases, it was due to some follower tool the person tried.

I get asked a lot if it’s okay to contact someone who unfollows you. Generally, I think it’s okay except for certain obvious exceptions – those being related to having a heated argument or anything thing else that would end a friendship in real life. But the first thing to do is try to figure out what caused the unfollow to begin with. If the unfollow happens randomly, then check out the person’s profile (if you still have access to it) to see what’s going on. Have they done a mass unfollow to clean house or to look like a celebrity? Are there other clues such as the person seems angry or emotionally unstable? Has the person changed to the tone of their posts to be more work-like and is now only focusing on professional connections? Is the person trying to get attention?

If you don’t get any clues from their profile, try looking at your own. Did you post something that would offend or anger them? Are you posting nonsense or chatter? Are others unfollowing you? Sometimes we don’t realize the value, or lack thereof, of our posts.

So what happens if the unfollow has no rhyme or reason? Then go ahead and contact the person but just keep your cool. In Twitter, you could tweet a reply to the person and on Facebook you could send a private message. Try something like “Hey, I noticed you’re not connected to me anymore. Just wanted to see if things were okay.” You want to avoid saying “why the **** did you unfollow me?” or something like “my day was ruined when I noticed you unfriended me.” You don’t want to sound desperate and you want to keep your integrity.

You may find out that person used some follower cleanup tool and didn’t realize you got axed or they may have done it by accident. When I got my android phone, I accidentally unfollowed a few friends on Twitter when I was trying to send them private messages. Mistakes do happen.

Worst case, they may have decided that you’re not worthy of their friendship. They may ignore you because they don’t want to tell you why or they may be immature about it. While it’s easy for me to sit here and tell you that you’re best to move on and forget about them, we all know how tough that can be. No one likes to be rejected. My best advice is to take a lesson away from it and focus on the people that want to be friends with you.

Social media can be a great thing or it can ruin your life. Learn how to use it and treat others with the same respect you want to be treated with, and you’ll be okay. Keep in mind that some of the friendships you make can be as strong as the ones you make in real life and breakups can be just as painful. On the flip side, social media allows social rejects a platform and a mask to hide behind so they can wreak havoc on the lives of others. This isn’t meant to scare you – it’s meant to inform you. Most people have mainly positive experiences with social media and the more informed you are, the less likely you are to run into the negative aspects of it.

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