Last night when I was doing my cardio workout, I found myself getting tired towards the middle of it. Since it was my 12th day in a row of cardio, I started to wonder if it might be okay to do a 20 minute workout instead of a 40 minute workout. After all it was a Sunday night and I had had long day. But as I thought more about it, I decided that it was in my best interest to finish my workout.  Read more... (817 words, 17 images, estimated 3:16 mins reading time)

Ever catch yourself muttering something negative about yourself under your breath? I’ve caught myself doing it a lot and it’s something I’ve been to working to stop doing. It usually happens when I make a mistake – I’ll say something like “that was really dumb of me.” What I didn’t realize at the time was that when I said things like that, I started making more mistakes because I was essentially convincing myself that I was dumb.  Read more... (898 words, 17 images, estimated 3:36 mins reading time)

As organizations grow and technology allows us to easily do business internationally, communication skills are becoming increasingly necessary to rise to the top. While interpersonal skills are still the most powerful way to climb the ladder of success, another skill is becoming increasingly desirable and provides a great opportunity to get ahead: public speaking.

When you rise up in any organization, the number of people underneath you in the org chart grows. You also find yourself more frequently giving presentations to executives, external clients, the board of directors and even the media. In this type of position, being scared to speak in front of a group of 100 people won’t cut it. You need to be able to confidently and competently communicate to both those above and below you on the org chart – otherwise, neither will take you seriously.  Read more... (353 words, 17 images, estimated 1:25 mins reading time)

There’s an interesting scene in “A Very Brady Christmas” where Mike Brady, the patriarch or the infamous Brady Bunch, is giving a speech before Christmas dinner. Mike’s speech is about the importance of family and traditional values such as honesty. What’s funny is that while Mike’s speech isn’t about anyone in the family in particular, members of his family think that he is talking about them and therefore interrupt him to confess about not being honest with the family.  Read more... (383 words, 17 images, estimated 1:32 mins reading time)

There’s a piece of advice that I’ve seen floating around the internet that claims that you can create a marketable book in three hours or less. While the claim doesn’t explicitly say that the quality of such a book would get it on the New York Times’ bestseller list, it implies that the book might actually sell. While yes, it is technically possible to create a book in three hours or less, I question the value of such a product and in the three hours spent creating it.

So how does one write a book in three hours? Well all you need to do is speak into a microphone for three hours. That microphone can be attached to a recording device (including a computer with a recording program) so that you can ship off a tape, CD or MP3 file to a transcription service that will provide you with the text of what you have spoken. Or you could use a speech recognition product such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking
(I did an internship at Dragon years ago) that will do the transcription for you.  Read more... (606 words, 18 images, estimated 2:25 mins reading time)

Nothing strikes fear into the heart of someone more than telling them they need to give a speech. Whether it’s a speech for work, a speech to promote their business or a speech where they’re volunteering their expertise, most people panic when they learn they’ll be facing an audience.

It’s no surprise that that this scares people – so much could go wrong. They could embarrass themselves, make a mistake, say the wrong thing, lose their train of thought or commit countless other blunders that they fear could result in not getting the sale, not getting the promotion or other failure.  Read more... (770 words, 17 images, estimated 3:05 mins reading time)

We all forget things from time to time. Whether it’s where we put our car keys, the next main point of our speech, the names of our neighbors or the list of things to pick up at the grocery store, forgetting something can be frustrating or even embarrassing. That’s why there are so many ads out there for products that allegedly improve your memory bombarding the radio and television airwaves. But I have a secret for you that will help you improve your memory for free.

In most of the classes that I teach, the first exercise I do is to go around the room and get everyone to introduce themselves. This serves a variety of purposes but the one we care about right now is that it helps me learn everyone’s name. In most cases, I have everyone’s name memorized by the end of this exercise which usually prompts someone to ask me how I did that. And that’s when I share my secret for having a good memory.  Read more... (525 words, 17 images, estimated 2:06 mins reading time)