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Give Yourself Permission to Let it Go |
| By:Melissa Stacey on Tue 01 Jul 2008 7:43 PM under Get Organized |
When I ask people how their clutter makes them feel, the answers I get are ashamed, overwhelmed, stressed out, angry, frustrated and embarrassed. When you see your clutter do you feel any of these emotions? If so, you are not alone.
Most people feel disorganized in some aspect of their lives. Everyday we are trying to balance business, personal life, relationships, kids, volunteer work or all of the above. Sometimes things just get away from us. The point is, you should not be embarrassed by disorganization and don’t feel bad asking for help.
In general, when it comes to clutter, there are a lot of emotions involved. I find that people are ashamed of their clutter, have emotional attachments to physical items, feel guilty for letting go of things and feel relieved once they do get organized. Getting organized is a process and it is not always an easy one. But once you start down the path, you will find that it gets easier and you feel more positive emotions like happiness, peace, relief and freedom.
When it comes to clearing the clutter, try to set the emotions aside and be realistic. When you come across something that you don’t need, don’t use, don’t like, don’t want or don’t have a place for…give yourself permission to let it go. If you are not using it or displaying it, you are not really honoring it. Donate it to someone who does need it and who will use it.
When you give yourself permission to let things go, you are the one in control, not your clutter. So take back control of your space, stay positive and start Feeling Organized today.
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Marketing the most important product: You |
| By:Linda Popky on Tue 01 Jul 2008 10:58 AM under Career and Money, Careers and Job Search, Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Brand, Personal Success |
How good are you at telling your own story?
Do your clients and prospects (or your managers if you are in an organization) understand the value you bring to their business? Who is marketing and promoting your capabilities? How are you differentiated from other alternatives?
Whether you are looking to grow your business with existing clients, trying to land new business opportunities, get a new job or move up in your current organization, your success is dependent on how well you package and promote your biggest asset, Product You.
I will be offering a teleseminar on this topic for Women in Consulting next Tuesday, July 8th. We’ll focus on understanding how to apply proven marketing techniques to your own situation. You’ll learn how to identify your target audience, discover their wants and needs, and understand your market position vs. your competition. We’ll also talk about how to develop and articulate your unique value proposition, and how to package, promote, and distribute your “solution” to meet the needs of your clients and prospects.
(This seminar is based on my workbook Marketing Your Career: Positioning, Packaging and Promoting Yourself for Success which is available from Amazon or Woodside Business Press.
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“Everyone” |
| By:Valli Bindana on Mon 30 Jun 2008 12:11 PM under Business, Communication |
I got an email yesterday from an acquaintance, one of those mass mailed ones. It addressed me as “Everyone”.
I thought here was a classic instance where the communicator hadn’t stood in the reader’s shoes at all before punching in the word. An address such as “Everyone” can make a reader feel like a cold distant unappreciated brick-in-the-wall. Unless I was part of a small intimate group of friends where the address “Everyone” huddled us all together and made us feel good and belonged, on a business email it certainly seems impersonal, almost callous. If one really didn’t want to bother much about an address, a simple “Hi” “Hello” “Dear member” could have been good enough. But “Everyone”?
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To Be More Effective, Try Being Less Helpful |
| By:Brilliance Inc on Mon 30 Jun 2008 11:21 AM under Uncategorized |
Anyone who wants to help others become more effective, can borrow techniques used by Executive Coaches.
Coaching is all about helping someone become an independent problem solver. It’s about helping someone find solutions that were once not apparent—perhaps even to the manager/coach.
The big secret in coaching is: you don’t have to be brilliant to evoke brilliance. In fact, when coaching, our need to feel smart and/or helpful often gets in the way.
Smart executives pay good money for coaches who have never even worked in the executive’s industry, let alone held the same position. Why? They have discovered that the less the coach knows, the more curious he or she is. And curiosity, not knowledge, is a main ingredient in evoking brilliance.
But many of us have misplaced our curiosity. Watch a child for two minutes and you will see undeniably that we were born with profound curiosity. But between the meetings and demands of our day, we speed ourselves up and squeeze out any time for curiosity. We assume we have the answers. We assume others will benefit most if we share our ideas and help them solve the problem fast, so we can get on to the next crisis.
Have you ever had a partner at home who wanted to solve your problems when all you wanted was someone to listen deeply? Curiosity and listening are so rare, we are willing to pay for it.
So if you want to grow your people, your business, your results, your reputation, stop being so darn smart and helpful. Instead, try listening with curiosity.
And if you find that you can’t do that so well, fake it. Yes, fake it. Simply ask good open-ended questions that make you seem curious. Over time, you will begin to see that people seek you out because they experience with you, a space where they feel heard; where new thinking happens and new solutions unfold.
A few of my favorite questions are:
“What else?” “How can you tell?” and “What have you tried already?”
Keep asking good, open-ended questions and, one day, you will find that you are no longer faking it.
And that will be brilliant.
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An Apology: Speaking Authentically from the Heart |
| By:Liz Strauss on Sun 29 Jun 2008 9:07 AM under Communication |
Recently, I launched my new eBook. It was a thrilling, and at times frustrating, learning experience for me. Help from experts I knew was only available in bits at a time. I struggled through most of the process alone.
Naturally I didn’t get every step just right. A fabulous designer/coder, who helped me put together the landing page integration with paypal, and I got too clever in how we set up the download and how we named the file. The result was that folks didn’t realize the paypal button led to the download file. Some folks waited in vain for a few hours looking for an email link they assumed would come.
When a kind customer pointed out that she paid, but received no eBook, I not only fixed problem — set it up with the email link instead — but checked the entire process again. That’s when I found out that folks were also getting the unedited version of the file.
I wrote to each buyer personally from my own desktop and checked all the details as I sent off each individual email. The note said this:
Hi Xxxx,
It would be so easy not to write this message. It would also be the wrong thing.After the paypal problem with the download, I did what every publisher does and checked the whole system again. I found more. The files that went out were the wrong ones. The ebook you got has errors. I’m embarrassed and kicking myself, because I’m better than that.
I often say, “The first time you do anything there’s a problem hiding inside of it. Be prepared and overcheck things.” I should follow my own advice more often.
I had to write because you paid for the quality product and that’s what you should have. The correct link is attached.
I’m sorry it took so many tries to get it to you.
In return for your time and patience on this, I’d like to offer you a free half-hour consult on your blog or blog writing. Just email me back if you’d like to do that.
Smiles,
Liz
What happened next was a wonder!
Several replies came back to me with words like these
That’s okay! I understand how those things happen. I do them too.
Now I’m meeting with a calendar of folks that are telling me about their blogs, what they do, and what their problems are.
Wow! Seems like I won all around. It always amazes me, the connections we make when we speak authentically from the heart.
Liz
