Fulfilling Relationships - 7 Common Sense Core Elements
July 30, 2008
Fulfilling Relationships - 7 Common Sense Core Elements
by: Karin Syren
Relationships can be complicated is pure understatement. And yet, rather than shy away from them, we continually seek new ones. They are the pivot point around which society, an organized pattern of relationships, is formed. An internet search brings up 255,000,000 entries for relationships! It has always been a hot topic and will remain so as long as there is more than one person on planet earth!
But for all this vast amount of material, do we really know any more about building and maintaining fulfilling relationships than we ever have? We’ve certainly studied the subject, but the same issues that divided hundreds of years ago continue to divide.
A great deal of commonsense is necessary to birth and nurture any healthy relationship. We often seek complex answers to weighty issues when true and lasting success is found in simplicity.
To begin, let’s look at seven necessary components to any healthy caring relationship. Perhaps you can assemble a more impressive, more complex list, but these comprise a core from which you can build, or begin rebuilding any relationship.
Excuse Again?
July 28, 2008
Excuse Again?
by: Patric Chan
When we fail to do something we are expected to do, we almost always have an excuse for it. That’s just how our habit acts. But we have a choice to change that for good.
If we analyze it closely — an excuse is a self-destructive alibi for having failed to do something, especially when it involves attaining a goal. Instead of trying to persevere in finding ways to continue achieving a goal, some of us resort to excuses.
Why?
To avoid pain. Excuses. The best medicine.
But you should not use excuses for not becoming successful! That’s self-destructive.
Whenever we look at a “handicap”, we almost always look on the negative side only. It’s about time we take a look at the positive side of it. The positive side may be the difficult side, but it’s the one worth looking into. It’s the side that is going to lead us to excel in life.
Hadicap can appeared in many forms — Physical handicap, mentally handicap, emotional handicap, financial handicap, etc.
5 Elements to Customer Service: A Fresh Look
July 25, 2008
5 Elements to Customer Service: A Fresh Look
by: Dr. Richard L. Williams
About 20 years ago while I worked for American Stores Company (now part of Albertson’s) I headed up a customer service program named “Smile and Speak Up.” Employees attended a two-hour customer service training class and then tried to be seen being courteous to customers by mystery shoppers who visited stores twice each week for ten weeks. An employee could win small cash rewards plus the recognition of being a winner. My job was to organize the program and take to various groups of stores.
Most people associated with the Smith and Speak Up program praised our efforts to improve customer service in the stores. The wife of the chairman of the board, for example, once told me that she could see a difference where the program had been implemented. But even with the general acceptance of the program, I was never convinced of its effectiveness. This is why.
Learning to Open Your Heart
July 23, 2008
Learning to Open Your Heart
by: Suzanne Falter-Barns
Five years ago a psychic in Key West, FL told me something I’m only just now beginning to understand. As I sat there in front of her, in a darkened room all full of incense, she intoned: “You’ll have the success you want, Suzanne… but only when you open your heart.” I wasn’t sure what this meant, exactly, but I did what any good self-help devotee would do. I set out to crack the code on what ‘opening your heart’ meant.
My first stop was the aromatherapy store, where I spent a good hour sniffing this and that until I’d whipped up my own little brew designed to split open a congested heart chakra. (Mind you, I had no idea what I was doing, but this did seem like the place to start.) Then I headed over to my friend, Mary, the Oriental Medicine Woman. Mary listened to me quite seriously when I requested she set lots of needles that would open my heart. After the third treatment, she gingerly asked how it was going. “I don’t know,” I replied. “Well, what would ‘opening your heart’ be like?” she asked. Again, I could not answer. Meanwhile, a nightly application of my heart chakra oil was giving me nothing but a greasy, rose-scented chest.
Eliminate The Stutterings
July 19, 2008
Eliminate The Stutterings
by: James Masterson
Some people lose confidence upon facing other people due to a speech problem known as stuttering. This is a severe condition in speech that experiences problems in fluency. Its symptoms include the person’s facial muscles becoming tensed as he or she tries to speak. This is very common to children who are just beginning to talk. Stuttering is a disfluency that causes them to repeat some of their words’ syllables. Although this is normal, the severity can cause concern for some parents.
This speech problem starts in the early childhood while they are at their developing stage and some would stutter at least ten to fifteen per cent of their total speech. Though, this does not affect one’s intellect, it affects one’s social state, especially when they begin to date and mingle with other people. It is for this reason that others would opt to be loners and just choose a career that does not involve meeting people.
There are inconsistent degrees of stuttering. Some people do not stutter when they do other special skills like dancing or singing or even delivering a declamation piece. There are also those who do not stutter on good days but just start to stutter on other days.
Management Training to aid the Trouble with Sarcasm
July 17, 2008
Management Training to aid the Trouble with Sarcasm
by: Richard L. Williams, Ph.D.
Among the various styles that people use to communicate with each other, sarcasm is one of the most unique and dangerous. The excuses people use in an attempt to explain away their use of sarcasm varies from, “I didn’t know I was doing it,” to “It’s how I get someone’s attention.” Whatever the excuse, and whatever the reason, sarcasm is a deadly communication style that rarely has long-term success and commonly results in contempt from the person who receives it. It’s easy to say, “Stop doing it,” but it’s far more difficult to pinpoint what caused a person to begin being a sarcastic communicator in the first place.
Stated very simply, a person who uses sarcasm to gain effect is nothing more than a verbal bully. Think of the playground bully you experienced as a child in school. The person tried to create terror in the minds of playmates in order to gain some type of power or social advantage. The sarcastic verbal bully, using words rather than physical threats, is also trying to gain some type of advantage over the other person. And it’s the realization that a sarcastic communicator is trying to gain an unfair advantage that causes the receiver to form feelings of contempt.
Why Advice Doesn’t Work
July 13, 2008
Why Advice Doesn’t Work
by: Cameron Elliott
Lucy felt trapped. It was nearing 3 am, and despite spending the last 8 hours at the library, she’s made absolutely zero progress on her music history paper. She still has a half- completed stats assignment that was due yesterday, but Lucy can’t worry about that until she finishes her paper and studies for tomorrow’s child development exam.
The next day after failing the exam the next day, Lucy was required to meet with her professor who told her that she needed to study harder and do better on the upcoming midterm. That night, Lucy was 15 minutes late to her job as waitress, a common occurrence. Her boss scolded her for being late and questioned her dedication to the cafe. Diana, Lucy’s best friend, said Lucy needed a better work-life balance.
Telling Lucy to work on her study skills or to work harder is no better than telling the homeless they need jobs, or telling an alcoholic to stop drinking; this advice fails on two counts: It’s short-sighted and insulting.
How To Have Fun With Speeches
July 12, 2008
How To Have Fun With Speeches
by: James Masterson
While most people consider speaking in public worse than a death sentence, it does not have to be so. In fact, public speaking can be a fun and fruitful endeavor in the hands of a speaker with the right mindset.
And the first agenda when it comes to public speaking is to approach it in terms of having fun.
How can you ever have fun speaking to a large audience hanging on to your every word and gesture, you say? The answers are simple.
Here are a few tips to get you started.
1. Choose a subject near and dear to your heart. There is no better supplier of knowledge than experience. Your audience knows when you just read off a book and when you’re speaking from having been there yourself.
Frankly speaking, unless you speak with emotional involvement with the subject, you cannot endear yourself to your audience. The audience looks for it, wants to know that whatever they are learning from you is worth their time and effort to listen to.
Get Organized
July 11, 2008
Get Organized
by: Paul Hegarty
Why should you get organized? Getting organized gives you the ability to achieve balance in your life. Getting organized allows you to see what you are doing and how much time you spend doing it. Getting organized will help you to relieve stress because you will know where you stand. Getting organized will give you the opportunity to achieve your goals. Getting organized will help you to deal with challenges with ease. We are busy people these days and getting organized can give us more time.
To start to get organized allot some time to sit down and plan. If you keep running around like a dog chasing its tale you will never get organized. So let’s begin with one hour. In this hour we are going to start to devise a plan. I would rather call the plan an outline so as to allow for flexibility. Start your plan with how you start your day Monday through Sunday. To initiate this rather than writing down what you would like to do, for the first week just keep a diary and see what you are actually doing.
What Is It We Want?
July 6, 2008
What Is It We Want?
by: Jose Damaso Ramon
When we dig to the core of what we want it will always come to one thing: HAPINESS.
And how we achieve that special state of being we call happiness?
When we discover and claim our passion, when we recognize and emphasize our strongest points, and we commit to become our best most capable self, we are on our way to happiness.
Is it really important to achieve that deep feeling of satisfaction and happiness? It might be possible we have tried to improve our life to get lasting results without success. However that does not mean we have to let self doubt control our minds and resign our God given right to be really successful and make our life satisfying and happy.
We are not supposed to live hostage of childhood believes and doubts which are tremendously damaging. Those automatic negative thoughts from the past are mostly the cause of what is holding us back in our lives.
