Some refer to it as being human, others consider it vulnerability. Personally, I don’t have a name for it, but I do know it involves stripping all thoughts of being something you’re not.
In terms of pitching for clients, I want to be excellent and place a lot of stories. PR pros are told we can accomplish this if we follow a pre-approved pitch email and phone script (given some flexibility, of course, but not much).
The times I’ve had the best pitching experiences is when I’ve stripped down the layers of scripted professionalism. The times I’ve had the most heart-to-heart conversations is when I’ve stripped away the fear of appearing weak. The times I’ve written the most resonating blog posts have been when I’ve written in the universal voice.
When you’re speaking in the truest, most intimate voice about your life, you are speaking with the universal voice, according to Cheryl Srayed who wrote the story Wild.
When you speak in that voice, you will always be understood.
Stay Positive & Give It A Try (And Try Hard, You Will)
In the moment of indecision, of wondering what people want to hear, in trying to please the boss in the room, we forget the talking points we are most moved by.
What happens in most presentations is they get filled with the expected.
Informative, sure, but expected.
The presenter goes through the motions and about three-quarters into the keynote, they’ve finally slid in a slide about what they are most passionate about. And you know what? That’s the most moving part of the presentation.
Not because of any build up to it, but because the energy of the presenter finally gets noticed.
People like Sasha Dichter and Simon Sinek aren’t phenomenal speakers because they practiced how to speak publicly. What makes them special is they’ve practiced how to speak publicly about points that completely move them, energize them, fill them with an incredible need to share. (That’s why Sasha paces and Simon uses so many hand motions and vocal influxes.)
Instead of putting the expected talking points in your next presentation, send them out earlier in an email and dedicate your presentation to what moves you most.
Stay Positive & Focus On Resonating, Not Feeding An Audience The Basics
I’ve sifted through dozens and dozens of blogs, attended some productive, some not-so-productive meetings and listened to speakers all week. Here are some tips to spitshine your blog, your productivity and your speaking.
Blogging
Never start a blog post with anything that is similar to “it’s been awhile since I’ve written,” “I’ve been sooo busy and haven’t been able to write lately” and “I’m going to try and write more.” Nothing makes me cringe as much as seeing 165,000,000 results show up on Google
You won’t find that fine line between personal and professional until you write a lot under each.
I met with blogger Danielle Bruflodt who advocates planning out blog posts. I, on the other hand, never do. I argue that not planning forces you to observe more and keep a more open mind throughout each day to find something to write on. Both ways work.
What Danielle and I both agreed on: write daily.
Productivity (meetings)
Don’t let any meeting go past an hour.
Know who the leaders are and those that flat-out standout. Thank them for it.
Some meetings don’t need to be ran. Some meetings run themselves. Recognize this. Leading meetings that don’t need to be lead damages productivity and how people will view you as a leader.
If you’re not running the meeting, know more about the people who are than anyone else attending. It’s not creepy to know I completed National Novel Writing Month or stayed in Madison for Thanksgiving.
Speaking
Much like the que on how you start a blog post, never start speaking by giving an apology, no matter what you’re sorry for.
Not everyone loves cherries on their sundae’s, but everyone loves getting gifts when they get information. Give. Give. Give.
Handouts are your friends, but not at the start of your presentation. Let everyone know they are getting a handout outlining the presentation. What matters is that they focus on you, not on following an outline and not on taking notes the entire time.
No one goes to just listen to a speaker anymore. They go to speak to. Involve your audience, they expect it. There’s a reason it’s called a “speaking engagement.” Engage them in conversation.
Quite recently in my career as a journalist, I decided that I would not do an interview that goes over an hour. Collectively, the interview may take more than an hour, but the total would not be one continuous effort to get all that I could out of it. I also hold this rule for team meetings or anything one does in groups.
When the hour is up. It’s up. Not a minute over. Sometimes – and preferably – it ends a few minutes short of an hour.
People are exhausting. So is caring, listening, and interacting with other people. I’ve come to the conclusion that speaking for an extra three minutes or asking people to stay late or staying on one topic when it was scheduled to change 10 minutes ago does more harm than good. Why does this matter?
Think about your work. What do you do? There are very (very!) few jobs that don’t require you to interact with another person or group of people. (For those few jobs that don’t, I guarantee they would only benefit by having human to human interaction.) The thought behind this is that while an extra two minutes may mean nothing to you, those you interact with may view their time as more valuable. (Not to mention, your inability to recognize this leaves those who you interact with with the impression that you don’t care about them, which is exactly what you set out not to do.)
To stay parallel with my recent writing on consumerism and positive emotionalism (that people buy products that make them feel certain ways and sacrifice leisure time to do so), overtime needs mentioning.
The concept behind normal working hours and being paid a larger amount if you worked over those hours (overtime) was introduced in 1937 by the Fair Labor Standards Act. The development overtime has taken in the workplace is outstanding, both in terms of higher pay for working overtime and pushing employers to heavily restrict the ability for workers to work overtime. In turn, offering workers more leisure time.
I argue that with this additional leisure time, people still participate in overtime. With “overtime” being defined as our pursuit of that which makes us feel the way we want to feel through working more than is reasonable and beyond meaningful. (Work, by my definition, is anything that we put effort into doing without passion.) One does not need to have a full-time cubicle job with benefits for one to be considered working. Many times, just doing dishes and vacuuming is work.
The pivotal point here is that overtime is an average object covered with a cloak of hope. Hope that if one works hard enough, that what is under the cloak will turn into something that makes them feel better; be it a bigger car, a better type of coffee brew, or just new dishes.
What puzzles me most is that we work overtime to perform this cloak-covered magic when we are better off performing the real magic of working with passion (making art).
The wand is in your hand.
Stay Positive & You Don’t Need An Object Just To Wave It
Garth E. Beyer
Ironically, Seth Godin touched on part of this post this morning. Full disclosure, I had the idea and began writing about this prior to my viewing of his blog.
Being a digital native, using the term new media does not feel accurate. While it may be new to other people, it is perfectly normal and expected to me. However, the world does not consist entirely of digital natives and the media must account for this. They do in the sense of utilizing and incorporating storytelling into all forms of media. Every TV program, radio station, YouTube video, and E-version of a magazine use storytelling to not only gain the attention of you and me, but to maintain that attention. Rushkoff, who spoke in Digital Nation explains how everyone is multitasking now. Rarely does a person focus on one specific thing intensely; they are all over the place! It is our inability to focus which requires the new media to use storytelling.
It seems that when media uses storytelling, it is the only time when a person is face-to-face with technology, which they can actually focus on one specific thing. You can find examples of this in every medium of media. On TV, you can watch the speeches given by Romney, Anne, Michelle, Obama and others. Most people who do watch those speeches are not doing ten other tasks at the same time. Why? Because each of the speakers go up and tell a story, they get your interest, they offer a plot, rising action, a climax and so on.
Why is this so effective? Because storytelling has been around since the beginning of man. Before scripture was invented, people communicated and entertained each other through storytelling. It is in our nature to be attracted to storytelling and the media knows this. However, not all media knows it and this is where we get the distractions; the ads, the pop-ups, the proclamations of people who interrupt our lives. “It may be decades until we know what living in a state of constant distraction will do to us,” says Rushkoff. He is right in the sense that we are living in a state of constant distraction, but since the media utilizes storytelling in all that they communicate effectively, as long as we continue to subject ourselves to that type of media and not the type which only acquires are attention for a few moments, we will be safe.
If the media and storytelling are so vitally important to our lives and society in general, we better be paying attention to the right kind of media. It is almost as if media’s storytelling ability makes us grow or destroy us. Since storytelling holds such persuasion over our daily lives, how do we know what storytelling is right and just? This is my biggest fear. The new media direction of storytelling is an absolutely great thing overall, so long as the storytelling persuades positive action. Going back to the example of our presidential candidates and ladies speaking on TV, their speeches were inspiring, positive, and radiating love for one another and our nation. However, we can look at the type of storytelling that is occurring in another country to find that the particular storytelling the media is producing creates negativity, arguments, and even wars. I suppose you can go so far as to say that our quality of life is dependent on the media’s quality of storytelling.
I am all about designating a theme for each year. In 2010 it was “my” year, simple as that. 2011 was “our” year because during “my” year I found a girlfriend. In 2011, her and I traveled to Canada and took other road trips together and moved in together. Now 2012, we have made it the year of career advancement. I had started to truly pour my passion into my website, I also got another ghost writing job and a huge promotion at work (making almost twice as much as I made before the promotion). She will be getting a promotion at Starbucks and has recently gotten a personal training job at Anytime Fitness. And we are only four months into the year! If you are not one to write new years goals, or like so many others, have relinquished your 2012 goals from your mind, it’s not too late to declare this year yours!
If you can even remember where you put your new years resolutions, if you even wrote them down, toss’em. Many don’t really stuck to them anyway. Even me, as a big goal achiever, I sometimes stray away from some goals that I made at the beginning of the year. Maybe your goals have changed and some goals no longer seem reasonable to keep. Maybe you didn’t’ even make any. That’s okay, you don’t have to. This isn’t a post about making goals for this year, its bout taking the 12 tips I am going to give you to still make this “your” year. You don’t need determining goals to make it your year. While I had goals (over 250 currently), I never had specific goals that would make 2010 my year, or specific goals for 2011 or 2012, yet I accomplished so much and my life improved drastically. I learned that to live the life you want, you just have to evaluate how you live now and begin implementing the following 12 tips to make this “your” year.
1. Beginning now and at the start of each month for 30 days in a row, commit to doing something new that you have thought about doing, but have not done.
If you wait until the first of the next month or the first of the week or if you wait until you finish something else before you do something new, you will never get anything done.
I suggest reading Zig Ziglar’s affirmation sheet or make your own. Wake up each morning and create the habit of complimenting yourself and reminding yourself of all your strengths. What I have learned about doing this is that it is not necessarily the affirmations that changes your world (though they play a large part), it is the development of a habit. It is the feeling that “hey, I did it today.” It makes each day complete. It makes you feel like you can stick to your word. It creates the image of reliability and persistence. Anyone can say they are improving every day in every way, but very few have the skill and talent to do it everyday.
Pick a habit to develop each month, whatever you like, just pick and follow through.
2. Write emails/letters to three people in life to let them know what they mean to me.
Sure gratitude is great (we will get to that) but no type of gratitude is stronger than “thanks” being given to people who have touched your life. This may require you to think back and check who has affected your life. Try to find all the people who have and simply thank them; send them a friendly message or write a paragraph to them explaining your thanks. Since snail mail is nearly obsolete, I encourage you to either send emails or Facebook comments (not messages, you want other people to see how grateful you are and that the person your commenting on means a lot to you). You can even send a random txt message, just make sure you make it personal, meaningful and from your heart. Who knows, you may even get one back!
3. Start a business plan regardless if you have a business idea
It doesn’t matter what it is. Some ideas are dumb… think back to my post about my two business ideas. First, you never know. As you work on the business plan ideas might be created to improve your original concept or you may think of one entirely different. Either way, get in the habit of creating and making a plan to follow through. A small plan or a big plan, a plan is a plan. If you don’t have any business ideas, that doesn’t mean you get to skip this tip. Get creative and think of one, what product or service could you do or create to serve others and make people happy? By all means, have fun with this.
4. Schedule family time
I’m human. I’m guilty of not doing this, but when I do, my world changes: stress is relieved and the weights I carry feel lighter. Not only that, but when I talk to family members, I often talk about things that I normally wouldn’t have thought of. It takes you out of the moment and brings you to a place you can feel comfortable. As you know, making a year YOUR year really means you have to step out of your comfort zone and shake and move your brain. Always schedule family time to center yourself and make sure those who know you best see that you are on the right path. Tell those who matter most about your goals and aspirations because they will be able to hold you accountable and by saying it with confidence, you are one very large step closer to achieving your success. Warning: The trouble with family time is deciding what to listen to and what not to since they want to put all their evaluations on what you are doing. Some family members may not support your ideas and may talk you down. Take it as a challenge. Prove them wrong. Take what they say and find a way to prove them wrong. By doing so you are not only showing them you know what you are doing, but you are creating a way around any future skepticism.
5. Record what I say
Every day is a constant flow of information. You receive input and provide output constantly through reading, listening, speaking and thinking. Begin recording your thoughts and what you say to evaluate the language you are using. By doing so, you can find where you need to begin making improvements. Are you thinking negatively about work each day? Do you look into a mirror unable to see your beauty? Do you speak before you think to your friends and family? You need to start recording what you say and think and feel so that you have a better understanding of what effects you negatively and what you are negatively affecting. No improvements and changes can be made until you know what needs to be improved and changed.
After gaining a deeper insight into what you output, begin evaluating what is input through your daily routine. Are you reading the news (95% negative information) every morning or do you view blogs such as mine or others to keep learning new information on the topic of your interest? Do you surround yourself by negative people? Or worse, do you enable them? Pay close attention to what is taken in throughout the day and begin to set aside and walk past those things in which are detrimental to your daily positive attitude.
6. Find a mentor
I know how difficult it is to get a mentor that you really want. I understand the difficulty to capture the attention of great and widely known people and have them act as a mentor toward you. That does not mean you cannot connect with them and learn what they have to teach through the information they provide whether it is in books, blogs or audio presentations. Think of what you really want this year and begin following those who are most well known for teaching that. In doing so, you will discover under-noticed and under-deserving people who know just as much and are more willing to assist you. In essence, begin connecting with those that you have related interests with. It is also key to note that mentors come and go. Accept this transitional flow and keep seeking authoritative figures that you can learn from.
In addition, I need to add that becoming a mentor is far greater than having one. If you go out searching for friends, you will find very few. If you go out searching to be a friend, you will find a countless number of takers. As you learn from mentors and begin changing the information you digest each day, share it with others. Rather than complaining that Seth Godin won’t take you up as an apprentice (guilty), become like that idol and turn into a mentor for others who want the same as you.
7. Discover the 20% of work
You may know about an app for the Droid phone called “task killer” that kills processes that are running but are not being used and are depleting the energy (battery life) of the phone in order to maximize performance for what you are using. The first step to discovering the 20% of work is to kill the 80% of apps that are consuming your brain and your life but are not priorities. This also includes cutting out any of the negativity in your life. Begin un-friending people who complain and spam your social networking profiles. Begin cutting out the bad eating habits. Begin cutting out the people you meet each day that upon seeing them, bring you down. A person doesn’t need to be holding a thousand balloons to float, they only need to stop the gravity that is holding them down.
Once everything that is holding you back is let go, you don’t even have to search for the 20% of work, it finds you. Your thinking and focusing abilities will be 10x stronger which will produce 10x better results. You will be able to manage your time better to complete a task further than its potential in 20% of the time. By eliminating the 80% of “apps” holding you back from your potential, it will allow you to have 10x more success because you have discovered the 20% of energy needed to succeed in each task. In simple terms, devote yourself to something completely by getting rid of everything else that is not worthy of your attention and you will be able to create miracles.
8. Gratitude
Start a gratitude journal. It doesn’t matter if you write one thing in a book or you list things throughout the day on your phone or on sticky notes. Personally, I type 5 things I am grateful for in a notes app on my phone each night before sleep. By writing in a gratitude journal of everything you are thankful for, you are putting power in the present which sets the stage for the future. It keeps you consistently happy, gives you peace of mind and allows you to go to sleep with a smile on your face. There are absolutely zero negative side effects to being thankful.
But don’t stop there. Also aim to be the one other people are grateful for. How did you help someone today? How did you serve? Did you give everyone you saw today a smile? Maybe you were the jokester at work and made everyone laugh? Constantly work to be what others are grateful for. Not only will it make their day, and you’re name will go on their gratitude list, but you are giving yourself a distinguished type of respect seldom held. In addition to positively impacting the people you meet each day, find an organization to volunteer at. My current volunteering consists of running races where the funds go towards a specific charity. I am also looking into Habitat for Humanity and Big Brothers Big Sisters to continue my volunteerism. The general rule of volunteering is at least two hours a week. The benefits of volunteering are so incredible that they deserve a blog post to themselves. Look at all the benefits by giving it a Google if you’re interested.
Come to think of it, it may not be a bad idea to also list the contributions and volunteering you’ve done along side your list of things you are grateful for each day.
9. Plan a trip for 4 months from now.
Figure out where you want to go and start looking into it now. Whenever you seem to have some free time, begin searching on the internet for things you can do at the destination you chose and start planning for it. Think how you are going to save for the next four months or how you will use the money you already have to take the trip. It does not have to be anything huge but don’t let it be too little either. Having something major to look forward to as it is necessary to maintain a continuous positive attitude and outlook. If anything goes wrong through the week, just remember that you are taking a trip soon and will be able to get away from everything and enjoy yourself. The point of this is to stop putting celebration off, enjoy life, YOLO and always have something big to look forward to in the long run.
10. Say yes
Simple. Start saying yes to everything (with thorough judgement of course). Take every opportunity and option and work with it, create something productive and positive with every choice you make. In essence, try new things. Begin to experiment and experience everything you can. Heck, go sky diving. If you see a flier for a free event, go to it. If someone asks you to join them for an activity, do it. If the Botanical gardens or some other place is free on Wednesday, give it a visit. Saying yes is about you agreeing to living your life to its fullest potential by exposing yourself to all the world offers.
11. Schedule a date night
With yourself, with your life partner or with the girl/guy you met because you said “Yes” to an invitation to an event. Adding the previous 10 tips to your life on top of all your responsibilities and duties already, you deserve a night of pure enjoyment. Use this time to do everything, do nothing, or only do what you want to. She and I have Origami nights and other nights we stay in and play Farkle and Scrabble. (I’m unbeatable at Scrabble). Other times we go out to dinner and a movie. The options are endless but the point is purely to enjoy yourself. Relax, meditate, reminisce on the highlights of the past week, think about all you have to look forward to and practice living in the moment. Forget all tasks, all obstacles and all affairs that are up in the air. Schedule a date night where you stop time and live.
12. Complete the following: Stay ________
Just do it. If you are only going to do one tip to make this “your” year, let this be it. Get optimistic, improve your attitude, change the outcomes and Stay Positive. Nothing will make “your” year greater than if you Stay Positive. The reason I end every post with this reminder is because it is the most important trait to living the successful life you want. Staying Positive is the basis of everything that has made you happy, everything that is making you happy and everything that will make you happy. By all means, devote all you have into Staying Positive.
If I asked you who taught you to speak English, you would say your parents.
If I asked you who taught you how to think, you would say your parents.
Am I wrong when I say that people who teach you language, teach you how to think?
I doubt the educational system realizes the greatness they are producing by requiring the youth to take language classes. I even more so doubt that YOU realize the greatness.
Learning a different language than your native tongue opens your mind to the possibilities of exploring the world.
Hearing a language makes you feel connected with the world even in your home town.
I love Improv, so knowing another language allows me to really work new personalities and different cultures into an Improv show. I can imitate Hitler in a humorous way, I can reenact the German language parts of movies, I can create any type of German person I want, all because I learned another language.
With another language, you rarely learn negative vocabulary, so you do not know how to produce negative feelings – Stay Positive
As a more fun reason to learn another language, you get to become someone else. You have just opened another path that you can walk while you walk your current path. A double life of excellence. You can make up a common German or Italian name (Mine is Gregor, in German).
While language gives you a new way of thinking by having you analyze, articulate, write, and explore a certain language, it does something far greater for you.
On the base level, you open your mind to growth, the more you understand about language, the more you can comprehend about life. Yet there is something even greater… not only does it expand your mind for greater understanding, but it expands it to “Not understand” — Not understand why so many people limit themselves in their learning. It compels you to “not understand” why people can think they can be one of the most successful people on the planet without being able to talk and understand the lifestyles of people on the other side of the planet. The reason I am writing this post is because I do not understand why anyone is content with knowing one language. Language allows you to connect.
If you talk to a woman in a language she understands, that goes to her head.
If you talk to her in her language, that goes to her heart.
Which person do you think learns more and is more successful? The person who only knows english and can only connect with less than 3 billion people? Or the person who knows two, three, four, five languages that can connect with 6+ billion people. Twice as many as the single language speaker. The ability to speak and connect with 1 billion more people than you can now, would dramatically improve your life. Traveling would not be a dream, it would become a reality. Job opportunities would open across the globe. You would be exposed to millions of more women and men to find your true love. (Maybe you wont find someone in a foreign territory, but when you find one near your home place, you can serenade her with the language you now know!)
A Manual Aptitude For An Einstein
With language, you are not only open to connecting with billions of people, but also billions of books and information. With a better understanding of the world and the endless amount of knowledge it provides, you can become a genius.
Language is the archives of history. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the world of learning a language and how to think, it does not matter what “success” is to you. The fact is, that no matter what success means to you, learning another language will get you there 3+ billion times faster with 3+ billion times greater of an experience, a journey.
Learning a language is like being born again. You are now able to make all the decisions you made in your native language. But this time, you can make the right ones.
Stay Positive, and 3+ Billion Times More Positive Than Before
Garth E. Beyer – Like Confucius, “In his speech, he wishes to be sincere”
