Fear is temporary, failure is permanent. This was a throwaway line from a mountain biking guide I was riding with at the weekend, and it struck me just how true it was. In fact you could substitute an awful lot of words for ‘fear’. (On the day in question, cold, wet, tiredness, climbing, and a number of others could have easily been substituted.)

Why do we make it so easy for ourselves to just give up?  Most of us have heard the saying that we’ve never failed until we stop trying. A lot of us even agree with it, even more if you count the ones who just won’t admit it. What we don’t like to admit is that once we do give up, we have failed. We can always start again, but that attempt has failed, and we are NEVER going to get it back.   Maybe if we think of this a little more it might just give us the extra impetus to try just that little bit harder, to keep it going just that little bit longer, to resist the easy option of stopping, to make that one extra phone call, to keep on going until we hit the targets we set ourselves for a reason.

A bird does not sing because it has an answer,

It sings because it has a song.

I don’t blog because I know it all,

I blog because I like to.

 wrote this ages ago. For some reason never got around to putting it on here. Found it after a speaking engagement recently so thought I’d share it with you.  Enjoy

Speaking tips for Confidence & Power

Posture is the key!

The way you carry yourself has a huge influence on the way you feel. If you slump and look unconfident, it is likely you will feel that way too. If you stand up straight, and confident ready to take on the world, you’ll feel, and sound, significantly better!

Know your subject

If you know what you’re going to speak about without having to refer to notes too often, you will be much more confident and articulate, and your speech will ‘flow’ well.

Don’t be shy

When you are speaking, the audience ‘know’ you’re the expert. They want you to do well, and they want to learn from you. Act the part.

Be ‘larger than life’

Nothing you do ever seems as big or as silly to the audience as it does to you. Small gestures can get lost – consider making them BIGGER!

Remember to breathe

Without air, your voice will die (and so will you, after a bit). Don’t talk so fast that you have to gasp for breath, pace yourself and breathe ‘normally’.

Find the passion!

Be passionate about your subject. A less rounded speech delivered with passion and conviction will ALWAYS be better than a perfectly written speech delivered in a dull and lifeless fashion.

What’s the one thing that would be difficult to do your job without?

Ask 100 office workers this, and you’ll get 90+ answers of ‘email’.

88% of us now regularly use email at work (I’d be willing to bet 100% of the readers of this blog!), but 20% of these are described as ‘time wasting’ or unnecessary (survey by Kelly Services).

Once upon a time, email was a godsend. A utility sent from on high to make communication simpler, easier, and more manageable. A way to communicate with customers in the blink of an eye, sometimes even an easy option when the news wasn’t good.  A way to liven peoples lives up with funny stories and jokes, making the humdrum working day a little more bearable.  It wasn’t a replacement for ‘real’ mail, and it wasn’t an essential. It was just useful; an aid to productivity and, in some cases, a cost reducer.  I mean, why spend 20 minutes carefully typing a letter, finding an envelope, paying for a stamp and writing an address when you can spend just 30 seconds banging out a quick email?

Nowadays, those systems have moved on. Not content to be merely a messaging interface, email is often the main business tool for a lot of users. Blackberrys and PDAs have made it mobile. No longer restricted to desktops, we can send and receive messages on the move, and from almost anywhere.

It’s all too easy, and it often attracts our attention to the point where it stops us doing anything else!  In fact, this is one of the biggest challenges that email has; it has become ubiquitous. It is so prevalent, so ‘always there’ that we don’t stop and think if we might be better off using a different method of communication.  A short written note, perhaps, or even, shock, horror, a phone call!  Maybe we could just think about NOT replying, or at least, taking people off the CC list when they no longer need to be there.

It’s not email’s fault I know. Email is just a tool that finds itself open to misuse (in some cases one could reasonably argue abuse), but when you’ve had 30 emails in 20 minutes arguing about whose turn it is to buy the cakes, or give people a lift at lunchtime, it gets extremely annoying. Particularly when you find that in amongst these vital emails is the one really vital email you’ve been waiting for and you missed it because it was crowded out by everything else.

There are ways to reduce these issues though, and start to make email a useful tool again, rather than letting it run your life.

The first of these is really simple – think for yourself how you should manage email. Everyone is different, every business is different, and everyone needs different things from their email systems. How can you use it best? Spend some time, thing about this. Find your own ways. Suggest them here – we can all use new ideas on how to make the most of the tools available to us.

I will make one suggestion, and that is this – check your email at spaced intervals, NOT every time an email comes in. It could be every 30 minutes, every hour, every day, even in some cases every week.  Checking email at intervals means that we can spend focused time managing, rather than just reacting to it. It’s quicker to delete 10 emails at a time than it is to delete 10 individual emails. It’s easier to prioritise and act on 10 tasks rather than just starting each one immediately it comes in.

Remember this – you have better things to do than check each individual email that comes in – prioritise and act on the tasks you already know about. Add to that list when you need to, but don’t let email run your business!

I’ve always thought that good advice is only as valuable as the store that people put in it and the actions they take following it.

Having had a friend call me tonight asking me for some I thought I’d share it here.  She’s about to start cold calling in her first ‘real’ sales role and is nervous about it, and asked what makes a good sales person. Much as I tried to avoid it, I found myself talking in cliches, but only ones that I truly believe, and have experienced, to be accurate.

Successful people are the those that do the things that unsuccessful people don’t (or won’t).

Spend time on the activities that generate business, don’t get bogged down in admin during prime ‘callout’ time.

Every unsuccessful call is a step closer to the gold dust call.  Every successful call is good practice for the next one. Just don’t stop.

These are three bits of advice that ALL sales people know. Good sales people live by them, and bad salespeople just know them, but don’t action.

I can’t do that. I’m never going to get the time. Why am I even quoting for this when I’m not going to win it? Something always goes wrong. I always get stuck in traffic. I wish I had time to go to the gym more often. I’m not fit enough to do anything like that. I’ve tried to stop smoking a bunch of times and I can’t do it. I never get enough sleep. My wireless network never connects properly.

Why can’t we talk more positively?

The statements above are all actual or paraphrased ststements that I’ve heard people give over the last couple of weeks. Can anyone spot what they all have in common?

Would you be surprised if I told you that the reality you experience is very likely to be quite different from the reality your colleagues experience? or your husband/wife? or mine?

The problem with reality is its not fundamentally based on whats ‘there’ its based on how we perceive whats there, and that can vary drastically depending on how we interpret and describe that ‘reality’. Have you ever noticed how two different people can watch the same events and have completely different visions of what actually happened?

One of the ways we interpret our world is through the language we use. Not just to describe to other people, but the language we use to urselves. Our internal monologues are an aspect of life that is almost always there, reinforcing our beliefs and understandings, helping us to make sense of what we’ve seen and experienced.  You probably know this already, or at least this likely makes sense to you. The old ‘glass half full’ or ‘half empty’ adage springs to mind as a good example. There is no difference to the actual physical reality, but people will describe and therefore experience the same thing in different ways, and feel and act very differently according to that perspective.

Here’s the rub though – if we already know that how we perceive and describe things to ourselves and others has an impact on our understanding and feelings about those events, why do we persist on using negative language to describe our reality??

‘I can’t do this’???  -  Surely it would be better as ‘How can I do this?’

‘I’m no good at that’ – Better as ‘I’m going to get better at this.’

Is your target unreachable? or do you just need to plan, and action, the steps needed to overachieve?

What are you going to change to make your life better?

A Zen teacher saw five of his students returning from the market, riding their bicycles. When they arrived at the monastery and had dismounted, the teacher asked the students, “Why are you riding your bicycles?”

The first student replied, “The bicycle is carrying the sack of potatoes. I am glad that I do not have to carry them on my back!” The teacher praised the first student, “You are a smart boy! When you grow old, you will not walk hunched over like I do.”

The second student replied, “I love to watch the trees and fields pass by as I roll down the path!” The teacher commended the second student, “Your eyes are open, and you see the world.”

The third student replied, “When I ride my bicycle, I am content to chant nam myoho renge kyo.” The teacher gave praise to the third student, “Your mind will roll with the ease of a newly trued wheel.”

The fourth student replied, “Riding my bicycle, I live in harmony with all sentient beings.” The teacher was pleased, and said to the fourth student, “You are riding on the golden path of non-harming.”

The fifth student replied, “I ride my bicycle to ride my bicycle.” The teacher sat at the feet of the fifth student and said,”I am your student!”

 *Copied from the ‘Veloquent’ blog here.*

I like this. Sometimes we just need to do what we do because we like to do it, not for any other conscious reason. Not to justify it to ourselves or anyone else, but because it free’s us from having to find reasons and arguments to do something we enjoy.

Once upon a time, I was quite a good rock climber. I trained, I entered competitions, I even tried out for the British squad (unsuccesfully, but I didn’t do too bad – in fact, a friend of mine, Chris Cubitt, became British Climbing Champion for 2 or 3 years on the trot, and I remember beating him at one of them!). Funny thing was though, I got better at climbing when I stopped training and just climbed for fun. I did half as much work, lost a chunk of muscle, and started using better technique and smiling a hell of a lot more. I just climbed – to climb. No more, no less.

I’m sure there’s something in that, somewhere.

Just Do It! « Sharon’s Perspective

Interesting blog here.

How do you make YOURselves get up and do the things that need doing? Any tips and tricks you can share? Pointers that might help the rest of us DO something toward making our goals and dreams come true?  We all need a bit of a nudge now and then, and most of the time we have to nudge ourselves – lets see if we can come up with some additional ideas.

One of my personal favorites if I want to make sure I achieve something is to tell as many people as possible. If there’s eough people that are expecting me to achieve, I find a way to make sure it happens. NB – this DOES mean being realistic with your goals

An absolutely FASCINATING article here. Called Geek Etiquette, it is a summary of a talk by Michael Schwern “Geek to geek:how we fail, how to fix it.”   Swear words are used in the post, but I’m pretty sure that most of my readers are adults, and can handle it.

The interesting bit for me is the piece about tact filters. The extract below explains this a little -

“Most non-geeks have outbound tact filters: they filter what they want to say and add polite noise as it passes through. Geeks have inbound tact filters: they take bare communication with no politeness and just wrap it in assumed politeness as they interpret it.

When non-geeks talk, geeks think the polite sounds they make are redundant.

When geeks talk, non-geeks just think they’re being incredibly rude.”

I’m interested in peoples thoughts on this. I’m a firm believer that the language we use is incredibly important. Not just in the way that other people perceive us, but in the way that we perceive and understand the world. The words we use ’shape’ our world. If we continually use negative words – can’t, problem, stupid etc – it skews our perception of the world so that these words become real. We see ‘problem’ instead of ‘challenge’, or see people as ’stupid’, instead of just having done something that didn’t work out.

Waking up every morning and saying (and believing) ‘today is a GREAT day’ will typically make the day a lot more fun and productive than waking up and thinking ‘I hate my job’, for example.

The spin that the article linked above brings is fairly simple for me. Lack of positive words does NOT necessarily equal negative. Just because your boss doesn’t tell you how good you are every morning, or a co worker doesn’t ask if you want a cup of coffee when they make one for themselves, doesn’t necessarily mean anything.  It could very easily be that they just don’t consider it; that its understood that you are valued, and that engaging in social niceties is just a waste of time. NB – this is not often a conscious consideration either.

As far as I am concerened, rudeness (and politeness) has to have TWO aspects.

1. The act of rudeness itself (or ommission of politeness)
2. Sincerity (The INTENT to be rude, cause offense or snub; or the converse, the desire to be polite or praise)

Without BOTH elements, it’s just an accident of perception, and offense should not be taken. (In fact, it’s rarely a good idea to take offense in any case. It doesn’t work for the offender if the offendee doesn’t take it. – A good lesson in customer service is that irate customers are almost never angry at the person in front of them, just a service or product which is perceived to be below par.)

Funnily enough, I got a new satellite navigation system recently, and the voice on it is already causing me to grit my teeth for this very reason. When I approach a junction it always tells me to ‘Please prepare to turn’. Maybe I’m a geek (I’ve been called worse), as this false politeness just seems to be a complete waste of time and effort. It cannot possibly be sincere, it is delivered by a machine, so what point does it serve?

What’s the point?

Just to think about it, consider colleagues with a slightly different angle, and to consider who you’re speaking to and how your own communications might be perceived by them.

So the first day of the new year is over. How many of us made New years resolutions I wonder, and how many of those resolutions now lie in splinters on the floor, circumstances ‘beyond our control’ having forced us to break them ‘against our own wishes’.

Did you know that in a survey some time ago of 1200 managers, 4% of them were classified as peak performers?

What was the common denominator here? This 4% all took full responsibility for themselves, their teams, and their results. There was no blaming of others, no blaming of circumstances, in fact, no blame at all. Even when questioned about poor outcomes there was no ’self kicking’, just a rational analysis of what went wrong in an effort to find a better way for next time. This top 4% are the ones who realise that they write the story of their own lives, and thats a pretty powerful realisation.  Once you accept this, it can give you a power over your own destiny that was never possible up til that point.

You can picture this concept quite simply. Picture an open book – on the left side, the pages are filled with text, on the other side, they are completely blank.  The left side is the bits that no one person can control. The environment, other people, society, culture etc. The things we just have to deal with. Its important to see though, that although we may not have ‘control’ over this side of the book, we can influence it in many ways, because the other side is ALL written by us. If we don’t like the way things are going, we can change the story.

We can write a new page every day, or we can write a chapter all at once as a guide, but it is up to every one of us to write our own story the way we WANT to write it. If the story’s not working out so well, change it! If you can’t change it all at once, change little bits. Make the story work for you.

The important thing is that you take responsibility for your own life and, well, write it yourself.

Good luck!