Seven Steps to a Winning Life Step 4 Success is not About Skills

Seven Steps to a Winning Life - Step 4 - Success is not About Skills
By James Ray

Your knowledge is not impressive...

As a national sales and management trainer for AT&T, I used to pour my heart out giving people sales tools and techniques. Yet, only a small percentage of people would use them.

Keep doing the same old thing...

The majority would just keep doing what they'd always done. This taught me that success and achieving Harmonic Wealth is not about skills. Clearly, if know-how were all there was to being successful, every salesperson that had attended my training sessions would have become a top producer.

It's not about hard work either...

But, ultimately, achieving Harmonic Wealth; is about something else entirely. What's the missing piece? You may be thinking it's just a matter of hard work, but that's not it, either. There are plenty of people who work incredibly long and hard, yet they are barely making ends meet.

Is it intelligence?

Many incredible scholars are flat broke! If it were intelligence, then the PhDs would be extraordinarily happy with their lives and making all the money in the world, but I know plenty of scholars who are crusty old coots who can't rub two nickels together.

Your beliefs create the fact...

Then what is the answer? The key ingredient is mindset, the combination of conscious and unconscious beliefs, your values, expectations, and experiences. I also call this the Total Belief System, or TBS for short.

If you're a subscriber to my newsletters, then you already know how to recognize that a good story is just that: a reasonable sounding excuse for lack of success, but an excuse nonetheless. This is a crucial first step to uncovering any limiting beliefs that are hobbling your TBS and, therefore, your success and wealth in life.

Change your beliefs... change your life...

If you find yourself telling good stories, it's an excellent indicator that you need to change some underlying, unconscious beliefs if you hope to achieve wealth however you may define it.

Refining and revitalizing the TBS creates the whole thrust of my curriculum in The Harmonic Weekend. In this event, we work to create a great rapport between the conscious and unconscious mind so that we can produce the results we desire in the real world.

If you don't like the program, change the channel.

You see, if the unconscious mind is calling all the shots, then we are left to our old programming, the conditioning of our childhood. We are at the whim of our child's mind, which contains antiquated and often detrimental ideas about our abilities and possibilities in life.

What did your environment hand you?

I believe we are born into greatness and conditioned into mediocrity. That conditioning comes from good people who just don't know any better and who do the best they can. Still, they're bound to tell us we're limited, and in so many ways they tell us what we can't do.

We're conditioned with that from the time we are born. And then we show up as adults, with those things out of our conscious awareness, and that conditioning still drives who we are and what we do and do not.

To change results you must deal with the cause...

Go straight to the source. Most people want to throw solutions at the effect (the lack of results), rather than at the cause (the mindset). In other words, they look at their lack of wealth in any area and ask: How can I get more skills? How can I learn more? How can I work harder? But by definition, the result is the effect, the manifestation of a greater cause. The cause is at the level of consciousness. So in The Harmonic Wealth Weekend, we back up and ask:

How can we uncover limitations in the unconscious mind, clean those out and replace them with more empowering ideas and build communication between the conscious and unconscious so that the cause and, therefore, the effects are both changed? You will never harvest corn if you have planted potatoes. Imagine the unconscious mind is the soil, and the results we experience in the physical world are the plant. If we have a weak plant (or weak results) the real solution is usually to amend the soil. That doesn't mean that conditions like the amount of sunshine and attacks from bugs are not factors, but they're not really the determining factor. Similarly, mindset or TBS is the determining factor in your Harmonic Wealth, not the circumstances of your life.

Another analogy I use frequently is that of the movie theater. Most of us will sit through almost any film, good or bad. Instead of getting up and leaving the ones we think are horrible, we stay riveted to our seats and continue to view. How like life!

Those who are dissatisfied with their lives simply continue to sit there and watch the results they don't like. Why? Because they've paid for the ticket; they're invested in seeing how it all plays out. Some people will complain about the movie, or throw cans and bottles, but that doesn't get them anywhere; it doesn't change the film. Yet there are those unique few who go back to the ticket counter, ask for their money back and see a different movie. They realize that:

The results on the screen don't change until they change the film.

To your continued wealth and happiness,

James Arthur Ray

James Arthur Ray of James Ray International is an expert in teaching individuals how to achieve Harmonic Wealth in all areas of their life by focusing on what they want, opposed to what they don't want. He has been speaking to individuals as well as Fortune 500 companies for over 20 years and is the author of four books and an inventor of numerous learning systems. His studies of highly successful people prove that they continually achieve results by taking control of their thoughts and actions to create and shape their own reality.

The Harmonic Wealth Weekend ( http://harmonicwealthweekend.com ) will explain in detail how success is state of mind and how the principles of quantum physics (as seen in the movies What the Bleep and The Secret) can be applied to proven success-building techniques. James will also cover why people who are successful in one area of their life tend to be successful in all areas. For more information, visit www.HarmonicWealthWeekend.com.

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Top Performers Have These Critical Management Skills

Top Performers Have These Critical Management Skills
By Dennis Sommer

Do want to be known as The Expert or The Guru? Do you want to advance your career and income? If you answered yes to both of these questions then you need to become a Top Performer in your profession. Whether you are now a Manager, Executive, Consultant, Sales or Service Specialist, then Management skills will be one of the keys to your success. Experience and knowledge in your area of specialty may make you an above average performer, but to be a Top Performer start implementing the following 11 Management skills and action items today.

Top performers are successful by being honest, respecting a clients intelligence and focusing all their energies on how to make a difference in a clients life. After reviewing the following Top Performer Management skills and action items, you will know how to be more effective, efficient, and successful.

Strategies for building a strong successful organization.

1. Define both long term and short term measurable goals. Concentrate your efforts on the short term goals. This can be measurable goals either weekly or monthly. The long term goals will come.

2. Fuel your internal motivation by setting clear and concrete goals and objectives. Example, customers to contact, revenue, gross margin, issue response time, etc.

3. Measure everything. Anything with a response that will measure your effectiveness. Develop a scorecard system that tracks your target goal versus what you actually achieved.

4. When your customers perceive your offering or service as being in short supply, they view it as more valuable. Market for 20% more volume that you can manage.

5. Discontinue 50% of your offerings to increase overall sales. To many offerings cause customer confusion and lost sales. Analyze your offerings and discontinue your unprofitable or low margin offerings.

6. Focus promotions on new customers not current customers. Your current customers already know what value you bring to the table.

7. Promote a list of unique features that compliment a competitive solution or show unique value. Your offering will then stand out from the others.

8. Keep it simple and relevant. Eliminate irrelevant information from offering brochures, marketing, and presentations.

9. Empower healthy competition between departments, divisions, and regions. Reward success.

10. Hire competitive people. Competition is healthy and will improve everyones performance.

11. Selling success follows six fundamentals:

Passion (for your company, offering, service, and yourself)
Organization (take notes and have all your information at your fingertips)
Planning (develop and execute a step by step plan for each opportunity)
Persistence (never give up)
People Skills (develop excellent written and verbal communication skills)
Offering Knowledge (know everything about your offerings and the competitors offerings).

Copyright 2006 Dennis Sommer

Dennis Sommer is a widely respected and world renowned authority on sales, business development and leadership performance improvement. He is a leading adviser, author, and speaker providing clients with practical strategies that improve personal and organization performance. With nearly twenty years of business development and leadership experience, he has consulted on over 200 critical business and technology initiatives for Fortune 1000 companies. Dennis can be reached at Dennis@btrconline.com or http://www.btrconline.com

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Who Do You Need to Influence the Most? Four Simple Skills When and How to Apply Them

Who Do You Need to Influence the Most? Four Simple Skills, When and How to Apply Them
By Bob Selden

Do you need to have:
Your manager give you more credit for the work that you do?
Your partner acknowledge that your ideas are really worth listening to?
Your children accept more responsibility?
Your friends take you seriously when you really mean it?
Your customers buy more from you?
Your suppliers meet your quality standards?
Your team become more energetic?

Hey, couldnt the list go on! Im sure many of us would like to see some or all of the above occur (and probably a few more as well). The key to being more successful in our interpersonal endeavours, is to become more influential. Influence is no longer considered a magic quality that is bestowed on some and not others. Nor is it something we gain through holding a position of power. Surprisingly, we can all improve our ability to influence others by merely sharpening the influencing skills we already have in our armoury and perhaps using them more appropriately according to the situation.

The first step in applying our influencing skills more productively, is to recognise the type of situation we are facing. Is the person (or people) you are trying to influence at all emotional about the topic? For example, are they worried or excited, sad or happy? What are your feelings about the topic? Do you have some basic needs that you must satisfy? If either you or your influence target are at all emotional about the topic, then you are dealing with a feeling type situation.

On the other hand, if both parties see the topic or discussion as factual i.e. logic and reason prevail over emotion, then you are in a fact situation.

So, step one is to decide Is this situation feeling or fact? As you might now expect, Feeling and Fact situations require quite different influencing skills.

Lets say that you are a parent. You want to get your seven year old child to tidy their room. All the reason and logic in the world will not get the child to tidy their room if they dont want to (no doubt many of you can relate to this!). Despite what some of the parental guidleine books might suggest, experience shows that you need to take an assertive (feeling) type approach rather than a reasoning (fact) approach in such a situation.

However the assertive approach taken with your child will probably not work when you want your boss to approve a new item of budget expenditure (in fact it may even work in reverse and get your budget cut!)

Lets look at how to manage the Feeling situations first. For example, when a person comes to us with a personal problem, we need to apply our reflective listening skills. Whereas, when we have a very strong desire to get our needs met (for instance in a tough negotiating situation), we need to apply assertive skills.

Whilst these situations are quite different in their context, both are feeling type situations the first is dealing with their feelings, the second is dealing with our feelings. Because of this, each feeling influence situation is successfully handled by using different influencing skills.

For feeling situations, the most powerful influencing skills are:
Reflecting . . .
The ability to really listen to the underlying message being expressed by the other person (not what they may be saying, but what they are really feeling)
Asserting . . .
Stating our own needs and expectations strongly

Fact situations on the other hand, require the skills of questioning and suggesting. Whenever we ask open, non-threatening questions we are using the influencing skill of gathering data. e.g. Id like to hear more about your proposal. What are the main reasons why you have suggested this?

Whenever we put forward a proposal, recommendation or merely a suggestion, we are using the influencing skill of suggesting. And our suggestions can become even more powerful when they are supported with strong reasoning. e.g. There is only one system on the market that meets these requirements and that is why I recommend the P680.

For fact situations, the most powerful influencing skills are:
Questioning . . .
Asking fact-finding, non-judgmental questions.
Suggesting . . .
Making proposals and suggestions supported by two or three strong reasons.

Employing our natural influencing skills more productively on a daily basis means:
1.Deciding whether the situation calls for feeling or fact type influencing skills
2.Using the most appropriate feeling or fact influencing skills for the situation.

So, next time you want to influence that important person in your life, rather than barging in, step back a little and think. Is this fact or feeling? What skills will be most appropriate?

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Communication Skills the 4 Powerful Secrets that Win People Over

Communication Skills - the 4 Powerful Secrets that Win People Over
By Peter Murphy

Having a conversation seems very natural to some people, but to others it is a struggle every time. There is no need to feel frustrated or upset every time you are faced with a situation where you must be involved with a conversation.

Conversation is essential and important to every day life. If you avoid conversation with others they may see you as stuck up. Thinking you do not value what they have to say or think they are not worth your time. You can gain a horrible social image if you avoid conversation.

There are four great tips that can help you to overcome whatever may be bothering you about conversation.

Tip#1 How to answer rude or inappropriate questions.

Some people are very bad at the art of conversation and may say something off beat. They may ask an extremely personal question or just make a comment that is not appropriate.

To handle this situation you should politely give a short answer or reply without drawing attention to the situation and then move on. Change the subject or if the person just piped up with this, go back to the original conversation.

Tip#2 What to do when you run out of things to talk about.

If you are constantly watching others and paying attention to what they are talking about you shouldnt run out of things to say. If you do find the conversation running out then try to find something common to talk about.

This will bring everyone back into the conversation and allow it to pick up again. Some good conversation topics are current events or something about the place you are at.

Tip#3 How to kick up a conversation.

Sometimes for lack of better things to talk about a conversation can get boring. If people are not interested in what is being talked about they will stop talking or leave. You do not want to end up with silence or awkward good byes.

So if you feel the conversation is dragging try to bring up something different than what you have been talking about. This is a good time to state an interesting fact you know or to share a hobby. Pet peeves are another good thing that will liven up the conversation.

Tip #4 How to deal with a topic you know nothing about.

Sometimes you will find that the people you are having a conversation with bring up a topic you know nothing about. In this case you have the opportunity to use your listening skills.

You should take interest in learning about this topic by asking questions. This shows you are interested in the other person and you care about what they have to say.

These tips cover four main situations that crop up in conversation and cause anxiety. Knowing how to handle them can make you feel more at ease with the idea of having a conversation and improve your overall communication skills.

Peter Murphy is a peak performance expert. He recently produced a very popular free report: 10 Simple Steps to Developing Communication Confidence. Apply now because it is available for a limited time only at: http://www.conversationtalk.com/report.htm

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Adapting to Change: 5 Essential Life Skills

Adapting to Change: 5 Essential Life Skills
By Steve Brunkhorst

People who are adaptive are able to organize their thoughts in ways that generate appropriate and positive actions. Adaptive abilities are necessary as changes occur in individuals and their circumstances.

Adaptive behaviors are age-dependent skills that allow us to engage successfully in activities of daily living throughout our lives. We can also think of adaptive behaviors as skills that allow us to be flexible when change occurs in our personal lives or careers.

If we are adaptive, we will react to unexpected events or unconstructive actions in creative or constructive ways. An adaptive individual is able to refocus the mind in new directions and make choices based on his or her desired outcomes. He or she is open to change, knowing it is the set of the sail that mattersnot the direction of the wind.

Consider these five life skills for dealing constructively with changing circumstances in daily living.

1. Stop and think to avoid misinterpretations. Give yourself time to analyze situations thoroughly. View actions and circumstances from different angles and perspectives to gain an accurate understanding of what has happened. If people are involved, communicate your concerns and ask questions to get information that might not be apparent. This will allow you to make informed choices.

2. Think long-term. Ask yourself What if? questions. Think about the consequences of dealing with a situation in various ways. Ask, What will I lose? and What will I gain? How could this choice affect my family, friends, self, and future well being?

3. Prepare for change with continuous learning. Change is a constant in everyone's life. The skills needed to meet various needs will change throughout all stages of life. We will continue to need updated knowledge in such areas as self-care, relationships, parenting, and financial.

4. Look beneath the surface. Welcome challenges. Every challenging situation brings the chance to grow wiser and more skillful. Somewhere, someone has successfully dealt with the same situation. Even circumstances that seem most devastating carry within them the seed of a new blessing. Those who search for these blessings will eventually find them.

5. Become clear on your values: the principles that guide your actions. Then look at your needs: those things that must be met in ways that remain true to your values. Ask yourself this question: Is my reaction an attempt to meet a personal need in a healthy manner, or is it a creative solution to some other problem? Then ask, Is my choice of action in keeping with my core values?

Thinking conscientiously about these skills has helped many of my clients to make positive choices in situations requiring adaptive change and problem solving. They can also help you. May every new challenge leave you wiser, more skillful, more adaptive, and more loving, today and also in the future.

Copyright 2006 by Steve Brunkhorst. Steve is a professional life success coach, motivational author, and the editor of Achieve! 60-Second Nuggets of Inspiration, a popular mini-zine bringing great stories, motivational nuggets, and inspiring thoughts to help you achieve more in your career and personal life. Get the next issue by visiting http://www.AchieveEzine.com

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3 Aspects of Developing Leadership Skills

3 Aspects of Developing Leadership Skills
By Bill Thomas

Everyone knows that great leaders are made, not born. However good that statement sounds, we still want to know how we make or turn people effective leaders. And other questions need to be answered about the process of leadership development.

So how DO you boost your leadership skills? If you want toimprove your ability to lead, where should you focus yourattention? Why are certain leadership talents moreimportant than others?

To Boost or not to - that's a good question

Would you want to be a leader with more skills? Yes,especially when you consider the opportunities more skills offer you. You would want to effectively plan a strategy or generate purposeful agenda to meet the challenges of your daily situations.

You could employ different skills to encourage your team to perform beyond their ordinary level, bridge the gaps causing low morale in your followers or coach and counsel people who face difficult circumstances.

With more skills, you would be better prepared to take action with greater confidence, and you would act more decisively.

Having more skills means you have:

=> More options, styles and capabilities to choose from,

=> More approaches to evaluating or solving your problems,

=> More opportunities to innovate.

In the world of leaders, you must agree that more is definitely better!

Quo Vadis? Whither doth thou goest? Where should you focusyour attention?

Taking a journey involves having an intent and a destination in your mind. Your leadership training, development and educational efforts demand the same kind of purposeful mind-set.

Your reasons for improving your leadership abilities will depend upon your working conditions, operating environment and other organizational factors.

For instance, what types of situations do you face, how will yourleadership skills be applied?

- Will you lead a special or critical one-time project?

- Will you lead others who directly report to you or areunder your direct influence?

- Will you lead people who are outside your sphere ofcontrol [such as, your clients, partners from othercompanies, or members of your community?

You must focus your attention on providing service throughyour leadership. To look at leadership in this light, youwill need to know what types of leadership service arerequired:

=> Should your style be dictating or nurturing;

=> Should more of your time be spent listening and observing;

=> Should your behavior be motivating or modeling;

=> Should your role be instructing or supervising and so on.

Leadership is not a wondering-about activity - when leaders are aimless. their followers are clueless, and everyone's efforts are worthless.

Show and Tell or tell and show - it depends on your talents

Because you do have strengths and weaknesses, you owe it toyourself to investigate your talents honestly and deeply.Are you a strong communicator, do you usually think aboutor see things in a positive light, can you easily adaptyourself to deal with changes, are you flexible?

Your strengths will empower your effectiveness and yourweaknesses will betray you and disgust, disappoint ordiscourage others. The trick you need to turn is found inusing your strengths to analyze and overcome your weaknesses.

Let me explain myself -

I have a fairly strong ability to react to andperceive the subtleties of my surroundings - but there aretimes when I realize that my understanding of someone's behavior is wrong. When I'm incorrect in my assessment, it would be wise for me to acknowledge my error and apologize for being insensitive to that person's plight or burden.

Another way to overcome your weakness is to delegate yourauthority to and share your power with someone who has agreater strength, more time or a stronger relationship thanyour do. But you should always be aware of your skills,knowledge and connections to others.

In a word, you want to maintain a constant inventory of your attributes, tendencies and shortfalls.

Your portfolio of strengths will affect your decisions to embarkon prudent courses of action, with knowledge of yourweaknesses you can defend the threats to your mission bydeveloping alternative plans or assign tasks to other people.

Once you have determined the state of your strengths, youcan use your skills-inventory

=> To act in innovative or more creative ways;

=> To establish appropriate and effective patterns, structures or solutions;

=> To support and propel the momentum of your leadership power.

So then the questions remain: will you step-up to the challenge, are you willing to awaken the great leader that slumbers inside you?

If so, you can be made into a leader of great promise. There are leadership training courses, workshops and programs available to all sizes of budget and ambition.

I believe you were born to bless the world with your God-given greatness. Please don't deny us the energy of your unique, meaningful and worthy contributions.

Copyright 2003-2005, Mustard Seed Investments, Inc.,All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Bill Thomas is publisher of leadership skills trainingmaterials. courses & programs. Your Leadership-UltraNet! is the Web's only ULTRA-Performance Empowerment System That Shows You How-To Think-like, Act-like, Behave-like, Believe-like and then Manage-like a Creative, Confident, Persuasive, Highly Effective Leader, Each & Every Day!

http://www.leadership-toolkit.com/skills.html

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Your Skills and Abilities

Your Skills and Abilities
By Ted Marlett

Most of us do not know anything, or at least very little, about self defense or the skills training needed to defend ourselves or our families. Imagining the amount of time necessary to get into good physical condition and maintaining that condition is difficult for some of us and not at all for others. Yet, we all have some physical or mental skills that we use on a daily basis to keep us out of dangers way. And when danger finds us, we will most always try to find a way to defend ourselves, either physically or mentally. Either way, we may spend a great amount of time taking care of ourselves in a very negative way.

Of course there are many organizations whose job it is to keep their men and women physically and mentally fit in order to take care of us, but can they always be there for us when we need them? Not always, as you will see when you read the daily paper or read the headlines on your web browser. These people spend a great deal of time training and exercising to keep in shape and honing their skills for when their help is needed. And they have to spend a great deal of time studying on how to keep us safe. Can you and I spend that amount of time along with all the other things we have to do in order to maintain daily life and the comfort levels we want? The answer is no. We leave that to the people who are paid to do it.

We all have abilities and skills. They just vary from person to person. Abilities are the things you do as you have developed your life and learned how to do things. Skills are the things you do as you were trained based on your abilities. There is a connection between the two, although an ability to do something can be taught and developed into a skill rather than learned through trial and error. Don?t most people who drive a car have some ability to do so? They just had to be eventually trained in the skill of driving and all the other things necessary to do as one drives an automobile.

Yet many of us have not the greatest ability to take care of ourselves in a dangerous situation. That's why self defense and security products have been developed. They may help us put down an attacker, or at the very least help us get away and call for help. Most are non-lethal as sold on web sites and in some stores. These are the ones that the law says we can have to protect ourselves that won?t necessarily kill anyone. Use them, but remember to develop your abilities with them and turn those abilities into skills so you have a little more protection for yourself and your family. And do remember: not all self defense products will stop everyone or render everyone helpless. Use your common sense when defending yourself or your family.

Ted Marlett
nwsecurityproducts.com

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