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| Business As Usual And Other Facts Of Life |
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Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Now that gives it a whole new perspective. You say, "You can trust me. You have my word on it." Well, okay, but so what? Seeing is believing, show me, talk is cheap, time will tell, and all that. Your being trustworthy is not one of those things you can just proclaim and think that is the end of it. It is not something you tell people about you. It is a judgment other people make about you. That is why you need to conscientiously work at being sure that you truly are trustworthy, every time, with everyone. The next requirement is being candid. Actually, it is a double requirement, with being trustworthy and being candid sitting side by side. You can't have one without the other in the world of personal success. Consider someone who is blunt, direct, frank, and straight forward. There is someone who is candid, sure enough. Got the picture? Okay, erase that picture and consider someone who is neither blunt, direct, frank, nor straight forward. Is this someone you are going to trust? Not likely! Now picture someone who is authentically candid and who combines that candor with trustworthiness, genuine sincerity, and a liberal splash of sensitivity. There is someone who is truly exceptional. People like that are also the people who become success superstars. If you'd like to join this elite company one day, just keep in mind that you must be committed to being candid, every time, with everyone. Being focused is equally essential. Taking care of business can get very complex and complicated. If you do not stay focused, it will soon be all she wrote, as they say. While you are in the heat of the game, though, it is not enough to simply keep your eye on the ball. You have to keep it on the other players too. Since they have all got balls of their own, you will also need to keep your eye on their balls. In fact, the superstars at taking care of business are the players who have the uncanny ability to focus on their ball, the other players, and the other players' balls simultaneously or at least that is how it looks to the unsophisticated observer. Strictly on a "from my mouth to your ear" basis, it is not necessarily so. The high flyers have mastered a secret technique. They only focus on one ball or one player at a time and never on a player and a ball at the same time. Now, that is focus! But there is more. Players ready for the first string can predict from other players' moves where their balls are going. Since they know where all the balls are headed, they do not need to know where other players or their balls actually are. Do you get it? You do not keep track of or worry about other players. The key to taking care of business is keeping focus on the balls and knowing where yours is in relation to where the other balls will end up. A moral approach to taking care of business is certainly the next bottom line success requirement. This does not mean that people who do not take a moral approach are bad or evil people, though they may be. It simply means that they are not committed to personal success, I. e., they do not take a principle centered, value centered approach to business. I would not presume to tell you what your principles and values should be, though I do have a few strong opinions about the subject. Having principles that direct your actions and values that force your choices are essential ingredients for developing PPS. For example, "I will never knowingly give a customer a product or service that is below the standard I promised." That means you have to do it right, the first time, on time, every time. Now there is a principle to live up to, one that certainly directs your actions. What principles direct your actions, direct how you take care of business? If you have three or four clear, non negotiable principles by which you always do business, you are up there with the success creme de la creme. Values of course follow principles; but they are not simply a list of things you like. For example, your principle is that you will do the right things right, the first time, on time, every time. The missing question is, WHAT are the right things?" Perhaps they are products that reliably do what they are supposed to do or services that consistently accomplish what they are intended to accomplish. You value products and services that work, the first time, on time, every time. Having that "value" will then force many choices you need to make about products and services, about how you use your resources, and about people who produce or use those products and services. Think about your principles and about the values that follow from them. Coming to grips with that moral cluster is how you commit yourself to a moral approach to taking care of business, every time, with everyone. Predictability joins the success equation and combines with a moral approach to taking care of business. There certainly are those unscrupulous types who are totally predictable: you can simply assume that they are only taking care of No. 1 and that they will screw you every chance they get. If you join predictability with moral principles and values, though, it is indeed a pleasure for others to experience. People do not always know what you are going to do or how you are going to do it; but they always know why you do it: you are following your principles and values. You are innovative, original, creative, and uniquely you, sure enough. At the same time, you are predictable and anyone who understands your principles and values knows that it is so. Does predictability sound like something you want to incorporate into your approach to business? If so, you need to understand that predictability is a product of pursuing your principles and values every time, with everyone. Persistence is the final requirement. Being worthy of trust, candor, staying focused, taking the moral high ground, and predictability are honorable and worthwhile pursuits. At the same time, none of them are easy, automatic, or guaranteed paths to success. Rather, they are sometimes slow and often tedious commitments to your success. Even so, intentionally and persistently pursuing personal excellence every time, in every way, with everyone is the cost and the opportunity available to those committed to personal success. A final tip will help you along the way as you take care of business. Suppose you are hot on the trail of a great deal, a resolution to a nasty conflict, an answer to a tough question. Without a hint, it suddenly all goes sour. Have you been there, up close and personal? Sure you have. It is frustrating to say the least and is usually down-right maddening. The nearly irresistible temptation is to poke at it just one more time, take just one more shot. Sure, I know. The problem with resisting temptation is that it may be the only chance you get. Nonetheless, it really may be time to put the old dog in the truck and call it a day. ------ This article was excerpted from Proactive Personal Style from Publish America. For more articles by Gary Crow, visit http://www.LeadershipVillage.com or http://www.BusinessStew.com Using Reason Is The Way To Have Complete Faith Some have the idea that faith and reason are in conflict with each other. They think that if you have reason, you don't need faith, and if you go by faith, you cannot go by reasoning. It is this paradox that has caused the biggest problems in all religion and spirituality. The truth is that faith and reason are one and the same. In order to have faith about something, you need to know it as true. You can't know something as true unless you have a reason for it to be so. Faith is reason and reason is faith. All truths are ideas. If you knew everything there is to know about an idea, you would no longer need to "have faith" in it. You just know it as reality. Faith is knowing. To know a thing is to be aware of it. It is all about awareness, the more you have it, the more faith you have. If you want to fully know something, you have to understand everything there is to understand about it. You have to be able to explain everything about it. The more reasons you discover, the more truth you realize. The way to truth is the way of understanding. Understanding alone will solve all our problems. Understanding the problem dissolves the problem. Once we understand a problem, it is already solved. All that is left is to act out the solution. A problem is never without a solution, otherwise it would not be a problem. Therefore all problems have their corresponding solutions. Understanding is to key to resolving everything. To understand is to reason. You have to reason all the way to all truth. Everything in the universe is consciousness. For something to be realized, it has to be perceived. Until we are able to perceive a thing, it is not real to us. It would be real to the one who perceives it. The more we are able to perceive, the more conscious we become. Consciousness is what we are, and the more we expand our consciousness with perception, the more we expand our being. The more our awareness increases, the greater our reality will be until it matches the reality of the whole. Understanding brings life to those that have it. When you deal with things from a state of awareness, you become a cause because you act with freewill. When you deal with things from a state of ignorance, you become an effect because you act with unconscious choice. Awareness allows you to be calm and free to choose reality whereas ignorance causes you to be unstable and moved by impulses. He that deviates out of the way of understanding ends up in the congregation of the dead. The subconscious mind does not differentiate between an imagined experience and a physically experienced one. To know something is to have an experience of it. The more you experience something whether physically or mentally, the more you know it in consciousness. You can always experience a thing from a place of awareness or a place of ignorance. Learning with awareness brings enjoyment and freedom whereas learning with ignorance brings pain and suffering. The difference between learning with awareness and learning with ignorance depends on the intent. When you go through every experience with the intent to understand, you are resonating with awareness and your consciousness will be open to perceiving as much as you can about it. When you seek to understand, you can arrive at the right reasons, or else you would reason wrongly from lower consciousness and mishandle the situation because you are not seeing what is out of your perception. Incline your ear unto understanding. Seek to know the reason of a thing. Seek to know all the reasons there are to know about it. Open your heart to be understanding so that you may receive the truth of a matter and not block it out of perception. You need understanding in order to do what is right. Understanding gives us strength because it makes us bigger than our situations. Knowing all the explanations and reasons of a thing allows you to see it in a scientific and definite way. Faith is having certainty. The more you know scientifically, the more certainty you have and the more faith you have. Evolution of science, knowledge and consciousness is evolution of faith. When you know everything from a position of science, there are no more doubts. Because everything is understood through universal laws that never change. You know absolute reality to the fullest degree. In any situation where total understanding appears to be unattainable in a scientific way, it means the science is incomplete. True science is perfect in reasoning and operates from a position of total perception. Total faith and total science are one and the same. It is all awareness of truth. Faith comes by hearing which means perception, and perception by the Word of God. The Word is Logos which means Reason. It is reason or awareness that directs your perception and determines your knowing. To know as much of the Word of God is to know as much reason as possible. All wisdom, understanding and knowledge is for you to be convinced about the truth because you are aware of all the reasons that define it. To have absolute faith is to be totally convinced about the truth. Reason or logic is what runs the entire universe. You need as much reasons as possible to do good. Reason is what causes others to act and it determines how they act. It is the programming logic that runs the program. If you want to move yourself or others to take a certain action, give as much reason as possible whether logical or emotional, conscious or subtle to persuade, direct and motivate them. Reason can command an entire army to war or it can compel all nations to peace and harmony. God himself has perfect reasoning and total understanding of all there is. When we are lacking awareness about something but are clearly guided by him in a certain area, that is when we should trust in God with all our heart and not lean towards our limited understanding. God's reason is the higher reasoning compared to ours. To reason against reason is treason. But God still wants us to grow in awareness and understanding so that we may reach his level of reasoning and be of one mind with him. ------ Enoch Tan aims to help people achieve greater awareness in living and experiencing life. To evolve human consciousness to higher levels. To change lives and transform the universe. To revolutionize the way we understand the mind and reality. Because that is what governs every area of life and destiny. Get Free Ebooks of The Most Powerful Knowledge and Learn Secrets of Mind and Reality That will Fully Benefit You Now at: Secrets of Mind and Reality Finding your focus when learning Spanish If you're trying to learn Spanish at home on your own it can sometimes be difficult to decide what you should be concentrating on at any given time. After all there seems to be so much that you could do, particularly if you're at the beginner or intermediate level. Even if you are following a course, such as Learning Spanish Like Crazy, you sometimes need to sit down and analyse your weaknesses so you can be more effective in your studies. To work out what your actual weaknesses are it helps to break down the language a bit. Think of it like this: Listening and understanding Listening and understanding are two quite different skills, but are completely entwined. 1. Listening Listening is largely a question of tuning your ear into the sound of Spanish. If you have no knowledge of Spanish at all then when you hear the language being spoken it sounds like a jumble of sound that has no meaning for you. The sounds are alien, you can't distinguish words or phrases and it is all produced at a speed that seems like its supersonic. Once you become used to the sounds it doesn't sound quite so busy, although you will still be unable to understand the words, but you may start to notice the sound of phrases. 2. Understanding Understanding Spanish is a different skill to listening. You need to have learned some vocabulary, however simple and be able to reproduce simple phrases. However, you may initially find that you are unable to understand a Spanish speaker because your brain isn't used to decoding information in Spanish so quickly and you may even find that you understand what is being said seconds after they've been spoken. Thus, you need to improve your listening skills to aid your understanding. Formulation and performance Just as in the example of listening to and understanding Spanish, speaking Spanish also combines two distinct skills. The first is finding the words to express an idea; the second is to perform them. 3. Formulation Formulation is a question of finding a phrase to express an idea. You may find that you need to express yourself in a slightly different way when you lack vocabulary and may need to fall back on a phrasebook or dictionary at first. As your vocabulary increases you'll find that many phrases stick and you can use these as a model for producing new phrases. To start with you'll need to spend some time thinking of what you want to say and how to express yourself, but as you become more proficient at Spanish and internalise it you'll be able to speak without thinking hard about it first. 4. Performance Deciding what you are going to say is great; it's the hardest part of speaking Spanish. However, you also need to know how they should sound and reproduce them accurately; if you know a native Spanish speak them ask them to correct you whenever you make a mistake. You may think that correct pronunciation is optional providing the people you are speaking to understand you, but it has another benefit; you'll be able to understand out words and phrases that you hear better because the model of the word carried in your head is more accurate. When you pronounce Spanish correctly you also train your mouth muscles to move correctly. Because Spanish sounds are different from English the mouth is used in unfamiliar ways to produce the sounds; it takes a while for your mouth to become used to this, but practice will ensure that your mouth adapts. Conclusion When you're learning Spanish it helps to identify what you're weak at to enable you to focus exercises to improve it. By sitting down for a few minutes every couple of weeks or so and planning what you aim to improve and how you are going to improve it you will find that little by little your Spanish improves. Learning Spanish can be one of the most rewarding learning experiences of your life, despite taking time to master. You'll be able to communicate with people from very different cultures, with the side effects of boosting your self esteem and improving your job prospects. Mark Hazard's website deals with the subject of learning Spanish, with tips and advice on the most effective study techniques. Find out more at www.SimplyLearnSpanish.com |
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