Making a Great First Impression

be Darren Hardy

Here’s how:
Who do you want to make a good first impression with? What caliber and type of person?

No. 1: Become an attractive person—from the inside out.

1. Write a long list of their attributes. These are attributes of character, attitude, mindset and philosophy. Make a long list and then boil it down to a half-dozen.

2. Rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 on each of those half-dozen attributes. Now wherever you are short buy levitra from canada you now have your personal development plan to improve your first impression to your intended flock.

3. Write out all the observations you make about your desired flock. How they walk, talk, carry themselves, shake hands and interact with others. How they dress, what they talk about and care about. Start adopting these behavioral and visual cues.

No. 2: Stop faking it.
Be real, be transparent, be authentic and be yourself

No. 3: Treat people… like people.
I remember a mentor of mine when I was in real estate corrected me on this. I was having a discussion and I showed him my “Hit List” of target prospects. He said, “Hit List? Who wants to be your next HIT?! These are real people, real families, who will be going through one of the most emotional transactions of their life, involving the most valuable asset they own—their home. Not until this list is considered the list of those families whom you will help, protect and fight for next, will they be interested in what you have to say.” That was great advice. It is not just semantics; it is an entirely different philosophy, mindset and emotional approach to every conversation and human interaction.

Don’t treat people like targets, capital, pawns or even prospects or just customers. Treat people like people… people with real desires, fears, hopes, wishes, worries, dreams and ambitions… just like you.

No. 4: Take a sincere interest in other people.
The best way to do this is to talk less and listen more. Make fewer statements, ask more questions. Everyone wants to work on their script: What do I say? Instead, it’s better to work on your questions. What questions will draw people out so they talk about their real values, interests, hopes and desires. Once others express what they really want, it’s much easier to match your potential solution to their real and personally expressed needs.

No. 5. Always be positive.
Be the one who brightens a room and every conversation you enter. It is easy to pile on to a complaint fest or add to the rousing gossip, but you will actually be perceived better by others if you don’t join them in that talk.

Let your reputation and brand become those of positivity, grace and class. These rare qualities are what people look for in others. Be the standout.

No. 6. Recognize others.
Give people honest and sincere appreciation. Take a page from Catherine the Great’s book: “Praise loudly, blame softly.” Catch people doing things right and acknowledge them. Congratulate others on their accomplishments; celebrate others’ victories. Find at least a dozen ways to compliment, congratulate or appreciate someone else’s work, contribution or successes every day.

Be so busy giving other people recognition that you don’t need any yourself. Do that and people will swarm to you like bees to honey.

No. 7. Give.
Most people are only after getting… and they wonder why they don’t. Look for ways to contribute, provide, help, offer and assist. This goes back to the golden rule of relationships that Zig Ziglar taught us, “You can have everything in life that you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

see my relationships as bank accounts (psychologically, not emotionally); the more I deposit the more valuable I am to that person and the more I have on account with them. There might come a time when I need to make a small withdrawal, but I always want to be on the positive side of the ledger. My objective is to create a great surplus of wealth in as many accounts (or people) as possible by depositing as much as I can as often as I can.

That is what I recommend you do—seek to help, give, assist, empower and support. Build a reputation as one who wants to give and help others… and as Zig promises, in return you will GET everything you want in life.

Embracing unfamiliarity

This story comes from the Oriya Mahabharata by Balaram Das:

One day, Arjuna saw a strange creature in the forest, a creature he had never seen before. It seemed like a fusion of nine animals, its head was that of a rooster, its neck was that of a peacock, its back was a bull's, it had a lion's waist and serpent's tail, and its four limbs were those of a human, a deer, a tiger and an elephant.

At first Arjuna thought that it was a monster. He raised his bow to kill it. But then he realized that simply because it was a stranger did not make it a monster. A creature that does not exist in human imagination can exist in the imagination of the cosmos. He lowered his bow and the creature raised its human limb, a hand, in blessing. The 'monster' was Krishna himself, checking how much patience Arjuna had for creatures he did not recognize.

Often we come across situations that have no precedence, that do not make sense, that confound us. Our natural reaction is one of hostility. We want to shun it, or destroy it, and restore the familiar. We consider it a monster. But if we look at the monster with a different gaze: one with curiosity, seeking the familiar within the unfamiliar and a whole world of possibilities opens up.

Mark had lived all his life in New York City, a city that is designed as a grid. One can get from any point of the city to another by simply following intuition, logic or the road signs. There is no need to ask anyone for directions to get to the destination.

So imagine his surprise when he landed in Mumbai, which is anything but a grid. In fact, in some stretches, he wonders where the road actually ends. He sees hawkers on pavements, pedestrians on roads. The flyover was not quite a flyover; it was home to a whole tribe of people who were a moving market of flowers and digital accessories.

This is chaos, he concluded. He wanted to run away back to New York.

But after two days of fear, he stopped and observed. He observed the macrocosmic chaos contained microcosmic order. He observed that people did get to work on time despite the traffic jams, with a little adjustment. People of different socio-economic criteria were living in the same space.

Everyone seemed to have a mobile. He managed to get to his meetings but that involved asking for directions from four different people. Deals were being struck, various languages were being spoken, files were being moved, money was being transferred, markets were abuzz and life was moving on. It was just different.

Must every city be like New York? Must every city be like Mumbai? What is the ideal city? Mark realized that order takes many forms. And the absence of grids does not need to mean anarchy. The Navagunjara was no monster, just an unfamiliar conglomeration of different familiar creatures. The problem lay in his assumptions and expectations of how the world should be. [The author Devdutt Pattnaik is the Chief Belief Officer of the Future Group]

Here the question is not of developed vs developing or ordered vs disordered. The question is how to take the unfamiliar things or situations when we come across them. Most of the time the only things we hate are the unfamiliar or uncertain things and never want to see them. However, life is never that way and keeps them throwing at us time to time to give new experiences. When we are on a journey we should not fear unfamiliar thing and instead expect, welcome and accept it.  So better to be open to unfamiliar, embrace new way of life, places, things, relationships, knowing that we are entering into unfamiliar territory. Be ready to learn, be ready for a challenge, and be ready to meet someone that might just change our life forever. Make unfamiliar a wonderful learning experience rather than running away from it. At first, it's unfamiliar but later it strikes root.

Don't be afraid of unfamiliar situations, paths or things as sometimes they're the ones that take you to the best places to enrich your life. - Anonymous

Shared by one of my TCS colleague.

Why this blog?

We read some really inspiring and useful stuff here and there over the time, some we make note of but some articles are so much important and brilliant that you can not make note of few lines, entire article has to be preserved for further reading later, to reinforce the  brilliant idea it contains not once  but all the time throughout the life probably. The goal of this blog is to store all such magnificent pieces which needs re-reading, making a public blog will make the ideas available to larger audiences. I could very well give a link somewhere to the original weblink, but there is very much chance that the owner can remove the article after sometime or change location. This blog does not make me the owner of any of the info published here but just a curator of articles.

How to Achieve ALL Your Yearly Goals

by Robin Sharma

1.     Tactic #1: Do a Daily Goal Review. We live in a time of intense noise and distraction. Every morning–while the rest of the world is asleep–take just 5 pure minutes to reread and then actually rewrite your top five 2014 goals. This will boost your focus dramatically and imprint them with total clarity on your subconscious mind.

2.     Tactic #2: Go Complaint-Free. You empower everything you complain about. You strengthen the negative things you speak of. And you energize the problems you vocalize.

3.     Tactic #3: Clean All Messes. Masters of Goal Achievement are minimalists. They get that messes create distraction. And distraction reduces your power to achieve every goal you set. The messy office+the disorganized home+the dirty financial life+cluttered mind all weaken your ability to bring your natural laser-like focus to bear on your greatest desires.

4.     Tactic #4: Become an Incrementalist. Bottom line: 5 little goals done a day lead to 1850 goals achieved by December 31, 2014. An awesome work and personal life is more about evolution than revolution. Get serious about the small wins.

5.     Tactic #5: Work In 90 Day Themes. I’ve been teaching this to the billionaire clients I coach for years. The best period to set goals within is a 90 day chunk. And set a theme for every quarter. For the first 90 days of 2014, I suggest themes like “Look 10 years younger + feel 20 years stronger” or “The Quarter of Financial Transformation” or “My Best 90 Family Days” or “3 Months of Best of Breed Productivity.”

6.     Tactic #6: Imprint Your December 31 Statement. Here’s my coaching question to you: “If every single thing you want to happen over the next 12 months happened, what would it all look like?” Fast tip: Clarity is Power. Write out your answer in a single paragraph (or record it on your iPhone). Review it DAILY in your Holy Hour. You’ll go from distracted to massively concentrated. On the few things that count.

7.     Tactic #7: Join A Mastermind. You can’t do it alone. One of the reasons my online course Your Absolute Best Year Yet is one of the most powerful and advanced personal transformation programs in the world today is because you’ll get the support of other go-getters just like you over the 12 weeks of the course. You need to partner with other people. To get their encouragement. To feed off their energy. To share your hopes and dreams with theirs.

8.     Tactic #8: Outlearn Last Year’s Self. Outlearn and outthink who you were last year. As you think better, you’re certain to perform better. And all it takes is one new insight or idea–strongly acted on–to take you to a completely different place mentally + physically + financially + socially and spiritually this New Year. So do what the most successful people on the planet do: invest in your learning and self-education.