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Life, Personal Development and Best Advice You Will Ever Get

Vicki St. Clair is one of those very special people that help personal development industry to flourish. She is an accomplished writer, producer and journalist, Vicki has successfully created and managed an extensive range of projects, broadcast and published around the world. She works in all media, including film and video. One of her main projects right now is a radio show called Conversations Live with Vicki St. Clair (you can hear it on Seattle’s KKNW 1150am on Monday’s, or stream it on the internet on www.ConversationsLive.net).

BurstCreativity: Vicki can you tell us a little about your background and about what you do?

Vicki: I used to love writing when I was a kid and thought I’d be a writer … then life got in the way and I stopped writing. But eventually I started listening to that inner voice (which was starting to become a scream!) and 10 years ago, I left San Diego to make a career change … to become a writer. Once I was up and running, getting assignments and meeting people, things evolved and I found other aspects of the work that I was passionate about, such as documentary film. And then radio. I am now a writer, producer, and talk radio host. And also consult on commercial, corporate, and editorial projects both with visual communications and the written word. I grew up in England, moved to the states 23 years ago. Lived in San Diego, California and Seattle, Washington.

BurstCreativity: How did you first get into the field of personal development?

Vicki: I’ve always been interested in the power of human potential—I’ve always wondered since I was a child what motivates people, what makes some successful when others who are seemingly more talented are less successful in their field? What makes some people travel the world, and others stay in the same vicinity of their birth home? But like most people, I really got into it when I experienced a major life event, and as a result, decided that if I was going through this painful life event, I was going to live my life more purposefully. And on my terms. I believe we all have untapped potential and can learn from people who’ve walked their talk, so I particularly look for information from people who’ve ‘been there’ and thrived.

BurstCreativity: Tell us about the most memorable interview you have ever done and how it impacted your life on a personal level.

Vicki: Dr. Jane Goodall instantly jumps to mind for a number of reasons. Not only has she done fantastic work saving the chimpanzee population and educating kids about the environment in her Roots and Shoots program … but she was a pioneer in her field. She traveled overseas to a jungle in a time when single women simply did not travel to those places. (Her mother had to chaperone her.) She was horribly ridiculed by scientists and anthropologists, because at that time she had no formal education; and she faced real hardships, yet never gave up. She’s also the most humble, grounded, gracious person; her ‘public persona’ is no different than her behind the scenes persona. I can’t say enough about her … I just find her so inspirational to listen to, to talk with. The first time I interviewed her I left feeling that anything was possible. That I wanted to do better. To make a difference. And she made me feel that I could and should.

BurstCreativity: What in your opinion was the best piece of advice that a guest on your show gave to the listeners?

Vicki: Oh… the biggie … I actually have two. Trust your instinct. Tune in and pay attention to what your instinct is telling you … that lurch in the stomach, that catch in your throat, that gut feeling. I’ve certainly learned the hard way (more than once I’m afraid) that when I ignore that feeling, I always wish I hadn’t! Another common thread I hear from people who’ve had great, and not so great, experiences in life, and that is that we must be true to ourselves. That sounds somewhat cliché, and it’s something that comes naturally to some, while others have to work at it. But it’s worth the practice because until we are true to ourselves, in every aspect of life, we cannot become our best selves. Which also means, we cannot give our best selves.

To learn more about Vicki and her radio show, or to listen to a stream of her show go to: www.ConversationsLive.net

Technorati Tags: Vicki St-Clair, Personal Development, Radio

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Mastering Communication 101 - Part 2

In the first part of this mini-course, we learned that listening is very important for effective communication.

Challenge 4

Translate your (and others) complaints and criticism in specific requests, and to explain your requests. To obtain more cooperation from the other, whenever possible, ask what you want from the specific, action-oriented, positive language rather than through the use of generalizations, “why , “” Don’ts “or” someone should’s. “Help your listeners explaining fulfill your requests with a” so that …”, “help me … If you want …” or “so ….” Similarly, when you receive criticism and complaints from others, translate and reformulate the request as a request for action. …. “).

Challenge 5

Ask questions more “openendedly” and more creative. “Openendedly …”:

In order to coordinate our work with life and the lives and work of others, we all need to know more about what other people are feeling and thinking, wanting and planning. But our usual “yes / no” in fact people tend to be closed rather than open. To encourage your conversation partners to share more of their thoughts and feelings, to ask “open-ended” rather than “yes / no”. Open-ended questions allow a wide range of responses. For example, by asking, “How did you get that food / cinema / speeches / doctor / etc.” Promote a more detailed response, “Did you like?” (Who could be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”). In the first part of the Challenge Five, we explore calling for a broad range of open-ended questions.

“And more creative …” When we ask questions, we use a powerful tool for language conversation to focus our attention and guide interactions with others. But many of the issues that we have learned to ask are totally sterile and self-defeating (for example, parents of a pregnant teenager, “Why ???!!! Why have you done this to us? ??!!!”). Normally, it would be more fruitful to ask “how” questions about the future rather than the “why” questions about the past, but there are many more creative possibilities that

Good. Billions of questions one might ask, all are not as successful or insightful, all are not as useful for solving problems together. In the second part of Challenge Five explore we call creative force with the questions many areas of life.

Challenge 6

Express more satisfaction.

Building more satisfying relationships with the people around you, express more satisfaction, pleasure, affirmation, encouragement and recognition. Because life compels us constantly to attend to problems and outages, it is very easy to see in life what is broken and must be fixed. But fulfilling relationships (and a happy life) require us to notice and respond to what is pleasant, excellent, pleasant to work, to food well cooked… It is the appreciation that made a relationship strong enough to accommodate differences and disagreements. Some thinkers and researchers in different fields have reached similar conclusions on this subject: healthy relationships need a basis of mutual appreciation.

Challenge 7

Adopt the “continuing education” approach to life, which makes improving communication an important part of your daily life. To get your new communication skills available in a wide variety of situations, you need to put them into practice in such a variety of situations as possible until, as driving a vehicle or bicycle, they become ” second nature. ” The seventh Challenge To practice your evolving communication skills in daily life, solving problems together, giving emotional support to important people in your life, and we appreciate the way you become a positive influence in Your World. This challenge is learning to see every conversation as an opportunity to grow in skills and awareness, every encounter as an opportunity to express more satisfaction, each argument as an opportunity to translate queries in the complaints, and so on.

Although I have a long road ahead of me to become a master of communication, I think that communication is an integral part of any relationship, be it at home, with friends, or at work. Research has always shown that a deficiency in this skills can completely ruin relationships. The foundation strong interpersonal skills is not just to make you hear, but also an understanding of where other people are coming from.

Technorati Tags: personal development, communication, relationships

How to Jump Into the Cold Water

Have you ever gone into cold water, so cold that from the first step you start rethinking your desire to be there?  How do you handle that situation?  Are you one of those people that will simply jump in?  Or do you torture yourself by taking one painful step at a time? 

I went to personal development seminar once, and one of the concepts that they taught us was: “How you do anything, is how you do everything”.  Basically what they were trying to say was that if you are a person that will simply jump into the cold water, you will also carry that trait into other areas of your life.  If we take starting a business as an example, you would simply go at it 100%, as opposed to doing endless preparation before you actually do anything productive.

The “Simply jump in” attitude has both advantages and drawbacks.  One of the great things about this outlook on life is the fact that it initiates action.  Inaction is the greatest peril in the way of accomplishing absolutely anything.  Unfortunately we are all susceptible to it to some degree.  The flipside of this concept is that sometimes we can act too fast, and that bears a whole new set of consequences.

So what is the best solution to this problem of making our selves take action, but acting at the “right time”? 

I often bring this up in my articles, but balance is very important in anything that we do.   To apply this concept to what we are discussing – we should “simply jump in”, but at the same time we should also be able to stop out selves long enough to do some necessary due diligence. 

The other solution to inaction is a simple piece of advice – “Get over your-self”.  It might be a bit harsh, as a statement, but I believe that it is a vital thing to do in our life in general.  People tend to over analyze a lot of what they do.  Often we simply need to push ourselves to jump into the cold water, so that we can feel less cold after we do.

Last but not least, we should talk about having motivation to be able to “jump”.  It is easy to say that we should “just jump”.  The simple fact is that if we are not motivated to do so, if the reward at the end of the “jump” isn’t big enough to get us to do it, we simply are not going to jump.  This is a very crucial point.  Imagine that you are standing on the shore of a very cold ocean.  Would you be able to force yourself to jump into it if you didn’t really want to swim?  Probably not!  

People, who are exceedingly successful in life, all have one thing in common.  They all live their passion.  What would be a better motivator then being passionate about what you do?  So the very first thing you have to do before taking any action is to ask yourself a question – is what I am about to do what I really want?  And if it is, or it will give you something that you really want, or bring you to that place where your passion lives – don’t think, even if it is unpleasant at first, simply jump!

Technorati Tags: Personal Development, Success, Fear, Self Discipline