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

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

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

So how do we address this situation? 

First of all I would like to say that there isn’t one thing that will allow all of us to become happy and follow our destiny with ease.  I think that the biggest thing we have to realize is that in order for us to find our real purpose in life; we first have to start looking!  I think intention, is the key element in actually achieving our goals.

Next, after we have decided that we want to find our ultimate mission in life, we have to look at what are the things that really make us happy.  I think that it could be most difficult undertaking, because in order for us to find the meaning in our life, we first have to get to know our selves.  Although this process can be difficult, it also can be very rewarding.  For example some people are very good communicators.  So good, as the matter a fact, that people always make fun of them, because they talk too much.  Their personality will work well in the activities that require them to communicate effectively with other people.  So they would probably enjoy profession such as a journalist or a sales person.  Then there are others who are more analytical in everything they do.  They might want to try something like being an engineer.  These seemingly little personality descriptions, can be very important indicators in our search to discover our destiny.

Here is what I did when I was trying to figure out what to do with my life.  First I wrote down all of the things I enjoyed doing (writing, teaching, personal development, trading on the stock market etc.).  Then I looked at that list and prioritized in order of what I would want to try and do first.  You see out of all of the things I enjoyed or wanted to do, I first and foremost wanted to have my own business.  So anything I would do would have to become a business, in order for me to be completely satisfied.  That is exactly how I started BurstCreativity.com.  This site allows me to teach, write, communicate, help people, but also it is an online business that allows me the freedom that I want - perfect compromise between my desires.  

It doesn’t mean that this is going to be the only thing I could be doing.  I could come up with some other activities that would allow me to fulfill the very same needs.  I also want to build businesses for example, so I am also involved in several other ventures. 

The most important part however is the fact that I try to choose what I do based on what I want.  My inner desires dictate what I do – and this is probably the key formula here.  Find out what you want and do it.

Technorati Tags: Career, Destiny, Path in life, Happiness

1.  Make lists.

If you make to do lists and employ other kinds of organizational tools, you surely will benefit from higher efficiency levels of your life.  Time management is one of the most important parts of improving anybodies efficiency. 

2.  Outsource.

This might be a controversial view, but outsourcing all of the things you do on daily basis, can be a great way to free up time and do things more efficiently.  For example if it takes you 4h/week to shop for food, you can find a service that delivers, and use those 4 hours for something much more productive - for example, spending it with your family. 

3.  Learn how to be healthy.

Not everyone would think that health could be an important factor when it comes to improving the efficiency of our daily life, but it really does make a difference.  Just ask yourself if you could be very productive if your health would prevent you from doing what you have to do every day.

4.  Automate your life.

One of the greatest concepts in internet marketing is automation.  Set as many tasks as you can to execute automatically.  This might be a little different in real life, but worth trying.  Our example about grocery shopping can be considered automation.  How many hours does it take you to get groceries every week?  What if you would get a service that would bring groceries to your doorstep every week? 

5.  Leverage whenever you can.

Leverage is a concept that is very familiar in business milieu.  It does however also apply to our regular activities as well.  Do you think it would be helpful to you if you would be able to achieve more with less effort?  Leverage through people - get other people to help you do the things it takes you a long time to complete alone.  Leverage through systems - employ systems.  An example of that could be dividing responsibilities in cooking and cleaning duties in a household.  One person cooks the other does dishes.  It is simple yet very powerful efficiency tool.

6. Plan everything.

It is a lot easier to accomplish anything if you know what it is you are trying to accomplish.  If we don’t plan, we tend to jump from one activity to another, and waist a lot of time.  Write out a clear map of what you are trying to do and follow it.  By the way a plan should never be set in stone.  It should evolve and mutate to best suit your needs as time progresses.

7.  Do all of your banking on the internet.

One of the biggest time wasters is dealing with banks.  I have noticed that those establishments eat at least 1-2 hours of our time every time you go there.  I have done majority of my banking online for several years now and I would say that it saved me at least a hundred of hours of unnecessary waste of time.

8.  Allow yourself to waist 1 hour per day.

We are bound to get distracted!  Most often it happens over and over again, so we actually end up losing quite a bit of real productive time due to distractions.  We also probably tend to get more distracted when we get tired, so over-scheduling can be a real bad thing.  My suggestion is to plan when and for how long you are going to waste time.  If you do, you might start noticing that your attention span actually increases and you are getting less distracted as the time passes by. 

9. Create a flow.

Create a flow of incoming and outgoing items.  Make a place where you would hold all incoming documents and mail.  Put everything that will require you immediate attention in that place.  Alternatively put things that need to go out, such as mail or something you will need to accomplish during the day, in your path.  By that I mean put them in a place you bound to go to on your way out – I often put those things beside my shoes.  This way there isn’t a chance that you are going to forget to do it - you won’t leave without your shoes on, so there is a good chance of you seeing those things you need to take with you.

10.  Set a time for “No Fly Zone”

This is probably one of the most valuable tips I can give.  You will increase your efficiency exponentially if you will put a conscious effort into turning off your phone, internet, locking yourself in a room where no one will disturb you, while you are working.  If you manage to isolate yourself from distractions - you will produce more work.

All these tips are simple and common sense.  We just have to implement them into our life, and the results we are seeking will start showing themselves.

Technorati Tags: efficiency, performance, better productivity, success

It was a very interesting movie, about a topic that I am very familiar with - the law of attraction.  I have used this law many times before, but I am always amazed how something external can bring things into focus with a laser sharp precision.  Case in point, my fiancée ended up on the radio as a direct result of this movie.

This is what happened:

She watched the movie and got inspired - it is a very well made program.  As they recommend, she wrote down her dreams and visualized them.  Actually, she drew a picture of a waterfall of money.  She just started a Chinese medical practice and wanted to manifest clients for herself.

So the next day all of her patients cancelled.  Instead of feeling sorry for herself she made some flyers and decided to go out there and introduce herself to the businesses around her clinic.  One of those businesses was a local magazine.    She walked in, did her spiel, and was ready to leave, when the receptionist tells her to hold on a second.  It turns out that they do a weekly radio show about health.  They were also looking for guests for upcoming shows.  And my fiancée ended up being one of those guests. 

I find that this is absolutely amazing.  All of that happened, because she manifested it. 

This speaks volumes about the power of personal development programs.  Would she have done all of that if she didn’t watch “The Secret”?  I don’t know, probably not.  A lot of these programs give you the power of inspiration, and that enables you to act.  Sometimes we only need a little push to achieve success, and programs like that give us exactly that – a little push that will help us set things in motion.  So go out there and get inspired to act - help yourself, change your life!  My fiancée is a true testament to this.

Technorati Tags: Inspiration, Success, Secret, The Secret

Just imagine the following situation. You have a competitor that constantly undercuts your prices. He often forces you into bidding wars, and generally your relationship with him is adversary. Now imagine that instead of waging the usual war, you decide to approach your competition from a different point of view. You come up with an idea of a cross promotion that will funnel your clients to him and his to you. You sell that idea to him, and you join forces in promoting this venture. It is so successful, that both of you make a lot of money from it. From then on your relationship changes; and instead of competing you join forces. You do many promotions like the first one and take your business to new heights of success. Thanks to your new partner - your former competitor.

So what can we do to incorporate more of win-win philosophy in our business? Here are a few suggestions:

1. Every time you make a decision in your business, consider how it will affect people around you. Will your decision have a positive effect on your clients, employees, competitors? If not, can there be anything done to change, improve the situation?

2. Be flexible. This is key, because if you are not flexible, the creation of win-win conditions will be impossible. Usually in order for both parties to win, they both will have to sacrifice first.

3. Communication is crucial. In order for you to be able to sell your proposal of win-win conditions you will first have to educate the other party. If you can’t do it effectively, there is no way will you be able to get them to agree to it in the first place.

4. You must sell your proposal to everybody involved. This, like any other sales process will require you to show clear benefits to the opposing party. Show them how they will win before you show them how you will.

5. Treating your employees as partners and creating win-win conditions when dealing with them, will probably be the best decision you have ever made. Your employees affect your business a lot more then your clients do, because they deal with your clients and represent you business on all levels of sales process.

6. Creating incentives can be a great tool to create win-win conditions. In selling your proposal to the opposing side, your proposal will hold a lot more weight if it comes with an incentive of one form or another.

7. Extend trust to the other party. One of the biggest problems that prevents win-win deals from happening is the lack of trust among parties involved. The surest way to start building trust is to be the first to extend it to your opponent.

8. Put your self in the other person’s shoes. Understanding where the other person is coming from, is imperative to be able to craft a strategy where both parties win.

9. Have a clear understanding of what is it that you are trying to accomplish. As with any other endeavor having clear goals will help you keep things in perspective and know when the goal has been accomplished.

Following this advice surely will allow you to develop long lasting fruitful relationships with your clients, employees and competition alike.
Business, Personal development, Success

Technorati Tags: Business, Personal development, Success

Let’s look first at what a fear really is. Most things we are afraid of are irrational. For example, a fear of spiders or mice. Those things can not really harm us, but our mind makes it out to be more then it really is, so we perceive it as if they could. This kind of division between rational and irrational fear is important to note. It would be probably not very wise to fight a fear of getting lung cancer when someone mentions that you should quit smoking. So the only fears that we should address are the fears that we know are irrational.

What do we do next? There are several ways to go here, but all of them boil down to few things we must do if we want to overcome fear.

We must examine where the irrationality of our fear comes from. Can we think of a reason why we are afraid of spiders? If yes simply acknowledge the fact don’t do anything else.

Next, we must admit to our selves that we are being irrational. Sometimes it is harder said then done, but it is unavoidable. In order for us to be able to take control over the fear, we have diminish it in our mind first.

After that, we must confront the fear. Here, smaller steps are better then big heroic leaps. So in the case of spiders, you can start by learning about spiders from a book. This will not be as effective, but with small steps we will eventually get us to the point where we can face what we are afraid off.

I need to clarify something here. Once we have confronted the fear, it will not magically disappear. As the matter a fact, you probably will not stop feeling uneasy about the thing you feared. The big difference is that you will now be able to control that fear, instead of it controlling you. Eventually if you face your fear enough times, it might diminish to the point where you will not be afraid at all. This however isn’t our goal here. What we want is to regain control over your emotions, so when you are put in the situation where you are afraid, you will be able to take control and handle whatever comes your way.

Technorati Tags: Fear, Personal Development, Success

Personal Development

Jordan Shannon presents How Positive Thinking Works | Self Development Blog posted at Self Development Blog.

ananga presents Get yourself in a state! posted at Answers from Ayurveda.

Alvin Soon presents Are You Fighting Yourself? posted at Life Coaches Blog.

Think Happy Thoughts Happiness Blog presents Look for What You Want to Find posted at Miguel Trujillo, saying, “How your brain can help you find happiness.”

Self Improvement

Karen Lynch presents The Best You posted at LivethePower.

Victor Fam presents Personal Development Articles » Archive » Making Decisions with Less the Stress posted at Personal Development Articles.

Business

Charles H. Green presents I’m OK, You’re an Idiot posted at Trust Matters, saying, “I’m an idiot, you’re an idiot. So let’s get over it, let’s work together and let’s do something great.”

Susan Velez presents The Truths To Starting A Home Business posted at The Secret To Life, saying, “Change lives with a personal development business;income opportunity. The opportunity to make six figures from home.”

David Maister presents Relationships and Romance posted at Passion, People and Principles, saying, “How to improve your business and personal relationships with the Six Rules of Romance”

Self Improvement

John presents Are you happy? posted at OhCash.com, saying, “What’s the point of living if you’re not happy? All the cash in the world will not bring you happiness if you don’t know how to live.”

Talina presents The biggest lesson I have learned in 2006 posted at Harvest of Daily Life.

Kavit Haria presents How To Deal With Choice Overload posted at Kavit’s Letters, Thoughts and Musings.

Victor presents Personal Development Articles » Archive » Eliminate Procrastination, Now! posted at Personal Development Articles.

Shamelle presents Dale Carnegie Guide To A Happier YOU posted at Enhance Life.

Chris presents Social Skills And How To Improve Them posted at How to be Cooler.

Success

John presents Know Your Sacrifices posted at OhCash.com, saying, “Starting a business takes a lot of sacrifices, and everybody knows this. But what exactly are these sacrifices and how to deal with them?”

Alan presents The Likeable Factor - Do your clients like you? posted at Made to Be Great.

Alan presents Your True Inner Potential posted at Made to Be Great.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of personal development burst using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags: personal development burst, blog carnival. ]]> http://burstcreativity.com/word/2007/02/03/personal-development-burst-2nd-edition-2/feed/ http://burstcreativity.com/word/2007/02/02/money-management-101-and-how-it-can-improve-you-life/ http://burstcreativity.com/word/2007/02/02/money-management-101-and-how-it-can-improve-you-life/#comments Fri, 02 Feb 2007 16:04:54 +0000 almomento Self Improvement Success Learning Personal Development Wealth and Get Rich Money management http://burstcreativity.com/word/2007/02/02/money-management-101-and-how-it-can-improve-you-life/ Money is a very important topic in our life. I would go so far as to say that anybody who says that it isn’t, are lying to them selves. The reality of our life is that over 70% of transactions in our life are monetary. If we do not learn how to properly manage this part of our being, we are going to be bound to life of lack and need – and nobody wants to have that kind of stress in their life. The only way to avoid this kind of existence is to become a monk and withdraw from society completely. But I do not think that a life of a monk is for everybody.

Here is a bit of background on me. When I was younger, I had a highly idealistic and almost snobbish point of view about money. I believed that money represented materialism. I, being a “highly evolved” spiritual being should not be concerned with finances. I believed that being poor or struggling financially meant that I am evolving even more. This just reinforced my conviction about being spiritual and my already inflated ego. In my opinion it did not help me be any more evolved then I am now. It did land me in debt however. So badly that I wasn’t able to pay it off for years. Constantly worrying about finances brought me more stress and nothing else but that.

I think the only great thing about struggling financially, is realizing that you have to do something about it in order for it to stop, or it never will. I also think that we learn spiritually much more from doing something to improve our present situation (or our selves) rather then simply accepting our fate, and wanting for the change to come.

When I realized that I might have been wrong about how I view money, changes began to happen in my life. I changed what I do for a living. I changed how I look at finances. I began studying what it takes to be financially successful. These changes improved the quality of my life more then two fold, and I do not think I am more materialistic then I was before.

Here are a few things I learned through out this journey:

- You must know where you want to end up financially. In other words - have a goal.

- You must have a plan of getting there. Make a strategy that will allow you to achieve your goal.

- A budget must be a part of your plan. A bookkeeping and budgeting is like a window into what is happening in your financial life. How much you are spending, where, and how much of it you can actually afford. If you do not follow a budget you can look at it as driving blindfolded in a snow storm. You can do it, but you might get in trouble.

- Have a plan where you are going to divide your money as soon as it comes in. So as soon as you get a pay check (of any sort), separate it into categories (long term investment, short term savings, budget, charity, spending money. You can use how ever many categories your plan will require.) This way you will know where every single cent is at all times.

- Learn about investing your money. This is probably the best advice I can give. Learn as much as possible. If you don’t have money to pay the “best” to do investing for you, you must take matters into your own hands and learn how to do it. Nobody will care about your money as much as you do. Learning different investment strategies will always give you a better result, then simply giving it to someone to do it for you.

Money can be compared to breathing. We don’t think about it when it comes to us easily, but it sure is a problem if it doesn’t. So, as it is important to learn how to breathe when we are born, it is also important to learn how to manage our finances. And the beauty of it all is the fact that there is a lot to learn. So let’s get started.