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"I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition."

Martha Washington

Creating lasting change

In times of uncertainty, people look to leaders for guidance. Imagine having the ability to positively and profoundly affect any individual, group or situation. What if you could influence and drive a team to produce exceptional results and empower them to go beyond supporting an organization to inspiring a mission-driven movement? What if you could help a loved one or co-worker identify what is stopping them from getting what they want in life and give them the tools to break through?

Creating Lasting Change: The 7 Steps to Maximum Impact guides you down the path to becoming a more effective inspirational leader. In this 10-day program, you will examine leadership from a unique perspective—the ability to influence the thoughts, feelings and actions of others.

Conquer Today's Challenges. Take Control Now.

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This year’s Miles Franklin winner – Breath by Tim Winton

breath Breath Winner Miles Franklin award for Literature 2009

by Tim Winton

This slender book packs an emotional wallop. Two thrill-seeking boys, Bruce and Loonie, are young teenagers in smalltown Australia, circa the early 1970s. Their attraction is focused on the water—ponds, rivers, the sea—but they do little more than play around until they fall in with a mysterious, older man named Sando. He recognizes their daredevil wildness and takes it upon himself to teach them to surf. As the boys become more skilled, their exploits become more reckless; narrator Bruce (nicknamed Pikelet) has doubts about where all this is heading, while the aptly named Loonie wants only bigger and bolder thrills.

http://www.pivotalbookclub.com/breath.htm

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7 Key Ways to Gesture Effectively

from "10 Days to More Confident Public Speaking"
(Chapter 5 - pages 107 - 110)
Copyright, 2001 Philip Lief Group Inc & Lenny Laskowski
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Gestures are reflections of every speaker's individual personality. What's right for one speaker may not be right for another; however, if you apply the following seven rules, you can become a dynamic, confident speaker who uses gestures well.

1. Respond naturally to what you think, feel and see. - It's natural for you to gesture. If you inhibit your impulse to gesture, you'll probably become tense.

2. Create the condition for gesturing, not the gesture. - When you speak, you should be totally involved in communicating - not thinking about your hands. Your gestures should be naturally motivated by the content of your presentation.

3. Suit the action to the word and the occasion. - Your visual and verbal messages must function as partners in communicating the same thought or feeling. Every gesture you make should be purposeful and reflective of your words so the audience will note only the effect, not the gesture itself.

4. Don't overdo the gesturing. - You'll draw the listener away from your message. Young audiences are usually attracted to a speaker who uses vigorous gestures, but older, more conservative groups may feel your physical actions are overwhelming or irritating.

5. Make your gestures convincing. - Your gestures need to be lively and distinct if they are to convey the intended impressions. Effective gestures are vigorous enough to be convincing yet slow enough and broad enough to be clearly visible without being overpowering. For example, if you are conveying excitement about a point or topic in your speech, show it in your face such as with a big smile. If you are excited and don't show it, your body language sends a negative message. Your gestures need to match your words and the mood you are conveying.

6. Make your gestures smooth and well timed. - This rule is the most important but also the hardest. Why? Gestures have to be somewhat planned in advance so you can incorporate them during your speech rehearsal. In addition, practice sessions allow you to get a sense of how early you need to start your gesture so it coincides with the point you are making. Every gesture has three parts:

* The approach-Your body begins to move in anticipation.
* The stroke-The gesture itself.
* The return-This brings your body back to a balanced posture.

The flow of a gesture - the approach, the stroke, the return - must be smoothly executed so that only the stroke is evident to the audience. While it's advisable to practice gesturing, don't try to memorize your every move. This makes your
gesturing stilted and ineffective. For example, you're standing on the left-hand side of the stage (the audience's left) and you need to use the flip chart to illustrate a
point, but the flip chart is on the far right-hand side of the stage (the audience's right). You may say to your audience. "Let's take a look at it on the flip chart."

As you start this statement begin walking toward the flip chart (the approach). Your goal is to start your gesture early enough so you can walk naturally toward the flip
chart. At the word "flip" place your hand on the flip chart. This combined walking and placement of your hand on the flip chart is the gesture or the stroke. After a
brief moment, place your hand on the flip chart and then take your hand and move it to one of your resting positions. This is the return or completion of the gesture.

7. Make natural, spontaneous gesturing a habit. - The first step in becoming adept at gesturing is to determine what, it anything, you are doing now. For example, pay attention to the gestures you use in everyday conversations and try to use these gestures during your presentation. If you prefer, you can videotape your practice speech. The camcorder or video camera is truthful and unforgiving. If you want to
become a more effective speaker, you need to make the camcorder your best friend. Recording yourself is a surefire way to eliminate your distracting mannerisms. Videotape yourself and identify your bad habits. Then work at eliminating them.

All of my private executive coaching sessions and seminars, use a video camera to help the participants "see" what they are doing and what changes they need to make. To improve gestures, practice - but never during a speech. Practice gesturing when speaking informally to friends, family members, and co-workers.

Simply Speaking...Selling Yourself & Your Ideas E-Zine

Published by Lenny Laskowski
Copyright LJL Seminars(tm), 2003
All Rights Reserved

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"If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never."

~ Søren Kierkegaard

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Outline Essay Useful Tool For Speeches

Writing an essay, taking a pop quiz, and giving a speech probably are three of the tasks students dread most. Speaking in public terrifies many people of all ages. Adolescents are not immune. It doesn't matter that they may be speaking only to their closest friends; most students feel very nervous because peer pressure is so intense. Usually there are a few students who delight at being given a chance to address their classmates. Over time with practice, the rest can learn to enjoy making oral presentations. They simply need to learn a few secrets.

The steps involved in writing a good essay are the same as those used to prepare a good speech. Both require the student first to organize his ideas and then to present them systematically. This helps readers and listeners to understand his line of reasoning.

Secret #1 is to write an "outline essay."

The first sentence answers the question, or makes a general statement. Each of the following sentences expresses a single reason or argument to support the first sentence. Think of these sentences as "bullet points;" students will elaborate on these points with facts and details in subsequent paragraphs. The last sentence offers a preliminary conclusion.

The "outline essay" becomes the first paragraph of the paper. It provides an overview of what the student is going to tell the reader. Then he actually tells him in the paragraphs that follow. Finally, he uses the final paragraph to remind the reader what he was told. The "outline essay" provides the student with a road map for presenting his ideas in an orderly manner.

The outline essay also can function as a "crib sheet" for presenting the essay's content orally to the student's classmates. So what? How does this make it any easier to stand up in front of the class and give a speech?

Here is secret #2: It is not necessary to memorize every sentence in the essay.

The other people in the class won't have a copy of the essay in front of them. They don't know what the student wrote. It won't matter if he leaves out a few minor details. All that matters is presenting the ideas in a logical sequence to make it easy for classmates to understand them. Think about it: What do folks fear most about giving a speech?

A) They are afraid of appearing foolish.
B) They are afraid of losing their train of thought.

No one enjoys listening to someone reading a speech word for word. It sounds awkward and stilted. More important, it prevents the speaker from making eye contact with individuals in the audience. A relaxed speaker can use vocal tones and voice inflections to add another dimension to the content of a paper, causing it to be even more persuasive.

Accomplished public speakers always know their material well, yet they present it as if they were merely having a conversation with the audience. After writing the essay itself, a student should be familiar with its content. It should be fairly easy to address his or her classmates about the essay's topic, referring to the outline essay occasionally to stay on track. Giving a speech provides students with a taste of what it's like to be in "Show Biz." The fear of ridicule is offset by the delicious sense of power that comes from delivering a speech, which is well received by the audience. Presenting an essay orally to classmates is excellent training for becoming a competent public speaker. This skill can be useful to students for the rest of their lives..

Michael Strong created the ColorCode System to teach his daughters afflicted with A.D.D. how to write an essay. By demonstrating visually the format of a properly structured essay, the ColorCode System enabled his daughters to grasp this important concept in less than 30 minutes. The pattern of the colors helped them think logically and organize their ideas. They used those ideas to write an outline essay, which became the first paragraph. By following the format illustrated in the color-coded sample essay, they learned how to present their ideas systematically for every essay assignment, regardless of topic. They began writing good essays and getting better grades. Both daughters gained admission to their "first choice" college. You can learn more about the ColorCode System at http://essaywritesystem.com

Michael Strong earned a Diplome from the University of Lyon, France; a B.A. in Political Science and a Master of Arts in Teaching from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. During the '60s, he served as a Page Boy in the British Merchant Marine, a Private 1st Class in the US Marine Corps and a Midshipman at the US Naval Academy. During the '70s, he taught school; opened Town Hall - the legendary Chapel Hill nightclub; managed Brice Street Band and ran the UNC Campus Mail Service. From 1983 until he retired in April 2009, he worked as a stockbroker and as a Certified Financial Planner. He and his wife Nancy have been married 38 years and live on 12 wooded acres 5 miles south of Chapel Hill NC.

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Must-Read … a masterpiece novel

Home by Marilynne RobinsonHome

by Marilynne Robinson

From the author of the magnificent, award-winning GILEAD comes a masterpiece novel that returns to the people and places of Gilead

'Robinson makes us understand home isn’t just a place—it’s something we carry with us.'


--- Download the Book Club Guide

--- Listen to a podcast from the Philadelphia Free Library

--- Download the audio of an interview in which the author reads from her book

--- Listen as the novelist talks to Claire Armistead about the novel that has won her this year's Orange prize

or just buy the book

List Price: $25.99

Discount Price: $17.15

Buy Now



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Must-read – the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

by Stieg Larsson

Girl with the dragon tattoo

Girl with the dragon tattoo

Cases rarely come much colder than the decades-old disappearance of teen heiress Harriet Vanger from her family's remote island retreat north of Stockholm, nor do fiction debuts hotter than this European bestseller by muckraking Swedish journalist Larsson.
Already being compared to The Da Vinci Code in Europe, this Swedish bestseller (first in a trilogy) has come to America.

Buy now

$24.95 $14.97


The 7 Deadly Sins of Public Speaking

Some speaking sins, like the occasional “ah” or “um”, will not doom your presentation. With good content, you can earn forgiveness from the audience for those sins.

Other speaking sins are so grave that when you commit them, your speech or presentation is certain to fail. This article reveals the seven deadly sins of public speaking.

http://sixminutes.dlugan.com/2009/09/21/7-deadly-sins-public-speaking/

Language barriers

From Stephen Downs' OLDaily: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff

When I was a child I learned that there were six colours in the spectrum. I even learned a little rhyme to help me remember. Red and orange, green and blue, shining yellow, purple too, all the colours that we know, live up in the rainbow. Somewhere along the line, someone added a colour: indigo. Ask me today what colour something is and I'll probably use one of the words in my rhyme. Indigo? Never use it, never even see it. Do I need the word for the colour to exist? Do I need to have learned the concept to distinguish indigo objects from others? This short article, unattributed but reading a lot like George Lakoff, suggests that concepts can exist even if the words don't. By Unattributed, The Economist, August 19, 2004

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Connecting with and selling to power buyers

Connecting with and Selling to
Power Buyers
with Josiane Chriqui Feigon


Josiane Feigon

You’ve increased your prospecting and marketing efforts but now realize you have invested too much time aligning with the wrong people. In today’s unpredictable economic landscape, it’s not unusual to spend time with buyers who have no power and no potential, yet make you believe they can actually do something.

There is business out there, you just have to work smarter to uncover it and get to the decision makers — the Power Buyers. It is harder than ever, but when you learn the right techniques, you’ll get more business. This session helps you focus on the Power Buyer: how to recognize them, what to say to them and if you really deserve to speak with them.

You’ll learn how to:

  • find the Power Buyers — how to recognize verbal and visual Power Buyer signs and what are common characteristics of people with high influence.
  • engage with Power Buyers — when you finally get to the Power Buyer, what do you say and how do you align and package your offerings with high value that creates curiosity and intrigue?
  • move out of the “No-Po Zone” — don’t get fooled into believing the ones with No Power and No Potential will actually do anything. Stop listening with your Happy Ears.
  • understand Power Buyer objections — you’ve been hit with a tidal wave of objections, but do you believe them all and where are they coming from?
  • determine if you are Power Buyer Worthy — do you have the self-confidence, knowledge and courage to believe you have something important to say?

Details:

Register for the 13th October or order the CD or MP3 recording. Note: Everyone who registers for the teleseminar will get the MP3 recording of the session for free.