From Fear and Paralysis to Positive Action

By Sandra Sinclair

When you feel paralyzed about taking action toward a desired goal, fear of failure could be a possible reason. Fear of failure can be a huge obstacle to taking positive action toward your desired outcomes, because so much personal esteem and happiness can depend on the outcome. After all, attempting something important to you, only to fail at accomplishing it, can potentially make you feel less than capable or deserving, or even crushed at the outcome. So in order to prevent this from happening, its often easier to just never try at all.

If trying and not reaching your desired goal would feel terrible, then dreaming about it and not taking action can feel far more comfortable. That way, you can dream about what you want and then create reasons for inaction to make yourself feel better about never trying to reach your goal. You may even convince yourself that you could do it, but rather than risk failure, you can just dream, and stay safe. This is a natural, self-protective mechanism. Your mind is truly brilliant, and knows how to protect you from getting hurt.

To change fear of failure into a force for positive action, you may have to change your thinking about what your desired outcome means to you in terms of your own happiness. This may surprise you, because what Im suggesting is quite different from what we usually hear. Were usually told something like: If you dont want it enough, youll never get there, Nothing easy is worth having etc. Or even the much more seemingly innocuous What would make you happy? The overall message is that if its worth having, its going to involve a lot of pain and struggle, but to achieve happiness, you must achieve this outcome.

However, if your very happiness is riding on the success or failure of this venture, you can literally block yourself from trying, because so much is riding on the result.

So at this point, you can ask yourself these questions:

How much do I need to achieve this outcome in order to be happy?

If I was still able to desire my goal without actually needing it in order to be happy, what would happen? In other words, can I accept reaching or not reaching my desired outcome and still be happy?

What would happen if I chose to be happy right now?

You may say that having this attitude of happiness now could cause you to lose motivation for your goal, your purpose, or motivation for anything, for that matter, but I have another proposal for you: What if actually being happy right now, whether or not you accomplish your desired outcome, actually made you more powerful in reaching it? You may find that wanting a goal without attachment to the outcome can change paralysis into positive, inspired action.

Does this attitude change guarantee that youll reach your goal? No, you may not reach your desired outcome, even with this attitude. However, youre probably much more likely to achieve what you want through happiness and ease than through efforting and struggling against fear of failure and paralysis.

You may also say that its not that simple to just decide to be happy that its not the way the world works. But the truth is that happiness is a decision, just as unhappiness is a decision. It can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. Its a decision thats independent of your past experience, and of others actions and opinions, unless you wish it so. No one can tell you what to believe or think. Any beliefs that were handed to you early on about the way the world works, what youre supposed to feel or what youre capable of are only truthful if you decide that they are.

You decide your own truth, every moment.

Sandra Sinclair

Sandra Sinclair is a personal development coach and author of The Happy Path Mini-Course- 5 clear steps you can take to create your ideal life, a free mini-course, at: http://www.thehappypath.com/

Practice Self Talk and Postive Affirmation Statements in Your Life

Positive self-talk means purposely giving yourself positive reinforcement, motivation, and recognition- just as you would do for a friend. Congratulate yourself when you do well, and remind yourself of your abilities, accomplishments, strengths and skills. Keep a to-do list, check off accomplishments, and review your progress periodically.

Make self-talk work for you. When you habitually say to yourself has a very profound impact on your self-image, your self-esteem, and your performance as well as eventual success. Remember that your subconscious triggers physiological responses to match the pictures and thoughts that you have of yourself to make them happens. Make this work for you by keeping your self-talk positive.

For example say to yourself either I did a good job on that changing a friends oil even though I took a quart and for myself or I did a good job of not paying a good friend the cost of supplies for the efforts he did for me .

Stop negative self-talk. You may well be quick to nag yourself because your mother wanted you to more than perfect. However, negative self talk can be damaging because your subconscious believes what you say to your when you repeat that negative talk in your mind over and over. How is your subconscious to know otherwise? If you catch yourself using negative self-talk, stop and rephrase. Eliminate the negative words. Focus instead on the best course you can take and do it.

Make positive communications a habit. Focus on the positive in goal statements, self-talk, and all communications. Compare the following phrases, and notice how the positive words convey confidence, commitment, and enthusiasm.

For example instead of I will try substitute the phrase I will . Instead of saying to you I should do insert the phrase I will do . Try saying I want to or I choose to instead of the more common I must .

Focus with affirmation statements. Affirmative statements are positive self-statements or reminders to help you achieve goals. They are positive messages with a punch mental bumper stickers of sorts to motivate your subconscious mind to work for you.

Here are guidelines to help you to use the powerful tool of affirmative statements as vital mental reminder technique.

1) Make the statements personal to yourself. Not arbitrary or generic. Use the phrase I , your own name , or you

2) Keep affirmations short. How can you use the affirmations if you cannot remember them?

3) Phrase your affirmations positively. The mind accepts as truth the words that you give it. Use positive words only as affirmations. Leave out any negative words. For example say I will not be nervous during my interview with the warden . Rather say I will be calm and self-assured during my interview

4) Include a positive emotion. A phrase that triggers a positive emotion strengthens the affirmation. For example My goals are valuable and it excites me.

5) Phrase affirmations as fact. Phrase a goal as though it is happening even if you have not achieved it yet. Your subconscious believes mental messages and works to make them a reality.

6) Say your affirmation at least 6 times a day. Repetition is life. Repetition enhances self-confidence, acts as a reminder, and stimulates your subconscious to help you achieve your goals in life.

It cannot be overstated the impact that positive self talk and affirmative statements can help you towards the vital goals that you have identified in your life. Remember that without goals even if you work hard you are like a ship without a rudder.

These powerful tools of positive self talk and positive affirmations can more than help speed you along to your chosen goals.

Bill Piker old dog!'s Blog blog.360.yahoo.com/blog/slideshow.html?p=3id=ROjOVC8wIv9KijBAErka www.aceemploymentservices.net

The Best Learning Tool

Copyright 2006 Donovan Baldwin

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

What do these people have in common? Walt Disney, Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, Joanne Rowling (Author of the Harry Potter books), just to name a few.

Well, I'll give you a hint. You might say they all attended the same school. Took some of the same courses, in a manner of speaking.

Every one of them is famous today, and is considered to be the model of a successful person. However, at times in their lives, and not just during the early years, they had pretty much either failed, or had not achieved anything of note in their lives.

They all attended, in one form or another, the school of hard knocks. But, they learned in that school, and they eventually accumulated enough knowledge, enough common sense, enough experience, enough guts, maybe, to rise to a point where their names have been recorded as a part of history.

Oh sure, circumstance played a part. Had not World War II happened along, Winston Churchill would have remained a has-been rather than becoming one of the world's most famous statesmen. Had Abraham Lincoln caught a fatal disease in his youth, we would never have known his name, and how much of our world would be different?

We have to look at our lives and our circumstances in this light. I AM here now, and I CAN make various choices. One of the choices is to do nothing. One of the choices, however is to take a stand, give it the old college try, go out swinging...pick your literary cliche.

In the world of network marketing and internet marketing, those with experience and "success" can almost to a person tell story after story of failure, embarassment, defeat, rejection, and depression. I've never met a person yet who joined a program and was making appreciable amounts of money in just a few days. I've HEARD about such things, and I am sure that there are a few who have either had the skill or luck to create a huge network business practically overnight. However, it doesn't happen to most of us.

What DOES happen to most of those who sign up for a network marketing program is that while we AREN'T experiencing overnight success, we DO experience failure, embarassment, defeat, rejection, and depression, not to mention other "...slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." This combination of negative pressures without any offsetting positives (I'm talking about income) in the early stages of a network or internet business causes most of the so-called "failures" and drop-outs in the networking world.

The sad part is that most of these people do not truly become "failures" until they actually give up. Yes, some will never be successful, but that is true about anything from brain surgery to law to flipping burgers. Some people are just not going to be good at certain things. Some people are going to be in the wrong place at the wrong time almost every time, but that does not mean that they are failures or should be branded as such by themselves or by anyone else.

Temporary failure, if we can see it that way, is not just a course in the school of hard knocks, it is a coach. Just as a coach may pit a boxer, wrestler, or entire team against a tougher opponent in hopes of teaching them to overcome such opponents, failure gives us the opportunity to learn new skills and to unlearn old, useless skills. Those who continue to grow through this process are the ones who will eventually be labeled "successful".

It is necessary to see the obstacles that a new marketer faces as training experiences, not as an insurmountable or immoveable objects.

The sad part is that so many people recruiting for network marketing programs go out of their way to play up the potential gains of the business while failing to prepare the new player for the difficulties of the game. Many of us who have achieved varying degrees of success in network marketing or internet marketing can tell many of the same stories. We tried all kinds of programs, methods, and techniques. We bought, or bought into, all kinds of books, programs, software, and miscellaneous mumbo-jumbo. We did it because we were ignorant, and perhaps a little greedy, but eventually we learned, and eventually we succeeded.

I now make a living off the internet, the mystical target, the six-figure-income. However, beside me is a bookcase full of books, on top of my work station are all kinds of software, loaded onto my computer are many programs, tucked into nooks and crannies around the room are folders full of papers. Among all of these are many things that I use to promote and grow my business, but, to tell the truth, I could probably dispose of ninety percent of it and never miss it. I have spent so much time following the wrong paths, and so much money (my term is "accidental tuition") buying things that did little or nothing for me. And yet, I cannot truly regret all that because I never gave up the idea that some day I would succeed, and each "failure" just was another lesson learned. Eventually, all those lessons reached the point where one day my wife looked at me and said, "You know all those ads you use to read to me about making a six-figure-income?"

I replied, "Yes. What about it?"

She said, "You are."

I had graduated from the school of hard knocks, at least for the time being, but I did not grauate because I was brilliant. I graduated because I didn't give up.

Wow! Me and Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln.....! Okay, I'll shut up now, but I started with a quote and I'll end with one.

"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." -- Walter Bagehot

Donovan Baldwin is a Dallas area writer and internet entrepreneur. A graduate of the University of West Florida, Pensacola, and a member of Mensa, he creates website content for his own use and that of other webmasters. He offers home based internet business opportunities at www.donovanbaldwin.com/

Hopes Dreams: A Critical Ingredient In The Lives Of Caregivers And Their Loved

Its human nature to hang onto two basic hopes the hope of overcoming illness and the hope of delaying death. However, in many cases the reality is that your loved one faces a steady medical decline, a life-threatening illness or impending death.

Hope is like the vase that contains your sweet-smelling colorful dreams. Dreams, like flowers, change over the seasons of life and the stages of caregiving. Yet, no matter how desperate the situation, there is always room for hope and dreams. It is the magical salve for the suffering of caregivers and their loved ones.

Hope is the optimistic belief that you can expect a better tomorrow.

Sometimes that better tomorrow happens as a result of something that changes in the outside world such as a new drug or unexpected help. Sometimes the better tomorrow arrives because you see things from a new perspective. Hopes and dreams become the guiding light for the tough choices that you and your loved ones face.

Here are 7 tips for hanging onto hope:

1. Give a voice to your secret longings, wishes and dreams.

If you had a magic wand, what would you wish for? Maybe its turning back the sands of time and taking away the car keys from your father instead of sitting at his hospital bedside where he is recovering from the car accident he caused. Maybe its imagining that youll turn on the news and learn of a new miracle cure for the cancer thats taking over your mothers body or for the dementia thats erasing your grandmothers memories. Hope might be something simple like a good nights sleep for you and your loved one. Say it out loud, We could use a good nights sleep.

2. Define the reality.

In the course of taking care of tens of thousands of patients, Ive seen miracles happen. However, most people experience likely events. Grasp an understanding of your current reality based on whats most likely to happen naturally.

When you define the most likely outcome, it helps you decide where to place your hopes. For example, a friend of mine who is a family doctor told me of a conversation between him and a loving mother whose 6-year-old child had a relapse of leukemia after a bone marrow transplant. There was an experimental treatment offered halfway across the country. The mother wanted to know where to take her child: to a new hospital across the country for lots of pokeys as her son called them, or Disneyland to enjoy the final days of his life. Does she hope for a cure, or for the fullest remaining days of her childs life?

3. Recognize your loved ones hopes may be different than your own.

The mother of the 6-year-old made the medical choices for her son. What if the person with the leukemia is your father, who is competent to make his own medical choices? Maybe you cannot bear the thought of losing him and hope that a new treatment will cure him. Maybe your father shares that perspective. However, what if he considers experimental treatment with certain discomfort and an uncertain benefit and decides he would rather live out his days enjoying his grandchildren?

You may find it difficult to support him. You do not want to burden your loved onea with your disappointment that he has placed hope in a different place than you would if you were in his shoes. Thats when you turn to a trusted friend and say, I wish Dad would make a different choice. I want him to fight. Im sad and angry that hes chosen death.

4. Honor your loved ones hopes.

As a caregiver, its important to understand that your loved one is the patient. Its his or her body and life. As much as you think you know what the best choice is, your job is to help your loved ones realize their hopes.

5. Mourn the loss of the old dream.

Gretta said, Mom had always hoped to live all of her days in her home filled with the memories of Dad and small children and happy holidays...and not so happy holidays. It just wasnt safe any more. We moved her to a terrific retirement community that has everything she wants, including a beautiful garden. Still, shes sad because its not what she had always imagined.

You too could have a dream of a healthy and independent loved one thats hard to let go of. The loss of a dream can be as painful as the loss of a loved one. Mourning the loss of a dream brings healing.

6. Create a new dream.

You can still have hopes and dreams! Theyre just different. Maybe the hope for cure is replaced with the hope for days or hours or moments free of pain. Maybe its the dream that your fragmented family will come together and heal old wounds around the deathbed.

State your dreams as attaining something you want rather than avoiding something you dont want. As medical conditions change, its important that you and your loved one revisit the dream. If youre disappointed about the course of events, ask, Is this the loss of a dream, or a hope I can fulfill?

7. Focus on your loved one.

Always remember, caregiving is first and foremost about supporting the person you love. Yes, you as a caregiver have hopes and dreams. Maybe the heart of caregiving is the willingness to fulfill the hopes and dreams the vase filled with brilliant blooms of those for whom you care whether or not you hold the same vision.

Follow these tips, and you will be sure to hold onto your hopes and dreams. Remember, no matter how desperate the situation, there is still hope for the dream. The dream will change as the condition of your loved one change. Just like theres always a flower to put in a vase -- theres always hope.

Dr.Vicki,board-certified surgeon who left operating room to help families take the most direct path from illness to optimal health.Her book,The Personal Health Journal,will help you understand direct your loved ones health story. Empower yourself with the tips tools that will help you partner with their doctor more effectively; save your loved ones life at: www.drvicki.org/drvicki-store-health-journal.html

MP3 Players: Why You Should Buy One

AN MP3 player will be relatively small price to pay for your grand victory behind a poker table and I do not mean that as a joke. Studies conducted over past years have proved direct connection between player's performance during the poker game and the type of music these players listened to while playing it online or at live casinos.

What can we say about poker game? This game is full with emotions as well as strategic moves and considering the number of books written on that theme, I can assure you that poker game is here to stay for a very long time. Students, college professors, professional players and simply lucky gamblers want to discover the naked truth behind the game, and frankly, we are slowly getting closer to the answer. If that is the case, then music will be the first phenomenal aspect of poker gaming around the world to receive high media hype because music can touch people's souls.

The greatest artists who ever lived on the planet can tell you that music has great impact on human brain, almost hypnotic, if I may. For instance, it can help sick people to get well, encourage children to overcome their fears, program individual success in terms of relationship or accomplish positive thinking, which is a clear psychological mark. What seems very natural to us is not a coincidence, but rather a solid theory based on years of profound research - music can program person's mood and shift it one way or the other like talented magician can make the girl appear or disappear on his command. But since we do not live in the circus, that theory must prove itself in real life.

We must see the influence of music in order to believe in it, but here comes the question skeptics would definitely ask: how can we see or recognize something unobservable, especially when it happens online or in a land based casino? I give ten percent to every skeptical question because not even one theory can be one hundred percent reliable, what leaves us with ninety percent assurance. Before I continue our discussion, I suggest you to try the following exercise: listen to your favorite song and try to think about something, the very first thing that comes into your mind. After you done that, play something that you normally dislike or turn off your TV when you hear this composition and do the thinking exercise again. I bet in the first case you thought about something nice like hot chocolate in the cold winter or your loved ones as oppose to the second time when you felt some unexplained disturbance and irritation.

The secret is very simple my friend: some type of music can bring happy emotions while other rhythms awake negative feelings. Your poker game will be directly influenced by your emotional state and result in explicit consequences. Are you ready to buy that MP3 player now and fill it with winning melodies? Before you pay your next visit to online poker room or land based casino, I suggest investing a few bucks into that little magical device, because it will take your poker game to the new levels. If peaceful melodies suggest higher level of concentration in poker room and help to prevent external disruptions, then beats loaded with negative energies will motivate aggressive behavior and players should avoid that at any cause.

Jack Reider edits reviews of online casinos , poker rooms and flash casinos but he also edits a musical theme site.

How To Get Into The Zone

Alan C. Walters, an author and motivational expert, has often been "in the zone." He calls it the Golden Magic Zone.

In his book, The Secrets to Increasing Your Wealth, Power, and Happiness, he describes one of his remarkable experiences.

Once I wanted to purchase an airplane, a turbo-charged Beech Bonanza, that cost $38,000; I had $3,000.

I circled the advertisement in red ink and thought, "How am I going to turn this $3,000 into $38,000?"

An idea flashed to mind: Play Blackjack!

It was a Sunday morning. I got into my car and drove 280 miles to John Ascuga's Nugget in Sparks, Nevada, a suburb of Reno.

I sat down with two other people at a table that had a $400 a hand limit. I cashed my $3,000 for chips and bet $400 on two positions.

I played for twenty minutes and bought cards three times by double downing an ace, two, and received an eight each time.

I hit blackjack twenty-three times in twenty minutes; I had a huge pile of chips. The first time I lost a hand, I quit.

Picking up my chips and taking them to the cashier, I found I had won $58,000; I had $46,000 after taxes.

I purchased the Bonanza for $34,000, cash.

On my first flight, I blew the engine over Aurora, Oregon. Looking down, I saw a small airport. It had no radio, so I landed with great billows of black smoke pouring from the engine. I didn't know where I was, and the airport was surrounded by trees and hedges.

With several taxiways disappearing into the trees, something made me choose a taxiway toward the south end of the field.

As I taxied between those trees, I saw an old, broken-down shed. I stopped the plane in front of the shed, climbed out and walked through the front door. There I saw an elderly man putting away tools.

"Is there anyone at this airport who really understands turbo-Bonanzas?" I asked.

The man smiled. "Well," he drawled. "Up until last week, I was the foreman and head mechanic of Bonanza West, over at Portland Airport."

Amazing! (I was in the right place at the right time).

I had him replace the engine and do a complete overhaul of the plane. It cost $12,400, the exact amount I had left from my winnings. I flew that plane for ten years and never had another problem.

What are the factors that create this unique experience?

Dr. Perry Mitchell, a psychologist and public speaker, has identified some critical elements that can help anyone step into the zone.

Since what you focus on expands, you get into the zone when you naturally capitalize on your strengths and get over your mistakes quickly.

If you enjoy what you do, you will effortlessly create a momentum that can carry you into the zone, a state where you are focused, relaxed, and self-trusting.

People rarely enter the zone because they completely believe in two myths about success.

One is that to do well you have to work hard. The result of this, of course, is that since you want to do well to succeed, you believe that working harder and harder will get you closer and closer to your goal. What it does, however, is increase pressure, anxiety, and fear. Instead of doing better, you actually do worse as you fatigue and tense up.

Another myth is that pain is good. It has been particularly popularized in sports with the slogan, "no pain, no gain." Again, increasing pain results in a state of exhaustion and the cessation of effort toward your goal.

These myths are so ingrained in the collective unconsciousness that most people operate on them without even noticing them. They feel that they are not making progress unless they feel a sense of strain and effort. And they doubt if something can be good for them if it doesn't cause discomfort.

What keeps these two myths operating is what Dr. Mitchell calls the "Critical Advisor." In Freudian terms, this would be the Super-Ego. It is an ego state that is omnipresent and works on you by making you doubt anything and everything, especially your own self-worth. It is your inner map of how you should be and persistently criticizes you for not measuring up. It considers negative motivation to be necessary for your success.

To get into the zone, you have to shut off the Critical Advisor and get into the "Hands Free Zone." This term is based on an analogy. When you are riding a bicycle without holding the handlebars, you're in the "hands free zone."

When you are in the Hands Free Zone you are soaring. When you are in it, you are focused, but in a relaxed way, like a karate expert, who is both alert and relaxed enough to strike quickly at an opponent. However, once you start to notice that you are focused,
the Critical Advisor leaps in and puts you down, thus cutting off the evenly flowing psychic energy that was putting you in the zone.

The Critical Advisor has a contest mentality and a critical mentality. The contest mentality is polarity. An evaluation of whether you are good or bad, performing well or poorly. The critical mentality is the belief that you are not good enough to do it well, not worthy of accomplishment. It constantly looks at results.

Thus, the Critical Advisor operates on a polarity paradigm and a results paradigm. Since its job is to criticize you in the belief that this will steer you in the right direction (negative motivation), it cuts off any flow or zone states. You are so focused on not making a mistake that you manifest mistakes. By trying not to miss the ball flying at you, you fumble and let it slip through your fingers. By trying not to hit the lake as you make your golf swing, you send it straight into it .

The way to avoid "choking" is to turn the Critical Advisor off. You do this by being willing to consider multiple options. And you do this by focusing on the process, not the results.

If there are more than two options, then the polarity of right and wrong lose their grip on you. Similarly, if you're still in process, you can't judge results.

Doing it right is relevant to the Critical Advisor. But to the person in flow, doing it is all that matters. When you are just doing it, not worrying about whether you are good or bad at it, not concerned about results, then you are in the zone.

In the zone, you surge (enter the Hands Free Zone), recover (from the Critical Advisor), and surge again (back in the Hands Free Zone).

In relationship to time, the Critical Advisor seeks to either dominate the past or the future.
In reviewing the past, it stirs the emotion of guilt and regret. In previewing the future, it stirs the emotion of doubt and anxiety.

A person in the zone, focuses on the present, which completely removes all the negative emotions that arise from contemplating the past or the future.

There are two formulas for getting into the zone.

In the first formula, you do the following:

1. Notice what is happening right now.
2. Weigh all your options (also called the magic of the third option).
3. Learn from your experiences.
4. See what is different.

In the second formula, you do the following:

1. You perform a centering ritual. For example, a basketball player may bounce the ball three times before shooting for the net.
2. You perform a mental rehearsal. The basketball player envisions the ball arcing and flying into the center of the hoop.
3. You optimize. Turn up the volume, so to speak. Releasing the ball into the air.
4. Finally, you capitalize on what you did well. Say a loud "yes" with a clenched fist as the ball slides perfectly into the hoop. This reinforces the subconscious.

Getting into the zone is possible. But it is a skill more than just luck. And like any skill, you have to practice to get good at it.

Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul

Strategies Of The Most Successful People In The World

By alvin donovan

"People are strategies waiting to be discovered."
Definition: Strategies are the particular sequence of internal and external representations that lead to a specific outcome. Human experience is an endless series of representations. To deal with this endless sequence it is useful to punctuate it in terms of outcomes.

Some major categories of strategies are excellence, decision, learning, motivation, buying and convincer.

The key to all successful persuasion is being able to "aim" or "sequence" your message at the person you are persuading in such a way that they can not say no because it is what they are already doing all of the time.

People have a naturally developed "sales/persuasion" resistance. So, your job is to elegantly present whatever you say in a way that blows right by any resistance.

In fact, it makes the person salivate to hear more and take action on what you say because it is how they normally do it all the time.

After all who normally likes to say no to themselves?
You must learn to think, talk and write in terms of process not content, to immediately become successful in persuasion.

Think of it this way, process is the direction and content is the method of travel. Obviously, if you spend all of your time concentrating on your method of travel, you will not get very far.

Questions like, "What caused..." and "How did you decide to..." will get you process information. The best ways to uncover process oriented information is to listen for it with your ears and look for it with your eyes as the person you are persuading talks. They give it to you left and right.

In fact, they cannot not give you their strategies because it is what they are doing all of the time. With practice, persons strategies will be as obvious to you as their name, clothes they are wearing etc.

General strategy elicitation and employment:
1.Determine outcome
2.See, hear, feel, make sense a movie doing it perfectly and step into it.
3.Put yourself in the optimum physiology, attitude and intention for excellence.
4.Establish rapport.
5.Check wiring.
6.Ask basic questions: "How do you decide, know etc. What happens first?"
7. Use all accessing cues: Look with your eyes and listen with your ears.
8. Calibrate.
9. Backtrack to get the next step.
10. Make sure you get a logical sequence.
11. Make sure you have all the key functional pieces.
12. Beware of your own bias toward your own strategies.
13. Elicit major representational modalities until complete.
14. Unpack criteria lists
15. Elicit and do not install: More than one option, use contrast, counter example.
16. Feedback the sequence wrong and calibrate. Take a picture.
17. Feedback the sequence right and calibrate. Take a picture.
18. Cycle for intensity and keep going for the right picture until you readily truly achieve your outcome.

Convincer strategy elicitation and employment- It is the process one goes through in their mind in order to become convinced. Once I know it and use the process and fill it in with my product or service they will buy.

Here is how it works
a) Ask "How do you know when X? i.e. How do you know when an investment is one that you will buy (sell)? What is the procedure you (or the investment committee) goes through from start to finish?

You will get one of five answers
i) see
ii) hear
iii) read about
iv) Do or feel
v) Criteria lists

Then ask
b) How many times do you need to X to convince yourself?

You will get one of four answers
i) Number of times
ii) Length of time
iii) Automatic response- right away.
iv) Consistent response- each time.

Now you- Cycle through and do it wrong, calibrate. Take a picture. Cycle through and do it right, calibrate. Take a picture. Let the correct cycle be your first PPP and keep cycling for intensity until you achieve your outcome.

Personal training tip
Instant decision to agree (buy):
Ask "When have you looked at something and knew it was absolutely right for you, it was the perfect thing for you and you have been right through the years?"

Watch where they focus their eyes and present your product at that good
convincer spot.

Hint- you might need to ask
"What was it?"

Criteria List
Without unpacking and using a persons criteria, you will never succeed in your persuasion efforts. You will discover the persons criteria in the "criteria list" step of their strategy.

Using this information will allow you to "customize" everything you say so that it has the maximal effect on that person-right then.

The reason is that the criteria list is what we use to "test" if something is a good decision or not.

Here is how to do it now:
The question to ask to elicit criteria list is:
"What is important about (here fill in the context) for you?"

EXAMPLE:
1. What is important about investments to you?
2. What is important about improving your influence skills?
3. What is important about a X you will buy?

Criteria-It is what a person uses to decide if something is good/bad etc. As he cycles through his decision process, his criteria must be met for him to make a yes decision. It is what drives a person to take action or to avoid it.

The more closely your product or service matches the person criteria that you are persuading, the more impact you will have.

For influencing purposes, the more you refer to their criteria list and link it to your product, service or proposal, the more impact you will immediately have.

Criteria, properly used, can eliminate any objection.
However, you do not stop there. Once you get the answer to the question, above, you then ask it repeatedly until you get a "hierarchy" or Criteria List of value information that will absolutely stun you as to its effectiveness.

Then, cycle through once and do it wrong, calibrate. Take a picture. Cycle through once and do it right, calibrate. Take a picture. Let the correct cycle be your first PPP keep cycling for intensity until you achieve your outcome.

Fill in the blanks with your criteria for learning this information.

The function of criteria- All criteria serves to move a person towards an objective or away from a problem. This is called, for simplicity the Towards/Away pattern. This is the basis for all motivation.

Toward- Words like: Attain, Achieve, Goals, Include; Accomplish, Solutions are what you will hear when a persons criteria is moving them toward.

Away from- Words like: Avoid, Get Away From, Evade, Exclude, are what you will hear when a persons criteria is moving them away from.

The question to ask to determine move toward/away is:

"What will having (name their criteria) do for you?"

Examples of move toward answers:
1. Q. What will having a passive income do for you?
A. It will enable me to buy more of what I want.

2. Q. What will having high quality do for you?
A. It makes me feel good knowing that I can afford the best.

3. Q. What will having superior influence skills do for you?
A. It makes accomplishing all my goals easier and faster.

Examples of move away answers:
1. Q. What will having a passive income do for you?
A. It makes sure I won't have to work when I get older.

2. Q. What will having high quality do for you?
A. It guarantees me that what I buy won't break down.

3. Q. What will having superior influence skills do for you?
A. If I have superior influence skills, I won't get told no as often.

Now, cycle through one time to calibrate that you have it. Take a picture. Let the cycle be your first PPP to link the criteria to your product and keep cycling for intensity until you achieve your outcomes.

Alvin Donovan, founder of the investment bank www.KiwiGrowthPartners.com, is the co author of Make More Money NOW and has also been a consultant/faculty member for several of the world's largest management institutes.

To Self Improve You Must Flow Like Water

By Robin OBrien

Water is found in all living things but it is never contained. Somehow, somewhere it will escape and flow where it wants. To find true happiness you must allow your mind to escape and flow like water.

It was once thought that all life on earth needed 3 things: light, warmth and water, but today scientists have found living organisms deep within caves that never receive light and even bacteria buried deep in the sub-zero ice caps of Antarctica. Life doesnt need light or warmth but one thing is now known to be essential: water.

Water cannot be contained. Sooner or later it escapes and travels on a journey of its own inclination. A river flows, not in a fixed route, rather it follows the contour of the land and, if the landscape changes, the river changes course. The river follows the easiest route, the path of least resistance. Its course may change many times, it may even reach an impasse and form a lake, but eventually it finds its journeys end: the sea. Even man-made waterways, such as canals, dont contain or control water. Glass contains water but cannot keep it. If you ever look at a truly old piece of glass you can see that it has lost its smoothness: you can observe that the surface has what appears to be ripples, like ripples on a pond. The ripples always follow one direction: downward, towards gravity. A pane of glass will actually form a droplet of glass that eventually drips; it just takes a couple of thousand years to do so.

Your journey of self-improvement, to be successful, must be like that of a river. The yearning to improve your inner self is the spring from where your wide river of self-fulfilment will come.

Along the way your journey will take many turns. Youll encounter what seem to be insurmountable obstacles that loom like mountains, but like water youll find the valley or canyon to flow around the obstacles. At times the river will disappear, deep underground. Youll lose sight of it, perhaps for a long time. But, it must resurface eventually, as all rivers do before they reach journeys end.

Your journey will not always be a smooth one. Youll encounter rapids and you may even have to take enormous leaps of faith before tumbling down to where you want to be: but like a waterfall, when you reach the next step along the journey your power and energy will be many fold. You will also experience many stagnant pools along that path where the flow of the river is almost imperceptible. But flow the river does and it will flow freely and cleanly.

The journey will be a rewarding one. Your spring, that tiny step toward self-fulfilment, will turn into a river, perhaps even a great, mighty and wide one. And you wont be alone. A river is not a single entity; rather it is formed by a meeting of many springs: a meeting of minds. Your journeys end will be a confluence of water.

Dont try to constrain your river of self-development. Dont build canals to take the river where you think it should go, or aqueducts to take you over obstacles. Let the river of you journey find its own route. Can the greatest man-made canal ever compare to any river. A river moves, changes, adapts and grows bigger. The water in a canal moves slowly, the course it follows never changes, and it never will grow bigger or wider. Do you want your journey to be that of a canal or a river?

A river follows the path of least resistance. This isnt laziness: it is just expending energy where it is really needed. Your journey must explore every field, valley and wood. Dont expend energy on getting to your destination; spend your energy on exploring the world around you. All rivers eventually flow out to the sea. They all reach journeys end and you will too.

Robin O'Brien is a successfully webmaster and founder of http://www.selfimprovementtechniques.comwhere he provides help and support. You can find more self improvement tips on his site.