Wishing you a SUPER successful and fulfilling day!

If you’ve yet to visit Cincom Expert Access website, which offers ideas, insights and inspiration for business, may I recommend that you do so immediately?   With a top notch roster of contributors, this site is a tremendous resource to anyone in management, human resources, customer service or small business ownership.

My article on dealing with Know it Alls and Think They Know it Alls is one of the featured articles right now, and you can read it here. And while you’re on the Cincom site, you might also want to take in one of my favorite articles, written by my friend and fellow blogger J.D. Meier, ‘the Top 10 Lessons Learned from Bruce Lee, for Business and for Life’. You’ll find it here.

In other news:

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Sending Yourself Messages From The Future – Life Skills

by Dr. Rick Kirschner on March 8, 2010

Last month, I blogged about how to start your year off right with nutrition and exercise. To make such changes for the better, your motivation has to align with your direction.   And one of the best ways to find your motivation and change the way you take care of yourself is to look for it inside of two stories about the future, one irresistible, the other repulsive.   A future that beckons is like a tractor beam that pulls you forward, while a future that frightens you serves as a repulser ray that pushes you away.  Working together, your hopes and fears can move you to make dramatic changes.

“Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe.”   -H.G. Wells

The problem is that if you wait for these things to become clear, they may take too long.  At that point, you may find the repulsive future looming on your horizon,  and the irresistible one fading from the realm of possibility.   The good news is that you don’t have to wait until it’s too late!

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Superman ThursdayHope you’re having a Super day!  This is my second post this week. It’s a work in progress.

Comparison, or contrast, can be used as a signal of persuasion.  It allows us to consider one thing in the light of another.  And in today’s technology news, I noticed two stories that offer several lessons in contrast. Now I’m curious to see how many comparisons can be made.

First up, John Breeden, who writes for GCN (Government Computer News,) responds to an email from Apple Inc.’s  CEO, Steve Jobs, after publishing something that wasn’t true about the new iPad battery life.  I’m beaming just thinking about it.

Second, Microsoft’s V.P. for Trustworthy Computing (I’m not kidding! As ironic as it sounds, that’s his title) offers a suggestion that to clean up the problem of the viruses and hacker networks that plague the Windows OS, we should put a tax on all internet users. I’m a Mac user.  I bristle at the thought.

That’s a bit of contrast.

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Can Changing Your Story Change Your Life?

by Dr. Rick Kirschner on March 1, 2010

Here’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. I love narrative psychology, and teach it to my clients and students as a powerful change tool.  This burgeoning field of study is based on the idea that the stories we tell about ourselves and each other shape our identity, determine how well we access our resources, and contribute (or take away from) our ability to create positive change.

I have my story and you have yours.  I hope yours empowers you, inspires you and enlivens you.  The nature and impact of your story is really up to you.  And if the words and pictures you use to describe what you’ve experienced and to determine your behavior and reactions in the present and future don’t serve the life you want to live, you have the creative authority to change the words and pictures and get a different result.

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Closing The Loop On The Blame Game

February 22, 2010

Some people are more practiced at assigning blame than others. There is no point in arguing with them. Much conflict comes down to blaming statements. Yet more often than not, no matter how reasonable these blaming statements sound, more often than not they are made up of reasons that don’t hold up to scrutiny.

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Obama Out of the Bubble, Onto the Battlefield of Persuasion

February 16, 2010

The President can’t persuade Congress to make meaningful changes if he’s allowing Congress to define the narrative. In a battle of persuasion, he’d best act now or his moment will be lost.

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Building Relationship On Agreement-Life Skills

February 15, 2010

Every semester, the students change but the questions I hear remain the same. Where am I coming from with these agreements? Why do I think it so important to the well being of these students that I’m willing to spend precious time on it, time that I could just as well put into teaching other things that might be valuable for my students? What justifies the use of so much class time for these agreements?

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New Class in Healthy Communication Begins

February 8, 2010

Today is day one in my healthy communication class (Psyc 604) at Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine. This intensive is one of the most rewarding things I do each year, because I relish the chance to teach these future doctors

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