Living With Balance

If you feel that life’s hectic pace leaves parts of your life lacking and that you’d like the merry-go-round called life to stop and let you off, you are not alone!!
Help is at hand and there are ways to tip the balance back in your favour.

There’s nothing new about the idea of work/life balance, although, for many of us, it can seem elusive as we try to keep everything together on the treadmill of life. The question to ponder, though, is “What do you do when you can’t keep up and the quality of your life suffers?”

Firstly, it’s important not to compare your life with others but to get totally honest with yourself about what it is you want out of life. Self awareness is the key stone to achieving life balance and making choices based on what’s best for you.

To start getting your life back in balance, we suggest you make a comprehensive list of everything you do in your week. Include the time spent with family, friends and at work. Remember the time spent watching TV and surfing the net also. The next step is to reflect and decide what you need to be doing with your time in order to feel happy and fulfilled. A great way to do this is to go out in time and do the ‘Rocking Chair Test’. That is, when you are 95, sitting in your rocking chair, and looking back over your life, what will you be grateful for and what will you regret not having done?

There are not too many people, who, when on their death beds, regret not having worked harder or having spent more hours at the office!!

Having done that, decide how can you better spend your time, (the one thing we all have the same amount of in each day), what do you value and what decisions can you make based on this so that you can live the life of your dreams and be the best you can be?

Sometimes change can be frightening and it can seem easier to maintain the status quo. That’s why with a Coach you’ll never be alone. They can guide and steer you in the direction that you truly want whilst giving you support and keeping you accountable for ‘real’ change.

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Communication Needs - Do You Listen Properly?

Do you ever consider whether you are listening properly when you are in a conversation? Not listening properly can prevent you getting the most from your communication experiences as you do not meet the communication needs of whoever you are conversing with.

When we should be listening to understand the other person, it is likely that we are:

• Perceiving listening as a passive activity and therefore finding the prolonged concentration impossible to maintain;
• Already speaking before the other person has finished or preparing to respond in our mind;
• Not clearing our minds beforehand, so the ‘noise in our system’ shuts out or distorts what is being said;
• Filtering what we hear through our own picture of our world - our paradigm;
• Reading our own experience into the other person’s life. We hear it often… “I know exactly what you mean. When I did that…”, “That reminds me of when I…” or “Let me tell you what happened when I did that…”
• So tense with emotion that our ability to listen is seriously impaired;
• Distracted or bored because our listening style doesn’t match the speaker. Larry Barker, a communications consultant, came up with findings that differentiate types of listening styles - people, action, content and time oriented. People oriented listeners, for example, like to hear about the colour and descriptors around a story, whereas an action oriented listener just wants to get to the bottom line. Therefore, our preference may result in shutting out some of the information because it doesn’t fit our style of listening.

Do you find yourself doing these things when you communicate with others? If you do then consider how you could enhance your communication experience by improving your listening skills and meeting the communication needs of the person you are communicating with. As a coach I suggest you learn about active listening. It will make a big difference to your ability to satisfy the communication needs of the other person and they will feel more valued and likely to reciprocate, enhancing the communication experience for both parties.

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Listening - Part of Our Communication Needs!

I often wonder whether people are really truly understanding what I am communicating to them because it feels like they are there really only in body and not listening properly, to what I am communicating to them. They are not meeting my communication needs as I need them to listen properly.

Our communication experiences are enhanced when we understand what the communication needs of the people involved in the conversation are. One of these needs is active listening. Active listening means putting everything else out of your mind and acknowledging the other person with eye contact, facial gestures, words that confirm you understand, and perhaps even touch so they have feedback that you are listening properly and valuing what they have to say. Here are some of the reasons that active listening improves communication.

• When people notice how well you listen to them, they usually reciprocate and try to understand you better. They feel valued and therefore value you more.
• Communication improves, Relationships improve. Friendships develop and deepen.
• You receive more accurate information because communication is more effective. People explaining problems are more inclined to give you the whole story.
• People encouraged by your active listening often discover solutions to their own problems. The opportunity to talk things over is all many people need to see the issue in its proper perspective.
• You get on better with people. Active listening combined with empathy makes it easier to solve problems or at least reach a compromise.
• You can discover not only what people are saying, but why they are saying it. You learn more about what is really going on ‘between the lines’ through more effective communication

They all seem pretty good reasons to take the time to improve active listening skills and a small investment for our prize of better communication through meeting the conversation needs of whoever you are conversing with.

Confident Future Newsletter

Would you like to receive a short and sweet weekly success strategy sent to your inbox? These were made available due to popular demand, they are thought provoking and implementable in your life now. To receive your weekly dose of inspiration from us and begin benefiting from our information now, fill in the box below.

Falling in Love

There’s plenty of advice and rules around for getting a girl to fall in love with you. This is not about those rules and advice. This little article focuses on the basics that can be used to strengthen a girl’s feeling of love for you. Love can’t be forced. It has to take it’s course.
Things You’ll Need:

• Patience
• Kindness
• Respect
• Sincerity
• Honesty

Step 1
If you want a girl to fall in love with you, just make her the center of your respect and admiration. Treat her well and do things that you know will make her happy. A girl will most likely fall in love with a guy when she knows she is important to him. Make her smile, make her laugh, and show her that she can be happy with you. She’ll fall in love with you because she feels happy when with you and when thinking about you.

Step 2
Offer her your support and friendship. Falling in love is about offering her a shoulder to cry on, someone to talk to, and a friend to be there when she needs one most. A woman will find it hard to open herself up to a man who cannot be her friend. In order to fall in love, a woman needs someone who will listen to her fears and troubles and know that you’re being sincere. Remember, it’s not all about you. Letting go of your expectations will also help you relax, which will make you more appealing to a girl than if you are uptight and worried.

Step 3
Give her lots of attention and lavish her with love. If you want a woman to fall in love with you, you have to show her how much she means to you. Telling her how you feel is great, but showing her your love is the key. Kiss her often, cuddle her, and do sweet things for her like making dinner, giving her a massage, or buying flowers for no particular reason. When a woman knows how much she means to you, she feels secure and this increases the chance that she’ll fall in love with you.

Step 4
Show her that you’re a sincere and genuine man. A woman needs security to fall in love, just as anyone does, and if you show her that your feelings and intentions are real, she’ll be more likely to fall head over heels in love with you. A woman knows when someone is not being true…it’s called woman’s intuition. So, if she senses you’re not being genuine with her, she will not let you in. If you’re honest and real with the woman you care for, she’ll offer the same in return and love will blossom before you know it. Love is patient, kind, and honest…treat the woman you care about with respect and be true to her…she’ll love you for putting her feelings first and give you the same or more in return. Love thrives in the absence of pressure (in the form of neediness and clinginess).

Step 5
Give her space. This step can be looked at in many ways and can get distorted easily. It isn’t about playing hard-to-get. The point is to give the girl the control of what happens next. This step isn’t about ignoring her so SHE has to call you, or avoiding long conversations with her to torment her into loving you. Just allow her to live her life outside you. Allow her to see a movie without you. Allow her to be without you and she will then decide to love you on her own terms.
If you’re shy, you might end up giving her too much space. You still need to express your interest in her (flirt a little, and when the time is right, kiss her). Just don’t smother her. Give her some time to reflect on those moments and realise how awesome they were.

Further Tips:-

• Be yourself and don’t try to be someone else to make a woman fall in love with you…she’ll see through this and know you’re not being sincere…if she’s going to love you, it will be for the person you already are.
• You can’t make someone fall in love with you…so if it’s not there, don’t force it…love comes naturally.
• Don’t get angry if your partner hasn’t said “I love you” yet…love takes time and needs kind encouragement to flourish.
• Don’t be afraid to fall in love yourself…you can’t have someone fall in love with you if you are not the falling in love kind. . Love often starts with friendship and often comes with time, and in that time you need to show the girl that you are worth being around. This is the fun part! The only way this will work, though, is if you believe, on some level, that you are lovable and worth being around. It’s very difficult to fall in love with someone who thinks badly of themselves.

Once in love, your relationship has to be nurtured and respected. Love is only one part of a healthy relationship–the rest depends on effort and patience.

Now that you have got to the end of the article you might be thinking I knew all of that.  But now go back, take your time and truly ask yourself the questions:

• When was the last time I bought flowers for no reason for someone I care for or love?
• When was the last time I was there for some one who needed support?
• When was the last time I cried with laughter with some one I love?

If you can’t remember when, look in the mirror, ask yourself  who you could show your love to first and how could you express that?

Remember: The more you give out the more you will receive and it is never to late to say “I love you”.

Confident Future Newsletter

Would you like to receive a short and sweet weekly success strategy sent to your inbox? These were made available due to popular demand, they are thought provoking and implementable in your life now. To receive your weekly dose of inspiration from us and begin benefiting from our information now, fill in the box below.

Communication Process

Communication is the means by which people share words, ideas and feelings. When you explain an idea to someone, you are attempting to share that idea. If your communication process is successful and as a result you share that thought, it is then something that you and the other person have in common.

Sharing ideas helps people relate to each other more effectively, to work together more happily and to get jobs done faster. Effective communication makes life work.

But is that all there is to communication? What is really going on? When people say they are communicating are they only talking about sharing ideas?

How Communication Works
The illustration here demonstrates the concept of communication in its simplest form. Of course, this diagram shows a message travelling in only one direction, when in fact most communication involves two-way exchanges.

Different Ways of Communicating
Each type of communication listed below needs different skills and techniques.

Person to person -

face-to-face, reading a letter, making a phone call, dancing;

In a small group -

planning, solving problems, making decisions;

In a meeting -

presenting, bargaining, negotiating agreements;

In an organisation -

writing reports and memos, using notice boards, supervising, managing;

Through the mass media -

speaking in public, on radio or television;  writing for the media, in papers, journals,  books, advertising and public relations;

Others - training or teaching, entertaining (art, cinema).

It Takes Two to Communicate
The word ‘communication’ and similar words such as ‘community’ and ‘communion’ all have Latin origins describing the idea of ‘common-ness’, the result of sharing ideas, having shared understanding or reaching a common agreement.

To be described as communication, an exchange must involve two or more individuals, although not necessarily humans. Most living creatures communicate, but you cannot share ideas with a machine. Computers are used to communicate, but having no ideas of their own they cannot communicate with you or among themselves.

Main Elements in the Communication Process
Defining the steps involved in communication is complex, however the main parts of the process and the terms most commonly used to describe it are given below:
Who communicates?

• A sender and a receiver.

What do they communicate?

• Messages, codes and meanings.

How do messages travel?

• Via channels.

How does this happen?

• The sender has an idea and converts the idea into a message. This message is sent or transmitted and is either received or ignored by receiver. The receiver interprets the message.

What else happens?

• The receiver responds or reacts; the sender receives feedback.

The Message
A message is a unit of communication. It starts as an imaginary package that carries a meaning. Some messages are portable - for instance, a memo being passed from one person to another. Others are transferred visually - a smile, or a raised eyebrow. A handshake travels by touch. All these are messages.

In our Success Strategy for Life on Communication we go into the communication process in great detail helping you understand what it takes to be a truly great communicator, how to get your message across first time and most importantly to have those around you feel understood.

Would you like to receive the first unit in this Success Strategy for life? If so fill in the box below and we will send you your Free link to: “Communication - What did you say?”

Confident Future Newsletter

Would you like to receive a short and sweet weekly success strategy sent to your inbox? These were made available due to popular demand, they are thought provoking and implementable in your life now. To receive your weekly dose of inspiration from us and begin benefiting from our information now, fill in the box below.

BizSmart Handouts

Thank you for attending the BizSmart 2009 Event. Confident Future presented on Selling with Emotional Intelligence and we had a great time working with such an enthusiastic group! As promised you are most welcome to receive a full copy of the handouts and slides from the session.

To receive your copy of the handouts and the slides please
fill in the form below with your name and email address.

Ready to Win?

Do you remember the exercise from the presentation where we worked through part of a Prosperity Pod? The exercise helped you understand and articulate your customers buying motives, and potentially sell to them better. That exercise is just one exercise in an entire Prosperity Pod about Sales! And the Sales Prosperity Pod is just one Pod in a collection of Pods designed to improve and accelerate your business. These Pods have all been created by Confident Future coach, Kate Kingsbury.

By taking action and requesting the handouts you are showing that you are committed to your success. To reward you we would like to offer one person that requests the handouts the opportunity to work one-on-one with Kate Kingsbury (The coach that actually WROTE the Prosperity Pods) for a period of 4 months. This coaching would include access to as many of the Prosperity Pods as you can handle in that time as well as Confident Future’s other Success Strategies for Life. Additionally you have email access to contact Kate directly and will also receive an hour on the phone with Kate per month.

This is an amazing opportunity to improve yourself and your business so that you can make the 2009/2010 financial year your biggest year ever! Whether you are interested in increasing sales, decreasing costs, boosting profits or maybe even getting a better work-life balance - Kate is the best coach we have at working with Small Business Owners to get amazing results!

You are an action taker. You are demonstrating your commitment to your results. Even though coaching with Kate would normally be $497.00/month (Which makes this prize an AMAZING $1988.00 value) we want to do it so we can support your business.

So what do you need to do for a chance to be coached by Kate? All you need to do is request the handouts! Just pop your name and email address below and we will send you the handouts and also enter you in the draw to win 4 months of coaching with Kate.

To receive your copy of the handouts and the slides please fill in the form below with your name and email address.

Once we have received your name and email address you can expect to receive the slides in under 12 hours, normally sooner. You will initially receive an email to confirm your email address, just click the link in that email to have the slides emailed directly too you. Your email address is safe with us. We do not sell or share your information with anyone else. You always have the option of unsubscribing if you change your mind about receiving emails from us later.

NB: Competition winner for coaching with Kate will be drawn on Tuesday, 11th August 2009 at 9AM Perth time (GMT +8).