“
Seek opportunities to show you care. The smallest gestures often make the biggest difference.
”
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John Wooden
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When you're making something, you're in a different state. You go into a deep level of concentration, to the point where you're not self-conscious anymore, it's just flowing out of you.
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David Rakoff (Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems)
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For God's sakes, quit worrying about your next job. Just do the best you can at the job you have now, and the offers will come. And when they do, if you have confidence in yourself you don't have to feel that you can't turn it down if it isn't quite right for you because you fear you'll never get another offer. You will. Wait for the right opportunity, and turn down all the rest. It will make all the difference.
”
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Bo Schembechler (Bo's Lasting Lessons: The Legendary Coach Teaches the Timeless Fundamentals of Leadership)
“
The only dream I ever had was the dream of New York itself, and for me, from the minute I touched down in this city, that was enough. It became the best teacher I ever had. If your mother is anything like mine, after all, there are a lot of important things she probably didn't teach you: how to use a vibrator; how to go to a loan shark and pull a loan at 17 percent that's due in thirty days; how to hire your first divorce attorney; what to look for in a doula (a birth coach) should you find yourself alone and pregnant. My mother never taught me how to date three people at the same time or how to interview a nanny or what to wear in an ashram in India or how to meditate. She also failed to mention crotchless underwear, how to make my first down payment on an apartment, the benefits of renting verses owning, and the difference between a slant-6 engine and a V-8 (in case I wanted to get a muscle car), not to mention how to employ a team of people to help me with my life, from trainers to hair colorists to nutritionists to shrinks. (Luckily, New York became one of many other moms I am to have in my lifetime.) So many mothers say they want their daughters to be independent, but what they really hope is that they'll find a well-compensated banker or lawyer and settle down between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-eight in Greenwich, Darien, or That Town, USA, to raise babies, do the grocery shopping, and work out in relative comfort for the rest of their lives. I know this because I employ their daughters. They raise us to think they want us to have careers, and they send us to college, but even they don't really believe women can be autonomous and take care of themselves.
”
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Kelly Cutrone (If You Have to Cry, Go Outside: And Other Things Your Mother Never Told You)
“
During the act of making something, I experience a kind of blissful absence of the self and a loss of time. When I am done, I return to both feeling as restored as if I had been on a trip. I almost never get this feeling any other way. I once spent sixteen hours making 150 wedding invitations by hand and was not for one instance of that time tempted to eat or look at my watch. By contrast, if seated at the computer, I check my email conservatively 30,000 times a day. When I am writing, I must have a snack, call a friend, or abuse myself every ten minutes. I used to think that this was nothing more than the difference between those things we do for love and those we do for money. But that can't be the whole story. I didn't always write for a living, and even back when it was my most fondly held dream to one day be able to do so, writing was always difficult. Writing is like pulling teeth.
From my dick.
”
”
David Rakoff (Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems)
“
A note from Annabeth.” Piper shook her head in amazement. “I don’t see how that’s possible, but if it is—” “She’s alive,” Leo said. “Thank the gods and pass the hot sauce.” Frank frowned. “What does that mean?” Leo wiped the chip crumbs off his face. “It means pass the hot sauce, Zhang. I’m still hungry.” Frank slid over a jar of salsa. “I can’t believe Reyna would try to find us. It’s taboo, coming to the ancient lands. She’ll be stripped of her praetorship.” “If she lives,” Hazel said. “It was hard enough for us to make it this far with seven demigods and a warship.” “And me.” Coach Hedge belched. “Don’t forget, cupcake, you got the satyr advantage.” Jason had to smile. Coach Hedge could be pretty ridiculous, but Jason was glad he’d come along. He thought about the satyr he’d seen in his dream—Grover Underwood. He couldn’t imagine a satyr more different from Coach Hedge, but they both seemed brave in their own way.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus, #4))
“
Bill looked for four characteristics in people. The person has to be smart, not necessarily academically but more from the standpoint of being able to get up to speed quickly in different areas and then make connections. Bill called this the ability to make “far analogies.” The person has to work hard, and has to have high integrity. Finally, the person should have that hard-to-define characteristic: grit. The ability to get knocked down and have the passion and perseverance to get up and go at it again.
”
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Eric Schmidt (Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell)
“
One Decision Makes All the Difference
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Kimesha Coleman (He Loves Me Not: Buried Tears of Betrayed Love)
“
Coaching is a good profession for people who are genuinely devoted to making a difference in the lives of others.
”
”
Steve Chandler (The Prosperous Coach: Increase Income and Impact for You and Your Clients (The Prosperous Series Book 1))
“
Often those on the more able end of the spectrum may be considered too "high functioning" by the systems in place to require any type of support, yet access to someone who could coach them a few hours a week would make all the difference in their lives.
”
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Chantal Sicile-Kira (A Full Life with Autism: From Learning to Forming Relationships to Achieving Independence)
“
Professor Umbridge stood up. She was so short that this did not make a great deal of difference, but her fussy, simpering demeanour had given place to a hard fury that made her broad, flabby face look oddly sinister. ‘Potter has no chance whatsoever of becoming an Auror!’ Professor McGonagall got to her feet, too, and in her case this was a much more impressive move; she towered over Professor Umbridge. ‘Potter,’ she said in ringing tones, ‘I will assist you to become an Auror if it is the last thing I do! If I have to coach you nightly, I will make sure you achieve the required results!
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5))
“
When we strike a balance between the challenge of an activity and our skill at performing it, when the rhythm of the work itself feels in sync with our pulse, when we know that what we're doing matters, we can get totally absorbed in our task. That is happiness.
The life coach Martha Beck asks new potential clients, "Is there anything you do regularly that makes you forget what time it is?"
That forgetting -- that pure absorption -- is what the psychologist Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi calls "flow" or optimal experience. In an interview with Wired magazine, he described flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost."
In a typical day that teeters between anxiety and boredom, flow experiences are those flashes of intense living -- bright against the dull. These optimal experiences can happen when we're engaged in work paid and unpaid, in sports, in music, in art.
The researchers Maria Allison and Margaret Duncan have studied the role of flow in women's lives and looked at factors that contributed to what they call "antiflow." Antiflow was associated with repetitive household tasks, repetitive tasks at work, unchallenging tasks, and work we see as meaningless. But there's an element of chaos when it comes to flow. Even if we're doing meaningful and challenging work, that sense of total absoprtion can elude us. We might get completely and beautifully lost in something today, and, try as we might to re-create the same conditions tomorrow, our task might jsut feel like, well, work.
In A Life of One's Own, Marion Milner described her effort to re-create teh conditions of her own recorded moments of happiness, saying, "Often when I felt certain that I had discovered the little mental act which produced the change I walked on air, exulting that I had found the key to my garden of delight and could slip through the door whenever I wished. But most often when I came again the place seemed different, the door overgrown with thorns and my key stuck in the lock. It was as if the first time I had said 'abracadabra' the door had opened, but the next time I must use a different word. (123-124).
”
”
Ariel Gore (Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness)
“
The difference between selling a service and talking about something you love makes a world of difference.
”
”
Brent O'Bannon (Selling Strengths: A Little Book for Executive and Life Coaches About Using Your Strengths to Get Paying Clients)
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An individual can make a difference, but a team makes a miracle.”
Doug Pederson,
Head Coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, after winning 2018 Super Bowl LII
”
”
Douglas Gerber (Team Quotient)
“
Effort is important, but knowing where to make an effort in your life and in relationship with others makes all the difference.
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Marilyn W. Atkinson (The Art & Science of Coaching, Volume 1: Inner Dynamics of Coaching)
“
My life's work is to help people step into their God-given abilities and make a positive difference in their community.
”
”
Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
“
War thoughts again. I think back to the business cards from that health shop earlier on. I think about miniature wars that individuals fight all the time. They fight against cellulite, or negative emotions, or addictions, or stress. I think about how we can now hire all different sorts of mercenaries to help us fight against ourselves…Therapists, manicurists, hairdressers, personal trainers, life coaches. But what’s it all for? What do all these little wars achieve? Although it is a part of my life too, and I want to be thin and pretty and not laughed at in the street and not so stressed and mad that I start screaming on the tube, it suddenly seems a little bit ridiculous. All the time we do these things we are trying to enlist ourselves into a bigger war. We are trying to join up, constantly, with the enemy.
-
Hitler tried to impose his shiny, blonde, neat, sparkling world on us all and we resisted. So how is it that when McDonald’s and Disney and The Gap and L’Oreal and all the others try to do the same thing we all just say, ‘OK’? Hitler needed marketing, that’s all. His propaganda was, of course, brilliant for its time, everyone knows that. What a great idea, to make people feel that they belong to something, that their identity makes them special. If Hilter had bee able to enlist a twenty-first-century marketing department, would he have been able to sell Nazism to everyone? Why not? You can just see a beautiful, thin woman with her long blonde hair moving softly in the breezes, and the tagline ‘Because I’m worth it’.
”
”
Scarlett Thomas (PopCo)
“
The coaches let me prove myself, they gave me a chance to show how my difference could be a strength. That understanding, that diversity of strength, was critical to the team and made it possible for me to be judged on my athletic merits alone.
”
”
Jen Welter (Play Big: Conquer Your Fears and Make Your Dreams a Reality - Lessons from the First Woman to Coach in the NFL)
“
This past soccer season, the league in which my son and daughter were playing had to make up two games due to rain (the price of living in Houston). The consensus in the league was that Sunday was the only available day, so the makeup games were scheduled for Sunday afternoon. My family and I sat down to discuss the matter, but no discussion was really necessary. There was no way we were going to participate. Sunday is the Lord's Day, and playing youth soccer games on Sunday makes a definite statement about the priorities in a community. Interestingly, the most flak from our decision came not from the irreligious people involved but from Christians! “You can go to church, then run home and change for the game,” one man said. One of my children's coaches added, “I'd be glad to pick them up if there is somewhere you have to be.” Nobody seemed to get it. We weren't making a decision based on the hectic nature of our Sunday schedule, nor was it a question of our adhering to a legalistic requirement handed down from our denomination. It was a matter of principle. Sunday is more than just another day. Youth sports leagues are great, but they are not sacred; Sunday is! Again, I do not believe that there is a legalistic requirement not to play games on a Sunday. Nor do I believe that the policeman, fireman, or airline mechanic who goes in to work on Sunday is out of the will of God. I do, however, think that there is a huge difference between someone whose job requires working on Sunday and a soccer league that just doesn't care.
”
”
Voddie T. Baucham Jr. (The Ever-Loving Truth: Can Faith Thrive in a Post-Christian Culture?)
“
Accomplishing the maximum impact on student learning depends on teams of teachers working together, with excellent leaders or coaches, agreeing on worthwhile outcomes, setting high expectations, knowing the students’ starting and desired success in learning, seeking evidence continually about their impact on all students, modifying their teaching in light of this evaluation, and joining in the success of truly making a difference to student outcomes.
”
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John Hattie (Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning)
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I would have never finished the book without Sam. I wanted to finish his story, to test him, to put him through tribulation and watch him become a man. No, not just a man, I wanted to watch him become a hero. He started his professional life only wanting to make money. I took him on a journey to wanting to make a difference. To be honest, I want men to read the book and decide its never too late to be somebody’s hero. I want the man mired in sin to shed his shame and make a stand for righteousness. My Christ Jesus is ready to coach just such a man.
”
”
K.R. Dial
“
Children and adults alike need to experience how rewarding it is to work at the edge of their abilities. Resilience is the product of agency: knowing that what you do can make a difference. Many of us remember what playing team sports, singing in the school choir, or playing in the marching band meant to us, especially if we had coaches or directors who believed in us, pushed us to excel, and taught us we could be better than we thought was possible. The children we reach need this experience. Athletics, playing music, dancing, and theatrical performances all promote agency and community.
”
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Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
“
We had each other of course, but not in the perfectly synced way our television counterparts did. We didn't live in the same apartment building and pop in unannounced to make grilled-cheese sandwiches or coach each other for job interviews. We weren't always available for emergency brunches or last-minute trips to Jamaica. Instead, we had complicated, independent lives wending down many different paths, lives that sometimes had us working sixteen-hour days, or moving out of state, or navigation fledging romance. We saw each other the way most urban professionals do - by booking dates days or weeks in advance. That meant we were frequently alone, with time.
”
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Sara Eckel (It's Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You're Single)
“
Before I knew what I was doing, I was out of my seat and rushing up toward the railing that divided the seats from the field. I had to make sure he was okay. I couldn’t just sit here and watch him lie there in pain.
I heard my name called, but I ignored it as I flung my leg over the top railing and prepared to hoist myself over.
One of the guys working security happened to see me and he rushed over and ordered me to stop.
“I can’t. That’s my…” My voice broke. I couldn’t force the word boyfriend between my lips. It just wasn’t enough. It just didn’t describe how desperate I was to get to him.
“He’s my everything,” I finished.
The security guard gave me a grim look. “You can’t come on the field.”
A lone tear tracked its way down my cheek, and I craned my neck. Frustrated, I glanced up at the big screen to see if it was showing a different angle.
But they weren’t playing Romeo. They were focused on me.
I blinked at the site of me half straddling the railing and the security guard standing there with a grim look on his face as he stared me down. My cheeks were red, behind my glasses, my eyes wild.
I turned away from the screen, irritated that they weren’t focused on Romeo.
I glanced at the guard. “I’m coming over.”
He crossed his arms over his chest as if to say, I dare you.
I flung my other leg over so I was balanced on the bottom rung.
“This is your last warning,” the guard shouted.
The crowd started to cheer and go wild. Romeo’s number started filling the air. I looked up.
He was okay!
He was on his feet, helmet in hand, and laughing at something Braeden was saying. Beside him, the coach looked relieved, and all the Wolves were clapping.
The guy who’d mowed him down was being escorted off the field.
Jackass.
Relief made me weak and a sob caught in my throat. I sagged back against the cold metal of the rails. The guard gestured for backup, and a few others that were dressed just like him started my way.
I mean, really. He was being a bit dramatic. I was only one girl. And a small one at that.
”
”
Cambria Hebert (#Hater (Hashtag, #2))
“
1. Did you conduct one-to-one meetings with each salesperson on your team? 2. Did you ask each of them how they like to be managed? Are they coachable? 3. Did you inquire about their prior experience with their past manager? Was it positive or negative? 4. Did you set the expectations of your relationship with them? Did you ask them what they needed and expected from their manager? What changes do they want to see? 5. Did you inform them about how you like to manage and your style of management? This would open up the space for a discussion regarding how you may manage differently from your predecessor. 6. Did you let them know you just completed a coaching course that would enable you to support them even further and maximize their talents? 7. Did you explain to them the difference between coaching and traditional management? 8. Did you enroll them in the benefits of coaching? That is, what would be in it for them? 9. Did you let them know about your intentions, goals, expectations, and aspirations for each of them and for the team as a whole? 10. How have you gone about learning the ins and outs of the company?Are you familiar with the internal workings, culture, leadership team, and subtleties that make the company unique? Have you considered that your team may be the best source of knowledge and intelligence for this? Did you communicate your willingness and desire to learn from them as well, so that the learning and development process can be mutually reciprocated?
”
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Keith Rosen (Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions: A Tactical Playbook for Managers and Executives)
“
She believed that a good teacher should make a poor student good, and a good student superior. I remember her saying, “When our students fail, we, as teachers, have also failed.” She focused on identifying and magnifying each student’s unique gifts. Her mantra to her students was “Trust yourself. Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Speak for yourself. Be yourself.” She embodied the philosophy “You can’t teach what you don’t know, and you can’t guide where you don’t go.” We don’t have to teach thousands, hundreds, or even dozens. If we can show one person the way, if we can bring one person from darkness into light, if we can make a difference in one person’s development, we have succeeded as a teacher and a coach. It is true that when you light someone else’s path, you see your own more clearly.
”
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Kevin Hall (Aspire: Discovering Your Purpose Through the Power of Words)
“
This kind of parenting was typical in much of Asia—and among Asian immigrant parents living in the United States. Contrary to the stereotype, it did not necessarily make children miserable. In fact, children raised in this way in the United States tended not only to do better in school but to actually enjoy reading and school more than their Caucasian peers enrolled in the same schools. While American parents gave their kids placemats with numbers on them and called it a day, Asian parents taught their children to add before they could read. They did it systematically and directly, say, from six-thirty to seven each night, with a workbook—not organically, the way many American parents preferred their children to learn math. The coach parent did not necessarily have to earn a lot of money or be highly educated. Nor did a coach parent have to be Asian, needless to say. The research showed that European-American parents who acted more like coaches tended to raise smarter kids, too. Parents who read to their children weekly or daily when they were young raised children who scored twenty-five points higher on PISA by the time they were fifteen years old. That was almost a full year of learning. More affluent parents were more likely to read to their children almost everywhere, but even among families within the same socioeconomic group, parents who read to their children tended to raise kids who scored fourteen points higher on PISA. By contrast, parents who regularly played with alphabet toys with their young children saw no such benefit. And at least one high-impact form of parental involvement did not actually involve kids or schools at all: If parents simply read for pleasure at home on their own, their children were more likely to enjoy reading, too. That pattern held fast across very different countries and different levels of family income. Kids could see what parents valued, and it mattered more than what parents said. Only four in ten parents in the PISA survey regularly read at home for enjoyment. What if they knew that this one change—which they might even vaguely enjoy—would help their children become better readers themselves? What if schools, instead of pleading with parents to donate time, muffins, or money, loaned books and magazines to parents and urged them to read on their own and talk about what they’d read in order to help their kids? The evidence suggested that every parent could do things that helped create strong readers and thinkers, once they knew what those things were. Parents could go too far with the drills and practice in academics, just as they could in sports, and many, many Korean parents did go too far. The opposite was also true. A coddled, moon bounce of a childhood could lead to young adults who had never experienced failure or developed self-control or endurance—experiences that mattered as much or more than academic skills. The evidence suggested that many American parents treated their children as if they were delicate flowers. In one Columbia University study, 85 percent of American parents surveyed said that they thought they needed to praise their children’s intelligence in order to assure them they were smart. However, the actual research on praise suggested the opposite was true. Praise that was vague, insincere, or excessive tended to discourage kids from working hard and trying new things. It had a toxic effect, the opposite of what parents intended. To work, praise had to be specific, authentic, and rare. Yet the same culture of self-esteem boosting extended to many U.S. classrooms.
”
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Amanda Ripley (The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way)
“
complaining means you have a reference point for something better that you would prefer but that you are unwilling to take the risk of creating. Either accept that you are making the choice to stay where you are, take responsibility for your choice, and stop complaining . . . or . . . take the risk of doing something new and different to create your life exactly the way you want it. If you want to get from where you are to where you want to be, of course you’re going to have to take that risk. So make the decision to stop complaining, to stop spending time with complainers, and get on with creating the life of your dreams. Pete Carroll, the coach of the NFL Seattle Seahawks football team, which won the 2014 Super Bowl, has three rules for his team: (1) ALWAYS protect the team; (2) no whining, no complaining, and no excuses; and (3) be early. These are the rules of a Super Bowl championship team. They are worth adapting.
”
”
Jack Canfield (The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be)
“
Yesterday while I was on the side of the mat next to some wrestlers who were warming up for their next match, I found myself standing side by side next to an extraordinary wrestler.
He was warming up and he had that look of desperation on his face that wrestlers get when their match is about to start and their coach is across the gym coaching on another mat in a match that is already in progress.
“Hey do you have a coach.” I asked him.
“He's not here right now.” He quietly answered me ready to take on the task of wrestling his opponent alone.
“Would you mind if I coached you?”
His face tilted up at me with a slight smile and said. “That would be great.”
Through the sounds of whistles and yelling fans I heard him ask me what my name was.
“My name is John.” I replied.
“Hi John, I am Nishan” he said while extending his hand for a handshake.
He paused for a second and then he said to me: “John I am going to lose this match”.
He said that as if he was preparing me so I wouldn’t get hurt when my coaching skills didn’t work magic with him today.
I just said, “Nishan - No score of a match will ever make you a winner. You are already a winner by stepping onto that mat.”
With that he just smiled and slowly ran on to the mat, ready for battle, but half knowing what the probable outcome would be.
When you first see Nishan you will notice that his legs are frail - very frail. So frail that they have to be supported by custom made, form fitted braces to help support and straighten his limbs.
Braces that I recognize all to well.
Some would say Nishan has a handicap.
I say that he has a gift.
To me the word handicap is a word that describes what one “can’t do”.
That doesn’t describe Nishan.
Nishan is doing.
The word “gift” is a word that describes something of value that you give to others.
And without knowing it, Nishan is giving us all a gift.
I believe Nishan’s gift is inspiration.
The ability to look the odds in the eye and say “You don’t pertain to me.”
The ability to keep moving forward.
Perseverance.
A “Whatever it takes” attitude.
As he predicted, the outcome of his match wasn’t great.
That is, if the only thing you judge a wrestling match by is the actual score. Nishan tried as hard as he could, but he couldn’t overcome the twenty-six pound weight difference that he was giving up to his opponent on this day in order to compete. You see, Nishan weighs only 80 pounds and the lowest weight class in this tournament was 106. Nishan knew he was spotting his opponent 26 pounds going into every match on this day. He wrestled anyway.
I never did get the chance to ask him why he wrestles, but if I had to guess I would say, after watching him all day long, that Nishan wrestles for the same reasons that we all wrestle for.
We wrestle to feel alive, to push ourselves to our mental, physical and emotional limits - levels we never knew we could reach.
We wrestle to learn to use 100% of what we have today in hopes that our maximum today will be our minimum tomorrow. We wrestle to measure where we started from, to know where we are now, and to plan on getting where we want to be in the future. We wrestle to look the seemingly insurmountable opponent right in the eye and say, “Bring it on. - I can take whatever you can dish out.”
Sometimes life is your opponent and just showing up is a victory.
You don't need to score more points than your opponent in order to accomplish that.
No Nishan didn’t score more points than any of his opponents on this day, that would have been nice, but I don’t believe that was the most important thing to Nishan. Without knowing for sure - the most important thing to him on this day was to walk with pride like a wrestler up to a thirty two foot circle, have all eyes from the crowd on him, to watch him compete one on one against his opponent - giving it all that he had. That is what competition is all about. Most of the times in wrestlin
”
”
JohnA Passaro
“
SPIEGEL: You have a lot of respect for the Dalai Lama, you even rewrote some Buddhist writings for him. Are you a religious person?
Cleese: I certainly don't think much of organized religion. I am not committed to anything except the vague feeling that there is something more going on than the materialist reductionist people think. I think you can reduce suffering a little bit, like the Buddhists say, that is one of the few things I take seriously. But the idea that you can run this planet in a rational and kind way -- I think it's not possible. There will always be these sociopaths at the top -- selfish people, power-seekers who want to spend their whole lives seeking it. Robin Skynner, the psychiatrist that I wrote two books with, said to me that you could begin to enjoy life when you realized how bad the planet is, how hopeless everything is. I reached that point these last two or three years when I saw that our existence here is absolutely hopeless. I see the rich people have got a stranglehold on us. If somebody had said that to me when I was 20, I would have regarded him as a left-wing loony.
SPIEGEL: You may not have been a left-wing loony, but you were happy to attack and ridicule the church. The "Life of Brian," the story of a young man in Judea who isn't Jesus Christ, but is nevertheless followed like a savior and crucified afterwards, was regarded as blasphemy when it was released in 1979.
Cleese: Well there was a small number of people in country towns, all very conservative, who got upset and said, "You can't show the film." So people hired a coach and drove 15 miles to the next town and went to see the film there. But a lot of Christians said, "We got it, we know that the joke is not about religion, but about the way people follow religion." If Jesus saw the Spanish Inquisition I think he would have said, "What are you doing there?"
SPIEGEL: These days Muslims and Islam are risky subjects. Do you think they are good issues for satire?
Cleese: For sure. In 1982, Graham Chapman and I wrote a number of scenes for "The Meaning of Life" movie which had an ayatollah in them. This ayatollah was raging against all the evil inventions of the West, you know, like toilet paper. These scenes were never included in the film, although I thought they were much better than many other scenes that were included. And that's why I didn't do any more Python films: I didn't want to be outvoted any longer. But I wouldn't have made fun of the prophet.
SPIEGEL: Why not?
Cleese: How could you? How could you make fun of Jesus or Saint Francis of Assisi? They were wonderful human beings. People are only funny when they behave inappropriately, when they've been taken over by some egotistical emotion which they can't control and they become less human.
SPIEGEL: Is there a difference between making fun of our side, so to speak, the Western, Christian side, and Islam?
Cleese: There shouldn't be a difference.
[SPIEGEL Interview with John Cleese: 'Satire Makes People Think' - 2015]
”
”
John Cleese
“
I heard you didn't hit it off with Kevin last month."
"No one warned me he was going to be there," Neil answered [...]. "Maybe you'll forgive me for not reacting well."
"Maybe I won't. I don't believe in forgiveness, and it wasn't me you offended. That's the second time a recruit has told him to fuck off. If it was possible to dent that arrogance of his, his pride would have shreds through it. Instead he's losing faith in the intelligence of high school athletes."
"I'm sure Andrew had his reasons for refusing, same as me."
"You said you weren't good enough, but here you are anyway. You think a summer of practices will make that much a difference?"
"No," Neil said. "It was just too hard to say no."
"Coach always knows what to say, hm? It makes harder on the rest of us, though. Not even Millport should have taken a chance on you."
"[...] It was a matter of being in the right place at the right time, I guess."
"Do you believe in fate?"
Neil heard the faint scorn in the other man's voice.
"No. Do you?"
"Luck, then," Aaron said, ignoring that return question.
"Only the bad sort."
"We're flattered by your high opinion of us, of course.
”
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Nora Sakavic (The Foxhole Court (All for the Game, #1))
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If they’re not practicing deliberately, even experts can see their skills backslide. Ericsson shared with me an incredible example of this. Even though you might be inclined to trust the advice of a silver-haired doctor over one fresh out of medical school, it’s been found that in a few fields of medicine, doctors’ skills don’t improve the longer they’ve been practicing. The diagnostic accuracy of professional mammographers, for example, doesn’t get more accurate over the years. Why would that be? For most mammographers, practicing medicine is not deliberate practice, according to Ericsson. It’s more like putting into a tin cup than working with a coach. That’s because mammographers usually only find out if they missed a tumor months or years later, if at all, at which point they’ve probably forgotten the details of the case and can no longer learn from their successes and mistakes. One field of medicine in which this is definitively not the case is surgery. Unlike mammographers, surgeons tend to get better with time. What makes surgeons different from mammographers, according to Ericsson, is that the outcome of most surgeries is usually immediately apparent—the patient either gets better or doesn’t—which means that surgeons are constantly receiving feedback on their performance. They’re always learning what works and what doesn’t, always getting better. This finding leads to a practical application of expertise theory: Ericsson suggests that mammographers regularly be asked to evaluate old cases for which the outcome is already known. That way they can get immediate feedback on their performance.
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Joshua Foer (Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything)
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Even at this point, say Ressler and others, these potential hosts of monsters can be turned around through the (often unintentional) intervention of people who show kindness, support, or even just interest. I can say from experience that it doesn’t take much. Ressler’s theories on the childhoods of the worst killers in America have an unlikely ideological supporter, psychiatrist and child-advocate Alice Miller. Her emotionally evocative books (including The Drama Of The Gifted Child and The Untouched Key) make clear that if a child has some effective human contact at particularly significant periods, some recognition of his worth and value, some “witness” to his experience, this can make an extraordinary difference. I have learned that the kindness of a teacher, a coach, a policeman, a neighbor, the parent of a friend, is never wasted. These moments are likely to pass with neither the child nor the adult fully knowing the significance of the contribution. No ceremony attaches to the moment that a child sees his own worth reflected in the eyes of an encouraging adult. Though nothing apparent marks the occasion, inside that child a new view of self might take hold. He is not just a person deserving of neglect or violence, not just a person who is a burden to the sad adults in his life, not just a child who fails to solve his family’s problems, who fails to rescue them from pain or madness or addiction or poverty or unhappiness. No, this child might be someone else, someone whose appearance before this one adult revealed specialness or lovability, or value. This value might be revealed through appreciation of a child’s artistic talent, physical ability, humor, courage, patience, curiosity, scholarly skills, creativity, resourcefulness, responsibility, energy, or any of the many attributes that children bring us in such abundance.
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Gavin de Becker (The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence)
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I find that while each partner might have needed some specific coaching, the real tests we faced were basically the same, season after season. We had to learn to move as a team. We had to master complex, carefully timed choreography. We had to face the hot lights and live action and the idea that millions of eyes were upon us. But beyond that, I needed to inspire and instill confidence in each person I coached and danced with. I needed to communicate with an open heart and empathetic, encouraging words. I had to critique usefully and praise strategically. I also needed to be my authentic self--exposing my personal vulnerabilities to win their trust. Ultimately, I had to make each of my partners embrace not just me, but also her own sill and power. Every partner I’ve danced with has it within them to kick ass and climb mountains. When you put yourself in a situation when you’re vulnerable, that’s when your power is revealed. And it’s always there; it’s part of your DNA. It’s like a woman walking into a room looking for the diamond necklace and realizing it’s around her neck. I’m not changing any of these ladies; I’m helping them rediscover themselves.
And truth be told, that was never my goal. I never walked into a studio thinking, I’m going to transform this person’s life. I’m no therapist! I was just trying to put some damn routines together! But I realized after all these seasons that the dance is a metaphor for the journey. Every one of my partners has had a very different one. What they brought to the table was different; what they needed to overcome was different. But despite that, the same thing happens time and time again: the walls come tumbling down and they find their true selves. That I have anything at all to do with that is both thrilling and humbling. In the beginning, I thought I was just along for the ride--army candy.
To touch a person’s life, to help them find their footing, is a gift, and I’m thankful I get to do it season after season.
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Derek Hough (Taking the Lead: Lessons from a Life in Motion)
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You might expect that if you spent such an extended period in twelve different households, what you would gather is twelve different ideas about how to raise children: there would be the strict parents and the lax parents and the hyperinvolved parents and the mellow parents and on and on. What Lareau found, however, is something much different. There were only two parenting “philosophies,” and they divided almost perfectly along class lines. The wealthier parents raised their kids one way, and the poorer parents raised their kids another way. The wealthier parents were heavily involved in their children’s free time, shuttling them from one activity to the next, quizzing them about their teachers and coaches and teammates. One of the well-off children Lareau followed played on a baseball team, two soccer teams, a swim team, and a basketball team in the summer, as well as playing in an orchestra and taking piano lessons. That kind of intensive scheduling was almost entirely absent from the lives of the poor children. Play for them wasn’t soccer practice twice a week. It was making up games outside with their siblings and other kids in the neighborhood. What a child did was considered by his or her parents as something separate from the adult world and not particularly consequential. One girl from a working-class family—Katie Brindle—sang in a choir after school. But she signed up for it herself and walked to choir practice on her own. Lareau writes: What Mrs. Brindle doesn’t do that is routine for middle-class mothers is view her daughter’s interest in singing as a signal to look for other ways to help her develop that interest into a formal talent. Similarly Mrs. Brindle does not discuss Katie’s interest in drama or express regret that she cannot afford to cultivate her daughter’s talent. Instead she frames Katie’s skills and interests as character traits—singing and acting are part of what makes Katie “Katie.” She sees the shows her daughter puts on as “cute” and as a way for Katie to “get attention.
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Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers: The Story of Success)
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Jane felt limp and sated and thoroughly wicked as she snuggled against Dom. They were still joined below, though he’d begun to soften inside her. Still, how naughty it was to be here like this, how deliciously carnal to have made love while they were both half-dressed. Why, Dom still even wore his cravat! She didn’t know why that excited her, though it did.
But not as much as Dom saying “please” over and over. Letting her take control of their lovemaking. Even encouraging her to do it.
And not nearly as much as Dom asking her to marry him.
Well, he didn’t really ask, exactly. He demanded it yet again. But he’d said “please,” and that made all the difference. Especially since he’d then asked her to love him.
Silly man. As if she had any choice in the matter.
“I do love you, you know,” she whispered. “I can’t help myself. I fell in love with you practically from the moment we met, and I never stopped.”
“I love you, too, sweeting,” he murmured into her shoulder. “Always have, always will.”
Her heart thundered in her chest. She’d waited so long to hear those words again, she could scarcely believe them.
She pulled back to search his face. “Truly?”
“Truly.” With infinite tenderness, he brushed her fringe of curls from her eyes. “I tried so hard to forget you after we parted. But I couldn’t. Not for one day.”
That earned him a long kiss…that, and the prospect of him as hers. Her very own husband. Oh, yes. She could let herself think it now. They could marry at once, or at least as soon as this business with Nancy was over.
Nancy! Oh, Lord, she’d forgotten all about her cousin.
Sliding off him, she frantically sought to put her clothing to rights. “You don’t think that Meredith returned while we were…you know…”
“No.” A faint amusement lightened his tone as he tucked himself back into his drawers and buttoned them. “The man I spoke to said she and her family return at seven every night.” He pulled out his pocket watch. “It’s only six now.”
“Thank heaven.” She tugged her skirts and petticoats into place and patted her hair. “I do wish that hackney coaches came with mirrors.”
Dom’s eyes gleamed at her. “Be glad I didn’t take your hair down completely, while I was mauling you with all the self-control of some half-grown lad.”
She shot him a teasing glance. “I didn’t mind. You maul very well. And making love in a carriage, with the world passing by unsuspecting, was rather…well…thrilling.”
“I can do without that kind of thrill, frankly. If anyone had discovered us…” He shuddered. “Next time we make love, it will be in a bed, and I will treat you with the tenderness you deserve.
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Sabrina Jeffries (If the Viscount Falls (The Duke's Men, #4))
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Ellen Braun, an accomplished agile manager, noticed that different behaviors emerge over time as telltale signs of a team’s emotional maturity, a key component in their ability to adjust as things happen to them and to get to the tipping point when “an individual’s self interest shifts to alignment with the behaviors that support team achievement” (Braun 2010). It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. —James Thurber Team Dynamics Survey Ellen created a list of survey questions she first used as personal reflection while she observed teams in action. Using these questions the same way, as a pathway to reflection, an agile coach can gain insight into potential team problems or areas for emotional growth. Using them with the team will be more insightful, perhaps as material for a retrospective where the team has the time and space to chew on the ideas that come up. While the team sprints, though, mull them over on your own, and notice what they tell you about team dynamics (Braun 2010). • How much does humor come into day-to-day interaction within the team? • What are the initial behaviors that the team shows in times of difficulty and stress? • How often are contradictory views raised by team members (including junior team members)? • When contradictory views are raised by team members, how often are they fully discussed? • Based on the norms of the team, how often do team members compromise in the course of usual team interactions (when not forced by circumstances)? • To what extent can any team member provide feedback to any other team member (think about negative and positive feedback)? • To what extent does any team member actually provide feedback to any other team member? • How likely would it be that a team member would discuss issues with your performance or behavior with another team member without giving feedback to you directly (triangulating)? • To what extent do you as an individual get support from your team on your personal career goals (such as learning a new skill from a team member)? • How likely would you be to ask team members for help if it required your admission that you were struggling with a work issue? • How likely would you be to share personal information with the team that made you feel vulnerable? • To what extent is the team likely to bring into team discussions an issue that may create conflict or disagreement within the team? • How likely or willing are you to bring into a team discussion an issue that is likely to have many different conflicting points of view? • If you bring an item into a team discussion that is likely to have many different conflicting points of view, how often does the team reach a consensus that takes into consideration all points of view and feels workable to you? • Can you identify an instance in the past two work days when you felt a sense of warmth or inclusion within the context of your team? • Can you identify an instance in the past two days when you felt a sense of disdain or exclusion within the context of your team? • How much does the team make you feel accountable for your work? Mulling over these questions solo or posing them to the team will likely generate a lot of raw material to consider. When you step back from the many answers, perhaps one or two themes jump out at you, signaling the “big things” to address.
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Lyssa Adkins (Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition)
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Company Team Buildingis a tool that can help inside inspiring a team for that satisfaction associated with organizational objectives. Today?azines multi-cultural society calls for working in a harmonious relationship with assorted personas, particularly in global as well as multi-location companies. Business team building events strategies is a way by which team members tend to be met towards the requirements of the firm. They help achieve objectives together instead of working on their particular.
Which are the benefits of company team building events?
Team building events methods enhance conversation among co-workers. The huge benefits include improved upon morality as well as management skills, capacity to handle difficulties, and much better understanding of work environment. Additional positive aspects would be the improvements inside conversation, concentration, decision making, party problem-solving, and also reducing stress.
What are the usual signs that reveal the need for team building?
The common signs consist of discord or even hostility between people, elevated competitors organizations between staff, lack of function involvement, poor decision making abilities, lowered efficiency, as well as poor quality associated with customer care.
Describe different methods of business team development?
Company team development experts as well as person programs on ?working collaboratively? can supply different ways of business team building. An important method of business team building is actually enjoyment routines that want communication between the members. The favored activities are fly-fishing, sailing regattas, highway rallies, snow boarding, interactive workshops, polls, puzzle game titles, and so forth. Each one of these routines would help workers be competitive and hone their own side considering abilities.
Just what services are offered by the team building events trainers?
The majority of the coaches offer you enjoyable functions, coming from accommodation to be able to dishes and much more. The actual packages include holiday packages, rope courses, on-going business office video games, and also ice-breakers. Coaching fees would depend on location, number of downline, classes, and sophistication periods. Special discounts are available for long-term deals of course, if the quantity of associates will be higher.
Name some well-known corporate team development event providers within the U.Utes.
Several well-liked companies are Accel-Team, Encounter Based Studying Inc, Performance Supervision Organization, Team development Productions, The education Haven Incorporated, Enterprise Upwards, Group Contractors In addition, and Team development USA.If you want to find out more details, make sure you Clicking Here
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Business Team Building FAQs
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you are brought face to face with the great question about the soccer coach: Does he really matter? It turns out that coaches or managers (call them what you like) simply don’t make that much difference.
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Simon Kuper (Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia, Turkey--and Even Iraq--Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport)
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Understand that the size of the coach makes little difference in the total investment. Coaches of all sizes cost the carrier about the same to insure across the board. In addition, the size of your group does not reduce the required investment dramatically. Most coaches that can transport less than 36 passengers will not be allowed to travel more than 150 miles from the carrier’s home base. These coaches will not have restrooms, ample luggage space, or the level of comfort needed.
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Craig Speck (The Ultimate Common Sense Ground Transportation Guide For Churches and Schools: How To Learn Not To Crash and Burn)
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Advika was given a chance at coaching to speak on
any topic she wishes, as it was their fun day.
As she was a good speaker she drafted a poem for people
like her who too were in the same level game of life,
dealing with the same hell, just different devils -
“If you like wearing short clothes, wear it,
If you like makeup, do it,
If you like going to pubs, go for it,
If you love pretending fake, pretend it,
If you like drinking, smoking, just do it,
But
If I like traditional clothes, let me wear it,
If I don’t put makeup, let me be that way,
If I don’t go to pubs, don’t force me to come along,
If I stay real and hate pretending fake, deal with it,
If I don’t want to drink, smoke, then don’t tag
me as old-fashioned.
If I do not go with the trend just let me breathe in
my comfort zone do not try to steal oxygen to make
me die someday just because I do not fit in your space.
Great ones usually do not fit it, so it is okay!
Everybody is unique so what if I am antique.
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Garima Pradhan
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Advika was given a chance at coaching to speak on
any topic she wishes, as it was their fun day.
As she was a good speaker she drafted a poem for people
like her who too were in the same level game of life,
dealing with the same hell, just different devils -
“If you like wearing short clothes, wear it,
If you like makeup, do it,
If you like going to pubs, go for it,
If you love pretending fake, pretend it,
If you like drinking, smoking, just do it,
But
If I like traditional clothes, let me wear it,
If I don’t put makeup, let me be that way,
If I don’t go to pubs, don’t force me to come along,
If I stay real and hate pretending fake, deal with it,
If I don’t want to drink, smoke, then don’t tag
me as old-fashioned.
If I do not go with the trend just let me breathe in
my comfort zone do not try to steal oxygen to make
me die someday just because I do not fit in your space.
Great ones usually do not fit it, so it is okay!
Everybody is unique so what if I am antique.
”
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Garima Pradhan (A Girl That Had to be Strong)
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The five key factors could have been taken right out of Bill Campbell’s playbook. Excellent teams at Google had psychological safety (people knew that if they took risks, their manager would have their back). The teams had clear goals, each role was meaningful, and members were reliable and confident that the team’s mission would make a difference. You’ll see that Bill was a master at establishing those conditions: he went to extraordinary lengths to build safety, clarity, meaning, dependability, and impact into each team he coached.
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Eric Schmidt (Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell)
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The Complexity of Indian Accents in American English
Not everyone from India has the same accent, so what’s important to think about when identifying what to focus on to create clear speech?
Here are some things to consider:
1. Some people from India are English-medium schooled. Some are not.
2. Many people from India speak with tense articulation, which might make their speech sound fast.
3. Complexity & Variety
If someone from India is having challenges speaking American English clearly at a comfortable pace, they may need to familiarize themselves with the vowels Americans use … they may be using British vowels, or some combination of vowels from their first languages and British vowels, and they are not aware of the vowel substitutions. They may also speak at a faster pace than American audiences are used to, and they may not pause and breathe as they go. They may have a lot of issues with the /w/ and /v/ sound distinctions, and their /th/ sounds make sound like /t/’s. Their /t/ sounds may have little bouncy/poppy qualities and they may be using a different part of their tongues to make the sounds. They may also be throaty speakers. And, for southern languages in particular, word stress patterns in American English and how to stress syllables by elongating them is key to intelligibility.
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Rebecca Linquist
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Passage Five: From Business Manager to Group Manager This is another leadership passage that at first glance doesn’t seem overly arduous. The assumption is that if you can run one business successfully, you can do the same with two or more businesses. The flaw in this reasoning begins with what is valued at each leadership level. A business manager values the success of his own business. A group manager values the success of other people’s businesses. This is a critical distinction because some people only derive satisfaction when they’re the ones receiving the lion’s share of the credit. As you might imagine, a group manager who doesn’t value the success of others will fail to inspire and support the performance of the business managers who report to him. Or his actions might be dictated by his frustration; he’s convinced he could operate the various businesses better than any of his managers and wishes he could be doing so. In either instance, the leadership pipeline becomes clogged with business managers who aren’t operating at peak capacity because they’re not being properly supported or their authority is being usurped. This level also requires a critical shift in four skill sets. First, group managers must become proficient at evaluating strategy for capital allocation and deployment purposes. This is a sophisticated business skill that involves learning to ask the right questions, analyze the right data, and apply the right corporate perspective to understand which strategy has the greatest probability of success and therefore should be funded. The second skill cluster involves development of business managers. As part of this development, group managers need to know which of the function managers are ready to become business managers. Coaching new business managers is also an important role for this level. The third skill set has to do with portfolio strategy. This is quite different from business strategy and demands a perceptual shift. This is the first time managers have to ask these questions: Do I have the right collection of businesses? What businesses should be added, subtracted, or changed to position us properly and ensure current and future earnings? Fourth, group managers must become astute about assessing whether they have the right core capabilities. This means avoiding wishful thinking and instead taking a hard, objective look at their range of resources and making a judgment based on analysis and experience. Leadership becomes more holistic at this level. People may master the required skills, but they won’t perform at full leadership capacity if they don’t begin to see themselves as broad-gauged executives. By broad-gauged, we mean that managers need to factor in the complexities of running multiple businesses, thinking in terms of community, industry, government,
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Ram Charan (The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company (Jossey-Bass Leadership Series Book 391))
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Posture
The first impression you make is likely to be from several feet away. An observer will assess your approachability from a general analysis of how you stand, so the right posture is something to be considered.
A closed posture—sitting with arms and legs crossed, often with a hand covering the mouth or chin—gives the signal: “Stay away, I’m not interested in speaking with anyone.” Similarly, standing with arms crossed conveys defensiveness or displeasure, a poor impression to give anyone you’d like to get to know.
An open posture—arms relaxed, not crossed, hands away from mouth—says: “I’m available for a conversation, and I’m friendly. Come on over and approach me.”
When you are working toward friendly posture, keep in mind that the degree of muscle tension is another clue to whether someone is open to being approached. A relaxed posture indicates that a person is more receptive. A tightened posture indicates that the person feels threatened. Think about the muscle relaxation exercises in the previous chapter: Remember how much calmer you feel when you have given your muscles the “soft and loose” command? Similarly, deep, regular breathing creates an impression of approachability.
Here is an exercise that makes use of biofeedback (information gathered, stored, and applied) to give you knowledge about your body language. Stand or sit in front of a mirror. Strive for an absence of tension. Look at your face. Use internal coaching to let your facial muscles go slack. Say, “My forehead, cheeks, and mouth are relaxed.” If you see a furrowed brow or tight cheeks or lips, continue giving yourself the relaxation message until your face looks different. Then, imprint the muscle memory of relaxation into your mind. When you interact with others, try to recall this relaxed state.
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Jonathan Berent (Beyond Shyness: How to Conquer Social Anxieties)
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Pharos institute development programs help to improve organization growth by offering the different type of development programs including Manager coach certification, internal coach certification,diploma of leadership & management and much more.it helps employee's to make more productive,a better communicator to resolve the issues.
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Pharosinstitute
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Player: Sir, I don’t think we will win this match, every team member is convinced about the loss, the discussion is only about how badly.
Coach: What do you think?
The player: I think we only win if we decide to win, but I am just one member of the team, I can’t do anything on my own. At the end of the day it’s a team game. One person can make a difference, but the games are won by the teams.
Coach: So, go there and make a difference.
Player: How?
Coach: It’s difficult but not impossible, you not only have to fight the opponents but also the fear of your team-mates, pretend it’s not difficult, stand firm, just over-look the refusals & denials, keep trying & make them believe it’s a cake-walk even if you are bruised, petrified or tired.
Player: But what about the negative mind-set of some players.
Coach: Don’t worry about them. They are like sheep, will anyways follow the majority. Keep trying, and most of them will feel ashamed of not doing anything, at least they will pretend to try, and that will give a positive signal to other players.
Player: But I also feel de-motivated at times?
Coach: Well, find your motivation in fighting the loss of hope, picture yourself in a post win situation, go for the win & take others along, even if some needs to be carried on your back.
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Shahenshah Hafeez Khan
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Even at this point, say Ressler and others, these potential hosts of monsters can be turned around through the (often unintentional) intervention of people who show kindness, support, or even just interest. I can say from experience that it doesn’t take much. Ressler’s theories on the childhoods of the worst killers in America have an unlikely ideological supporter, psychiatrist and child-advocate Alice Miller. Her emotionally evocative books (including The Drama Of The Gifted Child and The Untouched Key) make clear that if a child has some effective human contact at particularly significant periods, some recognition of his worth and value, some “witness” to his experience, this can make an extraordinary difference. I have learned that the kindness of a teacher, a coach, a policeman, a neighbor, the parent of a friend, is never wasted. These moments are likely to pass with neither the child nor the adult fully knowing the significance of the contribution. No ceremony attaches to the moment that a child sees his own worth reflected in the eyes of an encouraging adult. Though nothing apparent marks the occasion, inside that child a new view of self might take hold. He is not just a person deserving of neglect or violence, not just a person who is a burden to the sad adults in his life, not just a child who fails to solve his family’s problems, who fails to rescue them from pain or madness or addiction or poverty or unhappiness. No, this child might be someone else, someone whose appearance before this one adult revealed specialness or lovability, or value. This value might be revealed through appreciation of a child’s artistic talent, physical ability, humor, courage, patience, curiosity, scholarly skills, creativity, resourcefulness, responsibility, energy, or any of the many attributes that children bring us in such abundance. I had a fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Conway, who fought monsters in me. He showed kindness and recognized some talent in me at just the period when violence was consuming my family. He gave me some alternative designs for self-image, not just the one children logically deduce from mistreatment (“If this is how I am treated, then this is the treatment I am worthy of”). It might literally be a matter of a few hours with a person whose kindness reconnects the child to an earlier experience of self, a self that was loved and valued and encouraged.
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Gavin de Becker (The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence)
“
Third, the idea that venture capitalists get into deals on the strength of their brands can be exaggerated. A deal seen by a partner at Sequoia will also be seen by rivals at other firms: in a fragmented cottage industry, there is no lack of competition. Often, winning the deal depends on skill as much as brand: it’s about understanding the business model well enough to impress the entrepreneur; it’s about judging what valuation might be reasonable. One careful tally concluded that new or emerging venture partnerships capture around half the gains in the top deals, and there are myriad examples of famous VCs having a chance to invest and then flubbing it.[6] Andreessen Horowitz passed on Uber. Its brand could not save it. Peter Thiel was an early investor in Stripe. He lacked the conviction to invest as much as Sequoia. As to the idea that branded venture partnerships have the “privilege” of participating in supposedly less risky late-stage investment rounds, this depends from deal to deal. A unicorn’s momentum usually translates into an extremely high price for its shares. In the cases of Uber and especially WeWork, some late-stage investors lost millions. Fourth, the anti-skill thesis underplays venture capitalists’ contributions to portfolio companies. Admittedly, these contributions can be difficult to pin down. Starting with Arthur Rock, who chaired the board of Intel for thirty-three years, most venture capitalists have avoided the limelight. They are the coaches, not the athletes. But this book has excavated multiple cases in which VC coaching made all the difference. Don Valentine rescued Atari and then Cisco from chaos. Peter Barris of NEA saw how UUNET could become the new GE Information Services. John Doerr persuaded the Googlers to work with Eric Schmidt. Ben Horowitz steered Nicira and Okta through their formative moments. To be sure, stories of venture capitalists guiding portfolio companies may exaggerate VCs’ importance: in at least some of these cases, the founders might have solved their own problems without advice from their investors. But quantitative research suggests that venture capitalists do make a positive impact: studies repeatedly find that startups backed by high-quality VCs are more likely to succeed than others.[7] A quirky contribution to this literature looks at what happens when airline routes make it easier for a venture capitalist to visit a startup. When the trip becomes simpler, the startup performs better.[8]
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Sebastian Mallaby (The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future)
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Children and adults alike need to experience how rewarding it is to work at the edge of their abilities. Resilience is the product of agency: knowing that what you do can make a difference. Many of us remember what playing team sports, singing in the school choir, or playing in the marching band meant to us, especially if we had coaches or directors who believed in us, pushed us to excel, and taught us we could be better than we thought was possible. The children we reach need this experience.
”
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Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
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supported by someone who has experience, expertise, and perspective that you need, who is invested enough in your success and growth to gently direct your attention to the most significant things in your situation—the small changes that can make a big difference as you tackle those choices and challenges.
”
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Melinda Cohan (The Confident Coach: Build a Business You Love, Attract Ideal Clients & Make a Lasting Impact)
“
To lovers out there …
Social media standards destroy relationships and marriages. What you need to understand is people are not the same. Everyone has their own unique custom features, which is created by their experience that makes them behave or act different than others. Whatever you read online or anywhere might not apply to all man or women even thou it applies to Peter or Mary.
”
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D.J. Kyos
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Transforming Challenges into Opportunities: Enhancing Problem-Solving Skills through Critical Thinking
In today's fast-paced and competitive business world, the ability to think critically and solve problems effectively is crucial for success. Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur or a budding startup owner, developing strong problem-solving skills can give you a significant edge in the market. By harnessing the power of critical thinking, you can transform challenges into opportunities and propel your business towards success.
As a coach for business start-ups and a catalyst for innovation, I understand the importance of equipping entrepreneurs with the necessary tools to overcome obstacles and thrive in the face of adversity. In this blog post, I will explore how honing your critical thinking skills can help you navigate the challenges of starting and growing a business.
1. Identifying the Problem:
Critical thinking involves the ability to accurately identify and define the problem at hand. As a coach for business start-up ideas, I can help you analyze your unique challenges and break them down into manageable parts. By clarifying the problem, you can focus your efforts on finding the most effective solution.
2. Analyzing Different Perspectives:
One of the key aspects of critical thinking is considering different perspectives and viewpoints. When faced with a problem, it is important to step back and evaluate the situation from various angles. This allows you to gain valuable insights and uncover opportunities that may not be immediately apparent. As a coach, I can guide you through this process, helping you see the bigger picture and explore alternative solutions.
3. Developing Creative Solutions:
Critical thinking encourages out-of-the-box thinking and the ability to generate creative solutions. By breaking away from conventional thought patterns, you can discover innovative approaches to solving problems. As your coach, I can help you tap into your creative potential and unlock new possibilities for your business.
4. Evaluating Risks and Benefits:
Effective problem-solving requires a thorough analysis of the risks and benefits associated with different solutions. Through critical thinking, you can weigh the pros and cons, assess potential outcomes, and make informed decisions. As your coach, I can guide you in evaluating the risks and benefits of various options, enabling you to make strategic choices that align with your business goals.
5. Adapting to Change:
In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, adaptability is crucial. Critical thinking allows you to embrace change and adapt your strategies as needed. By honing your problem-solving skills, you can navigate unexpected challenges with ease and turn them into opportunities for growth. As your coach, I can provide you with the tools and techniques to foster adaptability and resilience in the face of change.
In conclusion, developing strong problem-solving skills through critical thinking is essential for entrepreneurs and business start-ups. By working with a coach who specializes in business start-up ideas, you can enhance your problem-solving abilities, uncover new opportunities, and position your business for long-term success. So, why wait? Invest in your critical thinking skills today and unlock the potential within your business.
If you are looking for a coach to guide you in transforming challenges into opportunities, I am here to help. Contact me to explore how we can work together to enhance your problem-solving skills and achieve your business goals.
Keywords: coach startup ideas, coach for business start-up, problem-solving skills, critical thinking, challenges, opportunities, entrepreneurs, innovation, analyze, creative solutions, risks, benefits, adaptability.
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Lillian Addison
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Study after study shows that employees leave organizations primarily because of poor relationships with managers, not because of pay, benefits, or other factors. How well you train, coach, empower, and support your people—and whether you show appreciation for the hard work they do each day in the trenches serving customers—makes all the difference not only in retaining your best employees, but also in creating memorable experiences for customers.
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Chip R. Bell (Managing Knock Your Socks Off Service)
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I need a word with you, Miss Vega.” He pointed back into the room as the girls disappeared into the men’s locker room across the hall.
I backed up with my heart pounding madly against my chest and as the door swung closed, he whipped me around to crowd me in against it and cast a silencing bubble around us.
“Nervous?” he asked with a smirk and I nodded.
He pressed his mouth to mine, kissing me deeply and making my heart pound for a whole different reason.
He released me, resting one hand above me on the door which made his bicep flex. “You’ll do great. You’ve been killing it in your practise sessions. You’re the best Pit Keeper we’ve had in years.”
“Are you just saying that to get into my pants, Coach?” I teased and he chuckled darkly.
“No, Blue. I’m saying it because it’s true.” He smiled and my heart started to slow as I drew comfort from his confidence in me.
“Thanks. So are you wearing a cheer ribbon for me today?” I taunted and he leaned in closer with mischief in his eyes.
“Yes, but I had to wear it somewhere no one would see. So it’s tied in a very special place.”
I burst out laughing, gripping his waistband. “Are you telling me it’s tied to your-”
“You can find out exactly where it’s tied after the game, but only if you do well.” He plucked my hand off of him with a stern stare that sent a shiver through me.
“Okay, sir,” I said breathily. “Let’s go beat Aurora then.” I pushed away from the door and he disbanded the silencing bubble with a chuckle before we exited and headed across the hall into the men’s locker room.
(Darcy)
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Caroline Peckham (Cursed Fates (Zodiac Academy, #5))
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Grand Slam Offer: Pay one time. (No recurring fee. No retainer.) Just cover ad spend. I’ll generate leads and work your leads for you. And only pay me if people show up. And I’ll guarantee you get 20 people in your first month, or you get your next month free. I’ll also provide all the best practices from the other businesses like yours. ● Daily sales coaching for your staff ● Tested scripts ● Tested price points and offers to swipe and deploy ● Sales recordings . . . and everything else you need to sell and fulfill your customers. I’ll give you the entire play book for (insert industry), absolutely free just for becoming a client. In a nutshell, I'm feeding people into your business, showing you, exactly, how to sell them so that you can get the highest prices, which means that you make the most money possible . . . sound fair enough? It’s clear these are drastically different offers . . . but so what? Where’s the money!? Let’s compare both in the below chart. Breakdown: You spend the same amount of money for the same eyeballs. Then, you get 2.5x more people to respond to your advertisement because it’s a more compelling offer. From there, you close 2.5x as many people because the offer is so much more compelling. From there, you are able to charge a 4x higher price up front. The end result is 2.5 x 2.5 x 4 = 22.4x more cash collected up front. Yes, you spent $10,000 to make $112,000. You just made money getting new customers.
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Alex Hormozi ($100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No)
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Mandeep Motor Driving School helps you learn car driving in Malviya Nagar with ease. Our only focus is to make you an expert driver and see you drive stress free on the busy streets of New Delhi. We have a team of experts who provide all the essential training within your course period. You might have struggled to drive on the traffic-filled streets of Malviya Nagar before but it will not be the case now! It is a promise from Mandeep Motor Driving School that you can drive confidently with a smile on your face by the end of your course. Book your session today to know the difference yourself.
Our staff consists of car instructors, two wheeler trainers, car mechanics etc. Their experience in the automobile field has been an asset for our driving institute and also to all our students. They are well aware of the demographics of the city and have been trained to impart impeccable coaching to all our students.
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Driving School in Malviya Nagar
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Optimism makes you less likely to walk away while not actually increasing your chances of success. That means that being overly optimistic will make you stick to things longer that aren’t worthwhile. Better to be well calibrated. Life’s too short to spend your time on opportunities that are no longer worthwhile. When someone is on the outside looking in, they can usually see your situation more rationally than you can. The best quitting coach is a person who loves you enough to look out for your long-term well-being. They are willing to tell you the hard truth even if it means risking hurt feelings in the short term. Decisions about when to quit improve when the people who make the decisions to start things are different from the people who make the decisions to stop those things. Getting the most out of a quitting coach requires permission to speak the truth.
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Annie Duke (Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away)
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Visualization As you hone and create your identity and new narrative, being able to picture yourself moving through this new life actually helps it become your reality. As you use imagery as a tool, be aware that there is a huge difference between fantasizing and visualizing. It’s like the saying “If you write it down, it’s a plan; if you don’t, it’s a wish.” Fantasizing is the activity of imagining scenarios that satisfy your desire for gratification and vengeance. Fantasizing is wishing, which is not a bad place to start. Fantasy often uses a third-person POV, like watching yourself in the best movie ever, starring you. It might be fun to fantasize, but as a psychological tool that enables you to get what you want in life, it’s more or less useless. Fantasy is usually about outcome. You imagine yourself being respected or thin, in a sexual or romantic relationship, or on the beach, but you are no closer to realizing those dreams than you were before you fantasized about them. Visualizing is like writing it down to make a plan; more specifically, it is making a model in your mind of the process leading to the desired result. Visualizing is a scientific methodology for rehearsing different reality-based scenarios in your head before an important event or interaction. If you learn to visualize effectively, you can condition yourself to succeed, even in stressful, anxious situations. To visualize for success: First, use the third-person POV to see yourself showing up as required in your life, on task, and with the performance you desire. Next, use the first-person POV, where you enter into the scene and you see and feel the experience. Go over the specifics of a job interview and see yourself being assertive. Feel your steady heart rate. Smell the confidence. Train your brain to associate walking into that interview with assurance and calm. Visualize every sensation and step. The coldness of the doorknob, the plush carpet under your shoes, the overhead lighting, the sound of the copy machine down the hall. Immerse yourself in detail. Script the scene with positive, powerful phrases, like I can and I am. I can get the job done. I am the person you’re looking for. Repeat the scenario. During the week before the specific event or interaction is to take place, practice daily. Later on, when it’s all over, examine how close your visualization was to reality. Even if the two look completely different, you’ll be glad you did all you could to be prepared and to succeed. This is a tried-and-true method of practicing for success. Athletic coaches on the sports field and personal life coaches advocate and outright require this kind of thorough mental preparation. There is no substitute except to rely on luck, which is not really a plan. Prepare, prepare, prepare, and remember what Louis Pasteur said: “Chance seems to favor the prepared mind.
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John R. Sharp MD (The Insight Cure: Change Your Story, Transform Your Life)
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There’s not much of a difference between a stadium full of cheering fans and an angry crowd screaming abuse at you. They’re both just making a lot of noise! How you take it is up to you.
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Sue Sylvester
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Good. How about you find the balls that are attached to your dicks, draw them out of your abdominal cavity and show me.”
“You want to see our testicles, Coach?” Mike asked, making his way backward down his ladder.
“Maybe when I find my magnifying glass, Mr. Brown! I won’t be able to tell the difference between what you call testicles and raisins.”
Mike gasped for air. “My balls are sweeter, sir!”
Lids narrowed over his black marbles. “Glad to know how flexible you are, Mr. Brown. That’ll come in handy for the rest of my practice.” Watkins added with a growl, “If you are still alive.
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Ashlan Thomas (The Silent Cries of a Magpie (Cove, #1))
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They all helped make me a more confident player, and with more confidence comes the desire to try different and more creative things on the ice. That lesson in building a player’s confidence is something all coaches need to learn. It worked back then, and it still works for today’s players.
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Bobby Orr (Orr: My Story)
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Minibus Hire Company in Manchester can cater for guests and small families for any kind of journeys whether short or long distance trips. They tend to have a large fleet and a well managed process in which to cater for these travel requirements. Make sure your minibus hire company can cover long distance hire requests if you are 100% serious on being able to travel in a safe, comfortable and overall convenient manner. Make sure you don't therefore hire a firm that may end up offering false promises they cannot deliver on.
No matter why you're traveling to United Kingdom, you can count on minibus hire as being a good type of minibus hire Manchester for going a long distance. Book online before you go and discover a range of options. From here you will also be able to look at the ways minibuses can be a reliable means from which to be able to travel. Unlike car hire or hiring a taxi, you can get a lot more leg room and this is why they are a great means of transport for meeting events and business related requirements. Most of the firms in the market have a wide range of vehicles that can accommodate any size group.
Most firms in the market today can offer a service providing competitive prices on minibus hire manchester, seaport transfers, sightseeing journeys and long distance UK travel. There are in fact not a lot of services which these firms cannot offer their customers. They can and do the hassle and stress of driving yourself and this can ensure you have all of your travel plans taken care of well in advance. The services can also be great value for money in terms of what they can cost. That said, there are also providers of minibus transport who trade in the luxury segment of the market.
Private hire from a local single journey, full day hires or long distance minibus tours can all be sourced, booked and arranged from a manchester minibus hire. There are firms offering these such services across different pricing levels and to suit a great range of customer requirements. You can now source these services all to your convenience. The same can also be said of and for the services coach hire firms offer too.
More information please visit
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Coachiremanchester
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Quarterbacks today, they're ripped. You ever see players at the combine meat market, standing up on stage in their skivvies so the owners and coaches can take a look?" "Uh, no. I haven't. And I don't want to." Sam chuckled. "It is a bit strange, white team owners and coaches eyeballing these big black studs same way white plantation owners used to eyeball black slaves being sold on the docks in Galveston—I saw a show on cable about that, struck me—but difference is, these black players are going to make millions not pick cotton.
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Mark Gimenez (The Case Against William)
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Speakers, coaches, consultants, thought-leaders, experts, and authors who dedicate their professional lives for the love of humanity and the betterment of society are making a positive difference in the lives of millions. These messengers of hope make our entire world a better place through their love and generosity.
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Susan C. Young (The Art of Being: 8 Ways to Optimize Your Presence & Essence for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #1))
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A healthy character means developing a positive outlook on life no matter what serious situation you’re facing. Well-respected basketball coach John Wooden said, “Be more concerned about your character than your reputation. Your reputation is how others perceive you; your character is who you really are.” Character means having a healthy, positive attitude in the wake of job loss or any life challenge. Clement Stone said, “There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.” Thomas Jefferson said, “Nothing can stop a person with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; but nothing on earth can help the person with the wrong mental attitude.
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Jay A. Block (101 Best Ways to Land a Job in Troubled Times)
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You live here in Copper Creek, Miss Ashford?” She dipped a fresh cloth in the water and washed the bullet wound in the patient’s shoulder as best she could. “I do now. We arrived today.” She paused and straightened, the muscles in her back in spasms from bending over the table, and from too much riding on trains and coaches and wagons. She thought of Janie waiting at home, watching for her, and hoped she wasn’t worrying. Robert’s only concern would be that she’d left him overlong with people he didn’t know. He hated making chitchat. She just hoped he wasn’t acting sullen and stone-faced with Vince, Janie, and Emma, like he so often did with her. Hearing a clock ticking somewhere behind her, she rethreaded the needle and focused again on her task. Suturing a man was different from suturing a horse, and very definitely different from sewing saddles. Yet something about the repetition of the act felt similar, which made her wonder if she was doing it right. “We?” Finishing the third suture in the man’s shoulder, she peered up at Caradon, the needle poised between her right thumb and forefinger. “I beg your pardon?” “You said ‘we arrived today.’” Not wanting to talk, she tied off a fourth suture, and a fifth, aware of him watching her. “My brother and I.” “Where did you move from?” She raised her head to find him leaning close, their faces inches apart. “If you don’t mind, Marshal Caradon, could we . . . not talk right now?” The tanned lines at the corners of his eyes tightened ever so slightly. “Not much on that, are you, ma’am? Talking, I mean.” Though his expression denied it, she heard a smile in his voice, yet she held back from responding to it. Outwardly anyway. Someone like Wyatt Caradon was the last person she, or Robert, needed in their lives right now. “I don’t mind talking, Marshal. When I’m not exhausted, famished, and stitching up a gunshot wound.” Catching his grin before she looked away, she finished suturing and bandaging the wound.
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Tamera Alexander (The Inheritance)
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Manage Your Team’s Collective Time Time management is a group endeavor. The payoff goes far beyond morale and retention. ILLUSTRATION: JAMES JOYCE by Leslie Perlow | 1461 words Most professionals approach time management the wrong way. People who fall behind at work are seen to be personally failing—just as people who give up on diet or exercise plans are seen to be lacking self-control or discipline. In response, countless time management experts focus on individual habits, much as self-help coaches do. They offer advice about such things as keeping better to-do lists, not checking e-mail incessantly, and not procrastinating. Of course, we could all do a better job managing our time. But in the modern workplace, with its emphasis on connectivity and collaboration, the real problem is not how individuals manage their own time. It’s how we manage our collective time—how we work together to get the job done. Here is where the true opportunity for productivity gains lies. Nearly a decade ago I began working with a team at the Boston Consulting Group to implement what may sound like a modest innovation: persuading each member to designate and spend one weeknight out of the office and completely unplugged from work. The intervention was aimed at improving quality of life in an industry that’s notorious for long hours and a 24/7 culture. The early returns were positive; the initiative was expanded to four teams of consultants, and then to 10. The results, which I described in a 2009 HBR article, “Making Time Off Predictable—and Required,” and in a 2012 book, Sleeping with Your Smartphone , were profound. Consultants on teams with mandatory time off had higher job satisfaction and a better work/life balance, and they felt they were learning more on the job. It’s no surprise, then, that BCG has continued to expand the program: As of this spring, it has been implemented on thousands of teams in 77 offices in 40 countries. During the five years since I first reported on this work, I have introduced similar time-based interventions at a range of companies—and I have come to appreciate the true power of those interventions. They put the ownership of how a team works into the hands of team members, who are empowered and incentivized to optimize their collective time. As a result, teams collaborate better. They streamline their work. They meet deadlines. They are more productive and efficient. Teams that set a goal of structured time off—and, crucially, meet regularly to discuss how they’ll work together to ensure that every member takes it—have more open dialogue, engage in more experimentation and innovation, and ultimately function better. CREATING “ENHANCED PRODUCTIVITY” DAYS One of the insights driving this work is the realization that many teams stick to tried-and-true processes that, although familiar, are often inefficient. Even companies that create innovative products rarely innovate when it comes to process. This realization came to the fore when I studied three teams of software engineers working for the same company in different cultural contexts. The teams had the same assignments and produced the same amount of work, but they used very different methods. One, in Shenzen, had a hub-and-spokes org chart—a project manager maintained control and assigned the work. Another, in Bangalore, was self-managed and specialized, and it assigned work according to technical expertise. The third, in Budapest, had the strongest sense of being a team; its members were the most versatile and interchangeable. Although, as noted, the end products were the same, the teams’ varying approaches yielded different results. For example, the hub-and-spokes team worked fewer hours than the others, while the most versatile team had much greater flexibility and control over its schedule. The teams were completely unaware that their counterparts elsewhere in the world were managing their work differently. My research provide
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Anonymous
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Seek opportunities to show you care. The smallest gestures often make the biggest difference.” - John Wooden
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Michael Taylor (Life Coaching Manual: Authentic Guide for True Life Change)
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Can I Trust You?
Years ago, I heard Lou Holtz speak at a national conference. His rock-solid reputation preceded him—he is the only coach in the history of college football to take six different football teams to a bowl game. He is not only well-respected for his ability to elevate football programs, but to elevate individuals as well.
During his humorous and entertaining keynote, he taught a few small lessons which carried big meanings. He shared that every person you meet is privately asking themselves three questions:
1. Do you care about me?
2. Do I like you?
3. Can I trust you?
When you make an authentic, sincere, and dignified effort to create a positive first impression, you increase your chances of receiving a "Yes!" to those questions. Unfortunately, if someone you meet answers "No!" you’ve got an uphill battle to earn their business or develop a friendship.
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Susan C. Young (The Art of Connection: 8 Ways to Enrich Rapport & Kinship for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #6))
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The difference between politicians and us voters . To politicians its all fun and games. Flexing power and chess moves.
To us it is our lives and reality. No matter which decision they take. That won’t affect their salary, job, or lifestyle.
But every decision they make it affects our lives, jobs, and lifestyle. Until we are all in the same boat and share the same problems with them. They won’t understand our suffering and won’t solve our problems. They will make decisions that doesn’t favor us. They won’t have our best interests at heart.
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D.J. Kyos
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There was something different about this drill though—the pace. The tempo was furious. Generally, during a drill, an attack occurs approximately every eight to ten seconds. With the Steiner brothers, an attack occurred every three to five seconds. My body and mind grew tired. I hit a threshold of exhaustion, resulting in my inability to control any deliberate movements. My mind unraveled as Gable and his staff looked on. Fortunately, Coach yelled the most coveted word on the planet when extreme fatigue hits, “Time.” I was exhausted and relieved. I realized I’d barely made it through this intense and exhausting drill. Winners don’t just make it through. They thrive. The Elite thrive in the toughest environments. The Steiner’s were thriving. I wasn’t. They didn’t seem tired at all, but I was dying. My heart rate spiked to a level that caused the lack of oxygen to my brain and muscles. The Elite never want to be in scenarios where the stakes are high and their preparation is below the level of challenge. We’ll always sink to the level of our training. It’s a Navy Seal creed, but it’s also truth. Unfortunately, I lived that scenario during that training session. I
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Tom Ryan (Chosen Suffering: Becoming Elite In Life And Leadership)
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Coach yourself with these four excuse-shattering questions: 1. What’s my excuse? 2. What does this excuse give me permission to do (or not do)? 3. If I could no longer use this excuse, what would I have to do instead? 4. Why don’t I just do that now?
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Valorie Burton (Successful Women Think Differently: 9 Habits to Make You Happier, Healthier, and More Resilient)
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PERSONAL COACHING TOOLKIT: POWER QUESTIONS TO ENHANCE YOUR THINKING STYLE Answer each of these questions in a journal or with a coach or friend who can listen objectively and give you the space to explore your answers without attempting to give you the answers. 1. Spend some time in meditation. The perfect dream for you is the one God uniquely equipped you for. Paint a picture of what the next level of success looks like for you. What is your real dream (not the downsized one)? 2. What would it mean to you to be able to accomplish that dream? Picture yourself living that vision. What does it feel like? 3. What gifts, talents, passions, or experiences will you draw on to reach your goal? 4. Think back to a time when you were at your best and reached a particularly meaningful goal. How did you do it? What did you learn about yourself? 5. Consider that meaningful goal you described in the last question. What enabled you to be at your best? Who were the people, circumstances, and other key factors surrounding your success? 6. How could you go about recreating similar circumstances to empower you to reach that “next level of success” you described in the first question? 7. Think back to a time when you failed to reach a goal. What personal factor(s) led you to fail? What external factor(s) led you to fail? What lesson(s) can you glean from these contributing factors to help you succeed when reaching future goals? 8. Realistically, when you look at the picture you painted in the first question, what are the most significant obstacles you might face? If you don’t know, take a look at role models who have already been where you aim to go and pinpoint the obstacles they faced. 9. How can you reduce the risk of those obstacles occurring as you move forward? How will you navigate around those obstacles if they occur? 10. Describe your best possible future self. Who is she and how does she approach life? Think Differently Be intentional about what you say to yourself when you fail as well as when you succeed. Choose hope. Dream big. Learn new skills. Believe all things are possible.
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Valorie Burton (Successful Women Think Differently: 9 Habits to Make You Happier, Healthier, and More Resilient)
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a world characterized by a limited and vertical nervous system and by walls’. Instead we need to move to ‘networks – an open, fluid team of teams and continuous change making’ (quoted in Elkington and Braun, 2013: 38). This is echoed by Jon Katzenbach (2012): Today, with the ever-increasing necessity of working across organizational and geographical boundaries, and the growing complexity of daily business, more leaders at all levels are finding that it’s not always practical – or even best – to put together a team. Fortunately, we now have more options; in particular, consider the potential of focused networks, and sub-groups that can work more effectively in different modes than a ‘real team.
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Peter Hawkins (Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership)
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Distinguish between three different types of activity: information sharing, generative dialogue and decision making. Try to maximize the time spent on generative dialogue where the team have to generate collective thinking that is better than any individual could have arrived at by themselves, thus leveraging the team quotient.
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Peter Hawkins (Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership)
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At the start of each NFL season, before games have begun and injuries have occurred and expectations fail to meet reality, optimism is an organizational requirement. As the mindless blather goes, 'Every team is 0-0' and 'With a few breaks...' and 'If everyone lives up to their potential...' It makes no difference whether your franchise is plagued by a roster of talentless dopes, whether your coach is an alcoholic and your GM a heroin addict, whether you haven't won since Washington crossed the Delaware.
This, at long last, will be the year!
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Jeff Pearlman (Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton)
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We should stop trying to meet the world on its own terms and focus on building up fidelity in distinct community. Instead of being seeker-friendly, we should be finder-friendly, offering those who come to us a new and different way of life. It must be a way of life shaped by the biblical story and practices that keep us firmly focused on the truths of that story in a world that wants to obscure them and make us forget. It must be a way of life marked by stability and order and achieved through the steady work, both communal and individual, of prayer, asceticism, and service to others—exactly what liquid modernity cannot provide. A church that looks and talks and sounds just like the world has no reason to exist. A church that does not emphasize asceticism and discipleship is as pointless as a football coaching staff that doesn’t care if its players show up for practice. And though liturgy by itself is not enough, a church that neglects to involve the body in worship is going to find it increasingly difficult to get bodies into services on Sunday morning as America moves further into post-Christianity. Benedict Option churches will find
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Rod Dreher (The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation)
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In 2004, I was working toward my master’s in organizational development at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School and decided to write my thesis on the effectiveness of life coaching. Two years of extensive research with almost one hundred former US Senate interns showed what I already knew from personal experience. Regardless of age, gender, level of self-awareness, or degree, three months of coaching increased their life satisfaction and improved their personal growth.
The key conclusions that emerged from this study include:
•Life coaching makes a significant difference in overall life satisfaction.
•Coaching is an effective approach to goal attainment and personal development.
•Coaching helps clients be more effective in setting concrete, measurable goals instead of being overwhelmed by large tasks.
•Asking challenging questions encourages the client to look at a problem in new, creative ways.
I knew coaching was effective, and this research proved it.
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Darcy Luoma (Thoughtfully Fit: Your Training Plan for Life and Business Success)
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Beyond the company results the team is asked to produce, teams need something else to strive for—something to change the hamster wheel into a journey of their own making. Instead of seeing the same scenery in the hamster wheel again and again, they need to see different signposts and landmarks along the way indicating progress toward something resonant and worthwhile. This “something” is the quest for high performance. It’s the daily act of, together, striving to be the best they can be.
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Lyssa Adkins (Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition)
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Greg Aloi Singapore - How is a coach different from a consultant?
The key difference is in the way that the coach does not do the work for the coachee (the one receiving the training).
Greg Aloi The coach trains managers and senior managers so that they can perform their roles and responsibilities more efficiently in the organization, but does not do the job himself.
That is, with an example, a coach will help the company to make it understand how the development of strategic management works and the consultant will develop that strategic plan himself.
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Greg Aloi Singapore
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To help your child, try implementing the following strategies: Encourage your child to invite friends over after school or on weekends. If they don’t feel confident enough to do this, you could contact the parents to make arrangements yourself. Talk to your child’s teacher and ask them to suggest some potential friends whose parents you might be able to make contact with. Help your child plan in advance the activities they could do or play with their friends and discuss important issues such as sharing and not being bossy. Model and teach positive social skills, and always praise your child when you witness these being used. This is essential to being successful at making friends. Some examples of positive social skills that must be used when making friends and keeping them are: Smiling and being friendly Making eye contact when speaking or being spoken to Knowing names and using a confident, friendly voice when talking to others Listening to the needs and preferences of others Making compromises with friends, they won’t always want to do what your child wants to do If you see your child being negative and displaying poor social behaviors, quietly discuss with them the need to behave differently. Demonstrate what to say or role-play preferred behaviors with them, so they have a good understanding of how to act. Don’t make this discussion a critical or negative experience; your approach should be positive and helpful. Coach and support your child on a regular basis with the skills they need to remember when making friends. They can practice the desired behaviors with family members. Quietly prompt, remind and encourage them to use the skills you have discussed. Praise should be used to encourage your child when they act in a friendly and cooperative manner. Always do this quietly away from
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Katrina Kahler (How To Win Friends And Influence People for Kids)
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As it turned out, Moss and the Patriots were hotter than the game-time temperature of 84 degrees. They ran the Jets off the field in a 38–14 rout highlighted by Moss’s 51-yard touchdown against triple coverage and 183 receiving yards on nine catches. “He was born to play football,” Brady said of his newest and most lethal weapon. The quarterback had it all now. He was getting serious with his relatively new girlfriend, Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen (his ex-girlfriend, actress Bridget Moynahan, had just given birth to their son, Jack), and now he was being paired on the field with a perfect partner of a different kind. Brady wasn’t seeing the Oakland Randy Moss. He was seeing the Minnesota Moss, the vintage Moss, the 6´4˝ receiver who ran past defenders and jumped over them with ease. Brady had all day to throw to Moss and Welker, who caught the first of the quarterback’s three touchdown passes. He wasn’t sacked while posting a quarterback rating of 146.6, his best in nearly five years. Man, this was a great day for the winning coach all around. On the other sideline, Eric Mangini had made a big mistake by sticking with his quarterback, Chad Pennington, a former teammate of Moss’s at Marshall, when the outcome was no longer in doubt, subjecting his starter to some unnecessary hits as he played on an injured ankle. Pennington was annoyed enough to pull himself from the game with 6:51 left and New England leading by 17. “That was the first time I’ve ever done that,” Pennington said. Mangini played the fool on this Sunday, and Belichick surely got the biggest kick out of that. But the losing coach actually won a game within the game in the first half that the overwhelming majority of people inside Giants Stadium knew absolutely nothing about. It had started in the days before this opener, when Mangini informed his former boss that the Jets would not tolerate in their own stadium an illegal yet common Patriots practice: the videotaping of opposing coaches’ signals from the sideline. The message to Belichick was simple: Don’t do it in our house. It was something of an open secret that New England had been illegally taping opposing coaches during games for some time, and yet the first public mention of improper spying involving Belichick’s Patriots actually assigned them the collective role of victim. Following a 21–0 Miami victory in December 2006, a couple of Dolphins told the Palm Beach Post that the team had “bought” past game tapes that included audio of Brady making calls at the line, and that the information taken from those tapes had helped them shut out Brady and sack him four times. “I’ve never seen him so flustered,” said Miami linebacker Zach Thomas.
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Ian O'Connor (Belichick: The Making of the Greatest Football Coach of All Time)
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While the roles we play in life—parent, child, friend, author, coach, teacher, you name it—are important, they are not our life’s purpose. Purpose is not a role or a goal; it is an aim and a mindset. To awaken, to grow, to continually give, and to make a difference to others—that’s why we are here. It’s who we bring to what we do.
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Richard J. Leider (Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old?: The Path of Purposeful Aging)
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The prize money certainly said something about FIFA’s priorities, though. The same week the 2015 Women’s World Cup kicked off, United Passions debuted in movie theaters. It was a propaganda film that FIFA produced about itself and bankrolled for around $30 million. That’s double the total amount of prize money FIFA made available to all teams participating in the 2015 Women’s World Cup. The film earned less than $1,000 in its debut weekend in North America, for the worst box-office opening in history, and it went down as the lowest-grossing film in U.S. history. Almost all the millions of dollars FIFA poured into making the movie was lost. The film has a 0% rating on the popular movie-review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, and a New York Times review called it “one of the most unwatchable films in recent memory.” And remember the uncomfortable encounter at the team hotel between the Americans and Brazilians after the 2007 Women’s World Cup semifinal? That would never happen in a men’s World Cup. That’s because FIFA assigns different hotels and training facilities to each men’s team, to serve as a base camp throughout the tournament. The women don’t get base camps—they jump from city to city and from hotel to hotel during the World Cup, and they usually end up bumping into their opponents, who are given the same accommodations. American coach Jill Ellis said she almost walked into the German meal room at the World Cup once. “Sometimes you’re in the elevator with your opponent going down to the team buses for a game,” Heather O’Reilly says. “It’s pretty awkward.
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Caitlin Murray (The National Team: The Inside Story of the Women who Changed Soccer)
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The ideal team purpose process should… The ideal team purpose should… –energize –inspire –include robust dialogue –demonstrate patience –be emotionally demanding –help reveal discrepancies and conflicts in team members’ roles (Wageman et al, 2008) –be clear/give clarity –be challenging –be consequential (Wageman et al, 2008; Hackman, 2011) –take time –take effort –be a joint creation (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993, 1993b) –provide meaning beyond making money –be aspirational as opposed to preventative and reactive –energize others –encourage collective responsibility –(Edmondson, 2012) –unearth the motivation and energy of individual members –surface differences of opinion –renew a sense of passion and commitment (Leary-Joyce and Lines, 2018) –have an element related to winning, being first, revolutionizing or being cutting edge –belong to each individual in the team –belong collectively to the team (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993b) –involve dialogue with wider system sponsors (Hawkins, 2017) –orientate a team towards its objective, helping them choose strategies to support their work (Hackman, 2011)
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Lucy Widdowson (Building Top-Performing Teams: A Practical Guide to Team Coaching to Improve Collaboration and Drive Organizational Success)
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How long does it take to Learn Freelancing?
How long it takes to learn freelancing depends on what you're learning, how you start freelancing, and how hard you try to learn it.
Learning something requires more willpower and concentration than any effort.
The sooner you continue to learn to work with focus, the sooner you will succeed. And the slower you go, the longer it will take you to learn the task.
So if you want to build a career online as a professional freelancer then you must spend extra time on it.
Freelancing for Beginners:
If you are new to the freelancing sector, there are a few things you need to know. For example: What is data entry? What is outsourcing? Web design key etc.
Having a basic understanding of these things will make it much easier for you to learn freelancing. Although freelancing has complex tasks as well as some simple ones. But it is very few and low incomes.
There are many new freelancers who want to earn freelancing with mobile. Their statement is, "I don't need so much money, only 4-5 thousand taka will do".
In their case, I would say that you learn data entry work. You can earn that amount of money in this work.
But if you choose freelancing just to do this job then I would say you are doing it wrong. Because this data entry work is very long, you need to work for 7-8 hours.
And if you dream of only 4-5 thousand rupees by working 7-8 hours, then my suggestion for you is that you should not do this work but get tutoring.
At least it will be best for you. Freelancing requires you to have big dreams and the passion to make them come true.
Misconceptions about Freelancing:
There is no substitute for a good quality computer or a good quality laptop to learn and master freelancing professionally. This way you can practice and learn very quickly without any hassle. Many people think that by looking at the monitor and pressing the keyboard, they become freelancing and can earn lakhs of rupees a month.
In fact, those who think so cannot be entirely blamed. Many of us get lured by such mouthwatering advertisements as "opportunity to earn lakhs per month with just one month course" and waste both our precious time and money by joining bad unprofessional coaching centers. Why is it not possible to learn freelancing in just one month even in one year?
It is clear proof that glittering does not make gold. There are thousands of jobs in freelancing, each job is different, and each job takes a different amount of time to learn. So it is very difficult to comment on how long it takes to learn freelancing.
Be aware in choosing the right Freelancing Training Center:
But whatever you do, don't go for an online course of Rs 400-600-1200. Because it will also lose the willpower you have to learn to freelance.
If you have to do this type of bad course today, then do a government freelancing course or you can take practical training from an organization called "Bhairab IT Zone" for a nominal fee.
Here hands-on training is provided by professional freelancers using tools in free, premium, and upgraded versions.
Although there are many ways or mediums to learn freelancing or outsourcing. E.g. Outsourcing Learning Books, Youtube Video Tutorials, Seminars etc.
Either way, some learn to swim in a day and some in a week. To become a good swimmer one must continue swimming for a long time.
Not everyone has the same brain capacity or stamina. Humans are naturally different from one another. The same goes for freelancing. You might learn the ins and outs of freelancing within 6-7 months, it might take another 1-2 years. No matter how long it takes to learn, you need to work twice as long to become proficient at it. But with hard work, willpower, and determination you can make any impossible possible.
Please visit Our Blogging Website to Read More Articles related to Freelancing and Outsourcing.
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Bhairab IT Zone
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Hi friend, can you believe we're already a month into the new year? One of my resolutions when it began was how to make it different from the previous year, which started with similar resolutions and goals but ended with most unfulfilled. Maybe you’ve had that problem too? That’s why I’m kindly sharing with you today a solution to this problem I found in this quote: “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems”. That bit of insight is from James Clear, author of the book “Atomic Habits”, and one of the key takeaways in my book on “Personal Growth”, which is also on Amazon. The is the quick explanation I gave for his words in my book: “Having specific goals is important, but having a good system in place to achieve them is even more important”. So, if we reflect on each resolution you and I made or goal we set at the start of this year, we do well to ask “What system or set of daily actions or behaviors have I put in place to enable myself to achieve it?” A system makes all the difference, not just having a goal, writing it down or repeating it every day. As Clear illustrates in his book, goals in themselves are overrated sometimes because, before the Superbowl, both teams or coaches had the ‘goal’ of winning it, but only one had the better system to achieve it. That was the team that actually won! So, having a good system in place to achieve our goals is just as important, if not more so, than simply having the goal. I will be sharing insights like this one as regular public LinkedIn posts each week. If you're interested in following along, please do. But no pressure, I completely understand if this type of content isn't your cup of tea. Just wanted to reach out and share something that has been impactful for me. Thanks for reading and have a great day!
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Dale Naughton (Personal Growth: A Collection of Key Takeaways from Several Popular Self Development Books)
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When someone is on the outside looking in, they can usually see your situation more rationally than you can. The best quitting coach is a person who loves you enough to look out for your long-term well-being. They are willing to tell you the hard truth even if it means risking hurt feelings in the short term. Decisions about when to quit improve when the people who make the decisions to start things are different from the people who make the decisions to stop those things. Getting the most out of a quitting coach requires permission to speak the truth. INTERLUDE III The Ants Go Marching . . .
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Annie Duke (Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away)
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Treat Your Manager as a Coach Given what we’ve discussed about the role of managers, your own boss should be one of your best sources of learning. But this might not naturally be the case. Maybe he doesn’t see the day-to-day of your work, or he’s busy putting out other fires, or he simply isn’t as proactive about helping to guide your path as you’d like. Regardless, the person most invested in your career isn’t him; it’s you. Your own growth is in your hands, so if you feel you aren’t learning from your manager, ask yourself what you can do to get the relationship that you want. One of the biggest barriers I’ve found is that people shy away from asking their managers for help. I know that feeling well; for years, I held the mental model that my boss—like my teachers and professors of the past—was someone in a position of authority who took note of what I did and passed judgment on it. As such, how I interacted with my manager could be summarized in one neat statement: Don’t mess it up. I considered it a failure if my manager had to get involved in something I was responsible for. It felt to me like the equivalent of a blinking neon sign that read, Warning: employee not competent enough to take care of task on her own. But we know by now that a manager’s job is to help her team get better results. When you do better, by extension, she does better. Hence, your manager is someone who is on your side, who wants you to succeed, and who is usually willing to invest her time and energy into helping you. The key is to treat your manager as a coach, not as a judge. Can you imagine a star athlete trying to hide his weaknesses from his coach? Would you tell a personal trainer, “Oh, I’m pretty fit, I’ve got it under control,” when she asks you how she can help you achieve a better workout? Of course not. That is not how a coaching relationship works. Instead, engage your manager for feedback. Ask, “What skills do you think I should work on in order to have more impact?” Share your personal goals and enlist his help: “I want to learn to become a better presenter, so I’d be grateful if you kept an eye out for opportunities where I can get in front of others.” Tell him your hard problems so he can help you work through them: “I’m making a hiring call between two candidates with different strengths. Can I walk you through my thinking and get your advice?” When I started to see 1:1s with my manager as an opportunity for focused learning, I got so much more out of it. Even when I’m not grappling with a problem, asking open-ended questions like, “How do you decide which meetings to attend?” or “How do you approach selling a candidate?” takes advantage of my manager’s know-how and teaches me something new.
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Julie Zhuo (The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You)
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Perhaps the greatest difference between coaching and consulting is where the intellectual authority lies. Coaching is a partnership, with the coach and client collaborating primarily using the client’s intellectual authority and experience to design new experiments, decisions, and ideas. With coaching, the client is the one with the answers. It is not the coach’s job to advise and instruct, but to ask challenging questions, make observations, and open new perspectives, so the client can see options and plan the best solutions for their environment. Coaches help clients take time to reflect, learn, and develop new ways of thinking. With consulting, the intellectual authority is typically in the hands of the consultant. Clients turn to consultants for advice, instructions, and professional opinions because the consultant can provide answers in areas where the client does not have the experience or expertise. Consultants often step in and do work for the clients.
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Cherie Silas (Enterprise Agile Coaching: Sustaining Organizational Change Through Invitational Agile Coaching)
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Arriving at the true destination requires that the person travels along different routes until they reach their goal.
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Ilana Weibel (Make Your Passion Your Reality: A practical guide for coaches, counselors, and anyone looking for vocational fulfillment)
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Where you live in this country makes a huge difference if you are poor,” says Concannon. “And it’s not just the weather. You have states with these sixty-or seventy-page documents people have to fill out to get benefits. Poor people are easy to wear down.” Georgia was usually a problem. Texas, too. “If they ran any of their football teams the way they run their food program, they’d fire the coach,” said Concannon. A Wyoming legislator, proud of how badly he had gummed up the state’s nutrition programs, told him, “We pride ourselves on doing the minimum required by the federal government.” An Arizona congressman proposed that the card used by people receiving food-stamp benefits be made prison orange, conferring not just nutrition but shame. In 2016, after several counties in North Carolina suffered severe flooding, the state tried to distribute federal disaster-relief food-benefit cards on the day of the presidential election, to give poor people a choice between eating and voting.
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Michael Lewis (The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy)
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People want to know they matter. They want to know they make a difference. They wan to connect with their authentic selves and they want to experience joy.
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Sharon Pearson (Becoming A Successful Coach Ultimate Guidebook)
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In coaching we use what is called “Reframing” to change the perspective that a client has of an event. One of my favorites is changing “Failure” to “Feedback” or “Learning experience”. How do you feel if you say “I failed terribly in my last relationship”? Now say “I learned so much from my last relationship, I’m sure I will not make the same mistakes again!” Can you feel the difference?
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Marc Reklau (30 Days- Change your habits, Change your life: A couple of simple steps every day to create the life you want)
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Nineteenth-century French poet Théophile Gautier illustrates this in his storied travels through Andalusia, recounted in Wanderings in Spain: Traveling becomes a reality, an action in which you take a part. In a diligence {coach} a man is no longer a man, he is but an inert object, a bale of goods, does not much differ from a portmanteau. He is thrown from one place to the other, and might as well stop at home. The pleasure of traveling consists in the obstacles, the fatigue, and even the danger. What charm can any one find in an excursion, when he is always sure of reaching his destination, of having horses ready waiting for him, a soft bed, an excellent supper, and all the ease and comfort which he can enjoy in his own home! One of the great misfortunes of modern life is the want of any sudden surprise, and the absence of all adventures. Everything is so well arranged, so admirably combined, so plainly labeled, that chance is an utter impossibility; if we go on progressing, in this fashion, towards perfection for another century, every man will be able to foresee everything that will happen to him from the day of his birth to the day of his death. Humanity will be completely annihilated. There will be no more crimes, no more virtues, no more characters, no more originality. It will be impossible to distinguish a Russian from a Spaniard, an Englishman from a Chinese, or a Frenchman from an American. People will not even be able to recognize one another, for every one will be alike. An intense feeling of ennui will then take possession of the universe…. What is remarkable about this passage is Gautier's foresight into the plight of too many modern travelers: the washing out of cultural differences among nationalities, the overarching ennui of trendy cynicism, the lack of pleasure in a journey with no surprises. His remarks are a model for those trying to find a way to allow for synchronicity in their travels.
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Phil Cousineau (The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred)
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Tell me—or anyone else—something thatis personal to you, Coach had said.
Seiji couldn’t talk to just anyone, but Nicholas had said they were friends.
“I was… Jesse’s mirror,” said Seiji slowly. “I reflected his—glow, his glories and his victories. I used to think it was an honor. We were similar, I told myself, in all the ways that really mattered.”
Jesse was left-handed like Nicholas, so facing him sometimes felt like looking into a mirror. Like seeing yourself through the glass, a better, golden self in a different world. A self who fenced just as well but didn’t have to work as hard for it. A Seiji who did everything in life with the same skill as he fenced.
“You’re not a mirror,” said Nicholas. “You’re real.”
“It’s a metaphor, Nicholas.”
Nicholas shrugged. “You’re still not a mirror. Mirrors break. You never do.”
Seiji thought of his moment of defeat against Jesse. The moment that Aiden had seen, and taunted Seiji with, making Seiji lose again. Seiji had trained his whole life to be strong, but somehow, he was still weak. Jesse had taken his sword, and Seiji hadn’t been able to stop him. The bitterness of that defeat sent Seiji to Kings Row.
Always keep moving toward your target, his dad’s voice said, but somehow Seiji had ended up getting his target wrong. He’d moved toward loss and pain he still didn’t entirely understand.
“I lost,” confessed Seiji. “Badly.”
“Doesn’t make you a loser,” said Nicholas, having another lapse where he didn’t understand what words—let alone metaphors—meant. “You didn’t burst into tears and give up fencing. And you didn’t follow Jesse to Exton like a little lamb, the way he was expecting. You came to Kings Row, and you came to fence. You came to fight.”
This view of the matter was so shocking that Seiji said something he’d thought he would never say to Nicholas Cox.
“I suppose…,” said Seiji, “… you’re right.”
Nicholas’s gaze remained fixed on the floor.
“Being rivals shouldn’t be about being someone’s mirror. Both of you get to be real. Neither of you has to break.”
“Sometimes you’re insightful, Nicholas,” said Seiji. Nicholas looked pleased before Seiji added: “I think it’s mainly by accident.”
At that point, Nicholas rolled his eyes and stepped into his side of the room, yanking the curtain closed between them.
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Sarah Rees Brennan (Striking Distance (Fence, #1))
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I love that I’ve been lucky enough to travel to every Australian city and work with some of the best, most forward-thinking individuals, and coach many to extraordinary feats. I love the friendships that have been culturally safe and supported me to reach my childhood goals and taught me that our differences make us stronger not weaker.
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Don Bemrose (Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia)
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Kathleen.” He made no attempt to hide the lust in his gaze. “If you hold still, I’ll help you with your skirt. But if you run from me, you’re going to be caught.” He took an unsteady breath before adding softly, “And I’ll make you come for me again.”
Her eyes turned huge.
He took a deliberate step forward. She bolted across the nearest threshold and fled to the carriage room. Devon was at her heels instantly, following her past the workshop with its long carpenter’s benches and tool cupboards. The carriage room smelled pleasantly of sawdust, axle grease, lacquer varnish, and leather polish. It was quiet and shadowy, illuminated only by a row of skylights over massive hinge-strapped doors that could be opened onto the estate’s carriage drive.
Kathleen darted through rows of vehicles used for different purposes; carts, wagons, a light brougham, a landau with a folding top, a phaeton, a hooded barouche for summer. Devon circled around and intercepted her beside the family coach, a huge, stately carriage that could only be pulled by six horses. It had been designed as a symbol of power and prestige, with the Ravenel family crest--a trio of black ravens on a white and gold shield--painted on the sides.
Halting abruptly, Kathleen stared at him through the semidarkness.
Taking the overskirt from her, Devon dropped it to the floor, and pinned her against the side of the carriage.
“My riding skirt,” she exclaimed in dismay. “You’ll ruin it.”
Devon laughed. “You were never going to wear it anyway.” He began to unbutton her riding jacket, while she sputtered helplessly.
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Lisa Kleypas (Cold-Hearted Rake (The Ravenels, #1))