Create Your Own Personal Vision

I have just spent some time googling How to Create a Personal Vision.  Ohhhh my goodness, there is a plethora of information online about this topic.  I am not sure how we are meant to know which ones are good, great, effective etc.  I was getting so carried away with my reading that I had to give myself a time limit so that I would actually get back to tasks and timelines!!

And just as I was thinking, this is all too hard, I found this short video snippet and thought you may like to have a look at it too.  The speaker is Benay Wettle and she shares with us how to create an awesome personal vision statement. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0E8Ub8n64w
Hope the link works for you as I have not embedded a link in this Blog before.  Fingers crossed.

Silence is Sensible

"Let silence do the heavy lifting". 
Susan Scott.

"Where in your life did you become uncomfortable with the sweet territory of silence?"

Native American saying.

I want to share a short extract from a book called Fierce Conversation by Susan Scott, and in particular the chapter, Let Silence do the Heavy Lifting.  Hope it resonates at some level with you - for whatever reason!

Extract from Fierce Conversations - Chapter 7, Let Silence Do the Heavy Lifting. 
"Do you know of someone who will mostly die with his or her mouth open?  Many CEOs could go on this list.  This is not good.  A dazzling way with words rarely proves to be enough to guarantee success as a leader.  Joseph Conrad suggested, "To have the gift of  words is no such great matter.  A man furnished with a long-range weapon does not become a hunter or a warrior by the mere possession of a firearm; many other qualitites of character and temperament are necessary to make him either one or the other."

Many people attempt to forge relationships exclusively through words.  Lots of words.  However, the best leaders talk with people, not at the. Emerging entrepreneurs have special challenges.  They can get so wrapped up in telling the story of their businesses, in order to attract employees, vendors, and investors, that they no longer have conversations.  They have "versations", talking at people rather than with them.

Talking at people is a common affliction.  In fact, on a purely practical note, did you know that eight out of ten sales proposals fail?  And 50 percent of those eight fail because we spent too much time talking about ourselves or the features and benefits of our product, and not enough time talking about the customer and listening to the customer before we explained how wonderful doing business with us would be.

We all know people, intent on impressing us, who talk so much that they turn us off completly.  Such people are often unconscious of the effect they are having on others, as they run on endlessly about their accomplishments and clever ideas.  They may be spectacularly brilliant.......The trouble is, it wears us out to be with them.  They talk incessantly, going from one story to the next, without taking a noticeable breath.  Though their stories are at timesentertaining and laced with insight, after a  while we get the feeling that we are merely a spot on the wall in which they direct their comments."

Tips for Using Silence in Your Conversations
And here are some tips from Susan about how to use silence in all our conversations....

1. Talk with people, not at them.
2. The more emotionally loaded the subject, the more silence is required.
3. Use silence to slow down a conversation so that you can discover what the conversation really wants to be about.
4. Allow silence to fill in the greater meaning that needs to be there.
5. Allows silence to teach you how to feel.

A Challenge for You 
And a challenge for you.  Have a go.  Over the next day or so during a conversation at home or at work, have a go at building in silence.  Give yourself space before you speak so that you can fully understand what others have said.  Use a statement such as "that's interesting, I'd like a moment to reflect on what you have said", pause take some time and then respond.                          

Live Love and Thrive

Isn't this what we all want?  So how do we get it? Good question....  Here are my Top Ten Tips.

1. Like and love yourself.
2. Drink loads of water (squeeze of lemon helps).
3. Surround yourself with positive people.
4. Think and say positive things.
5. Acknowledge your strengths and live them as often as you can.
6. Say thank you (for even the smallest things).
7. Live beyond today.
8. Smile, Smile, smile and smile some more - it really does warm hearts, including your own.
9. Speak to yourself daily - keep it positive.
10. Always have a dream.  Allow yourself to dream and drift beyond the small things.

And now it's over to you.  Make up your very own Top 10 Tips.  Display them on your computer, carry them with you.... LIVE BY THEM.

    

Quotes From the Eat Pray Love Journey

And just in case you don't get to read this book, here are some of my favorite quotes, hope you like them as much as I do.

"There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life-whether I will see them as curses or opportunities. I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts."

"To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life"
"Tis' better to live your own life imperfectly than to imitate someone else's perfectly."

"Operation Self-Esteem--Day Fucking One."

"You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control."
"You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight."
We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy's fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, under him the whole time. Your treasure--your perfection--is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the buy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart."
"Prayer is a relationship; half the job is mine. If I want transformation, but can't even be bothered to articulate what, exactly, I'm aiming for, how will it ever occur? Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention. If you don't have this, all your pleas and desires are boneless, floppy, inert; they swirl at your feet in a cold fog and never lift." 

Eat Pray Love

 A few years ago I read this book and loved it.  It was written by the highly talented Elizabeth Gilbert who embarked on a life changing journey and experience and then wrote about it.  Shortly after a great friend and I were having a cuppa and she told me she had recently read Eat Pray Love.  I asked her what she thought and she told me it was an OK read but nothing to rave about.  So I said nothing.  For a long time now, I have remembered this book with great fondness. I have rethumbed its pages often.  I have recommended it to others. I have wanted to visit an Ashram in India and an ancient medicine man in Bali.  Not to mention find who I am and live the life of my dreams.    Oh my, it appears the book really has had an impact on me.  While the Ashram is on hold, Bali is at least looking likely sometime within the next 10 years, I want to share my favorite part from the book and now the movie.  (Wasn't so keen on the movie, but still love this book!)   So here it is a scene from the Ashram in India where Elizabeth struggles with the whole idea of meditation.  See what you think.....

"Are you kidding me? You have to learn to select your thoughts the same way as you select your clothes every day.  Now that's a power that you can cultivate.  You wanna come here and you wanna control your life so bad.  Work on your mind cause that's the only thing you should be trying to control.  Cause, if you can't master your thoughts then you are in trouble, you're in trouble forever.  Hell that's the damn problem, stop trying, surrender.  Go out into the garden and just sit there and still your mind and watch what happens.  Why don't you just let it be."