motivational – Page 2

Be Grateful and Generosity Will Follow

November 27, 2013 Beth Devine

There are two things you can do that are sure to kill your negative buzz. That self-pity, bitterness, jealousy, and regret we all tend to cloak ourselves with, like Peanut’s Linus dragging his dirty blanket around with him everywhere he went.

It’s a simple two-step formula, and it requires only a minor sacrifice from you.

1. Ditch the dirty blanket

Instead of clinging to the negative, wrap yourself with gratitude.

2. Choose to share

Without the weight of negative thoughts, its a natural transition to turn around and give.

Your kindness counts, and whatever you choose to do as an individual or business will make a difference.

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” ~Anne Frank

Gratitude is a skill that anyone can practice and learn. Check out Robert Emmons “10 Ways to Become More Grateful” to reap the benefits of gratitude, which science shows can impact your social, physical, and psychological well-being.

Encourage Charity

Implementing this into your business’s mindset can be as simple as organizing a charitable effort, such as including a non-perishable food drive for your next event. When Web Savvy Marketers held their second anniversary celebration Mardi Gras style, we asked for donations for the local food pantry. In exchange for colorful beaded necklaces, guests brought cans of food and checks made out to the pantry.

“He that feeds the hungry spreads out a banquet more sweet and refreshing than luxury can bestow. “ ~The Voice, 1845.

This generosity fed over eleven families. From a small group of concerned individuals, a small section of the world was impacted. Creating opportunities for people to give requires little effort when its incorporated into a scheduled function through invitations, e-newsletters, and online announcements.

Charitable and fundraising efforts of all kinds can be the definitive buzzkill for any negativity that surrounds you. Finding non-monetary ways to help go beyond sharing your treasure. Giving your time and talent makes your donation come to life by connecting you to the causes you support.

Participate in volunteer activities where you live.
Use your skills to help raise awareness by sharing, liking, and commenting in your charity’s social media sites.
Help spread the word by persuading and connecting the charity with new potential donors.

Understand the need through a deeper connection to a charity by staying abreast of stories, statistics, and current events that impact the cause. This will help your connection to grow.

Make a Wall of Gratitude at Work

A workplace Gratitude Wall bulletin board is another way to help usher in a grateful attitude among employees. Be sure to focus on thanking people as opposed to things.

Saying thank you begins with you. Your thank you’s impact will be stronger when you are specific, giving details about the person, action, or thing you are thankful for.

Are you wondering what your gratitude quotient is? Take this online gratitude quiz by the Greater Good Science Center and find out!

The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, in collaboration with the University of California, Davis, is launching a three-year, $5.6 million project, Expanding the Science and Practice of Gratitude with funding from the John Templeton Foundation.

Look for expanded gratitude results in medicine, education, schools, and workplaces as they work to promote the role of gratitude in society.

As you reach out to others and learn to wrap yourself with gratitude, remember this:

“When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.” ~Anthony Robbins

To help keep the gratitude flowing, create a gratitude mandala like the one here using these free mandala templates.

How to Be a Giver Not a Taker

November 21, 2013 Beth Devine

To be successful, it’s commonly assumed that a Taker personality will outperform and overshadow a Giver personality.

Givers are people who help others without worrying how they will benefit; they are other-focused and motivated by altruism.

Takers look out for themselves first; they are quick to take credit and self-promote, believing that the only way to achieve is to be better than everyone else.

In Social Trigger’s Derek Halpern podcast interview with Adam Grant on his latest book, Give and Take, Grant reveals the surprising truth about generosity and success.

It’s no surprise that most of us fall somewhere in the middle, believing that a good deed will be equally matched with a reciprocating act. The Matchers of the world operate with expectations of balance and fair exchange.

It makes sense that the common conception is Takers are the winners and take all, with Matchers falling in step just behind.

The Long Run Wins the Race

When you take in the big picture, this is not true. Grant explains that there’s a short run and long run reversal.

This reminded me of the story of The Tortoise and the Hare. The Hare self-aggrandizes from the moment he appears, whereas the Tortoise shows his goodwill immediately.

Takers imitate the Hare and take the fast route based purely on self-interest and winning, often burning a bridge or two in the process.

The Giver behaves like the Tortoise, willing to take the time to work hard, as in helping colleagues and customers, building trust and goodwill along the way.

The long run of the Giver eventually pays out like it does with the Tortoise. The investment of time, knowledge, and resources builds the social capital which will cheer a Giver on and create individuals who are genuinely glad of his or her success.

Tell the truth. Who were you rooting for, the Tortoise or the Hare?

How to Be a Giver Not a Taker and Still Succeed

Grant tells us that true Givers combine what Bill Gates called the two great forces of human nature: self-interest and caring for others.

If you care about the people and causes you are giving to, and you are really interested in and enjoy that form of helping, this mix of motives will sustain a giving nature.

Are Givers really concerned for others or are they more worried about their image? Grant calls anyone who gives solely to boost their image a Faker. They are in reality a Taker who is creating an “aura of generosity to mask their self-serving intentions.”

As for Matchers, if you’re giving for purely Matcher reasons – because you expect payback – then it will appear very transactional and people will see through it, and their appreciation level won’t be as high as it is with a Giver.

“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”—Malcolm S. Forbes.

Jobs Vs. Gates: Giver or Taker?

Halpern asked Grant whether or not he believed Steve Jobs was a Taker and Bill Gates is a Giver. Grant conceded that Jobs had Taker moments in his career relationships, but he was extremely customer-centric in his giving.

“Maybe the Giver-Taker spectrum is not the right axis in evaluating him,” Grant decides.

What Halpern and Grant agreed upon, however, was the Giver legacy versus the Taker legacy. A Giver will be remembered long after they are gone, but a Taker will be forgotten, even vilified, regardless of their achievements.

The Key to Getting a Giver Personality

No matter what your tendencies are, you can be a Giver and begin to experience the benefits of building giving relationships. Just ask yourself the all-important question, “What do I desire?”

The key to being a giver is to unlock the secret to your desire. For inspiration on finding your hidden desire, watch this video by Alan Watts, “What if Money Was No Object?”

How would you enjoy spending your life? Find the answer to these questions and you will learn how to be a Giver not a Taker, achieving your goals as well as enjoying the journey along the way.

It’s far more than a race to the top. As Hemingway said, “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”

Change Your Website, Change the World

July 18, 2013 Beth Devine

You don’t have to be Buddhist to appreciate the Dalai Lama’s Change Your Mind, Change the World conference. In fact, his basic premise to global well-being is to put aside such labels and focus on our common humanity.

How can we encourage this common good for humanity in our websites, our businesses, and our daily efforts to interact with others?

Michael Holmes, author of I Shall Raise Thee Up: Ancient Principles for Lasting Greatness, supplied three universal laws for achieving change.

Anyone who wishes to avoid repeated and lasting failure knows these laws. As Cecil B. DeMille said, “It is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law.”

3 Laws to Change the World

1. Purpose

“The Law that states no person can achieve maximum effectiveness without knowing who and why they are.”

To know your purpose is to know how your unique gifts and position will affect change.

When determining your purpose, always consider your audience. When considering your audience, always ask what’s in it for them.

If you’re stuck in finding your purpose, think about what’s holding you back. Max Simon of Big Business Vision suggests that rather than focusing on how much it will cost to update your website or create a marketing plan, ask “what’s the cost of doing nothing?”

Focus on your purpose and how it will benefit your audience. How will your leadership bring them something worthwhile?

In “Modern Laws of Global Life, the Law of Purpose,” “the end result of an action is already contained in the original thought.” If we want to change the world, we must first change the purpose behind the action.

So make it a good one.

2. Persistence

“The law that states only through consistent and continuous effort can any plan, vision, or achievement be realized.”

As Paul Jun explains for any craftmanship: it’s a journey, not a destination. You’re in it for the long haul.

So what do you do for this long haul? Apply the Rule of Five.

Jack Canfield of Chicken Soup for the Soul tells how he used this persistence principle to get his book onto the bestseller list for over a year. He uses the analogy of chopping down a tree.

“If you would go every day to a very large tree and take five swings at it with a very sharp ax, eventually, no matter how large the tree, it would have to come down.”

The Rule of Five for you might include

emailing 5 potential customers
writing 5 blog posts
scheduling 5 interviews
calling 5 current customers

Like climbing a mountain, keep your eye on the summit or your purpose, but begin with taking measured steps and doing five specific things to get there.

Because you will get there.

3. Service

“The Law that states in order to be greatest of all one must be servant of all.”

A business owner wanting to make his company great.
An artist looking for recognition.
A speaker trying to make a difference.
A musician bending the rules.
A service provider going the extra mile.
A writer writing to impact for a common good.

What do the success of these people have in common? They make awesome!

(Seriously, check that link out. You do want to make awesome, don’t you?)

How you choose to interact with your audience becomes a way for you to engage in service for others. Changing the world, as Margaret Mead said, requires thoughtful and committed citizens.

Communicate something useful and true and don’t stop. For them. That’s the beginning of service, and making awesome.

The Dalai Lama believes “if we make consistent effort, based on proper education, we can change the world. We are selfish, that’s natural, but we need to be wisely selfish, not foolishly selfish. We have to concern ourselves more with others’ well-being, that’s the way to be wisely selfish.”

Sounds to me a lot like the 3 Laws to Change the World. Now let’s go out there and begin.

3 Rules to Killing Your Monster and Writing Better

June 25, 2013 Beth Devine

The thought of writing a blog post can send the average self-possessed person into fits of apoplexy.

That monster who hides under your bed? It’s as if he’s crawled out and wants to breathe the air in your shirt collar as soon as you set pen to paper. Or fingers to keyboard.

We’re not all Simon Cowell material, who remains unperturbed even through an ecstatic barrage of egg-bombs. (Just look at the perpetrator’s face in the YouTube video. Have you ever seen an expression of such gleeful retribution?)

However suave and steady you happen to be, sitting down to write, egg-free, can upend your calm state of zen. It’s time to chill and learn the 3 Rules for Writing Better.

Killing your monster is the added perk.

The internet is filled with advice on how to make your writing better, faster, and easier. There’s one thing everyone seems to agree on. It’s probably going to irritate the cowplop right out of you.

Ultimate Rule: Just Write.

In case you harbor any doubt, Brian Clark of Copyblogger created the 10 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer. This should really clear things up for you.

Being the generous writer he is, he even gave us a downloadable PDF to hang near our writing space.

Your aversion to writing, your bona fide fear, is about as real as that large red-eyed monster lurking behind you. If you turn around and it snares you in its lethal grip, then I’ll have to admit, you have a real excuse.

Otherwise, you just need to follow the ten steps. And take Stephen King’s advice in On Writing.

“The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better.”

So start. Just write.

The second rule is revolutionary. You will be equally peeved when you realize how straightforward this technique is, and yet, somehow, you’ve managed to remain oblivious.

Revolutionary Rule: Write in longhand.

What? But that’s for grandmas.

Writing in longhand has the remarkable effect of helping you to think better. Now go and tell Grandma that.

Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way compares writing to driving a car. When you are typing on the computer, it’s like driving 80 miles per hour and missing the exit. Writing by hand is like driving 60 miles per hour and seeing the exit up ahead. You even notice the surrounding sites as you approach your turnoff.

“The act of slowing down brings us to real and surprising clarity, offering insights we would have otherwise missed,” Cameron says at juliacameronlive.com.

Now that you’re determined to travel the scenic route, try using your memory muscle.

Awesome Cheat Rule: Copy the Masters.

When you copy in longhand the writing you admire, you’re exercising your memory muscle. This is the best way to cheat and learn from the masters at the craft.

Find writers who write like you want to write, and spend a half hour to an hour every day copying their work. Your brain will learn the writing style and you’ll be able to mimic it.

Studies of pictures of the brain show “that sequential finger movements activated massive regions involved in thinking, language and working memory—the system for temporarily storing and managing information.”

Repetitive drills, like practicing your golf swing, become part of your memory. Writing better has never been so simple. Practice, use longhand, and learn from the pros.

No one said writing was easy. But it can be simple when you apply methods that work.

How’s your monster? Still breathing?

How to Harness the Power of Good and Influence Decisions

April 30, 2013 Beth Devine

When you engage in social media, you’re not only showing the best side of your brand. You’re given the opportunity to reach the good side of your audience.

Create conversations that celebrate all that’s good, and bring out the compassion, generosity, cooperation, and altruism in your followers.

At the end of the day, you’ll feel even better about yourself and your brand.

These studies show the power of good is in demand and human nature easily leans toward the force of goodness. Here are seven ways to help your audience find the best in themselves and spread goodwill in the process.

7 Ways to Help Your Followers Choose to be Good

1. March to the Beat of the Same Drum

If you want to make someone more sympathetic, have them perform something in sync. Marching armies, religious chanting, and cultural dancing all have this “muscular bonding” as a cohesive element that encourages cooperation and “weaken[s] the boundaries between the self and the group.”

Stanford University’s behavioral psychologists asked volunteers to do different exercises in sync, including walking and singing, and then measured their cooperation through various methods. The groups who acted in sync were more willing to cooperate.

This evokes childhood games of Mother May I?, where we learned to behave more harmoniously without any adult reprimands. Could this work for encouraging workplace harmony too?

2. Spontaneity

When people have less time to think, they are more generous. Harvard researchers demonstrated how participants chose to contribute more money to the common pot for later redistribution when they reacted quickly.

When acting on first impulse, volunteers showed greater results for sharing than when they were given time to consider. The results show that people are “intuitively predisposed towards cooperation.” We become uncooperative when we are given time to reflect.

Set quick deadlines for your fundraising and charity appeals, and keep the emotional bar way up in the kindness level. People are more likely to follow their inner tendency to cooperate and donate when they have less time to think and let selfishness set in.

3. Get Awestruck

Has the vista of a starlit night sky ever sent you into a dizzying awareness of your general insignificance?

Merely thinking of an awe-inspiring natural scene is enough to produce selflessness and a focus on your surroundings. As University of California, Berkeley, showed in its Nature of Awe study, the inducement of awe is a powerful tool in creating a disinterest in self, whereas participants responding to an instance when they felt pride reported feeling more fear, more challenged, and more tired.

Give your audience a reason to be more interested in something bigger than themselves with notions of nature’s grandiose beauty.

4. Share the warmth

We are more prone to give to a stranger when we experience warmth. Based on Yale University studies on the brain and trust, holding a hot cup of coffee before investing in an anonymous person caused investment amounts to go up.

The effects of temperature on our willingness to extend ourselves and accept another’s input was measured in the insula, a tiny portion of our brain where visceral sensations are translated into emotions. When we hold something cold – an aversive sensory input – the insula registers it.

Think steaming cups of latte as you challenge your audience to make decisions – and get them to heat up too.

5. Vegetarians are More Aggressive

The sight of a juicy steak sparks the exact opposite of what you might expect. When McGill University’s Frank Kachanoff attempted to prove images of hearty beef would instill aggression, he was surprised to find the results were just the reverse.

Participants who viewed ready-to-eat photos of meat were less likely to dole out harsh reprimands than were those who were shown neutral pictures. The findings suggest that meat-eating prompts feelings of mealtime community and safety, not discord and aggression.

So display those photos of hearty, charbroiled hamburgers and grilled steaks before asking your followers for a positive and flavorful heaping of support.

6. Create a Ripple Effect

How you choose to treat others “can influence dozens or even hundreds of people,” whether you know them or not. Political scientist James Fowler, PhD, at the University of California, San Diego, and medical sociologist Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, at Harvard University teamed up to test participant’s selfishness in a game where selfishness was the rational choice.

Instead, volunteers mimicked the example of one another’s generosity. This ripple effect in social behavior was shown to have up to three degrees of separation (from person to person to person to person), and as a result, can spread beyond your network of acquaintances.

The critical component is making sure others witness you doing your good deed. They will mimic the observed behavior, causing the “pay it forward” phenomenon to occur in a setting where reciprocity is impossible.

The implications here are enormous, placing great potential for organizations and businesses to create a setting for this cascade of cooperation.

7. Surrender Your Fates to the Universe

While people are waiting for something they deeply desire, they’re more likely to donate their time and money, as well as show an increased sense of optimism. University of Virginia’s Benjamin Converse ran a study indicating our belief that “helping others may indulge the intuition that if one acts virtuously the universe will reciprocate.”

In other words, we believe good things happen to good people, and when we await the outcome of an uncontrollable event, we are more prone to good behavior.

For example, participants who reported having to wait on the results of pregnancy attempts, graduate admissions, and court proceedings were more likely to volunteer their time to give food for the hungry and wishes for terminally-ill children.

Encourage good behavior through offering longed-for results, and you’ve got people who are more prepared to invest in your goodwill.

Being a Force for Good

Use these potentially powerful methods with goodwill and good motives. Your ability to influence decisions toward the greater good are only as sound and authentic as your intentions.

This is Your Brain on the Internet

March 4, 2013 Beth Devine

Are you a victim of the internet? — Flickr photo: Wallula Junction

If you’re reading this, you may already be a victim. Driven to distraction with the Internet, you are well on your way to becoming part of the “pancake people” phenomenon.

Those of us – and we are many – who have fallen under the spell of instant gratification, information overload, and easy access, are at risk of mirroring the World Wide Web that we are so intimately connected with: “Spread wide and thin” like pancakes, as playwright Richard Foreman describes the Western culture.

If you find it difficult to read long essays, rarely ever read books, and find yourself bouncing from link to link, skimming instead of actually reading, you’re in danger of growing flat. What’s missing from today’s computer-centered thinking is “deep reading,” which leads to deep thinking.

Allow Yourself Time to Think

“Sound bites, text bites, and mind bites are a reflection of a culture that has forgotten or become too distracted by and too drawn to the next piece of new information to allow itself time to think,” writes Maryanne Wolf, developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.

She worries, as do I, that the “digital glut of immediate information” threatens to erode intellectual effort. What will we be left with?

Screaming goats and Harlem Shake videos, for starters.

This is what competes for our attention when surfing the Net. But it’s all so entertaining and, well, distracting. In part it’s easy to consume because it’s quick. Harlem Shake videos are capped at thirty seconds. Screaming goat videos are often shorter.

I ask you, is Google making us stupid?

“Apparently, it is,” Super Savvy Carolyn answered, when I explained these inexplicable video crazes.

Is Six-Second Brevity the Soul of Wit?

Shakespeare’s long-winded Polonius in Hamlet ironically proclaims that brevity beats beating around the bush, leaving us to ponder exactly how and where this applies.

Pare viewing time down to a mere six seconds with Twitter’s new app, Vine, which boasts creativity-boosting acumen in its super-short video looping. Like Twitter, with its 140 character limit, Vine hopes to launch unexpected inspiration through similar constraints.

The shortened writing trend in twin culprits Tweeting and texting continues to promote, if not creativity, short-circuited thinking. A far cry from email, and our parents and grandparents thought that was a sad move from the now-archaic handwritten exchange.

“Searching for Dummies”

Don’t get your digital reading brain all in a tither just yet. The studies on how all this short-and-quick information decoding and viewing affects our thinking aren’t complete.

One study suggests that for people with prior Internet search experience – that’s you and me – our brain’s neural circuitry is improved. “Your Brain on Google: Patterns of Cerebral Activation during Internet Searching” leaves us with hope, which tends to spring eternal.

Further hope is from a review in the Journal of Communication (ISSN 0021-9916) on the books The shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains, by Nicholas Carr, and You are not a gadget: A manifesto, by Jaron Lanier, showing there’s little evidence that our minds are being warped by Internet consumption.

The alternative, however, is unthinkable.

As technology visionary Edward Tenner wrote in the New York Times in 2006, “It would be a shame if brilliant technology were to end up threatening the kind of intellect that produced it.”

Have you experienced mind-altering repercussions from so much Internet exposure? Do you worry about how this affects the way we think? Let me know your thoughts.