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Monday, March 28, 2011

Does First Impression Lasts?

First impressions are an extremely important part of everyday contacts. The people you meet, the places you go, the things you do all through your life are affected by first impressions – of you or by you.

People or places that make an unfavorable impression on you are left in the background. If you create an unfavorable first impression on the other fellow, you are usually left in the background. The reason your first impression is so important is that you don’t always get a second opportunity to correct an unfortunate first impression. Therefore, it is important that you keep your best foot forward at all times, in order to be sure that you do create a favorable first impression in every instance.

Jack Schwartz of Los Angeles has an opinion about favorable impressions. He is the author of the book: “How to Get More Business by Telephone” and conductor of Telephone Sales Clinics in California, and is famous as an able insurance salesman.


"I once asked twenty-five people: “Tell me frankly how many times in ten do your first impressions of a person prove entirely wrong? Think this over carefully and don’t let your vanity of opinion dictate your reply.” The result: 22, which is 88%, said that their first impressions were rarely changed. This about corresponds to what most people would report. So take serious note. You are extremely foolish if you ignore the first impressions you make – socially, in business, in public work – in every department of life.

So impressed have I been by this fact that in my sales work I take extra pains with my first contact, which I always make by telephone. Every word, every inflection, every thought is studied from the angle of what first impression it will make on the person who has never met me before. The result is that in four out of five cases I am able to make an appointment to see this person and talk with him face to face. His reaction is favorable or he would not agree to this appointment.

My sales success, I am certain, is very heavily dependent on this first impression during which I must register:

1. Courtesy
2. Consideration
3. Interest
4. Personal magnetism
5. Sympathetic understanding of the person’s needs and desires.
6. Eagerness to be of service
7. Gracious manners
8. Attractive speech and personality
9. Reliability and responsibility
10. Sense of humor and balance

I have trained myself to transmit all of these to make an immediate good first impression that I could rely upon."


This articles is also seen on Bizcovering.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Optimism

The difference between an optimist and a pessimist is illustrated by their reaction when given a doughnut. The optimist sees the doughnut and its tempting qualities, while the pessimist sees nothing but the hole.

Perseverance requires complete command of mind, of heart, and of hand in the accomplishment of a certain task. Are there obstacles on the way? You don’t mind them. You go on trying.

You have a duty to accomplish. You set about its accomplishment. You apply all your energy in the act. You are fully determined to do right and you carry out your purpose in the face of a strong temptation or opposition. Perseverance is an index of a strong character.

Read the following passage and learn its message.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Burton Hillis and Others on Whistling and Humming

Burton Hillis speaks of whistling as an outlet for the joy and peace that well in the heart. Moreover, he strongly believes that one who whistles cannot be harboring any meanness or malice deep in his heart. Whoever hears an angry person whistle?

Can we say the same of a girl who hums as she goes about her daily home chores? Or a man who, as he toils in the fields sings out a lusty merry tune?

What is the effect of the whistle on others who listen to him? The whistler passes on a message of good will and friendliness, and before long he, the listener, catches the spirit of joy and mirth.

Learning to whistle

Cheerfulness is something you should cultivate. With your heart full of the joy of living you help make the world a happy place in which to live. Henry Ward Beecher said: "A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs. He is jolted disagreeably by only pebble in the road."

George Elliot speaks of the futility of life that is not spent in making it less difficult for one another.

There is a need for the cultivation of cheerfulness. Try keeping a cheerful disposition and maintaining a calm unworried state of mind amidst adverse happenings and you will find yourself happily adjusted. What is more you will radiate a bright light around.

You maintain a cheerful disposition when, as you are bent over an unpleasant task for yourself or for someone who is unjustly and several critical, you keep toiling on with a smile and a will to succeed.

Cheerfulness does not mean boisterous laughter caused by dirty indecent stories. Vulgar jokes irritate rather than brighten your sensibility. Many stories in comic strips are not the kind that develop wholesome humor.

Try cultivating humor. Humor is the quality of action, speech, or writing which excites amusement. It means the faculty of seeing what is amusing. "Ask anyone knows and has experienced the lubricating effects of even a small joke in a household, humor has an element of juice. It keeps life from drying up, and gives to it living freshness and flavor."

Monday, March 14, 2011

Cheerfulness and Optimism


“Men and boys don’t whistle the way they used to. In my days, every boy who amounted to anything was a whistler.”

“As a boy, I used to climb the town water tower and sit up there all by myself and whistle to the sky above me and to the world below me. A woman would start setting the table when she heard her man come whistling home, and she would listen for her son’s whistle if he was out after dark. I don’t say that whistling improved a man’s thinking or anything like that, but I do say you cannot be working up any mean thoughts when the words of some pretty tune are running through your head, while you whistle the air as fine and fancy as you can.”

-Burton Hillis


Read more here!!

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Looking Ahead for Growth

Those who gaze too much upon the past, who think too much about what might have been, are running something of the same risk as the driver who keeps his eyes upon the rearview mirror and is inattentive to the road ahead.

Experience is a great teacher; it is the road we have been over. But the wrecks in the rear aren't the ones we are now trying to avoid. It's the curves ahead that count now. Whatever mistakes we have made, our only way out is ahead. This is life's inflexible formula. What has been and might have been may well serve as a warning - but what may yet be is our first concern.


- Richard Evans

Growth scar

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Know Thyself

Your father has plans for you. He dreams of seeing you a civil engineer someday. He tells his friends of his big plans. He does not bother appraising your talents, the things you can do and like to do best. He has not taken the trouble of sizing up your weaknesses. Seeing your father set on the career he likes best for you, you, too. That he feel it is the right thing to do for you to have a better life.

Do you think this is a good start towards growth? Is it someone else who should determine what you will be in the future? What is the right thing to do?

“Know thyself,” said the philosopher Socrates of ancient times. Knowing yourself means knowing your talents, your likes and dislikes, what you can do and like to do best. It means examining the world about you, deciding what you must do to get what you want out of life, then listing down your plans to reach it.

This in essence is the next formula for growth: to know yourself, know what you want for your improvement, depending upon your capabilities.

The more aware you are of yourself, of your strength and your weakness, the more alive you become.

Is it important that you should grow? It is of utmost importance:

“All that we need to do,

Be we low or high,

Is to see that we grow

Nearer the sky”

-Lizzette Woodworth Reese

Read more here!

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Improve Every Shining Hour

It is your job now to improve when you are young. What should you do to improve every shining hour?


clock and numbers
  1. Learn something new, something that was not yours yesterday. Store a new idea in your mind. Gather new and constructive ideas from your elders and let your mind be a storehouse. Of course, it takes a keen mind to determine what ideas are useful and what to discard because they are trash.
  2. Absorb new knowledge. Take your day's lessons as a source of new and rich information, of new experiences and new lessons in the right living.
  3. Acquire new skills - skills which will give you techniques in doing constructive work, skills which will minimize, if not entirely eliminate, waste and errors.
  4. Discover new sights, new sounds, new scents from your environment that will enrich your life and make living an entirely interesting experience.
  5. It is when you are young that you envision what you would wish to be in the future. Reading is the best preparation for a happy life ahead.