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Home » Business And Finance Articles » Monday Morning Mindfulness

Monday Morning Mindfulness

Learn more about these topics by subscribing to "Monday Morning Mindfulness" at http://www.schrift.com/monday.htm

Sandra's ezine 'Monday Morning Mindfulness' Sandra Schrift will help you grow and enlighten your soul with her bi-weekly ezine 'Monday Morning Mindfulness. Request a free subscription at www.schrift.com and start improving your speaking success!

Table of Contents:
On Special Offers and Invitations
On Generous Spirit
On Short-Term Stress
On Adding Punch to Your Humor
On Time
On Useful Web Sites and Announcements

Welcome to Monday Morning Mindfulness . . . to my Clients, Colleagues and Friends. Join me every other Monday in getting motivated and inspired to act/think/feel something differently.

1. On Special Offers and Invitations

Would you like to be paid to speak? Learn how to connect with your audience? Persuade people to act on what you say? You can get answers to these questions and more through my new feature, Approach the Coach. Go to this web page http://www.schrift.com/approach and ask me your number one question about speaking skills or speaking professionally. I will answer your questions by email and every few months will compile your questions (with answers) in a FAQ page for my MMM readers.

Summer Sizzle Sale! Want to cut your learning curve by 60% to become a well paid professional speaker? If you have the passion and the persistence to do this, I have the product for you. All of our most popular products are discounted for a limited time.

Choose from any of 15 Hear the Pros one hour audio tapes

6 hour audio cassette program on How to Succeed in the Speaking Business;

6 hour streaming audio program on How to Make it as a Professional Speaker

6 hour three CD Rom program on How to Become a Highly Paid Professional Speaker.

Order the CD Rom by August 1 and you will also receive a Fre*e PDF Bonus Report to go along with this program. The World Is Changing...So is the Meetings Industry

All programs include PDF handouts and 20 minutes of coaching with me. Such a deal! http://www.schrift.com/summer_sizzle.htm to get details on products and your deep discounts.

2. On Generous Spirit

In dwelling, be close to the land. In meditation, go deep in the heart. In dealing with others, be gentle and kind. In speech, be true. In ruling, be just. In daily life, be competent. In action, be aware of the time and the season. No fight. No blame. - from Tao Te Ching

The Coach thinksit is helpful (but challenging) to think about my life being in perfect harmony with the way things are. And you?

3. On Short Term Stress

Psychologists Gregory Miller and Suzanne Segerstrom state that when test subjects were asked to speak in public or do mental math in the lab, the tasks tended to mobilize their fast-acting immune response the bodys all- purpose defense system for stopping our infections and healing our wounds. What they found, compared to controls, was that people subjected to short-term stresses had up to twice as many natural killer cells in their blood ready to fight the early stages of infection.

The Coach thinks Jerry Seinfeld may be wrong . . . He said , most people would rather be in the casket than give the eulogy.

4. On Adding Punch To Your Humor

John Kinde, humor specialist offers us five tips to add punch to your platform humor. Make humor a natural part of your daily life. The key to creating humor is awareness of relationships. Find connections between things previously thought unrelated. The pause drives home your punch lines. Pausing emphasizes the punch lines. Pausing builds the tension. Pausing magnifies your physical delivery. Master the power of observational humor. Be focused on your surroundings and what is happening just before you are introduced. Look for connections. Practice observational humor at meetings. A Toastmasters meeting is ideal. At the end of the meeting, weave an item of observational humor into your closing remarks.

The Coach sez . . . sign up for Johns Humor Power Tips ezine at http://www.HumorPower.com

5. On Time

Theres an old Irish saying, When God made time, he made plenty of it. Yes, we all have the same 24 hours each day, 168 hours each week and 8736 hours a year. It may be the most democratic element in our lives. So how come it doesnt feel that way? How come we often feel we are out of time? How come some people accomplish hundreds of complex tasks and others lay buried under a sea of papers and. . . laundry? Thats the paradox.

The Coach sez I dont have time to think about this anymore. (What are your p & qs for managing your time?)

6. On Useful Websites and Announcements

"Speak Like a Pro for Profit" Struggling to get clients? Want to have a full speaking calendar? This e-book contains proven tips and techniques to become a polished presenter to speak effectively to anyone, anywhere, with confidence. I wrote this for speakers, coaches, authors and business professionals who want to deliver masterful presentations and/or grow a profitable speaking business. Only $8.95. http://www.cartoonresource.com

Summer Sizzle Sale! Big product sale going on. See details above under "Special Offers" and http://www.schrift.com/summer_sizzle.htm for product descriptions and discount prices.

Here is a country guide to help you plan your next trip (or speech) http://www.economist.com/countries

Learn about website traffic and opt-in list building methods. http://www.affila.com

Let's meet in Bermuda, August 7-14, Denver, Colorado, October 13 - 20; Quebec City, Canada , November 3-6; (ICF conference) or in San Diego at any other time.

Sandra's Products Sandra Schrift offers a variety of products that will turn you into the speaker you always wanted to be. Her innovative thinking and powerful leadership can be right at your fingertips. Go to www.schrift.com to order your e-books, video tapes and audio cassettes so that you can have the right tools on hand.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Coach Sandra Schrift shares a few easy-to-read insights in this bi-weekly broadcast, and welcomes positive responses and input. Her 13 years as the founder/owner of The Podium Speakers Bureau in San Diego afforded her the privilege to work with many outstanding professional speakers and meeting planners nationwide. She knows what the Meeting Planners want . . . and knows what speakers need to know!

If you are an Executive, you will benefit by strengthening your presentation skills, so that whatever audio-visual aid you use will enhance, rather than distract from, your message.

As your coach, Sandra provides you with greater focus, increased ways to prospect, more ideas for getting referrals, and just more business.

E-mail Sandra for your Complimentary 30- minute Coaching Call: Sandra@schrift.com (http://www.schrift.com) The only group that likes change are babies with wet diapers." -- Sandra Schrift

Thank you for reading this issue of Monday Morning Mindfulness Look for your next issue on August 9, 2004 --Coach Sandra

If you have a comment you would like to share, please email me at Sandra@schrift.com. I appreciate hearing how this newsletter is influencing your career and life.

Invite a friend, speaker, coach who would enjoy reading MMM to subscribe. Copyright 2004, Monday Morning Mindfulness. This content is copyright please copy it right when you pass it on!

COPYRIGHT: 2004 by Sandra Schrift. All rights reserved

Publishing Guidelines: You are welcome to publish this article in its entirety, electronically, or in print fre*e of charge, as long as you include my full signature file for ezines, and my Web site address (http://www.schrift.com) in hyperlink for other sites. Please send a courtesy link or email where you publish to sandra@schrift.com Thank you.

And here is another random article you might be interested in...

There's Profit in Being Organised

Hi!

An article in a major American business magazine nominated personal organisation as the main reason that senior, top level super-executives are so successful.

The story admitted that while vision and energy were very important, the most vital of all the qualities needed by these men and women is that they all have their professional lives together and also have a life outside of work.

HOW???

For a start, they work in a clutter free environment. Everything in their office is in its right place. They prioritise and delegate.

They never waste time on trivialities. They use a strategy called LEVERAGING. This means that they reserve serious work for "prime times" when their energy level is at its peak. They work quickly and effectively.

Accomplish More in Less Time

You need to know how to maintain a tidy, organised working environment that will enable you to block out periods of the day when you are able to accomplish creative work without interruptions.

By using our weekly planner it is easy to plan to action your major objectives for the week for the business and your life as well.

These are times when you can be assured of being left alone in your own space to get things done... as long as you don't let other people interrupt you. Often when they do, it's because you've let it happen. You have to set the rules.

The problem in most cases is that people are unable to organise their office space (or anything else for that matter) and are surrounded by so much mess that they cannot put their hands on what they want when they want it.

The process of searching for needed files or other items often accounts for an extraordinary amount of vital time that could be better used to do productive work,

e.g. if you search 6 times per day for lost paperwork, you could be wasting a minimum of 30 minutes a day.

That's unproductive time equivalent to:

10 hours per month, or 3 weeks per year.

If your time is worth $100 per hour, that's costing you $12,000 a year!

Are You Losing Money and Don't Even Know It?

And how would you know how much time you waste?

Write down what you do with your time. You can design your own time sheet or use our weekly planner and record what you do as it occurs.

You may 'think' you are 'busy'; well this will prove whether you are being effective or just wasting time.

You'll find after analysing a minimum of one full week there will be areas you could have saved heaps of time by delegating, saying 'no' and taking your own time seriously.

The Lawyer

Sometime ago I was called in by a law firm that had a brilliant yet totally disorganised solicitor whom they wanted to organise.

This man was highly respected for his ability to grasp complex legal matters and reduce them to simple terms. He was also convinced that he did not have a problem.

One look at his office showed that he was in real trouble.

His desk was buried by a mountain of paper, there were stacks of files all over the floor and piles of reference books in all directions.

Through coaching he gradually whittled down the paper on his desk and at the bottom of the heap made an amazing discovery - a cheque from a client for $5,000 that had been there for months.

For you business owners reading this story, that would never happen to you in your business... or could it?

The Computer Maintenance Company

One of my clients who runs his own computer maintenance company admitted to me that prior to being coached, paperwork would often be lost amongst the clutter in his office. He would invoice clients much less than he should have because he couldn't find the necessary information, particularly for parts he supplied.

Also his lack of systems and poor use of his time meant he didn't invoice regularly and had major cash-flow issues.

Now that he has learned how to get himself organised, he's now on top of his paperwork, his business and his life.

Clear the Clutter

Clearing the clutter helps to dissolve the procrastination that so many people experience in their work every day.

Of course you also need to motivate yourself to get started. That is a vital ingredient in the process of becoming a super-executive or business owner. The initial motivation is the desire to achieve and taking the necessary action.

Everything else is built on that. The object of the exercise is to get more done - faster. By MORE I mean more quality work. There is no point doing lots more work if most of it is meaningless.

The Final Word

The important thing about clearing the mess from your life is that it helps you to prioritise and then immediately put your hands on the files and reference works that can help you to get the job done fast and effectively.

Discover how organised you really are by filling in our free assessment. You'll soon find out if you need to make changes. If you seriously want to profit from being organised, then take action now...because nothing changes if nothing changes!

Have a great week

Lorraine Pirihi