June 5, 2008

Improving Communication Skills for Better Interpersonal Relationships

Improving Communication Skills for Better Interpersonal Relationships

Communication is the cornerstone for all relationships. Without good communication skills a person is pretty much doomed at interpersonal relationships. Communication is vital for all kinds of interpersonal relationships, between partners, colleagues, friends and family.
Improving Communication Skills for Better Interpersonal Relationships
• Communication is not just about talking or speaking, it is also about listening. Therefore communication is a three way process: you speak, you listen and then you react and speak on the basis of the information you have received.
• Most problems in interpersonal relationships stem at the inability to listen or pay attention to what the other person is saying.
• Communication is effective if you are speaking in the right pitch and you are speaking clearly and at a comfortable pace. Don’t be in a hurry to finish a conversation. This will take some amount of practice but the results will be far beyond your expectations.
• Communication is not restricted to the verbal interaction between two people but also includes non-verbal cues. This includes the body language you display. If you are telling your partner that you want to know how they feel and then fidget or keep glancing at your watch, then you are communicating an entirely different message.
• Make and keep eye contact. This tells the person that you want to communicate and be with them.
• Think about what you are saying before you say it, this is age-old wisdom and you can’t go wrong with it. This is especially true when you are irritated or angry and may say things that you really don’t mean. But once you have said them, the damage is done, so pay attention to what you say.
• Don’t say one thing and do another as this sends the other person mixed signals and creates a state of confusion and tension in the relationship.
Good communication skills take time and practice to master and are crucial to the success of every relationship in your life.

Learn more about how to develop yourself.

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June 4, 2008

How to Program Your Subconscious Mind

How to Program Your Subconscious Mind

Many people would like to initiate long-term changes in their lives but do not know how to. Thus, they make decisions that translate into sporadic changes that do not last. Would you like to make such changes permanent? The answer lies in programming your subconscious mind.

Before we go further, just what is the difference between your conscious mind and your subconscious mind? The conscious mind is responsible for your awareness of daily activities – it operates on short-term programming. The subconscious mind is very different – this part of you acts to fulfill quasi-permanent programming for long term purposes.

The content of the subconscious mind are not easy to change. You need to issue a specific command if you want to initiate changes in your subconscious. Without such a specific command, it would be easy to make changes in your subconscious – so easy, in fact, that your subconscious would be swamped with a deluge of new programs to follow, leading to confusion.

How then is it possible to change the content of your subconscious mind? Well, it is possible if you have an emotional commitment to make such changes. You must be enfused with emotion, enthusiasm and energy as you initiate the changes. If you make changes simply because someone else demands it, it is highly unlikely that the changes will be carried out to fulfillment.

Children find it less ardous to change the content of their subconscious since the programming in our subconscious becomes more imprinted as we grow older. The synaptic pathways we continuously rely on stay connected. On the other hand, those we do not rely on as much break apart. Thus, making changes becomes harder as we grow older.

Another reason why children find it easier to change their subconscious mind is that children possess more enthusiastic emotions. Adults generally have less of such enthusiasm which is needed to unlock our subconscious so new programming can be set in place.

Furthermore, it is more likely that the subconscious mind will be tapped when you can feed it with information from your senses of sight, hearing, and feeling, rather than rely on general, abstract verbally expressed goals. This is why advertisements on television try to impart stimuli which can be felt by the viewer: so that an emotional link can be created between the viewer’s subconscious and the stimuli on the screen. It is a subtle form of programming.

So the next time you watch and listen to a commercial on the tube, you should be aware that your subconscious is being programmed to want that particular product.

www.selfimageimprovement.com

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June 3, 2008

Manage Your Anger.

How to Manage Your Anger?

We can lose everything in a moment of anger. We can lose friends, money, health and even our lives.Have a read of the points below,I’m sure you can learn some hints here.

It is vital to understand how to manage anger.

In this article I’m going to show you one of the best ways to manage anger. Anger is easy to manage if we understand how to attack it and stop it from increasing.

One of the best ways to attack anger was stated long time ago by the master Chinese thinker and social philosopher, Confucius.

Here is what he said…

“When anger rises, think of the consequences.” – Confucius, 551-479 B.C., Chinese Thinker and Social Philosopher

That is truly amazing!

In just a few words, Confucius laid out a secret weapon to kill anger at its very beginning.

When you feel that you are becoming angry, stop and think of the consequence. What will happen if you act based on your anger? What will happen if you let anger dominate? Will you be happy of the consequences?

What if you controlled your actions? Would it be better to think how to resolve the situation that caused your anger or let yourself and emotions to be jeopardized by anger?

I think you know very well what negative effects anger has on every aspect of your being. It affects your mind, emotions, health, etc.

Don’t ever let it dominate. Stop and think of the consequences. When you see the destructive consequences that anger can lead you to, you will realize that it is far better to relax and think thoroughly how to wisely respond to a certain situation.

If you let anger rise and dominate, it is very hard to control it.

Kill it from the beginning.

Awareness is a vital key. Be aware of your emotions and anger level and use your secret weapon that you learned in this article…Think of the consequences! To learn more on how to develop yourself go to my web site. www.selfimageimprovement.com

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June 2, 2008

How to Develop Good Listening Skills

How to Develop Good Listening Skills

When we come into this world we learn to listen, much before we learn to talk. But as grown-ups we most often forget to listen because we do not find time from talking. A constant chatterer is generally a bore and repulsive. A good listener, who lends an empathetic ear in all conversations, always wins hearts.

Just like you cannot discard any habit in a single day, you can’t build one either. You need to constantly practice being a good listener before it comes naturally to you. To be a good listener:

• You should be sincere and attentive. Don’t ever pretend to be listening while your mind wanders over your last date. Fake attention is always visible.

• Ask questions to express interest and not to interrogate.

• Increase your awareness and knowledge. Then you would have wider areas of interest.

• Be a courteous listener and never interrupt even if you disagree with the speaker.

• Take notes, wherever possible.

• Don’t be in a hurry to react. Listen, understand, analyze and then speak if required.

• If your mind wanders, search for topics that interest you in the conversation and tactfully divert the speaker towards it.

• Maintain eye contact with the speaker but do not stare. Fidgeting or nail biting during a conversation, reflect poor manners.

• Do not try to finish the sentence for others. They may get put off by you.

• If someone makes a mistake while speaking, don’t correct him in front of the group. Take him aside later and politely mention your thoughts to him.

• Remember, the one who goes away from your conversation feeling happy about his own conversational skills, is sure to be pleased with you. Listening provides you an opportunity to learn. Don’t waste it by talking incessantly.

Learn more here

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June 1, 2008

How to Attain Your Goals Effectively

How to Attain Your Goals Effectively

Whether for the short or long term, every person in this planet has set a goal that needs to be reached. It may be small, like getting to work on time, or huge, like building a house in a year’s time, or even running for the U.S. presidency. Sometimes, these goals are met with flying colors. There are moments, however, when the effort ends with disappointment.

There are many reasons why some goals are not met. Needless to say, the failure to achieve them is often a key contributor to low self-esteem and drive. The trick to getting past the hard times? Don’t let them get to you and move on.

Between Goals and Success

Success and goal attainment always come together. More goals set almost always translates to greater success. There are goal attainment strategies that are focused on things that should be always be accessible and available. These include powerful emotions like desire and passion. It also includes expectancy and the ability to identify your current state, as well as the creativity and imagination to build the path towards your goals.

There are several approaches to successful goal attainment, and their proper implementation could be the very element that can make or break your road to achievement.

The first approach in attaining your goals is to objectively scrutinize and appraise your abilities and skills.

Setting goals that are flexible and realistic is a great help. Don’t pressure yourself to buy a brand new car in 3 months if you’re earning only around $300 per month gross. Goals that are beyond one’s normal ability to meet are a dream to achieve, IF you get them. However, they can also lead to depression if you don’t.

Be open-minded when it comes to networking. Make friends. Establish connections. Just don’t do it too much to run the risk of looking like a desperate sycophant, of course. Keep learning about your goal and searching for various ways to get closer to it. You don’t need to take just one path. Explore other possibilities and expand your horizons. Who knows, you might find, along the way, that there are more important and more urgent goals that need to me reached.

The bottomline is, be original and don’t follow a template. What may work for your colleague when he got a promotion might not be the proper route for you. All these sound like a very rigorous process, but it’s really not. You will find, as you trudge through that realistic path you laid out, that everything can actually occur naturally and seamlessly.

Internal and External Barriers

Both internal and external barriers impede a person’s ability to take the first step towards a goal. Internal barriers include your fears. Fear of the unknown, the fear of looking stupid, fear of failure, and even fear of actually living success are the common and will definitely create negative impact. Pushing all these fears out and telling yourself that you can win will definitely help you deal with them effectively. You are the captain of your ship. You alone have the power to will these negative thoughts away.

External barriers include the lack of money, the requests and petition of the family, your kids and your work, even religion and culture. Most of these barriers are things you can’t really control towards your favor. Thus, like what life coaches usually say, don’t worry about things you cannot control and focus only on those you can change. So grab a pen and make a list of what you want to achieve; and once you’re done listing, take the first step. Go on, you can do it.

www.selfimageimprovement.com

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