Become Unafraid of Failure

That's correct! This guy needs to be unafraid of failure in order to jump and learn its correct way.

Most people are afraid of failure consciously or unconsciously and this affects their life seriously whether they know it or not.

Worse than that, many people try to make you afraid of failure.

Failure is something that we dislike but we must realize that it's the only way that we can truly learn and grow.

The problem with fear of failure is that it disables us to do any action, and this is the problem not the failure or even the fear.

Without failure there is no success, indeed each failure is a success because through which we learn something new towards an achievement.

Indeed, the correct way of thinking is that in the real meaning we always succeed, there is no failure. That's the strategy by which you can turn threats into opportunities.

In the other words, feel the fear and do it any way until you get to a point that you become UNAFRAID OF FAILURE that's when you become so strong and unshakable.

Try something new, take a risk, determine what you fear of and do it.

I hope you use this wisdom tip in the right way that benefits yourself and others.

Next:

Do something about it, knowing is not sufficient. Specify what failures you are afraid of and plan to do something about them and become unafraid of those failures.

Repeating an affirmation like following every day is helpful to reprogram your mind and visualization as well:

"I am unafraid of failure"

Your Confident Voice is Infectious

Naturally, all people have Confident and Unconfident voice depending on the situation they are in but they often get used to apply one of which.

When you are aware of your confident voice and you use it, then it will be infectious. By this I mean, other people will feel your confidence and can easily have confidence on you.

Hear your confident voice, imagine when was the last time you use it.

Using our confident voice is so joyful, however, we should be aware of the difference between an aggressive voice and a confident one because the border line is very thin.

Experience:
Another interesting point I would like to make is that when we use our confident voice, our personality, our thoughts and behaviours get changed.

My experience says just use confident voice while talking and you will be self-confident automatically.

I also experienced that using my confident voice I stammer much less.

Next:
Practice for one day only talking with your confident voice and see the results

Qualities to Develop and Maintain

"Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48)

To walk on the path towards being perfect, we must develop and maintain certain qualities.

In Relation with Self
Self-Confident, Self-Assured, Self-Actualized, Driven, Self-Determined, Self-Motivated, Firm Believer, Proactive, Disciplined, Focused, Self-Leader, Creative, Autodidact, Unafraid of Failure, Intolerant of Laziness and Idleness, Strong, Positive, Different, Unique, Special, Blessed, Fighter, Self-Manager, Risk Taker, Smart, Wise, Thoughtful, Productive, Star, Intelligent, Hard Working, Professional, Patient, Perceptive, Talented, Bright, Open Minded, Highly Eager to Learn, Independent, Happy, Cheerful, Organized, Faithful, Responsible, Steady, Stable, Sure, Steadfast, Staunch, Realistic, Self-Starter, Self-Controlled, Self-Reliant, Visionary, Knowledgeable, Self-Aware, Continually Improving, Agile, Courageous to go beyond comfort zone, Decisive, Strategist, Planner, Invincible, Able to judge wisely, Self-sufficient

In Relation with Others
Good Listener, Good Friend, Caring, Helpful, Loyal, Compassionate, Honest, Sincere, Encouraging, Inspiring others to reach their full potential, Empathetic, Trustworthy, Asset for Others, Very Dependable, Trusty, Leader, Manager, Affectionate, Motivator, Adaptive, Team Builder, Task Assigner, Excellent communicator with people at all levels, Empowering, Team Couch, Conflict Resolver, Persuader, A Role Model, Courteous, Respectful, Polite, Tactful

Next:

1) Use "I " and read all these attributes again say e.g. I am self-confident, I am self-assured ...

2) Record your voice on a tape and listen carefully at least once a week

Repeating these words frequently reshapes your visualization and your believes accordingly :)

3) Pray the Lord to give you Wisdom to grow in these qualities

FIGHTER

You have only one option, you must recognize that you are in a battle and must be an equiped FIGHTER.

I don't mean fighting with people! I mean we must fight against our own fears and the things that hold us back from our goals such as anger, sickness, sadness, hatred, laziness, lack of discipline, negative thoughts ...

The fight is real and almost every day.

The battle is indeed between the holy spirit which is within (desires to be happy, caring, strong and confident) against our flesh (desires to sadness, hatred, fear ...).

ENJOY TO BE ALWAYS A STRONG FIGHTER and NEVER GIVE UP.

What shapes your future?

What you're doing now, shapes your future.

It's the law of cause and effect.

If your actions are good, good results will be produced.

If your actions are bad, bad results will be produced.

So, don't worry much about the future and focus on the responsibilities you have now.

Leadership

To be a good leader you must develop and maintain a set of abilities as following:

• Visionary
• Voice
• IQ
• EQ
• Influence
• Persuasion

to be continued ...

Chakras

We have 7 chakras that all should be balanced but not always they are balanced.

To help you open your Chakras:
http://www.eclecticenergies.com/chakras/open.php


Tips to heal your 5th Chakra (Expression & Communication):

• Yoga
• Release sound
• Breath deeply
• Change your self-communication to positive - inner talk
• Exercise

Hardworking is the key

Lazy people want more and get less, but hard working people prosper.

To get more from life, we need to work harder and add more value. Not only harder but also smarter. Sometimes the way we do things are not smart and there are tools in the market that can make us more productive in what we do.

But hard working is the key to achievement and prosperity.

By hard working I don't mean only physical work, but also thinking and wise networking.

Those who go to work 8 hours a day, are survivals, normal people who get to no where in their lives. Those who work 10-12 hours a day can get something extra, can make a fortune, can start a business, can do many other things.

I believe we must work hard until we get to a level of financial freedom so that our assets work for us afterwards. When this happens? I don't know ... we must think, plan and be action oriented...

What is your value?

I was thinking today about being valuable.

Every person is valuable in some situations and is not valuable in some other situations.

The good or bad news is that the fact that a person is valuable in a situation is not absolute and unshakable. By this I mean, you can loose or gain value depending on the circumstance and situation.

In the other words, being valuable is contextual and has a season.

We always get value and give value. We get value in forms of love, care and money from our cercumstance and we give value in forms of our actions, works, words, etc.

A child is often valuable in the eyes of his/her parents and no matter what that child does, the value doesn't dissappear.

If you are an employee of a Company, depending on the value that you add to the Company you will get paid. If you can't or don't add any value to the Company, you will be fired or at least redundant. On the other hand, if you are very valuable for the Company, you can get pay rise or promotion.

Strangely, sometimes you loose your value not because you haven't done anything wrong and sometimes you gain value not because you have done anything right!

What is your value at your Company?

Friends provide value for each other. If one friend becomes invaluable, then the relationship is cut.

Husbands and wifes are valuable for each other. Once one side is invaluable for the other, the relationship is cut.

Do you try to add value wherever you are?

Did you know that you have no other option? I mean if you don't add value, you loose the value, e.g. money and support, you have so you have no option but keep adding the same value or adding more values.

Yes, it's always a trade fortunately or unfortunately!

This fact is a bit stressful, isn't it?

Go where you can be valuable and leave where you can't be.

The greater value you add, the greater value you get. That's why if you work hard and add more value, the more prosper you become.

List of English Names

I have had some difficulty to identify some English names since most of them sound new to me, specially when people call me or introduce themselves to me. So, sometimes I had to ask them to repeat or spell their names.

The solution came to my mind is to quickly review the list of men English names and list of women English names, which helped me to be familiar with this culture specific feature. Having said that my name sounds unfamiliar to the other people as well.

Top 10 boys names:

Jack; Thomas, Joshua; William; Daniel; Matthew; James; Joseph; Harry; Samuel

Top 10 girls names:

Emily; Chloe; Megan; Jessica; Emma; Sarah; Elizabeth; Sophie; Olivia; Lauren

Is the problem fully resolved?

Because London is a multicultural city, knowing the English names only doesn't help because you might meet people from other cultures as well. So I guess the best way is just to ask the other person to spell his/her name.

Stammering - Hexagon

Yesterday I had a conference call with John Harrison the founder of Hexagon.

Stammering had a big impact on the first half of John Harrison's life. Like the ancient Greek philosopher whose whole life was spent trying to unravel a mystery, John's "compulsive nature", as he puts it, drew him into a deep understanding of his own stammering. The process helped him develop a broad view of the nature and treatment of stammering summed up in a model he has developed, called the 'stammering hexagon'.

Stammering Hexagon is shown as below:

My understanding from what he said was that these 6 factors are major principles that cause or cure stammering.

You can find the collection of his research and research of others which have been gathered for years here.

Stammering - Self Advertising Technique

Self Advertising technique is one of the best techniques to be used by those who stammer so that they become desensitize about the way they speak.

The idea is that you become a confident speaker no matter you stammer more or less, which helps you become desensitize in regard to your stammering.

Technique
The technique is very simple:

At the beginning of your conversation on the phone or face to face, confidently say "I have a stammer, please could you bear with me". Then 99.99% the other person says "Yes, sure". Then you will have time to continue.

• Remember that this must be the first sentence of your conversation, afterwards you introduce yourself and say other sentences such as "My name is ...I am calling in regard to...
• Know that this is your absolute right to stammer and there is no shame on this.
• The other person understands that he/she needs to be patient while you talk and 99.99% of the situations people are nice and understandable.
• Besides, instead of feeling stressed and anxious you will feel confident and acceptable and you will have enough time to say what you want to say.

Here is another link to explain how to use telephone for people who stammer.

Next:
If you stammer sometimes like me, discipline yourself to practice this technique, desensitize yourself and boost your confidence.

The Power of Word of Mouth

...

How to become an IT Expert?

The only way to become an IT Expert, is to think, speak, look and act like an IT Expert. Wait a second and think about it...

Remember that you only can fly as high as your visualization can fly.

To become an IT Expert, there are a set of skills you must develop, maintain and practice and the following affirmations are to lead your self-visualization and consequently to shape your thoughts and deeds accordingly:













Next:

Record your own voice repeating the above sentences assertively, then listen to these records regularly so that you be able to lead your thoughts and actions to become an IT Expert.

Stress Management Tips

Why we get stressed?

Getting stressed is natural because life is challenging and usually hectic although varies per individual. The following reasons could lead to having too much stress:

• Too much worries
• Too much works
• Too much demands from other people
• Too much unmanaged thoughts
• Fear of future, fear of uncertainty, fear of rejection, fear of failure
• Lack of confidence
• Lack of courage
• Too much debts

"TOO MUCH" really depends on how much you can tolerate stress and it varies for every person.

Why STRESS must be acknowledged and managed properly?

The reason is that stress sometimes can create real issues. For instance, too much stress can lead to:

• Depression
• Headache
• Sickness
• Unhappiness
• Confusion
• Feeling blocked
• Sadness
• Aggression

And all these affect the health, productivity and performance significantly.

In addition, some people behave harmfully to themselves or to others because they have too much stress. For instance, they get addicted to drugs or they behave aggressively towards others.

What is positive stress?

Stress is not always bad. Sometime high level of stress can be motivational which increases performance and productivity. For example, setting realistic deadline on a project, increases stress but at the same time it increases the performance as well.

On the other hand, a work without stress is inefficient. So we must identify when stress is low, high or too much to make the right choice to manage it properly.

How to manage "too much" stress properly?

Wise people acknowledge the level of their stress, then identify solutions and techniques to manage and overcome their stress positively. Here are some techniques that help managing and releasing stress:

Breathing deeply
One of the quickest ways to release stress is to breath deeply and slowly for about 1 minute. In this way, more oxygen will be inhaled in your system and your stress is decreased. Do this frequently every hour in the middle of stressing situation.

Smile
Smile with open mouth so that your teethes are shown! When smiling, body releases some chemical material that releases the stress we have. In the middle of a stressful situation, try to smile frequently and you will see the result immediately. I know it's not easy sometimes, but its fantastic result make it worth trying it.

Prayer
If you believe in God, pray and talk to God asking Him to take the stress from you and you will see and feel that He does!

Meditation and relaxation
Meditate and relax your body. To meditate you need a quiet place. Focus on your breathing and free your mind from all thoughts for a while. In this way, you will see that the stress has been released.

Delegate works to the others where possible
Sometimes, our works are in such a way that we can delegate some parts of it to the other people. Doing so leads to have less work which will result in having less stress.

Exercise
Exercising can release our stress and give us confidence and strength.

Yoga

Yoga exercises help release our stress.

Prioritize and plan your day in advance
A good way to manage too much work is to plan your day in advance (the night before) based on the most important works of the next day. Please bear in mind that prioritization of works must be based on the consequences of doing or not doing those works.

Focus effectively
If you think about 100 jobs at the same time, you can't be efficient and you get too stressed and blocked. The best way is to have 2 actions in your mind at the same time. Always 90% focus on the current work and 10% on the next work. Knowing your next work makes you be aware of the time you spend on the current work which will improve your performance.

Time management
Learn time management techniques. Eliminate unnecessary works.

Consult with an expert
Consult with an expert about your work. Maybe the demands on you are unrealistic and you must be assertive to make it clear and find proper solutions.

Thought awareness
Try to be aware of your thoughts and observing yourself. Sometimes, our thoughts become too unfairly negative. Identify your negative thoughts and replace them with realistic and solution oriented thoughts.

Stress tolerance
One way to manage stress is to identify the level of our stress tolerance, then finding solutions to increase our tolerance so that we feel comfortable in the stressful situations.

Stress Relief Tea / Tablets

Drink a cup of stress relief tea everyday :)

Affirmations to reduce stress

• Nothing bad ever happens to me
• Everything is according to the plan and is being handled properly

Ginseng Tablets or Tea

Ginseng is considered the most notable medicinal herb used to restore vitality, boost energy, reduce fatigue, improve mental and physical performance, and protect the body from the negative effects of stress.

Vitamin B Family

The B-complex vitamins are a treasure trove of stress relief. Supermalt, beer all contain vitamin B.

References:

• http://www.scribd.com/doc/11531164/Stress-Management-Tips-From-Readers-Digest

How to be creative? - Part1

Definition
Creativity is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts.

Creativity is a way of living not just an ability but the good news is that it can be learned and practiced.

Importance
It's vital to be creative in this world specially in Software Development. Often whoever is more creative, will be more successful in life. Creative people are more intelligent and attractive.

Technique 1: Problem Reversal

This technique helps us to see and think about the opposite aspects of problems. There are 7 subtechniques for this technique:

1. State your problem in reverse.
2. Change a positive statement into a negative one.
3. Try to define what something is not.
4. Figure out what everybody else is not doing.
5. Use the "What If" Compass Change the direction or location of your perspective
6. Flip-flop results
7. Turn defeat into victory or victory into defeat

Example
Imagine you're an employee with £20k salary and you would like to find a way to increase it. Think about how not to increase your salary, decrease it or keeping it in the same amount?

• Just going to work, coming back home and doing nothing else
• Not studying anything new or achieving any certification
• Not looking for a new job with higher salary
• Wasting time at work - being unprofessional
• Not thinking about self-business

The result is you will come up with new ideas how to increase your income.

Example
Imagine you want to live your day in a way you achieve your goals, so think about how you can waste your time in a day?

• Not to plan it in advance
• Watching TV all day
• Looking around the internet with no goal
• Talking with friends all day
• ...

The result is you will come up with new ideas how to use your day properly.

Example:
Imagine your goal is to improve customer services, list all the ways you could make customer services bad.

1. Waiting customer for a long time
2. Not answering customer
3. Swearing to customer
4. Saying you will do what customer has asked, and not to do it.
5. ...

In this way, you will understand and come up with new ideas how to improve the customer services.

Example:
Imagine your goal is to have a tidy bedroom, list all you can do to have an untidy bedroom e.g.

1. Not hanging the shirts immidiately after you take them off
2. Not cleaning your desk at all
3. Putting your clothes on the floor
4. Not assigning time per week to clean your room

The result is, you will understand what easy ways are there that you can avoid doing or do to keep the bedroom tidy.

Example:
Imagine you went to a job interview and they didn't give you an offer, think about the positive aspects e.g. I gained more experience that will help me in my next interview.

How to Develop Our Intelligence?

What is intelligence?

Intelligence is a set of brain abilities e.g. reasoning, planning, finding solutions, courage and creativity. This is a topic that I enjoy thinking about and detailing all day :)

Intelligence Categories:

• Emotional (Interpersonal) Intelligence
• Financial Intelligence
• Business Intelligence
• Social Intelligence
• Health Intelligence
• Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
• Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence
• Musical Intelligence
• Intra-personal Intelligence

Everyone has some degree of these intelligences but the good news is that whatever your level is you have the option to make a decision improving your intelligence and persuading others to do so as well.

Suggestions to Develop Your Intelligence?

Developing our intelligence, IQ and EQ, is all about utilizing our brain properly and constantly.

• Minimize watching TV; TV can make you stupid by taking your mind away. You need to think yourself and use your brain. Watch intelligent programs.
• Exercise regularly
• Actively read good books
• Actively learn from experts
• Go to bed early and rise early
• Actively think about solutions for problems. In the other words, be solution-oriented instead of problem-oriented.
• Try new things; take risks
• Be food-wise: eat healthy food - eat fish, protein and carbs - drink water about 8 glasses a day
• Be aware of your own and of others emotions
• Become a writer - write daily notes, personal diaries, poetry, ideas are are good to improve your IQ

More:

• http://www.verticalthought.org/issues/vt26/seven-types-intelligence.htm
• http://www.aboutintelligence.co.uk/ways-improve-intelligence.html

Emotional Intelligence

What is it?

Emotional Intelligence (EI), which is measured by Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ), is the ability to identify, assess and manage the emotions of one's self, of others and of groups.

It's good to say that some brain researchers believe that EQ, not IQ, is maybe the true measure for human intelligence.

Necessity

Not having this intelligence is too costly whereas having and developing it is essential to create and maintain a healthy relationship with ourselves and others.

I believe this intelligence is absolutely essential for all the relationships we have including:

• With ourselves
• Team leadership
• Team working
• Friendship
• Marriage
• Family
• Business relationship
• Customer relationship

Benefits of having it?

I believe having and growing this intelligence reshapes our behaviour to:

• Know our own emotions better which leads to make wiser decisions to resolve our challenges.
• Have a better understanding of different people which leads to make better decisions in how we communicate with them
• Develop and maintain a tactful and wise relationship which adds our value, respect and professionalism.
• Recognize when to ask what and from whom. As a result, we get what we want more efficiently (easier and quicker)

How to grow in this intelligence?

We need to be wise enough to be able to see the world and situations from the viewpoint of others. It's not an easy task and needs practice to get it developed. Having said that some people inherentally are better than others but the good news is that it's something obtainable.

We need to understand the ways we COMMUNICATE with other people including telephone, chat, email, forum discussions, meetings.

We also need to understand that EMOTIONS have great power in all the communications and relationships.

This understanding and wisdom certainly changes our behaviour towards ourselves and others around us and we will "Treat people in a way we like to be treated".

Example1

When you wrote an email to a person and before sending it, read it again to understand that if another person was reading it, what thoughts or emotions she/he might have. This wisdom certainly changes the way you wrote the email.

Next

Learn more about this intelligence and practice it daily.

More info

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence

http://www.time.com/time/classroom/psych/unit5_article1.html

http://quiz.ivillage.co.uk/uk_work/tests/eqtest.htm

Power of Visualization - Part2: I WILL HANDLE IT

WHAT?

Life throws many challenges every day into our lives but the question is how we can use the power of VISUALIZATION to our benefit?

One solution is to have a self-talk of "I WILL HANDLE IT" against anything life throws at you, these are all from the same family:

WHEN TO SAY IT?

• Whenever you worry about something
  
• Whenever you are not sure about something
  
• Whenever you fear of something
  
• Whenever you have a goal and you want to achieve it
  
• Whenever you have uncertainty about future
  
• Generally, whenever you have a challenge

I have tried it several times and it has always worked.

WHY IT WORKS?

When we say "I WILL HANDLE IT", we are

• Helping our mind to visualize a person who will handle that challenge no matter what it is.
  
• Helping our mind to find and focus on possible solutions and ways to handle that challenge rather than focusing on the problem.


• This improvement in visualization automatically results in being confident and courageous. In addition we see that our worries and fears are wiped out.

NEXT:

Whatever life throws at you keep saying yourself "I WILL HANDLE IT" and you will see that you will handle it.

How to read efficiently?

Efficiency in reading means to read faster and at the same time to understand more.

CONCENTRATION
Concentration is a fundamental factor, which means you must provide your environment of reading good enough that you be able to concentrate on what you are reading e.g. lightening of the room, your seat should be adjusted properly and the book should be flat on desk.



On the other hand, you should be aware of distractions and try to eliminate them as much as possible e.g. clean your desk, turn your mobile off, find a quiet place and make sure you're comfortable before reading.

Having said that you can study at a noisy place as well as long as you make enough efforts to focus and concentrate, so if you can go to a more quiet place and eliminate distractions why not doing so?!

READING METHODS

1) Read slowly
Many people think if they read slowly they understand better which is a completely wrong belief. Reading slowly is inefficient and has no effect on comprehension.

2) Read a sentence/paragraph then go back read it again
This method is called regression. Although this method improves the comprehension 3-7 percent, but it's also inefficient. Eliminate regression and your reading speed will rise from the average of 250 wpm (words per minute) to 450 wpm.

3) Skim-Read
Skim reading is one of the most efficient methods of reading. It improves the speed and comprehension both. Using this technique will improve the speed of reading up to 80% without lowering your comprehension.

How to Skim-Read:

In normal reading, the eyes make small & swift movements between groups of words and pause briefly on each group but skim-read is different as following:

• Before reading a book or a text, if it has a introduction, conclusion, index or picture, read these first to understand the topic and choose what you want to read.
• Enlarge the groups of words to see and read, then accelerate the move from one group to the other.
• Visualize what you read and try to associate and complete the picture in your mind as you read on.
• Review what you read using the following technique.

Improving memory:

Memory is very strong after a few minutes but nearly 80% is lost after 24 hours! So, if you spend 5 hours today and read a book, you will forget 80% of what you read tomorrow after 24 hours!

So what can we do to improve it?

We must review what we read to minimize the lost and maximize the memory. A technique is as following:

1. Study for 60 minutes (1h)
2. Review for 6 minutes
3. After 1 day, review what you read again for 6 minutes
4. After 1 week, review what you read again for 6 minutes

The reviewing process takes about 1/10 of the time spent on what you read but it improves the memory dramatically.

4) Skim-Read PLUS

This method is highly helpful to stregthen the comprehension of reading.

In this technique you do all you did for skim-read method but also you:

• Take time to think about what you read and analyze it
• Take time to discuss about the subject in a forum, meeting or with friends
• Take time to teach what you learned to a person who is interested
• Take time to write an abstract about what you learned

When you teach, think, analyze and discuss about a topic, your comprehension about that topic gets increased dramatically.

5) Associated Reading

When you read, associate what you read with a real life scenario. This is an excellent method to learn that lasts longer. The real life scenario or picture does not need to be fully relevant to the topic.

NEXT

Practice and practice to master this skill

Good luck!

Discipline

Consistent Discipline is the bridge between setting a goal and achieving it.

Without consistent discipline hardly any goal can be achieved. In the other words, having consistent discipline is a key and fundamental factor in achieving any goal in life.

The length of the discipline must be until the goal is achieved that's why I said Consistent Discipline. By this I mean, short term disciplines will not lead to achievement and that's just simply waste of time.

Example 1: Passing an exam
Imagine Jack has to pass a difficult exam next week. If he studies without proper discipline and only for 2-3 days then he will not pass his exam. The rule says he must study consistently with proper discipline until the exam has been passed. If he gives up during the process he has just wasted his time.

Power of Visualization

Visualization is one of the most important factors in becoming successful in life. Indeed, most often we get what we keep visualizing.

The truth is whether we are aware or not, we all are visualizing all the time.

Hope:

What is hope? Why some people are more hopeful than the others?

Hope is expecting something that we want although we are not sure whether it's certainly possible. If you are sure of something, it's called certainty not hope.

How to have hope in the middle of uncertainty?

you must visualize, without visualization there is no hope. Visualize what you want and strengthen your hope and positive expectation.

Do you expect to succeed or fail? Do you worry about everything too much?

If you expect and hope success, success will have much more chance to get attracted to you.

"Hope is expecting what we want and it's meaningless without visualization"

Visualize you might fail, failure gets more chance to come to you. In fact, we most often attract what we visualize whether it's good or bad.

Could we ever travel to the moon before visualizing it might be possible?

Confidence:

What is confidence? What is the difference between a person who has confidence and the one who doesn't?

When you think deeply you see the difference is all about their visualization. In the other words, a person who is confident is a person who visualizes himself/herself doing something in the right way and successfully.

How this confidence is built up?

Confidence is built up in 2 ways; consciously and unconsciously.

Previous successful experiences and knowledge build our confidence unconsciously. Our current awareness and deliberate visualization build up our confidence consciously.

So, practice constantly this visualization wisdom to build up your confidence stronger in all aspects of your life.

There is no limit in your mind, if it's there you have put it by habit and you have the potential power within to take the limit out.

Become Solution oriented:

Have you seen people who always nag? always see negative points? always are unhappy? always talk about their problems, problems of others and problems of society?

Such person is a problem oriented person and it's not hard to identify them. A problem oriented person can not be happy in his/her life and can not find the right way because before finding the solution you must look for it, you must try to visualize solution.

Whose life is without pressure and trouble? I tell you there is no one on earth without trouble and pressure in his/her life, because life is a challenge. Financially, whatever you earn, you will have your own troubles and pressures. But the winners are those who turn pressures and troubles to opportunity by visualizing opportunities constantly and focus on solution always.

You should understand problem, but only solution is what you must focus and put most of your energy and thoughts on.

Once you do it for a while it becomes a pleasant habit and you will feel that nothing on earth can hurt you because there are always solutions found soon or late, so make the decision today, right now and be committed to practice it and you will be joyful by your achievements.

Become and stay solution oriented and encourage others to do so as well. Let the knowledge gets spread.

Learning:

Have you ever thought how we learn? why some people learn quicker than others? is it possible to speed up our learning process?

The answer is in visualization again. For instance, if you are reading a book, don't just look at words but visualize what you read while reading. If you are hearing to someone saying something, visualize what you hear. Consequently, you learn much faster and easier. Besides, what you learnt won't go away from your memory easily.

Even those who think they learn by hearing, it's not hearing that make them learn, it's indeed the picture they draw from what they hear.

So, practice using visualization to speed up and enjoy your learning.

Fear:

What is fear? can you fear consciously? is it possible to fear without visualization? Do you let your fear stop you from getting what you really want? Is fear always bad at all?

Fear of death, fear of becoming poor, fear of loosing, fear of rejection, fear of loosing your job, fear of not paying your bills. Yes, all these are fears that everyone could have.

First of all, I would like to say that fear is not always bad. Indeed, it's sometimes wonderfully helpful. For instance, you might fear of failure in your exam tomorrow, then this fear is turned to a force to encourage you to read harder to pass and you will.

So I don't look at fear as something always against us but, as described above, it could be helpful sometimes for us as well.

Fear sometimes can paralyze us and stops us from moving forward or doing any action. This is the negative part of fear that can prevent our progress unless we find a strong mean to tackle it.

This mean is called visualization. Turn your fear to opportunities, change the pictures of fear in your mind to what you want. Direct fear, if you can't destroy it, to your benefit by visualization.

Do not let your fear control you but you control and direct your fear to your advantage. Face your fear if it's stopping you from your progress, and do the action.

Visualize why you have the power to take it under your control.

Believe:

What is belief? believing in what? why? Is it certainty?

Certainty, knowledge, belief, hope, wish, desire.

To be continued ...

Communication Methods/Skills

What is communication?

Communication is the ability and willingness to give and receive information effectively, either verbally or in writing.

The importance

Not having proper communication between IT people and business people is the main cause of failure for almost all Software projects.

Why communication?

• To ask a question e.g. When is our release date?
• To share or inform information e.g. Hey, look at Pooya Khamooshi blog. It's interesting.
• To teach and to learn
• To discuss about a topic e.g. Hey, let's discuss how we do unit testing here ...

The primary goal of my blog is to have a constructive communication mean with myself indeed! By this I mean, this is a tool to organize my thoughts and understandings in a more efficient way. Having said that readers can benefit as well.

Communication Means?

• Email
• Phone
• Formal meeting
• Informal discussion
• Chatrooms e.g. Windows Messenger, IRC

Pros and Cons?

Each mean is essential and has advantages and disadvantages, so you'd better know when to use which.

Email.Pros:

• High accuracy of information
• If immidiate answer is not required for your email
• The other person will have time to think and answer

Email.Cons:

• It's not good if you need an immidiate answer
• There is a possibility that the other person doesn't read or reply to your question or communication, so it's not highly reliable. Indeed, people who are busy or even stressed often ignore emails.

Email.Tips:

• Write accurately
• Write then reread what you wrote to get it improved - don't be too perfectionist though

Phone.Pros:

• Fastest way of communication, so it's good if you need an immidiate answer
• Your emotional mood, tone of voice and how you say what you want to say will affect the quality of your phone call, so this method is highly dependent on the person and emotional mood of both, whereas for example with email your emotional state is not highly important and it's more logical.

Phone.Cons:

• Phone is often not very accurate, maybe the other person doesn't understand exactly what you need from him, so it's better to be written when the topic is long.
• Sometimes people are not immidiately available for your call

Phone.Tips:

• Smile while talking - I know it's not always possible topic-wise
• Be passionate - I know it's not always possible mood-wise
• Listen well and make sure you understood - I know it's not always possible time-wise
• Speak clearly and make sure the other person understood what you said - I know it's not always possible stress-wise

FormalMeeting.Pros:

FormalMeeting.Cons:

InformalMeeting.Pros:

InformalMeeting.Cons:

Chat.Pros:

Chat.Cons:

Aim Highest

Always aim highest at your business, education, work, exercise whereever you are.

If you are studying like software engineering, aim to be the best software engineer in the world. Find the best people in that area, learn from them and grow towards that aim.

If you aim low and you just see your current situation and capabilities, you are limiting yourself. Do not do it. You are worth much more. You have the potential. Aim the highest. Plan for it, prepare for it and enjoy achieving it.

If you have a business, aim to be the best in your area. Learn how to be the best. Read books. Meet successful people, learn from them.

Become the best Principle Technologist. Aim for presidency. Aim for being the best.

It's good to say that, I do not mean we should compare ourselves with the other people. But, we need enjoy ourselves as we are, but aim always for better.

When you aim low, you get low. When you aim high, you get high.

No matter you have currently the ability to be the best, but aim for it. The ability will be found, the solutions will be found when you focus on the highest.

Enormous potential is within everyone of us. You can either use it or loose it!

Stammering and Confidence

Stammering:

1% of the population of the world stammer and not every knows about it.

Stammerers stammer less or more depending on the situation, to whom they are speaking and their mood.

The way people stammer is very different and it's unique for each stammerer.

Stammering is not just the physical struggle in saying something but it has much more effects internally. It can destroy the confidence, ego and hope of the stammerer if left untackled. There's a war within which must be fought and won with wisdom.


When/where you need to speak:

In many places we need to speak in life and this can become a real challenge for a stammerer e.g.

1. Having a video call with a colleague or client
2. Presenting at a conference for known or unknown people
3. Having conference call with known or unknown people
4. Having a phone call to a known or unknown person

Causes of fear:

Generally public speaking creates fear for most people but this fear is doubled for those who stammer and the causes are:

1. Fear of looking foolish when stammering
2. Fear of failure in succeeding what you want your audience know or understand
3. Fear of failure in gaining the respect and listening you deserve
4. Fear that others underestimate you because you stammer

There are 2 aspects about stammering:

1. Overt:

What you see when a person stammers e.g.

• Struggle in face, mouth
• Sliding words
• Bouncing words
• Loosing eye contact while speaking

2. Covert

What is within of a stammerer is much bigger than what is outside (Overt). This involves the fears, negative emotions, feelings and thoughts which are developed gradually within e.g.

• Getting depressed
• Loosing confidence
• Getting dissapointed and sad
• Developing a fear whitin as described above which results in avoiding behaviours and not doing any action
• Avoiding stammering which makes it worse and persistent e.g. avoiding situations of speak, avoiding words on which we stammer more
• Self-hate because the voice system is unable to glorify the power within and meeting the expectations

Tips:

• The more you avoid stammering the bigger the fear becomes
• You must allocate time (about 15 minutes) to practice speaking fluently every day
• You must consult an expert and therapist if you haven't done so yet
• The more sensitive you are about changing yourself, the more stammering you get

Possible solutions for the stammerer

The best advise is to attend therapy courses and to consult with a good therapist.

My other advise is to practice regularly every day for about 10-15 minutes the techniques you learn.

Unfortunately, there is no known cure for stammering but there are some suggested solutions to consider:

• Understand stammering, emotions and behaviours involved with it.
• Desensitize yourself about stammering. Love yourself as you are even when you stammer.
• Use block modification techniques including pre-block, in-block and post-block modification techniques
• Relax your voice system and shoulders frequently.
• Do something to boost your confidence every single day.
• At the time of failure, don't get disappointed but create a new positive experience.
• Pray and ask guidance and strength
• Speak slowly and smoothly with confidence
• Practice and practice and practice and never give up
• Self-advertise yourself. Say "I stammer please bear with me". In this way, you turn stammering to your advantage and credit so please will listen to you better.
• Listen to your voice and the way you speak while speaking. This helps to have control over how you speak and consequently it can enable you to change the way you speak.

Boost your confidence:

• Know that it's your right to stammer so don't fear or shame of it, go for it!
• Know that it's your right that people listen to you and if they don't they have issue not you!
• Show respect and listen well in communications
• Have proper posture and show your confidence in your posture; the way you walk, the way you sit
• Exercise regularly
• Keep your eye contact while stammering
• Practice every day
• Read positive and self-development books
• Prepare properly before your talks
• Self affirm positively and keep doing so with visualization and in details.
• Learn from failures but forget them quickly. Remember the success stories and repeat them
• Help others to boost their confidence as well
• Controlled and positive aggression is essential in boosting confidence
• Have 10-20 deep breathing every hour
• To be confident you must be courageous! The Courage to stand out in the crowd, the courage not just to be a face in the crowd!

LINKS:

http://www.stammering.org/

You do not need confidence!

There are hundreds of books about how to gain self-confidence but the fact is that in order to become successful in whatever we want to achieve in life, we do not need confidence at all!

We do not need to be confident to do something and not many people have understood this.

If you have enough confidence in all aspects of your life, good for you and this article is not for you but if you don't have it, the good news is you don't need it!

Here, I will explain the Action & Confidence Workflow:

1) Our creation:
All human beings when they are born they have senses that help them to have inputs and understanding e.g. they can see, hear and feel the hunger. This is the first step in the confidence workflow.



2) Desire/greed/need/fear:
This is a step that our desire, ego, need or fear is realized. This realization sometimes is done by comparing ourselves with the other person.

3) Visualization/Imagination:
After we keep seeing, hearing and having the desire, need or fear; then we start imagining and thinking about what we want in more details. The more we grow at this stage the closer we get to the next step. We see dreams of our achievement.

4) Passion:
When we keep imagining and visualizing then the passion is created within us. Having said that at this stage we have no ability or experience but the passion is kept increasing. We really want it.
It's important to say that at each stage all the previous steps are repeated automatically. It's not something we do consciously often, it's what is done unconsciously and automatically within us. Without being complete in each stage we don't get to the next phase.

When this passion gets to a burning level, the next phase is going to begin.

5) Courage for Action:
After having a burning passion, detailed imagination, strong need or desire then our courage for action is created. Our passion is strong enough that generates a courage within us to move and act towards getting what we want.

6) Action:
It's important to say that before any action to be made many spiritual and emotional processes, as explained above, are happening inside us.

Mainly our courage and passion and with all the previous steps move us towards action. We go out and ask people, we search for it, we try it. As we continue acting, we gain knowledge and experience.

As we are passionate and courageous enough and action oriented, our knowledge in the gets improved. We keep getting knowledge and find solutions for the problem or the goal we have.

At the time of failure again the process works. If our passion is not greater that our fear of failure, then we give up otherwise we try another solution!

As we do consistent action, we get closer to start the next phase.

7) Achievement/experience:
Our knowledge, constant action, courage, burning desire and passion leads us to achievement. Once we achieved it we become experienced.

8) Confidence:
As we achieve and we gain knowledge and experience, our confidence gets build up. This confidence helps us to do further actions or keep doing current actions well. But the most important point is that confidence is built up automatically.

Indeed confidence is a result of our previous achievements and knowledge and is not necessary important for our next success and achievement.

If we have it good for us, if we don't we must know it's not a key factor for success unlike the teachings of many books written.

Here, I will write few examples to clarify exactly how the process works

Example 1: Getting a job

Example 2: Getting fit

Example 3: Passing an exam

Example 4: Buying a house

Example 5: Starting a business


In conclusion, what we should focus on is to understand the Action & Confidence Workflow and to know that for any achievement confidence is not a key factor at all but our PASSION, VISUALISATION and COURAGE for ACTION.