Staying Positive Around Negative People

2 Ways to Stay Positive When Dealing With Negative People

By Tony Robinson 

We all have to deal with negative people at some point in lives, we just do. Sometimes we can avoid them, other times we can’t. Sometimes these negative people stay for a little while, other times they stay long enough to make us want to jump off a bridge.

But since we know it’s a fact of life that negative people exist, what can we do deal with Negative Nancy and Pessimistic Peter?

Understand They Have Different Values

There are times when the negative people we have to deal with aren’t always negative, they just happen to be really negative in certain situations.

When I started college, I was an engineering major. I did really well in school and got accepted into a summer internship program with one of the biggest oil companies in the world. It was awesome. I performed so well in the internship program that they brought me back the following summer. After the second summer I was told I had a full time job waiting for me once I graduated.

But unfortunately, not only did I turn down that high paying job offer, I left the engineering major entirely! I realized that engineering wasn’t my passion and I began studying small business management instead.

My family wasn’t so thrilled about the idea. I was going to be the first one in my family to get a college degree, and the fact that it was going to be an engineering degree made my family ecstatic because they knew that a degree in engineering meant financial security. That’s what was important to them, a nice steady paycheck with great benefits.

So when news broke that I was changing my major, my family voiced a lot of concerns and brought a pretty negative attitude to the situation. They kept reminding me of the time that would be wasted and the big payday that would never come. It was tough to hear, and it even made me second-guess my decision.

But I had to go back and remind myself of what my values were. What was important to me? Delivering something of significance to world the world, and I felt that a degree in engineering wouldn’t allow me to really reach my potential.

I valued significance, my family valued security. We couldn’t have been further apart from each other.

Once I realized that we had such a big difference in values on the topic, it made it a lot easier for me to tune out the negative comments and energy they were sending my way.

Take Responsibility for Your Own Happiness

Negativity is contagious. It’s easy for someone else’s negative thoughts to slowly creep over and start affecting you in a negative way.

But positivity is also contagious, so when someone is giving you a lot of negative energy, you have to fight back with positive energy. You can’t allow someone else’s negativity to become yours. Just because Negative Nick doesn’t think it’s a good idea for you to go after your dreams, that doesn’t mean you have to think it’s a bad idea too.

You have to be responsible for you own happiness and positivity. If we break down the word responsibility we get “response – ability”. Responsibility is simply your ability to respond.

You don’t have the power to choose what life throws at you, or what these negative people do and say to you, but, you do have the ability to choose how you respond and that’s what’s most important.

You can choose to respond in way that lets the negativity drains your positivity and makes you feel hopeless and frustrated, or you can choose to respond in way that makes you work even harder and focus even more on the positive aspects of the situation.

The dictionary defines responsibility as “the opportunity or ability to act independently and make decisions without authorization”. That means you don’t need an ok from anyone else to act on something that you’re responsible for. So even when the negative people disagree with you, who cares?

It helps if you ask yourself,

• “What can I do to reinforce my positive attitude?”
• “What can I do to discredit their negative attitude and opinion?”

Your happiness depends more on your own attitude than any external factors. So don’t let the negative people of the world get you down.

4 Ways To Ignite Your Personal Passion

By Brian Heat 

Personal passion is the explosive flame you possess inside in the form of strong ideas, gifts and fascinations. It is this passion that propels you towards your very own unique forms of creative expression, fields of interests and adventurous curiosity.

It is also your passion that drives you to push beyond obstacles and self-limitation.

The question then becomes, how do we tap into this enormous power?

1. “You Are a Walking Phenomenon”

As of right now there are over 7.1 billion people on the planet, but only one of you. Down to your very DNA you are a walking phenomenon, an anomaly of sorts…a unique deviation from every other person the world. You were born for reason, designed for a purpose and meant to be here. Embrace your individuality and know that your dormant talents were given to you as a gift. Determine your uniqueness, your strength and your voice…then begin to introduce it to the world.

2. “Chasing The Rush of Fascination”

I’ve often described the feeling your personal passions give you as “The Rush”, or that fiery exhilaration you sense inside while engaged. For some, it may be the excitement of competition that comes from playing sports, while for others the relaxation and creative outlet artist experience while performing.

Starting right now, feel yourself returning to those certain experiences that captivated you and moved your heart once before. Reflect back to reawaken the passions you once possessed assures that where you presently direct your time, efforts and focus is directly connected to the youthful spirit you were from the beginning.

3. The “MASSIVE Power of Mentors”

Now once you’ve taken the time to identify what gifts, talents and experiences that once sparked within you, your next move is to place yourself in situations where you can accelerate your learning and explore everything your passion has to offer. At this point, mentors become invaluable resources because in most cases they’ve already walked the road you are embarking on and now possess the essential expertise needed to point you in the right direction towards more opportunities for growth, resources and access to other like minded individuals. Now, in those cases where the mentors you require are not within your immediate circle of influence, I recommend using the web to profile those accomplished game changers in your fields through their bios, interviews and wisdom filled back stories.

4. “Build a Storm Ready Vision”

What continues to ignite the strength behind your passion as you travel your journey is your ability to create and hold an explosive vision that reflects everything that passion encompasses. This vision is nothing more than a crystal clear mental picture of what exactly you desire to accomplish or become. Just like a beacon in the storm this inspired vision helps you navigate your thoughts, actions and behaviours to stay focused. But in order to keep this vision realistic and grounded you must build into your vision the possibility of adverse circumstances and obstacles that will come along the way. With this in mind, as circumstances occur that attempt to deter your efforts you will already be prepared with contingency plans and alternatives routes to keep progressing forward.

5 Ways to Build an Extraordinary Team Culture

5 Ways to Build an Extraordinary Team Culture

When your employees work together to achieve common goals, everyone wins--you, your business and your customers.

Employee teams are one of the best ways to get things done in any business. When you take a group of independently talented people and create a team in which they can merge their talents, not only will a remarkable amount of energy and creativity be released, but their performance, loyalty and engagement will be greatly improved.

Here are five steps for building an extraordinary team culture:

1. Create a Team-Oriented Organization

Make teamwork one of your core company values, and put a clear emphasis on self-managing teams that are empowered to make their own decisions. Don't just talk about teamwork. Show your employees the seriousness of your commitment by giving teams the authority to get their jobs done on their own terms, while ensuring they accept responsibility for the results.

2. Assign Serious Team Goals

Give your teams really important assignments and projects, not just planning for next summer's annual company picnic. Bring teams in when you're looking at new trends in the market, or need to see things through new eyes. It's important to mix it up and not have the same people making the same decisions all the time. Ask them to challenge the status quo and the conventional wisdom. This will help to keep your company fresh and ahead of the game.

3. Encourage Informal Teams

More work in organizations is accomplished through informal teams than formal ones. It's therefore in your interest to encourage the proliferation of informal teams throughout your company, addressing any and all issues and opportunities that capture their interest. When your employees are able to tackle concerns themselves, without elevating every little decision to top management, you'll have a much more efficient organization.

4. Cross-Train Employees

When employees understand how different areas of the company work, they are more apt to make decisions that benefit the company as a whole, rather than solely their own department or group. Give your employees the opportunity to learn other people's jobs. Some organizations go as far as switching employee roles on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. And don't forget your managers. Have top executives spend a few days working on the front lines with customers or directly with your product. They'll have a new appreciation for what your regular employees go through on the job.

5. Provide Team Resources

No matter how talented a company's individuals might be, teams cannot be successful without the proper resources. Teams need a designated and available place where they can regularly meet. Nothing much can be achieved in an over-crowded lunch room. All employees need to be given adequate time to devote to their team meetings, with no grief from supervisors. And make sure to supply your teams with an appropriate budget if required, and the permission--with guidance--to spend it as they see best for the company.

BY PETER ECONOMY

How to Increase Your Influence

Alignment

This is one of the great buzzwords of our time. When used consciously, it's also the key to building solid relationships as well as the foundation for being influential. When you are able to show how someone else's needs can be met through your idea or process, you both stand a chance of walking away satisfied. 

The question: How do you do it?

Five Styles to Help You Influence

1. Demonstrate. Give a successful example of your idea. 

How? Highlight related examples of the same idea already taking place in your organization or in another business. 

2. Cost-Focus. Show how problems and costs can be minimized. 

How?  Run through the numbers to reveal, factually, the cost benefits of your approach. Do this on paper and hand the other person(s) a copy to hold in their grubby little paws. This makes it real. Don't just say it; print out the math.

3. Values-based consistency. Show that your solution is consistent with, and strongly supports, the other person's values. 

How? Do your homework and find out the non negotiables in the business lives of those listening. Then, clearly point out the values-alignment that your solution brings.

4. Time Awareness. Demonstrate how the plan will unfold over a specific period of time.

How? My favorite--because it is low risk and high payoff--is to do a trial project implemented in stages with "client" review at designated points. It is very powerful because the other person is actively involved, shares likes and dislikes at each step, and is part of the successes and problem-solving. Ownership emerges rather quickly.

5. Testimonials. Show that your idea already has the support of other respected people. 

How? Ask others who have used the idea to give you a blurb or, internally, to come to the meeting. Nothing succeeds like someone else showing how successful you have been with them. You hardly have to say a word except "thank you" to those who have helped.

Some Other Thoughts

• Listen to what sound like objections and acknowledge them. You'll gain respect. You'll lose respect if you don't treat feedback to your ideas as being legitimate. 

• Stay focused on your theme and not everything you know about the idea or proposal. Too many details will distract your listeners. However, if they ask for details, be prepared to respond. It means they are interested. 

• Consistent with #4 above: People are more likely to accept a smaller proposal if they've just rejected a larger one. Keep the pilot program in your back pocket as a reasonable alternative to implementing the entire idea. It will seem sensible to the individual or group.

I found this great Blog posted by Steve Roesler! Thanks for the info!

15 Success Principles

The 15 Success Principles You’ll Never Want To Forget

By Joel on March 12, 2013

You can’t assure success, but you can increase the chances of it happening. After all, opportunity favors the prepared. With the following 15 success principles, you can dramatically increase the chances of success in your life.

1 – Prepare

The first success principle is preparation. It’s the foundation of success. With preparation you create your own opportunities. Once you have all the different elements lined up, it only takes a small opening to realize your goal. At the same time, taking advantage of big opportunities without enough preparation means risking your success, as you’re building without a well-laid foundation.

2 – Do something you love

You have to work very hard whatever it is you choose to do. Your work or your project will dominate much of your time and your life. Therefore, find something that you enjoy doing and do that.

3 – Get started

You have to start somewhere. Today is as good a day as any to start. Get into action today and start moving in the direction you want. Putting it off can only lead to failure, whereas if you start and see an early setback, at least you conquered that setback early on.

4 – Move in the right direction

Keep everything moving in the direction you want. It doesn’t matter if things go slowly initially. As long as the overall direction is favorable, you’ll get where you want to go eventually.

5 – Use the power of dreams and your imagination

What you dream and visualize today will become true tomorrow. You just have to work on turning it into reality. Just as your dreams can only influence your life if you let them, the cities you build in your imagination can only become real if you build them.

6 – Think big

If you set your aim a bit too high you might fall short. If you set your aim too low you might achieve your goal… and miss out on the other opportunities. By thinking bigger, the only limit is what is possible. You’re no longer limited by what you think is possible.

7 – Focus on growth

Seemingly impossible challenges are just cleverly disguised opportunities for growth. If you take those challenges and, in solving them, improve yourself, you’ll find yourself continually moving in the right direction.

8 – Maintain your determination

With enough determination, you can succeed through almost any odds. Enough determination means you’ll find a way no matter the situation.

9 – Set a clear vision

Think through where you’ll want to go. Develop a clear sense of what your final goal is, and keep this with you. By knowing the destination you want to reach, you can continually look at your current path and decide if it’s a route that will help you get where you want to go.

10 – Set goals along the way

A final goal isn’t enough. You need intermediate goals that set the path. These goals should be specific, measurable, realistic, attainable, and timely. These intermediate goals define the steps that you need to take to get to the final one.

11 - Work out plans of action for your work

For each goal, it helps to have plans to reach them. Your plan describes how you can reach each step from where you are, or where you will be. Keep in mind that the future is never certain. Things rarely work out exactly how you plan. Therefore, see these plans as showing one or more possible routes, not necessarily the route you’ll end up taking.
Still, knowing the plan means you can avoid long detours that might compromise your chances of reaching a goal on time — or at all.

12 - Commit to taking action

Once you start going, keep going. Never, never, never give up. If you find an obstacle in your way, chip away at it or go around it. The only way to really fail is to give up. If you keep going you’ll succeed. If you hit the limits of what’s possible, you can regroup and find another way.

13 - Use affirmations

Affirmations are just short, positive, and above all direct phrases in present tense. Things like “I’m getting more and more successful.” The idea is that they reinforce a positive world view. With affirmations, you are defining your own reality. By transmitting a positive world view to your mind, it adopts this view. As your mind adopts this view, it helps shape the world around you to fit it, which means it helps make the world around you one that reflects a reality of you getting more successful every day.

14 - Get rid of negative influences

Avoid harmful influences around you that might shake you from your goal. Keep people and ideas around you that support your success and your belief in yourself.

15 - Be grateful and appreciate what you have

The final success principle is to appreciate what you have already. Realize that — by sheer virtue of the fact that you can be reasonably certain you’ll live from one day to the next — you already have enough. Enjoy it! Appreciate what you’ve achieved so far, and see that what you want, where you’re going, is not what you need or what you must do. Rather, these are things and actions that will make your situation even better.

Article By James Meyer | Addicted2Success.com

Business Books That You MUST Read

How many of these have you guys read? Any others that should be on the list?

Business Books that Will Change Your Life by Dave Kerpen

Great leaders learn every day, and reading great books is the one of the best ways to learn. I've been fortunate enough to read some excellent books over the last fifteen years - books that have inspired me to change the way I see the world, my business, and the opportunities in front of me. In the order in which I've read them, here is a list of nine books which have changed my life. May they change yours as well:

1) What Color is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career Seekers by Richard Bolles
I read this book when I was 21 years old and didn't know what to do with the rest of my life. It helped me go from a Crunch n Munch vendor at the ballpark to a top salesperson at Radio Disney. Ffifteen years later, I have given at least 40 copies away to interns, staff and friends who are searching for their career purpose. It's difficult work - because not only will you read the book, but you'll have to do a lot of exercises and soul searching throughout - but whether you're 21 or 61, you'll emerge with a clearer vision of what you want to do next and where you'll want to work.

2) Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends & Friends Into Customers by Seth Godin
No author has influenced me more as a marketer, business person and writer than Seth Godin. I could have easily included 9 books just by Godin - Purple Cow, Tribes, Linchpin, Poke the Box & his latest, Icarus Deception are all amongst my favorites. But Permission Marketing described social media marketing before it existed. Seth understood push-vs-pull marketing long before others, and this book, published in 1999, is still a must read for anyone in marketing today.

3) The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
This classic, one of three by Gladwell (Blink & Outliers are the others), demonstrates how successful products are launched, how ideas spread and how a trend can take off. It's influenced me a great deal, as a word of mouth and social media marketer. And it's an essential read, whether you're in marketing or sales, or just want to become better at getting your ideas to spread.

4) Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap - and Others Don't by Jim Collins
Collins is scientist of great companies - and this is his best work - chock full of case studies and simple yet profound principles like Level 5 Leadership. Even though I read this book when my company was only a handful of employees, it inspired me to want to build something great, and enduring. Whether you work at a large company that has the potential itself to become great and enduring, or you have a vision of a company you'd like to one day build, this is a must-read.

5) Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase The Value of Your Growing Firm by Verne Harnish
It's hard to believe I even had a business before I read this book by the founder of my favorite business group, Entrepreneurs Organization. Verne's 1-page strategic plan is now used by both companies I've founded, and thousands of other companies. And our management teams use much of the methodology from this book. What's great is that it's both inspirational and quite practical - an excellent read for any entrepreneur or manager at a small business.

6) The E-Myth: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work, and What to Do About It by Michael Gerber
This is a must read for any small business owner - especially "technical" owners such as lawyers, accountants, florists, restaurateurs, consultants and dentists. Gerber inspires the small business owner to get out of his/her own way, and to build systems and processes that scale and allow the business owner to work "on" the business and not "in" the business.

7) Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You by John Warrilow
Make no mistake - if you are an owner or leader at a business - this is a great, super valuable read, even if you or your owners have no intention or ever selling the business. The idea isn't to create a business in order to sell it - it's to create a business that has sustaining value beyond you and without you. Warrilow's book is a short, easy story - with powerful, unforgettable lessons - so much so, that after my business partner and I read it, we gave copies to the entire Likeable team to read.

8) Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
No matter what you do, this easy read will change the way you think about your work. It is so simply written, with small words and big pictures - and yet contains profound wisdom about how to be more productive and successful without being a workaholic or sacrificing anything. I read it in an hour on a plane, and have since shared it with two dozen colleagues, and referred back to it myself at least a dozen times.

13 Things Overachievers Do!

13 Things Overachievers Do

 1. They laugh — at themselves. And with others.

2. “They steal stuff.”

I have to come clean right here. This post is completely inspired by Penelope Trunk and her blog post: 15 Things Overachievers Do. Her post is way better, filled with links, and you need to read it, in full, to start 2013 off properly.  Link at the end of this post, too, since I hope you’ll read to the end and then go visit her site and post. I find most of her career posts a huge breath of fresh air in a world of stale content. She has a great sense of humor, too.

Continuing the #2 item, overachievers know they have plenty of ideas, says Penelope, so they don’t care if people take their ideas. And they bend the rules to make their own lives better. They know that ideas are a dime-a-dozen, really, and that execution is what matters.

So, when she says they steal stuff, she is talking about how people build, iterate, incubate on ideas. It is #15 on her list. Like me, for instance, I borrowed a number of Penelope’s ideas, but rounded them out with my own thoughts and attempts at humor.

3. They are notorious list makers. Sometimes they make lists after they complete the task so they can enjoy that feeling of greater productivity. I’m not sure if list makers are more successful in life, but I believe they have more fun putting sticky notes on everything.

4. Their desk is usually clean and everything is organized. They love IKEA because they can buy lots of organizing bins and boxes.

5. They don’t mind when a door shuts. They know that a window might be open. Or they go buy a DeWalt Sawzall and make a door. Seriously, Penelope points out that go-getters know that life is about tough choices sometimes and you have to be willing to give up one thing in order to get something else. 

6. They are not shy about their weaknesses because they are uber-confident in their strengths. Every strength comes with a weakness and if you can share that awareness, that wisdom, with potential employers, or your employees if it is your company, then people will see you as a real person.

7. They get tons of mentoring or coaching. They seek out mentors. Overachievers know that top athletes have coaches for a reason. To get to the top of your game, you need help. You don’t get there alone. They are willing to pay for someone to push them.

8. They don’t write books. The book industry is dead, Penelope reminds us. She points out a post by my Forbes colleague Suw Charman-Anderson: Amazon Is Ripe For Disruption. People who have something to share are putting those thoughts down in blogs. Or, in my mind, in ebooks. Of course, I’m a bit biased as I’m finally finishing a simple book I’m publishing on the Kindle platform about building websites. I’m hoping that books are not yet dead.

9. They don’t let themselves get fat  soft. Soft in any sense of the word. They work out regularly, fanatically, and they take care of their bodies and minds. 12/30/2012 update: My conscience bothered me. My goal in any of my writing is to uplift and encourage people. So I edited this section. My intent was not to target people who are overweight, myself included, but more appropriate is type-A personalities don’t let themselves get soft, in any way, if they can avoid it. You can be skinny and soft, by the way.

10. They like to start things. They like saying they are the “founder” of a project or company or initiative. I’ve seen many overachievers lay claim to being the founder of a hashtag. You know those Twitter tags, such as, #SmallBusiness or #Journalism or #Marketing. Their ego and confidence allows them to take ownership of things that can’t possibly be owned. Many of them love to finish things, too.

11. They ask about you so they can get a turn to talk about themselves. As Bette Midler said as one of her characters after talking about herself for a long time, “Enough about me; What do you think about me?” Ha. They do thrive on being able to tell of their exploits — that’s half the reason (or more) for why they do them. Time is not money; Time is Life. When you listen to an overachiever, you have a choice: You can either hate them or be inspired to your own greatness by listening to all they have achieved.

12. (Speaking about Goals) They are rabid about lists because they are crazy about achieving their goals. Uh, hello, that’s why the word “over” is in front of achiever. They have a bucket list for life, for each year, and perhaps each week. Many of their goals include a fair amount of adventure-seeking and the stuff that takes them out of their comfort zone. Because that’s where stuff gets done — outside the comfort zone.

13. They have an “I Love Me” wall in their home or office. That’s what we used to call it when I was in the US Air Force. Every officer or NCO that had an office would have all of their awards and commendations displayed for all to see. Awards are like a list in 3D — you can hang that item on the wall instead of checking it off a list.

But this award mania isn’t bad — it is one of the ways overachievers keep score for themselves. They are out to change the world. And, in reality, the best and brightest overachievers are not competing with you, but only themselves. They are happy for you to succeed and often want to help you achieve, too. Just as long as you spend a bit of time listening to how they helped you get there…

You can find the original article from Forbes.com HERE