Things To Do When Our Lives are Going Too Fast

It has been a terrific year or couple of years economically for a lot of countries. For a lot of us, it has been a run of good career opportunities and also an accompanying series of sacrifices we have invariably made along the way. We are hurting from the crazy hours, the ever continuing series of conference calls and the endless traveling. We are stunned at the soul numbing speed at which our days fly by.




We want to :

• Have a bit of calm. We want to stop briefly here and there to admire the flowers on the roadside.
• We want to reclaim a bit of the way for ourselves, to hear our souls.
• We want to be with our families. Nothing fancy, we just want to be with them, to be together.
• We want to remember who we are. We want to double-check as to what we are rapidly doing everyday is what we want to do, and meant to do with our lives.

Things To Do:

• Take long walks with no apparent purpose. Take a camera, as it focus you on your surroundings
• Have long lunches and dinners with your families and friends. Talk.
  
• Sit down at a beach early in the morning.
• Wake up at 5:00am everyday - exercise, meditate, write your journal - HEAR yourself.
• Exercise more than 3 times a week.
  
• Read good books actively with a pen in your hand, and constantly reflecting on what the authors are saying.
  

Ten Reasons Why People Work For You

(Not very good reasons)

• You pay above market rates or you give Google-sque benefits.
• They are waiting for the yearend bonus and so they won't leave yet.
  
• The more competent ones left already. The rest has hit their 'optimal performance' with you - no one else is offering.
  
• They got pretty established with you. With any new employers they will have to work much harder.
  

(Better reasons)

• They like the people working with them.
• They like you.
• You inspire them, they want to achieve the targets that you paint for them.
  
• You take interest in their professional development, and they treat your business like their own.
• You don't let them stagnate, you always coax them into new challenges.
  
• You help them learn skills that they want to learn and find ways for them to apply them to work, instead of forcing them to learn skills that you want them to learn.
  

Where does Your Mind Retreat To?

I tried meditation. I need a lot of practice as it takes great effort to rein in my mind from all over the place but I know it works. I know certain activities can also put people in a similar state of mind and leave them calm and refreshed: when they find themselves focusing entirely to the task at hand, when time seems to slow down and everything else seems to melt away - no past, no future, just the present, just the task at hand.

I thought about it today as I took my long walk and these are the activities that put me in a meditative state (no wonder I do them all the time) :

1. Lifting weights slowly and concentrating on my breathing, from my abdomen.
2. Playing volleyball.
3. Taking long walks through quiet trails and also breathing from my gut.
4. Sitting on a wide open beach under a hot sun.
5. Taking photos.

What does it for you? Where does your mind retreat to?

Let your Customers Tell You Why They Want to Buy

If all salespeople will just ask good, pertinent questions and focus on what the customer wants, the (business) world will be a very different place.

I walked into a Mac distributor during lunch the other day, looking for a “FM Transmitter” for my iPod Nano that will pipe the music to my home stereo. Something that I want but absolutely don't need. I picked one up and asked the salesperson if that works with older Nanos.

The salesperson promptly moved to up-sell me by pointing out that the sound quality of the one I am holding is bad. He introduced me to a model that is 50% more expensive but comes with a car charger, and another model that is almost double the price, comes with a car charger and will also show the name of the song somewhere apart from the Nano's own screen.

The problem is, I need to buy a car for that to work - I don't have one right now. Needless to say, I walked out empty handed even though I walked in with full intention of making a frivolous purchase.

The salesperson never bothered finding out what I am looking for and what my “operating parameters” were. He never bothered to ask me any questions. An outstanding salesperson don't make the sale by selling you what they want you to buy. An outstanding salesperson look at each sale as a sculptor look at a block of marble. She chips away with questions, until she helps the client find why he wants to buy.

Salespeople : cut out the chatter, ask good questions and your customers will tell you why they want to buy. It's really that simple.

6 Reasons why wearing flip-flops on weekends is going to save your sanity (assuming of course that you don't wear them on weekdays already)

1. It's perfect for starting the day off at the beach.
2. Even if you are not going to the beach, they make you feel like you are anyway, and that feels good.
3. They make you look laid back and cool. You look relaxed, you feel relaxed and you are relaxed.
4. It feels good feeling the breeze on your toes after a whole week of wearing shoes.
5. They force you to walk slower and that makes you relax.
6. They make you very aware of the people around you especially when it gets crowded, lest you get stepped on. That makes you very aware of your surroundings, of the community around you.

The Best Salespeople

The best salespeople are not always the ones who are really gregarious and outgoing. A lot of them only appear to be born salespeople because they fit the common mass market image of a pushy salesperson. The best salespeople listens well, asks the perfect questions, remembers what you say and follows up well. You might think of them of them as really slick talkers, but they are slick talkers most likely because they are good listeners, otherwise they can't hit all your buttons with every word they say. They listen to what to say and to what you didn't say. They listen to your body language, they “listen” to what your office says about you, they “listen” to any interactions they see you having with your colleagues and your environment.

The best salespeople never tell you what you “need” to do. It's never about them. Instead it's always about you - your business, your aims, your goals. May be they will make the sale today, may be they won't, but the agenda is always about you. They will remind you of angles to issues that you might have missed. They will offer new approaches for possible solutions. They will help you decide on solutions. Their solutions will most likely include their product or services since they have qualified you to start with, but on occasions where there is not a fit, they never seem to lose interest : there's always another day, there's always a friend that perhaps you'd like to refer to them as prospects.

Conversations with the best salespeople are always entirely about you, never themselves - your business, your needs, your hopes, fears and aspirations. Their success lies in making you successful. Their power lies in their ability to make their product or services relevant to YOUR world. These are the best salespeople.

8 Reasons Why You Love Your Job

1. You love being with your colleagues
2. You can see clearly how your work impacts the business or better yet, the world
3. Your work challenges you without being horribly overwhelming
4. You are coached by someone who genuinely takes pleasure in you doing well
5. You get recognition from your boss and your peers, for the good work you do
6. You are respected for your judgement and creativity and you get the room to execute your ideas and realize the results.
7. It is not really THE thing that gets you going but your job still pays reasonably well.
8. Loving your job differentiates you and turn into your competitive advantage. Rare is the person who passionately loves what they do.