Improving Our “Signals” and “Beings”

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“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” - Maya Angelou, poet and actress

“Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.” - Mark Twain, highly quoted writer

“You can close your eyes to the things you do not want to see, but you cannot close your heart to the things you do not want to feel.” - Anonymous

“I am involved in all of mankind.” - John Donne, 16th century poet

One midnight, I had just finished another shift at a job I didn’t like so I was alive with energy. I smiled, my eyes were open, I felt good about myself. I said my usual goodbyes to a friend and sprung into my car. My friend reversed his car just before I had the chance to leave my car park so he had beaten me this time – it was an unspoken game that took place each time we left from work. I waited for him to get out of the …

This is a review of Carol Fleming’s The Sound of Your Voice, an audio program created to improve your voice.

What better way to improve the quality of your voice than to listen to a speech expert teach the skills she has learned for several decades. Since 1968, Carol Fleming as ran her private speech communication consultancy in the San Francisco Bay Area. Having earned her doctorate in communication disorders from Northwestern University, she has made her vocal techniques available in her entertaining audio program.

You can buy books on improving your voice, such as Renee Grant-Williams’ Voice Power, but until you hear a good voice and are able to break it down into specific reasons why it is good, you will be speaking in hope that your technique is correct. Understanding what is a good voice, the qualities of a good voice, and being able to transfer this understanding into your voice through practical exercises is vital – all things covered in The Sound of Your Voice.

The program isn’t a boring dictation of a book. It is an entertaining, well produced, free-flowing program. Fleming is …

This is a review of Renee Grant-Williams’ Voice Power: Using Your Voice to Captivate, Persuade, and Command Attention.

Have you ever wondered why some people can grab people’s attention and make them listen to their every word? If your voice isn’t as powerful as you want it to be, you can learn to make it resonate with a powerful clarity. Renee Grant-Williams will show you how in Voice Power.

Having worked with celebrities and singers such as Garth Brooks, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, and The Dixie Chicks, Grant-Williams has established herself as an authority on improving the human voice. You don’t need to be a singer or even a public speaker to improve your voice - having a better voice will help you whenever you say a word. Whether you’re disciplining children, motivating employees, seducing a partner, or teaching a workshop, a better voice helps get your point across and make it stick.

Voice Power isn’t about getting you to speak loudly. In fact, volume was mentioned rarely in the book. It is more about creating the support and resonance for a commanding voice that comes with little effort. The basis behind …

This is a book review of Daniel Goleman’s Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships.

Neuroscience is quickly discovering that humans are wired to connect. Goleman in his groundbreaking books says that the neural linkages between humans influences the brain, and hence the body. These invisible bridges give us the ability to change people’s moods, emotions, and health, as these people can do to us. Relationships not only shape emotional states and general psychological experience, but also the very physiological matter that makes our body. Our interactions with people influences our immune system, circulation, hormones, and breathing for example.

Our ability to connect with fellow humans influences us in deep and immediate ways. Unlike emotional intelligence, social intelligence focuses on this intimate connection between two human minds. Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence focuses on skills and capabilities within the individual. It deals with self-motivation, self-awareness, handling anxiety, and reading social cues. Social Intelligence expands from the one-person psychology within an individual to a two-person psychology that looks at the connection shared between individuals. More specifically, Goleman defines social intelligence as: 1) social awareness, which comprises of primal empathy, attunement, empathic accuracy, …

Poor email etiquette. You’ve been a victim of it and perhaps you’re even a guilty criminal. From unknown abbreviations, forwarded chain emails, and unwanted messages, we’re all bound to be affected from bad email etiquette both socially and in the workplace. You can’t reach through your computer cables to retrieve a sent email, so you need to follow good email etiquette.

A USA Today article in April, 2008, reveals that Microsoft has 256.2 million users with Yahoo! not to far behind with a total of 254.6 million users. Additionally, with Google having 91.6 million users and AOL having 48.9 million users, it’s obvious the majority of people with Internet access use email as a way to communicate. Now for the real shocker: Tim Sanders, former Chief Solutions Officer of Yahoo!, estimates that 90% of business communication is email based and that 10% of email users receive adequate training. So chances are, your workplace and business is suffering from poor email etiquette.

While I never try to be overly professional in emails, because too much formality and jargon can destroy good communication, there are some rules and tips you …

This is a book review of Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ.

I purchased the 10th anniversary edition of this “groundbreaking book that redefines what it means to be smart”. 10 years following the release of his book, Goleman’s development and popularisation of emotional intelligence (EQ or EI) has sprouted a new field of study that assists parenting, teaching, managing people, personal success, and general well-being. If you are at all interested in your own emotions and the emotions of those around you, then Emotional Intelligence is what you are after.

Emotional intelligence is a broad subject incorporating how you manage yourself and other people’s emotions. There is the self component and relationship component. Emotional skills directly relating to the self include, but not limited to: self-awareness, impulse control, handling stress and anxiety, self-motivation, and coping skills; while emotional skills relating to relationships include, but not limited to: reading social and emotional cues, awareness of others’ perspectives, sociability, motivating people, managing conflict, and listening. Nearly all of these skills play a powerful role in personal living and business success.

Long gone are the days of a person’s …

“Getting rid of a delusion makes us wiser than getting hold of a truth.” - Karl Ludwig Borne (1786-1837)

“Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description.” - David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930), English writer who often criticized modern living’s negative influence on humans

“Few people have the imagination for reality.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), famous German writer

The truth is harsh. Lies, deception, misunderstandings, illusions, distortions, and deceit is much easier for our minds to accept than the truth due to its cushioning effect on the problems we ignore. It is easy-going, versatile, and satisfying to believe myths. Other times we accept myths over truth because we don’t know the difference. Moreover, a relationship expert, counselor, or psychologist may have mislead you in believing a myth is truth. Whatever the case maybe, this article is sure to shake up your communication belief and shock you into reality – allowing you to communicate more effectively.

Originally I was struggling to complete 10 myths for this article, but after brainstorming, …

This is a book review of Chip Heath and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.

Why is it that urban legends, conspiracy theories, and public health scares can reach the other side of the world; while most businesses, teachers, and public speakers cannot get their ideas to reach the very person they are talking to? The answer lies in Made to Stick.

Everyday we get pounded with information from people. Most of it slips straight off us like food sliding off Teflon. “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.” said Herbert Simon, winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economics. “Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

Chip Heath and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick teaches you more than how to grab people’s attention. It will provide you with an exact formula for getting your ideas in people’s minds and keeping them there. The two authors use their first of six principles, “Simplicity”, in their …

This is a book review of Writing Works: A Resource Handbook for Therapeutic Writing Workshops and Activities edited by Gillie Bolton, Victoria Field, and Kate Thompson.

Writing Works specifically deals with writing in various forms, mostly poetry, for a therapeutic effect of self-awareness. It contains many contributions of exercises and stories from over 40 experts in the fields of psychotherapy, poetry, creative writing, social work, and psychology, put together by the three editors.

The book doesn’t go anywhere near psychoanalysis and analyzing a person’s writing; as it specifically deals with helping people help themselves, and helping you help yourself. Once the writer overcomes the initial hump of getting pen to paper, the writer goes through much powerful exploration. Usually the writer is completely unaware of one’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences until written on paper. This is really the purpose of Writing Works.

Though the majority of the book’s exercises are focused on working in groups, they can be easily done one-on-one or alone. The book is just as applicable …

This is a book review of Susan Jeffers’ Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway: Dynamic Techniques for Turning Fear, Indecision, and Anger Into Power, Action, and Love.

Forget trying mumbo-jumbo, a psychological trick, or the latest dietary secret to “remove” your fears. Just do the thing you fear. If reading that statement scares you, you’re not alone.

There’s no wonder this book has sold over 2 million copies. With fear being so common in society, Susan Jeffers has provided a solution: a guide that will have you acting in the face of fear.

By taking action in spite of fear you will remove anxiety and come to believe in yourself. You will save yourself a lot of time and worry in failed attempts to deal with your fear. Ironically, you can make your fears disappear, or at least greatly diminish, once you “just do it”. Susan will have you controlling the “chatterbox” within you that limits your success and makes you worry.

Susan’s best-selling book is named after a class she taught on fear. The class quickly became a hit. Her students became able to act in …