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In Business and Life: Books that strive to Motivate and Inspire Us

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A Weekly Series by Teresa Morrow

I’m Teresa Morrow, Founder of Key Business Partners, LLC and I work with authors and writers by managing their online promotion. As part of my job I read a lot of books (and I love to read anyway!). I am here to offer a weekly post about one book I am working with and one book I have put on my reading list. The books will cover topics such as social media (Facebook and Twitter), organization, career building, networking, writing and self development and inspiration.

Where Did The Gift Go?

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This week I would like to start off with a book I have read and working with entitled Where Did the Gift Go? by Ricky Roberts III.

I believe we all need inspiration in our lives, sometimes more than others. What I really enjoyed about Ricky’s book is the honesty and devotion to his message throughout the book. He writes about the gifts we each have within us to live our greatest lives and how we can regain these gifts at any time we want.

I would like to share with you a brief excerpt from “Where did the Gift Go?”:

“In this book, I ask, “Where did the Gift Go?”. I say the gift is here, right now, just to be. It’s in the essence of who you are and how you choose to live every moment that you are given. Live your life!
If you were to take ten people on a timeline, chances are they will all fall in different places on it. Naturally
some come in the world at the same time, or leave at the same time, but the chances of them coming and going at the same exact time are unlikely…”
“I, my friend, can tell you the exact moment of one thing, and that is your life, the gift. It is now!”

I see it, even in myself many times, I get going so fast, I don’t slow down long enough to really appreciate the gift of life staring me in the face. Each moment we are here on earth, we can make a difference within ourselves and help others do the same.

If you wish to pick up a copy of Where did the Gift Go? you can pick it up on Amazon.

About Ricky: At the age of seventeen, after being stabbed nine times, Ricky realized a higher calling in his life and has been driven to work that purpose since then. He is devoted to this path of service and is passionate about making a difference wherever he can.

Drive

Now is time for me to showcase a book I have not read but it is on my reading list. This week my choice is Daniel Pink’s latest book, Drive: The Surprising Truth about what Motivates Us.

About the book:
From Daniel H. Pink, the author of the bestselling A Whole New Mind, comes a paradigm-shattering look at what truly motivates us and how we can use that knowledge to work smarter and live better.

Most of us believe that the best way to motivate ourselves and others is with external rewards like money—the carrot-and-stick approach. That’s a mistake, Daniel H. Pink says in, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, his provocative and persuasive new book. The secret to high performance and satisfaction—at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

About Daniel:
I was born on the American east coast. Then I was reared (that’s the word we use) in the American midwest — where I enjoyed a steady diet of team sports, public libraries, and 70s sitcoms. After punching my ticket at a few outposts of what was once called “higher education,” I went to work, got married, and had kids.

If you would like a copy of Drive, go here on Amazon.

Again, I hope you have enjoyed this week’s post of these two books on motivation and inspiration. If you have read either or both of these books, please comment and share with us your thoughts.

Beach Notes: Priceless Beach Art

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by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

Installation: “Flotsam, upright, after the storm”, Duranbah Beach, February 2010

Materials: Sand, found objects (timber)

Artist: Some Anonymous Surfer Dude

doodart

Duranbah (accent on the second syllable, as in Duran Duran) Beach is only used by board riders and boogie boarders. Walking there one morning this week after big storms, we saw trees, branches, seaweed and various other bits of flotsam and jetsam strewn along the beachfront. Then this, with the upright pole definitely not even a freak effect from the storm.

Tantalizing.

We were reminded of many contemporary art exhibitions in trendy galleries we have visited. Only here there was no cheap wine and crackers, no little card explaining in artspeak what the work “means”. Nor any red sticker, or price tag

Literally, priceless.

Look around. Find some priceless creation today in your neighbourhood.

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

Look Who’s Entered to Win a FREE SOBCon Trip — OR Get a $250 Discount

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150 People to Fine Tune Your Web Presence

sobcon-vmc

Suppose you could take a weekend retreat away from the noise of the Internet …

  • to focus on your business with the support of a mastermind team
  • to get quality time to interact with the top people in social media
  • to get the best information AND time to discuss how you’ll apply it
  • to work with sponsors who are doing the same thing
  • in a room limited to 150 people — all focused in the same direction
  • without worry because the food and the wireless are outstanding.

Imagine a weekend work retreat with these people totally invested.

Here are the entries to win …

  1. Jon Swanson @jnswanson wrote How Becky McCray Changed My Life
  2. Leia Ferrari @lferrari2 wrote My BlogCrush confession
  3. Cynthia Smoot @ohsocynthia wrote Getting Back to Basics …
  4. Kristin Rielly @geekgirls wrote Opportunity Can Be the Greatest Motivator
  5. Ria Sharon @RiaSharon wrote How Our Relationships Matter
  6. Deb Brown @debworks wrote The Virtual Meets the Concrete
  7. Ellen Nordahl @ElleLaMode wrote Inspiration to Embrace Uncertainty
  8. Laura Maly @laura_maly wrote Online Thoughts Crash Into Reality
  9. Esther Crawford @faintstarlite wrote My Internet Addiction
  10. Glenda Watson Hyatt @glendawh wrote Lives Change When the Virtual Meets the Concrete
  11. Jasmin Tragas @wonderwebby wrote Virtual Adventures and Girl Scout Cookies
  12. Ken Trump @safeschools wrote Inspiring Person: Liz Strauss
  13. Paul Merrill @paulmerrill wrote How Chris changed my life
  14. Teri Conrad @tlchome wrote The Doctrine of Stephen Jagger
  15. Susana Molinolo @foodplayground wrote #SOBCon2010
  16. Lynne Jarman-Johnson @LjjSpeaks wrote Work + Fun = Passion
  17. Erno Hannink @ernohannink wrote Als online ondernemer doormodderen of in stroomversnelling – SOBCon 2010
  18. Stephen Sherlock @SherSteve wrote Hitchhiking with Aloha
  19. Hope Bertram @windycitysocial wrote SOBCon2010 – Getting to know Hope
  20. Connie Roberts @ConnieFoggles wrote Connecting Is The Easy Road To Blogging
  21. Carole Hicks @carole_hicks wrote SOBCon2010 – The People Who Have Made a Difference For Me
  22. Deb Hildreth@adlex wrote I am …
  23. Hollie Pollard @commoncentsmom wrote They Don’t Even Know
  24. Chris Burdge @b_WEST wrote #SOBCon2010
  25. Pieter van Osch @pyotr wrote Online Creativity Accelerated by Off Line Event
  26. Lisa Grimm @lulugrimm wrote Reflection: Inspirations From the Web
  27. Dave Murray @DaveMurr wrote #SOBCon2010 – To Everyone, Thank You for Being Here and for Helping Make This Ride All the More Meaningful
  28. Nathan Hangen@nhangen wrote 3 People/Places that Have Inspired and Educated Me for Online Success
  29. Nerissa Marbury @OneEpiphany wrote The Person I Secretly Admire (or use too)
  30. Lynn Reidl @lynnreidl wrote Peace of Mind: a Concrete Reality
  31. Phil Gerbyshak @philgerb wrote Big C Communities Matter: #SOBCon2010
  32. Tamara @unexperiencedmom wrote Liz Strauss Labeled Me an SOB!

    33. And this just in from

  33. Jordan Cooper, stand-up comedian @NotaProBlogwho wrote Nigerian Spammers Changed My Life

Would you write a blog post to get a chance to win a FREE SOBCon Weekend?

An Expense Paid Ticket!! AND the BlogIt EarnIt Discount

Here’s what they did to enter …

Now, we’ll put all of the entries in a random drawing and choose one lucky winner. We’ll announce the winner at the Webinar on February 15th. The winner will receive:

  1. a free ticket to SOBCon2010 – $895.00 value
  2. airfare and three nights at Hotel 71 – up to $1105 in hotel and airfare

A total package value worth as much as USD $2000 – nontransferrable, nonrefundable.

And remember as a thank you for sharing a story, we’re sending everyone who enterred a special code to take $250 off the $895 FULL conference rate – that’s over a 25% savings!

If you can’t make to SOBCon2010, you could “pay it forward” and pass the discount on to one of your friends — or offer it back to us as a gift for us to pass on for you.

Don’t Miss the FREE SOBCon Webinar Monday

Join us at noon EST on February 15th), to kick off a special SOBCobn2010 Webinar with Chris Garrett, Chris Brogan, Amber Naslund and Liz Strauss

We’ll be announcing the FREE SOBCon Trip contest winner and a new special limited time offer!

SOBCon2010 Webinar
Mon, Feb 15, 2010 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM EST
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/197073915

We’ll be talking strategy and tactics for our online business.

We’re doing everything we can to bring you all the value, the experts and expertise, and the time to work and network that you need to make your business outstanding and extremely profitable in 2010.

What could you do with a weekend of the time, expertise, and support you need to focus your business?

We’re all coming for the same reasons.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Register Now!! for sobcon-vmc Make the investment.

Beach Notes: What Goes into Effortless?

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by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

A couple of times recently we have seen this man at our local beach, Rainbow Bay, with a didgeridoo ( or yidaki), the traditional Australian Aboriginal musical intrument.

This day we saw and heard him playing with the end of the “didge” submerged at the water’s edge.

didgplayer

My thought was that there might be some spiritual explanation, connecting with the spirits of the sea, etc. A bit of a web search suggests something more mundane. Evidently the exercise of playing the instrument in this way trains the diaphragm and builds the player’s ability to maintain the constant pressure to produce the long drawn out sounds that are such a feature of didgeridoo playing.

So we think he was not just blowing bubbles or even communing with the spirits of the sea, so much as practising, training his body to support his playing.

Of course, we could have asked. But when we came back, he was gone and we have not seen him on subsequent days.

Inspirational thought from this? When you watch and listen to an indigenous or even a skilled non-indigenous Australian play the didgeridoo for an extended period, it seems so effortless. And maybe it is. But as with many apparently effortless displays of high level skills, such as those of a champion sports person, there is usually many hours of practice, training and self-discipline that have gone into that “effortless” performance.

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

Watering Ideas at the Reflecting Pool

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A Guest Post by
Pamir Kiciman

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Browser tabs are great. Emails, tweets and feeds update so you can switch tabs and see what it is. But what happens when you switch in the middle of a juicy post, mindmap or other creative jaunt? You break continuity at the mercy of an insatiable beast. And breaking continuity can spell disaster for your output.

Ideas are ephemeral. The act of putting them down is a way of preserving them. The mind already computes at high speed and distraction is just too easy. I often wish I didn’t know about ALT-TAB (I’m a PC) which easily switches this in-progress Google doc to that third-party app which just dinged!

After all, it’s the real-time web and it HAS to be important.

What was I saying?

Ideas and the Mind

Fortunately the mind can be harnessed. In fact its real power becomes available only when it is. Why? Because the mind is layered and each layer has its own fluctuation. To get to the layer where ideas are generated, surface fluctuations have to be stilled.

Say you’re a diver and your favorite body of water is very turbulent one day, so you don’t go in. On another day conditions are perfect and you dive. When you do, you find treasures that couldn’t be seen from the surface.

The mind’s fluctuations are called brainwaves. There are four basic brainwaves: beta, alpha, theta and delta, each with its specific cycles per second. Brain states are a combination of these with one or two emphasized depending on the state.

Delta is sleep, but also the deep unconscious (darkest ocean depths). Theta is serene, meditative awareness (depths sunlight penetrates). Alpha is relaxation and comfort (floating atop gentle currents). And beta is conscious functioning in the world (driving to the ocean).

Some ocean creatures that live where sunlight doesn’t reach have bioluminescence which is a wonder to see. The unconscious (delta) may be dark but it stores treasures. In theta we access some of that, and all our creativity. Alpha relates to fantasy and visualization. Beta is logical thinking, problem solving and external attention.

Trouble with beta is that too much of it leads to a churning of unfocused thoughts. And without alpha there isn’t creative recall, for alpha is the bridge from reflection to output.

Single-tasking is actually a form of reflection. The reflective mind is concentrated and unified, making use of logical processes and intuitive ones. To produce anything, everything has to move in the single direction of that thing. Multitasking is like being a jack of all trades, but master of none.

Flowing with Ideas

An idea won’t reach fruition unless you engage the “reflecting pool.” You may not even craft the idea at all. For example, “attentional-blink” happens when two pieces of information are given in rapid succession and the brain doesn’t process the second one because it’s still thinking of the first. You have to flow with an idea and follow it.

The reflective mind is a flow state, which can also erect a dam so an idea can concretize. Often reflection takes place best at times other than the moment of creation. In fact, it’s way of life, an orientation. Your accumulated reflections establish a resource from which you draw at the time of production. There’s in-the-moment reflection too, but without a cultivated well this dries up fast.

Inner and outer stillness engenders reflection, and dipping daily into an alpha-theta state solidifies it. Really good ideas are submerged. The inmost layers of the mind will gladly let them surface but you have to be present. If you’re gasping for oxygen in the infostream, you can’t be present.

There are some apps below to ‘force’ reflection and one-pointedness, but in the end this is an internal discipline that must be developed. Interiorizing the mind is where ideas are watered. Here are some ways to do so:

  • Look into the distance
  • Look at nature or a cityscape
  • Watch the sky or sunrise/sunset
  • Watch and/or listen to water
  • Look at inspirational images
  • Turn on a fountain
  • Use a rain stick back and forth
  • Play a drum with a steady beat
  • Read wisdom literature
  • Learn breathing and relaxation techniques
  • Learn meditation

I’ll be monitoring this space so please use comments to give your input and ask questions so we can dive deeper together.

Useful apps:

—-
Pamir Kiciman, BA, RM, CHt is a Classical/Original Usui Reiki Teacher, Meditation Coach, Healer. He writes at the Reiki Help Blog. You can find him on Twitter as @gassho.

Thanks, Pamir! I’m going to take my time exploring those tools!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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Conan’s Good-bye: 10 of 10 in Leadership, Reputation, and Community

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A Lesson in Reputation Management

cooltext443809558_authenticity

At a time that anyone serving the public is aware of the importance of brand and reputation management. It’s still rare to see a fine example of a response to a tough situation that shows authentic, human leadership. The recent NBC / Conan O’Brien situation had so much press that millions of people were following it.

Conan O’Brien’s farewell came after what could be called an unseating, what may have felt a betrayal. His final good-bye was televised. How would he communicate with grace and dignity when a crowds of fans and lawyers are looking at him to recognize what’s been?

10 of 10 in Leadership, Reputation, and Community

Corporations, small businesses, every one of us could learn a lot from how Conan said good-bye. His words were the careful words of a leader delivered from the heart in a difficult situation. He was visible authenticity, leadership, and grace in these visible ways.

  1. He took control of the situation. Gently, but firmly he said …
    There has been a lot of speculation in the press about what I legally can and can’t say about NBC. To set the record straight, tonight I am allowed to say anything I want.
  2. He told the truth in fair and generous context.
    … between my time at Saturday Night Live, The Late Night Show, and my brief run here on The Tonight Show, I have worked with NBC for over twenty years. Yes, we have our differences right now and yes, we’re going to go our separate ways.
  3. He shared his pride and his gratitude.
    But this company has been my home for most of my adult life. I am enormously proud of the work we have done together, and I want to thank NBC for making it all possible.
  4. He was honest about state of mind and his feelings of loss.
    Walking away from The Tonight Show is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. This is the best job in the world, I absolutely love doing it, and I have the best staff and crew in the history of the medium.
  5. He celebrated the positive.
    Every comedian dreams of hosting The Tonight Show and, for seven months, I got to. I did it my way, with people I love, and I do not regret a second.
  6. He moved the focus to the future.
    I’ve had more good fortune than anyone I know and if our next gig is doing a show in a 7-11 parking lot, we’ll find a way to make it fun.
  7. He raised up and cherished all who might be his friends.
    And finally, I have to say something to our fans. The massive outpouring of support and passion from so many people has been overwhelming. The rallies, the signs, all the goofy, outrageous creativity on the internet, and the fact that people have traveled long distances and camped out all night in the pouring rain to be in our audience, made a sad situation joyous and inspirational.
  8. He gave everyone’s investment meaning.
    To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. .
  9. He invited everyone to be part of something better.
    All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere.
  10. He offered hope even to the nonparticipants.
    Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.

It took leadership, courage, a sense of humor, and trust in his audience to deliver on that message. If you saw it, you know it was real. Unfortunately, the video has been taken down at YouTube, but you can see it at the Huffington Post.

Conan won day and probably won a huge following of new fans by showing humanity, fairness, and leadership. He kept his focus on who and what mattered and left out who and what did not. He raised us all by not tearing anything down. I hope we’re never faced with such extreme circumstances. If we are, I hope we come back to this example of how to build good relationships from conflict.

Imagine if every corporation, business, and individual demonstrated that same 10 or 10 in Leadership, Reputation, and Community when conflict occurs.

What was your personal response to Conan’s last words?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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