Tag Archives: development

SUCCESS for Teens: Take a Second Look

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Teens are often confronted with a lot of changes at once. And without the right attitude, these changes can derail them from reaching their goals. From changes in relationships to the pressure of grades, tests and transcripts to bigger life challenges in their home or work life, teens face a number of opportunities to practice a positive attitude.

But often this attitude doesn’t come naturally. A person has to work at it. So teaching teens to look on the bright side of things, to let life roll off their back a little, is a valuable skill. Here are some things you can talk to them about.

A great way to start looking at life in a more upbeat way is to count your blessings. Are you thankful for your family, friends, home or job? Make a list of all the things you’re grateful for and post it where you can see it every day. As you review your list daily, you’ll change your mindset from complaining about what you don’t have to feeling blessed for all you do have.

You’ll carry this positive approach into the rest of your day. When obstacles arise, you’ll be more prepared to see the solutions rather than focusing on the downsides. You’ll be less prone to worrying and more apt to hope for good outcomes.

Try using some new vocabulary to push this transition even further. Instead of telling yourself you’re bad at math, tell yourself that you’re practicing your math skills and will do better next time. Instead of beating yourself up for missing the goal, remind yourself of the great assist you made during the game. And rather than worry about what will happen with your college entrance applications, remind yourself of the great time you had in high school and of your ability to enjoy yourself no matter where you end up.

A report by Civic Enterprises published in 2010 shows that nearly one-third of all public-high-school students, and almost half of minority students, fail to graduate with their class. The report details the ever-increasing “downward spiral of failure, from boredom in the classroom and occasionally skipping class, to long absences from school, engaging in risky behaviors and becoming part of a subculture that thinks it is cool to drop out.”

Often, these behaviors are a result of a negative attitude, a philosophy about life that doesn’t leave room for growth. Failures are seen as permanent and teens are so hard on themselves and so sure that nothing will improve, they stop trying.

Does everything seem to go wrong for you? Do you feel like everyone is against you? Or do you just wonder why no matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to reach your goals?

Maybe it’s time for an attitude check.

The right attitude can help teens handle failure. Shift your perspective to see that lessons are only learned by falling down. If you’d never fallen, you never would’ve learned to walk. If you’d never failed, you never would’ve tossed a ball into a basket. Failure is a way to earn feedback on your performance and improve it.

The teens that persevere, graduate high school and go on to pursue their dreams are the ones who understand that winners learn the lessons from failure and get up again. They take the risk of looking foolish now and then so they can learn something; they see themselves as capable of change.

All of this is about attitude. Everyone experiences failure and disappointment. But your positive attitude can pull you through, help you see the value in each experience and move you toward something better.

Profiles in Greatness: Alexander Graham Bell

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Our relationships with history’s greatest innovators and influencers usually are developed in a classroom or during an hour-long documentary. Imagine having an entire evening, some appetizers, wine and steak with one of them. What would you say? Would you ask the obvious: What inspires you? Or would you go for gossip: Did you really have a thing for Amelia Earhart? Every month SUCCESS is going to “sit down to dinner” with one of the world’s greatest minds and ask a few questions of our own.

We recently had haggis (that’s Scottish sheep sausage to you and me) with Alexander Graham Bell, who was awarded U.S. Patent No. 174,465, a sequence of six numbers that officially launched the telephone. Though the phone is Graham’s most noted invention, he also innovated in areas of aeronautics, transportation, medical research and alternative fuels. And each of his innovations sprang from his desire, at least initially, to better understand sound and speech.

Q: Did you inherit your scientific mind from your parents or did you just wake up one day and think, “Today would be a good day to revolutionize communication”?

A: “A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with—a man is what he makes of himself.”

Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 3, 1847. His brother, father and grandfather all researched and studied elocution and speech. They greatly influenced Bell’s decision to explore elocution—clear speaking—as did his mother, who started losing her hearing when Bell was a boy. Many of his experiments were driven by a desire to communicate with his mother and collaborate with his family.

While Bell was certainly influenced by his surroundings, his obsessive interest in science and unyielding work ethic impelled him to become a great inventor. He spent his time exploring, experimenting and devising ways to improve existing technologies and people’s everyday lives. When he was 12, Bell built a corn de-husking machine for a local miller who had complained that manual de-husking was laborious and time consuming.

Like many innovators, Bell indulged all of his passions. If he had an interest, he explored it. He learned to read music and taught himself ventriloquism to entertain guests.

His varied interests often led to new inventions. His success with minor mechanical inventions like the de-husker and his understanding of the way ventriloquism and music manipulate sound all led to his eventual creation of the telephone.

Q: You didn’t exactly follow the crowd when it came to getting your education and finding a job. What would you tell others who yearn to take the road less traveled?

A: “Leave the beaten track behind occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do, you will be certain to find something you have never seen before.”

Bell left school at 15 (his record was undistinguished) to stay with his grandfather in London. There, his grandfather fueled his scientific curiosity, and Bell spent more time learning and studying than in the classroom. At 16, he became a student and teacher of elocution at the Weston House Academy in Scotland. By 19, he had an idea to produce vowel sounds electronically, and he made an observation that set the tone for the rest of his life’s work: He determined that if he could produce consonants, he could electronically “articulate speech.”

Q: There must have been a lot of pressure to say the right thing when you finally tested the first working telephone. What were the first words you spoke?

A: “Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you.”

Bell really started working on the concept of the telephone in 1871, five years before the patent was approved. He started work on his harmonic telegraph, a device that would allow multiple messages (rather than one at a time) to pass through a single wire by use of a transmitter and receiver. While he worked on the device, he opened the School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech in Boston and tutored several students. Stretched thin and unable to fully engage in his experiments, he turned his full attention back to his laboratory in 1874.

Following the success of the harmonic telegraph, Bell developed an acoustic telegraph (one that transmitted vocal notes) and embarked upon a patent race with Elisha Gray, who was working on an acoustic telegraph that relied on a water transmitter. The two got their patent applications in on the same date in 1876, but Bell won the patent, leading many to claim he stole Gray’s design.

Three days after getting his patent, Bell “phoned” his assistant, Thomas Watson, who had sat on the receiving end of countless failed attempts at telephone communication before hearing Bell’s voice.

Q: As an inventor you suffered many failures before attaining your many successes. What advice do you have for those who have met failure?

A: “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”

Critics not only tore apart Bell’s successes, they also celebrated his failures. In 1881, Bell, his asssistant Sumner Tainter, and mathematician Simon Newcomb claimed to have developed a device that could locate bullets lodged in a person’s body. President James Garfield had just been shot and doctors were hoping to find a way to locate the bullet without using traditional means of trial and error, which was all that was available to them at the time.

The two men invented and experimented with a device that hummed when in close proximity to metal. They tried it on their own bodies by hiding bullets under their arms and locating them with the device. They were successful when they used it on themselves, but when they tried it on the president, it hummed nonstop. Bell was highly criticized for the failure. Later it was realized that Garfield’s bed had thrown off the device. Much of it was metal.

Though Bell technically failed to find the Garfield bullet, he’s credited with the invention of the metal detector.

Q: Spending hours on end in a lab seems like it might get dull. Did you ever get bored?

A: “There cannot be mental atrophy in any person who continues to observe, to remember what he observes, and to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things.”

Anyone who saw Bell at work might have dismissed his antics as a waste of time, but his willingness to try anything and test his powers of observation led to many successful inventions. He and a brother once fooled visitors into believing their Skye terrier, Trouve, could say, “How are you, Grandma?” While they played it off as a practical joke, playtime with Trouve was actually an experiment in sound transmission. The Bell brothers would get the dog to growl then teach it to manipulate its mouth and vocal cords so it sounded as if the dog was asking after Grandma.

To some, playing with a dog was a waste of time. To Bell, it yielded insight into the complexities of sound transmission.

Q: Do you feel that your inventions are precursors for things like computers or smartphones?

A: “Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments, I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself.”

Bell knew better than anyone the importance of collaborating with other innovators and building off their innovations. Many of his 30 patents (a number of which were shared with colleagues) resulted from working with others or improving innovations.

And though Bell didn’t live to see its universal impact, his most famous invention certainly became the impetus for many more.

When Preparation Meets Opportunity

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“Just do your work.” That advice from a high-school drama teacher hit home with Matt Damon. The young actor knew doing his best— even if no one else seemed to notice—was the only way to succeed.

Even if it meant losing 40 pounds in 100 days to play a heroin addicted Gulf War veteran in the 1996 film Courage Under Fire—a decision others cautioned him against for health reasons. Or devoting a year to writing the critically acclaimed Good Will Hunting. Or spending hours on the firing range and learning to box so he’d know how to carry himself in the role of a trained killer in the 2002 film The Bourne Identity. Or going with police on a drug raid in preparation to play a dirty cop in The Departed in 2006.

In most cases, Damon reaped rewards for his preparation and hard work. The studios waged a bidding war for the script for Good Will Hunting, which landed an Academy Award for best original screenplay, as well as several other nominations. He received some 30 script offers within a week after The Bourne Identity opened.
But although he had poured himself into his role for Courage Under Fire, his performance garnered little attention from critics. Damon was crushed that his sacrifice was for nothing. Then came a chance meeting with a legendary director.

While filming Good Will Hunting, co-star Robin Williams introduced the young actor to Steven Spielberg, who recognized Damon but couldn’t place him. “He said, ‘What movie have you been in?’ ” Damon recalls in an Inside the Actors Studio interview. “I said, ‘I was in Courage Under Fire.’ He said, ‘I loved you in that movie. I
was thinking I wanted you to play Private Ryan, but I thought you were too skinny.’ ”

And that, says Damon, was how Spielberg cast him in the title role of the 1998 blockbuster, Saving Private Ryan. It turned out doing the work was all the preparation Damon needed.

Preparing for Greatness

Want to increase your learning and earning potential? Prepare and persist.

Learn while you commute.
Listening to educational audios while commuting 12,000 miles annually for three years can be equivalent to two years of college study.
Read up.
While experts debate the number of books you must read to make you an expert on a topic (somewhere between 3 and 300), many tout reading as the key to success.
Teach someone what you know.
Teaching others reinforces your own abilities, helps you look at a subject in different ways and inspires you to learn your subject inside and out.
Practice, practice, practice.
But remember Vince Lombardi’s advice: “Only perfect practice makes perfect.”

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New Year’s Resolutions

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Do the New Year’s resolutions you make really reflect your personal goals? Or are you just making the same resolutions as every other 47-year-old college grad in your tax bracket?

A study by the Barna Group says that certain demographics are more likely to make certain resolutions. Here were the most common resolutions people made for 2011 and the types of people who tended to make them:

(Source: Barna Group Omni Poll 2011)

So are you making the same resolutions as others like you? If you are, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. What’s important is making resolutions you can stick to.

The study also found that 61 percent of Americans have made New Year’s resolutions in the past. Of those, about one in four say they experienced significant, long-term change as a result. But half saw no change at all.

To give yours staying power over the long haul, be specific, write them down and try to build in a way to measure progress—with weekly check-ins, time requirements, etc. By February, you could be feeling results instead of regrets.

Lose the Spare Tire

Resolve to be healthier with these fitness apps.

⇒ Editor’s Pick

SUCCESS Managing Editor Amy Anderson uses MyFitnessPal to log her workouts, monitor calories and track wellness goals. “My favorite part of the app is the endless database of nutrition info that includes everything from restaurant faves to my morning cereal,” she says. “I can see my total calories for the day, plus find out if I’ve gotten enough calcium or protein in my diet.” Free for Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile.

→ SportyPal—No matter how you’re exercising, this app will measure your distance, speed and calories burned, then sync your data with your profile and display your stats. Plus, hikers and bikers can create outdoor topographical maps. Free for Android, BlackBerry, iOS, Windows Mobile.

→ iFitness—Scan through the illustrated catalog of over 300 exercises from ab crunches to the Arnold press. Watch how-to videos and create a custom workout, or use one of 20 designed by fitness experts. $1.99 for iOS.

Save Some Spare Change

Leave the clipping at the craft table with mobile coupon apps.

⇒ Editor’s Pick

SUCCESS Web Editor Shelby Skrhak uses Shopkick to download mobile coupons for stores like Best Buy, Target and American Eagle Outfitters. “I collect points for checking into stores, scanning products and inviting friends to join,” she says. “The points are redeemable for gift cards.” Free for Android, iOS.

→ Cellfire—No need for an accordion file of paper scraps with this app that downloads grocery coupons direct to your mobile device or to your grocery member card. Simply swipe your card at checkout to apply discounts. Free for Android, iOS.

→ CouponSherpa—From grocery coupons to discounts at big-box stores, this mobile version of a tried and true source for printable coupons will help you climb to the summit of savings! Free for Android, iOS.

Coaching and Personal Development

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Coaching and personal development – simply getting much, much, more out of your life, sooner than you thought possible.

What is coaching and how could you benefit?

We are all well aware of coaches working in sport but what exactly do they do and what is coaching outside of sport? Well the answer is that coaching is the action of improving personal knowledge and development and growth in any area. Just as with the sports coach there is a close alliance between coach and client that is dedicated to the outcomes of the client. Coaching enables individuals to look at their lives in the whole taking into account all areas of a persons’ life and reconsidering the goals, activity and direction in each area as well as the balance between competing demands. The main reason why people turn to coaches to simply to get more out of life, whether this is in terms of relationships, career, health, sport, well being, spirituality, learning, life-style, or creativity. Typically people turn to coaches when they are no longer getting the results that they are seeking. This point can be a crisis, period of transition, or it can even be a frustration in a particular aspect of personal performance. Many people, however, are now aware of the benefits of coaching and are realising that they can get more out of any aspect of their lives through working with a coach well before aspects of their lives begin to become problematic.

A keen equestrian has a fall and looses confidence and works with a coach to rebuild her confidence. Realising the changes she continues to develop her understanding of her work life values and relationships and makes changes in her life and work as a result.

A highly successful businessman works with a coach to improve his golf game – realises the approaches are applicable to his business life and continues to develop his goals and motivation together with a breakthrough session to remove limiting beliefs which he found holding him back. His target – to double his business in twelve months. He takes an NLP Practitioner Course and develops a new range of approaches to working with himself and with others clearly confident in doubling his income which he does.

A teacher takes a distance learning coaching course to work with students better, realises he has no life goals or targets himself and sets about transforming his life, doubles his salary, gets a new house and eventually lets go of old beliefs and values and embarks on a totally new career and life-style.

Coaching is about personal transformation and growth. It teaches us that we have options in every aspect of our lives. It shows us why we live within frameworks of values, beliefs, behaviours, and habits and it gives us choice in every area.

So why do so may people spend so much time and money on self help books with such limited impact? The reason is simple. When you are learning about your own mind it’s far more effective to work with another, more skilled mind to get the changes you want. Coaches compel to action simply through natural human interaction. They challenge with skilful questions at the right time. They provoke within a context of rapport to challenge beliefs and values. They enlighten with a range of approaches and techniques to reveal to the client representations of the clients own experience which they simply were not aware of. Coaches work within what they call a framework of ecology. What this means is that they consider all the consequences of any course of action for a client. Yes a client could double his or her income but if this had a negative impact on their health or relationships the coach can easily lead the client to a deep understanding of all the consequences of their action so that they can adjust behaviour accordingly.

The Coaching Process

The coaching process is focussed on you. It begins with a detailed personal history which is much more than it sounds. It’s not just a detailed personal history in terms of your upbringing relationships, career etc. It will start your internal unconscious processes working to re-evaluate your values and aspirations before any formal work begins.

You may complete an audit and review of your current context and then choose an area to work on.

Breakthrough

The coach then begins an intensive programme called a breakthrough process which elicits and ranks your core values in a chosen area of your life – typically these are broad contexts such as Relationships, Career, Wealth, Health, and can also focus on personal contexts such as creativity, spirituality, and sporting interests.

Addressing limiting beliefs, behaviours and values

In order to be able to move forward in your life the coach works with you to identify the limits which your pervious learning, experience and upbringing may be placing on you. Having identified these the coach will use specific techniques which will then give you choice over whether to modify these or not. Learning that you have choice over these aspects of you make up is a tremendously liberating experience – hence the breakthrough tag on the process.

Creating a new pattern to live to

We all work and life to our own internal patterns, goals and aspirations. We do this whether we acknowledge this or not. These patterns shape our daily and lifelong behaviour. Becoming aware of the programmes we operate by through working with a skilled professional coach and giving ourselves choice over these is the key point of the whole coaching process.

Working with your coach, using specific techniques, the coach will assist you in the development of a revised personal conceptualisation – plan – vision – sense of – schema – of your present and future life. The imprinting events which shape our lives for decades are acquired really quickly and can be revised just a quickly. In fact, when we realise where our imprinting events are we can be shocked at how casually we adopt these and the lasting impact they have on us long, long after they were relevant or served our personal needs.

The coach knows how to develop your new internal aspirations and programmes with you so that they impact on your daily beliefs and behaviours and then works with you to achieve this.

Follow up

This is the followed up by a process of clean up of any further limiting beliefs, less helpful behaviours or sustaining new changes.

Ideally you will now have a very detailed written description of your future in every respect. The writing process is important to pattern unconscious learning into conscious thought – this directs the attention of the unconscious mind which then automatically matches actions, thoughts, opportunity taking to meet the new programmes you are working towards.

Choosing a coach

There are no standard qualifications which coaches have to have but there are some standards which will give you a great deal of security in choosing someone to work with. You will see many coaching courses available however these may not give the coach the full range of skills needed. The main ones to check for are that they have an advanced qualification in Neuro Linguistic Programming. You should know that there are three of four levels of qualification:

NLP Diploma A Three or Four day Qualification which is an introduction. If you are interested in your own personal development then this would be a good place for you to start with yourself. There are though, far too any people operating as coaches with only a Diploma or Certificate in NLP.

NLP Practitioner This is a qualification which take between seven to sixteen days to achieve and is the minimum standard you should work with. They will have a good grounding in the techniques and approaches needed to coach you. They might also have additional coaching qualifications but these are generally focussed on goal setting and low level rational processes which are limited in effectiveness without the Practitioner Certification. You will see Coaches with NLP Coaching Certification as well -such coaches are well prepared to support you in your development.

NLP Master Practitioner This is the ideal training needed to coach you. Master Practitioners are able to work with values, beliefs, behaviours, limiting beliefs, early patterning issues and even significant trauma. Ideally they will have additional certification in Hypnotherapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy thought this is a useful bonus and not essential.

NLP Trainer Such coaches have generally the highest level of capability of skills available and can work fluidly and flexibly to coach you to the outcomes you are looking for. They should be actively training and you should be able to assess their abilities by attending one of their shorter seminars.

Coaching is about working with you to achieve personal excellence in any area of your life. Many coaches set themselves up in response to some sort of unwanted transition in their lives. Why model these people? Choose a coach who is successful and effective in their own lives. You may not personally like them but you are not looking for a friend – you may need someone who can lead you out of your comfort zone

What you can do on your own

There are many ‘Be Your Own Life Coach’ books available which will give you a good introduction to personal development. Similarly there are many books available on Coaching and NLP which you may find useful. Free coaching course are available and a good introduction to personal development for participants as opposed to setting up a practice. You would certainly get a lot from taking an NLP Diploma or Practitioner course as this will give you considerable personal advantages and flexibility. Some coaching practices Charge less for a practitioner course than they do for a coaching package in the belief that it represents better value to the client. That is something you need to decide yourself.

In practical terms today go online and look for a wheel of life exercise and complete this. Then spend some times writing out a set of goals for your future setting out in detail what you want your life to be like in three years time, one years time, and what you will do every week to achieve this.

You are not stuck with the life you currently have. You have the life you have now because of your beliefs, values and behaviours. All of these can be changed so that they align with the life you want now rather than the life you wanted then.

Andy is a certified NLP trainer who has trained with John Grinder, Carmen Bostic St CLair and Michael Carrol. After a long career in Special Education Andy specialised in working with Young people with severe emotional and behavioural difficulties as well as leadership and management as a headteacher. He works as a trainer with SimplyNLP.Me in the North of England. You can learn more now about the high quality NLP training he offers at: http://simplynlp.me

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Profiles in Greatness: Rowland H. Macy

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When Rowland Hussey Macy was 15, he started working aboard a whaling ship. Macy, born in 1822, had grown up on Nantucket Island, Mass.—once the home of more millionaires than anywhere else in the United States, thanks to the whaling industry—and watched his father sail on two previous expeditions.

R-H-Macy-250x300

But young Macy was a little more ambitious than his father. He earned about $550 on that first voyage, a disappointing paycheck for such hard work. So at 19, he started working as a printer’s apprentice in Boston. He had read about Benjamin Franklin’s success and decided to model his own career after the legendary statesman.

Unfortunately, printing didn’t suit Macy as well as it did Franklin, so, with the backing of one of his brothers, Macy opened his first dry goods store in 1843. Over the next 10 years, Macy failed at four retail ventures.

He had moved to California in search of gold and also dabbled in real estate speculation, so despite his retail failures, he returned home to Massachusetts with $4,000 and a wealth of new life experiences. He opened the first Macy’s store in Haverhill, Mass., in 1851.

Immediately, he put to use what he had learned from his failed stores and instituted groundbreaking initiatives in retail management. Macy offered lower prices for cash purchases in an era when most shoppers used credit, and he offered fixed prices rather than opportunities to bargain, which was the norm.

While the Haverhill store ultimately failed, the 36-year-old Macy had no intention of giving up. He moved to New York City in 1858, and started R.H. Macy Dry Goods on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 14th Street. The red star he had tattooed onto his hand during his youthful whaling days would become the shining symbol of his new venture.

Again building on lessons learned from previous stores, Macy bought and sold merchandise only if he could do so with ready cash. Even as his business grew and wholesalers offered him credit, he refused it, deciding instead to work exclusively on a cash basis.

In its first year, while a recession loomed over the country, Macy’s did $90,000 in sales. As the business grew, Macy obtained the leases of 11 neighboring buildings, creating the concept of what we know today as the department store, selling everything from clothing and jewelry to toys and housewares. In 1874, Macy leased the basement of his building to L. Straus Sons. Lazarus Straus and his sons, Isidor and Nathan, sold china, glassware and silver (and later took ownership of the Macy’s chain when it passed from the Macy family in 1895). The china department soon became the store’s most famous. Macy introduced new products to the public as well, including tea bags, Idaho baked potatoes and colored bath towels. He also began accepting mail orders.

Despite a recession, these were boom years for Macy, who became a master of advertising and publicity. He developed marketing strategies that would one day become part and parcel of the retail industry. He was the first, for example, to have a store Santa Claus during the holidays, and he originated themed store exhibits and lighted window displays to draw customers in from the street.

Because his store was beyond the borders of the main shopping district, Macy knew he had to be innovative to draw customers, so he used his printing industry experience to launch some unique newspaper advertising campaigns. The ads emphasized keywords again and again, used bold headlines and quoted exact prices of store items, something none of his competitors had ever done. He advertised in five city newspapers. Macy also offered his patrons a money-back guarantee, and the store continued to only accept cash well into the 1950s.

Macys-StoreMacy’s innovations didn’t end with business strategy. He was also the first to hire a woman executive in retail sales, promoting Margaret Getchell to store superintendent in 1866. Having grown up on Nantucket, where women ran family businesses and households in the absence of husbands, fathers and brothers who were on whaling expeditions, Macy believed that women were just as capable as men. His Quaker upbringing also promoted the idea of spiritual and intellectual equality of the sexes.

Getchell, a distant relative of Macy’s, was a fellow Nantucketer, and she not only had a good head for business but helped Macy understand what his main customers—women—wanted. Four years after Getchell became store superintendent, Macy’s revenue topped $1 million.

Macy died in Paris in 1877 of Bright’s disease. An obituary in The New York Times praised his accomplishments.“His energy and enterprise in business and the strict attention he gave to every detail of it gained for him a host of staunch friends,” the obituary noted. “In fact from comparatively nothing, he became one of the best known and most successful merchants of the day.”

That year, Macy’s famous department store employed 400. The Straus brothers ultimately became owners of the store after Macy’s death.

In 1902, the flagship store on Herald Square was built and, after a 1942 expansion, it became known as “the largest store on earth.” In the century that followed, the Macy’s brand expanded exponentially and has since become a household name, with more than 800 stores across the United States.

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Why Self Development Is The Industry To Be In Right Now

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You don’t need to open your eyes very wide to see that self development is booming at the moment and as the industry gets bigger and bigger, more and more lives are changing for the better. There has been a huge increase in the variety of products available both on and offline, as people attempt to increase their self-confidence, improve their love-lives, lose some extra belly fat, be more assertive, quit smoking or experience past life regression.

In fact, so many stories you hear on the news or in business about anyone who has had some sort of personal breakthrough or who has achieved any sort of personal success, usually have a self development story attached to it. The late Steve Jobs who achieved massive success in his life was a self-development aficionado, spending seven months in India on his spiritual journey. He later became a Buddhist and it was his faith that influenced his simplistic designs and business philosophy.

What Is Self Development?

So what, then is self development? If you look in Wikipedia, it will tell you that self development is,

‘a self-guided improvement-economically, intellectually, or emotionally – often with a substantial psychological basis. There are many different self-help movements and each has its own focus, techniques, associated beliefs, proponents and in some cases, leaders.’

This explanation is pretty vague and if you are involved with the self development industry, you will know that is so much more than that. In fact, I would say that the industry has undergone a transformation of late. It used to be about getting rid of an unwanted problem but these days it seems to be appealing for more positive reasons. Guided meditations, visualisation and other subconscious techniques are used by very successful people from sportspeople to top-tier salespeople in an attempt to get the best possible results from themselves. In fact I was listening to a very influential network marketing coach the other day who said that it was important to ‘work harder on yourself than you do on your business’.

Why Self Development is So Important

And here is the bottom line. Here is the reason self development is so important. When the most successful people realise that they can increase their results by spending half an hour a day meditating, listening to a motivational CD or using subliminal messaging or self-hypnosis, this creates a huge opportunity. Self-development is something that is used by winners. And by winners, I mean people who have the money to invest in themselves, or are at least willing to invest some money into themselves.

And the best thing is that people who want to emulate winners will follow their example. So the message has a distinct trickle-down effect. Now as the times we live in become more uncertain and more and more people are realising that they need to develop themselves in order to keep up with change, we have seen an unprecedented growth in self development.

The self-development industry is now a multi-billion dollar industry. Last time I checked it was worth somewhere between $17-19 billion and it seems to double in size every few years. Why? Because it is about getting results and people are seeing the need for results more than ever. If that wasn’t the case, we wouldn’t have seen the unprecedented growth in the number of life coaches, NLP practitioners and the like around the world.

Now if you also consider the growing popularity of the Law of Attraction (a consequence of the hugely popular film ‘the Secret’) and how this concept links into the self-development movement, then you can begin to see just how powerful an opportunity self-development is.

Of course, there is a downside to all this and that is that everywhere you look, there is a new ‘wonder product’ that will help you to effortlessly create miracles in your life and it is these types of over-hyped products that lower the integrity of the self-development industry.

But that being said, there is still massive opportunity for people who wish to get involved in the industry in a real and genuine way.

And on that note, I’m off to do a nice 20-minute meditation and ponder my direction.

If you would like to know more about how you can be involved in the self-development industry, then visit http://subliminalmindprogram.com/work-with-linda/ or you can download my free e-book ‘How Your Sub-Conscious Mind Works here: http://subliminalmindprogram.com/freedownload/

Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Linda_Paull

Baby Steps to Better Business

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Sometimes, all you’ve got is 10 minutes. Or 10 dollars. But 10 minutes a day or 10 dollars a week add up. When it comes to building business, small steps can make the biggest impact.

Don’t believe us? Listen to these entrepreneurs. Each one of them faced a huge goal and met it—one small step at a time.

Mat Dwyer
President
PhotoScanning.ca
Toronto

THE GOAL Increase visitors to the company’s website through social media and organic search engine hits.

“I’m the owner of the company, but as with many small businesses, I’m also the marketer, the salesperson, etc.,” says Mat Dwyer of his role at PhotoScanning.ca, which converts old photos, slides and videos to digital files. “We’ve really focused on creating an affordable solution—not on maximizing revenue, but rather ensuring that it’s affordable for families to actually have electronic scanning completed. This significantly alters our marketing budget, forcing us to look outside the box to gain new clients.”

THE STEPS “There were a number of small steps involved,” says Dwyer, who devoted at least 5 to 10 minutes a day to the task. “First and foremost, I had to analyze our current website and pinpoint areas where it could be altered to be more attractive to search engines. That involved identifying what people would likely be searching for, so I spent about 10 minutes a day for a week just brainstorming appropriate keywords. By writing the phrase, ‘Vancouver photo scanning’ on one of my web pages, for instance, I’d be able to rank in Google search results when someone types in ‘Vancouver photo scanning,’ and that was very important.

I set out to alter one page per day and make it as keyword-rich as I could. When the site was at a level I was comfortable with for search engine optimization, I then sought to create a social media presence, each day adding something to either Twitter, our Facebook page or another social media platform, such as a blog entry or a response to a Tweet or forum post. The overall time didn’t exceed 10 minutes a day, but we started to gain a following, and even customers who didn’t follow us on Twitter mentioned that they read through the timeline of our posts and that it gave ‘legitimacy’ to the business, which is crucial in an online environment.”

THE RESULTS “I’ve slowly built our site to rank first in the country for our targeted keyword, and this now accounts for approximately 75 percent of our new customers,” Dwyer says. “I didn’t initially think SEO would be our primary source of new customers, but it started paying dividends almost immediately. We also find that customers who are engaged socially (Twitter, Facebook) refer customers themselves and take a personal interest in the brand and the company.”

THE TAKEAWAY “It’s important to remember that the huge, daunting task is really just a series of little 5-minute tasks,” Dwyer advises. “As long as you are motivated and committed to doing those 5-minute tasks each day, you’ll meet your goal. Skipping one day leads to skipping two. Put a calendar on the wall and mark a giant X on it each day you actually do a task. You’ll start to see a line of Xs and not want to break it.”

“It’s important to remember that the huge, daunting task is really just a series of little 5-minute tasks.”

Scott Newman
President and CEO
US Markerboard
Holbrook, Mass.

An online retailer providing whiteboards, bulletin boards and other visual communication supplies to schools and various businesses, US Markerboard relies heavily on its website. But a few years ago, the site became impossible to maintain. Adjusting prices, for example, was a month-long task. So president and CEO Scott Newman devised a way to overhaul the site without jeopardizing sales and usability.

Against the advice of both the website designer and engineer, Newman decided to make the changes incrementally, a process that would take far longer than if they built a brand-new website and rolled it out all at once. But Newman was concerned with maintaining customers, not just acquiring new ones. “For the customer, the change wasn’t really noticeable,” he says. “And sales grew in the process.”

THE GOAL Update the company’s website and database in an effort to stay competitive and to reduce the intensive labor it took to make even minor updates.

THE STEPS The company’s initial website was built using basic pages and low-resolution images. For each product, there was limited information, including the stock number and price, but the products couldn’t be purchased online. Customers would call in their orders, and staffers would calculate the shipping costs and process the sales manually.

“My partner and I decided to hire a database engineer to help us move to a more robust, expandable platform,” Newman says. “We started with the product pages first then worked backward over a period of 18 months, making sure that the processes worked completely before moving on to the next step. One of the advantages of rolling out the website changes slowly and incrementally was that we had the ability to test each new page and process, figuring out what worked and what didn’t as we went along.”

THE RESULTS “It would be hard putting tangible numbers on this update,” Newman admits. “Yes, we saw significant growth, but we also ended up in a staggering economic shift while this was all going on. So who knows what would have happened if we hadn’t made the updates? What’s most important is that we didn’t stick our head in the sand or rest on our laurels. We decided that what was best for the company over the long term was a major overhaul of the website and database. We worked as a team, collectively, taking the time needed to adapt to the changing needs of our customers, developing a new site that will lead us forward.”

THE TAKEAWAY “Take your time,” Newman insists. “Talk to your customers about the changes you are about to make and get their feedback. Talk to your staff, especially your customer service people. They are on the front lines and hear what your customers are saying. And make sure that your staff knows that although some of their ideas might end up on the cutting room floor, without their input that one great idea might never come.”

Heather Ledeboer
Owner
Mom 4 Life
Athol, Idaho

THE GOAL “Cut the cord” and run the business rather than allowing it to run her.

Heather Ledeboer calls herself the CMO, or chief mom officer, of her online business Mom 4 Life. The mother of four started her own business back in 2003 after the birth of her first son as a way to stay at home with her family and still make money. The company markets mom-friendly products that are, in fact, all mom-invented. However, as Mom 4 Life grew, so did Ledeboer’s family. Consequently, the amount of time she had to work on her business dwindled with each new addition.

THE STEPS “ ‘Operation Don’t Work All Day’ had a soft launch almost two years ago when I first carved out an office space for myself in our home,” Ledeboer says. “I figured it was about time that I took control of my schedule and set some boundaries so I had more time for myself and my family. The plan has taken much longer for me to act on than it should.

“Because I enjoy what I do and have a tendency to be a perfectionist, I try to stay on top of work around the clock. However, I have discovered that no matter how much I work, there’s always more to be done.” So Ledeboer set about making priorities and structuring her day in a way that encouraged progress. To do that, she set office hours. “I’ve worked out a schedule with my husband that allows me to work in the morning and again in the afternoon for about an hour each time while he shuttles our two older children to and from school,” says Ledeboer.

Next, she took control of her inbox by setting up an automatic reply to email that alerts contacts of her work schedule. It spells out that she answers emails only one or two times a day, Monday through Friday, and that you can typically expect a reply from her within 24 to 48 hours. The last line reads, “Thank you for your understanding!” Notes Ledeboer: “This gives me the peace of mind that those contacting me are not only aware of my schedule, but are expecting me to abide by it.”

Her final step was to create a system for her to-do list. “If something comes to mind during my off hours that I need to remember to do, I email myself a reminder from my non-work email and then breathe easy knowing that I’ll see the reminder the next time I sit down to work,” she says. The to-do list itself is kept in a binder on her desk. “There’s an urgent and a non-urgent column,” she explains. “Each day I check my list and make sure that the urgent list is caught up. If I finish my emails early, then I’ll tackle a non-urgent item.”

THE RESULTS “Operation Don’t Work All Day has been an essential step in allowing me a richer daily experience,” Ledeboer says. “The result is that I can be fully present, engaged and focused rather than stressed, distracted and overwhelmed.”

THE TAKEAWAY Taking time away from your business can actually improve the quality of your work time because you’ll be excited about “digging in.” It also requires you to stay true to your goals. The freedom you feel when you walk away from work each day helps reinforce the benefits gained from such a simple change.

Laura Davis
Vice President and Director of Marketing
HPD Architecture LLC
Dalls, Texas

“It’s not what you know, but who you know that gets you in the door,” says Laura Davis, acknowledging the old adage. Back in early 2009, her design and architecture firm was about to complete its existing projects and had no new ones on the books, so the decision was made to seek contracts with federal, state and local agencies. “It became painfully obvious, though, that the larger architecture firms were hungry for work too and were pursuing the same small projects we were,” Davis says. By the time they learned of an opportunity to submit a bid, they had little chance of getting short-listed. So Davis began reaching out to other architects who had experience with government projects and, more important, who had personal connections with the contracting officers.

THE GOAL Network with relevant decision makers and other industry insiders to earn new business.

THE STEPS “First, we joined a local chamber of commerce, which hosted happy hours and community brown-bag seminars,” Davis says. “I was scared to death at the first happy hour I attended because I didn’t know what to say after, ‘Hi, I’m Laura. I’m an architect with HPD Architecture.’

“Fortunately, a few months later I attended a seminar about Twitter. There, I learned several important things that gave my networking more purpose. I learned that on Twitter, and in other marketing efforts, we have the opportunity to be an expert resource.

“Second, I learned I needed a compelling story and a goal to focus my efforts. Once I grasped the concepts behind business networking, I brought the idea of hosting our own happy hour to my partners. We were nervous we wouldn’t even have the required 35 attendees at our first event to get the free appetizers provided by the bar, but our fears were put to rest when more than 100 people showed up. Clearly we found a group of people needing a way to connect.”

Davis’s other networking efforts include offering introductions between contacts who could benefit from each other’s expertise, blogging, podcasting, sitting on expert panels, mentoring students and volunteering in the design community.

THE RESULTS In 2008 there were zero Google search results for “HPD Architecture,” but by 2011 there were nearly 4,800—a marked improvement in visibility. As an expert resource, the firm is mentioned in everything from blogs to books, and team members participate in speaking engagements at conferences across the country. Adds Davis of their networking efforts: “We’ve learned how to talk to prospective clients and not undervalue our services. It has changed the way we approach business and how we view our firm.” And the new clients are nice, too.

THE TAKEAWAY “Be approachable and open to new opportunities,” Davis advises. “And where there are no obvious opportunities, create your own that are a win-win for everyone around you.” More important, she says, don’t get stuck in “analysis paralysis.” Start now to take the small steps necessary to complete your mission.

“Don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis.”

Sheryl Petrashek
Realtor
RE/MAX Results
Apple Valley, Minn.

THE GOAL Accommodate a 400 percent increase in file workload, generate four times the number of prospects, increase visibility and sales of inventory, while preserving the highest standards of customer service.

With home prices plummeting and sales declining, residential realtor Sheryl Petrashek was forced to react to the sudden shift in the real estate market in late 2007 by finding a new way to do business. “I wanted to preserve my previous income and continue working as a full-time realtor,” Petrashek says. But due to falling home prices, she could no longer maintain her income by selling an average of 25 homes per year or managing just eight to 10 clients at a time. “I needed to sell 30 percent more homes, or about 36 homes per year. It also meant I needed to carry 33 listings simultaneously.”

THE STEPS “My first small step was to allocate an hour a day to work on my business instead of in my business,” Petrashek says. “To stay focused, I silenced my phone and sat in a conference room with only a legal pad and pen. I asked myself a series of questions, including: How do I want my business to look in three years? How do I want my clients’ experience to feel? How can I make that happen? What must I do to delegate and automate the additional workload? I wrote down all the ideas that came to me, no matter how impossible or outrageous they seemed. I discovered, however, my ability to strategically plan for business growth was hampered by doubts about my ability to manage the increased workload.”

So Petrashek’s next move was to begin organizing her business. She created an automated task list, detailing every action necessary for a property listing. Then she evaluated various marketing activities to increase the visibility of her clients’ listings. She also set about getting the extra leads she needed to achieve her goal. Working just one hour per day, she wrote a series of letters targeting homeowners whose houses had previously been on the market but hadn’t sold. During this time, she hired a second administrative assistant and put the “Power Hour” into place for her growing staff.

THE RESULTS The automated task list and series of targeted letters led to a more than 100 percent increase in sales in just 18 months.

THE TAKEAWAY “No idea is wrong, and nothing is impossible,” Petrashek says. “So brainstorm with wild abandon. And be patient. This daily exercise will strengthen over time, slowly and steadily. Commit to one hour a day for at least two weeks and watch your ideas grow.”

“My first small step was to allocate an hour a day to work on my business instead of in my business.”

Jaime Tardy
Owner
Eventual Millionaire
Auburn, Maine

By age 22, Jaime Tardy was earning a six-figure salary. By 24, she was more than $70,000 in debt and dreaded going to work each day. So she quit her corporate gig and started her own company. Today she works as a business coach, helping entrepreneurs employ their talents and resources to create their dream lives. To this end, Tardy has interviewed dozens of business owners who’ve already made their millions, quizzing them for their tips of the trade and posting the audio interviews on her website.

THE GOAL Start a blog to grow nationally, limit her schedule to 20 hours per week and reduce the time spent driving to client meetings. Moving her business online would help achieve that.

THE STEPS “When I first started learning about blogging, I realized it was just one of the many marketing tactics you could use online, but it was one I was willing to invest in since I wanted to build an audience,” Tardy says. “I created a simple blog using WordPress and started to learn the technical side myself. I spoke to a lot of people about blogging, found a mentor in the blogging world and learned a lot. I was told that you should blog for at least six months before you decide if it’s worth it. While that was a huge time commitment, I realized that either way it was great information to have. If it didn’t work, I’d explain what I found to my clients, and if it did work, then I’d continue. Right before the six-month mark, I didn’t feel like it was getting a ton of traction and I was going to give up. But something told me to wait. A week later, CNN contacted me.” Tardy’s been quoted in the press multiple times since.

John C. Maxwell: Connecting With Your Staff

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Last month I talked about the first level of leadership, Position, where you are able to direct people’s work simply because your title says you can. To become an effective leader, though, you must advance to the next level, as I explain in my book The Five Levels of Leadership. Let’s take a closer look at Level 2, Permission.

When a leader learns to function on the Permission level, everything changes. People do more than merely comply with orders. They actually start to follow, because they really want to. Why? Because the leader begins to influence people with relationship, not just position. When people feel liked, cared for, included, valued, and trusted, they begin to work together with their leader and each other. And that can change the entire working environment.

Moving up to Level 2 is an important development in leadership because that is where followers give their supervisors permission to lead them. People change from being subordinates to followers for the first time. Here are some of the upsides of Permission leadership:

Leadership Permission Makes Work More Enjoyable

Leaders who move up to Level 2 develop relationships and win people over with interaction instead of using the power of their position. That shift in attitude makes the workplace become friendlier. People begin to like each other. Chemistry starts to develop on the team. The workplace becomes more enjoyable for everyone—leaders and followers alike.

Leadership Permission Increases the Energy Level

What happens when you spend time with people you don’t especially like or who don’t like you? Doesn’t it drain your energy? Conversely, what happens when you spend time with people you know and like? Doesn’t it give you energy? I know it does me. Spending time with the people I love—whether at work, at home or while playing—is my greatest joy, and it always energizes me.

Leadership Permission Focuses on the Value of Each Person

Nothing lifts a person like being respected and valued by others. As a leader on Level 2, your goals should be to become aware of the uniqueness of people and learn to appreciate their differences. You need to let them know that they matter, that you see them as individual human beings, not just workers. There is a common thread in all great businesses, governments, educational centers and religious institutions. That thread is everyone’s valuing and respecting people. As a leader who moves up to Level 2, you can help to set an example of that for your organization.

Leadership Permission Nurtures Trust

Leaders who move up from Level 1 to Level 2 stop trying to impress others to maintain their position and start developing trust to maintain their relationships. Trust is the foundation of Permission. If you have integrity with people, you develop trust. It’s a building process that takes time, energy and intentionality.

Now let’s look at a few downsides of Level 2 so you can nip problems in the bud and hopefully move on to Level 3 (which we’ll discuss in next month’s column).

Permission leadership appears too soft for some people. It’s been my observation that most people start their leadership focused on either the “hard” aspects of leadership, meaning the productivity side, or on the “soft” aspects, meaning the relational side. Those who start on the hard side and refuse to learn softer skills often get stuck on Level 1. They desire to go to Level 3 Production, but they can’t achieve it without learning and earning Level 2 first.

In contrast, those who start on the soft side easily work their way up to Level 2 Permission, but if they don’t do more than just win relationships, they get stuck and never move up to Level 3, either. It takes both Permission and Production to become a good leader.

Leading by Permission can be frustrating for achievers. High achievers want to get things done and get them done now! Leading by Permission requires them to achieve, of course, but building relationships takes time. It can be very slow work.

Permission leaders can be taken advantage of. People whose leadership style is nonrelational are usually seen as no-nonsense leaders. Positional leaders often use their positions to distance themselves from subordinates. High achievers sometimes intimidate their followers. But when leaders are relational, their followers naturally get closer to them. That sometimes means they get taken advantage of.

Being relational is a risk, just as it is when you open yourself up to falling in love. Sure, you can stay guarded and never get hurt. But you will also never have the chance to have deep, rewarding relationships that will enrich your life and the lives of others.

To develop authentic relationships on the Permission level, leaders need to be authentic. They must admit their mistakes. They must own up to their faults. In other words, they must be the real deal. That is a vulnerable place to be for a leader. And truthfully, it is one of the main reasons many leaders never progress from Level 1 to Level 2 in leadership.

And finally, Permission leadership forces you to deal with the whole person. As a leader, you may be tempted to build relationships only with the people you like or with whom you are highly compatible, and to ignore the others. However, by doing that, you have the potential to lose a lot of people. It’s important to remember that while the things we have in common may make relationships enjoyable, the differences are what really make them interesting. Good leaders on Level 2 deal successfully with these differences and leverage them for the benefit of the team and organization.

Good leaders are able to look at hard truths, see people’s flaws, face reality; and do it in a spirit of grace and truth. They don’t avoid problems; they solve them.

Every person needs to improve and needs someone to come alongside them to help them improve. As a leader, it is your responsibility and your privilege to be the person who helps them get better. That often begins with a candid conversation.

I believe that people can change their attitudes and can improve their abilities. And because I do, I talk to them about where they’re coming up short. If you’re a leader and you want to help people, you need to be willing to have those tough conversations. So how does a leader handle being relational while still trying to move people forward? By balancing care and candor. Care without candor creates dysfunctional relationships. Candor without care creates distant relationships. But care balanced with candor creates developing relationships.

Caring for people, making good decisions for everyone involved, and building solid relationships is what Level 2 is all about. This is Permission at its best.

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Mel Robbins: The Power of Forgiveness

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I can’t believe this. I’m crying. I’m sitting on a JetBlue flight, seat 5B. I’m on my way to Los Angeles to tape a show with Dr. Phil, and I’m crying like a child. I have a pit in my stomach, bubble gum in my mouth and tears rolling down my cheeks.

The reason: Gene Simmons. Yes, Gene Simmons… from KISS. Gene is making me cry.

The gentleman sitting in 5A just leaned over and asked me, “Are you OK?” He is Pastor Tom Crouse from Holland Congregational Church in Holland, Mass. I wipe away the tears and explain to him what I’m about to explain to you.

I had selfishly turned the JetBlue TV to AE to see if commercials for my new television series Monster In-Laws were airing. Instead, I got drawn into another AE reality show: Gene Simmons’ Family Jewels.

At the moment, I’m on my seventh episode. I can’t stop watching.

In case you don’t watch it, allow me to fill you in. Gene Simmons is the guy with the crazy tongue from the rock band KISS. He is now 61 years old, and the show follows his family in their everyday lives. He has a relationship with a former Playboy playmate named Shannon Tweed. They’ve been together for 27 years and have two adult kids, but they are not married.

In the first couple episodes I watched, Shannon and Gene were in a massive breakup because TMZ had run a photo of Gene leaving a hotel, rock-star style, with two young blondes. It seems that for 27 years, Shannon tolerated his rock-star ways. But with the added exposure that this AE show brings and the kids out of the house, she had reached her breaking point and could no longer stay in a relationship and be so disrespected. So she moved out.

I watched as the two kids tried to stay neutral but were clearly pissed off with their dad. Gene moped around the house and went to therapy, and close friends tried to talk some sense into him. He realized how much Shannon meant to him and became determined to win her back. In one episode, their daughter had tricked them into showing up at a jazz club at the same time. It was reality TV gold as Gene approached Shannon, wrapped his arms around her, and she just collapsed in tears. So did I.

I got reminded what it feels like to just love someone for everything they are and everything they aren’t. Through the heartbreak and through the heartfelt moments, we are all just human after all.

Over another few episodes, I watched Gene and Shannon take a trip to Israel because Gene was receiving an award in his hometown. I learned a lot about him along their journey. Gene’s dad abandoned the family when Gene was 7. He hated his father for leaving, and that anger fueled his success; he wanted to prove to the world that he didn’t need a father to be successful.

But the truth was, he was empty. Anger is what we feel when we don’t want to feel the emptiness and pain that’s inside.

What Gene didn’t know is that his dad hadn’t abandoned him; his mother kicked him out and then immigrated to America. His father had started another family. Turns out, Gene has half-brothers and sisters. And Shannon had secretly arranged a surprise meeting in Israel with the siblings Gene had never met.

I cried with Gene as he met his brother and sisters and as they all watched home videos of his father, who looked so much like Gene. And I really lost it when Gene’s new family took him to his father’s grave and read a letter that his father had penned to Gene on his deathbed.

Gene said what we all do when we realize it’s too late: “I was so stupid. I don’t know why I didn’t go see him. I’m so stubborn. I make a rule for myself and then that’s what it is. Because I never want to be wrong.”

We are all just like Gene.

There’s someone in your life that you’ve wronged or who has wronged you. Perhaps, like Gene, you are estranged from a parent, a sibling or a child. Stubbornness keeps you from fixing it. Pride, fear and anger will do that to you. But remember that, like Gene, you may be feeling anger to avoid facing the pain and fear inside.

This is the year you stop it. Stop being so damned stubborn and open yourself up to what you really want: to feel loved and connected again. It doesn’t matter what happened, or who the distance is from. You are capable of fixing it and of feeling connected and loved again. It only takes one of you to take the first step, to admit you were wrong, to forgive the human frailty of someone you love.

That’s how you start your year powerfully.

As for me, I’ve got more TV to watch. After all that’s transpired, Gene has realized that the most important things in his life are not his rock-star ways or always being right. The most important thing is love: He proposed to Shannon and they’ve filmed the wedding for the show. Get out the Kleenexes!

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