The 50 New Rules of Work

-Robin Sharma

1. You are not just paid to work. You are paid to be uncomfortable – and to pursue projects that scare you.
2. Take care of your relationships and the money will take care of itself.
3. Lead you first. You can’t help others reach for their highest potential until you’re in the process of reaching for yours.
4. To double your income, triple your rate of learning.
5. While victims condemn change, leaders grow inspired by change.
6. Small daily improvements over time create stunning results.
7. Surround yourself with people courageous enough to speak truthfully about what’s best for your organization and the customers you serve.
8. Don’t fall in love with your press releases.
9. Every moment in front of a customer is a moment of truth (to either show you live by the values you profess – or you don’t).
10. Copying what your competition is doing just leads to being second best.
11. Become obsessed with the user experience such that every touchpoint of doing business with you leaves people speechless. No, breathless.
12. If you’re in business, you’re in show business. The moment you get to work, you’re on stage. Give us the performance of your life.
13. Be a Master of Your Craft. And practice + practice + practice.
14. Get fit like Madonna.
15. Read magazines you don’t usually read. Talk to people who you don’t usually speak to. Go to places you don’t commonly visit. Disrupt your thinking so it stays fresh + hungry + brilliant.
16. Remember that what makes a great business – in part – are the seemingly insignificant details. Obsess over them.
17. Good enough just isn’t good enough.
18. Brilliant things happen when you go the extra mile for every single customer.
19. An addiction to distraction is the death of creative production. Enough said.
20. If you’re not failing regularly, you’re definitely not making much progress.
21. Lift your teammates up versus tear your teammates down. Anyone can be a critic. What takes guts is to see the best in people.
22. Remember that a critic is a dreamer gone scared.
23. Leadership’s no longer about position. Now, it’s about passion. And having an impact through the genius-level work that you do.
24. The bigger the dream, the more important the team.
25. If you’re not thinking for yourself, you’re following – not leading.
26. Work hard. But build an exceptional family life. What’s the point of reaching the mountaintop but getting there alone.
27. The job of the leader is to develop more leaders.
28. The antidote to deep change is daily learning. Investing in your professional and personal development is the smartest investment you can make. Period.
29. Smile. It makes a difference.
30. Say “please” and “thank you”. It makes a difference.
31. Shift from doing mindless toil to doing valuable work.
32. Remember that a job is only just a job if all you see it as is a job.
33. Don’t do your best work for the applause it generates but for the personal pride it delivers.
34. The only standard worth reaching for is BIW (Best in World).
35. In the new world of business, everyone works in Human Resources.
36. In the new world of business, everyone’s part of the leadership team.
37. Words can inspire. And words can destroy. Choose yours well.
38. You become your excuses.
39. You’ll get your game-changing ideas away from the office versus in the middle of work. Make time for solitude. Creativity needs the space to present itself.
40. The people who gossip about others when they are not around are the people who will gossip about you when you’re not around.
41. It could take you 30 years to build a great reputation and 30 seconds of bad judgment to lose it.
42. The client is always watching.
43. The way you do one thing defines the way you’ll do everything. Every act matters.
44. To be radically optimistic isn’t soft. It’s hard. Crankiness is easy.
45. People want to be inspired to pursue a vision. It’s your job to give it to them.
46. Every visionary was initially called crazy.
47. The purpose of work is to help people. The other rewards are inevitable by-products of this singular focus.
48. Remember that the things that get scheduled are the things that get done.
49. Keep promises and be impeccable with your word. People buy more than just your products and services. They invest in your credibility.
50. Lead Without a Title.

I encourage you to share + discuss + debate these with your team and throughout your organization. Within a quick period of time, you’ll see some fantastic results

What your Twitter Feeds say about you

All you micro bloggers who share links, and pain, with the world, find out what your Twitter feeds say about you

Namrata.Bhawani@timsgroup.com

Twitter may have mercifully reduced the bandwidth for sharing information, but even then it isn’t hard to go from trivia to trivial in 140 characters. Social media gave us the platform to express ourselves and that’s when the dam burst. People have used it as a confessional, fed their narcissistic streak or turned into self-styled Deepak Chopras without his ability to spell.

If you’re a tweetaholic, you’re probably following or being stalked by one of these varieties that grows like fungus on the micro-blogging site. Analyse your tweeting pattern to see if you have inadvertently morphed into a reckless Twitter deviant:

THE CUTIE-PIE FROM HELL Babies are cute, but having said that, all babies look like little blobs and yours is no more precious than the thousands of others. Baby talk, a stream of cute compliments, a show of constant appreciation, etc, show a need to be loved. People pleasers are nice, but it takes a toll on them eventually. Show some spunk and watch the change.

VERBAL VOMIT
Just because a thought is dancing around in your head, doesn’t mean it needs to be unleashed on an unsuspect ing public. Silence really is golden, and brevity really is the soul of wit. People with verbal diarrhoea think fast, act faster, but may not consider the consequences of their actions. The need to share constantly indicates lack of a strong support system or childhood trauma.

GYAAN GURU If you’re prone to recycling clichéd philosophies about life, imagination is not your strong suit. You’re a softie, but prone to laziness — if you’re substituting soul searching for second hand platitudes, you’re probably not about to go out of your way for people. We bet you our month’s salary that your bookshelf is stocked with Paulo Coehlo, Rhonda Bryne’s The Secret and The Monk who Sold his Ferrari for inspiration.

THE GOOD SAMARITAN
When there are blasts or an earthquake, you feel left out if you can’t add to the buzz. Twitter has created a whole new brand of Causerati. But Good Samaritans tend to be a nuisance. The need to save the world shows that you are a giver, but only give when someone asks, you’re not a walking, talking charitable trust. You’re well-meaning and will probably make for a good friend or partner.

SELF-PROMOTER
The self-promoter values his time. It’s about ambitious goals like networking, promoting your own product, blog or website. So much for building a community. Selling yourself is a finely-tuned art, so subtlety is not a bad quality to acquire. People who succeed in their goal in cyberspace usually have wit and charm for support. 

EMOTIONAL GARBAGE
If you’re feeling depressed, nostalgic or just PMSsing, we don’t want to know. If your doodhwala didn’t come this morning and your fridge broke down, we don’t care. If your boyfriend broke up with you, there is probably a good reason for it. People who have public emotional outbursts tend to be dreamers, emotionally fragile, trusting and romantics at heart. Get a positive outlook on life, find a balance between cynicism and blind trust.

THE WANNABE
Stalking celebrities and hoping that they retweet one of your messages, incessant brand mentions, boasting about your sexual escapades are all hints of being a wannabe. Self-esteem and maturity issues are at work here. A desperate vibe is singularly unattractive, and perhaps you may want to examine the image you want to project on a public platform. 

The legend of the Phoenix

The legend of the Phoenix bird comes from ancient history.

It goes that this bird lives for a thousand years. At the end of this period, it starts to make a nest and then, when the thousand years are at its end, it sits down and goes up in flames. Out of the ashes a new phoenix appears to live for another thousand years.

Legend states that it can even change into a human being after 5 cycles.

For me it means that it is possible to renew one self in order to reinvent one self. We have to see the possibilities to rise from the ashes.

When the Phoenix rises from the ashes a new era starts.

My strong belief is that everybody can rise from their ashes and start all over again. We just have to see the possibilities. And the possibilities are there. They are already in all of us.

Each and everyone of us starts their life as a strong human being. We have an indefinite amount of inner strength. But in the course of our lives, life-events occur that break down, bit by bit, this inner strength.

We get uncertain, lose our selfconfidence. People try to thrust themselves upon us through intimidation and sometimes even through agression and violence.

Through the Phoenix example we can see, feel and know that we can be strong again, to see possibilities instead of boundaries.

The Phoenix teaches us to re invent ourselves, experiment and continue until we are supremely happy being what we are.

The Phoenix helps us learn that to fail is normal and expected and natural, but to let the failure stop us from heading towards our goals of being happy is an act of cowardice, inhuman and unacceptable for the supreme species that inhabits this earth.

3 Powerful Skills You Must Have to Succeed in Sales

by Sharon Michaels

A key to successfully sharing and selling a product, service or idea, is to ask questions and then listen quietly and carefully to the answers. Many of us try too hard to “convince” people to buy instead of discovering what our future customer or client really wants, needs and desires from us.

To succeed in sales remember these three listening and relationship building skills:

S – Sincerity – Listen without an agenda, it’s not about your needs.

E – Ethics – It’s not about trying to talk someone into something, its about listening to what they want.

A – Asking – Serve others by asking questions that will assist them in making a wise buying decision.

Building win-win relationships means remembering that it is not about what we want but what the other person wants. Here are three relationship building skills that when used regularly will have you increasing sales and creating satisfied loyal customers.

1. Listening sincerely and without an agenda. The buying process is not about you and your wants and needs, it is about the customer. Too many of us come to the sales table with our own agenda. We are sometimes too busy thinking about quotas, promotions and commissions. It’s not about us; it’s about the wants, needs and expectations of the prospective buyer.

A sales person with an agenda tends to push too hard and often doesn’t listen well. Leave your agenda at home. Sincerely focus on your customer and how your product can best serve their hopes, dreams and goals. Zig Ziglar said it best, “You can have everything in life that you want if you just give enough other people what they want.”

2. Help talk someone into something. Allow them to make their own buying decision. Doing what is right for everyone involved is the ethical thing to do. I’m reminded of a phrase from Dale Carnegie’s book, How To Win Friends and Influence People, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”

Your role in the sales process is to present your product in a clear, concise and truthful manner—with integrity. The best customer is the customer who can make an educated decision based on what is best for them. A loyal customer is an educated customer. You are not in the convincing business; you are in the sharing business. Your job is to ethically offer the product, service or idea, explain the benefits and answer questions. Your customer or client will then make a buying decision based on the information they’ve been given. Making the sale is about asking questions, answering questions and building a trustworthy win-win relationship.

3. You can serve your client/customer best by finding out what they want, need and expect from what you are offering. Sometimes, we are so excited to share everything we know about what we’re offering that we forget it is about your potential customer’s expectations. What is important to you may not be important to them.

I’m reminded of a story: A young mother just starting out with a large network marketing company was excited and eager to share her business with other stay-at-home mothers. She was having coffee with a potential recruit as their children played near by. The young mother was eagerly showing her products and explaining the business potential. She went on and on about how she could stay home with her children and didn’t have to leave the house to conduct business.

The mother who was listening seemed to suddenly turn off her interest and attention. When our eager young network marketing mother asked her friend to join her in the business, the friend replied with a resounding, “No,” The business-building mother was shocked and saddened, “Why?” she asked. “Because,” her friend said, “I want to be able to do something that allows me to get out of the house and socialize with other adults.”

Moral of the story: Ask questions and listen. Don’t assume that what is important to you is important to your future customers.

Successful selling isn’t about what you want, it is about how can you best serve the needs of your customers and clients. Coming from a sincere place of service, will help increase sales and develop loyal client and referral base.

Keeping the three elements of SEA (Sincerity, Ethics, Asking) in mind, you can easily and effortlessly find new customers and clients who will want to do business with you now and in the future. Selling your service, product or idea is about doing the right thing for everyone involved – it is about building win-win relationships.

Key Concepts about Priorities

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• Think carefully about what priorities mean to you… about how you decide what is really important. Remember, you will never have time for everything, but you will have time for most important thing.

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• 80-20 rule: Eighty percent of the value comes from 20 percent of the items. While only 20 percent of the value comes from 80 percent of the items. Learn to concentrate on your high value 20 percent and master them.

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• Most people start with the quick, easy, enjoyable things first. Instead, start with the important things first.

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• Just because something is urgent, doesn't mean it’s important. Important activities are those which help you achieve your goals.

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• Learn to distinguish between important and urgent.

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• Don’t allow trivial thing to crowd out the important things.

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• Don’t always do someone else’s requests at the expense of your own top priority tasks. Learn when to say no. Do it logically, firmly and tactfully.

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• Constantly switching priorities often results from failure to establish priorities properly in the first place. The best way to set priorities is on the basis of importance.

•

• Don’t constantly switch priorities just because people make loud demands. Be very careful about which squeaky wheels get greased.

Key Concepts about Priorities

•

• Think carefully about what priorities mean to you… about how you decide what is really important. Remember, you will never have time for everything, but you will have time for most important thing.

•

• 80-20 rule: Eighty percent of the value comes from 20 percent of the items. While only 20 percent of the value comes from 80 percent of the items. Learn to concentrate on your high value 20 percent and master them.

•

• Most people start with the quick, easy, enjoyable things first. Instead, start with the important things first.

•

• Just because something is urgent, doesn't mean it’s important. Important activities are those which help you achieve your goals.

•

• Learn to distinguish between important and urgent.

•

• Don’t allow trivial thing to crowd out the important things.

•

• Don’t always do someone else’s requests at the expense of your own top priority tasks. Learn when to say no. Do it logically, firmly and tactfully.

•

• Constantly switching priorities often results from failure to establish priorities properly in the first place. The best way to set priorities is on the basis of importance.

•

• Don’t constantly switch priorities just because people make loud demands. Be very careful about which squeaky wheels get greased.

Key Concepts about Goals

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• Determine your long range goals. Make sure you are aiming at what you really want.

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• Be sure to set SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed

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• Don’t try to keep your goals in your head, write them down

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• Read your long range goals at least once every day. You will find it easier to sort out all the trivia that comes your way.

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• You need short range goals to know what to do today. You need long range goals to add continuity and meaning to all your short range goals.

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• Consider projects carefully. Make sure they will move you toward your goals. Identify the critical steps, when they should be done and who should do them.

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• Set deadlines for all your projects. Estimate the time needed and determine the logical starting time to avoid last-minute rush jobs.

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• Focus on your goals at all times. “Will what I am doing right now help me achieve my goals?” if the answer is “no”, then switch to something else that will help.

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• Be sure that you have at least one significant goal every day. Don’t quit until you reach your daily goals. Before long you will develop the habit of setting goals and reaching them.

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• Write out long range personal goals. Strive to balance your time across all aspects of your life.

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• When conditions change, you may need to modify your goals. And, as you achieve your goals be sure to set new ones.

Key Concepts about Attitudes

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• You never seem to have enough time yet you have all the time there is. The problem is not the shortage of time but how you choose the time that is available.

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• Time management is really self-management.

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• Chinese Proverb: Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life lies in eliminating the non-essentials.

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• Earl Nightingale: “Habits are the key to success. Successful people form the habit of doing the things that others don’t like to do.”

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• Zig Ziglar:”When you choose a habit, you also choose the results of that habit.”

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• It is not enough to know, you must also act. Knowledge without action is impotent.

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• Most of us only change when we are forced to do so. Force can be either external or internal.

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• The key to will-power is want-power. If you want something strongly enough, you will usually find the discipline necessary to do it.

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• Self-discipline is simply doing what you know you should do, regardless of whether or not you feel like doing it

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• Self-discipline is easier if you stop thinking about it, and simply do it

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• Press on. Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence

•

• Henry Ford: “Whether you think you can, or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.

The Law of Compensation

By: Brian Tracy

You Get What You Give
Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay, "Compensation," wrote that each person is compensated in like manner for that which he or she has contributed. The Law of Compensation is another restatement of the Law of Sowing and Reaping. It says that you will always be compensated for your efforts and for your contribution, whatever it is, however much or however little.

Increase Your Value
This Law of Compensation also says that you can never be compensated in the long term for more than you put in. The income you earn today is your compensation for what you have done in the past. If you want to increase your compensation, you must increase the value of your contribution.

Fill Your Mind With Success
Your mental attitude, your feelings of happiness and satisfaction, are also the result of the things that you have put into your own mind. If you fill your own mind with thoughts, visions and ideas of success, happiness and optimism, you will be compensated by those positive experiences in your daily activities.

Do More Than You're Paid For
Another corollary of the Law of Sowing and Reaping is what is sometimes called the, "Law of Overcompensation." This law says that great success comes from those who always make it a habit to put in more than they take out. They do more than they are paid for. They are always looking for opportunities to exceed expectations. And because they are always overcompensating, they are always being over rewarded with the esteem of their employers and customers and with the financial rewards that go along with their personal success.

Provide the Causes, Enjoy The Effects
One of your main responsibilities in life is to align yourself and your activities with Law of Cause and Effect (and its corollaries), accepting that it is an inexorable law that always works, whether anyone is looking or not. Your job is to institute the causes that are consistent with the effects that you want to enjoy in your life. When you do, you will realize and enjoy the rewards you desire.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, remind yourself regularly that your rewards will always be in direct proportion to your service to others. How could you increase the value of your services to your customers today?

Second, look for ways to go the extra mile, to use the Law of Overcompensation in everything you do. This is the great secret of success

The Law of Compensation

By: Brian Tracy

You Get What You Give
Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay, "Compensation," wrote that each person is compensated in like manner for that which he or she has contributed. The Law of Compensation is another restatement of the Law of Sowing and Reaping. It says that you will always be compensated for your efforts and for your contribution, whatever it is, however much or however little.

Increase Your Value
This Law of Compensation also says that you can never be compensated in the long term for more than you put in. The income you earn today is your compensation for what you have done in the past. If you want to increase your compensation, you must increase the value of your contribution.

Fill Your Mind With Success
Your mental attitude, your feelings of happiness and satisfaction, are also the result of the things that you have put into your own mind. If you fill your own mind with thoughts, visions and ideas of success, happiness and optimism, you will be compensated by those positive experiences in your daily activities.

Do More Than You're Paid For
Another corollary of the Law of Sowing and Reaping is what is sometimes called the, "Law of Overcompensation." This law says that great success comes from those who always make it a habit to put in more than they take out. They do more than they are paid for. They are always looking for opportunities to exceed expectations. And because they are always overcompensating, they are always being over rewarded with the esteem of their employers and customers and with the financial rewards that go along with their personal success.

Provide the Causes, Enjoy The Effects
One of your main responsibilities in life is to align yourself and your activities with Law of Cause and Effect (and its corollaries), accepting that it is an inexorable law that always works, whether anyone is looking or not. Your job is to institute the causes that are consistent with the effects that you want to enjoy in your life. When you do, you will realize and enjoy the rewards you desire.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, remind yourself regularly that your rewards will always be in direct proportion to your service to others. How could you increase the value of your services to your customers today?

Second, look for ways to go the extra mile, to use the Law of Overcompensation in everything you do. This is the great secret of success

36 Random Insights On Exceptionalism -Robin Sharma

1. Average people are dedicated to leisure. The best people are devoted to learning.

2. The ordinary wait for the energy to do a task. The exceptional do the task because that’s how they get the energy.

3. A job is just a job if all you see it as is a job. (Work is a vehicle to promote Full Self Expression of Your Creativity+Ingenuity+Talent).

4. The most precious asset of a businessperson isn’t time. It’s energy. Manage yours well.

5. Love your family. What’s the point of getting to uber-Success yet arriving alone?

6. From a participant at my recent Lead Without a Title event in Doha, Qatar: “The true measure of the greatness of a person is the length their shadow casts on the future.” Love it! Genius.

7. Manners matter.

8. If you’re in business, you’re in show business. And every day’s a performance.

9. “Be yourself, everyone else is taken.” Oscar Wilde.

10. To double your income, triple your rate of learning. The best invest in their professional and personal development.

11. The primary purpose of business is the delivery of as much unusual value to as many people as possible.

12. Use music to boost your motivation.

13. Be ethical like Buffett. Rock the house like Bono. Innovate like Edison. Serve like Mandela.

14. You dishonor yourself when you play small with your talent.

15. Ideation without execution leads to delusion. What makes Google Google is not the idea behind Google but the culture of execution that is Google.

16. Don’t work at world-class for the money or the ovations. Do it for the pride you feel on a job brilliantly done.

17. Keep a journal.

18. Spend time in solitude. The only person you’ll be with your whole life is you. Why not get to know-and like-yourself?

19. Watch “The Fighter”.

20. Work hard. Industry stands at the foundation of Mastery.

21. Remember that the quality of your practice determines the caliber of the performance.

22. Speak your truth-even when your voice shakes.

23. Leaders leave a trail of leaders behind them. If you’re not developing the best in others, you’re not leading.

24. You know you’re doing genius-level work when people start to dislike you.

25. Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to Mastery.

26. Develop your friendships. Respect your elders.

27. Make time to have fun. Life is short-enjoy the ride.

28. The bigger your dream, the more important your team.

29. If you have average people, you’ll have an average company. To have a great company, hire and coach great people.

30. Remember that your doubts are nothing more than the lies your fears have sold you.

31. Leadership is simple. It’s not easy. But it’s really really simple.

32. Leadership’s mostly about 3 things: Impact+Influence+Inspiration.

33. If you’re not inspiring those around you, you’re not Leading. You’re following.

34. Think for yourself.

35. “Potential unexpressed turns to pain.” From “The Leader Who Had No Title“.

36. Take brave risks. At your End, it’ll be the risks you didn’t take versus the ones you did that most fill you with regret.

SMILE !

Ron Gutman reviews a raft of studies about smiling, and reveals some surprising results. Did you know your smile can be a predictor of how long you'll live -- and that a simple smile has a measurable effect on your overall well-being? Prepare to flex a few facial muscles as you learn more about this evolutionarily contagious behavior.

How to Create a New You

The human body can be a source of the miraculous....

Yet you and I find ourselves with bodies that wear out, age, grow sick, and disappoint our highest aspirations for freedom and creativity. Clearly, the body needs to be reinvented...

I offer five breakthrough ideas that can completely alter how you see your body and what you do with it.

Breakthrough1 — Your Physical Body is an Illusion;

Breakthrough 2 — Your Real Body Is Energy;

Breakthrough 3 — Awareness Has magic;

Breakthrough 4 — You Can Improve Your Genes;

Breakthrough 5 — Time Isn't Your enemy.

Each of these breakthroughs overturns an outmoded belief that turns into a physical limitation. If you think of your body as a physical object, you will cooperate with aging, because what is aging but a physical object wearing out.

If you believe that time is your enemy, aging has gained another ally.

If you accept that your genes are fixed, they take away your freedom to change.

What these five breakthroughs have in common is this: you can change your body through consciousness, because despite its physical appearance, your body is the product of consciousness to begin with. There is no difference between a thought and a molecule in the brain. Each intention sends signals to every cell in the body, causing the cell to change. Therefore, the most natural way to achieve change is through the power of intention.

DEEPAK CHOPRA