5 Strange Ways a WordPress Site Will Get You More Customers
By Rachel Young
Alright, let's be honest. You weren't expecting a silly blog site like WordPress to drive more traffic to your site, were you? You certanly weren't expecting anything that's FREE to get you more business, right? Surprise! WordPress can do all of that AND MORE! Here are the 5 Strange Ways WordPress Can Get You More Customers:
#5. Go Viral - Ever have a site so strange or out there that people can't help talking about it? Something that is so far outside your comfort zone that you smile and almost apologize when people see it - but that makes you a CRAPLOAD of sales?
NO? I have. This very site use to be black and neon pink. The header was of a half-naked woman (her lower torso) and the phrase "Marketing for Men with the B*lls to Get Rich" (the site targeted male business owners specifically). Keep in mind I'm a woman. Having ANYTHING half-naked on my site was outside my comfort zone.
But guess what happened? First of all, the site went totally viral. I mean that I didn't have to pay one red cent for marketing and had a waiting list over 6 months long.
Secondly, and I didn't see this coming, most of the people who contacted me to have marketing material one were WOMEN. Turns out, women felt that I was poking fun at men. Men felt like I was talking on a level they understood. Between the two, I made more money in 6 months than I'd made my entire copywriting career beforehand.
Going viral was the best way I coulda gotten the word out about my marketing services. But trends change and in order to remain on top, I gotta change too (and so should you). Which leads me to point #4...
#4: Being Flexible - One of the great things about WordPress is that you can switch, change, and customize your skin/theme on the site to suit whatever's hot at that second - without having to change the words or usability of your site. That's why I work as fast as I do - trends can disappear like a fart in the wind (weren't expecting me to write that, huh?) and if you want to remain on the cutting edge, you have to work quickly too.
Granted, no one's gonna go to your site and say, "Well, I was going to buy their widget, but they're using fall colors and its almost summer" or whatever. If they're that picky, did you really want them as customers to begin with? (I'll help you with the easy questions) Um, NO. But by being willing (and able) to change the look and feel of your site almost overnight, you're assured a top spot in your particular niche (and that's a great position to be in!)
#3: Get Searchable! - I've told you before that WordPress makes it easier to get ranked in the search engines like Google and Bing. Wanna know why? (Doesn't matter cause I'm gonna tell you anyway.) Here's the thing: the search engines send out these "robots" and "spiders" (their names, not mine) that "crawl" through your website, looking for ideas to what your site is about, and then they file that information away in their databases.
When someone types in a certain keyword (like "dog grooming"), the database instantly pulls up a list of sites they've "crawled" that have to do with "dog grooming" (some VERY relevant to the topic, some miss the mark entirely).
But here's the key...Most sites that are put on the ol' World Wide Web don't "DO" anything. They have a home page that's been the same since 2007 and nothing on the site is ever updated. So the robots and spiders crawl the site, get the gist of the topic, and MAYBE come back every 6 months or so to make sure that's what's still going on...and most of the time, the site looks exactly the same.
WordPress is totally different. You can update your home page on the fly, create a new blog post, add a new page...and it keeps those spiders coming back a LOT more often (I've trained mine to come back every other day)!
This translates into their database thinking, "Wow. These guys are happening! This is a site that is constantly updated, so the material stays relevant and fresh! We gotta come back more often to make sure we stay on top of what they've got going on!" The result? Your page gets ranked higher for the words you use most often on your site. You get ranked more often (ever see a search that has multiple results for the same website? Like that.)
Bottom line, it's a VERY good thing indeed.
#2: Look like a genius - Quick, it's the night before a major holiday. You just thought of a KILLER promotion that'll tie into exactly what's going on the next day. Do you have time to contact your webmaster and communicate to them exactly what you want done, wait 3 days for them to get to it (they were on vacation, don'tcha know) and by then the opportunity has passed.
OR
Would you rather be able to hop onto your WordPress site, make the updates yourself, and the following day be able to roll out a brand new promotion that looks like you'd prepared for it all year? DUH! (Ok, help with the easy questions again) OF COURSE YOU WANNA DO WITHOUT the EVER-VACATIONING WEBGUY!
Don't get me wrong. There are certain things you really want someone else to do (that whole fear-of-breaking-something-you-don't-know-how-to-fix...that's what I'm here for.) But there's a BOATLOAD of changes and alterations you already know how to do (or a quick tutorial would show you how to do) to add pages or make changes on the fly!
And that leads us to the #1 Strange Way Your WordPress Site Will Get You More Customers (is that a drumroll in the background?
#1: Become a Social Gathering Place! Whuh?
Look, not ONLY can you have Twitter updates and comments on your blog all over your Wordpress site (in appropriate places, mind you)...but its CAKE EASY to add a forum where your readers can get into discussions (HELLO! It doesn't necessarily involve you writing anything!) about relevant topics that they can even create themselves!
How does this translate into more customers or even sales? It's a fact that the longer someone stays on your site, the more likely they are to buy. You're building a relationship with them through the words, pictures, videos, whatever on your site.
Get em to keep coming back because they want to see the latest comment, update, or question posted on a forum, Tweet, or blog posting and you're golden, my friend!
So what are you waiting for? This is only a SNAPSHOT of what your site is capable of! Head over to Big Cheese Marketing dot com right this second (while it's still fresh in your mind) and let's get the ball rolling!
To read more about creating a custom site that puts YOU back in the drivers seat AND gets you more traffic (and sales), check out Rachel?s site about all things WordPress at http://www.bigcheesemarketing.com.
To your marketing success,
Rachel Young
Big Cheese Marketing
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rachel_Young
http://EzineArticles.com/?5-Strange-Ways-a-WordPress-Site-Will-Get-You-More-Customers&id=4028908
วันพฤหัสบดีที่ 26 ธันวาคม พ.ศ. 2556
The Magic of the Universe and Your Thoughts - Making Us One - Quantum Physics and You
The Magic of the Universe and Your Thoughts - Making Us One - Quantum Physics and You
By C. Manuel Grace
Sir Isaac Newton thought nature-as-machine which details the price laws that govern how that machine operates. Science thought the universe as empty, three-dimensional space, through which physical objects move according to immutable laws. We learn from these laws which brought us modern technology from steam engines to space probes.
We had to go deep into the heart of the atom when it was discovered in 1890. The world within the atomic nucleus, coined in ancient Greece, the term atom means "indivisible unit." We discovered Radioactivity, and it showed how the atom was divisible. Everything is energy. We all know this term: E=mc2; is energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.
We found that energy and matter is related that it can be transformed backed and forth into each other. We use a study called Quantum Physics as the study on how the world works on the smallest scales at a level far smaller than the atom. There are distinct elusive little packets of energy which physicists called quanta.
Everything is energy, whether it is rock, a planet, glass of water, and everything touchable, taste or smell. All things are made of molecules, which are made of atoms, combined with protons and electrons and neutrons which create this vibrating packet of energy.
Sir Isaac Newton thought nature-as-machine which details the price laws that govern how that machine operates. Science thought the universe as empty, three-dimensional space, through which physical objects move according to immutable laws. We learn from these laws which brought us modern technology from steam engines to space probes.
If you build a vision board, putting pictures of what you want on it then the boundaries between the physical world and the world of our thoughts start to disappear as well. Your thoughts travel to the universe, for there is no absolute distinction between matter and energy. These little packets of energy has the unknowable way in influencing one another with a property called entanglement
We came across the unified field theory, or a "theory of everything," if known you know the mind of God.
The fact is thought influences matter which becomes tiny packets of possibility. When we try to record information about the location of a proton you cannot pin down its speed or trajectory; figuring out its speed prevents you from getting the precise location. We now know that physical matter is not anything yet. With this new understanding reality is not solid substance but a field of potentiality. When we have ideas or sketches of an object yet waiting to be materialized when we finish the product in production, and we measure its properties it would soon dematerialize when measure or observed. This act influences the particles behavior.
The Laws of Attraction
The quantum universe has no accidents, no coincidences; every particle and every action is accounted for. The laws are exacting. The laws that govern the movements of subatomic particles and solar systems also govern our thoughts and feelings, families, and careers.
Quantum Physics
Two worlds: the seen and the unseen. The key is originated in the unseen world, for the unseen world is powerful than the seen world. It is the immense, hidden portion of the ice berg that most of us are unaware of 99 percent of the time, while the tangible, material world we think of as "real" is only the minuscule tip that just above the surface of our conscious awareness. What bumps us down is what we do not see.
Everything starts as an idea. This is how the universe works with your idea. Everything in the physical world is made out of atoms. Atoms are made out of energy. Energy is made out of our consciousness. Everything in nature, every phenomenon in the universe, starts as an idea. We create from the nonphysical level, turning that which we can not see into that which we can.
Newton used the principle of cause and effect as it operates in the physical, mechanical world as the basis of his law of thermodynamics. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Newton did not understand that matter, energy, and consciousness are not distinct and separate domains, but are all simply different frequencies along the same continuum.
We now know that the principle of cause and effect applies not simply to the mechanics of matter but to the mechanics of everything including our thoughts, every thought you form broadcasts a distinct and particular frequency, and that frequency elicits a response from the quantum universe as surely as a swinging hammer has on the surface it strikes. In the east karma, in the west The Golden Rule: The core of principle is this you are at cause in your life and in your business. You can not blame others for your situation or circumstance. With the opposite side of any situation, you have more opportunity to create the events and circumstance in your life than you have ever imaged possible.
With the Principle of Resonance, it says that energy in a specific pattern or frequency will resonate with every other form of energy in a similar pattern. The Law of attraction is simply the action of resonance together with cause and effect. Thoughts create events and circumstances that have the same pattern, and are thus resonant with those thoughts.
To create your successful situation, you need to start with the part nobody else sees, the hidden part of the iceberg. The seed of you company is the vision. There is a gestation period. It has a law. Here is the Law of Gestation. It declares that for every seed, there is a set gestation or incubation period, a specific span of time that particular seed needs to establish itself before it can unfold from blue print into fully realized physical form. There is a zero-point field, the quantum vacuum, which is all knowing; all powerful, and all capable.
The Guard Fallacy
Fact: here is how much control our conscious functions exert over what we actually do: ten quadrillion reaction per second. Your conscious brain loses focus every six to ten seconds. Your unconscious brain never loses focus. A new finding on the brain for neuroscience is the observation that we are making new brain cells and new connections all the time. The process of neurogensis does not stop with adolescence but continues throughout the human life span. Whatever your age, your brain is perfectly capable of creating entirely new pathways. Your conscious brain loses focus every 6 to 10 seconds. Your unconscious brain never loses focus. The process of neurogensis does not stop with adolescence but continues throughout the human life span. Whatever your age, your brain is perfectly capable of creating entirely new pathways.
Neurogenesis: the process of cell division that creates new brain cells continues throughout our lives. Neuroplasticity is a neuron of a certain type is called a mirror neuron. They help us mimic the behavior that is around us. You can change your brain the way you want. We are structured so that we can grow our creativity, intelligence, and capacity for achievement throughout our lives.
Reticular Activating System (RAS) that all-important, life-shaping decision is made moment to moment, all the time, day or night, awake or asleep, by a part of your brain called (RAS). It is the scientific term for a network of nerve pathways at the base of your brain that connects the spiral cord, cerebellum, and cerebrum and acts as a filter for all the sensory input your brain draws from your external world. (Reticulum, from Latin for "little net," simply means a net like structure. A new finding on the brain for neuroscience is the observation that we are making new brain cells and new connections all the time.
You Get What You Are Looking For
How do you program your (RAS) with what you do not want? Focusing on it, and create a habit of thought around that thing. Through neural reconditioning, you can train your (RAS) to direct its amazing capacity to focus on what you do want, not what you do not want--on the solution, not the problem. The neck turns the head-brain. You can be the neck that turns your unconscious brain and points it in whatever direction you want. Our autopilot called the psycho cybernetic mechanism. Cybernetic refers to a control and response mechanism in organisms and some machines. The Thermostat in your brain is the natural self-corrective process dubbed the psycho cybernetic mechanism. This was termed by Maxwell Maltz a plastic surgeon.
Taping the Power of the Quantum Universe
You can change your brain the way you want. We are structured that we can grow our creativity, intelligence, and capacity for achievement throughout our lives. Remember this please. Let us tap the power of the quantum universe. The unconscious mind is like the dog that wags the tail. Your conscious mind is where you design your new beliefs--but it is not where you hold these beliefs.
First use your conscious facilities, choose the thoughts you want to have as your beliefs. They systematically impress these thoughts on the unconscious part of your brain.
With our conscious mind using will and imagination, pluck an idea out of the Quantum Universe and see the possibilities. We choose what we think. We must take these conscious thoughts and bring them into impeccable clarity, and deliver them to our unconscious facilities.
Setting goals is a conscious exercise; achieving goals is a spiritual and unconscious exercise. To succeed we need to become expert in using both parts of our brain. Most of us never have been taught how to do this. First; use your conscious abilities, such as imagination, intuition, reasoning, and the rest--to craft a crystal clear (vision), picture of your dream business: the perfect seed.
Second: Plant the seed in the unconscious mind, making it a habit of thought--a belief. Once you do that, no force in the world can stop it from happening. Discover those areas where you are strong, those areas where you have keen intelligence, and focus on those. Discover what it is you are uniquely gifted to be and to do, then build your business and your life in ways that take maximum advantage of those aspects of yourself. That is when goals come easily.
Take the gifts you have and make those your pillars. Then find other people who have other intelligence, other gifts, and help them become your allies. Make it your goal to share your gifts with the world. You must create a vision for your business. Here is how it is done. Create your Business Vision.
1. Put it in the present tense. "My business is going to be good for people and people will appreciate it...to give them an alternative approach to medicine.
2. Make it visual and emotional so it will attract what you need to manifest it as a physical reality.
3. Knock it out of the park!
Here are the three roles of the unconscious brain: 1. It runs your personal biochemical operating system; 2. It runs your programmable software: your habits, routines, attitudes; 3. It connects you with the Quantum field of infinite intelligence.
Our brain is an electromagnetic switching station, and it connects to the seen and unseen world. Great ideas and invention have come from our state of light sleep into our unconscious brain. Your unconscious brain has access to all knowledge. No matter what the problem, challenge, or need, it knows where to feed the problem, challenge, or need.
The Success Code:
1. Find something you have a passion for accomplishing.
2. Become excellent at it.
3. Recondition your mind to be here. You can have it and achieve it.
4. You must understand how to make money at it.
5. You must take daily action.
Affirmations are very important. Whenever there is a conflict between consciousness and unconscious, the unconscious will always win. Your present beliefs determine your outlook. If you are broke, then your belief is, "I am broke: That is how and who I am." You will say, "I do not deserve to have a lot of money."
Step 1: The fact is you are in the drivers', seat; your life is your creation and principle tool you have used to create it your beliefs. If you want to change things, and then decide what beliefs you want to have. Your conscious brain puts things in logical, linear sequences. It has to: It can not focus on more than one or two things at a time.
Step 2: Your unconscious can focus on a million things at once. It does not need to think, first this, then that, then eventually....We can not create large, successful businesses all by ourselves; none of us can.
Step 3: Create emotional Anchors for Neural Linking. Neural linking uses emotional association to deepen the impact of any belief or affirmation you choose. You accomplish this by linking that new belief with powerful feelings that already exist in association with some other memory. Neural Linking happens all the time. Your habits on what you put on first, brushing your teeth in the morning.
Step 4: Prepare your Neural Imprinting Material. The most common example of imprinting materials are:
a) Written statements
b) Audio recording, be creative
c) Subliminal media
d) Picture and vision boards or dream boards
Step 5: Your Neural Reconditioning routine
Keep in step same time of day each day for your heart rhythms. A routine practiced five days in a row at the same time every day has a far greater impact on your developing abilities than a routine practiced five days in a row at widely different times. The best time is when a little tired and not too focused. That half-awake/half-asleep state when you do not have your conscious filters fully in place is the moment when your unconscious is most accessible. The ideal time is first thing upon rising in the morning, and last thing before going to sleep at night. Lunch break is a good time.
Meditation
Meditation is the foundation of the neural reconditioning process, the ground upon which you build the structures of new beliefs, goals, and aspirations in your unconscious brain. We will look at the different types of Brain Waves. Which brain waves would you like to be in most of the time?
Brain Waves
Alpha (8-14 Hz): These brain waves are associated with relaxation, deep learning, relaxed focus light trances, bring on a mental sleep or waking drowsiness, producing higher intuitive factors, meditation, and the beginning of access to the unconscious mind. Access to the quantum field begins with Alpha brain waves.
Theta 4-7Hz): Dreaming state (vital for learning and memory) increased creativity and ability to tap into universal intelligence, integrative emotional experiences, potential changes in behavior and increased retention of learned material. There are high levels of access to the quantum field that is available through theta brain waves.
Delta (0.1-4Hz): Slow, very long brain waves associated with dreamless sleep, and the release of human growth hormone (HGH). Trained workers can access this level of the quantum field in an awakened state.
Beta: High (15-18 Hz); Low (12-15Hz) When you are awake and active, thinking, social and in a normal state in life and at work.
Compare these four common levels of brain waves to the four gears of an automobile, with beta being first gear, alpha second, theta third, and delta fourth. Most of us function in the beta range all day long. Beta would not take you very far, once the initial information is figured out, you want to drop back into second gear. As you shift gears there is less stress on the engine of your life. You move faster and your engine heart rate (slows down). You have less wear and tear as you shift gears. Less frustration and anger, less depression and anxiety--and you are getting more accomplished.
Gear Shift Your Brain
Meditation must be practiced: concentration on breathing is important. Start for six minutes, then fifteen minutes, then thirty minutes. Yes, your mind will wonder, but then bring it back. Meditation is a powerful ground work for neural reconditioning. You are developing your ability to access and stay loaded onto your goals like a laser-- and when you do, you open the possibility for the quantum field to respond, resonate, and supply all those elements you need for the fulfillment of the goals. You will exercise the Law of Attraction. Note: the average human being loses focus every six to ten seconds through meditation. Mastering meditation will result in your world to slow down giving you more time to accomplish your goals.
You can start to reprogram your brain at any age. You are building new neural connections (plasticity. You are keeping your brain alive and vital. Now phrase your goals and vision in positive terms. You can use the terms debt-free, alcohol free, or drug free. The associations we have in our minds are already clear on what debt-free means. We subconsciously emphasize the free, so it does not seem to cause us to go in the opposite direction such as toward debt, alcohol or drugs.
Any new material introduced will set up a conflict of interest bring on habitual beliefs for your psycho cybernetic mechanism will be enforced. You may get a detox type reaction to this process. You are forcing the brain to move into a higher order of functioning which shows up as you usually release chemicals that reflect that. You need to apply it, put it into action, and put it into action in such a way that it gets into your unconscious brain.
Create a dream board for vision, focus and action. Define those targets and the ground needed to get you there is termed Gap Analysis. Use a Revenue Plan. It is a description of the formula that takes a business from one side of the gap to the other.
Try to create precisely the right circumstance, and then you will automatically generate the right result. The law of compensation describes those specific circumstances. Compensation occurs when enough people want what you offer. Here are the conditions for the Law to work.
1. There must be a strong need and/or desire in the market place for your product or service.
2. Your offering must be outstanding.
3. You or your team must have the ability to market and sell your offering.
Apply the Law of Magnetism in your life. The vibrations of the whole world pass through your body. Be calm at all times to protect you from negative vibrations. If you read quality books, think quality thoughts, and surround your self with high spiritual beings, and saints, your magnetism will be strengthen, and your attraction will pull you in the right situation in life. These are the ideas of the Ancients and the Great Law.
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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=C._Manuel_Grace
http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Magic-of-the-Universe-and-Your-Thoughts---Making-Us-One---Quantum-Physics-and-You&id=3363671
By C. Manuel Grace
Sir Isaac Newton thought nature-as-machine which details the price laws that govern how that machine operates. Science thought the universe as empty, three-dimensional space, through which physical objects move according to immutable laws. We learn from these laws which brought us modern technology from steam engines to space probes.
We had to go deep into the heart of the atom when it was discovered in 1890. The world within the atomic nucleus, coined in ancient Greece, the term atom means "indivisible unit." We discovered Radioactivity, and it showed how the atom was divisible. Everything is energy. We all know this term: E=mc2; is energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.
We found that energy and matter is related that it can be transformed backed and forth into each other. We use a study called Quantum Physics as the study on how the world works on the smallest scales at a level far smaller than the atom. There are distinct elusive little packets of energy which physicists called quanta.
Everything is energy, whether it is rock, a planet, glass of water, and everything touchable, taste or smell. All things are made of molecules, which are made of atoms, combined with protons and electrons and neutrons which create this vibrating packet of energy.
Sir Isaac Newton thought nature-as-machine which details the price laws that govern how that machine operates. Science thought the universe as empty, three-dimensional space, through which physical objects move according to immutable laws. We learn from these laws which brought us modern technology from steam engines to space probes.
If you build a vision board, putting pictures of what you want on it then the boundaries between the physical world and the world of our thoughts start to disappear as well. Your thoughts travel to the universe, for there is no absolute distinction between matter and energy. These little packets of energy has the unknowable way in influencing one another with a property called entanglement
We came across the unified field theory, or a "theory of everything," if known you know the mind of God.
The fact is thought influences matter which becomes tiny packets of possibility. When we try to record information about the location of a proton you cannot pin down its speed or trajectory; figuring out its speed prevents you from getting the precise location. We now know that physical matter is not anything yet. With this new understanding reality is not solid substance but a field of potentiality. When we have ideas or sketches of an object yet waiting to be materialized when we finish the product in production, and we measure its properties it would soon dematerialize when measure or observed. This act influences the particles behavior.
The Laws of Attraction
The quantum universe has no accidents, no coincidences; every particle and every action is accounted for. The laws are exacting. The laws that govern the movements of subatomic particles and solar systems also govern our thoughts and feelings, families, and careers.
Quantum Physics
Two worlds: the seen and the unseen. The key is originated in the unseen world, for the unseen world is powerful than the seen world. It is the immense, hidden portion of the ice berg that most of us are unaware of 99 percent of the time, while the tangible, material world we think of as "real" is only the minuscule tip that just above the surface of our conscious awareness. What bumps us down is what we do not see.
Everything starts as an idea. This is how the universe works with your idea. Everything in the physical world is made out of atoms. Atoms are made out of energy. Energy is made out of our consciousness. Everything in nature, every phenomenon in the universe, starts as an idea. We create from the nonphysical level, turning that which we can not see into that which we can.
Newton used the principle of cause and effect as it operates in the physical, mechanical world as the basis of his law of thermodynamics. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Newton did not understand that matter, energy, and consciousness are not distinct and separate domains, but are all simply different frequencies along the same continuum.
We now know that the principle of cause and effect applies not simply to the mechanics of matter but to the mechanics of everything including our thoughts, every thought you form broadcasts a distinct and particular frequency, and that frequency elicits a response from the quantum universe as surely as a swinging hammer has on the surface it strikes. In the east karma, in the west The Golden Rule: The core of principle is this you are at cause in your life and in your business. You can not blame others for your situation or circumstance. With the opposite side of any situation, you have more opportunity to create the events and circumstance in your life than you have ever imaged possible.
With the Principle of Resonance, it says that energy in a specific pattern or frequency will resonate with every other form of energy in a similar pattern. The Law of attraction is simply the action of resonance together with cause and effect. Thoughts create events and circumstances that have the same pattern, and are thus resonant with those thoughts.
To create your successful situation, you need to start with the part nobody else sees, the hidden part of the iceberg. The seed of you company is the vision. There is a gestation period. It has a law. Here is the Law of Gestation. It declares that for every seed, there is a set gestation or incubation period, a specific span of time that particular seed needs to establish itself before it can unfold from blue print into fully realized physical form. There is a zero-point field, the quantum vacuum, which is all knowing; all powerful, and all capable.
The Guard Fallacy
Fact: here is how much control our conscious functions exert over what we actually do: ten quadrillion reaction per second. Your conscious brain loses focus every six to ten seconds. Your unconscious brain never loses focus. A new finding on the brain for neuroscience is the observation that we are making new brain cells and new connections all the time. The process of neurogensis does not stop with adolescence but continues throughout the human life span. Whatever your age, your brain is perfectly capable of creating entirely new pathways. Your conscious brain loses focus every 6 to 10 seconds. Your unconscious brain never loses focus. The process of neurogensis does not stop with adolescence but continues throughout the human life span. Whatever your age, your brain is perfectly capable of creating entirely new pathways.
Neurogenesis: the process of cell division that creates new brain cells continues throughout our lives. Neuroplasticity is a neuron of a certain type is called a mirror neuron. They help us mimic the behavior that is around us. You can change your brain the way you want. We are structured so that we can grow our creativity, intelligence, and capacity for achievement throughout our lives.
Reticular Activating System (RAS) that all-important, life-shaping decision is made moment to moment, all the time, day or night, awake or asleep, by a part of your brain called (RAS). It is the scientific term for a network of nerve pathways at the base of your brain that connects the spiral cord, cerebellum, and cerebrum and acts as a filter for all the sensory input your brain draws from your external world. (Reticulum, from Latin for "little net," simply means a net like structure. A new finding on the brain for neuroscience is the observation that we are making new brain cells and new connections all the time.
You Get What You Are Looking For
How do you program your (RAS) with what you do not want? Focusing on it, and create a habit of thought around that thing. Through neural reconditioning, you can train your (RAS) to direct its amazing capacity to focus on what you do want, not what you do not want--on the solution, not the problem. The neck turns the head-brain. You can be the neck that turns your unconscious brain and points it in whatever direction you want. Our autopilot called the psycho cybernetic mechanism. Cybernetic refers to a control and response mechanism in organisms and some machines. The Thermostat in your brain is the natural self-corrective process dubbed the psycho cybernetic mechanism. This was termed by Maxwell Maltz a plastic surgeon.
Taping the Power of the Quantum Universe
You can change your brain the way you want. We are structured that we can grow our creativity, intelligence, and capacity for achievement throughout our lives. Remember this please. Let us tap the power of the quantum universe. The unconscious mind is like the dog that wags the tail. Your conscious mind is where you design your new beliefs--but it is not where you hold these beliefs.
First use your conscious facilities, choose the thoughts you want to have as your beliefs. They systematically impress these thoughts on the unconscious part of your brain.
With our conscious mind using will and imagination, pluck an idea out of the Quantum Universe and see the possibilities. We choose what we think. We must take these conscious thoughts and bring them into impeccable clarity, and deliver them to our unconscious facilities.
Setting goals is a conscious exercise; achieving goals is a spiritual and unconscious exercise. To succeed we need to become expert in using both parts of our brain. Most of us never have been taught how to do this. First; use your conscious abilities, such as imagination, intuition, reasoning, and the rest--to craft a crystal clear (vision), picture of your dream business: the perfect seed.
Second: Plant the seed in the unconscious mind, making it a habit of thought--a belief. Once you do that, no force in the world can stop it from happening. Discover those areas where you are strong, those areas where you have keen intelligence, and focus on those. Discover what it is you are uniquely gifted to be and to do, then build your business and your life in ways that take maximum advantage of those aspects of yourself. That is when goals come easily.
Take the gifts you have and make those your pillars. Then find other people who have other intelligence, other gifts, and help them become your allies. Make it your goal to share your gifts with the world. You must create a vision for your business. Here is how it is done. Create your Business Vision.
1. Put it in the present tense. "My business is going to be good for people and people will appreciate it...to give them an alternative approach to medicine.
2. Make it visual and emotional so it will attract what you need to manifest it as a physical reality.
3. Knock it out of the park!
Here are the three roles of the unconscious brain: 1. It runs your personal biochemical operating system; 2. It runs your programmable software: your habits, routines, attitudes; 3. It connects you with the Quantum field of infinite intelligence.
Our brain is an electromagnetic switching station, and it connects to the seen and unseen world. Great ideas and invention have come from our state of light sleep into our unconscious brain. Your unconscious brain has access to all knowledge. No matter what the problem, challenge, or need, it knows where to feed the problem, challenge, or need.
The Success Code:
1. Find something you have a passion for accomplishing.
2. Become excellent at it.
3. Recondition your mind to be here. You can have it and achieve it.
4. You must understand how to make money at it.
5. You must take daily action.
Affirmations are very important. Whenever there is a conflict between consciousness and unconscious, the unconscious will always win. Your present beliefs determine your outlook. If you are broke, then your belief is, "I am broke: That is how and who I am." You will say, "I do not deserve to have a lot of money."
Step 1: The fact is you are in the drivers', seat; your life is your creation and principle tool you have used to create it your beliefs. If you want to change things, and then decide what beliefs you want to have. Your conscious brain puts things in logical, linear sequences. It has to: It can not focus on more than one or two things at a time.
Step 2: Your unconscious can focus on a million things at once. It does not need to think, first this, then that, then eventually....We can not create large, successful businesses all by ourselves; none of us can.
Step 3: Create emotional Anchors for Neural Linking. Neural linking uses emotional association to deepen the impact of any belief or affirmation you choose. You accomplish this by linking that new belief with powerful feelings that already exist in association with some other memory. Neural Linking happens all the time. Your habits on what you put on first, brushing your teeth in the morning.
Step 4: Prepare your Neural Imprinting Material. The most common example of imprinting materials are:
a) Written statements
b) Audio recording, be creative
c) Subliminal media
d) Picture and vision boards or dream boards
Step 5: Your Neural Reconditioning routine
Keep in step same time of day each day for your heart rhythms. A routine practiced five days in a row at the same time every day has a far greater impact on your developing abilities than a routine practiced five days in a row at widely different times. The best time is when a little tired and not too focused. That half-awake/half-asleep state when you do not have your conscious filters fully in place is the moment when your unconscious is most accessible. The ideal time is first thing upon rising in the morning, and last thing before going to sleep at night. Lunch break is a good time.
Meditation
Meditation is the foundation of the neural reconditioning process, the ground upon which you build the structures of new beliefs, goals, and aspirations in your unconscious brain. We will look at the different types of Brain Waves. Which brain waves would you like to be in most of the time?
Brain Waves
Alpha (8-14 Hz): These brain waves are associated with relaxation, deep learning, relaxed focus light trances, bring on a mental sleep or waking drowsiness, producing higher intuitive factors, meditation, and the beginning of access to the unconscious mind. Access to the quantum field begins with Alpha brain waves.
Theta 4-7Hz): Dreaming state (vital for learning and memory) increased creativity and ability to tap into universal intelligence, integrative emotional experiences, potential changes in behavior and increased retention of learned material. There are high levels of access to the quantum field that is available through theta brain waves.
Delta (0.1-4Hz): Slow, very long brain waves associated with dreamless sleep, and the release of human growth hormone (HGH). Trained workers can access this level of the quantum field in an awakened state.
Beta: High (15-18 Hz); Low (12-15Hz) When you are awake and active, thinking, social and in a normal state in life and at work.
Compare these four common levels of brain waves to the four gears of an automobile, with beta being first gear, alpha second, theta third, and delta fourth. Most of us function in the beta range all day long. Beta would not take you very far, once the initial information is figured out, you want to drop back into second gear. As you shift gears there is less stress on the engine of your life. You move faster and your engine heart rate (slows down). You have less wear and tear as you shift gears. Less frustration and anger, less depression and anxiety--and you are getting more accomplished.
Gear Shift Your Brain
Meditation must be practiced: concentration on breathing is important. Start for six minutes, then fifteen minutes, then thirty minutes. Yes, your mind will wonder, but then bring it back. Meditation is a powerful ground work for neural reconditioning. You are developing your ability to access and stay loaded onto your goals like a laser-- and when you do, you open the possibility for the quantum field to respond, resonate, and supply all those elements you need for the fulfillment of the goals. You will exercise the Law of Attraction. Note: the average human being loses focus every six to ten seconds through meditation. Mastering meditation will result in your world to slow down giving you more time to accomplish your goals.
You can start to reprogram your brain at any age. You are building new neural connections (plasticity. You are keeping your brain alive and vital. Now phrase your goals and vision in positive terms. You can use the terms debt-free, alcohol free, or drug free. The associations we have in our minds are already clear on what debt-free means. We subconsciously emphasize the free, so it does not seem to cause us to go in the opposite direction such as toward debt, alcohol or drugs.
Any new material introduced will set up a conflict of interest bring on habitual beliefs for your psycho cybernetic mechanism will be enforced. You may get a detox type reaction to this process. You are forcing the brain to move into a higher order of functioning which shows up as you usually release chemicals that reflect that. You need to apply it, put it into action, and put it into action in such a way that it gets into your unconscious brain.
Create a dream board for vision, focus and action. Define those targets and the ground needed to get you there is termed Gap Analysis. Use a Revenue Plan. It is a description of the formula that takes a business from one side of the gap to the other.
Try to create precisely the right circumstance, and then you will automatically generate the right result. The law of compensation describes those specific circumstances. Compensation occurs when enough people want what you offer. Here are the conditions for the Law to work.
1. There must be a strong need and/or desire in the market place for your product or service.
2. Your offering must be outstanding.
3. You or your team must have the ability to market and sell your offering.
Apply the Law of Magnetism in your life. The vibrations of the whole world pass through your body. Be calm at all times to protect you from negative vibrations. If you read quality books, think quality thoughts, and surround your self with high spiritual beings, and saints, your magnetism will be strengthen, and your attraction will pull you in the right situation in life. These are the ideas of the Ancients and the Great Law.
http://www.alternativemedicine1.net
[http://www.universalresearch1.com]
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=C._Manuel_Grace
http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Magic-of-the-Universe-and-Your-Thoughts---Making-Us-One---Quantum-Physics-and-You&id=3363671
Trading the Markets With High Velocity Market Master
Trading the Markets With High Velocity Market Master
By Laura Brewerton
The creators of High Velocity Market Master, Netpicks, have decided it is time for the system to be released again after its incredibly impressive performance last time. One thing that seems to surprise everybody it just how simple the system is and yet the results traders get are continually exciting and consistent.
Trader's who managed to get hold of HVMM at its last release will know just how much support you get which helps to significantly cut down on your trading time, leaving you free to spend time doing what you want, whether it is playing with your children, taking the dog for a walk, or having a nap. The HVMM method enables a trader to get, get out and make a profit quickly and consistently.
However, this is just one of the best parts of HVMM, for the products, treatment and support that you get once making the purchase of High Velocity Market Master is beyond that of most other products out there on the market at the moment. For example you receive a lifetime High Velocity Market Master Indicator Suite that you can begin to use straight away. You will always be able to use these same indicators across all trading markets and time periods, which makes your trading lifestyle a lot easier too.
As a privileged owner of High Velocity Market Master you will also receive full length training CD's that are extremely in depth and that tell you all that you ever need. These can be played on your computer and stopped and started whenever you like, so you will be able to learn at your own pace, step by step. Of course, manuals are a given and with the system you get amongst many other manuals, a manual and guide to the Markets and Timeframes, which will enable you to see all the key trade set ups.
As well as all the physical things that you gain with buying High Velocity Market Master, you also receive consistent ongoing HVMM support until you find that you have mastered the system and do not need so much help anymore. As well as this support, you will also become a member of the select Owner's Club, free for one whole year. Through this membership you will be able to be admitted to live training rooms and video training as well as being able to view trade walk throughs, obtain marketing condition reports and importantly have the right to all system upgrades and much much more!!
There will, like last time, be a limited amount available because the Netpicks team want to make sure that they have not only the staffing but resources on hand to give each customer the support they require, whenever they need it. So if it is an easy to follow method that you are looking for, that will enable you to trade each market that you want to, making a good profit as you go, then you should definitely check out High Velocity Market Master. This is a system that will not only help you in the present but will be something that you can support yourself with throughout your entire trading career.
You can find more information on Mark Soberman's trading course [http://www.highvelocitymarketmaster.org/the-hvmm-system-trading-course] by reading this full no nonsense HVMM review [http://www.highvelocitymarketmaster.org/].
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Laura_Brewerton
http://EzineArticles.com/?Trading-the-Markets-With-High-Velocity-Market-Master&id=3328526
By Laura Brewerton
The creators of High Velocity Market Master, Netpicks, have decided it is time for the system to be released again after its incredibly impressive performance last time. One thing that seems to surprise everybody it just how simple the system is and yet the results traders get are continually exciting and consistent.
Trader's who managed to get hold of HVMM at its last release will know just how much support you get which helps to significantly cut down on your trading time, leaving you free to spend time doing what you want, whether it is playing with your children, taking the dog for a walk, or having a nap. The HVMM method enables a trader to get, get out and make a profit quickly and consistently.
However, this is just one of the best parts of HVMM, for the products, treatment and support that you get once making the purchase of High Velocity Market Master is beyond that of most other products out there on the market at the moment. For example you receive a lifetime High Velocity Market Master Indicator Suite that you can begin to use straight away. You will always be able to use these same indicators across all trading markets and time periods, which makes your trading lifestyle a lot easier too.
As a privileged owner of High Velocity Market Master you will also receive full length training CD's that are extremely in depth and that tell you all that you ever need. These can be played on your computer and stopped and started whenever you like, so you will be able to learn at your own pace, step by step. Of course, manuals are a given and with the system you get amongst many other manuals, a manual and guide to the Markets and Timeframes, which will enable you to see all the key trade set ups.
As well as all the physical things that you gain with buying High Velocity Market Master, you also receive consistent ongoing HVMM support until you find that you have mastered the system and do not need so much help anymore. As well as this support, you will also become a member of the select Owner's Club, free for one whole year. Through this membership you will be able to be admitted to live training rooms and video training as well as being able to view trade walk throughs, obtain marketing condition reports and importantly have the right to all system upgrades and much much more!!
There will, like last time, be a limited amount available because the Netpicks team want to make sure that they have not only the staffing but resources on hand to give each customer the support they require, whenever they need it. So if it is an easy to follow method that you are looking for, that will enable you to trade each market that you want to, making a good profit as you go, then you should definitely check out High Velocity Market Master. This is a system that will not only help you in the present but will be something that you can support yourself with throughout your entire trading career.
You can find more information on Mark Soberman's trading course [http://www.highvelocitymarketmaster.org/the-hvmm-system-trading-course] by reading this full no nonsense HVMM review [http://www.highvelocitymarketmaster.org/].
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Laura_Brewerton
http://EzineArticles.com/?Trading-the-Markets-With-High-Velocity-Market-Master&id=3328526
Seven Ways to Use Your Writing Coach!
Seven Ways to Use Your Writing Coach!
By Elizabeth Gates
Many things can cause an otherwise worthwhile writing project to founder. Your writing coach will keep your project, your writing career and your writing ambitions safe. Your writing coach can help you:
1. Set clear goals and deadlines
2. Organise your life as a writer
3. Identify training needs in the genre of your choosing
4. Organise your research
5. Start writing and keep going to the end of the first draft
6. Handle feed-back, edit and re-write
7. Publish, broadcast or share in other ways
1. Set clear goals
Where do you hope to go with your writing project? Following your nose can work. But sometimes planning can help you arrive where you want to be more quickly and with better results. So, some writers start work, bristling with diaries, 'road maps' and post-it notes - lending a writing project the air of a military offensive. If you favour this style - and many do - your writing goals may benefit from the strong-minded application of management principles. Your writing coach can guide you here.
The SMART formula is currently popular. Adopt this and consider:
1) Is your writing goal Specific? (What form(s) of writing do you want to work on? A novel? A radio play? An academic treatise? The ultimate letter of complaint? )
2) How will you Measure your success? (Do you, for example, want to hold your published book in your hand by the second August Bank Holiday?)
3) Are you Able to produce this piece of writing? (Or do you need more training?)
4) Does this piece of writing Relate well to who you are and what you want from your life? (And does writing mesh well with your other hopes and aspirations at this time?)
5) What is your Time-line for this goal? (Deadlines work wonders for some.)
Meeting your own promises - Commitment
Once you've shaped your writing goal, of course, you must then consciously to commit to the process. According to the American Society of Training and Development, conscious commitment enhances your chances of success in any project. And the probability of success, it is said, ranges from 25% - if you decide to do something - to 50% if you plan how you will do it, to 95% if you 'have a specific accountability appointment' with an independent person. A writing coach, perhaps?
Being accountable to a coach is powerful. Knowing you'll have to explain yourself can override your natural instinct for, say, making the family porridge or walking the dog. Imagine how you'll feel when your coach asks you 'Where is Chapter 3?' and you have to reply 'I haven't done it.'
According to a 2002 survey, 81% of adult Americans wanted to write a book - and feel they should have done - but only 2% of these did. With your coach's support, and your commitment, you should be able to join the 2%. At least, if you don't, with coaching, you'll understand the reasons why.
2. Organise your working life as a writer
Your working style contributes to the success or failure of your project so you may need to identify the best working style for you. If you hope to be a writer, words - and books - probably suit you. But do you ever feel that you work better with music in the background? Or that people telling you their stories is preferable to spending time in the library with psychological treatises? Or pictures inspire your writing? Different approaches - or a blend of these - may work better for you than keeping office hours at your desk. But, for some writers, office hours work best. Discussions with your coach will help you strategise to optimise your working style.
You'll also benefit from considering life-style issues which can influence your project's outcome. These include:
o Work/Life Balance and relationships
o Wellness for writers
o De-cluttering your working space and your mind
o Time management and productivity
o Handling rejection and starting again.
o And much more.
3. Identify your training needs and develop writing skills
The important issue may be whether your words on the page say what you want them to say. But publishers aren't noted for their patience in wading through poor presentation to discover this. You may also lack confidence regarding your grammar, punctuation or your choice of words and, if you do wish to publish, you could need an intensive programme in these skills. With practical exercises and recommendations for further reading, your coach can customise a programme to help you with the nuts and bolts of writing as well as the grander requirements of structure, theme and consistency. Writing training of this calibre will make you a professional.
4. Organise your research
Having too little material is rarely the problem. Having too much is more usual. And, as you move more deeply into the project, the goal-posts may shift. In a novel, for instance, as characters take on their own life, the ensuing structural changes can be seismic. And, during this process of seismic change, your coach will hold your agenda, calm your panic attacks, and help you understand what information from your research the reader needs to know and what information is merely distracting - especially apt for historical fiction writers! Your coach will work with you to develop a flowing chapter block-out - outlining chapter contents and arranging them in the most effective way. This will also be useful when you come to write a synopsis for potential publishers.
5. Motivation - start writing and keep going
Your coach will help you to deepen your commitment to your writing and become aware of those values you hold both as a person and as a writer. You will then understand what motivates you and how you can use this not only to start your writing project but also to keep it going. Writing a novel, for example, is a long haul, possibly using up two years of your life. You need to have the clearest idea of your motivation before you start.
You'll also avoid procrastination. All working writers have tricks to help them keep writing and minimise displacement activities - such as the washing up. For some, for example, the electricity bill can be a major motivator. But, you may need something more subtle. Work with your coach to find out what motivates you to write and anchor this.
This done, when you wake in the morning, the first thing on your mind will be making use of the insights which came to you in the night. International creativity guru Eric Maisel calls this journey to your workplace from your bed the most important and the most dangerous walk of your day! Distractions abound. But it is also, he says, the walk that gives your life its meaning.
A Word on Writers' Blocks
More serious than daily displacement activities, the writer's block can make your project founder. It presents as fear - a rabbit in the headlights moment - in face of the blank page. You may be afraid of starting, of rejection, of the perceived imperfections of your writing, your inadequacies as a writer, even success (and what happens next). Your fears may be a very mixed bag.
A real block may need some effort to remove but the constant support of your coach will help you regain control of your project. And your coach will keep hold of your agenda even when you lose sight of it and be able to suggest strategies such as free writing; or modelling yourself on other blocked writers who've successfully moved forward. Or a laser coaching session. Ten minutes on the phone can do the trick!
6. Handle feed-back, edit and re-write
At the end of the first draft, you may feel you've done enough. Unfortunately, not. Editing is an essential part of the process and re-writing happens as often as needed to make the manuscript as perfect as possible. There is no escaping this and feed-back is a useful guide. Avoid friends who will just rubber-stamp your brilliance. This is when you need to ask for honest feedback, not just to assess the viability of the project - you should already be convinced of that - but to iron out inconsistency, flag up inaccuracy, and identify absolute nonsense. You may choose whether or not to integrate suggested changes but those who make them are invaluable in your process. Receiving feedback - the when of it, the who of it and the what to do with it now of it - is only the start of the sixth phase.
7. Move on to publication
This is the sharing bit of the process. Communication demands someone to receive what you have to say. None of us works entirely in a vacuum - even though you may feel that writing for yourself alone is enough. Or you may want to be published or broadcast and need the support of a coach to move out of the cocoon of your writing life and into an industry which like any other exists to make a profit.
Your coach will help you when you need to consider:
o Preparing your manuscript for submission
o Covering letters
o Writing a proposal for a publisher or editor
o Marketing for writers
o Beginning the next book.
Good Luck!
©Lizzie Gates@Lonely Furrow Company 2009
Elizabeth Gates is an experienced published writer and an experienced coach, helping clients to write for their own professional or personal development, from idea to publication. She also facilitates creative writing workshops For more information, please see her website, http://www.lonelyfurrowcompany.com and read her blog at http://lizziegates.blogspot.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Elizabeth_Gates
http://EzineArticles.com/?Seven-Ways-to-Use-Your-Writing-Coach!&id=3299649
By Elizabeth Gates
Many things can cause an otherwise worthwhile writing project to founder. Your writing coach will keep your project, your writing career and your writing ambitions safe. Your writing coach can help you:
1. Set clear goals and deadlines
2. Organise your life as a writer
3. Identify training needs in the genre of your choosing
4. Organise your research
5. Start writing and keep going to the end of the first draft
6. Handle feed-back, edit and re-write
7. Publish, broadcast or share in other ways
1. Set clear goals
Where do you hope to go with your writing project? Following your nose can work. But sometimes planning can help you arrive where you want to be more quickly and with better results. So, some writers start work, bristling with diaries, 'road maps' and post-it notes - lending a writing project the air of a military offensive. If you favour this style - and many do - your writing goals may benefit from the strong-minded application of management principles. Your writing coach can guide you here.
The SMART formula is currently popular. Adopt this and consider:
1) Is your writing goal Specific? (What form(s) of writing do you want to work on? A novel? A radio play? An academic treatise? The ultimate letter of complaint? )
2) How will you Measure your success? (Do you, for example, want to hold your published book in your hand by the second August Bank Holiday?)
3) Are you Able to produce this piece of writing? (Or do you need more training?)
4) Does this piece of writing Relate well to who you are and what you want from your life? (And does writing mesh well with your other hopes and aspirations at this time?)
5) What is your Time-line for this goal? (Deadlines work wonders for some.)
Meeting your own promises - Commitment
Once you've shaped your writing goal, of course, you must then consciously to commit to the process. According to the American Society of Training and Development, conscious commitment enhances your chances of success in any project. And the probability of success, it is said, ranges from 25% - if you decide to do something - to 50% if you plan how you will do it, to 95% if you 'have a specific accountability appointment' with an independent person. A writing coach, perhaps?
Being accountable to a coach is powerful. Knowing you'll have to explain yourself can override your natural instinct for, say, making the family porridge or walking the dog. Imagine how you'll feel when your coach asks you 'Where is Chapter 3?' and you have to reply 'I haven't done it.'
According to a 2002 survey, 81% of adult Americans wanted to write a book - and feel they should have done - but only 2% of these did. With your coach's support, and your commitment, you should be able to join the 2%. At least, if you don't, with coaching, you'll understand the reasons why.
2. Organise your working life as a writer
Your working style contributes to the success or failure of your project so you may need to identify the best working style for you. If you hope to be a writer, words - and books - probably suit you. But do you ever feel that you work better with music in the background? Or that people telling you their stories is preferable to spending time in the library with psychological treatises? Or pictures inspire your writing? Different approaches - or a blend of these - may work better for you than keeping office hours at your desk. But, for some writers, office hours work best. Discussions with your coach will help you strategise to optimise your working style.
You'll also benefit from considering life-style issues which can influence your project's outcome. These include:
o Work/Life Balance and relationships
o Wellness for writers
o De-cluttering your working space and your mind
o Time management and productivity
o Handling rejection and starting again.
o And much more.
3. Identify your training needs and develop writing skills
The important issue may be whether your words on the page say what you want them to say. But publishers aren't noted for their patience in wading through poor presentation to discover this. You may also lack confidence regarding your grammar, punctuation or your choice of words and, if you do wish to publish, you could need an intensive programme in these skills. With practical exercises and recommendations for further reading, your coach can customise a programme to help you with the nuts and bolts of writing as well as the grander requirements of structure, theme and consistency. Writing training of this calibre will make you a professional.
4. Organise your research
Having too little material is rarely the problem. Having too much is more usual. And, as you move more deeply into the project, the goal-posts may shift. In a novel, for instance, as characters take on their own life, the ensuing structural changes can be seismic. And, during this process of seismic change, your coach will hold your agenda, calm your panic attacks, and help you understand what information from your research the reader needs to know and what information is merely distracting - especially apt for historical fiction writers! Your coach will work with you to develop a flowing chapter block-out - outlining chapter contents and arranging them in the most effective way. This will also be useful when you come to write a synopsis for potential publishers.
5. Motivation - start writing and keep going
Your coach will help you to deepen your commitment to your writing and become aware of those values you hold both as a person and as a writer. You will then understand what motivates you and how you can use this not only to start your writing project but also to keep it going. Writing a novel, for example, is a long haul, possibly using up two years of your life. You need to have the clearest idea of your motivation before you start.
You'll also avoid procrastination. All working writers have tricks to help them keep writing and minimise displacement activities - such as the washing up. For some, for example, the electricity bill can be a major motivator. But, you may need something more subtle. Work with your coach to find out what motivates you to write and anchor this.
This done, when you wake in the morning, the first thing on your mind will be making use of the insights which came to you in the night. International creativity guru Eric Maisel calls this journey to your workplace from your bed the most important and the most dangerous walk of your day! Distractions abound. But it is also, he says, the walk that gives your life its meaning.
A Word on Writers' Blocks
More serious than daily displacement activities, the writer's block can make your project founder. It presents as fear - a rabbit in the headlights moment - in face of the blank page. You may be afraid of starting, of rejection, of the perceived imperfections of your writing, your inadequacies as a writer, even success (and what happens next). Your fears may be a very mixed bag.
A real block may need some effort to remove but the constant support of your coach will help you regain control of your project. And your coach will keep hold of your agenda even when you lose sight of it and be able to suggest strategies such as free writing; or modelling yourself on other blocked writers who've successfully moved forward. Or a laser coaching session. Ten minutes on the phone can do the trick!
6. Handle feed-back, edit and re-write
At the end of the first draft, you may feel you've done enough. Unfortunately, not. Editing is an essential part of the process and re-writing happens as often as needed to make the manuscript as perfect as possible. There is no escaping this and feed-back is a useful guide. Avoid friends who will just rubber-stamp your brilliance. This is when you need to ask for honest feedback, not just to assess the viability of the project - you should already be convinced of that - but to iron out inconsistency, flag up inaccuracy, and identify absolute nonsense. You may choose whether or not to integrate suggested changes but those who make them are invaluable in your process. Receiving feedback - the when of it, the who of it and the what to do with it now of it - is only the start of the sixth phase.
7. Move on to publication
This is the sharing bit of the process. Communication demands someone to receive what you have to say. None of us works entirely in a vacuum - even though you may feel that writing for yourself alone is enough. Or you may want to be published or broadcast and need the support of a coach to move out of the cocoon of your writing life and into an industry which like any other exists to make a profit.
Your coach will help you when you need to consider:
o Preparing your manuscript for submission
o Covering letters
o Writing a proposal for a publisher or editor
o Marketing for writers
o Beginning the next book.
Good Luck!
©Lizzie Gates@Lonely Furrow Company 2009
Elizabeth Gates is an experienced published writer and an experienced coach, helping clients to write for their own professional or personal development, from idea to publication. She also facilitates creative writing workshops For more information, please see her website, http://www.lonelyfurrowcompany.com and read her blog at http://lizziegates.blogspot.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Elizabeth_Gates
http://EzineArticles.com/?Seven-Ways-to-Use-Your-Writing-Coach!&id=3299649
วันพุธที่ 25 ธันวาคม พ.ศ. 2556
People - Make the World Go Around
People - Make the World Go Around
By Curt Canada
June 2009 has produced a myriad of expected and unexpected news events of either the death of movie stars, the sudden loss of musical icons such as Michael Jackson, and the plane crash of Air France Flight 447. However, we continue to co-exist amongst the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in which has recently escalated and the sudden train accident here in Washington DC.
I will stop here because it is no way possible for me to account and post all the events that has led to the death of one our mortal acquaintances. This week has left me a little grasping for straws. One can't help but reflect on their existence.
It's that yin and yang thing, that beginning and ending thing, that starting and stopping thing, that inevitable appointment with our creator thang! I don't know about you but it just makes you think about the true meaning of life in which for each of us is different. Quite frankly, the news media strives on such events. It's what they do best covering all events throughout the world. Anyway, I'm grasping for straws reflecting back on particularly what I was doing during the beginning careers of those famous people that left us this week. I find myself trying to account for how time has seemingly past by. Life's chores and new experiences are sometimes our best friend; well you know what I mean; following a favorite movie or TV series, rebuilding or painting the outside of your house, planning a vacation, visiting a friend you haven't seen in a long time, starting your first vegetable garden, taking a day off from work just to appreciate your surroundings, walking with the dog, reading a book, saying I love you to that special person(s) in your life, visiting someone in the hospital unknown to you, or just simply saying hi and how are you and really mean it!
I will end my post today thinking of yes how beautiful and courageous Farrah Fawcett was and the creative, mysterious warmth, and humble personality of Michael Jackson, Karl Malden and his detective series on the tube, and the recent Yemini airplane accident that killed about 152 people leaving miraculously a 13 year old female survivor. This is exactly what all our days are about!
So we move forward despite a continued troubling global economy and wars in various places allowing a moment to reflect on life's beauty, helping others less fortunate when we can, and giving thanks! Life and death are so intertwined that it leaves those left behind sometimes "grasping for straws."
Curt Canada MSW provides Personal Development Coaching and Advisement at Finding Your Zenith in Washington D.C. He holds a Masters in Social Work from The University of Iowa and a Masters in Teacher Education from the American University and The Institute for Life Coach Training. Member of the International Coach Federation.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Curt_Canada
http://EzineArticles.com/?People---Make-the-World-Go-Around&id=2605328
By Curt Canada
June 2009 has produced a myriad of expected and unexpected news events of either the death of movie stars, the sudden loss of musical icons such as Michael Jackson, and the plane crash of Air France Flight 447. However, we continue to co-exist amongst the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in which has recently escalated and the sudden train accident here in Washington DC.
I will stop here because it is no way possible for me to account and post all the events that has led to the death of one our mortal acquaintances. This week has left me a little grasping for straws. One can't help but reflect on their existence.
It's that yin and yang thing, that beginning and ending thing, that starting and stopping thing, that inevitable appointment with our creator thang! I don't know about you but it just makes you think about the true meaning of life in which for each of us is different. Quite frankly, the news media strives on such events. It's what they do best covering all events throughout the world. Anyway, I'm grasping for straws reflecting back on particularly what I was doing during the beginning careers of those famous people that left us this week. I find myself trying to account for how time has seemingly past by. Life's chores and new experiences are sometimes our best friend; well you know what I mean; following a favorite movie or TV series, rebuilding or painting the outside of your house, planning a vacation, visiting a friend you haven't seen in a long time, starting your first vegetable garden, taking a day off from work just to appreciate your surroundings, walking with the dog, reading a book, saying I love you to that special person(s) in your life, visiting someone in the hospital unknown to you, or just simply saying hi and how are you and really mean it!
I will end my post today thinking of yes how beautiful and courageous Farrah Fawcett was and the creative, mysterious warmth, and humble personality of Michael Jackson, Karl Malden and his detective series on the tube, and the recent Yemini airplane accident that killed about 152 people leaving miraculously a 13 year old female survivor. This is exactly what all our days are about!
So we move forward despite a continued troubling global economy and wars in various places allowing a moment to reflect on life's beauty, helping others less fortunate when we can, and giving thanks! Life and death are so intertwined that it leaves those left behind sometimes "grasping for straws."
Curt Canada MSW provides Personal Development Coaching and Advisement at Finding Your Zenith in Washington D.C. He holds a Masters in Social Work from The University of Iowa and a Masters in Teacher Education from the American University and The Institute for Life Coach Training. Member of the International Coach Federation.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Curt_Canada
http://EzineArticles.com/?People---Make-the-World-Go-Around&id=2605328
Men's Midlife Crisis - Fact Or Fiction?
Men's Midlife Crisis - Fact Or Fiction?
By David Michael Martin
If you are a Man and you've read my Article on "What women want" which really was all about female midlife crisis, you might be a little more understanding of a women's plight and maybe even have a little more appreciation for your partner, but there's also a chance that a small part of you might also be saying to yourself;
"Well what about me?"
"I have challenges, I have responsibilities, I have dreams."
The reality is that men go though just as many phases of their lives as women do, some are obviously biologically different from women, but many are in deed emotionally, very much the same or similar.
Some are natural & some are imposed, but regardless of who they are, or where they are, they will probably all experience some or all of these thoughts and feelings whether they want to or not.
Currently the largest group of people in the World, are the combined groups called Baby Boomers & X Gen's.
If you are a Baby Boomer (born between 1946 and 1964, which makes you between ages 45 & 63) you might be saying to yourself "I've worked hard all of my life to try and get ahead and provide for my family, now I just want to have some fun. I'm tired of striving and driving everyday. I've earned it. This should be my time!"
If you are an X Gen (born between 1964 and 1976, which makes you aged between 33 and 45) you might be saying to yourself; "Hey stuff work, I still want career success but we're here for a short time, not a long time, I need more excitement and freedom in my life and I want it now!"
I'm generalizing I know, and I'm sure that none of these thoughts ever run though your mind. They probably run through the minds of all the other males you know, but just not yours. Whatever the case may be, together these two groups of men (Boomers & X Gen's) may represent just over a staggering half a billion people.
The reality is that as "mid-life" seems to suddenly and quite uninvited arrive, for many men certain previously ignored facts start to emerge and converge into equally un-invited clarity. Clarity that may feel anything from mildly annoying at one end of the scale to absolutely terrifying at the other.
As with women, this "converging" of events is definable & very important. In fact so important that for many men, the decisions that they make during this phase of their life may in fact influence the rest of their life.
Let me give you some common examples.
Their birthday arrives and everyone around them reminds them that they are getting old. All delivered with good humor, but after the 50th joke, trust me, it's wearing thin.
Your "teenage" or "twenty something" daughter pats the fatty bulge that is camouflaging your once defined six pack, and asks when you're due. (There's something that happens to a proud father's self image when he realizes that his daughter no longer sees him as the all powerful King in her world).
The son that you could once easily beat at an arm wrestle is now 2 inches taller than you and built like a train. Or smaller than you but treats you with the same disrespect. Somehow over night the old alpha dog has lost his ability to intimate & command.
Perhaps he's found his first gray hair. Or his hair line is reseeding faster than ever.
Perhaps he is struggling to read the newspaper but refuses to wear those 0.01 glasses that he's been prescribed.
Perhaps he's caught himself in the mirror and suddenly realized that he's starting to look more like his Father.
Perhaps his nose & ear hair is getting out of control.
For both men & women of this age the "Midlife" could be brought on by the death of a parent or children leaving home.
And all of a sudden his own mortality seems all too real as he senses the passing of youth and the commencement of old age.
But that's not all. Other ego denting factors also bump into his already bruised self image & self esteem;
The fact that he may not be as financially free as he thought hey would be by this age starts to play on his mind.
It may be that he is starting to feel a little less energetic; it may be a little harder to get out of bed in the mornings; maybe his body isn't working the way it used to.
Perhaps his Doctor is talking about the need to lower his stress or cholesterol or alcohol consumption and may be change his diet.
Perhaps his Doctor is bringing up words like "Prostrate."
Or he's finding that his libido is taking a tumble; he may even be experiencing some dysfunction which for a male can be both distressing and embarrassing.
Statistically many men will probably avoid doing anything about it, and especially avoid talking about it with their partner or anyone else unless they really have too.
In fact there is some evidence to suggest that many men never seek help because of the level of embarrassment they feel.
Suppressing that stress, like suppressing any kind of emotion causes irritability and irrational behavior. And can leave their partner feeling rejected because they don't understand what's changed.
Even if that isn't the case, He may become less tolerant and more easily irritable anyway.
He may talk about feeling bored, show signs of restlessness or apathy.
He may feel depressed, show signs of frustration and even become quick to anger. And, when his partner try's to talk to him about it, he won't or can't translate what he's feeling, because he may not understand or know what he's feeling.
He starts to question his life. Even if he has achieved a lot in his life, all of that may suddenly have lost it's meaningfulness as he asks himself; "Is this all there is?" Or "I should have more by now!"
He may become more nostalgic and relive stories of his youth. Reliving the memories of all of those "boy's nights" out
He may begin to question what he does for a living. And even who he's married too.
As this phase progresses he may start to change. For example;
He might start to take more notice & care of his appearance, change his wardrobe, and join a gym.
He might start spending on things that weren't on the radar before; say a Harley Davidson or a sports car.
His eye may start to wander towards another or younger women. Someone he can wow. Someone he can woe. Someone who doesn't know what he perceives are his flaws.
So what do they want, what are they looking for?
Having spent most of their early adult hood chasing women or experiences and later chasing "things;" the big house, the new car, the boat, the career, the investment portfolio, the kid's college education, the keeping up with the Jones's.
They suddenly "get" that they didn't "get it" in the first place. Accept now they are middle aged, and they don't like it.
What they are hungry for, what they are going crazy trying to find is what ever is going to satisfy their need, whatever is going to quench their thirst.
In a nut shell, most are looking for "Meaning." They are looking for a reason to get up in the morning beyond "things" & beyond "ego." Whatever is going to make them feel truly happy. Whatever is going to help them feel truly fulfilled.
The problem is that unless they search for the answers in the right places, they will likely ruin a lot of what they already have.
If he's smart he'll trust himself & learn to talk about how he's feeling rather than act out un-useful fantasies or retreat into his cave.
Having a "midlife" doesn't have to be or end in a "crisis".
There are ways of successfully navigating the "mind field" in resourceful ways.
In fact for those Men that have taken control of their feelings and taken stock of their lives using our Go For Gold Program say that it was more like a "Midlife Awakening" than a midlife crisis, giving them a greater sense of control, a renewed sense of freedom, a clearer understanding of what they needed and far more resourceful ways of communicating that and getting it. Leaving them feeling more at peace and content as time went by. We encourage you to pass this article onto all of your friends, both male and female.
David Martin is a well respected Performance Coach based in New Zealand.
He has developed a range of leading edge self improvement products that are available from; [http://www.core-resourcing.com]
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Michael_Martin
http://EzineArticles.com/?Mens-Midlife-Crisis---Fact-Or-Fiction?&id=2568816
By David Michael Martin
If you are a Man and you've read my Article on "What women want" which really was all about female midlife crisis, you might be a little more understanding of a women's plight and maybe even have a little more appreciation for your partner, but there's also a chance that a small part of you might also be saying to yourself;
"Well what about me?"
"I have challenges, I have responsibilities, I have dreams."
The reality is that men go though just as many phases of their lives as women do, some are obviously biologically different from women, but many are in deed emotionally, very much the same or similar.
Some are natural & some are imposed, but regardless of who they are, or where they are, they will probably all experience some or all of these thoughts and feelings whether they want to or not.
Currently the largest group of people in the World, are the combined groups called Baby Boomers & X Gen's.
If you are a Baby Boomer (born between 1946 and 1964, which makes you between ages 45 & 63) you might be saying to yourself "I've worked hard all of my life to try and get ahead and provide for my family, now I just want to have some fun. I'm tired of striving and driving everyday. I've earned it. This should be my time!"
If you are an X Gen (born between 1964 and 1976, which makes you aged between 33 and 45) you might be saying to yourself; "Hey stuff work, I still want career success but we're here for a short time, not a long time, I need more excitement and freedom in my life and I want it now!"
I'm generalizing I know, and I'm sure that none of these thoughts ever run though your mind. They probably run through the minds of all the other males you know, but just not yours. Whatever the case may be, together these two groups of men (Boomers & X Gen's) may represent just over a staggering half a billion people.
The reality is that as "mid-life" seems to suddenly and quite uninvited arrive, for many men certain previously ignored facts start to emerge and converge into equally un-invited clarity. Clarity that may feel anything from mildly annoying at one end of the scale to absolutely terrifying at the other.
As with women, this "converging" of events is definable & very important. In fact so important that for many men, the decisions that they make during this phase of their life may in fact influence the rest of their life.
Let me give you some common examples.
Their birthday arrives and everyone around them reminds them that they are getting old. All delivered with good humor, but after the 50th joke, trust me, it's wearing thin.
Your "teenage" or "twenty something" daughter pats the fatty bulge that is camouflaging your once defined six pack, and asks when you're due. (There's something that happens to a proud father's self image when he realizes that his daughter no longer sees him as the all powerful King in her world).
The son that you could once easily beat at an arm wrestle is now 2 inches taller than you and built like a train. Or smaller than you but treats you with the same disrespect. Somehow over night the old alpha dog has lost his ability to intimate & command.
Perhaps he's found his first gray hair. Or his hair line is reseeding faster than ever.
Perhaps he is struggling to read the newspaper but refuses to wear those 0.01 glasses that he's been prescribed.
Perhaps he's caught himself in the mirror and suddenly realized that he's starting to look more like his Father.
Perhaps his nose & ear hair is getting out of control.
For both men & women of this age the "Midlife" could be brought on by the death of a parent or children leaving home.
And all of a sudden his own mortality seems all too real as he senses the passing of youth and the commencement of old age.
But that's not all. Other ego denting factors also bump into his already bruised self image & self esteem;
The fact that he may not be as financially free as he thought hey would be by this age starts to play on his mind.
It may be that he is starting to feel a little less energetic; it may be a little harder to get out of bed in the mornings; maybe his body isn't working the way it used to.
Perhaps his Doctor is talking about the need to lower his stress or cholesterol or alcohol consumption and may be change his diet.
Perhaps his Doctor is bringing up words like "Prostrate."
Or he's finding that his libido is taking a tumble; he may even be experiencing some dysfunction which for a male can be both distressing and embarrassing.
Statistically many men will probably avoid doing anything about it, and especially avoid talking about it with their partner or anyone else unless they really have too.
In fact there is some evidence to suggest that many men never seek help because of the level of embarrassment they feel.
Suppressing that stress, like suppressing any kind of emotion causes irritability and irrational behavior. And can leave their partner feeling rejected because they don't understand what's changed.
Even if that isn't the case, He may become less tolerant and more easily irritable anyway.
He may talk about feeling bored, show signs of restlessness or apathy.
He may feel depressed, show signs of frustration and even become quick to anger. And, when his partner try's to talk to him about it, he won't or can't translate what he's feeling, because he may not understand or know what he's feeling.
He starts to question his life. Even if he has achieved a lot in his life, all of that may suddenly have lost it's meaningfulness as he asks himself; "Is this all there is?" Or "I should have more by now!"
He may become more nostalgic and relive stories of his youth. Reliving the memories of all of those "boy's nights" out
He may begin to question what he does for a living. And even who he's married too.
As this phase progresses he may start to change. For example;
He might start to take more notice & care of his appearance, change his wardrobe, and join a gym.
He might start spending on things that weren't on the radar before; say a Harley Davidson or a sports car.
His eye may start to wander towards another or younger women. Someone he can wow. Someone he can woe. Someone who doesn't know what he perceives are his flaws.
So what do they want, what are they looking for?
Having spent most of their early adult hood chasing women or experiences and later chasing "things;" the big house, the new car, the boat, the career, the investment portfolio, the kid's college education, the keeping up with the Jones's.
They suddenly "get" that they didn't "get it" in the first place. Accept now they are middle aged, and they don't like it.
What they are hungry for, what they are going crazy trying to find is what ever is going to satisfy their need, whatever is going to quench their thirst.
In a nut shell, most are looking for "Meaning." They are looking for a reason to get up in the morning beyond "things" & beyond "ego." Whatever is going to make them feel truly happy. Whatever is going to help them feel truly fulfilled.
The problem is that unless they search for the answers in the right places, they will likely ruin a lot of what they already have.
If he's smart he'll trust himself & learn to talk about how he's feeling rather than act out un-useful fantasies or retreat into his cave.
Having a "midlife" doesn't have to be or end in a "crisis".
There are ways of successfully navigating the "mind field" in resourceful ways.
In fact for those Men that have taken control of their feelings and taken stock of their lives using our Go For Gold Program say that it was more like a "Midlife Awakening" than a midlife crisis, giving them a greater sense of control, a renewed sense of freedom, a clearer understanding of what they needed and far more resourceful ways of communicating that and getting it. Leaving them feeling more at peace and content as time went by. We encourage you to pass this article onto all of your friends, both male and female.
David Martin is a well respected Performance Coach based in New Zealand.
He has developed a range of leading edge self improvement products that are available from; [http://www.core-resourcing.com]
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Michael_Martin
http://EzineArticles.com/?Mens-Midlife-Crisis---Fact-Or-Fiction?&id=2568816
วันจันทร์ที่ 23 ธันวาคม พ.ศ. 2556
Top Ways to Achieve Balance in Your Work and Personal Life Part II
Top Ways to Achieve Balance in Your Work and Personal Life Part II
By Laval Denny
Everyone seems pressed for time these days. With the faster pace of business and the push to do more with less, we feel more pressure at work and home. What I am going to try to do is help you recognize the signs of stress.
With new technology it's easier to do work at home, on the road, on the bus on holidays and extremely hard to set aside. It seems we are always rushing to get home - once we're there - to get dinner ready, get the garbage out, take the kids to their sports, pay the bills, bathe the children, walk the dog, return phone messages, connect with family and friends, do the dishes, make the lunches, catch up on e-mails, help the kids with their homework, do some laundry, walk the dog, feed the cat and many other little but time consuming and important tasks. This all happens in the time period of 4 hours! We rarely have time for our own needs, for relaxed visits with friends, and for other important things in life such as hobbies.
How can we do our best at work, be available to our families & friends, and take good care of ourselves when there's so little time? How do we come out from under this heavy load and the sense of pressure?
It's not easy but it is achievable. Even though your life may seem out of control, each of us can make it better and the first step is to convince ourselves we NEED to make a change.
In order to manage stress in our lives and achieve balance in our work and personal lives, we need to first recognize its symptoms and understand how it affects our behaviors and our health. Most of us notice stress when the pressure becomes unbearable...but it is always around. There is healthy stress and unhealthy stress. I will discuss and explore unhealthy stress.
Stress can come from the outside world - work, from family, other personal relationships, from our financial situation - and from inside - from guilt, expectations we have on ourselves, from worrying what other think and see about us and from habits of all types that we can't seem to break. Too much stress is unhealthy and can be paralyzing. It can make us afraid to take chances, saps our energy and creativity, damages relationships and even make us physically sick.
As stress levels rise, our tolerance for waiting goes down. We can't bear to go to a restaurant where the service is slow. We hang up the phone when we are put on hold and we interrupt people when they are speaking with us. Red lights are extremely long and we want to be ahead of the line. This is the hurry pattern.
Think about what we are fed visually and verbally all the time - "fast track", "instant meals", "quick study", "fast food", and "overnight" delivery. Sometimes we do need to be quick and efficient in our lives but many of us also need to learn how to slow down.
Be aware of over-scheduling your time. Schedules are important but scheduling the time of those around you and yours is a sign of stress. We need to keep appointments, pay bills on time, shop before the stores close but more importantly we need to know when to let schedules go, when not to look at our watches. Many of us are guilty of over-scheduling our children so tightly that they may feel trapped. We overload our children with organized activities and don't give them enough opportunity to rest, read, imagine, play spontaneously and just be kids.
The on-line/call-waiting syndrome is one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to controlling stress. At the beginning of the phone era it was one caller at a time and if someone else was trying to reach you and the line was busy....that meant you were busy and they would try later. Today with the communication available in our homes it becomes so tangled in that web that we can't get out. We've succumbed to the expectations of others. Some may get pleasure from the feeling of being indispensable, (but that is another issue) the flip side is that we don't realize or notice how it drains us. We forgot how to shut the communication off and get away from work and other responsibilities.
So what is our solution to the stresses we put on ourselves every day? Caffeine of course! We lose sleep due to many factors such as anxiety, watching TV, staying up late reading, studying or working at home. So we drink caffeinated beverage to keep us alert in the day to make it through which spirals into making it harder to sleep that night. What price are we willing to pay for those few more hours of alertness a week? It opens us up to inaccuracy, errors, and forgetfulness, lack of creativity and concentration and increases accidents. The combination of caffeine and sleep deprivation leads to irritability, impatience, and a tendency to react with anxiety or anger to the normal demands of life.
As pressure mounts in our lives, the first needs we neglect are our own. We give up the pleasure and relaxing activities as there is no time. We deprive ourselves and by doing so we end up fueling the stress and making it even worse. The things we give up doing for ourselves are the very things that will help reduce the stress in our lives.
Too much stress can cause us to close our minds to new possibilities and to react too quickly with irritability and anger to what would otherwise seem reasonable requests. Left unchecked stress can hurt our careers, our families and friendships. Anger such as this is a cue that something is wrong. Stress at this level can be linked to depression and is a feeling of overwhelming sadness, anxiety, hopelessness and with a greatly reduced ability to cope with day to day demands. Depression can also lead us to behave in ways that cause stressful events to occur.
Now that we have explored recognizing stress and can see the day to day activities that explode with stress we can move on to managing stress and achieving balance in you work and personal life. Step by step you will see the light at the end of the tunnel and it won't be a train coming towards you it will be a way out.
http://familyfinancialrescue.blogspot.com/
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Laval_Denny
http://EzineArticles.com/?Top-Ways-to-Achieve-Balance-in-Your-Work-and-Personal-Life-Part-II&id=1684337
By Laval Denny
Everyone seems pressed for time these days. With the faster pace of business and the push to do more with less, we feel more pressure at work and home. What I am going to try to do is help you recognize the signs of stress.
With new technology it's easier to do work at home, on the road, on the bus on holidays and extremely hard to set aside. It seems we are always rushing to get home - once we're there - to get dinner ready, get the garbage out, take the kids to their sports, pay the bills, bathe the children, walk the dog, return phone messages, connect with family and friends, do the dishes, make the lunches, catch up on e-mails, help the kids with their homework, do some laundry, walk the dog, feed the cat and many other little but time consuming and important tasks. This all happens in the time period of 4 hours! We rarely have time for our own needs, for relaxed visits with friends, and for other important things in life such as hobbies.
How can we do our best at work, be available to our families & friends, and take good care of ourselves when there's so little time? How do we come out from under this heavy load and the sense of pressure?
It's not easy but it is achievable. Even though your life may seem out of control, each of us can make it better and the first step is to convince ourselves we NEED to make a change.
In order to manage stress in our lives and achieve balance in our work and personal lives, we need to first recognize its symptoms and understand how it affects our behaviors and our health. Most of us notice stress when the pressure becomes unbearable...but it is always around. There is healthy stress and unhealthy stress. I will discuss and explore unhealthy stress.
Stress can come from the outside world - work, from family, other personal relationships, from our financial situation - and from inside - from guilt, expectations we have on ourselves, from worrying what other think and see about us and from habits of all types that we can't seem to break. Too much stress is unhealthy and can be paralyzing. It can make us afraid to take chances, saps our energy and creativity, damages relationships and even make us physically sick.
As stress levels rise, our tolerance for waiting goes down. We can't bear to go to a restaurant where the service is slow. We hang up the phone when we are put on hold and we interrupt people when they are speaking with us. Red lights are extremely long and we want to be ahead of the line. This is the hurry pattern.
Think about what we are fed visually and verbally all the time - "fast track", "instant meals", "quick study", "fast food", and "overnight" delivery. Sometimes we do need to be quick and efficient in our lives but many of us also need to learn how to slow down.
Be aware of over-scheduling your time. Schedules are important but scheduling the time of those around you and yours is a sign of stress. We need to keep appointments, pay bills on time, shop before the stores close but more importantly we need to know when to let schedules go, when not to look at our watches. Many of us are guilty of over-scheduling our children so tightly that they may feel trapped. We overload our children with organized activities and don't give them enough opportunity to rest, read, imagine, play spontaneously and just be kids.
The on-line/call-waiting syndrome is one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to controlling stress. At the beginning of the phone era it was one caller at a time and if someone else was trying to reach you and the line was busy....that meant you were busy and they would try later. Today with the communication available in our homes it becomes so tangled in that web that we can't get out. We've succumbed to the expectations of others. Some may get pleasure from the feeling of being indispensable, (but that is another issue) the flip side is that we don't realize or notice how it drains us. We forgot how to shut the communication off and get away from work and other responsibilities.
So what is our solution to the stresses we put on ourselves every day? Caffeine of course! We lose sleep due to many factors such as anxiety, watching TV, staying up late reading, studying or working at home. So we drink caffeinated beverage to keep us alert in the day to make it through which spirals into making it harder to sleep that night. What price are we willing to pay for those few more hours of alertness a week? It opens us up to inaccuracy, errors, and forgetfulness, lack of creativity and concentration and increases accidents. The combination of caffeine and sleep deprivation leads to irritability, impatience, and a tendency to react with anxiety or anger to the normal demands of life.
As pressure mounts in our lives, the first needs we neglect are our own. We give up the pleasure and relaxing activities as there is no time. We deprive ourselves and by doing so we end up fueling the stress and making it even worse. The things we give up doing for ourselves are the very things that will help reduce the stress in our lives.
Too much stress can cause us to close our minds to new possibilities and to react too quickly with irritability and anger to what would otherwise seem reasonable requests. Left unchecked stress can hurt our careers, our families and friendships. Anger such as this is a cue that something is wrong. Stress at this level can be linked to depression and is a feeling of overwhelming sadness, anxiety, hopelessness and with a greatly reduced ability to cope with day to day demands. Depression can also lead us to behave in ways that cause stressful events to occur.
Now that we have explored recognizing stress and can see the day to day activities that explode with stress we can move on to managing stress and achieving balance in you work and personal life. Step by step you will see the light at the end of the tunnel and it won't be a train coming towards you it will be a way out.
http://familyfinancialrescue.blogspot.com/
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Laval_Denny
http://EzineArticles.com/?Top-Ways-to-Achieve-Balance-in-Your-Work-and-Personal-Life-Part-II&id=1684337
Integrity Lost - Integrity Found
Integrity Lost - Integrity Found
By Mike Doman
As a fourth generation banker, I literally grew up at our local bank in Pensacola, Florida, The Citizens & Peoples National Bank. I can't remember a time in my early childhood when I didn't dream about being the president of this great company. To follow in my fathers' footsteps and succeed him as president was the basis of that recurring dream. As a child, I would love it when my father or mother would take me to the bank. I would run around and speak to everyone and I considered many of those employees like my extended family. Everyone enjoyed working there and the warmth and hospitality they displayed impelled me to want to work there someday.
I joined the bank in 1982 and felt that I was well on my way to fulfilling that dream when something happened that changed everything. On October 6, 1986, my grandfather passed away. At the time, he was the Chairman of the Board of Directors and the former president of our bank. As an independent bank with a limited number of stockholders, and he being one of the largest stockholders, our future was pretty certain. We were at that time rated as one of the top 100 banks in the nation in safety and soundness. For a small independent bank, this was unprecedented.
After he died, there was clearly a change in attitude that was led by the Board of Directors to bring the bank forward to be a major player in the Pensacola market. To change how we did business in order to compete with the other national and regional rivals within our community. There was also a faction of stockholders and directors that were insistent to test the waters for a possible buyout although my father was against it.
On August 29, 1988, less than two years after my grandfather's death, the bank was sold to Bank South Corporation, a large regional bank with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Our stockholders got what they wanted, a large paycheck, and our bank the promise of a bright future, better services and a decentralized style of management that would allow our bank to continue with its current management team and Board of Directors. The only difference was our company's earnings were being shipped upstream to our new holding company in order to bolster their own dwindling profits.
As a now publicly traded company and with Bank South's continued struggle to make earnings goals even though our local bank was still doing quite well, I watched my stock value in this new company begin to deteriorate. In 1993, our bank again was sold, this time in a swap between Bank South and Barnett Bank. Bank South was able to get a great deal on some of Barnett's branches in the Georgia market where Bank South had no presence and Barnett (one of our local rivals) was able to acquire our bank and become the largest bank in Pensacola.
This was the beginning of the acquisition and merger boom that was sweeping the nation. This was also the beginning of the mortgage boom that was happening across the country. As the high interest rates of the late 70's began to decrease, banks were creating separate divisions within their own institutions to market services normally handled by their staff of lenders and bank officers. Independent mortgage brokerage companies began springing up all over the country.
Then something happened that changed banking forever. I believe this was the beginning of our downfall and is what put our great country in this financial mess we are in today.
Banks and mortgage companies got the novel idea of providing incentives and commissions to their mortgage lenders in order to boost their loan production volume. They began to steer away from salaried positions to commission only positions. Today this practice has spilled over to every facet of banking including the most basic services. No longer are employees rewarded for customer satisfaction and great customer service, they are rewarded for pushing product.
These types of programs are great when times are easy, but when the ability to sell these products diminishes, many problems begin to surface.
Having worked on both commission and on salary, I have seen first hand the perils of this mentality. Not only have I watched friends lose their jobs, I have watched lenders falsify documents in order to make a loan so they can put food on the table for their family. I have seen a total disconnect from lenders in simple morality. "Sell at any cost" has replaced the Golden Rule.
When my hometown bank was gobbled up by a large corporate bank, I watched the principles with which I had grown up with get tossed out the window and substituted by words such as sales charting, sales referrals, cross selling and sales culture. "Trust" departments were being replaced by brokerage services.
The local banker has gone from a trusted financial advisor to the door to door salesman with financial products to sell rather than vacuums or encyclopedias.
In the late 90's, I worked for Norwest Mortgage, who at the time was one of the largest mortgage companies in the nation. One of our most successful producers out of the gate was a gentleman who had no lending experience at all. He was a salesman from a local real estate company who could sell swamp land to the Pope! The problem was he didn't give a darn about the customer. He would put people in adjustable rate mortgages that paid higher commissions and charged outrageous fees with no regard for the customers' needs. Needless to say, he never received a favorable customer satisfaction survey (which our company would send out after the closing) but he made a ton of money. So the company looked the other way.
At the time the sub-prime market was starting to swell. Driven by the higher yield, investors were beginning to come out of the woodwork. And when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started loosening their underwriting guidelines to get their piece of the pie, the whole sub-prime industry went mainstream. With Wall Street investors chomping at the bit to take advantage of these high risk high yield loans, anyone with a job and few hundred dollars could buy a house. Buying a home with 20% down was the rule, now it was the exception.
Because many of the sub-prime borrowers had less than perfect credit or the homes they were buying did not fit into the box of a normal conventional loan, many mortgage lenders were using this disparity to convince buyers into adjustable rate mortgages with higher rates and would charge excessive fees all the while telling these borrowers they would be able to refinance in a couple of years to a low rate loan.
However, many of these sub-prime loans had large prepayment penalties which many borrowers were unaware of until the day before closing. Many of the buyers would go through with the closing anyway due to the fear of losing their down payment they had made when they signed the real estate purchase contract. Thus, predatory lending was born.
Since these types of loans were being packaged and sold to investment groups in the secondary market and not held by the mortgage companies or banks, lenders were becoming less and less concerned for these borrowers ability to repay the loans. They were already moving on to the next sucker!
In the old days, banks did not have the luxury of selling their loans to investors with no recourse. If the borrower couldn't pay, the bank had to foreclose on the borrower and take back the property and re-sell it. That is why banks would require a 20% down payment, to insure that if they did take the property back, they could sell it at face value and use their 20% equity to cover legal fees for foreclosure and pay the realtor's fee and minimize the bank's losses.
Being disheartened by the mortgage industry and the direction my company was taking, I decided to go back into banking and in 2000, I joined a large regional bank. The bank was based primarily in the southeast at that time. I was hired as a branch manager. Although this was a large change from the small independent hometown bank where I had grown up, I immediately connected during my initial interview with the CEO, who was also the senior lending officer over the greater Pensacola, Fort Walton and Panama City markets. He was obviously cut from the same cloth as my father and grandfather and I admired his style of banking.
However, by 2002, he had retired and the bank's focus (like many of the larger banks) shifted to sales. By 2003, I was devoting over twenty percent of my day to documenting sales calls, referrals and cross sales that my employees and I were making on a weekly basis. The company ramped up its already aggressive sales program and incentive plans. The company also began to tie our employee's performance reviews to their success in achieving the sales goals set by the company. If you didn't meet the minimum standards set by the company, no raise! But if you exceeded your goals, big bonus!
While I was working as Branch Manager, from time to time, I would hire tellers and other employees that had previously worked in other branches within the company. One of the employees we hired had come from another branch and told us a story about one of the new accounts representatives from a neighboring town. How this employee would deceive her customers just to sell a product. How she would use her foreign accent to pretend she didn't understand when a customer tried to reject the sale of additional products or services. How she would tell them that she needed the money because her husband was in the hospital. She was consistently one of the company's top producers and would do anything to make the sale. Her supervisor would look the other way because she was getting large bonuses due to her employee's success.
By the end of 2002, I began to notice a trend that really began to make me question the tactics and motives of the senior management at our head office in Birmingham, Alabama.
As the year rolled on, the company would position themselves competitively in our local markets and many of my fellow commissioned employees (like myself) were able to push ourselves to reach the company's' lofty sales goals throughout the year because of a fear of losing our jobs. But like clockwork, around October, November and December of every year, our loan rates would increase and deposit rates decrease just enough to put our company at a disadvantage in our local marketplace causing many of our managers to miss the mark of reaching our sales goals by the end of the year or to some degree, decrease the amount of the bonus we would have expected had we maintained our ability to compete.
I would imagine that the company saved millions of dollars in unpaid bonuses each year by using this tactic. They would push loan and deposit growth by offering large bonuses, but make it next to impossible for the managers to reach their goals by the end of the year. By January or February, we would regain our competitiveness in our local market. Coincidence? You be the judge.
In this new age of banking, integrity and morality for the most part has become lost in this new generation of bankers. The senior management in most banks today is all about the money. They have grown up with different values than those bestowed upon me by my mentors like my father and grandfather. They have all since retired along with the respect, trust and admiration that the name "banker" represented.
Integrity Found:
So where do we go from here and how do we fix this problem? How do we get back the trust of the American people and restore the integrity of the nations banking system?
Step One: Repair Safety and Soundness.
To do this we must change the entire compensation structure of the banking system. This will need to be implemented not only on the lending side of the fence, but also the deposit and investment side as well. Although this will be a monumental task in itself, it must be done. We must remove the carrot in front of the horse and return to the days of performance based on customer satisfaction rather than production volume. We have to get back to quality over quantity, performance over production.
Would an employee be willing to put his/her job on the line by bending the rules or falsifying documents to make a loan if there was no additional incentive or cash in their pocket to do so? I doubt it. We need to eliminate that temptation altogether.
It is also time to eliminate some of the ridiculous loan products that allow borrowers to finance 100% of the purchase price for a home. It is time to get back to the days of requiring borrowers to put a substantial amount of their "own money" into the purchase of their new home. No more free rides. No more deals where the bank finances 80% and the seller finances the additional 20% as a second mortgage so the buyer can purchase a home with no money down. The fact is, and the statistics prove, that borrowers with little or no money invested in a property are much more likely to default on their loan than someone who has put a substantial amount of their own cash into the purchase.
Step Two: Consolidation and Collaboration.
I was trained as a lender to make sound lending decisions in every aspect of lending: retail, commercial and mortgage lending. Today we have retail lenders, commercial lenders, conventional mortgage lenders, sub-prime mortgage lenders, leasing specialists and the list goes on and on. By consolidating some of these services and divisions back under one roof, the savings would be considerable. This would also make the job of oversight by regulatory agencies like the OCC, FDIC or NCUA a lot less complicated. The ability of a financial institution to hide its problems by splitting into different entities has created a smoke screen for troubled companies like Lehman Brothers and AIG.
It is also necessary that our financial regulatory agencies also be consolidated. These agencies essentially provide the same services but with no communication between themselves. Not only will consolidating these independent organizations eliminate a huge duplication of duties, it will allow this single organization to collaborate with each division more effectively to prevent gaps in oversight and to paint a clearer picture of our country's financial condition.
It is also imperative that these regulatory agencies hire experienced auditors that have a thorough knowledge of the lending industry. I've seen so many State and Federal auditors come through the system fresh out of school that frankly don't know what they are looking for. Our country must be willing to pony up and recruit experienced lenders to be the watch dogs and protect the public's money. The regulatory agencies must also be willing to take a harder look, review a larger percentage of a bank's loan portfolio in order to prohibit more bad loans from slipping through the cracks unchecked.
I also think it is high time that Credit Unions that operate outside the boundaries of providing the basic services of deposits and personal loans be taxed just like banks and any other for-profit financial institution. If they wish to maintain their current non-profit status, they must adhere to restricted more stringent guidelines for membership. These new tax revenues will help to subsidize the increase in costs for more stringent oversight by the regulatory agencies.
There also must be a fundamental change in the mentality of the owners of these companies (i.e. stockholders). As one of my good friends and local bank president, Ken Naylor said, "A bank was like a three-legged stool." "Each leg represented one of three principals: 1) Soundness, 2) Profitability and 3) Growth." "If a loan wasn't sound credit-wise, then that leg would be too short and the stool would fall over." "Or if a loan was good on credit but priced too thin (not sufficiently profitable), then the same result would occur." "As for growth, all of the legs had to grow simultaneously and at the same rate or one leg would grow too fast and the stool would fall over."
Stockholders along with Wall Street analysts have become consumed by growth and profitability. They have overlooked the need for safety, soundness and most importantly stability. More is not always better. Just ask the stockholders of Washington Mutual, IndyMac and Wachovia! As a stockholder, you need to take a serious look at the management team YOU vote for and place in power. Are they too walking out the back door with their pockets full of multi-million dollar severance packages while your company's very existence hangs in the balance? Stockholders will need to take a more active role in the direction their company is heading.
By following these steps outlined above, I believe that the banking industry can regain its integrity. It won't be easy, but it will be necessary if our country ever expects to win back the trust and respect of the American people. My ideas will not be popular with many senior management teams because it requires an admission of guilt and faulty decision making on their part. They have spent millions and millions of dollars developing these sales strategies in the hopes of gaining an advantage over their competition. They have taken their eyes off the ball!
I left behind my banking career in 2007 after devoting 25 years of my life to what I thought would be a lifelong profession. But I long for the day when the term "banker" again carries with it the connotation of trust, respect and admiration.
Mike Doman
Email: mike@gulfbreezefinancialconsulting.com
[http://www.gulfbreezefinancialconsulting.com]
(Mike Doman is a former bank executive and has worked in almost every sector of banking including retail, commercial and mortgage lending. Mike is the founder of Gulf Breeze Financial Consulting which specializes in restructuring and retraining financial institutions to recapture their image and trust in the marketplace. Mike lives in Gulf Breeze, Florida with his three children, Haley, Jordan & Reese.)
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Doman
http://EzineArticles.com/?Integrity-Lost---Integrity-Found&id=1620459
By Mike Doman
As a fourth generation banker, I literally grew up at our local bank in Pensacola, Florida, The Citizens & Peoples National Bank. I can't remember a time in my early childhood when I didn't dream about being the president of this great company. To follow in my fathers' footsteps and succeed him as president was the basis of that recurring dream. As a child, I would love it when my father or mother would take me to the bank. I would run around and speak to everyone and I considered many of those employees like my extended family. Everyone enjoyed working there and the warmth and hospitality they displayed impelled me to want to work there someday.
I joined the bank in 1982 and felt that I was well on my way to fulfilling that dream when something happened that changed everything. On October 6, 1986, my grandfather passed away. At the time, he was the Chairman of the Board of Directors and the former president of our bank. As an independent bank with a limited number of stockholders, and he being one of the largest stockholders, our future was pretty certain. We were at that time rated as one of the top 100 banks in the nation in safety and soundness. For a small independent bank, this was unprecedented.
After he died, there was clearly a change in attitude that was led by the Board of Directors to bring the bank forward to be a major player in the Pensacola market. To change how we did business in order to compete with the other national and regional rivals within our community. There was also a faction of stockholders and directors that were insistent to test the waters for a possible buyout although my father was against it.
On August 29, 1988, less than two years after my grandfather's death, the bank was sold to Bank South Corporation, a large regional bank with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Our stockholders got what they wanted, a large paycheck, and our bank the promise of a bright future, better services and a decentralized style of management that would allow our bank to continue with its current management team and Board of Directors. The only difference was our company's earnings were being shipped upstream to our new holding company in order to bolster their own dwindling profits.
As a now publicly traded company and with Bank South's continued struggle to make earnings goals even though our local bank was still doing quite well, I watched my stock value in this new company begin to deteriorate. In 1993, our bank again was sold, this time in a swap between Bank South and Barnett Bank. Bank South was able to get a great deal on some of Barnett's branches in the Georgia market where Bank South had no presence and Barnett (one of our local rivals) was able to acquire our bank and become the largest bank in Pensacola.
This was the beginning of the acquisition and merger boom that was sweeping the nation. This was also the beginning of the mortgage boom that was happening across the country. As the high interest rates of the late 70's began to decrease, banks were creating separate divisions within their own institutions to market services normally handled by their staff of lenders and bank officers. Independent mortgage brokerage companies began springing up all over the country.
Then something happened that changed banking forever. I believe this was the beginning of our downfall and is what put our great country in this financial mess we are in today.
Banks and mortgage companies got the novel idea of providing incentives and commissions to their mortgage lenders in order to boost their loan production volume. They began to steer away from salaried positions to commission only positions. Today this practice has spilled over to every facet of banking including the most basic services. No longer are employees rewarded for customer satisfaction and great customer service, they are rewarded for pushing product.
These types of programs are great when times are easy, but when the ability to sell these products diminishes, many problems begin to surface.
Having worked on both commission and on salary, I have seen first hand the perils of this mentality. Not only have I watched friends lose their jobs, I have watched lenders falsify documents in order to make a loan so they can put food on the table for their family. I have seen a total disconnect from lenders in simple morality. "Sell at any cost" has replaced the Golden Rule.
When my hometown bank was gobbled up by a large corporate bank, I watched the principles with which I had grown up with get tossed out the window and substituted by words such as sales charting, sales referrals, cross selling and sales culture. "Trust" departments were being replaced by brokerage services.
The local banker has gone from a trusted financial advisor to the door to door salesman with financial products to sell rather than vacuums or encyclopedias.
In the late 90's, I worked for Norwest Mortgage, who at the time was one of the largest mortgage companies in the nation. One of our most successful producers out of the gate was a gentleman who had no lending experience at all. He was a salesman from a local real estate company who could sell swamp land to the Pope! The problem was he didn't give a darn about the customer. He would put people in adjustable rate mortgages that paid higher commissions and charged outrageous fees with no regard for the customers' needs. Needless to say, he never received a favorable customer satisfaction survey (which our company would send out after the closing) but he made a ton of money. So the company looked the other way.
At the time the sub-prime market was starting to swell. Driven by the higher yield, investors were beginning to come out of the woodwork. And when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started loosening their underwriting guidelines to get their piece of the pie, the whole sub-prime industry went mainstream. With Wall Street investors chomping at the bit to take advantage of these high risk high yield loans, anyone with a job and few hundred dollars could buy a house. Buying a home with 20% down was the rule, now it was the exception.
Because many of the sub-prime borrowers had less than perfect credit or the homes they were buying did not fit into the box of a normal conventional loan, many mortgage lenders were using this disparity to convince buyers into adjustable rate mortgages with higher rates and would charge excessive fees all the while telling these borrowers they would be able to refinance in a couple of years to a low rate loan.
However, many of these sub-prime loans had large prepayment penalties which many borrowers were unaware of until the day before closing. Many of the buyers would go through with the closing anyway due to the fear of losing their down payment they had made when they signed the real estate purchase contract. Thus, predatory lending was born.
Since these types of loans were being packaged and sold to investment groups in the secondary market and not held by the mortgage companies or banks, lenders were becoming less and less concerned for these borrowers ability to repay the loans. They were already moving on to the next sucker!
In the old days, banks did not have the luxury of selling their loans to investors with no recourse. If the borrower couldn't pay, the bank had to foreclose on the borrower and take back the property and re-sell it. That is why banks would require a 20% down payment, to insure that if they did take the property back, they could sell it at face value and use their 20% equity to cover legal fees for foreclosure and pay the realtor's fee and minimize the bank's losses.
Being disheartened by the mortgage industry and the direction my company was taking, I decided to go back into banking and in 2000, I joined a large regional bank. The bank was based primarily in the southeast at that time. I was hired as a branch manager. Although this was a large change from the small independent hometown bank where I had grown up, I immediately connected during my initial interview with the CEO, who was also the senior lending officer over the greater Pensacola, Fort Walton and Panama City markets. He was obviously cut from the same cloth as my father and grandfather and I admired his style of banking.
However, by 2002, he had retired and the bank's focus (like many of the larger banks) shifted to sales. By 2003, I was devoting over twenty percent of my day to documenting sales calls, referrals and cross sales that my employees and I were making on a weekly basis. The company ramped up its already aggressive sales program and incentive plans. The company also began to tie our employee's performance reviews to their success in achieving the sales goals set by the company. If you didn't meet the minimum standards set by the company, no raise! But if you exceeded your goals, big bonus!
While I was working as Branch Manager, from time to time, I would hire tellers and other employees that had previously worked in other branches within the company. One of the employees we hired had come from another branch and told us a story about one of the new accounts representatives from a neighboring town. How this employee would deceive her customers just to sell a product. How she would use her foreign accent to pretend she didn't understand when a customer tried to reject the sale of additional products or services. How she would tell them that she needed the money because her husband was in the hospital. She was consistently one of the company's top producers and would do anything to make the sale. Her supervisor would look the other way because she was getting large bonuses due to her employee's success.
By the end of 2002, I began to notice a trend that really began to make me question the tactics and motives of the senior management at our head office in Birmingham, Alabama.
As the year rolled on, the company would position themselves competitively in our local markets and many of my fellow commissioned employees (like myself) were able to push ourselves to reach the company's' lofty sales goals throughout the year because of a fear of losing our jobs. But like clockwork, around October, November and December of every year, our loan rates would increase and deposit rates decrease just enough to put our company at a disadvantage in our local marketplace causing many of our managers to miss the mark of reaching our sales goals by the end of the year or to some degree, decrease the amount of the bonus we would have expected had we maintained our ability to compete.
I would imagine that the company saved millions of dollars in unpaid bonuses each year by using this tactic. They would push loan and deposit growth by offering large bonuses, but make it next to impossible for the managers to reach their goals by the end of the year. By January or February, we would regain our competitiveness in our local market. Coincidence? You be the judge.
In this new age of banking, integrity and morality for the most part has become lost in this new generation of bankers. The senior management in most banks today is all about the money. They have grown up with different values than those bestowed upon me by my mentors like my father and grandfather. They have all since retired along with the respect, trust and admiration that the name "banker" represented.
Integrity Found:
So where do we go from here and how do we fix this problem? How do we get back the trust of the American people and restore the integrity of the nations banking system?
Step One: Repair Safety and Soundness.
To do this we must change the entire compensation structure of the banking system. This will need to be implemented not only on the lending side of the fence, but also the deposit and investment side as well. Although this will be a monumental task in itself, it must be done. We must remove the carrot in front of the horse and return to the days of performance based on customer satisfaction rather than production volume. We have to get back to quality over quantity, performance over production.
Would an employee be willing to put his/her job on the line by bending the rules or falsifying documents to make a loan if there was no additional incentive or cash in their pocket to do so? I doubt it. We need to eliminate that temptation altogether.
It is also time to eliminate some of the ridiculous loan products that allow borrowers to finance 100% of the purchase price for a home. It is time to get back to the days of requiring borrowers to put a substantial amount of their "own money" into the purchase of their new home. No more free rides. No more deals where the bank finances 80% and the seller finances the additional 20% as a second mortgage so the buyer can purchase a home with no money down. The fact is, and the statistics prove, that borrowers with little or no money invested in a property are much more likely to default on their loan than someone who has put a substantial amount of their own cash into the purchase.
Step Two: Consolidation and Collaboration.
I was trained as a lender to make sound lending decisions in every aspect of lending: retail, commercial and mortgage lending. Today we have retail lenders, commercial lenders, conventional mortgage lenders, sub-prime mortgage lenders, leasing specialists and the list goes on and on. By consolidating some of these services and divisions back under one roof, the savings would be considerable. This would also make the job of oversight by regulatory agencies like the OCC, FDIC or NCUA a lot less complicated. The ability of a financial institution to hide its problems by splitting into different entities has created a smoke screen for troubled companies like Lehman Brothers and AIG.
It is also necessary that our financial regulatory agencies also be consolidated. These agencies essentially provide the same services but with no communication between themselves. Not only will consolidating these independent organizations eliminate a huge duplication of duties, it will allow this single organization to collaborate with each division more effectively to prevent gaps in oversight and to paint a clearer picture of our country's financial condition.
It is also imperative that these regulatory agencies hire experienced auditors that have a thorough knowledge of the lending industry. I've seen so many State and Federal auditors come through the system fresh out of school that frankly don't know what they are looking for. Our country must be willing to pony up and recruit experienced lenders to be the watch dogs and protect the public's money. The regulatory agencies must also be willing to take a harder look, review a larger percentage of a bank's loan portfolio in order to prohibit more bad loans from slipping through the cracks unchecked.
I also think it is high time that Credit Unions that operate outside the boundaries of providing the basic services of deposits and personal loans be taxed just like banks and any other for-profit financial institution. If they wish to maintain their current non-profit status, they must adhere to restricted more stringent guidelines for membership. These new tax revenues will help to subsidize the increase in costs for more stringent oversight by the regulatory agencies.
There also must be a fundamental change in the mentality of the owners of these companies (i.e. stockholders). As one of my good friends and local bank president, Ken Naylor said, "A bank was like a three-legged stool." "Each leg represented one of three principals: 1) Soundness, 2) Profitability and 3) Growth." "If a loan wasn't sound credit-wise, then that leg would be too short and the stool would fall over." "Or if a loan was good on credit but priced too thin (not sufficiently profitable), then the same result would occur." "As for growth, all of the legs had to grow simultaneously and at the same rate or one leg would grow too fast and the stool would fall over."
Stockholders along with Wall Street analysts have become consumed by growth and profitability. They have overlooked the need for safety, soundness and most importantly stability. More is not always better. Just ask the stockholders of Washington Mutual, IndyMac and Wachovia! As a stockholder, you need to take a serious look at the management team YOU vote for and place in power. Are they too walking out the back door with their pockets full of multi-million dollar severance packages while your company's very existence hangs in the balance? Stockholders will need to take a more active role in the direction their company is heading.
By following these steps outlined above, I believe that the banking industry can regain its integrity. It won't be easy, but it will be necessary if our country ever expects to win back the trust and respect of the American people. My ideas will not be popular with many senior management teams because it requires an admission of guilt and faulty decision making on their part. They have spent millions and millions of dollars developing these sales strategies in the hopes of gaining an advantage over their competition. They have taken their eyes off the ball!
I left behind my banking career in 2007 after devoting 25 years of my life to what I thought would be a lifelong profession. But I long for the day when the term "banker" again carries with it the connotation of trust, respect and admiration.
Mike Doman
Email: mike@gulfbreezefinancialconsulting.com
[http://www.gulfbreezefinancialconsulting.com]
(Mike Doman is a former bank executive and has worked in almost every sector of banking including retail, commercial and mortgage lending. Mike is the founder of Gulf Breeze Financial Consulting which specializes in restructuring and retraining financial institutions to recapture their image and trust in the marketplace. Mike lives in Gulf Breeze, Florida with his three children, Haley, Jordan & Reese.)
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Doman
http://EzineArticles.com/?Integrity-Lost---Integrity-Found&id=1620459
วันอาทิตย์ที่ 22 ธันวาคม พ.ศ. 2556
John Galsworthy - English Novelist and Dramatist, Co-founder and First President International PEN
John Galsworthy - English Novelist and Dramatist, Co-founder and First President International PEN
By Arthur Smith
John Galsworthy's authorship seems to develop unusually smoothly, pushed on by a conscientious and indefatigable creative impulse. Yet he is not one of those who have turned to the literary career rapidly and without resistance. Born, as the English put it, with a silver spoon in his mouth, that is, economically independent, he studied at Harrow and Oxford, chose the law without practicing it, and traveled all over the world. When, at the age of twenty-eight, he began writing for the first time, the immediate reason was the exhortation of a woman friend, and it was to Galsworthy a mere recreation, evidently not without the inherent prejudices of the gentleman, against the vocation of writing. His first two collections of tales were published under the pen name of John Sin john, and the editions were soon withdrawn by the self-critical beginner. Not until he was thirty-seven did he begin his real authorship by publishing the novel The Island Pharisees (1904), and two years later appeared The Man of Property, the origin of his fame and at the same time of his monumental chief work, The Forsyte Saga.
So went the citation for Galsworthy on the occasion of his receiving the Nobel Prize for literature in abstentia
Galsworthy was born at Kingston Hill in Surrey, England into an established upper-middle-class and wealthy family, his father, John Galsworthy, a lawyer and director of several companies and his mother, nee Blanche Bartleet, the daughter of a Midlands manufacturer. Galsworthy attended Harrow and New College, Oxford, training as a barrister and was called to the bar in 1890. Not keen to begin practicing law, he traveled abroad to look after the family's shipping business interests whilst pursuing an unlucky love affair. During the period of his studies, he gained fame as a cricket and football player, but not with his writings. Only that once he planned to write a study of warm-blooded horses.
During his travels he met Joseph Conrad, then the first mate of a sailing-ship moored in the harbor of Adelaide Australia, and the two became close friends. In a letter he noted: "The first mate is a Pole called Conrad, and is a capital chap though queer to look at; he is a man of travel and experience in many parts of the world, and has a fund of yarns on which I draw freely." This meeting convinced Galsworthy to give up law and devote himself entirely to writing.
In 1895 Galsworthy began an affair with Ada Nemesis Pearson, the wife of one of his cousins. with whom he lived in secret for ten years, because he did not want to cause distress to his father, who would not approve of the relationship. With his father's death in 1904, Galsworthy became financially independent and in 1905 married Ada. They stayed together until his death in 1933. She even inspired many of Galsworthy's female characters. Her previous unhappy marriage with Galsworthy's cousin formed the basis for the novel The Man of Property (1906), which began the The Forsyte Saga novel sequence which established Galsworthy's reputation as a major British writer.
From the Four Winds a collection of short stories was Galsworthy's first published work in 1897, which with several subsequent works, were published under the pen name John Sinjohn. It would not be until The Island Pharisees (1904) that he would begin publishing under his own name, after the death of his father. His first play, The Silver Box (1906) became a success, and he followed it up with The Man of Property (1906), the first in the Forsyte trilogy.
Although he continued writing both plays and novels it was as a playwright he was mainly appreciated at the time. Along with other writers of the time such as Shaw his plays addressed the class system and social issues. Two of his best known plays were Strife (1909) and The Skin Game (1920).
He is now far better known for his novels and particularly The Forsyte Saga, the first of three trilogies of novels about the eponymous family and connected lives. These, as with many of his other works, dealt with class, and in particular upper-middle class lives. Although sympathetic to his characters he highlights their insular, snobbish and acquisitive attitudes and their suffocating moral codes. The first appearance of the Forsyte family was in one of the stories in Man of Devon (1901). The saga follows the lives of three generations of the British middle-class before 1914. Soames Forsyte, married to beautiful and rebellious Irene, was modeled after Arthur Galsworthy, the writer's cousin. Soames rapes his wife, which was the fate Ada Galsworthy suffered at the hands of her former husband Arthur. In the second volume, In Changery (1920), Irene and Soames divorce. She marries Jolyon Forsyte, Soames's cousin, and bears a son, Jon. Soames and his second wife, Annette Lamotte, have a daughter, Fleur. In the third volume, To Let (1921), Fleur and Jon fall in love, but Jon refuses to marry her. The second part of Forsyte chronicles, containing The White Monkey (1924), The Silver Spoon (1926), Swan Song (1928), starts on an October afternoon of 1922 and closes in 1926. 'A Silent Wooing' and 'Passers By', the two interludes, came out in 1927.
Galsworthy returned again to the world of the Forsyte books in 1931 with a further collection of stories, On Forsyte Change. Romain Rolland, the writer of Jean-Christophe (1904-1912), coined a special term, the roman-fleuve, to descibe this kind of series of novels, which can be read separately, but which form a coherent narrative.
Although Galsworthy chronicled changes in the middle-class family in England, he said in the preface of The White Monkey, that the English character had changed very little since the Victorianism of Soames and his generation. "He emerged still thinking about the English. Well! They were now one of the plainest and most distorted races of the world; and yet was there any race to compare with them for good temper and for 'guts'? And they needed those in their smoky towns, and their climate a remarkable instance of adaptation to environment, the modern English character! 'I could pick out an Englishman anywhere,' he thought, ' and yet, physically, there's no general type now!' Astounding people!"
Galsworthy is viewed as one of the first writers of the Edwardian era; who challenges in his works some of the ideals of society depicted in the literature of Victorian England. The depiction of a woman in an unhappy marriage is a recurring theme in his work. Through his writings he campaigned for a variety of causes including prison reform, women's rights, animal welfare and censorship, most of which have limited appeal outside the era in which they were written.
Galsworthy's first four books were published at his own expense under the pseudonym John Sinjohn. After reading Maupassant and Turgenev, Galsworthy published Villa Rubein (1900), in which he started to find his own voice. These early efforts, written under the influence of Kipling and Russian novelists, he later labeled as heavy and exaggerated. The Island Pharisees (1904) the first book which came out under his own name. Galsworthy wrote originally in the first person, then in the third, and revised it again. Its final version was not finished until 1908.
In Galsworthy's satire against the Island Pharisees, the fundamental feature that was to mark all his subsequent works was already apparent. The book deals with an English gentleman's having stayed abroad long enough to forget his conventional sphere of thoughts and feelings. He criticizes the national surroundings severely, and in doing so he is assisted by a Belgian vagabond, who casually makes his acquaintance in an English railway compartment and who becomes his fate. At that time Galsworthy was himself a cosmopolite returned home, prepared to fight against the old capitalistic aristocratic society with about the same program as George Bernard Shaw, although the Englishman, contrary to the Irishman who fought with intellectual arms, above all aimed at capturing feeling and imagination. The pharisaical egoism of England's ruling classes, the subject of Galsworthy's debut, remained his program for the future, only specialized in his particular works. He never tired of fighting against all that seemed narrow and harsh in the national character, and the persistence of his attacks on social evil indicates his strong impressions and deeply wounded feeling of justice.
With the Forsyte type he now aimed at the upper middle class, the rich businessmen, a group not yet having reached real gentility, but striving with its sympathies and instincts toward the well-known ideal of the gentleman of rigid, imperturbable, and imposing correctness. These people are particularly on their guard against dangerous feelings, a fact which, however, does not exclude accidental lapses, when passion intrudes upon their life, and liberty claims its rights in a world of property instincts. Beauty, here represented by Irene, does not like to live with The Man of Property; in his bitter indignation at this, Soames Forsyte becomes almost a tragic figure. Fifteen years later that he again took up his Forsytes, the effects of the World War had radically changed the perspective. But now this work expanded; In Chancery (1920) and To Let (1921) and two short story interludes were added, and thus The Forsyte Saga proper was completed. Not finished with the younger members of the family, Galsworthy wrote A Modern Comedy, a new trilogy whose structure is exactly like that of its predecessor and consists of the three novels, The White Monkey (1924), The Silver Spoon (1926), and Swan Song (1928), united by two short story interludes. These two trilogies together form an unusual literary accomplishment. The novelist has carried the history of his time through three generations, and his success in mastering so excellently his enormously difficult material, both in its scope and in its depth, remains an extremely memorable feat in English literature.
In the foreground of this chronicle is everyday reality, as experienced by the Forsytes, all personal fortunes, conflicts, and tragicomedies. But in the background is visible the dark fabric of historical events. See, for instance, the chapter describing how Soames with his second wife witnesses the funeral of Queen Victoria in grey weather at the Hyde Park fence, and the rapid survey of the age from her accession to the throne: «Morals had changed, manners had changed, men had become monkeys twice removed, God had become Mammon - Mammon so respectable as to deceive himself.» In the Forsyte novels we observe the transformation and the dissolution of the Victorian age up to the onset of the modern age.. In the first trilogy comes to life the period that in England effected the fusion of nobility and plutocracy with the accompanying change of the notion of a «gentleman», a kind of Indian summer of wealth before the days of the storm. The second trilogy, no longer called «saga» but «comedy», describes the profound crisis of the new England whose task is to change the ruins of the past and the improvised barracks of wartime into its future home.
The gallery of types is admirably complete. Robust businessmen, spoiled society ladies, aunts touching in an old-fashioned way, rebellious young girls, gentlemen of the clubs, politicians, artists, children, and even dogs - these last-mentioned especially favored by Galsworthy - emerge in the London panorama in a concrete form, alive before our eyes and ears.
The situations recur as a curious documentation of the oscillation and the undulation in a family of given hereditary dispositions. The individual portraits are distinguished, and the law of social life is at work.
One could observe in these novels how Galsworthy's view gradually changes. The radical critic of culture rises by degrees to a greater objectivity in his appreciation and to a more liberal view of the purely human. There is his treatment of Soames, at first satirized, but then described with a respect that, reluctantly growing, finally changes into a genuine sympathy. Galsworthy has seized upon this sympathy; his characterization of Soames's personality thoroughly worked out becomes the most memorable feature of the Forsyte saga and the comedy of the descendants. One of those masterly final episodes of Swan Song, in which Old Soames, having driven to his ancestors' village on the west coast, finds with the help of an old census map the place where the Forsytes' farm had been situated, where only a single stone marks the site; lingers in the reader's mind. Something like the ghost of a path leads him down into a valley of grass and furze. He breathes in the fresh, rough sea air which goes a little to his head; he puts on his overcoat and sits musing, his back against the stone. Had his ancestors built the house themselves at this lonely place, had they been the first to settle down here? he wonders. Their England rises before him, an England «of pack horses and very little smoke, of peat and wood fires, and wives who never left you, because they couldn't probably». He sits there a long time, absorbed in his feeling for the birthplace.
«And something moved in him, as if the salty independence of that lonely spot were still in his bones. Old Jolyon and his own father and the rest of his uncles - no wonder they'd been independent, with this air and loneliness in their blood; and crabbed with the pickling of it - unable to give up, to let go, to die. For a moment he seemed to understand even himself.»
To Galsworthy Soames thus becomes one of the last representatives of static old England. There was no humbug in him, we are told; he had his trying ways, but he was genuine. The sober prosaic respectability is in this manner duly honored in Galsworthy's realism. As time passed, and the weary, cynical laxity grew more and more visibly modern, the chronicler found that several traits which under other circumstances had been little appreciated, perhaps really constituted the secret of the British power of resistance. On the whole, Galsworthy's later novels are permeated with a patriotic feeling of self-defense that appears also in his descriptions of the home and studies of nature. Even these last-mentioned are rendered with a more tender and more anxious poetry, with the feeling of protecting something precious yet already shadowed by certain loss. It may be old chambers where people have established themselves as if to remain there forever. Or it may be an English garden park, where the September sun is shining beautifully on bronze-colored beech leaves and centenary hedges of yew.
It is above all in The Country House (1907), in Fraternity (1901), and in The Dark Flower (1913) that his mature essential character is seen. In the novel of the manor he created perhaps his most exquisite female portrait, Mrs. Pendyce, the type of the perfect, unaffected lady with all the modest tragedy which surrounds a truly noble nature, condemned to be restrained if not destroyed by the fetters of tradition. In Fraternity he represented, with a discreet mixture of pity and irony, the unfulfilled martyr of social conscience, the aesthete who is tortured by the shadows of the proletarian masses in London, but is not able to take the decisive step and carry out his altruistic impulse of action. There we also meet the old original Mr. Stone, the utopian dreamer with his eternal monologues beneath the night sky, indeed one of Galsworthy's most memorable types. The Dark Flower, may be called a psychological sonata, played with a masterly hand and based on the variations of passion and resignation in the ages of man. Even in the form of the short story Galsworthy has often been able to evoke an emotional response through contrasts of shadow and light which work rather graphically. He can do this in only a few pages which become animated by his personal style, for example, when he tells about such a simple case as that of the German shoemaker in «Quality», the story of the hopeless struggle of good craftsmanship against low-price industry.
By appealing to education and the sense of justice, his narrative art has always gently influenced contemporary notions of life and habits of thought. The same is true of his dramatic works, which were often direct contributions to social discussion and led to definite reforms at least in one area, the administration of public prisons in England as through Justice (1910), a realistic portrayal of prison life that roused so much feeling that it led to prison reform.
His dramas show an unusual richness of ideas combined with great ingenuity and technical skill in the working out of scenic effect. When certain inclinations are found, they are always just and humane. Galsworthy's plays, written in a naturalistic style, usually examines some controversial ethical or social problem. In The Forest (1924), for example, he brands the inconsiderate spirit of greed that, for crass purposes, exploits the heroism of the British world-conquering mind. The Show (1925) represents the defenselessness of the individual against the press in a family tragedy where brutal newspaper curiosity functions like a deaf and unchecked machine, removing the possibility of any one being held responsible for the resultant evil.
Loyalties (1922), dealing with the theme of anti-Semitism and which was also the best of his later plays depicts a matter of honor in which loyalty is tested and impartially examined in the different circles where it is at work, that is, the family, the corporation, the profession, and the nation. The force of these and other plays is in their logical structure and their concentrated action; sometimes possessing an atmosphere of poetic feeling that is far from trivial. especially in A Pigeon (1912) and A Bit o' Love (1915) which, however, did not meet with such brilliant success on the stage. The Silver Box (1906), like many of his other works, has a legal theme giving a bitter contrast of the law's treatment of the rich and the poor thus showing that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. Later plays include The Skin Game (1920), filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1931, and Escape (1926), filmed for a second time in 1948 by 20th. Century-Fox, starring Rex Harrison. In the story a law-abiding man meets a prostitute and accidentally kills a police in defending her. He escapes from prison, and meets different people before giving himself up.
Although on the whole Galsworthy's plays cannot be rated artistically with his novels, they confirm quite as plainly how strongly he sticks to his early ideal of liberty. Even in his rather cool dramatic works we meet a steady enemy of all oppression, spiritual as well as material, a sensitive man who with all his heart reacts against lack of consideration and never gives way in his demand for fair play.
We find in Galsworthy a definite musical charm catching and keeping the hidden feelings. His intuition is so infallible that he can content himself with a slight allusion and a broken hint. Galsworthy's irony is such a singular instrument that even the tone separates him from any other writer. There are many different kinds of irony. One principal kind is negative and can be compared to the hoar-frost of the windows in a house where there is no fire, where the hearth has grown cold long ago. But there is also an irony friendly to life, springing from warmth, interest, and humanity; such is Galsworthy's. His is an irony that, in the presence of tragicomic evil, seems to question why it must be so, why it is necessary, and whether there is nothing to remedy it. Sometimes Galsworthy makes nature herself take part in that ironic play about human beings, to underline the bitterness or sweetness of the incidents with the help of winds, clouds, fragrances, and bird cries. Assisted by this irony he successfully appeals to the psychological imagination, always the best ally of understanding and sympathy.
As we have alreagy seen , Galsworth had a quest for adventure, altruism and social commitment. This continues throughout the rest of his life. During World War I, for instance, he tried to enlist in the army, but was rejected due to his shortsightedness. He instead worked in a hospital in France as an orderly. He worked for the Red Cross in France, and helped refugees in Belgium. Galsworthy refused knighthood in 1917 in the belief that writers should not accept titles. He also gave away at least half of his income to humanitarian causes.
In 1924 Galsworthy founded PEN, the international organization of writers, with Catherine Dawson Scott and was elected as its first president. Galsworthy and Dawson Scott after contacting American writers had a center started in New York. At its inaugural meeting, April 19, 1922, at a dinner in the Coffee House Club, where about forty people gathered to which he sent a message of good will; read by Alexander Black, Chairman of the Executive Committee. Galsworthy sent warmest greetings to the new American Center and set down the central idea and hope upon which P.E.N. was founded:
We writers are in some sort trustees for human nature; if
we are narrow and prejudiced we harm the human race. And
the better we know each other....the greater the chance
for human happiness in a world not, as yet, too happy.
One of Galsworthy's ideas from the beginning that there should be an International Congress each year, to which all the Centers would send their delegates was first held in London in 1923 with an impressive number of centers, and representatives from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Italy, Norway, Rumania, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. The following year the American Center hosted an International Congress, in May 1924, consisting of three days of festivities and discussions, the highlight being a gala banquet at which a letter from John Galsworthy was also read by Mrs. Dawson Scott, which emphasized the reason behind P.E.N. hospitality:
I beg you earnestly to believe that our meetings are not
just festivity, but gestures of friendliness which have
a deep and wide-reaching significance....Friends, the
P.E.N. Club was a great dream....I believe I speak from
your hearts, as well as from my own, when I say: "With
this dream we will go forward till we have made of it a
great reality." Good fortune to you all and may you serve
this dream.
In January of 1933, a year after the Budapest Congress, John Galsworthy died from a brain tumor at his London home, Grove Lodge, Hampstead , leaving his Nobel Prize money in a trust fund for P.E.N., the last gift and contribution to an organization he loved and nurtured, watching it grow and take shape. In accordance with his will he was cremated at Woking and his ashes scattered over the South Downs from an aeroplane, but there is also a memorial in Highgate 'New' Cemetery.
The popularity of his fiction waned quickly after his death but the hugely successful adaptation of The Forsyte Saga in 1967 renewed interest in the writer. A number of John Galsworthy's letters and papers are held at the University of Birmingham Special Collections. He produced 20 novels, 27 plays, 3 collections of poetry, 173 short stories, 5 collections of essays, 700 letters, and many sketches and miscellaneous works. Galsworthy's socially committed work was attacked by D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf who said in her essay 'Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown', that the Edwardian writers "developed a technique of novel-writing which suits their purpose. . . But those tools are not our tools, and that business is not our business." The younger generation of writers accused Galsworthy of being thoroughly embodied of the values he was supposed to be criticizing. On the other hand, his influence is seen in the works of Thomas Mann, and he was widely read in France and in Russia. The Forsyte Saga gained a huge popular success as a BBC television series in 1967.
Reference:
Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969
Arthur Smith was born and was schooled in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He has taught English since 1977 at Prince of Wales School and, Milton Margai College of Education. He is now a Senior Lecturer at Fourah Bay College where he has been lecturing English language and Literature for the past eight years.
Mr Smith's writings have been appearing in local newspapers as well as in various international media like West Africa Magazine, Index on Censorship, Focus on Library and Information Work. He was one of 17 international visitors who participated in a seminar on contemporary American Literature sponsored by the U.S.State Department in 2006. His growing thoughts and reflections on this trip which took him to various US sights and sounds could be read at lisnews.org.
His other publications include: Folktales from Freetown, Langston Hughes: Life and Works Celebrating Black Dignity, and 'The Struggle of the Book' He holds a PhD and a professorship in English from the National Open University, Republic of Benin.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Arthur_Smith
http://EzineArticles.com/?John-Galsworthy---English-Novelist-and-Dramatist,-Co-founder-and-First-President-International-PEN&id=988419
By Arthur Smith
John Galsworthy's authorship seems to develop unusually smoothly, pushed on by a conscientious and indefatigable creative impulse. Yet he is not one of those who have turned to the literary career rapidly and without resistance. Born, as the English put it, with a silver spoon in his mouth, that is, economically independent, he studied at Harrow and Oxford, chose the law without practicing it, and traveled all over the world. When, at the age of twenty-eight, he began writing for the first time, the immediate reason was the exhortation of a woman friend, and it was to Galsworthy a mere recreation, evidently not without the inherent prejudices of the gentleman, against the vocation of writing. His first two collections of tales were published under the pen name of John Sin john, and the editions were soon withdrawn by the self-critical beginner. Not until he was thirty-seven did he begin his real authorship by publishing the novel The Island Pharisees (1904), and two years later appeared The Man of Property, the origin of his fame and at the same time of his monumental chief work, The Forsyte Saga.
So went the citation for Galsworthy on the occasion of his receiving the Nobel Prize for literature in abstentia
Galsworthy was born at Kingston Hill in Surrey, England into an established upper-middle-class and wealthy family, his father, John Galsworthy, a lawyer and director of several companies and his mother, nee Blanche Bartleet, the daughter of a Midlands manufacturer. Galsworthy attended Harrow and New College, Oxford, training as a barrister and was called to the bar in 1890. Not keen to begin practicing law, he traveled abroad to look after the family's shipping business interests whilst pursuing an unlucky love affair. During the period of his studies, he gained fame as a cricket and football player, but not with his writings. Only that once he planned to write a study of warm-blooded horses.
During his travels he met Joseph Conrad, then the first mate of a sailing-ship moored in the harbor of Adelaide Australia, and the two became close friends. In a letter he noted: "The first mate is a Pole called Conrad, and is a capital chap though queer to look at; he is a man of travel and experience in many parts of the world, and has a fund of yarns on which I draw freely." This meeting convinced Galsworthy to give up law and devote himself entirely to writing.
In 1895 Galsworthy began an affair with Ada Nemesis Pearson, the wife of one of his cousins. with whom he lived in secret for ten years, because he did not want to cause distress to his father, who would not approve of the relationship. With his father's death in 1904, Galsworthy became financially independent and in 1905 married Ada. They stayed together until his death in 1933. She even inspired many of Galsworthy's female characters. Her previous unhappy marriage with Galsworthy's cousin formed the basis for the novel The Man of Property (1906), which began the The Forsyte Saga novel sequence which established Galsworthy's reputation as a major British writer.
From the Four Winds a collection of short stories was Galsworthy's first published work in 1897, which with several subsequent works, were published under the pen name John Sinjohn. It would not be until The Island Pharisees (1904) that he would begin publishing under his own name, after the death of his father. His first play, The Silver Box (1906) became a success, and he followed it up with The Man of Property (1906), the first in the Forsyte trilogy.
Although he continued writing both plays and novels it was as a playwright he was mainly appreciated at the time. Along with other writers of the time such as Shaw his plays addressed the class system and social issues. Two of his best known plays were Strife (1909) and The Skin Game (1920).
He is now far better known for his novels and particularly The Forsyte Saga, the first of three trilogies of novels about the eponymous family and connected lives. These, as with many of his other works, dealt with class, and in particular upper-middle class lives. Although sympathetic to his characters he highlights their insular, snobbish and acquisitive attitudes and their suffocating moral codes. The first appearance of the Forsyte family was in one of the stories in Man of Devon (1901). The saga follows the lives of three generations of the British middle-class before 1914. Soames Forsyte, married to beautiful and rebellious Irene, was modeled after Arthur Galsworthy, the writer's cousin. Soames rapes his wife, which was the fate Ada Galsworthy suffered at the hands of her former husband Arthur. In the second volume, In Changery (1920), Irene and Soames divorce. She marries Jolyon Forsyte, Soames's cousin, and bears a son, Jon. Soames and his second wife, Annette Lamotte, have a daughter, Fleur. In the third volume, To Let (1921), Fleur and Jon fall in love, but Jon refuses to marry her. The second part of Forsyte chronicles, containing The White Monkey (1924), The Silver Spoon (1926), Swan Song (1928), starts on an October afternoon of 1922 and closes in 1926. 'A Silent Wooing' and 'Passers By', the two interludes, came out in 1927.
Galsworthy returned again to the world of the Forsyte books in 1931 with a further collection of stories, On Forsyte Change. Romain Rolland, the writer of Jean-Christophe (1904-1912), coined a special term, the roman-fleuve, to descibe this kind of series of novels, which can be read separately, but which form a coherent narrative.
Although Galsworthy chronicled changes in the middle-class family in England, he said in the preface of The White Monkey, that the English character had changed very little since the Victorianism of Soames and his generation. "He emerged still thinking about the English. Well! They were now one of the plainest and most distorted races of the world; and yet was there any race to compare with them for good temper and for 'guts'? And they needed those in their smoky towns, and their climate a remarkable instance of adaptation to environment, the modern English character! 'I could pick out an Englishman anywhere,' he thought, ' and yet, physically, there's no general type now!' Astounding people!"
Galsworthy is viewed as one of the first writers of the Edwardian era; who challenges in his works some of the ideals of society depicted in the literature of Victorian England. The depiction of a woman in an unhappy marriage is a recurring theme in his work. Through his writings he campaigned for a variety of causes including prison reform, women's rights, animal welfare and censorship, most of which have limited appeal outside the era in which they were written.
Galsworthy's first four books were published at his own expense under the pseudonym John Sinjohn. After reading Maupassant and Turgenev, Galsworthy published Villa Rubein (1900), in which he started to find his own voice. These early efforts, written under the influence of Kipling and Russian novelists, he later labeled as heavy and exaggerated. The Island Pharisees (1904) the first book which came out under his own name. Galsworthy wrote originally in the first person, then in the third, and revised it again. Its final version was not finished until 1908.
In Galsworthy's satire against the Island Pharisees, the fundamental feature that was to mark all his subsequent works was already apparent. The book deals with an English gentleman's having stayed abroad long enough to forget his conventional sphere of thoughts and feelings. He criticizes the national surroundings severely, and in doing so he is assisted by a Belgian vagabond, who casually makes his acquaintance in an English railway compartment and who becomes his fate. At that time Galsworthy was himself a cosmopolite returned home, prepared to fight against the old capitalistic aristocratic society with about the same program as George Bernard Shaw, although the Englishman, contrary to the Irishman who fought with intellectual arms, above all aimed at capturing feeling and imagination. The pharisaical egoism of England's ruling classes, the subject of Galsworthy's debut, remained his program for the future, only specialized in his particular works. He never tired of fighting against all that seemed narrow and harsh in the national character, and the persistence of his attacks on social evil indicates his strong impressions and deeply wounded feeling of justice.
With the Forsyte type he now aimed at the upper middle class, the rich businessmen, a group not yet having reached real gentility, but striving with its sympathies and instincts toward the well-known ideal of the gentleman of rigid, imperturbable, and imposing correctness. These people are particularly on their guard against dangerous feelings, a fact which, however, does not exclude accidental lapses, when passion intrudes upon their life, and liberty claims its rights in a world of property instincts. Beauty, here represented by Irene, does not like to live with The Man of Property; in his bitter indignation at this, Soames Forsyte becomes almost a tragic figure. Fifteen years later that he again took up his Forsytes, the effects of the World War had radically changed the perspective. But now this work expanded; In Chancery (1920) and To Let (1921) and two short story interludes were added, and thus The Forsyte Saga proper was completed. Not finished with the younger members of the family, Galsworthy wrote A Modern Comedy, a new trilogy whose structure is exactly like that of its predecessor and consists of the three novels, The White Monkey (1924), The Silver Spoon (1926), and Swan Song (1928), united by two short story interludes. These two trilogies together form an unusual literary accomplishment. The novelist has carried the history of his time through three generations, and his success in mastering so excellently his enormously difficult material, both in its scope and in its depth, remains an extremely memorable feat in English literature.
In the foreground of this chronicle is everyday reality, as experienced by the Forsytes, all personal fortunes, conflicts, and tragicomedies. But in the background is visible the dark fabric of historical events. See, for instance, the chapter describing how Soames with his second wife witnesses the funeral of Queen Victoria in grey weather at the Hyde Park fence, and the rapid survey of the age from her accession to the throne: «Morals had changed, manners had changed, men had become monkeys twice removed, God had become Mammon - Mammon so respectable as to deceive himself.» In the Forsyte novels we observe the transformation and the dissolution of the Victorian age up to the onset of the modern age.. In the first trilogy comes to life the period that in England effected the fusion of nobility and plutocracy with the accompanying change of the notion of a «gentleman», a kind of Indian summer of wealth before the days of the storm. The second trilogy, no longer called «saga» but «comedy», describes the profound crisis of the new England whose task is to change the ruins of the past and the improvised barracks of wartime into its future home.
The gallery of types is admirably complete. Robust businessmen, spoiled society ladies, aunts touching in an old-fashioned way, rebellious young girls, gentlemen of the clubs, politicians, artists, children, and even dogs - these last-mentioned especially favored by Galsworthy - emerge in the London panorama in a concrete form, alive before our eyes and ears.
The situations recur as a curious documentation of the oscillation and the undulation in a family of given hereditary dispositions. The individual portraits are distinguished, and the law of social life is at work.
One could observe in these novels how Galsworthy's view gradually changes. The radical critic of culture rises by degrees to a greater objectivity in his appreciation and to a more liberal view of the purely human. There is his treatment of Soames, at first satirized, but then described with a respect that, reluctantly growing, finally changes into a genuine sympathy. Galsworthy has seized upon this sympathy; his characterization of Soames's personality thoroughly worked out becomes the most memorable feature of the Forsyte saga and the comedy of the descendants. One of those masterly final episodes of Swan Song, in which Old Soames, having driven to his ancestors' village on the west coast, finds with the help of an old census map the place where the Forsytes' farm had been situated, where only a single stone marks the site; lingers in the reader's mind. Something like the ghost of a path leads him down into a valley of grass and furze. He breathes in the fresh, rough sea air which goes a little to his head; he puts on his overcoat and sits musing, his back against the stone. Had his ancestors built the house themselves at this lonely place, had they been the first to settle down here? he wonders. Their England rises before him, an England «of pack horses and very little smoke, of peat and wood fires, and wives who never left you, because they couldn't probably». He sits there a long time, absorbed in his feeling for the birthplace.
«And something moved in him, as if the salty independence of that lonely spot were still in his bones. Old Jolyon and his own father and the rest of his uncles - no wonder they'd been independent, with this air and loneliness in their blood; and crabbed with the pickling of it - unable to give up, to let go, to die. For a moment he seemed to understand even himself.»
To Galsworthy Soames thus becomes one of the last representatives of static old England. There was no humbug in him, we are told; he had his trying ways, but he was genuine. The sober prosaic respectability is in this manner duly honored in Galsworthy's realism. As time passed, and the weary, cynical laxity grew more and more visibly modern, the chronicler found that several traits which under other circumstances had been little appreciated, perhaps really constituted the secret of the British power of resistance. On the whole, Galsworthy's later novels are permeated with a patriotic feeling of self-defense that appears also in his descriptions of the home and studies of nature. Even these last-mentioned are rendered with a more tender and more anxious poetry, with the feeling of protecting something precious yet already shadowed by certain loss. It may be old chambers where people have established themselves as if to remain there forever. Or it may be an English garden park, where the September sun is shining beautifully on bronze-colored beech leaves and centenary hedges of yew.
It is above all in The Country House (1907), in Fraternity (1901), and in The Dark Flower (1913) that his mature essential character is seen. In the novel of the manor he created perhaps his most exquisite female portrait, Mrs. Pendyce, the type of the perfect, unaffected lady with all the modest tragedy which surrounds a truly noble nature, condemned to be restrained if not destroyed by the fetters of tradition. In Fraternity he represented, with a discreet mixture of pity and irony, the unfulfilled martyr of social conscience, the aesthete who is tortured by the shadows of the proletarian masses in London, but is not able to take the decisive step and carry out his altruistic impulse of action. There we also meet the old original Mr. Stone, the utopian dreamer with his eternal monologues beneath the night sky, indeed one of Galsworthy's most memorable types. The Dark Flower, may be called a psychological sonata, played with a masterly hand and based on the variations of passion and resignation in the ages of man. Even in the form of the short story Galsworthy has often been able to evoke an emotional response through contrasts of shadow and light which work rather graphically. He can do this in only a few pages which become animated by his personal style, for example, when he tells about such a simple case as that of the German shoemaker in «Quality», the story of the hopeless struggle of good craftsmanship against low-price industry.
By appealing to education and the sense of justice, his narrative art has always gently influenced contemporary notions of life and habits of thought. The same is true of his dramatic works, which were often direct contributions to social discussion and led to definite reforms at least in one area, the administration of public prisons in England as through Justice (1910), a realistic portrayal of prison life that roused so much feeling that it led to prison reform.
His dramas show an unusual richness of ideas combined with great ingenuity and technical skill in the working out of scenic effect. When certain inclinations are found, they are always just and humane. Galsworthy's plays, written in a naturalistic style, usually examines some controversial ethical or social problem. In The Forest (1924), for example, he brands the inconsiderate spirit of greed that, for crass purposes, exploits the heroism of the British world-conquering mind. The Show (1925) represents the defenselessness of the individual against the press in a family tragedy where brutal newspaper curiosity functions like a deaf and unchecked machine, removing the possibility of any one being held responsible for the resultant evil.
Loyalties (1922), dealing with the theme of anti-Semitism and which was also the best of his later plays depicts a matter of honor in which loyalty is tested and impartially examined in the different circles where it is at work, that is, the family, the corporation, the profession, and the nation. The force of these and other plays is in their logical structure and their concentrated action; sometimes possessing an atmosphere of poetic feeling that is far from trivial. especially in A Pigeon (1912) and A Bit o' Love (1915) which, however, did not meet with such brilliant success on the stage. The Silver Box (1906), like many of his other works, has a legal theme giving a bitter contrast of the law's treatment of the rich and the poor thus showing that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. Later plays include The Skin Game (1920), filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1931, and Escape (1926), filmed for a second time in 1948 by 20th. Century-Fox, starring Rex Harrison. In the story a law-abiding man meets a prostitute and accidentally kills a police in defending her. He escapes from prison, and meets different people before giving himself up.
Although on the whole Galsworthy's plays cannot be rated artistically with his novels, they confirm quite as plainly how strongly he sticks to his early ideal of liberty. Even in his rather cool dramatic works we meet a steady enemy of all oppression, spiritual as well as material, a sensitive man who with all his heart reacts against lack of consideration and never gives way in his demand for fair play.
We find in Galsworthy a definite musical charm catching and keeping the hidden feelings. His intuition is so infallible that he can content himself with a slight allusion and a broken hint. Galsworthy's irony is such a singular instrument that even the tone separates him from any other writer. There are many different kinds of irony. One principal kind is negative and can be compared to the hoar-frost of the windows in a house where there is no fire, where the hearth has grown cold long ago. But there is also an irony friendly to life, springing from warmth, interest, and humanity; such is Galsworthy's. His is an irony that, in the presence of tragicomic evil, seems to question why it must be so, why it is necessary, and whether there is nothing to remedy it. Sometimes Galsworthy makes nature herself take part in that ironic play about human beings, to underline the bitterness or sweetness of the incidents with the help of winds, clouds, fragrances, and bird cries. Assisted by this irony he successfully appeals to the psychological imagination, always the best ally of understanding and sympathy.
As we have alreagy seen , Galsworth had a quest for adventure, altruism and social commitment. This continues throughout the rest of his life. During World War I, for instance, he tried to enlist in the army, but was rejected due to his shortsightedness. He instead worked in a hospital in France as an orderly. He worked for the Red Cross in France, and helped refugees in Belgium. Galsworthy refused knighthood in 1917 in the belief that writers should not accept titles. He also gave away at least half of his income to humanitarian causes.
In 1924 Galsworthy founded PEN, the international organization of writers, with Catherine Dawson Scott and was elected as its first president. Galsworthy and Dawson Scott after contacting American writers had a center started in New York. At its inaugural meeting, April 19, 1922, at a dinner in the Coffee House Club, where about forty people gathered to which he sent a message of good will; read by Alexander Black, Chairman of the Executive Committee. Galsworthy sent warmest greetings to the new American Center and set down the central idea and hope upon which P.E.N. was founded:
We writers are in some sort trustees for human nature; if
we are narrow and prejudiced we harm the human race. And
the better we know each other....the greater the chance
for human happiness in a world not, as yet, too happy.
One of Galsworthy's ideas from the beginning that there should be an International Congress each year, to which all the Centers would send their delegates was first held in London in 1923 with an impressive number of centers, and representatives from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Italy, Norway, Rumania, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. The following year the American Center hosted an International Congress, in May 1924, consisting of three days of festivities and discussions, the highlight being a gala banquet at which a letter from John Galsworthy was also read by Mrs. Dawson Scott, which emphasized the reason behind P.E.N. hospitality:
I beg you earnestly to believe that our meetings are not
just festivity, but gestures of friendliness which have
a deep and wide-reaching significance....Friends, the
P.E.N. Club was a great dream....I believe I speak from
your hearts, as well as from my own, when I say: "With
this dream we will go forward till we have made of it a
great reality." Good fortune to you all and may you serve
this dream.
In January of 1933, a year after the Budapest Congress, John Galsworthy died from a brain tumor at his London home, Grove Lodge, Hampstead , leaving his Nobel Prize money in a trust fund for P.E.N., the last gift and contribution to an organization he loved and nurtured, watching it grow and take shape. In accordance with his will he was cremated at Woking and his ashes scattered over the South Downs from an aeroplane, but there is also a memorial in Highgate 'New' Cemetery.
The popularity of his fiction waned quickly after his death but the hugely successful adaptation of The Forsyte Saga in 1967 renewed interest in the writer. A number of John Galsworthy's letters and papers are held at the University of Birmingham Special Collections. He produced 20 novels, 27 plays, 3 collections of poetry, 173 short stories, 5 collections of essays, 700 letters, and many sketches and miscellaneous works. Galsworthy's socially committed work was attacked by D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf who said in her essay 'Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown', that the Edwardian writers "developed a technique of novel-writing which suits their purpose. . . But those tools are not our tools, and that business is not our business." The younger generation of writers accused Galsworthy of being thoroughly embodied of the values he was supposed to be criticizing. On the other hand, his influence is seen in the works of Thomas Mann, and he was widely read in France and in Russia. The Forsyte Saga gained a huge popular success as a BBC television series in 1967.
Reference:
Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969
Arthur Smith was born and was schooled in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He has taught English since 1977 at Prince of Wales School and, Milton Margai College of Education. He is now a Senior Lecturer at Fourah Bay College where he has been lecturing English language and Literature for the past eight years.
Mr Smith's writings have been appearing in local newspapers as well as in various international media like West Africa Magazine, Index on Censorship, Focus on Library and Information Work. He was one of 17 international visitors who participated in a seminar on contemporary American Literature sponsored by the U.S.State Department in 2006. His growing thoughts and reflections on this trip which took him to various US sights and sounds could be read at lisnews.org.
His other publications include: Folktales from Freetown, Langston Hughes: Life and Works Celebrating Black Dignity, and 'The Struggle of the Book' He holds a PhD and a professorship in English from the National Open University, Republic of Benin.
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