10 Verbal Communication Skills Worth Mastering Last week I read a blog post 7 Personal Branding Predictions for 2011 by personal branding expert Dan Schawbel. One of his seven predications for 2011 was that soft skills will become more important than hard skills. Dan said, “When enough people have similar talents, and are competing for the same positions and opportunities, the real differentiator is your interpersonal skills. The way you present yourself, how you communicate with other people, whether it’s in an interview or with management at work, can make or break your personal brand. Schawbel then went on to highlight a new research report by Kelly Services conducted with 134,000 people. This made me ask myself, “What are some of the top verbal communication skills that people need to master if they want to stand out from their competitors.” Below are my top 10 verbal communication tips we should all strive to master. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9 Be concise. 10. Bonus Tip: Verbal Modeling. Related Posts: What’s Your Brand?
50 Life Secrets and Tips Memorize something everyday.Not only will this leave your brain sharp and your memory functioning, you will also have a huge library of quotes to bust out at any moment. Poetry, sayings and philosophies are your best options.Constantly try to reduce your attachment to possessions.Those who are heavy-set with material desires will have a lot of trouble when their things are taken away from them or lost. Possessions do end up owning you, not the other way around. Read “Zen and the Art of Happiness” by Chris Prentiss.This book will give you the knowledge and instruction to be happy at all times regardless of the circumstances.
6 Beneficial Things They Made You Stop Doing in School It's easy to think of a classroom as a battle of wills between kids who want to dick around all day and teachers who actually want to make them learn. But it's not that simple. A lot of the things that will get you yelled at in a classroom are, in fact, beneficial to learning. They're just really annoying to other people (and the teacher). Consider this the next time you hear ... #6. Getty Teachers must look at the cell phone as the modern plague on their profession. Getty"You can have it back at the end of the semester, if it doesn't sell on eBay." But teachers have a reason to hate texting above even other high-tech time-wasters like portable games. Everybody should stop and take a deep breath, because texting actually improves both your language skills and your ability to pay attention in class. Getty"Holly balls, I understand calculus!" Wait, What? Yes, you read that right. Mark van LaereIt's not Hemingway, but it is a form of literacy. Sounds counter-intuitive? #5. Right. #4.
5 Insane Ways Words Can Control Your Mind On some level we already know that language shapes the way we think. We're automatically more afraid to fight a guy named Jack Savage than somebody named Peewee Nipplepuss, even if we've never seen either of them before. It's totally illogical, but you probably run into an example of that every day, and don't notice it. While we tend to think words are just sounds we make to express ideas, science is finding that language is more like a fun house mirror, warping what we see in mind-blowing ways. For instance ... Speaking English Makes Us More Likely to Blame People Let's say your roommate Steve is jumping on your bed. How will you answer? Keep in mind, Steve pulls this shit all the time. The answer largely depends on what language you speak. Stanford scientists did experiments on this, by having speakers of various languages watch videos featuring, in various situations, people breaking eggs or popping balloons, sometimes on purpose, sometimes on accident. Will nothing stop his madness?
5 Seemingly Innocent Ways You Risk Your Identity Every Day We tend to think of identity theft as a crime perpetrated exclusively on stupid people. Sure, you don't fall for that Nigerian prince schtick and you don't send your login information to "official" emails that misspell "PayPal." Well, you'd best take a slice of humble pie, because there are lots of things that you do every day, that you're probably doing right now, that are putting your personal information at risk. Things like ... Playing Facebook Games Getty After a long, hard day of playing Facebook games and pretending to work, there's nothing quite as relaxing as heading home to unwind and play Facebook games without pretending to work. Getty"Before 'Farmville,' gin was the only thing that could get me through a day of work." We've already discussed how Zynga, the operators of "Farmville," are evil masterminds. But hey, 'Mafia Wars'! And we don't just mean they could see all those pictures of you drunkenly fingering that elephant pinata at your cousin's birthday blowout. Getty"Tits?
5 Unexpected Downsides of High Intelligence You know that phrase, "Ignorance is bliss"? There's a reason it's stuck around all these years. Because having the upper hand in intelligence might give you an advantage in some areas, like crossword puzzle solving and quantum physics-ing, but it also might just screw up your life forever. Note: Stephen Hawking can talk about how dangerous AI will be in the future, but we're not worried. For instance, if you're smart ... #5. Getty Recently, scientists discovered a quirky side effect to having a high IQ: You tend to stay up until later hours and get up later in the morning. Photos.comAnd spending reports. It appears to just be evolution -- the more intelligent members of a species are, in general, the first to change habits (their big brains are wired to seek out novelty). So let the early birds keep their measly worms. So What's the Problem? Well, being a night owl does have some negative side effects. GettyAnd we mean REALLY screwed. And the fun doesn't end there, geniuses! #4.
20 Facts That Will Make You Really Mad If You Stop And Think About Them For A While The more you read the news today the more likely you are to get really mad. The world is becoming an incredibly crazy place, and at times the amount of bad news that is coming out can seem almost overwhelming. Everywhere you look, the poor are being oppressed, our politicians are making stupid decisions and evil is on the march. The America that so many of us grew up deeply loving is literally being ripped to shreds in a thousand different ways. The following are 20 facts that will make you really mad if you stop and think about them for a while…. #1 Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the U.S. dollars has declined in value by over 95 percent. #2 The difference between the budget that the “big spending Democrats” are proposing and the budget that the “big spending Republicans” are proposing is only about 32 billion dollars. #3 Japan now manufactures about 5 million more automobiles than the United States does.
9 Productivity Tricks for Procrastinators Irony: As I started to write this article, I thought, “I’ll just go play one quick Sudoku game first.” I caught myself in the act and marched myself to my laptop. People who say that procrastination is about laziness are probably the same people who think that anorexia is about not eating enough. Procrastination isn’t about laziness. The good news is that there are ways to get moving again. Here are 9 of my favorite tricks to help even the worst procrastinator break the habit: 1 – When you get an idea, do some little thing to begin. When I read Stephen King’s book On Writing, I noticed something. Most people get an idea. Then they sit there. They wonder if it’s a good idea. Then, they wonder if it’s a good idea some more. Got an idea? 2 – All hail small chunks of time! Lots of us complain about having no time. Are you waiting for many hours of spare time to begin your idea, your project, or your taxes? 3 – Agree to do it badly. Set a goal to do it badly. 4 – Commit aloud. 5 – Define quantities. Why?
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