Who knew that rebalancing the negativity bias with enough positive could have so many great results? Here is a wonderful speaker talking about great research showing so many advantages to smiling often!
Influencing Your Inner Movie – The Thinker & The Caveman
This is my favorite thing to teach. Being able to positively influence oneself is a critical skill for anyone increasing success, happiness, and even health.
There will be more videos teaching how to apply these concepts and tools in your life.
Stay tuned!
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Best DNA: Be more of the best of who you are
I’ve updated this blog post with new insights, photos and links.
Get your Caveman Passionate!
I was honored to be interviewed for Peter Sterlacci‘s video blog last week. In his view, part of what I do is what he calls a “Personal Brand Mechanic”. I talk about the Caveman and the Thinker and how to get them both engaged both in living your personal brand, and in creating positive change in general.
Mr. Happy Man – an inspiration to us all
Bermuda’s Johnny Barnes shares his love of life and humanity with thousands every day.
Talk about positive influence!! Prepare to be inspired by this amazing man.
Positive Intelligence
Shawn Achor is a dynamic speaker and writer on this topic.
His take, through the Harvard Business Review on positive intelligence is a fantastic example of putting the science of happiness ahead of outdated conventional wisdom.
Even though he is a “competitor” of sorts I can only speak highly of everything I’ve seen him put out there.
Rock on, Shawn! You are a major player in what I call the Positive Change Revolution!
Do free work – For a career you’ll love!
Charlie has clearly articulated a powerful approach to creating a career you can love. It’s an approach that we have used successfully as well.
Our Story at Matchbox Group:
In mid-2009, when work slowed down dramatically, I did the same thing. We had all this free time on our hand so we decided to go out and do what we loved for free until people could pay us. We realized that the best thing for creating paying work, is when people have experienced good work of ours.
The ways that have worked for us:
- We identified our “ideal client” and our “ideal gig”.
- We began to speak about these favorite topics to groups of people that contained our ideal clients (CEO’s, human resource professionals, and other leaders).
- Even more radically, we became very flexible with our price structures if an ideal client fit the following criteria:
Their mission is one we are passionate about
We like them as people and working with them was enjoyable
We have the time to do it
- The easiest thing is to do whatever it takes to make our consulting programs work for the client. That often means going way above and beyond what we’d expected to see happen. Adding value in many unexpected ways as we go along. The wonderful thing is that this is a far more delightful way to work as well. Plus, the testimonials clients did for us went from very good to outstanding.
- We produce free videos for our ideal clients. I’m a bit of a video production geek anyway, so it was an easy next step. We started asking if we can video-record portions of our programs. We created videos they could use to communicate changes to their far-flung employees and other stakeholders.
- We even create videos and lead events far after we are officially done with a gig.
The benefits
- No surprise, their gratitude helps us network and build a reputation much faster.
- We’re doing more and more of the work we love to do.
- We’re partnering more and more with clients we like and respect and who like and respect us.
- I’ve always enjoyed my career, but now I love it more than ever.
- We keep honing our skills at what we most want to master.
- We feel engaged and alive, even when the money isn’t so strong. It keeps morale up.
My challenge for you
What can you do to create even more passion in your career?
Join us at the Breakfast With The Best and Culture Con, 1/31!
Michael and will be leading workshops on how to have a ‘best company to work at’ in the morning with the Breakfast with the Best and in the afternoon at the Culture Con.
At Breakfast With The Best we’ll be hearing from the 10 best companies to work for in NH. Plus the gathering of 300-400 will be sharing their top practices as well! Come for great ideas and fun connections.
Sponsored by Business NH Magazine
Following that we’ll move a few blocks for the Culture Con. There we’ll go deeper into how to apply the best ideas to your own organization.
As a preview I’m guest blogging on Dyn’s blog about “8 Ideas For Enhancing Change Via Positive Change“. Dyn is hosting the Culture Con.
I hope to learn and have fun with you there!!
Bob
Gratitude improves health, happiness, love-life, popularity and more
Scientific research brings us more proof of the power of gratitude!
A great blog post by Ocean Robbins…
The Neuroscience of Why Gratitude Makes Us Healthier
When ideas have sex
This is a fascinating Ted talk on the unfathomable amount of collaboration that goes into every single thing we modern humans do.
Positive change (and negative) are happening all the time. Just by doing whatever jobs we do, we contribute to millions of other people’s wealth, health and knowledge.
If you are a learning geek like me, check it out!