Archive for July, 2010

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Monday Mojo: You Are Who You Hang With

By Tom Tognoli | July 12th, 2010 0 Comments

Do you ever notice that people who are negative, down and have low energy tend see the negative in everything no matter what? They see the glass half empty. While those who are positive, upbeat and fired up about life see the positive in almost everything. They see the glass half full.  If you had to take a guess, which group do you think is right – the positive ones or the negative ones? The answer is both.

They are both right, because you get what you focus on and you attract people into your life who are like you. So the good news is, if you are positive, upbeat and fired up – you attract positive, upbeat and fired up people into your life. The more positive people you attract into your life the better your life gets. Actually it gets better exponentially! The downside is if you are negative, down and have low energy, you attract negative, down and low energy people into your life. The more negative people you attract into your life, the worse your life gets. And yes, it gets worse exponentially.

For a minute, just think about some of the people you know. Not necessarily those who are your best friends, but just acquaintances. What are the common characteristics of the positive ones and what are the common characteristics of the negative ones? What energy do they give off? Do they smile or frown? Do they laugh or do they yell? Do they fire you up when you see them or suck the energy from you? Do they complement or do they criticize?

Have you noticed that we don’t see the positive people and the negative people spending much time together, except when absolutely necessary? Why is that? Because the positive people naturally spend time with optimists and find ways to improve their lives. While the negative people seem to always spend time with the basket-cases and seem to always be looking for ways to sabotage their life – not intentionally, but subconsciously. The positive people tend to do things good for their physical, mental and spiritual body, while the negative tend to do bad things for their physical, mental, and spiritual body.

So, how do we get out of the funk and into the fired up?

One of the most important things we need to do is stop spending time with other people in a funk and start spending time with people who are fired up. Or if you are fired up, find other fired up people to spend time with. Better yet, find people more fired up than you to spend time with.

Both groups are like magnets and either we are going to get sucked down into a hole with the “my life sucks” group, or we are going get pulled up into the clouds with the “my life is on fire and awesome” group. You can’t beat it, because it is like any fight. No matter how tough you are, if you are out numbered you are going to lose. If you are trying to be positive but hang out with negative people, you are going to get your ass kicked. The good new is if your negative, but hang out with positive people, you are also going to get your ass kicked.

Remember, everything in life is contagious. Choose to hang with people who have the fired up plague and catch it!

Make it a GREAT week!

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Cool Apps: Instapaper Saves It for Later

By John Thompson | July 9th, 2010 0 Comments

How many times has this happened to you? You’re surfing the web looking for something in particular and along the way you find four or five really interesting articles or blog posts. But alas, there’s no time to get stuck reading these things!

At that point, you wish there was an easy way to save these articles for later. Well, now there is!

Meet Instapaper – a service that enables you to save things for later reading. Say you’re in the office working on something and you stumble upon a long article that you don’t have time to read. You simply mark it with a bookmarklet in your web browser, then retrieve it later at Instapaper.com.

Brilliant!

Or, for you iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users: You can pick up an offline version of the article using the Instapaper app made for these devices. The company has a free “lite” version of the app for iPhone and iPod Touch, but the full app for these devices and for the iPad costs $5. The paid version can hold up to 250 articles, while the free version holds only 10.

It’s almost like creating your own custom newspaper every day!

No more dealing with hundreds of bookmarks. Or just forgetting about the article altogether. Now you can feed your mind later without getting overly distracted from the task at hand now.

Instapaper is a side project of Marco Arment, the lead developer behind the Tumblr blogging platform. It was named one of the top 8 best iPad apps by MacWorld in April of this year.

Go on, check it out! Your brain will thank you now and later.?

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Thursday Thoughts: Leaders Have Edge

By Gino Blefari | July 9th, 2010 0 Comments

“When you confront a problem, you begin to solve it.”              
                                                                            -Rudolph Giuliani

Sometimes we are called upon to lead in an unforeseen circumstance. We are judged by how quickly we react to something and how effective that reaction was in helping the situation.

That reaction often is what distinguishes great leaders from the rest of the crowd. It’s what gives great leaders edge. Leaders with edge are competitive and know the value of speed. They are confident they know when to go or stop. They don’t get paralyzed by the paradox.

Rudolph Giuliani is a political leader who’s shown he has a great deal of edge. While he was big on being prepared, he never could’ve known what would happen on Sept. 11, 2001, the day of the tragic terrorist attacks on New York City, or how he would react to it. Just months from retirement as the city’s mayor, he could’ve hunkered down that day, issuing commands from an undisclosed location.

Instead, he showed his true edge. He was everywhere at once helping, guiding, leading and most of the time he was at Ground Zero where the attacks occurred. Even his harshest critics applauded him that day. Of course, Giuliani could not have known exactly what would happen that day, but he had prepared himself all along for leadership and that’s what guided his actions.

Giuliani urges others to “prepare relentlessly.” He said he learned early on never to “assume a damn thing” and he followed his own advice.

Before being elected mayor of New York, Giuliani was concerned that he would come to the job not fully prepared. So he put together a tutorial on being mayor that included a series of seminars designed to help educate him on those aspects of the mayor’s job he did not know as well.

Those sessions, he later wrote, not only provided the knowledge he needed, but also afforded him the chance to think through how he would perform in various situations. He argued that leaders should take all the time they have to make the best decisions, but that they should start weighing alternatives now, not days from now!

Giuliani may have been what Peter Drucker would call a “natural,” but he took nothing for granted and left very little to chance. He relentlessly prepared for leadership and held himself accountable to tough standards. All these factors converged to benefit New York and the nation on the one day that mattered most.  

Giuliani’s edge was in preparing to lead no matter the situation, reacting quickly and not standing paralyzed by the tragedy at hand.

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Wednesday Wellness: Plastics

By Tammy Parkinson | July 7th, 2010 0 Comments

By Tammy Parkinson
Intero’s Fitness and Nutrition Coach

Recently the subject of “plastics” has come to my attention. I’ve heard the negatives about the correlation between health and plastic, and have made slight modifications over the years to reduce the amount of plastic I use, but I now realize I use a LOT more plastic than I should. Not just for my own health, but the health of our planet.

Although I’d love to say that I only use glass and I never use plastic bags, that wouldn’t be the truth – but it’s something I would like to work towards! In my attempt to learn a little more about why plastic is unhealthy, I’ve read through the articles below which I’d like to share with you:

http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Plasticizers/Out-Of-Diet-PG5nov03.htm
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_are_plastic_bags_so_bad_for_the_environment
http://www.fitsugar.com/Plastic-Water-Bottles-Really-Bad-Environment-256406
http://abunchofgreens.blogspot.com/2008/03/good-plastic-bad-plastic.html

The idea for many of us in revamping our entire lives in order to eliminate plastic might be daunting, but here are some simpler suggestions I would like to offer and proclaim that I am going to utilize:

  • Never heat my food in plastic
  • Bring a shopping bag or brown paper bags back to the grocery store (I’ve just loaded 10 in my car!)
  • Use my Sigg water bottle during the day and refill as needed
  • Use eco friendly vegetable bags which are washable and reusable when I buy produce (vs. getting more plastic bags)
  • Use silverware when on the go vs. plastic spoons and forks ( I used to load up on plastic spoons and forks for emergency food)

Anyone want to join me?

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Monday Mojo: Focus on the positive

By Tom Tognoli | July 5th, 2010 0 Comments

Why is it that the nightly news is always negative? Why is it that your morning paper, if you are one of the few who still get one, is always negative – especially the headlines? The reason is because that’s what people want to see, read, and hear about. So, why in the world do people want to read and hear about doom and gloom? Why is it that people are intrigued by the bad news? The media doesn’t do it just because they feel like it; they do it because bad news sells. One big reason it sells is because the bad stuff supports people not having to make a decision. It supports people’s “I don’t want to change” mindset. It gives people the excuses they are looking for to stick with the status quo, to not take risks, to not take chances, to not go for it! No wonder people are stuck. When there is risk and we focus on the bad news it supports us saying things like: “I am going to wait until things get better.” “It is just too risky given the current environment.” “Haven’t you been reading the headlines?” ”Didn’t you hear about what just happened to ____?” “I am not going to do it and let that happen to me.” “I am going to sit here and wait for it to get better”.

If we could only find a way to be optimistic and focus on the good news, our lives would ignite. Good news forces us to take action, to take advantage of the opportunities and it encourages us take some risks. Think about your life and some of the things you want to accomplish. What is stopping you – the bad news? If it is, it’s because the bad news supports your internal instinct to play it safe, right?  While focusing on the good news forces you to take a hard look at yourself and ask yourself “what the hell am I waiting for?” Good news makes you optimistic and pushes you to go for it.

Try this for a while, for at least a week, but preferably a month or more. Don’t read the headlines, don’t watch the negative crap on the news, don’t read the headlines of Yahoo, don’t pay attention to the bad news. ONLY FOCUS ON THE GOOD NEWS. Start reading a good book on keys to success, listen to a good CD on success or on personal and professional growth and development, watch a good movie. Watch what will happen to your attitude and to your life. You will be amazed how much more positive your mindset and attitude will become. You will be amazed at how you will start taking advantage of those opportunities instead of hiding behind the bad news.

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Categories: Monday Morning Mojo

Intero Cool Apps: Mozy

By John Thompson | July 2nd, 2010 0 Comments

REALTORS are busy – working through the weekends, evenings, you name it. It’s a constant hustle to get the job done. In the shuffle, it can be easy to forget about some pretty major things like backing up your data.

You know – that data that lives inside your computer that you never really think about until you need it for something. It’s precious stuff. But have you ever lost your data unexpectedly? It can be soul-crushing, to say the least. That’s why I wanted to share with you a service called Mozy.

Mozy is an online backup service for consumers and small businesses. For a small monthly fee of $4.95, you can protect your personal data and feel much better knowing that a hard drive meltdown won’t take all of your files with it. You get unlimited space so you can back up photos, music, videos, you name it. Plus, you can access your files from anywhere because you’re not relying on CDs or external hard drives. Instead, everything lives in a safe place online.

The service also promises top-notch protection, so you can back up financial and other sensitive documents and not have to worry about anything being compromised.

They can’t really make it any easier to use. All you need to do is go to the Mozy website and sign up for an account, download and install the application, and then choose the files you want to back up. And like magic, your life’s precious data is backed up in a secure and accessible place on the Internet.

Future crisis averted.

Maybe you’ve never experienced a situation where your computer died and you realized a little too late that none of your files were backed up. If not, just ask anyone who’s been through it – it is devastating! If you don’t have a “back-up” plan, you will most surely go through this at some point. Using something like Mozy that’s easy and cost effective will save your life. And that’s no exaggeration!

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Thursday Thoughts: Leaders Make Energy and Passion Contagious

By Gino Blefari | July 1st, 2010 0 Comments

Energy and passion are the key drivers to business success. But what does it really mean to be energetic and passionate as a leader and more importantly, as a corporation? One of my favorite passages in a book called “What the Best CEOs Know” by Jeffrey Krames, shows energy and passion at work through a look at leadership at Southwest Airlines and GE:

One business leader who consistently showed his energy and passion was Southwest Airlines’ feisty founder, Herb Kelleher. In a period when most of his larger rivals were racking up multibillion-dollar losses, Kelleher was delivering steady growth and profits, year after year, and winning industry wide customer service awards. What was his secret?

Like Jack Welch, GE’s Chairman for over a decade, Kelleher reinvented the management rulebook. Among other things, he hired for passion, thereby creating a unique service organization that was known for its positive attitude and good humor. “If you are not on fire about what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and the people who do it with you,” he explained, “then you can’t kindle their minds, hearts and devotion to a cause.”

In addition to hiring for passion, he argued that the organization should let people be themselves at work- and then go even farther. The company, he wrote, should “celebrate the achievements of (its) people, often and spontaneously.”

Southwest became legendary for celebrating the milestones experienced by its employees, including their weddings, births, marriages, and other happy moments- and also for acknowledging and sharing in employees’ losses and catastrophes, which is almost unheard of in large corporations.

The point? Kelleher’s action added energy to the organization. He valued informal dialogue. He urged his managers to speak from the heart, as well as from the head. He underscored the idea that job titles aren’t important but that leadership qualities are. Kelleher believed strongly that an organization’s two most important constituencies are its employees and its customers- in that order. “Employees are your premier customers,” argued Kelleher. If the company succeeds in involving and inspiring its employees, they become more tolerant and more empathetic- toward each other and also toward their external constituencies.

Source: Jeffrey Krames, “What the Best CEOs Know,” (McGraw-Hill) (pp. 189-191)

Bottom line: love what you do and you’ll inspire not just yourself, but the employees around you who are integral to your company’s success. Soon you’ll find yourself amidst an organization that carries a reputation for passion and energy – the kind that everyone wants to work for and do business with. Passion and energy come from within, but can be very contagious.

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