Ned’s Note: This week, dance differently and make some history.

Ned’s Note: This week, TAKE responsibility; don’t wait for it.

 One of the things we try to do is to always give positive feedback and yet correct what we need to have corrected.  There are a whole lot of psychological theories out there about putting the wrong thing in someone’s mind.  Norman Vincent Peal made affirmative reminders famous in some of his books that he wrote in the 1950’s although they’ve been around for thousands of years.  This is an affirmative reminder made into a very short, simple format for giving consistent, powerful feedback. I call them LB’s and NT’s.  In other words; what I like best and what I want to see next time.

Here’s how it might sound used to coach my daughter and her horseback jumping.  She’ll go and jump the course, and come back to my sister, Holly, who’s her instructor and ask, “How did I do?” Holly will tell her, “I liked best is how you were keeping your eye on your next jump and on your line.  You knew right where you were going. The next time I want your jump line right straight and down the middle of those jumps.”  Wow, that’s it.  The student turns around, she’s been rewarded for what’s she was doing right;  moving and looking with her head and looking where she was going.  And she knows what she needs to do next; keep a straight line and go right down the center of the jumps.

How do you know when it’s working?  When someone asks for your feedback and uses the words, “What did you like and what would you like next time?” 

Closing

This is an excerpt from Simple & Easy an audio CD Ned Parks published in 2007. If you to purchase the full version of the CD contact Ned at ned@nedparks.com

Ned’s Note:
This week, stand up and shout out your mistakes. Then correct them.

The lost are of sending thank you notes.  Does it even happen anymore?  Well it does with me and it does with a lot of people I know. Here’s what we’ve fallen prey to we’ve fallen prey to that wonderful thing called email.  “Hey Bob thanks for buying me and my wife dinner the other night.”  Well that’s certainly a nice thing to do.

But how about this?  How about putting a card in an envelope with ink and a stamp?  Yea, those are those little things you put in the upper right hand corner of an envelope.  And then you put it in the mailbox and a man delivers it to someone’s house. 

Well you say but email is so much quicker.  Well there’s no arguing that, it certainly is.   Is it anywhere near as personal? No!  Amazing I’ve been getting thank you cards now for the last 10 or so years.  I don’t think I’ve thrown one of them away.  I have a little file of thank you cards.  I even go back and read them every once in a while.  It reminds me of something.  I’ve gotten a lot thank you emails.  I’ve not saved one of them, not one.  So when is it appropriate to send a thank you card?    Well here’s an easy answer for you; whenever you want to say thank you.  That’s the simple one. 

Closing

This is an excerpt from Simple & Easy an audio CD Ned Parks published in 2007. If you to purchase the full version of the CD contact Ned at ned@nedparks.com

Ned’s Note:
Are you willing to work on yourself or are you going to continue to try and fix everyone else?

Master your time! I teach people lots of ways to save, manage and master their time.  But my favorite is stop hitting the snooze button.  Who’s in charge you or the clock?  Snooze buttons give you nine minutes or 540 seconds of sleep.  Just enough to get close to getting back to REM stage sleep only to get rattled awake by another annoying blast from the alarm clock.  And then we repeat the process.  Oh we might do this three to five times every morning.  And it is no wonder you’re in a bad mood. This activity would put Mother Theresa in a bad mood.         

Most people set the clock before the real time they want to get up and then they hit the snooze button. Oh that’s helpful.  Nine minutes a day works out to be 54 hours a year or more than 1 ½ weeks of productive time.  That might turn into a vacation.  It could turn into reading. It could turn into listening to the news, reading the newspaper. It could turn into having a little more time at breakfast rather than inhaling your food.  Nine minutes doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s a bunch. 

I used to be a slave to the old snooze button but not anymore.  Several years ago my wife and I change from hitting the snooze button to setting the alarm to start our favorite radio news program.  We actually built that amount of time into the day.  We’re going to listen to the news anyway.  We lie in bed for about 15 minutes and get our eyes open and get caught up on the news from the night before.  And it works out perfect.  So we’re not a slave to the clock.   We’re not a slave to the snooze button and we’re not losing nine precious minutes.   We’re doubling up on our time.   We’re managing it much better. 

You know the question always comes up, why nine minutes, why not eight, why not 10?  Why are alarm clocks set for nine minutes?  No one seems to have the answer.  But if you want to have a little fun, just put the ‘nine minute alarm clock or snooze button’ in Google and you’ll get run over with tons of fun little theories to read.  Nine minutes, I don’t know why the engineers    at the alarm clock company set it that way, but I know what it equates into – a whole lot of time that can be used for me.  Not getting yanked out of sleep every 9 minutes.  

Closing

This is an excerpt from Simple & Easy an audio CD Ned Parks published in 2007. If you to purchase the full version of the CD contact Ned at ned@nedparks.com

Ned’s Note:
It is easy to tell someone what to think. The real teacher, mentor and coach teaches HOW to think. What will you do this week?

Self educate don’t self medicate.  The musician, Frank Zappa, said, “Forget
about the senior prom, go to the library and educate yourself if you’ve got any
guts.”

Autodidactism means self education or self directed learning.

An autodidactic also known as an auto math is mostly a self taught person.
One of the most famous autodidactics is mythologist, Joseph Campbell.  After
he finished his master’s degree he retreated to a secluded area of upstate New
York reading up to 9 hours a day.   Campbell said this process was far more
educational and far more rigorous than anything he could have learned in school.

Quitting your job and becoming a learning recluse is neither simple nor easy not to
mention your spouse might have something to say about it.  But that does not mean
you can’t self educate in a simple and easy way.

I conduct leadership and management training for the crew on board cruise ships.  During a
transatlantic crossing on the Costa Magica I meet the hotel director, Alberto Abruzini.

The hotel director on a cruise ship is in charge of about 500 employees; everything from food and beverage, to entertainment, to how the ship is kept clean, to the cabin attendants. It’s an enormous
job.  When I had a chance to work with the hotel director I asked him, “What one little thing have you done in your career that has helped you become so successful?” He gave this some thought and
he said, “I learned something new every single day.”  I said, “Really?”   He
said “Yes, when I was a child my parents moved to New York City and I attended
a Jesuit school for young boys. We would get into bed at night and the priest would come by
and say, ‘Did you learn something new today?’  And if so we had to tell him what it was we
learned.  If not we had to get up, get any book we wanted, read one or two pages, tell him
what we learned and go back to bed.”  He said he almost can’t go to sleep now if he can’t
identify what new thing he learned that day.  He says, “I still get out of bed and I’ll
read a book even just a page – anything to teach myself something new.”

Closing

This is an excerpt from Simple & Easy an audio CD Ned Parks
published in 2007. If you to purchase the full version of the CD contact Ned at
ned@nedparks.com