“A strong stand is how you attract superfans.  They point to you and defend you.  They spread the word further and wider, and more passionately than any advertising could.”  — From Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

Taking a stand on something; your product, your writing, or your professional ideas has practical benefit.  If you have a product and you try to please everyone, you’ll end up pleasing no one.  Apple is a company that takes a stand and has superfans.  I’ve been listening to Mac bigots (not intended pejoratively) for decades.

Yes, you will make some people mad, you may offend some, they may unsubscribe or they may hate your product, but that’s life.  I like the idea of taking a stand and attracting superfans.  I would rather have 100 superfans than 1,000 lukewarm fans.

If you take a stand you will get noticed.  That’s why many people don’t take a stand.  They don’t want to get noticed by someone who doesn’t like what they are saying.  It’s better to play it safe.  If you poke your head up it may get knocked off.  This is the behavior of 80% of the people in the corporate world.  You may be safe, but you’ll never get anywhere.

I find myself drawn to and respecting people who take a principled stand even if it is diametrically opposed to my own.  I would rather have a principled enemy than a wishy-washy friend.

Aside from the practical benefit in attracting passionate supporters, there is another and maybe more important benefit of taking a stand – your self-respect.  Whenever I’m quiet about something that is important to me in the face of strong opposition, I end up feeling sick about it later.  Whenever I hold back on writing something because I’m afraid it might offend someone, I lose a little respect for myself.  I have just violated one of my basic principles.  When I stand up for what I believe, I feel good about myself no matter what anyone else thinks.

“If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he’ll eat you last.” — Ronald Reagan

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“Our default response in life is not to experience happiness.”

“Our default response in life is not to experience meaning.”

“Our default response in life is to experience Inertia.”

– Marshall Goldsmith

In his excellent little book Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It, Marshall Goldsmith describes his solution to the problem of inertia.  It seems simplistic, but I think in its simplicity lies its effectiveness and elegance.

Inertia is simply the process of continuing to do the same thing you are already doing.

The Two Question Discipline

Evaluate every activity with the following two questions:

1. How much long-term benefit or meaning did I experience from this activity?
2. How much short-term satisfaction or happiness did I experience in this activity?

The simple fact that you know you are going to be monitoring your activities by asking those two questions will make you more mindful and awake and alter your behavior.  But you can take it further and ask yourself these questions before you act.

1. How much long-term benefit or meaning am I going to experience from this activity?
2. How much short-term satisfaction or happiness am I going to experience in this activity?

In that way you can alter the activity to get more satisfaction and benefit from it or you can refrain from doing it at all.  You are changing your mindset and no longer defaulting to the inertia of continuing to do what you’ve been doing.

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” — Albert Einstein

Simple, elegant, and effective.

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Switch

This is the second part of the series on change made simple.  It is based upon the excellent book by Chip and Dan Heath: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.  You can read the overview here: Change Made Simple – Overview.

In this article we discuss the first of the three main components of the process – Direct the Rider.  Directing the rider is all about providing clarity to yourself or others.  It’s about solving specific problems and taking specific actions instead of trying to boil the whole ocean.

Find The Bright Spots

To pursue the bright spots is to ask the question “What’s working and how can we do more of it?”

I thought this chapter of the book was a very good one, but you are going to have to read it to get the full effect.  The bottom line strategy here is to stop focusing on problems and instead look for things that are already working.  Once you find these bright spots, simply expand them and do more of those things.  After reading this it sounded like obvious common sense.  However, people almost always focus on fixing problems instead of focusing on solutions that already exist.  This is really brilliant advice and I’m already thinking about many situations in which I can look for the bright spots and expand them.

Many real-world examples are provided.  In one case, a man named Jerry Sternin went to Vietnam to try and help address a decades long problem of malnutrition in children.  He had little time or resources to address what looked like an intractable problem with poverty and lack of education.  Those standard explanations were already in play and they were huge problems that would require massive expenditures of resources to even attempt to address.

Instead of writing position papers on these known factors, Jerry Sternin searched the villages looking for well-nourished children who might be exceptions to the general problem.  He was looking for the bright spots in a sea of malnutrition.  He found them, he discovered the simple solution, and he worked with the villagers to expand that solution to nearly 3 million other children.

The authors tell stories of changes in medical practices, changes in delinquent behavior at school, and other examples where people with little resources or authority were able to bring about big changes by simply looking for what worked and doing more of it.

This is a simple, direct, and elegant approach.

Script the Critical Moves

To spark movement in a new direction, you need to provide crystal clear guidance.  That’s why scripting is important – you’ve got to think about the specific behavior that you’d want to see in a tough moment…

The bottom line here is that in trying to change, analysis paralysis will disrupt  and cause a retreat into the status quo default.  The authors describe research in human behavior that support their point.  People with more choice are less like to choose and therefore less likely to change.

“The status quo feels comfortable and steady because much of the choice as been squeezed out.  You have your routines, your ways of doing things.”

“Successful change requires a translation of ambiguous goals into concrete behaviors.  In short, to make a switch you need to script the critical moves.”

I don’t have a really good way to summarize the excellent advice in this chapter because every situation is so different.  One of the authors’ favorite examples which seemed to work very well was a 1% milk campaign.  I’m sure my friend Vin of Natural Bias would not think 1% milk was a healthy choice.  However, whether you agree with the chosen goal or not, you can’t deny the simple effectiveness of the campaign to get people to buy 1% milk.  The critical move for a healthier diet was a simple script – Buy 1% milk.  It wasn’t about eating a certain number of fat grams or calories, it wasn’t about cutting back on potato chips.  It was a simple script to change from whole milk to 1% milk.  If you want people to eat healthy you need to provide a specific and simple script.  Saying “eat healthy” or “follow the food pyramid” isn’t going to accomplish anything.

You can’t script every move, and you don’t want to.  However, you want to script the critical moves.  If I look at the maintenance schedule of my car, it is quite complicated.  I can’t possibly keep track of what maintenance is needed when.  However, I would wager that most American car owners are aware of the basic script – change your oil every three months or every 3,000 miles.  That one simple script is all you need to remember because when you take it to the shop, they will tell you what other maintenance is recommended at your current mileage.

“To the Rider, a big problem calls for a big solution.  But if you seek out a solution that’s as complex as the problem, you’ll get the Food Pyramid and nothing will change.  (The Rider will just spin his wheels trying to make sense of it.)  The Rider has to be jarred out of introspection, out of analysis.  He needs a script that explains how to act.”

Point to the Destination

You have a choice about how to use the Rider’s energy: By default, he’ll obsess about which way to move, or whether it’s necessary to move at all.  But you can redirect that energy to helping you navigate toward the destination.  For that to happen you need a gut-smacking goal…

This is a decently long chapter in the book with a lot of good real-world examples making it clear that you need a compelling destination for change to happen.  There is not a lot of description or analysis that I can provide in a summary however.  The point of this chapter is that for change to happen you need a destination that invests you emotionally in the destination, what the authors above called a “gut –smacking” goal.

Goals that lack emotion, and are just SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, Timely) don’t work well for change.  You need to point clearly to the destination, make it simple and easy to understand, and make it compelling.

“When you describe a compelling destination, you are helping to correct one of the Rider’s greatest weaknesses – the tendency to get lost in analysis.”

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I saw this in the ETR Newsletter today.

A group of students was asked to list what they thought were the present “Seven Wonders of the World.” Though there were some disagreements, the following received the most votes:

1. Egypt’s Great Pyramids
2. Taj Mahal
3. Grand Canyon
4. Panama Canal
5. Empire State Building
6. St. Peter’s Basilica
7. China’s Great Wall

While gathering the votes, the teacher noted that one student had not finished her paper yet. So she asked the girl if she was having trouble with her list. The girl replied, “Yes, a little. I couldn’t quite make up my mind because there are so many.”

The teacher said, “Well, tell us what you have, and maybe we can help.”

The girl hesitated, then read, “I think the ‘Seven Wonders of the World’ are:

1. To see
2. To hear
3. To touch
4. To taste
5. To feel
6. To laugh
7. And to love.”

Read the whole article: The Other Seven Wonders of the World

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Switch

Chip and Dan Heath of Made to Stick fame are out with a new book that looks to be a huge winner: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.  Check out 90+% five star reviews on Amazon.  It is currently a best seller on Amazon and the New York Times lists.

Switch is an excellent book with very practical advice that is made as easy to follow as you can imagine for such a broad and complex topic.  I really loved this book.  I bought the book at a Barnes and Noble.  When I was checking out, the sales clerk said “The whole world needs to read this book”.

I’m going to write a series summarizing the ideas and suggestions in the book and this first article in the series will be an overview.

Overview

The book covers individual, organizations, and societal change and does so in a reasonably concise way.  The book is organized around a metaphor of an elephant, the rider on the elephant, and the path the rider and the elephant take.  The elephant represents the emotional self, the rider represents the rational self, and the path represents the environment in which change occurs.  This metaphor works very well.  When the rider and the elephant do not agree, which is often, you have a problem.

The authors describe interesting research on human behavior that is relevant to their topic.  They also use a lot of real-world examples and stories to make it engaging and believable, really believable.  It is really well done.

The book and the process for making changes have three main parts described below.  The authors admit that they leave out a lot of “great thinking” on change in order to create a framework that is practical.  Maybe that’s what separates this book from many others.  Instead of droning on and on about theory, they try to create something that someone can actually put into practice.

You don’t have to finish the whole book to make use of it.  After reading the Find the Bright Spots chapter near the beginning of the book, I was already thinking of ways I could put the advice to use.

The process and the organization of the book into main parts and chapters is described below.

Direct the Rider

– What looks like resistance is often lack of clarity.  So provide crystal-clear direction.

1. Find the Bright Spots
2. Script the Critical Moves
3. Point to the Destination

Motivate the elephant

– What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.  The Rider can’t get his way by force for very long.  So it’s critical that you engage people’s emotional side – get their Elephants on the path and cooperative.

1. Find the Feeling
2. Shrink the Change
3. Grow Your People

Shape the Path

– What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.  We call the situation (including the surrounding environment) the “Path”.  When you shape the Path, you make change more likely, no matter what’s happening with the Rider and Elephant.

1. Tweak the Environment
2. Build Habits
3. Rally the Herd

What’s Next?

Coming next is a summary of the ideas in Change Made Simple – Direct the Rider

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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I was reading Zen Habits this morning and it contained this quote by Steve Jobs:

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”

I really liked that quote so I thought I would share it with you.

The article is called Kill Busywork: The One Skill to Focus On What Matters and I thought it was a worthwhile read.  It is written by Michael Bungay Stanier of Box of Crayons and looks to be part of a promotion of his book Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork. Start the Work That Matters. I have not yet read the book, but it does look interesting and I plan to get it.

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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For some of us, myself included, there is an internal battle going on between our natural inclination to go with the flow of unstructured thinking and living and the real-world of dealing with the necessary details of life.

By nature I’m not a planner nor an organizer.  My world is one of increasing disorder.  Whenever I get a wild hair and decide to get organized, the change is only temporary.  Things quickly return to an equilibrium of disorder.  I seem to have a set point of disorder.  Despite repeated attempts I can’t seem to change that set point.

I’m a big picture person.  I don’t like to work the details.  After a few minutes in a spreadsheet I want to commit suicide. I’m a tinkerer and I like to try things out and see if they work rather than trying to plan them out ahead of time.  I don’t like to schedule my day.  I like to work on whatever feels right at the time.  I love the freedom of going with the flow.

The problem with all this is that for most of us, life insists on a whole lot of details.  You have to take care of food, clothing, shelter, hygiene, pets, kids, bills, taxes, regulations, meetings, email, work, writing, relationships, etc.  Even when we have to deal with those kinds of things, some of us tend to approach them in an unstructured way.

I’ve finally settled on something that really seems to work.  I first got the idea from a wonderful book called Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less.  It can be applied to your business and work life or your personal life.  I don’t go the whole way with what is described in the book because it is just too much for me.  However, the ideas in the book were the inspiration for what I am putting into place.

The bottom line is that for those things you have to do, those things for which a repeatable process can be used, you create a system that is deadly efficient and as automatic as possible.  In this way you burn through those necessary tasks with maximum speed and efficiency and that frees up the rest of your time to do what you want.   In my case that means no planning and no organization.  Instead I do whatever I feel like doing and in the way I like to do it: playing, tinkering, and creating.  I expect to get much better at this as I continue to work these systems.

A Suggested Approach

Seeing the world as a set of systems and subsystems

You start looking at your world and realize that to a large extent it is made up of systems and subsystems.  Think about the human body.  It’s a number of subsystems; digestive, pulmonary, circulatory, immune, etc. put together to make up one primary system – you.  You can take some area of your personal life such as your health and break it down into subsystems like sleep, exercise, diet, regeneration, screening and checkups (for those of us in the older crowd).  Your morning routine could be considered a system that might be made more productive and efficient freeing up time for you to do something else.  I’ve identified online systems for myself like email, blog reading and commenting, blog article research and writing, and social media.  Your work is undoubtedly made up of many such subsystems.

Selection of systems to work on improving

You probably should only tackle one system at a time.  I’ve been working on the online systems mentioned above.  Obviously the most broken, most problematic, most time consuming areas are where you will get the most initial return on investment.  However, don’t just ignore smaller areas.  If you could attack 4 systems and save 15 minutes a day on each, your end result is one hour a day free for you to do something else.  I consider that a big payoff worth a lot of investment.

Elimination

If you’ve read this blog for long, you’ll know I’m a big proponent of elimination.  Take an axe to what you think you need to do and then take another cut at what you think you have left.  Identify the Essential and Eliminate the Rest.  You can eliminate whole subsystems this way.  When you are first looking at improving a system look at what you can eliminate from it first.  For example in my email system I unsubscribed to a whole bunch of stuff that I never read, but that cluttered my inbox and had to be processed.

Delegation

You may or may not always have this choice but I implore you to let go of the control and get creative to see if you can take advantage of delegation.  The work may be essential and maybe can’t be eliminated, but you may be able to eliminate it from your task list by delegation. From your perspective that accomplishes the same thing. In my household I earn the money so the deal I have with my wife is that she takes care of the household details.  I don’t pay bills, deal with insurance, taxes, clean, garden, mow, schedule repairmen, or any other of those messy things I’m not good at and hate to do.  It’s wonderful.  I don’t even think about them.  My female friends are jealous and joke that they want a wife like mine .  The same thing applies to your work.  Wherever you can, delegate tasks to others and free yourself for better things.

Analyze and document the process

Whatever system you have chosen to work on needs to be analyzed in detail and the process articulated in some way.  Unfortunately there is some heavy lifting here that cannot be avoided.  If you fail to analyze exactly what you are doing and how you are doing it, you will not have the foundation you need to dramatically improve the process.  I hate this part, but it is necessary.  You have to pay the price here to get the big payoff later.  I choose to document very lightly and only to the point of making sure I remember and understand every step I am taking.

Simplify

It may seem obvious, but it is often missed.  There are undoubtedly ways you can simplify the process.  If you have to go from point A to point B, the shortest distance is a straight line.  Eliminate any unnecessary steps and look for shortcuts.  If you get good with keyboard shortcuts in working email for example, you can eliminate a lot of moving the mouse and clicking around.  It can dramatically speed up the process.  The main thing is don’t take three steps to do what can be accomplished in one.

Make it repeatable and rigorous

Come up with at process that is rigorous and reliable by making it repeatable.  If you just wing it every time, that may “work”, but it is inefficient and makes it more likely you will spend more time to get less done.  Why do I need a repeatable process for reading and commenting on other blogs?  At first thought that seems ridiculous to me, but I have realized I’m neglecting that task because I do it haphazardly.  I start reading something when I feel like it and then I get distracted and/or bored and end up going off on a tangent or procrastinating.  A rigorous repeatable process allows me to allocate time and get things done that are important to me in as little time as possible.

Automate

If you make a process within a system repeatable, you have a lot of opportunity for automation.  Automation is the mother lode of payoff.  Automated tasks are like eliminated or delegated tasks – you are no longer doing them.  Email is a perfect example.  I’m creating rule after rule in both Gmail and Outlook to process email automatically and send emails to predefined folders or just automatically delete them.  Some of those folders I review and some of them I keep for records.  For instance, I get a lot of emails saying something was automatically paid or shipped.  Those just automatically get filed for record keeping.  I have blog or newsletters going to other folders, some of which are high priority for review and some which I almost never look at.   The latter should be candidates for elimination.

Time limits

For someone who tends to be unstructured like me, time limits work great.  I’m setting time limits on many of my systems for two reasons.  First to motivate me to accomplish something important to me such as “Read and comment on five favorite blogs”.  And second to finish it “in 30 minutes” and ensure I’m not getting distracted and wasting time.  That is not preventing me,  in my free flow time, from reading and commenting on more blogs, it’s just that by having a system with a time limit, I know I’m getting something important done and not just when the mood may strike or not in my more unstructured time.

Tweak

This is nothing more than maintenance and continuous improvement.  As I discover new tools, have new ideas, or as conditions change, I tweak the system and make it better.

The Future

I’ve only been working the systems like this for a short time, even though I had the idea from reading the book over six months ago.  I really think it has great long term potential to allow me to get the things done I need to get done in a structured way, while allowing the rest of my time to truly be my time.  That is time without the stress and pressure of incomplete tasks.  Sam Carpenter has this to say about his Work the System methodology.  I think he is on to something:

“If you pay attention to the mechanical details of your world and make proper adjustments to the key systems that compose it, you can construct a life that is unencumbered with fire-killing, a life seldom dictated by urgency.  Flexible, strong, and resilient, it’s a life of smooth, calm days; days that have lots of room for thinking and planning, for friends and family, and for just being yourself.”

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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“We’re attached to a certain view, a given outcome, and when it doesn’t appear, we waste time mourning the world that we wanted that isn’t here.” – Seth Godin

In the video below, Srikumar S. Rao discusses the If… Then… mental trap and our investment in outcomes.  It is a medium length video of 18 minutes, and I realize in our ADD world, that is a long time.  But is it really?  I think you will find it time well spent.

If you are reading this in email and don’t see the video link, click on the article link and you will find the video on the web page.

Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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Novelty is an important component in fostering creativity.

Optical illusions work because of the perceptual shortcuts your brain has developed from past perceptual experience.  This tendency of your brain to make snap judgments and statistical predictions is a very good thing.  It occurs in many different areas of your brain and it reduces by many magnitudes the amount of mental resources required to function in your every day life.

The downside of this is that your thoughts tend to fall into ruts.  Thoughts travel easily along well worn neural pathways.   You get stuck inside a path and can’t easily get out of it.

You can’t think outside the box if you  keep sitting in the same box.  Imagination uses some of the same visual circuits as perception.  In order to imagine new ideas you need  create new visual wiring in your brain.  You need new and loosely connected patterns to help trigger new ways of stringing ideas together.

Seeking out new experience does exactly that.  Children squeal with delight at novel experiences because their immature brains are desperately trying to make sense of the world.  They instinctively act in a way that produces discovery and learning.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could get some of that delightful attitude back into our adult lives?  Even more, there is evidence that novelty seeking is a key to long term well-being and brain health.  See Todd Kashdan’s book Curious?: Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life.

Since we are visual creatures and since visual circuits are used in imaginative thinking, novel visual experiences are very important to creativity.  The richer the experience the better.   Here are some ideas on things you can do to increase novelty in your life.

1. New experiences involving both vision and movement.  Your brain loves physical movement as long as that movement is attended to and is not automatic.  Combining physical movement with a visual experience is ideal, so do something that makes you keep your eyes open.  Whether it is dance, yoga, sports, martial arts, or something else, novel movement with focused visual attention is great for your body and brain.  Be sure and change it up frequently.  Play different sports, learn new dance moves, etc.
2. People, people, people.  There have been a slew of studies showing the mental and physical benefits of social involvement.  For novelty, go further out into your social networks.  Engage more with people you know who are not your friends or regulars in your inner circle.  Going even further and meeting and socializing with brand new people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds is a fantastic way to experience novelty.  Your same old friends bring the same old things – lovely as they may be.
3. Physical is better then virtual.  Brain scans show that you have a richer pattern of neuronal activity when viewing an actual physical object than you do when viewing it on a two-dimensional screen.  I am not opposed to computer stimulation (that sounds bad), but obviously being there and experiencing it in the real world is better than watching pixels flash on a two-dimensional plane.
4. Change up your environment.  Doing the same thing in the same room with the same furnishings is not conducive to creativity.  Novel surroundings boost the creative juices.  So instead of sitting in a bland office, talk a walk in the woods to do some thinking.  Get out your laptop and do some work on a beach, a park, or in a different room.  Change your furniture and decorations around.  Do things in a variety of places.
5. Drive, walk, and exercise using different routes.  Just travelling a new route and seeing something different can trigger a new connection in your brain.
6. Diversify your reading material.  Read fiction and non-fiction, something technical and something light and breezy, thrillers, biography, philosophy, etc.  I know you can’t read everything and I personally tend to focus on narrow categories, but I’m committed to expanding my reading horizons.
7. Travel, travel, travel.  This one activity can introduce you to so many novel experiences visually, intellectually, and socially, that it may be hard to beat.  If you can afford it, actually live for a while in different locations.  Even if you don’t have time or means to travel far, you can travel out of your neighborhood or city almost any time you want.
8. Natural is better than artificial.  I admit this is just a personal bias, but I have to believe our brains do better in a natural environment for which they have been sculpted than in an artificial one.  I know there have been some studies showing the benefits of natural sunlight and green spaces, but mostly this is just an intuition of mine.
9. Vary everything.  Whatever it is you do, look for ways to vary it.  The more variation the better.  Look for the mysterious or the things you have never noticed before, even in the mundane.  Just stop and smell the roses for once.  You’ll be amazed what you see for the first time if you just stop and look.
10. Think Laterally.  This is a great way to generate novel ideas.  Check out this Wikipedia article on lateral thinking, especially the tools section.  Lateral thinking generally involves trying to put random and unconnected or exaggerated ideas together.  It’s a way to challenge your default modes of thought.

Please add your own ideas on how to stimulate creativity through novel experiences.  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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Note from Stephen: This is a guest article by Tess Marshall at www.TheBoldLife.com.  Please check out her excellent blog.

We know people who can light up a room with their presence. They are good at building and maintaining relationships. They establish rapport quickly and effortlessly. It seems like everybody is their best friend. Bestselling author, Malcolm Gladwell, call these people connectors.

With observation, guidance and a lot of practice, we can all build and amplify strong personal characteristics and become better “connectors.” The following methods will help you be the “one” others love to be around.

“If we were supposed to talk more than we listen, we would have two mouths and one ear.” Mark Twain

1. Make Others Feel They Matter. Listen more, talk less. Make eye contact and clear your mind of any of your own thoughts. A good question to ask another is, “Do you want advice or do you only want me to listen?” Listening creates feelings of appreciation and importance.

   “A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you just the way you are.” – Unknown

2. Practice Acceptance. Spend time looking for commonalities. When you focus on what is good, what is “good” stands out. Allow others to be themselves. Become aware of trying to change, fix or judge someone.

   “Empathy is the fundamental “people skill.” – Daniel Goldman

3. Practice Empathy. If you want to learn to be empathic, the easiest way is to “walk a mile in another’s shoes.” Empathy is understanding, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.

   “Your presence today spoke volumes. Thank you all for the support.” – Benjamin Crump

4. Make Others Feel Important. Stay in the present moment, don’t multi-task, check your phone or glance around the room. Make the speaker feel like the most important person in the world. Open and connect heart to heart.

   “It isn’t necessary to blow out the other person’s light to let your own shine” – Unknown

5. Let Others Shine. Don’t one up the speaker with one of your own personal stories. Instead, imagine the other person with a sign that says, “Make me feel special.” Practice being the last one to speak when you are with others. Your relationships will blossom.

   “Once someone touches your heart, the fingerprints will last forever.” – Unknown

6. Use Touch. When the moment presents itself touch the other person on the arm or pat them on the back or shoulder. Touching someone shows you care. It creates a warm feeling. As a relationship grows, those small touches turn into big hugs. Touching heals our emotional wounds and creates feelings of acceptance.

   “Affirm the positive, visualize the positive and expect the positive, and your life will change accordingly.” – Unknown

7. Be Positive. Build the other person up by saying, “I understand you. I get that.” Make an effort to point out the positive in any situation. Learn to express humor and make others smile. A great place to practice is with any service clerk.

   “Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment.” – Lao Tzu

8. Be Genuine. Nothing is more attractive than being real. Authenticity creates an unbreakable emotional bond. Being real allows for trusting and enduring relationships. Being real in a world that encourages us to be like everyone else, will allow others to feel safe enough to be real themselves.

Tess Marshall is the mover and shaker, at www.TheBoldLife.com , where she’ll hold you accountable for being the boldest you’ve ever been in every area of your life! What would you do if you were 10 times bolder? You can sign up for her RSS feed and receive her updates or follow her on Twitter

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