Become a Leader Yourself

When a situation calls upon you to demonstrate leadership skills, those skills need to come to the fore naturally and instantly. And because all good leaders share the same qualities, you can imprint these upon your unconscious mind using hypnosis.

Perhaps you are a manager or want to organize people in a sporting context or maybe you want to rise to the top of your profession. Whatever the context, being a leader; knowing how to lead and, importantly, feeling like a leader will be a huge bonus.

• Leaders know how to inspire which means they exude confidence.
• Leaders know how to positively influence others without seeming bossy or over bearing.
• Leaders know how to be a part of the team and don't seek glory for themselves at the expense of others (although they do gain great respect as a by-product of their leadership).
• Leaders have 'grace under fire'. Leaders know how to think on their feet which means they are calm.
• Leaders have confidence and are not afraid to make mistakes and take responsibility.
• Leaders are not control freaks - they know how to delegate and trust others to do well.
• Leaders look like leaders - not in physical stature but in the way they move, speak and relate to others. When you feel like a leader you will have the body language of a leader.

Be a Leader will inspire you with confidence and help program your instincts with the leadership edge. To truly be a leader you need confidence and calm. Only when you are calm can you see clearly what needs doing. This powerful hypnotic session will help you become a true leader.

3G Mobiles Internet access

Previously, we discussed how to select a wireless Internet access method for corporate laptops. Most workers who choose 3G wireless will either buy a new laptop with embedded 3G or add a new 3G card to an existing laptop. But don't overlook a third option that just might prove less expensive, so why not use a 3G phone for Internet access.

Benefits and limitations

Embedded and after-market 3G adapters provide Internet access by connecting a host (i.e., laptop, desktop, PDA) to a carrier's EV-DO or HSDPA data network. Embedded 3G is the most convenient option for those who require very frequent on-the-go Internet access. An after-market PC or Express card is slightly less convenient, and these small devices may be mislaid, stolen or broken. Both have a costly down-side: 3G adapters require their own service subscription, usually with a long-term contract. Going 3G this way commits you to spending Rs.4000-8000/month for the next one to two years, depending on your carrier and data limit.

Alternatively, a mobile worker who has already purchased a 3G phone, or who expects to do so in the near future, should consider tethering that phone to his or her laptop. Depending on your phone and laptop, those two devices may be linked using Bluetooth, Infrared (IrDA), USB cable or serial cable. The tethered host treats the linked 3G phone as a modem, using dial-up networking or a carrier-supplied wireless connection manager to initiate calls to the carrier's network.

The main advantage of cell phone tethering is the ability to get more mileage out of a single 3G subscription. Travelers who already pay for unlimited wireless data on a RAZR, BlackBerry, Blackjack or similar handset may find it less expensive to tether that phone instead of buying a separate wireless adapter and service plan. For example, a Verizon Broadband Access Data subscriber will pay an extra Rs.1500 per month to add the Broadband Access Connect feature (tethering) to an existing Smartphone account, without incurring a card activation fee or requiring another service contract.

Tethering is a good way to trial 3G laptop connectivity without making a long-term commitment. It can also help 3G subscribers satisfy both Smartphone and laptop wireless Internet access needs at a lower total monthly cost. But there are drawbacks:

Those who don't already have a compatible phone, or don't already have a data plan for that handset, could end up spending more for both than the price of a dedicated 3G wireless adapter. Those with limited MB-per-month plans may need to upgrade to an unlimited data plan to accommodate the combined bandwidth consumption.

Tethering has a significant impact on ease of use. Connecting a Bluetooth-enabled laptop to a Bluetooth-enabled Smartphone is reasonably convenient but will eat into the phone's battery life. USB tethering may not consume as much handset power but requires carrying a cable and connecting it whenever Internet access is desired.

Mobile workers who need to talk on the phone while connected to the Internet cannot use one tethered handset to meet both needs simultaneously. When a laptop places a data call using a tethered modem, that phone cannot make or receive voice calls until the data session is terminated. Running a VoIP soft phone on the laptop is a possible work-around but is less convenient than just using the handset directly for voice calls.

Forgiveness

Learning to forgive can feel like one of life’s harder lessons. So many seemingly-logical objections arise such as "why should I, after what they did to me?"

However, long lasting bitterness, resentment and hate is so damaging, not only to your enjoyment of life, but to your health. Bitterness chews you up inside and spoil your time on this Earth.

Forgiving someone doesn’t mean tolerating or excusing the bad that was done. But the shock, even horror of what happened needs to register only for a while. After that you need to move on from it for your own peace of mind.

Don't let resentment color all of life

The worst kind of bitterness is when a person is treated badly by one person but then starts to resent all people. This kind of negative over-generalizing is called ‘globalizing’ and you need to be aware that you don’t start to unfairly ‘tar everyone with the same brush'.

And as for thoughts of revenge there is a wonderful old saying: ‘Do unto others what is worthy of you, not what is worthy of them'. This encourages us to treat people in accordance with our own values and character regardless of what they have done.

Imagine when you can think about the events in question and feel calm and even indifferent. What a relief! How much more space you’ll have in your mind and life. When you truly forgive and move on you can put the past behind you and get on with life.

How ADSL Works

ADSL is a passband system, meaning that it carries its information in one or more channels above the baseband region of the frequency spectrum. This frees the 4kHz baseband section for use by standard voice transmission. In order to transmit data at high rates over a relatively lossy medium, the hardware must implement similar techniques to those employed by standard modems. This involves sending "symbols" rather than individual bits, a process known as quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). ADSL has two competing standards for implementing this.

The accepted standard, Discrete Multi-Tone (DMT), divides the spectrum into 256 4kHz channels called bins. Some of these channels are used bidirectionally and require echo cancelling to prevent corruption, and the rest of the channels are used for downstream data only. The baseband voice channel is well separated from these, and can be accessed by use of a simple splitter device. The effect is similar to a standard voice line and a bank of standard modems operating in parallel to deliver the high bandwidth service, but over a single twisted pair. This is depicted by figure.

Since many impairments of the twisted pair cable access are frequency sensitive, the hardware can optimise transfer rates by monitoring the performance of each individual channel. If the quality degrades, then the bit rate can be reduced on that channel, and possible reassigned to another channel with a better signal to noise characteristic. Bandwidth within individual channels can be optimally used with modulation techniques similar to those employed by traditional modems.

Motivation Motor

There's a saying often attributed to writer Samual Johnson about hell being paved with good intentions the origins which can be traced back to a saint who lived in the 11th century. Whoever said it, the big question is why do good intentions end badly? Maybe not in hell but certainly in the dumpster. 'Giving up smoking' - in the dumpster. 'Losing weight' - in the dumpster. 'Getting fit'. You get the idea.

Often we lose sight of our original goals. Getting fit gets modified to 'going swimming once in a while'. Losing weight becomes 'only having chocolate' on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays' and giving up smoking becomes 'cutting down'. Big goals become little goals. So much easier to reach but so much less worthwhile and satisfying.

And February is a great month for downsizing our motivation. It's dark, it's cold (for a lot of us) and after several weeks of salads and no fries (as we battle with a post-Christmas bulge) we're looking for any excuse to cut back on our grand plans. Can I tell you one of the greatest motivation killers I know? It's the phrase: 'I just wanted to prove to myself I could do it.' This translates into: 'This is my way of getting out of this and turning a big goal in to a little one.'

This brings me on to a now-famous bucket story. A time management speaker shows people a bucket and fills it with rocks to represent the things they have to do. He then asks: 'Is it full?'

'No' came the answer - 'you can still fit gravel between the rocks'. So he puts in the gravel and asks 'Is it full now?' 'Not yet' says a watcher, 'you could put sand in', and so he does. 'Surely it's full now?' 'Nope' says Mr. 'I know all the answers', you can fill it with water.' Everyone agrees that the bucket is at last full, and the speaker asks what can be learnt from this. 'There's always room for more?' says our know-it-all. 'No', says the speaker, 'if you want to fit in the big things, you have to put them in first'.

The point of this story is to always tackle the big things first and don't fill up your time with the little things. 'Stick to your big goals' and relish the enormous satisfaction that comes from achieving them.

If you would like a little help kick-starting your motivation again, try our popular Self motivation booster. And if you haven't done so already, take a look at the goal setting guide on our Uncommon Knowledge site. And think about what it was that got you focused on your goal in the first place. Whatever it was I wish you every success and I know that, with a little help, you can achieve it.

Email Deliverability Tips

Ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to subscriber inboxes is an increasingly difficult battle in the age of spam filtering. Open and click thru response rates can be dramatically affected by as much as 20-30% due to incorrect spam filter classification.

Permission

Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.

Subscriber Addresses

When requesting website visitors to opt-in ask for their "real" or "primary" email address instead of a free email address like Yahoo or Hotmail. Free emails tend to be throw away accounts and typically have a shorter lifetime than a primary ISP address.

List Maintenance

Always promptly remove undeliverable addresses that bounce when sending email to them. An address that bounces with a permanent error 2-3 times in a 30 day period should be removed from the list. ISP's track what percentage of your newsletters bounce and will block them if you attempt to continually deliver messages to closed subscriber mailboxes.

Message Format

Usage of HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. Most spam is also HTML formatted and thus differentiating between requested email and spam HTML messages can be difficult. A 2004 study by AWeber .com shows that plain text messages are undeliverable 1.15% of the time and HTML only messages were undeliverable 2.3%. If sending HTML it is important to always send a plain text alternative message, also called text/HTML multi-part mime format.

Content

Many ISP's filter based on the content that appears within the message text.

Website URL:
Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send spam, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be filtered.
Words/phrases:
Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid hot button topics often found in spam such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography. If you do need to use words that might be filtered, don't attempt to obfuscate words with extra characters or odd spelling, you'll just make your messages appear more spam like.

Images:
Avoid creating messages that are entirely images. Use images sparingly, if at all. Commonly used open rate tracking technology uses images to calculate opens. You may choose to disable open rate tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content.

Attachments:
With viruses running rampant and spreading thru the usage of malicious email attachments many users are wary of attached documents. It's often better to link to files via a website URL to reduce recipient fear of attachments and reduce the overall message size.

CAN-SPAM Compliance

The January 2004 Federal CAN-SPAM law introduced a number of rules regarding the delivery of email. It's important you have your legal counsel review your practices and ensure you are in compliance. The two most important rules include having a valid postal mail address listed in all commercial messages and a working unsubscribe link that is promptly honored to remove the subscriber from future messages.

Reputation

Reputation services are often used by large ISP's as a way to vet email senders regarding their email practices and policies. Businesses listed with these services are then given less stringent filtering or no filtering at all. Several reputation services are:

• http://www.isipp.com/iadb.php
• http://www.bondedsender.com
• http://www.habeas.com

Relationships & White listing

Contact with major ISP's and email providers is essential in letting them know about your requested subscriber email. Many large providers such as AOL and Yahoo have specific white listing programs and postmaster website areas to ensure your email is delivered as long as you meet their policies and procedures in handling your opt-in list.

How did I Learn to Love

There are lots of things that I needed to understand about relationships and romance. Very few of them are taught to us in school or at home! Here are some of the more common things that I learned. Most teenagers begin their romantic lives with a series of crushes. Crushes are sort of easy entry-ways into the world of strong emotions and relationships, without having much of the scary risk involved in really dating someone. Also, I learned how to handle feelings. A crush is about learning that I get POWERFUL emotions in relationships - and that I need to deal with them. Just like learned in earlier years how to deal with strong anger and strong sadness, I learned how to deal with strong feelings of attraction.

Teenagers (and adults too) often get caught up in the "What She/he Looks Like" mentality, fueled strongly by the fashion industry and MTV. It's easy to chase after someone just because their hair is cool or their body is buff. But as much as those lustful reasons might seem great at first, one of the strong lessons that life teaches is that beauty is skin deep, and living with a beautiful-but-poorly-matched person can bring a lot of misery and heartache.

We live in a world where everything can be measured. Our scales give us our weight down to the tenth of a pound. The weather forecasters know the exact temperature. It's no wonder that we want some sort of a chart to use that says for sure "This is not love" and "this is love". Unfortunately for lovers, emotions are not an exact science.

Love is not a crush - love involves someone you really know fully, not someone you admire from afar. Love is not lust - love involves really wanting to care for and help someone, not just admiring their body and wanting to touch them. If you love someone, you are content just sitting with them for the afternoon, not being "seen", not touching each other, but just spending time together. If you love someone, then you trust them fully. You readily share all your hopes, dreams and fears, and you are not "afraid" of talking about any topic with them.

Using Text or HTML in Emails

We field a lot of questions from customers about the pros and cons of using HTML in your messages. Like them, you may not know the major pros and cons of sending a multipart message (Text/HTML) versus sending text-only emails. There are a lot advocates on both sides of the fence when it comes to Text and HTML. In my experience everybody tends to focus only on the pros of what they do, and the cons of what they don't. You rarely get a balanced view.

So… right here, today, let's size 'em up:

Text. HTML. Toe to Toe in the Ring.

Somebody get Don King on the line.

Plain Text

People live in an HTML world. We experience pictures, colors, boxes, sizes in a way that plain text just doesn't replicate.

But… we talk in plain text.

We might SHOUT

or… pause…

but any way you cut it, most of us primarily use text to communicate with each other. This means that plain text messages look more like a message that you’re sending to someone on a one-to-one basis.

Plus, plain text is easier to create. You've got a box, you type in it. If it weren't easier, we wouldn't send the majority of our personal email messages in it. Even in your simplest HTML messages you normally make a hyperlink or change a font size or color.

And, text is text is text. Different email programs may display some HTML differently, but for the most part, text messages are going to look the same no matter what program your subscribers use to read them.

Reasons to Use Plain Text

Displays Consistently Across Email Clients

Always Necessary for All Messages (whether you use HTML or not)

Looks more like a Personal Email Message

Reasons Not to Use Plain Text

Can't use Colors or Graphics

Can't turn words like "Click Here" into Links - must type out URL

Harder to Break Up Into Easy-to-Scan/Read Sections

Can't Use Multiple-Column Formats Easily

HTML Benefits

Before we go any further, let's clarify one thing: I am NOT suggesting that you completely avoid using Plain Text! You've got to have a plain text version. If you're not so sure, go read my post on why plain text is necessary. We're talking about whether you should include an HTML version in addition to your text one.

So why aren't we all using plain text?

Simple: you can do more with HTML. You can use color, images, and sizes to connect with your readers in more ways. You can better tie what people see in your emails to what they see on your website.

And, you can see whether or not people are even opening your messages. And you can track clickthroughs without showing a tracking URL in the body of the message.

Reasons to Use HTML

Can Track Opens

Can Make Text Links Clickable

Can Use Images and Colors - Good Branding Opportunities!

Easy to Break Up Content into Digestible Bits (using columns, headers)

Reasons Not to Use HTML

Takes Longer than Text - and You Have to Do Text Anyway

Images are Often Blocked

Looks Less like a One-to-One Message

So What Do the Judges Say?

It's a tough decision.

Text is cleaner and leaner, and looks more like emails that we send to each other every day. Its stick-and-move marketing, simple jabs that get the job done.

But HTML packs more punches. It'll hit you with crosses, hooks and uppercuts in addition to the simple jabs that text offers. Granted, not all of those always work (example: image blocking), but they're manageable (example: use ALT text to get subscribers to enable images or describe what the image was).

Me? I use HTML when I can. But it's not about what I do or what I prefer.

Core of your Heart’s Desires

Before you start seeing outward signs of success, you have to start changing on the inside – in your heart, your conscious mind, your hidden thoughts and desires. If not automatically, it will feel like work and a chore you have to do – and pretty soon, you will abandon everything to crawl back into your comfort zone. We need to say “Come hell or high water, I am going to be successful from now, today!"

Once Dr. Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Great men are they who see that the spirit’s stronger than any material force.”

What drives your Inner spirit? Can you remember back on school when you would go to a big match and cheer the school team with more spirit than anyone else? You would scream, stomp our feet, chant with the friends.

You should believe in the unbelievable and can you do it..?

If you shake your head in disbelief when someone has an “overnight success story”, then you need a major attitude adjustment. Miracles are not anything unattainable, they are just what occur when people take the reins and make success happen manually.

Once you think of an intention, also known as a “goal”, you then need to help the seed grow into blossoming opportunity. You cannot just toss it out there and expect good things to happen.

Most people have goal to partner with someone, but they do nothing more than whine and complain about needing it on a message board forum – hoping someone else will take the initiative to pick them up off the ground and say “Oh I will save you!” As you work toward your goal, you have to know exactly what is that you want. You do not want people coming back with offers that do not meet your needs or an expectation, forcing you to settle for less.

“Whether you think you can or whether you think you cannot, you are right!” ~ Henry Ford