eTip #627 Three Reasons to Slow Down This Holiday Season

By Liz Scavnicky-Yaekle

It’s the ‘most wonderful time of the year,’ or is it?  For many Americans, the Thanksgiving holiday officially kicks-off a month full of stress as they struggle to balance their professional responsibilities with additional ‘tis the season to-do’s. 

Here are three reasons to slow down so you can glow all season long.

The pace of your race could be detrimental to your health.  Jeffrey Brantley, a psychiatrist and director of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program at the Duke Center for Integrative Medicine warns, “We pay an enormous price in both health and happiness for living in a sped-up world.”  It would be unrealistic to recommend that you hire a personal assistant to lighten your load, however you can make simple changes to decelerate in order to enhance your mood, mind and even your memory. 

Schedule a half hour to sit and sip a coffee without any electronic devices.  Take the long way home from work.  There is a high probability that during these peaceful pauses, the solution to a perplexing problem you have been trying to solve will suddenly appear.

Time pressure can impede your ability to retain information.  If you rush through your day at 100 miles per hour, you will find it nearly impossible to recall both basic and complex information.  When Julie Earles and her colleagues at the Wilkes Honors College at Florida Atlantic University studied the relationship between time pressure and remembering information, they found that slowing down helps to recall information accurately.  “If people are under a lot of time pressure, they have difficulty retrieving important pieces of information,” Earles stated.  These findings are particularly important for sales professionals who benefit immensely when they remember details about prospects and clients such as technical specifications, organizational structures, etc. 

Dale Carnegie’s 6^th Human Relations principle is, ‘Remember that a person’s name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language.’  When meeting someone for the first time, slow down, repeat their name back to them, e.g., “It’s nice to meet you, Frank.”  Then create a snapshot in your mind that will help you recall his name when you bump into him in the future.  For example, you may picture a hotdog to remember, ‘Frank.’ 

Constantly rushing can compromise your most important relationships.  Picture this—you’re in the kitchen prepping dinner, pausing to update a project plan and helping your daughter with homework when a sales rep knocks on the door.  You’re tempted to ignore the bell, but set aside multi-tasking to answer. 

This type of time pressure turns the relationship between the primitive and thinking parts of your brain upside down.  The result is that you either lash out at, or completely ignore, the people around you.  To avoid similar ‘lose-lose’ scenarios, decrease the total amount of activities you are doing simultaneously, one by one, over time. At first, you may feel uncomfortable delaying dinner or responding to a client, however just remember that Dale Carnegie said, “Practice makes permanent.” 

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eTip #626 What's Preventing You from Prospering Professionally and Personally?

By Liz Scavnicky-Yaekle

Dale Carnegie said, “Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be ‘hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.’” We are therefore excited about the latest analysis from the Kauffman Foundation which ranked Connecticut’s “Main Street Entrepreneurship” 9th among the nation’s 25 smaller states which is up from 12th just one year ago. Connecticut was one of only two states to move up three positions in the ranking.

According to survey data, Connecticut’s rate of business owners was 6.55%; the percentage of the adult population who own a business as their main job. If you own a business and are unsatisfied with its performance level, we ask you to ponder what exactly is preventing your business from persevering and prospering?

At Dale Carnegie Training of Western Connecticut, our expertise is helping people become their professional and personal best. Our unique techniques are based on the Human Relations principles penned by Dale Carnegie himself in his best-selling book which was published in 1936, ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People.’ Whether the goal is to foster innovation through collaboration, enable employees to persuade confidently or to strengthen interpersonal relationships, we help organizations create highly engaged workforces to maximize their success every day.

Dale Carnegie said, “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” If you are an employee who is frustrated because it seems that you are unable to attain your professional and personal goals, don’t lose hope. We implore you not to give up, rather to consider another path to success; one that nearly eight million people in over 85 countries have chosen—a Dale Carnegie course. Here a few to consider based on your particular needs:

The Dale Carnegie Course

Perhaps you have great ideas, but lack the confidence to present them. You may struggle under stressful circumstances or when you have to address a tough topic or situation with a co-worker.   If so, check out the world-class Dale Carnegie Course.

Winning with Relationship Selling

Do you or other sales professionals within your organization struggle to attain sales goals? Are retention rates and client relationships where they should be? If you or your sales team needs a proven technique to score more deals, consider the Dale Carnegie Sales Training: Winning with Relationship Selling course.

Leadership Training For Managers

Are you responsible for motivating and managing a team, but lack the leadership skills required to be successful in doing so? Learn effective coaching, delegation and motivational techniques, and how to master problem analysis and decision making by enrolling in the Leadership Training for Managers course.

High Impact Presentations

Do you or your employees’ presentations lack persuasion and punch? The two-day High Impact Presentations seminar is as close as you can get to teaming up with a personal, public speaking coach. Participants present at least seven times and improve their performance by evaluating and learning from their videotaped presentations.

For more information, visit our website!

eTip #625: Four Ways Showing Gratitude Guarantees Better Health

By Liz Scavnicky-Yaekle 

Boost your immune system thanks to improved optimism levels.  Not surprisingly, grateful people tend to think more optimistically which researchers say boosts the immune system.  Lisa Aspinwall, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Utah stated, “There are some very interesting studies linking optimism to better immune function.”   In one study, researchers comparing the immune systems of healthy, first-year law students under stress found that, by midterm, students characterized as optimistic (based on survey responses) maintained higher numbers of blood cells that protect the immune system, compared with their more pessimistic classmates.

Increase alertness, determination, energy and more.  In one study, two psychologists, Dr. Robert A. Emmons of the University of California, Davis, and Dr. Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami, asked participants to write weekly in a gratitude journal.  Those who wrote daily reported higher levels of “positive states of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness and energy compared to a focus on hassles or a downward social comparison (ways in which participants thought they were better off than others).”  Another benefit reported was that participants who kept gratitude lists had a greater propensity to attain important personal goals over a two-month period compared to subjects with different experimental conditions. 

Squash stress levels in two ways.  First, people who have feelings of thankfulness and give gratitude tend to take better care of themselves.  According to an interview with Emmons by WebMD.com, grateful people—defined as those who perceive gratitude as a permanent trait rather than a temporary state of mind, have an edge on the not-so-grateful where health is concerned.  Emmons stated, “Grateful people take better care of themselves and engage in more protective health behaviors like regular exercise, a healthy diet, regular physical examinations.”

Secondly, while stress can stimulate sickness not limited to heart disease and cancer—and claims responsibility for up to 90% of all doctor visits, gratitude enables us to better manage stress.  “Gratitude research is beginning to suggest that feelings of thankfulness have tremendous positive value in helping people cope with daily problems, especially stress,” Emmons stated.

Lessen your risk of certain forms of psychopathology.  Other researchers have found that focusing on and appreciating the positive aspects of life on a habitual basis is related to a generally higher level of psychological well-being and a lower risk of certain forms of psychopathology.

By incorporating grateful expressions and/or activities into your daily life, you will be more likely to cultivate optimism, thwart sickness and live an overall healthier lifestyle. 

For more information, visit our website!