You Can Put Lipstick On A Pig, But It’s Still A Pig

October 16, 2008 – 3:44 pm

The following is from author Keith A. Shaw, and is published with permission –
Copyright © 2008 Mind Body Spirit Central, LLC

It seems this colloquial saying, “You Can Put Lipstick On A Pig, But It’s Still A Pig”, is making the rounds – and causing quite a row – in the current U.S. presidential campaigns. According to the “Urban Dictionary”, this phrase is slang for when someone tries to dress something up to make it look better than it really is.

Yes, it is true. No matter whether it is lipstick, perfume or a tuxedo, a pig is still a pig. Now, before the animal rights people start e-mailing me let me go on record that – I have nothing at all against pigs!

However, it did stimulate me to think about the way that people communicate. You see, phenomenally successful people work constantly on their “people skills”. In the popular motivation and success system, The Power of Concentration, the author wrote that…

“The first, and most critical, area is the relationships you have with others as well as what and how you COMMUNICATE in those relationships.”

The manner in which you communicate, not only

#1) what you say, that is, your choice of words, #2) how you say it, and #3) the situation or circumstance in which you communicate, can either make you (more) successful OR make you appear or perceived to be just like the “poor pig” in our opening example – all dressed up to look better than it is!

And, with that in mind, here is the key takeaway of my motivational story. Be careful of what I call “the colorful metaphors”. You may also know them as the dreaded “four-letter words!

For example, last week I met a potential client, who I will call “Karen” who despite her current status in life injected these “colorful metaphors” quite liberally in the conversation. Now, I’m not talking about “shucks” or “darn” as examples, I’m talking about the “queen mother” of all four-letter words among others. Yes, it was the nuclear “F-bomb”!

The truth is, without quality communication with the people that you relate to on a daily basis, whether they are at your place of business, in your personal life or at the shopping mall, you can not attract the building blocks that lead to success.

Poor communication, especially when using “colorful metaphors and four-letter words”, affects the way others perceive, understand and react to you. The people who communicate best are the ones that are the most successful. Look at any of the successful people that you know and study the way that they communicate. You will quickly see through their words, body language and tonality their formula for success. You will also notice that they listen more than they talk. When it is time for them to talk, they ensure that they TAKE THE RESPONSIBILITY for the other party to understand what they are saying.

And, it does not matter what your current situation or circumstance is. Whether you are on the path to success or already believe you are successful. It does not matter if you already have a high-level of financial comfort, a college or university education, an expensive watch, luxury car or you or your spouse own a business. The cold, hard truth is that the person who does not take the responsibility for the words they choose lacks self control, self discipline and will quickly and positively lose the respect of the people they deal with.

Period.

Be aware and watch these simple, yet critical, interpersonal skills every day as they will take you far along your path to success. Be careful not to take the “Ready, Fire, Aim” approach in communicating with others. Manage your thoughts by developing your self control and self mastery. There is a Chinese Proverb that reads, “A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.” Practice everyday, and soon you will be making a powerful and positive impression, (without lipstick or a tuxedo), no matter where you are on your quest for personal development, success or self improvement.



Keith A. Shaw, of http://www.MindBodySpiritCentral.com is an authority on motivation, success, qigong, self improvement, health and happiness. For more “secret recipes” on how to win at any game, no matter how challenging, see my website to order my Powerful Motivation and Success Systems.

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Walk Proud

October 13, 2008 – 3:37 pm

One day, I met a young man who had difficulty looking at me when he spoke to me. When he walked his eyes were down and his posture was slumped. When he did speak his voice was low and unsure and didn’t look very enthusiastic. D o you know anyone who carries him or herself this way? It’s hard to watch. I feel for these kids. They wouldn’t want to hear it, but they’re setting themselves up for a load of hard times. It’s tough to attract good things when you carry yourself as if someone hit you over the head with a shovel. This young man and others like him are paving a very difficult road for themselves ahead.

Why so?

Quite simply it’s because of the energy that these people send out to other people. These vibrations are weak and they tell others that a person is not sure of themselves and not confident. Negative energy attracts other negative energy. Many people go through life wondering why happiness and good things never come their way. Could it be that what they think and believe affects how they look and feel and ultimately affects how people feel and act towards them?

Feeling good and projecting good can begin with a few simple steps. Begin by believing that you’re o.k. Remember it doesn’t matter what anyone else might tell you. It matters what you think.

Remind yourself of the things that you’ve done to support the fact that you’re o.k. They don’t have to be big things. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Little things make big differences. Allow yourself to feel the feeling of “you’re o.k.” It’s a nice feeling. Surround yourself with it for a while.

Remind yourself to smile when you are out and about. A smile is inviting and sends out a great energy. It welcomes people to you others. Remember to look at people in the eyes when you talk to them and walk tall, straight and proud. You’ll be amazed at how much better you feel when you carry yourself in a strong, confident fashion and smile.

All of these are very simple things to do. Even though simple, they make a world changing difference when practiced regularly. Let your good energy come out.

To your best,

Fred Nicklaus



For tips on raising Rock Solid Kids visit www.ConfidentKidsCoach.com for free tips on raising your child to be a leader, and for the fitness training that will sky rocket your core body strength, check out www.CombatEnduranceTraining.com

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Stop Daydreaming and Start Enjoying!

October 9, 2008 – 3:22 pm

By author Holly Cox:
For many of us, the idea of transforming our lives sounds like a fairy tale. It seems like we have been dreaming about that illusive “someday” forever, yet we never actually arrive in “someday land” since we keep projecting further into the future. “When I lose weight, I’ll feel good.” “When I get married, I’ll be happy.” “Having children will fulfill me.” “When my children get older, I’ll have more time.” Daydreaming about the future is not bad in itself; however, when we stop enjoying the present because it never matches up to our fantasies, we often become disillusioned. It’s possible to take daily action steps toward our dreams while enjoying life to the fullest in the present moment. If we want to play starring roles in our own lives, it is essential to treat ourselves as well as, if not better, than we might treat a special guest.

It helps to ask ourselves how we would speak to someone we admired and respected. What kind of food would we serve this person? How would we go out of our way to make this visitor feel nurtured and welcome? Would we give him or her moments of our undivided attention? If we were buying clothes for this individual, what quality would we buy? Would we use our best china, crystal, and linens, or would just any old thing do?

Our actions toward ourselves say a great deal about the value we place on our own needs, wants, and desires. It is essential that we stop expecting others to treat us better than we treat ourselves. We can try these tips for making ourselves a priority in our own lives.

1. Take a moment before we get out of bed in the morning to stretch, savor the sensation of being alive, and set clear intentions for what we want our day to look like.

2. Check in with ourselves on a regular basis and ask some of these questions: What do I need to do for myself in this moment? If I were determined to make the most out of this day, what would I do? What are the sensations in my body right now? What does IT need? What matters most to me today? If I made taking care of myself a priority today, what would I do differently?

3. Find a way to pamper ourselves each day – reading a good book, taking a walk, getting a manicure/pedicure, taking time to enjoy our meals, talking to a friend, writing a letter, spending time with a journal, meditating, napping, etc.

4. Learn to enjoy our own company.

5. Dress to please ourselves.

5. Drink a favorite beverage from a beautiful crystal goblet or coffee mug.

6. Eat foods we love, and serve them to ourselves on our best china.

7. Rid our closets of clothes that no longer suit us, and only wear what we absolutely love.

8. Have a “spa” night on a regular basis.

9. Schedule time for ourselves in our appointment calendars.

10. Wrap small surprise gifts for ourselves, and open them when the mood suits us.

11. Write letters of appreciation to ourselves.

12. At the end of the day, take time for reflection.

Copyright 2008 by Holly Cox, L.C.P.C., C.D.C®

Holly Cox is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor, a Certified Dream Coach®, and a Certified Dream Coach Group Leader®. She is committed to helping women design and maintain “dream-come-true” lives. Sign up for Holly’s “Transform Your Life” newsletter at
http://www.mypersonaltransformation.com and get great tips to jumpstart your transformation.

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SEO and Web Site Promotion

March 16, 2008 – 6:41 pm

The mantra of the SEO community is: Content and Backlinks. The MetaGoogle MegaCorporation calculates a site’s worth with some high-falutin’ hueristic that measures the depth of the Moon’s Shadow, the Man’s Piaba and maybe the number of ‘worthy’ links into your site. The worthiness is also a magic quantity that nobody is really sure about.

There have been so many bogus e-books on Search Engine Optimization that you can spend a fortune and not get any new visitors to your site.

For me, Jim Hinds, my main interest is romance and relationships: My web pages are Romance Capitol and my therapy page Celarien

I need to get visitors to my site. That is your opportunity also: getting visitors to your site!

So we need a strategy that will put eyeballs on your site and maybe make google happy.

Now, what if there was a secret society that put a whole bunch of web site owners together that:

  1. looked at each other’s site
  2. reviewed each other’s site
  3. encouraged the site owners to post those reviews with proper backlinks on their own site
  4. add those reviews on a slow and daily basis so as not to confuse the Search Engine People
  5. made suggestions to each other’s site
  6. and invited other site owner’s to do the same

Bingo! What do you have? A club that encourages cross-linking. Fair, you only link to those you want to, and Balanced, when you want to. In addition, you have lots of the most web-sophisticated people looking at your site. That is linkreferral.com! An altogether good thing. I estimate that my FREE usage of that service has gotten me over 100 hits in the first week of use alone.

But what is the down side? Well, the way that the Link Referral people encourage site owners to join is to return a fraction of the action. And so it looks a bit like a multi-level marketing program. That’s not entirely bad, especially when you consider that you are not really joining to get rich, just to get more real eyeballs on your site.

Another organization is quite a bit more up ‘in your face’ about the money making aspect. That is You WE (yuwie.com). Here is the funny part: They are actually more fair and honest than the social web services that do NOT give any money back to their users. Does your daughter’s social web site give her any money? If she was on Yuwie, she might get evan a little back.

But money is NOT the big advantage of the Yuwie community. The big secret is that these users are more motivated to look at your yuwie site, simply because they think it will gain them some money. It may, but the effect is that your Yuwie site can point too your REAL site with full RSS links, blog postings and such. Yuwie users will be looking at your content and that can’t be bad.

Check out this video introduction to Yuwie.

It is like a one-two punch to get visitors to your web site: The linkreferral concept joined with the Yuwie concept.

Act now. You can use your on-computer time more fun and more intelligently as well as get more visitors to your site. And that’s pretty much a good thing.

By Jim | Posted in marketing | Comments (0)

Capitol of the World

November 6, 2007 – 2:43 pm

This is a new kind of blog for me. All of my other blogs have been centered on personal stuff: jahbini.org, kegare.org or are emotion and romance related: celarien.com, romantictrances.com or romancecapitol.com.  My main goal in all these blogs is to raise awareness about the changeable nature of our emotions and how we can use that to enhance our relationships and romances!  This blog is new in that we will be looking at how my life interacts with all of the stuff in our culture. And believe me, it won’t be easy. Or cheap. Well, not too expensive. But certainly if I’m going to let you in on the real impact the artifacts of our culture have on my life, I’ll want to let somebody pay for it.  I’m not a mindless shill like many people:  Can you believe that most people have such bizarre personal values that they advertise a product just because they believe it makes them look cool or important or rich? Why the *&%%$ would anybody wear a ‘Roll – Eks’ watch, unless it said ‘Roll – Eks.’  Or wear a baseball cap that had a team logo on it? or a shirt with an alligator.  And don’t even get me started on designer clothes, handbags, and jewelry.Come on, admit it, you want to advertise.  These folks really think that advertising a designer name will advertise themselves as ‘with-it’ and superior people!! I mean honestly, is it really any better or better looking than another watch?  So that’s why most people are mindless shills for some manufacturer. You sell out cheap. But for me, It’s only if I like the whole enchilada enough to tell you all about it.  

By Jim | Posted in marketing | Tagged | Comments (0)