“Our value is the sum of our values.” –Joe Batten In order to make an advancement in your ability to persuade, I believe it’s necessary to advance yourself. Personal advancement. Personal understanding. Personal growth. These are all incredibly powerful ways to increase every aspect of your life–business, personal and public. This article is about an amazing process that will help begin to accelerate your skills with my material. The goal is to rank our values. It’s fairly painless, and will take you to new levels of understanding and give you a little more insight into persuading your affluent clientиle. Future articles will get deeper into this, but feel free to check out other articles on criteria and values as they relate to influencing the affluent. The following is a list, albeit an incomplete list which you should feel free to add to, of some examples of core values. Please, add your own should they not appear. As you practice this with your clients, you’ll see this list grow. * Honesty * Freedom * Security * Passion * Freedom * Recognition * Integrity * Health * Family * Spouse * Friends * Spirituality * Money * Love * Success * Recognition * Education * Self improvement * Adventure * Fun * Financial independence * Variety * Knowledge * Self actualization * Wisdom * Accomplishment * Power You might notice that ‘happiness’ is not on the list. The reason for this omission is, ‘happiness’ is not a value. Happiness is what will occur once your core value is actualized. The next step is to put them in order. Start with your top ten from the above list. And this is how to determine your top five: As an example, your list may, in no particular order, start out with health, love, money, passion, freedom, knowledge, wisdom, friends, accomplishment, recognition. Start with health and make your way down the list. If you had to choose between perfect health and no love, or a perfect love, but poor health. . .which would you choose? For sake of this example, we’ll choose health. What if you could have amazing health OR all the money you wanted? Which would you choose? Perfect health and no freedom, or absolute freedom and poor health? Choose which better describes what you want. We go through the entire list this same way to determine the top five values. Why is this a valuable exercise? Well, I’ll answer that with another question. If a sales professional had the top values of security, wealth and family, do you think they might be able to effectively interweave security, wealth and family into a conversation about their product or service? We can’t elicit our prospect’s values in this way, but we are eliciting their criteria (which is really more of a context based value. . . i.e. their value about the given situation that we’re asking about). We need to make it relevant to them. As you begin to understand the value of this information, you may also want to check out www.maxpersuasion.com/blog for more articles on how values and criteria can affect the way you sell.

Being successful in life is everyone’s goal. But most of us fail to avail the golden chances and opportunities, life presents us. The major reason behind this is we become victims of procrastination. Procrastination is a synonym for laziness. We get so lazy sometimes that we think that we have a long time to accomplish the task, knowing the task can take more time we assumed. Then we tend to do work in last moments and most of people fail to hold their patience and get tensed to that extent that they make situations worse or do the things in a wrong or ineffective manner. After that we mourn over our procrastination but now nothing can be restored. Thus, to emerge successful one needs to get rid of procrastination and this than be done in following manner: First of all if you feel you are victim of procrastination you need to get organized. Get organized from today. The best way to start is with your room. Organize your room, your time, your life and your things. The sense of organization will bring stability in you and you will tend to stay organized, thus every time you see anything out of order, you will place it in a proper place. Slowly with passage of time you will imbibe a order in you, helping you to overcome your procrastination. The next thing is to make a routine. Take your monthly planner with you and write down your short term as well as long term goals and also jot down ways to accomplish these tasks. Make a habit of doing the things as mentioned in your routine and make sure to mention even minor things like ironing of clothes in your routine. Though initially, you will find it hard to follow the routine but once if you started sticking to it, you will dwell the habit of doing things at specified period of time. This will help you in accomplishing your goals in a timely manner and thus you get rid of habit of not doing work on time. Drawing your future plans holds another advantage too. Earlier you had no work to do and could sit idle for hours but if you know what you need to do before hand, a pressure will always be there on you to do the things in timely manner, otherwise your other work will hamper. Along with planning, managing your time in a productive manner always help you get rid of procrastination. You need to finish the tasks in the allotted time period and this organizes your lifestyle. Moreover, if you start managing your time well you will be always left with plenty of time at the end of day allowing you to carry other activities which was not feasible earlier due to your procrastination. The most important aspect to get rid of your procrastination is to build just do it attitude. Always think it’s now or never whenever you feel like skipping the work or task that needs to be accomplished and you will always get rid of procrastination.

Someone asked me recently if I could articulate some easy and basic “steps” that a person could do every day that would help them be in alignment with wealth, meaning be “in line” to attract wellbeing, goodness, and prosperity. So, that prosperity would flow easier in life. So, that where they stood emotionally was a reflection of what they wanted to create in life, versus standing in fear and scarcity. My answer to that question was yes! Yes, you certainly create some basic “steps” to do each and every day that would align you with wealth, joy, and goodness. Now, before I go there, I want you to realize that these steps, or perhaps a better word would be “keys”, to alignment are not set in stone. But, they are indeed good building blocks for beginning the journey, your journey, that sets your “keys to alignment” apart from everyone else’s. 1. I would begin with a heaping dose of self-care. What I mean by this – choose at least 10 things to do for yourself each day that isn’t a should or a have-to. This is one of the most essential things. It builds your sense of self worth and you will begin to love yourself in a new way, and this in turn, lines you up with love, wellbeing, and prosperity. 2. Meditate. Every day for at least 5-15 minutes, begin to intentionally quiet your mind. Increase this time as you are able. Close your eyes, breath in through your nose, and out through your mouth 3 times. Then gently focus on your heart and your connection with God. Let fleeting thoughts pass by, with out resistance. Stay focused on your love for God, your appreciation, and your joy. This is Tibetan form of meditation that I have found to be excellent. Why is meditation important? Connection to All That Is, and All That Is a far cry from scarcity isn’t it?! It is good to experience truth and love on a daily basis and move away from the many illusions of life. Meditation also quiets your mind so that you can raise your vibration to it’s most natural and abundant state. In this state, you are powerful attractor of wealth and wellbeing. Treat your self to this each day. 3. Be in charge of your thoughts and feelings. Choose thoughts and feelings that make you feel better, and help you to ease any resistance to wellbeing in your life. If you can jump into joy this is great! But, if joy is too big of a stretch, then take your time and ease your way there. Make the topic of “feeling good” or “feeling better” at the top of your life’s list. Here is an example. I have this little health issue. I could, if I chose, stand here: “This health issue is the worst, I can’t handle it, I have no control over this, my doctors don’t care, feel angry ..etc etc. ” OR, I could stand here, and ease my resistance to it: “Well, I am here. It is better than where I was last week, and I can really feel myself improving a bit. I love my new naturopath and I believe in her. I know I will heal, and I know it will be soon, I can feel it coming. I trust I will have learned something from this, and that my body will be healthier because of it in the end. This thing won’t get me. It’s MY life.” Help yourself move UP the wellbeing scale, versus spiraling down and around, creating more of the same situation you are in. You will be amazed how your connection to wealth and wellbeing seems to just happen…as if it was there all along. Imagine that! Here it comes. Peace, Lori Hamann

One of the major symptoms associated with social anxiety is stress. Stress works two ways – the social anxiety can cause it, and the stress can intensify the social anxiety. Stress can be a big problem, because it leads to other health related problems, such as high blood pressure or heart attack. Stress can also cause headaches, ulcers, insomnia, excessive fatigue, and muscle pain. When a person who suffers from social anxiety is contemplating a social interaction or situation, they experience stress. When they are actual in a social interaction or situation, the stress level increases to extreme levels, and triggers a variety of other symptoms. Stress plays such a big role in social anxiety that, in many cases, once a person learns how to control their stress levels, they literally overcome their social anxiety as well. There are many methods that can be used to control stress levels. Exercise is one of the best ways to reduce or eliminate stress, because believe it or not, stress can create energy. This is the fight or flight response that we were all born with. This fight or flight response was used by our ancestors for their survival. We don’t typically use this fight or flight response for our survival today, but it is still there, and it does create energy that needs to be used. Exercise is the way to use it. You can also employ other methods for dealing with long-term stress and it’s side effects. These methods include: Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR), Autogenic Relaxation, and Imagery Relaxation. These methods can be used along with exercise to greatly reduce your stress levels. Progressive Muscle Relaxation is a technique in which you tense, then relax, groups of muscles. The ultimate goal of PMR is to be able to relax your entire body all at once. When you can relax all of your muscles, stress disappears from your muscles, and it is either reduced or eliminated. Autogenic relaxation is often used for the relief of chronic pain. Since stress can cause chronic pain, autogenic relaxation is used to treat stress as well. Autogenic relaxation combines deep breathing exercises with imagery and positive verbal statements to control and master a problem that is causing stress. Imagery relaxation also involves deep breathing, but instead of dealing directly with what is causing the stress, you use your mind to take you away from the stressful situation – to a happier, more relaxed place. This can be done with the use of tapes, or on your own. Whether social anxiety is causing your stress or something else is causing your stress, it is important that you deal with the stress as soon as possible, before it leads to other more serious health problems and takes over your life. Even if you are not able to deal with other issues just yet – such as your social anxiety – your stress levels can still be greatly reduced.

We are so much more than we know. The divine eternal spark of love, light and hope lives within us. This is true for all souls and all of us who are embodied here on the Earth, and yet so often life our daily life feels so far from this. There are some difficult or traumatic events that shape us profoundly to the very core of our being. Some are personal or family events and some are larger global events that affect us deeply. When pain enters our life, there are coping mechanisms within us that help us to get through the time of difficulty. If the trauma is very deep, or goes on for a very long time, our coping mechanisms can solidify and form a protective layer around us. These eventually become assimilated into our identity, so that we no longer feel the pain of the traumatic events. Our coping mechanisms help us to move forward into life, despite difficult circumstances. These ways of coping with pain are intended to support us in times of difficulty. They are not intended to become solidified into an entire way of life, however in the absence of the love and light that are needed to foster healing, we may become entrenched in the old defenses. It is possible to go through life with an emotional and energetic suit of armor, which protects us and allows us to function, but which does not allow for a greater level of intimacy or emotional connection with others. In this kind of situation, the emotional, physical and energetic patterns of self protection can become so much a part of us that we no longer know of any other options. Like a fish who does not realize that he is in water, because he knows of no other options, we remain in the only environment we have known, not realizing there is any other possibility. Under these circumstances our identity and sense of who we are shapes itself around our defensive patterning. Without realizing it, we become our coping mechanisms. This can continue for a shorter or a longer period of time, until such time as our inner being feels safe enough to begin to explore other possibilities. When the time comes that life shows us that we don’t need to continue in these old patterns, it is possible that we find ourselves afraid to let go of our defenses. In some ways, our emotional armoring was familiar, and provided a sense of safety. To think of letting this go can provoke feelings of panic or even terror, even if another part of us wants to move forward and free ourselves. One of the reasons this can be so difficult is because our defenses became, for a time, a part of identity. When we begin to let these go, suddenly it can feel as though our very self is on the line. The question becomes, who am I if I let go of my pain? Like standing on the cliff, looking down into the abyss, it can feel like there is nothing and no one to catch us if we dare to let go of holding on. In reality, there is a natural rhythm and flow to our inner lives, so when we reach the point of being willing to open to new possibilities, new supports become available, so that we are not alone in facing our fears. It could be a new friendship or relationship, an inner sense of greater trust, or other kinds of supports that reveal themselves and help us to have the courage to open to the new and to let go of our past defenses. In this way, we are helped to move forward in our life’s journey, and to gradually come to know more of who we are as divine eternal beings of love. When we have the courage and faith to release our hold on old ways of perceiving ourselves, a new world opens before us and reveals choices we would have previously only dreamed about. By releasing our hold on the pain, and by releasing the ways we have protected ourselves against the pain, we are born anew into a new realm of love and possibility.