This week my another guest post was published. This time it is at The Positivity Blog – a great blog about personal development.
I talk about reasons why we want to achieve success. A highly recommended reading for people who want to enjoy success and understand why we pursue it.
Enjoy the weekend.
I am a big fan of action movies. Nothing unusual about that, I guest that probably you also enjoy watching a quality action at the big screen. What makes me impressed is that action movies can effectively grab my attention and keep focus till the very end, on extremely high level. When I am watching a really good piece of action, in my mind there is literally nothing beyond that.
So, what factors do such a great job? Below is what I find the most important.
Action
Fights, stunts, shootouts, races, runs, jumps… all scenes that include these elements always boost our adrenaline. And that is cool, pleasurable and galvanizing. If we have a good imagination and it is not difficult for us to associate with the character taking part in such scenes, then the impact is even stronger.
Building suspense
Good plot brings strong emotions. We start to experience fear, anticipation, curiosity, insecurity, frustration. All of them build in us urge to watch next seconds, next minutes.
Dialogues
Interactions between characters are a very important part of good action movie. Of course we don’t expect any sophisticated conversations there. We are looking for dialogues that emphasize interesting personalities and increase the momentum by pushing the plot further.
Jokes
Well, somewhere in the middle of spectacle, there should be a moment when we can release a little bit of tension accumulated in our bodies. There is no better way to do that than laughter and a good joke can provide a lot of it.
Special effects
With today technology, the possibilities are endless. Explosions, pile-ups, stunts, weapons, robots, monsters and futuristic cities. All of them can be a part of images that would keep our jaws dropped to floor for a long, long time.
Gadgets
Who don’t want to get the gadgets that main character uses? I do want. They are uber-awesome and they always save life when in hopeless situation.
Pretty women
Actually, pretty women should be in every movie, not only in action genre, right?
The end
Most of action movies have quite obvious finish. Main character finally kicks all bad-asses. And that is also good. No matter what happens in the middle of the movie, how strong are the enemies, how impossible is the mission, and how bad is situation – we know that in the end our hero will accomplish. Paradoxically, the fact that we know there is kind of happy end, keeps us watching that show till the end. Just to see how our hero would achieve that.
Now, the real ending of this post
Knowing above, now it’s time to do some brainstorming on how to use these ideas in order to grab the attention of customers and readers; and how to keep their focus on us, our services and our products.
Supervisor: Attention, whoever you are. This channel is reserved for emergency calls only…
John McClane: No fucking shit, lady! Do I sound like I’m ordering a pizza?
photo credit: -l.i.l.l.i.a.n-
Shyness is a psychical state in which we experience feeling of fear, lack of confidence and awkwardness.
Negative emotions are often accompanied with lower self-control, lack of concentration and some psychosomatic signs like sweating, increased pulse, blushing and unnecessary tension especially in facial muscles.
When are we shy? Among the most common situations are:
A little bit of shyness can have advantages. It is very likely that in order to feel and perform well in the situation when we are usually shy, we would prepare ourselves better for that moment. We would put more effort and take actions to improve our skills, knowledge and competence.
What we want to avoid is a strong, negative effect that shyness can make on our performance. I remember many moments in my life, when I lost control over my shyness and it spoiled my job. I guess you can recall such moments from your life as well, and probably, just like me, you hate when that occurs.
How to cope with the shyness?
If shyness is not your worst nightmare and you can work quite well, while keeping it under control, then great. Probably trying a few of my tips I described below would be helpful enough to drastically improve on that.
But if shyness frightens you the whole day before your presentation and in the worst possible moments it causes that your system almost halts, I must be honest, there is quite some work you have to do.
Of course all the following advices need your commitment and positive approach. It is not enough that you just read them and say ‘a-ha’. Unfortunately it is not that simple. So, let’s don’t waste any more time. Read them; find what may be helpful for you and…
Practise
Exactly. You need to practise. Without constantly putting yourself in situations when you meet your shyness, there is no possibility to get better on this. You can start small. At the beginning the quantity is more important that quality. Talk with people in different situations, prepare a presentation at work, take martial arts classes. Step beyond your comfort zone and set new borders. Then take another step and another…
Know your material.
Sometimes we experience moments we don’t know what to do or what to say next. These moments may be very difficult especially for very shy people. Psychosomatic symptoms intensify and we are nearly paralyzed. Good preparation can help us to avoid such situations. When we get better at dealing with shyness, we become more natural and spontaneous. Then we would improvise better and more often instead of strictly following our routines.
Act and talk confidently
It is kind of “your mind follows your body”. If you talk and act confidently, then your mind tunes into that and brings you more confident state, mood and similar emotions. Additionally, acting and talking confidently make strong impression on other people and if this is their first impression about you or your performance, then they will very likely remember you and your job as a confident.
Slow down
A lot of people are in hurry while performing under shyness. Why? They want to finish quickly, so they no longer feel that way. But this way, they make impression of nervous and uncertain. Acting and talking faster than usually is also in some way kind of new situation, behind their comfort zone. It is better to slow down. Your body and mind become calmer, you are less stressed. You have more time and you make fewer mistakes. That also builds an impression of confidence and your message is clearer and more credible for the receivers.
Visualize
Visualization is a very powerful technique. I guess there could be written more than many books about this topic, that is why it is not an easy task to write about it briefly in few paragraphs. But visualization is not a rocket science and everybody should, at least try it.
The two things you need there are imagination and intuition. Imagination, because it is necessary to create strong and detailed images (I mean not only pictures, but also sounds, feelings and so on) in your mind. Intuition, because everybody I know visualize in slightly different way that works for that person and you need to find your own way.
To fight the shyness I have two favorite ideas.
The first one is that I visualize the situation that I expect in near future, where of course the shyness may appear. I try to create as much significant details as it is possible. I build that place in my mind, I put there people, noises, colors and other possible sensations. Then I play there multiple scenarios with most possible courses of action. I also work on my emotions. I apply most of advises I presented above, also while visualizing. What does it give to me? When I’m there for real, I feel way much more confident. I was there before. I did it once. It was so simple in my mind; it is simple now as well. It is something like while visualizing I built a map in my mind. Now I only have to follow the route which I know. I’m not lost in the unknown.
The other method is more dedicated to the bare feeling of shyness. I visualize the situation when I’m shy and ten I try to get used to it or even take control over it. With time I’m better and better at performing under shyness; I just don’t care about it so much and I can act pretty well even with that feeling. Visualizations help me also to take control over shyness. I amplify it in my mind and then I decrease the intensity in various ways: by changing my focus and thoughts, by changing perspective of time and place, by bringing other emotions and so on. As you can see, you should experiment a lot in this technique. There are no strictly bad and good ways to use it. What works for you is the only measure of success.
Relax
I find relaxing quite difficult as a way to beat shyness. In past, when I was trying to relax in order to cope with my shyness, I usually got additionally nervous and stressed. I couldn’t relax at all or it barely worked for me. Moreover, many techniques that I used for relaxing, where simply unavailable to perform in various situations. I don’t imagine myself doing yoga positions in few minutes before defending my master thesis. But there are three simple things that always do their job.
Breathe. Sometimes it is enough to focus on it for a while; sometimes I perform a short play with it. I take a deep breathe and hold it for few seconds. Then for example I breathe out soundly. Finally, I want to achieve slow and steady breathe and thoughts focused on something else than the forthcoming situation. Both lead to relax.
Muscle tension. Release some tension from your muscles and you would immediately feel more relaxed. How? Start simply with focusing on your biggest muscles and part of bodies, then tense for a while and release the tension. Start with your feet and go up through calves, thighs, abdominal, chest, shoulders, arms, neck and head. Repeat if necessary.
Smile. It is another example of “your mind follows your body”. Smile for a minute, bring some positive emotions and it will surely help.
The above techniques are my favorite and most effective for me. I hope they will also help you. Remember that being shy is nothing wrong. Most of us feel shy in some situations. With some work and practice you will be able to control this emotion and decrease its negative influence on your performance.
Today, as usual on Thursdays, I was doing my workout routines at gym. While resting between another series of overhead press, I approached gym’s bulletin board to check if there were some new announcements or interesting stories.
What took my attention was a short piece of article about motivation. Of course, as you can suppose, it concerned health and fitness, but presented advices can help motivate you also in other aspects of life.
The introduction put an accent on the essential element of motivation – answering for this one question. Why do you want to achieve your goal?
Why do you want to change your diet? Why do you want to exercise? Why do you want to improve your life? I pointed out importance of this in my post about goals setting.
In nextpart of the article author suggested three advices to keep your motivation at satisfying level.
Don’t motivate yourself in a negative way. Instead of saying: I must lose weight because I look terrible use I must lose weight to look better.
Set yourself short-term and long-term goals. If you have a clear objective to achieve, it is way easier to stay motivated. Celebrate your successes and use them to motivate yourself even more.
This one is amazing and it definitely helps. I wrote about it many times and recently I dedicated a bunch of posts especially on tracking expenses. Tracking your progress helps you to see that you are going into desired direction. You know that you improve and how you improve. While you are coming closer to destination, the stronger motivation flows from this technique.
As you can see, there is actually nothing new or nothing kind of rocket science. And that is good. Motivation is not only for chosens. I can enjoy it and you, my friend; you can enjoy it as well. It is really simple. Needs only a little practice and few smart ideas that will work for you.
Stay motivated.
