Now or never. You decide your fate

If you’re young and ambitious and driven, don’t run from the challenge, run towards it. If you’re terrified of learning something new, go find a way to learn and master it. When you are a student and young you have loads of energy and enough time for learning as much as possible. You won’t stay young for ever and student life won’t stay with you for ever. You spend so much time having fun during college that you miss this vital point, that once you are out of college you are on your own to find a job and succeed in career. Campus interviews may give a job for some but that is the worst job with low pay and high pressure to handle.Those students who are smart enough realize the value of time and work towards their goals early on and once they are ready they also look for jobs they like to do in LinkedIn , twitter and Facebook other than campus interviews.

Life is full of temptations and distractions. When you are young you will have more opportunities to waste time, money and your youthfulness.

Start using your mind on what matters most for your life and for your family.Fate is not decided by anyone. It is you who can decide what is best for you and your family.  Time is precious and need to be spend wisely.  One of the best practice you need to develop is to check how you spent your day and what value you derived from all the activities you did during the day. Spending time on  Facebook, twitter or games or chatting or going to movies should be restricted otherwise it will  only add more junk in to your precious mind.  Networking with professionals , spending time to know yourselves , your strengths, your weaknesses and becoming mindful of all your activities will give you enough mental strength, knowledge and courage to find what you love to do for your career. Positive habits help you with clarity of thoughts when you need direction and guidance to succeed in life. Think of your parents, teachers and friends who you should trust for guidance and work hard to learn skills needed for you to succeed.  You may not love it while you’re going through the learning phase, but you’ll carry that learning and success with you  for ever. Once you achieve what you are aspiring for then you will have wonderful life. May be you will be  visiting exotic places and working on some wonderful and challenging assignments.

In order to have quality life, good food and good life you need to work for  it and  prove that you are eligible for good life.

I worked for that and I succeeded and i want you to succeed too.

You can start with small positive actions such as reading for a hour a day something new, doing yoga /meditation for a while etc and as days pass by they become your habits and you will be in a position to control your life and lead a life rather than living a life.

Similarly for getting rid of bad habits you should start with small attempts and then slowly  get rid of that bad habit  completely after some time.

Please do comment your feedback and suggestions.

Tips for great presentations

Most of us are not new to the most boring to the most entertaining , educational and motivational presentations we attend.  What we need to learn is not just what is told in the presentation but we should also watch how presenter /speaker is performing his act. That includes Body language of the presenter , the way the topic is covered, what tools and software is used, how they modulate their voices/moods and gestures  and how much they are interacting with the audience.  There are many online resources to tell us how a great presentation should be. Here are some sample of what is good practices of presentations. Search for some outstanding live presentations after you read this blog

1. Your Face.

While presenting you should attempt to connect to the audience in the room by briefly having a eye contact with each of them.  Audience should feel that you are presenting to them. You should also have smile on your face while presenting. Your facial expression are very important. If you look at the roof, or away from audience , that shows your lack of interest or purpose of your presentation and they will loose interest in what you are saying  and they stop listening to you.

2. Your body

Standing like a statue and reciting your presentation will not entice the audience towards your speech. Having appropriate body gestures adds some excitement to your presentation and keeps audience engaged. Moving around the space you have on the podium should be considered along with your body gestures in order to show your enthusiasm for the subject you are speaking.

3.Your Voice

Your voice is most important part of presentation.How you say what you say is most important for any good presentation. Adjust your volume and tone according the size of the room and the number of audience you have. Silence and space between words allows for emphasis and lets your audience catch up with your ideas. Variation in the volume, tone along with body gestures can bring life to your presentations. Avoid words like “Nothing but””, Like ,  ümmm”, Ähhhaa” Érrrr” etc.

4.Your presentation.

Your presentation should be a mixture of your talk, slides, audio and video and what and how you present on the stage. Engaging Audience for long time needs an outstanding mixture of all the above.  Audience will not have eternal focus on what you are saying until unless what you say matters so much for them. You are presenting for the audience’s benefit not to fulfill your desire to be in the limelight.

5.Practice a lot.

Practice helps you to avoid mistakes and  fine tune your language and other skills of presentations. Malcom Gladwell in his book Outliers says that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. Practice is the mantra for an outstanding presentations.

6.Develop great opening.

The first 15 seconds are enough for audience to make a impression on you. You should use your opening statements wisely to catch the attention of the audience and  to listen to rest of the presentation. Start your speech by talking about something interesting: Give a staggering statistic, ask a question, make a declaration, or use a quote to draw people in.

7.Organize your presentation.

Your presentation should be a smooth flow of speech  as if you are saying a great story to your audience. Your presentation should have an obvious opening, a body, and a conclusion. Your presentation should also have a mixture of pictures, video and limited text. It is you, who is presenting not the power point. Power point slides allow you to stick to a certain flow and end your presentation on time.

8.Connect with your audience

You need to establish a connection with audience. Use a personal story that reveals something about you or your experience to create a connection. If you are a professional then  highlight your background and expertise to make audience feel comfortable that you are going to add value to their time by listening to you.

9.Check the facility.

Make sure before hand that all the hardware, software, mike setting, Lighting and good ventilation is there in the hall. You should avoid adjusting all the above when audience have already arrived. It is better you check the facility and practice on stage to get rid of stage fear before the audience take their seat.

10.Ask for honest feedback.

No one can claim to be the best presenter and there is always plenty of room to improve your skills. So make sure to ask for honest feedback from your trusted friends in the audience and work in fixing the issues.

11. Change the content for next presentation : If you have to present again the same subject matter make sure it is still relevant otherwise update your presentation topics to match what is latest and the greatest .

Hope you will follow the above guidelines and next time if  i happen to hear you present , i expect you remember the above and show that.  Good luck with your presentation skills. As always I’m there to help you to improve.

“I” or “Me”

The below is from Oxford Dictionary.  http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/i-or-me

Please visit the above site for more details.

The two personal pronouns I and me are often used wrongly, usually in sentences in which I is being used with another noun. Here are some tips to help you get it right:

• Use the pronoun I, along with other subjective pronouns such as we, he, she, you, and they,when the pronoun is the subject of a verb:

He went to bed.

We waited for the bus.

Clare and I are going for a coffee.

 

In the last example, the pronoun I, together with the proper noun Clare, forms the subject of the sentence, so you need to use I rather than me.

• Use the pronoun me, along with other objective pronouns such as us, him, her, you, and them,when the pronoun is the object of a verb:

Danny thanked them.

The dog followed John and me to the door.

In the last example, the pronoun me, together with the proper noun John, forms the object of the verbfollow, so you need to use me rather than I.

• Use the pronoun me, along with other objective pronouns such as us, him, her, you, and them,when the pronoun is the object of a preposition:

Rose spent the day with Jake and me.

Me, together with Jake, forms the object of the preposition with, so you need to use the pronoun merather than the pronoun I.

Another good place to checkout for new words that got added is here

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/blog/whats-your-word,40,HCB.html

Need more training on softskills?   Contact me at skillsnest@gmail.com

what time internet is most awake? want to copy web content? Learn English words

When is the best time for your facebook comment to be seen? what is the best time to tweet? Inorder to know Edlund created a world clock, which animates the probability when the Internet is awake or asleep in 25 countries at any given moment of the day. Check the cool stuff here

http://www.edlundart.com/pages/is-the-internet-awake.html

Want to copy web content.

The following two companies provide you the tools to copy the content and organize them together. Check the websites for further details

http://www.clipboard.com/

http://evernote.com/

Some interesting websites

http://pinterest.com/ and http://streamzoo.com/home people can “pin” items they find on the web — everything from recipes and home décor to DIY(Do it yourselves) crafts and style inspirations.

Oxford word of the year 2011.

The Oxford English Dictionary has chosen its (two-word) word of the year: “Squeezed Middle”. Last year’s word of the year was big society, and the word of 2009 was unfriend. A good way to learn English words every day and new words that are becoming popular dues to social websites and technology innovations.

check for more words at http://oxforddictionaries.com/

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/11/squeezed-middle/

Why you need to fail?

“Success is a lousy teacher”. Bill Gates   the richest man on the planet said once.

Success does not teach you so much as failure; in moments of success there is celebration, whereas in moments of failure there is learning,

Once upon a time in a village there was a wrestler with strong body. He feels happy and proud whenever the villagers praise him for his muscles and that made him to go into comfort zone and he stopped practicing regularly. He always expected every passerby to acknowledge his strength.  One day a guru was passing thru the village and he did not notice this wrestler and the wrestler was upset. He stopped the guru in his tracks and caught him by the hand trying to push the guru to ground. In a shift reaction the guru was able to twist the arm of the wrestler and pushed him down.  Suddenly the wrestler felt weak and came down to his knees and asked the guru what is wrong with him. The guru replied that he did not fail till now and he avoided refining his wrestling skills since he went into a comfort zone. “Without sweating and fighting fit to improve new skills every day you possibly won’t learn anything new except what you already know”  said the guru. 

What is the lesson we can learn from this? Most of us put a tremendous effort trying to avoid the possibility of failure by not even trying once.

According to Dr. Carol Dweck, professor at Stanford University, we have a mindset problem. Dweck has done a tremendous amount of research to understand what makes someone give up in the face of adversity (difficulty) versus strive to overcome it.

It turns out the answer is deceptively simple. It’s all in your head.

If you believe that you cannot do a thing then you won’t even try.  If you believe that your talents are fixed, then you will try to avoid failure at all costs because failure is proof of your limitation. We all go thru a routine that we are used to everyday and never challenge or use our brains to improve upon some of the things we do on  daily basis. Just try a different routine today and learn what is the new results you got.

Students with fixed mindsets would rather not learn new language such as English and adjust to low life or jobs that come their way.   

Some company owners or heads of some institutes with fixed mindsets will surround themselves with people who agree with them. They feel smart when they get it right. It reinforces their sense of competence and they feel comfortable that way.
But if you believe your talent grows with persistence and effort, then you seek failure as an opportunity to improve. People with a growth mindset feel smart when they’re learning, not when they’re flawless.
Ask any national or international sports person or any successful person how he reached that levels. You will surely get to know that they failed several times before succeeding but they kept learning from the failures so they can do better next time.
A growth mindset is the secret to maximizing potential. At skills nest trainings I give my students tasks above their ability to bring them out of the comfort zone and make them learn things that enable them to adjust to corporate world.

Want to increase your own performance? Set high goals where you have a 50-70% chance of success.. Then, when you fail half the time, figure out what you should do differently and try again. That’s practice. And according to recent studies, 10,000 hours of that kind of practice will make you an expert in anything. No matter where you start.

I set a goal of transforming the mind set of students in Godavari districts and bring them at par to national and later international competency levels.  That is a high goal for me now. I’m realizing the pain of the inefficient systems/resource crunch surrounding the students and how that is not allowing them to learn new things.   Hey, but I’m trying out methods to overcome the problems for my students. Are you with me? Let me know your thoughts.