Inspiring Audiences

As I am a member of Toastmasters, I have always tried my best to inspire my audience with my speeches. Tending to run out of ideas and even inspiration myself, I was glad I found this book...

When I first saw this book, I was unfamiliar with the author, but "Foreword by Zig Ziglar" caught my attention.
Once I started the first page, there was no putting it down. I devoured it in less than 2 hours.
But I came back to the book again and again.

The tips range from overcoming nervousness, to improving your credibility, to catching attention in the first 3 minutes and all the way to closing effectively.

The fact that this book also comes with many areas to jot down notes and my own points really made this a good read.

I recommend it, as a Toastmaster, it is good and useful reading....

10 Things I Took Away from "Developing the Leader within you" by John C. Maxwell

Developing the Leader Within You

1. Leadership is Influence, ie the ability to obtain followers..

2. The Pareto Principle in action - 20% of your priorities will give 80% of production

3. Thomas Macauley said (on Integrity), "The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he would never be found out".

4. Max Depree said (on Positive Change), "Remember that we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are".

5. Solve task-problems quickly, people problems will take longer.

6. Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I decide to react to it...I choose the attitude

7. People do what people see.... so I better be a good role model

8. God's gift to me is my potential, my gift back to God is what I do with the potential

9. We cannot travel without until we first travel within...

10. Team development...those closest to the leader determines the leader's success

Sneak Peek - There are 5 Levels of Leadership....the higher you seek to climb, the better leader you will become.

"Read and Grow Rich"

Reading... a passion for some, a necessity to others and a chore to many more. It is no wonder Burke Hedges tells us in his book "Read and Grow Rich" how reading can change people's lives.


A book published in the year 2000, it is an easy read about how reading can enrich one's life in so many ways. Its easy to read content tells us how reading has changed his life. Then he writes about how reading has changed the lives of many people in the world. After that he shares his thoughts on how to effectively read.
 
Later on, he lists 10 writings that have rocked the world in terms of influence:

1. The Bible
2. The Ancient Greek Philosophers
3. The Magna Carta
4. The Gutenberg Bible
5. Martin Luther's 95 Theses
6. Shakespeare's Plays and Sonnets
7. The Declaration of Independence
8. The US Constitution and the Bill of Rights
9. The Communist Manifesto
10. Mein Kampf

Burke then highlights a good point..."You are what you read". Meaning, reading changes you, for the good or bad. So if you read good stuff, you will be a better person, and vice versa.He then shares a list of classics that (not exhaustive) has changed many lives:

1. Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
2. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
3. Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau
4. Horatio Alger Stories
5. Acres of Diamonds by Russell Conwell
6. As a Man Thinketh by james Allen
7. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
8. Think & Grow Rich by Napolean Hill
9. The Power of Positive Thinking by Dr Norman Vincent Peale
10. The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale
11. The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz
12. Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
13. The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino

He concludes by saying that "Standing in a garage does not make you a car" any more than buying books make you a reader. Therefore it is your choice whether you want to read to grow rich.

I don't know about you, but I am going to start reading more.... and you will hear more about it.

Cheers!

New Motivations!

Reading has always been my passion. Leadership is something I felt was unattainable in the past, but realised that with the right training, it can be learnt and developed. Training, and communication to a large extent, is something I grew to love over the past 15 years or so. Hence, the seemingly strange name for a Blog title.


I have thus decided, Hey, why not start writing about my passion for reading? Going further, why not write about what I read, since I read nearly all the time?

And why not write about what I am currently trying to develop? And trying to be?

So here goes... book reviews, book summaries, a bit about where I source for good books, and what I learnt from all this reading, and more...