Notes

How Can High School Dropouts and Extension Cords Boost Your Business Profits?
You'd think in the stunning valley of Napa, CA that everything is wine and roses and families have no problems, but this school district has their share of dropouts and delinquents exactly like any district in america.

The three senior high school teachers I met with the other day work with the District's toughest youth - those who have been expelled from their regular school and that are given a second chance in these special classrooms. We have been meeting with the Board of Education since September, 2009, and in April, we finally got the chance to visit the classrooms.

Last week, we'd the honor of earning a presentation to these hard-working teachers on what we could teach them life-saving emotional resilience and positivity skills that they could, subsequently, teach the kids. It was a poignant, strangely timed meeting as we all got the news headlines that morning that one of the former students committed suicide.

These teachers are fantastic, committed caring folks who are dynamite within their classrooms. The point of our meeting wasn't how good or bad these were as teachers, although certainly a gathering like this where we want to teach them something about their classroom skills - we, having never spent one hour teaching in the classroom could be perceived as threatening to them, increase defensive behavior on the part or, in worst case, could be taken as downright insulting to think we knew a lot more than them. They were a lot more than good sports to be there and listen with an open mind, knowing it's about the kids.

We made our presentation, and in August, we'll be delivering a workshop for the teachers on the latest applications of resilience work, social cognition, positive psychology, and neuroscience. They'll subsequently, manage to share these ideas with the kids. A lot more exciting is we've found a method to measure before and after results so that we can quantify the result these tools are experiencing.

After a while, the teachers tell us among their biggest challenges: the "not my fault" syndrome. For instance, "I missed the bus, it wasn't my fault." Boy do I have some tools for that certain. You can't have a single-engine airplane around the world and live to tell the story with the "It isn't my fault" thinking pattern.

I love the various tools that help move people across the continuum from being victims of their circumstances to taking full responsibility. They're not just for kids; this is the lifelong lesson that's so powerful it could move people out of poverty (as well as middle income) and into glorious wealth. It's initially counter-intuitive to take responsibility for things you do not think are your fault, but that is the only place where the "power" is. Without responsibility, you can't fix it.

If there's something that you experienced you're "putting up with" or feeling a victim of, then the answer would be to move farther along the continuum of taking full responsibility. Take the economy. Most people feel like they're a victim of the economy. In that place, you merely suffer. Once you change your mindset to take responsibility, you can start to plan new solutions and activities to go up above your suffering.

In flying this is taken to the best level. A pilot could say, "engine went, not my fault, let's crash and die." Or he is able to be prepared with checklists, contingencies, great training, another redundant engine. When I speak publicly, I take all kinds of extra equipment I usually don't need, such as for example an extension cord. I don't want to get to the event and have my laptop go out of batteries because I didn't have an electrical source. I take responsibility; I don't leave it to chance. I can create and improve my likelihood of success by anticipating my failures and being prepared to avoid them if they happen.

That is clearly a snippet of what we'll be teaching the youngsters in August. Are going to learning it at the bottom rung of the ladder, however the real secret is that we now have hundreds of rungs on the responsibility ladder. What There is is people apply responsibility intermittently in their lives and especially within their businesses. There's always website of the ladder we are able to climb.

How will you apply resilience and responsibility to your business to boost your profits? Here are some take-aways:

Know very well what drives you, and make decisions from that place rather than from ego or from fear, like the majority of people do. For the teachers, it's all about the kids.
Be and stay coachable. Being coachable never takes away from how good you already are. No one on the planet can know every tool they want at the rate science and knowledge is expanding. When we're not coachable, automagically we become defensive, stubborn, and occur our ways. It's more fun to give directly into our natural curiosity also to be lifelong learners, especially if you're a teacher or a business owner.
Go where in fact the power is. Take responsibility and come up with creative solutions to control the situation.
Understand you can find levels, layers, and rungs of responsibility. See if you will find a blind spot in your organization in terms of responsibility and shore up the gap.
Know there are concrete tools now in science where we are able to now learn emotional resilience skills. These are exactly the same skills that help people gain control of slimming down, making more money, and achieving their dreams. It doesn't have to be a big unknown black mystery box any more. It's learnable, exactly like math, reading, and science, so when we master this, the results produce the highest paybacks I've ever observed in business. This is my core message and service to others.
Although we're proficient at knocking out the items on our business plans or to-do lists, the ideas above often never ensure it is to our lists. We read the articles, and soon we forget. Don't make that mistake. When you finally start developing these soft skills instead of continuing to work on your hard skills forever, that's when you're going to see true and amazing transformation in your organization and your life.

�2010 Sandra L. Smith, Inc. Sandi Smith coaches women companies to improve their revenues, live fearlessly, and take giant leaps within their business utilizing the science of breakthrough success. Subscribe at http://www.sandismith.com to get her FREE newsletter filled with business-building tips.
My Website: https://cnnislands.com/precisely-what-is-earned-income-tax-credit/