Communication Skills - Your Identity

The ability to communicate is the primary factor that distinguishes human beings from animals. And it is the ability to communicate well that distinguishes one individual from another. Apart from the basic necessities, one needs to be equipped with habits for good communication skills. This is what will sell them in this global market. this is what will finally make them a happy and successful social being.

When you communicate clearly and openly, you always make your wants, needs and doubts obvious. In the case of an interview, you may not be that well qualified, but with good communication skills you can crack your interview and you can sell yourself convincingly. You then don't try to fill in a vacancy in a company but make a place for yourself.

The basic thing that one needs to know while communicating is that what is the type pf communication that he/she is doing. The different types of communication are:-

1. Persuasion
2. Negotiation
3. Announcement
4. Advertisement
5. Lecture

6. Debate

Secondarily while communicating one must always focus on the subject. A little shift from track can make you land into others influence or concern and remember one thing that you can never solve others concerns.

Apart from this here are some tips that we got from Nitin Sir about Communication Skills:-

• Be clear, concise and straightforward.
• Keep your sentences short. This will avoid grammatical mistakes.
• Look into the eyes of the person you are speaking to. This gives a glimpse of your sincerity and dedication to the other person.
• Use Body gestures – Make your whole body talk. Remember body speaks more than words.
• Make the audience active with the help of some jokes or some icebreakers at a particular interval.
• Take feedback from the audience.

There are 6 principles of communication:

1. Principle of Liking:- People look those who are like them.
   APPLICATION: Uncover real similarities and offer genuine praise.


2. Principle of Reciprocity:- People repay in kind.
   APPLICATION: Give what you want to receive.


3. Principle of Social proof:- People follow the lead of similar others.
   APPLICATION: Use peer power whenever it is available.


4. Principle of Consistency:- People align with their clear commitment.
   APPLICATION: Make their commitment active, public and voluntary.


5. Principle of Authority:- People defer to experts.
   APPLICATION: Expose your expertise, don't assume it is self-evident.


6. Principle of Scarcity:- People want more of what they can have less of.
   APPLICATION: Highlight unique benefits and exclusive information.

Effective Email Writing Skills...

How to communicate powerfully by email

When you're trying to locate some information in an e-mail someone sent you a few weeks back, what helps you find it quickly? If the sender included the information you want in a long message covering lots of points, the chances are that it will take you time to find it. Worse, if the sender is someone you communicate with regularly, and he or she just pressed Reply to a previous message about a different point, the heading of the mail you need won't actually be related to the information you want.

Most of the people see the email rather than reading it and then decide to read it or not. So its very important to write an email in this format to give it an attractive and a professional look.

There are a few simple rules to ensure that your emails are read in the first place and stay useful to the recipient.

1. The most important thing while writing an e-mail is that it should be in SQTA format.

S - Situation
C - Complication
Q - Questions
A - Answers

Most of the people see the email rather than reading it and then decide to read it or not. So its very important to write an email in this format to give it an attractive and a professional look.

2. The email should have a good subject line. Subject Lines are Headlines.

   The headline in a newspaper does two things: It grabs your
   attention and informs you what the article is about so you can decide whether
   you want to read further. Email subject lines need to do the same thing.

3. Repetition of words should be avoided.
4. While writing professional emails avoid words like I or me, rather use words like we.
5. Keep your email short, sweet and simple. Use short and less number of sentences.
6. At the end but most importantly have a proper end line for the email.

The Secret Law of Attraction

You’ve probably heard about, and perhaps read about, a book phenomenon called The Secret. I haven’t read the book, but I’ve seen lots of reviews about it and documentary that gives some glimpse of THE SECRET.
In this documentary for the first time in history, the world`s leading scientists, authors and philosophers gather to reveal All the resources you`ll ever need to be as successful as those who knew The Secret... Plato, Newton, Carnegie, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Einstein.

On a more serious note, this book is skilfully marketed to convince people that some new truth is about to be revealed here. But nothing of the sort takes place. It is simply a flashy repackaging of some very old ideas: positive thinking, cosmic consciousness, and so on.
It says that you can have anything and everything you want in live if you apply the Great Secret of Life
Law of Attraction
We all work with one infinite power; we all guide ourselves by exactly the same law. Everything that is coming to your life you are attracting into your life. And it is attracted to you by virtue of the images you’re holding in your mind. It’s what you are thinking. Whatever that is going in your mind you’re attracting it to you. The simplest way to look at the law of attraction is to think of you as a magnet. Like attracts like. Our job as humans is to hold onto the thoughts of what we want, make it absolutely clear in our minds what we want, and from there we start to invoke the law of attraction. You become what you think about most but you also attract what you think about most.

In short, Thoughts become things.
The message is simple: you and I are God, are energy, are the universe, are perfection, are spirit, etc. As such, “you can have, be, or do anything you want”. Want a perfect partner? A new home? Perfect health? A new job? A million dollars? A new waistline? It’s all yours. Just claim it. Receive it. No more negative thoughts. Just think happy, positive thoughts and anything you desire is yours. It is the creative visualisation message made popular in the New Age Movement: you create your own reality. You script your own destiny.
An Example from my own life:-

In my graduation, in the first semester I got a backlog in one of the subject as I was not prepared completely for the subject. In the next semester I cleared the previous one but again i had another one and now from the second semester. This in turn created a negative thought in my mind that I would get a backlog each and every time i appear in the exams and every time it happened the same. However in the last semester I decided to myself that “...whatever happens I have to be all clear this time....” this in turn created positive thoughts in my mind and as the days progressed I was feeling more and more confident. And guess what.... it really worked. I got cleared all the subjects.

Another incident which clearly demonstrates the power of positive thoughts:-

Recently I have developed an interest in white paper presentation. Every time Isee any advertisement about any paper presentation competition I always give it a thought. This is about the one which I presented in my own college (Indira Institute of management) and in JSPM College. Because of the previously presented papers I had developed a sense of positive attitude in me. So it went this way... when I and my partner were writing the white paper we were preparing it as we have already won the competition. According to a rule of our college for any Inter college competition internal students are not considered for prizes. But this competition is not as of any other ordinary competition. This was a competition where even the home students knew just the topic and winning only depends upon your own skills. So we tried to convince our faculties to consider us for prizes. Most of the times we got the answer that u first present then we will see. However we were already in a thought of winning. We were least interested about how the other presentations would be. The only thought that was going on in our minds that “if we present we are going to be the winners.” And we presented with the same confidence and zeal in Tchzeal-2009. Unfortunately we were not finally not considered for prizes however again as each and every coin has two sides we are now so confident that whenever we see any advertisement for any competition we are already in a state of mind of winners. And with the same attitude we presented our white paper in JSPM college and guess what we were the winners.

This was only and only possible because of the sincere efforts of all our faculties specially Mrs.Poornashakar, who always motivated us to perform well, my partner Awdhesh for his sincere efforts and all my colleagues for always supporting us and their valuable suggestions to do better and better each and every time. And at the last and the most importantly I would like to specify the name of the person who always taught us lessons about thinking positive and thinking out of the box and many many more. He is our faculty for soft skills. A trainer, an author, a consultant and a great great motivator - Mr.Nitin Ahir. I would be discussing some more things that I learnt from sir in the next postings.

Most people always think of what they don’t want and they wonder why it shows up. The Law of Attraction doesn’t care whether you perceive something to be good or bad or whether you don’t want it or do want it. The Law of Attraction is responding to your thoughts. When you focus on the things you don’t want, you really are calling that into existence. The Law of Attraction doesn’t hear that you don’t want it, and so it’s going to show up over and over and over again. The Law Attraction simply manifests the things that you’re thinking.

It has now been proven scientifically that an affirmative thought is hundreds of times more powerful than a negative thought. The hardest concept to get is to understand that all the things that you have in your life (including the ones which you don’t want at all) are what you’ve attracted to it.
You’re 100% responsible for everything.

So how can you control your thoughts? We know that it is impossible to monitor every thought we have as we have about 60,000 thoughts every day. So the easier way to control our thoughts is to control our feelings. A simple shifting of your emotions can simply change your day, and change your life. If you start out having a good day, you’re having good feeling. As long as you don’t allow something to change your mood, you’re going to attract, by the law of attraction, good things. That’s why the rich gets richer, poor gets poorer, sick gets sicker and happy people get happier. You can begin to feel rich, feel loved, even if it is not there. The universe will respond to your song, to your feelings.

Steve Jobs Speech

Drawing from some of the most pivotal points in his life, Steve Jobs, chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, urged graduates to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life's setbacks—including death itself?

This Speech taught me some of the greatest lessons about life. When I heard it for the first time I had actually started connecting myself to each and every incident and stories that he narrated. It was a complete Mind opener for me.

It is most inspiring and thought-provoking speeches that I have ever read or listened.

It has full of a lot of wonderful stories, including about his first bout with cancer. And the speech ended with some words Jobs saw on the back of “The Whole Earth Catalogue” when he was young, which impacted him greatly. They were:

“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”
It also has one of the most wonderful words to help someone to find his ambition, his work or his goals. And the words were

“KEEP LOOKING, DON’T SETTLE.”
So let’s slow things down and get some much-needed perspective what this speech surely has.
Here’s a video of the Jobs speech, as well as some of the things I learnt from it after the jump.

Five of the life lessons from Steve Jobs speech that I found interesting were….

• Believe in your Destiny(connecting the Dots)

"......Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can"t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

We need to believe in our destiny. The best approach would be to always think positive. Whatever happens in your life always think that it is for the good. Even if you fail in something or commit a mistake try to find the learning out of it and implement it in your life. The only real mistake is the one from which we don't learn anything. So always learn from your mistakes.

• Love what you do…(Keep Looking... . , Don't Settle)

“…sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick, don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied, is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know it when you find it. And like any great relationship it just get’s better and better, as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.”

You cannot underestimate the power of passion in life and in successful leadership. All successful people are passionate about what they do. I have yet to find a successful leader that does not love what they are doing with their life. Do you love what you do? Is it a passion? Just think about this for 2 minutes.

• Live each day like it’s your last…

“When I was seventeen I read a quote that went something like, ‘if you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right’. It made an impression on me, and since then for the past thirty three years, I’ve looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ Whenever the answer has been ‘NO’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

The question “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” is a good way to test if we are doing what really matters… How would you answer this question?

• Live your own LIFE

“…Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life… Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

We should live our own life, see our own dreams and construct your own path to achieve it. We cannot be successful in something because someone was successful there because skills an only be learnt it never can be copied. So find your own skills, find whats unique in you and live up to your dreams.