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As you all know, I am in the midst of preparing for our Inaugural Inspiration Ball in Galway in the West of Ireland on April 30th this year.
Similar patterns are starting to appear to the last time I set a lofty goal which reaffirm the wisdom behind my belief system.
1. Ongoing focus on the goal has meant that over time the all important map has appeared - I now know specifically how we are going to raise €400k over three years. Furthermore, I also know what wont work!
2. Teachers and helpers are appearing from everywhere!
Last night, I met an award winning set designer who is willing to give his time freely to help the cause - an amazing award winning Band are playing at our pre dinner reception - friends of friends have intervened to help with the fundraising and so on.
3. The power of friendships - without any committee we set the bold goal of a sell out which we expect to achieve by the due date.
4. The strength in unity and interdependence.
And all from organising a ball!
Surely at this stage you want to be there!
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 06:42 AM
Recently, I stumbled upon some fascinating research by Stanford University psychologist Claude Steele on the way prejudice can cause stigmas that directly affect performance.
For example, one Steele experiment showed that when women were given a standard graduate exam in math, if they were first told that women tended to perform more poorly than men on the test, their scores would be significantly worse than those of women who didn't get that message.
There is an obvious lesson for parents, teachers, managers from this study.
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 08:11 AM
Top entrepreneurs shared with Fortune magazine the best advice they had got in their career - here are some of the findings:
Get good or Get out
Peter Drucker
When "everybody knows" something to be true, nobody knows nothin!
Andy Grove Chairman of Intel
Follow your own instincts, not those of people who see the world differently
Sumner Redstone, Chairman and CEO of Viacom
Make a fool of yourself. Otherwise you wont survive.
Richard Branson
Keenly visualise the future.
Klaus Kleinfeld, CEO of Siemens.
Respect people for who they are, not for what their titles are.
Herb Kelleher, Founder and Chairman of Southwest Airlines.
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 10:02 AM
So what is the secret to successful ageing?
Is it simply a matter of perception - how we perceive what is happening to us?
A study, presented recently at the second International Conference on Healthy Ageing and Longevity held in Brisbane, is the first in Australia to look at what makes up a centenarian personality.
It found centenarians seem to have a special ability to cope with stress, and move on from dramatic life events with a minimum of angst.
Flinders University senior lecturer in nursing Charmaine Power said the research team was struck by the fact that most of the 24 centenarians from around the country interviewed for the study had no sense their lives had been "stressful".
"Yet some had been to war, or had been left alone with small children while their husbands went off to war. They had lived through the Great Depression. Their children had died," Dr Power said.
"It's not about avoiding stress, it's more about how people respond to stress that is key. They are people who don't dwell on the past. They just get on with it, basically," said Ms Power
Other traits common to the centenarians in the study were a sense of humour, a strong work ethic, engaging personality and deep religious beliefs.
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 09:15 AM
Imagine knowing that you are having a poor relationship with your partner but marrying them anyway?
Hard to believe, however a recent research study which polled 716 Singaporean couples found that thirty nine per cent were unhappy in their relationship, and only fourteen per cent described themselves as very happy.
But no worries they were getting married anyway!
Obviously the search for soulmate should continue for the majority.
Have they bought into all the studies about the positive effects of marriage that show increased wealth, lower stress levels etc but missed the last three words….for happy couples!
The most recent research on the positive effects comes from Ohio State University.
"Marriage is good for both men and women," says Dr. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, professor and director of the psychiatry department at Ohio State University.
Positive marital relations translated into lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. The lower the cortisol, the faster compounds are delivered to a wound to kick-start the healing process. A correlated study of older married couples -- married an average of 42 years -- found that lower cortisol levels helped reduce the risk of infectious diseases and perhaps cancer.
Arguments between husbands and wives weakened their immune systems, making them more susceptible to illness, the study found. In revisiting these couples 10 years later, the researchers found that elevated hormone levels from the earlier studies had been the best predictors of divorce -- 19 percent of the couples had split, all of whom had higher levels for three of four stress hormones monitored: epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine, adrenocorticotropic hormone and cortisol.
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 09:54 AM
Happy St Patricks Day to all my visitors from around the world.
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 12:11 PM
"With every adversity there always comes the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit."
Napoleon Hill
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 09:38 AM
New U.S research re-emphasises the need for a daily diet of laughter as it stimulates the flow of blood in the body which makes the blood vessels work more efficiently.
The studies, presented at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Orlando, Florida, show how psychological factors can affect a person's health.
Mr Michael Miller, the head of a research team at the University of Maryland, said that laughter benefits the body in a similar way to aerobics but without giving any pains and muscle tension to the body.
Thirty minutes of exercise three times a week, and 15 minutes of laughter on a daily basis is probably good for the vascular system," said Dr. Michael Miller of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.
Miller asserted that average blood flow increases by 22% during laughter while it reduces by 35% during mental stress.
Miller and colleagues at the school showed two movies, one humorous, one stressful, to 20 healthy volunteers and tested the function of their blood vessels.
This test shows that after stressful movie clips, the blood flow in the vessels of endothelium was reduced in 14 of the 20 volunteers but blood flow more evenly in 19 of the 20 volunteers when they laughed at funny movie segments.
Have a laugh this weekend!
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 09:07 AM
In the recently released list of World's Most Admired Companies published by Fortune magazine one interesting statistic resonated most:
In the context of innovation within the workplace, the two companies that lead the field in this respect factor in failure as an inevitable and important part of the process:
82% of innovative ideas can fail without penalties
70% of innovative ideas can fail without penalties in the sample of the other companies listed in Most Admired.
Bottom line - great companies create a winning culture in which failure plays an important part.
Both individually and collectively, the only failure in life is the failure to learn from failure.
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 08:51 AM
"I've never led this party by calculation. Policy you calculate - leadership comes by instinct."
Tony Blair
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 09:13 AM
A new Gallup study found that when managers focused on employees' strengths, 61 percent of the employees were engaged in the work and only 1 percent were actively disengaged ie complaining about their jobs, sniping at their co-workers and bad-mouthing the company.
On the other hand, when managers focused on employees' weaknesses, only 45 percent of the employees were engaged and 22 percent were actively disengaged.
Another Gallup survey showed that employees who received regular praise and recognition were more productive, more likely to stay with their employer, received higher satisfaction scores from customers and had better on-the-job safety records.
On the health front, researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. found that optimistic people had a 50% decreased risk of early death compared with those who leaned more toward pessimism. The results were published in the August 2002 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
For Forbes top ten tips on how to live longer scroll to the bottom of the following link:
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 09:20 AM
Half of U.S. workers are happy with their jobs, down from nearly 59 percent in 1995, according to the survey conducted by TNS for The Conference Board, a New York-based business research group. Of those, just 14 percent say they are very satisfied.
The number of those satisfied is slightly higher than in a similar survey done in 2003, when just below 50 percent of workers indicated they were content with their jobs.
Compared to a decade ago, job satisfaction has declined among all types of workers, but the drop varies by age and income. The biggest decline in on-the-job happiness was among workers earning $25,000 to $35,000 and among workers between the ages of 35 to 44.
The workers most satisfied with their jobs are those at least 65 years old, the survey found.
As mentioned so often in past entries work and relationships are two key ingredients in the cocktail of life. Unhappiness in either tends to negatively influence the other.
So the question is - do we continue to labour and toil for the rest of your life with all its negative physical and mental implications or do we take the first step to a life less limiting.
Action is required and choosing differently is the appropriate strategy.
One potential option is to take the first step to working on your own - significance, contribution, legacy, flow, adventure, personal growth, energy and enthusiasm could be some of the by products of your decision.
In the book Authentic Happiness, which has a chapter on Work and Personal Satisfaction, author Martin Seligman cited research done by Amy Wrzesniewski, a professor of business at New York University in 1997.
She found that one-third of people viewed their work as a job; they are just there for the money.
The next one-third viewed it as a career, and are primarily motivated by `climbing the corporate ladder'.
The last one-third viewed it as a calling; if they could afford to, they'd continue to do the work even if they didn't get paid.
If you have heard that calling honour it today and financial fulfilment and abundance will follow.
Posted by Kevin Kelly at 09:16 AM