Find what makes your heart sing and move mountains to do it and then continue to do it. ~ Shannon White

If today were my last day on Earth and I could share 500 words of brilliance with the world, here are the important things I'd want to pass along to others...
Find what makes your heart sing and move mountains to do it and then continue to do it. Each one of us has a life calling... that passion for which we know deep down we've been uniquely made.

Some of us cheat the world by not finding out what that is and not fulfilling our dreams. My mother always told me, "If you don't use the gifts you've been given, you'll lose them." Do everything you can to uncover what it is you were meant to do and then plow ahead with the courage to do it... And since it does take great courage, surround yourself with people who will love you and support your dreams!

A mentor of mine once said, "If you want to change, you've got to grow." Internal growth takes intent and concentrated energy. At times growth is uncomfortable and even excruciatingly painful. But it never ends there. Miracles happen. Just like a caterpillar which through time and effort goes through a life transformation, eventually what once seemed impossible bursts forth in beauty.

Some of your most fulfilling moments will come when you get out of your comfort zone... when you take a risk by putting yourself into new situations, with people you don't know. Rough edges are sanded off. Vulnerability becomes a beautiful and magnetic quality about you, and you find deep parts of yourself and gifts you never knew you had.

Love, love, and more love is all there really is. So many of us spend far too much time caught up in petty differences and let past arguments fill our heads. Why not reach out and mend broken relationships today? Apologizing costs you nothing, except perhaps a bit of pride, but the benefits of living a life free from old resentment is priceless. Besides, holding onto the past takes a lot of energy. When you let things go, you'll find all sorts of creativity!

Find and connect daily with your Divine Source. Have gratitude for everything you have and for who you are, for the ups and downs which bring you your greatest life lessons. There is a very attractive, magnetic quality about those who humbly recognize they are who they are and where they are because of "whose" they are.

The Scriptures say, "It's more blessed to give than to receive." Both are difficult to do for many people. Many are good at one or the other, but those who balance both are truly blessed. So, give sacrificially and receive generously, whether it be love, energy or resources of any kind.

And lastly, wake up! Right now... you can be present to each and every moment. Breathe deeply and be aware of what is happening both inside and outside of you. Figure out what you don't want to see and ask why. Be curious about your life. We are given the opportunity to go through life, not have it go through us. Make the conscious decision to make each day count for the good of all.

Accomplish Things Never Before Accomplished by Using Parts...........

Dr. Ellen Weber, Ph.D.

Reflect on your personal strengths as mental tools, and soon you'll begin to accomplish things never before accomplished by using parts of your brain never before used. ~ Dr. Ellen Weber


If today were my last day on Earth and I could share 500 words of brilliance with the world, here are the important things I'd want to pass along to others...
From the time I can remember, I was fascinated by the possibility that intelligence can improve life's quality for anybody. Innovation awaits people who risk mentally reinventing their brainpower to create.

I discovered that in spite of being out on my own at 14, due to my mom's death, intelligence adds successful opportunities, one brain cell at a time, regardless of what happened or failed to happen at school.

My lifetime quest to zero in on how people get smarter led me to ask, What do geniuses do differently? In less traditional roundtables with people from many cultures, backgrounds and countries, I facilitated success with the brain in mind.

Opportunities came more from chasing the question, How are you smart? than from asking the less useful question, How smart are you? Traditional questions about IQ, I find, often lead to misconceptions that you are not smart. Geniuses may get kicked out of school, as Einstein did, but they rarely trip over false notions of fixed intelligence.

Fact is, intelligent people rewire daily for updated mental tools and so can you. To act like a genius is to develop mental tools that master change, contribute gems to innovative circles, and lower speed bumps on life's coolest highways.

Regardless of age, position or education, geniuses and most ordinary people can find success in spite of barriers. A genius tends to replace common misconceptions with mind-bending facts that optimize more brainpower.

At the heart of mental reinvention are newly discovered facts that IQ is not fixed, and brains rewire completely overnight. Moreover, brainpower comes to those who ask, what if.... kinds of questions. Ask, for instance, what if I could rewire mentally today to risk a life-changing inspiration? What does one do next?

Start small. Question one event in your day, and you'll trigger new ways of seeing angles that eluded you in past. Bored? Then drive to work a new way. Too many rigid routines? Read the morning news from back to front.

Mental tactics that switch it up, help you act from a new premise, and break with traditions to embrace change. Brain gurus would say you, "generate new neuron pathways to achieve more of what you want." Whatever you call this mental reboot, it takes less effort and adds more dividends than most people think.

Target one visible improvement in your day and the brain begins to create conscious impressions for you to improve other parts.

Do you see challenges at work or in relationships? Let's say you are part of a team where one person dominates. Brainstorm one solution with peers over lunch, such as mutual collaboration on a project together, and you'll recharge the collective brainpower for positive neuron pathways toward doable solutions.

Expect insights to crack other related problems as well, once you begin to look at problems with solutions in mind.

Reflect on your personal strengths as mental tools, and soon you'll begin to accomplish things never before accomplished by using parts of your brain never before used. It changes that little voice inside that limits ideas about your unique brand of brainpower. The same challenges that stop some people, tend to launch others who take time to reflect and act as masterminds do.

That leads to genius IQ.

Dear Internal Revenue Service:

Enclosed you will find my 2010 tax return showing that I owe $3,407.00 in taxes.

Please note the attached article from the USA Today newspaper, dated 12 November, wherein you will see the Pentagon (Department of Defense) is paying $171.50 per hammer and NASA has paid $600.00 per toilet seat.

I am enclosing four (4) toilet seats (valued @ $2,400) and six (6) hammers valued @ $1,029), which I secured at Home Depot, bringing my total remittance to $3,429.00.

Please apply the overpayment of $22.00 to the "Presidential Election Fund," as noted on my return.

You can do this inexpensively by sending them one (1) 1.5 " Phillips Head screw (see aforementioned article from USA Today newspaper detailing how H.U.D. pays $22.00 each for 1.5" Phillips Head Screws). One screw is enclosed for your convenience.

It has been a pleasure to pay my tax bill this year, and I look forward to paying it again next year.

Sincerely,

A Satisfied Taxpayer

Tarrant Entrepreneurs Group (TEG) - Are You Invited?

Our objective is to bring starting and accomplished entrepreneurs in Tarrant County together and share best practices how to develop your ideas and how to build your business

By Organizers: Erik Wulfers, Mike Muhney

This is not a networking group to sell your services or products to members, but a best practices sharing group how to grow your business. In order to offer maximum value to our group members and to ensure group members with a similar objective, membership requirements are:

- Be a business owner;

- Are planning to start a business AND have a (at least high level) business plan and/or are talking to investors;

- Have at least one employee/associate or are planning to add employees soon

IRS Wants Volunteers AT THE SAME TIME Charging for Forums...pffgh!

3. IRS Seeks Volunteers for Taxpayer Advocacy Panel
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The Internal Revenue Service seeks civic-minded volunteers to serve on the Taxpayer Advocacy Panel (TAP), a federal advisory committee that listens to taxpayers, identifies key issues and makes recommendations for improving IRS service.

5. Registration is Open for the 2011 IRS Nationwide Tax Forums
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The IRS has announced the locations and preregistration dates for the 2011 IRS Nationwide Tax Forums.
Below are the Cities, Dates of the Forums and the Pre-Registration Deadlines:

Atlanta, Georgia June 28 - 30, June 14, 2011
Orlando, Florida July 12 - 14, June 28, 2011
Dallas, Texas July 26- 28, July 12, 2011
San Jose, California Aug. 9 - 11, July 26, 2011
Las Vegas, Nevada Aug. 16 - 18, Aug. 2, 2011
Washington DC, National Harbor, Aug.t 30-Sept. 1 Aug. 16, 2011
The IRS Nationwide Tax Forums offer three full days of seminars with the latest word from IRS leadership and experts in the fields of tax law, compliance and ethics where attendees can earn up to 18 continuing professional education credits. Attendees can preregister on line.

The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint by Guy Kawasaki

I suffer from something called Ménière’s disease—don’t worry, you cannot get it from reading my blog. The symptoms of Ménière’s include hearing loss, tinnitus (a constant ringing sound), and vertigo. There are many medical theories about its cause: too much salt, caffeine, or alcohol in one’s diet, too much stress, and allergies. Thus, I’ve worked to limit control all these factors.

However, I have another theory. As a venture capitalist, I have to listen to hundreds of entrepreneurs pitch their companies. Most of these pitches are crap: sixty slides about a “patent pending,” “first mover advantage,” “all we have to do is get 1% of the people in China to buy our product” startup. These pitches are so lousy that I’m losing my hearing, there’s a constant ringing in my ear, and every once in while the world starts spinning.

To prevent an epidemic of Ménière’s in the venture capital community, I am evangelizing the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. While I’m in the venture capital business, this rule is applicable for any presentation to reach agreement: for example, raising capital, making a sale, forming a partnership, etc.

•Ten slides. Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting—and venture capitalists are very normal. (The only difference between you and venture capitalist is that he is getting paid to gamble with someone else’s money). If you must use more than ten slides to explain your business, you probably don’t have a business. The ten topics that a venture capitalist cares about are:

1.Problem
2.Your solution
3.Business model
4.Underlying magic/technology
5.Marketing and sales
6.Competition
7.Team
8.Projections and milestones
9.Status and timeline
10.Summary and call to action
•Twenty minutes. You should give your ten slides in twenty minutes. Sure, you have an hour time slot, but you’re using a Windows laptop, so it will take forty minutes to make it work with the projector. Even if setup goes perfectly, people will arrive late and have to leave early. In a perfect world, you give your pitch in twenty minutes, and you have forty minutes left for discussion.

•Thirty-point font. The majority of the presentations that I see have text in a ten point font. As much text as possible is jammed into the slide, and then the presenter reads it. However, as soon as the audience figures out that you’re reading the text, it reads ahead of you because it can read faster than you can speak. The result is that you and the audience are out of synch.

The reason people use a small font is twofold: first, that they don’t know their material well enough; second, they think that more text is more convincing. Total bozosity. Force yourself to use no font smaller than thirty points. I guarantee it will make your presentations better because it requires you to find the most salient points and to know how to explain them well. If “thirty points,” is too dogmatic, the I offer you an algorithm: find out the age of the oldest person in your audience and divide it by two. That’s your optimal font size.

So please observe the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. If nothing else, the next time someone in your audience complains of hearing loss, ringing, or vertigo, you’ll know what caused the problem. One last thing: to learn more about the zen of great presentations, check out a site called Presentation Zen by my buddy Garr Reynolds.



Read more: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html#ixzz1HQirx0M5

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