Here is an extract from the Blog of Michael Oliver - a generic Sales Trainer in the network marketing industry. He has THE KEY to building a successful business which will not suffer from the usually high attrition rates that most do these days. I have referred to him before now and no doubt will in the future. He has fantastic advice for anyone who is open to learning, especially how to improve communication between people in any situations eg in relationships, work and anywhere you want to make an impression or want to persuade someone to change their mind/behaviour. I recommend reading his book which you will see if you visit his blog on the link below.


" . . . If you want a successful business, then having an enthusiastic
and motivated team is essential. Ideally, your team would be
made up self-starters.

Unfortunately, many network marketers find themselves spending a
lot of time working with their team to keep them on track. That
means building your business can be more stressful and time
consuming than it needs to be.

However, there's a simple, yet very profound, thing you can do
when you first talk with a potential partner. It will pay big
dividends for both in that you won't have to continually
encourage them or follow up with them to make sure they're doing
what they said they would.

As a result, you'll save time and have a more productive team.

To discover the key to an enthusiastic, self-motivated and
productive team, read this week's newsletter. Simply click on the
following link...

http://naturalsellingblog.com/productive-team/ . . . . ."

Helping Families In Our Community

I'm a person who is naturally attracted to ways of helping others. I've done lots of studies on various modalities, one in particluar I really like is NVC or Non-violent communication, developed by Marshall Rosenberg. I have put some of the tools into practice in a classroom where I was a relieving teacher a little while ago. It worked well. There was an altercation in a sewing class involving 2 children about 14 yrs of age. One of them lashed out at the other. It ended up in tears, as you would expect. I took them both aside in the room and dug a bit deeper into what may have caused the problem. The outcome was that the offending student had lost her brother earlier in the year from an accident and the other, a boy from another culture, had lost a young brother several years ago. Obviously there was underlying incompleted sadness on both sides and through the process I was able to demonstrate the opportunity for greater understanding and empathy for each of them.

I found this exercise very satisfying and was able to use it with a whole class again at a later date when there was another incident between 2 boys.

Whenever I see young children suffering or not being treated in a way that supports and enriches them, I feel great pain for them. They are so vulnerable and trusting of adults around them. After all, children are not small adults - they are fragile, young souls craving love, acknowledgement and nourishment, both the nutritional type and importantly, the emotional type. They need training on how to cope with life and if parents do not do this at an appropriate level they will grow up with difficulties in being effective adults. In observing how children and adults relate in my community, I see that very often they are not given suitable explanations about why things are as they are, for example. If you explain to children, simply and in language they can understand, they will be able to understand better and perhaps work things out for themselves at a later time.

Suffice to say then that if anything crosses my path that provides a way for people to relate and communicate better I am interested in learning about it.

I have studied The Spalding Method (www.spalding.org) when I was living in Australia recently and that is a wonderful way to teach children how to read, write and spell in a way that empowers them to help themselves. I now teach 2 students using this approach.

More recently I have come across something else which I know will have huge repercussions on families in general.

The mission of FamilyIQ is to empower individuals and parents to improve their personal, partnering, and parenting skills in order to build stronger and more effective families. Their Vision is to change the world one family at a time. FamilyIQ is a values-driven company. They believe that values which are nurtured, promoted and upheld can motivate positive behavior and foster unity. They aim to promote and protect the culture of values within the context of entrepreneurialism. Our core values are multi-faceted: meaning that they apply to us as individuals, families and as an organization.

The Values of the Company are simply:

1. Family
They believe that the Family is the foundation of all great societies. Families come in various sizes and styles and each one has the capacity for love, respect and appreciation. The organization is a family and every member is needed and important. We aim to sponsor a culture of unity with our employees, members, and customers.

2. Trust
Trust is the foundation of all healthy relationships. In families and in business, we strive to foster relationships based on earning trust with each other. This is done in part by keeping commitments, respecting one another and living with integrity. FamilyIQ will work tirelessly to not only earn but always keep the trust of our families, business partners, members, employees and customers.

3. Loyalty.
They believe that trust leads to loyalty. They believe that loyalty is the key to profitability and growth in a business and in relationships. Our goal is to foster loyalty with our families, business partners, members, employees and customers.

4. Growth.
Growth is a by-product of treating others like family, earning and keeping their trust and nurturing lifelong loyal relationships. Growth is inevitable as we live our values. We believe that FamilyIQ will grow to be a world-wide organization as we live our values and provide our products to those like minded individuals who share our values.

It's a programme that, amongst other things, has developed a revolutionary assessment test designed to produce awareness, knowledge and skills in nine critical areas of healthy family functioning.

I think you'll agree with me here that this company will be seriously contributing to the health of our communities in the near and distant future.

If you'd like more information on the products and the business model please first visit the website then contact me on nzglobalsolutions@gmail.com

Practicing with Money

At Home in the Muddy Water - a guide to finding peace within everyday chaos. by Ezra Bayda

At the beginning of this book there is a quote: "All I can experience and work with is what my life is right now. That's all I can do. The rest is the dream of ego" - Charlotte Joko Beck

The author comments that "... it made me realise how often we forget that practice is actually about living, about opening into whatever life presents. Isn't it true that we tend instead to equate spiritual practice with a particular technique such as sitting in meditation or with feeling a particular way such as calm or centred?"

(Her book) is simply about clarifying the confusion of daily living, cultivating equanimity even within the high-speed messiness of life and transforming our everyday suffering into the genuine life that all of us want. This entails knowing ourselves and all the ways we hold ourselves back in fear. These things are not easy but they are possible. Her intent is to communicate how to make the genuine life a lived reality. Using topics such as relationships, trust, sexuality and money the emphasis is on ways to become willing to "Just Be" right in the middle of life. To do this we must see the endless ways we keep ourselves stuck in the mud of our spinning minds, our habitual and protective patterns and of course our fears.

Chapter 10: Practicing with Money

Money issues, along with sexual issues obviously play a dominant role in everyday life. Yet we rarely consider either of these issues in terms of practice. Money issues tend to be seen as not even worthy of "spiritual" consideration. But given how much of our daily life distress is related to finances, it is unfortunate that we tend to overlook this crucial area of practice. Money issues make an especially rich field for practice because our relationship to money is predominantly determined by unconscious beliefs and behaviours. Money issues rarely are just about money.

What good is it to sit in meditation even if we're having great experiences, if we plunge into the anxiety of our financial situation as soon as formal practice ends? Practice includes everything, even the mundane world of money. Until we are free from our deep-seated beliefs about money, as well as our deeply conditioned behaviours, we cannot truly be free.

What's the practice here? It begins with knowing what we're up to, by precisely observing our believed thoughts around money. We can begin to discover them by asking ourselves questions such as the following: Do I experience tightness and anxiety around money issues? Do money issues provoke feelings of losing control, chaos, danger or doom? If so, what strategy do I fall into: excessive frugality, frantic obsessing or withdrawal into hopelessness ? How much of this strategy is based on fear-based projections that have almost no relationship to what's actually happening right now? With each belief and strategy that we blindly adhere to, we restrict and narrow our life.

It's only through endlessly observing our beliefs and behaviours that such patterns can be uncovered. And then what? The only thing we have to change is our awareness. The practice is first to see clearly our beliefs and strategies. Then we need to locate the well of fear from which they arise. Finally we must learn to gradually welcome the experience of fear into our awareness, especially the fear of losing control, of not feeling safe and in charge. THis requires courage - we need to exercise compassion here which comes from seeing our conditioning as just our conditioning.

So ask yourself "What is the price of practice?" The price may not be monetary, but it still needs to be paid, because we always have to pay the price for what we do.

A Zen student walked in to see the master. Sitting down he blurted out "There's something terribly wrong with me!" The master looked at him and asked "What's so wrong?" The student, after a moment's hesitation, responded "I think I'm a dog" To that the master responded "And how long have you thought that?" The student replied "Ever since I was a puppy"

An extract from "At Home in the Muddy Water" Ezra Bayda author of "Being Zen"