Upcoming Events

Here’s a quick update regarding a few events that may interest you.

If you’re interested in passive income, here’s a very timely deal that’s going on now.

This weekend SBI kicked off a 72-hour Buy-One, Get-One Free special on their Facebook page. To access the special, go to this page, click “like” to join, and then click on the icon for the special.

I’ve been recommending SBI for several years since it’s an easier way to make money online than blogging in my opinion. Be sure to read my full SBI review if you haven’t already seen it.

There isn’t much time left in this special, so if you want to take advantage of it, definitely look into it now. You may want to follow their Facebook page anyway, so you’ll be alerted to other specials they may run. This 2-for-1 is the very best deal they offer.

Learning Strategies is hosting a free online event called Meditationfest which begins on Monday, Sep 10th. It features 7 different meditation experts. Each will share a different style of meditation along with a lesson to help you understand the meditation and its benefits.

I’ve met 4 of the 7 teachers of this program, and I know the people who are hosting it, so I’m confident it will be a quality event. It should give you a nice introduction to different styles if you’re new to meditation, and if you’re already experienced, it will expose you to other styles you may not have tried before.

The Meditationfest is totally free, so it won’t cost you anything. When you register for it, which only takes a minute, you’ll receive your first meditation right away. They also have some pretty nice prizes you could win.

Visit the Meditationfest website to sign up and get started. I’m signed up for it myself.

I’m going to Oslo later this month (my first time in Norway!) to speak at the Morten Hake Summit. This will be a awesome weekend to be sure!

Most of the attendees will be men, so the sales page is geared towards them, but the conference itself is for men and women alike — anyone who wants to learn to communicate and connect more authentically.

This conference is very inexpensive for what it offers — only $199 USD for the whole weekend — so if Oslo is an accessible destination and you’d like to hang out with dozens of cool growth-oriented people while learning to improve your social skills, I encourage you to attend.

This is a non-profit event, so I’m speaking there for free. The proceeds go to help schoolgirls in Africa.

I’ll be hanging out in Norway for a few extra days after the conference. I’d really like to see the fjords, and I know others who are interested as well, so perhaps we can get a group together to do that.

Steve Recommends
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Getting Rich with Ebooks - Earn passive income from ebooks
Sedona Method - Free Audio - Learn to release blocks in a few minutes
Site Build It! - Start your own money-making website
Lefkoe Method - Permanently eliminate a limiting belief in 20 minutes
Paraliminals - Condition your mind for positive thinking and success
The Journal - Record your life lessons in a secure private journal
PhotoReading - Read books 3 times faster
Life on Purpose - Discover your life purpose

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How Reframing Events Leads to Success

Have you ever wondered how some people always manage to achieve success in life even when they are going through traumatic events or situations?

What’s their secret?

I’ve researched what the most successful people do when the going gets tough and there’s one killer technique that I’m going to share with you today that you can start using immediately.

This is it:

Regardless of what’s going on in our lives, we can always ‘reframe’ our situation. So – no matter how bad everything appears to be, we always have the choice to make ourselves feel better by changing the way we view our problems or situations.

The key point is this:

We can’t always change the things that happen to us in life, but we can change the way we view them

Here’s an example of a smart student using the ‘reframe‘ technique to help her parents ‘view’ a situation differently:

Dear Mum and Dad

Apologies for taking so long to write, but my writing utensils were destroyed in the fire at my apartment. I am out of the hospital and the doctor says I should be able to lead a healthy normal life. A handsome young man called Pete saved me from the fire and kindly offered to share his apartment with me. He is very nice and drives a lovely motorcycle, which I like to travel on with him – we go so fast and it is fun. I think you’ll be happy when I tell you that he did the right thing and we got married last week…you see you’re going to be grandparents very soon.

Actually – there was no fire, I haven’t been in hospital, I’m not married and I’m not pregnant. But I did fail my biology exam and I just wanted to make sure that when I told you, you put it into proper perspective.

Love Your Daughter

So essentially, ‘reframing’ events is a way of changing your ‘perspective’ in life so that you don’t get so caught up in everyday problems.

The way that we choose to ‘frame’ our lives will depend on our personal happiness and achievement.  The fact is that there will be times when you don’t have control over an event or a situation. You do though, have control over the way that you ‘view’ the event or situation.

You can choose to ‘view’ it negatively or you can choose to ‘view’ it positively.

The research shows that those who reframe challenging events & situations positively will achieve much more success than those who reframe negatively.

Why?

In my opinion it can be easy to get caught up in everyday problems and this can block us from getting ahead. By ‘reframing’ events you can ensure you’re always moving forward and are not getting fixated on the problems in your life.

It’s all about context –  if you perceive something to be bad – that is often because you are comparing it to something you perceive to be better.

So, take a lesson from the most successful people in history and choose to reframe positively.

The inventor of electric light, Thomas Edison was a genius at ‘reframing’ events in his life and in my opinion it was this technique that powered him forward through every failure to his eventual success.

Having been asked this question by a New York Times journalist: “How does it feel to have failed seven hundred times?”, Edison’s reply was as follows:

Imagine what you could achieve if you began to ‘reframe’ the failures in your life instead of being blocked by them?

How Can you Start Reframing Today?

The next time you notice yourself feeling frustrated about a situation or perceiving something to be ‘bad’, ask yourself how you can reframe it?Start by finding something worse to compare it to by thinking, “At least ‘X’ didn’t happen”.Try flipping the situation around to gain a positive from it.Think about what you have learned from the experience – this can often provide a positive reframe.Consider how the experience will help you move forward and remember that failure is always a pre-requisite for success.

(Photo credit: Businessman Different View via Shutterstock)

Zoë B is a strategist, coach & the author of the Simple Life Strategies blog. Through her coaching programs and blog, Zoë helps others to learn the strategies that exceptional people use to overcome things like stress, indecision, worries, boredom, procrastination & fear so that they can perform at their own personal best. Connect with Zoë B on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

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Event innovations from TEDx events: We pick 5

TEDx events — powered by passionate volunteer hosts and committed audience members — are hotbeds of innovation, and we’re constantly looking to them for what’s next in event planning, audience participation and outreach. Each month, the TEDx team picks 10 great event ideas bubbling up from the TEDx community, highlighting them in a newsletter and on the TEDx Innovations page on the TEDx site.

We’ve picked five of our January favorites below — see all 10 on the TEDx Innovations page, where you can also sign up for February’s newsletter.

(And if you have a TEDx innovation to share, email tedxstories@ted.com.)

During TEDxValencia, attendees wrote out ideas and thoughts on Post-it notes, which were displayed on a wall during the event. Afterward, the notes were scanned and compiled on an interactive microsite. Learn more from TEDxValencia >

Dez Propaganda commissioned an 18-minute composition for TEDxValedosVinhedos, written by Valmor Pedretti Jr., with vocal contribution from Luiza Caspary. Attendees got a copy of the song on a CD in their gift bags, and you can hear it here >>><

At TEDxDelft, sponsor Senz let attendees test their storm umbrellas — designed with one side longer than the other — against a giant wind machine just outside the venue. Result? Hilarious pics >>

The TEDxAmericanRiviera stage was covered with rectangles of Mylar stretched across iron tubing. During rehearsal, speakers were given white pens and asked to write their “idea worth spreading” on the mylar. The makeshift boards were covered by the end of the day, and gave an amazing close-up when captured on video >>

On TEDxYouthDay, TEDxYouth@Chisinau held a viewing party for 47 young people at the juvenile prison in Lipcani, Moldova. At the end, the group was asked to write what “youth” means to them on a piece of paper, and then to fold a paper plane and fly it through the air. As youth reporter Alexandru Lebedev writes: “Some of them drew prison symbols, others wrote the names of social networks that they have heard about, and some wrote that they want to fall in love, or to love, or to have a family, or to have a house and a place that could give them warmth.” Read the full story on the TEDx blog >>>

See all 10 innovations on the TEDx Innovations page, where you can also sign up for February’s newsletter.

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Force Yourself to be Productive with Conditional Events

Photo credit: gayle_n (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

I’ll be the first to admit it; doing stuff is difficult. By “stuff”, I don’t mean eating, or playing video games, or doing easy things – nope, I’m talking about the things in life we decide we’ll do because they’re good for us or will help us improve.

Every day, I find things that I’d like to in order to live a better life, such as doing a certain exercise every day, drinking enough water, or writing morning pages. These are all things that I know will make me feel better or learn more.

So why are they so friggin’ hard to do consistently?

My theory as to why these things are hard stems from Isaac Newton’s first law of motion: a body at rest tends to stay at rest. We humans operate kind of like lightening; we naturally want to take the path of least resistance. Most of us live a in a country prosperous enough to afford us a comfortable living in exchange for work that is oftentimes sedentary and mentally easy after the initial learning period. Because we can get along fine doing this kind of work, we’re content to spend the rest of our time diverting attention to TV, video games, and other things that are easy to consume.

Still, we all have goals and know we could be doing more to reach them. Maybe it’s being leaner. Maybe it’s learning a new skill. Maybe it’s a big goal like writing a novel. Whatever our goals may be, the steps we need to take to achieve them are usually right in front of our faces. The hard part is getting up off our butts and doing them.

Today I’m going to detail a technique I use to make myself do the things I know are necessary for reaching my goals. This technique involves removing the need to internally motivate yourself by setting up conditional events that make doing things necessary, or at least very, very easy.

The way I think of conditional events is in the context of computer programming. In a computer program, a conditional event describes something that will be done once a certain condition is met. Most programming languages use “if” statements or “while” statements to accomplish this. Here’s a small example that anyone should be able to understand:

if (user logs in) {

display welcome message

}

This is pseudocode, meaning it’s not written in any particular language, but it should still illustrate the concept well. Basically, a conditional statement makes something happen every time something else happens.

Applying the logic of conditional events is quite easy, actually. I have a four-step process for incorporating a conditional statement into my own life that you can follow:

Pick a specific goal you haveIsolate one action that needs to be taken to work towards achieving the goalTie this action to another action you already do (we’ll call this the parent action), making sure the pairing makes senseMake sure you do the conditional action every time you do the parent action

Building conditional actions into your life in this manner has a very powerful effect: it eliminates much of the preparation involved in doing the desired action, thus removing any reason you could use to justify not doing it. Essentially, it makes working towards your goals a part of your daily routine. This is a really important fact, as something that’s part of your routine will take a lot less of your mental energy to do than something that’s been added on.

Now that you know how to build conditional statements into your daily life, as well as why doing so is beneficial, let me provide you with a few examples of conditional statements I use in my own life. I’m sure you’ll be able to use at least one of them!

Goal: Drink at least a gallon of water a day. Conditional: Every time I use the bathroom, I down a 20 ounce bottle of water and refill it. This essentially creates a loop that keeps me well hydrated.Goal: Be able to do at least 15 pullups. Conditional: I put a pullup bar in my dorm room. Every time I come in, I do five pullups. This is a conditional I took from the Army; many basic training camps will make cadets do a few pullups before entering the mess hall for meals.Goal: Write down my thoughts every morning in a journal. Conditional: I made my computer be my alarm. Every morning, it wakes me up and I have to turn on my monitors to disable it. At this point, I’m already at my computer, so I sit down and write.

These are just a few ideas; there are literally endless possibilities for conditional statements you can build into your own life. Come up with some of your own, and start making headway on your goals! If you like, you can also share the ones you create in the comments to give inspiration to others.

Thomas Frank is a student at Iowa State University studying MIS and speech communication. When he's not in class or driving monster trucks, he runs a pretty sweet college blog. You can connect with him on his personal website or on Twitter.

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Attending Networking Events is a Career Investment

As a Lifehacker, you must be attuned to the changing trends in the workplace. The uncertainties in the U.S economy put into question the idea of a “stable job”. You might be also more keen on pursuing portfolio careers or perhaps setting up a business in lieu of the traditional climb-the-corporate-ladder career path.

The only way for you to cope with a changing workplace is for you to leave your desk and meet people who can help you attain whatever you want from your career – with or without the threat of recession.

So, the best career investment that you can do now is to go to networking events. This will give you a chance to meet corporate executives and entrepreneurs who can give you job leads, serve as your mentors and/or become your business partners.

Some events are worth it, some are just useless, you need to choose the networking event which is aligned with your goal. Choose an event where you can find the experts in your field and/or where you have a higher chance of meeting your potential employers.

Do your research first – surf the net for information about the event and ask your friends and colleagues for feedback on the networking events they have went to themselves.

List down what you want to get out of this networking event and then make your own schedule that will meet your goals.

For instance, Rossana Llenado, founder of online tutorial company Ahead Interactive (AI), invests on attending networking events as this helps her in building her business. So despite her initial concerns on cost and spending time away from her four kids in Manila, Llenado left for California to attend the four-day convention of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) in San Diego.

Llenado went to IABC conference and participated in the workshops and met up with business contacts in the U.S.. This is in line with her goal to put AI as one the world’s premier provider of online tutorial services. She came home, with a lot of ideas on how to expand AI’s reach and is now busy fine tuning her operations.

Instead of indiscriminately handing out and collecting business cards, use networking events to meet and establish long-term relationships with potential employers or business partners. Networking organizers advise that you focus on making “meaningful connections” with few people – those who have the right vibe and you’re comfortable working with.

You also need to avoid being too aggressive, asking questions like “so do you have any job openings?” or “are you interested to buy my products?”

This will turn off a lot of people – hard selling won’t sell here. Just be cool and discuss with them your common interests and goal. Exchange business cards and keep those contacts “warm” by sending e-mails or inviting them for coffee where you can discuss your proposal.

Go to the networking events with the mindset that you will bring value to the table – and not to pass around your resume and sell your products.

Yes you can find job leads in networking events – but not on one go. You need to establish trust and confidence among the people that you meet in these events. When approaching someone, you need to consider how your skills and interests can help in solving his/her business problem.

Going to these events is not cheap. You need to invest both time and money, and the cost gets higher if the event is being held overseas.

You need to discern the difference between value and cost. If the $1,000 you spend going to networking events will bring you triple that amount either in terms of business revenues or career promotion, then the event will have paid for itself.

That said, if you’re broke or had to get a second mortgage just to attend the event then you better skip it, and save for it so you can go there in the future. Besides, a high price tag will not necessarily mean that is of high value – to you. Many people spend money to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos. It is a high value event for many people, but do you think going to Davos will help you attain your specific career goals?

Whatever career path you want to pursue, everything in the end will boil down to having solid relationships with present and future colleagues and partners. While social networking sites may have helped in expanding your work and social circles, meeting people face to face will build trust and confidence that will pave the way to better opportunities.

About the author: Prime Sarmiento is a long time journalist and content marketing strategist for online tutorial company Ahead Interactive - provider of live, real-time, video-powered tutorials. You can follow her writing tips in twitter.

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