“Whatever your discipline, become a student of excellence in all things. Take every opportunity to observe people who manifest the qualities of mastery. These models of excellence will inspire you and guide you toward the fulfillment of your highest potential.” –Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan

“If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.” –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. I believe in giving people incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.” –Charles Schwab

As women, it can be hard to “toot our own horns” and own up to our strengths. But it’s so important to know your worth and to be able to speak to it! We’re reading the following four tips on self-promotion, from forbeswoman.com.

Want to make a woman feel uncomfortable? Just ask about her strengths. It’s no stereotype: Studies show that women are notoriously bad at promoting themselves.

One study, from employee search firm ISR, attributes this trait to the high value women place on relationships and communities. Women don’t speak about their strengths; the reasoning goes, because they don’t want to alienate people who are less successful.

Whatever its cause, this hesitance to self-promote hurts women’s careers. In today’s competitive world the people most vocal about their accomplishments are the ones most likely to get ahead. And by downplaying their accomplishments and deflecting praise onto others, women act like their own worst enemies.

As a marketing consultant for women business owners, I see this behavior all the time. I’ve also heard countless excuses for why women avoid self-promotion. These excuses tend to fall into one of four categories, which I’ve dubbed the four myths of self-promotion:

The Assertive Woman Myth-”Self-promotion will make me look arrogant.” Not all self-promotion is shameless. Sometimes it’s essential to a successful career, whether that means reminding a boss of your achievements or publicizing the 10th anniversary of your business. But many women have trouble making the distinction between shameless bragging and smart marketing.

The Queen Myth-”If I’m good enough, people will hear about it.” This myth originates from fairy tales where the princess waits for her knight to arrive and sweep her off her feet. Generations of girls have heard this story. Many grow up believing it’s true. If you work hard and wait patiently enough, someone will eventually notice.

Unfortunately, this only applies to fairy tales. In the corporate world most people are juggling too many responsibilities to notice what others are doing well. This goes double for people with the authority to give promotions and pay raises. For business owners, simply waiting for the right customers to appear is a recipe for failure.

The world is too full of competition for businesses to stay solvent without good promotion.

The Friends and Family Myth-”Others should talk about my accomplishments, not me.” Some women assume that their friends, family and other customers will do their marketing for them by spreading positive word of mouth. While word of mouth is a great form of promotion, relying on word of mouth alone can hurt your chances of success.

Let’s face it–no one is more passionate about your work than you. No one else knows the depth of your experience and expertise. And no one can elaborate on your unique skills as convincingly as you can. By delegating promotion to others, you’re taking away your best opportunity to demonstrate your value.

The Martyr Myth-”You can’t control what people think anyway.” When self-promotion makes you feel uncomfortable, it can be tempting to take a “why bother?” attitude. After all, people form their first impressions before you even say a word, so there’s no sense trying to change their minds … right? Wrong! The Bottom Line The myths you believe often mask a deeper insecurity about the value you place on what you have to offer. If you don’t fully believe in yourself, you’ll naturally resist stepping into the spotlight. This resistance, plus generations of conditioning to be humble and stand on the sidelines, has left many women unprepared for today’s ultra-competitive business world.

That doesn’t mean you have to play the role of a pushy saleswoman to get ahead. But it does require taking small steps outside your comfort zone. Get familiar with your strong points. Write them down if necessary and put them somewhere you’ll see them often. (Practice talking yourself up in front of friends: They’ll give you honest feedback about what works and what doesn’t.)

Most importantly, tap into your passion for what you do. By denying your passion a voice, you keep the world from benefiting from what you have to offer. And that’s the most shameful thing of all. Reprinted from ForbesWoman.com

Scores and meanings:

10-24 You are on track! Keep it up. Notice which questions you scored higher on and think about applying yourself more to balance. You are aware of your needs. You are making yourself strong and able to continue and give your best.

25-40 You are moving in the right direction. Examine your priorities a little more closely and notice where you are getting results and what needs attention. Maybe give yourself a little break or time and space to rejuvenate and get perspective. Review your answers with higher scores and consider what you might do to move your scores down.

41-50 Congratulations! You have taken a big step. You have become aware that you have an opportunity to gain the skills to work smart. Imbalances are not irreversible. Review your goals to keep them BRIEF, applying the five factors of working smart, and use the SMART techniques to help you plan. Give yourself some rest and relaxation, and re-approach with a new, refreshed point of view, and keep abreast of your activity to build new hands to work smart.

Have you ever known someone who just seemed to “have it all together?” Maybe that someone is you, but maybe you could do even better. “Having it all together,” is what many perceive as “working smart.” But what does it really mean to “work smart?”

Is it a mysterious quality that some of us are born with, and the rest without? Or is it a skill set that can be learned and mastered? Most business and relationship experts support that “working smart” is a skill set that enables one to achieve balance in life and be fruitful.

Many women have intuitively been using these skills to successfully juggle their many responsibilities. When done effectively, the result is a general contentment and satisfaction both personally and professionally. When reflected on and analyzed, five key traits of “working smart” emerge. They may be remembered best using the acronym BRIEF for: Balanced, Results achieving, Independent minded, Energized and Fit in.

5 Traits of Women Who Work Smarter

1. Balanced: Balancing one’s personal and professional life.
2. Results achieving: Reaching a satisfactory level of results.
3. Independent minded: Considers information and opinions of others as appropriate, and ultimately makes her own mind up on her position.
4. Energized: Achieving and maintaining an effective distribution of one’s energy including reasonable breaks and vacations.
5. Fit In: Being accepted in the culture of one’s chosen environment.

Balanced: Personal and professional life balance is a key part of working smart. Whole life aspects such as exercise, proper nutrition, and constructive support from family, friends, community and more provide a strong basis from which to draw strength. Feeling capable in one’s work approach is built from many sources, not only success at work.

Results achieving: Reaching a satisfactory level of results is a subjective call, and is important because it is a reality check. If the results do not show and goals are not met, it is hard to say one is working smart. A widely used technique to help achieve results is the SMART approach to goal setting. Ask yourself, “Are my goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Reasonable, and Timely?”

Independent minded: Although she considers the information and opinions of others as appropriate, she makes up her own mind. She chooses with her own free will to associate with people, places and things or not. She takes responsibility for her decisions.

Energized: Achieving an effective energy distribution depends on one’s ability to monitor their body and their feelings and have the self-discipline to get enough sleep, and take enough breaks and vacations to allow themselves to restore and replenish. The kinds of activities that refresh a person are as individual as their finger prints. Do you work smart, or do you need to improve?

Fit In: Fitting into one’s chosen environment is a sign of working smart. Drawing healthy limits that others respect and appreciate so that there is a harmony is important. It helps one to perform better and it indicates effectiveness.

As you prepare for the day ahead, consider are you working smarter?

We awaken to the smell of freshly brewed coffee and our senses begin to come alive.  We walk outside in the cold winter morning and smell the soothing scent of a fire in a fireplace. We walk in to the bakery and smell the fresh cinnamon rolls just as they come out of the oven.

When we become more aware of all our senses, we begin to realize how wonderful our life truly is. We touch the soft skin of a baby and our heart is warmed. We hear soft mellow voice of a stranger say ‘good morning’. We taste the creamy chocolate morsel and a sense of pleasure washes over us. We see a stranger hold the door open as we walk out, our hands filled with packages and we feel gratitude.

Awaken our senses and life takes on a new meaning. We can stop the hustle and bustle of life and simply enjoy the moment when we become aware of our senses. For this moment will not come again as it is right now and if we don’t stop and ‘smell the roses’ they will be withered and gone.

Enjoy life today and allow your senses to bring new joy.

Things go wrong in our lives and we are quick to look how we can shift the blame to someone or something else. It’s their fault the project wasn’t completed on time. It’s their fault that we’re late for the party.  It’s the other driver’s fault that we had a fender bender. It’s their fault for whatever goes wrong today… it just is.

Let’s take a step back and give an honest look at what happened. Did we have any part in the event? Could we have changed the outcome if we took some action? Don’t blame others without honestly looking at our role and in many cases, we will see that we are just as much to blame. Our hand should never point fingers at others and blame them, without pointing the same fingers back at ourselves first. We should look to see how we could have changed the outcome and learn from the lesson.

It’s too easy to blame someone else for what has gone wrong today. It’s time we step up and take some of the responsibility. Remember, we are quick to take the credit when things go well, it’s time we take the same approach when they don’t.

It’s the time of year when gifts are exchanged and many times in the back of our mind we have set an expectation of gift giving. At times it is just the mere fact that a gift will be given to us, or it may be that we’re expecting a certain gift from a person. When we set these expectations there are several possible outcomes. The first is that we get the gift we expected… and now we’re only mildly happy because we expected it. Next might be that we don’t get what we expected but still got a gift and we feel it is less than what our expectation was… and now we have to put on a smiley face and pretend to be grateful. The last is that we don’t get a gift at all… and now we feel hurt and resentful.

How ugly the scenario can be when we set expectations to feed our ego. Setting greedy expectations can only be the first step toward disappointments, leading to full blown resentment and beyond. Is that what we really want? It is when we give and truly expect nothing in return do we get to feel that joy in our heart. It’s that joy and love in our heart that we look for, yet we set ourselves up for just the opposite when we set expectations.

When we give, and truly expect nothing in return is when we truly discover that we were given a gift… and that gift is the joy and love in our heart; that we have touched another person’s heart. There is no better gift than that.

We walk along a path that meanders through the woods. The autumn colored leaves gently float to the ground as the branches of the tree gently sway in the cool wind. The sun’s rays are clearly visible as they stream through the woods and reflect the wonderful colors of each leaf as it gently falls to the ground. Silence fills the cool brisk air as we continue to slowly walk along the path.

Our path brings us to a slow moving stream. The water is crystal clear as it flows over and around the rocks that fill the stream bed. We pause for a moment to watch the water, mesmerizing and soothing this form of beautiful nature. We become relaxed as we just lean against a tree and watch the water follow to its appointed path. Just as the stream has its path, we have ours and it has brought us here, to this place, in this time.

The water flows over the rocks in the stream and one catches our eye, a special rock that stands out from the others. We slowly kneel, reach into the cold water and take the rock from the bed of the stream. The rock is beautiful. The patterns of various colors that nature has woven appear to be a word. As we look closer we see a word and that word is ‘Believe’.

We are that stone, unique from all the others in the stream. We are the stone that has ‘Believe’ woven into ourselves through all the beautiful patterns and colors that makes us who we are. It’s time we look at our stone and put it in our pocket to carry from now on, as we travel on our journey. Believe, you are who you are meant to be and you are capable of achieving your dreams.

“Quit complaining!” Wow… how many times have we heard that? And yet, we still do it and it’s usually about things or situations that we have no control. We complain about the weather, of which we have zero influence over. We complain about the traffic because of highway construction, and of course we have zero control of highway development. The list will go on about things we complain about and we will voice our complaints to anyone that will listen. We rant and rave and rant some more, filling our mind and the minds of other people around us with negativity.

So here’s an idea… if we find ourselves getting ready to complain about something, let’s ask ourselves, can I do anything about it? If the answer is no, then quit complaining.  If the answer is yes, then take the action necessary and quit complaining. Complaining is spreading negativity and is certainly not very appealing to anyone on the receiving end, because they can’t do anything about it either. So why vent on them and add negativity to their day.

Instead of complaining, spreading negativity, wouldn’t it be awesome if we spread positivity? Let’s share the blessings in our lives and how grateful we are for what we have and make a positive difference instead of a negative one. People want to feel good and spreading positive thoughts and words will make a difference in their lives. So quit complaining and rejoice in the season. Give thanks for the little things in life such as: health, family, friends, home, the opportunity to work but most of all give thanks you are here today.

Let’s pretend we can be someone else, past or present. Who would we want to be? Perhaps we would want to be a great leader in the past. Perhaps we would want to be a spiritual leader like Gandhi, the Dalai Lama or Mother Teresa. Maybe we would want to be a famous scientist that discovered something that changed the world as we know it.  Still perhaps we would want to be a notable philosopher like Ralph Waldo Emerson or an author like Stephen King. Who do we want to be?

We can wish were someone else and if we could make that come true, then the world would be without one special person, you. You are you and not someone else. We can strive to be like someone else, but only in the fact of how they made a difference in the world and how they made a difference in our life and in the lives of others. We can do this by being ourselves and finding ways to make a positive difference in the lives of others.

You are special and never let anyone ever tell you otherwise. You make a difference and will continue to make a difference in everyone you touch today and tomorrow. Be yourself and the world is better as a result.