How Life is Different from College.

Reality Bites -- If You Let It

Here are some ways the real world differs from college?

• Lots less vacation time

• Can't sleep in

• Work every day, including Fridays

• Daily commute

• Success is not measured by grades

• No excuses for late work

• Independent living (and expenses)

• No drop/add for employers

• Answer to at least one boss

• Must work with people of all ages

13 dumb job-interview moves

This is a nice article that I read today.
Researchers spoke with executives at 1,000 big U.S. companies, plus 100 in Canada, and asked them to recall the most embarrassing or bizarre interview moments they had witnessed or heard of. A sampling of their answers:

"The person was dancing during the interview. He kept saying things like, 'I love life!' and 'Oh, yeah!'"

"One job applicant came in for his interview with a cockatoo on his shoulder."

"The candidate sent his sister to interview in his place."

"The candidate stopped the interview to ask me if I had a cigarette."

"We had one person who walked out of an interview straight into a glass door. The glass shattered."

"The candidate got his companies confused and repeatedly mentioned the strengths of a competing firm, thinking that was who he was interviewing with."

"A guy called me by the wrong name during the entire interview."

"We're a retail company, and when we asked the candidate why she wanted to work for us, she replied that she didn't want to work in retail anymore."

"An interviewee took his bubble gum out of his mouth and held it in his hand. Then he forgot about it and shook hands with me."

"A job seeker gestured with his hands so much that he then sat on them to stop it."

"A candidate fell asleep during the interview."

"An applicant was doing really well in the interview until we got to the question about why she had left her previous job. She told us everyone there was out to get her."

"A candidate insulted the interviewer's tie."

"Handling problems gracefully may actually impress interviewers," notes Dave Willmer, OfficeTeam's executive director. "But if the situation can't be overcome, move on and focus on the next opportunity. It's a learning experience that will someday make an entertaining story." If you can bear to recall it.

Be Grateful

This is a video of a 5-year old girl who is extremely talented. She plays the piano really well. It seems she can listen to a tune once and immediately play it on the piano! The fact that she is visually challenged doesnt really come in her way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SFppCXNOyk
What am I complaining about today?
Truly, God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.

How smart is your right foot?

Just a small exercise..
How smart is Your Right Foot ? Just try this.

1. While sitting where you are at your desk in front of your computer, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.

2. Now, while doing this, draw the number '6' in the air with your right Hand. Your foot will change direction.

I told you so!!! And there's nothing you can do about it! You and I both know how stupid it is, but before the day is done you are going to try it again, if you've not already done so

Best Advice

This is from an article that I read on CNN Money. I picked up a few lines that I thought were really good.

Leonard Lauder, Chairman Estee Lauder Companies

• If you had something good to say, you should put it in writing. But if you had something bad to say, you should tell the person to his or her face

Michael Bloomberg

• First, always ask for the order, and second, when the customer says yes, stop talking. I have watched more people make great presentations, whether they're trying to sell to their family or in business or in government, and never get to the point of what they're trying to get out of it. And too many times when the customer says yes, the person who got that answer just doesn't stop talking
• The worst advice that people can take is to react before they've had a chance to think.

Peter G Peterson, Co-founder and Senior Chairman, Blackstone Group

• Focus on those things you do better than others.

Tina Fey

• Always be the only person who can sign your checks."

Indra Nooyi, Chairman & CEO Pepsico

• Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent. You will be amazed at how your whole approach to a person or problem becomes very different.

Thomas Murphy

• Doing the wrong thing is not worth the loss of one night's good sleep.
• Don't spend your time on things you can't control. Instead, spend your time thinking about what you can

Bob Iger, President & CEO Walt Disney

• To thine own self be true.

Joanna Shields, President Bebo.com

• I go back to things my dad said: "Your career is long and the business world is small. Always act with integrity. Never take the last dollar off the table." In my dealings to sell Bebo [to AOL], this advice was critical. You can always do a slightly better deal, but that incremental dollar or windfall is not worth creating an imbalance that affects the relationship. You have to have the intuition to know when to say, "I'm going to make sure that we walk away feeling like we've both done well.

Stewart Copeland, Drummer, The Police

• Son, count your own money before the professionals who say they do it for you.
• Believe in the statement “Yes I can”

Andrea Guerra, CEO Luxottica

• A piece of good advice came from my first boss, when I was a young man starting out on my career. I was working at Marriott. He told me that in your first years of business life, you shouldn't go chasing after fancy titles, but try to find people who can teach you something.

Prayer

Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons, but they are helpless against our prayers.-J. Sidlow Baxter.

Coffee Anyone?

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, gottogether to visit their old university lecturer. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering hisguests coffee, the lecturer went to the kitchen and returned with alarge pot of coffee and an assortment of cups: porcelain, plastic,glass, some plain-looking and some expensive and exquisite, telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the lecturer said: "If you noticed, all the nice-looking, expensive cups weretaken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is thesource of your problems and stress. What all of you really wantedwas coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the bettercups and are eyeing each other's cups."

"Now, if Life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position insociety are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life,but the quality of Life doesn't change. Sometimes, by concentratingonly on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it."So, don't let the cups drive you...enjoy your coffee... :-) sip, lick, ummm

An all time favourite

The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I--I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
- Robert Frost

Justathought

I would rather live my life as if there is a God, and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't, and die to find out there is.