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04 August 2009, 21:34
Self-Honesty by Brian Vaszily
Perhaps the Most Challenging Thing You’ll Ever Read About Self-Honesty (But It's Worth It!)
by Brian Vaszily, founder of IntenseExperiences.com
My head has been bumped and bruised, and I am thankful for it. I offer the following in the hope that maybe you can avoid a few bumps and bruises of your own.
Like you, I have heard the advice ten thousand different times in my life, delivered five thousand different ways: honesty is the best policy.
But ideas like this that seem to make perfect sense when we hear them, that seem like givens when we are reminded of them, well … it’s precisely because they are so obvious, as obvious as our own beating heart, that we so often stop recognizing them.
And therefore stop respecting them.
Then we end up spending so much time, energy and money – for many, a lifetime’s worth -- battling the destructive symptoms of this unrecognized cause: this forgetting of our own “obvious” truths.
By way of quick example, consider your own body. When you hear, for the zillionth time, how important it is to eat right, exercise and achieve emotional health to avoid heart disease, cancer and to live a long, vibrant life, it just seems obvious. Yeah, you already “know” that.
But if you’re like most people in the Western world today, you’re overweight. Or you’re battling some health issue, some symptom, based at least in part on lifestyle choices such as not exercising enough, not addressing emotional blocks, or drinking too many Carmel Macchiatos and eating too many Doritos.
So is that really knowing? Does knowing mean understanding and even agreeing with the information, or does knowing actually imply doing it?
What is obvious rarely remains apparent.
What seems sensible is rarely followed through.
And so it is with honesty.
My Headfirst Bumps
When asked, most people tend to say yes, except perhaps for the little white lie here or there, they believe they’re an honest person.
And fortunately, most people are honest on the highest level in that they don’t intentionally set out to prey on and deceive others … to intentionally con and manipulate others out of their money, business, time, knowledge and all the rest for greed, power and other perceived personal gain.
But it is the subtler form of honesty – self-honesty – that can so often be lost on those with even the biggest hearts. And it’s a particularly funny thing about this honesty: though we would all like to believe we’re being honest with ourselves, one day you inevitably bump headfirst into your own actions and realize it isn’t exactly so.
In my own case, my head has been knobbed and bruised multiple times in the last couple years.
In a certain business relationship I had invested a lot of myself in, for example, I finally realized that I had long been ignoring signals that I should’ve run the other way from the start. My heart was in the business, but so much so that it blinded me to the honesty of my own intuition.
In certain personal relationships, meanwhile, I realized that I still had a habit of concealing that which I thought would hurt or burden the other person. My intuition again knew better, but my thoughts – set in a pattern from long ago – insisted that I was better off not unsettling their emotions and instead solving the issues myself … even when the issues directly involved the other person.
Of course, though the other person’s ego may not immediately enjoy it, their spirit, and the relationship itself, deserves the truth. Real trust. Any concealment may “protect” the status quo in the short run, but it can destroy happiness in the long run. Including the things that are hard to say. Especially the things that are hard to say.
There are many reasons, perhaps infinite reasons, that we can lose touch with being honest. Most of these are not sinister – not greed, not the hunger for power – but instead understandable and even well-intentioned reasons, such as a wish to avoid confrontation and maintain calm, or a desire to keep someone safe and content.
But as Aristotle noted, “The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.”
As author Tad Williams put it, “Every time we tell a lie, the thing we fear grows stronger.”
And as author Ambrose Pierce cautioned, “The hardest tumble a person can take is to fall over his own bluff.”
Not being honest always has a way of bruising us, if not downright slaughtering us, even when we aren’t aware of the dishonesty.
The Self-Scan
It is not an easy thing, keeping the obvious apparent. Eat right and exercise. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another. Honesty is the best policy. These take vigilant effort.
I have learned, or rather, I now strive harder than ever to practice, what I call the self-scan. Whenever I feel the slightest unease, whenever I feel my emotions trembling in any way, and whenever I sense my intuition calling out in any way, I try to step off somewhere in solitude. There I try to assess what the truth of the situation is, and what the honest course I should take is – regardless of whether it is difficult or not.
It is often difficult, and being human I am often struggling with it and forever learning how to do it better, but it has made all the difference in the world to my deep inner-peace and happiness.
Should you want to attempt this experience, and perhaps avoid some of those bumps, bruises and worse in your own life, what follows are some key questions I ask in this self-scan. You will likely want to modify and create some of your own:
# What is the truth here?
# Am I avoiding the truth here?
# Is a desire for money, power, respect, or acceptance, clouding my truth?
# Is a fear of confrontation, pain, loneliness, death or the unknown clouding my truth?
# Am I honestly scanning myself to recognize the truth here, am I honestly listening to it even if I don’t like what it says? Or is my pride, or my fear, or other ego and emotional blocks in the way?
All honesty starts and ends with self-honesty. The benefits of this honesty seem obvious, but making them apparent takes vigilant effort. Do you also believe though that it’s worth it?
Want more ? go for http://www.intenseexperiences.com/self-honesty.html
ENJOY !
Sincerely,
Margarita Nomeikiene
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28 July 2009, 04:26
Writing For Higher Conversions byTim Ash
Writing For Higher Conversions (Part 1)
Changing your approach to writing can often lead to a double-digit increase in conversion rates.
Our company routinely runs large scale landing page optimization tests to improve conversion rates. One of the most common components that we test is the sales copy on the page. We have found that changing your approach to writing can often lead to a double-digit increase in conversion rates.
How Users Read on the Web: They don't.
-- Jakob Nielsen, Web usability expert
What I am going to share with you is a distillation of our hard-earned experience over the course of hundreds of landing page tests. But this is not an article about "persuasive" copywriting, or powerful magic words to use in your headline. Most of the problem with writing for the web lies at a much more fundamental level. There is a giant disconnect between how much we care about our sales copy, and how much our Internet visitors do.
"How users read on the Web: They don't!" Even though these words were written in 1997, they still hold true. Jakob Nielsen's pioneering work in this area has been confirmed by a lot of subsequent research. The vast majority of Internet users do not read a webpage word by word. They scan it and focus on individual words, phrases, or sentences. They are often seeing your company for the first time, and do not know how much trust to place in your information. They are used to being assaulted with promotional messages and will tune out most of your attempts to overtly market to them. They are task-oriented and are on your site to get something specific accomplished.
Most of the adaptations that you need to make to your writing have a single purpose: to reduce the visitor's cognitive load. Instead of being forced to pay attention to how the information is presented, they can devote more focus to getting their intended task accomplished. By getting out of their way, you empower them to be faster, more efficient, and effective. This will lead to higher conversion rates for you, and higher satisfaction for them.
To increase the odds of a favorable outcome you need to consider the following areas of your writing:
* Structure
* Tone
* Format
Let's take a look at each in turn.
Structure
Inverted Pyramid. The preferred structure for most Web writing is the inverted pyramid. It uses the principle of primacy (ordering) to control saliency (importance). In this style of writing, you put your conclusions and key points first. Less important and supporting information should be placed last. This is critical since most readers will choose not to read very far.
Most of this is probably not earth-shaking insight in the world of newspaper writing. Newspaper editors have a similar audience makeup: casual visitors who scan for information that competes for their attention, and consider the source as a transient and disposable resource. Because of this they have developed a very similar model. Headline size and prominent positioning indicate the importance of articles. The lead paragraph summarizes the whole story, and supporting detail is buried further down (or by following text hyperlink jumps to other pages).
Get to the point and let them decide if your content is relevant enough for them to stick around. By writing in this way you maximize the chances that they will come away with the information that you consider most valuable. The same structure should be used for creating online audio or video clips for your site.
Headlines and Page Titles. Remember that the visitor may have arrived from any number of different inbound links and may not have a lot of context about your page. Use clear and prominent headlines and page titles to tell them why each page is important.
One Main Idea Per Paragraph. Make sure that you only have one main idea per paragraph. If you bury a second idea lower in a block of text, it will probably be missed as the reader jumps down to scan the lead-in text of the subsequent paragraph.
The inverted pyramid approach should be used when creating bullet lists or lists of navigational links -- put the important ones on top.
Short Pages. Keep your pages short. This will allow them to be digested in small, bite-sized chunks that correspond to a Web user's attention span. There is evidence to show that significantly shorter text results in higher retention and recall of information, and is more likely to lead to conversion actions. Your page should only contain important information for its topic and level of detail. You can move longer supporting text to other pages, and create links for the dedicated reader.
However, at SiteTuners.com we have run across an occasional exception to the shorter-is-better guideline. Some single-product consumer websites have very long direct response pitch letters that outperform significantly shorter alternatives. They draw the reader in and encourage them to spend a lot of time on the page. After a certain point the visitor's attention investment gets high enough to build momentum toward the conversion action. This is not to say that long sales letter pages cannot be made better. There is definitely a lot of bloat and deadwood on the ones that we routinely test and improve.
In part 2 of this article I will examine tone and format and their contribution to conversion.
To you from
http://www.wilsonweb.com/conversion/ash-writing-for-conversion1.htm
Enjoy
Sincerely, Margarita Nomeikiene
Content
19 July 2009, 13:29
Understanding the Male Brain
The Male Brain: What's Really Going On in There
By Carol Mithers
Is he truly incapable of putting down the toilet seat? Can he really have passionate sex and not even think about calling you again? We go exploring for answers.
The more science learns about how men are different from us (right down to the structure of their brains), the more we find ourselves hoping it will finally explain some age-old mysteries. For instance:
Why do men keep their cars spotless but live like pigs at home—while for women it's the other way around?
According to Simon Baron-Cohen, PhD, author of The Essential Difference: Male and Female Brains and the Truth About Autism, men's neurological wiring tends to make them better at systems, while women are superiorly rigged for empathy. Which could help explain why—although the culture is changing—guys still take such pride in their machines, while women often care more about maintaining a clean home. Another clue comes from a 2007 study (conducted for BMW by a British team that included Oxford psychologists), which found that male drivers actually view their cars as extensions of themselves. Women, whose self-image is tied more directly to their bodies, are likely to think of their vehicles as separate entities, the authors suggest. But because men are less tuned-in to their bodies, they easily project their identity onto an object. If only that object were a sink full of dirty dishes.
Why do men like to watch violent sports, while a good number of women would rather do almost anything else?
The truth is, football has a lot of female fans (44.3 million women watched the 2009 Super Bowl, for example). But guys are drawn to football (and boxing and wrestling) in ways that women aren't. Men tend to be more aggressive, says Lucy L. Brown, PhD, a professor in the departments of neurology and neuroscience at Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. The difference likely involves hormones (like testosterone) and sensitivities to those hormones in parts of the brain such as the hypothalamus—which, in animals, is associated with aggression. Fine, but does he really have to shriek "Kill him!" when the other team's quarterback is about to get sacked? Yes, he does: If you're a guy, watching your team win increases testosterone levels, according to a 1998 study in Physiology & Behavior. Viewing combative sports also helps men identify with traditional ideals of masculinity like domination, risk taking, and competition, explains Douglas Hartmann, PhD, associate professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota. "In fact," he says, "the less physically competitive his daily life is, the more sports can become a means toward achieving those ideals, at least in his mind."
Want more? go there http://ow.ly/hpEA
Enjoy!
Sincerely,
Margarita Nomeikiene
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