Business Book Summaries

It has got to stop. The average business presentation made in the English-speaking world today is woeful and we just cannot go on this way. It is little wonder then that when graduates find themselves in business, they struggle to make themselves understood.

The trouble is, many people delude themselves about their real abilities. The trouble with business is that everyone knows how to drink, therefore everyone thinks they know how to run a pub. It is the same with speaking. The ability to open one’s mouth and talk does not automatically mean that one is a brilliant speaker.

Sadly, the evidence of this lack of ability is there to be seen. And it often manifests itself in disaster. Oh, how one’s heart sinks when a clearly ill-prepared presenter arrives to speak with a huge pile of overheads! Often they compound the issue either by apologizing for not being the right person to make the presentation or by confessing that due to pressure of work, they have had “little time to prepare”.

This book takes the mystique out of presentation. It is designed for those who know they need to present more effectively. Whether you make presentations every day or have never presented in your life but know the fateful day is coming, this book is for you. But what about your time? We all know that presentations are hugely time-consuming, even if you have some idea about what it is you want to say. This book will actually save you time. How long will it take to improve? With a little application, you can use the information to good effect and become a stunning speaker in just six weeks!

You are about to break the final frontier in business – that of effective spoken communication.

BusinessSummaries.com is a business book summaries service.  Every week, it sends out to subscribers a 9- to 12-page summary of a best-selling business book chosen from among the hundreds of books printed out in the United States.  For more information, please go to http://www.bizsum.com

The Big Idea
We give leis to say “Thank you” and we give leis to say “Goodbye.”

Our attitude is like a lei. If you string together a collection of dried fish, everything starts smelling fishy! If you string together old socks, the whole world has this funny odor to it.

Your attitude is like a fragrance you carry around with you. The difference is that skunks carry a bad odor while a beautiful Hawaiian plumeria blossom carries a fragrance.

Why You Need This Book
This book gives practical steps to building internal values and perspectives that will change your life!

Make Your Choice
So far too often we see the consequences of making a bad choice or walking through life with a bad attitude, and yet we choose that attitude anyway. Then when relationships fail, when we lose friends or forfeit a great opportunity, it really should be no surprise.

Deposit into your heart the necessary ingredients to develop a life-changing attitude. Make that choice right now. The new attitude may feel awkward at first, but practice until it becomes natural.

You are only one attitude away from a great life, a successful marriage and a promising future!

Your attitude is the set of your sail. You must choose the direction you want your life to travel and set your heart accordingly.

There will be storms, but it will be your attitude toward those storms that drives you in one direction or another, not the storm itself.

A poor attitude in the midst of the storm can cause the storm to rage inside for a lifetime.

You will see problems everywhere, but don’t allow your eyes to remain focused on them. Develop a new perspective – a fresh view of your problems. Don’t hang around the swamps of despair.

They will only skew your attitude and impede your resilience. Learn to bounce back quickly.

Don’t miss the ride! Don’t forget to laugh. There is plenty to laugh about in life, and we need to laugh.

Whatever it is, take time to enjoy life in its simplest form.

Make a new friend today. A great place to start is with your family.

Life is too short for that. By establishing deep friendships with your family, you’ll begin to reap one of life’s greatest promises and rewards.

Pause long enough to enjoy the ride. You will be pleasantly surprised how a new perspective will help you to develop an attitude that attracts friends, laughter, joy and success!

Raise the Bar of Excellence
We need to practice having an excellent attitude in each and every endeavor, for it will always be true that we can improve the way we see problems, people and life.

Even if it’s only 1 percent each day, improve something about yourself. If you can improve just 1 percent a day, that means over one year you will have improved more than 300 percent for your life.

Raise the bar!

Play the Right Background Music
As you dwell on these memories, experiences and thoughts, they are recorded on the soundtrack of your mind and play continuously all day long.

Whatever you play on this internal sound system affects everything about you – your attitude, your self-image, your confidence level, your relationships, the way you communicate with others and even your faith. Memories hang on for a long time if you let them.

What is your play list? You get to make the selections, so choose wisely!

Practice, Practice, Practice!
Love
Am I consistently committed to helping others develop and discover the very best in their lives?

Peace
Do I bring a calming effect to every situation, or do I stir up people’s feathers? Do I tend to fix the blame or fix the problem?

Patience
Do I give people room to fail, and then help them look for the lessons of life that can be extracted from that failure?

Kindness
When working with people under my supervision or care, do I appeal to them kindly?

Gentleness
How do I deal with others’ failures, especially if it affects me? Self-control
The more you practice these things, the more fruitful you’ll be in your attitude, business, and family. So practice, practice, practice!

Finish Well
Each of us can live an extraordinary life with an attitude of excellence, but it must be diligently cultivated. Let’s take a look at four keys to living an extraordinary life.

Aim for the Right Target.
An attitude that attracts success begins with knowing which opportunities to accept and which to reject. This way you will begin to develop not just an existence but a LIFE.

Run the Right Race.
You cannot run someone else’s race; you can only run your own. If you run the wrong race, you’ll end up at the wrong finish line.

Understand What Satisfies Your Soul.
Contentment cannot be acquired directly. Truly content people are those whose aim in life is something much bigger than attaining mere contentment alone.

Learn to understand what truly satisfies you – what satisfies your soul. Otherwise, you will never develop an attitude of true contentment.

Make Contentment an Inside Job.
Contentment is vital in developing an extraordinary attitude and, as discussed in the previous point, must be aimed for instead of instant and all too temporary gratification.

The prisoner on the top bunk was staring out the window of his cell into the night sky. The stars were spread out in a splendid array, with an occasional shooting star making the evening sky a spectacular display of fireworks.

Calling to his cell mate in the bunk below, the man said, “Hey, wake up! Look at the stars! “Aw, leave me alone,” his cell mate grunted.

The stars tonight are the brightest I’ve ever seen!”

One prisoner saw the stars; the other saw the bars. It all depends on your attitude, doesn’t it? Contentment is an inside job.

Choose a good attitude that you might experience life the way it was meant to be lived!

But it takes training, discipline and desire to develop your perspective to see what’s good. Choose, because both will be present – the stars and the bars.

Look for the stars. You’re only one attitude away from a fantastic life!

BestSummaries.com is a book summary service that provides summaries of top self-help, motivational and inspirational books where you can learn–in minutes– what it takes to live life and live it well.  BestSummaries sends out one book summary every week in PDF, PDA, audio and/or print formats.  For more information, please go to http://www.bestsum.com.

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You now know yourself better than most people ever will. So, what do you do with this newfound knowledge? First, ask yourself if you have enough fire in your belly to proceed as an entrepreneur in your own business. If you do, you will most likely be highly successful and will enjoy your individual endeavour. That fire in your belly can truly make the difference between success and failure in an entrepreneurial venture.

If you find you don’t have this entrepreneurial fire, consider other venues. Perhaps linking up with a partner who fills in your gaps and who has that entrepreneurial passion is the answer. Seek a partner whose skills and interests are very complementary. If entrepreneurship is totally out of the realm of your thoughts, then seeking an “intrapreneurial” opportunity with the right company will be best for you. Only you can decide which path is right for you, but you need to make this important decision before you worry about applying the rest of the principles of life.

Second, spend some time trying to understand your occupational “sweet spot.” Strive to understand in what business or situation your gifts, skills, and interests allow you to function best. You will be good at whatever this is and will have fun doing it. Remember, making money should not be the primary focus. If it is, you may find yourself financially successful but otherwise miserable.

Third, don’t forget to keep asking for wisdom. Encourage to drink deeply from the Bible and other literature that is particularly inspirational for you. After establishing a financial budget, seek inspiration and wisdom to know the ideal occupation for you to pursue. And keep seeking wisdom along the way.

The 7 Principles for Creating Your Future is a road map for you, showing you how you can find your occupational “sweet spot” based on who you are while achieving your dreams and incorporating a balance into all you do. When you proceed, it will change your life! Now that you have an understanding of yourself, it’s time to select the “right” opportunity based on this knowledge.

If you decide to go into business for yourself, don’t go into debt to start the business and don’t stay in a money-losing venture. The opportunity you choose to pursue must pay all the bills necessary to support a conservative lifestyle. But, life is not all about accumulating money. You have to do more with your resources to have a truly meaningful life. A portion of your time and money goes to your business, another portion to your own needs, and use the rest to help others. When the money starts coming in, don’t just spend more – live by your budget, eliminate debt, accumulate a cash reserve, invest wisely for the future (retirement and other future plans), and of course, help others.

Clearly, business and money are important to all of us, but they only provide the means to an end. Avoiding the constant pursuit of money for money’s sake, and planning and living so that you have time to leverage your resources to help others is a profound, life-changing philosophy.

BestSummaries.com is a book summary service that provides summaries of top self-help, motivational and inspirational books where you can learn–in minutes– what it takes to live life and live it well.  BestSummaries sends out one book summary every week in PDF, PDA, audio and/or print formats.  For more information, please go to http://www.bestsum.com.

The negotiator can and should exercise power, strength, and influence. By power, we mean the capacity to dominate.

The strength of a negotiator depends on the situation he is in. It depends on the combination of technical, economic, and social ingredients which he represents when he comes to the negotiating table – if he is selling products which really are cheapest and best, he’s in a strong position.

His skills are in the way he develops and uses his influence. A basic skill in that influence is the ability to communicate: to create conditions for effective communication, present information, present cases, keep it simple, listen diligently, and use the skills of non-verbal communication.

Psychology can justify and enrich our understanding of the skills. Bosses and colleagues can help us to prepare and support us when we are out in the field. But at the end of the negotiation, satisfaction does not come from forcing something onto an unwilling opponent, nor dissatisfaction from yielding to overwhelming pressure.

Our sense of fulfillment comes from the conviction that we have worked with another party to create a deal excellent for us both, or from the conviction that we have earned the advantage whilst yet giving satisfaction.

Our sense of fulfillment comes from having successfully used the practical skills of negotiating.

Effectiveness in negotiating is an important part of any manager’s equipment, and Bill Scott’s best selling book “The Skills of Negotiating” is suitable for both the beginner and the experienced negotiator. It covers key areas such as the building of a businesslike yet cordial climate for negotiations, a disciplined approach to preparation, and the skills of leading and structuring a negotiation towards agreement; and it presents a range of techniques and tactics designed to give immediate advantage. This book offers methods that have been developed and tested with some four hundred negotiators representing many types of business in many different countries. With the author’s down-to-earth style, this book is surely to be read with enjoyment as well as profit. To access the full book summary, please visit http://www.bizsum.com.

People have just two choices when it comes to their emotions: they can master their emotions or be mastered by them. That doesn’t mean that to be a good team player, you have to turn off your feelings.

But it does not mean that you shouldn’t let your feelings prevent you from doing what you should or drive you to do things you shouldn’t.

A classic example of what can happen when a person doesn’t discipline his emotions can be seen in the life of golf legend Bobby Jones. Like today’s Tiger Woods, Jones was a gold prodigy. He began playing in 1907 at age five. By age twelve, he was scoring below par, an accomplishment most golfers don’t achieve in a lifetime of playing the game. At age fourteen, he qualified for the U.S. Amateur Championship. But Jones didn’t win that event. His problem can be best described by the nickname he acquired: “club thrower.” Jones often lost his temper – and his ability to play well.

An older golfer whom Jones called Grandpa Bart advised the young man, “You’ll never win until you can control that temper of yours.” Jones took his advice and began working to discipline his emotions. At age twenty-one, Jones blossomed and went on to be one of the greatest golfers in history, retiring at age twenty-eight after winning the grand slam of golf. Grandpa Bart’s comment sums up the situation: “Bobby was fourteen when he mastered the game of golf, but he was twenty-one when he mastered himself.”

People who often experience relational difficulties are tempted to look at everyone but themselves to explain the problem. But we must always begin by examining ourselves and being willing to change whatever deficiencies we have. Critic Samuel Johnson advised that “he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief which he purposes to remove.”

The human mind has a tremendous amount of power in our lives. That which holds our attention determines our actions. Because of that, where we are today is the result of the dominating thoughts in our minds. And the way we think determines what our attitudes are. The good news is that you and I can change that. You can control your thoughts, and because of that, you can control your attitude. The point is that your thinking prompts your emotion. Why is that important? Because your attitude is your emotional approach to life. It’s the framework through which you see events, other people, even yourself. That’s why you can believe in the saying, You are not what you think you are, but what you think… you are.”

Can’t get enough of leadership? If you’ve read any of John C. Maxwell’s books on leadership, you know that leadership is developed daily, not in a day. That’s why he’s created Go for Gold, a daily companion to Leadership Gold. It’s designed to help supercharge your growth as a leader.  For more book summaries, please visit http://www.bizsum.com.

One of the most common misconceptions about forgiveness is that it necessarily means forgetting. How many times have we heard someone say, “Forgive and forget!” This is next to impossible – barring serious brain injury, of course. We are not wired to completely forget painful events in our past.

Some people might think this kind of memory is God’s cruel joke, just to torment us for our sins. On the contrary, it is a blessing that allows us to remember and learn from past experiences that were hurtful.

We don’t believe it is possible to totally forget a hurt, but we also don’t believe it’s always a good thin to do so anyway. When we try to stuff away our hurts, we are only prolonging the inevitable. When we do that, we are simply waiting for the explosion to occur. Like a volcano, the intense pressure from past hurts builds up inside us, looking for release until it finally erupts. And when it does, it is extremely damaging to family and friends.

William Meninger once wrote these words about forgiveness: “Forgiveness, then, is not forgetting. It is not condoning or absolving. Neither is it pretending nor something done for the sake of the offender. It is not a thing we just do by a brutal fact of the will. It does not entail a loss of identity, of specialness, or of face. It does not release the offenders from obligations they may or may not recognize. An understanding of these things will go a long way towards helping people enter into the forgiveness process.”

Forgiveness is not a onetime event but a process. Unfortunately, many Christian men don’t understand this. If you’ve done something extremely hurtful to your wife and seeking her forgiveness, then you can’t expect the healing to take place immediately. Your loved one may not get over the hurt right away. It may take time.

In fact, and this can be painful to consider – depending on the severity of the hurt, your loved one may never fully recover from the pain. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you will suffer day after day for your wrongdoing or the wrongs done to you, but it does mean that the pain may show up from time to time, even years after the offense, usually when some events sparks the memory. The pain isn’t as severe as when it first happened, but it still hurts.

We think this is one way God helps us to keep humble, it’s hard to be overconfident about our emotional or spiritual maturity when we remember how things used to be. We somehow believe that once we say those magic words, “I forgive you,” all pain and hurt just disappear. But it doesn’t always work that way. Often we must go through a process before we can completely heal from the hurt and forgive our loved one for the hurt he or she caused.

By humbly seeking forgiveness and acknowledging every aspect of wrongdoing on your part, you are taking care of your own responsibilities. God does not hold us responsible for our spouse’s sin, only our own.

This article is based on the book “Men’s Relational Toolbox.”  For more self-help resources, please visit http:/www.bestsum.com.