Just read this and thought I would share. It comes from Michael Tate over at Aria.

How do you take courage when your whole world is collapsing around you? How do you maintain a continued vision and philosophy of success when everything around you turns to crap, and continues to do so? How do you maintain a vision when you’re under attack?

Each time I sit to write an article for the revenue.generator newsletter I try to create something helpful, something purposeful, and something hopefully not only valuable to your day in radio sales but also useful somehow in your life.
I suspect like you I read my fair share of motivational books and articles - sometimes a word, an idea, or some simple phraseology penetrates my dull brain and helps make some kind of difference to me and hopefully to the way I interact with those around me. But it’s when I’m struggling and drowning in the world that I need this stuff the most, yet I turn to it least.

It is extremely difficult to maintain courage ‘under fire’, particularly to maintain inner-strength, character, and the clarity of your ‘dream’ beneath a consistent and prolonged attack of what can feel like ‘you against the world’.

So what’s the difference between those who persist and those who cave-in under the outside pressure?

hat happens to the dreamers of big dreams?

What happened to the dreams you had as a kid?

What happened to the goals and grand visions you had at the beginning of last year; and of this year? Let alone the dreams you dreamed the day you finished college; the day you got married; or the day your child was born?

Whatever happened to fulfilling what quietly lives in your heart?

Have you all but stopped seeking and believing?

Have you become so tired, so jaded, and so mediocre that you’ve convinced yourself that your dreams were simple minded ideas of a younger more innocent you?

Have you stripped yourself bare of all your promise and power? Are you now simply quietly and cynically drifting through life (waiting to fade away) convinced that genuine success and joy is for others?

It’s absolutely true that the gutter is full of failed genius. Yet did these people truly fail because “that’s the way it’s meant to be”, or did they fall under the weight of their own self-imposed beliefs and barriers? Did they simply lack the strength of courage to fulfill their inner dreams and desires?

If you are going to allow fear to win the war for your life you will lose, and your dreams will die with you.

Don’t depart without showing us the real you.

Get rich, go broke, and do it all over again. Get married, don’t get married. Love your children; live your truth and speak your truth. Enjoy your madness and embrace your genius. A life lived less than genuinely is a mere façade, and then not you.

Helen Keller wrote: “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
If you simply avoid living consciously and courageously, then that is equivalent to giving up on life itself, where your continued existence becomes little more than a waiting period before physical death - the nothing as opposed to the daring adventure.”

Sell (and live) without regret.

We ALL have a great responsibility for Great Creative!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYEf8XZKlUU[/youtube]

Being well liked is what most people want in relationships. The benefits are obvious. You will get the help you need at the time you need it. People will give you information about new opportunities you didn’t know before. Above all, they will really care and love you.

But how could you get other people to like you? How could you become a well liked person? There is actually just one simple rule to follow: you should like other people before they like you. When people realize that you like them, it’s very likely that they will also like you.

Regarding this, I believe that there is one and just one message you need to deliver in your relationships. Delivering this message is the key to strong relationships, and here it is:

You are important to me. That’s it. No more, no less. Not “your money” nor “your knowledge”, but “you” - as a person - are important to me. Anything you should do in relationships stems from this message. There more you succeed in delivering this message, the more people will like you.

So here I’d like to share 33 tips on how to deliver this message in your relationships. Consequently, these are also tips to become a well liked person. Here they are:

1. Give your contacts a big smile when you meet them. Make them feel that you are really happy to meet them.
2. Give your full attention to the people you converse with as if nothing else is important.
3. When they ask for your attention, leave whatever you are doing.
4. When they call you, greet them with enthusiasm as if you are longing for their call.
5. Don’t make them wait.
6. Print the list of your contacts and look at it in your spare time. It will remind you of whom to touch base.
7. Always reply your contacts’ emails and text messages.
8. Reply their emails and text messages in the first chance you get.
9. Shake their hands with enthusiasm.
10. Praise them sincerely when they do something good. Make them feel that you are proud of them.
11. Always return their calls.
12. Send a message to them on their birthdays. Even better, call them.
13. Drop your old contacts quick emails or text messages to ask how they are doing.
14. Remember their names and achievements.
15. Remember important facts about them, especially the things they really care about (you may want to write them down).
16. Introduce them to the people in your contact who may help them out.
17. Actively find the deepest needs they may have (without waiting for them to explicitly tell you).
18. Take initiative to give them the solutions they need.
19. Give thanks for them in your session of gratitude.
20. Mention their names in your prayer.
21. Talk with them about their life.
22. Ask them specific questions about things they care about. They will realize that you care enough to remember their facts.
23. Give them something precious you have. Time is a good candidate.
24. Go eat with them. Even better, treat them.
25. When you meet them, don’t look at your watch as if you have something more important to do.
26. When you talk to them, don’t look over their shoulder as if you are looking for someone more important to talk to.
27. Send them quick tips or articles you just found which may benefit them.
28. Message them encouraging words or quotes.
29. Lend them the best books or DVDs you have.
30. Talk to them about how you like your other friends. They will think that you may talk the same way about them.
31. Don’t talk negatively to them about how you don’t like your other friends. They will think that you may also talk the same way about them.
32. Occasionally mention their names in your conversation with them.
33. Be creative to give them small surprises every now and then.

And Drink! They’d die of dehydration blaming the cowboy because he didn’t scoop the water, cool the water, and bring it to the horses lips, where he would gently pour the water down the horses throat.

This exercise continues to prove one fact: Radio continues to kill itself by convincing reps that they sell advertising, when all they really sell are the minutes. WE create the advertising to fill the minutes.

That point is often left out.

Clients come and go. Sometimes we just need a little reality check and a little motivation.

Thanks to Andrew Frame for the insight.

This is a call a young lad made to a Christian radio station in Texas. My aplogies if you have seen it. But it’s very moving.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCdZwitrNoY[/youtube]

Want a little more perspective?

We had a listener e-mail us about their youngest child…

“I went to my youngest’s classroom today for their “holiday” party. A little girl named Brittany from our neighborhood - a little ragamuffin type, their family is broke and it shows, there’s some MAJOR issues there, her older sister has a mouth that would make a drunken sailor blush and has told me where to go and what to stick in and where when I get there and she’s 7. yowza. Anyway, Brittany is in Emilie’s class. I saw her today. Her smile can light up the room. Even though I know she suffers by having to follow her only sibling around the neighborhood and encurring the wrath of the kids that make fun of her or yell at her and her sister or whatever. I see her today, smiling, with a patch over her eye. Not a dark one. A clear bandage type one. Not knowing what happened, I simply went straightforward (after she ran up to me to give me a hug - this poor child sees comfort within myself and Holly whenever they drive around the neighborhood, she always stops…) and said “What happened to your eye, sweetie?” “It got sick, and I had surgery. They’re looking for one to match my other one.” WHAT? How does this happen? WHY does this happen? She’s able to smile through it. And, from the teacher I hear that it was CANCER. They found it - and they’re not out of the woods yet. UGH. It’s VERY possible that she’ll ultimately lose the other one. I wanted to hug her and not let go. I wanted to try to figure out how to explain to her that no matter how difficult life is, to be sure to check out the colors in things, the sunsets, the way the christmas lights reflect around the neighborhood and light up the sky. I wanted to let her know that life is going to be “okay”. That she won’t be picked on (any more than normal…kids are awful creatures sometimes…). That it’ll all work out. Of course, all I could do was hug her and tell her Merry Christmas, between teary eyes. After reading “The Polar Express” to her and the rest of the class, I found out from the teacher (who is a wonderful woman - and actually had my wife in her very first class…) that another of their classmates’ mother died. Suicide. Last week. Guess who found her and tried to get her to wake up?”

Yeah. It’s the most wonderful time of the year and stuff. But, man, be extra nice to folks, pick up a tab for a stranger, give to the Salvation Army kettles, whatever… but try to keep this giving spirit with you ALL YEAR, not just at Christmas. And certainly, give your spouse, loved one, life partner, rock, whatever… an extra hug tonight.

It may have been a rough year for you, but seeing what these two wonderful children are going through, I realize that my life is peaches and cream in comparison.

Justin Kaiser
Creative Identity Group