Turning Strangers Into Friends

By Royane Real

Do you find it easy to make conversation with new people you’ve just met? Or does the thought of trying to make conversation with someone new make you break out in a cold sweat?

If you don’t feel comfortable making casual conversation with new people you have just met, you will find it harder to make new friends. You will also find it more difficult to fit in at your work place.

One of the most common reasons that people have difficulty making conversation with someone they don’t know very well is because they put too much pressure on themselves.

Many people think that whenever they meet someone new, they have to say something really interesting and brilliant, right from the beginning. Even before they know the other person very well. They think they have to really put up a great performance to impress the other person.

They don’t just let themselves just be ordinary, and talk about fairly ordinary things.

Here’s a very important lesson to learn about making conversation with people: Insisting to yourself that you have to be brilliant and dazzling in all your conversations will not win you new friends. It will not even improve your conversational performance.
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How to Invest in Your Children This Summer

By Chick Moorman

My neighbor recently purchased a $400 sandbox for his young children. How can anyone spend $400 dollars on a sandbox, you might wonder. Simple. It’s a state-of-the-art sandbox with a swing set and slide attached to it. It’s high quality through and through.

With all due respect to my neighbor (who loves his children and has the best of intentions when making major purchases for them, I am sure), children do not need a $400 sandbox. What they do need is the experience of going out to the backyard with their parents and building a sandbox. They need to hold boards together while we pound and do the pounding while we take a turn holding the boards together. They need to get a sliver and have it removed and bandaged. They need to help us sand the boards so slivers are kept to a minimum. They need to rub shoulders with us, sweat with us, smell us, see us, touch us, and hear us. They need the experience of building a sandbox much more than they need the sandbox.

So the number one summer rule for parents is this: When investing in your children, invest in experiences, not in things. Some suggestions include: Read more

FLOAT Above It All.

by Travis Wright

When a situation doesn’t turn out as you would liked it to, take a moment to reflect and visually float above it all. Seriously. Imagine that your are like a spirit floating above this moment in time. Now, take look from a new angle. Sometimes, you will find a certain ridiculousness about the situation than you initially thought.

Many of us like to think that we are logical 100% of the time. We would like to think that we are rational 100% of the time. But in reality, we make irrational and illogical choices every so often… probably more frequently than we would like to admit.

So, I propose taking a moment and being purposeful, fanciful and pretend to be omnipotent. Rise above the situation, and perhaps view it as if were an optimal situation. Do a 360 angle pan around the event in your mind’s eye, if you wish.

What would it take to make it happen and become the best it can be? How could you have acted and reacted in that event, to make this optimal situation occur?
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What Everyone Should Know about Battling their Family Members

by cg.com GuestBlogger Aaron Potts

Very few people in history (if any) have gone through their entire lives without coming to blows with members of their family at one time or another. Sometimes it is parents and children who can’t see eye to eye, sometimes it is a struggle with in-laws or siblings, and sometimes it is married couples who take it to the ring on a frequent basis.

Whatever iteration of family strife that you have in your life, it is rarely an occurrence that has positive results. Controlling this issue can benefit everyone involved, including yourself.

This article is not meant as a psychological analysis of family trauma. However, at a basic level, family problems can at least be alleviated – if not avoided – by simply learning to control emotional responses.

The issue of who is right or wrong, or what resolution is found for any given situation is not nearly as important as the emotions that are generated during the struggle.
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