10 Effective Ways to Promote Yourself

This is a competitive world and people are too busy to take note of you. Therefore, it is in your own interest to promote yourself. Promoting yourself is to build your reputation, get trust from others. It is also to let others know you are there so that you can get ahead and grow your career.

1. Keep your boss posted: You may be a competent worker, but don’t just work quietly. You must keep your boss informed regularly about your work in progress. When your boss is aware of what you do, it is easier for him or her to decide in your favor when there is a promotion or a career-enhancing assignment.

2. Learn something new and share: After you have attended a course or a seminar, prepare a summary of what you have learnt and pass a copy to your boss and circulate it to your co-workers as well.

3. Update your profile at social networking sites: Your profile at the social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn needs to be updated constantly. Highlight your achievements, courses taken, or movements in your career.

4. Write articles: One effective way to promote yourself is to project an image of authority in the field of your expertise by writing articles of your niche. Build a blog and start writing and inform others through your social networking sites whenever you publish a new article.

5. Contribute ideas: Contributing original and unique ideas at work is a great way to impress others and create a positive image of yourself.

6. Offer solutions to problems: Similarly, taking an initiative to solve problems at the workplace is another marvelous idea to create a positives self-image.

7. Networking offline: Get to know more people in your industry and introduce yourself. Give your business card when you meet someone so that your new acquaintance will know what you do for a living.

8. Publicity: Volunteering to do public speaking and engaging in media interviews are some of the sure ways to let others take note of you and remember you.

9. Obtain testimonials: What others say about you is more convincing than what you tell the world about yourself. Collect and keep appreciation and thank you letters. Provide links to other blogs that say a positive thing about what you have written. These are proof of what you are capable of.

10. Showcase your accomplishments: Nobody knows what you have achieved. It is up to you to keep others informed of your successes in a subtle way.

To establish oneself in the world, one does all one can to seem established there already. ~
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

13 Tips to Bring Up a Happy Child

One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.
Maria Montessori

As parents, you can do a lot to bring up a happy child:

1.      Be active outdoor:  There are many advantages to spend time outdoors with your child.  Apart from fresh air and sunshine, your child gets to build up his or her body and reduces stress and negative emotions. It is also a chance for them to have fun and find satisfaction in what they do physically.

2.      Hug often:  To hug is to show affection and it is an effective way to convey your love for your child. For the baby, your tender touch will be able to promote health and alertness.  For the parents, hugging can reduce stress and calm your mind.

3.      A lot of free time: Avoid filling the time of your child with a lot of activities and classes. Let the child have more free time to do what he or she likes and stimulate their imagination. Allow your child to do less and encourage relaxation that leads to creativity.

Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world.
Maria Montessori

4.      Eat healthily: The key to good health is to eat fresh food, consume less fat and sugar and follow a balanced diet. Drink plenty of water and not sugary drinks every day. A healthy body is essential for the healthy and happy growth of your child.

5.      Listen to your child: When your child is talking to you, put down whatever that you are doing and listen to him or her attentively. Be patient and don’t interrupt. It is the way to show your concern for your child. In this way, you encourage your child to communicate with you freely and willingly. Your child just needs to talk to someone.

6.      Teach your child to care for others: Encourage him or her to help others by taking part in community services. This is an effective way to show your child that giving is a wonderful way to be happy too. 

7.      Discourage perfection: You can encourage your child to do his or her best but do not measure their performance according to your standards or expectations. It is applying stress and pressure on your child. Allow your child to learn and grow happily. 

8.      Stimulate the artistic talents in your child: Introduce music, art, dance, and other artistic activities to unearth the inner world of your child. To dance, draw or play music is a way to express his or her emotions and feel satisfied.

9.      Teach your child to solve problems: Help your child to identify a problem and ask how he or she is going to solve it.  Guide your child to take the correct steps to solve a problem. Assist your child to come up with a solution to a problem.  

Too often we give our children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. ~Roger Lewin

10.  Compliment your child constructively: Spot what he or she has done right and compliment accordingly. This is the best way to inspire and motivate your child. He or she will be very happy and excited to do more and better.

11.  Read stories to your child: It is the best way to cultivate a reading habit in your child and to provoke his or her imagination.

12.  Teach your child about a positive mental attitude: Promote confidence in your child. Let your child know that whatever happens to him or her is not important, the most important thing is to react to things positively. This is to encourage optimism, hope, and positive expectations in the mind of your child.

13.  Be happy yourself: Your child follows what you do and not what you say. Be cheerful, upbeat, and smile often. Spread happiness around the house and influence your child to live with joy and happiness.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. ~James Baldwin

The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother. ~Theodore Hesburgh

10 P’s To Be Successful

Success is a Journey, Not a Destination

The more P’s you adopt, the more successful you will be. Find out how many P’s you have got.

1. Productive: Productivity is the product of efficiency and effectiveness. It means doing the right thing and doing it right at the right time. The other plus factor is getting more important things done in less time.

Once you get into the habit of work, you can be more productive in the things you want to do. ~Adrian Grenier


2. Passion: Are you enthusiastic about what you do? You are inspired by your dreams and passion. You are energetic about the things that you are interested to do. Find your passion and be successful.

Follow your passion, and success will follow you. ~Terri Guillemets

3. Positive: Possibilities are about positive thinking. Positive thinking, in turn, brews a positive attitude. A positive attitude develops into positive habits.

The only difference between a good day and a bad day is your attitude. ~Dennis S. Brown

4. People skills: The secret of human relationships is to be interested in others.
Helping others to get what they want will, in turn, help you to get what you want in life. There is no withdrawal without a deposit.

Courage means to keep working a relationship, to continue seeking solutions to difficult problems, and to stay focused during stressful periods. ~Denis Waitley


5. Personal development: Be interested to develop in all areas of your life such as your health, work, family, relationships, and personal finance. Read consistently and regularly. Learn new things to stimulate and enrich your mind. When you live, you continue to learn and stay young.

Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still. ~Chinese Proverb

6. Physical fitness: The only way to live life fully is to be fit and energetic. The way to maintain a robust lifestyle is to move your body every day. To obtain energy you have to expend energy.

Happiness lies first of all in health. ~George William Curtis


7. Play: Remember the saying: all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy? You need a balanced life. The most wonderful thing is that when you work hard, you will play hard because you truly deserve it and there is no guilt feeling.

When you play, play hard; when you work, don't play at all ~Theodore Roosevelt


8. Prepared: To organize and to plan is to be prepared. Live an orderly life to avoid stress, last-minute rush, and frustration.

To be prepared is half the victory. ~Miguel de Cervantes
Think ahead. Don't let day-to-day operations drive out planning. ~Donald Rumsfeld


9. Patient: One of the benefits of patience is that you make a better decision because you do not act in haste. To reach your goals you also need patience. To understand other people, all the more, you need patience and attention. Patience is a virtue though you get instant gratification in this age of technological advancements.

Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy. ~Saadi


10. Perseverance: When you know you are on the right track, just carry on until you reach your goals. Do not be discouraged by setbacks and problems along the way and be willing to go for the long haul. There is no overnight success.

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish. ~ John Quincy Adams


Which are the most important P’s for your success?

How to be more Successful

Follow your dreams, work hard, practice, and persevere. Make sure you eat a variety of foods, get plenty of exercise and maintain a healthy lifestyle. ~Sasha Cohen

Success can be anything. It can be getting a straight-A in an examination for a student. It can be a promotion for someone from a junior level to that of an executive. It can be publishing the first book for a writer. However, success principles are the same. You need to spend a long time, put in extra effort and hard work to get what you want in life. Here are the 7 ingredients to achieve success:

1. Be clear about your goals: You will form mental images of what you want to be when you are very sure of what you want in life. It is usually something that you are passionate about. You will conceive ideas, make a plan, and set goals to turn your dreams into reality. Goal setting is a powerful way to focus your mind and energy because you have established a direction and a purpose. You channel your energy productively as you are motivated by what you can accomplish when your goals are realized.

Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally. ~David Frost

2. Be prepared: Be willing to put in the daily effort to do what is required of you. Learn as much as you can so that you can continue to improve yourself. Aim for the best of what you want to be and be excellent in what you do. When you are prepared you are ready.

One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes. ~Benjamin Disraeli

3. Be fit: Physical fitness is essential to sustain your energy in the long haul. Health and fitness promote calmness and allow you to work with concentration. Productivity is what you get.

If a man achieves victory over this body, who in the world can exercise power over him? He who rules himself rules over the whole world. ~Vinoba Bhave

4. Be enthusiastic: When you love what you do and you stay fit and energetic, you will work wholeheartedly and mindfully to do the tasks for the day. To be successful is to work with zest.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

5. Be Creative: Be resourceful to create original ideas, don’t follow the crowd. Establish and build your own brand to differential yourself. Be outstanding and be a winner.

Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better. ~John Updike

6. Be Persevered: Success is meaningless if it can be attained without great effort. Real success is about working with your blood, sweat, and tears for many years and encountering setbacks, failures, and obstacles.


In order to succeed, you must fail, so that you know what not to do the next time. ~Anthony J. D'Angelo

7. Be lucky: When you are ready and you tell the world what you want, you will be lucky to receive many opportunities.


Those who have succeeded at anything and don't mention luck are kidding themselves. ~Larry King



The secret of success is constancy to purpose. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

Related article: How to be successful

Are You Blogging Productively?

Are you making progress as a blogger? Are you getting what you want from your blog? Answer the following questions to find out how productive you are in blogging:

1.       Are you posting articles regularly and consistently within your niche?

 What is your posting schedule? Do you post an article a day, three times a week or once a week? Be consistent so that readers are not turned off.  Are your articles written within your niche? Readers expect to read what you have promised to them.  

2.       Are you getting more traffic?

 Is your site getting more visitors directly, from referring links and keywords of your articles?  Are you getting more page views and unique visitors? An upward trend of your site visitors means you are doing something right.

3.       Are you getting more subscribers?

 More RSS and email subscribers of your articles mean what you have written are what they are looking for. 

4.       Are you getting more Twitter followers?

 More followers mean they are interested in what you do. They follow and see what you do next.

5.       Are you getting more “Like” and “+1” for your articles?

Do you have “Like” and “+1” buttons at the end of each article? ” Likes” and “+1” mean people find your articles interesting and stimulating. 

6.       Are you getting more Technorati Authority?

To get Technorati Authority, your blog needs to stay active and current because only fresh links to your blog are counted. The moment when your blog is without new links your authority will drop.   

7.       Are you getting PageRank?

You do not find PageRank on all popular blogs. It’s good to have it because it means your pages are valuable to Google and it is more than just relevant links to your site or pages.   

8.       Are you getting more blog followers?

Blog followers, like Twitter followers, “Like” and “+1”, enjoy what you blog about and they are taking an interest in what you are going to write about. 

9.       Are you getting more comments?

Comments mean readers are keen to interact with you and share their views. You get to know the readers’ thoughts and reaction. They find your articles thought-provoking.     

10.   Are you getting more earnings?

Are you making decent money from AdSense?  The more page views you can get for your site, the more money you will earn.

11.   Are you getting a positive blog review? 

A positive review is like getting thumbs up for your blog. The writer appreciates what you do and he or she recommend your blog to others.

Are you happy and satisfied with the performance of your blog? Are you getting what you have expected and hope for? What can you do to be more productive?

How to be productive

Once you get into the habit of work, you can be more productive in the things you want to do. ~Adrian Grenier


To be productive is to produce results. How can you follow the ways of successful people and produce satisfying results?

1. Fill a need: Something needs to be done, but nobody ever figures out how to go about it. You come along and create a great idea to fill the need. There will be a demand for what you can do. By selling your products or services you become rich and famous.

2. Solve a problem: You notice a problem and you have a wonderful idea to overcome it. You differentiate yourself and stand out with your unique and original idea.

3. Positive mindset: a positive mindset is to work without fear and hesitation. There is no negativity to interfere with what you do at the moment. Positive thinking produces positive results. Productivity is what you get.

4. Passion: To be passionate is to love what you do. To be productive is to work hard and smart.

Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.
~Oprah Winfrey

5. Work on a clear goal: To focus is to work on the most important thing. It brings results and satisfaction and gets you nearer to your goals.

6. Seek Improvement: If you don’t fail it means you don’t try hard enough if you do fail it is a learning experience. To be productive is to do things differently and learn from your failures and move on much wiser. The only failure is to stop trying.

Our greatest glory is in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

7. Be inspired: What is your aspiration? There is something you enjoy doing and you work with your heart and soul. Concentration and attention are productive ways to get things done.

8. Be organized: The objective of getting organized is to accomplish what you want to get done. It is to be achieved in the shortest possible time. Advance planning is the way to get organized. Productivity is achieved by doing things in an orderly manner.

9. Taking breaks: Your productivity diminishes when you continue to work non-stop. Taking breaks from time to time is to regain your energy and sustain your concentration when you resume work.

10. Aim to simplify: Get rid of unnecessary paperwork and simplify procedures to get the same or even better results.



The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings. ~Thomas Sowell

10 Effective Ways to be Productive at Work

To be productive is to work smart, get the right thing and the most important thing done according to your plan and within a stipulated time frame in the most efficient way. However, there are other things to consider and avoid getting unproductive at the workplace:

1. Reduce procedures: To be productive is to simplify workflow. The trick is to avoid too much red tape to get a thing done like going to many departments and following many rules and getting approval from many people. It’s complicating to get a job done quickly.

2. Reduce meetings: Meetings are time-consuming. Try other more effective ways to get ideas, make decisions and discuss things without wasting everybody‘s time. The most important thing is to avoid meetings without a clear purpose.

The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings. ~Thomas Sowell

3. Reduce reports: Fewer reports mean more time for people to do the real job; workers work and salespeople sell.

4. Reduce paperwork: Examine existing forms and see if you can discard, reduce or combine a few forms into one so that less time is wasted on filling forms or other paperwork.

5. Follow the 80/20 rule: To get the most out of your business, concentrate on 20% of your customers who give you 80 % of the business. Spending more time on those people who matter the most to your revenue is the most productive thing to do.

6. Communicate more effectively: Be clear and concise in your written communication because you want to avoid misunderstanding and the need to clarify instead of getting a job done as instructed.

7. Impose deadlines: Parkinson’s Law says that ‘Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. It is important to have a deadline for every job so that it can be accomplished without undue delay.

8. Solicit ideas from workers: People on the job know what they are doing inside out. It is wise to seek suggestions from them to get things done more efficiently.

9. Personal productive habits: Some of the productive habits are:

• Plan ahead and carry a to-do list and be organized for the day
• Clear the clutter at the workplace.
• Take advantage of technology to do things faster and more accurately
• Doing one task at a time
• Be mindful at work
• Take breaks

10. Develop and train the workers: Invest more in workforce development because they are the ones who are responsible for the productivity of the company. Provide training and upgrade their skills so that they can be more productive and grow in their career.

At the end of each day, it is also a productive habit to take a few minutes to ask yourself a few questions and find out what you have achieved for the day:

•Was it a productive day?
• What have I learnt today?
• What were the challenges?
• How can I do better tomorrow?