Jeff Gitterman – Financial Freedom – Episode #33

Jeffrey Gitterman is an award winning financial advisor and the founder and CEO of Gitterman & Associates Wealth Management, LLC. www.gawmllc.com.

In these challenging economic times, Jeff recently co-founded Beyond Success, www.BeyondSuccessConsulting.com, a coaching and consulting firm that brings more holistic values to the world of business and finance. His first book, Beyond Success: Redefining the Meaning of Prosperity, was recently published by AMACOM, the publishing house of the American Management Association.

Scott Musgrave – Episode #32

Scott Musgrave shows you how to take your health seriously! He strives to create optimal health by utilizing cutting edge knowledge and skills to create balance within your body. Once your systems are balanced, optimal function is restored and you will thrive.

His advanced training allows him to rapidly create a state of neurological and physiological balance within your body. This balance is often a catalyst for significant life changes, including: performance enhancement, symptom reduction, normalized movement patterns, and pain relief.

Don’t settle for living with less than optimal function. Take advantage of your full potential… Play at Your Peak and Live Without Limitation!

How To Cope With Being Passed Over For Promotion

Have you recently been passed over for promotion? Seeing a peer being offered advancement opportunities while your career seems stuck in a rut can be an unpleasant experience. This is especially true when you consider your skill set and commitment to be equal to (or better than) that of your promoted coworker. Coping with the emotional fall out of this situation requires objective self examination and good communication. Stressing out about your capabilities and worth isn’t effective either so the best thing to do is find out what happened and get feedback.

Talking to Your Boss

Storming into your manager’s office and demanding an explanation for why you weren’t chosen is a bad idea for obvious reasons. Someone who can’t stay in control of their emotions isn’t ready for additional responsibilities. On the other hand, trying to figure out “what went wrong” all on your own is a sure way to become paranoid and depressed. So, it is OK to talk to your boss about how the decision to promote a peer was reached – once you have calmed down. Here’s an example of a respectful way you can talk to your boss that may shed some light on what’s holding you back in terms of your career:

Elder Caregivers Need Policies and Benefits to Change with Times

Many of today’s workers are faced with a stressful caregiving situation as their parents become more and more dependent. Even if you don’t have an aging parent living with you, there’s a good chance you could be “on call”. Mom may fall and break her hip while she’s home alone; Dad might have a memory lapse and be found wandering the streets. As the emergency contact, you’re the one who is asked to come and sort things out.

If a health issue is ongoing, FMLA may kick in. This provides you with legally protected (but unpaid) leave to care for an ill family member if you work for a company with 50+ employees. However, when you pitch in to care for a mother or father in-law FMLA does not apply. So far, the law hasn’t caught up with the realities of elder caregiving. It’s up to employers to decide when and if emergency time off will be granted or if you will be fired for attendance violations.

Some Employers Have a Double Standard

Many employers seem to have a compassionate attitude about parents having to leave the office suddenly when a dependent child needs them. Part of this has to do with a wariness of being accused of discriminating against women. After all, it’s still usually Mom who gets the call to deal with a child-related emergency – even if both parents work.

However, employers don’t always view the elder caregiving relationship as a serious commitment. Apparently, they figure you can just get someone else to step in and take care of an emergent need. Unlike in the UK, there is currently no law protecting U.S. employees’ right to put family first in these situations. Employees can’t afford to wait for the law to catch up – they need to start negotiating for changes in the workplace now.

Contrarian Investing

Would you consider purchasing a fireplace in the peak of summer or an air conditioner in the dead of winter? Would you invest in a sale even if you did not have an immediate use for the product you are purchasing? Do you place value on the things you get at a discounted rate?

The summertime almost always presents an opportunity for people to invest. It is a quiet period because most individuals are focused on spending money and having fun. Businesses tend to slow down and they offer significant incentives to attract new clientele. Most companies are focused on maintaining relevance, marketing and promotions. It’s a great opportunity for networking and seeking out new relationships. Investment of time and money can produce great rewards if strategically planned.

As a singer, songwriter or other creative artist, the summertime is the best time to work on your visibility and ability to earn significant money promoting your ministry and/or product. While everyone else is vacationing, you should be working diligently making connections, attending events and yes, even selling your product out of the trunk of your car. Going into non-traditional places for exposure will give you a chance to book your calendar for the remainder of the year.

ARE YOU SUFFERING FROM STRESS CREEP?

You know what it’s like when you’re down to the wire on a project and suddenly that jolt of adrenalin kicks in and gets you to the finish line? That’s stress. In small doses, stress can give you a welcome energy boost and the increased focus you need to get the job done. But when you’re dealing with massive doses of stress – especially unrelenting stress with no recovery periods – it can take a physical, mental and emotional toll.

When your brain perceives danger – real or imagined – your natural survival instincts spring to your defense and you go into “fight or flight” mode. Your heart rate speeds up, your muscles tighten, your focus sharpens and your blood starts pumping faster. Stress can protect you by increasing your reaction time so that you’re able to slam on the brakes and avoid hitting a car that suddenly pulls out in front of you. Stress also keeps you sharp when you’re giving a presentation or studying for final exams.

The problem is that the amount of stress in your life can elevate without your even realizing it. I call this stress creep. It’s not hard for our stress to creep up on us in our ultra-driven society where we seem to pride ourselves on being crazy, busy, slammed on a 24/7 basis. And it’s literally 24/7 since our cyber-gadgets and social networking systems have added a right-now urgency and around-the-clock accessibility to our lives like never before.

So how do you know if your stress is under control or off the charts? Get a quick snapshot by answering the questions below with the following scores: 4 always, 3 often, 2 sometimes, and 1 never.

I Fired My Dad

Are you in your 20s to early 30s and filling a managerial role at your job? Congratulations! Your work ethic, educational accomplishments, and job skills are paying off already. As a Gen Y boss, you’ve got a bright future ahead if you can learn how leverage the talents of those who report to you. This can be a particularly challenging task when your employees are older – in some cases – old enough to be your parents. It’s even more challenging when you encounter performance problems that can result in disciplinary actions that can, in some cases, lead to termination.

Many Gen Y managers are adapting, often rapidly, with how best to manage the needs and motivations of a multi-generational team. Supervising an older workforce as a young adult highlights the generation differences that impact work relationships. This can create a host of awkward and stressful communication challenges to Gen Y managers.

Generation Profiles: Comparing Work Styles

In order to understand how to approach performance issues between a younger manager and an older employee, you have to recognize that discrepancies abound between Gen Y and other generations in terms of work ethic. The chart below highlights some typical attitudinal differences about work between generations that make up the bulk of current workforce populations.

Diana Lewis Jewell – Going Grey – Episode #29

Diana Lewis Jewell has been called everything from “the guru of gray hair,” to “Moses leading us out of the wilderness of hair coloring” as the author of Going Gray, Looking Great!, the first book of its kind for women considering letting their silver shine.

The Former Marketing Director of Vogue Magazine and Promotion Director of Seventeen, In early 2008, she founded www.goinggraylookinggreat.com, dedicated to women even thinking about going natural. Here, she dispenses advice daily, helping women go through the dreaded transitioning process, select the right makeup and wardrobe for their newly silvered locks, consider coloring procedures or haircare products that might boost or enhance their gray, and, indeed decide if going gray is right for them.

The website has fostered a strong, supportive community, is logged into in 80 countries around the world, and has an active Membership chatting daily on its pages.
She points out that “going natural” is a megatrend not envisioned at the time she wrote the book. “We’re now seeing two generations embracing authenticity, both boomers and Gen-Xers,” she says, “and it has to do with so many factors beyond a simple decision to stop coloring.”

Warren Bobrow – Reinventing Yourself – Episode #27

Warren Bobrow – Wild River Review/ Wild Table editor, Warren Bobrow grew up on a farm in Morristown, NJ. A graduate of Emerson College with a degree in Film, he spent his senior year as a research assistant in visual thinking at CAVS / MIT. He worked for many years in the corporate world, hating every minute of it and then suddenly lost his job. At which point he decided to follow his passion and reinvent himself into a world re-known wine and food expert.

Today, he lives his life with passion!

Wild Table has bits of visual poetry, terroir and food commentaries. In addition to Wild River Review, Warren writes for NJMYWay.com, NJ Monthly, Edible Jersey, NJ Savvy Living, Chutzpah Magazine and NJ Life Magazine.

Sharing Your Vision

This challenging economic season has created an opportunity for everyone to think outside of the box and create a plan of action utilizes your natural talents and abilities. Consideration to establish your own business is both personally fulfilling and a satisfactory financial vehicle as well.

It is imperative to identify your talent, write a vision and make it plain. Then, you must share your vision with others. This is what I want to discuss today. You’ve determined your true calling, you’ve envisioned yourself walking into your destiny and now how do you make that happen? Sharing your vision based on your talent with others will allow those individuals to assist you creatively with options of how to get started. After all, that is what deters people most often. They don’t know where to begin.

I recall sharing the challenges I faced when I first became an author. I wasn’t certain if I accomplished my goals and objectives. Fear of rejection made me keep the thoughts of my perceived failure to myself. To share that intimate information and allow myself to be open to criticism was new for me. After all, a reason why we don’t succeed is because we talk ourselves out of our destiny being afraid of what others might think. Or perhaps we didn’t get the results we were seeking the first time we tried. Maybe, you shared your ideas with the wrong people and they told you that you were chasing a dream, it wasn’t possible, you can’t achieve… I could go on. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had more to accomplish. So I went back to the drawing board. I had already identified the gift and I wrote the vision. It never changed. This time around I shared the vision with other people.

You see, I was independently successful the first time around based on my own skills.

But when I shared my vision with other people, they began to add creative ideas and suggestions I never considered.

Next Page »