Presentation skills are extremely important in many aspects of your life. Some people think that these skills are only needed by sales and other people that are required to get up in front of people on a regular basis. Reality is that communication is key to a happy and successful life. The words that we use are not always the most important piece of that communication process, but rather how way say and conduct ourselves while saying them. Whether you like it or not we are all in sales and have to sell ourselves everyday. Spend some time developing your presentation skills and you will be amazed by how much further you get in life.

Understand:

1. What areas are you weak at when it comes to presentations?
2. Why do you feel it is important that you develop your presentation skills?
3. What benefits will come to you personally if you develop your presentation skills?
4. If you do not develop your presentation skills what will be the consequences over time?

Learn:

Prescribe:

1. What is the most important take away that you gained from the video?
2. How will you use that take away to improve your presentation skills?
3. Present on a topic and record yourself on video as if you were giving that presentation to your target audience. Watch the video, critique it, and if there are any flaws start the process over again until have given a presentation that you would deem to be a killer presentation based on the concepts above.

There is always one common denominator that people that are unsuccessful at over coming challenges has and that is negative self talk and question asking. While you may not be able to control every situation that life throws at you, what you can control is how you react to those challenges which puts you in a postion of greater control. When you react in a postive way to challenges you begin having better self talk and asking more empowering questions rather then negative, endless loop questions. Postive question give you a means to an end around solutions, where negative questions thrust you into a negative loop with no real answers. For example a negative endless loop question is: “Why does this always happen to me?”. Where an example of a positive question would be: “How can I turn this around?” One allows you to focus on solution, where the other your just focusing on the problem.

In addition to asking yourself postive / empowering questions when you run into issue you also need to make sure you are spending your time focused in the right things. Most people that are not able to overcome challenges are more focused on the problem then solutions.  A good rule of thumb is to spend about 20% of your time on the problem and understanding it better and 80% of your time focused on solutions appying energy that will solve the problem.

To get your started ensure you are using the 80% / 20% rule of problem solving as mentioned about in conjustion with good questions. Five great empowering questions that will help you solve any problem are as follows:

1. What is great about this problem? Or what could potentially be great about it?

2. What is not perfect yet?

3. What am I willing to do to make it the way I want?

4. What am I willing to no longer do to make it the way I want it?

5. How can I enjoy the process while I do what is necessary to make it the way I want?

By putting these practices to work in your every day life you will give yourself a tremendous amount of empowerment to get any problem solved. Please feel free to add to any of the above information and add your thoughts in the comment area below.

So let’s start by breaking this skill up into segments and understanding them a bit better. The first part of this skill is Heartfelt Understanding. What I mean by heartfelt understanding is being able and willing to connect to your partner’s emotional world. In laymen’s terms this means being able to put yourself in your partner’s shoes and understanding things from their perspective.  When your partner doesn’t feel understood by you the relationship cannot grow and develop. The trick and the power comes in when you can listen to your partner without out judgment and truly understand and feel what they are feeling.  Most people are so worried about their agenda and themselves they over look the one main thing that it takes to make your relationship work and that’s your partner and his or her feelings.  Now that’s not to say that you have to agree with everything that your partner is saying, but they need to feel that you are on their side and understanding their perspectives.

The next part to this skill is being able to put your partner first, because it can’t be about you in a relationship.  The thing is, when you put someone else first and you are not concerned about you it puts you in a place of perceived vulnerability. After all if you aren’t worried about yourself and you’re putting yourself on a limb who’s going to have your back, right? The answer is your partner will if you both are truly committed to this practice, but you both have to have trust and faith in each other.  Scary, right? We’ve all been hurt or let down at some point or another in past relationships or even the one you may be in right now. But I truly believe the end result is amazing if you both can commit to taking this leap of faith and developing this practice. You can’t be your partners observer or critic, you need to develop that inner heart connection and become totally conscious of what your partner needs and feels.  It takes a little practice but I fully believe all the best things in life come as a result of practicing good habits.

There are a number of things you can do to help develop this practice. First be totally selfless, its about your partner not you. No matter how busy you and your partner get in this crazy world have scheduled periods of time where you tend solely to your partners needs and putting your needs second or third. Maybe bring them breakfast in bed, massage their back while talking after a hard day, or just hold them and touch them in ways that make them feel special, and I again emphasize “them”.  For this to work you want to spend time to fully understand what your partner likes and continually refine your approach. Understand what gifts, gestures, touch, or words makes your partner feel loved and appreciated. Focus on continually becoming more proficient at loving and pleasing him or her.  One thing I do need to emphasize is that for this to work you both have to be committed to doing this. If one side is consistently putting in and the other partner is just taking with no reciprocation it becomes somewhat of an emotionally cannibalistic relationship that eventually harnesses high levels of resentment by the person that is giving.

One movie I always reference is “The Notebook” , through the course of the movie you see this couple refining this ability to such a high degree that they become what most of society only dreams about becoming, hence the reason there are so many tears flowing through the course of the movie.  Fairytale endings do exist, you just need to know what you want, and prioritize the things that brings what you want to life. In this case its needs to be all about your partner, and your partner needs to have the same mindset towards you. Spend time, talk, explore each other, let your walls down and enjoy each other. A world with a lot of walls and distrust, while it may feel protective in the short term, is a very lonely place in time. Take some chances, after all if you are seeing someone and you care about them aren’t they worth it?

Live life with passion, and not regret. Put your partner first and everything else in life will fall in place because you will then create an unstoppable team formed out of love and understanding.  The possibilities then become endless.