Today is a great day!

Today is a great day! Today is a great day! Today is a great day!

This is a sentence that someone once told me to repeat three times in the mirror with different intonations to start off each morning. Waking up might be the most difficult thing you’ll do all day, so sometimes you need to give yourself a little pep talk. Get yourself excited about the day ahead; each day is a new opportunity to make a difference in the world. “Wake up, Show up and Follow up“ are the key ingredients to success.

Some mornings, I wake up to my alarm and all I want to do is count the hours ’til I can go back to sleep. If I find myself falling into that trap, I repeat to myself, “Today is a great day.” You can’t make a difference or accomplish much if you don’t get up and get out there. That’s not to say you don’t need a “Lunch, Nap, Vodka” day every now and then, but most days, you may need to give yourself a little extra motivation to join the real world.

Saying the words “today is a great day” has no magic effect on its own. The magic happens when you think about what you are going to do that day, and what you are most looking forward to doing. The countdown in your mind becomes the time until you meet a friend for coffee, or go to an interesting lecture, or read an article for class. You create your own mini-countdowns so that you don’t spend your waking hours wishing you were asleep.

I know it sounds a little corny to talk yourself up in a mirror. It’s a little too “who’s the fairest of them all” – I never thought I would ever actually do it when it was suggested to me years ago. But it is such a simple, quick, and easy confidence builder. So, while I now occasionally say “today is a great day” to myself to get motivated about the day ahead, I also give myself little compliments throughout the day, especially when I have a stressful activity ahead.

Before an interview, I might coach myself about what a qualified candidate I am for the position. Before a presentation, I might remind myself of how knowledgeable I am about my topic. On my way to a party, I might tell myself how great I look. (And after running into an ex-boyfriend, I might exclaim in my car on the drive home how great my new life is without him!)

Do what you need to do to build your confidence and remind yourself how great you are! When you do it privately, you become your own secret weapon. Although we try to surround ourselves with supportive people who love us and think we are wonderful, those people will not always be around when we need that extra ego boost- so figure out a way to boost yourself up when you need it!

Sometimes on my note cards for a presentation, I will write myself little compliments; or before an interview, I will make a list of all the things I’m really great at doing. Every once in a while, look yourself in the mirror and repeat, “Today is a great day,” or whatever you construct to get you motivated to make your day exceptional.

How will you remind yourself of your own greatness? How will you become your own secret weapon to success?

Silence is Golden

Silence is a very interesting concept to me, because when used well it can be a very powerful weapon in your college success arsenal. Silence can be awkward – and therein lies the power. People will do almost anything to avoid feeling awkward! If you can control silence by not being afraid to use it and not getting uncomfortable, then you can exert some control over a conversation, a presentation, an interview, or even a date!

The following are a few applications of intentional silence that I have found are easy to implement and can result in the user gaining some form of power in the conversation.

• Negotiations – When you are in a negotiation, there is always a (real or perceived) power struggle between the two parties. I have found that the negotiator who has better control over the use of silence will generally hold more power in the negotiation. What do I mean by “control over the use of silence“? In a negotiation, information is power; so, if you can get the other party to tell you something they did not originally plan to reveal, you can use that to your advantage. How can you do that? In the information gathering phase before you suggest your solution, you need to ask a lot of questions. After you pose a question, you’ll know the other person has finished answering when they stop talking. Typically, you’d interpret this as the time for you to ask another question, or fill the silence something else.
  
  But what happens if you say nothing? Most often, if you allow a period of silence after the other person has finished answering your question, they will keep talking and add further detail. This additional information was not a part of their original answer and may contain important details you can use in your argument against them.
• Interviews – The bad news for us is that, usually, interviewers already know this little trick. When they are interviewing you, if they are a good interviewer, they will leave an almost uncomfortable silence between questions to prompt you to share more information. When the pause occurs, you begin to feel like your original answer was not good enough. You start to panic a little and try to answer the question again, but your second answer is given under much more stress and is usually not your best work. Interviews are already pretty stressful for most of us, but remember that knowledge is power. Use this knowledge to your own advantage in the interview!
  
  You can either a) stand by your original answer confidently and sit smiling in uncomfortable silence until the interviewer breaks it with a new question, or b) elaborate upon your answer, but without the additional stress that your fellow candidates will undergo, because you were ready for this. The interviewer’s job is to make you feel a little discomfort and stress to see how you perform under these conditions. Now you can impress them when you stay cool because you knew this was coming!
• Class Presentations – A third application for silence that I have found to be useful for college students is in giving presentations, where you need to either keep an audience’s attention or, even more challenging, get your audience to participate. Class presentations, especially ones over 20 minutes, are a challenge and are becoming more and more common as a part of college curriculums. As you prepare your presentation, think of how you can use silence to your advantage in your delivery. A pause for emphasis is a pretty easy technique. Asking rhetorical questions is always a good way to go – ask a question and pause long enough for them to think of an answer (and feel a little pressure that they may have to answer it themselves), then answer it yourself. This keeps your audience paying attention and following along without actually engaging them. This technique is good if you have a very strict timeline and cannot afford to have someone answer your question with a lengthy or controversial response.
  
  Lastly, if you do need to fill up some time and facilitate a discussion, or even a debate, you will need to ask questions. Confidently pause and wait for an answer. If you wait long enough and don’t lose your cool, someone will always come up with an answer. Additionally, after you set the tone that you are willing to wait an uncomfortable amount of time for an answer, others in the class will more willingly participate for the remainder of your presentation.

These are just a few tips I’ve learned along the way, so try them out next time you’re having a conversation and see what happens. I think you’ll find that when you have mastered the art of silence, you will feel much more in control of any situation. My last piece of advice on the issue is this: Look out for others who have mastered this concept – you may end up in an exceedingly awkward staring contest!

Emotions are contagious!

As you go through college, you constantly encounter opportunities to influence others. Almost every interaction you have is one of these opportunities, and you can influence others positively, negatively, or indifferently. Each time you interact with a teacher, a classmate, a roommate, a friend, a recruiter, a co-worker, a boss, your parents, or anyone else, you have the chance to influence their opinion of you, and that influence can often result in favorable treatment for you in the future.

If you want to gain favorable treatment from the important or influential people in your life, my advice is to spread the passion for what you love contagiously, and they will be inspired by your enthusiasm!

Emotions are contagious. How many times have you met up with a friend and the first thing they do is complain about their day? Conversely, how many times have you seen someone and they’re on top of the world? What happens to you when you’re around them?

Generally, you’ll find that when you spend time with a “Debbie Downer,” your mood deflates; and when you spend time with a “Peppy Pam,” your mood elevates. If you have experienced this phenomenon, as I believe most of us have, then you’ll agree that you can wield significant power over the emotions of others by managing your own.

Think back to how you feel around these people – when you are around happy people, you feel happy; sad people bring you down. After such an interaction, when you think of that person, or their name comes up in conversation, what kind of feelings do you associate with them? Well, positive feelings with people that made you feel good, and negative with people that make you feel bad. Pretty simple psychology, right? Now that you’ve mastered the concepts, you can start using that power to your advantage!

Knowing that you can affect not only others’ immediate moods, but also their lasting impression of you, you can have complete control over that impression!

Wouldn’t you like to be remembered, thought of, and talked about as someone happy, upbeat, and passionate? Think of the adjectives with which you’d like to be associated. Maybe they’re reliable, charismatic, friendly, nice, intelligent, or considerate. How do you want others to describe you?

Now it’s simple – just start acting out those words. It takes discipline to always “be on.” But just as I referenced in “How are you?” and “Fake it ’til you Make it,” you are in complete control of your personal brand. If you are lazy about building your brand, you create a sloppy, inconsistent image. Whereas if you show the discipline to behave in the manner you want to be perceived, you will eventually own those characteristics.

So, be mindful that how you behave affects others, and take that responsibility seriously. There are only three outcomes that can result from any given interaction:

1) You leave them feeling worse than when they met you
2) You leave them feeling better than when they met you
3) You make no impression on them

Which would you prefer?

Don’t keep Michael Jordan on the bench

Group assignments can be a challenge for college students. Your grade for the class is now in someone else’s hands, and most people do not react well when they feel that they have lost their sense of control over a situation. When your success is directly related to the actions of others, it can bring out the worst in you.

However, once you learn how to bring out the best in others, you will all succeed as a group!

One of my teachers once told me, “If you had Michael Jordan on your team, you would let him play! You wouldn’t keep him on the bench all game.” And she was, of course, correct. When you have talented teammates, as a leader, you should empower them to do what they do best. For your group work projects, bringing out the best in others requires three simple steps:

1) Identify the skills and passions of others in your team

2) Assign roles that match the person’s talents or interests

3) Don’t tell them how to do their job / Don’t micromanage

The first step is identifying the skills of your teammates. Everyone has something that they are good at or that they like doing. When you discover, for instance, who on your team is the creative thinker and who is the analytical thinker, you can then place those people in roles where they can flourish.

The second step is as follows: Once you have identified each person’s strengths and what they bring to the team, give them tasks that they can perform to the best of their ability. For example, the creative person might be great at brainstorming ideas, but lack the discipline to choose one single idea and iron out all the details. A more detail-oriented teammate might be a pro at developing an outline and filling in the missing spaces, but a nervous wreck when it comes to presenting. A third teammate, who is very outgoing and enthusiastic but seems to lose focus easily, might be a captivating presenter. If you assign these people to the right roles, you can see how the entire group will succeed with far less of a headache. Likewise, if you arbitrarily assign people to tasks such that their talents are not being used effectively, you waste time and energy and create unnecessary stress.

The third step is just stepping back and watching your well-oiled machine work. When you have identified people’s strengths and placed them in the right positions, you need to make them feel empowered to do their job their way. Sometimes, this can be the most difficult step, especially for the leader. It is difficult to trust people when you have a stake in the collective results! You need to first trust yourself and know that you have performed the first two steps well.

All right, what do you do when you get a dud on your team who seems to have no skills? I know that not every team is going to have prodigal members with useful core competencies. When this happens, I suggest you ask that person what they think they are good at. Everyone thinks that they have strengths in some area (whether you agree or not is a different story). Let them tell you how they feel they can best contribute, and see where it goes from there.

Much of this goes back to the idea of SYNERGY which I reference in an earlier post: 2 + 2 = 5. Look for the Michael Jordans on your team and let them shine! It is difficult to trust others and relinquish control, but you must find a way if you want to succeed as a team.

Have you ever felt like you were the Michael Jordan on your team and that your talents were wasted? How can you avoid letting that happen to others in the future?