Gail's Story

Gail is a friend of mine and she was relating to me for hundredth time about situation her brother was in. Gary is a nice enough guy. He's hardworking, honest and a good father His only flaw is that he is extremely negative. After a five minute conversation with him, you feel like you've been hit by a bus. He has knack of sapping up your energy due to his negativity.

It's interesting how Gary's life has turned out. He has owned a number of businesses and none of them have been successful. He constantly gets sick and so do his two children. He's been married twice and is nearly ready to tie knot again. What he doesn't realise is that he's problem and that it doesn't matter how many times he gets married, his attitude will follow him and continue to create challenges in his life until he works on himself. Gary blames all his woes on everyone and everything else except himself. He also has a couple of very negative friends whom he loves being around which doesn't help him whatsoever as they all commiserate with each other. As saying goes 'misery loves company'.

Gary has never done any personal development and when you bring that up with him he always scoffs at idea believing that he doesn't need it.

Gail has tried to get Gary to see light and do some work on himself yet he refuses to listen. As I've often said to Gail, you cannot change Gary's behaviour but you can change your behaviour. Instead of listening to him moan and groan about how hard life is, perhaps it was time she told him honest truth and offer some solutions to him at same time. If he takes no action, then she'd be best to spend as little time as possible around him otherwise she will continue to be affected by his negative attitude.

A Negative Attitude - The Reasons Many People Are Poor

In his latest newsletter, The Trident, well-known professional investor Lance Spicer who has written 26 books on subjects such as wealth creation and small business had a great story to illustrate why many negative people are poor.

I've enjoyed book so much and felt it will be of great benefit to all of you that I just had to write up an extract from it:

Women Talk, Talk and Talk " When a woman talks she often uses indirect speech. This means she hints at what she wants or infers things.

Women's indirect speech has a purpose - it builds relationships and rapport with other by avoiding aggression, confrontation or discord.

When women use indirect speech with other women there is seldom a problem - women are sensitive to picking up real meaning. It can, however be disastrous when used on men.

Men Take Words Literally Men use direct speech and take words literally. They find women's lack of conversational structure and purpose very disconcerting, and accuse women of not knowing what they're talking about. They respond by saying things like "What's point here?" "Where is this conversation going?" and "What's bottom line?"

Men then proceed to talk to a woman as if she is a mental patient or will cut her off by saying "We've been over this a dozen times", "How much longer will this take?" and "This conversation is too much hard work and isn't going anywhere!"

Indirect Talk In Business When a woman uses indirect speech in business, it can prove problematic because men may have difficulty following a multi-tracked, indirect conversation.

Men need to be presented with clear , logical, organised ideas and information before they will make a decision. A woman can have her ideas and requests rejected purely because her male boss didn't have a clue what she really wanted.

Marie's Story After six months of negotiations, Marie finally won chance to present her company's new advertising program to a big financial client. The audience would be eight men and four women, account up for grabs was worth $200,000, and she had 30 minutes to sell her story.