How to Make a Smart Career, Love, or Other Important Decision

Learning to make smart decisions will help you to avoid painful and embarassing situations in your personal and professional life. Unfortunately, many of us have to learn hard way, or sometimes never at all, and are left wondering "how did this happen to me again?" But when we stop to think-- it often comes down to our inability to make decisions. Instead of taking an active approach to our lives, we act clueless, and end up reacting to what life throws at us. But it doesn't have to be that way! The good news is that you can learn to make smart choices which will help you to avoid unwanted jobs, people, and situations. Life is About Learning (Sometimes Hard Way) Life's ups and downs are often cleverly disguised as learning opportunities. But when relationships or jobs don't work out as we planned, we seldom stop to find meaning in "mess." On other hand, if you learn to make use of disappointments and let-downs, you will soon begin to see that all of it-the good and bad, were nothing more than lessons to be learned. Yes, you are a student, still learning about being single, romantic relationships, career development, financial management, and life in general. Life is tricky, you have to make it work for you and not against you. The best way to do this is to learn your lessons, and to make smart choices on front-end. This will enable you to follow path of least confusion, which will prevent you from making costly mistakes. How can you take more control over your life? By using "Get Smart!" decision-making process. Getting smart means raising your self awareness, practicing active reflection, and following your intuitive guidance, which will greatly increase your chances of selecting right person to share your life and family with.

Review: Filling the Glass

Businesses often seem more concerned with spin than with reality, more concerned with what people think about product than product itself. Employees are constantly being told to be positive. "Negative attitude" on an evaluation can kill a career. Positive thinking shaman crisscross country, delivering keynotes and writing books. With cosmetically perfect smiles and televangelist hair, they explain that everything is, after all, wonderful. Let's all think happy thoughts. And glass is-as we all know--half full not half empty. Reading cover of Barry Maher's new book, Filling Glass: The Skeptic's Guide to Positive Thinking in Business, you might expect more of same. Maher is, after all, a prominent keynote speaker. And cover blurbs are too good: "inspiring," "uplifting," "packed with useful practical advice," "enlightening," "entertaining," even "laugh out loud funny." Once you begin book however, you'll suspect that Maher's teeth are less than perfect. He openly admits his hair is much too thin for televangelism. He says things like "With all money we spend on self improvement in this country, you'd think we'd all be darn close to perfect by now." And, "If you're absolutely, 100 percent positive, without slightest trace of a doubt that you can do something, get a second opinion." Filling Glass is a business self-help book with an edge: Chicken Soup for Skeptical Soul. It's a book for rest of us-for those who understand benefits of a positive attitude but deep down inside don't really believe that chanting affirmations will make our dreams come true. It's a book for those who suspect that when boss enthuses, "Jack has a positive attitude," he really means, "Jack kisses all right posteriors and doesn't gripe about my stupidity." Barry Maher doesn't seem at all concerned about who moved his cheese. He distrusts self-help books and business gurus. And when he holds them up to question, he holds himself up as well. Readers who loved Leadership Secrets of Attila Hun, Maher writes, will find that Maher is "every bit as much an expert on seat-of-the-pants psychology as Attila was on rape, pillage and--I guess--twentieth century management technique." To Maher, whether you call glass half empty or half full, it's still only four ounces of water. The problem isn't whether it's half full or half empty, problem is figuring out how to fill it up. Reality counts. To grow or change or improve a business, to motivate people for long haul, you have to begin by dealing with that reality-rather than what you, company, CEO or stockholders might wish were true. All innovative--and even counter-intuitive--strategies, tactics and tips that Maher offers for improving businesses, business lives, and careers spring from that deceptively simple premise.