Whether intentional or by misfortune, being late for a meeting is, in itself, a visible sign of disrespect for other people's time. Think about the fact that your tardiness usually affects not just your own productivity. Your being late has a infectious multiplying factor because tardiness impacts the productivity of those many that are kept waiting. The impact in real dollar cost associated with productivity loss related to lateness are staggering.

Bottom line: 10 minutes/day of lateness equates to $90 Billion/year in lost productivity or 1% of the US GDP

Recent studies have shown that chronic tardiness affects 20% of the US population, Yes, 20% are consistently late. In 2006 Corporate CEOs show being late 8 out of 10 meetings. This alarming trend of Chronic CEO tardiness has actually worsened since 2002, when a study by management consulting firm Proudfoot, highlighted CEOs were late six in 10 meetings.

All good studies wouldn't be complete unless they categorized the types of latecomers. According to an ABC News report in March 2007, there are 4 types of chronic tardiness people:

1) Rationalizer type: Blames outside factors

2) Absent-minded Professor type: forgetful or disorganized

3) Deadline or Producer Type: Adrenaline addicted junkie. Gets a psychological high on having a jammed schedule

4) Rebel type: Defies authority and gets a high in keeping people waiting. Feel so important that feel people are willing to wait.

Diana DeLonzor, in her book "Never Be Late Again", has chronic lateness types further defined into seven categories.

Bottom line: Whether it is a thrill or habit, there are steps you can take to reduce and eliminate your chronic tardiness problem.

How do you respect and effectively utilize the universally shared commodity of time?

Balancing your time with those around you is an ongoing challenge. Be vigilant about effectively using your time and anyone sharing your time. Your calendar, your day timer (or PDA) and the clock are intrinsic tools of the business trade. Learn to tell time, use timers and challenge yourself to get there on time.

There are mental mind-sets and effective meeting processes that can help you kick the tardiness problem (they helped me).

Consider your scheduled meeting times as just a center point of your overall meeting time. It is usually the informal meetings or contact before and after the formal session where most of the business or decisions are solidified. Always allow time for this informal contact:

1) Allow yourself 15 minutes before each scheduled meeting or event to:
- get your thoughts or agenda together at the location for the meeting
- have a quick meeting with the main person to review the agenda
- chat with the person who is setting up the meeting room to get information on the attendees. Executive Assistants and Administrative Assistants can be an invaluable source of information. Build trust with this individual.
- socialize and introduce yourself to the attendees prior to the formal meeting. You are likely to pick-up on the temperament of key individuals attending your meeting.

2) Allow 15 minutes after each scheduled meeting or event to:
- review how effective the meeting was perceived by your key customer (coach) or by an attending colleague.
- Take time with the key person (key influencer) to review the outcome of the meeting and strategize next steps
- Test the water and ask for the business. You might actually get the order. Alllow time for that too

3) Give yourself the 15/15 minute buffer before and after each scheduled meeting to allow for unexpected things. Plus you will less likely impact on subsequent meeting times. Early is always better than late. Arriving on-time is the most visible sign of disrespect toward the other people involved. For first time meetings, being on-time is one of the major positive impacts on 'first and lasting impressions'. Add to your good reputation – be on-time.

Including this "15/15 Time Wrapper" around each of your scheduled appointments and meetings will afford you more time to prepare/strategize (before)and then assess/close(afterwards). Reduce stress on both yourself and those around you. Your respect for other people's time is a measure of your own self-respect. Being respectful is an honorable trait - a trait that can only add to your glowing reputation.

About the Author:

Carl Chesal is a business and channel development consultant, trainer, internet marketer and professional photographer. He operates BizFare Enterprise Inc, providing business development, marketing, and internet marketing services. Bizfare Enterprise also operates a number of secure on-line shopping sites.

Google and DMOZ - Organizational Dichotomies in Partnership

In one corner you have Google – analytic, automated, user interactive, driven by rules-based mathematical algorithms, digital efficiency – trusted and respected.

In the other corner you have The Open Directory Project (DMOZ) – completely people-driven, uncommunicative, no rules, no feedback, inefficient, analog – not trusted.

It is like having Herman Hollerith's punch card system feed data into today's grid and super computing environment. It just DOES NOT COMPUTE! Stone Age meets the Digital Age.

So what is the relationship between this two unlikely partners?

Google commands the Worldwide Directory of Website Registration. But you cannot just add your Website to the Google Directory. Some time ago, someone at Google decided that if your website was listed in DMOZ (The Open Directory Project) then it was worthy of possible inclusion in the Google Directory. BTW Alexa also opts for this 'good-enough-for DMOZ then-good-enough for-us' approach.

The Open Directory Project has long been chastised for its troll-like gatekeeper presence when is comes to granting DMOZ directory status that feeds key global Internet Directories, like Google and Alexa. A completely volunteer organization, The Open Directory Project has received accusations of corruption, manipulation and incompetence when it comes to determining what domains get listed in the DMOZ directory. Some websites have been listed on DMOZ one day and then days later removed – with not even a simple explanation to why or why not. This is just basically WRONG!

The article, Ineffective DMOZ by Baron Turner (circa 2005), effectively articulates the wrongs of this volunteer organization.

Why has Google never intervened by advancing DMOZ from this highly suspect environment of an "all volunteer" editorial organization to a professional, accountable, semi-automated and communicative editorial organization? One of those web mysteries.

Example: Our organization, Bizfare Enterprise, has 8 commercial websites. In the last year only two of the eight websites have had the honor of getting listed on DMOZ. Why these two got accepted and the other six were rejected is the "sixty-four thousand dollar question". Or were they rejected? No way of knowing. DMOZ has no feedback mechanism! There is no way of knowing if:

1. a submission request was actually received by one the DMOZ volunteer editors

2. if it is in the DMOZ queue for review or

3. if it was rejected by a DMOZ editor and WHY it was rejected!

The absence of ANY type of feedback mechanism as part of the DMOZ process is simply a broken customer management system. Each and every Webmaster that submits to the Open Directory Project is a DMOZ CUSTOMER! DMOZ offends its customers by showing disrespect to these webmaster and SEO professionals.

Google represents capitalism, competitiveness and dynamic change. DMOZ is too close to a a third world Dictatorship. The topic of this unlikely partnership could be material for a new Reality TV series. Wait! Maybe the Google-DMOZ Irony is material better suited for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert.

In the 30 plus years in the High Tech Business, I have come to observe that the longer you have the same group of unaccountable people involved in a process, a process that is unchecked or not audited, then you will get laxness, arrogance and opportunity for corruption.

Maybe it is time for a Google REALITY CHECK on The Open Directory Project. Google has a responsibility to bring the now arcane processes of the DMOZ organization into the customer-centric age of Trust and Accountability.

Until then best of luck in getting listed in the The Open Directory Project.


About the Author:
Carl Chesal is a business and channel development consultant, trainer, internet marketer and professional photographer. He operates BizFare Enterprise Inc, providing business development, marketing, and internet marketing services. Bizfare Enterprise also operates a number of secure on-line shopping sites.

Is an XML Sitemap effective in getting your website Page Indexed on Google? Or indexed on any other Search Engines?

Creating and XML-based Sitemap and FTP'ing this XML Sitemap to the lowest directory on your website does alert the Google spider robot to review your website. It is an effective way to get more of your web pages indexed for your website. It is also effective, when you add new pages/content to your website, to:

1) regenerate a new XML Sitemap file, FTP it to your website
2) alert Google Site Maps to look at your site AGAIN NOW.

And now XML Sitemaps have just become even more important!

Google, Yahoo and MSN have announced that by January 2007, they will also standardize on the use of one common XML Sitemap file to index your website! All three mega search engines will now use the same XML Sitemap file to index your website.

So what are the steps in creating and getting the Google XML Sitemap file to your website directory?

These 4 Steps will get your XML sitemap file created and registered with Google:

(1) use a software tool to create the sitemap in Google's designated XML format. You can create a Google Sitemap for FREE (maximum 750 pages per website) at >Sitemap Generator. Be patient with this FREE XML Sitemap file generator. It sometimes reports URL breaks (likely timeouts) when there are none. I found using it off peak hours (late at nite) generates cleaner files.

ADDED BENEFIT: The Sitemap Generator also creates HTML, ROR and Text Sitemap Files, which are used by thousands of other search engines and web crawlers to index your website.

(2) upload the XML file (and HTML, ROR and text files) to your website. You want to FTP the XML sitemap File created in step (1) to the lowest level directory on your website. There are many FREE FTP programs our there. Download the latest version of Filezilla. It is one of the easier FTP programs to use.

(3) Verification - notify Google of the existence of the XML sitemap file. This is done by registering at Google Webmaster Tools. Follow the steps at Google Sitemap to Verify your website by FTP'ing the Google Verification file to your website and then requesting Site Verification. You need only do this verification step once. Under the Webmaster Tools Dashboard you will see a check mark for each of your sites that have been verified.

(4) Submit XML file – once Verification is confirmed by Google Webmaster Tools click on the appropriate listing under the Sitemap heading. Highlight the box next to sitemap.xml and then click on Resubmit Selected button. Your sitemap.xml file will now be submitted to Google for indexing.

From this point forward, whenever you change/add/delete links or add/delete pages on your website you will repeat steps 1, 2 and 4 so that the Google, Yahoo and MSN bots can re-index your website.

While you're at it, create a specific HTML Sitemap Page on your website to be used by other search engines and directories. This will help their BOTS and Web Crawlers migrate through your website. This Sitemap Page also acts as an index for your customers helping them migrate your website. Here is a sample Sitemap Page.

Bottom line: XML Sitemap files are an important ingredient in getting your webpages indexed in Google as well as Yahoo and MSN. It is equally important as the top two SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies, Keywords and Inbound Links. No excuse now. Just Do it.

About the Author:

Carl Chesal is a business and channel development consultant, trainer, internet marketer and professional photographer. He operates BizFare Enterprise Inc, providing business development, marketing, and internet marketing services. Bizfare Enterprise also operates a number of secure on-line shopping sites.

What is Google PageRank? Google Directory? Google Indexing?
How do you succeed in each of these Google areas?

Google PageRank is a Google algorithm that measures the worth of EACH webpage based on the links or other webpages that reference it. Like the Voter is to the Candidate, consider each external reference (link) to your webpage as a VOTE of Importance for that specific webpage. Democratically, the more votes (links) your webpage receives the better your Google PageRank. But were it that simple. Google also measures the Importance of each Voter's webpage and weighs this in the Vote of Importance calculation. So you see, important webpages bring more importance (greater Vote Value) to your webpage!

Bottom Line: Linking, Links For Trade, Reciprocal Links and getting listed in the thousands of Directories, Blogs, and Ezines all promote Votes of Importance for your webpages. This is an ongoing lifelong endeavor by Webmasters and SEO experts.

Google Directory is where you go to get your entire website included in a Google Catalogue organized by Category or Topic. You would think that getting listed in the Google Directory would be a well defined process just like it is clearly outlined in most of the top directories:

(1) Website URL

(2) Title of Website

(3) Short Description of website and

(4) maybe keywords that best represent your website.


But not so with Google Directory! Google outsourced this critical inclusion to the Google Directory to another Directory Organization called The Open Directory Project or DMOZ. Why does Google entrust such a crucial element of Directory Cataloguing to an outside organization? You are even more perplexed by this Google outsourced function when you discover that The Open Directory Project is a organization of Volunteer Editors! Yes, a host of no-credential individuals somehow freely donate their time to apply strict and ethical editorial rules to each submitted URL. And this wonderful world of volunteers ensures a trusted process resulting in consistent, fair and quality listings in both the DMOZ and Google Directories! Believe It or Not! But my distaste for the whole DMOZ thing will be detailed in another article.


Bottom Line: You must submit to DMOZ .. The Open Directory Project and IF, and I MEAN A BIG IF, you get listed in The Open Directory (months but who knows because there is NO Feedback or Status mechanism in place), then Google might also extract your DMOZ listing information and place it into the Google Directory. GOOD LUCK!


Google Webpage Indexing is the more predictable process and can be accomplished by submitting your website URL to Google. To ensure that Google Robots crawl through ALL of your webpages for your website, you must create an XML Sitemap of your entire website and let Google know it exists in your website directory where the Google Robots will use it. This XML Sitemap will get all your webpages Indexed in Google. Google even references a website that will FOR FREE generate XML Sitemaps and HTML, TXT and ROR versions of the Sitemaps as well. And Good News! By January 2007 Yahoo and MSN will also use the Google XML Sitemap file to crawl your website!


Bottom Line: Always submit and re-submit Google XML Sitemaps whenever you add new pages, products, anchor text or links to your website. Search Engine Robot Crawlers love websites that are changing, dynamic and adding new content.

A little more of Google understood.


About the Author:

Carl Chesal is a business and channel development consultant, trainer, internet marketer and professional photographer. He operates BizFare Enterprise Inc, providing business development, marketing, and internet marketing services. Bizfare Enterprise also operates a number of secure on-line shopping sites.

Having mastered the Laws of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you are now receiving good traffic (visitor numbers) on your website. Your challenge now is converting this traffic from Visitors to Buying Customers. The whole conversion exercise, among other things, requires a website that has a good design. Notice I say a "good" web design. The website does not have to be perfectly designed, with Flash or fancy scrolling effects. It has to be good - something your Visitor (Potential Customer) can navigate through easily. But moreover, your website has to offer products or services that:

1)the customer wants; products they realized as a need and the benefits of your product or service

2)are priced competitively compared to similar products or services offered on other websites

Oh, Yes! You can attract Visitors to your site and then entice them to migrate around your website with offers like Savings, Discount, and Free Shipping. But, at the end of the day, your Potential Customers will shop and compare. With comparative shopping tools like Froogle, the buying public can easily compare prices: item for item.

Having worked in a family-run grocery store, in addition to co-owning a franchise health and life style business with my wife, I know that the practice of selling and merchandising in these 'mortar and brick' businesses applies equally well to the world of online web-based shopping.

As a Merchant, your challenge is to raise the bar, eliminating the item to item price comparisons. Stop the 'onesy twosy' product comparisons and create a greater value for the customer. Here is where solid merchandising practices take effect.


In the world of retail, merchandising is the difference between selling one product and selling volume. To do this effectively, you must consider:

1)Product placement (on the website and web page rather than on the shelf or display window)

2)Product Value Bundles (the benefit of buying more or a complete set)

3)Pricing for a higher value product bundle (buy more save more)

4)Create Value Groupings around seasonal or special events (sell to emotionally charged events)


Look at your products item by item:

1) Place items in customer logical categories, then

(A) create icons, buttons to easily identify the items(s) and

(B) allow the customer to migrate there (easily and within three or fewer number of clicks)

2) Group individual but related products into NEW Product Bundles

3) Price these New Product bundles showing savings of 10, 15, even 25%


Follow these points when merchandising your products and you will have succeeded in

1. Increasing your average order size

2. Reducing the one-to-one price comparisons

3. Giving the customer a more valued product.


For online selling, merchandising is the key element in Retail Sales.



About the Author:
Carl Chesal is a business and channel development consultant, trainer, internet marketer and professional photographer. He operates BizFare Enterprise Inc, providing business development, marketing, and internet marketing services. Bizfare Enterprise also operates a number of secure on-line shopping sites.

You bought into the Internet Merchant Dream. You now have one or more websites selling products online that you are convinced are in great demand. Now that the entire internet world becomes your customer base, you figure that your sales will blossom your websites into a 'Wal-mart of Websites"!

Most likely you have received one or two calls per week from a number of Internet Marketing companies who promise you the glories of improving one or more of these:

1. Your traffic by establishing reciprocal links


2. Your Google Ranking through Hundreds of Directory registrations (registrations that are repeated 2 -4 times each month)


3. Web Traffic through writing articles for eZines and BLOGS


4. Traffic (up from the number of Visitors you now have – whatever that number is) using Marketing using email campaigns


5. Search Engine Page inclusions based on the proper selection, webpage positioning and page density of Keywords, Meta Descriptions and Meta Keywords to improve search bot sweeps of your site.


6. Search Engine Page Inclusions with XML and ROR sitemaps for Google and Yahoo Search Bots


7. Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns


8. Web Banner campaigns


9. Advertising Revenue through Affiliate Programs, Adsense, el al

Each Marketing Company will pitch you the importance of their company's offering providing you the "winning formula for the Internet Selling Bonanza". Well almost!

Take it from me - someone who operated a "mortar and brick" business: a franchise that offered a great new way to merchandise healthy life style products and services. We all want to hear how quickly we can make thousands and thousands of dollars as a Retail Merchant. We all get convinced by a few of these "get the sales quicker" Internet Marketing Companies pitch that their product or service will vault us into Conversions (fancy name for Internet Sales) with unbelievable speed.

We entrepreneurs, each and every one of us, must first buy into the concept, the products, the vision of demand for the products and services offered. Our hope for a successful business, coupled with our zeal to quickly start our business, clouds our vision in applying the basics of building a business. Beware these purveyors of "Business Bliss"!

I am often reminded of a story we read back in elementary school called Stone Soup. It is fable about a traveling Minstrel who had devised a simply ingenious way of obtaining food at each of his stop-over destinations. The housewife invites the Minstrel into her home intrigued by the promise of a "Magic Stone" capable of turning plain boiling water into a delicious soup.

While the Minstrel is stirring the Magic Stone (free for the taking from the roadside) in a huge pot of boiling water, he begins to tell the unsuspecting housewife how wonderful the soup is going to taste. He weaves a tale of a tasty and healthy meal for her family. But then he states, "As delicious as this Magic Stone Soup will be, it would be even more delicious if we added a few carrots." The housewife always obliged and would eagerly add diced carrots to the Magic Stone Soup.

The Minstrel would continue this charade of suggesting other vegetables to enhance an already excellent tasting Magic Stone Soup. And the housewife, or another person in the village or town, would eagerly add what vegetable the Minstrel suggested to the soup pot. At the end of the story, the soup created was a great soup, filled with vegetables donated by the towns people! This Magic Stone Soup is then shared with the lady of the house, and the whole town. Once he has had his fill of soup, the Minstrel would remove his Magic Stone and continue on his way to the next village or town. This is the technique used by many Internet Marketing Service companies – Stone Soup Selling. They start you with something simple (and free or of little value) and before you know it, you have to invest more of your money and time to make what they originally sold you work.

I will agree that a balanced approach toward applying ALL of the items above (and more) are necessary for getting people to your website. But getting them to move from Visitors (browsers) to Sales Conversions (buyers) requires good old merchandising and pricing and promotion techniques as well.

So don't buy into the Stone Soup 'Quick Fix' messages delivered by most of these Internet Marketing Companies. Like any business, whether it be Mortar 'n Brick or Internet, it takes months to years to build a loyal client base and reap your Merchant Fortunes. Be patient. Be diligent. Apply the many aspects of marketing; whether it is the


FIVE P's: People, Price, Product, Promotion, Place or

FIVE C's: Customer Solution (benefits), Customer Cost (competitive) , Convenience (right to your door), Communication (engage emotion, information).

Remember: there is no such thing as a quick road to riches (at least not morally and legally). There is no magic Stone Soup. Beware the "Minstrels of who weave a tale of Quick Money".

About the Author:

Carl Chesal is a business and channel development consultant, trainer, internet marketer and professional photographer. He operates BizFare Enterprise Inc, providing business development, marketing, and internet marketing services. Bizfare Enterprise also operates a number of secure on-line shopping sites.

An infant's smile or a child's laugh is magical. Receiving a smile from an infant or child elicits an automatic smile from any adult. Parents, grandparents and adults alike will perform varying degrees of happy face antics in the hope of getting a baby to smile. Medical studies have determined that laughing is both contagious and healthy.

I it's most demure mode, laughing will manifest itself visually as a smile maybe coupled with some wide eye contact. At the other extreme end of the laughing scale, you will realize Visual, Kinesthetic, and Auditory displays – leg slapping, belly shaking, body contorting laughter! Just thinking about this 'Laugh Attack' brings a smile to your face. Remembering or thinking about laughter itself physically and mentally emotes all the positive effects of actually laughing.

The beautiful thing about laughter is that it is contagious. It matters not whether you initiate laughing or it comes from some other source, the health benefits of laughing have been studied and documented.
Laughter is the BEST MEDICINE!

Yet, laughter is still one of the least understood of human behaviors and one that is just now a serious study by scientists. Science has been able to determine three parts of the brain are activated during a good laugh: 1) a thinking or cognitive area for understanding the joke, 2) a movement or kinesthetic part for initiating muscle movement, and 3) an emotional region that derives the "giddy" feeling. Why do people laugh at jokes delivered while others laugh at incongruities like pain inflicted or a threatening situations? Is laughter a signal indicating a action is meant "in fun"? These things are still being studied.

Laughter makes us (and others) feel better.

Studies have identified a number of areas, where applying laughter, will be a positive and healthy experience. Feel better by laughing:

1) Health and laughing
A) lifts up your mood
B) is contagious and positive
C) is stress reducing
D) has proven long term connections to improved mental health

2) Learning and laughter has shown that
A) levity as a teaching style reduces fear and anxiety and opens students up to learning and absorbing
B) well-planned, appropriate, contextual humor can help students ingrain information

3) Relationships and laughing
A) help create a social lubricant that, in groups, encourages cooperation and altruistic behavior
B) is believed to be one of the earliest forms of communication; especially, emotional communication. Laughter could have preceded the spoken word and bonded groups in pre-historic society.


"By the time a child reaches nursery school, he or she will laugh about 300 times a day. Adults laugh an average of 17 times a day." "Science of Laughter" Discovery Health


Clearly as adults we do not laugh enough. Here are ten ideas to improve and increase laughter [and fun] in your life:

1) Receive, Share and Tell Jokes - email is awesome for this and so are social gatherings. Telling jokes (and learning what jokes are appropriate) will prove to improve your social and public speaking skills.

2) Share humorous personal stories - stories about yourself will allow you to laugh at yourself. Laughing at yourself is a great way to express and learn from our mistakes and little foibles.

3) With your family and friends play group games that require group interaction (Parlour Games) - old standards and board games (like Charades, Pictionary, Balderdash, Cranium, Trivial Pursuit, Humzinger) or more organized themed events like a Murder Mystery Night. Excellent for a varied group of age and shyness. These are just FUN! Play like children!

4) Laugh out loud - not just a chuckle, a deep laugh that works the lungs and belly (maybe even brings tears to your eyes). Laughing equals Happy and Happy equals Healthy!

5) Karoke or new video games like Guitar Hero - whether at home or at a public event, singing and music are excellent and fun group situations that will help create fun and laughter!

6) Meet your group at a favorite pub or watering hole - conversation and stories will naturally make you laugh. Have fun!

7) Play Kids' Games - nothing allow you to play like a child than playing with your children or grandchildren. And nothing is more liberating than laughing with children!

8) Learn with friends - experience learning a new language or go to dance class with other people or couples. Laughing will open you up to a better learning experience.

9) Host a Party (maybe with a Fun Theme (item 3) - a casual informal gathering (BYOB, BBQ, Campfire or Dinner Party) will always give people an opportunity to meet and share. Invite fun people and you will create a fun and memorable event.

10) Do something you have never done before - with other people or friends, step out and do something new (community fair, site seeing, small airplane ride, hot air balloon, casino, a day at the track, snowmobiling, skiing). With a group you have both the benefit of increased support and protection. Have fun!

Fun and Laughter is best in a social group setting. Do Not attempt Laughter alone. It is best served with friends. Get Crackin' and Get Laughin'!

About the Author:

Carl Chesal is a business and channel development consultant, trainer, internet marketer and professional photographer. He operates BizFare Enterprise Inc, providing business, marketing, and internet marketing consulting services. Bizfare Enterprise also operates a number of secure on-line Professional Services sites, like Communicate Innovate.

I am Adamant About That.

You've heard this phrase time-and-time again from individuals - from your friends, from colleagues, from family, even from your own mouth. In a group conversation, you or someone has likely ended a statement with this claim, "....... I am adamant about that!".

This phrase seems to emphasize a strong and unmovable conviction or opinion about a particular subject. This exclamatory statement "I am adamant about that!" serves to both reinforce our personal, absolute convictions and also let's others know that this is your non-negotiable, uncompromising, don't-question-me area.

This personal claim of conviction is a perfect window (Johari Window) into your persona and helps people understand you as an individual, as a human being. This 'adamantation', as we shall call it, is a glimpse into your personal BELIEFS and VALUES. And beliefs and values are the solid foundation of our personalities.

A new approach.

Idea! Most of us presently elicit these personal 'adamantations' in a random way through one-on-one conversations and group dialogue. Maybe we should take time, regularly, to create (and re-create) a written 'Personal - I am Adamant List'. This list could explicitly identify our personal position on any number of worldly things. Some of the topic areas to consider as part of this 'Personal Adamant List' might be: the environment (maybe specifically global warming), traditions (around holidays and birthdays), relationships (love and friendship relationships), ethics, spirituality, sexuality, politics and the list grows.

A 'Personal Adamant List', or PAL, would never be a static or stagnant written list. Your 'Personal Adamant List' would, like life, be a dynamic and changing list of 'adamantations'. Over time this PAL would outline an interesting personal history of your beliefs and values mapping a revealing trail of your personal growth and maturity. A personal document more poignant than the daily ramblings of a diary or a BLOG. Your PAL, being void of personal references, would have the added benefit of being something you might openly share. Your PAL is likely to provide YOU with a greater understanding of YOURSELF. A Good Thing.

Make your 'Personal Adamant List' (PAL) a part of your toolset when you are assessing a new employer, a customer or a business associate. Use it to determine the alignment between your personal beliefs and values and their underlying beliefs and values. You could even include parts of your PAL in your bio, your blog and your profile information. Give people the opportunity to really get to KNOW YOU, really get to UNDERSTAND YOU. Understanding is the first step toward effective communication. It could result in a richer human interaction and communication experience. This is a another Good Thing.

Imagine the positive effect at a party, social soiree (swa ray), or business gathering. Much reduced 'foot-in-mouth' situations. Eliminate those embarrassing moments when you say something that, you only now realize, is diametrically opposed to somebody else's belief. And now you perform some awkward back-peddling to counter the wave of alienation you've created. In time using your PAL, you could come to develop a more adept manner of approaching topics, which will allow you to test the waters for other people's 'adamantations' before opening your mouth. More improved communication and human interaction.

It just keeps getting better.


About the Author:
Carl Chesal is a business and channel development consultant, trainer, internet marketer and photographer. Carl and Janet provide Personal Development and Communication Services.