It's the day from hell in your office... how to deal with it to keep sanity and reap profits.

It's the day from hell in your office... how to deal with it to keep sanity and reap profits.

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note. You knew it was going to be one of those days when, upon waking late, you stepped on the cat's tail... to be promptly punished by the feline drawing blood with her oh-so-sharp claws. And this was just the beginning...

We all have such days... and we all need to know what to do about them to avoid worsening an already trying situation and bounce back, flags flying, good humor intact and only the barest number of welts and bruises.

For such a day, Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) and his lighter-than-air style was born. In 1858, the world was gladdened (and scandalized) by what was said to be the first classical full-length operetta, "Orpheus in the Underworld". It contained what soon became one of the most celebrated pieces of music ever composed: "The Infernal Galop" which we all better know (and erroneously) as the "Can-Can", where a lady's bottom took Offenbach to the top.

This music, which can be found in any search engine, strikes just the right note for your chaotic day. "Orpheus in the Underworld" helps you get out of Hades, back to life at the top of your game.

Take a deep breath.

Could the day get any worse? Of course... and on days like this... it will.

You can scald yourself in the shower. Get trapped in rush hour traffic. Spill hot coffee on yourself.

All this sound familiar? It's just the beginning.

Your boss is in one of his "moods." The sales figures are bad. Your best customer just quit. And they don't have your favorite dough-nut at the commissary.

Yes, it's one of those days, and your job is to get control of it... before it gets any worse.

Take a deep breath. You've probably confronted a ton of messes in your life. This one is just a little more intense and demanding. Start with the sure-to-ground- you deep breath.

Then sit down at your desk, and jot a quick to-do list of what you need to do, when you're going to do it, and how you're going to do it. This is how to begin reestablishing the control that you must have, the control so necessary to efficiency and enabling you to do what's necessary, instead of being at the mercy of events. Remember at all times: there is only one of you... and so you must prioritize what is important... and what (the dough-nut) can wait and so can any other personal matters. Matters involving your job come first.

Get your boss off your back.

To buy yourself some time, deal with your boss first. Even if he's being demanding and difficult (so what else is new?)... he is the boss... and if you get him off your back, you'll buy yourself some of the time you really need to reassert control and move ahead. Take notes on what the boss says. Then ask him for his priorities about what should be done. Don't assume. Ask the boss to tell you what he wants, how important it is, and its priority in today's scheme of things. End with "aye, aye, Captain". Then go back and mesh what the boss said...with your own priorities. Your job is to know what the important things are... then get down to doing them.

Saving the lost customer.

One thing that can always knock you for a loop is losing a big account. This, for sure, is a matter for immediate, concentrated attention. But before you make this call, think. You may get only one chance to turn things around. You must be sure you 1) understand the customer's complaint and reason for canceling and 2) be prepared to address these points in deft detail. You must be as clear as you can be with why this key customer is quitting. What has she said before that'll give you a clue? People usually don't cancel without warning; there are omens. What were they? And what have you done and can you do to answer these concerns and make things better? Remember, the goal is keeping this person happy and the account where it belongs: with you. And this is going to take thought and constructive action.

Once you're ready -- but not until -- place the call. Remember if you turn this around, you'll get the positive momentum you need to turn the entire day around.... you'll be a hero; this is, after all, a Big Deal. So, place the crucial call... no pressure!

If the customer is determined to cancel, she probably won't take the call. This may mean she's determined to burn the bridge. Bad sign. This may also mean that she's brought her concerns to you in the past (however gently) and that you failed to act on them. Now these chickens are coming home to roost. Be prepared to eat crow... and a lot of it. Remember, this is business... and your job is to get that account back, whatever it takes.

Call again in 30 minutes, taking care of other matters from your to-do list in the meantime. Remember, your job today is to be super efficient and shake off the woes by checking off completed items from your list, even small things. Everything counts toward regaining efficiency, control, and as much serenity as you can muster.

Now try that all-important customer again. Unless this customer has made an irrevocable decision about not doing further business, this time you should connect. Remember, you are here to fix a problem; to get the customer to change her mind again and, with a very good deal from you, a better deal than she has now, return to the fold.

What, offer a better deal? Yes... you want this contract. You may very well have to renegotiate the terms to keep it. At least you should be prepared...

Now that you've got the customer on the line, your job is, first, to listen carefully to what she says. So, lean back... hear and evaluate what the customer has to say. Don't rush this call. You are lucky to have it and lucky to have this chance to save your bacon.

Now, when it's your turn to talk be prepared for the following:

* If you've made promises in the past, say so. Don't defend a position that's indefensible.

* If you can truly do what the customer needs, say so. You must make your strongest possible case now; you may never get another chance.

* Remind the customer just how long you've been part of her team and that you're willing to do, adamant to do, what will help her. Then bring on the extra goodies you've got to keep their business.

Sincerity, clarity, honesty, and, yes, enthusiasm are all part of the what you need. You are aiming for one of two outcomes. First, if the customer still won't budge, ask for at least the courtesy of a day or two for her to reconsider. This is better than affirmation of the account's cancellation.

Better, of course, is the customer's willingness to try again... thereby not only giving you the time you need to turn things around... not only with this customer specifically but with your day-from-Hades generally.

You're smart, you're following these recommendations... I feel confident, therefore, that you're going to re-establish beneficial relations with that key customer who just moments ago was ready to write you off. But not now.

Therefore, you need Jacques Offenbach again... and his celebrated "Infernal Galop," for with what you've read here... and with the essential dollop of galop... I feel sure you "Can-Can" do anything on what may prove to be your best day ever.

And, by the way, your favorite doughnut has just come into the commissary. Take two, you've earned them!

*What do you think? Post your comments below.

About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., a company providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Jeffrey Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books.

Republished with author's permission by Craig Telfer http://MyTrafficInjection.com.

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'To the shores of Tripoli', let freedom ring as one of the world's nastiest and most enduring tyrants dies by inches. The end of Moammar Khadafy.

'To the shores of Tripoli', let freedom ring as one of the world's nastiest and most enduring tyrants dies by inches. The end of Moammar Khadafy.

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note. Like so many of my Scottish countrymen, my family left the Highlands in the mid-eighteenth century to pursue a better life in America. But though they left physically, a portion of their heart remained behind and their love continued strong and enduring. The current events taking place in Libya returned my attention to the cruel end of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland when 270 innocent passengers were shredded in mid-air to satisfy the blood lust and barbarism of one man, Moammar Khadafy. Today this most bestial, longest-serving dictator in the Arab world, is inches from the retribution he has long deserved and is hopefully as painful as his deeds demand. But first, take a moment to find the evocative, spectral song "Loch Lomond" in any search engine. Let it sooth the spirits of the airborne dead and remind them, we have never forgotten what Khadafy, his henchmen, and their hatred did to you... and to so many innocent others.

Today the remnants of Khadafy's insolent regime are crumbing, block by block, desertion by desertion, as the everyday people of Tripoli, and throughout Libya, do what they have not been allowed to do for the nearly 42 year regime -- think for themselves! Live for themselves! Be who they want... not merely whom they have been told to be.

Today is one of the rarest days for one of the world's oldest civilizations... a day of possibilities, not restrictions. A day of high hopes, not of grinding despair. A day when the heart beats faster and when the world's peoples extend the hand of friendship and fraternity... glad to share the joy of a people who have experienced so little of it.

This is 21 August, 2011 and their long dreaded, capricious lord comes closer, closer to his inevitable conclusion, squalid, bloody, wherein the reigning monster of their long terror is shown to be what he always was, a man of small mind, mendacious habits, and contempt for every human but himself. And so the great man is revealed and abased... humbled... and shown to be at the end so very little.

So now this man of hatred, contumely, and abuse is reaping what he had sown day by day....

Today is a day which looks resolutely forward, for today the people of Libya, who have and have always had under this regime, so very little, at least have the prospect of a future. But today must also be a day of full remembrance for the full litany of dislocations, murders, maimings, disappearances, and ceaseless terrors perpetrated by a regime with power but no vision, weapons but no soul, destructive prowess but without humanity and compassion. Let us pause to remember them now... and vow that these outrages, every one of these outrages, will never be forgotten and stand as a vital testament to the never-ending saga of what a man is capable of doing when the world stands by and pretends that this diabolic business as usual is acceptable.

So now tolls the bell, for each and every one of these outrages, each a manifestation of malice aforethought...

As one of his first deeds, Khadafy in 1970 expelled the Italian population of Libya. He detested all Westerners... and ordered the extirpation of all evidence of their culture... and their systematic dislocation and removal.

From the first days of his power, and reaching full speed and application by 1973, he became the living symbol of Orwell's Big Brother. Dictators all have a compelling need to know what their peoples are doing at all times and places. Khadafy's need to know was the very essence of dictatorial thoroughness. Surveillance took place at every level of the government, on all people in any position of power, no matter that he had put those people there himself. Surveillance was constant, intrusive, paralyzing in factories, in education, in the military, everywhere where two or more people might meet and converse.

In short order, human behavior, human contact, human interaction in Libya became just what "Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution" permitted, and absolutely nothing else, upon pain of unimaginable suffering and horror. Libya was not a nation; it was a prison, where everyone was in thrall to a man of unmatched skill in the business of refined and exquisite torments,

His capacity for inflicting sufferings developed apace...

He hung dissidents to his all-encompassing regime in public, the better to intimidate. He headed a band of zealots perfect in the art of mutilation; so happy in this severe art that he had its execution and best examples played on television, to a nation which never failed to grasp the glaring meaning: so could thy life end, in an instant, with such pain.

But this quintessence of evil had more pain and suffering to deliver...

He censored the press, of course, by the simple expedient not just of suppressing content but by killing its writers, brutally and publicly, so that the ones not executed today would not even think of thinking, much less writing and publishing the brutal truths they knew to be irrefutable.

He executed, too, after the full panoply of torture, all those who sought national redemption through means political. Their moment of dissent was their last. They went to prison where they experienced the full pain humans can inflict. Such outrages against humanity were constant, brutal, the stuff of everyday existence for every Libyan.

Of course, he had a special regard for the growing ranks of his critics worldwide... they were a menace, a problem, and as such he increased the ranks of his thorough executioners, the better to diminish, and painfully so, the ranks of the disaffected.

There is more, much more, every instance an outrage to every sentiment that makes us human. And at last, Libyans, who saw nothing more for their lives than the constant chaos and confusion of their existence, saw that revolt was their only hope against a regime without any limit to the abuses perpetrated against the long suffering Libyan people.

On 17 February, 2011 major political protests began, as Libyans looked carefully at the events that had toppled the Mubarak tyranny in Egypt and called forth the admiration of the world, in their attempt to become the men they were, the men Khadafy had tried so long and with such bitter means to control.

Khadafy, with more men at his command, more armaments, more mercenaries, more money yet failed to eradicate the often ramshackle forces against him. The reason could be deduced in a single word: FREEDOM. Khadafy sought to control, to regiment, to hurt and divide. His opponents, whose names are now the names of patriots, wanted only one thing: for the people of Libya to control their own destinies, free from the daily terrors and anxieties each knew so well under the current regime.

And so, bit by bit, they advanced... never without hardship, never without the immemorial difficulties of war, experiencing want, sacrifice, their own political difficulties and conflicts... but still, despite every drawback, they advanced... until today the end of the regime is nigh, perhaps just hours away. These are the valiant days in Tripoli... the days proud men of action will impart to their grandchildren. It is a great day not just for Libyans but for all of us who value freedom and know its unending cost. Today all us ride with you through streets of Tripoli, optimistic, hopeful, grateful for your courage and application in a cause we all must hold dear.

About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Jeffrey Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books.

Republished with author's permission by Craig Telfer <a href="http://MyTrafficInjection.com">http://MyTrafficInjection.com</a>.

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21 Recommended Books for Entrepreneurs

21 Recommended Books for Entrepreneurs

Often when I am consulting with clients, I am asked to recommend books for entrepreneurs. I have compiled a list of titles on my shelf that I think are worth reading. Success in business means constantly learning and evolving, what better way to do so than sitting down with a good book. These are in no particular order. I hope you enjoy them as I have.

The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley & William Danko

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries & Jack Trout

The Intelligent Entrepreneur by Bill Murphy

Cash Copy by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

The Wealthy Barber and The Wealthy Barber Returns By David Chilton (these will appeal especially to Canadians reading this article)

Midas Touch: Why Some Entrepreneurs Get Rich-And Why Most Don't by Donald J. Trump and Robert Kiyosaki

The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur by Mike Micalowicz

7 Strategies for Wealth & Happiness by Jim Rohn

Alpha Dogs: How Your Small Business Can Become a Leader of the Pack by Donna Fenn

Illusions of Entrepreneurship by Scott A. Shane

Escape from Cubicle Nation by Pamela Slim

Magic of Thinking BIG by David J Schwartz

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas by Dan Kennedy

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell (His book, The Outliers is really a good book too but less related to Entrepreneurs)

Why We Buy by Paco Underhill

The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox

Screw It, Let's Do It by Richard Branson

Maximum Achievement: Strategies and Skills That Will Unlock Your Hidden Powers to Succeed by Brian Tracy

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

You Need to Be a Little Crazy: The Truth About Starting and Growing Your Own Business by Barry Moltz

Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar

Of course these are print books. There are lots of superb blogs and websites targeted at entrepreneurs. I will save that list for another post as it will be a very long list. For now I think you have some reading to do? Enjoy.

NOTE: Let us know what you think. We've love to hear which are your favourite titles. Open minds invite new ideas, sharing ideas makes us all a little smarter.

About the Author

Sandi Hunter is the Director of Website Development at Worldprofit Inc. Worldprofit provides a number of services for the small and home-based business community including hosting, design, webconferencing, traffic, advertising, SEO, training and resources. This year Worldprofit marks their 17th year in business. Republished with author's permission by Craig Telfer http://MyTrafficInjection.com. Check out Instant Traffic Robot ->

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Got an idea to change the world? Then you could get $1000 free. That'sAwesome.

Got an idea to change the world? Then you could get $1000 free. That'sAwesome.

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note. If you live in a college town like I do (Cambridge, Massachusetts) you're going to hear the undergrads talk about the "awesome" this, the even more "awesome" that. Usually I don't pay much attention to this because the word is habitually misapplied and misused. I mean just how "awesome" can the umpteenth pizzeria be, right?

But today I have got an idea for you, an idea that's, well, "awesome", particularly if you're of an inventive turn of mind and need 1000 smackers to help you with your improve-the-world idea. Just a free thousand bucks, with no strings attached.

Too good to be true? That's the awesome part! It's that "once in a blue moon", "it is what they say it is," "I'll be darned" idea.

For such an idea, soon to be revealed to you, I've selected the song that'll start any day off right, even if your voice needs re-inventing. It's "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin;' " from the 1947 Broadway musical "Oklahoma!" by Rogers and Hammerstein. You can easily find it in any search engine. Let 'er rip... especially when you're completing the simple form that could net you a free grand.

2008 Harvard grad Tim Hwang's awesome idea.

Tim Hwang, like most of us, hates paperwork, bureaucracy, and wasting time with stupid and "what's the point?" tasks. But unlike the rest of us, Hwang actually did something about his annoying pet peeve and irritation. The beneficiaries are those special people who have had that proverbial "aha!" moment, that exciting instant in time that signifies the fact you've just given birth to what the world always needs... another bright idea. We just can't get enough of them.

In the real world, your brand-new, bright-shiney idea would quickly become the easiest part of an endless list of things to do, especially if you want -- money! (As every single inventor in human history has.)

It becomes a backbreaking task, doing this, doing that, hurry up and wait for funding sources that seem to be friendly and accessible in their brochures, then morph into inhabitants of an "undisclosed location" when you want to hit them up for something. That common situation is awful...

Hwang's "aha!" moment.

Cambridge is a city where everyone and his brother is Always Imagining Something, Doing Something and, in due course, Achieving Something and (nice this) Giving Back Something. It's a very exciting, motivating environment where establishments of every kind could well have "Creative People Need Apply" signs on the door. It's most addictive. Tim Hwang is one of these people and even at his young age is already in the Give Back category. Here's what he dreamed up... and how that object of your affection -- you! -- can benefit.

First Hwang came to be aware of one of the truest facts on earth, viz. that to get money from people they require you to fill out a whole filing cabinet's worth of forms. It's time-consuming, often daunting, and always as dull as dishwater. But Hwang built a better mousetrap, so to speak, giving away money -- real Yankee greenbacks -- with a form so simple you won't have apoplexy or worse completing it and -- drum roll -- no (universally hated) reporting requirements at all. Nirvana!

Hwang credits the MacArthur Foundation for inspiring him. MacArthur awards the so-called "genius grants" which give folks a truly awesome $500,000 to use however they want without being forced to complete a single page of application or meet a single reporting requirement. I could use one of those myself! Hwang took this established mode of helping idea people... and gave it an awesome turn.

The Awesome Foundation.

Hwang's idea was new, innovative, and (biggest deal of all) so flexible it could help any idea reckoned as "awesome" by either the trustees of the newly established "Awesome Foundation" or the people who came up with the ideas and applied for the money. Hwang's "foundation" is not a classic grants-making foundation at all. Instead it is a singular way for idea people to apply -- and easily get -- a thousand dollars to use towards any idea they dream up and submit to the trustees.

These trustees are a key to the foundation's success, first because they each kick in $100 a month, from which the awards are made; second because they are responsible for determining which "awesome" idea gets the money. This involves judgement as fine as King Solomon's. Here's an example of a recent conundrum presented to the trustees of the original chapter, now known as the Boston chapter. 130 folks applied in August, 2011... 128 of these, while awesome , were not awesome enough. And so it came down to just 2 people.

The first wanted to buy a couple of goats to rent out as urban lawn mowers. The second was a sculptor who wanted to change careers and asked the Foundation to fund a portable welder so he could go round and fix his deteriorating city. And so, after further careful consideration, the trustees selected the disenchanted sculptor and his awesome idea for reinventing himself and his city.

It grows as it goes.

The motto for the state of New Mexico is also appropriate for the Awesome Foundation and its labor of love. This simple idea of people helping people and providing some financial encouragement, too, is truly an idea whose time has come. As a result Tim Hwang has got himself a tiger by the tail. There are already 23 chapters around the world; Australia is the farthest away from Cambridge... Detroit is the newest. They both need a hand from whoever is willing to help.

Largesse from the Knight Foundation.

At the Awesome Foundation's website (awesomefoundation.org) enthusiastic members post evidence of their work's success. It reads like what it is, a bulletin board of all the available evidence that the Foundation is moving ahead smartly. It is an amateur production in need of sharper design and copy, but the overall effect is positive; of real people who could have ignored the problems they deal with choosing instead to do something useful, even if that was limited.

This positive, hands-on, people-helping idea came to the attention of the bigger fish at the Knight Foundation whose decision makers liked what they saw, and gave $244,000, so joining the Awesome cause. This grant, the biggest yet to Awesome, will fund an initiative to provide microgrants to citizen journalism projects in Detroit. It's Knight's way of endorsing Awecome and helping Detroit, a basket case among America's wide array of urban plights.

And I'll tell you something. I think that's just plain Awesome, don't you think?

To apply for one of Awesome's $1000 no-strings grants, go to awesomefoundation.org

About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Jeffrey Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books.

Republished with author's permission by Craig Telfer http://MyTrafficInjection.com.

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An appreciation of Holly Hickler, master teacher, poet, her love affair with words, dead at

An appreciation of Holly Hickler, master teacher, poet, her love affair with words, dead at 88.

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note. This is a story about words and a woman who understood the power of words properly used to motivate adolescents, some of the toughest customers on earth. It is the story of Holly Hickler, proud to be a teacher, exhilarated by the challenges of her profession, a model to the less committed, who are legion.

Words, words, and ocean of words.

If you are a word person (as I confess I am) you will be sad upon reading this article that you never knew Holly Hickler. The minute I read her obituary in The Boston Globe (July 31, 2011), I was so saddened... I wanted to know her... and I wanted the world to know her, too. Words, you see, even words in an obituary, can make you feel so; words can do anything, convey anything, rouse anything, exult anything, change anything, remove anything, love anything, revolt anything...

... but you must know the words, have them not just in your head, but in your fingertips; words must be your constant companions. They must intrigue you, mystify you, bring you to your knees with grief, carry your prayers to God, and then, doubling back, conjure love from indifference... then ask your too late mate when she will be home for dinner.

Holly Hickler loved words, every word; she loved the sound of them, the textures, the complicated words and the simple words which proved upon reflection to be the most complicated of all: heaven, love, death, God, forever.

Mischievous, this mother could with laughter and purpose confound her children by reciting at any time or place a sprig of Frost on an autumn day:

""Summer was past and the day was past. Sombre clouds in the west were massed. Out on the porch's sagging floor Leaves got up in a coil and hissed...."

( from "Bereft" by Robert Frost, 1874-1963)

Or this written by Gerard Manly Hopkins (1844-1889) in 1877, but not published until 1918.

"GLORY be to God for dappled things -- For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow: For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings:..."

( from the poem "Pied Beauty").

Poems like these, even simple seeming Frost, are hard to read... harder to understand... and that would have suited Mrs. Hickler just fine. Such words, in such order, forced the surly, withdrawn, moody, often aggravating adolescents (either school delivered or borne by her) to stop, read the words clearly, sharply, for words must be heard; then look up the definitions... recite them again with greater clarity both of recitation and of meaning... then again and again, transforming brain cells into repositories of words, to be yours forever, shared only when you wish to touch a human heart or uplift, if only for a minute, some weary passerby in need of the comfort of the right word right delivered.

Her life.

Born Helen, in Philadelphia, her mother, Jean Miller Schloss, was fashion coordinator for Gimbels Department Store, and her father Edwin Schloss, a cellist who played chamber music with members of the Philadelphia Orchestra. It was a home of culture, the arts, and of sensitivities to music... literature... and, always, to words.

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1945 with a major in English, she worked on women's magazines and publishing for a time and interviewed authors on television in New York City. Unfortunately (and tellingly) her greatest achievement in these years was not the stunning prose she wrote and published (for she did neither), but rather the fact she survived the crash of a B-25 aircraft which plunged into the Empire State Building in July, 1945 while she was working. But she survived...

In 1946, she married Courtland Yardley White III, her former writing professor. They had twins, Peter and Kate. Mr. White died of tuberculosis in January, 1950. That September she married Frederick Dunlap Hickler, an architect. They had three children. When their oldest child left for college, Mrs. Hickler started teaching at the progressive Cambridge School of Weston, Massachusetts. Here her vocation for teaching became evident to all.

Sympathetic, loving, strict standards.

Unwary students often misread Mrs. Hickler's educational approach, to their peril. She was kind, empathetic, even loving towards her students, but this did not mean any diminution of the high standards she expected students to meet. As Bonny Musinsky, a fellow teacher at the school for 17 years, said, "when it comes to grading, she was no push-over. If they didn't measure up -- with all her love and caring -- she would give them a C."

The writer's eye.

Writers are a probing, observant, perceptive, invasive kind of people. They never merely glance and are the masters of minute detail and of actually seeing a thing. No one can write effective prose without these skills. Mrs. Hickler made it a point to foster this ability which she used to good effect in her 1981 book co-authored with Cambridge psychiatrist John Mack. It was titled "Vivienne: The Life and Suicide of an Adolescent Girl", and focused on the impersonal attitude of teachers in meeting the needs of teen-agers. No one ever accused Mrs. Hickler of such misunderstanding and dereliction and that is why she was such an effective, impacting, and always memorable instructor.

Writer's block.

I can guess, but cannot confirm, that one of the great sadnesses of this productive life was her own difficulties with writing words and slender published oeuvre. It must have been maddening, discouraging, irritating at the very least. So much so, that at age 75 she took a class to overcome writer's block. In due course, she wrote again. It was prose remembers Deborah Carr of Wellesley, a member of the group, about her "youth in an artsy, intellectual family in Philadelphia which she told in a voice that sounded as young as Holly was at heart." Unfortunately, it was not published... but this article, which will be read by thousands, will help keep green the memory of Holly Hickler, and her message that words matter, good writing matters, and that both are essential in the complicated business of human communication.

Infuriatingly, this is something far too many school districts have not grasped, which is one reason SAT reading scores have sunk to a record low with the class of 2011. In this connection, Wayne Camara, College Board vice president of research, mused, "We're looking and wondering if more efforts in English and reading and writing would benefit students."

Having read this article, just what do you think Holly Hickler's resounding response would have been? Or what yours should be, now that she has gone?

Then go to any search engine to find the recording by the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia of Tshaikovsky's Variations on a Roccoco Theme. Holly would have loved it.... and so will you.

About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Jeffrey Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books.

Republished with author's permission by Craig Telfer http://MyTrafficInjection.com.

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9/11, closure, and an important new book by Professor Nancy Berns.

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's program note.  This is a story about death and remembrance, one of the most difficult of subjects; universal reality for every human... but one we approach with the utmost diffidence, wanting to make the troubling matter which touches upon our own mortality short, clean,crisp, so that the experience is sanitized and efficient. We want to treat it as a  management problem not as profound unsettling event. We want closure... and we want it as soon and as effortlessly as possible.
But death and remembrance do not work that way... it is not a management problem; it is about our own oblivion, and it must be treated with the high seriousness it deserves.
That's why I have selected revered Mozart's "Requiem Mass in D minor" (K. 626) for the musical accompaniment for today's article. It is the precise sound needed to help you consider the matter of eternity, including your own. You will find it in any search engine. Allow yourself to be touched by this masterpiece unfinished at his death, which the Master left in 1791 for his encounter with God. It will help us with ours and help the loved ones who must deal, in due course, with our own passing.
How a new book by Professor Nancy Berns can help.
Drake University associate professor of sociology Nancy Berns has just published a work which may perhaps become seminal, offering as it does vital insights into the prevailing American way of grief, remembrance and the matter of "closure." Her book is titled "Closure: The Rush to End Grief and What It Costs Us," and it comes just as the nation faces another agonizing bout of remembrance on the never-must-be-forgotten events which fall under the name "9/11".
Her subject is important, timely, and of the greatest significance to every one of us: is closure a desirable objective, or is it another illustration of our national disinclination to deal with subjects at once difficult, distasteful, and perhaps irresolvable? Let's start with a definition of "closure," "that which closes or shuts down."
It's easy to see why real everyday people want death and its aftermath to be an "over ASAP" matter. We live in a culture which not only values but obsessives over the need for youth, beauty and boundless health and which sees in age and the weight of enfeebling years the markers of debility, always measuring by how much is gone and how much may remain. Death thus becomes not just an event but the event which deprives us of everything... and gives the hot potato of your death and disposal to people who want to pass it on immediately and get back to life.  For such people (for all they may have loved us) the concept of "closure" is absolutely essential because it gives them the right to forget and forget as fast as possible. This is especially true where the fatalities have been significant... as they can be in wars, natural disasters and traumatizing outrages like 9/11.
Images of 9/11
9/11 seared the national memory with images profound, haunting, horrifying, indelible. Each of us, all of us, have been bothered and afflicted by these images which in an instant altered our consciousness and diminished our securities.  We close our eyes and will it otherwise but these images abide with us forever, the residue of carnage. We attempt to make sense of the senseless by creating statistics, for that is easier than remembering the victims, those blown to Kingdom Come mid-air and those on whom the debris and the bodies fell, eliminating lives in a cascade of unimaginable flames.
65 percent of the victims were between 31 and 50 years old.
76 percent of those killed were men.
64 percent of the dead were married.
72 percent had at least one dependent.
Nearly 39 percent made at least $100,000 a year.
Statistics give a kind of distance -- and closure.
9/11 oppresses us, not merely because of the original event, but because we want to "move on",  into a world where the impact of this tragedy lessons and gives us peace... without guilt; closure, with finality.
Here's where the deeper insights of Professor Berns come in.
She argues, and I think rightly, that closure is a concept born  n our speed-driven culture. It is an appealing idea because it offers a definitive end to our suffering or grief and thereby offers an acceptable basis for starting a new life chapter where there is no sorrow, guilt, or anger. An invention of Gestalt psychology, this concept is now a cultural commonplace in every area of national life. But the fact that this notion is widely cited and believed does not make it real or true, merely convenient.
Thus we do a grave disservice to the dead, to ourselves, and to what we should rather do to reaffirm our humanity and gain the benefits that come from celebrating the dead... and letting them abide, much loved, never forgotten, as vital as our brain can make them and recall.
Thus, grief is not bad. It is not some set destination, to be concluded at a certain time and in a certain manner. It is not something that must necessarily end, or which by ending, brings peace and serenity.
Grief is not like an illness which can and should be ended with the right pill or prescription. It is highly personal and cannot be regulated, regimented, erased by rules or reason. And so it is difficult for all and most want an early exit, a strategy that does not soothe or lesson the pain. Thus the pain continues, to the growing frustration and irritation of others who, grieving differently or not grieving at all, have "moved on".
Things were different 100 years ago.
Just a century ago, people grieved quite differently; no doubt in part because they had more time and the pace of life was leisurely compared to our own. When people died, at home more often than not, strands of hair would be carefully cut, then annotated in copperplate hand and dispatched to relatives and a few special friends who loved the deceased. Some would be placed in or made into keepsakes, brooches, lockets with pictures. No one rushed the matter of grief... and social mores dictated a liberal amount of time, how long and in what way black should be worn, and the degree of reserve and retirement from society. No one vexed you by telling you to "move on, get closure."
And no one should say so today. As we age, the ranks of our dear departed increase until, at the last, they undoubtedly outnumber the living. But the dead remain with us, too, and should for to forget them is to diminish ourselves. The intensity of that grief will wane... but the fact and meaning of that grief cannot.
And so I'll end on this personal note. I have before me a letter from my mother dated Monday, November 18, 1985 and begins "My very dear son...." I would recognize the careful writing anywhere. This is how it opens "your letter came Saturday and I've been answering it ever since and throwing away the pages. I would so like to hold you and comfort you and 'make the world go away'".
I no longer remember the incident which provoked this response, but in every word I see her... and feel her love. And so I grieve anew for her death... and rejoice again that she abides with me and so long as I remain she remains and must be grasped and treasured accordingly. There is pain in this course... but there is solace,too... and to give up the one is to lose the other. And that would never do.

Which is why we must not seek closure but rather understanding that grief is the way we keep our beloved and honored dead in our lives... world without end, for ever and ever... amen.

About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Jeffrey Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Craig Telfer <a href="http://MyTrafficInjection.com">http://MyTrafficInjection.com</a>.
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Too busy? Need extra time? Then it's time for your 'NEVER DO' list!

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
We all know the importance of "to do" lists, that is lists where you write down what you need to do and when you need to do it. You DO have such lists, don't you? They are essential for maximum efficiency and focus.
Well, this is a recommendation to start drawing up and living by items on your "never do" list, a list that becomes absolutely necessary as  you see your opportunities and tasks expanding exponentially and your time remaining inflexible and limited.
Time is infuriatingly limited
Face it. Since you were born, no one has been able to figure out how to get more than 24 hours in a day. Generations of trained, often brilliant, scientists have come and gone... yet we have the same amount of time as the Caesars with no change in sight. Bummer.
Thus instead of wishing we had more time, the challenge becomes making better use of the time we have. Inspired allocation of time becomes the goal... and this includes the all-important "never do" list.
The residual pull of "do it yourself".
If your upbringing was anything like mine, you were constantly admonished: "if you want it done right, do it yourself."
Without detracting from the wisdom of this remark, I must tell you this in all seriousness: quite simply you cannot do it all yourself... and to achieve increasing success you must make the determination and live by it... that that which can be done by others, must be done by others; this is the only way  you can perfect your ability to make money and mastermind the growth and expansion of your empire.
Start today. What task(s) can you stop doing at once?
Review what you did yesterday, everything you did. Write it down. It is time to see where you currently invest your time... and to stop doing at least 1 of the items currently being done by you. Now, when I say write down EVERYTHING you did....I do mean EVERYTHING. The goal is freeing up time... which means a total review of what you now do for yourself.
Looking at what you do
This list will include items like these
* household tasks like laundry, food shopping and preparation, taking care of pets
* time you spend with children and elderly parents
* running errands (list every one  you must do)
* driving and upkeep of your vehicles.
Be thorough, be exhaustive, be honest!
Selecting the first item to be done by others
Remember, the amount of time is rigidly fixed. What you personally do... and what you delegate to others to do is not. Now is the time to start this crucial delegation.
Household help
Busy people, important people, people with lots of things to do... and the desire to advance... almost all have household help and so must you.
Hire your help (recommendations from friends help). Then train them to meet your exacting standards and to create the lifestyle of ease and efficiency that you require as a  necessary condition for your own success.
Now, I'm not saying it's not possible to live without household help. What I am saying is that if you want the maximum amount of free time that you can devote to getting on and getting richer, then you MUST have household help. That help is a crucial factor in your success.
Training such people in what you require is essential. You'll need a "to do" list for them, and you'll need to monitor carefully what they do and how they do it. Allowing them to get on with the job of helping and serving you will yield a huge dividend in time and a general feeling of contentment and satisfaction.
A driver
If you're like most people you spend a spectacular amount of time in and around your vehicles. This is time better spent in advancing your economic well- being and comfort. In short, you require a driver.
Drivers can be used for a myriad of purposes, from running errands to making an evening out comfortable and efficient.  If you've never had such help before, you can hardly imagine how liberating it is to acquire and use it... and how promptly you become accustomed to its many advantages. And the cherry on the cake, of course, is that it frees up a huge volume of time, time you can better use for other purposes.
A word of recognition
My own driver is Aime Joseph, a man of efficiency and concern, who with his charming wife Mercedes, take care of me and mine. Indeed, so popular is Mr. Joseph, that when my relatives visit they always ask whether he will be picking them up at the air port. An affirmative answer cheers them immensely. I am glad to attest to his virtues... and to the essential services he delivers, services which have given me both leisure and the time required for enhanced business profits and a better, more serene existence.
A word of advice: slow and steady wins the race
The first problem to overcome will be accepting the need for help to free up time. Then there is the matter of cost. You'll say that you don't have the money to delegate life's essential tasks to others. That's rubbish. You simply need to be sure that you can generate the necessary money from your business and that this money is greater than the cost of the assistance you are acquiring. If it is, no problem.
But don't go mad... before you add additional help to your expense ledger, always make sure you can generate the income to pay for it. Once you are sure, proceed. This means moving ahead with all due deliberation. Help is great, help is essential, help gives you the better life... but you must be able to pay for it.
Now begin. You are about to stop doing one essential task after another, tasks you may have done for a lifetime but which you cannot afford to do yourself any more. Why? Because you truly know and intend to live by the fundamental truth that is Benjamin Franklin's famous line: "time is money." Indeed it is... and now, with all your new and vital help, you are about to liberate a great deal of that time and reap the very substantial benefits that come when you do!

About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Attend Dr. Lant's live webcast TODAY and receive 50,000 free guaranteed visitors to the website of your choice! Dr. Lant is the author of 18 best-selling books. Republished with author's permission by Craig Telfer <a href="http://MyTrafficInjection.com">http://MyTrafficInjection.com</a>.

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