What does a romance hero do for a living? When I was much younger the hero in romance comic books, these books were my favorite right after Betty, Veronica and the gang, was usually the boss in an office. I don’t think it mattered what he did, he was simply “the boss.” The secretary, receptionist, etc. usually kept her infatuation a secret. She may have told her gal pals but never let the boss know. Then it happened, maybe a ride home in the rain, perhaps they had to work late at the office, she or he had a life emergency and…the rest is romance history.

Romance novels are as popular as ever, perhaps more so now that you can download your novel and read it online ;) Some women (and men) never admit to reading these books, but the numbers tell us that someone is reading them. And far more than those who stand up and freely admit, “My name is Vannie, and I am a reader of romance novels.”  When you admit to this, you are also admitting that you don’t want to read about someone who is a fast food worker or an accountant. Although sometimes…well.

Romance novels have such an impact on readers, the magazine Psychology Today performed an analysis of over 15,000 romance novels and the heroes that live within these pages. See the list of the most common occupations of romance heroes in fiction, not one works at Mickey D’s:

• Doctor
• Cowboy
• Boss
• Prince
• Rancher
• Knight
• Surgeon
• Monarch
• Bodyguard
• Sheriff

Where are you gonna find a knight to romance you? Hey we are talking fantasy, remember? That’s also why he always has rippling muscles, a killer smile and can charm honey from a stone! BTW, did you know that August is Romance Awareness Month?

Source: Psychology Today Magazine: http://www.psychologytoday.com/
Visit Romance Genre: for Tweets about romance and romance authors http://twitter.com/RomanceGenre You will have to join Twitter first.

• Provide a healthy variety. You want your kids to eat right, but don’t force foods on kids, they often rebel just because…hey they’re kids.  However if you make tasty nutritious food available in your home and allow them to  choose what they want you will have a win-win situation.

• Avoid power struggles:-( You can’t control what other children eat. And, sad but true, you can’t control  what your child eats at a friend’s house. But, you can set the rules for your own home. Do set rules and don’t worry about what other kids eat, just your own.

• When shopping involve your children. If your kids are young enough that you take them shopping with you, explain why you are buying this or that. Let them see how and why you choose  certain items.  Let them a few selections of their own. If they make the wrong choices, reading the label out loud may make them think twice about the product.  Allow kids to help prepare meals so they see what goes into a healthy dinner. While making green salad, pop a few morsels in your mouth to show how delicious you think they are. Talk about where fruits and vegetables come from, if there is a farm nearby, even better, some farms welcome visitors.

• When possible eat together. As much as possible, schedule dinners so everyone in the family can eat together. If only five members of a six-member family is available, go for it, the sixth member may make more of an effort to join the family at dinner time. When eating together, serve healthy and tasty food, this may influence what your children eat at meals when not at your dinner table.

• Eating a meal is not a race to the finish.  You should not rush through your meal, nor should you allow child to do it. Engage family members in conversation. Have you noticed when you eat out with friends you find that you have spent two hours at lunch or dinner? Why? How? Conversation! If you normally serve soda or other sugary drinks, add water to the mix, place water on the table.  A reminder that water helps to clear the palate for the next course. You don’t have to tell them that drinking water will help to fill them and perhaps eat less. That will be our secret.

Was the concept of personal branding started way back in 1997, when Tom Peters’ wrote “The Brand Called You” in Fast Company magazine? Or was it before that? I think years before. Think of actress Mae West, her brand was definately sex. Not just sex, but SEX.  She ran with it and was a success. So, it does not matter when or how it started, it is a smart and legitimate career practice not just practiced by actors, but used by entrepreneurs, CEOs, and regular workers who want to distinguish themselves from the crowd.

How to do this? First take charge of your career and your life by constructing your very own personal brand and hit bullseye everytime. Or at least most times.

First and foremost know who you are. Your brand should be as near to who you really are. Then run with it.

Identify your passion. Your brand won’t stand the test of time unless it’s based on something you feel strongly about and want to do for the rest of your life.

Specialize. Plant your banner in a niche that’s narrow enough for you to stand out in. Look at what you already do better than anyone else, and concentrate on keeping your skills sharp in that area.

Market yourself. Position yourself as a service provider. Let your manager and co-workers know what you’re capable of and what you want to do. Think of yourself as a CEO, even though you have an employer. Your career is ultimately your responsibility, after all.

Keep a record or scorecard. You know that setting goals is important to your career progress, right? Decide what you want your brand to accomplish, and establish some milestones—your next promotion, a new client, a completed project, etc. Track your brand’s success over time.

Source: Fast Company: Tom Peters “The Brand Called You

According to a report by eMarketer, online networking continues to rise.

As one who recently joined Facebook, I am feeling like the proverbial country mouse coming to the big city. Wow! What a exciting life–yes I know I said I had no interest in joining. To be perfectly frank I had none until I was given my own Facebook URL. Stepping in this world has reunited me with an early Internet connection; as I have said many times, though world-wide, the Internet is actually a very small place. Much like ones own real life social/business network. Even when you don’t remember the name, you remember the face and vice-versa. Facebook helps you find former co-worker’s, old beaus, lost family members, old friends and more. And you can connect with those you have wanted to meet. Very cool!

So how many individuals in the US are on Facebook? eMarketer says that in 2011, the Facebook social network “will have 132.5 million U.S. users. That’s more than half the number of Internet users overall in the U.S., and about five times higher than the number of subscribers to Twitter.

By 2013, eMarketer predicts, 62% of all domestic Web users will have a Facebook profile—47.6% of the U.S. population. After that point, Facebook’s growth will probably peak domestically, although expansion is likely to continue around the globe.”

My advice to those not on Facebook, go ahead and connect. It’s painless and fun. I guess it’s a good thing I have no problem saying, I was wrong!

Source: www.emarketer.com/

Artists have called on their creative instincts since the first cave drawing. What can they teach us?  To look deeper than paint and canvas.  See quotes and advice attributed to these creative people, then consider pushing your creative juices and imagination to the limits.

Brock Davis, artist: “I think it’s important to not be afraid to fail. I have a lot of ideas, sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. I just keep trying until it works, and I learn from the times that it does not.”

Andrew Zuckerman, photographer: “You have to believe that your vision is just as valid as anyone else’s, have faith in that vision, and then approach your own work with rigor.”

Salvador Dali, artist: “There is only one difference between a madman and me. I’m not mad.”

Michelangelo, artist, sculptor: “What one has most to strive for is to do the work with a great amount of labor and study in such a way that it may appear, however much it was labored, to have been done almost quickly and almost without any labor, and very easily, although it was not.”

Robert Fawcett, book illustrator: “Don’t stop to admire a partly completed sketch.”

Me…I like what Sgt. Gabriel said to Capt. Taylor’s secretary Frannie when she was helping him by performing a difficult internet search using a system that was new to her, “Go for it Frannie.”  [The Closer, Season One, Episode Three, THE BIG PICTURE.]

Did Frannie find what they were looking for?  She was on the mark and aced it, she was so on target, she said ”I should be in Vegas.”  Do you have to be creative to find obscure information on the Internet? To create a blog, site, etc. that people will want to visit? You bet.

“It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas as all.” — Edward de Bono

     A famous art professor died and went to heaven. At the Pearly Gates, the prof asked St. Peter, “Sir, I spent most of my life on Earth studying great art, but I have a question that’s puzzled me for 30 years: Who was the greatest painter in history?”

St. Peter pointed to a nearby cloud. “See that woman right over there? That’s the one.”

The professor frowned. “But I knew that woman on Earth! She ran the cafeteria at the university where I taught! How could she have been the greatest painter in history?”

St. Peter shook his head sadly. “She could have been, if she had ever picked up a brush and tried to paint.”

In the words of Nike–Just do it! Don’t die wishing you had tried, don’t let your dreams slip away.

CareerBuilder.com collected some of its employees’ more unusual excuses for missing work. See a part of their survey, it brings a smile to your face or perhaps I wish I had thought of that to mind:

• One employee said his mother had been attacked by a chicken
• An employee reported that his finger had gotten stuck in a bowling ball
• One employee simply told the boss he wasn’t feeling too clever that day
• An employee said he needed to mow his lawn right away in order to avoid a lawsuit from his homeowner’s association.
• One employee’s foot got caught in a garbage disposal.
• One employee called in the day after Thanksgiving, to say she’d burned her mouth; on a piece of pumpkin pie.

My personal favorite all time reason for being late was given by a former co-worker to our boss. She said she was late because she had trouble with her car. The truth was she had no car and did not know how to drive

My favorite from CareerBuilder.com’s employee excuse list is “not feeling clever that day.” On one hand, this excuse seems lame, on the other it feels perfectly legitimate. When I worked 9 to 5, there were days when I wished I could return home and hide under the warmth of the covers when everything I touched or tried to do in the office turned to …. and I was not feeling very clever.

These day’s when I am not feeling too clever I have the option of trying to make it through the day slowly or simply shutting my faithful laptop and reading for a while. Oh if only it were that simple in corporate.

http://www.CareerBuilder.com

I give you one more reason to be careful what you post online.

In the past year or two there has been much publicity about married people using social media to share their eagerness, sometimes graphic longings to be with someone other than their legal mate. As the headlines have shown nothing online is really private.

A survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers found that 80 percent of divorce lawyers say they’ve seen an increase in the number of cases relying on social media for evidence of hanky-panky and other wrong-doing.

When social networking get into the mix, 66 percent of the lawyers say Facebook has been used as the primary source of evidence, followed by Myspace (15 percent), and then Twitter (5 percent), with other sites making up 14 percent. You will note that Twitter is only 5 percent, I guess it’s not that easy to post hot and heavy longings in 140 character’s. 

American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers http://www.aaml.org/

You don’t expect to get fired, but what about being displaced? Are there warning signs that tell you to update your resume? Or that you are not as valuable as you thought you were?  Sometimes little things can mean a lot.

  Do you take time to notice what’s going on around you in your office? So what are the signs to look for to make sure your job is as secure as you can make it? There is no time like the present to take stock of how you are seen in your work place:

• You’re no longer in the loop. Does everyone else know what’s going on at your organization before you do? If your manager and co-workers all stop communicating with you, the reason may be because they know you won’t be around much longer.

• Other people are getting promoted ahead of you. The guy who was hired six months after you is now your manager’s boss. You may have hit a wall and need to learn something new or sharpen your people skills.

• Your responsibilities have been cut in half. These days most employees have too much to do. If your key tasks have been assigned to someone new, the rest of your job may soon follow.

• People ignore your mistakes. Sometimes what’s worse than getting yelled at for an error is NOT getting yelled at for an error. That could mean that your boss isn’t planning on taking any more chances with you.

• Your manager wants you to sign off on everything. Most terminations call for a certain amount of documentation—your boss needs to show that he or she did everything right before letting you go. If you’re being asked to sign every memo or acknowledge each e-mail you receive, your manager could be creating a paper trail to justify a decision he or she has already made.

 
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You don’t have to be rich to be a philanthropist, you don’t even have to give money. Without hands-on-volunteers, many organizations would soon fold. However, if you do give money or it is your plan to do so, there are some things to think about.

I usually give money to organizations based on how I have been personally affected by certain illness or situations, some I support because of heart tugs. As with all things you should be discerning when you give your hard-earned ‘‘m-o-n-e-y’ or your valuable personal ‘t-i-m-e’ to charitable organizations. How you give and for whatever reason you give, make sure charities;

1. match your principles. Know what they stand for and most important, does what they do match up to what they say they stand for and what you want to support?;
2. truly back what you believe in. While it is nice to be generous and giving, give to support only what you believe in. If you get a telephone call or email and are asked to give as little as a dollar, don’t do it if the cause does not meet with your beliefs or goes against the grain of who you are. And don’t feel guilty about saying no, because what you do no support, somebody else does.

One of my solid commitments is to give to and support charities in my country before I give to an outside country for a similar need. It is like paying myself first.

If you want to check charities, Charity Choices is a good place to start.