Amazon prioritizes customers over employees. It goes to great lengths to offer low prices and fast shipping even if that means no lavish employee perks. Employees are not seen as customers. Amazon accepts this cost to keep its customer flywheel spinning.

Customer Obsession Over Employee Experience

Amazon plays hardball to beat competitors. Example: It slashed diaper prices to zero until it could acquire the rival startup diapers.com. Amazon shoots first in conflicts with sellers, assuming guilt until proven innocent. It directly competes with bestselling Marketplace merchants. Amazon plays to win at all costs.

No Holds Barred Competition

Bezos requires robust six page narratives over slide decks in meetings. Teams labor intensively on these papers to convey their proposal completely. Bezos absorbs details and anticipates issues. The process surfaces flaws early. Big innovations like Prime survived this gauntlet of critical review.

Six Page Narratives Over PowerPoints

Bezos built an inner circle of loyal, long-tenured executives called the S-Team. They share his values, question assumptions and run core businesses. Bezos signals they could replace him, providing continuity. He even has S-Team mentors to coach him on deficiencies.

The S-Team: Loyal Lieutenants

If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.

Like Steve Jobs, Bezos occasionally erupts in angry outbursts at unprepared staff. He demands brutal honesty. While traumatic, these "nutters" are strategic. He pushes people to their cognitive limits resulting in a loyal, battle-tested team.

Demanding Brutal Honesty

Bezos takes the long view, thinking in decades and centuries. He developed this perspective early reading about outer space and timescales. He trains employees and investors to have long-term patience and not sacrifice the future for quick profits.

Forcing Long-Term Perspective

Bezos is willing to make big bets, but they are educated risks, not reckless gambles. Ventures like the Fire Phone failed, but Amazon gained insights it applied elsewhere. Bezos mitigates risk through testing and iteration. Big bets pay off over time.

Making Educated Big Bets

The Amazon flywheel represents an endless loop of value that propels growth. <ul><li>Lower costs attract more shoppers and sellers. </li><li>This generates data to improve AI and services further reducing costs. </li><li>Amazonians constantly innovate to accelerate the flywheel's momentum.</li></ul>

Relentlessly Innovating the Flywheel 

<ul><li>Prime's convenience hooks members to one-click buying and fast shipping. </li><li>They grow addicted and brand loyal. </li><li>Prime's selection and original content enriches the ecosystem. </li><li>Members are insensitive to price. </li><li>Amazon lavishes attention and investment to keep them satisfied and loyal.</li></ul>

Prime Addicted Loyalists 

Amazon pursues revolutionary innovation like 1-click buying, Prime Video, Alexa and cashier-less retail. Bezos believes in disruptive change over incremental gains. He is willing to wait years for big breakthroughs. Slow progress is still progress if the end vision is revolutionary.

Pursuing Revolutionary Innovation 

Automation and AI like Amazon Go stores will displace retail jobs. Amazon pays for training, but many may turn to Universal Basic Income. To survive, people can sell products on Amazon Marketplace, but algorithmic Amazon competes there too. The future of work is uncertain.

Preparing For a Jobless Future

Despite strengths, Amazon has weaknesses to exploit.<ul><li> It can't offer truly personalized service at scale or all products.</li><li> Commoditization diminishes its brand power. </li><li>Competitors can differentiate with niche selection, high-touch service and customization - like Best Buy's Geek Squad.</li></ul>

Understanding Amazon's Weak Spots

Bezonomics" was written by Brian Dumaine and published by Scribner on May 12, 2020. The book focuses on Jeff Bezos and Amazon, and argues that Bezos's focus on customer service and the accumulation and analysis of customer data is key to Amazon's success. It explores how Amazon has disrupted traditional retail and changed the way we shop, and also looks at the challenges the company faces as it continues to grow and expand into new industries.

Amazon is the business story of the decade. Jeff Bezos, the richest man on the planet, has built one of the most efficient wealth-creation machines in history. Like a giant squid, Amazon's tentacles are squeezing industry after industry and, in the process, upsetting the state of technology, the economy, job creation and society at large. So pervasive is Amazon's impact that business leaders in almost every sector need to understand how this force of nature operates and how they can respond to it. Saying you can ignore Jeff Bezos is equivalent to saying you could ignore Henry Ford or Steve Jobs in the early years of Ford and Apple. These titans monumentally changed how we do business, redefining the rules on a global scale. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the new disruptor on the block. He has created a 21st century algorithm for business and societal disruption. He has turned the retail industry inside out, is swiftly dominating cloud computing, media and advertising, and now has his sights trained on every other domain where money changes hands and business is transacted. But the principles by which Bezos has achieved his dominance - customer obsession, extreme innovation and long-term management, all supported by artificial intelligence turning a virtuous-cycle 'flywheel' - are now being borrowed and replicated. 'Bezonomics' is for some a goldmine, for others a threat, for still others a life-shaping force, whether they're in business or not. Brian Dumaine's Bezonomics answers the fundamental question: how are Amazon and its imitators affecting the way we live, and what can we learn from them?

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

books

Books

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Brian Dumaine

Bezonomics

Most people won’t make an extraordinary effort. They’ll make an ordinary effort. The only competitive advantage comes from having people who will make an extraordinary effort.

Going from good to great requires paying attention to details and exceeding expectations, not just meeting them. It means relentlessly raising the bar on individual and team performance at all levels.Accepting mediocrity anywhere cripples an organization's competitiveness.

Raising the Bar on Performance

Building a championship team is not about marquee names but rather people with drive, initiative, and a track record of outperformance.<ul><li>Skills can be taught, but the right attitude cannot.</li><li>Have high standards in hiring.</li><li>Let low performers go quickly.</li></ul>

Assembling the Right Team

Creating a high-performance culture requires leaders to set an intense pace and lead by example.The culture must align around key principles and values like customer focus, excellence, innovation, and teamwork.Culture is established early and hard to change later.

Instilling the Right Culture 

<ul><li>Establish a simple, focused strategy and make it widely understood.</li><li>Set almost impossible goals to shock the system.</li><li>Do not spread resources too thin.</li><li>Make hard strategic choices to amplify strengths.</li><li>Bold strategies excite top talent.</li></ul>

Setting a Bold Strategy

All efforts must align around strategy. Build streamlined, metrics-driven management systems to track progress. Stay close to the details of execution.Push for speed but not recklessness. Do not tolerate mediocre execution or excuses.

Executing Flawlessly 

Build products that are not just incrementally better but fundamentally unique. Go beyond customer asks to delight them. Take risks on innovation but demand rigor.Ensure development priorities align tightly with strategy. Kill less differentiated products.

Developing Differentiated Products

<ul><li>Motivate the sales team through contests and incentives.</li><li>Set high aspirations and track results relentlessly.</li><li>Use metrics to drive sales behavior aligned with strategy.</li><li>Spend time coaching major deals.</li><li>Make sales a core competence, not an afterthought.</li></ul>

Amping up Sales Impact

Big marketing budgets are wasted without sustained programs to engage customers and promote differentiated positioning. Nurture target customer relationships. Promote thought leadership.Build programs around key strategies and messages.

Leveraging Marketing Programs

“Priority” should ideally only be used as a singular word. The moment you have many priorities, you actually have none.

The book Amp It Up by Frank Slootman shares leadership and management wisdom from his experience growing companies like Data Domain, ServiceNow and Snowflake. It provides advice on culture, talent, strategy, sales, marketing, product development and more. Slootman aims to help leaders ramp up performance.

Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly Bestseller The secret to leading growth is your mindset Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman is one of the tech world's most accomplished executives in enterprise growth, having led Snowflake to the largest software IPO ever after leading ServiceNow and Data Domain to exponential growth and the public market before that. In Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity, he shares his leadership approach for the first time. Amp It Up delivers an authoritative look at what it takes to transform an organization for maximum growth and scale. Slootman shows that most leaders have significant room to improve their organization's performance without making expensive changes to their talent, structure, or fundamental business model—and they don’t need to bring in an army of consultants to do it. What they do need is to align people around what matters and execute with urgency and intensity every day. Leading for unprecedented growth means declaring war on mediocrity, breaking the status quo, and making conflicted choices daily, all with a relentless focus on the mission. Amp It Up provides the first principles to guide that change, and the tactical advice for organizing a company around them. Perfect for executives, entrepreneurs, founders, managers, and leaders of all kinds, Amp It Up is a must-read resource for anyone who seeks to unleash the growth potential of a company and scale it to heights they never thought possible.

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

Frank Slootman

Amp It Up

The goal is to walk away feeling enriched by the exchange, even if the conversation was difficult.

<ul><li>Have the courage to initiate necessary but difficult conversations rather than avoiding them, even when uncomfortable. </li><li>Avoidance only breeds anxiety, harms relationships and deepens divides. </li><li>Be assertive but also lead with compassion. </li><li>Focus on achieving mutual understanding. </li><li>Find common ground to begin building rapport.</li></ul>

Cultivating the Courage to Communicate 

Listen fully without immediate judgment, defensiveness or interruption in order to understand the other person’s perspective. Reflect back what you hear to confirm understanding. Ask curious questions to learn more, not interrogate. Provide space for people to share thoughts and feelings freely and feel heard. Manage your reactions.

Listening Deeply and Openly

Share your own viewpoint honestly but always respectfully. Be descriptive and specific about your actual experience using "I" language rather than generalizing. Take ownership of your perspective rather than externalizing blame onto others. Stick to the substantive issues at hand. Speak your truth with care.

Expressing Yourself Honestly and Respectfully

When giving constructive feedback, be specific, kind and solution-oriented. Focus comments on observable behaviors rather than character judgments. Explain the impact of the behaviors both on others and organizational goals. Then partner on improvement goals and next steps. Follow up.

Providing Constructive Feedback Thoughtfully

<ul><li>Handle conflict through openness and communication, not escalation. </li><li>Actively listen for common ground and higher purpose. </li><li>Diffuse heightened emotions and keep communicating. </li><li>Rebuild eroded trust after tensions through reciprocated vulnerability and demonstrating reliability over time.</li></ul>

Addressing Conflict Productively

Seek first to deeply understand by putting yourself in the other person's shoes, feelings and situational constraints. Relate to their motivations, struggles and pressures. Suspend your own biases and mental models. Imagine if roles were reversed. Hear them before replying.

Developing Greater Empathy

Strengthen mutual relationships and trust by sharing more of your own experiences, challenges and humanity. Be authentic. When you confide, others feel safer to be vulnerable and open up too. Then follow through consistently on what you say you will do.

Building Rapport and Trust

<ul><li>Approach every difficult conversation as a learning opportunity, not a battle to be won. </li><li>Remain humble and open, with a curiosity about different perspectives. </li><li>Appreciate that you grow in wisdom by genuinely listening. </li><li>Be grateful for insight gained.</li></ul>

Adopting a Learning Mindset

The book Can We Talk? by Roberta Chinsky Matuson offers strategies for having meaningful and constructive conversations at work to strengthen relationships and build trust. It provides guidance on communication skills.

WINNER: Independent Press Award 2022 - Career Are you avoiding an uncomfortable conversation at work? If you're an executive or a team leader, strengthening your organization's ability to have difficult conversations is necessary and worth the discomfort. The key to successful dialogue starts and ends with changing the conversation. Recognizing that it takes two people to engage in meaningful outcomes, Can We Talk? outlines what each contributor needs to do to achieve the best possible result. Using examples from everyday work situations, this book offers guidance on how to create the right conditions for a meaningful discussion. The author identifies the seven key principles that enable both parties to gain a deeper understanding of what the other person may be thinking and will help establish their point of view more clearly: confidence, clarity, compassion, curiosity, compromise, credibility, courage. Can We Talk? includes examples and advice from those who have been there and thrived, as well as lessons learned from conversation failures and example scripts of productive conversations. Readers will learn how to prepare, start and manage the potentially challenging exchange of words that typically occur at work, and come away with an understanding that for any conversation to take place, both parties must be engaged.

communication

Communication

Roberta Chinsky Matuson

Can We Talk?

Joyless cultures are ultimately doomed to mediocrity.

Inspire team members' passion by ensuring people find deep meaning, purpose and opportunity to use their strengths in their work. Enable them to contribute to projects that genuinely matter. Passion is the rocket fuel that drives astonishing effort, creativity, innovation and commitment. It cannot be faked or forced. When passion is alive, excellence follows.

Making Passion a Central Focus

<ul><li>Model and embody boundless energy, optimism, enthusiasm and zest. </li><li>When leaders clearly love what they do and find joy in the journey, it spreads. </li><li>Share excitement authentically. Bring an upbeat spirit of fun and liveliness to all interactions, even challenges. </li><li>People flourish under dynamic optimism.</li></ul>

Leading with Boundless Positive Energy

Show that your organization is deeply obsessed with understanding, serving and creating amazing experiences for people - both your team members and external customers/partners. Make every human interaction uplifting. People crave working at places with caring, human-centered cultures.

Obsessing Over Serving People

<ul><li>Delight people through small bursts of surprise, authentic appreciation and celebration. </li><li>Send handwritten thank you notes, impromptu treats, personalized gestures of recognition.</li><li> Thoughtfulness multiplies reciprocal joy. People remember how you made them feel.</li></ul>

Adding Small Touches of Delight and Appreciation

Proactively support mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health and balance. Operate with care, flexibility and humanity. Encourage self-care, development, and managing energy. Healthy environments liberate engagement and multiply productivity.

Promoting Holistic Wellbeing

Let team members shine as their authentic selves. Foster trust that people will not be punished or judged for harmless self-expression. Channel their unique passions and strengths. Personality diversity elevates collaboration when embraced.

Enabling Authentic Self-Expression

<ul><li>Intentionally strengthen interpersonal bonds and a sense of community among team members. </li><li>Facilitate relationships through offsites, breaks together, group activities, mentorship. </li><li>Nurture care and belonging. Social needs are as critical as professional ones.</li></ul>

Building Bonds of Community

Walk the talk. Make espoused values like integrity, care and transparency real in all practices. Hypocrisy instantly destroys engagement and morale. Do the right thing for people, partners and society - beyond profits. Ethics bring purpose.

Aligning Values and Practices

In Chief Joy Officer, business guru Tom Peters makes the case that spreading workplace joy, passion and meaning is the ultimate leadership responsibility. He argues this mindset drives excellence and profitability.

A 2018 Nautilus Book Award Winner for Business and Leadership! The founder of Menlo Innovations and author of the business culture cult classic Joy, Inc offers an inspirational guide to leaders seeking joy in the challenge of leading others. Rich Sheridan's Joy, Inc. told the story of how his tiny software company in Ann Arbor, Michigan achieved success and renown by embracing offbeat culture and human-centered values. In Chief Joy Officer, he turns his attention from culture to leadership, and draws on his experience running Menlo and consulting elsewhere to offer a wise, provocative guide on how anyone can build leadership capacity for joy within their own organization. Chief Joy Officer offers sage, hard-won advice to any manager or leader who yearns to make more of an impact on the lives of others, including:   *  Self-understanding is the cornerstone for every virtue of leadership: authenticity, trust, humility, and optimism.   *  Good leaders make more leaders: Learn to judge your performance not on whether people are doing what they're told, but whether they're developing independent leadership capacity.   *  Influencing up is just as important is influencing down: how to encourage different thinking in those above you in your organizations. Filled with colorful anecdotes from Sheridan's personal journey and wisdom from many leadership mentors, Chief Joy Officer offers an approachable, down-to-earth philosophy and practice that will help even the most disillusioned of middle managers bring a renewed sense of purpose to their work building others.

Richard Sheridan

Chief Joy Officer

Content marketing creates an emotional connection between your company and your customers.

<ul><li>Shift your mindset away from being an advertiser to building a media company delivering consistent, high-value content. </li><li>Your content platform and distribution channels become assets as powerful as products. </li><li>Rather than constantly pitching sales, provide ongoing education and value to build more durable mindshare. </li><li>Quality content that solves problems earns audience trust.</li></ul>

Becoming a Media Company, Not Just an Advertiser

Determine a specific target market vertical and buyer persona to create niche content tailored precisely to their preferences versus scattered content on various topics. Conduct research to deeply understand your core target customers' informational needs, problems, and interests. Customize content accordingly.

Identifying Your Target Market Vertical and Buyer Persona

<ul><li>Clearly define your central content mission – the informational needs, problems, and interests of your target audience that your content aims to address. </li><li>Let this mission guide ongoing creation of content formats, editorial themes, and messaging. </li><li>All content should tie back to serving the audience.</li></ul>

Developing a Content Mission Tied to Audience Needs

Create a diverse mix of content formats including blogs, podcasts, video, research reports, white papers, webinars, infographics, newsletters. Variety retains audience interest while also allowing you to build a more robust content platform. Expand reach.

Crafting a Diverse Mix of Content Formats

Map out the conversion pathways you want readers to follow from each content format to desired outcomes like sales, email subscribers, event sign-ups. Optimize these pathways through clear calls-to-action and seamless user experience across touchpoints.

Optimizing Conversion Pathways to Desired Outcomes

<ul><li>Monetize content through selected, unobtrusive avenues like sponsorships, premium memberships, virtual/live events and carefully vetted affiliate links. </li><li>Avoid over-commercialization that erodes audience trust. </li><li>Focus on serving audience needs through content.</li></ul>

Monetizing Content Strategically to Deliver Value 

<ul><li>Rigorously analyze performance metrics on how each content piece performs, including traffic, engagement, conversions. </li><li>Double down on what succeeds. </li><li>Improve or eliminate underperforming pieces. </li><li>Continuously refine content based on data.</li></ul>

Analyzing Performance Data to Refine Content

Recognize success requires a major long-term commitment to consistently producing high-quality, value-adding content. Budget significant focus, time and resources accordingly. Maintain consistency without burning out. Take the marathon mindset.

Sustaining Consistency Over the Long-Term

 In Content Inc., Joe Pulizzi makes the case for entrepreneurs to build media platforms and valuable content that attracts their ideal audience rather than pitching products alone. He provides strategies for using content to build a loyal following.

The NEW Rulebook for Entrepreneurial Success What’s the surest way to startup failure? Follow old, outdated rules. In Content Inc., one of today’s most sought-after content-marketing strategists reveals a new model for entrepreneurial success. Simply put, it’s about developing valuable content, building an audience around that content, and then creating a product for that audience. Notice a shift? Author Joe Pulizzi flips the traditional entrepreneurial approach of first creating a product and then trying to find customers. It’s a brilliant reverse-engineering of a model that rarely succeeds. The radical six-step business-building process revealed in this book is smart, simple, practical, and cost-effective. And best of all, it works. It’s a strategy Pulizzi used to build his own successful company, Content Marketing Institute, which has landed on Inc. magazine’s list of fastest growing private companies for three years straight. It’s also a strategy countless other entrepreneurs use to build their own multi-million dollar companies. Build an audience and you’ll be able to sell pretty much anything you want. Today’s markets are more dynamic and customers are more fickle than ever before. Why would you put all your eggs in one basket before securing a loyal customer base? Content Inc. shows you how to get customers first and develop products later. It’s the best way to build a solid, long-lasting business positioned for today’s content-driven world. This is the simple but profoundly successful entrepreneurial approach of one of today’s most creative business minds. A pioneer of content marketing, Pulizzi has cracked to code when it comes to the power of content in a world where marketers still hold fast to traditional models that no longer work. In Content Inc., he breaks down the business-startup process into six steps, making it simple for you to visualize, launch, and monetize your own business. These steps are: • The “Sweet Spot”: Identify the intersection of your unique competency and your personal passion • Content Tilting: Determine how you can “tilt” your sweet spot to find a place where little or no competition exists • Building the Base: Establish your number-one channel for disseminating content (blog, podcast, YouTube, etc.) • Harvesting Audience: Use social-media and SEO to convert one-time visitors into long-term subscribers • Diversification: Grow your business by expanding into multiple delivery channels • Monetization: Now that your expertise is established, you can begin charging money for your products or services This model has worked wonders for Pulizzi and countless other examples detailed in the book. Connect these six pieces like a puzzle, and before you know it, you’ll be running your own profitable, scalable business. Pulizzi walks you step by step through the process, based on his own success (and failures) and real-world multi-million dollar examples from multiple industries and countries. Whether you’re seeking to start a brand-new business or drive innovation in an existing one, Content Inc. provides everything you need to reverse-engineer the traditional entrepreneurial model for better, more sustainable success. Joe Pulizzi is an entrepreneur, professional speaker, and podcaster. He is the founder of several startups, including the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), recognized as the fastest growing business media company by Inc. magazine in 2014. CMI produces Content Marketing World, the world’s largest content marketing event, and publishes the leading content marketing magazine, Chief Content Officer. Pulizzi’s book Epic Content Marketing was named one of Fortune magazine’s Five Must Read Business Books of the Year.

business

Business

creativity

Creativity

Joe Pulizzi

Content Inc.: How Entrepreneurs Use Content to Build Massive Audiences and Create Radically Successful Businesses

Clutter is nothing more than postponed decisions.

<ul><li>A cluttered mind leads to increased stress, lack of focus, negative thinking, and feelings of being overwhelmed. </li><li>Understanding how cluttered thoughts originate from things like information overload, multitasking, lack of priorities, and habit loops is key to change. </li><li>Clutter hampers productivity, performance, and mental health.</li></ul>

Understand the Causes and Costs of a Cluttered Mind

<ul><li>Start by decluttering your physical space and keep it organized. Physical clutter leads to mental clutter. </li><li>Create open space by getting rid of things you don’t use.</li><li> Apply the “one thing at a time” principle to avoid being overwhelmed while decluttering. </li></ul>

Declutter Your Physical Environment

<ul><li>Mindfulness through meditation, deep breathing, and staying present brings calm and clarity. </li><li>It increases self-awareness, improves focus, and promotes positive thinking. </li><li>Making mindfulness a habit is key to maintaining an organized mind long-term.</li></ul>

Practice Mindfulness to Declutter Your Mind  

Avoid distractions from phone, email, social media, and interruptions. Multitasking reduces efficiency. Creating distraction-free time blocks to focus on important projects boosts productivity significantly. Turn off notifications and assign set times to check messages.

Limit Distractions to Improve Focus 



Clarity comes from identifying your most important goals and tasks, ranking them, and scheduling time to work on them. Use the 80/20 principle to prioritize. Schedule focus time for high priority projects first. Learn when you have peak energy to tackle tough tasks.

Prioritize and Schedule Your Most Important Tasks

Decluttering your mind space aids decision making by helping you focus on pertinent information. Avoid decision fatigue by reducing trivial choices. Streamline wardrobe and meals. Apply “good enough” principle to avoid perfectionism traps when choices are similar.

Improve Decision Making by Removing Clutter

<ul><li>Your mind replays negative experiences from your past which does not serve the present. </li><li>Practice self-forgiveness and actively release regrets using affirmations and mental imagery. </li><li>Replace bad memories with positive ones.</li></ul>

Let Go of Clutter from Your Past

Anxiety often arises from disorganized thoughts and emotions. Practice mental cleaning through journaling, listing worries, talking to someone or scheduling worry time. Organize your thoughts and plans in a list to gain clarity and calm.

Clean Up Mental Clutter to Reduce Anxiety

Declutter Your Mind by S.J. Scott and Barrie Davenport aims to help readers overcome information overload, negative thinking, distraction, and stress through mindfulness, focus, and mental decluttering strategies. It offers actionable advice to quiet the mind, increase focus, practice mindfulness, and achieve mental clarity.

How to Stop Worrying, Relieve Anxiety and Eliminate Negative Thinking  Feel overwhelmed by your thoughts? Struggling with anxiety about your daily tasks? Or do you want to stop worrying about life? The truth is, we all experience the occasional negative thought. But if you always feel overwhelmed, then you need to closely examine how these thoughts are negatively impacting your lifestyle. Declutter Your Mind details the habits, actions and mindsets you can use to clean up the mental clutter that might be holding you back from being more focussed and mindful. Authors show how to change a specific aspect of your life that might be causing you to feel stressed or overwhelmed. It is written for anyone who recognises how their untamed thoughts are interfering with their focus, productivity, happiness and peace of mind. This book is full of exercises that will have an immediate, positive impact on your mindset. Instead of just telling you to do something, this book provides practical, sciencebacked actions that can create real and lasting change if practiced regularly. In his books, S. J. SCOTT provides daily action plans for every area of your life: health, fitness, work and personal relationships. Unlike other personal development guides, his content focuses on talking action. So instead of reading overhyped strategies that rarely work in the realworld, you’ll get information that can be immediately implemented. BARRIE DAVENPORT is the founder of an awardwinning personal development site Live Bold and Bloom (liveboldandbloom.com). She is a certified personal coach and online course creator, helping people create happier, richer, more successful lives. She is also the author of a series of selfimprovement books on positive habits, life passion, confidence building, mindfulness and simplicity.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

mindfulness

Mindfulness

Feel overwhelmed by your thoughts? Struggling with anxiety about your daily tasks? Or do you want to stop worrying about life? The truth is...We all experience the occasional negative thought. But if you always feel overwhelmed, then you need to closely examine how these thoughts are negatively impacting your lifestyle. The solution is to practice specific mindfulness techniques that create more "space" in your mind to enjoy inner peace and happiness. With these habits, you'll have the clarity to prioritize what's most important in your life, what no longer serves your goals, and how you want to live on a daily basis. And that's what you'll learn in Declutter Your Mind. DOWNLOAD:: Declutter Your Mind -- How to Stop Worrying, Relieve Anxiety, and Eliminate Negative Thinking The goal of this book is simple: We will teach you the habits, actions, and mindsets to clean up the mental clutter that's holding you back from living a meaningful life. You will learn: ** 4 Causes of Mental Clutter ** How to Reframe ALL Your Negative Thoughts ** 4 Strategies to Improve (or Eliminate) Bad Relationships ** The Importance of Decluttering the Distractions That Cause Anxiety ** A Simple Strategy to Discover What's Important to YOU ** 400 Words That Help Identify YOUR Values ** The Benefit of Meditation and Focused Deep Breathing (and How to Do Both) ** How to Create Goals That Connect to Your Passions Declutter Your Mind is full of exercises that will have an immediate, positive impact on your mindset. Instead of just telling you to do something, we provide practical, science-backed actions that can create real and lasting change if practiced regularly. Would You Like To Know More? Download now to stop worrying, deal with anxiety, and clear your mind. Scroll to the top of the page and select the buy now button.

Barrie Davenport

S. J. Scott

Declutter Your Mind

We have vast untapped potential within us beyond who we currently are.Consciously deciding who you want to become in your ideal form and then aiming single-mindedly at that gives life meaning and forward momentum.Trade complacency and routine for a voluntary transformation through rediscovering exploring your latent talents and rebirth.

Becoming Who You Could Be 

<ul><li>Don't hide unwanted emotions, flaws, and unsavory motivations in a fog of willful blindness.</li><li>Have courage to look unflinchingly inside at your capacity for malevolence alongside good.</li><li>Integrate your full self through radical truth and self-understanding.</li><li>What you most wish to hide from yourself holds key truths.</li></ul>

Confronting the Shadow

The quintessential source of positive emotion is taking responsibility - defining goals and projects, then making progress.Turn and confront the difficulties of the future rather than hiding; reduce suffering.Stand up straight with your shoulders back and enjoy the journey.Where responsibility is abdicated, there is opportunity.

Taking Responsibility  

<ul><li>Notice where responsibility has been shirked and take it upon yourself to set things right instead of blaming others.</li><li>Step up to address problems rather than carping from the sidelines.</li><li>Approach issues needing leadership with the desire to make things better through your efforts.</li></ul>

Noticing Abdicated Responsibility 


If you feel contempt and inauthenticity doing something merely to maintain superficial order and expectations, pause and seriously reconsider.<ul><li>Minor moral transgressions snowball when left unaddressed. Listen to your conscience.</li><li>Refuse what you know to be wrong.</li><li>Speak truth.</li></ul>

Refusing What You Hate

Beware of resentful us-versus-them ideologies that distort truth. Maintain humility about your own flaws.The enemy is often biases within our own minds.Set your own house in perfect order before self-righteously criticizing others as the problem. Change begins from within.

Rejecting Ideology

Aiming intensely at a precise goal or vision fuels you with meaning and drive. If you aim at nothing, you'll be plagued by distractions and drift through life.Decide what you want, plan, and work diligently. Imperfect action beats perfect indecision. Value conscious effort.

Working with Diligence

Art expands vision, cultivates the soul, and connects us to the transcendent. Making something beautiful is intrinsically meaningful, not just a means to an end.Don't become so task-driven that you lose touch with beauty and degrade into soulless cynicism. What we aim at determines what we perceive.

Appreciating Beauty  

<ul><li>Unresolved, unprocessed painful memories from your past disrupt your present self.</li><li>Carefully deconstruct those memories to understand them, then integrate them into your story.</li><li>This frees you from lingering pain and anger.</li><li>Old ghosts must be confronted to move forward.</li></ul>

Integrating Painful Memories

<ul><li>Consciously plan enjoyable activities to nurture romance, fun, intimacy, and deep trust in a long-term relationship.</li><li>Dishonesty and poor communication erode foundations.</li><li>Protect your shared journey through openness. Invest when apart to sustain when together.</li></ul>

Maintaining Relationship Romance

<ul><li>Understand that good and evil exist within all people, including yourself.</li><li>Maintain hope in human potential while accepting flaws realistically, not cynically.</li><li>Bitter resentment and blind arrogance breed hatred.</li><li>Integrate your full humanity compassionately.</li></ul>

Avoiding Resentment and Arrogance


Suffering is inevitable in our imperfect world. But you can choose to be grateful anyway. Courageously give thanks even in the midst of life's catastrophes; do not become bitter.Suffering is in the mind. Find meaning through responsibility despite adversity.

Gratitude Despite Suffering


If you don't say what you think then you kill your unborn self.

When you have something to say, silence is a lie.

 In Beyond Order, Jordan Peterson provides philosophical insights on taking responsibility to find meaning, confront suffering, and live an ethical life. He offers principles to counter chaos and develop character.

The inspirational sequel to 12 RULES FOR LIFE, which has sold over 5 million copies around the world - now in paperback In 12 Rules for Life, acclaimed public thinker and clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson offered an antidote to the chaos in our lives: eternal truths applied to modern anxieties. His insights have helped millions of readers and resonated powerfully around the world. Now in this long-awaited sequel, Peterson goes further, showing that part of life's meaning comes from reaching out into the domain beyond what we know, and adapting to an ever-transforming world. While an excess of chaos threatens us with uncertainty, an excess of order leads to a lack of curiosity and creative vitality. Beyond Order therefore calls on us to balance the two fundamental principles of reality - order and chaos - and reveals the profound meaning that can be found on the path that divides them. In times of instability and suffering, Peterson reminds us that there are sources of strength on which we can all draw: insights borrowed from psychology, philosophy, and humanity's greatest myths and stories. Drawing on the hard-won truths of ancient wisdom, as well as deeply personal lessons from his own life and clinical practice, Peterson offers twelve new principles to guide readers towards a more courageous, truthful and meaningful life.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

The companion volume to 12 Rules for Life offers further guidance on the perilous path of modern life.    In 12 Rules for Life, clinical psychologist and celebrated professor at Harvard and the University of Toronto Dr. Jordan B. Peterson helped millions of readers impose order on the chaos of their lives. Now, in this bold sequel, Peterson delivers twelve more lifesaving principles for resisting the exhausting toll that our desire to order the world inevitably takes.   In a time when the human will increasingly imposes itself over every sphere of life—from our social structures to our emotional states—Peterson warns that too much security is dangerous. What’s more, he offers strategies for overcoming the cultural, scientific, and psychological forces causing us to tend toward tyranny, and teaches us how to rely instead on our instinct to find meaning and purpose, even—and especially—when we find ourselves powerless.   While chaos, in excess, threatens us with instability and anxiety, unchecked order can petrify us into submission. Beyond Order provides a call to balance these two fundamental principles of reality itself, and guides us along the straight and narrow path that divides them.

Jordan Bernt Peterson is a Canadian psychologist, author, and media commentator. He began to receive widespread attention in the late 2010s for his views on cultural and political issues, often described as conservative. Peterson has described himself as a classic British liberal and a traditionalist.

Jordan B. Peterson

Beyond Order

Drama results from miscommunications, misunderstandings, and misdirected efforts between coworkers.

Recognize that workplace drama stems from unclear expectations between coworkers, ineffective or avoided feedback, selective listening, assumed negative motives, and poor conflict management. Left unaddressed, drama breeds polarization, erodes trust over time, and drains energy from productive work. Be aware of these root causes.

Recognizing How Workplace Drama Originates

Proactively mitigate unnecessary drama by setting clear mutual expectations, providing regular positive and constructive feedback, questioning assumptions rather than jumping to conclusions, and communicating directly to prevent distortions. Maintain open, mature dialogue.

Proactively Mitigating Drama Through Clear Communication

<ul><li>Constructively deal with difficult coworkers and behaviors through compassionate candor, not avoidance or fueling negativity. </li><li>Lead with empathy, but also courage. </li><li>Understand the context and motivations driving behaviors, and find common ground.</li></ul>

Compassionately Addressing Difficult Behaviors 

Clearly set and enforce healthy boundaries around how team members engage with and treat each other, aligned with company values. Don't accept abusive, manipulative or intimidating conduct. Walk away if boundaries are violated. Enforce consistently, not punitively.

Setting Healthy Interpersonal Boundaries

<ul><li>Proactively encourage open sharing of dissenting opinions, disagreements, and honest concerns to prevent hidden resentments. </li><li>Make it psychologically safe to voice issues early before they silently escalate into drama. </li><li>Value transparency, diversity of thought, and addressing issues.</li></ul>

Fostering Open Sharing of Diverse Perspectives

Workplace conflict consultant Anna Maravelas draws on her long experience to explain how to prevent and resolve workplace clashes.

"Maravelas is the best source on workplace irritability and tension." --Matt Villano, New York TimesThe human longing for respect and dignity is deep and pervasive. Yet, while resolving more than 300 workplace conflicts, author Anna Maravelas has met thousands of individuals struggling with tension and mistrust. Creating a Drama-Free Workplace contains strategies to avoid and reverse these troubling trends. Learn why trust and connectedness slip through our fingers despite our yearnings for workplaces that are grounded in collaboration and success. Stop common missteps before they walk out the door with your most valuable assets--trust, morale, and productivity. You can create the environments you desire and deserve with these proven skills grounded in neuroscience.In this book you will learn how to: <ul><li>Take the drama out of disagreement and enhance your ability to problem solve.</li><li>Eliminate the 5 root causes of workplace tension.</li><li>Be hard on the problem and soft on the people and create lasting alliances.</li><li>Preserve your integrity by talking to people rather than about them.</li><li>Replace bitterness about the past with a shared responsibility for the future.</ul></li>Knowing how to transform conflict into collaboration affects the outcome of every interaction, challenge, and opportunity.

Bezonomics

Amp It Up

Can We Talk?

Chief Joy Officer

Content Inc.: How Entrepreneurs Use Content to Build Massive Audiences and Create Radically Successful Businesses

Linda Thompson