Quality of Life depends on....

Who you spend time with impacts on your quality of life! Examine the scope and influences that impact your life. This includes who you listen to, who you learn from, the books you read and TV programs you watch.
Your future will be the same as your past unless you examine your quality of life. By this I’m not referring to the place you live, car you drive the chattels you’ve gathered or the stocks and shares you have accumulated.
To examine your quality of life, listen to your body.
Is your thinking excessive?
Does your body carry anxiety?
Do you have harmony in your heart?
*There are times when we feel little flutters in our tummy. These little flutters are usually short term and relate to good stress, eustress, the definition of stress given by endocrinologist Dr Hans Seyle, for the stress evoked by any positive emotion or event.

Good stress refers to healthy and/or fulfilling arousal! The thought or sound of that ‘special someone’, preparing for a long awaited special event, watching your favourite sports team...
If your past has not been as harmonious as you desired, honestly examine the capacities and influences that impacted your life and of the energies that are still influencing your life choices.
I have mentors some of which are no longer living but their influence still has a positive radiating effect on my life. On the other hand, there are those whose lives and life choices impacted our lives negatively and it is to these we need to address decisions if our future is to be different to our past.
Consciously and unconsciously negative influences are contributing factors to distress. Distress is not healthy, the list of diseases related to stress is long and scientific research adds on a regular basis more mental and physical diseases to this list. Examples of stress related diseases are depression, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, sexual dysfunction…sadly the list is large.
Whether distress be covert or overt it has the power, silent or otherwise, to put people into a depressed, ineffective mode. Unless ‘nipped in the bud’ this behaviour can have a crippling effect on the once healthy body.
Distress often stays in an alert state much longer and for this reason researchers refer to this state as the fight or flight response. Unaddressed becomes the foundation for disease.
If while reading you have identified contributing factors to distress, what are you willing to change? Some may say, there is nothing I can do. This dear reader is another subject for another time – it is called ‘helplessness’.
“Change brings opportunity.” Nido Quebein.
It takes courage to change but change brings new opportunity, better health and brighter tomorrows. So whatever it is that you have been promising yourself to do, make a decision and do it now!


Leslie Choudhury - Int'l Speaker, Trainer, Consultant and Author   
 周来利
LCI - logo2      
CEO – Leslie Choudhury International
Director – Directive Communication International
Associate Director – ADMC Pte Ltd
65 96347354

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Seven Steps to Corporate Sccess



1. Don’t start only with customer-facing teams. Starting your service transformation with customer-facing team members might seem like the obvious move. But if your objective is to build an uplifting service culture, this approach can be very problematic. Because your people in “customer-facing” roles interact with customers daily, they already understand that service is important. They know that upset customers complain. They know happy customers are easier to serve. What they don’t know is how to fix the behind-the-scenes issues that often affect the customers’ perceptions.
When you provide new service education, greater encouragement, and more recognition for customer-facing teams like sales, installation, repair, or customer service, they will be inspired to serve better, smile wider, and strive even harder to delight. But at some point, they will start to wonder how they can give customers better service if their colleagues do not give them better service.
When launching an uplifting service program, it would be much better to include or begin with internal service providers: production and design, hardware and software, warehousing and logistics, facilities, finance, legal, IT, and HR. When these internal service providers make things easier, faster, more responsive, or more flexible for your customer-facing employees, they’ll be surprised, delighted, and better able to serve your external customers. Let those on the inside inspire those who are serving on the outside with better service first. It’s a proven win-win situation.
2. Launch at all levels. Starting from the top with an uplifting service initiative makes sense. When high-level leaders speak up and role model with commitment, it’s easier for everyone else to follow—and take the lead at their own levels. However, a top-down approach on its own can leave your leaders in an uncomfortable position. When those at the top make the earliest efforts, they must wait for the cascade to see practical results. But a cascade does not happen overnight—and this lack of quick and observable impact can cause some leaders to get impatient and question whether the outcomes will happen at all.
At the same time, though, you must beware of launching from the bottom up without support from the top—the classic mistake of stand-alone “frontline service training programs.” It won’t take long before a motivated frontline service provider bumps into a supervisor or manager who does not share the understanding or the passion.
That’s what happened at a leading tour operator when it brought its frontline employees a novel campaign called “Be Service Entrepreneurs.” The objective was for staff members to make decisions as if they were the owners. One enthusiastic frontline service provider did just that. He chartered a plane to move customers along when the company’s tour bus broke down. It was a gutsy move his customers loved, but most of the company’s leaders had never heard of this frontline program and were not pleased with this result. The program was quickly retired as word spread throughout the company that “Be Service Entrepreneurs” was no longer supported.
3. Don’t forget the middle. Companies often decide to launch from the top down and from the bottom up at the same time. But doing so puts a great deal of responsibility on the people in the middle. In the top-down cascade, middle managers and supervisors must translate the messages in action, connect company objectives to frontline concerns, and make uplifting language appear practical and useful. In the bottom-up bubbling of new ideas and action steps, the middle plays three culture-building roles: praising team members who do a great job, raising good suggestions for higher-level review, and spotlighting roadblocks that require leadership action for removal.
In both instances, you’re asking a lot of your managers and supervisors.
But starting in the middle won’t work either. When leaders are not prepared to lead, and frontline employees are not prepared for action, then asking middle managers to start the journey alone is a formula for pure frustration. A top-down cascade brings commitment, alignment, and support. A bottom-up program stimulates new ideas and new actions. An activated middle connects, enables, and empowers. It’s best to prepare well and start with attention to all three.
4. Arm your leaders with helpful service hints. Most people who reach high leadership positions are experts in their industry. But rarely are they experts in building or leading a service culture. That means if you are one of the passionate and committed service heroes inside your organization, you may need to help your leaders lead. That means creating opportunities for them to walk the walk, talk the talk, and model uplifting service.
Invite your leaders to participate with you in customer meetings and focus groups. Ask them to help you recognize the company’s top-notch service providers with a visit, a handshake, a photograph, and a short speech. Keep them informed about the uplifting service transformation’s progress by providing short descriptions of service problems that have been recently solved, noting who worked on the problem, what they did to solve it, and how service was improved.
5. Go for easy wins first. The principles of uplifting service are so empowering and the practices so effective that some leaders push their teams to solve the most difficult and complex service problems right away. That’s a mistake to avoid. Warming up a machine before you go full throttle is good practice. Warming up your service team with a series of “early wins” is good practice, too.
When planning a sequence of service problems to tackle, take a gradual approach. Build momentum with early wins on easy issues. Let your team taste the pleasure of uplifting service success. Highlight achievements and celebrate the compliments you earn. Restrain the urge to work on your toughest problems first—their day to be conquered will come.
6. Stay vigilant. Keep your aim on the right bull’s-eye. I write about a client who launched a vigorous service improvement program to create greater value for external customers. Hundreds of classes were conducted for thousands of service champions around the world. But something unusual happened as the program rolled out. Rather than focus on identified external business targets—reclaiming market share, rebuilding a slipping reputation, bouncing back in recovery situations, etc.—earning high internal course evaluations became the course leaders’ primary focus.
Scoring 9 out of 10 for leading a wonderful class became a cause for celebration. That’s a great score, but a very different bull’s-eye. Eventually this lack of alignment with the program’s original goals became painfully apparent. The focus had drifted away from the early goals, and the entire program needed to refocus. Don’t let this drifting happen to you. A clear bull’s-eye that delivers value to others should always be at the center of your efforts, well articulated and understood by everyone involved.
7. Watch out for stuck-in-the-mud team members. Some hard-nosed managers will challenge a new program by sending their most cynical and problematic employees. Their view is, “If a new program can work on these tough nuts, then perhaps it has some merit.” But the opposite approach will work much better. What you want in the early days of your journey is good feelings, good results, and good gossip. That comes more easily from participants who want to participate and are eager to succeed.
There is an old saying that “A rising tide lifts all boats.” This is also true when building an uplifting service culture—except for those who are stuck in the mud. Practicing generous action raises everyone to a higher level—except those who will not budge. For deeply cynical, resentful, or unwilling employees, there are two successful options. First, they may come to see the light and climb on board for an unfamiliar but uplifting ride. And second, they may feel so out of place as everyone else moves ahead, they no longer feel welcome, and leave. For the success of your organization, either outcome is welcome.

When transforming an existing service culture, you have to get everyone involved in new, swift action to make the change really happen. What you need is a service revolution, not gradual evolution. A timid program with small starts and scattered efforts won’t work. You need a bold and uplifting revolution that gives everyone a role to play, and counts on everyone to make the future—a better future—into a service reality today.
www.lesliechoudhury.com     &   www.l-c-international.com