Use The Law of Attraction to make your telephone conversations more productive.

Ring! Ring!!

Thank the goddess for caller ID. You've been waiting for this call. You need to talk to Ms. Brooks, but you're not ready. What do you do, pick up the phone or risk missing out? No, wait, You HAVE to answer this call. How can you make the most of it?

There is a third way to handle the call. It puts you firmly in control of this opportunity because you're going to put the Law of Attraction to work for you.

First you answer the telephone:
"Hi, this is Tracey." When Ms. Brooks identifies herself, you say, "Thanks for calling. I'm eager to talk to you. Can you hold on for a second, please?"

…and then you say to yourself, What is it that I most want to achieve in this conversation? I want to uplift the other person. I want to be understood. I want the other person to understand me, and I want the other to be positively influenced in the direction of my desire. Indeed, I want the other to be stimulated and excited by my words. Indeed, I want this to be a successful conversation. Then, when you come back on the line, you have prepaved [the way to a successful outcome]. And now, that other one will respond to you much more in accordance with your desire than if you had not taken the time.
- Esther and Jerry Hicks, The Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham

When you're the caller, you pick the time that's right for you. When you're the callee, you don't have that luxury. But you don't have to be at the caller's mercy. This exercise of segment intending helps you 

• clarify what you want
• focus on it
• draw power to it, and
• build your confidence

Can you use segment intending with each part of your day? You bet! I use it to keep myself safe and happy while surfing, to ensure my well being while driving, and lots of other times. Try it.

I look forward to reading your comments.

A homeless guy was standing by the stoplight. His scrawled sign said, "Will work for food." I scoped out nearby restaurants, then asked him, "Are you hungry?"

"Yes."

"OK, meet me at Cracker Barrel in 10 minutes. I’ll buy you lunch."

As we waited for his meal, I sized him up. He looked like a boomer like me, so I started the conversation by asking, "Were you in Vietnam?"

"Yes. I nearly died there."

I was all ears. "Tell me more. Did you have a near-death experience?"

He did. After his truck hit a mine, he was looking down on it and could see everything: the shattered metal, the mangled men, even his own broken body. But he felt no pain. Just a great expansion and freedom. "I knew I could go anywhere or know anything, just by putting my attention there.

"But I decided that I wanted to live, and SNAP! Just like that, I was back in my body, and it hurt like hell. I’m not afraid of death anymore. In fact, it’s something to look forward to."

Now that’s real freedom. Let’s put that in our Bill of Rights! As D. Eagleman wrote,

"Humans have discovered that they cannot stop death, but at least they can spit in his drink."

Here are more Memorial Day thoughts:

 As always, I welcome your comments and stories.

We paddled through mangroves, sailed across stingray flats, snorkeled around elkhorn coral and bluehead wrasses, scooped up sand dollars, swapped poems by firelight, and wished on shooting stars. My tribe nicknamed me Potcake.

Oh, it wasn’t all glorious: a scorpion bit Whitney twice; 3 of us cut our feet on shells and glass; and from sunset to sunrise, mosquitos and no-see-ums feasted on our uncovered body parts. We nearly peed on our toes, and we banged pots to scare off Wilbur, the massive pink pig who shared our "deserted" island. He sneaked up on us, and more than not wanting him to carry off our vittles, we never wanted him to surprise us squatting in the bushes.

I didn’t miss a toilet or comfortable bed. I missed a fresh-water rinse. My hair, though cleaned with No-Rinse Shampoo, always felt thick and sticky, hyped up on Super Salt Body. When I shampooed after the trip (AHHHHH!), it felt like two-thirds of my hair had fallen out. 

So what do I say when people ask, "How was your trip?" 

I say, "It was great."

Period.

For most folks, that’s enough. All they want to know is that pirates didn’t carry me off, and a passing stingray didn’t nail me to the reef.

Maybe it’s stingy of me to share so little. Do you think so?

Sometimes I bore myself with a one-word answer, and I have to say more. Then I might describe the nursery of 4-inch conchs, helter-skelter, half out of the water at low tide.

If there’s space for more information, sometimes I add details. You know what I mean by "space"? It’s somebody’s willingness to listen; it’s their ability to care; it’s the time to share. In my opinion, of course.

Then I say, "The best part was spending time with my family, including my cousin Vicki who married Cathy, her partner of 27 years, and turned the trip into a honeymoon. I loved meeting my first cousin Nan."

By way of showing how much fun Nan is, I might add, "After paddling for hours, Nan’s in the middle of the bonefish flats, squatting by the kayak, saying, ‘I’ve met 3 presidents, and now I’m peeing in my pants.’" 

I love a juicy quotation. I squatted, too, but didn’t generate a sound bite. (Thanks, Nan.)

Here’s what I’ve learned about the conversation question "How was your trip?"

The answer is what you make it. The question is super open-ended, so you could reply with a single word — "great" — or with a detailed description.

What makes me happy is something memorable and specific to hang my hat on. So the next time one of my friends goes traveling, I’ll won’t say, "How was your trip?" I’ll ask, "What were some highlights from your trip?" 

My neighbor Faye leaves for Italy and Greece tomorrow. When she asked what to bring me, I said, "Stories."

blog by Tracey E. Bennett You’re calling customer service. But you land in a maze — or daze. How do you get a person on the phone? You could get your problem handled in a jiffy if only someone would talk to you. Here are 8 tips adapted from Reader’s Digest:

1. Don’t push any buttons. The computer will assume that you have a rotary phone and send you to a real person.

2. Push zero. Sometimes that sends you to a helpful soul.

3. Press a mess of buttons.

4. Mumble. It confuses the system and might send you to human land.

5. Speak Spanish. Many operators speak English, too.

6. Select the cancel-service option. It’s easier to hang on to a customer than to get a new one, so the company might bend over sideways to satisfy you. To do that, they have to talk to you, so you’re in.

7. Swear. [I swear Reader's Digest recommends this] because swear bunnies go to the head of the line. [Do try this at home, not on the bus.]

8. *** Go to www.GetHuman.com *** for a list of 900 companies and their get-a-human-on-the-phone numbers.

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Blog by  Tracey E. Bennett, Queen of Conversation

How’s your track record with customer service? What tips and tricks do you use to get a person on the phone? Please go the comment section and share your secrets.

Have you ever gone to dinner with friends and ordered only a drink or appetizer? But when the bill came around, you got stuck with a chunk of it? How do you pay your fair share — that is, for your smaller portion — without looking or feeling cheap?

#2: Eat before you go, then just order appetizers.

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. –  AP – A museum is showing artwork collected by a Delta flight attendant who started handing out crayons to passengers after the Sept. 11th attacks. The Palm Springs Air Museum is showing "Plane Art — Connecting People" through Jan. 25. Several dozen pictures are hanging at the museum, and many others are available for visitors to leaf through in folders.   The pictures were collected by Delta flight attendant Jewel Van Valin. She got the idea a few months after 9/11, when the airline began substituting paper for linens as tray table covers.

She said one passenger who noticed the change "threw his head back and rolled his eyes, and I could tell he was thinking, ‘What’s next?’ That look clinched it for me." Van Valin had a box of crayons in her flight bag and started putting a crayon on each tray.

"The passengers started laughing and drawing," she recalled. "It was a way to reconnect after 9/11."

A criminologist who has spent decades studying the lives of girls and women who end up in prison has some simple advice for parents trying to raise happy, healthy daughters: Listen.

"We need to listen to our daughters, not just talk to our daughters. That what girls tell us," said University of Hawaii professor Meda Chesney-Lind. "They want to be heard. Parents think they are talking with their daughters, when they’re really talking at their daughters." [from the opening 2 paragraphs in Friday's Star-Bulletin story by writer Christine Donnelly.]

My stepfather listened to me. Maybe that’s why I loved him so much. We traded stories:  he and his brothers dumped a nest of mice on the counter of their father’s store and made the clerk scream; I chased a camped counselor with a daddy longlegs spider. She was too busy running to scream.

We talked about current events, what was going on at school, and whether God existed (I didn’t think so). We talked about sex, too. If he thought my ideas were off the wall, he never said so. He just asked questions in a tell-me-more way. 

In high school I loved hanging out with my mom because she was so witty. When her best friend came over and they sat at the bar’s only 2 stools, I’d tuck myself beside the sink and join in. But–you knew there was a but, didn’t you?–eventually Mom’s conversation would turn to me: how much better I’d look in contacts, how unruly my hair was, how I ought to smile more. 

When I smoked pot in college, who do you think I told, Charlie or Mom?

And who was very upset when she found out that I’d told him? I think Mom was more upset by getting the information second-hand than she was by the pot itself.

Perhaps Mom was trying to pass on the skills that made her popular. Or maybe she was trying to transform me into a suitable chip off the old block. Whatever her reasons, they didn’t bring us closer. 

Here are some conversation questions for you:

• Over the years, who has listened, really listened, to you?
• How did these good listeners impact your life?
• Do children learn more from what parents do than what they say? Is that true for you? For your children?

Please leave your comments below. 

by Tracey E. Bennett, Queen of Conversation

I’m driving home from the bark park, thinking about my ex-friend Mary Wagner. I’m feeling the hurt of being dumped after 30 years of close friendship. And it’s not a new hurt either;  it’s been more than 10 years since Mary announced she was ending the friendship.

Why? On our trip to Guatemala and Costa Rica, I had bugged her with judgments about her singlehood. 

Who, me? A couple mentions, yes. But over the top? I had no idea. Is that enough to end a friendship?

Nobody gave me the ballot to vote on it.

So I’m driving, thinking, how many times in our lives do we allow someone to bug us, not tell them we’re annoyed, and then cut them off? SNIP! If only she’d spoken up: "Enough with the singles stuff!" We’d have a 40-year friendship.

Next thought: I should blog about how not to end a friendship. Maybe I could save somebody else’s friendship from going in the ditch, save them this pain. 

Two seconds later, I hear a voice, an actual voice. He says,

Be here now. Don’t anticipate. Don’t yearn for things of the past. Let the past go….with forgiveness. And let the future go with no anticipation.

What are the odds of hearing that then? Of the thousands of songs in my iTunes, the computer put 1,300 songs on my iPod. Of the 1,300 — days and days of music and podcasts — Ram Dass’s "Be Here Now" played at the precise moment I needed to hear it. 

What are the odds?

Pretty good.

On August 3rd, I blogged about three kinds of conversations:

1. with yourself
2. with others
3. with God/the universe/Higher Ups

Driving along, I thought I was talking to myself. But somebody was listening and sent me a message. How cool is that?

What’s the take-away here? 

What’s your style of dealing with friends, or for that matter, lovers or colleagues who annoy you? Do you

• confront them
• avoid them, or
• grit your teeth and hope they’ll change?

I hope my story spurs you to take action, not just once, but all the time. Speak up when you’re mildly irritated so you don’t blow up later and end a friendship altogether.

p.s.
If you see Mary, tell her I miss her and our thoughtful, stimulating conversations. She challenged me and made me think. Still does.

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Thanks for reading my blog. And now I’d like to invite you to get all my posts delivered by email. See the box on the right? You know what to do now….

-  Tracey E. Bennett, Queen of Conversation

You’re wandering down the cookie aisle at Your Groceries USA. After some moments of indecision, you are seduced by the Pepperidge Farm Chocolate Chunks. Three inches in diameter, packed with chips and nuts — what’s not to like?

It is the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act that protects you from ripping open the bag only to find wimpy quarter-sized cookies with three chips each and nary a nut in sight. 

The Fair Packaging Act ensures that what’s on the inside matches what’s on the outside. 

No such law applies to people.

When speaking in front of a group, you may seem knowledgeable even if you’re not. You may appear confident while you’re quaking inside. You may sound certain even though you don’t believe in what you’re saying.  

But not for long.

An audience has a collective intelligence that can spot phoniness in three seconds. Imagine 115 people simultaneously recognizing that you don’t know what you’re talking about. 

Obey The Fair Packaging Act: "Ah! We have entered territory unfamiliar to me. Let’s go back to my area of expertise." Or, "Wow, I thought I had my adrenaline under control. Guess not!" 

Be genuine. Be the cookie you say you are. 

++++++ Tracey says, "Thanks, Pam. Great photo!" Now it’s your turn. Do you have an anecdote or personal experience to share? Write your comments below. Pam and I would love to hear from you. For more presentation tips, visit Pam’s Web site.

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Thanks for reading my blog. And now I’d like to invite you to get all my posts delivered by email. See the box on the right? You know what to do now….

-  Tracey E. Bennett, Queen of Conversation