New Year Resolutions to a Better Financial Future
There could not be a better time to mull over the changes needed in our life style than at the beginning of a New Year. This is also a good time to set yearly goals and make resolutions. Each year, according to statistics, almost a third of us make some kinds of New Year Resolutions. Interestingly, although financial future is our main cause of anxiety, our personal finance, according to surveys, gets only to the fifth place in the list of most common New Year resolutions.For those of us who are still in the process of making New Year resolutions,

The Flexible Mortgage
The flexible mortgage originated from Australia and was introduced into the UK around the late 90s. Most people were slow to switch as old habits die hard and the flexible mortgage is a complex product that customer need to understand before they are able to make the product work to its full potential.Banks were reluctant to change as the flexible mortgage used correctly places the customer in an advantageous position.There are many different types of flexible mortgages which are generally indicated by the degree of flexibility built into each product.Can you play at the top of your speaking game on demand? How do you handle the rigors of the high stress professional speaking game? Mental toughness is the ability to thrive on stress and to perform in the upper ranges of our potential more often. The top athletes who possess mental toughness live this every day. Professional speakers are the pro athletes of the business world. The speakers who continually perform to their potential over a lifetime know what it takes to build and maintain a strong mental game.

Here are some tools and attitudes that you, as a mentally tough speaking athlete, can hold about yourself, your audiences and the speaking business. Reflect on them, discuss them with others and write about them in your journal. Use them to build your mental toughness.

1. You Don't Hope For an Easy Life; You Strive to be a Strong Person. Top athletes seek the rigors of competition and thrive on seeing how they rise to the occasion. You seek challenging opportunities and realize the speaking business is not for the faint of heart. You continually seek assignments which help you grow personally and professionally.

2. You Love the Craziness of the Pro Speaking Business. You accept the often ambiguous and unpredictable nature of our business and learn to adapt, be flexible and overcome the inevitable curves thrown at you. You flow like a mentally tough athlete handling every roadblock imaginable with poise and mastery.

3. You Have a Mistake Management System. Athletes make mistakes every time they compete. They have a system to maintain their confidence and refocus on the task at hand immediately. When you make an error, you breathe, relax, smile or joke, recover and maintain poise and balance. You practice "ad-libbed" humorous recovery phrases and have backup plans to handle any problem contingencies in your programs.

4. You View "Tough Audiences" as Being Your Teachers. You reframe them as partners in co-creating a valuable learning experience you both share. The more difficult your audience, the greater the victory in winning them over and the more you raise the bar on your influencing skills. Any win is more meaningful when it is more difficult to achieve.

5. You Use the Specificity of

know what it takes to build and maintain a strong mental game.

Here are some tools and attitudes that you, as a mentally tough speaking athlete, can hold about yourself, your audiences and the speaking business. Reflect on them, discuss them with others and write about them in your journal. Use them to build your mental toughness.

1. You Don't Hope For an Easy Life; You Strive to be a Strong Person. Top athletes seek the rigors of competition and thrive on seeing how they rise to the occasion. You seek challenging opportunities and realize the speaking business is not for the faint of heart. You continually seek assignments which help you grow personally and professionally.

2. You Love the Craziness of the Pro Speaking Business. You accept the often ambiguous and unpredictable nature of our business and learn to adapt, be flexible and overcome the inevitable curves thrown at you. You flow like a mentally tough athlete handling every roadblock imaginable with poise and mastery.

3. You Have a Mistake Management System. Athletes make mistakes every time they compete. They have a system to maintain their confidence and refocus on the task at hand immediately. When you make an error, you breathe, relax, smile or joke, recover and maintain poise and balance. You practice "ad-libbed" humorous recovery phrases and have backup plans to handle any problem contingencies in your programs.

4. You View "Tough Audiences" as Being Your Teachers. You reframe them as partners in co-creating a valuable learning experience you both share. The more difficult your audience, the greater the victory in winning them over and the more you raise the bar on your influencing skills. Any win is more meaningful when it is more difficult to achieve.

5. You Use the Specificity o

tition and thrive on seeing how they rise to the occasion. You seek challenging opportunities and realize the speaking business is not for the faint of heart. You continually seek assignments which help you grow personally and professionally.

2. You Love the Craziness of the Pro Speaking Business. You accept the often ambiguous and unpredictable nature of our business and learn to adapt, be flexible and overcome the inevitable curves thrown at you. You flow like a mentally tough athlete handling every roadblock imaginable with poise and mastery.

3. You Have a Mistake Management System. Athletes make mistakes every time they compete. They have a system to maintain their confidence and refocus on the task at hand immediately. When you make an error, you breathe, relax, smile or joke, recover and maintain poise and balance. You practice "ad-libbed" humorous recovery phrases and have backup plans to handle any problem contingencies in your programs.

4. You View "Tough Audiences" as Being Your Teachers. You reframe them as partners in co-creating a valuable learning experience you both share. The more difficult your audience, the greater the victory in winning them over and the more you raise the bar on your influencing skills. Any win is more meaningful when it is more difficult to achieve.

5. You Use the Specificity o

you. You flow like a mentally tough athlete handling every roadblock imaginable with poise and mastery.

3. You Have a Mistake Management System. Athletes make mistakes every time they compete. They have a system to maintain their confidence and refocus on the task at hand immediately. When you make an error, you breathe, relax, smile or joke, recover and maintain poise and balance. You practice "ad-libbed" humorous recovery phrases and have backup plans to handle any problem contingencies in your programs.

4. You View "Tough Audiences" as Being Your Teachers. You reframe them as partners in co-creating a valuable learning experience you both share. The more difficult your audience, the greater the victory in winning them over and the more you raise the bar on your influencing skills. Any win is more meaningful when it is more difficult to achieve.

5. You Use the Specificity o

ckup plans to handle any problem contingencies in your programs.

4. You View "Tough Audiences" as Being Your Teachers. You reframe them as partners in co-creating a valuable learning experience you both share. The more difficult your audience, the greater the victory in winning them over and the more you raise the bar on your influencing skills. Any win is more meaningful when it is more difficult to achieve.

5. You Use the Specificity of Training Principle. You rehearse in your mind and in actuality, using all props, aids, and movements key elements of your program exactly as they will be so there are no surprises. Olympic stars believe that practice does not make perfect...it makes permanent. Only perfect practice makes perfect.

6. You View "Speaking Slumps" as Opportunities For Growth. You view these as a normal part of a speaker's development. You examine the "slump" or plateau, learn from it and use it to go to the next level. You are careful as to how you define a slump so you don't create one when one isn't there.

7. You Use the Concept of Automaticity. You over-prepare and know your material cold so your mind is free to do audience calibration. You read the audience instead of being in your head "remembering" what to do or say next. This allows you to be creatively extemporaneous, and to be in relationship with your audience. You are audience-centered and meet their needs at every moment.

8. You Use Negative Thinking and Visualization. You are a positive thinker, yet you also use negativity thinking or mastery visualization where you plan ahead for potential problem contingencies and practice responses to unusual or difficult speaking circumstances. You plan and hope for the best, but you open your eyes to potential bumps in the road in advance.

9. You Take a Strategic Stance About Difficulties in the Business. You look back to see how far you've come in the business and how each challenging event toughens you mentally to be able to handle higher levels of stress. You have perspective and can execute tactically as you hold a long-range, wise, strategic viewpoint.

10. You Use Periodization to Recover From Stress. Our business is exciting yet energy-draining. You create a periodiz