One of the biggest changes I wanted to make on this site was to simply define it better via the tagline. The first tagline – “Invest in yourself and make it happen” came as a result of when I stumbled onto the idea of investing in yourself while reading a book somewhere and it just stuck with me. It was a very good visual so I added to it and that’s how I came up with the first tagline for the site.

However good it was though, I found myself wanting something much more simplistic, something much shorter, and something that would easily define and reflect the nature and topic of the site once it was read.

And that’s what led me to create the new tagline for BrianKim.net as you can currently see right now on the site logo (if you can’t see it, you may have to refresh the page as your browser is probably loading up the old logo from its cache): BrianKim.net - The Definitive Guide to Self Improvement.

It’s simple, to the point, very encompassing, and I think it gives a much better feel and a clearer grasp as to what the site is all about and it says it in a “cleaner” way so to speak.

Those of you who know my writing and have read my articles for some time know this is what I strive for – to come up with the definitive answers to the questions everybody seems to gloss over. I hated reading the same old material out there. I hated the fact that there were issues out there that left people hanging. I wanted new, fresh, logical, definitive, answers to the questions nobody seemed to really want to answer.

It’s the theme that permeates all my articles, books, and soon my new service (which I will post about later next week). It’s what led me to write How to Find What You Love to Do, How to Believe You Can Do Anything, Why Nice Guys Can’t Get Girls, How to Be a Man, How to Really Make Money Online, The Hidden Secret in Think and Grow Rich, How to FINALLY Find What You Love to Do: The DEFINITIVE Guide to Finding and Successfully Pursuing Your Passion, etc.

It’s hard wired into my personality too. For those of you familiar with the Myer Briggs Personality Type, I fall into the INTP type and for those of you unfamiliar with how that personality type operates, here are some quotes on it to get a better idea of what it’s all about.

“Possessing a desire to understand the universe, an INTP is constantly looking for natural law. Curiosity concerning these keys to the universe is a driving force in this type.

For INTPs, the world exists primarily to be understood. Reality is trivial, a mere arena for proving ideas. It is essential that the universe is understood and that whatever is stated about the universe is stated correctly, with coherence and without redundancy. This is the INTPs final purpose.”

- 1984 Gnoslogy Books Ltd.

“INTPs are known for their quest for logical purity, which motivates them to examine universal truths and principles. They are constantly asking themselves and others the questions ‘Why?’ and ‘Why not?’ Clear and quick thinkers, they are able to focus with great intensity on their interests. They appreciate elegance and efficiency in thought processes and require them, even more so, in their own communications.

- Profile by Sandra Krebs Hirsch and Jean Kummerow

“INTPs have a special gift with generating and analyzing theories and possibilities to prove or disprove them. They have a great deal of insight and are creative thinkers, which allows them to quickly grasp complex abstract thoughts. They also have exceptional logical and rational reasoning skills, which allows them to thoroughly analyze theories to discover the Truth about them.

“INTPs live in the world of theoretical possibilities. They see everything in terms of how it could be improved, or what it could be turned into. They live primarily inside their own minds, having the ability to analyze difficult problems, identify patterns, and come up with logical explanations. They seek clarity in everything, and are therefore driven to build knowledge… Their natural drive to turn theories into concrete understanding may turn into a feeling of personal responsibility to solve theoretical problems, and help society move towards a higher understanding.”

- BSM Consulting

The new tagline also represents the desire I have for the site as well as the vision I have for it, as well as the content currently on it. There are a lot of other issues pertaining to self improvement that I want to settle through this site. So much out there is just a rehash of the same old material that I wanted a new, fresh central place that contained DEFINITIVE information to all the self improvement questions out there.

This entire site is geared toward that theme of definitiveness and the new tagline also forces me to hold on to that higher standard, rather than feel tempted to slip in terms of the quality of the material on the site.

I love the new tagline I think it succinctly and accurately reflects the desire I have for the site and what it’s currently all about and what it will continue to be in the future.

That I know for sure.

The promise of a new school year is in the air, illustrated by fresh clothes, blank notebooks and new backpacks. Yet for some kids, this excitement is tempered by fear -- that pit-in-the-stomach feeling of being bullied, says a recent CNN article.

But nowadays, it’s not just kids who get pushed around -- it’s workers, too. That’s because tough economic times are helping to create more mean bosses, according to this MSNBC article. This boss bullying and nastiness has a cyclical, trickle-down effect that can hurt productivity and negatively impact an entire organization. Sandy Gluckman, author of Who’s in the Driver’s Seat: Using Spirit to Lead Successfully, explains it this way in the article: “When (bosses) are mean, their teams do not deliver great results, so they become more fearful. The more fearful they get, the more their ego takes control and the meaner they get. The meaner they get, the more the team shuts down and the less they are able to perform.”

So if a boss or peer is bullying you at work, what can you do? This MSNBC article offers seven tips. And check out this Monster article to help identify your bully as well as this article for tips on how to handle the situation. Finally, if you feel the need to vent and get more specific advice and support from the Monster community, visit our Workplace Bullying message board.

The quality of enthusiasm – it’s definitely an x factor. An x factor in the sense that it’s something out of the ordinary and an x factor in the mathematical sense that it acts as a multiplier across the board.

It’s a trait that’s definitely underestimated and not really utilized that much so I want to write an article about the power of it just to really bring people’s attention to it.

Probably the best area to illustrate the power of enthusiasm so you can see it unfold before your very eyes is sports. So often in professional sports, talent is the end all, be all goal. Nothing else matters. If you have a natural gift for doing what you do, teams want you. And it does make sense. Teams will focus on acquiring the best talent there is out there and while that’s very important from a “hard” perspective, it can backfire in the sense that teams begin to rely on talent too much. Enthusiasm about the sport and the game itself gets lost in the process as an air of “seriousness” takes over.

This reminds me of a college football game that was on last season. It was between the Georgia Bulldogs and the Florida Gators. It was a bitter rivalry with Florida almost always getting the upper hand whenever they met. Florida was always stocked with talent and in that year, they were stocked with great talent as well. Add to that, they were playing at Florida so they had the home field advantage too.

The coach for the Georgia Bulldogs decided that since he couldn’t stack up against Florida in terms of talent, that he would bring in the x factor. The x factor of enthusiasm. He made it VERY clear to his team that when they scored their first touchdown of the game, that they would celebrate so much that they would be penalized for excessive celebration by the referees. If they didn’t, the whole team would be running at 5 in the morning the next day. When they scored their first touchdown, the ENTIRE team, about 50-60 players came running off the bench onto the field, celebrating with the offensive unit.

The team went crazy. The fans went crazy. The crowd went crazy. They felt that something special in the air. And it multiplied like crazy across the stadium. Needless to say, Georgia won the game, 42 to 30.

There’s another college football game that comes to mind when it comes to showing the power of enthusiasm.

In 2006, the UCLA Bruins played against the USC Trojans in the last game of both their seasons. If USC won the game, they would be playing for the national championship. Talent wise, UCLA could not even compete with the Trojans. The USC Trojans were stacked to the brim and on a totally different level. Yet, what the UCLA Bruins lacked in talent, they more than made up for in enthusiasm, especially the coach who was usually very stoic and never showed any sort of emotion during their games.

When USC went for it on 4th down in a crucial offensive drive down the field late in the game, the UCLA defensive unit stopped the Trojans dead in their tracks and the camera then panned to the UCLA head coach, Karl Dorrell, who the media embraced as one of the most “emotionless” coaches in college football.

But the picture told another story.

His right fist was clenched tightly, pumping through the air and he was shouting at the top of his lungs with eyes that looked like they were coming from a blazing fire. His whole aura reeked of enthusiasm and when the team saw this, when the team saw for the first time, their “emotionless” coach, coming to life thanks to that shot of enthusiasm he got from that crucial play the defensive unit made, the entire team huddled around him in a circle and started jumping up and down, huffing and puffing at the other team and fed off his enthusiastic energy.

And it started to grow. There was storm of electric hope in the air. The team could “feel” it. And the crowd began to feel it. They started to believe. They could win it.

Never mind that every college football analyst gave UCLA a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the game. Never mind that nobody in the nation expected UCLA to pull of the upset. Never mind that even some fans of UCLA never really believed that their team could do it.

The enthusiasm the UCLA Bruins showed that day and especially at that moment late in the game negated all of it.

Needless to say, UCLA won that game as well, 13 to 9, and it proved to be one of the greatest upsets in college football history.

Now obviously, as great as these stories are, there are times when no matter how enthusiastic you are, it won’t be enough to help you win the game.

But sometimes it is. Sometimes it will prove to be just enough, just enough to give you that edge to win the game. And that’s what makes enthusiasm such a great x factor trait.

And enthusiasm doesn’t even have to work in just sports either.

Take a speech for example. A person can nail a speech in the sense that he doesn’t stumble, mumble, or have any awkward pauses. He speaks clearly, enunciates, and just basically does everything technically right. In other words, the speech is perfect, but it lacks that “soul”.

But take a person who isn’t so technically graceful, who sometimes stumbles, forgets what he has to say, but he’s enthusiastic about his speech. He’s excited about what he’s talking about. The audience feels it. They connect with him. They feel his passion for his message. And in the end, they remember the enthusiastic speech and the feeling they got from it that much more than the “perfect” speech they heard earlier.

These examples also bring up another point besides the fact that enthusiasm can make up for talent, in that enthusiasm spreads like crazy. It’s infectious. Very infections. In a very good way too. It elevates the levels of everyone it comes in contact with. People feed off of it. It’s one of those things that can be started by one individual, one event, one action and it just grows and grows and grows from there.

Talent doesn’t do that. Talent is confined to the individual. You can’t “give” talent to another person, yet enthusiasm does just that in the sense that it gives others the energy to step up their own game and improve upon it.

Another power that enthusiasm brings with it is that it attracts other people who are willing to help the enthusiastic individual. People are more willing to impart knowledge, and helpful information to enthusiastic people because they sense that desire to improve within them that naturally comes along with the quality of enthusiasm.

And not only that, people just like to be around enthusiastic people in general. Look at your own social group and I’m pretty sure you’ll find the most popular individual is the one who’s the most enthusiastic of them all. People naturally gravitate toward that quality like moths to a flame.

Going back to that UCLA vs. USC game, the quarterback for UCLA was one of the most, if not, the most enthusiastic player on that team. The players felt it and rallied around him. They played for him. They gave it their all for him. That enthusiasm was one of the major contributing factors that made him the true leader of the team and led to them winning the game.

And the best thing about enthusiasm is that it’s within everyone’s reach to use it. You don’t have to “learn” it. It’s a natural human emotion you can tap into anytime.

But if you’re having some trouble mustering it up, just get your body into it first. Start jumping up and down. Pump your fist in the air. Shout at the top of your lungs. Beat your chest and flex your arms. Your mind will naturally follow.

Get mentally fired up about what you want to do. Imagine how good it will feel like if you accomplish that goal. Get to work on the things you know you have to do to reach that goal.

Then, simply watch enthusiasm work its magic and grow.

It’s the day before that big job interview, and you want to make sure you’re ready. You get together your materials to bring to the interview, and then you open your closet. A sea of clothes stares back at you. So what will you wear?

It’s a basic but huge question, because that first impression you project can set the mood for the entire interview -- and ultimately influence whether you get the job. Do you want to look like the workers you see in the elevator? Dress a level up from them? Is a suit always necessary?

Fortunately, we’ve got some answers for you. Check out our Dress for Success microsite for a guide to dressing for the big day. And if you’ve still got questions on your interview attire or anything else interview-related, post them on our Interview Tips message board.

If you ever find yourself in a position where you really want to teach something, whether you’re giving a speech, a presentation at work, or just plain old advice to a friend, stories are the way to do it. They’re one of the most effective tools when it comes to really “planting” our points in people’s minds. We may be tempted to just state the facts and the points that we want to get across, as well as the logic to back them up, and just repeat them again and again for emphasis, hoping that the good old strategy of attrition will do the trick, but we find that won’t be the case.

People forget. That strategy doesn’t “stick”. Stories have a much better “sticky” factor and it’s through stories that people remember the points. People remember the tortoise and the hare, and then they remember the point that slow and steady does indeed win the race.

So why are stories so effective when it comes to teaching?

One of the biggest advantages that stories have over just stating facts, logic, and reasoning is that it provides a big enough framework to allow people to see a bigger “experiment” going on so to speak. They can see how different types of actions interact with one another to create different results, and then how those actions can somehow result in a certain tangents being created, or attracting certain circumstances, etc. It’s taking a step back and seeing how the many variables interact with one another rather than just focusing on a fixed, narrow point of view of space that comes along with just stating the points and logic behind them.

Because of the “space” that stories provide, it’s big enough to show the results and outcomes and to prove the points effectively through the analysis of the actions that led to those results and outcomes. It also provides a forum where our own objections can be answered to remove any mental barriers we might have and to allow the story and its points to “sink” into our minds.

And last, but not least, people can relate to stories, especially if they come from the speaker’s own experiences. Don’t get me wrong, stories that don’t come from your own experiences are great too when trying to get across a point. Parables are great at doing just that. But there’s something about telling a story from your own experience that just doesn’t compare to telling a story outside of your own experience.

Your whole being goes into telling the story when it comes from your own experience. There’s a certain emotional X factor that injects itself into the story that the audience feels, an X factor that makes the message you’re trying to get across that much more “stickier”. The stories of our own experiences, when shared, help us to connect with each other on a deeper level because we find that we can always relate to it somehow, in some way, shape or form, and it helps to paint the picture of logic AND emotion, emotion that comes from telling your own story to help ingrain your message into the minds of others that much more and to really anchor it.

You’ll find that a lot of popular best selling self improvement and business books are popular and best selling, just because they incorporate this idea of telling a good story.

Let’s take a look at Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad. The main points of the entire book can be summed up in more or less these four sentences.

- Become financially literate by understanding the difference between assets and liabilities: Assets are things that put money INTO your pocket and liabilities are things that take money OUT of your pocket.

- Instead of spending your money and saving what’s left over, save your money FIRST and use it to buy assets that put money INTO your pocket and keep your liabilities to a minimum as well so you can build your assets quicker.

-You want to possess enough assets that can produce enough cash flow to exceed your liabilities: These assets include owning your own business, rental income from real estate, “paper” assets such as stocks, mutual funds, and bonds, etc.

- Know how to leverage the tax system in your favor.

Certainly one can go through the “hard logic” route to get these points across, but would the book have been that much of a success if it did go that route? Chances are, the answer is no. It would’ve just been another one of those “dry” financial books.

The story of how he grew up with a rich dad and a poor dad (which some say is just a made up story that Robert concocted), and how he weighed their two philosophies, and the experiences he went through putting them into action (working at the grocery store, starting his own comic book reading business, etc), it allowed the reader to see everything in the big picture and how the different types of actions he took resulted in different types of outcomes.

The reader is able to see the “sequence” of actions Robert took and all the tangents that resulted from it, as well as what Robert realized along the way. And the book relates to most people, especially those who feel that the educational system does absolutely nothing to help people make money, who feel that people don’t really “need” it, that it just serves to put them on the treadmill toward a job for life – a very sensitive and highly debated subject indeed.

The story was able to do all these things – it made people FULLY understand one of the biggest points that Robert was trying to get across – the difference between assets and liabilities, it showed all of Robert’s experiences in the “big picture”, and it helped relate to all those who felt that something was wrong with the educational system when it comes to helping people make money.

You’ll find that most bestselling books utilize the power of story and therefore are in the format of “story -> reasoning -> point”, like in the case of Rich Dad, Poor Dad or the reverse, “point -> reasoning -> story” in order to get their message across. Either way, both routes utilize the power of stories to drive home their respective points into the minds of readers.

Stories really help people to TRULY understand the point being given. Not just understand it in the sense that they can repeat it from memory, but to really, truly understand it from all angles and have it sink into their mind, enough to actually influence their behavior and actions in the future.

To illustrate, here’s one of the most popular points in self improvement that most people hear all the time, but just can’t “swallow” out of doubt and fear.

“Just start and everything else that you need will come to you along the way.”

Or if you want the longer and more eloquent version:

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back– Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”

The point is made in order to disarm people’s fears and doubts of starting to go down the path of their dreams, whatever they may be.

At first, the point is met with hard resistance. It’s a tough pill to swallow. It almost sounds like “magic”, which further makes readers resist the point that if they just start, everything will come together.

Then logic is introduced to reinforce the point and to break down that mental resistance, the logic being that if you start, then you take some sort of action which will lead to another discovery of knowledge which helps you make a decision to take another sort of action, which leads you to find this person who can help you, which leads you to this idea, which leads you to that idea, which leads you to another person who can help and teach you, and soon momentum really starts to build toward the achievement of your goal, etc.

The picture is becoming a bit clearer now with the logic. But resistance is still there.

A story needs to be heard to bring all this logic to life and to tie it all together.

So the speaker relates of his own experience. His dream was to become a bodybuilding champion. So he started to work out at the gym, broke the windows of the gym on the weekends when it was closed just so he could sneak in and work out, built his own gym in his basement, lifted the lumber at his job to get more exercise in, refused to play soccer with his friends out of fear of losing muscle, found a role model to look up to, met a mentor at the gym he worked out at who introduced him to anabolic steroids, which helped him gain muscle even faster, got the money he needed to travel to compete from people he met along the way who he impressed with his burning desire, learned about the “show business” side to bodybuilding from other mentors he met along the way, which helped him to win even more competitions, got the army to support his goal to become a bodybuilding champion by getting them to give him all the food he could eat to put on even more muscle, learned to play “mental” guerrilla warfare with other contestants, and on and on and on and upon hearing the rest of the story, the reader finally begins to understand how things came together for the speaker, and gets excited at the possibilities of what might come to himself, if he just starts.

By listening and/or reading about the story, all the logic of that point comes to life and all it ties together and makes sense to him (the preceding was just the partial story of how the one and only Arnold Schwarzenegger got to achieve his goal of becoming a bodybuilding champion by winning the Mr. Universe competition).

This is just another reason why I recommend reading autobiographies of successful people because when you begin to read all their stories, you’ll see this point of “just starting and having everything come together” holds true in ALL their cases which helps make that point that much easier to swallow.

Stories.

Not just great for entertainment, but for learning and more importantly, for truly understanding.

They are truly indeed, one of the most effective tools out there when it comes to teaching.