If you want to become a better soccer player then you have a lot of work ahead of you. But if you’re committed to improving your game, you will see results, and you will achieve your goals. Just remember, like anything else in worth accomplishing, it will take hard work and won’t happen overnight.

Here are a few tips to that can help your game if you apply them properly:

1) Pass and Move.

Once you pass the ball, don’t you dare stand still! Move into open space and ask for the ball again. When you stand in the same spot and admire your pass you make it very easy for the opposition to defend you. Moving will create openings for yourself as well as your teammates. Get involved in the play and demand the ball again. Get it out of your feet, pass it and move on. Pass and Move. Pass and move. When executed properly, it’s a beautiful thing.

2) Two Touch Soccer.

If you want to play Soccer at a high level you are going to need to learn to play two touch Soccer. If you watch professionals they rarely take more than one or two touches unless they are in a one on one situation. Playing two touch Soccer keeps the speed of play up and makes it difficult for your opposition to keep up with you. Learn to play the ball as soon as possible, even if your teammates don’t. If they know what’s good for them they will soon adapt this mindset as well.

3) Accuracy over Power.

When it comes to shooting always use accuracy over power; you will not score many goals if you can never hit the net, no matter how hard your shot is. If you concentrate on picking your spots and placing your shots, rather than blasting the ball as hard as you can, you will be much more successful as a Soccer player and score many more goals.

Hope this helps. Remember, if you want to become better you are going to have to apply all the advice you read into practice. Simply reading about Soccer will not make you better at Soccer. So get out there and get playing. That’s the first and most important step to becoming a better Soccer player.

“Three apples fell from heaven, one for the teller, one for the listener and one for the one who heads the tale.” Armenian Proverb

Everyone loves a good story, whether from a book, a spoken tale, or a movie. However, most people, children and adult alike, would say, “I can’t tell stories.” The truth is, everyone can tell a story, they just need to know how. Telling stories is relatively easy because you don’t repeat the story word-for-word. When memorizing a poem or Scripture each word must be correct. A story requires two abilities: memory and imagination. Both are skills children have in abundance. Why not harness that talent to teach your children writing?

If you want to see your children’s writing soar, teach them to be storytellers. Like reading or cooking or working cooperatively with others, storytelling is a life skill. When your child gets the knack of storytelling in everyday circumstances he will have a lasting legacy and write more expressively, be attuned to the beauty of language, give a listening ear to others telling a good story, recognize good writing, and think more imaginatively.

Using storytelling in your homeschool brings a great deal more than the enjoyment of stories. You are giving your children a foundation in orality. Just as literacy is the ability to read and write, orality is the ability to speak and listen. All four modes-reading, writing, speaking, and listening-make up human communication. Orality supports literacy. Storytelling is the highest form of orality.

Typically to help a child read better and write better we make him do more of both, usually with some resistance. The most effective way to improve literacy is to increase oral language experiences, like narration, recitation, play-acting, to name a few. Storytelling is the best form of oral language experience because the teller internalizes a set of relationships and structures that they can then map back onto experience. Think of a fairy tale you love. What does it show you? The value of being kind, the lowest often makes it to the top, the need for virtue and honesty, are just a few.

Orality takes the form of stories, rhymes, sayings, conversation, and songs. Using oral language experiences with preschool children is easy, since they are preliterate and in love with words. It is sheer fun to giggle with a toddler and say a nonsense rhyme.

Once children master reading, however, the focus tends to be on the printed word and sadly, speaking and listening begin to lag behind. To achieve their best in reading and writing, elementary students must continue to develop their oral skills of speaking and listening.

How can I bring a greater orality to my homeschool?

Here are a few simple, easy to do activities that require little or no preparation:

1. Read aloud to your children every day. Pick stories and books that have a strong plot and rich use of language. Avoid adaptations of well-known stories or books.

2. Use narration every day. Narration is the art of telling back in your own words a passage that is read.

3. Do simple nursery rhymes and finger-plays with your children. If you have older children, teach them so they can do finger-plays with the younger ones. You can find books of finger-plays and nursery rhymes at your library. A few well-know rhymes are: “Jack and Jill”, “Hey, Diddle Diddle, the Cat and Fiddle”, “Little Miss Muffet”, and “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”

4. Make storytelling a special time during the day or week. Use folktale collections or picture books that are retellings of folktales and ask your elementary age children to learn to tell them.

5. Tell stories about your own life. All children love to hear about when their parents were little.

6. Tell simple, well-known stories such as “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” “Ten Little Monkeys.” See if your children can tell all or part of the story themselves.

What does all this have to do with writing?

If you want to help children improve their writing you have them write? Right? Wrong. When children are asked to do writing, they often struggle because they are asked to perform two very different developmental tasks-write and think spontaneously. One task at a time is usually no problem; but, both at once require a certain amount of maturity. Begin from a different point—try having your child tell rather than write the sentence, paragraph or story.

The process

Here’s the process: compose orally, revise orally, then-and only then-write it down. At another time ask your child to check for accuracy in grammar and punctuation but definitely not when they are composing (orally or in writing). That’s it. It sounds simple and it is. However, to see results requires consistency and a light touch. Your child needs to become accustomed to thinking out loud. Be patient and praise all efforts. Be sure to offer guidelines at the start but do not prompt with answers. There are no wrong answers with this approach, only good, better and best. Let your child sometimes play turn-about and have you try the process.

If you’re ready to give the process a try, set aside the writing workbooks for a time (you can always come back to them later). The results will amaze you.

To Learn More

To learn more about how to tell stories, check your library for the following books:

The Storyteller’s Start-Up Book: Finding, Learning, Performing, and Using Folktales: Including Twelve Tellable Tales, Margaret Read MacDonald

This is an easy-to-understand handbook that gets you started telling.

The Way of the Storyteller, Ruth Sawyer

This is a classic of storytelling literature and one of my favorites that I go to for inspiration

Well that’s a bit rude, isn’t it? Maybe at first glance you may think I am being a little offensive but, excuse the pun, there is a good reason.

Do you wonder why it is that some days are just not good golf days? How is it that on Saturday you can go out on to the course and play brilliantly and on Sunday, same course you can not buy a decent drive?

A very common fault among all us amateur golfers is posture. Golf is an athletic sport despite my wife’s opinion and as such it requires you to adopt a sportsmanlike pose.

Take a look at prominent golfers on tour these days and you will not see many guys or ladies walking around with slopping shoulders and their chins on their chests.

A good golf swing is based on the set up, if you get this right then you have taken one huge step to playing better golf.

Golf is dynamic, it is a sport of moving parts and all those parts are connected to you. So with that in mind how do we set up dynamically?

To begin with lets stand up straight, ears lined up with shoulders, lined up with hips, lined up with feet. This is the basic position and from here your body can move freely and easily.

Stand in front of your ball with your feet pointing a little outwards, your feet should be about as wide as your shoulders. Now we have a firm, balanced base for our swing.

Obviously we need to get down to the golf ball and to do this I take my club and hold it at about 45 degrees to my body. Now I bend forward and flex my knees until the club head touches the ground, this will place you at the right distance from the ball.

Once you are in this position stick your butt out. The reason for sticking your rear end out is to bring your center of gravity to a point over your arches.

With your weight in the middle of your feet you are in a dynamic position, you can swing the golf club to and fro and maintain good balance and that is the key to a good, solid, repeatable golf swing.

There are many different types of billiards cues out in the market; and if you play pool often, then you probably know the best ones, though even the best billiards players who don’t necessarily play professionally can still have a hard time choosing the right pool cues. However, they do realize that pool cues can make or break your game. A Lucasi pool cue is one of the top-selling brands of cues in the market because it is known for its durability and superior hit ability, making it stand out among the rest.

The Lucasi company is well-known (and well-respected) in the billiards industry. Players, both professionals and serious amateurs like, will swear by this brand. Billiard players who choose to use a Lucasi pool cue tend to continue using one for years. This type of loyalty only comes from a quality product.

Below are the top three reasons why a Lucasi pool cue can change your game and make it better than everyone else’s:

1. A Lucasi pool cue offers top performance, quality craftsmanship and value for your money. Many of the best pool players in the world are impressed with this cue stick. These pool cues also offer innovative designs; it comes as no surprise that most players choose this over others.

2. They also make their cues out of the best materials and offer pool players an option to choose what kind of material they want. The ability to “customize” your cue should not be undervalued. The better the cue feels in your hands, the better you will play. You can choose from several unique wood choices with beautiful inlays and you can even specify special joint details that you may want your cue to have. With each Lucasi pool cue, you can aim for precise hits and you would find that your game would significantly improve.

3. Another reason why professional pool players prefer Lucasi over the other brands is because there are some varieties that offer a uni-loc quick release joint and a radical pin joint, which makes it easy to break down your cue after your game is over. With the wide selection of pool cues by Lucasi, you are sure to find what you need no matter what your budget may be.

Billiards is a game of strategy; and to become a pro in this sport, you have to be able to deliver precise hits. However, if you don’t have the right equipment for it, then your game would most likely suffer as well. Since Lucasi can significantly help improve your hit ability, you will not only enjoy your game so much more, but you will also find that your overall pool skills have improved. With a Lucasi cue, you don’t have to look anywhere else. Top-quality and efficiency are what Lucasi stands for and you don’t even have to spend so much just to get one as they make sure that all their products are fairly-priced based on the material and the features of each cue stick.

Can Asking Better Questions Lead To Better Answers?

Better Questions Get Better Results

In my thirty years of coaching, I’ve noticed that even highly successful people tend to ask very few questions, and not very good ones at that.

I can’t speak for other coaches, but the people who hire me as a coach tend to be competent, confident and at least moderately successful. They’ve done alright in life, sometimes much better than “all right.” They are smart enough to see the value of coaching. They tend to be goal-oriented, ambitious, hard-working and creative. They are “going someplace” and want to get their easier, faster and with higher levels of success.

But even they tend to be influenced by the Law of the Familiar. That’s a polite way of saying we all tend to (1) do the same things over and over because we know how to do them and are comfortable with the familiar, and (2) we tend to fear the unfamiliar, the uncomfortable and the unknown. So we repeat the old definition of insanity: Doing the same things over and over while hoping for a different result.

Good questions get us out of that rut. Great questions open doors and move us forward quickly. Sometimes the right question makes the “impossible” easily possible! A great question can even turn a frustrating situation into an adventure, something that is exciting, that stretches us, helps us grow and makes life more fun!

Unfortunately, most of the time, most of us ask really dumb questions. We tend to ask questions like, Why does this always happen to me? Or how about the old favorite, Why can’t I catch a break? Maybe one of your personal favorites is, How come things (my life, my work, my kids, etc.) never change?

Those questions are dead-ends! The human brain is remarkably creative and it will always (ALWAYS!) find answers to those questions! And, unfortunately, the answers it comes up with tend to keep us stuck exactly where we are.

Here are some better questions you might try:

1. What are twenty nutty, off-the-wall things could I do to solve this?

2. How have other people dealt with this problem and solved it?

3. What if I did the opposite of what I’ve been trying?

4. Who could help me with this?

5. Could I find a book or website that would help me?

6. How do my competitors handle this problem?

7. If I had a million dollars and a team of experts, how would I deal with this? And, in light of that, where can I start today?

And here’s a great question: Is it time to hire a coach or consultant to help me with this?

Finally, I want to ask some direct and deeply personal questions. If we were together face to face, I’d ask them quietly but as powerfully as I could:

1. If we talk again three years from now, what will you have achieved in the past three years? What will you point to with pride three years from now?

2. What has to happen for those achievements to become reality? What will you have to do? What skills will you have to master? What obstacles will you have to solve or over-come? Who will help you get there?

3. What are your plans for making it happen? Can you show me your “road-map,” your calendar and your budget for success?

These are the questions top performers ask themselves. You should ask them of yourself, as well.

Positively stimulating interpersonal relationships inside an Organization can often lead to an increase in productivity, a warm working atmosphere that can expand with a happier workforce.

1. Keep everyone Informed

A simple notice board, company newsletter or for large Organizations a Magazine keeps everyone informed on upcoming events, changes within an organization and helps everyone feel part of a team.

2. Canteens

Larger Organizations usually have a canteen whilst small scale organizations should have a refreshment area, with a microwave and a place were employees can relax, and mix together.

3. Resource Centers

Access to resources are as important as the job itself, resource centers could be a simple computer that could be accessed by all employees or in much larger organizations a library or center.

4. Social or Activity Clubs

Encouraging Social or Activity Clubs inside an Organization can often encourage employees to socialize with each other in a positive environment. In an economic recession, this could help employees substitute vacations with more localized activities.

5. Celebrations

Birthdays, Festivals like Christmas, Idul Fitri or other religious holidays could be celebrated after work. This often shows a company does care, and helps motivate Employees.

6. Counseling Services

These are particularly important in times of economic change, when a company may have to cut working hours or even lay-off staff. Counseling could help employees affected by this change to accept in a positive way, an unwelcome change.

7. Quality Circles

Allowing members of your Organization to discuss in the open issues around work in an informal setting, often brings positive results, and can sometimes solve issues before they become too serious.

Encouraging Interpersonal relations inside an Organization creates a more positive, and open environment many employees should feel comfortable in. During economically hard times, this could be the difference between a smooth transition, and a rough volatile transition.

Studies show millions of meetings are held each day in the United States and that thousands of dollars are spent per meeting hour where the meetings include multiple executives as attendees. Are all these meetings a business investment or a waste of time? Sadly many of those same studies indicate the managers attending the meetings felt up to half their time investment was wasted. If meetings are important enough to hold, then why don’t the bosses of the organization insist they be better lead?

Can the gift of better meetings be this year’s ultimate management prize? If meeting leaders can learn to accomplish more in the same amount of time or less, then the answer is most definitively yes. If the answer is yes, then how can this gift of better meetings come about?

There are lots of good training courses and books on meeting management. When looking for a good meeting leadership course, besides using the words “meeting management”, search for courses that include some form of lead or facilitate in the course title. Sometimes meeting management course titles seem to be disguised as something else or the meeting training is a component in a larger package offered as a longer workshop. The benefit of taking a course is concentrated effort on learning the tools and techniques along with networking and ideas from other course participants who have the same business world experiences. The main disadvantage is time away from the job to attend the course, which is why many do not take advantage of this formal training option.

Reading and following a book on meeting management is a viable alternative to formal training, if the meeting leader commits to following the guidelines and the book includes examples or usable forms. One option with examples and forms is the new book “R.A!R.A! A Meeting Wizard’s Approach” (ISBN 1-4196-5367-9). This book and others on meeting management may be bought through Amazon or ordered from bookstores. The primary advantage of informal learning from a book is that it is portable and may be read on or off work hours using small segments of scattered time rather than consecutive hours. Books often include the same benefit of tips, tools, and techniques but in a different format than found in a formal course. The disadvantage could be the lack of networking and discussion with other course participants who are learning the meeting leadership material at the same time. However, this disadvantage may be overcome by forming a book study group at the jobsite or having a regular meeting team explore the book’s materials and learn better meeting management together.

Going back to the meeting studies, they also show that the number of meetings is increasing and their duration is too. To save dollars, time, and management worry – offer bosses the gift of better meetings as a direction towards higher profits and increased productivity. Better meetings lead to more productive employees, less time and dollar cost wasted, and less cost means higher profit margins. Make meetings a business investment instead of a waste of time by reading a book or attending a course so more people become better meeting leaders. Give and share the gift of better meetings this year.

Too many business professionals waste valuable time constantly checking their emails. Sending emails may also take more of time than is necessary too. Practice email organization and time management to save time when working with email.

Keep in mind that every email does not have to be read when it comes in. For most people checking business email can be done three times during the day – when coming in at the beginning of shift, before or after lunch, and before leaving work for the day. However, people in a customer service or support job may need to check their email hourly, such as at the beginning of each hour rather than every minute of the day. The old time management rule for answering inquiries was within 24 hours, however with the technological advances today, by end of business day or each work shift may be a better practice.

If an email is not going to be answered on the same day that it is read, because it requires more thought time than can currently be given to it, use the reminder or tickler feature in email system indicating a deadline so the reply requirement is not forgotten. If the email does not indicate a due date, ask for it or at least let the sender know when they might expect a well considered response. Also, it may take a little more time upfront when composing emails, but it can save time and confusion later if when sending business emails, professional email etiquette should be followed.

Although it is true that there is no need to check to email as often, no one should not let their inbox get too full. A full inbox takes more time to clear out in the future. If an email requires a response, don’t keep people waiting too long for an answer. If it does not require a response, decide if there is a need to keep the email or trash it immediately. Always clean the inbox out at the end of each day at s set time. Also, if emptying the trash folder is not set up on an automatic timeframe, empty it out at the end of each day too.

When keeping emails for future reference, be sure to make folders for filing them. Having folders created for active projects or teams makes it easy to quickly retrieve important communications and forward them when necessary. It is also easy to quickly remove all those old emails when the project is complete or team is dissolved by deleting the folder. Some email tools allow sending emails from particular people directly to a folder to make checking project tasks during a designated time during the work day. Not only can folders be set-up and sending emails to them the sender information, filtering emails into specific folders based on a word in the subject line is also possible.

As a final time saving tip, when sending mass-emailing to a particular group or team of people on a regular basis, consider putting their email address together in a group ID to make completing the “To” field for outgoing messages quicker. So practice better email organization and improved time management working with email. Don’t be one of those business professionals who waste valuable time checking emails more often than necessary.

NOTES: For information on email etiquette, please see article titled “Encouraging Email Etiquette – Do’s and Don’ts.” For more details on group IDs, see article titled “Get Emails Out Faster Using Group Names as Addresses.”

I was asked to do a spec spot recently. In case you’ve never heard that term, it’s a radio commercial written and produced for a client who doesn’t know he’s a client yet.

Like builders sometimes put up houses on spec (speculation) radio salespeople call on business owners, and as part of their pitch, they offer to have a spec spot produced so the client can hear how good his radio commercial will sound, should he choose to purchase air time.

A good friend at a local radio station thought of me for a spec for one of her potential clients. She had the spot written by a sales assistant and emailed it over to me to voice, and I was to email it back to the station production person so he could put sound effects and music under it for presentation to the potential client.

That’s when the laughter started. The title of this article gives you a clue…think of all the Billy-Big-Voice, reverb-laden commercials you’ve heard in your life, telling you about an event you just CAN’T miss, and it’s this Friday…Friday…Friday!!!

Yes, the writing was that bad. The 60 second script had about 75 seconds of copy and there were at least 5 different ideas going on. I called my friend. She had questioned the sales assistant about the odd choice of style and was told it was all she could come up with. My friend and I completely re-wrote the spot, removing the cliches, tightening up the copy, and focusing the message to one strong one instead of the three different messages in the original script.

The secret to a good radio commercial is really no secret: relate to the listener, use vivid, descriptive language, keep the copy short, keep the message focused on one thought, include a call to action, and sell the benefit the listener will get by using this client’s service.

Meanwhile, the spec spot is done. I hope it helps my friend land her new account. I know it sounds better without all that Friday…Friday…Friday!!!

Boots are better than shoes for all sorts of reasons. They are more durable. They last longer. They protect your feet from potential dangers better than shoes do. The list goes on and on. However, real life anecdotes help drive home the idea better than just making a list. Here is a list of experiences that demonstrate the point.

1) When you drop an eighty-pound speaker cabinet on your foot, the steel toed work boots you are wearing protect your feet from being crushed. Meanwhile your friend who was only wearing a pair of Converse All Stars now has a smashed foot with lovely purple toenails.

2) While cruising on your motor scooter your only brake cable snaps and you are forced to press your thick Vibram lug sole work boots to the pavement in order to stop. In a similar incident your girlfriend wears shoes while riding her moped. Unable to get her machine to stop because her shoes were inadequate to the task at hand, she now sports a nice scar on her hip marking the spot where she became one with the asphalt.

3) Being a short female, less than five feet, in a bar sucks. Wearing a nice pair of women’s western boots can give you a solid two-inch lift and the stability that isn’t offered by a pair of stiletto heels. Plus when the drunken guy next to you tries to balance his beer on your head you have the option to kick him in the package without fear of the toe breakage that an open toed shoe would be vulnerable to.

4) Your friend falls off his skateboard and sends it careening your way. It hits you in the ankle. You end up with only a small bruise because you have a nice pair of Lacrosse work boots on that cover your ankle with thick leather. Thank goodness you didn’t wear tennis shoes because you’d probably have a fractured ankle.

5) Out on a summer picnic with your girlfriend you spy what looks like a rounded up pile of dog feces. Before you are able to react the dark brown-coiled object lunges at your feet and bangs its head against your boot. I further examination you find two tiny semi punctures with trailing scrap marks in the leather. Rattlesnakes can ruin picnics if you don’t watch where you are walking and wear leather boots.

6) It rains roughly three inches in less than an hour in your neighborhood. The city drains begin to back up from the deluge and become choked with debris. The streets are now flooded with two feet of standing water. Luckily you have a pair of Muck boots which you deploy thereby keeping your feet dry and protected against the floating trash within the water. You unclog the nearest drain, which stops the water from almost entering your home. Your neighbor wears a pair of Nike shoes and gets a nasty gash on top of his foot from a submerged spiked palm frond. You trudge onward protected by thick rubber boots.

7) You try to recapture your youth and buy a pair of Converse All Star tennis shoes. These shoes proceed to do everything in their power to murder your feet. Pain permeates your body with each step you take. You swear you don’t remember them hurting like this when you were in high school. You buy a pair of plain looking Tony Lama cowboy boots. You slip them on and they become the most comfortable footwear you have ever owned. You don’t take them off for two years. Your girlfriend is concerned. You get a new girlfriend and give the All Stars to the Salvation Army. Boots rule!

No matter if your experience is out of the ordinary or not, boots just do a better job of keeping your feet in good health. Don’t mess around with footwear and stay standing and walking by wearing good boots.