“Shameless You!” launches ShamelessForGood.com for development at home and abroad

PRESS RELEASE: "Shameless You!” announced that it will be donating a portion of its product sales to aid relief efforts in Haiti. For each workbook and audio CD sold, “Shameless You!” will donate funds to the American Red Cross.

The program is currently available on purchases through the Shameless for Good web site at www.ShamelessForGood.com. For each workbook or audio CD sold, the company will donate $2 to the American Red Cross. If a buyer chooses to purchase both items together, the company will donate $5.

“Connecting people to what they need most is what ‘Shameless You!’ is all about,” says program designer, author, and public speaker Tracy Corley. “We want to ensure that we are putting programs in place that promote giving and community development. Our goal is to reach $5,000 in donations this month.”

The “Shameless You!” program aids economic development in the United States by providing a career development strategy for the unemployed and underemployed workforce. The program assists workers and business owners in setting a personal strategy and using that strategy to promote their skills and strengths in the workplace and in the marketplace.

The benefit to Haiti runs through February 1, 2010. The “Shameless for Good” program will be an ongoing giving program for investment in local and global communities. Future proceeds from products and services will benefit other national and international personal and community development programs.

Rebuild at Home and in Haiti with Shameless You!

The current situation both at home and in Haiti demands that I do something. As I see what's happening in the current job market and with the tremendous suffering in Haiti, I realize that it's tough to have confidence when you don't have the basic tools needed for survival.

To help our unemployed and underemployed thrive at home, and to help the people of Haiti, I am donating a portion of all Shameless You! product sales to the American Red Cross.

For each order of our popular Shameless Self Promotion Audio CD and Workbook combination, we will send $5 to the American Red Cross. If you order the products separately, we will donate $2 for each Workbook or Audio CD purchase.

And shipping on all three options is free.

Just place your order by 2/1/2010, and you can:

• Toot your own horn with confidence and integrity.
• Overcome intimidation in your personal and professional life.
• Craft an elevator pitch so that employers and clients get it.
  
• Rebuild your career with actionable tools.
  
• Help the people of Haiti get the resources they need to rebuild their lives.

Don't miss out on this opportunity to rebuild both at home and abroad.

Order now at http://store.shamelessyou.com.

Using Impact to Perfect Your Pitch

In our last post, we talked about the power of the smile. Learning how to use a smile to boost confidence and promote shamelessness is just a part of the overall picture on building awareness of your impact on others.

The people around you can instantly tell if you're confident or not. Your confidence comes across in the way that you carry yourself each day. Do you stand tall with your shoulders thrown back, or do you slouch and slump? Confidence can be read in the way that you smile. Is the smile genuine and sparkles in your eyes, or does it look forced while your eyes are dull with fear and uncertainty? Even a simple handshake makes a difference. Do you use a firm, but comfortable grip, or does your handshake feel like a dead fish?

Little gestures make a big difference in how you relate to others. In our Perfect Your Pitch workshop, we help people understand how delivery is just as important as content when giving a presentation. Any time you interact with others, you're technically giving a "presentation". Your every gesture and interaction is a pitch to others about who you are and whether they should interact with you. If your gestures match the content, they will know that you're confident. If what you are saying and/or they way you act do not match, you will inspire doubt.

Give this a try: next time you're in a coffee shop or a public place, throw your shoulders back, put on a smile, then walk up to a stranger and ask them if they know what time it is. Most likely, that person will smile back to you and either give you the time or will tell you why they cannot give you the time.

Next, walk up to someone else with a slouch and scowl and ask them if they know what time it is. Look for a difference in the way they respond.

You're just asking for the time, right? Not really. Your demeanor and gestures have a huge impact on how others respond to you. It is up to you to be conscious of that impact so that you can feel more confident and get more of what you want. Even getting someone to tell you what time it is can be a challenge if you're not making the right impact.

When working toward a Shameless You, work on perfecting your personal pitch so that your gestures match your words, and all are working together to portray confidence and integrity. With a little bit of consciousness, you can be more aware of how your gestures are perceived by the people you encounter every day. This consciousness will lift your own confidence once those around you start responding to you positively and with a smile.

The Power of a Smile in Shamelessness

Not so long ago, I would walk down the street and complete strangers would stop me and ask, "What's wrong?" or "Is it really that bad?"

This has happened to me at least a dozen times. At first, I thought it was just because strange guys wanted to hit on me. When the frequency increased to include little old ladies, I realized that something else was really going on.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming teaches us that if we start with what's on the inside, it will change how we express ourselves. Sometimes, it helps to change our outward appearances to impact how we feel on the inside.

In our Shameless Self Promotion program from Shameless You!, we discuss getting rid of negative influences to help boost our confidence. As an architectural designer, I studied psychologically how environment impacts mood and our emotional core. The same is true of the clothing we wear. As Darcey Howard delivers through her company Lifestyled, our appearance is about the life you want to lead and the image you want to have.

Like getting rid of dead or fake plants in your house or updating your wardrobe to reflect the type of style and confidence you want to portray, we can also change how we present ourselves personally to get the confidence we need to have a positive impact and contribute to the world.

To get rid of my "permascowl", I followed the advice of a line I read in a book somewhere: It's hard to be angry when you're smiling. It took a seriously conscious effort to turn up the corners of my mouth and wear a self-satisfied little grin on my face much of the time. That's because, as a close friend of mine reminded me, the muscles in our face naturally keep our face looking slightly unhappy when they are completely relaxed. Unfortunately, when we're angry or frustrated or fearful, that pulls our facial muscles downward even more, creating a scowl that reflects what's going on inside even if we're not conscious of it.

The act of smiling actually makes us feel better. It draws people to us, makes us look younger, and encourages those around us to smile. When the people around us are happy to see us coming, we feel more confident about ourselves. When practiced regularly, the act of smiling will come naturally. Suddenly, you feel more confident, giving you more to smile about, which then boosts your confidence even more.

So sometimes, it's okay to start on the outside first, then work our way in. With just a simple smile, you can start feeling more confident and be quickly on the path to shamelessness.

Read more on the 10 reasons to smile from About.com.

When the mutli-generational workforce really doesn't matter.

In a recent meeting with colleagues, we discussed communication challenges in a multi-generational workplace. As we touched upon topics of technology, motivating factors, and influencers that shape the lenses through which each of us sees the world, a Gen X/Millennial wondered aloud, "Why do we, the younger generation, always have to defer to the side of older generation folks?"

In the world of shamelessness, effective communications don't take sides. Regardless of your generation, gender, culture, or personal preferences, effective communications keeps your needs in mind while taking the time to understand the needs and goals of the other person. If you're working together for a common goal and everyone is on board, lines don't get drawn in the sand. And if everyone is working with integrity, each will drop their "stances" and their insistence on one communication style over another to get the job done.

Everyone has their preferences. Everyone has different motivators and experiences that make them who they are. If everyone were truly shameless, each would respect other people enough to acknowledge the differences, motivators, and preferences to be a part of something that's bigger than each individual. Otherwise, communications in the multi-generational workplace, or any place, would be rather lonely indeed.