One day a young man was standing in the middle of the town proclaiming
that he had the most beautiful heart in the whole valley. A large crowd
gathered and they all admired his heart for it was perfect. There was
not a mark or a flaw in it. Yes, they all agreed it truly was the most
beautiful heart they had ever seen. The young man was very proud and
boasted more loudly about his beautiful heart.

Suddenly, an old man appeared at the front of the crowd and said, "Why
your heart is not nearly as beautiful as mine."

The crowd and the young man looked at the old man's heart. It was beating
strongly, but full of scars, it had places where pieces had been
removed and other pieces put in, but they didn't fit quite right and
there were several jagged edges.   In fact, in some places there were
deep gouges where whole pieces were missing.

The people stared - how can he say his heart is more beautiful, they
thought?

The young man looked at the old man's heart and saw its state and
laughed.  "You must be joking," he said. "Compare your heart with mine,
mine is perfect and yours is a mess of scars and tears."

"Yes," said the old man, "Yours is perfect looking but I would never
trade with you. You see, every scar represents a person to whom I have
given my love - I tear out a piece of my heart and give it to them, and
often they give me a piece of their heart which fits into the empty place
in my  heart, but because the pieces aren't exact, I have some rough edges,
which I cherish, because they remind me of the love we shared.
Sometimes I have given pieces of my heart away, and the other person
hasn't returned a piece of his heart to me. These are the empty gouges
giving love is taking a chance. Although these gouges are painful,
they stay open, reminding me of the love I have for these people too,
and I hope someday they may return and
fill the space I have waiting. So now do you see what true beauty is?"

The young man stood silently with tears running down his cheeks. He
walked up to the old man, reached into his perfect young and beautiful
heart, and ripped a piece out. He offered it to the old man with
trembling hands. The old man took his offering, placed it in his
heart and then took a piece from his old scarred heart and placed it
in the wound in the young man's heart. It fit, but not perfectly,
as there were some jagged edges. The young man looked at his heart,
not perfect anymore but more beautiful than
ever, since love from the old man's heart flowed into his. They embraced
and walked away side by side.

How sad it must be to go through life with a whole heart.

Remember...

Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody is watching.

Pass this on to someone you like. I did.

I’m really curious to know what cost effective means of advertising my fellow ebayers are using in order to attract customers. Some of the things that I try to use to attract more customers to my store are as follows:

• I had some business cards and flyers made which I give out to people every chance I get.
• I always include a flyer or business card in all the packages that I mail out to my customers.
•   I always upload all my items on Google base.
• I submit my store url to as many search engines as I can.
•   I advertise my store on my blogs.
•   I advertise my items on forums every opportunity I get.
• I use my store banner as my signature on all my out going e-mails.

If there any other suggestions out there please feel free to share them, I would really love to hear them.

That being said I’ll leave you all with some words of inspiration, hope you’re all inspired by this like I was after reading it.

Summary of Steven R. Covey’s

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Habit 1: Be Proactive

Change starts from within, and highly effective people make the decision to improve their lives through the things that they can influence rather than by simply reaching to external forces.

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Develop a principle-centered personal mission statement. Extend the mission statement into long-term goals based on personal principles.

Habit 3: Put First Things First

Spend time doing what fits into your personal mission, observing the proper balance between production and building production capacity. Identify the key roles that you take on in life, and make time for each of them.

Habit 4: Think Win -Win

Seek agreements and relationships that are mutually beneficial. In cases where a “win-win” deal cannot be achieved, accept the fact that agreeing to make “no deal” may be the best alternative. Think win-win encourages conflict resolution and helps individuals seek mutually beneficial solutions. It’s sharing information, power, recognition, and rewards.

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

First seek to understand the other person, and only then try to be understood. Stephen Convey presents this habits as the most important principle of interpersonal relations. Effective listening is not simply echoing what the other person has said through the lens of ones own experience. Rather, it is putting oneself in the perspective of the other person, listening empathically for both feeling and meaning.

When we listen with the intent to understand others, rather than with the intent to reply, we begin true communication and relationship building. When others feel understood first, they feel affirmed and valued, defenses are lowered, and opportunities to speak openly and to be understood come much more naturally and easily. Seeking to understand takes kindness; seeking to be understood takes courage, Effectiveness lies in balancing.

Habit 6: Synergize

Synergy is about producing  a third alternative – not my way, not your way, but a third way that is better than either of us would come up with individually. It’s the fruit of mutual respect -  of understanding and even celebrating one another’s difference in solving problems, seizing opportunities. Synergistic teams and families thrive on individual strengths so that the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts. Such relationships and teams renounce defensive adversarialism (1+1=1/2). They don’t settle on compromise (1+1=11/2) or merely co-operation (1+1=2). They go for creative cooperation (1+1= 3 or more).

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Sharpening the saw is about constantly renewing ourselves in the four basic areas to live: physical, social-emotional, mental, and spiritual. It’s the Habit that increases our capacity to live all other habits of effectiveness. For an organization, Habit 7 promotes vision, renewal, continuous improvement, safeguards against burnout and entropy, and puts the organization on a new upward growth path. For a family, it increases effectiveness through regular personal and family activities such as establishing traditions that nurture  the spirit of family renewal.

I have an online business and sometimes business is so slow it's discouraging! I can't say how many times I've felt like giving up and just closing mybusiness. However, I'm still hanging in there, giving it my all. I came across this and found it very interesting, it actually motivated me to keep on doing all that I can to make my business grow. It also helped me realize that success does not come easy and sure doesn’t happen over night.

Believe it or not a lot of these big time business men and women that we sit down and admire today did not start from the top. The statrted from the bottom and worked there way to the top which was not easy, at some point they were where we are today. But  Guess what? They never gave up on there dreams, they faced there challenges and found a way to make it happen..... I just thought I should share that with everyone. Hope you find it as inspiring as I did.

Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, grew up poor in a farm community in rural Missouri during the Great Depression. The poverty he experienced while growing up taught him the value of money and to persevere.

Today, Wal-Mart is the world's #1 retailer, with more than 4,150 stores, including discount stores, combination discount and grocery stores, and membership-only warehouse stores (Sam's Club). Learn Walton's winning formula for business.

Sam Walton: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Business

Rule 1: Commit to your business.

Believe in it more than anybody else. I think I overcame every single one of my personal shortcomings by the sheer passion I brought to my work. I don't know if you're born with this kind of passion, or if you can learn it. But I do know you need it. If you love your work, you'll be out there every day trying to do it the best you possibly can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you — like a fever.

Rule 2: Share your profits with all your associates, and treat them as partners.

 In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will all perform beyond your wildest expectations. Remain a corporation and retain control if you like, but behave as a servant leader in your partnership. Encourage your associates to hold a stake in the company. Offer discounted stock, and grant them stock for their retirement. It's the single best thing we ever did.

Rule 3: Motivate your partners.

Money and ownership alone aren't enough. Constantly, day by day, think of new and more interesting ways to motivate and challenge your partners. Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score. Make bets with outrageous payoffs. If things get stale, cross-pollinate; have managers switch jobs with one another to stay challenged. Keep everybody guessing as to what your next trick is going to be. Don't become too predictable.

Rule 4: Communicate everything you possibly can to your partners.

The more they know, the more they'll understand. The more they understand, the more they'll care. Once they care, there's no stopping them. If you don't trust your associates to know what's going on, they'll know you really don't consider them partners. Information is power, and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of informing your competitors.

Rule 5: Appreciate everything your associates do for the business.

A paycheck and a stock option will buy one kind of loyalty. But all of us like to be told how much somebody appreciates what we do for them. We like to hear it often, and especially when we have done something we're really proud of. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free — and worth a fortune.

Rule 6: Celebrate your success.

Find some humor in your failures. Don't take yourself so seriously. Loosen up, and everybody around you will loosen up. Have fun. Show enthusiasm — always. When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. Then make everybody else sing with you. Don't do a hula on Wall Street. It's been done. Think up your own stunt. All of this is more important, and more fun, than you think, and it really fools competition. "Why should we take those cornballs at Wal-Mart seriously?"

Rule 7: Listen to everyone in your company and figure out ways to get them talking.

The folks on the front lines — the ones who actually talk to the customer — are the only ones who really know what's going on out there. You'd better find out what they know. This really is what total quality is all about. To push responsibility down in your organization, and to force good ideas to bubble up within it, you must listen to what your associates are trying to tell you.

Rule 8: Exceed your customer's expectations.

 If you do, they'll come back over and over. Give them what they want — and a little more. Let them know you appreciate them. Make good on all your mistakes, and don't make excuses — apologize. Stand behind everything you do. The two most important words I ever wrote were on that first Wal-Mart sign: "Satisfaction Guaranteed." They're still up there, and they have made all the difference.

Rule 9: Control your expenses better than your competition.

This is where you can always find the competitive advantage. For twenty-five years running — long before Wal-Mart was known as the nation's largest retailer — we've ranked No. 1 in our industry for the lowest ratio of expenses to sales. You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient.

Rule 10: Swim upstream.

Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there's a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction. But be prepared for a lot of folks to wave you down and tell you you're headed the wrong way. I guess in all my years, what I heard more often than anything was: a town of less than 50,000 population cannot support a discount store for very long.