Graduates with psychology degrees are increasingly in demand. As the world becomes more interconnected, the study of human behavior is becoming more practical and valuable for its diverse applications in almost every stratum of society. Employers are naturally drawn to graduates with a proven background beyond conventional programs. Studying in a foreign country builds strong skills in problem solving, increases confidence and gives students broader critical thinking skills.

Psychology requires innovative thinking in an evolving world of people and cultures with changing needs. Students who immerse themselves in other realms and perspectives by studying abroad build for a broader foundation of human understanding themselves and their future employers.

Depending upon areas of specialization, students with psychology degrees can choose to work in a myriad of professional settings. By studying abroad aspiring psychologists are exposed to more types of settings, organizations, groups and connections than those who only study at domestic universities.

International Study Expands Workplace Possibilities
A graduate with a psychology degree typically expects to work in certain types of workplace settings, but international exposure at the undergraduate or graduate level helps students discover more creative possibilities for types of work environments and applications in their career.

Depending on the psychology degree, a psychologist can work anywhere from a private practice to a consulting firm to a government department. The experience of having studied abroad can inspire graduates to seek out work settings that fit their individual style since they have seen different work settings in different parts of the world. Learning how a private practice looks in the outback of New Zealand can change how a graduate decides to set up a practice in the United States., for instance.

Because of the inherently multifaceted nature of psychology, psychologists work in almost any arena of society-corporations, education, government, health and welfare services, community agencies, police forces, counseling services, defense forces, non profit organizations, research institutions and training services. Yet, a graduate with a degree in psychology who has had international exposure is more likely to be in a position to take advantage of a wide range of offers.

International Study of Psychology Can be More Specialized
For students who focused on a psychology degree early in their academic life, a study abroad degree can be more efficient and specialized. The study of psychology in Australia is an especially popular and sophisticated discipline among the many universities there. In Australia a bachelors degree in psychology is compressed into three years of specialized coursework, without the usual liberal arts electives in U.S. requirements. Students can complete their bachelors degree more quickly and graduate level students can be assured of studying within a highly refined international system with many professional and high level connections.

Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Wayne_Hemrick

Not surprisingly, expatriate selection practices have been critically reviewed during the last decades. Where leadership skills, technical competence and domestic track record were viewed as the prime selection criteria until the 1990s, senior executives in 2005 considered the ability to control emotions as more important than technical skills. Traditional selection criteria are now considered additional to softer selection criteria. The observation that technical training and current cross-cultural training programmes do not seem to address expatriate failure complicates matters. During the 1980s and 1990s it became obvious that expatriate maladjustment was a main cause of ineffective expatriate performance and premature returns. Which additional skills and competencies are then required to make expatriation a success?

Firstly, several selection criteria are not related to individual skills but are of utmost relevance. Family suitably, opportunities for spouse employment, possible disruptions of the children’s education, for instance, will affect expatriate job satisfaction and the intent to complete the assignment. The Global Relocation Trends 2005 survey report found that for 67% of respondents family concerns were the dominant cause of premature return and that spouse/partner dissatisfaction was the number one reason for assignment failure.

Secondly, soft skills such as relation skills affect expatriate success significantly.

Agreeableness or non-judgementalism were, in a recent study, considered to be an important predictor of both adjustment and performance. Further, cross-cultural communication skills and personal characteristics in dealing with host country nationals have been found key variables. Noteworthy is that the relational ability of expatriates in regard to host country nationals has been found to support both interaction among expatriate and host country nationals and expatriate effectiveness. As well, relation skills are also important when adjusting to new cultures. A meta-analytic study of 8,474 expatriates in 66 studies concluded that cultural adjustment is “perhaps the strongest determinant of disengagement and withdrawal decisions (Bhaskar-Shrinivas et al., 2005, p.273).” A clear relationship between levels of adjustment and overall performance was established.

Lastly, group processes on the work floor play role that were previously unaccounted for. Individuals recognize that memberships of various groups get incorporated into the self-concept, therefore, these social identifications have important consequences for behavior. Group categorization was found to be negatively related to the provision of social support by host country nationals in recent research. Interaction between groups has a positive effect on group and work effectiveness, however, expatriates’ ethnocentric beliefs have been found to emphasize group differences resulting in various negative consequences. These negative consequences are related to intergroup behaviour and fall back on social identity and categorization processes. Therefore, appropriate expatriate selection processes should emphasize non-ethnocentric traits and soft skills in expatriates next to additional harder selection criteria. A ‘misfit’ will likely affect the expatriate’s adjustment process as well as the psychological wellbeing of expatriates.

Cross-cultural training could provide potential expatriates access to the evaluations of their strengths and weaknesses in acculturation-related skills in order to focus training on skills that need development. However, not all skills and traits are ‘trainable.’ Appropriate expatriate selection procedures focusing on the right balance of soft/hard skills and non-ethnocentric traits may prevent future expatriate failure. The potential valuable input in cross-cultural training of the host country employees in identifying specific work interaction demands could assist expatriates in making the required transition. Expatriates do not act in a vacuum; the interaction in a social web strongly impacts on their adjustment and wellbeing. Appropriate attention to strategies that enhance positive interaction at the workplace therefore seems desirable.

Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ben_Van_Den_Anker

An international lawyer has to cover a lot of things such as expediting criminals, land disputes between nations, trade laws, crimes committed in international waters and cases of war crimes. There is much more to deal for an international lawyer. An international lawyer needs to be well aware of the cultures, traditions and laws prevailing in different countries and needs to be efficient to adapt to the constantly changing conditions that emerge around the globe. Most of the business these days take a global approach and therefore have international divisions and require the expertise of an international lawyer for the legal guidance.

1. Normally, you need not to care about the major or minors in your undergraduate degree program, if you want to seek admission in a law school. But there are some instances where the selection of subjects can help you a lot in your law studies. For example, if you want to start your career as an international lawyer, taking international affairs, history or political science as your majors in Bachelor’s degree program will help you a lot in the future law studies. You only have to keep your GPA high that is all important.

2. As competition is getting high in the job market, most of the students prefer to graduate from a prestigious law school. For this, you have to present a persistent good school records and also a high score in LSAT. LSAT is an important condition for law students and they have to pass this test in order to become eligible for the admission in a law school. The higher the score, higher will be the chances to get into a prestigious school. Prepare well for this test.

3. You will be surprised to know about the number of law schools in your city or state. It becomes difficult to choose the law schools that best fall in line of your requirements. There are some law school recruitment events where you can talk to the representatives and get to know about the admission criteria and also other features of the law school.

4. Gather all the required documents and send it along the admission file to all the law schools where you want to apply.

5. During law school, you have to work hard for becoming an international lawyer. Choose the courses of international law to groom your skills and abilities as international lawyers.

6. Start doing internship or part-time job in a law firm dealing with international law cases to gain some hands on work experience.

7. Graduate from the law school. Now is the time to prepare for the state’s bar exam. Pass the exam, get the license and start practicing law as international lawyer.

Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tauqeer_Ul_Hassan

Dakota’s story is exceptional, the average student candidate does not get accepted to 10+ of the most selective colleges in the country. But with more than 4,000 higher education institutions in the US, there are plenty of great options that will cater to your individual needs. And then, the question is – which one provides the best fit for me?

There are many things to consider when evaluating college options. Here are things to think about and thoroughly consider when making your original and final selection.

1- Small vs. Large

Want a school where you know everybody or do you long to have the diversity and social environment offered by a school with 40,000 students? There are great colleges in both spectrums of the balance, so your job is to examine the benefits and drawbacks of all. For example, a large school is more likely to have more student organizations, more student activities, more majors and more classes. A smaller school offers a more intimate environment, more personal attention, and more direct access to your professors, among other benefits. Think then in which type of school you would be able to perform your best in every aspect of college – academic, social, personal, and professional (looking towards the future).

According to Forbes Magazine, “Small liberal arts schools shine in our rankings, probably due to both the quality of their faculty and the personal attention they can provide. Williams and Swarthmore both rank in the top five, while Pomona, Smith, Middlebury and Amherst all come in the top 20, ahead of such schools as Stanford (23rd) and Brown (27th).”

2- Public vs. Private

The main difference between public and private universities is price. Just compare the cost of attending a top public university like UC-Berkeley ($8,353 in-state, $31,022 out-of-state) versus top private universities like Harvard, Columbia, Georgetown, Boston College and Cornell where you can expect to pay more than $50,000 a year without need-based aid. With need-based aid chances are you’ll still have to pay more than $20,000 a year, and that’s not counting room and board which can cost you another $10,000+.

Think about what will happen if you graduate with a huge college loan debt, consider the salary prospects of your chosen career and how you will feel when you’re making $900+ a month in loan payments for a job that pays $50,000 a year. Remember, you don’t need an expensive private school to succeed in life, Suze Orman got a BA in Social Work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign at a low price tag, look at her now!

So if you can’t afford a respected and extremely expensive private school, consider that “according to the 2009 Academic Ranking of World Universities, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ranked 25th out of the more than 1000 international institutions recognized. It is home to some of the highest-ranked Engineering, Computer Science, Library and Information Science, and Accounting programs in the United States.” And here’s the best part, it only costs about $9,000 a year for residents and $23,000 for non-residents.

Sometimes the best decision is the least expensive. Not having the financial burden when it is a burden for you and your family can be positive in many ways. Having the extra money and no debt will take you far, especially when considering affording graduate school. Attending a good public school can cost less and make no difference in terms of the quality of your education.

3- Campus Activities

I heard from a graduate from a renowned urban university in Florida how he described it as a weekend cemetery. He explained that there was nothing going on for students in the weekend, who literally left campus almost as a migration only to return on Sunday evening. With no university facilities open during the weekend, the school became a ghost town, certainly not fun for him, as he had nothing to look for outside of the school in the city. He felt so bored and isolated that his full college experience was not the best. However, this environment made sense to the many students wanting a life outside of the college environment, wanting to keep close ties with their family and friends in the area.

Other schools offer great life on campus 24/7. They bring film festivals, concert series, offer many options of coffee shops which remain full of students any day of the week almost at any time. In these schools, we can find libraries servicing students until 4 am, closing for one hour and then reopening at 5 am. So if you’re a bookworm, a jock, a philosopher, or just a person who’s drawn to a certain social environment make sure to find a campus that fits with your lifestyle. Check out their individual websites and see if the school has fraternities, student clubs, fitness facilities, sports, and so on. For example, Penn State University recently dethroned the University of Florida as the top party school according to the Princeton Review. You can also check studentreviews.com which lists Tulane University as the #1 school for social life, and if you’d rather be volunteering, US News & World Report recommends Duke, University of Maryland, Stanford, and other colleges where you can learn and make the world a better place at the same time.

4- Campus Politics

They say you should never talk about sex, politics or religion if you want to avoid making people uncomfortable. In college however, you’re likely to meet people who will discuss all three so if you’re a progressive who voted for Obama or a conservative who voted for McCain, you should think very carefully about what kind of people you want to study with.

While some schools encourage vigorous debate, others censor students that hold unpopular views and there are cases of teachers who are openly hostile to conservatives, members of the military, Zionists, etc. Some universities even have “speech codes,” or other draconian laws that stifle the First Amendment of the US Constitution. For example, according to FIRE, an organization that fights for individual rights in education, Binghamton University suspended a student for making posters criticizing the Department of Social Work.

That doesn’t mean conservatives or libertarians have to study at places where they’re not welcome, consider options like Hillsdale College which currently ranks 89th in the 2010 U.S. News & World Report listing of best American Liberal Arts colleges and 76th in the 2009 Forbes report of America’s Best Colleges. It ranks second in the Princeton Review’s The Best 371 Colleges 2009 listing of colleges where students are “most conservative” and among the fifty “best value” private colleges.

Of course, if you’re a progressive or liberal, you might feel comfortable at Duke, NYU, Columbia, Oberlin, Ohio State University, Princeton, Tufts, Berkeley and lots of other great schools, some more politically correct than others.

5- Religious vs. Secular

Nietzsche said that God was dead, yet almost every school in the nation has at least one religious student group. Catholic and Protestant schools have their own chapels, even orthodox Jews can attend top-rated schools like Baruch College, Yeshiva University, and Brandeis, where the food follows Jewish dietary restrictions. The question for you is how much or how little religion you want in your life, there are top-rated Christian schools like Wheaton College, ranked 59 in U.S. News & World Report (2008) and 11th in total number of graduates who go on to earn doctorates. Other options include Baylor University with over 146 undergraduate degrees, Pepperdine University, Calvin College and others.

One thing to consider about religious schools is their standards of conduct, many of them don’t tolerate smoking, drinking (even if you’re over 21), drug use, premarital-sex, homosexuality, and in the case of Bob Jones University, interracial dating used to be against their laws. At Liberty University for example, students are not allowed to have TV’s in their rooms and the televisions in public areas are tuned to family-friendly programming.

The rules of conduct are less strict at top-rated Catholic universities such as Georgetown, Loyola, Boston College, Creighton, and others.

If you are religious and choose to attend a secular college find out if they have college ministries, a college-age Sunday school class or youth group, worship services, and churches near campus.

6- College Rankings

Not our most favored way to choose a college, but certainly one of the most popular. Google “college rankings” and you’ll find that schools are rated by organizations like US News & World Report on a wide variety of categories such as “Highest (and Lowest) Acceptance Rate,” “Top-Public Schools,” “Best Nursing Programs,” “Most Students in a Fraternity,” “Most International Students,” etc. However, BEWARE! College Rankings should be only a guide and never the reason why to choose a school – it would be the wrong decision to make your college decision based solely on the ranking of a specific school vs. others. Remember, rankings change every year, and they are measures that cannot directly point your fit with the programs. They try to assess college proficiency in many areas and far too often fail at being accurate by not taking under consideration the “soft” aspects of the college education.

As quoted by College Confidential, here is another comment on “Rank vs. Individual Fit: College admissions counselors universally agree that a school must “fit” the student in terms of academic environment, social environment, athletic and other extracurricular opportunities, urban or rural location, etc. A good fit will result in a great college experience and, most importantly, maximum personal growth and achievement. Rankings can be a negative influence when students or parents look more at how highly a school is ranked instead of how well it will serve the needs of that particular student.” collegeconfidential.com

Example, say you’re a passionate outdoorsman who enjoys kayaking, hiking, horseback riding, etc. If that’s the case, the rankings of Outside Magazine are going to suit you perfectly. Perhaps you’ll love Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. At Warren, “The Bent Creek Experimental Forest offers miles of singletrack, road riders convene every Tuesday at Liberty Bikes for a morning ride, and runners can join the Asheville Track Club. Prefer solitude? Hop onto the Mountains to Sea Trail…Hikers, mountain bikers, and horseback riders don’t even have to leave the 1,200-acre campus, as more than 25 miles of trails cut through the grounds.”

Of course, you’ll also want to know how Warren and other schools rank nationally, in your major, cost, and other categories relevant to you. For example, if you are a vegetarian you should check the PETA’s college rankings, did you know Yale, Oberlin, NYU and University of Florida are among the top-ten options for vegetarian students? Rankings however, are also a tool for selling magazines. Each organization that has developed a ranking has a different way to calculate results, and they are not infallible. This is mainly the reason why many often do not agree with results. However unfair and miscalculated results are, having lists of colleges that distinguish themselves for one reason or another can make it easier to find options for a student. If nothing else for this, rankings become a valuable resource when seeking college information. With this said, use rankings as a tool to learn more about the school’s areas of strength, but make sure not to believe all you read…

How not to choose a college

Believe it or not, sometimes people pick the wrong college for the wrong reasons. Some may say “my boyfriend/girlfriend/best friend” is going there, others are impressed by the football team (which makes no sense unless you’re going to be on the football team), some pick a prestigious school even if they don’t have the major they want, others want to go where their parents went, or they want to live in a specific city where a college is located, and so forth.

Choosing a college based on factors that have nothing to do with your education and fit with the program/environment of the college could become a disaster. Remember, these four or more years could affect the rest of your life, and unlike Suze Orman, most of us don’t get to turn a B.A. is Social Work into a lucrative career as a Television Financial Adviser. So when it comes to your college choice, research, research, research and focus on fit by considering your needs and how the college meets them.

Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Claudine_Vainrub

Christina’s first business aqua failed and she had to start over from scratch. I’m very impressed with Christina because she spoke openly and candidly about what she went through when her first business failed. As a society, especially in the West, we are socialized not to talk about failure, but the biggest lessons and learnings come from failure as you will see in the interview. At the end of Part One of the interview (or workshop) you’ll:

1. Get incredible insights into a passionate woman who failed forward to success
2. Learn about what can happen when you have too much stress in your life
3. See a linchpin in action. Remember a few of the characteristics of a linchpin are to be ahead of the curve and anticipate the needs of your clients and customers before they do, and give it to them
4. Learn that you have to be clear and honest with people when you ask them to mentor you

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Christina Ioannidis: I am a Greek-Venezuelan who lives in London. My passion in life is to support other people and inspire individuals to do what they are passionate about, and that’s what I do on a professional and daily basis. I am the founder and CEO of Aquitude.

Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?

Christina Ioannidis: I don’t really have a typical day. A typical day might look like, get up in the morning, go to the gym or run. Afterwards I have breakfast, then either I leave the house and go for meetings usually back-to-back, followed by my training courses, or I stay in the office and work around building or designing the courses that I deliver. In the evenings, practically 90 percent of the time I am networking or going out to networking events.

Avil Beckford: How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

Christina Ioannidis: I think I motivate myself by thinking about how I’m going to break the market, or how I’m going to make something out of nothing. My motivation is knowing that I’ve started something completely new and that it’s going to be successful, so I motivate myself by having a goal and seeing whether or not I get there.

Avil Beckford: If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

Christina Ioannidis: Henry Ford once said, “Failure is the only opportunity to begin again more intelligently.”

I started my life from scratch again when I lost my business. If I were to start again as a youngster in my career, what I would do very differently would be to not expect other people to recognize my achievements, but to always be positive about what I have done myself and tell others about it, and network like crazy. When I lost my jobs and my businesses, I naturally networked but I didn’t realize that I had to do it 10 times more than I had originally done it. If I were starting my professional life again or my companies again, I would probably have a little bit more cash in the bank. To start something it always takes a lot longer to make money out of it than one thinks.

Avil Beckford: Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it. What lessons did you learn in the process?

Christina Ioannidis: There is no bigger challenge than what I went through with aqua. (This will make an interesting story for you and your readers. The day I setup my first entrepreneurial venture, the exact date, was the date I met my future husband, so there was an omen there, and we got married this year, on exactly the same date by chance, so some things are meant to happen.)

When I setup aqua in 2003, I was venturing into something completely unknown to me, and I was following my heart, blindly following my heart. And, I wasn’t listening to anyone, and I thought anyone who had any criticisms to what I was offering, just didn’t understand me, and didn’t understand the business, so I pursued creating it, growing it, going crazy taking out a retail outlet in Mayfair, taking out the risk which I personally signed for. Anyone in business will tell you that’s a no-no. But I was also convinced that it was going to work, I didn’t see any stumbling blocks, I just went for it.

After we had been trading in the premises for a year I was consequently told that the business was trading insolvently. Basically I couldn’t afford to pay all the suppliers that I had, and I was forced to close it, and consequently lose the business. I started to realize the big mistakes that I made along the way.

My big mistake was that I was too confident and thought the people who weren’t understanding the service, and were criticizing me, simply didn’t understand what I was trying to do. But they were giving me hints of what I was doing wrong, but I refused to listen to them.

Avil Beckford: What lessons did you learn in the process?

Christina Ioannidis: Lesson number one: Listen, you have two ears and one mouth, and that’s for a reason. Try and read between the lines even if you do not like what people are telling you.

Lesson number two: Beware of very extreme risks because there are other implications that come with it. When your business is declared insolvent, the directors of the business are automatically – because that’s the way the rules are in the UK – investigated for fraud, which makes sense, and I understand it from the England Revenue perspective. But when you’ve just lost everything, and then you are investigated personally, all your bank statements for the past three years, and you have to say where monies came from and where they went, and you are so emotionally destroyed, let’s say it’s just very difficult to manage that. So be aware of the implications of what you are getting yourself into. This is one of the romances of entrepreneurship, people think it’s so romantic being the director of a business, but you have legal responsibilities. I could have gone to jail if I had been told that I was trading insolvently and carried on trading. I didn’t know that.

These have been my biggest failures and my biggest learnings.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Christina Ioannidis: Big time. First of all, going back to your question about my biggest break, I didn’t know about mentors in the formal sense when I was starting my career. When I started my first job, I was in a very high profile international graduate program for a company called Allied Domecq Spirits. Only Mexicans or Spanish people know about this brand Domecq. Domecq was the biggest spirits company that came out of Mexico, and they had all the sherries in Spain as well. It was owned by a very prominent Latin family, and a British Distillery bought the business and it became Allied Domecq.

I worked for them in a fantastic graduate training program, where they spent millions of dollars on us. They took us on helicopter rides to Wales and to meetings in Hungary and just traveling the planet as graduates.

One of the stakeholders in the graduate program, who was a European president, asked to meet with everyone of the graduates, and I was the last one to meet with him because I was living in Spain at the time and I had to go to the UK to meet him. When I met him,  I asked if he would be my mentor. I was 25 at the time. This guy is at the top of the business, so it takes a little bit of guts, and I am that way. I was thinking that the worse thing that could happen is that he would say no. He was delighted, he smiled and said, “I’m so happy that you asked me, of course I would be delighted.”

He became my mentor, and we agreed that it was going to be an informal conversation, an email here and there, nothing too formal, no hours spent because the guy was busy. He was very instructive in me moving from Spain from sales, then financial and then move me into marketing in Greece. Now there is one thing that Greeks do beautifully, and that’s to have fun. I worked in Athens as a result of him proposing it.

This is a great example of what a mentor can do, and even though we think they won’t have the time, they make the time because they are people and they want to help people. They will help you if you are honest about what you want from them. I had told him I would like him to be there for me as a sounding board, and if there was anything interesting happening in the company that he thought I could embrace I would be happy to consider it. I was very keen.

He was a very important mentor, and ever since I have had my career, I have always had individuals, and they may not have known this, but they were actually my mentor without the formal M. They are the people who I would call up and say I’m doing this, what do you think? and most of the time I didn’t listen, and that’s why the first business didn’t quite work out. They’ve been there, and now I have a range of people who I call my Board of Directors, or my mentoring mesh of individuals, and each one plays an instructive role. I have been quite strategic in who I choose because I know they could be sponsors in those areas I’m interested in and likely to be critical to shape my advancement either for the business or for myself.

Avil Beckford: What’s one core message you received from your mentors?

Christina Ioannidis: I tend to be someone who is very spontaneous. I am Greek-Venezuelan and I love life. A consistent message was the need to question a bit more, to analyze a bit more before acting. I’m the kind of person who will come up with a brilliant idea, I’m convinced it’s going to work, I go out and start working and I don’t stop talking to people about it without actually having dotted the “i’s” and cross the “t’s”. So if someone asked me a question that I didn’t know the answer to, obviously I haven’t thought things through, so that’s something that came out consistently. So now I’m a little bit more focused on how I put stuff on the table, or actually tell people about it.

Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

Christina Ioannidis: Studies are showing, and it is my experience that you have to link your personal and professional life. You have to find the intersection between what you are passionate about, the skills that you have, and the market or the role on a professional basis to deliver those skills and bring in that passion. The intersection of those three areas is key.

As an example, in my life, I went to school, to university. I won all the awards that you could possibly win. I was top, top, top and I was going to be the next CEO of Proctor and Gamble. That was my ambition when I was 24. This is not an exaggeration because I was very ambitious. However, what I didn’t realize is that even though I was on a good career path I was desperately unhappy for a very long time and I thought it was because I was single and I didn’t have a boyfriend for five years. And I’m being honest about this because that was the kind of messaging that I gave myself that there was something wrong with me because I didn’t have a partner. I had everything else besides a partner, so I thought if I was unhappy, it must be that.

My redundancies came along and I started aqua, and I realized that it wasn’t because I didn’t have a partner why I was unhappy. I’d gone through life following a path that was expected of me, that I thought was right for me. The day that I started aqua, which I told you about was the day I met my future husband to be, everything changed for me. I lost a lot of weight, I cut my hair, everything about me shifted and I was the happiest and still am the happiest I have ever been. Despite all the upheavals in my life, I’m doing something which is creative. I realize that’s one of my strengths. I’m a very creative person. I am able to use my skills as an inspirer, someone who inspires people.

I love talking in public, I love training, which was what I was doing in the shop as well because I was responsible for getting the customers to sit down and design so I was using those skills. And I’m also using my natural communications skills because I am very external facing in everything I do. These were things that I was not doing before. That’s where the intersection comes in.

Identify what you are best at, what you love doing, which for me is the same thing. If you love doing something, you’re probably best at it, and they are probably your best skills so find a way to bring it into your career, into your job, and if your job doesn’t bring it to you, then do something to change it.

Avil Beckford: What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?

Christina Ioannidis:

1. Focus on what you love doing.
2. Build a network of people to help you through your challenges, whether it’s your Board of Directors, Power Minds Group. These are people who do not necessarily know you too well, but they know you enough to give you an objective view.
3. Use two ears and one mouth ratio, so listen
4. Seize the day. Don’t wait for tomorrow to do what you can do today. Last year I had a really bad accident. I could have died last year. Luckily I was injured but not terminally, so that made me realize how finite our life is. That made me realize that I’ve got to do what I want to do now, and be happy because I don’t know whether in 60 year’s time I’ll be around. Who cares if I have savings or not, because I’ll be lucky to live until I’m 90 years old or 100 years old.
5. Love people around you, share the love, and don’t be embittered. A lot of people walk around in their lives feeling negative, unhappy in their jobs, feeling helpless, and at the same time spreading negative vibes and negative energy. Negative energy only gets people to spew negativity toward you, so it becomes a vicious cycle. Be very aware of the energy you give to other people, because it’s only positive energy that pulls people your way, negative energy pushes them away.

Avil Beckford: What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

Christina Ioannidis: I think when I was in my corporate life I was very successful financially. When I left my corporate life I wasn’t as financially successful because I had a serious setback. However, I think overall I was more successful in my entrepreneurial life because I was able to create something, make it grow to a certain point. Now the steps would be:

1. Always keep learning and be open to taking in information even if it’s about an industry, or a way of doing things, or purely about business. Have your radar screen open to what’s going on around you because things can shift from one day to the next. In September 2008 the world changed with the credit crunch and that was in 24 hours. There were warning signs but not many people picked them up.
2. Be willing to adapt, as people we are set in our ways, and we do things the way we want to do them, but as entrepreneurial people know, you have to sometimes switch your strategy and positioning because the market may have shifted, or something may have happened externally to the business that will influence you. And this also comes down to the personal level to be flexible because nothing is set in stone.
3. Be very clear with your communications with others, so that you don’t get disappointed if a relationship does not work. You have to safeguard yourself against that, and set expectations, agree how you are going to work together.
4. Work with people who are different from you, bring in people who complement your skills set. A good example is myself and my co-author. She is a financier so she is highly organized person. I’m very creative and I’m very passionate. Put us together and we complement each other perfectly. It makes for a good collaborative working relationship, but had I not been aware of how different she is to me, we probably would have had so many arguments. But because I know what strengths she brings, she appreciates the strengths I bring, we work very well together, because we both come to it from a place of mutual respect.  When we set out to write the book together, to work together, we said this is the reason we are working together because we know we are complementary, and we say that every time we speak to anybody.

Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Avil_Beckford