The USC Rossier School of Education’s MAT@USC offers current educators and aspiring teachers the prestige of earning a Master of Arts in Teaching degree from an elite research university with the convenience and flexibility of studying online. The program includes:

• Highly interactive online learning combined with field-based experiences

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• Accelerated program you can complete in as little as 12 months

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• MAT@USC Student Blog, hear insights about the program from actual students

• Rossier and the MAT@USC were awarded by AACTE for innovative use of technology in education

Pursuing your degree online provides the best opportunity to change your current career without having to drop everything. Keep your day job and work on your new career as a teacher in your free time. You can earn your Master of Arts in Teaching degree from an internationally renowned research institution with a 100-year history of educating teachers. Become an agent of change for the next generation.

Take the opportunity to learn from distinguished USC faculty recognized for their contributions to modern education. Enjoy full USC student status and benefits, participation in commencement ceremonies with free lifetime Alumni Association memberships. Become part of the elite USC Trojan Family. All this from the comfort of your own home. Visit the MAT@USC website for program information.

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This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Coldwell Banker. All opinions are 100% mine.

Many people have developed a culture of thinking small. We lament about stuff we can’t afford. We talk about how broke we are. We make jokes about how messed up our credit is and we would never be able to do something like buy the car of our dreams or purchase a house. Thinking in this way is a downward spiral, a race to the bottom. Even when you’re joking, thinking negative brings you negativity.

One example of thinking bigger can be found in the concept of buying a home. It seems like such a huge and difficult thing to do, especially if you’re not confident in your credit history or feel like you don’t make enough money. Just as with anything else in life, though, you won’t know unless you try.

“Not bothering to try is the same as failing, except that you don’t learn anything from it.”

With the 2010 Homebuyer Tax Credits, this is even more incentive to step out and try something you didn’t think was possible. This federal income tax credit has been extended and expanded to include homeowners who wish to “move on” after 5 years of living in their current property, as well as first-time homebuyers.

“Live in your new house mentally until it takes form around you physically” –Wallace D. Wattles

If you make less than $125,000 as an individual or $225,000 as a family or have lived in your current home consecutively for 5 of the last 8 years, you are eligible to receive a tax credit ranging from $6,500 to $8,000. To say it a different way, the federal government wants to pay you thousands of dollars for getting a new house and stimulating the economy. You have to act now as there may not be another extension. You need a written, binding contract by April 30, 2010 (close by June 30, 2010.)

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.” –Les Brown

Start thinking bigger and stop sabotaging your own success before you ever get started.

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Whatever things you hold onto in your thoughts will be the things you get out of life. I’m talking about your real thoughts, the ones in your subconscious, not the ones in your head as you look at your reflection and chant “I am somebody.”

Following from that, there is a serious problem with the way most of us think. Instead of thinking about what’s positive in our lives, we focus on everything that’s negative. Thinking about these negative things will, eventually, bring them into your life. Of course, this isn’t true of all of your thoughts, just the ones you focus on the most.

I’m sure this is some kind of survival mechanism, always looking out for danger and thinking about how to avoid it but, this is completely unnecessary in the world we live in now. For some people, it borders on paranoia.

For instance, some people spend a lot of time thinking about sickness. Some of them have even been diagnosed with stuff, helping to keep the thought of SICK at the forefront of their minds. Every time they don’t feel 100%, the thought of some ailment or another is amplified in their mind, bringing about the very thing they dread.

Do you know parents who are over-protective of their kids? The children can’t play without a close watchful eye, they can’t leave the yard, they’re constantly admonished about this or that. Get down from there! Be careful! Slow down! You’ll put your eye out! A constant barrage of verbal warnings fueled by a mind riddled with doubt about their child’s safety.

We have it backwards, folks. If we keep focusing on what we don’t want, it’s exactly what we’ll get. The trick is to reverse your polarity. Any time you find yourself focusing on the negative, flip it to the positive:

• Nobody wants to see their kids hurt. The next time you find yourself stressing about it, focus instead on how well they’re developing. How fearless they are. How fast they can move. How agile they are.
• The next time you’re feeling slightly off, realize that it’s probably no big deal. Your reality is health, as that is the way we spend most of our lives. I’m not saying you shouldn’t get certain things checked out by a professional, but you shouldn’t feel that every little thing is the beginning of the end.

In a more general sense, you have to catch yourself when you see that you’re dwelling on potential failure of any kind. Refocus on your goals, the things you actually want your life to be, and don’t be afraid to take those actions that will bring those things to you.

Can you reverse your polarity?

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I have had many different types of jobs in many different fields, but there is one thing that remained consistent from job to job. The manager always acted all brand new when his boss showed up.

Suddenly, procedures we had been following at the managers request were “wrong” and the manager admonished us for doing things that way. Suddenly, the manager was deeply concerned about the fine details of the business. Suddenly, we weren’t moving fast enough, nothing was clean enough, we weren’t smiling hard enough or greeting customers enthusiastically enough.

Every time I see this, it makes me nauseous. A manager is supposed to be a leader. A leader who does things half-assed until the Boss comes around is no leader at all. They should be setting an example for their team to follow at all times. So much so, that their team follows their exemplary lead even when they aren’t around.

So, I ask you, do you act different when the boss is around, or do you uphold the same high standards and encourage your co-workers to do so even when the boss is away?

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1. Shave some points of your thermostat.

Set your thermostat a few degrees colder in winter and a few degrees warmer in summer. You probably won’t notice the difference, but you’ll save money and reduce energy consumption.

2. Unplug your appliances when not in use.

These days, off doesn’t really mean off. Standby mode wastes energy.

3. Switch your laptop from using Standby mode to just Hibernate.

Again, standby mode still wastes energy. Hibernate might take a few extra seconds to recover from, but it’s worth it.

4. Get a new monitor.

If you’re still using big hot and heavy CRT monitors, step into the new millennium and get yourself an LCD. How often do you get to buy new stuff and save mother earth at the same time?

5. Work from home.

Not only do people who work from home get more work done on average, but you’ll be saving energy and avoiding the stress of a commute. Plus, you’ll avoid needless interruptions from your co-workers.

6. Kill paper bills and junk mail.

There are very few instances where you can’t get your bill in electronic format and save paper. No, you don’t actually need a paper copy. They’re just taking up space and killing trees.

7. Stop drinking bottled water.

This is a pet peeve of mine. The entire bottled water industry is a scam in plain site. Get yourself a water filter for your home and buy a reusable aluminum bottle to carry around with you.

8. Maintain your computer.

If you keep your computer maintained, up-to-date, and purring like a kitten, it will last longer. The longer you can hold onto the same computer, the more you can help the environment.

9. Borrow stuff instead of buying it.

I know many that read this blog are book hoarders, but are you really going to ever read that new Stephen King again? Even if you are, why not just borrow it from your local library when the mood strikes? It’s great to own stuff, but it saves the environment if you just borrow stuff instead.

10. Turn off the coffee maker.

Nobody is going to drink that last sip of coffee left in the pot, so keeping the warmer on is just wasting energy. Not only that, but you could end up ruining a perfectly good carafe.

11. Turn off those lights.

Instead of relying on lamps and bulbs, open your blinds and curtains. Take advantage of natural lighting. It saves energy, reduces waste, and makes you a happier person (true story).

12. Park the car.

Avoid the drive-thru like the plague. The EPA estimates that if one million drivers turned off their cars, rather than idled unnecessarily, for just two minutes per week for an entire year, pollutants would be reduced by more than 750 tons.

13. Be a vegetarian.

Not all the time, but even having one meal per week where you don’t include any meat can have a positive effect. Meat consumption is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. While this will not effect my love for steak, it might be nice to dig into some veggies every once in a while.

14. Shorten your shower.

Either that or take a cold one. Using hot water wastes a lot of energy, so take the opportunity to save it whenever you can. It doesn’t really take that long to wash yourself, does it?

15. Wash your clothes in cold water.

Not only will this prevent your colors from running, but it also helps save hot water and there are even detergents that work better specifically in cold water.

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I started lifting weights at the end of 2007. Since I was about a buck thirty-five soaking wet, I started off doing basic strength training programs. The idea is that you have to build a foundation before you start fine-tuning your physique. To be more specific, you can’t work on defining your chest and abs if you have no chest and abs.

The way these strength training programs work is that you do the most basic compound exercises, increasing the weight a little each workout. You become stronger overall, develop good form, and you’re able to prevent injury by having a balanced foundation.

It’s The Small Things That Count

What you’ll notice here is that you’re not doing the same thing every workout. You’re steadily challenging your body to do a little more and this is the key to getting stronger. Even if you only increase a lift by a quarter of a pound, you have made progress.

If you plan to make any progress toward your goals in life, you’ll need to apply this same principle. You’ve heard it before, but I’ll say it again: Doing the same thing you’ve done before and expecting different results is the definition of insanity! Some of you may recognize this as the Slight Edge principle, so you’re already ahead of the game.

Do Something New

I’m sure you’ve seen the skinny guys at the gym doing curls in the mirror with 10lb dumbbells. As a matter of fact, you probably see them in there daily with the same set of dumbbells doing the same curls with the same bony arms. Or maybe someone on the recumbent bike who sweats it out on the regular, but never seems to lose any weight.

On the same note, how many people do you know who seem to be stuck in a loop? They do the same stuff day after day, month after month, and year after year. Maybe it’s someone always working the same type of job, or a business owner who never seems to get over that hump before financial freedom. Or maybe it’s you?

Just as I have to push more weight every workout to see results, you have to push the envelop on a daily basis to get what you want. Whether it’s as simple as putting in another hour promoting and networking online, or it’s finally pitching that big client you’ve been putting off…

…DO IT!

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It amazes me how the most important and basic things can fly right under your radar. I recently had a colleague ask me what they should be doing to promote their content. What should they do to get their blog out there? How should they go about creating a presence on the web? They had researched their blogs PageRank, checked their backlinks, and tweaked their theme. They couldn’t figure out why people weren’t linking to them.

Does an iphone case improve the phone’s performance?

Seriously,  if you put a brand new case on your iphone, does it operate faster or become endowed with advanced features? I know this sounds moronic, but many of us have a totally different perspective when it comes to other areas of life. How do you figure tweaking your blog’s theme is going to get you backlinks or subscribers? Do you think looking at your traffic stats is going to get you some traffic?

Your value is measured more by what you say than anything else

Is getting a new iphone skin going to change the way your iphone works? Of course not. Just as dressing up your blog isn’t going to make people read it. The key is to change what’s inside the casing. Make the content more valuable. It’s been said over and over, but we still somehow forget it. Especially when it comes to social media and blogging, we have to remember that your value is measured more by what you say than anything else.

Look at Robert Scoble. He’s an average-looking guy with an average-looking blog. I’m pretty positive he knows that there are no iphone skins that will make his iphone work better. It’s also obvious that he knows what he says online is more important than what he looks like. He has a PR 7 blog and almost 50k followers on Twitter. People are obviously interested in what he has to say.

So, before you go spending hours tweaking the look of your blog, making sure you have all the hottest widgets, and installing all the latest plug-ins, take a look at what you’ve written there. Have you given your audience something to work with?

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Sometime last year, I was accidentally listening to the radio. They were talking about a huge job fair here in GA somewhere. Businesses from the airport were featured and the station was interviewing a few people about how things were going. One female complained that there were only fast food jobs there. The conversation went something like this:

Radio Host : Did you apply to any of the restaurants?

Girl: Nah, I don’t wanna do nothin like that.

Host: So…do you have a job? Are you making any money right now?

Girl: Nah, that’s why I went to the job fair

Host: But you didn’t bother to apply to any of the jobs, even though you do not have a job or any source of income?

Girl: I mean, I need a job. I need money, but I can’t be doin’ no fast food

If you are too good for everything, how will you ever get anything?

Now, let’s be clear: there are different shades of Pride. I believe we could agree that taking pride in yourself is acceptable. You should care how you look, how you carry yourself. You should be proud when you reach certain goals. This is natural and healthy.

But, there is also a darker shade of Pride. This is the one that many religions consider to be a sin. This is the one that will definitely take away your shine and steal your dreams. I’m sure you’ve seen this level of pride. People who feel they are too good for everything. They believe they are perfect in every way. They are arrogant for seemingly no good reason.

Your Success Will Shine Regardless

Successful people will excel at whatever they do. They will always stand out. People will always rally around them. It doesn’t matter if they are dropping fries at McDonald’s or dropping platinum selling albums on their own label.

• They always shine because they always do what needs to be done
• They know where they want to be and they have an idea what they need to do to get there
• They are not afraid to work and hustle
• They have integrity

Can You Start At the Top of a Ladder?

Well, can you? If you want to reach your success, you need to remember that you have to work your way up. One rung at a time. You can’t skip any steps or you may fall right back to the bottom and land on your face. Don’t be so quick to say something is beneath you, because that may actually be the next step you need to take in reaching for your dreams.

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Sometimes we think about personal development and building your brand in terms of the tools we use. We talk about Twitter, FriendFeed, Blogging, Digg, StumbleUpon, and RSS Feeds. The issue with this is that tools are not useful in the wrong hands. Even in the right hands, your tools are useless unless you have raw materials to create something.

If you want to sell hammers, write about how to make holes

The above quote has been done to death, but it seems nobody really reads it. Did you ever buy a hammer just because it looked nice and shiny in the hardware store? (if you answered yes to that, it’s ok. I won’t tell anyone)

On the same note, personal development is not about arming yourself with a bunch of tools. It’s about developing yourself. Pimping your ride, if you will. You are a basic frame, a chassis with a double-wishbone suspension. You’ve got massive amounts of discount auto parts to pick and choose from to make yourself just a little better. Think of these parts like pieces of knowledge or nuggets of wisdom. The ones that fit you best, you stick them under your hood or snap them onto your interior. They become part of you.

Now, this process is obviously not about looks. You may grab parts from different niches that have nothing to do with each other. Honda auto parts with different colored doors, rims that don’t match, and a leopard-skin interior. Maybe some BMW auto parts, a little network marketing, some door-to-door sales, some software development, a dash of humor, and a sprinkling of geekery.

It doesn’t matter what parts you pick. What matters is that those parts are the best fit for your vehicle. Pick the best parts to develop your brand, broaden your mind, and increase your value. Don’t just pick stuff because it’s shiny and new.

No matter how shiny your tools, how many books you have on your shelf, how many conferences you attend, your value depends on how well you are able to incorporate and use those parts.

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