leejackson Archives | Lee Jackson - Online and Offline Motivational Speaker and Presentation Coach in organisations, businesses and education.

Lee Jackson Motivational Speaker inspires exam students Northern Echo newspaper

June 1, 2016 By Lee

“STUDENTS have been inspired by a motivational speaker Lee Jackson to look to their future in the run up to impending exams…

Lee Jackson Motivational speaker in the northern echo

Being from the North East originally its nice to get a bit of press in one of North Easts newspapers – thanks to Wensleydale School and the Northern Echo 🙂

http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/14521379.Exam_students_are_inspired_by_motivational_speaker

“STUDENTS have been inspired by a motivational speaker to look to their future in the run up to impending exams.

Motivational speaker and self-help author Lee Jackson addressed Year 11 and Year 13 students at the Wensleydale School and Sixth Form as they prepare to sit GCSEs and A Levels.

Billingham-born and now based in Leeds, Mr Jackson will become president of the Professional Speaking Association in the UK and Ireland in October.

An award winning teenage DJ and a youth worker, he has been speaking to audiences of all sizes for the past eight years as a motivational speaker in business and education.

He told students: “You are experts in education. The fact you are still here means you have the ability to do it. Up to this point you have taken many exams so you know you can do them.”

“Ding is the noise your brain hears when you learn something new,” he said. “But learning only ever takes place when you put it into practice.

“Every second counts and there is not enough time in the day to study and spend five hours on-line and on social media.

“Write down your ideas or you will forget them and it is the little steps that make a difference. Behave well in lessons and encourage you friends. Keep going as you are approaching the final hurdle.” ”

5 ways to really enjoy Christmas this year…

December 11, 2015 By Lee

Christmas – 5 ways to really enjoy Christmas this year…

Things I love about Christmas:
Turkey and cranberry sauce, slightly mad Christmas lights, food, seeing my family, food, time off work, great TV specials, food and a drop of Port with good friends, oh, and, err food!

Things I hate about Christmas:
People buying stuff they don’t need or can’t afford, presents that go straight to landfill, the over-hype of “the day”, hearing of people I know being on their own at Christmas, people who say it’s just for kids, Christmas pudding!

What do you love and hate about this time of year?

Sure, there are things that I love and hate about Christmas time like most people do – but I certainly wouldn’t ban it, like some have said that they would on Martin Lewis’s new online poll.

He says: “…20,367 voted on whether they’d cancel Christmas if given the choice. Perhaps unsurprisingly, parents of school-age kids were most festive, with 64% of those mums and dads happy to celebrate. Of the rest of voters, 55% would choose to press the cancel Christmas button if they could. Bah humbug!” See the full results of the poll here: http://is.gd/jgjQ78

People who want to ban it may well be in the majority, but why is that?
Maybe they are reacting to the over-hyped season of shopping?
Maybe they have a different religion, like my old neighbour who was a Jehovah’s Witness?
Maybe they have bad memories of certain events at Christmas time?
Maybe it’s an expense that they just can’t afford?
Or maybe they are just a bit grumpy?!

But for most semi-Scrooge’s, maybe they don’t realise the power of a celebration. Christmas is good for us, in fact any good holiday or celebration is good for us. But we in our British culture often just don’t celebrate very much. And some make not celebrating an artform! It always makes me laugh that anti-Christmas type people still go to Christmas parties but they sit there with a “Bah humbug” hat on while there! Or as I saw the other day at a hotel where a works party was taking place – everyone was wearing a Christmas jumper. i never saw the party as it was behind closed doors but one by one people were popping to the loo looking very sheepish wearing a really embarrassing jumper at a 5 star hotel! Their faces were a picture as they mumbled under their breath “please don’t see me please don’t see me” in their rush for the loo! I think they’d had an email from the boss to wear a light-up Christmas jumper, none of them were doing it by choice.

But amazingly it can be good for you…

5 reasons Christmas is good for you
(taken from The Mirror’s article)

1. You sing more at Christmas.
Singing is good for us, it lifts our spirits and makes us feel part of a community. Why not get to a carol service or start a sing-song at home? A study for the annual Sing for your Heart campaign by Heart Research UK found singing is a “great aerobic exercise, giving your heart and lungs a fantastic workout”.

2. You give and receive.
Studies show that when we give and receive gifts, the brain releases the feel-good chemical dopamine. Giving also releases the “cuddle” hormone oxytocin.

3. We spend more time together.
The average family manages just 36 minutes of quality time together a day, according to recent research, yet a separate poll reveals 95% of parents believe the key to happiness lies in spending quality family time together.

4. We make family traditions that will last.
“Whether it’s buying a new tree bauble every year, leaving a mince pie out for Santa or watching It’s A Wonderful Life, family traditions unite all generations”. We always watch National Lampoons Christmas vacation as our start to Christmas!

5. Err and lastly,
“The Christmas holidays are the most popular time to conceive, according to one US study, probably due to a combination of socialising more and the long, cold days of the Yuletide period when, for many, there isn’t the distraction of work! Condom sales also double in December, showing that sexual activity in general rises. And extra sex is good news for your health. As well as giving your heart a boost and relieving stress, its great for your self-esteem and wellbeing – and even makes you look younger!”

Here’s my 5 ways to really make the most of Christmas this year:

1. Take time to stop and think, reflect on the last year, write down the positives, learn from the negatives, then throw them away.

2. Don’t buy tit-for-tat presents for the sake of it, buy presents for those you want to, maybe even make a present or two yourself, a tin of homemade mince pies is much more meaningful than a bottle of talc! Or just send a text, have a Skype chat or send a card to someone you’ve lost touch with.

3. Write down a gratitude list. What are you thankful for this Christmas? It’s proven to make us feel better. Maybe also write down a task list for work too, so you can forget it and relax.

4. If you are not in the emergency services, then switch off your phone for a while (it’s so rare to do that these days) and put an autoresponder on your email too for a while, use it as your winter break.

5. And lastly, when you are at a party or get-together – be in the moment, enjoy the random conversation, games or cheesy TV, you’ll enjoy things so much more. Just go with it. Work can and should wait every now and then.

Have a great Christmas holiday, however you chose to celebrate it.

merry christmas lee jackson

When a motivational speaker has a bad day at work.

June 7, 2013 By Lee

Being a speaker is a strange job. One week you are really busy and the next week it's quieter. Thats life, that's business. I can handle that. This week has been a quieter week and to be honest it hasn't been the best week, the other day was simply not a good day. Amongst the admin and marketing there were a couple of lighter moments, but not many.

But, there were also three really annoying moments.

Another speaker caused me some hassle, a good client surprisingly let me down, and after rearranging a few things and driving to an appointment, a big coaching client just didn't show up.

I'd had it.

Three days of office work culminating in three big hassles just about finished me off. I was truly fed up.

Yes, you heard me right. I was fed up, ready for a break, and ready, at one point, for a new career!

Thankfully I'm not the kind of speaker who pretends they 'never have a bad day', my friend Paul McGee taught me that, in fact he reminded me just the other day. Handy.

You see having a not so good day is quite normal. It's what we do with it that counts.

So I went home grumpily, ate my tea grumpily, and then grumpily went into my man cave for an hour or so.

Then when I was ready, I decided to do some thing about it. I was ready to change 'my state' as NLP people would say. I put on some good loud music while I emptied and stacked the dishwasher, and then I simply went up to my whiteboard, grabbed a pen and wrote down in columns – the three problems, the gig i have tomorrow, my main to-do item, and a list of things I was grateful for. I then thought about the problems and asked one of the most powerful questions – was it my fault? And, did I try my best? All three problems weren't my fault and there's nothing more I could do to sort them out, so I crossed them out and concentrated on tomorrow and also on the good stuff in my life. I'd tried my best, it wasn't my fault, so I'm not going to dwell on the issues.

Not an easy task, but a simple one.

In all the years I've been researching real success in education and the workplace I've come to this conclusion. The difference between people who make it and those that don't, is this: it's what they do on their not so good days. It's what they put into practice when they don't feel like it – thats what really counts. When have you had a day like this? How did you move on as my mate Paul McGee would say?

The world is complex enough without us making it harder for ourselves.

Find the strategy that works for you, and put it into practice – often.

I do.

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