New Year’s Resolution…Appreciate Yourself

With the 2014 just around the corner, many of us are focused on our setting our goals, intentions, and resolutions. While this is a wonderful and exciting aspect of every New Year, one of the most important things we can focus on this New Year is appreciating ourselves – first!

If you’re anything like me and most of the people I know and work with, you probably have a tendency to be hard on yourself, or at least to think you have to achieve your goals or do something “good” in order to pat yourself on the back and appreciate yourself. What if we started with self appreciation, instead of waiting until we think we deserved it or had time to do it?

What we’re really after is a sense of satisfaction, fulfillment, and, most importantly, self appreciation. We think that if we achieve our goals, we’ll be happy and feel good about ourselves. However, as you may have noticed throughout your life – not only is this not true, it creates a great deal of stress for us in the process.

Without appreciating ourselves our goals are meaningless. By taking the time to appreciate ourselves, three incredible things happen. First of all, we put ourselves in the best possible position for the fulfillment of our goals. Second, we give ourselves first what we’re going after ultimately – a positive sense of who we are and what’s valuable about us, right now. And third, we make ourselves available in a genuine way to be there for others and appreciate the people around us.

Take care of yourself and appreciate who you are as we move into 2014.

With the holidays coming upon us and the continued uncertainty that surrounds us about our economy, we may feel a little out of sorts. Just remember during this time that people can only evoke reactions in us if we choose to let them. If you find yourself reacting to someone or something someone said, just look inside yourself. Be in a quiet setting and reflect by going back in time to when you first remember a similar word, situation, person, or incident. Once you remember an incident when you felt a similar emotional reaction, you can work through the original incident by replacing those memories with what should have been to make you feel okay. We find that by replacing negative messages with positive ones, we overcome negative programming and become more in harmony with our relationships and our environment. As you begin to understand yourself more and more, you will respond positively to more and more situations and relationships with understanding and compassion. Have a wonderful and peaceful Holiday Season.

I had an opportunity today to attend a luncheon that was a networking function that comprised a group of well-educated, entrepreneurial, successful business women. The one thing I learned was that most successful businesses are built on recommendations from family, friends and associates. It is these folks who we have established relationships with that know who we are, what we want to give to others, how we work, and why we want to do the business that we do. Not only are relationships the key to a successful business, they are also the best teachers in our lives. Maintain and nurture these precious relationships.

Creating a Personal Vision is a way to think about where you want to be and what you want to do now, next year, in five years or ten years. It is a method of setting goals for ourselves.
Sit down in a quiet spot and take a few deep breaths, relaxing as you exhale. Once you feel relaxed, begin brainstorming what you want to learn and what you want to know. Write these thoughts down. Once you run out of ideas, look at your list and give a rating of 1 to 3 for each item on your list (1 is most important to you; 3 is least important). For each of the 1’s, you will more than likely see a theme emerge. Focus on this theme and determine what it is that you want to learn or what you want to know. Here are some questions you may want to ask yourself to create your personal vision.

• Vision: What do you want to create? Draw a picture of what you want.

• Mission: Why do you want to do? What is the purpose?

• Strategy: How do you propose to do what’s important?

• Objectives/Goals: What are the specific actions that you need to do to achieve?

To give you an example of how to develop your Personal Vision, here is my life experience of my Personal Vision. I wanted to teach. I brainstormed why I wanted to teach and what I would teach. My vision of what I hoped to gain from teaching was to teach others my knowledge and give students the skills to manage more effectively and efficiently after taking my class. My mission was to enhance the workplace and work environment so that people would feel more balanced in their lives and feel valued. The strategy I used was to teach Peter Senge’s Concepts of the Learning Organization that focused on Systems Thinking (closing silos and open dialogue and communication), Personal Mastery (knowing yourself), Mental Models (understanding our biases, assumptions and filters), Team Learning (understanding how we learn from each other) and Shared Vision (integrating our personal vision and organization’s shared vision); McKinsey Model 7S to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats with the purpose of enhancing organizational effectiveness of Systems (evaluating procedures, information systems, performance measures, rewards, budget, controls), Strategies (understanding how your business rates against competition), Structure (identifying specialization and integration), Skills (defining the competencies of the personnel), Staffing (identifying the resources for the work needs), Style (identifying what is done, not what is said) and Shared Values (understanding the level of trust, integrity, morale, motivation and culture); Motivational Grid, History of Management Theory and Myers Briggs Type Indicator to provide a personality inventory based on the theories of Carl Jung. My Objectives and goals were to teach using three methods – visual (show you), hearing (tell you) and doing (let you experience and experiment).
Take a moment and write down on a piece of paper your personal vision. From there, write down how do you plan on achieving that vision. Next, write down what steps you must take to get there. You now have a footprint of where you want to be.

People can only evoke reactions in us if we choose to let them. By reflecting and going back in time to when you first remember a similar word, situation, person, or incident, you can work through the original incident by replacing those memories with what should have been to make you feel okay. By replacing negative messages with positive ones, we overcome negative programming and become more in harmony with our relationships and our environment. As you begin to understand yourself more and more, you will respond positively to more and more situations and relationships with understanding and compassion.

“Having No Goals” according to Kate Lorenz, Editor of Career Builder.com, is a fatal Career Move. Lorenz says, “Failure doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal, but in not having a goal to reach.” It is my belief that having goals applies to not only careers, but also life. Careers require professional goals. Life requires personal goals. Having both personal and professional goals result in a balanced and successful life. Lorenz says, “Eighty percent of your effectiveness comes from 20 percent of your activities.” Visualize your goals, write them down, and commit to daily activities. Prioritize and focus on those daily activities that will assist you in achieving your goals.

I want to wish you a prosperous and Happy New Year. May each of you be blessed with caring family and friends and good health in 2013. I am thankful for my community which includes family, friends, business associates and clients. We are slowly coming out of the recession. Even though the past few years have resulted in loss of income from investments, employment and/or savings, most of us are fortunate to still have our community. Count these blessings because these relationships are what really matter most. Make a commitment on New Year’s Day to work on SELF…mind, body and spirit. Read, travel and continue to educate yourself; exercise daily to keep your body in shape and your metabolism working at peak; and, take time to meditate or just take some quiet time to let your thoughts flow. Happy New Year!

According to Mike Robbins, author of “Focus on the Good Stuff,” it is important to tell others the truth. Sometimes we think that appreciation is all about being “nice.” It’s really about recognizing the value of someone or something and about being able to empower ourselves and others. It is also about coming from a place of gratitude, respect, and truth in our relationships with the people around us. Giving people honest feedback can be one of the best ways to appreciate them and let them know we that we care about them.

Before you give someone honest feedback you must have a foundation of trust and appreciation in your relationship with them. It’s also important to ask their permission and make sure it’s okay with them before you launch into your feedback.

It takes real courage to speak your truth to another person. In addition, understand your intention. If your intention is to make a difference for that person, “clear” something that might be in your way with them, or help them see something they may not be able to see – you’re coming from a place that can empower and ultimately support that person. However, if your intention is to be superior, to show them how wrong they are and how right you are, or some version of either of these two things, then you are coming from your ego and your “truth” that will most likely push them away.

Regardless of how we go about this, in the end it’s almost always better for us to speak up than not. We learn more about ourselves, get closer to the other person, as well as grow in the process.

When someone speaks a “hard truth” to you, you may have a tendency to push back and defend yourself initially. Try to hear the feedback and learn from it. More importantly, appreciate the other person’s willingness and courage to say something honest and potentially vulnerable to you.

Look at your relationships, especially the most important ones. Where are you not telling the truth, not giving feedback, or worried to say something honest? What would it take for you to be willing to tell them the truth? What are you afraid of? What would be possible in your relationship with them if you spoke up? Speaking your truth to the most important people in your life is a great gift and will strengthen your relationships. Remember to speak your truth with appreciation, honesty and kindness.

With the 2012 Summer Olympics going on, I am amazed at the backgrounds of the participants. All of them have spent their entire lives working on their event(s) and basically giving up so much of their lives as you and I know. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone gave 110% to each task at hand…what an increase in productivity. Don’t you believe that most of us slack off occasionally only to find ourselves trying desperately to catch up. We may have to even settle for less than what we are capable of. I hear so many complain about the day to day ups and downs, mostly downs, and I think to myself, we are not as disciplined as these remarkable athletes who give so much of their time and energy to being the best that they can be. It is so inspirational to watch the athletes compete and show us what can really be accomplished if we really want something bad enough. I am making a commitment to myself to tackle every task with enthusiasm and continuously give my all. Now, I challenge each of you to do the same. Are you up for the opportunities that this challenge will bring you?

Just thinking about July 4th and what it means to me. The Declaration of Independence signed by our forefathers put their lives on the line for our freedom. Even now, our freedom continues to come at a great expense…loss of our men and women in our Armed Forces. Our freedom as well as other countries that want a democracy continues to be threatened by those more interested in power and greed which permeates the world. If it were not for those in power wanting more, what would our society be like if we followed the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I recently heard a new one, the Platinum Rule, “Do unto others as they would want done unto them.” To reach beyond our greed and power and reach out to others in need. Wow…what a concept. What a value. What respect we would have for others. And, in turn, our life would be much easier if others did treat us the way we want to be treated. I challenge you for the next five days to observe and follow the Platinum Rule. At least it would be a start!