Be Successful Where You Are

Recently, I had the chance to hear Jay Steinfeld, Founder and CEO, of Blinds.com talk about his company's incredible company culture.  I've embraced one of the vivid ways he casts a vision for personal and company success:

• Be Successful Where You Are

As he made successive steps across the front of the ballroom, indicating that each step toward a goal could be viewed as failure, until achievement of the goal, it made a huge impact in my way of addressing success. Though setting and achieving goals is enormously important, we need to be careful not to define success solely by achievement of the next milestone.  We owe it to ourselves to celebrate current success while striving for even greater successes each step of the journey.

Memorable

We had a fabulous time celebrating Julia's birthday in D.C. this past weekend!  She's an amazing young woman with an incredible intellect, perpetually positive attitude and amazing ability to get others to seize a broad array of diverse entertainment and dining opportunities.

Our wonderful nonstop activities included wide-ranging conversations, spectacular museums, the national zoo, professional baseball, canoeing on the Potomac, a mini spades tournament, painting with a pro, meeting her friends at unexpected venues all around town, birthday brunch, and many other remarkable foodie feasts.

For me, spending time with my precious angel and her equally adoring father, would have been celebratory. However, her perfectly planned, nonstop birthday weekend elevated celebratory, to indelibly memorable.

Start, Stop and Continue

Today has been filled with milestones:

• Start - we celebrated a special colleague's achievement of her U.S. Citizenship
• Stop - we toasted another special colleague's retirement
• Continue - as of today I've run enough miles to be on pace to reach 500 miles by year end: 100 miles over my 2013 annual goal

Life is a series of starts, stops and continuations.  We don't often get to vividly recognize all three phases in a single day.  Celebrations, large and small, provide important connections, acknowledgements and incentives.

Here's to new beginnings, happy conclusions and productive progress achieving!

Hurrah!

It's always fun to achieve a goal, delight a customer or acknowledge a deserving family member or associate.    In our hurried world, it's important to take time to say "hurrah!" when successes are achieved - those of others and our own.  The treadmill of continuous activity can be a detriment to the important celebratory pause.

Awesome Partners Day

Today was officially Administrative Professionals (AP) Day.  In actuality, every day should be a day that we tell our hard-working administrative professionals how much we appreciate them.  I like to consider that today was Awesome Partners (AP) Day.  I have the privilege of working closely with two amazing administrative professionals who partner with me through the exciting and mundane with high energy, positive attitudes and a willingness to do whatever it takes to achieve success.  That's a real cause for celebration!

How to Resolve an Impossible Dilemma

How can we resolve an impossible dilemma?  Both of our precious angel children are graduating the same weekend 1400 miles apart.  We know all of the typical resolutions.  Our family is very close and ideally all four of us would be at both graduations.  Short of flipping a coin, what is the best way to honor everyone's accomplishments?

Christmas Babies

With no disrespect intended for Jesus, I now have 3 Christmas babies.  Of course, Jesus is the reason for the season.  My beloved nephew, Michael, is now 25.  He was born on Christmas Eve and we just celebrated his 25th birthday.  We've had the distinct privilege to celebrate his birthday each year.  Each year the family gathers for Michael's birthday.  Our celebratory feast marks his special occasion.  After dinner, birthday cake and birthday wrapped presents are opened, we move to our Christmas celebration.

My third Christmas baby is Jax.  Though his birthday is not in the Christmas season, this was his first Christmas and he enchanted 12 adults aged 18 to 79.

Celebrate Everything!

Our family loves to celebrate.  This motivated me to design and create a multi-faceted counted cross stitch project for Julia. 

Left-Overs

I love Thanksgiving!  It's all about the food, family and fellowship.  There's a wide-spread attitude of gratitude.  And there's a fridge full of wonderful left-overs to enjoy during the weekend as we pause and play together. These left-overs will soon vanish.  The left-overs worth preserving throughout the year are our Thanksgiving attitude and our focus on those who are important. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Celebrate!

I think there are millions of reasons to celebrate including - Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, morning, afternoon, evening, an A, a passing grade, knowledge gained, graduations, project completed, new insight, progress made, a positive diagnosis, new job, internship, promotion, preserving a job amidst layoffs, making someone's day, having someone make your day, making it through the day, a friend's arrival, relationships, weddings, births, new hires, retirements, a loving family, awards, recognition, positive press, giving a helping hand, receiving a helping hand, being valued, being loved, being cherished.

Efficiency v. Effectiveness

I would love to be able to give credit to the very creative person who provided this image, but alas, it was sent to me anonymously. Kudos to you and all other creative souls who can't be acknowledged for your work that makes us laugh, think and act.

My "efficient self" loves the practicality of this image and sentiment. However, my "creative and effective" self realizes the folly of not taking time to appreciate and enjoy each chance to celebrate.

May we all remember that effectiveness is our goal!