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!

Diplomatically Sharing What Else You Know

When hired for a particular role, it can discouraging to make additional skills, abilities and experiences, beyond a current role known. Social media can be a great equalizer.  Effective users of social media, regardless of age or experience, can become known as subject matter experts, to those at all levels of their current or asprirational organizations.

Mentoring, sponsoring, volunteering, speaking, blogging, continuous learning and sharing are incremental ways to demonstrate additional aptitudes.

And, creating an independent agenda for 1:1 meetings with a manager allows the subordinate to adequately prepare to positively portray not only accomplishments, but also skills and abilities.

Iceberg Diversity

What we see in others is influenced by what we expect to see and what they reveal.  However, we miss so many elements of who others actually are unless we delve deeper than the persona initially revealed to all encountered.

A small percentage of who we actually are is readily revealed to all those we meet.  Thus, like an iceberg, our true depth, breadth and potential impact is hidden.

Circle of Joy

We make decisions every day about what we will and won't do.  Decisions are often influenced by our interests.  When we decide to do things outside our areas of interest or expertise, because they are important to someone we care about, we have the possibility of experiencing unexpected joy.  We get to see something new through their eyes, and also appreciate them as accomplished in areas in which we are not.  

Discovering new ways of seeing the world, through the eyes of those we cherish, creates a circle of joy.

Turning a Negative Into a Positive

Frustrations are part of life.  How we deal with them impacts our success and happiness.  A dear friend encountered a major wreck on her way home from work this week. She knew that she could spend an uncertain, but significant amount of time stuck in traffic, so she changed the scenario.  She exited at one of her favorite retail haunts, enjoyed visiting with similarly destined and friendly strangers; had the chance to offer fashion advice to her new situational friends, and snagged a cool handbag.

Rather than moaning the next day about her traffic woes, she cheerfully sported her new find.

Life happens best when we choose to turn negatives into positives.

The Life-Long Joys of-Summer Reading

The Library Summer Reading Program was always a fun activity during my youth.  The tradition continued when Julia and Gar were young.  Little did I know, as a child, that this would help encourage my life-long love of reading.  Though I'm no longer eligible to participate in the structured goal based library programs, I've devised my own.  I've embraced a best-selling author, who Edgar has long enjoyed, starting with his just released latest mystery.  It's been fun to discover a number of this author's books in our personal library, and am enjoying a third great read.   Based upon my recommendation, Mama, also chose and is enjoying one of this author's books.

There are several mystery authors whose new works I eagerly anticipate, knowing they are sure to delight. Not too surprisingly, this love of mysteries began when I followed Mama's own childhood footsteps in devouring accounts of Nancy Drew's adventures. What fun for Mama and me to once again discover and share a series of novels that bring great joy to hot summer days.

Trash or Treasure

My mom, husband and children are all accomplished chefs.  Because they routinely create yummy feasts, and enjoy the process, my culinary skills are quite limited.  However, my creative instincts and ongoing desires to make something delightful from unexpected materials  (that often yield non-culinary successes),  occasionally result in delicious, yet usually non-repeatable dishes.

Seeing and acting on potential, where others fail to realize possibilities, is so rewarding.  Refrigerator ingredients that would have been trashed, were combined to produce a scrumptious potato corn soup.  Though I was the only one in town to enjoy it, it was quite exciting to realize that acting on good instincts can occasionally yield results that would ordinarily require skill and experience.

We are generally more apt to experiment when the stakes are low.  And when we are able to turn trash to treasure the rewards are amazing.