How About Those New Year's Resolutions?

So, it's the last week of January and a lot of us still have those New Year's resolutions that we haven't started and once February 1 comes, we are 95% less likely to ever start them!

Today, I want to encourage you to take one small step toward your goal/resolution, if you haven't already. It doesn't have to be big or take a long time...and let me know how I can help! Do you need suggestions to spark some action? I've come up with a quick list below to help get you started. **I am NOT affiliated with any of the resources, I have used them personally so I'm only sharing, not endorsing.**

If your goals are health oriented:

Put your exercise equipment somewhere convenient so you will be reminded to use it.

Find a local organic produce store or delivery service. Try a search for "organic food delivery (insert your city)". Having a regularly scheduled delivery of produce will help you work those into your daily meals and start to crowd out the junk food. Here's a website that can help you find one too: http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/07/guide-to-farm-to-door-delivery-services-usa.html

Don't force yourself to do long workouts. Give yourself permission to do 1 minute, 5 minutes or whatever will fit into your schedule. For example, do jumping jacks or lift free weights (cans of veggies work!) in your kitchen while you heat up food in the microwave or do a couple stretches while the coffee brews. I promise, even if you start tiny every step gets you closer to your goal, momentum will carry you.

Check out http://www.hulu.com/tv/genres/health-and-wellness, https://www.youtube.com/ or your library for a ton of free workout and cooking shows as well as health news.

If your goal is money or career oriented:

Find out if you're being paid what you're worth. Here are 3 sites to get you started: http://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm http://www.payscale.com/ http://www.salary.com/

If you're a freelancer, search for a book or blog on how to negotiate your rates and increase the value you provide. Two people I read/watch each week are: http://www.marieforleo.com/ and http://fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

Increase your skills! Find a cheap, online, anytime class in a topic you've always wanted to pursue. I've taken a few (live & free!) here: https://www.creativelive.com/ they also have a catalog of recorded classes on tons of business and creative topics. If you can afford a little more or your company will help foot the cost shop here too: http://www.amanet.org/

Track your spending/Budget. You can buy software or use a simple spreadsheet. Try a google search "budget templates" "spending tracker" and find a format that works for you. Once you can see how much money you are spending on different categories, you are empowered to make better choices and feel confident in them. Here's a couple sites to start: https://templates.office.com/en-us/Budgets or Google personal finance templates. The beauty of using a spreadsheet like this is that you can rename the categories to fit your personal preferences.

If your goal is purely personal development:

More an more universities and colleges offer online programs or even post the class syllabus for various classes. You can do a self study in almost any topic from an ivy league school, for free, just by following the syllabus.

Look through the community paper and rec center catalogs before you throw them in the recycle bin. You might be surprised what they offer. For less than the cost of dinner at a restaurant you can take classes in specialized software, yoga, finances, crafts like knitting or pottery and so many more.

If your goal is spiritual...let's talk! This can be such a personal and multi-faceted goal that generic suggestions can actually be off-putting and I refuse to discourage you.

What did I forget? I'd love to hear what your resolution/goal is for this year.

Balance - what are you getting for your sacrifice?

The last couple weeks we've been having many conversations about living a balanced life, specifically when it comes to your job. Are you the kind of person that lives to work or works to live? Maybe it's not that simple.

We have been talking about the value around how much time you spend on the job and commuting vs leisure at home with family and friends. Although many people still have a 9-5 type job where the boundaries and compensation of those hours are very clear, there are many more people in "exempt" (or salaried) positions who find that those boundaries are not as clear and recently becoming more and more broken. It might start with an employer provided smart phone (sometimes considered compensation) or even working at home, that allows coworkers to get in touch with you 24/7 and vice versa, which makes "going to the office" more and more irrelevant to get business done. This brings a lot of apparent freedom for an individual who can more easily take care of personal tasks during times that used to be off limits due to office hours, but it also carries a sacrifice when there is no "out of office" hours anymore and life becomes a constant cacophony of work and personal, all intermingled. Most of us start to experience heightened stress levels and even physical illness when we aren't able to isolate different parts of our lives that need to be handled in different ways.

Further, employers like to market these flexible work arrangements as non-monetary compensation, all but ignoring the huge benefit to the company in having employees basically on call 24/7. What it comes down to is that we have to take more personal responsibility for setting expectations and boundaries, based on the benefits vs sacrifice in each situation.

The good news is that this isn't a new problem, as long as there has been work a person had to decide how much they were willing to do before they took a break to do something else. What is new is the technology which doesn't discriminate between an email from your spouse, a tweet from a stranger or a call from your boss when it's on. It will prompt you constantly with reminder tones, if you let it, and managing those alerts can be a job in itself.

At the end of the day, we each have to decide how much of a sacrifice our personal time is compared to the benefit of a flexible work location or how often we are willing to answer those business messages compared to the compensation we receive to do so. Do you love your job so the sacrifice isn't significant? Is work interfering with your close, loving relationships because you're afraid to miss an important message? Are you missing out on life because you're tied to a screen waiting for the next bit of information to cross it? Or are you out enjoying more because you can answer those calls ala carte? It's a tough call sometimes and these are questions I pose often.

What are your thoughts?

On a related note, a friend of mine mentioned that in the "old days" people's livelihood was their life. For example, farmers and people who own their own business such as a store or restaurant. Although they might not have a boss pinging them past bed time, they might have customers demanding their time or sick animals to take care of into the night. How did they create balance?

A topic as old as time, I'd love to hear what you think!

You didn't waste your time, you make things better

We have all had times where we are closing out a part of our life. It might be a relationship ending or leaving a job, and we look back at it and think "What a waste, I'll never get that part of my life back." and it feels really awful. What I'd like to offer you today is a different perspective on it. No matter how wasteful it feels and how much we regret we hold, we have to know that it wasn't all in vain because we left the world a little better and that is what counts (what I mean is, it's not always all about you!).

For example, I have conversations often with people who regret an old relationship because it seems like their ex married the very next person they dated and they wonder why it couldn't have been them. To that I say, remind yourself of all the things that weren't working. Write them down and refer to the list often, if you have to. Then, realize that the time you spent with that person made them more marketable and able to make someone else happy enough to marry them! You did their new partner a huge favor, the kind of favor you wish someone else would do for you and we all know, what goes around comes around.

Another great example is when we are leaving a job. If you're choosing to leave or have been let go, chances are there's a lot of negativity around that termination and you feel like you wasted your time and efforts and you probably feel like they didn't value you like they should have. I'm not saying it isn't true, but it will help you get on with life a lot faster if you think of the ways you left that job better. Even if in your last moments there you left things an utter mess and tried to sabotage everything you could, chances are your employer will think the next person is a rock star when they clean it all up. You will have successfully given someone else temporary job security and self esteem to boot. Alternately, if you were conscientious and left the job in good shape, then the next person coming in will have an easy transition and appreciate how you made their life easier. I've been in both positions and I can tell you that from experience!

At the end of the day, you always know that things aren't what they appear and bad situations are definitely opportunities for positive growth in the world and you help make that happen!