Ready, set… Goals! Practical tips for making sure you are pointing your life in the right direction.

We’ve all heard that in order to accomplish much of anything personally or professionally, we should set goals.  Yet very few of us have them, and even fewer of us have them written out.  Here are some practical tips for helping you to determine what your long and short goals are.

• Dream baby, Dream!  Sit back somewhere quiet and comfortable and close your eyes.  Take a few deep breaths.  Resist the urge to clean the house or fold the laundry.  Take a few more breaths.  then fast forward yourself ten years.  Imagine that you are successful (whatever that word means to you personally).  Picture yourself calm, content, and at peace with where you are in your life.  Then take a look at what is making your future self so happy.  Where are you living?  What are you doing for work?  What is your family life like?  How about your spiritual life?  What do you look like and how do you feel about it?

(A word of caution here-  DO NOT let fear or worry creep in while you are performing this exercise.  DO NOT allow yourself to dismiss a dream because of a lack of time, money, or education.)

• Write it Down.  You don’t need to use complete sentences at this point.  Random thoughts or pictures are a good start.  I have had dozens of rough drafts of dreams in my head and I just revised them as they became clearer over time.
• Map it Out.  What are the different steps that you think you might have to take to make your dreams become a reality?  Write these ideas down too.  If you are unsure of all the steps, don’t worry about it.  They will become clearer to you as you work on them. 
• Build the Bridge.  If you have done this exercise properly, you will have some new long-term goals.  And if you look at the steps that you need to take to get to those goals, you’ll discover that you have some short-term goals too!  Now you’ll need to execute those  goals- more on that in a different post.

Once you have a more clearly defined image of what you want your life to look like,  it is time to write them down more formally.  Use full sentences, preferably written as affirmation statements.   Read your goals at least twice a day.   If you take this step, you will be programing your subconscious mind to find ways to help you achieve your goals.

Up, Up, and Away! – easy ways for women to improve their career mobility.

  I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but you need to know:  Gender-bias is still alive and well and flourishing in Corporate America.  Women only earn about 72% of what men earn for the same roles.  Only 2% of Fortune 500 companies are run by women, and we only hold 8% of the corporate leadership positions.  What can we do about it?  For starters, we can stop acting like girls and start acting like women.  Stereotypical behavior that we learned as children works against us once we reach the office.  In many different ways, women inadvertently sabotage their own efforts to move up the corporate ladder.  What follow are some ways that Lois P. Frankel, Ph.D., and author of Nice Girls don’t get the Corner Office says we can do to improve how we sound at work.

• Use your full name, not just your first name or a nickname.  Listen to how the men around you answer their phones.  You very seldom hear them saying things like “Good morning, this is Danny.”  They are more likely to answer the phone saying “Dan Thomas” or something similar.  Try using your full name when you answer the phone or when you are introduced to someone.  If you are known by the nickname Beth, consider referring to yourself as Elizabeth instead.  A formal name helps you to be taken more seriously.
• Instead of asking permission, make a statement.  Women have a tendency to ask if they can do something instead of just letting people know that they are doing it.  For example, instead of asking for next Tuesday off, try saying “I’m taking next Tuesday as a vacation day.   Let me know if there are any scheduling conflicts.”  When you ask for permission to do things that you already have the right to do, you diminish yourself.  Children ask for permission; women don’t need to.
• Don’t apologize for small stuff.  You might think that apologizing for small errors shows your committment to high quality and your attention to detail.  But in reality, you can cause others to have less confidence in your abilities to do a job.  Lots of small errors don’t need to be discussed at all.  But if you’ve made a mistake that requires discussion (such as spending too much money on food for a sales luncheon that you organized) you can acknowledge the error without saying “I’m sorry.”  Instead, try saying “That lunch went over budget.  Next time I plan on using a different vendor.” 
• Don’t talk too fast.  Let’s face it: we get interrupted when we are talking.  I recently attempted to participate in a meeting where one of my male counterparts interrupted me every single time I tried to talk.  Women frequently speed up their cadence in hopes of completing a full thought without interruption.  But talking too fast can give the impression that your words are not valuable.  Take the necessary time to say what you want to say.  Joining Toastmasters www.toastmasters.org can help you develp an appropriate speaking voice if speed or volume is a problem for you. 

     What did I do about the man who interrupted me at the meeting?  I (more or less) calmly confronted him afterwards.  Not only has he not interrupted me since then, but he has also made some recommendations that I be considered for a corporate role higher than the one I currently have.  I’ve earned his respect.

     The business world is tough.  You have to be confident and competent.  Try following these tips and see where they take you.

“Roughing” It!

 

Against my body’s better judgement, I spent last night camping with my children. 

We own a twenty four-acre parcel of land up in Ashtabula County.  And the lot we live on in Portage County is five wooded acres.  So where did we decide to pitch our tent?  You guessed it- right smack dab next to the house.  I like the convenience of bathrooms, cold beer, and warm coffee  so the location worked for me. And the kids were just happy being outside.

I also like to be comfortable. After my 40+ years on Earth I have enough trouble with my back and legs after sleeping on a decent mattress,   let alone on the hard ground.  I had the bright idea of blowing up both of our air mattresses and wedging them in to the floor of our two-man tent.  They fit right in and I was optimistic about a decent night’s sleep. 

At dusk we gathered outside to enjoy a nice campfire (a Duraflame log in a portable fire pit purchased at Lowe’s).  We told stories, sang songs, and only went back inside to make popcorn in our Whirley Pop.  Once the kids started yawning I knew it was time to turn in.  We kissed Daddy and Grandma good night, brushed our teeth, and piled into the tent.

The four of us were packed into that two man tent like crayons in a crayon box.  Everyone wanted to sleep next to me so I ended up in the middle with the older children on both sides of me and the youngest on top of me.  We read books by lantern (a Coleman battery-operated one) until my eyes wouldn’t focus anymore.  Then it was lights out. 

The top of our tent was all screen mesh and we had a beautiful view of the night sky.  The moon was climbing its way up the treeline into our view.  The crickets and cicadas were loud and wonderful.  Unfortunately, the two air mattresses I had placed in the tent had separated and all of our rear ends were sitting on the cold, hard ground.  No amount of pulling or tugging would keep them together.  The youngest two children were able to fall asleep but Shelby and I tossed and turned.  Well, as much tossing as you can do when you are a crayon in a crayon box.  We did eventually fall asleep. 

Around 4am Shelby woke me up, saying “Mom… are those wolves that I hear?” I listened and told her that no, they were just coyotes.  This didn’t make her feel any better and she asked to go in the house.  I took her inside and tucked her in to her nice, soft bed.  I headed back outside.  I was able to watch the full moon track across the sky just by opening my eyes and looking up.  A few owls hooted back and forth to each other.  And it wasn’t long before the neighbor’s rooster announced that dawn was right around the corner.  At some point I drifted off to sleep and was awakened by my husband coming out onto the deck to tell me that the coffee was on.  Mmmmmm.  Warm coffee.

I moved my legs and my arms and was delighted to find that nothing hurt any more than it usually did.  The kids stirred and played nicely in the tent by themselves while Eddie and I had our first cup of coffee for the day. 

My thoughts turned to my family’s camping trips when I was a child.  We used to really rough it- lakeshore campgrounds with no electricity or running water on the sites.  You would make fires out of logs you bought at the camp store and out of sticks you gathered out in the forest.  There were no air mattresses or popcorn poppers, and the coffee that my parents would drink would be instant with non-dairy creamer in it.  I remember how hard my mom had to work to provide us with this nice experience; she would spend days packing ahead of time, she would do all the cooking and she would do all the cleaning up after dinner.  It certainly wasn’t any kind of vacation for her. 

It may be true that my idea of “roughing it” is not the same as my parent’s.  I’m sure when my children are older we’ll venture up to our other property and camp out away from all civilization.  But for now, everyone is contented with the backyard experience and that’s all that really matters.

Ghost Cooking

Today my husband and I spent the day cooking. 

Normally that wouldn’t be a big deal.  But we were making Armeninan dishes with Ed’s mother, Alice.  That IS a big deal.  Alice is in her seventies and her time to be able to teach us how to make traditional recipes from her childhood is fleeting. 

Normally our fare is simple.  Microwaveable, sometimes.  And once a week or so we go to a fast food restaurant.  But right now Alice is visiting with us and we feel the need to take our meals a step further.  The Armenians have a wonderful food heritage that is endangered and could die with our generation.  So today we passed some of that heritage down from Alice to Ed and I, and we in turn will pass it to our children.

It started with Kourabia, an Armenian butter cookie.  We had three recipies to choose from in the Soor Adsvadzadzin Apostolic Church cookbook  http://armenianchurchofwhit.org  and we decided to choose the most difficult one.  We figured this meant it would be the most traditional.  It started by clarifying butter (I had to look up how to do it on the Internet) and a very, very long process of whipping butter and adding other ingredients.  Alice proudly directed the project. 

As we worked, each of our children in turn came up and took turns mixing, beating, adding ingredients, and shaping the dough.  We had three generations of Armenians cooking- Alice, her son Ed, and his three children, Shelby, Cole and Sarah.  The batter was rolled out, shaped, and put in the refrigirator to cool off before it was popped into the oven.  I was so happy to see how involved the children were in the shaping process; they all wanted to roll out the dough into the cookies.  All six of us- Ed, Alice, and children- crowded around the baking sheets and worked together. 

 And all three children took turns putting the final touch- the powdered sugar- onto the cookies.  They looked just as wonderful as the cookies we had bought before at the Armenian festivals… but how would they taste? 

To enhance the experience, I found some Armenian music on http://pandora.com and were ready to taste the cookies.  

We all took one off of the plate and took a bite.  The outsides were soft and powdery, the insides almost cruchy.  They absolutely melted in your mouth, and you could taste every bit of the eight hours it had taken us to get the butter from a box to the finished product. 

Ed sat at the kitchen table with a glass of wine and said something that really struck me. 

He said with emotion, ” When you cook these dishes, you are cooking for the living.  You are cooking for the dead.  By cooking, we honor the dead.  When you cook, you cook for love”.

I thought about all the family members that had passed.  Edward Ovian.  Peter Ovian.  Leo Ovian.  Angel Byrne.  Today, we cooked for all of them. And we cooked for our children, who we helped to be proud of their Armenian food heritage. And hopefully, we cook for our children’s children, whom we have not yet met, who someday will experience the joy of a cookie that melts in your mouth, that was made for no reason other than for pure love. 

This was a day that I will remember for a long, long time.  Sh’norhakal em. 

Next weekend… choreg!

Take Time to Think

     How much time do you spend thinking?

     For all of us in leadership roles, it is critical that we carve time out of our days for thinking.  It affects our creativity, our ability to strategize, and it improves our overall performance in all aspects of our lives.  Dr. John Maxwell, famous author and expert on leadership, recommends that we spend 20% of our time engaged in deep thinking. 

   It isn’t that easy, though.  Both Life and technology do a pretty good job of distracting us from taking the time that we should.  The list of distrations is endless, but here are some of the worst offenders:

1. EMAIL.  Most of us are too tempted by the unopened letter icon on our computers to focus on our current tasks; we pull away our focus which causes even the simplest tasks to take longer.
2. KIDS.   Don’t get me wrong- I love spending time with my children- but between softball practice, breaking up fights, and picking Moon Sand out of the carpet, it’s pretty hard to have any quality thinking time when they are awake.
3. TELEVISION.  Sure, there is some great quality programming out there.  But most television just eats away at your time and at your life.  According to the latest Nielson rating, the average American watches 4.5 hours of television a day.  That’s a full two months of your life GONE every year.
4. COMPUTER/ VIDEO GAMES.  How many times have you intended to play for “just a few minutes” and looked up at a clock to see that an hour or more of time had elapsed?

Sure, there’s lots of distractions.  How do we put the thinking time back into our days?  Here are some suggestions:

1. PLAN YOUR DAYS AROUND THINKING TIME.  Put it on your calendar daily and build the rest of your schedule around it.  It can be your most productive, effective time; be protective of it.
2. GET UP EARLY.  Family life is distracting and most houses are quiet in the wee hours of the morning.  All the really successful people I’ve questioned are all early risers.
3. HAVE A SPOT DEDICATED TO THINKING.  It could be anywhere; a chair, a desk, or perhaps a special room that you go to when you are thinking.  If at all possible use that spot just for thinking.  Once you use it regularly your brain will immediately click into thinking mode as soon as you sit down. 
4. EXERCISE.  It brings more oxygen to the brain.  It also slows down your mental activity to a point where you can listen better to what your brain has to say.  I’m a jogger, and I’m absolutely amazed at the wonderful, deep thoughts that come to me when I’m out on the road.  When you exercise, try leaving the tv and the ipod off.  Let everything be quiet so that inspiration can come to you.
5. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF YOUR COMMUTE.  If you can keep the radio and the cell phone off, you’ll give your brain another opportunity to talk to you.  And if you keep a digital voice recorder in your car you can easily record your thoughts without driving off the road. 

When you make room in your life for thinking on a regular basis, it means that you’ll have to take that time from somewhere else.  We all only have 24 hours in a day.  Hopefully you can find room by cutting out some of the time-wasters above.  If not, I’d suggest that cleaning the house is a good place to start…after all, that Moon Sand will still be there waiting for you after you’ve had your thinking time, won’t it?

A Lunch Date with Success

     Have you ever wondered how really successful people get that way?  How do they accomplish so much with what appears to be so little effort?  I’m talking about REAL people here; not the ones in the self-help books or the great leaders in history.  I’m talking about the ones who live near you.  They sit next to you at soccer practice.  They park near you at the supermarket (okay, they probably drive  a better car than you but the gist is that they pretty much go through life like the rest of us.)  How do they do it?

     I recently had the opportunity to have lunch with a man that meets my definition of “successful”.  He cares about and is very involved in his family.  He is charitable.  And he is constantly growing and developing personally.  And yes, he is wealthy. 

     We discussed the role that setting and executing goals plays on one’s success.  What follows are some of the many insights he gave me during our lunch together.

• LOOK AT LIFE TEN MINUTES AT A TIME.  I’ve tried this, and I can tell you that it’s really painful.  So much of our time leaks away from us ten minutes at a time.  Identify where those holes are and plug them up so that you don’t leak time out of them anymore.

This particular entrepreneur is up every day at 5am, even though he is technically retired at the moment.  That’s something I’ve noticed about successful people- they always get up early.

• NO EXCUSES.  We all have them and know how to use them.  Successful people understand that all aspects of their business and life are ultimately their personal responsibility.  When they look in a mirror they don’t see the reflection through a mist of excuses.  They see a raw image with all of its triumphs and imperfections.  Having a “no excuses” frame of mind leads nicely into the next point, which is…
• LEARN FROM YOUR CHALLENGS.  AT THE END OF THE DAY LEAVE IT BEHIND YOU AND PRESS ON.  Accept responsibility, yes, but forgive yourself, learn from the mistakes and keep moving forward.  Remeber that we learn more from our mix-ups than we do from our successes sometimes. 

That’s another thing about successful people.  They never stop trying.  They understand that you don’t fail until you give up.  They are this way because they believe the next point,  which is…

• I AM GOING TO DO IT.  Believe in yourself and your subconscious mind will find ways to make that belief come true.  It will help you plot your course to your goals. 

The next one is one of my favorite points.  It really surprised me that he talked about it, but it sums things up so nicely…

• YOU SHOULD BE SMILING EVERY DAY OF YOUR LIFE.  Huh?  Think about it.  If you are in control of all aspects of your life and you are working dilligently towards your life’s goals, then you should be happy, shouldn’t you?  So many people go through life dissatisfied or worse, downright miserable.  If you don’t like your life, you have the power to change it.

I have one more thing about this interview that I’d like to share with you.  My meeting with this gentleman was not an accident.  I realized that in order to continue my personal growth I needed to find people with the knowledge that I was seeking.  It was uncomfortable and akward to ask him, but I just told myself I AM GOING TO DO IT and sure enough, I did!

The Junk Stroller

Sarah and her entourage enjoying the Junk Stroller

     I own one of those jogging strollers that holds two children.  It’s been a member of our family ever since child # 2 was born seven years ago.  Whenever the weather was good I would take the two children out for a weekend jog.  At first it held Shelby and Cole, then Cole and Sarah, and now just Sarah and her Care Bear collection.

     It isn’t the best looking stroller.  When I first purchased it new it was  dark blue.  Now it has weathered to a purple-gray color.  There are bird droppings on it.  There are dried spider egg sacks dangling from the bottom of it.  And it holds the stains of a hundred Popsicles.  Yes, I did try to clean it once but the results weren’t impressive enough to ever attempt it again. The tires lose their air quickly and the front wheel wobbles and clacks when it rotates. 

     Sarah will have outgrown it by next season, so I’ve resisted the urge to buy a newer, single version.  I looked them up on Craig’s List early this past spring but I just couldn’t bring myself to spend $50.00 or more on something I’d only be using for a few months.  I’m not sure why; goodness knows I’ve spent $50.00 on dumber things before.

     I really haven’t spent too much time thinking about it until we went to a birthday party this past weekend.  There were twenty shiny, nice cars lined up the length of the driveway.  There was one junky stroller- mine.  At one point during the party I glanced over at it and saw just how shabby it looked, and I wondered what people thought of us.  When we were leaving (early, because the sun was setting and we had to walk the mile home before dark) one of the dads approached us and offered us a ride home.  I believe that he thought we didn’t have access to a car and had walked out of necessity.  His look of charity turned to one of puzzlement when I tried to explain to him that we had deliberately walked over for the exercise.  Sigh.

     While jogging today I reflected on the stroller some more.  I thought about the different bits of wear and tear on it as proof of many years of honorable and selfless service to our family.  Heck, at leat it hasn’t spent the last seven years parked in the garage!

Star Gazing

Photo of the Owl Nebula, taken from the SLOOH telescope

     I’m not able to spend much extra time with my children during the summer months, so I have to make the time I have count.  I love making lifetime memories with them.  Most of my favorite ones from my childhood didn’t cost my parents anything and they usually didn’t involve leaving the yard.  I’m pleased that we’ve added some great memories to the family collection this summer.  The latest one was viewing the Perseid’s meteor shower with my oldest daughter, Shelby.

     My husband Ed and I went outside for awhile to check out the show before we woke her up.  With meteor shower viewing, the conditions have to be just right; not too much moonlight and not too many clouds.  In the first fifteen minutes we saw shooting stars everywhere!  There were small ones and long ones and some that were so bright that their sparkly tails stayed burned into the sky for the better part of a minute before they faded away.   I went back inside to fetch Shelby.

     She had been sleeping but she was up with just one whisper that it was time.  Seconds later we were walking outside, bathrobes on, hand-in-hand.

     The night was soft and dark.  Dew was already clinging to the blades of grass and our sandals were soaked in seconds.  The cicadas sung loudly in the trees overhead.  Fireflies competed with the stars for our attention.

     We crossed the street to the neighboring farm.  Eddie and the neighbors were already stretched out in lawn chairs, faces tilted skyward.   Shelby and I took our places and it wasn’t long before the show started.  The only frustrating thing was that the sky was enormous (we were sitting in a great big field) and you couldn’t see the whole sky at once.  This meant that you would miss some of the shooting stars.  We all sat silently in the darkness, until a star would streak across the sky.  Then the silence would be broken by excited shouts of “Hey, did you see that one”? and “Awww, I missed it”! 

     At one point it occurred to me that a “good mom” wouldn’t let their child stay up so late at night.  I felt guilty for a few seconds, but then I pushed the thought away.  Sure, maybe “good moms” wouldn’t, but “great moms” sure would!