Why do most people, when we look in the mirror of ourselves, admit our negative traits before we admit our good ones?
I meet and speak with the most interesting people in my travels and demos and that is one of the things I notice on a continual basis. I always try and turn it around for the person, asking what they love to do best and working off of that, but it always interests me to understand why this seems to happen. The best I can guess is that people don't want to seem vain or egotistical in general, let alone to a person they just met.
I wonder though, why can't we see the good in ourselves first on a regular basis? Why can't we hone the good tools we have and slowly but surely pack away the not so good ones. Why can't we allow for the fact that feeling wonderful about ourselves is, well, pretty wonderful!
When we feel positive about a particular something we excel at, it releases the same feel good endorphins that make us healthier and stronger and happier. It makes us appreciate what we have more too, because we realize that we are worth the good stuff. We allow ourselves the healthy food and good drink. We let ourselves take the stress-releasing break. We take time to exercise.
What are your suggestions for looking kindly in the mirror?
It's that time of year again, the days of reflection after a whirlwind of holiday activities that really start here in the US with Thanksgiving and roll right through to New Years Day. The look on my kids faces the night before school starts up again, after their long holiday, would be heart-breaking, if not for the fact that I can't wait for them to get back to their routine again. People walk around town and offices with a little less bounce in their step. Their body language whispers,"ho, hum, it went so fast, I can't believe another holiday season is over". Yes, it does and yes, it is.
That is why I am proposing the "Happy UnHoliday"!
Instead of only being once a year, it shows up every single other day. It doesn't matter what what your beliefs are, nor what holiday(s) you celebrate, because it falls on all the other days than your own traditionally special days. You get to make the rules.
It's a chance to find joy in the every day things, the comfort and happiness in the routine, the beauty in our journey. What fun to celebrate hundreds of days, rather than just a few.
Go on, treat yourself.... It's Happy UnHoliday Day!
:-)
Do you take the time to celebrate your everyday joys? What do you do?
This past Friday night my business held its annual fund-raiser to benefit Komen Greater NYC for the cure. It was a huge success and we are well beyond what we raised from last year. The donations began as soon as we put the word out, and the giving has only continued. The smile on my heart has not disappeared once.
It is a tremendous effort to put this event together on the part of myself and my team and I have often been asked why I do it. I think the best answer I can come up with is why not!?
There are so many ways to give back that it can be done easily and often. Whether donating $1 or hosting an event, or supporting your favorite charity with your time. Whether making phone calls or helping a neighbor or offering a smile, when others have only given frowns.
The ability to help others is one of the greatest assest of humankind, and I truly believe in the inherent kindness of people. Yes, there is strife, and horror, and cruelty, and hate. But, there is also goodness, and caring, and kindness, and help.
I get so much more when I give that it almost feels "selfish", but I think this guilty pleasure is here to stay.
How do you give back to others and yourself on a daily basis?
I have been shaking my head over the fact that I have not blogged in a long while, and the only answer that keeps coming up is that I was too busy traveling and doing other things in life and in business. I guess a little part of me was also subconsciously nervous that I would not have anything relevant to say on a week to week basis. What I have finally realized is that my experiences meeting people, as I demo at various stores and salons, offers up so many opportunities to share and to educate. I'll do my best to keep blogging regularly from now on.
People. We come in all shapes, sizes, haircuts, skin types, clothing choices, education, experience, relationship, physiology and so on. I have had the pleasure of scrubbing/massaging hundreds of these peoples hands, and learning a bit about each one of them along the way. What always makes me smile is the change in one or both of us, after only 2 minutes or so of conversation and engagement.
I always wonder who I might meet on a particular day and what will make that person stand out. Once it was an older couple, who started with " I'm too old for that stuff, and wound up buying a jar after the demonstration. They were my "people of the day" as I realized that I hoped to live out my words to them. I said, "you are never too old to take care of yourself, nor your skin, because you are important enough everyday." Then there was the time I was pondering about something in my life, and the woman I met had a career in counseling. She helped me with my dilemma on the spot. A favorite was the 6 year old girl who called her dad over and said, " Do it dad, cause your hands are too rough!" She then asked me if I were married! :-)
Sometimes it has been a "hit me in the face" type of meaning, and other times it does not hit me till I am driving home. All I know is that it's worth it, we're worth it, and life is too short not to engage with each other on a daily basis.
Years ago a client friend asked me to become the marketing director of an adult education school. I had never before had the opportunity to be on the ground floor of a business except for my own free lance design, so I jumped on the chance thinking that all the pieces would just somehow fit.
There were 4 of us. 1 assistant, who was the true "gal friday" every day of the week; myself as marketing director; one partner who was head of the computer classes and also the liaison between ourselves and the teachers, and finally the other partner who wanted little of the day to day work, but was the cash flow source. The computer teacher partner had worked for a previous adult education school which was a success for 16 years. We thought that gave him enough credibility and knowledge. We even had the full database from the former place and a list of their best teachers. We truly believed the proverbial thought that if we built it, and announced it a few times, they would flock to us the way they flocked to the former place. How wrong we were.
We never built the solid foundation, nor did the proper demographic studies, nor the psycho-graphic research of our students that would have been necessary to determine if the school was worth starting in the first place. We never researched the where it was, only picking its location due to availability. We took the "less is more" approach to advertising, and then hired a PR person based on emotion, not hard facts. The mistakes kept piling up as high as the debt.
After 2.5 years, I had enough of the traveling back and forth watching the debt mount and the student base lessen. I cut my ties and we parted ways. The school never made it and died out completely 4 months after I left.
A little while later, while making body scrub just for myself, I was prompted to start my body care company. I decided to take all I learned about starting a business and use it to my advantage. Everything that seemed to work, I kept, but all the mistakes I knew had been made I tossed out the door and used that information to change the way I ran this business. It was the best decision I could have made.
Yes, I still make plenty of mistakes and am continually learning more and more on a daily basis. I am just beginning the streamlining and standardizing process and am doing my best at combining the entrepreneur with the manager and the production staff. I have come so far and yet have so far to go. But, 3 years later and I still love it as much if not more. I believe I have only just begun to scratch the surface of its possibilities.
Many people to this day will still call my former business a disaster, but to me, it was the fastest "what to do and what not to do" business education I could ever have gotten. So I believe, that in anything you might do, if you learn from it, it wasn't a mistake.
