Situation Normal

You know what?  This has been a really normal week.  A week where things have gone according to schedule, where all assigned tasks have been completed, where some unexpected (but nice) opportunities have arisen.  I liked it.

I could get used to this thing called normal.

See, I really like a routine.  I know that makes me somewhat pedantic and uninteresting, but I function best when things happen in a prescribed fashion, ideally one over which I have some control.  Deep in my heart of hearts, I'd like to be more of a free spirit,  wish I could go with the flow and take what comes.  But when things are up in the air, I get ansty and prickly.  Can't help it...that's just me. (See how self-aware I am, and I haven't even taken the StrengthsFinder?)

Here's what happened this week that I really liked...

~my weeping cherry tree blossomed beautifully.  oh yes.

~i got to accompany my friend's church choir rehearsal last night.  hadn't played the piano in three weeks!  yes, indeed, that felt good.

~it was so quiet in the office this week that i got all my work done in the allotted time and didn't bring anything home with me for the weekend.  whew.

~got one step closer to completing the disbursement of my aunt's estate - namely, preparing to finalize the transfer of her house to another of her nieces.   big smiles.

~walked two miles every day this week.  feelin' fit in spite of pizza for dinner.

Here's what I'm looking forward to...

~marathon men's chorus concerts tomorrow at the University of Michigan, where I expect to hear and see some of my favorite young men from the high school.  brava!

~going to East Lansing next weekend with my friend C. while our men are away on a choir tour of their own.  yea for girlfriends!

~sleeping late tomorrow and then taking the doggies to the park.  nice.

~more spring like weather which is said to be on the way.  ahhh...

In short, I'm loving life in the normal lane. 

How about you?  What's your situation these days?

First Impression

I work in a small office, and during the 10 years I've worked there I've seen quite a number of employees come and go.  Personality is important in a small, cohesive group like ours, and I've become quite adept at discerning who will "fit" and who will not.  My first impression is usually correct, too - even if I sometimes can't put my finger on exactly why.   So I've learned to trust it, that first initial feeling I get, not only when it comes to office personnel, but to other things in life as well. How about you? Do you trust your first impression?  What does it take to make a good first impression on you?  What's the best (or worst) first impression you ever had about a person/place?

This week, write about a~

FIRST IMPRESSION

Based on Strength

"The best leaders have a good idea who they are as a person.  They know their strengths and find ways to use them in their jobs every day..." from an interview with Josh Allan Dykstra, Organizational Development Specialist The concept of natural talent has always interested fascinated me - the way some people have such an obvious proclivity for music or art or sports or telling jokes or cooking or growing things or teaching... all the multitude of talents that make the world go round.  And sometimes I wonder about the talents people have that go undiscovered, because I've seen talent revealed quite by chance and it causes me to think about the times that opportunity doesn't occur and someone's true talent may never be uncovered.

It seems the Gallup Organization has been extensively studying the concept of strength and strength based leadership.  According to Josh Dykstra -who happens to be my friend C's son-in-law, but is also one heck of a smart young man- a strength is where "talent meets knowledge meets skills."  It's about knowing who you are and what your strengths are, and then finding ways to use them in the things that you do everyday.  Apparently the worlds best leaders don't necessarily share a list of similar characteristics, as you might imagine.   What they do have in common is a heightened sense of self-awareness which they've parlayed into their life and work.

This information comes at an interesting time for me, because over the past several months I've been tested in my job in ways that are uncomfortable.  I've kvetched about it here a few times, but in essence, my job has changed dramatically so that I'm now in a position of  totally managing other people's work, while still being responsible for the final product.  I've been trying to figure out why this is so difficult for me, why my stomach knots up every morning when I'm driving into the office, why I sometimes feel like crying when I sit at my desk and survey the piles of papers littered around me. 

So reading about strength based activity makes me realize that the reasons I feel so unhappy and frustrated is that I'm no longer using my natural strengths to their best advantage.  It makes sense to me that if people are most effective when they're working within the areas of their greatest strength, than the opposite would also be true- that we are not only less productive, but less satisfied when we our work entails utilizing our weaker traits.

Now here's where my inner Puritan pipes up.  "It's work, you ninny," the black-robed figure scolds, "it's not supposed to be fun or satisfying.  It's supposed to be hard!"

But the Gallup people have a different take on the subject.  Don't we owe it to our employers to give them our best selves?  And doesn't it behoove companies to encourage  employees to discover their strengths and help them find ways to use them in their employment positions, to make them more effective and productive?  Shouldn't that be a win-win for everyone?

Hmm.. it should, I think.

So in the days ahead I'll be delving a little deeper into this idea of strength based leadership, trying to determine just what my strengths (in this context) might be.  Perhaps I can find ways to use them in this new world I'm working in.  And perhaps in the process, I'll gain a better understanding of myself as a person.

I'll keep you posted.

To find out more about strength based leadership, and the StrengthFinder assessment, visit the Gallup Strength-Finder website here.

Sprung

Weather has an amazing effect on the personality, doesn't it?  We're enjoying an unbelievably early spring (it was 76 degrees today!) and people are so full of energy and enthusiasm.  Just give folks a little sunshine and they're good to go - if only we could bottle that.  What's that, you say?  they do?  It's called Vitamin D?  Well, you know what I mean. 

You can't pop a pill and get that euphoric -suck -in -a -deep -breath -of -that -fresh -warm -air feeling that comes from the first warm days of spring.

I'm no exception to the giddiness of the first spring day.  Even a day of paper shuffling at work was made bearable by having the window open and hearing the birds twittering away outside. 

Each year when winter rolls around, I wonder if I'll make it to spring, if I'll survive those long months of  ice and cold and gunmetal gray, if I'll live to feel the sun on my face, to sit on my back porch and drink coffee in the morning, to hang my sheets on the line, to fill my flower beds with impatiens. 

Today, I knew I'd made it again, that I'd been released from winter's entrapment, allowed to breath easy once more.

It's spring.

I'm sprung.

Write On Wednesday: Nervous Wreck

When I can't sleep, I worry.  About work done and undone,  roads not taken, futures unknown.  When I can't sleep, thoughts churn in my mind, roiling and boiling in my brain until I jump out of bed, a complete nervous wreck. Thankfully, sleep doesn't elude me that often anymore. I fall asleep fairly easily, and mostly sleep through the night unless a hot flash or lonely puppy disturbs me.   But the past two nights, troubled by respiratory congestion and fever, I've been thrashing around amongst the covers, unable to rest in body or spirit.

Nervousness runs in our family, I'm told.  My mother has memories of her grandfather suddenly rising from the table in the midst of Sunday dinner and bolting out the door, probably driven away from his meal by the cacophony of seven adult children, their spouses, and innumerable amounts of grandchildren.  "He was an awfully nervous man," she says, and remembers him pacing outside the house, up and down the dirt road running along beside it.

That urge to bolt comes naturally then, the one I feel when all the worries and anxieties overwhelm me, when I have to sit on my hands to keep from throwing wide the door and running for dear life.  Whenever I see movies of a runaway horse, I know exactly the feeling - that wild-eyed look which comes with the desperate need to escape.

There's usually no escaping real life, no matter how nervous one gets.   So I  get in my car if the weather is fine and roll down all the windows, drive as fast as I (safely) can, until the rushing wind sweeps the anxiety out of my mind.  On cold and dreary days, I might put on music (Jason Robert Brown, Bon Jovi) and turn it up loud, close my eyes and spin in crazy circles around the room. 

These are only diversions, they solve nothing, yet somehow they soothe a troubled soul and put the wrecked endings of my nerves back together.

How about you?  What makes you nervous?  How do you handle those time when you feel a nervous wreck?

for Write On Wednesday