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Ending the First Month in the New Year
Whew! Month one in and done.
Are you off to a good start? Did you start and stop and start again? Did you hit your target for January yet?
This is a good beginning, whatever the outcome. You are starting a new process and you are completing your first milestone. Take a look at your actions and results and find something to celebrate – even it’s just sticking to the program!
You are likely in this for the long run and not just a quick accomplishment, so slow and steady wins the race.
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
Starting new practices and habits isn’t a smooth process. After the initial excitement and inspiration wears off and old habits start to call to us, we feel pulled in a couple of directions: moving toward the future that we envision and desire and being tethered to a familiar way of doing things. We start to tell ourselves that the current reality is not so bad….and maybe we just need to live with it.
Fear. Resignation. Hopelessness.
When we know that breakdowns will occur or we may falt…
New Actions in Action
Actions are the only things that produce results. New actions feel awkward at first and sometimes that awkwardness stops us from continuing them.
When you know this might happen, then it’s not a surprise when it does. That’s why you want to keep actions to a very few and repeatable if possible. Feeling awkward lessens with practice. And how we know we are doing something new IS the awkwardness of it…so that is good news!
Have a reasonable expectation of what new actions will produce. Giv…
Get it in Writing
Have you finished writing your goals for the new year yet?
If this is your first time setting goals and putting them on paper, then give yourself a break. Did you get started and distracted? Did you lose your way? Did you need help with articulation but didn’t ask for it? No worries, just sit down and finish it. Even if you only have a couple of things written down, it’s a start.
If you have written goals before and had good results and still haven’t finished, well…are your goals inspirin…
New Year’s....are you ready?
I hope you have made good use of this month to reflect on the past year and start to put pen to paper to create the new one.
Have you completed your goals for this year? Did you make them 12-month goals or did you try to achieve them by Thanksgiving so that you can enjoy the holidays stress-free, with your loved ones?
- What did you learn from this year that you don’t want to repeat next year?
- What new challenges await you?
- What are the areas you want to develop – business skills? Tec…
Christmas
Whether or not you celebrate this holiday or share your life with people who do, this is likely to be a different kind of Christmas. From the pandemic to supply chain challenges, this holiday is surely one to be created.
As store shelves may be emptier than usual, Christmas presents might be replaced with gifts of ‘experiences to be shared’ or home-made treasures or treats from local shops. Maybe we will spend less time on getting presents and more time on being present to each other and to …
Prep for the Holidays
I am hopeful that your year has been strong and that your business has been consistently good each month.
And I am also hopeful that you prepared for HOW you would do business at the end of the year as the holidays approached.
One of the benefits of setting yearly goals (broken into quarters and months) is that you can anticipate and predict the cycles of traffic and buying highs and lows. You can manage how your business will be taken care of and your goals achieved during vacations and h…
The Last Month of the Year
December is a funny month.
For retail showrooms, this tends to be a slower traffic month with a lower average sale. And, like November, it also tends to be a good delivery month, with holidays driving making homes lovely for family and guests.
Residential trade business continues to be strong and retail traffic has started to wane a bit but is still sufficient to hit targets. And trade showrooms can go either way as these are not typical times.
Given the unpredictability, this is a c…
GRATEFUL for YOU
In this Thanksgiving week in America the conversation turns to Gratitude. What am I grateful for? How am I fortunate?
The original Thanksgiving had the Pilgrims grateful for making it through the tough winter and grateful for the friendship and partnership with the Native people who helped them to learn how to live in this New World. I love that as Americans we set aside a day to be present to what we are thankful for, big and small. And that we share this day with loved ones over a special mea…
GRATITUDE and CHALLENGES
It doesn’t take much effort to be grateful for the easy stuff…and we can forget even then.
It’s harder to be grateful for things that didn’t go the way we wanted them to go.
It’s harder to be grateful for the adversity itself and what the opportunity can teach us; a subtler more – dare I say evolved – experience of gratitude that for me that requires practice and effort. It takes work.
I have a solid practice of saying “thank you!” when I am happy with the results (I always say thank you when…
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