Monthly Archives: January 2018

Lifestyle & Health

An Ode To My Prolactinoma

Wasn’t that enough, no?
You had to come back for more.

At first my brain and then my insides
I feel wilted away and sore.

•••

Haven’t you had enough yet?
You leave me here to cry.

My emotions a mess I can’t control
But I swear I try, I try.

•••

Please, just leave me alone now.
I swear there’s nothing more.

You’ve changed my look and then my mood
You’ve ruined me to the core.

•••

Some days are good. Some days are bad. And on the bad days I try to channel that negativity into productive energy. I must say I feel #LIT lately. I am doing a cleanse by @medicalmedium and am on the right track up and up. But on the days I am down and down it helps to write. More on the cleanse in another post 🙂

Creative Juices, Productivity

The Anatomy of a Team

Trim the Fat

If someone or something is holding the team back – at first, try to keep them up to speed. And if at first, you don’t succeed, try again one or two more times. If you truly put your best foot forward and nothing is changing – trim the fat. No hard feelings but if you want the team to succeed you have to leave behind the things that are holding you back.

Build the Muscles

Challenges are good – they are what keep a team working closely together to solve a problem or objective. Keep them coming. You do not want to burn out your team but you constantly want to keep them challenged. And just like building muscle in the gym – it needs to be replenished and repaired afterward. After a team’s accomplishment, give them a pat on the back and celebrate the ups and downs – that powers the team to want to succeed time and time again.

Readjust the Bones

Sometimes when building a team we think of it like a puzzle. The right pieces all need to fit in the right spaces. But real life is not that simple. It is okay to rearrange a team so that they can be as efficient and motivated as possible. Maybe it is as simple as reworking a seating arrangement for optimal workflow or it could be that a team member you originally brought on for one job is actually better or more motivated at something else so let them shine there.

Fuel the Energy

Work hard and play harder – the motto I have always taken with me through my career so far. Working together on projects is a grind and honestly, it sometimes depletes a team of their solid energy. But if you can insert happiness, laughs and team-building activities throughout intense projects or work – I think you will find that it fuels the team’s energy and motivation.

Stretch the Thinking & Doing Muscles

Maybe your team is absolutely unstoppable at what they do. That is amazing, however, it is important to break up the routine every once in a while. If you keep drilling a team to do the same thing over and over again because they rock at it then they are building really strong muscles and thinking but are they learning and growing? We need to stretch these muscles too. Whether that is just encouraging your team members to work on their passion projects or if you can throw them small little projects between the big ones.

Productivity

Head in the Clouds

Link

My dreams of unusualness are keeping me awake at night. My dreams of success are holding me back from being present during the day. Which is my philosophical lead into Dreams vs Goals.

Dreams, in my opinion, are amazing. But it is how we use them, learn and grow from them that is where it gets tricky. I’m not going to define dreams but it is relatively common to hear that dreams are the inner workings of our subconscious mind. So with that said, I think dreams are important and should be listened to. They may be telling us something we know deep down but have not had the time or courage to really act on it.

But what is a dream without action? It’s an empty cloud that soon will evaporate into nothing. This is where goals come in. To achieve a dream you need to pave the way through stepping stones or goals. Sometimes our dreams are BIG and we get discouraged because it seems the path to get there is completely immeasurable but if we start to set small goals to check off, the list suddenly becomes a little bit easier. No item on the checklist is too small. So really, what am I saying with all of this…

  1. Write your dream down. Or better yet make a dream (vision) board. This helps to remind you what it is you are working towards. Visualization is key.
  2. Stay focused. Set benchmark goals in what you can do to get closer to your dream. Have them written down, but not in stone – it is okay if they slightly shift or change – as long as that is inline with your ultimate dream.
  3. Be realistic with your goals, treat some more like habits and be patient with yourself as you develop these. Consistency is key in making a change stick.
  4. Be okay with your dreams changing. If you reach one of those small goals towards a dream and it is not at all what you wanted, move on to the next and learn from that. If it even goes as far as to mean your dream is maybe no longer your actual dream, that is okay too, just repeat steps one through three.

Now, get after those dreams.