As the clock strikes midnight tonight, many people all over the world will be cheering and celebrating a new year. For many, a new year symbolizes more than just a change in calendar digits. The New Year symbolizes the possibility for a better tomorrow. Many people are inspired to create New Year’s Resolutions such as being a better person, losing weight, finding a better job, or spending more time with family just to name a few. I think everyone, regardless who you are, can always find something they can improve to make them a more well rounded individual. So if you’re thinking you want to have a New Year’s Resolution but aren’t quite sure what you want it to be, here’s some suggestions I thought of…
Volunteer
Speaking for myself, I’ve felt great internal satisfaction each time that I’ve volunteered. It feels really good to give back to the community and help others if you have the ability to do so. I have volunteered at food banks packing up boxes of food, I’ve also collected clothes for Dress for Success who provide work clothes and career development to disadvantaged women and I’ve organized and/or participated in multiple disease related fund raising events. I have to say that all of these activities have given me more fulfillment than a day’s pay. So if you are looking for a small way to make a big impact in your life, as well as someone else’s, I say volunteer. This is one place you will always be needed and they will always be happy to see you.
Make a personal date
Do something just for yourself, by yourself once a week. Something as simple as a candle lit bubble bath, a good book and warm blanket, an old classic movie, a long walk...just take some relaxing time out for you.
Take a risk
And I don’t mean something little like eating chocolate when you’re on a diet. I mean a big risk that scares you and might even make you think you can’t do it…then…you DO IT! Something like, apply for a promotion, change careers, join an activity group etc. So think of one thing that has always held you back because of fear, and then overcome it. There’s a saying I love “The only things in life you regret are the risks you didn’t take”. So, TAKE IT!
Create a Bucket List
A bucket list is a list of all the things you want to accomplish or see in your life before you…well…kick the bucket. I have an ongoing list that I keep on my computer and honestly, over the years it has come in handy. Sometimes if I’m looking for something to do, I refer to my list. I have things as little as parks I’d like to go hiking in, to places I want to travel to sky diving. So create your list and then get to doing them and check them off one by one!
Challenge yourself…
I firmly believe if you aren’t continuing to challenge yourself, then you aren’t growing as a person. I read somewhere once that challenging yourself develops a healthy self esteem. So think of something you’ve always wanted to tackle and then take it on! It could be anything from a home improvement project to learning another language or a book that’s a tough read (I have one of these right now that I am trying to get myself to tackle. It’s called House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves). I feel I challenge myself every time I write for my blog. Of course, the world won't end if you do not challenge yourself, but the building blocks of success can be found in tackling hard projects.
Get a hobby
I believe many people lose their hobbies as they get older. I think sometimes life just gets in the way and your hobby takes a back seat. But having a hobby is a great way to meet new people and do something you really enjoy. It can be anything from joining a sports league like softball or bowling to knitting or scrap booking, taking yoga or picking up that instrument you used to play when you were in high school. Like they say, in order to be interesting, have some interests.
Create a vision board
If you’ve ever read the book or watched the DVD The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(book)) then you know what I’m talking about. The Secret is all about The Law of Attraction which says that our thoughts, both conscious and unconscious can basically attract the things that you want. It suggests having a vision board where you display all the things you wish for your life and have it in an area that is visible to you every day as a constant reminder of what you desire. So think about the things you want for your life and then display them on a vision board and see if The Law of Attraction can work for you.
Read a self improvement book
There’s so many out there that I have found beneficial. I mentioned my favorite book in a previous blog, The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav but there are so many amazing, well written ones out there. Self improvement books are a great way to experience personal growth. If you’ve never read one, you’d be surprised how much you can take away from reading a book of this type and incorporate it into your life and your personal development. Some books can be a tough read for some people so if you decide to try this, maybe it could also be the challenging thing you do for yourself.
Practice compassion
The world can use more compassionate people. I try to be compassionate of others and try to treat others how I want to be treated. I love the quote by Gandhi “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” If everyone practiced compassion, the world would be a much better place. The next time you’re out, think of this and see where you can incorporate it into your own life. It can even be something small like saying hello to a stranger, holding the door for someone or lending a helping hand to someone in need.
Tackle your weakness
Think about what your weakness is and then improve it. Are you a terrible speller or awful at math, do you curse too much, do you not have a large enough vocabulary? Whatever your weakness is, figure out how you can work on it and then challenge yourself to overcome it.
Set goals
They could be long term or short term, big or small but everyone should have goals. So define your goals in life and continually evaluate your current situation to make sure you are still going in the right direction to reach your goals.
Well, as 2009 comes to a close, so does this blog. I hope that you find something valuable listed here that you could use to enrich your own life. I wish everyone a HAPPY and HEALTHY New Year filled with lots of LOVE, LAUGHTER and HAPPINESS.
As Benjamin Franklin said “Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each New Year find you a better man.”
Christmas is my favorite time of year, not because of all the presents but because of the energy that seems to exist at this time of year. As much as I think the gift giving part of the holiday season has become too commercialized, I love the Christmas music and the gorgeous decorations in all the stores. I’m not one of those people though that makes myself crazy buying gifts, to me that loses the whole purpose of the holiday. I don’t make myself stressed out running all over the place or go into debt to buy tons of gifts. To me, the holiday is about spending the day with my family, eating too many desserts, listening to Christmas music and watching all the kids go crazy ripping open their gifts. Another thing I love about this time of year is New York City. Every year I go into the city to see the tree, look at all the decorated store windows, watch the people ice skate in Rockefeller Center and Bryant Park and sometimes fit a Broadway play into the day’s festivities. It’s a great way to spend a day during the holiday season.
I was trying to recall my favorite childhood memory from this time of year. I think it would have to be the family vacations to “The North Pole”. For a few years as a child, my parents brought me and my sister, along with 2 other families, which totaled 13 people altogether. The North Pole was really upstate New York but as a kid I really thought I was going to the place where Santa lived…there was even an actual pole in the middle of the “resort” made out of snow! I don’t’ remember a lot about those vacations but I remember staying in what I think was a log cabin, seeing Santa and his elves walking around, doing lots of kid oriented activities like decorating a Santa hat with my name in glitter and making various Christmas things out of those fuzzy wire pipes. That was a really nice vacation for us kids so I have to say “thank you” to my mom and dad for giving up what could have been a more “adult friendly” vacation to make memories for me and my sister at “The North Pole”.
Now, switching gears but staying in the Christmas theme, I thought I’d share some interesting fun Santa facts. Here in America, whenever we think of Santa, we think of a red and white older man with a bushy white beard and big belly who “Ho, Ho, Ho’s” down the chimney with presents in the middle of the night. Although this symbolic image is known around the world, many countries have a different image associated with the tradition of Christmas and gift giving. In Italy, La Befana is a good witch who dresses all in black and brings gifts to children on the Epiphany, 6th January. In Holland, Sinterklaas sails in on a ship arriving on the 5th of December carrying a big book which tells him how the Dutch children have behaved during the past year. Good children are rewarded with gifts and his assistant, Black Peter, takes the bad ones away. In Germany Saint Nicholas also travels with an assistant, known as Knecht Ruprecht, Krampus, or Pelzebock, and comes with a sack on his back and a rod in his hand. Good children receive a gift, but naughty children are punished by the assistant with a few hits of the rod. In many Spanish countries; Spain, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and South America, the children wait for the Three Kings to bring their Christmas gifts. In France, Father Christmas or Pere Noel brings gifts for the children. Switzerland has the Christkindl or Christ Child who bears gifts. In some towns children await the Holy Child and in others, Christkindl is a girl-angel who comes down from heaven bearing gifts. The Scandinavian countries celebrate with an elf, called the Julenisse or the Juletomte who bears gifts. And in England Father Christmas, a more serious and thinner version of Santa Claus brings gifts. North America is really the only country that associates the red and white jolly man with his sled and reindeer flying throughout the night of December 25th.
Do you know how the St. Nicholas image came to be this image? Well, depending on your age, you may already know this, but truth be told, I had no idea until I researched it. The American Santa was done mainly by Coca-Cola, the soft drinks company. Coca-Cola was struggling to sell cold drinks in the winter season and wanted to figure out a way to associate their product with the holiday season. Santa Claus had this enormous task facing him every Christmas Eve to go around the world distributing gifts to children everywhere. Obviously from all the flying and climbing in and out of chimneys all night, Santa would get tired and thirsty, so what better idea than to have Santa taking a break in his rounds to enjoy a Coca Cola? The scene with a red and white, round belly Santa drinking a Coca-Cola became synonymous with the winter season advertisements.
So as I “wrap up” (pun intended) my blog, I thought I’d share this short but nice Christmas poem I came across.
Christmas Poem ~ by Oren Arnold
Christmas gift suggestions:
To your enemy, forgiveness.
To an opponent, tolerance.
To a friend, your heart.
To a customer, service.
To all, charity.
To every child, a good example.
To yourself, respect.
Wishing all of you a wonderful Christmas Day! I hope that everyone has a place to keep them warm, enough food to keep them from being hungry and family/friends to enjoy their day with.
I am INFJ…Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Judging. Know what this means? Well, neither did I until my Vice President came to me a few years ago asking me to observe my fellow colleagues using the Myers Briggs Type Indicator assessment. I was like….Sure! Absolutely! Yes, of course I know what that is! And then I quickly went online to gather as much information as I could to familiarize myself. Of course my VP realized I wasn’t a psychologist, nor remotely close to being able to accurately analyze their behavior, but he was looking to get a raw assessment of his team. So for an entire week during their annual sales meeting, I had to sit in the back of the room and secretly study their behavior using the Myers Briggs Type Indicator assessment. The reason I needed to “secretly” observe is so they didn’t change their normal behavior. For those of you that don’t know, like me, MBTI is a questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. Many companies use the MBTI as a tool for leadership training and development.
There’s lots of literature you could read if you wanted to learn about the MBTI assessment and how to use it. But for the purpose of my blog, I’ll simply say that, basically it’s observing behavior using four attitudes: Extraversion-Introversion and Judging-Perceiving as well as four functions Sensing-Intuition and Thinking-Feeling to determine how people take in information, make decisions and deal with the outer world.
So anyway, after doing this assessment of my team, I was really interested in learning more about my own personality type. I came across this online version of the test and my results were quite interesting! I have to admit I was shocked at the accuracy of the results as I feel this is spot on to my personality. Now, I know many things can alter a test’s results such as your mood at the time of taking it, having it in paper form rather than online etc however, given that the results indicated that I am “little more than one percent of the population”…I’ll go with it! I always knew I was an original! :-).
Take the test and see what you can learn about yourself! I believe this is an abbreviated version of the true test but it’s still fun to take. http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp
Here is a summary of my personality type:
Idealist Portrait of the Counselor (INFJ)
Counselors have an exceptionally strong desire to contribute to the welfare of others, and find great personal fulfillment interacting with people, nurturing their personal development, guiding them to realize their human potential. Although they are happy working at jobs (such as writing) that require solitude and close attention, Counselors do quite well with individuals or groups of people, provided that the personal interactions are not superficial, and that they find some quiet, private time every now and then to recharge their batteries. Counselors are both kind and positive in their handling of others; they are great listeners and seem naturally interested in helping people with their personal problems. Not usually visible leaders, Counselors prefer to work intensely with those close to them, especially on a one-to-one basis, quietly exerting their influence behind the scenes.
Counselors are scarce, little more than one percent of the population, and can be hard to get to know, since they tend not to share their innermost thoughts or their powerful emotional reactions except with their loved ones. They are highly private people, with an unusually rich, complicated inner life. Friends or colleagues who have known them for years may find sides emerging which come as a surprise. Not that Counselors are flighty or scattered; they value their integrity a great deal, but they have mysterious, intricately woven personalities which sometimes puzzle even them.
Blessed with vivid imaginations, Counselors are often seen as the most poetical of all the types, and in fact they use a lot of poetic imagery in their everyday language. Their great talent for language-both written and spoken-is usually directed toward communicating with people in a personalized way. Counselors are highly intuitive and can recognize another's emotions or intentions - good or evil - even before that person is aware of them. Counselors themselves can seldom tell how they came to read others' feelings so keenly. This extreme sensitivity to others could very well be the basis of the Counselor's remarkable ability to experience a whole array of psychic phenomena.
Mohandas Gandhi, Sidney Poitier, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Goodall, Emily Bronte, Sir Alec Guiness, Carl Jung, Mary Baker Eddy, Queen Noor, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela are examples of the Counselor Idealist (INFJ).
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