As the CEO (Chief Energizing Officer) at Hartful Living including GaiaHart.com and BizBuilderCards.com; I’m a Messenger and Mentor for women entrepreneurs, connecting them to their capacity to energize their work and their lives in the art of living Hartfully. At BizBuilderCards.com, you can make a living through giving with greeting cards and gifts to build your network net worth as an additive to your current business or an easy way to send gratitude and kindness to the world.
Big Picture or Little Picture View of the World
April 12, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Do you have a big picture or a little picture view of the world? Are you stressing over the administrivia or are you focused on the big picture of your life and your career? Take a look at what types of things stress you out – are they the small details, the perfectionism, the imperfect people, the gray areas on the outskirts of the black and white? Sometimes we make our own stresses and create our own energy drains by focusing on things that have less impact than the power we are giving them.
It’s tax season and focusing on numbers is something we all need to do, but getting crazed if your account is 94 cents off isn’t such a big deal in the scheme of things. Of course waiting until the bitter end and not leaving yourself wiggle room can also make you crazed. Step back from some of the situations you find yourself in and see if you’re stressing out because you’re focusing on little picture stuff. Perhaps you need to take a look at the big picture and if the stressors that are affecting you now will really matter in the scheme of things a few weeks, months, or years from now.
The big picture sometimes can pull us through the little picture stuff when things get tough – keeping our eye on why we are doing what we are doing can keep us going. Are you focused on big picture stuff or little picture stuff most of the time? Are you drowning in details or do you have paralysis by analysis? Is it taking your eye off the main goal and draining your energy? You may want to hire out your little picture stuff and have someobody else who loves doing it do what they love and allow you to keep your energy focused on your big picture. It can sure help your sanity – especially at tax time. We can all use a little energy boost at this time of year.
Energizing and Empowering the Women’s Workplace
April 4, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Working with many entrepreneurs lately has been an enlightening experience. The raw energy, sheer joy, purposeful passion and commitment to do what it takes to follow their dreams is an enticing and energizing change from working with employees who are burned out, rusted out and just worn out from the corporate climate.
It revitalizes my spirit to know that the transition can be made from endangered exec to enthusiastic entrepreneur, but it does take a mind-shift and a different way of thinking to move from employee to renegade entrepreneur. Many of whom are women seeking heart-work now that they’ve brought home the bacon in some not-so-fulfilling career. The U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics cite the number of women-owned businesses grew by 20% betweeen 1997 – 2002. They generated $16.2 billion in revenues, while businesses owned jointly by women and men generated $18.3 billion in 1997. Women also make 80% of the buying decisions in a family.
So forget the glass ceiling and find a skylight, then open it up and create your own culture in any type of business you dream of. If you are looking for somebody to lend a hand, lend a step up or step out, then send me an email at Gail@GailHahn.com and I can help you get your life energized and empowered by sharing resources for creating a life you love and setting up your safety net for that transition into your own business.
To Your FUNomenal Success!
Corporate Kindness
March 30, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
There are a couple books out on the topic of corporate kindness and how being nice can actually be a competitive advantage. In The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World With Kindness by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, they explain how friendliness and common courtesy along with how you look affects people’s moods and attitudes towards you. Cheerfulness and being polite and respectful spreads more easily than irritability and facial expressions and body language convey more relevant information than a sales pitch.
It’s all about the notion of consequences and karma – people may forget what you say, but they never forget how you made them feel. They remember acts of kindness as well as rudeness. After all, isn’t business and all of the world about relationships and how we connect with others be it inside or outside our organization?
Another book, The Kindness Revolution: The Company-Wide Culture Shift That Inspires Phenomenal Customer Service by Ed Horrell identifies how companies with stellar street reps for service excellence practice extreme kindness, respect, fairness and genuine niceties. He notes that the opposite of kindness isn’t being mean, it’s indifference. When indifference sets in, then it gives people a bad experience and in a world of choices, the customer (internal or external) chooses to walk. In fact, you can say that about any relationship – when indifference and disrespect and unkindness sets in, most people walk.
With a little more corporate kindness and consideration, I would argue that we would have many more gruntled workers than disgruntled workers. And we could actually save lives…one statistic form the Department of Labor cites that the #2 killer of workers on the job is homicide by a disgruntled colleague or customer. What are you doing to impart kindness in your daily activities? What are you doing to add light to the world? What are you doing to save a life today?
Embrace Imbalance
March 21, 2007 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
I know I’m supposed to be living a balanced life, as I walk my talk showing others how to lead more simplified, balanced lives and prioritize the things that matter. I find myself inundated lately with a symphony of things that seem to command my attention all at once. It’s at this time that I believe we need to embrace imbalance and go with the flow while letting go of some things for the time being.
Perhaps we can’t balance on a daily schedule, maybe it needs to happen over a span of a week or a month. When you know you need to gut through things or a plethora of projects for a month or two, then you brace yourself for a little imbalance during that time, as long as you can reward yourself with new balance at the end of the sprint. Having balance is all good and well, but sometimes it just isn’t possible and we need to get clear and what to do and what to drop.
What do you need to do and what do you need to drop today or this week in order to come back to center, regroup, re-charge and re-energize yourself. Get fiercely focused, get ready for a sprint and then find some fierce fun at the end of it all and reward yourself for your accomplishments. My reward for these past 2 months is a cruise and a trip to Cabo to mix some fun and effectiveness. What’s your reward?
Take the Tingle Test – Career Choices and Dynamic Decisions
March 20, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
When you’re in the midst of making career choices or other decisions about your job, your lifestyle, your surroundings or other business decision; of course you can write out the pros and cons and do a comparative analysis. I’m all for the using a visual to help sort out thoughts and see them in writing. It may make your clear choice jump out at you.
Trying what I like to call The Tingle Test is what really cuts to the chase and gets down to how you feel about a decision. Saying your decision out loud or just holding that vision clearly in your mind should give you a gut check and either make you tingle with excitement or leave you lack-luster. It’s truly getting quiet and listening to your body and how it reacts to a decision as if you already made that decision. After you visualize your decision or say it, how do you feel? Does your hair stand up, do you get tingles down your spine, does a smile appear on your face, do your eyes light up, do you stand taller? All these are signs that your gut says yes to that decision.
If your body doesn’t react positively, then maybe you need to tweak your decision – figure out what isn’t exactly feeling right about it an make some adjustments in order to pass The Tingle Test with flying colors. Stress is what happens when your mouth says ‘OK’ and your gut says ‘No Way’ – that’s when you know you need to regroup and feel energized with a better decision.
Make your decisions dynamic and involve all aspects of yourself to know if you’re OK with that decision. Take The Tingle Test on your next decision and see what happens.
Now I’ve got goose bumps just thinking about my future and opportunities coming into my world…..how about you?
Corporate Kindness: A Competitive Edge
March 19, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
There are a couple books out on the topic of corporate kindness and how being nice can actually be a competitive advantage. In The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World with Kindness by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval, they explain how friendliness and common courtesy along with how you look affects people’s moods and attitudes towards you. Cheerfulness and being polite and respectful spreads more easily than irritability and facial expressions and body language convey more relevant information than a sales pitch.
It’s all about the notion of consequences and karma – people may forget what you say, but they never forget how you made them feel. They remember acts of kindness as well as rudeness. After all, isn’t business and all of the world about relationships and how we connect with others be it inside or outside our organization?
Another book, The Kindness Revolution: The Company-Wide Culture Shift That Inspires Phenomenal Customer Service by Ed Horrell identifies how companies with stellar street reps for service excellence practice extreme kindness, respect, fairness and genuine niceties. He notes that the opposite of kindness isn’t being mean, it’s indifference. When indifference sets in, then it gives people a bad experience and in a world of choices, the customer (internal or external) chooses to walk. In fact, you can say that about any relationship – when indifference and disrespect and unkindness sets in, most people walk.
With a little more corporate kindness and consideration, I would argue that we would have many more gruntled workers than disgruntled workers. And we could actually save lives…one statistic form the Department of Labor cites that the #2 killer of workers on the job is homicide by a disgruntled colleague or customer. What are you doing to impart kindness in your daily activities? What are you doing to add light to the world? What are you doing to save a life today?
You can find these books at the link to Amazon in this publication.
Planning Playtime to Increase Your Energy
March 16, 2007 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Geeze, where has the time gone? I didn’t abandon you – just been up to my eyeballs in deadlines, projects and building a new house. In the midst of it all, I guess there was a slow news day or something, but Stephen Covey’s people notified me that I would be the cover girl for one of their other magazines in the Executive Excellence Publishing family of publications: Health & Fitness Excellence. Visit http://www.EEP.com. For a copy of the article on Planning Playtime to Organize and Energize Your Life, send me an email to Gail@GailHahn.com.
Other news is that this blog will be moving in the near future to another site. I plan on revamping my current website and making the front page a blog so you only need to visit one place.
Here’s a question for you: if you could plan a girlfriend getaway as part of your playtime planning, or just a personal escape to refresh, renew and recharge your batteries; what would be some of the things you would like in your escape haven? What types of activities would you like to do? What types of food? What types of environments? Would you want any guided facilitation or just to “be” in an inspirational place? Let me know your thoughts of what you would like for a FUNomenal Woman Weekend or an Energize Your Life Retreat and I will send you a free report on energy gains and drains.
Thanks for your insight!
Energizing Your Service Experience
January 7, 2007 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Happy New Year to everybody. I’m thrilled to be able to share another article on Customer Service that was published in the December Parks and Recreation Magazine; called Bringing Customers Back. The article was based on the experience that my friends Dr. Diane Blankenship and her family and I had dogsledding in Wyoming. About our adventures and mis-adventures with services that were lacking and how it could have been better to make it a more positive once in a lifestime experience. Those who are members of The National Recreation and Park Association can read it in their magazine and others can visit http://www.NRPA.org and look under publications.
Take a look at the article if you want to learn more about facilitating the 6 phases of the customer experience.
To Your FUNominal Success!