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.
*: Star in Your Own Life
January 19, 2017 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
This isn’t a dress rehearsal; it is opening night every single day. Practice putting your best foot forward; little eyes are upon you. Work on yourself to be the star of the show and shine in your own spotlight. A former Parks and Recreation slogan states “Life, be in it!” A good motto for living a luscious life.
What does your ideal life look like? What does success look like to you? How would you set the stage, and what specific details and characteristics would be present if you lived as the star in your own show? Take a couple hours to be alone with your thoughts and write down in graphic detail what your ideal life would look like. Take a look at your ideal day and then take inventory of what you already have from that list, then identify the gaps.
Write down specific steps to take to attract whatever you don’t already have in your life and take note of all the things from your ideal day list that you already have in your life. Celebrate the things from your ideal day listing that you already have in your life. It means you are on the right track. This one activity of being the star, producer, and director or your ideal show is one of the single most powerful visualization techniques and life changing exercises I have encountered.
Once you have your list, you are on your way to creating the Treasure Map of pictures depicting your ideal day and your ideal life that was mentioned previously. So get ready to dance the La Vita Polka – the dance of life and get ready to shine as the star of your own show. What are you doing to prepare for opening night?
Improving Meetings, Morale, and More
January 4, 2017 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Seems we can’t get away without having meetings. Communication is a key element to empowered workplaces and effective employee morale. But it seems that so many get it wrong when it comes to hosting meetings. What is up with that? To help pump up the effectiveness of meetings; I share the following tips.
If your meetings are becoming stale, try www.effectivemeetings.com with lots of tidbits for running terrific meetings.
Improve your all-employee meetings
- Draw on the experience of top performers and celebrate the successes of others – have them share their stories.
- Work actively with professional speakers to familiarize them with your organization.
- Encourage informal interaction with round tables and allow for socializing activities.
- If you are presenting awards: staff should participate in the selection of rewards.
- Employers should reward measurable activities or a point system.
- Offer reward that have some brag value – offering cash may be fleeting.
- Recognize employees who talk up the company and spread good words.
Improve morale with the five R’s
- Rewards: check competitor’s salaries, perks, and benefits packages and exceed it or get more creative to retain top talent.
- Room to grow: offer a chance to grow professionally and personally and advance skills through a mentoring program, promotions, and training.
- Recognition: Practice regular formal and informal praise and appreciation. Generation X and the incoming Millennials are used to getting feedback every 60 seconds with computer games and expect to know where they stand and get noticed for it. We tend to get antsy just waiting for our computers to download and that’s only 22 seconds. An annual appraisal won’t cut it.
- Respect: Make a determined effort to listen with an open mind and show genuine respect to avoid the “Because I’m the boss” attitude.
- Reasonable Workloads: Productivity will decline if workers are expected to produce 110% all the time. People need time to renew and refresh to avoid burnout and especially since September 11th, we need to understand that there will be a general defocus in work and productivity. Offer flexible work schedules, job sharing, telecommuting, and compressed workweeks.
&: Think About all That the World Has to Offer, and, and, and…
December 19, 2016 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
There is so much out there to do and learn and see and experience. How can anybody be bored for one second? It can be overwhelming at times, but it is all ours for the taking if we choose to become participants instead of spectators. Live as a lifelong learner and you will never be bored. Keep opening your mind to new experiences and accept the stimulation of change and challenges to keep your energy flowing, your neurons firing, and your brain expanding. If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it – so start exploring and discovering.
Check out books, surf the Internet, take adult education classes, attend seminars and conferences, participate in recreation programs, and travel to local or exotic destinations to expand your horizons. Keep growing your dendrites in your brain to keep yourself vital by continuously flexing that muscle in your head by doing crossword puzzles, reading, painting, and other activities that keep you moving and thinking and trying new things. Boredom is a state of mind and drains our energy quickly. Decide to be a discoverer and get curious about the world to defend against energy drainage.
Freedom from Fatigue
December 4, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
We’re a nation of over-doers, over-schedulers, and over-achievers which makes us fatigued both emotionally and physically. I offer some ideas from past clients on how they fight fatigue in the workplace along with my personal experience and research in fighting personal fatigue. Read on to help energize yourself and your workplace.
- SAS of Carey North Carolina, a privately held software company with a turnover rate a fraction of that of its competitors. They offer free amenities on their park-like campus including a health club, medical care, M & M’s every Wednesday, a chance to have lunch with their kids at the subsidized childcare center, and subsidized country club memberships to the company-owned golf course. They have also arranged for local businesses to bring their services on campus such as dry cleaning and car detailing to save worker’s energy, effort, and downtime from work running errands. They know that if workers are being taken care of and are happy, then they won’t feel fatigue, and will take care of the customers and that will make the owner as well as the customers happy. It’s all about removing the everyday irritants and obstacles to living a balanced life so workers can focus on their work without extra stresses of running errands and juggling life priorities.
- I asked one of my clients, trucking industry executives, what they did to energize their workplace and here are some of their answers:
- Have a spring bonnet contest with each department entering one bonnet to be modeled by one of their team members. Judges for this Alabama company selected the one with a live chicken on it as the winner. The gentleman in the audience declared that his bonnet would have won if he had known the use of livestock was allowed.
- One Fedex exec goes out on the floor and sings happy birthday to each person on their special day and he also sends candy bars with notes attached for those doing a great job.
- Another Fedex manager has found that asking his customers to supersize their order (similar to the fast food industry) is helpful as a recovery strategy. When following up with a customer whose package went astray, the liaison asks for another chance to do an even better job and it has resulted in tens of thousands of extra income – just by asking them to supersize their order.
- A Hilton Generational Time Survey of 1220 adults asked Americans how they felt about their lives:
- Need more fun – 68%
- Need a long vacation – 67%
- Often feel stressed – 66%
- Feel time is crunched – 60%
- Want less work, more play – 51%
- Feel pressured to succeed – 49%
- Feel overwhelmed – 48%
- When we look at these statistics, it seems even more important to evaluate how our workplaces are helping our employees balance their personal and professional lives and to make it easier for them to do the job we pay them to do.
- Seven Kinds of Tired:
- tossing and turning tired – not enough sleep
- everybody-but-you tired – overdoing it, too busy
- ditching-your-diet tired – skipping meals, overeating, unhealthy choices
- allergy tired – worn out seasonally, watery eyes
- hard-times tired – troubled home, lost your job
- under-the-weather tired – listless and groggy
- exercise-overdose tired – always on the go, overactive and stressed to fit your fitness in
That are you doing to fight fatigue at work? What are you doing to energize your personal life and your physical self? Take steps now to enjoy freedom from fatigue – you’ll be happier in the long haul.
#: You are More Than Your Number
November 19, 2016 | Posted in Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
We seem to be judged by our #s: our zip code, weight, age, cholesterol, body fat %, net worth, IQ, # of people we supervise, and if we have a cell phone #, pager #, or toll-free #. Our level of contentment and personal energy seems to fluctuate with what we believe to be the acceptable standard number. Your size, score, or worth are just #’s.
Focus your positive energy on being the best person you can be with what you have right now. Live larger than life and make adjustments as you see fit while you celebrate what you have, who you are, and what you can do outside of your assigned #’s.
Creating a feeling of safety and security in our lives relieves us from some of the stress and anxiety about our future or whatever #’s we “should” have in our lives. When we experience safety and security at home, we can renew and recharge to prepare us to go out in to the world. Once we are secure enough with our own #’s, be it bank accounts, income, weight, investment accounts, or house size, we can move forward with a stronger sense of ourselves and be more secure with who we are.
Creating a safe type of environment at work and at home frees us to focus more on experiences that will move us towards self actualization. We can have a physically safe place or an emotionally safe place and both types of safety are needed in order to feel fully secure with our environment and grow within it.
When we worry about our foundational needs such as food, clothing, shelter, safety, and security, we cannot readily move forward with an unencumbered and unburdened hearts. Once we have our basic needs fulfilled, we are open to reaching for new heights without the real need to worry about the #’s that are not as critical to our survival. Embrace all that you are and all that you have and know that you are so much more than your #’s.
Your Housekeeping and Hard-Work Habits Are Telling Your Story
November 4, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
All work and no play make Americans sick according to a study of 632 people by Oxford Health Plans that found 1 in 5 workers can’t use up annual vacation time because their jobs are so demanding. 33% never leave their offices once they arrive at work and that same number work and eat their lunch simultaneously and the pace of work is so relentless that 34% say they never have downtime. Taking a vacation for creative renewal is essential to staying healthy and productive, although the US gives the least vacation time among the industrial nations. (US – 13 days vs. Italy – 42 days).
Your work space may be telling on you. An IOGEAR survey found that 73% of respondents said their impressions of colleagues were influenced by the way their desks were organized and 70% said a messy desk was perceived as less career driven.
Although I advocate some executive toys and stress-busting items, there needs to be appropriate balance to alleviate the perception that you may not be a team player. On the other hand, a desk strewn with fast food wrappers and old coffee cups may denote an unbalanced workaholic. Visit these sites or stores for great organizing ideas for your home or office:
The Container Store
Pier 1 Imports
Target
Other tips from the world of Feng Shui to help improve your space and your energy:
- Tired of being tired – sweep away eyesores to release energy. Every messy pile has a negative force field around it that draws energy and deleting the clutter releases the energy.
- Down in the dumps – lift items off the floor to feel happier since low-lying items attract low, sad energy. Find a higher space to store things to elevate your mood.
- Slim down with less stuff – subconsciously we may be holding onto stuff the same as we are holding onto our extra weight – to protect ourselves and feel less emotionally vulnerable. Try shedding some outdated sentimental items that were once treasured and are now clutter.
Underline: Underline Your Principles and Stand by Your Values
October 19, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Defining your boundaries makes it easier to turn down unwanted offers or requests on your time that are not in alignment with your clearly defined values and principles. Stick by your guns to keep you from wavering and accepting anything that is incompatible with your standards. Doing so gives you the energy to follow through with your plan congruent with your stance.
One in four workers in America have an anxiety-related illness such as stress or high blood pressure, and the sales of antacids, pain killers, and anti-depressants is at an all time high. These signs of the times represent a workforce and a nation out of alignment. Is your body telling you that something is out of alignment in your life?
Take a close look at your work life and personal life and decide if you are acting with congruence. Monitor your body signals and heed the warning signs when it is telling you something is out of kilter. Be rock solid in your principles and your values and make sure that what you do when nobody is looking is what you really stand for – that’s called integrity and that will keep you from the energy drain of covering your tracks or operating below the proverbial line.
Hone in on the goodness of your values dear to your heart and be true to them. Ensure that your work is in alignment with your values in order to avoid energy-sapping stress. Living in congruence with your deeply held beliefs is enlightening and keeps you authentic to your mission here on Earth.
As we grow, our values may shift priorities – be aware of what you value and why, to give you more guidance in your daily choices. Once you truly know your values, it is much easier to say no to requests on your time, which do not correlate to your beliefs.
Clients Comment on Morale-Boosting Ideas
October 4, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
I often get ideas from clients on how they boost morale in their organizations. Here are some of their ideas along with some tidbits I’ve picked up on how to enhance your work experience to live and lead Hartfully:
- Have a mascot for the office who can wear the official badge, pin, or t-shirt of the department. This can be a stuffed animal or beanbag character. Other departments have been known to kidnap the mascot and hold them ransom for pizza or candy. Sometimes the mascot sits at the reception desk to oversee visitors – it adds some playful professionalism.
- One payroll professional wore a crown and a sash that say Payroll Queen when she personally distributed paycheck stubs to the team.
- One accounting firm offered free 15-minute seated massages during the month of April when their team was particularly overworked.
- A city recreation department’s executives hosted a breakfast cooked by them for their organization to kick off the summer staff meeting.
- Another recreation department used some of their own staff in a training film with the theme of COPS – catching frontline personnel staging bad customer service for the film. They also interviewed colleagues about what they thought was good service and the best part about the film was the bloopers and outtakes that they added to the end of the film. The audience went wild as they saw their co-workers goof up and be themselves in front of the cameras.
- The admin staff at a physics lab gets together for weekly lunches during the summer to create fresh salads made from the gardens of the workers with a recipe from an Italian grandmother.
- In similar fashion – another office hosts a cookie exchange over the holidays to expand on the variety of cookies each household offers without all the work of baking different cookies. They take it one step further and deliver extra plates of cookies to the local fire department, police station, and nursing home.
- Special Events Magazine reports that two-thirds of respondents to an online poll believe that in-person interaction tops technology as a communications tool. Some 66 percent of respondents said that technology-video conferencing, Webcasting and the like-is not as effective for communication in meetings as is in-person communication.
- Eliminating just fifteen wasted minutes each day adds up to ninety-one extra hours a year, more than two full workweeks. Organize and energize your space, your stuff, and your life to gain valuable time you can use for more fun in your life.
- Ask yourself what is the best use of your time right now and then act on it.
- Create systems that work with your preferences for sorting papers and stuff – try horizontal surfaces and vertical surfaces for storage bins.
- Look at your time you have allotted for a project and then add to it – things usually take longer than you plan.
- Put your personal and professional appointments on one calendar to avoid double-booking yourself.
- Finally, decide right now to think FAT: file, allocate (give to someone else), or toss.
- Findings in a recent USA Today article: HR experts say employees exposed to stresses such as layoffs are more likely to engage in violent behavior. Nearly 35% of workers say they’ve seen an increase in anxiety and stress-related physical ailments in their workplace in the last year. 27% report a rise in emotional problems such as insomnia and depression.