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.
^: Reach for Your Peak
September 19, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Set high standards for yourself and stretch your limits. Set short term and easy peaks as well as long term and higher peaks to build on your successes, build your self confidence and build your energy to gain momentum for the big stuff. Reach for the outer limits and rejoice when you accomplish what you formerly thought impossible.
Author and artist Susan Kennedy, a.k.a. SARK, says “impossible” means “I’m possible!”. Peak performers take care of themselves through body, mind, and spirit to ensure they can meet their challenges. Acquire solid, healthy habits to help you attain your peak: restful sleep, nutritionally balanced eating, exercise, emotionally stable relationships, and following your passion.
If you do not have a healthy balance in your personal life, there is no way to be a peak performer in your professional life. Get organized, get your act together, get goals, get support, and get going to reach your peak.
Top Reasons for Turnover
September 4, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
After spending a few decades studying employee recognition, resilience, workplace culture, personal energy and organizational moral. I’ve compiled some fun facts on the issues and top reasons for turnover:
- give meaningless raises
- give insincere thank you’s
- throw them into jobs without training or qualifications
- allow a disorganized, dirty workplace
- freak out by visits from authority
- my way or the highway – because I’m the boss
- overlook unacceptable behavior – inconsistent discipline
- ignore opinions and ideas from staff
- lack of feedback
- micromanage
- and…… drum roll please……. ugly uniforms (who knew?!)
- A Fast Company magazine reader poll asked for the wish list of their subscribers and questioned whether they would prefer dollars or downtime as a reward for a job well done. 61% said they would give up some of their pay for more time with their family. 39% said they would give up some pay for less stress. 59% of men said that given an extra hour, they would spend it with their family. 6% said they would spend the extra hour on work.
- In another Fast Company reader poll: 10% of Americans say stress-induced physical violence has occurred in their workplace. 42% have experienced yelling and verbal abuse in their workplace. 52% sometimes have to work more than 12 hours a day to get their job done. 26% say it’s time for their employer to redecorate. So if you’re spending so much time at work and getting yelled at to do it – you may as well be in a nice environment for most of those hours. The civility of colleagues sometimes goes out the door when placed under stress. When things get heated, be aware of the humanity in the workplace and consciously try to keep it in the workplace for everybody’s sake.
- Stress costs US industry over $150 billion yearly. Stress-related products and services are a $9.4 billion industry. (The GDP of El Salvador is only $11.4 billion.)
- Gallup interviewed two million workers at 700 companies and their conclusion was “The length of an employee’s stay in an organization is largely determined by his relationship with his immediate supervisor.” This translates to people leaving managers, and not leaving companies. What are you doing to pump up your managerial and people skills in order to retain your top talent?
- Some questions to ask your team in order to gain some insight into their most important issues and engage them in meaningful conversations:
- What is the one thing I could do better for you?
- If you were CEO for the day – what would you change to improve the quality of life here?
- What motivates you?
- How would you like to be recognized when you do good work?
- What would a good job look like?
Retaining Internal and External Customers
August 4, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
When employees do not feel empowered, nor energized by an organization (or their boss), they fly the coop. These are some signs that may point to the exit door for you or your colleagues. If you notice anything familiar, you may want to take a look at your morale-boosting programs:
- You are no longer learning – when there is little personal or professional growth left, it’s time for a new challenge.
- You feel sick and tired or a sense of dread and fatigue along with possible headaches, colds can be a physical sign of unhappiness at work.
- You just don’t care – when we get to “I don’t care”, our soul dies and we need to find soul food elsewhere.
- You’ve strayed from your path and find yourself in a place that was meant to be temporary, but just got convenient. Just because you have the skills and aptitude for a job doesn’t mean you should necessarily be doing it.
- Your quality of life is suffering or your work is infringing on too much of your personal life.
- Take a look at your options – would a flex-schedule solve some of your problems, a new job in a different department, or a new industry?
- Take the tingle test – if you talk about your current job out loud – do you get the chills of excitement talking about it? What gives you the tingles when you think about making a living at it?
4 tips to retain your external customers:
- Ensure your customers can get what they want without leaving your facility or website – build an unbeatable bundle of products and services for one-stop shopping and be willing to customize to their needs.
- Don’t forget incentives for customers as well as employees. Baby boomers especially like the loyalty cards where they earn special treatment. Frequent flier miles are like Pokeman for adults. Offer a gift, discounts, insider info, or special offers.
- Create a community of customers and give them additional ways to connect to you and to each other through your website or other events or programs to offer service after the sale.
- Be available when your customers need you, give a 100% satisfaction guarantee (Fun*cilitators does this and has not had any requests for refunds.), stand behind your product and services and generate sincere trust amongst your community.
>: Believe in a Power Greater Than You – Whatever/Whoever It Is
July 19, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Mother Nature, Buddha, Jehovah, Jesus, Mohammed, Allah, God, or the goodness in life – whatever it is that gives you strength to carry on and follow the golden rule, most experts now believe that participating in a religious activity lowers your response to stress and is good for your health.
It doesn’t necessarily mean going to temple or church, it can also mean taking a walk in the woods or being silent on a beach, just doing something that feeds your soul helps you reap the benefits. It may be the social contact of gathering with other worshippers or it may be the meditative quality of a religious and spiritual experience that relaxes our bodies and minds. Whatever it is, your belief carries great strength and energy. With it, you see the big picture and all the wonder that is outside of yourself.
Don’t be afraid to ask your deity of choice for more energy to handle your life. When we expect more, we receive more, and we do more. Believe in yourself and believe in something greater than yourself and believe that you deserve all the goodness that comes to you to help build up your energy. Using meditation or prayer to put yourself in a relaxed, meditative state in peaceful surroundings for at least 15-20 minutes at a time is an effective means for recharging and overcoming fatigue.
Stilling your mind and your body helps to bring clarity and calmness to your life. Assuming a “de-stress” position during meditation increases the benefits while you slowly and deeply inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth using your diaphragm to move the air in and out. Lie on your back with your feet and legs resting on a chair seat or bed, and with your calves at a 90 degree angle to your thighs. This position promotes blood flow to the brain and allows your neck, shoulders, and back to relax and release the fatigue. If you are in a space that won’t allow this position, at least get in a comfortable chair in a quiet place to help you wind down and stop the spinning world for a few minutes.
Prayer can also be implemented during this quiet time to help you gain perspective and gain some guidance on your life circumstances. The power of prayer has been around for eons – why not put it to work for you? Taking the time out just to be quiet and listen to your body and your mind or maybe your higher power, helps us recharge and regain our balance.
Life Balance Begins at Home
July 4, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully, Wealthy Woman | By Gaia Hart
Life balance is vitally important to your happiness, success, and health. There is considerable evidence showing that mishandled stress at home interferes with work performance, and mismanaged on-the-job pressures create or magnify problems at home. Other research shows that the quality of personal relationships strongly influences job productivity, disease resistance, and longevity. Evaluating your various roles in areas of your life and attaching a level of priority to each is another important step toward making more intelligent decisions on where to put your time and energy.
Providing time for Leisure Moments in our lives, helps increase our resilience to stress, helps improve self-confidence and self-esteem, our physical fitness, and mental alertness. Often, when we take time out to re-create, refresh, and renew, we feel more in control of our lives which helps lower stress levels. When was the last time you went out and played to recharge your batteries?
Humor and laughter can build a healthy heart. Cardiologists at the University of Maryland studied 300 participants, half with healthy hearts and half with heart disease. Those with heart disease were 40% less likely to see humor in situations based on a survey and were more hostile and angry than those with healthy hearts. You can test your healthy sense of humor with their survey at http://www.umm.edu/news/humor.html . Another study of 240 heart-attach survivors found those who laughed at comedy videos every day were less likely to suffer a second heart attack during the course of a year. Based on an article by Allen Klein, the Jollytologist, in the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor Newsletter.
Many workers believe that the supportiveness of their boss is an important factor in determining their attitude or outlook at work. Nearly 61% rated this factor as extremely important, while 26% rated the supportiveness of their boss as somewhat important. When choosing a workplace, 87% sought out a place that is understanding of their personal and family needs. Only 4% actually sought out employers who are strict about attending to family needs, while 9% found employers who appear to be unaware of family needs as reported to Careerbuilder.com. Being content at work is a big part of having a balanced life. Take stock of where you work and with whom you work and if it’s not working for you, find something that will.
Tab: Tabulate Your Blessings of Abundance and Show Appreciation
June 19, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Focus your attention on what you have and not on what you don’t have. There is so much to be thankful for that we don’t even think about it until it is taken from us. Start your day thinking about the things for which you are thankful or start a gratitude journal and write down a few daily things for which you are grateful. There is a very good chance they will add up to more than you had imagined.
Start a tradition on Thanksgiving to read your list of grateful things to your partner or family for some surprising warm fuzzies. To bring this idea into sharp focus, visit a third-world country, or a culture with sharply contrasting beliefs and economic situations, and your perception of abundance and gratitude will be forever altered.
When we fill ourselves up being grateful and appreciative, we edge out the resentment and anger that has a nasty way of sneaking in and usurping our energies. (Remember the power of negative energy?) Instead of being angry at being stuck in commuter traffic, change your perception to being grateful for having a nice air conditioned car with a great stereo system and a home or gainful work you are driving to or from. Being grateful and appreciative helps us take less things for granted and helps build up our stores of positive energy for a time when we may need it most.
Appreciation for who you are and for others who provide support to you, the team, the family, or the organization. Gratitude, acknowledgement, and appreciation improve the spirits of the giver as well as the receiver. It is physiologically impossible to be in the state of appreciation and the state of fear at the exact same time. When we remove fear from our lives, we remove a huge energy drain and barrier to gaining more energy.
So if you start to feel fearful, change your mind to feeling appreciative about some other aspect of your life to take your mind off the paralyzing affects of fear. Experience with thousands of audience members around the world confirm the research that appreciation improves motivation, self-esteem, productivity, and positive feelings. When we are appreciated, we feel better about ourselves and better about the person who is appreciating us. It creates a positive energy cycle and a connection between the two people or the person and the organization.
That is why it’s so critical to give recognition to improve retention in organizations. Likewise, it is just as critical to give recognition to improve retention in marriages. The wooing shouldn’t stop after the wedding. When people feel appreciated, they are more likely to keep giving and doing the behavior that gets appreciated. When the appreciation falls short, then the behavior starts to fall shorter, then the appreciation dwindles until there is a mutual shutdown by both parties. Before you know it, the positive cycle of giving and appreciating has turned into a downward spin of “why bother” or “what have you done for me lately?”
If you want to keep up the positive behavior, then you’ve got to keep up the positive rewards, and appreciation is one of the positive rewards we all seek. Be aware, be appreciative, and be grateful for the things and the people that come into your life.
Incentive Insights
June 4, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
The magazine Business 2.0 conducted a reader survey of 6439 people on the single factor that most heavily influences job satisfaction which, by the way, influences life balance:
- 60.3% the work I do is interesting/engaging
- 26% size of my salary
- 7.5% getting along well with colleagues
- 6.2% getting along with my boss
- From a survey of work/life balance by careerbuilder.com; 4 out of 5 respondents expect at least some flexibility from their employer when arranging daily work schedules. Over 29% would like to be able to set their own hours, while 52% would like the ability to negotiate their own hours.
- Many organizations are offering online incentives to make it easier to administer a reward and recognition system that is fresh and timely. Here are some sites that offer the gamut of corporate gifting and incentives:
- www.wishlist.com
- Some of these sites offer just gifts while other offer value-added services such as incentive program setups and program consultants to help you launch your program or pump up your morale with their services. With some of these sites, you can let the recipients choose their incentive or gift that enhances the motivating factor.
- Don’t think incentives and rewards are important? Did you know that?
- 46% of employees leaving a company do so because they feel unappreciated
- 61% said their bosses don’t place much importance on them as people
- 88% said they do not receive enough acknowledgment for their work
- Think again about your organization – what gets rewarded, gets repeated
F10 “Often”: Do What You Love Often
May 19, 2016 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
I’m sure you have heard “do what you love and the money will follow”. Well, so will your enthusiasm. The time you spend on something is directly proportional to the priority you give it in your life. Watch how and where you are spending your time to get a true picture of what you subconsciously think is important. Consciously choosing to do what you love often will increase your sense of control over your time and your life. (And your time is your life energy, remember?)
It may help to schedule a date with yourself on your calendar to block out the time to do what you love. List-makers know the power of the written plan. Take a look at the list of all the fun things and energy inserts you like to do and make time for creative renewal. When we are burned out, rusted out, pooped out, and tuckered out, then we have no energy left to give to others. If we don’t fiercely guard our personal energy by doing what we love often, then we run the risk of running on empty and not being there for others when they need us most. To be at our peak energy, we need to take care of ourselves, employ a healthy lifestyle, and honor our wants and our needs to be true to ourselves for optimum health.
A healthy lifestyle includes: hobbies, hope, honesty, home, heart, holistic thinking, happiness, hand-holding, healing, helping, humming, hanging out, hiking, good hair days, humanity, and honoring the human being inside the human doing.
I couldn’t imagine a life full of energy that wasn’t filled with these things. Currently stress costs American industries over $150 billion annually. What healthy habits are you cultivating to avoid being a statistic? Try including a new activity per week or a couple per month to get in the habit of practicing healthy lifestyle choices for a longer, enriching, and energized life.