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Letter From The Editor

Dear Friends,

Very recently I was asked, “Should workers take all of their vacation time? “ Dumb-founded that anyone would even ask such a question, I quickly responded, “Absolutely… yes!” I take vacations, my team takes vacations, and I encourage my clients to take time away too.

Vacation is not only something we earn, but it is also vital to our ability to live a balanced life and the health of our relationships, whether we’re reconnecting with our family, friends, or with ourselves as we lay on a beach in complete solitude!

When we work-work-work, even when we love our jobs, the pace and mental focus it requires drains us a little bit each and every day, and while I’m an advocate of daily recharging with personal plans, I also believe that using the vacation time due you is paramount as well.

Using your vacation helps to provide:

• Balance in your life.
• Opportunity for a full recharge of your personal physical and mental batteries; you get rested and better able to take on the world when you return to work!
• Chance to reconnect with your family; most of us work so much that our families get very little quality time. Instead they get what is left of us at the end of our work day, and vacation is an opportunity to be rested and have uninterrupted quality time with your loved ones.

And while the pressures to do more with less time keeps many people from taking all of their vacation time, it is important to remember why we do the work we do, and that the vacation time we are given is as much a payoff for the work we do as the paycheck we get every week!

So get your sunscreen ready and put together the plan that has your work run smoothly while you are away. Communicate your plans, delegate where necessary and then unplug!

OK you can check your email a few times if you must, but the point is to recharge, reconnect, and enjoy the simplicity of life away from the office. You’ll return energized, refreshed, and if you are paying close enough attention, you’ll also return with hundreds of moments about which you will smile for a long time to come.

Clay S. Nelson

Giving Up Crankiness

Crankiness is an affliction we’re all troubled with on occasion. So, there is no crime involved here and thankfully the options for resolving crankiness are really quite simple, but the very best tool for lifting your spirits is called Clearing.

Clearing is a way of getting all of the mind chatter out of our heads that cause crankiness and our not wanting to play, among other things, and clearing takes on many forms:

• You can write down everything that is racing around in your head and bogging you down and then wad it up and throw it away.
• You can call up a friend and ask permission to say what is go on with you, with the understanding that they aren’t supposed to fix anything. They are just the receiver of the information… there is nothing to fix. They are simply a safe place to get rid of your mind chatter.
• Then there is Trouble Tree, a place you designate to leave all of the stuff that happened during your day outside of your house before you walk in and be with you family.
• You can even build an imaginary box where you visually deposit all the stuff that has you feeling cranky.
• Or your clearing can even take the form of physical exercise. Think about how great it feels to lift weights or participate in a really hard work out when you are cranky!! That is the type of exhilaration that I’m talking about here!

Clearing, whether we’re talking about a mental clearing or a physical release of negative energy, is the very best way to move beyond crankiness! So to the cranky people out there, all I have to say is that you now have a great tool with which to dissolve your cranky ways, and if you choose not to use them you’ve made a choice to stay cranky!

Now that doesn’t feel so great, does it? So why not choose instead to clear when you find yourself being someone you don’t want to be! Remember: You have a choice in how your life turns out; you have a choice to be happy or cranky. Which are you going to choose?

Cubicle Etiquette

More and more, unless you are in an executive management position or work in a home office, we are forced to work in a cubicle environment. It is in the cubicle working environment that we are forced to listen to every one of the multiple telephone conversations “Jannie” has with her best friend, every fight “Frank” has with “Sally”, and then we are obliged to grin and bear the burnt microwave popcorn smell and “Ruth Ann’s” tendency to over do her perfume… working in a cubicle. Don’t you love it?!!?

The truth is that when you work in a cubicle environment and your co-workers are lacking in cubicle etiquette, those around you and the environment can grate on your nerves. So how can you assure yourself of a certain amount of privacy and to have your space respected, even in such an open environment? R-E-S-P-E-C-T!!

Surviving cubicle workspaces takes a respect for communal living by everyone on the team, meaning we have to be aware of others needs as well as our own and balance what the group needs as a whole. It is no different than living with someone; it is all about human to human relationship and the respect thereof of the differences!

Management, of course, can help limit difficulties from the beginning by establishing parameters regarding where food is kept, how loud music should be (if at all), placing limitations on non-work related telephone calls, and even putting efforts into technology that tempers the noise and helps to establish the balanced spatial relationship that is required in a cubicle environment.

Rarely does someone in a cubicle environment create disturbances on purpose. As a matter of fact, disturbances are much more likely to occur simply because the offending party doesn’t realize how loud or smelly (burnt bag of microwave popcorn, too much cologne, etc.) they are being! So when a problem does arise, those who are irritated by loud talking, blaring music, and smelly food, need to ask permission to shoot straight with the “offender”; don’t rant, don’t rave, just be honest. Let them know that what they are doing and how they are doing it is an interruption to your space, and when you do so respectfully, they are much more likely to show you respect in return.

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