Winter Moments

Instead of hibernating like a bear, I have used my winter moments to do some winter reflections. I hope this provides some warmth for you today.
A Best Day
Every day is a new beginning to live life fully and allow potential to flow and be fulfilled.
One of my favourite sayings from my 5 year old daughter is ‘today is the best day of my life’, she says this at least a couple of times a week. I retort ‘of course it is, because today is all that matters’.
What if we did live each day as the best day of our lives, what would it look like, how different would it be from each and every other day. Would I experience less groundhog days, days that feel they are a repeat of the previous? Would I get more done, or less done? Would it be a faster or slower?
What if every day was framed to be the best and get the best from one another, how would our work places look, how would our families behave? If we are not framing our lives this way, how are we framing them? Are our intentions to create mediocre or stressful work days? Do we design our work flow and teams for people to step up and use their talents or do we just assume people will thrive and achieve in any situation.
Please try this experiment - frame every day for a whole week as the best day of our lives, I wonder what we will discover…

Acknowledgement
I have recently been running focus groups with the intention of discovering customer’s real experiences and using this as research to learn and improve my client’s offerings. What I am discovering is that you can put 7 people in one room and they all have their own stories. The variation of experiences is quite extraordinary even though they were supposed to have experienced the same offering.
Their interpretation of reality needs to be heard and acknowledged and not judged. People’s body language and presence changes when they are heard, their faces soften up, their body opens up and they seem to have a weight taken from their shoulders.
Validation of the experiences we have in life is an important aspect of our being heard and being alive. I often hear people say ‘I don’t understand XYZ’s view, how could they think this way’. Many times I think people should be saying ‘I don’t agree with XYZ’s view’, understanding and acknowledging someone’s view is sometimes all people require. We don’t have to agree with what they are saying, we can just validate what we are hearing. I think this helps with creating more harmony and less conflict in our communication and relationships. Try acknowledging people around you, see what happens next…