Posted by Sara Hand, Perspective Consultant On July 7, 2010
Every so often I really am tempted to have someone just take care of the yard for me. (That does not mean that everyone reading this with a landscape business should call me.) Because, if someone else took care of it, I would miss out on all the important stuff I am supposed to learn through the experience of getting out there. For those who have received my newsletter in the past, you have read about butterflies, weeds, micro-climates and a host of other yard related topics. Well this week it’s about potato vine or kudzu. Let me explain what I mean.
Looks beautiful!
A number of years ago we built a new house on a wooded lot, a heavily wooded, previously un-cleared or ever mowed au-natural lot. This gave us a head start on that Florida landscape, that Sunken Gardens’ look that I love. It also gave us some interesting plants…like potato vine. If you are unsure what this is, think of driving on I-75 and those beautiful vines that fill the wooded sides of the road. That is what the back third of our lot looked like, with some beautiful native plants that we wanted to keep and some palmettos and palms…so we cleared this by hand.
This week working in my backyard, I realized that it is just like some of the other areas of my life. I may have been eating well, exercising, and taking my supplements or maybe I have been pursuing personal development by reading or maybe I have made a commitment to manage my finances more diligently and have been more careful in my spending. However, maintaining these habits is more than 21 days to a different life. 21 days is a start, but real lifelong development of behavior means periodically checking in to make sure that there are no little pieces of that old weedy behavior trying to rear its ugly head.
Looks can be deceiving...
I am still clearing by hand! Now it isn’t what it was. But I still have to be diligent, I still have to get out there and rescue the palmettos from this lovely, encroaching, invasive vine that would take over the world if there were not people like me. Although this vine has less of a hold on my yard year after year, like my life and the things that are important to me…auto pilot is not an option. Have you checked in lately to see how your garden is doing?
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Posted by Sara Hand, Perspective Consultant On January 6, 2010
The New Year is here and the list of things that you are going to do and accomplish is formidable. I applaud you for thinking big. Yet, one of the most common causes for failur
e is trying to do it all now!
In goal setting with clients, we create a list of all we want to achieve…to experience…to share in the coming year. Then we take a simple one page overview of the year with only the titles of the months on it and divide the objectives from our yearly “to do list” under the titles. There is a desire to want to place most of the items in January…let’s get them done and get them done NOW!
However, most of us have heard the question, “How do you eat an elephant?” and know the answer is “One bite at a time!”
This last year has been challenging to most everyone. Whether business has been good or bad, everyone has had to make some changes of some sort. For many the list of changes to incorporate is long. Instead of focusing on how far and how much still needs to be down…talk about an elephant…what one thing could you do today? What one thing would be a good choice today to make the most difference in your life, in your business? And then tomorrow, choose one thing.
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Posted by Sara Hand, Perspective Consultant On September 21, 2009
Seeds of greatness lie within each individual. For many, those seeds will remain just that, seeds of unrealized potential and possibility. From others greatness will emerge. Lives will be changed and the world impacted as their choices ripple outward.
What makes the difference between those that become and those that don’t? Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Sara Hand, Perspective Consultant On June 2, 2009
As people squeeze out the last of the summer vacations, the kids get ready to go back to school. Life will soon go back to a different sense of order and routine…or will it?
Bob, an uncle tells a story of laying pipe within a nuclear power plant. In their calculations, they would measure off of a pencil dot. As a supervisor, he spoke to the men of “centering” off that point. A younger worker insisted that they “were centered”…Bob let it go…sometimes your staff learns best by experience. Although it was only the outside edge of that point, several hundred yards later that equaled almost an inch…in a nuclear plant that is a lot!
”Vacation habits” like souvenirs of summer, love to “stow away” in my day to day activities. Unless I am vigilant and periodically take inventory…it could be Christmas before I notice. So every so often, I revisit my goals and action plans to see if I am still on track.
Hidden in my daily routine are the secrets to whether I am successful or not. Periodically, tune your instrument, calibrate the thermostat…take an inventory. When I am where I am not supposed to be, I am vulnerable to bad choices and quick fix solutions…the lotto is never the answer to “bad” money management habits, just as the vending machine is not a good answer to a missed meal.
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Posted by Sara Hand, Perspective Consultant On June 2, 2009
Crises: figurative a point at which a change must come, either for better or worse; deciding event
In my life I identified a moment, when a change needed to happen. That change would take place in me, however initially I had no idea what this change would look like. I am still walking this process out, but day be day the components of this change become more evident. For many people I work with, this moment, this epiphany of “something has to give” is what they would call a crises.
Crisis is not generally a conscious choice. However, once there, the very definition of crises indicates the necessity of choice. This “choice” is where the opportunity lies. Will I choose the easiest way, will that be the best choice for me? Or will I choose to do the hard things?
Mothers Against Drunk Driving…The Amber Alert… The National Kidney Foundation… Easter Seals… Alcoholics Anonymous… Susan G. Komen for the Cure… Organ donors “leave a life that keeps on living.” Only a few of the choices made.
Each one of us will face points in which change must come. Will our choices be mired in our own pain? Or can one person, one decision at a time make a difference?
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