Not a program person!

Ready to make your New Years Resolutions? Going to quit smoking? Drinking? Overspending? Undervaluing yourself? Good luck with that.

I have a friend who is a "program person". You know the type: If weight loss is her goal, she writes a check to the gym, joins the 7AM Tuesday & 6PM Thursday step classes, purchases a bunch of sleek aerodynamic workout clothes, new bouncy shoes, buys the book "Grapefruit Fasts for Every Figure" and begins her countdown. After missing the first Thursday step class, she decides the whole thing is quite useless, the grapefruits are not as tasty as she recalls and she'll wait untill next January to try again. Let's call that a $650 effort toward her goal to lose 10 pounds.

We know the same people who do this with other quests. Want a new career? Take one semi-related class, buy some career books, buy a new resume software program, get tired of the whole idea, drop the class, use the books to hold a door ajar, blah, blah, blah.

Having been raised by a self-respecting AA drop out, I did pick up at least one useful tidbit of life guidance: Take things one day at a time. This is how addicts approach quitting. Just try to quit for today. If you need to start again tomorrow, cool. I feel the same way about weight loss, career planning, physical fitness, etc... Just look at today.

Try this at the start of your day: Have a list of 5 big picture goals for the year. Let's not even call them goals, that is way too much pressure. How about "My Things"? Maybe your My Things List includes

1. Better Marriage
2. Steadily Reducing Debt
3. Job Promotion
4. Organized and Tidy Kitchen
5. Be Healthier

Print about 15 copies of this sheet. Each day, have a goal to have taken at least one step toward one thing becoming a reality. An entry next to better marriage might be something like this...Kissed him before leaving for work. Write theses things down. How simple is that? Some days you may be a super-achiever and have several entries, wow! fantastic.

Here is my point with this: If you screw up, it is only one day! Each day we make thousands of minuscule decisions that impact our big picture Things. Just try to make mostly good decisions each day. Highly structured changes don't come easy. And grapefruit just gets plain old boring!

Scrooge Your Career

Perhaps you have found yourself watching the movie A Christmas Carol, Scrooged, or another version of the Dickens story of personal redemption. Let's consider this story with an eye to our careers or businesses. We cannot change the past, the present is of our own making, and all that remains under our control is our future. Or does it?

I know I have seen and heard many friends with a spirit of despair when it comes to their economic future. We feel betrayed by big industry's failings, our state's poor choices, our employers for not planning for darker times. Do you feel frustrated by customers unable to afford your great product or service? Just as Ebenezer Scrooge looked to Christmas Past and Present with horror, we too can share his joy in looking to our futures. We can shake off what we can't change and change course, look to new directions, find something in yourself that was obscured to you and bring it front and center. Be bold.

Scrooge needed to learn to be generous in spirit with others. I',m going to guess that you've been doing that all along and the neglected one is.... YOU! These are times for Bold Change. Do not be discouraged by the economy we live in. Refuse to participate. Look to the new decade as your personal milestone of great change and growth, just as Scrooge does.

So where do you start with this Bold Change? Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• "What would I do with a million dollars?" You just may find that some of your ideas don't cost a million dollars at all, in fact they may cost nothing.
• "Why do I do what I do for a living?" Again you may be surprised. Is it because you are afraid or just comfortable? What is the back burner career you have dreamed of making real?
  
• "If I were to be assured that my circle of friends and family would support a change in my career/business/economic standing, what would I do differently?" When you've answered that, consider why you care so much about what other people think!

Your future is yours. Isn't that great? Don't be a captive of routine or expectation. Be bold and unafraid. Go back to school, relocate, kick your grown kids out of house, change the way you promote yourself and your business. Just do something to take charge of your future.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Life!
Your friend, Mary Rogers

I'll take my troubles, please!

In a Los Angeles family court waiting area is a poster with the following saying:

"If everybody put all their problems in one big pile,
upon seeing each others,
we'd grab our own and run!"

Ain't that the truth. As I was about to vetch about some silly complaint of my day to a woman I know, I stopped myself, realizing that my worst day is ten times better than this woman's BEST day. Gratitude can do wonders for lifting your spirits, especially when we see so many needy folks and families around us.

Even on the lighter note of our silly inconveniences, like a payment that got lost in the mail or the perfection of a fresh manicure only lasting half a day, these are so inconsequential in the big picture. It is that big picture perspective that will ground you and bring clarity about what is and what is NOT important.

The drama of your day turns to sand in the wind when you hear on the news that a family in the next town has lost their home and 2 cats to a house fire. Who cares that your husband doesn't put the dishes away, you have a sink.

I will gladly take my troubles from the pile. I will polish them and place them on my mantle.

You're Not the Boss of Me!

"You're not the Boss of Me" is the title of our next Marigold Forum on December 17th. I know this topic well, having been raised, both personally and professionally, in family run operations.

First I worked for my dad's business, temporary executive housing. That means he owned upscale furnished townhouses which he rented to the Big 3 auto companies for their European and German designers and engineers brought to Detroit for 6-12 month assignments. It also meant that I was shoveling snow, cleaning bathrooms, doing laundry and posting the company checkbook by the time I was 13.

In my spare time, I worked for my mom's first business, a tour company, filing travel brochures. Occasionally, I was working for my grandmother's importing business affixing mailing labels on direct mail pieces and helping her with inventory of place mats and women's' slippers from the Philippines.

The first "real job" was at 14 working for a Greek family's Coney Island restaurant. Then for a married hippie couple at their vintage clothing store.

So I suppose it was no big leap for me to team up with my mom and launch a full-service travel agency right after high school. I was to be a sweat equity partner, poised to inherit the business when my mom retired. Essentially, what this meant is that I worked 70+ hour weeks for a whopping $12,000 a year. I also got to manage a staff of 8 travel professionals, many of them old enough to be my mother, who universally resented my position and I'm quite certain assumed I was making a ridiculously large salary. I was not very popular in the employee break room.

This is so common in family-owned businesses. The kids actually get a pretty raw deal (upon retirement, mom & dad inevitably find that they need the money from the business and offer the kids first right of refusal to the purchase but the sweat equity just disappears) , the non-family employees feel unappreciated, and spouses end up without a "safe place to hide from work".

Big sigh. I bailed on the biz. I'm sure that others have figured out a way to make it work and I can't wait to hear the ideas flow at our Forum. I hope you will share your experiences, help out newbies to family businesses or gain some support from those who know your pain!

As frosting on the cake... how about having friends work for you!!!! Don't get me started.

For more information on this event, Click Here.