Did you climb a tree today?

It was intentional.  The walk to the nearby elementary school was intentional.  As part of Living a Full Screen Life I had determined to make my Sunday one filled with exercise, readings and organization at life and home.  (And a few family card games thrown in for good measure.)

I walked with my iPhone tuned into an Audible book, part II of The Absent One, a Department Q novel by Jussi Adler-Olsen.   The time listening to detectives and mysterious unsolved investigations is a mind thrilling escape that I take part in daily. 

As I was walking I had every intention of heading to the playground and finding a swing set to hop onto.  Walking up the driveway  I could see the tops of the monkey bars.  There is a big turn in the drive which leads your eyes to a woody area as you curve up the road.  Smack dab in the straight line of my eyesight was a  big maple tree with perfect climbing branches.  The reason they were perfect is they began at the base.  I'm a bit leery of jumping up and attempting to start a climb without a guarantee of a mere 12 inch drop at the end.  These limbs were outstretched as if to say,  come climb up no matter what your age!

And so I did.

As I perched upon the limbs about 6 branches from the forest floor I gazed up and snapped the picture of the tree limbs above me. 

Why climb a tree?  For me, it is a symbol of continuing to reach for more every day.  When you climb a tree you need to think ahead, plan your steps and look at the next move.  If you falter you can stumble, fall and even break.   There are many different moves you can make while climbing a tree.  You can be risky and jump to the next level.  You can be careful and only go so high or reach for more stable branches.

There are many things we do in life that we stop doing as we grow older.  We may feel we it's child's play and not worthy of our grown up world.  Many people stop climbing trees well before they are adults.  Perhaps they were reprimanded too often from concerned parents. 

I didn't wake up this morning thinking I was going to climb a tree.  But I sure am glad I chose to grab a limb and start the climb, breaking the cautionary thought process that comes with experience and age.  You may be feeling cautious about a project at work.  You may be thinking you already know how to do something well and don't need to take that extra reach to get to the next level.  If so, go find a tree and start the climb.  As you relax and look at your surroundings from a bit higher vantage point you just may see things differently.

C'mon - go find that tree!

Posted via email from MoJoCMO

Let's Create a Full Screen Happy Life

Pretty Stress Free Life Pictured Above! 

I've been spending the morning preparing for a cleaning out of now college freshman Emily's bedroom.

She did a great job packing and sorting.   The left behind is her childhood memories that will be stored away until she's ready to re-open the fun in her own home someday.

My Sunday's are often spent preparing.  I indulge myself with readings all morning  while I ponder the task list in front of me.  Today's task that looms ahead is one that is exciting and yet melancholic at the same time.  Two of the articles I read hit home with me today as I prepare for the challenge:  

The first is from http://zenhabits.net/ and it explains how we need to begin living a Full Screen Life.  

In it author Leo Babauta explains how we often are doing two to three or four things at once:

"We’re doing one work task while trying to stay on top of email, text messages and social media. We’re talking with a friend while seeing what we’re missing on Facebook and Instagram. We’re eating while planning. Making love while thinking about work."  Babauta shares his concept on living a "Full Screen Life" by focusing only on the one task you are doing.  If you are engaging in a discussion with your daughter - don't think about work - truly engage in the moment with your daughter.   He showcases how to do this and encourages practice. 

The second reading came from a review on Gretchen Rubin's new book,  Happier at Home:  ''Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson and My Other Experiences in the Practice of Everyday Life.'   Rubin dedicated a school year to making her home a place of greater simplicity, comfort and love.  I would love this book as a Christmas Gift (Hint Hint) and in the meantime have reviewed the reviewer and know that Rubin is on to something.  (‘Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life’ by Gretchen Rubin http://mymindonbooks.com/?p=6142)

Perhaps it is because our home has gone from a loud and open doored place where 6 kids introduced us to every form of friend and foe into a quieter more grown up house with two teenagers who rarely fight and revel in playing games with their ol' Mom and Dad.  Perhaps it's because I'm about to clean out a post-high school girl room and bring more space to what was once a very overcrowded home while celebrating another pretty successful push from the nest.  Either way the two readings that I came across today I believe did not show up by accident.  

The funny thing is - when you are in the midst of the madness of raising kids and raising career goals is when you really need to live a Full Screen Happy Life.  Don't get me wrong. I'm not in any way thinking my life was not full and happy -  I am saying there is comfort in intentional happiness and full attention at work and home. 

I'm excited and humbled at this juncture in our lives.  My work is compelling, challenging and just plain fun.  My life is less stressed with school activities and more open to new learnings and opportunities.  I'm taking the two readings from today and combining them at work and home.  Get ready to practice with me.... let's jump into a Full Screen Happy Life!

Tip #1 for Full Screen Happy Life:    Cards, Dice and Game Boards belong on every table - both office and home - not hidden in closets or drawers! 

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Pride, pain and a comforting blanket: The spaces to fill when your kids head to college.

We call ourselves "nearly empty nesters" because we are down to two at home. Raising our six kids to be independent and happy has been our goal. Who knew they would take the instruction literally and we would be left with hearts heavy with pride and pain. The pride is palpable. Each of our kids is uniquely their own person and truly live in their own skin. And yet together they are bonded with family experiences that have bound them together, for good and bad, with loud and oft times obnoxious laughter. The pain is one that lays heavy like a blanket left out overnight during a spring rain. It is one that comes after forgetting to take it indoors and you know it will lighten over time - to be used again to warm and protect. Where did the time go? We are driving our fourth to a college out of state. She independently took the reigns to make this college dream come true. She woke up this morning and gave us one more "Emily" moment, loudly worrying about the clock and the drive and the potential late arrival for registration. Our immediate family and her closest friends know and love these "Emily" moments--- she saves them for us because it is us she feels the most trust with and trusts us to love her when she lets off steam. Of course she is right to do so. Those "Emily" moments are what we will miss the most and yet can't pretend to miss when they are fewer and far between. When you leave your kids to begin their own chosen paths you end up with something you couldn't wait to have more of: Space. There is space in your home with doors open for return. There is space in your heart once you let go of the sodden blanket in its core. We have given our children the space to go and do and be and live. They have in turn filled up the spaces of our lives with joy and a wonderful feeling of anticipation for their future. In five minutes we begin unpacking our fourth and making her new space her own. The space in between our last hug and her new life is wide open. Our pride and pain mingle as we unpack her new blanket - appropriately a warm, dry comforter.

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Marketing that works: Know, Serve & Delight Your CUstomers.

Know. Serve. Delight.

It's been over six months since becoming a part of Consumers Credit Union.What an amazingly vibrant six months of learning and relationship building I've encountered. I love my work and my colleagues - and most important my members!

I have a very strong background in communication and marketing with over 12 years experience in marketing and publicizing Credit Unions. With that experience comes a joy of knowing it's important to break through barriers of knowledge on just what a credit union is and why everyone should look into them for all of their financial needs. That is the easy part of marketing. When asked what is my most important and challenging role the answer is simple: Providing customer service both internally and externally that has customers yelling Wow! Anyone can analyze data and create a campaign that draws attention to a target audience. Actually bringing the audience a service that surpasses their expectations is a whole other component that can easily be dropped. Once dropped, a customer will most likely not pick up the connection again or will come to the table with negative attitudes and perceptions. This negativity makes a marketing teams job that much more difficult.

Marketing professionals have both internal and external customers. Quality marketing is not effective if the public knows about the concept but your corporate colleagues do not or vice versa.
Here are three key ways that help us keep all of our customers served:
1) Know your customer intimately
2) Serve your customer the way THEY like to be served
3) Delight your customer the way YOU would like to be delighted

You can't go wrong if you know who you are talking with, how they like to be connected with and ensure they feel respected and cared about.

Knowing, Serving and Delighting your customer is hard work - guaranteed to work in any marketing.

Posted via email from MoJoCMO

5 Ways To Save 10 Invaluable Minutes

1) Stop reading blogs entitled '5 Ways To' ....

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My Lenten of Disconnect

I gave up FaceBook and Words With Friends for Lent.  It was easy to say I would do it.  Actually going cold turkey was the hard part. My daughter asked me to and so I did.  I think she was as tired of my head bowed to the iphone as I was of hers.  It was about time I bowed my head to more important things. 

I set up ground rules so that I wouldn't be accused of cheating. (More on that later)

1) I needed to stay connected to work and industry social media.  My success in my career is part and parcel social media so I could not just stop enhancing my skills or marketing my fabulous company.  My family knew that I would be continuing to surf, read, post, repost, tweet, retweet, square off, Link myself in, and more - but that I wouldn't be reviewing my personal Facebook site. 

2) I have many mediums connected together so if there were posts on my page that I wasn't aware of, I was given dispensation for the unintentional lapse of connection.

At the time of my start date in the game Words With Friends I had the maximum amount of games going and was ahead on all but 2.  To ensure I didn't play the game, I totally deleted it from my Iphone and Ipad.  This was the smartest solution because I didn't receive any "push" notifications telling me I was resigning.  This would have been an unbearable sight for my competitive spirit.  And the whole point of giving something up for Lent is to embolden your spirit, not break it.

 (read the other tips for disconnecting here:  http://mojocmo.posterous.com/my-roi-for-giving-   up-facebook-and-wwf-for-len)

My friends and colleagues asked me to write about 'what I missed the most' and to answer the question, 'was it worth it?"

Words With Friends,  What I Missed The Most:
I missed one or two people who made me Laugh Out Loud with the messages they would send after playing a particularly difficult word.

Words With Friends, Was It Worth It?
The time away from the game truly did help me see how I had formed a habit of checking the game at least 10 times a day.  I learned you don't have to use your brain to throw up letters on a screen.

I enjoy connecting face to face playing scrabble - or yahtzee - or farkle much more.  I now have 3 Words With Friends games going and only play once a day.  I feel reborn and it's a great feeling!  My WWF truly taught me WWJD and I am proud of that.

Facebook What I Missed The Most:
I missed my kids posts and my FB Friends who make me smile from the inside out.  I'm not about to tell you that I felt sad not being on Facebook.  I didn't.  I did feel "out of touch" when people around me would say "did you see on facebook?" I liken that to listening to someone talk about the TV show I missed.  You stare politely at those talking through you and you move on.

I happened to read a fascinating article,   Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?  By Stephen Marche
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/is-facebook-making-us-lon...  days following the end of Lent.  Take time to read this article and much of how I felt hits the nail on the head. 

In the article Mr. Marche writes about a Carnegie Mellon study of 1,200 Facebook users which concludes the effect of Facebook depends on what you bring to it: 
 

'Everybody else looks so happy on Facebook, with so many friends, that our own social networks feel emptier than ever in comparison. Doesn’t that make people feel lonely? “If people are reading about lives that are much better than theirs, two things can happen,” Burke tells me. “They can feel worse about themselves, or they can feel motivated.”  '

I have always been a very social person.  Giving up Facebook allowed me to connect socially in other ways.  I read quite a bit more and I attended more events.  I also connected with friends I hadn't connected with in a long time.  My life is a full one and I found that I enjoy the personal connection of laughter with someone vs., laughing at a screen. Yet I don't feel Facebook is the big bad time waster or that I was "on it too much."  I realize now that I enjoy seeing, learning, hearing, laughing, crying, and communicating with others all of the time and Facebook is one tool to allow me to do that. 

I did replace group texting with facebook posts.  My son could not wait for Lent to end so he would stop getting awakened with my inane group texts,  An example is "Good Morning Family! I Love You!"    Those texts surly put the surly in my kids at times!

The stories that I did miss were the ones that were very personal.  Finding out a friend's wife has cancer was not easy to learn about second hand.  Yet, what is Facebook if not the ultimate in second hand news?  Just knowing my family kept me up to date on the posts that mattered deep to your soul made me realize how important connecting through Facebook can be.

 
Facebook, Was It Worth It?
Giving up Facebook was not as difficult as I thought.  I often was given elaborate explanations at the dinner table when the family started talking about "what was up" which was always about Facebook.  I also cheated.  My loving husband and daughter would text me updates they knew I would want to know about.  I would text my "conspirator"  a photo I thought no one could live without so she would post and tag me in it.  (Guess what - they could have lived without that photo!)  I wasn't proud of the fact I cheated. But I am human after all.   I am proud of the fact I admit it.  (WWJD)

My Lenten journey had me questioning not IF I should use the different applications, networks or games but HOW I should use them.

Matthew 21 includes the following verse:
"....And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

My Lenten of Disconnect gave me pause to realize I choose to make my house a prayerful one and turn away from those who wish to bring harm, negativity, or a disingenuous spirit to my life.

We can make Facebook and all of the other Apps, Mediums, Networks into what we choose and we can be better people because of how we use the tools in our life. 

Learning these facts and living them daily tells me my Lenten journey was a success.  (well except of course for the human moments of just a wee bit of cheating)

 

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Flying High in Seagrove

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