- Discover new skills by taking on a project. Are you good with details, planning, or seeing the big picture? You might not even know yet. Tackle a small home-improvement project. Where do you get excited? Where do you feel stalled or stuck? On the Wright Leadership Institute’s Summer Training, for instance, participants use projects to discover strengths and weaknesses and to hone their skills.
- Ask for feedback, and give it. Everyone has blind spots. If you want to improve, ask the people around you for help. Good team players don’t wait for their annual reviews to find out what they need to fix.
- Break old, mindless habits by doing things differently. Do you feel like you’re learning the same lesson over and over? When you get feedback from a spouse, boss, or teammate about the same thing, it’s time to aim for a different result.
- Don’t hang back; engage fully! Think about the different “teams” you play on, with your family and at work. Where are you sitting on the sidelines? Where are you letting others take all the initiative? Do one thing to get involved.
- Build in nourishing breaks. Working without breaks seems like it would be more efficient, but it’s isn’t. Get up and stretch, tell jokes, pour everyone a glass of water. Meditate or take a short walk outside. Your efficiency will increase and so will your enjoyment of the task.
- Celebrate! When you complete a task or project, before moving on to the next thing, stop and celebrate! It’s fun, nourishing, and rejuvenating.
Judith