Seth Saunders Inspirational, Value

You Are Awesome

Okay, I need to give it to you straight, without sugar coating my words, YOU ARE AWESOME.I am serious. Whether I know you personally or not, I admire you. You inspire others in ways you may not even know. As someone who is reading this, you inspire me. I appreciate you being you.

When you feel down, lonely, anxious, depressed, sad or any other feelings that don’t allow you to be you, remember this, I CARE ABOUT YOU. Never underestimate the power of knowing that others truly care about you. Let nothing in your life let you forget that. You are awesome.

I came across the following poem that I love. I hope you will not just read it but think about the message.

You’re More Than Awesome

A poem by Noel S. Williams

You’re more than awesome
You are one of a kind
Your personality blossoms
and your bright soul is not confined

You’re smile is beautiful
You’re hope is bright
Your spirit is lovable
You shine through with your light

Sometimes you’ll forget these things
When your life gets tough
You’ll feel as if you’re tied up by strings
You feel like your life is rough

But when you get to that point
When you can’t remeber all the good
When you’re being torn apart joint by joint
Look back at this and remember what you should

You’re perfect in every way
You are the light in the dark
Your spirit is yellow not grey
And you are the start of a hopeful spark

You’re more than awesome
You’re one of a kind
You’re beautiful like a blossom
and your soul is not confined.

You are a hero and heroes rock.

 

Seth Saunders Learning

The Stress to Impress

The Stress to Impress

 If you haven’t noticed, we live in a stressful world. No matter what your current situation might be, stress is no doubt something that influences you in some way. The world continues to try and control so much of what we do, who we are and where we go. Because of that we find ourselves trying to impress others. Maybe its your friends, family, teachers, neighbors, community, co-workers or boss.

As a leader, you cannot afford to lead with the only goal in mind of impressing. If you do, you will create unnecessary stress that can often lead to failure. I am not saying that you don’t want to impress your boss or your team but you have to understand how and why you want to impress them. The problem is that there is often a selfish type of feel that comes when one is trying to impress. Although we try hard to convince ourselves we are trying to impress the other person, at the end of the day we are really just trying to impress ourselves because we are looking for acceptance and validation.

It is important that we find ways to have others see that we are of value and that we can achieve results. This will often lead to impressing others but we need to be sure we are properly defining what our goals are. A good leader has the ability to know how to define these goals and what will happen when they achieve their goals. If your boss is impressed, what a great added benefit. If your team is impressed and it leads them to wanting to work harder to achieve their goals, nice. The key is that you are leading for the right reasons. Selfish leaders have a very short shelf life.

It is important to remember this concept of stressing to impress outside of the office as well. There is a statement I have heard many times and it goes like this, “trying to keep with the Jones’s.” The significance of this statement is saying that people often see their neighbor come home with a new boat so they go buy a boat. Then that same neighbor comes home with new snowmobiles so they go buy snowmobiles. They are not really concerned if they can afford this stuff, they are just trying to keep so they can continue to impress others. We see this phenomenon with teenagers and the pressures they endure daily at school. We see this with our family, friends almost any part of our life. What ultimately happens is that the stress of trying to impress leads to some unpleasant outcomes. I have seen this happen many times to people who I am close with. One thing I do know, it never has a happy ending.

As a leader you should not try and keep up with others just to try and impress others, including your boss. It is just too stressful to keep up and you will become very ineffective. What you need to do is be sure you continue to build your strengths and control your weaknesses, leaders that can do that are impressive in my eyes.

Learn to manage your stress to impress and you will achieve great things, inside and outside the office.

 Heroes don’t stress but often impress.