Success cannot be achieved if you only stay in your comfort zone. That’s because success requiring striving, learning, testing, and falling possibly along the way, all of which are not comfortable.
So it’s important to be comfortable with being uncomfortable to achieve success and joy in life! For this reason, I am ditching the traditional new year resolution of setting goals and making my 2013 about experiences – a way to encourage myself to try new things or challenge myself to do some things I know may be uncomfortable and has no guarantee of success. It’s not just for my career but also for living my life to the fullest.
In 2013, I will add 50 more experiences to my life – about 4 to 5 each month. I have developed an initial wish list of 75+ experiences I want to try and probably add more throughout the year. It has already helped me take more action in life /career without over-thinking about whether I would “succeed.” Perhaps you will join me in making 2013 about experiences for you as well. Best wishes to your career success and a fulfilling life.
Improving my own soft skills
- Practice letting go on trivial matter – I tend to get upset if someone “wrongs” me (from bad customer service, taxi driver that like to take the long way for a few $, indirect racial comments from a stranger), This is for me to practice to let it go – don’t bother correcting them or letting it upset me.
- Sit for 30 minutes and meditate – I am so busy doing stuff all day long. It’s hard to stop and just be.
- Practice patience – wait until someone finish talking before I speak (no matter how much I disagree with what they are saying) – I have a bad habit of interrupting people especially when I am excited about the topic.
- When I find myself judging others, stop and focus instead on how to accepting others as they are and their positive contributions to my life and the world.
- Action trumps fear – act in spite of the fear of failure or embarrassment
- Take an Improv class – this is definitely outside my comfort zone. Be ok with embarrassment
- Stay calm and collected when I am usually furious about something
Career Success Blog
- Plan a local happy hour for readers of my career advice blog
- Do one small group workshop on one topic in soft skills at work
- Do one video conference on one topic in soft skills at work
- Write a synopsis for the book I want to write – several draft
- Get feedback on all the drafts
- Find a survey tool I can use to tally feedback.
- Write a book
- Create Soft Skills University – where people can learn / practice soft skills in stages and get certified as they finished each stage
- Speak on a career success panel
- Test the video medium on my blog – record video of coaching conversations
- Hire an intern or two to help with blog
- Test ghost writing – someone to take my newsletters and turn them into a book
- Test scenario based posts / articles
- Find an easy tool to post /schedule updates to multiple social networks
Career / Business
- Decide my career path when my contract end this year – continue to contract, go back to climbing the ladder or build the soft skills university to help millions accelerate their career success.
- Write marketing or business blog posts on www.rwomarketing.com
- Write a deck about how to help companies “Get the Wow” in their customer experience
- Write a sales deck on how to identify root cause to marketing/sales funnel fallout
- Re-name RWOmarketing
- Launch a website for Agnes to build photo stories for birthdays, holidays, wedding – she has a talent.
- Interview for a Product Manager job
- Interview for a customer experience job
- Interview for a process improvement job
- Interview for a marketing job
Family related – new stuff on top of what we do today
- Take Isabel (4 years old) to visit my mom and dad in Houston (she has never been on a plane yet)
- Take Isabel to Dance, Theater, and Art events (dance mission girl brigade show, nutcracker, small theater play)
- Take Isabel to Disneyland
- Take Isabel Pottery painting
- Take Alexis (1 year old) to swimming classes
- Plan a vacation for my parents’ 70 birthdays in 2014.
- Bake cupcakes or cookies with Isabel and Alexis
- Take Isabel to singing lessons (per her request that she want to learn how to sing. She loves Glee and American Idol)
- Practice Karate with Isabel
- Take Isabel to Gilroy Gardens (mini-disney land in Gilroy)
- Take Isabel to feed the homeless
- Teach Isabel about money
New , Fun Stuff
- Go Tandem skydiving
- Go Rollerblading or Ice skating
- Take a new dance class (Argentine Tango, samba, etc..)
- Join a dance performance group or workshop
- Travel to Europe, Vietnam, Brazil with hubby
- Have lunch at French Laundry
- Organize quarterly Diva events
- Go shopping and spend lavishly once – being Chinese, this will feel very uncomfortable. I am a bargain hunter sometimes to a fault.
- Let Agnes clean out my closet – sort stuff for donation (3 veto power). I tend to hold on to too many things.
- Join a Flashmob – group that gathers and breaks out into dance in a public place at a set time to make a statement
- Call a distance friend once a week (nice to keep in touch with people far away)
- Write the Baby Bump Triology – 3 blog posts about the evolution of my tummy through pregnancy to recovery after birth
- Start a Diva blog (remembering fun memories with girlfriend gatherings)
Health/Fitness
- Do an official 5 K run
- Do an official 10k run
- Take 4 classes at the nearby TRX/Pilates gym
- Do abs exercise every day a week (I just learned that our ab muscle recover quickly and therefore we can work on it every day
- Do a cleanse (I love food especially meat and seafood, so this will be HARD)
- Take a Jiujitsu class (I hear women can do this and well)
- Go to bed early and wake up early to see sunrise for a week. (I usually can’t sleep until midnight)
- Don’t snack before I go to bed at night for a week (I developed a bad habit of eating right before going to sleep)
- Don’t take any sleep aid for a week (I take a quarter dose of Unisom a few times a week – habit from my pregnancy)
- Eat vegetarian for lunch one day
- Have only raw vegetables and broth for lunch one day
- Have only juice for lunch one day
- 7 days of Bikram – Go for 7 days straight. I have practiced for 5+years but have never done this
- do a doubleheader – 2 bikram yoga classes back to back (3 hours long total)
Self Awareness / Bigger Picture
- Read a chapter in Rays of Dawn every night before I go to bed a week
- Read a chapter in Rays of Dawn first thing in the morning when i wake up for a week
- Live a day where nothing disturbed my mood and love of life no matter what happens
- Something unpleasant happens. Accept it, know that everything is still fine. Shit happens, let go and take action to move on
- No matter what happens in a week, just accept and move on. No regrets no worry
- No planning for a week (I am a constant planner to a fault – for work, blog, family, exercise, etc…)
- No criticism for a week (growing up Chinese, my instinct is to criticize my own action if they are less than optimal – not a fun trait. Want to break it)
Networking
- Go to a networking event once a month
- Do info interview with companies I want to work for
- Network with blogger and eBook publishers
I am always in your corner.
Lei