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The Week Before Thanksgiving

Holiday

The New Normal at Thanksgiving

Is this the first Thanksgiving holiday after the pandemic, that you’ve had people over or that you’re going places? Or are you old hat at being amongst groups of friends and family.

Last year, was a more hybrid type holiday season. Many people were restrained about decisions to travel or be in a crowd. Lots of families were still visiting virtually.

If you are like some of my friends, and me, you did travel somewhere during the past year. You found yourself amongst a group of people, came home and got sick with Covid. This Thanksgiving, it may still be a risk, but we’ve become a little more adventurous. We’re more willing to be out and about – with or without a mask. Whatever you do, have a fun, safe holiday.

One of the special things about Thanksgiving is the celebration of gratitude for all the many blessings in our lives. Grateful that we have the freedom to choose how we wish to celebrate and who we wish to spend it with.

To Travel or Not to Travel?

Traveling during the holidays can be filled with lots of opportunities to practice patience. Lots of people and potential weather impacts translate into potential travel challenges. Consider taking with you extra snacks of the low-sugar variety, just-in-case your long-distance travel plans hit a snag. Those snacks can help the “grumpy” factor and possibly postpone a meltdown!

If you decide you aren’t ready to go visiting and are going to just stay home or you’re going out to a restaurant – enjoy.

Another choice, skip the celebration entirely, treat it as just another day. If that’s what you want to do, go for it, and don’t let anyone shame you about your decision.

We’re having company this year for the first time in three years. Our granddaughters, four of them between 6 and 14, are coming over along with their wonderful parents. This will be a classic food fest with a turkey and all the fixings. Oh yes, one can’t forget the traditional football on the Thanksgiving day. This weekend is the final house preparation and then Wednesday turns to the food. After all Thanksgiving is all about the food, family, and friends – and the football!

A Season of Gratitude and Contentment

There is a sense of contentment and joy (see the blog: Joy – ‘Tis the Season Or Is it?) in the process. I’m excited to see the family and receive their hugs – big blessings in my life.

What about you? Are you receiving guests, staying home, going to a restaurant, traveling, or feeding the homeless? I’d really love to know! Leave a comment and share your plans.

Whatever you do on this day of gratitude, please know that you are part of the blessings in my life. To have you along on this journey called life is special. Thank you.

Around town

The next 3 Keys to Radically Transform Your Life and Finances Workshop is on November 29, 2022, at 2pm PT. This is your chance to learn my 5-step process that will change your financial reality no matter what beliefs or stories have held you back up until now. I’d love to see your there. You can register here.

You can buy my book Everything I Learned About Life I Learned on Vacation here.

Happy Thanksgiving and Ciao,
Sheri

Retreating is Succeeding

Self Care

Sheri here,

This weekend I’m off to a spiritual retreat with several close friends. It’s being held at the Serra Retreat in Malibu – one of my favorite serene places in the city.  The views of the ocean and the Malibu Hills are wonderful and restorative.

Walking the Labyrinth for Mediation

In addition, to the retreat sessions, I plan to spend a little bit of time in the labyrinth, a circular maze structure, outlined with flat small rocks or bricks.  The experience of walking through it is like a moving meditation.

Whenever I’ve brought a problem or an issue to my walk, before I leave, I have an intuitive insight as to either a solution or a next step.  I’ll then followed my walk through the labyrinth with some journaling, which has many of the same benefits as the labyrinth, except it is in writing.

Retreats Replenish Our Spirit

If you know me, you know that I love retreats and the time spent replenishing my spirit – see my Blog post “Retreat and Refresh.”  If you don’t know me well, yet, you’ll discover I attend at least a couple retreats every year.  This weekend will be my third so far in this year.

During the pandemic I attended retreats virtually.  They are different but depending upon how clever the team is putting on the event. It can generate many of the same benefits as an in person event.

My intention for the weekend is to restore my spirit and strengthen my relationship with my Higher Power.  This supports me coming back refreshed and focused on the important priorities of my business and my life.

Digital Free Time

I’m also striving to have a digital free time while I’m there.  This is the first time in several years that I’ve tried to do that.  As for many of you, my smartphone is not only my phone, but it is my entertainment – reading, communication with friends and games, my camera, and my email reader. I google everything – definitions, abstract facts, baseball scores, you name it.

Disconnecting will also support my intentions of the weekend.

This will be an interesting experiment; can I manage 48 hours without using my smartphone. Can you?

The Book Status

And the book?  Everything I Learned About Life I Learned on Vacation was sent off to the copy and line editor this week for review.  A good portion of this review is to assure spelling, grammar, punctuation are correct and consistent throughout and wordiness is kept to a minimum.  In a couple weeks, my manuscript will be returned, and I’ll get to make some more changes.

There is so much more to writing a book than the writing part.  This has been an educational process.  If you’d like to be on the wait list, you may sign-up here!

May you have a blessed week.

Ciao,

Sheri

Empathetic Listening

Listening

Sheri here,

Why empathetic listening?

Effective listening is listening with good eye contact, an environment free of distractions, attentive body language, and without turning the conversation to your needs or agenda.

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Empathetic listening allows you to develop and enhance relationships with a stronger understanding of what is being conveyed, both intellectually and emotionally.

Empathetic Listening Experience

Recently, I had two individual and unrelated conversations with friends who were in the midst of distressing situation.

I had no solutions for them; but I listened with an open heart and an empathetic ear.

My friends honored me, trusted me, and felt I had the sensitivity just to listen and to allow them to unburden themselves.

I can honor their confidence and give them a friendly face to hear them without interruption.  My heart broke for each one, given their circumstances.

I could not fix the issues; but I could listen as they poured their heart out.

I felt honored, privileged, and grateful that I have learned how to listen. Just to listen with an open heart, eyes and ears.

Now Your Turn

Have you ever been in that situation, where you are helpless to make the circumstances different, and the best you could do was to let someone use you?  Use you as a sounding board – not asking you to fix; but to listen thoughtfully?

It is not an easy thing to do, is it?  To be there for someone, to allow them the dignity of a listening ear and not jump in with possibly remedies.  While we may not listen perfectly without jumping in with possible solutions, we can continue the effort of effective listening with an empathetic ear.

Listening effectively is a gift you can give another, whether in your personal or business life.

May you find yourself blessed with the skill when the situation arises.  Practice makes better!

Good open communication involves talking, listening, and appropriate body language.  It is not waiting for our turn to talk while we formulate our response and not pay deep attention to what they are saying.

Around Town Here

Thank you to all of you who support me regularly by reading my newsletter – I appreciate you.

Welcome to our new readers from the wait list for my book, Everything I Learned About Life I Learned on Vacation, The Explosive Profit Summit and the Entrepreneurs Toolkit Gift Giveaway.  Thank you for being here.

My book is slowly moving forward.  Who knew it was going to take longer in the review and edit cycle than the writing? I saw a proposed book cover –it took my breath away to see my name on the cover! Holy cow, that’s me!!  As I said, slowly moving forward!

If you’d like to share in the progress for Everything I Learned About Life I Learned on Vacation, including when pre-sales are open, you can sign-up for the wait list here.

May you have a blessed week and ‘til the next time.

Ciao,

Sheri

Change is Hard in the Middle

Change, Opportunity

Sheri here –

Rosabeth Moss Kantor, the Harvard University chair and director of the Advanced Leadership Initiative has said: “Change is Hard in the Middle”.

A New Normal

Here we are hitting the reset button on a “New Normal” – major abrupt change. 

What has happened?

For some, the pace has slowed; there is less traffic and clearer skies; more time with the family; and creative ways to stay in touch.

For others, that is not their reality. It is different, they have lost jobs, temporarily or permanently; their stay at home is confining; their health might be compromised; or they fear for the safety of their loved ones.

We have choices: 1) to incessantly complain about a world out of control, 2) move forward without a care or concern for anyone but oneself, or 3) stay in the moment, and take advantage of this time to hit the reset button, to complete things, to explore new learning, and to spend time with loved ones.

Some are on the front lines, the health care workers, the first responders, those in essential jobs, including grocery and drug store workers, and all their families.

Community

Yet, for many, an enhanced sense of family and community has risen to the forefront. 

In this time of change, it is an opportunity for compassion and empathy, for looking out for one another more.  An opportunity for our communities to bond differently, with care and concern for each other as if we were more closely related.

Where have you bonded with your community in new ways? Share with us in the Facebook Group “Money Talks with Sheri”.

If you haven’t joined the Facebook Group yet, just click this link and join us in the group.

We are in the middle of a substantial change. While we have experienced pandemics, job losses and stock market crashes before, we haven’t experienced them concurrently. ⁠ 

Change

Add to that the “safe at home” directive many of us are under and the massive closures of “non-essential” functions – it is disruptive, in addition to massive change. ⁠

Many have been pushed to work from home. Businesses of all sizes have gotten creative in how to do that.  Additionally, there are large numbers of parents who are home schooling their children.  All of us are learning to share space in new creative ways.

Opportunity

This time at home is an opportunity to build new skills, to continue to stay in contact and enhance your business. 

But there are those who are hurting.  The hourly workers with no safety net, who were struggling before everything shut down.  The employees in industries that have been shuttered: travel, entertainment, restaurants and brick and mortar stores.

Many are fearful about their personal financial situation and understandable so.

We need to be aware and supportive of those around us in physical and emotional pain. We do not know what burdens they carry. We need to allow kindness to soften our response to others. 

Will we emerge more united and bonded as we did after 9/11 (for those who remember), changed forever, but in different ways? Most likely, but no telling how.

Change Looks Like Chaos in the Middle

Things are changing and its hard – chaos in some ways.

I remember Rosabeth Moss Kantor also saying that “change looks like chaos in the middle”. That certainly describes where we are now. ⁠

Stuck in the uncertainty of change?  ⁠Look past the chaos – if you want to talk strategies on how to do that, then let’s talk.  Just click this link to setup a time to do that!

This is also a time of massive opportunity, but you need to look around to find it.  You need to be open to the possibility of new opportunity.  Look past the chaos.

Stay safe.  Stay connected! Leave a comment below and until the next time…..

Ciao and hugs,

Sheri

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