Young mom car­ry­ing son

Core val­ues… we all have them, whether we acknowl­edge them or not.  So what are yours?  Can you eas­ily tell some­one what your core val­ues are?  Do you design your life around your core val­ues?  Do you live your core values?

Most of us would be able to say “Of course, I know my core val­ues.”  If that is true, then try writ­ing them down.  I think you will dis­cover that when you try to write your core val­ues, it is much harder than expected.  Try also writ­ing how a spe­cific core value man­i­fests in your daily life.  This is a great exer­cise.  How can we expect our chil­dren, spouses, rel­a­tives, employ­ers and friends to “get us” if we are not clear in our own minds about the guid­ing prin­ci­ples we draw upon to make deci­sions.  Think of how much eas­ier it would be to get your kids to under­stand your rules, if they knew your core val­ues.  Think how much eas­ier it would be to inter­act with your spouse or best friend if they knew your core val­ues.  This could be a great con­ver­sa­tion starter.

If you are look­ing for a resource to help you clar­ify your core val­ues, check out the Core Val­ues eCourse.  It is a good tool to get you started.

To add more har­mony to your life, reg­is­ter for a  Strengthen the Har­mony webinar.

Learn­ing a new skill

In this econ­omy it is more impor­tant than ever to keep your skills up-to-date.  It also is impor­tant to keep learn­ing new skills to keep your­self valu­able and able to han­dle new tasks.

I’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing the roller coaster of learn­ing new skills for the last sev­eral months.  I’m try­ing to become adept at the tech­nol­ogy involved in cre­at­ing and run­ning an online busi­ness.  There have been moments of sheer frus­tra­tion.  And there have been moments of sheer exhil­a­ra­tion.  I’ve learned to insert prod­ucts in my shop­ping cart.  I finally fig­ured out how to cre­ate my own web­site tem­plates.  The long hours of try­ing to under­stand Joomla, Word­Press, Dreamweaver, blogs, squidoos, arti­cle mar­ket­ing, link­ing and much more is finally start­ing to make sense.  I feel like I’m try­ing to learn a for­eign lan­guage and liv­ing in a for­eign coun­try.  I’ve had major melt­downs. I’ve had to walk away from it all to regain my per­spec­tive.  I’ve had cel­e­bra­tions to acknowl­edge mas­ter­ing a task.  I’ve got­ten excited to see arti­cles I’ve sub­mit­ted to direc­to­ries being viewed by web­site and blog editors.

And to my sur­prise, I kept com­ing back to try again and again.  There were many times I thought about just walk­ing away from the frus­tra­tion and expense.  But every time I walk away, I come back, try it again, and make small gains.

So what’s the les­son in this?  Per­sis­tence?  Try and try again?  Don’t give up?  If it is your pas­sion, you will prevail?

What do you think?  What expe­ri­ences have you had as you try to learn a new skill or job? How does the “try­ing” affect the har­mony in your life?

Friends.  What more can I say.  Friends can be a strong sup­port sys­tem to help you strengthen the har­mony in your life, your fam­ily and your work.  Who else will lis­ten to you as you vent, as you try to work your way through what you are deal­ing with, as your shed your tears or help you cel­e­brate when you over­come your obstacles.

The Bag Ladies Ball

I have two dear friends who just recently helped me restore some har­mony to my per­sonal per­spec­tive and work life.  We don’t live near to each other.  We don’t talk by phone often.  We might email once in awhile.  We all have our own busy lives filled with work, fam­i­lies, friends and com­mu­nity.  But we have a strong friend­ship.  We met as col­leagues over 20 years ago.  We worked for dif­fer­ent employ­ers, but served on a state-wide asso­ci­a­tion board together for a num­ber of years.  When we went dif­fer­ent ways, we dis­cov­ered we missed see­ing each other and decided that we didn’t need con­fer­ences or meet­ings as the rea­son to get together.  So we  started get­ting together for one “overnight” a year.  That has con­tin­ued for  over 25 years.  We are still get­ting together for an “overnight.”  Some­times we can even make it two nights.  Some­times we can make it twice a year.  We have dubbed our get-together the “Bag Ladies Ball.”  (At some point in our lives, we were each close to being a bag lady.  And we also show up for our get-togethers with things stuffed in a vari­ety of bags.)  Over the years we have sup­ported each other through job changes, job losses, chil­dren being teenagers, chil­dren grow­ing up and leav­ing home, chil­dren mov­ing out of state, divorce, death of par­ents and loved ones and cel­e­brated births, new begin­nings, pas­sages into dif­fer­ent stages of life and just the glo­ri­ous­ness of being still con­nected to one another.

These two friends just helped me work through a slump I was in try­ing to pull the next few pieces of my busi­ness together.  One of them is await­ing the birth of her first grand­chil­dren.  (Yes, its twins.)  The other has recently retired after a very active career and is now tak­ing time to assess and deter­mine what she wants to jump into next.

Friends!  True friends are rare.

How do you and your friends sup­port each other?  How do you deal with your dif­fer­ences?  (even the dear­est of friends can drive each other crazy once in a while.)  How do your friends help you strengthen the har­mony in your life, fam­ily and work?

An issue we are fac­ing right now is the whole quag­mire and emo­tional roller coaster sur­round­ing aging par­ents.  For­tu­nately, my par­ents, who are 88 years old, are still in fairly good health and in their own home.  They need some care, but for the most part their health and men­tal capac­ity is still allow­ing them to be independent.

On the other hand, my husband’s par­ents are not doing as well.  I’ve watched his fam­ily try to accept the loss of his mother whose delight­ful mind and per­son­al­ity has suc­cumbed to Alzheimer’s and is now in a care facil­ity.  I’ve watched his dad try to adjust to being “home alone.”  I’ve watched the sib­lings try to adjust to their mom no longer being the heart of the fam­ily.  It has been a painful and rocky road.

The role rever­sal of par­ent and child is dif­fi­cult, emo­tion­ally charged and full of pot­holes and mis­steps.  Work­ing through the paper­work and under­stand­ing the gov­ern­ment pro­grams adds another layer of work and stress.

I watched my mother and dad mas­ter the role rever­sal with dig­nity and grace as they took care of my Grand­mother who lived to be 101. Sure there were bumps. Sure there was frus­tra­tion at times.  But what I saw was the love they always shared with my Grandma.   Some­times we don’t appre­ci­ate the gifts we’ve been given or the lessons taught by exam­ple until much later.

Mom and Dad this lit­tle post is a trib­ute to you.  Thank you!

Work­places today are filled with stress. Employ­ers are stressed because of the econ­omy, for­eign com­pe­ti­tion and gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions. Employ­ees are stressed because of the fear of down­siz­ing, com­pe­ti­tion, the loss of their ben­e­fits, inter­ac­tion with their boss and co-workers, or increased workloads.

If stress is intrud­ing on you at work it can:

• Reduce your pro­duc­tiv­ity (which can cause more stress as your boss and co-workers rec­og­nize you are not hold­ing up your end of the job)
• Impact your health in both the short-term (colds, flu, headaches, stom­ach aches etc.)  and long-term if you don’t resolve the stress (car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, mus­cu­loskele­tal prob­lems, psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­ders, etc.)
• Cause you to be less sat­is­fied with your job
• Affect your rela­tion­ship with your co-workers
• Affect your rela­tion­ships with your family

The first step toward deal­ing with work­place stress is to iden­tify what is caus­ing the stress.  Once know what is caus­ing the stress, you can then work on find­ing a way to resolve it. For me, one thing that causes stress is when I don’t know how to do some­thing.  Usu­ally it involves tech­nol­ogy in some way, shape or form.  One trick I’ve learned is to step away from the task that is stress­ing me.  The sim­ple act of walk­ing away for a few min­utes calms me down and helps me to reframe my mind.  Some­times I have to leave it overnight.

Another trick I’ve learned is to check my “self talk.”  Usu­ally when I’m frus­trated and stressed, I have this unhealthy self ‘talk going on.  “I don’t know why this has to be so hard.”  “How come every­one else gets this and I don’t.”  “I just don’t get it.”  Rec­og­niz­ing the lim­it­ing self-talk and chang­ing it to:  “I can fig­ure this out.”  “I just know I can do this.” or “This is easy and fun.  I can find the infor­ma­tion I need to fig­ure it out.”  has proven over and over that I can con­trol my emo­tions and my stress.

What causes you stress in your work­place?  What tips or tricks have you used to reduce the stress and strengthen the har­mony in your life, fam­ily and work?

As I think about strength­en­ing the har­mony in my life (and in help­ing oth­ers) one of the first things that comes to mind is the mul­ti­ple “hats” we all wear.

In my life, I wear the hat of spouse, mother, grand­mother (of eight and it is the absolute blast), daugh­ter, sis­ter, busi­ness owner, friend, gar­dener, Great Dane and cat care­giver, bird feeder, vol­un­teer and per­pet­ual learner.  Try­ing to fill the role of each of these can be a daunt­ing task.  Main­tain­ing bal­ance across all of them is dif­fi­cult if not impossible.

The Jug­gling Act

If I try to bal­ance all of them, I find myself becom­ing mediocre at some.  Medi­oc­rity across all the roles does not work for me.   It only causes more stress.  What I’ve learned is there is an ebb and flow to the level of my involve­ment in all these roles.  When I have to focus on cer­tain roles, I  remind myself it is OK to put oth­ers “hats” on the shelf for a bit.  (Obvi­ously, you can­not do this with your chil­dren, although you may like to.)  I’ve also learned that there are ways that I can incor­po­rate just a bit of time in my day for cer­tain roles like life-long learner.  I’ve learned to make use of drive time to lis­ten to audio tapes of things that inter­est me.  My car has a trav­el­ing library of audio tapes that I have to move when I put on my “grandma hat” and trade car seats for audio tapes.  I fill my iPod with edu­ca­tional pro­grams, sub­lim­i­nal tapes and med­i­ta­tion pro­grams and lis­ten at night while falling asleep or while I’m trav­el­ing on a air­plane, or walk­ing the dog.

What “hats” do you wear?.  How do you man­age your “hats?’  What tips or tricks have you learned that could help oth­ers?  Please share your thoughts so we all can learn.

Well, the cat is out of the bag.  I know I should be pro­ject­ing this air of pure con­fi­dence, but I think it is impor­tant for the integrity of this blog to reflect what I am actu­ally feel­ing.  Trep­i­da­tion.  Excite­ment.  Amaze­ment that I’ve got­ten this far.

Cross­ing my fingers

Ques­tion­ing why I am not fur­ther. And much, much more. And cross­ing my fingers.

You see, I’m no dif­fer­ent than every­one else who is work­ing on achiev­ing their goals, build­ing the life they desire, and fam­ily har­mony. We all want to reach our goals.  We all want to have the life we dream about.  But I know from my own life that some­times it just feels like “I’m the only one strug­gling with this.” or “Why is this so hard?  Every­one else seems to get it so eas­ily.” or ” How come I am not get­ting what I want as fast as oth­ers get what they want? or “Why do fam­ily or work needs keep tak­ing pri­or­ity over what I want to accomplish?”

Being Authen­tic is Important

I want this blog to be authen­tic and a place where read­ers can find resources that help them on their jour­ney to strength­en­ing the har­mony in their life, fam­ily and work.

You see, I believe that the peo­ple we believe are suc­cess­ful — busi­ness owner, celebri­ties, hap­pily mar­ried folks, etc.  — have all expe­ri­enced their own per­sonal demons and dif­fi­cult times.  They just stuck with it and fig­ured out how to get through and get bet­ter.  That is what this blog is all about.  Help­ing you to get through what­ever is hold­ing you back and get bet­ter at strength­en­ing the har­mony in your life, fam­ily and work.

I don’t know where this jour­ney is tak­ing me.  I only know that I was given the idea — some­how it floated into my head and at least I was wise enough to “hear it.”  Up until now, I have been reluc­tant to truly embrace it and take action to take the idea to the world.

But now I am tak­ing action.  I hope “the world” will wel­come the idea and use the resources to take action in their own lives.

The topic of my sec­ond post (Yea!!  Feel­ing really expe­ri­enced now…) is to explain the pur­pose of this blog.

The  pur­pose  of this blog (StrengthenTheHarmonyBlog.com) is to

Strengthen the Har­mony Workbook

pro­vide arti­cles, resources and of course com­ments from the read­ers about top­ics and ideas that strengthen the har­mony in your life, fam­ily and work.

We all have many things that can cause stress in our lives.  It could be our kids, aging par­ents, work­loads that are increas­ing, finances, rela­tion­ships with our spouse, per­sonal goals that seem to always be out of reach or put on the back burner.  It could be try­ing to revamp our lifestyle to be health­ier or try­ing to learn a new skill (like blog­ging) or set­tling into or out of a job.

Any one of these things can add stress to our life.  Any one of these things can cause us to lose focus. Any one of these things can be the last straw that sends us over the edge. That’s why I finally took the leap.  I finally decided it was time that I put this idea out there.

So what you will find on this blog are arti­cles, ideas, tips and even humor to help you strengthen the har­mony in your life, fam­ily and work. I don’t have the answers.  But I do believe that as we share our thoughts, ideas and sup­port one another, we will dis­cover and uncover answers that will help us strengthen the har­mony in our lives.

I know I sure need more har­mony — espe­cially in the finan­cial area.  Devel­op­ing StrengthenTheHarmony.com, ShopliftingIsStealing.com, Whalen.com and ItStartsWithUs.com has def­i­nitely drained my resources.

I  am cer­tain that by pro­vid­ing qual­ity infor­ma­tion and serv­ing oth­ers, it will be replen­ished.  I’m still look­ing for­ward to the adventure.

This is my very first post on my very first blog.   Wel­come to  StrengthenTheHarmonyBlog.com

Judy Whalen

I finally took the leap, mas­tered the tech­nol­ogy (well, almost mas­tered) and launched this blog.  Let me tell you, it was a leap.   I hear so many peo­ple talk­ing about how they write, read and com­ment on blogs.  I’ve had inter­net mar­ket­ing coaches tell me to just put up a blog and start inter­act­ing with peo­ple.  Well, it seemed to take me more time than most peo­ple.  You see, I needed to develop the strat­egy of how the Strengthen the Har­mony webi­nar and this blog and fit into my over­all busi­ness.  In my offline world (whalen.com), I am a con­sul­tant work­ing with busi­nesses and non­prof­its to help them develop strate­gies to be suc­cess­ful.  So I needed time to get the strat­egy piece to come together.  But I also needed time to con­vince myself that I could mas­ter the tech­nol­ogy and learn the inter­ac­tion piece. You see I am “old school.”   My pro­fes­sional life started long before com­put­ers were on every desk or before you could research your mar­ket­place or get feed­back from your cus­tomer by “tweet­ing.”   Back in those days we devel­oped elab­o­rate plans about get­ting feed­back.  Today you get feed­back instan­ta­neously.  So that is the leap!   I am jump­ing off the “old school bus” and hop­ping on the “new school bus.”   I’m open­ing myself and my ideas up for com­ments and instan­ta­neous response.   I have to be hon­est, I have a bit of trep­i­da­tion.  But noth­ing ven­tured, noth­ing gained.  So here I go.…. Wel­come to the Strengthen the Har­mony blog.  I look for­ward to this adventure.