To all of you that have left the encour­ag­ing sup­port­ive comments,

“Thank You.”

When I launched Strengthen the Har­mony between Your Life, Fam­ily and Work my instinct and con­sult­ing work with busi­nesses and non­profit orga­ni­za­tions told me there was a need for peo­ple to look at their life from a holis­tic per­spec­tive.  But I had no idea if this would res­onate with read­ers.  Thank you so much for your encourge­ment.  I will con­tinue to write from my heart and hope that the top­ics res­onate with you.

Please feel free to sug­gest ideas for top­ics from your own life.

Thanks again for your sup­port­ive comments

The hol­i­days are almost upon us.  Many of us will be spend­ing time with fam­ily.  Some of us look for­ward to that and oth­ers of us dread it.

Think about your fam­ily life for a moment. If you are like most peo­ple, there are a vari­ety of dynam­ics that sur­round your fam­ily.   You get along, you don’t get along.  You laugh and have fun and you storm and yell.  You talk to each other and you don’t talk to each other.  You love your sib­lings, but you can’t wait to go home and get away from them.  You love your par­ents, but they drive you nuts.  You love your own kids, but you can’t stand them at times and you can’t wait for them to grow up and leave home. (OK,  I can hear some of you chuck­ling and nod­ding your heads, espe­cially if you have teenagers.)

So what can you draw upon when con­flicts arise and you need to save your san­ity?  You can draw upon your core val­ues.  Your core val­ues are your foun­da­tion.  They are your guid­ing prin­ci­ples.  And if they are truly your core val­ues, they are very slow to change.  They pro­vide you with con­stancy and clear direc­tion.  So when con­flict arises in your fam­ily, get clear on your own core val­ues and then assess whether your fam­ily — includ­ing your chil­dren — know and under­stand your core values.

Hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with your chil­dren about your core val­ues will help them to under­stand the rea­sons for rules, guide­lines and your con­cern about accept­able and unac­cept­able behavior.

And as you get clar­ity of your core val­ues, check them to deter­mine if there is one that allows for respect and tol­er­ance.  A num­ber of fam­ily issues are caused by people’s inabil­ity to respect dif­fer­ences and allow a fam­ily mem­ber to be dif­fer­ent than the fam­ily norm.

Reg­is­ter for a Strengthen the Har­mony work­shop to bring more har­mony into your life and family.

As I lis­ten to the mul­ti­tude of news sto­ries about one of the world’s best golfers crash­ing his vehi­cle in the early morn­ing hours and as the  details unfold about his pri­vate life, I am sad­dened for him, his wife and fam­ily and for us.  This is just one more high pro­file celebrity who has momen­tar­ily self-destructed. It is one more high pro­file per­son who in moments of indis­cre­tion has jeop­ar­dized his career and his fam­ily life.

Then I step back and try to gain per­spec­tive and real­ize we all have sim­i­lar vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties.  We all can stray from our paths, our fam­i­lies and our beliefs.

So what is it that enables us to stay true to our core val­ues?  What is it that enable us once we fal­ter to get back on track?

I don’t have the answer to that. But I do know the clearer you are about your core val­ues, the harder it is to ignore them.  Clar­ity brings focus and strength.  In your per­sonal life and in your busi­ness life.

To get clar­ity about your core val­ues, check out the Core  Val­ues eCourse for a sim­ple resource to guide you in clar­i­fy­ing your core values.

To strengthen the har­mony in your life, reg­is­ter for a Strengthen the Har­mony workshop.

Today is Thanks­giv­ing.  A day for giv­ing thanks, enjoy­ing fam­ily, friends, good food and football.

So what are you truly thank­ful for?  Do you really rec­og­nize the bless­ings in your life even when your life seems to be out-of-control?  Or is it out-of-control because you are not rec­og­niz­ing the bless­ings in your life?

Do you keep a grat­i­tude jour­nal?  Writ­ing down what you are grate­ful for every day is one way to keep “Thanks­giv­ing” and your bless­ings in mind every day of the year.  I’ve used this tip and it is amaz­ing how it shifts my atti­tude and what it brings into my life.  (like the courage to launch Strengthen the Har­mony.)  It doesn’t have to be a “big deal” type of jour­nal.  Mine is just a small book (with a beau­ti­ful cover).  It takes me 3 — 5 min­utes to write a list of what I am thank­ful for.  I just use a sim­ple for­mat.  “Today I am thank­ful for.….  It is amaz­ing when you reflect on your day, the things that are bless­ings -  my hus­band who made cof­fee for me that day,  the purr of my black cat when she sits on my lap, the enthu­si­as­tic wel­come from our Great Danes when I come home, the email mes­sage from a friend, the client who sent a pay­ment, a phone con­ver­sa­tion with my mom, the hugs from my grand­chil­dren, the phone call from my daugh­ter or son, the flow­ers in my gar­dens, the new snow on the ground.   My Grat­i­tude Jour­nal helps me shift my focus to “what is.”

Give it a try.  I write long hand, but maybe the com­puter is a bet­ter option for you.  Or record it on your cell phone. Or on your knees pray­ing.  Just use what­ever method works best for you.

Happy Thanks­giv­ing.  And I am truly grate­ful for this blog and the oppor­tu­nity to chat with all of you!

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!

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.