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.

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?

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.