Tip #1014 – Should you talk kind or show kindness?

September 26, 2016 By Liza Marie Leave a Comment

momtips-2 Being kind…..

So here is this scenario this morning. First it doesn’t help that I woke up with a super sore throat and feeling congested. I thought I had recovered from a cold two weeks back, I guess I was wrong.

So not feeling well, I stayed in bed and let my girls have a little down time which translated means “iPad time/Mindcraft time”.

Once I did get up and got us ready we were heading to the Florida aquarium where we haven’t been in a couple of years. I’ve been working 7 days a week these days, so I really wanted to spend some time with them and get out of the office.

Here is where the kindness thing comes in. The girls went outside to our car as I locked up the house and first one and then the other told me they were saying unkind things to eachother. I’m not sure where this was coming from because all morning they were being great to eachother and we tout kindness as one of our top family values. I believe kindness should be a part of their character without exception.

So as I’m hearing their tales or should I say “tattle tales”, one from eachother and it occurs to me, first to count it against our “attitude check” guidelines. Which means that just like we have zero tolerance for disobedience and disrespect to parents, I believe being unkind should also not tolerated and should be treated as such.

I’m thinking this through as I am driving and another thought occurs to me, what if I show extreme kindness to my girls today as the living, breathing example of kindness and then later this evening we can have the discussion of consequence and I can refer back to happenings in the day, whereby point by point I review my kindness and really grace to them throughout the day.

So as we are only mid day at this point I’m trying to see all the ways possible to display kindness to the girls and it is only 1:00pm……I hope the day is kind to me!

Tip #1013 – There is No Such Thing as the New Normal…

September 5, 2016 By Liza Marie Leave a Comment

Since moving to Tampa, from Washington state now three years I found myself, saying I’m living the new normal. My city of. Tacoma was replaced by Tampa. Our school Lighthouse was replaced by Cambridge. We belong to the country club named Carrollwood, we used to belong to Canterwood.

Many things in our past life seemed to be simply renamed in our new life here in in Florida. I actually thought I was living “the new normal”

I was wrong. I was wrong because there is really no such thing for me because without a change in me, there was nothing new.

When I realized this, I realized that although you can change all those things around you, if you don’t learn to completely change who you are, you are exactly in the same place whether you relocated across the country or not.

How to change yourself, here are 5 ways how to be the “new” you:

Don’t live up to someone’s else’s expectations.
Family, friends, community may be well meaning but just because they have pegged in a round hole, it is up to you to define yourself even if in that definition you are far from who those around you see you as.
Analyze if what you are doing is working for you?
Dr. Phil has made a living saying “how’s it working for you”? Whether you like him or not, he is right. Just because you can defend your position and may be justified in your current actions, if you are experiencing the same issues in your life, you need to change, no question.
Listen to your critics?
What do your critics say about you? This is a hard pill to swallow, especially if those critics are people you don’t respect or care for. However there might be something of validity in their assessment of you. This might be a big “might”, but nonetheless if you believe you can learn something from everyone in this life, this is another area you could look to to make a change.
Assess your current schedule, are you really living your priorities?
If you write down your top 3 priorities, take a look at your daily or weekly schedule and circle those activities that target these priorities? If you aren’t living what is priority to you, then certainly your life is off track for you.
Act as if you are a newly hired employee
Remember how it felt when you started a new job or took a new position. You had an openness to change and a new way to approach your work ethic. Sometimes if you feel your work life is stagnant it is because your behavior is. Act as if you were a new employee and perhaps tackle a project or position in a refreshed way.
Last, don’t look in the rear view mirror, what does this help? If you keep looking forward in gratefulness for all you have, this alone with change you and begin forming you into the “new” you.

Here is a quote I love:
“THE SINGLE GREATEST THING YOU CAN DO TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE TODAY, WOULD BE TO START BEING GRATEFUL FOR WHAT YOU HAVE RIGHT NOW” – Oprah Winfrey

KING 5 TV Interview on June 8th, 2016

August 15, 2016 By Liza Marie Leave a Comment

Working Moms and Mompreneurs. The balance of a working parent.

Why I think I’m a better parent because I’m a working mom
It takes a village AND a well built network to help care for your children (mother’s network)

Mountain Mountain Show on Park City TV Interview

August 8, 2016 By Liza Marie Leave a Comment

Good4Utah

I was interviewed on July 28th on the Mountain Morning Show of Park City TV in Utan. Not only did I speak to the contents of “Never Drink Coffee During a Business Meeting,” I shared some Mom Tips on getting organized for the coming school year.

Tip #1012: Getting Organized for school, with a capital “O”

August 8, 2016 By Liza Marie Leave a Comment

Tips for organizing and getting your kids ready for back to school:

As we get ready for school beginning this week, all our energies are towards one word….. this our last weekend until it all starts again….

Organization!

I’m excited for this time of year, the deadline of starting school this week, drives all my overdue organization tasks.

One of these tasks is to have my girls go through all their clothes and find those clothes that they have out grown. Typically we do this 3 times a year, once before school starts, once when school ends for the summer and the last time sometime around December or January to move in winter clothes.

This year we left for summer vacation early in May, so we didn’t clean out our dressers, so this afternoon we started this task.

Second, we review and filter through to organize school supplies for homework and extra study. We use pages from our last summer workbooks for “extra study” throughout the year. We find all our highlighters, pens, colored pencils and other supplies and get them “ready” and separated by type.

Last, we’re back on schedule with our bedtime sleep routines and we have been working to trying to keep our meal times more consistent with school, but mainly we have been talking about getting back into school and all that involves, in terms of my expectations for them and their own expectations of themselves. We have talked about what awards they want to achieve this new year and how they will go about it.

My children are “organizing” their minds!

For me, the word “organization” is a great thing!

Accepting Responsibility

July 22, 2016 By Liza Marie Leave a Comment

It seems to be a question as to when or if at all to accept responsibility these days.

For children this is one of the most important early lessons of their lives yet as they get older it seems like this lesson fades a bit. As adults, why does it seem like there is a question as to whether we will or we won’t accept responsibility?

I liken this question to years ago when I worked with a certain Project Manager who did not know his job. He was actually the husband of the installation manager and she wanted to put her man to work so she said he could manage a project that very clearly was completely over his skill set.

At the very first meeting I attended as part of his team, it came time for him to speak with the clients and vendors, he said “We have to take care of the telco” and then abruptly sat down.

For any telecommunications/VoIP professional we know this isn’t a really correct statement or question really. He was right that the issue of Telco needed attention and we needed to make sure all was in order, but calling it “telco” did cut it, there were very specific technical details surrounding “telco” that clearly he had no idea of.

Since I was a member of his team (actually quite embarrassed about it) I didn’t speak up during the meeting however after the meeting and with our internal team only I asked him to explain what he meant by that statement during the meeting. It was then that I figured out that someone had told him he needed to manage Telco, and he clearly had no idea what this meant.

Very unapologetic, this project manager would not admit he had NO idea what telco was. He would not accept responsibility as far as I was concerned. Big surprise he didn’t last long on any team as a PM.

Why didn’t he just say to his team “hey I’m not familiar with telco, can one of you help me out”?

Why do we as professionals worry that someone might find out that we don’t know 100% of all we do? Why is it, we don’t take responsibility in our job, take responsibility in our relationships, and finally why can’t we take responsibility when we fail with life lessons?

There are so many ways we can fail. We fail by not telling the truth. We fail by taking the wrong approach to deal with a situation. We fail by inaction or fail by taking the wrong action? Either way I’ve learned this lesson, sometimes in a repeated fashion but at in the end I learned.

I learned the lesson of NOT taking responsibility which then means I accept the consequence.

I try to teach my daughters the VERY best thing they can do when they fail or make a mistake is to take full and complete responsibility because it is from there that we can move forward.

If I’m about nothing, I’m about always “moving forward”!

Liza Marie Garcia

Speaker, Author, CEO