Strategic Serendipity

 I love New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.  They hold such promise, enthusiasm, and hope.  2020 was not as bad for me as for so many in the world.  After losing my dad in 2018 and my mom in 2019, the worst thing 2020 gave me was frustration and worry.  And for that I am very thankful.  But that doesn’t mean that the dreams don’t start to build this time of year.   As I was planning this year, I wanted to make sure I wasn't rushing forward too fast.  As the single mother of a nine-year old, we most likely will not be doing that big Disney/Harry Potter trip we had planned in 2021.  And that is okay.  But there are a lot of things I can do to build (or build on) good habits.   So here it is, my 2021 New Year's Resolutions.  Watch here to see if I succeed! Take 100 beautiful pictures .  This is a self-indulgent, self-care item.  My 2018 began with my son being admitted to the hospital and ended with my father's ...

I am not a purist when it comes to reading. I count books I listen to on audible.com as books I have read.  I encourage my child to listen to books on audible.  We often get the paperback so he can follow along, but it is not required.  In my house reading is for fun and learning. We listen to books together as a family in the car and many nights when we come home, he asks to keep listening to his book instead of turning on the tv.  It is a constant challenge to find books we will both love. We just finished one such book together on audible.   Ben Garrod’s A Grown-Up Guide to Dinosaurs is an amazing family listen!  Don’t be fooled by the title, my seven year-old was completely engaged.  It was easy to listen to in small 15-minute drives and the production quality was good!  The author includes pop-culture references to Jurassic Park for those who only know dinosaurs from there.  We even learned a few things the movie got wrong! If y...

This is a hard post to write.  I have been dreading July.  My dad would have been 85 this month.  For those who don’t know me, I worshipped my dad.  But just about one year ago he entered the hospital.  He would be released to assisted care and fight like hell to get out of there.  A hole in his lung would send him back to the hospital in September.  He would fight like hell to get out of there, too.  Surviving a surgery the doctor told me he couldn’t.  But he wouldn’t be released.  So as July starts and everyone celebrates our country’s independence, my sense of dread grows. From July through September I worked, fed my son, visited my dad, slept, and repeat.  You will notice cooking and cleaning we’re not mentioned in there.  Laundry was washed, but I only folded dad’s and that was because he liked things folded.  I figured he had earned that.  In October when he died, my world fell apart.  I worked and took...

All my life I have been a voracious reader.  I love series and can binge read them with the best.  When I found out I was pregnant at 40, I was elated.  I threw up every day the whole pregnancy (but it was so worth it) so when I struggled reading, I thought it was just from feeling sick.  After my son was born, I was all about him, feeding him, feeding myself, and sleeping. Maybe showering.  So I still didn’t notice anything. When I went back to work, in a job that required reading, it was a struggle.  I told myself I was just tired.  Three years in, though I started to worry.  I got a job where I was commuting three hours a day, and turned to audible.com and books as the best carpool buddies ever.  After six months of that commute, however, I moved five minutes from work and my reading sharply declined over the next year. So in 2016 I made a New Year’s Resolution to read more.  I found a reading challenge to help me search for boo...

You've seen the tests on Facebook that help you figure out which Disney Princess you are.  Because we want to be a princess, right?  Honestly, lately I feel more like the meme that shows Cinderella running down the stairs at midnight and says "all she really wanted was a new dress and a night out."  Or maybe the one that expresses our discontent that wild animals don't really clean house for me on a regular basis. Don't get me wrong.  I grew up on Disney.  I listened to my books on record of every story they had and would turn the page when Tinkerbell rang her bell.  I watched Wonderful World of Disney every Sunday night.   In high school I had a season pass to Disneyland and spent my 16th birthday there.  I still have the Tigger I got that day sitting in my room.   In college, I had my Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast VHS tapes constantly going while I was studying.   I owned all the VHS tapes, th...

When life kicks in and you start wondering where the day, week, month, or year went, it is time to slow down. (C) DeAnn Malone 2019 In our fast-paced society, this can be a real challenge.  Last year, I bought a camera and started taking photography classes.  I hadn’t ever used anything but a point and click camera or a cell phone.  I was intimidated at first by all the setting and rules for when they use them.  Over the course of 11 classes in 13 months I have fallen in love with photography.  And not just because of the priceless memories I have in photos of nature and my son.  What I found was a way to slow down. You have likely read all the studies on the benefits of meditation.  I tried it, I really did.  I WANT to master it.  But I really struggled.  Yoga has eluded me, too, so far.  I refuse to give up.  But in the meantime, I can go to the local gardens and spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to get a pictu...

How much alone time do you need? There seems to have been a cycle to my life where I go from a lot of alone time, to next to none, then back again.  When I was six, I was a latch key kid of a single mom who worked three jobs.  When we were together, she was tired in a way I could not understand.  I loved my time alone listening to Disney fairytale books on my record player and following along in the book.  I would turn the page when Tinkerbell made her sound.  I swear it is how I learned to read and to love reading.  But I would also get so lonely. Fast-forward to college and there were always so many people around. You weren’t ever really alone for long.  Summers were as much decompression as recharging my brain. Then I lived alone as a single person in DC. I had friends and volunteered a lot outside of work. But long weekends often consisted of a good audiobook while I worked on a quilting project. There were times that I was lonely and felt...

Have you ever had a plan in place for your life and then had it interrupted?  Life happens friends and while the last five years have not been what I had intended, they were exactly what they needed to be: family-focused.  I took advantage of a limited-time opportunity and will forever be grateful that I did. But life is changing again, and I welcome it.  For the first time in longer than I can remember, I can think about the future.  I spent the last three months working on my ICF coaching re-certification and realized I have time for coaching in my life.  And it brings me great joy!  So I will be taking on a few private clients each month for the rest of 2019. Leap Year by Helen Russell Is change a constant source in your life?  Do you embrace it or fight it? If you are looking for a great book about change, check out  Leap Year by Helen Russell  (amazon associate link).  Russell does an amazing job of exploring the science a...

I will never forget presenting a team-building program using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) when the self-proclaimed "senior" member of the group said "maybe I'm just old but most of this I've learned through my fifty-plus years of working with others."  I had to smile.  Because here's the deal, if you spend fifty-plus years paying attention to how you react and how others react to you in various situations and analyze what works and what doesn't, you don't need these types of assessments.  However, if you want to shortcut that learning process and learn from others (yes, please!) there are tons of ways to do it.  I like to call this Relationship Shorthand. There are three main instruments I like to use and each one is based on research.  Is this an exhaustive list?  Not by any means.  These three instruments are the ones I find give my clients solid information they can act on to improve their understanding of what they bring to the ta...

If you've been on social media the past 24 hours you've seen the infamous page from the April Issue of Self Magazine.  Check them out here .  You may have even seen the half-hearted, tongue-in-cheek apology from the magazine's Editor-in-Chief.  Opinions are flaring and some are siding with the magazine and some are siding with the women pictured in the article and their company Glam Runner.  For the record, I am very strongly on the side of the women pictured and very offended by the article, regardless of whether Ms. Allen was a cancer survivor.  Here's the point the magazine has missed entirely up to this point - sometimes just starting the race or just finishing the race is a major accomplishment.  If people want to put on "armor" to face a challenge like a tutu, face-paint, custom t-shirt, etc. who cares?  Not everything is about being the fastest or being first or being stylish.  Unless you are magazine for marathon winners, you probably want...

A little over twenty years ago, my friend and I jumped in her car the day after finals and moved to Washington, DC, without a place to live or a job (both of which were remedied within 48 hours of arriving in DC - ahhhh the good old days).  Today I pack up again.  Now I have a legal career I am proud to have served in, a new business in Executive Coaching with certifications in multiple areas, a two-year old son I couldn't be more proud of, and a new chapter ahead. While I will return to DC for work over the next few years, I will have a new home in the heart of the Midwest.  I will miss the friends I have made here but I look forward to renewing old friendships, making new friends, and reconnecting with family I have been away from for too long.  I leave the comfort of having four Starbucks within walking distance and a grocery store in the basement of my condo for the comfort of having both parents within a mile of home.  The nearest Starbucks will be about ...

I ran into a friend who has a newborn last night and she honestly said "this is hard!" I couldn't help but laugh at her honesty and the very mirror of my own daily feelings. Luckily, I was laughing with her. I started thinking about all my amazing mother friends who make one, two, or more look so easy and juggle it with a bunch of things I can't even imagine. I wonder, do they all struggle at one time or another? Judging by the number of popular mommy blogs I have read, I am willing to bet my friend and I are not the only two. But here's the thing, her simple statement made me feel like a weight had lifted off my shoulders. Because it was okay for someone I admire and respect and believe could run the free world if asked to say this is hard. So this is for all those women out there who have struggled at one point in their lives (whether by themselves or with a supportive partner) with that all important "mommy" role. I love you because I know whether ...

Did you put together a list of New Year's Resolutions?  When you were putting it together, did you think "if I can just achieve this, I will be happy?"  Have you felt that enthusiasm start to fade as "life" takes over and those resolutions get pushed to the bottom of your to do list?  Already thinking about doing a New Year's Reboot (no, really, from here on out I will do X.)?  Are you willing to consider a slightly different approach? Here's my recommendation to you… Download the unabridged Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh from iTunes or Audible.com, order the book from Amazon.com or BN.com, or pick it up from your favorite books store.  Whatever you do, don't put getting the book on your list of things to do later.  Do it and check it off as an item complete.  Print this article and keep it with you while you are reading.  For extra credit - grab a notebook and start your professional development journal with your reflections.  (Discl...

Employees or volunteers - it doesn't matter one bit when you are dealing with the concept of engagement.  Why?  As Stephen Covey said, "You can buy a person's hands, but you can't buy his heart.  His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is." In other words, you can make someone come to work and do a specified set of tasks through the "carrot" of a paycheck.  Getting a person to go that extra step, however, requires enthusiasm and loyalty, engagement and value alignment, and a core belief that the people with whom you are working have more to offer than the completion of the specified task list in your mind.  Without these you just have a body in a seat.  In the work world this is nicely described as disengagement, sometimes referred to as retired-in-place, and can lead to passive sabotage.  In the volunteer world it will usually lead to loss of volunteers.  In both realms, keeping people and keeping them productive requires keeping their ...

How do you interpret Einstein's quote?  Write about one thing you learned yesterday, one thing that made today special, what you hope for tomorrow, and what you question in the world, your life, or your career.  

In addition to regular blog posts I will be adding professional development journal prompts for those looking for inspiration.  You can find them on Pinterest, too!  Happy journaling in 2014!

I did a basic team building presentation for a volunteer organization last week and was absolutely shocked by the answers to one of my questions.  Now I will admit, I learn something from every presentation I do and pretty much every person I talk to.  But this incident stood out in my mind and really made me think. As part of the presentation, I have a slide with two columns and twelve rows titled "Which Do You Prefer?".  It is a basic checklist that I recommend using during the start up of a team to find out more about the people with whom you will be working and how their styles may differ from your own.  In addition to asking if you prefer "Agenda" or "No Agenda" I ask "why."  For instance, one person reflected that if the meeting is about something they know well, they do not require an agenda ahead of time.  If it is a new topic they may want the agenda up to a week ahead of time.  There is even a silly question as to whether you prefer...

In a fight between the Congress and the Administration, score goes to...the WWII veterans.  Depending on which side of the aisle you prefer (or whether you are inside or outside the beltway), you may have different views over what the government shutdown is about and/or means to you.  Regardless of what your personal beliefs are, I hope you will take a moment to follow what I consider THE story of the day  (picture and link are from www.newschannel9.com ).     I have several friends who volunteer escorting the Honor Flights of WWII veterans to visit the memorial created to honor their service to our country and first learned about the potential issue through their facebook posts this morning.  (The Honor Flight website is currently down, hopefully crashed by people donating money in light of today's news stories, but it is www.honorflight.org .)  This organization flies veterans to see "their" memorial at no cost to the veteran.  Th...

When you are childless and go through a break up it is hard.  I remember chocolate ice cream, Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs, and whole weekends spent on my couch.  And then slowly you get back into things, maybe go out for a night on the town with friends or speed dating (preferably combined with a wine tasting).  The entire process is about you and, well, processing what you have gone through. When you go through that break up with a child, however, it is different (still hard).  The process now becomes about making sure your little (or not so little) one is comfortable with the new normal and you are forever tied with "the one that got away" through your child (or children).  What's more, you now are doing most of it on your own (possibly without financial support) and quite frankly, that is draining in a way I can't even begin to explain. No matter what the circumstances of the parting of ways, no matter how amicable or how much of a relief it is, your mi...