PARKER Associates

15 years of work in Corporate America almost made me lose my ability to be playful.  At this time of year most of us feel the stress of getting everything ready for the holidays.  Take a play break this month.  It’s time for all of us (me too) to lighten up. Here are 10 suggestions:

1. Cut, paste and color something – As a child you probably liked to color a picture or make a collage?  Do something artistic now without judging the work.  Enjoy the feel of doing it.  The goal is to enjoy doing this.  It is not about the picture itself.
2. Dance – Who doesn’t like to move with music?  Take a break, choose some music you enjoy and dance with wild abandon.  Really let loose.  I know it takes me a while to lose my inhibited style.  I’ll need to close the windows, shades and doors for this one.
3. Sing – Here is my favorite.  I do this a lot in the shower, in the car or in my office when no one is around.  To have even more fun use your hairbrush as a microphone and pretend you are a rock star.
4. Bubbles – This one I learned from my grandchildren when they were younger. They would blow bubbles and then break them as the bubbles danced through the air.   I love blowing bubbles and then watching them float.  Sometimes I like to catch them on my finger which is tricky because they often break.
5. Swinging on a swing – Go to a playground or carnival.  Swing on a swing and feel the wind in your face, use a jungle gym or the monkey bars and swing from place to place or sit on a merry go round and go for the brass ring.  Just thinking of doing this makes me smile.  It is too cold to do this right now in Massachusetts.  It will have to wait until spring.
6. Enjoy a yoyo, a Nerf ball, or a paddle with ball.  I’ve never mastered a yoyo but they look like fun if you know what you are doing.  I end up winding the string most of the time.  I do like to use the paddle that has a ball connected to it with an elastic.  Fun to try to keep the ball moving and hitting the paddle.    Playing with a Nerf ball can be fun too.  Any ball will do but Nerf balls are squishy and colorful.
7. Mindful Walk – Walking is a great stress reliever.  Next time you walk begin to notice what is around you – the flowers, birds, the sounds, the trees, the people etc.  See where the sounds you hear come from, notice where the birds fly to, look at the leaves on the tree and all the flowers growing.  (I’ll need to wait for spring to see flowers and leaves but there is still lots to notice in the winter.)
8. String games – Have you ever played Cat’s Cradle?  String games are lots of fun.  You need a partner to do Cat’s Cradle but there are many things you can do alone like making a Brooklyn Bridge, a cup and saucer, a broom,  or a crown all in string. Sometimes it takes a bit of imagination to see what you have made but it is fun to do over and over.  Make up a new design yourself.
9. Stickers – Another way to make a collage or mosaic is with stickers.  If you have an assortment of stickers you can make an abstract creation and have fun while doing it.
10. Building with blocks, Legos, or sand. How high can you pile the blocks, Legos or sand?  Some people become quite artistic when it comes to sand.  I love making tunnels and moats on a big sand castle.   There are lots of instruction books for making things out of Legos but I’d rather make my own creation.  Again this is more about relaxing and having fun and not about making something.

What ways do you have to de-stress this time of year?

Shirley Temple was the star of the day when I was born.  My mother adored her.  Of course she envisioned her new daughter with lots of lovely curls.  Unfortunately I was born with straight brown hair.  It should have been no surprise to her though because neither she nor my father had curls.

As I got to be school age I too wanted Shirley Temple curls. I can still remember a girl in my first grade class named Cynthia Woodbury with beautiful curls that looked like sausages.  Oh did I want curls like hers.

My mother did try to curl my hair.  People told her to set my hair with rags.  That didn’t work.  Someone else told her to put lanolin on my hair and then put a cap on for an hour.  Still no curls!

Finally she found something that she was sure would work-a permanent.  Wanda the hairdresser put curlers that were connected to an electric hairdryer like machine on me.  Smoke came out of the curlers when they were attached to my hair.  I wanted those curls so badly I wasn’t even scared.

It did work! Now I had small tight curls all over my head.  When it rained my hair stood straight out.  I looked like a cartoon character that had put her finger in an electric outlet.  One boy in my first grade class said when he saw me, “Alvah, what happened to your hair?”  My mother who was with me said, “She ate lots of carrots.” Another theory she had read in magazines was that carrots make your hair curly.  That had not worked either!

As I got older my aunt would give me a Tony home permanent several times a year.  By this time it didn’t make such tight curls but there was still an issue on rainy days.  I continued getting the permanent periodically until I was in my 50s.  Finally I’d had enough.

I realized after all those years that straight hair can be pretty too.  The lesson learned was to work with what I had and to see it as being good.  It’s all about your mindset.

Barbara Corcoran, founder of the Corcoran Group, a real estate firm in New York wrote a book called Use What You’ve Got and other Business Lessons I learned from My Mom She tells a funny story about how she used her pigtails and friendly personality to attract customers to her counter in a restaurant. (Maybe you can guess what the girl at the other counter had.)

Maximize Your Strengths

Just as trying to acquire a physical attribute that I didn’t have was a waste of time trying to overcome a skill or talent weaknesses can be frustrating too.  Time is better spent maximizing a strength than trying to build up a weakness.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers suggests that even someone who is talented in a particular area must put in 10,000 hours of practice to get really expert.   He cites Bill Gates as an example of someone with the talent and strong desire to understand how to program computers.  Gates enjoyed programing and that made working on computers fun for him. He easily put in the hours necessary to gain expert status.

It takes a lot of energy to try to strengthen weaknesses.  It will be exhausting and in the end while you will see improvement you won’t be able to compete with the person who has a natural talent in that area and enjoys perfecting that talent.

So what are you naturally good at?  How can you use what you have to make it count in the work that you do?  Your work becomes much more meaningful when you are able to use the skills and talents you enjoy and that you are good at.

Not sure what your strengths are?  I give several assessments in my Value Program to help you to identify those strengths.  Once you know those strengths you can begin to use them in the work you do.  Sometimes people undervalue what they are good at because they do it so easily they believe everyone can do it too.  I’ll help you to see your unique value and where you can use that value in your current job or in a new job.  Call me at 781-598-0388 or email me at asparker@asparker.com.