Shift your attention

Posted by random olio

I recently found this great blog: The heART of Living by Emily. I cannot even remember how I came across it. She inspired me last week, and I want to share a quote from her blog post, in hopes that passing on her inspiration will help you as it did me:

“Our realities are shaped around where we place our attention. If we focus on negativity, then our life situations will reflect negativity. If we focus on qualities and behaviors that we would like to invite into our lives, then our life situations will eventually shift to reflect that reality. The difficulty is that often times we are unaware of what we’re focused on. Usually we’re unconsciously repeating habitual tendencies and patterns of thought that have been formed by the way we were raised and our life experiences. By practicing awareness on the yoga mat, in our interactions with others, or by simply observing our own thoughts and emotions, we start to realize where and how we place our attention.”

Recently I have felt bogged down by a few things that have not shifted or changed in my life. I find that in that struggle I can go the route of being negative, and dreading the outcome if things do not shift. I forget that focusing on the negative, or as some might call, the glass half empty, then that is the energy I am inviting into my life and experience. At times I am very aware of my negativity and at other times, I am completely oblivious.

What I need to do is focus on the good going on around me, and not focus on what has not happened. I actually really enjoy focusing on gratitude and appreciating the experience I am in, but there are times when I fear that the choices I have made are having a negative effect on other events in my life. If I move away from fear, and stay in the present, then I cannot get sucked into the negativity. The hope is that by staying in the present, my attention will go to what is happening right now. Where I spend my time, the event, activity, and individuals I am spending my time with will then find me with a glass half full. What we focus on is what we bring into our experience. Even on those rough days, we can take a break, take a breath, and remember to bring a half full, (or hey how about full) glass to the table. When it is full, there is more goodness to share!

What do you think?

Laugh lines, cars, and smiles…

Posted by random olio

One of my favorite things about Chris’ face are the laugh lines around his eyes. They are precious to me. I have watched them change over the past 10 years, and hopefully I have been one to help add to them. Those precious lines that show happiness and honesty. You can usually always tell when someone is giving you a real smile or laugh, just by the lines around their eyes.

There is nothing that makes my heart sing and a smile grow on my face than someone else laughing. The sound of a baby or child giggling uncontrollably is the sound of bliss in my ears. What could be better? On the other end of the age spectrum, is the man at the end of the below video. So precious.

I am not a fan of advertisements, but I have to give credit where credit is due. This VW ad campaign is clever, because it brings out your emotions. Instead of VW telling you all about their cars, and what is new, they instead speak right to your heart. They encourage you to stop, take a break, breathe, and laugh. You forget they are selling a product and allow you to just remember VW. The theme of this video is: “It’s not the miles, it’s how you live them.”

Enjoy and start watching for those laugh lines, they tell you a lot about an individual. Do not forget to smile and laugh today!

Oh, Behave…

Posted by random olio

Can you change my feelings and sway me? Seth Godin says: “The only purpose of ‘customer service’…is to change feelings.” I believe him, well almost. I think it should be a part of customer service. We each have a right to be treated as humans, connect with individuals, and enjoy our customer experience. Yet, so often, our experience has little to no human contact, no personal connection, and feels robotic. Where did I find this quote from Godin? I came across this blog post from back in October while thinking about the idea of “service.” The full quote says:

“The only purpose of ‘customer service’…is to change feelings. Not the facts, but the way your customer feels. The facts might be the price, or a return, or how long someone had to wait for service. Sometimes changing the facts is a shortcut to changing feelings, but not always, and changing the facts alone is not always sufficient anyway.”

Imagine if every individual that worked in some type of service environment made it their mission to impact, change the mind of, or shift the thought of at least one customer a day. In the grand scheme of things that would not be that hard, and maybe that is already happening in every company in the world. But, what if those interactions were shared, and we saw the ripple effect? What if we did know of the impact we had each day, or that we changed how an individual felt? Would we do more to ensure that our behavior happened more often? If we had positive reinforcement of our behavior would that start a domino effect?

There are businesses out there that are changing the nature of customer service. Their impact could mean we eventually have a better customer experience, but I shudder as I think about the impact of technology on service. On the one side you might have a more efficient, yet robotic process, allowing the customer to track down their own answer. In many cases, this works. When a customer does not find their own answer, then it is often a dead-end. When the situation needs a personal touch, a ruffled edge smoothed, or when the issue needs live problem solving that only a human can answer, where is that service? Many companies would say it is too costly to provide that kind of service, yet what does that say about the true value of their customer?

What would it truly take to bring back the human interaction and accountability of service? Is customer service heading in the direction of Wall-E?

Less money in your paycheck?

Posted by random olio

Unless you make buttloads of cash, you might have been scratching your head and wondering why your paycheck was considerably smaller this week. I am not complaining, as it is what it is. Politics aside we could be in a worse situation where we are out of even more money. Let’s face it, our country is in major debt and that is not going away anytime soon.

In case you do not know the specifics, the Social Security payroll tax rate is currently 12.4%. Employers pay 6.2%, and for the past two years employees have paid a reduced rate of 4.2%. With the recent fiscal cliff changes, that reduction will now go back to the normal 6.2% which means that employees will now pay 2% more Social Security tax (as we did in 2010). This is also true for those who are self-employed (if you make more than $433). According to Kiplinger: “Originally a one-year break, the holiday was extended at the last minute to cover 2012. Extending it again to cover 2013 would have cost about $100 billion…”

As an example: if you make $50,000 a year, you will now take home $1000 less a year, or about $38 a paycheck (about $80 less a month). If you are a dual income family, the amount is much higher of what will be lost in your take home pay.

A question: If I am paying more tax now in 2013, does that mean I will have a higher refund in 2014 due to paying more taxes now? The answer: Yes. Depending on your allowances. Since I am not the expert, here is Kiplinger’s answer: “By eliminating overwithholding of income tax, the average taxpayer who normally gets a refund can both defeat the paycheck-shrinking impact of higher payroll taxes and add a couple thousand dollars to 2013 take-home pay. (Yes, you’ll be giving up a fat refund in 2014, but wouldn’t you rather get your money when you earn it?)” Complete answer, full article, and their calculators.

What I find odd is that the Social Security website has not been updated with the 2013 rates and details. Kind of sad considering my company was able to make changes in their system to ensure that the Federal government received the extra 2% out of the first paychecks of the 2013 calendar year. Yet, the government still has not updated their website about the changes. Seriously?

Another interesting fact I found: “…many workers do not know that any annual wages above $106,800 are not taxed by Social Security. In other words, a worker who makes twice the Social Security wage cap – $213,600 per year – pays Social Security tax on only half of his or her earnings, and one who makes just over a million dollars per year pays the tax on only about a tenth.”

In case you are wondering: These are the 13 tax changes going into effect in 2013.

Clean sheets and feather pillows…

Posted by random olio

What does home mean to you? I was recently inspired by a blog post on Home by DesignSponge. It made me start to think about the different homes, dorm rooms, apartments, and condos I have lived in throughout my life. What made them home to me? My response: lots of things.

Growing up I do not remember specific things that made me feel at home. I guess I never had futuristic thinking or knowledge to know that after the age of twelve, I would never have a room to come home to that was my own. Once I learned that, I began to make each current “home” as comfortable to me as possible. In college that meant that my bed was the best place in my dorm room. I saved up from babysitting so I could purchase a feather bed, a feather comforter, amazing sheets, and, you might have guessed it, feather pillows. It was my home.

Gradually over the years, my bed was still very important, and I maintained the high quality sheets and of course, feathers, but as the size of my home evolved from a dorm room to an apartment, to a condo, to a house, so did my expanded of sense of home. Now, my sense of home is still very rooted in my actual house. My bed, the art, how it is organized, how clean it is, etc. all ground me and make me feel comfortable and at home.

Just like the saying goes: “Home is where the heart is.” That is true, and so in true form, Chris is my home. When we are together in someone else’s home, in a hotel, whenever or wherever we are together, I feel at home. One of my favorite things to do is to continue to make our house our home…together.

One last thing. I want to create a print and frame it that says: “You are responsible for the energy you bring into this home.” This is something that I have thought about over and over again in the past year. What energy am I bringing into other people’s homes and vice versa. What if we always thought of that before we enter any home, workplace, or commercial establishment?

We are only responsible for ourselves.