I was so excited about my husband’s Christmas gift in 2018. We had just begun renovating our home which would include an outdoor living space. We discussed wanting a large table in this space to be able to have people over to eat and fellowship regularly. I contacted a friend who owns a company that does custom woodworking and asked him to get a table created for us. Nine feet long I told him, sassafras wood, bench seats. The table wasn’t ready in time for Christmas nor was the space to put it, so I printed a picture of one similar
We welcomed our third child almost three weeks ago. With five-plus years between this one and our now middle child, we got rid of almost every piece of baby gear we owned. We kept the car seat and base, but come to find out, car seats expire. Who knew? It’s amazing how many seats, swings, monitors, plastic crap, etc. you can get for a baby. Most move, make noise, light up and can be quite expensive. We had a lot of this stuff for our first child. So, as we went to decide what “gear” we had to have, we
Interpersonal skills are a distinguishing factor in what makes people successful. I’m not talking about us all needing to be extraverts, I’m talking about us being able to understand ourselves and others and relate to people in a way that builds connections and relationships. Many people refer to this as emotional intelligence. I often hear employers talk about how job candidates’ interpersonal skills are lacking. Components of this include poor communication skills, low self-awareness, inability to control emotions and to read and respond to emotion in others. Many cite the constant connection to technology leading to the demise of strong
Note: This is the second of a two-part post on the value of abiding in patience in order to achieve the best kind of learning. The previous post focuses on the value of this practice, whereas this post focuses on how to actually do it. As leaders, we are often called to help others learn. To grow people in ways that lead to positive outcomes for themselves and for those they impact is our job. Leaders make more leaders. And this need to facilitate learning is sometimes hard to figure out how to do because we often have a hard time
Note: This is the first of a two-part post on the value of abiding in patience in order to achieve the best kind of learning. The value is described here, whereas how to do it is contained in the second post here. Patience is not one of my virtues. And oftentimes, the world reinforces what seems to be the need for it not to be. Get it done and get it done fast so you can get more done is often the mantra whether we consciously or unconsciously preach this to ourselves or hear it from others. And we are