NickVenturella.com 12-6-19 - Happy St. Nick's Day, here's a gift

Happy St. Nick's Day, here's a gift

December 06, 2019

Happy St. Nick’s Day!If you celebrate St. Nick’s then you’re in luck, so do I. If not, that’s okay too, but you can learn about its origins here if you’re curious.Today, I wanted to reach out with a gift (I’m in the St. Nick’s Day spirit).The end of 2019 is fast approaching, and many of us (myself included) want to make, even if minor, changes in our lives to improve our health, wealth, and happiness in the coming new year.However, it’s not easy to make even small changes in your life without some knowledge or direction of where you are and where you want to go.I was recently talking with some friends of mine. These friends are the founders of the CultureCon conference (Zach and Nick – not me Nick, a different Nick). CultureCon is a conference of mostly HR professionals who understand that connecting with humans in a people-first way can transform a corporate culture to have an immense and profitable impact on an organization.  I love this because it brings the human aspect of business to commerce, which is how commerce should be – people work and conduct business with other people.Anyway, I was meeting with Zach and Nick chatting about how the GrowLoop Journal might be useful for employee engagement/goal achievement within organizations by sharing it with teams of people in a business setting.Each person on the team would get a journal for their own personal use, but each establishing goals related to their role that rolls up to a larger team/company goal.Then like a book club, each week team members share actions, victories, and areas of gratitude that they documented in their own journals following the journal’s prompts and system (note: those participating don’t have to share the details of what they actually journaled about - that's for them personally - just the results of their journaling.)By doing this, the individuals on the team increase their own personal awareness, mood, and engagement in their role, and the team increases their interpersonal communications, empathy, collaboration, and overall goal achievement more efficiently. (You can read more about the GrowLoop Journal for business use here, if you're interested.)It was suggested in the meeting that the journal could be great for personal use outside of an organizational setting, which is completely true and how the whole GrowLoop Journal system started.Then Nick said something along the lines of (I’m paraphrasing), “How do you know what goals to focus on? Getting started and creating some direction for yourself can be difficult.”That’s true, and I can relate. That’s why I wanted to share with you some quick thoughts about how you can gain some direction on your personal goals for 2020, although I'll warn you, it's not easy.First, take inventory of who you are, and where you’re at in life today by answering these questions (there are no right or wrong answers):

  1. What do you value personally? (This could be anything, and likely more than one thing:  Faith, integrity, family, money, your profession)

  2. What responsibilities do you have? (This is meant to help you identify the realities of your life's current responsibilities like, having a family - spouse and kids - and needing to make a full-time wage to cover food, shelter, and clothing for yourself and your family, things like that.)

  3. What skills do you have? (Think of things you know how to do and do at least slightly better than the average person. This could be in your profession or through your hobbies)

  4. What do you like to do that energizes you?  (This could be anything that you engage in where it’s fairly easy for you to lose track of time while you’re doing it)

  5. What drains you? (Think of things that you do not like doing that have the opposite effect on you compared to your answers to the last question. This is just good to know.)

  6. What areas or topics are you curious about, or would like to learn more about?  (Think of things you have interest in, but perhaps have not spent as much time as you’d like learning about it.)

Now, review your answers through the lens of this question: If I were to consider focusing on one area of my life that either aligned with, or took into consideration the answers to questions 2 through 6, AND could improve or advance or deepen my personal values (answer to question 1 above), what would it be?Quick note:  This is not an easy exercise, but it’s extremely useful. Be prepared to spend a few days pondering your answer, and rewriting a new one…and then going back to the original answer, etc. My advice is to start this process now and give yourself a deadline of Dec. 25 to finalize it for 2020 – call it a Christmas gift to yourself.And, to help you move your goals forward next year, use this coupon code (ONESHIP) when ordering the GrowLoop Journal to get free mail shipping or 50% off ground shipping of the journal. (Offer expires Dec. 8th at 11:59pm EST).I’m grateful for your readership of this newsletter. I sincerely hope it benefits you. 

***Upcoming Events / UpdatesNick Venturella music performances:HotelRed1501 Monroe St, Madison, WI 53711Tuesday December 17, 2019(private party)The Cider Farm8216 Watts RoadMadison, WI(same building as Brennan's Cellars)Friday January 10, 20205:30pm - 7:30pm

Have a great weekend ahead!Sincerely,Nick VenturellaCreative ProfessionalNickVenturella.comNickVmusic.netGrowLoop.comTurnUpToEleven.com