We live in a world that is driven by data and trends. Looking for value and answers in the numbers and trying to figure out how to better our lives, our business, our goal based on those numbers. As I've been working more on my running and keeping track on the app on my phone my distances, my speeds, my number of weekly workouts and trying to week over week beat those numbers I realized something this week. This week I still did my workouts, but I was in a different environment. I still did the same number of miles, but the course I was doing them on was much more challenging. My goals had to adjust to the path that I was working on. I was more satisfied with my accomplishments when I was finished because the course had been so much more challenging. But I was let down by looking at the tracked numbers in my app because my times were slower and it was "messing up" my week over week numbers. For someone from the outside to simply look at the numbers and judge it would be easy to say that I'm "moving in the wrong direction." But for myself who was living in the moment, seeing the challenges in front of me and surpassing them, it was a success and move in the right direction to make me stronger overall. All too often we get caught up in the numbers and judged by the numbers because as more data becomes available to people and more people looking at numbers they don't know the reality behind it's easy to become discouraged and be told that we are failing. At work this week I was speaking with my management team and talking about our numbers and our goals and feedback I had received that I'm not holding them accountable to the expectations of what others feel they should be producing. One of my managers said to me that it's not that I'm not holding them accountable, I've set the expectations and we are reviewing and working towards those goals but that I'm a realist in understanding the true meaning behind the numbers and setting realistic goals. At the time I knew what she meant but when I was running this weekend and working my way up a very challenging hill the words and idea really hit home. We are each running our own race toward God and sometimes we will be faster and sometimes we will be slower but if we maintain the course and keep pushing forward we will be successful.
For this post I decided to take a topic idea from the comments that have been posted on this blog. Thank you, Kari, for the idea of discussing finding gratitude. When I first started researching the idea I wasn’t sure what I would find. Being thankful and having gratitude is one thing but finding it in our lives seems to be much more complicated. In general what I learned from various articles is that to find gratitude you must fist practice giving it. People who regularly practice giving gratitude seem to find much more fulfillment in their lives. The foundation of many of the worlds religions revolve around gratitude. The scriptures teach it by telling us to be thankful for what we’ve been given. ( http://www.religionlink.org/ ) One article I read entitled “Gratitude Leads to Happiness” states: “A grateful people will feel an obligation toward others—toward God (for believers) the source of all we have, and toward those les fortunate than we—toward those with less, especially those i...
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