What’s Important NOW!

Hello Fall.

The end of the month is ahead and fall is beginning. It’s my favorite and also a kick off to my busiest most engaged time of the year. There is a bit still planned. Let’s get into that.

• For wellness I am back into training mode for another marathon that I would like to run before this year closes out. I’m about 30+ miles a week on average for the first few weeks of the training. Different training than I have used previously. Lots of pacing, hill training, and endurance mixed in with easy to medium runs. I like the mix of training all around and it not being focused on just runs. Just finished another Chicago Half this year as part of series. Got some serious bling for the achievement below.

• With my development I’m really focused professionally and personally with developing others. Impacting through my work here on the blog and writing for myself. At work I’ve created a team that I am personally involved in bi-weekly with goals and their developmental focuses. It’s my best work and my favorite work to do. Some say leave the world a better place than you found it. I say leave human beings in a better place than how you found them. I was created to do this work and be accountable to it.
• Seasons of work are changing for me like the seasons outside. We have kicked into high gear for the next 3-4 months. The race has started, it’s a marathon, and things will not be slowing down. Nor would I want it to. I have to pace myself. This is my most challenging and engaging year of work ever in my career. Which, by the way, has passed a 7 year mark. It’s very exciting and something I do not take for granted.
• Books completed this month so far:
  • Flow by Mihaly Csikszentnihalyi
  • The Art of Happiness by Dalai Lama
  • The Happiness Equation by Neil Pasricha
  • The Telomere Effect by Elizabeth Blackburn and Elissa Epel
• Books in the hopper:
  • Cure by Jo Marchant
  • Are You Fully Charged? by Tom Rath
  • Focus by Daniel Goleman
  • The Blue Zones by Dan Buettner
  • Unselfie by Michele Borba

Most of my focus on the book reading is really geared to helping me write a better series for you while I work on development in myself. The books left to finish off this month (most of the above) are focused on happiness studies.

• IBTP (In-Between the Pages) focus for what’s left of September is about happiness. We will look at happiness through the lenses of practicing gratitude, self-knowledge, our pursuit of our passions, and happiness at work. Love to see some feedback on this series as I move through them from you the readers/viewers. I will be simplifying the blog by getting rid of the different posts putting them all under one listing. So they won’t be called “Shorts” or “In-Between the Pages” as the feedback shared it was clearer from the readers what each one meant. Initially, I wanted Shorts to be quick reads that were 2 minutes or less and IBTP to be the deeper dives that were 5+ minutes. You’d then be able to choose which path you wanted for the time you had at hand. My goal will be to continue the bite size 2 minutes or less reads as those were the most read of all the posts. I get it, we’re all busy. If I can give you quality in a short blitz of posts, that’s what I want to provide you.

That’s an update for what’s left of this month. October there is a whole lot more. Thanks for reading, keeping me accountable, and challenging me to be better.

Shawn