Shades of Success, Inc.

Happy Holidays!

 

Wishing you a wonderful holiday season! 

Peter, Arturo and Milo (the inspiration behind Shades of Success)

Happy New Year!

Anna

The ABC's of Empowerment

When asked to give a talk about empowerment at a recent event, my immediate reaction was,  "how much time do I have?" 

Empowerment is a loaded word.  Wikipedia has a few interesting definitions.  In a nutshell, empowerment means to give power to someone. This meaning implies that someone lacks power in whatever form it may be:  economic, social, political, etc. Empowerment in this example is an external change is someone's life.

I consider personal empowerment the key to reaching all other forms.  Personal empowerment manifests in increased self-confidence, ability to learn from mistakes, ability to manage one's life and make changes as needed. These are all internal changes within the person, which are hard to notice.

Can we really empower ourselves? How?  Why is it hard to do? 

Yes, we can give power to ourselves! We just need to become aware that we are the CEO's of our lives.  We can activate our self-empowering thinking by learning to appreciate our skills, abilities and strengths. By the way, do we know what those are?

Think of empowerment as a transformative experience. Like the caterpillar becoming a butterfly.  It takes some time but the result is life changing.

60th Anniversary - Declaration of Human Rights

Today is the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights.  I just read the whole document and although every article of the declaration sounds logical and practical, as they say, it's easier said than done.   On the other hand, it is somewhat perplexing that we needed to have a written document to remind us of the basic and elementary rights of everyone who inhabits the planet.  Maybe because we take them granted.

The United Nations website has lots of interesting historical information and suggestions about how to participate in celebrations to commemorate the event.

A suggestion of my own:  Take ten minutes to read the Declaration, reflect on it and figure out ways to incorporate its principles into your daily life.  We don't need to leave our families and live in the middle of nowhere to fight for and uphold human rights.  Start right in your community. 

Light after the Storm

I never thought I would get over the deep sadness I felt when all of my intellectual materials, collected over the course of years, disappeared when my laptop crashed.  But here I am with a smile on my face looking at the picture in the post.  What changed?

• Time passed.  Yes, time does heal all wounds.  There are some emotional scabs to remind me of the pain felt but wounds do heal.
• If others survived, I can too.  When telling colleagues about the death of my laptop, several shared their own horror stories.  Some of them had also lost all their files and somehow lived to tell their story.
• There is always hope. Several friends have offered suggestions to resurrect my laptop.  I am hoping one of them works.  Others shared the name of companies that automatically back up your hard drive for about $1 per week!

It is not what happens that is important (yeah, right).  What matters is how we respond to the challenges thrown at us.  And, ultimately, our reactions to life's ups and downs depend on how we view life itself.