Stepping Up!

Every year, it seems like everyone asks me what my New Year’s Resolutions are. In the past, they seemed to be centered on ways that I can make myself “better:” Work out more; stop biting my nails, etc. And every year I try my hardest to do those things, get a gym membership, have a work out buddy, join a team, get bite it and regular manicures and while I may improve over the year, it isn’t to what my expectations were. This year my New Year’s Resolution was to “be more awesome,” and while cool-sounding, I needed operationalize (haha, I’m a psych nerd) or define what that means. 

I recently attended the People Report Best PracticesConference and had the pleasure of hearing Dr. John Izzo talking about the notion of “Stepping Up.” His version of stepping up isn’t just doing big worldy things (though that is included) and also not completely focused on the individual. Rather, my interpretation was that you do things that will make a positive impact on others (no matter how big or small) and you understand how your actions fit into a bigger whole. 

My strategy to “Stepping Up” was to think of every facet of my life and how I want to make an impact.

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• Business/Work: Use my expertise in HR and my passion for Social Media interaction to redefine HR. I mean this: In HR functions, they are typically (no t always) very silo-ed off from each other and other departments. I think understanding your candidates and what they expect and treating all of them like humans rather than numbers. 
•  Personal: Don’t take my relationships for granted; make time for each and every person that is important. That also means to take “cyber” relationships that have developed over Facebook, Twitter and other platforms and make them “real” by seeing these people IRL (in real life). 
• Another Personal: Be 100% independent; financially, personally or otherwise. This doesn’t mean to cut people out, just to be self-sufficient. I think this will also help with the previous goal of not taking people for granted simply because I’m dependent on them. 
•  Volunteering: I joined a non-profit cheer team to help with this personal initiative, but my plan in this area is two-fold. Find more events my cheer team can support and support other things individually.
• Building Leadership: Take on more controversial topics in my blog to open discussion about them. I think a lot of times; people are very hesitant to discuss touchy issues because they are afraid of being labeled something negative. I say GO FOR IT!
• Worldly: Try and understand another culture though language, etc. Also, travel to (at least) one foreign country during the course of the year to experience something different. 

While these are yearly goals, my 30 day goal is to accomplish at least one of these for a full 30 days. I’m thinking that the two personal ones can be done rather easily, so I’m starting there!

Join us in Stepping Up!

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