EDITOR’S NOTE: South King Media Founder/Publisher Scott Schaefer serves on the Board of Directors for the Seattle Southside Chamber of Commerce.

Resolutions

By Andrea H. Reay

Setting goals is paramount to both personal and professional success and the new year is a great time to both reflect on past goals and think about what new things we want to accomplish.

This year we want to encourage you to think about setting both personal and professional goals. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that life is far too short and uncertain to waste time being anything less than our best selves. So let’s get busy doing the hard and necessary work to learn, grow and become all we’re meant to be!

Lucky for us, here at the Chamber, we have resources and assistance to offer as you begin to set some of those personal and professional goals. One of those resources that is often underutilized within our small business community: hiring a coach!

We often consider coaches for personal training and sports activities because we know how important the guidance of a professional is when it comes to learning, staying motivated, and reaching our fitness goals. Your personal success is no different.

We talked to Chris Lemig at True Nature Hypnotherapy about how he coaches people to focus on their personal well-being and success and he offered three of his favorite tips.

1. Rest and sleep
We’re living in a sleep and rest deprived world. The consequences of this can be pretty severe. Sleep deprivation has been linked to all kinds of health issues and disorders. Depression, heart disease, and even suicide are some of the results of the lack of good sleep.

Chris helps lots of people (including myself) create and maintain healthy sleep patterns. Sometimes hypnosis is involved but more often than not there are just a few basic things that need to be tweaked. Having a regular sleep schedule, maintaining a healthy sleep environment that includes enough darkness, and limiting sugar and caffeine intake are a few of the things we can begin to change right away.

2. Right sizing and reframing
Stress and anxiety have become more and more of a mental health concern in recent years. Right-sizing and reframing are techniques that we use in neuro linguistic programming (NLP) that help calm our mental state. By getting into the habit of noticing when we are starting to feel stressed or anxious, we are able to train ourselves to start looking at things from new perspectives.

For example, if we’re feeling ourselves spinning into a case of the “what if’s” (what if I lose my job, what if I get sick, what if I lose my house, etc.) we can simply add the word “so” to the beginning of the question. “So what if I lose my job?” “So what if I get sick?” The point is, when we face the source of our anxiety head on, we can see that there is a path through even the most difficult situations.

3. Meditation
There’s been a lot of talk about the benefits of meditation in terms of mental wellness in the past decade or so. And that’s because there are a lot of benefits!

A daily meditation practice, even just a few minutes a day, can help us to get to know and stabilize our minds. It’s a skill that can help us to calm down, focus, and relax both mentally and physically. I recommend just about all of my clients start a meditation practice with easily attainable goals. You can start to see the benefits right away.

In addition to personal wellness and success, we also are always looking for ways to increase our professional success as well. Whether you are looking towards improvement for your team—by becoming more effective in your work or seeking better employees—or self-improvement—by improving your abilities as a leader or seeking a new career pathway—we highly recommend engaging with a coach that specializes in working with small businesses and individuals.

I reached out to Martin Culbert at Culbert Consulting, LLC to learn more about how working with a career consultant can help you reach your goals. Martin offered his “Top 3 Tips” for 2022:

1) Increase Your Team’s Bond – In this time of “The Great Resignation” not every company is being impacted the same way. Companies with excellent culture are not seeing the loss rates of other companies. There are some simple disciplines you can build into your team to lower the risk of losing your biggest asset.

2) Get the Right Things Done – Most leaders are so busy doing work that they lose vision of whether or not they’re doing the right work. To have the bigger picture in mind you need to develop systems to take care of your less important work. The skills are simple, but it takes great discipline to master the process.

3) Hold Yourself Accountable – As a business owner or leader within your organization, you are accountable to your clients, your company, your employees, and yourself. This accountability can become unfocused very easily. There are some tools you can develop that will hold you accountable even when you’re overwhelmed or distracted..

I have benefited greatly from Martin’s advice and assistance over the last few years and can personally vouch for the good he has done to help me and my team. Consequently, our organization has benefited as he has assisted us with process improvements, new hire onboarding, and team building.

As you plan what the new year will look like for you and your business, consider working with a consultant like Martin or Chris to help align your strengths with your goals. If you would like a recommendation, please reach out to the Chamber at (206) 575-1633 or [email protected] and we’d be happy to give you a referral. Additionally, Martin is offering a Chamber-exclusive discount for his services: a 15% discount for your first year with Culbert Consulting, LLC.

There is an African proverb that is repeated often within the Chamber community: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” We’re proud to be your partner, no matter what your goals for yourself or your business may be. The journey may be a long one, but it’s more fun to go with company. Wishing everyone a healthy and successful 2022.

This article was written by Andrea H. Reay, President/CEO of Seattle Southside Chamber of Commerce, “A voice for business, a leader in the community.” Seattle Southside Chamber has served the communities of Burien, Des Moines, Normandy Park, SeaTac, and Tukwila since 1988.

For more information about the Chamber, including a full list of member benefits and resources, please visit their website at www.SeattleSouthsideChamber.com.

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