This season can be confusing. It is a time that is said to be filled with cheer with promises of being surrounded by love, but the reality is that for…

‘Tis the season, where your inbox is full of gift guides. And I’m not going to lie, I take a gander at each one as I am on the hunt for the perfect gift for the loved ones in my life. However, this has resulted in me finding myself more gifts than gifts for other people. Ironically, this has been the first time in a long time, that I actually allowed myself to be a bit selfish this season. Historically, this has always been the time of year where my tendency to put others’ needs before my own escalates rather quickly, arguably to unhealthy levels. Then I essentially crash and burn as soon as we ring in the new year. 

Today while scrolling my LinkedIn feed, I saw a post shared by a fellow connection sharing four ways we can manage stress. The first point was to let go of the past and be present. A concept that is much simpler said than done. Despite the complexity of bringing this concept to life, the message it shares I wholeheartedly agree with. 

As much as I love Halloween and the entire holiday season that is upon us. It never fails to prove to be a much-needed wake-up call on my current struggle of finding balance in my life. Yesterday, as I was carefully mixing our secret recipes for the haunting HR Cocktails (the main event at the Leadership Arts five-year anniversary Halloween Bash), I found myself thinking- I’m tired. Which was the transparent honest truth, with the demands of one my busiest seasons of work, my desire for a month packed of family fall fun and my personal health being under attack by allergies and the common cold virus – I was tired. Tired as we prepared to celebrate a monumental milestone and I just wanted to go home and curl up in bed (unicorn one-sie and all).

This morning marked the official ending of yet another chapter in my life. This has been a current trend for me as I continue to navigate my path to my true purpose. I have found that my path requires letting go of things that no longer serve me, saying no to incredible opportunities that aren’t aligned, and closing a few doors so the universe is able to open new ones. 

When it comes to my business it has always had only one guidepost, people. I took a leap of faith into entrepreneurship because of my desire to help people. Specifically, people in their workplaces – I’ve said it time and time again, I am an HR Practitioner at heart. It is at the core of all the work I do. When it comes to conversations regarding business, I want to discuss the people that are making the potential for that business possible (I also seem to have a slight bias toward P words, ever since I wrote my first book, From Heart to HRart). Nevertheless, the concept of helping people, or the subject of business and people, even HR is an entirely broad scope. 

This October, the company that came to be as a result of my leap of faith is celebrating its fifth year and I can’t help but find myself in a place of reflection and deep-rooted gratitude. Gratitude for the people who have shown up on this journey and have served as guideposts that molded and evolved Leadership Arts Associates to what it is today. 

I’d like to take a moment and recognize five significant guideposts…

Qigong is described by the National Qigong Association as, “a mind-body-spirit practice that improves one’s mental and physical health by integrating posture, movement, breathing technique, self-massage, sound, and focused intent.” I have found that I have begun to experience the true benefits of Qigong by integrating practices into my daily life. For personal healing and transformation, self-cultivation of Qi is key and having a daily practice a 20-45 minute Qigong workout is ideal, however engaging in any sort of practice for even a few minutes stills serves you on your healing path. In this article, I’d like to share with you the three Qigong practices that I use every day.

I thought this season would be the perfect time to reflect back on my time as an entrepreneur and share my top five entrepreneurial fears. Because if I’m being honest, being an entrepreneur has been my scariest job to date. 

This October marks the five-year anniversary of the start of my entrepreneurial adventure. I could have never imagined the magnitude of this journey when it began. See this adventure is much more than just building a business (which is huge in itself), see it was the start of some much needed inner work. Inside of me, there was some serious healing to do, years of emotional trauma piled on by the damaging distraction of constant high professional demands. This mixture left me completely disconnected and disengaged. I found myself wandering through the days questioning if I was worth anything at all. I was convinced professional aspirations, even at times, life aspirations were pointless. 

Feelings in a Professional World

When it comes to the world of business, logic is a must. We can’t make decisions strictly off of feelings, we need facts, data, and spreadsheets. But I guess my question to you is, why can’t we make decisions off of feelings? Sure, I get it, it’s massively uncomfortable. The amount of risk seems daunting because there isn’t logic to make the decision safe. However, if we go back through history, I am pretty sure the game changers in this world are game changers because they made a decision based off of a feeling.