We’re hiring!

We’re hiring! Exciting, yes! Easy, no.

The process of hiring can always be intimidating, especially to a small, close-knit company with a very distinct “personality,” aka company culture.

Our company culture comes naturally from being our authentic selves, caring about each other and working with our individual talents. Our titles and roles are ever-evolving to play on our strengths, instead of trying to fit a cookie-cutter job description. The collaborative and open environment encourages creative brainstorming and accessibility for help or advice. We even spend time with each other outside of the 40-hours a week that we “work” together.

As the most recently hired designer (almost 3 years ago!), I’ve had the privilege of growing my skills and my love of design with Worx. From my first business card design to, more recently, complete re-branding packages, growth is apparent all around me. Our lovely new office with teal walls and room for more team members; of course the creation and ongoing initiative of The Green Couch Project!

I personally happen to be in the desk position to potentially play footsie with the new Worx employee. I look forward to having another team member to encourage, help and learn from! We’re looking for a Junior Graphic Designer with strong logo and branding skills, who is team oriented and loves to collaborate!

So, what can you do to really define your company culture and invite growth to come your way?

- Be authentic.

There are times to be more relaxed and times to be more professional, but always be yourself. People like REAL.

- Be realistic.

Having very high goals set for yourself and your company is always a great thing. However, having a realistic plan of attack for reaching those goals, one step at a time, makes the short-term goals more achievable.

- Be honest.

With being authentic, comes being honest. Do you have an open door policy? Do your employees or co-workers feel intimidated or feel that they don’t have access to help or resources? Create open, helpful and encouraging dialogue to ensure positive communication and honesty.

- Be intentional.

Be intentional about each team members’ strengths and weaknesses and work with them. While it’s important to fill a “role” that needs to be filled, let it morph into what works best for them, you and the company. There’s no job title that’s one-size-fits-all for all companies.

-Be fun.

Everyone likes to have fun. While everyone’s definition of fun is different, finding common ground of something enjoyable to do together as a company will build the team up as a whole and just lift everyone’s spirits. If everyone feels appreciated and is presented an opportunity to relax and have fun, when it’s time to get back to work, they will feel refreshed, motivated and ready to go!

New Year, New Beginning

With the holidays in full swing, our schedules are over-loaded and so full of festivities with families, friends and colleagues. The Holiday Season seems to conclude with the New Year. While many would claim Halloween or Christmas as their favorite holiday, I have to admit mine has always been New Year’s.

Growing up, the reasons were more trivial but nonetheless, I still try to carry on these traditions. Especially blowing up dozens of balloons to create a colorful sea spread across the floor to pop with a safety pin at midnight! In more recent years, I have come to appreciate the “unity” of this holiday. I can’t think of another holiday that is celebrated worldwide. Every single person can celebrate this holiday and bask in the opportunity of a new beginning.

The whole world, in rotating time zones celebrating as one! The happiness and energy recognized on a global scale full of fireworks, glitter and kisses at midnight! Can it get any better? We should use this time as a refreshing new beginning; don’t hold yourself to the rigid expectations of the classically titled, “New Year’s Resolution,” instead just be aware, live authentically and follow your dreams. Be inspired by the ordinary, and integrate kindness into your daily habits. Every person on this planet is going through the journey of life, each story as unique as the next.

How can you contribute to a more positive and optimistic future in your family, career, community and/or Planet Earth?

Glasses Of Life

It all starts because we have a vision impairment.

We get asked if we have really have vision impairments or if the glasses on our faces are a fashion statement or accessory.

No, they are a necessity.

And when we wear them:

• We have to wipe the fog off when it’s warm or wet

• We get lost behind a veil of smudge. Don’t let any sales rep tell you differently- they are not smudge proof.

• Once we wear them, we have to stay committed to them all day since they ruin our makeup.

• We suffer injury on the bridge of our nose

• We can’t lie in bed on our sides to read

• We have a constant, pinching pain behind our ears

• We feel them slide down when we bend over

• We feel them slide up when you lean back

• We learn the hard way they are not foot or butt resistant

• We are expected to let everyone try them on

• We give ourselves whiplash as soon as children are placed in our arms so they can’t grab them

• We lose them and then sometimes we have to replace them even when they aren’t lost at this little inconvenient thing called an annual check-up.

But when we wear them all these things matter not, because we can read, walk without tripping; we can stop (we may choose not to) at red lights and we can experience life with our vital fifth sense.

And so goes the same with the glasses of life.

When we wear the metaphoric glasses of life, we are enabled to see things clearly. It may be through listening to a friend, slowing down, speeding up, traveling abroad, staying at home, thinking outside the box.

The pain that comes along with it, like the smudges, are worth it when what we envision from afar is suddenly close. When what was near or far sighted suddenly becomes a tangible success.

It’s just a matter of if you’re willing to wear the glasses. You see, when a vision impaired individual slips on their glasses, they do so knowing they are being compared to the trendsetters.

When the envisioned impaired decide to challenge themselves and wear the glasses of life, they might be compared to the trendsetters of life.

Speed up, slow down, travel abroad, stay at home, think outside the box: Others may be doing the same, and you may be called a copycat. It doesn’t matter because we can all look at the same thing, but what we see won’t be the same thing.

So, no matter what people think of you or say, never let the smudge keep you from wearing your glasses. Never let a vision impairment keep you from seeing. From living.

Communication

Learning to communicate is one of the first things we learn to do as an infant. We find ways to express our wants and needs to others without using words. As adults, somehow the use of words can make communicating more difficult. You would think it would ease the process. Learning to communicate effectively with people around us is important on a professional and personal level.

There are 3 key steps to this process:

1.  Thought: It enters your brain as a potential topic for future conversation.

2. Encoding: We as the communicator have to find the most accurate and best way to convey our ideas and thoughts to the listener.

3. Decoding: The listener has to understand and absorb our information, and we hope it is a similar translation on all levels.

Most often the communication stops at the first step. There are many more thoughts that aren’t shared with others than the ones that are, which is perfectly fine. However, when those thoughts turn into worries, concerns and topics that need to be addressed to achieve inner peace, following through steps 2 and 3 are critical. These steps can easily cause anxiety and guilt. What if I upset someone else? What if I’m crazy and no one understands me? What if I’m the only one? More than likely, the thought dwelling in your mind begging to be communicated will put you at ease once you let it out of the cage of your mind.

A few things to consider when communicating with the listener (decoder):

- Timing: Is this an appropriate time to bring this up? Consider things like time of day, how busy or distracted the listener will be and is it an appropriate setting? Nobody wants to cause a scene.

- Tone: How is the tone of your voice, body language and your heart? Be sincere without being over-dramatic.

- Technique: Are you remembering to not blame others or play victim? Are you willing to have an open-minded conversation with the listener? Are you ready to accept suggestions on how to come to a solution?

- Truth: Well… is it? Sometimes if we think something long enough, our heart and mind starts to believe it’s true. If you assume something you make an…well, you know the rest.

While it’s important to communicate both good and bad topics with others, these tips might seem more applicable in certain circumstances where communication might otherwise be uncomfortable. Communicating positive ideas and exciting thoughts might come more naturally for most people, so keep up the enthusiasm! Are you ready to improve your thought process, encoding practices and decoding skills? Try to incorporate these tips slowly into your life on personal and professional levels.

Be Thankful.

What if you woke up with only the things you were thankful for yesterday? Don’t wait until November to appreciate all of your blessings.

We all have days (or weeks) when it feels like the world is crashing down around us, but there are still many aspects of our life to be thankful for, hidden due to the overwhelming stress added onto our daily lives.

Below are a few questions to ask yourself:

Think slowly and answer thoroughly. Don’t skip or dismiss any of them. By the end, you will have a healthy list of things for which to give thanks. Knowing and feeling like your life is blessed and full of things to be thankful for will come back ten-fold and spread like wildfire.

1)    Who loves you?

2)    Who/What made you laugh?

3)    What compliments did you receive?

4)    What tasks did you accomplish?

5)    What food nourished your body today?

6)    Who were the positive people that you interacted with today?

7)    What physical tasks were you able to complete today that others could not?

8)    What were you able to buy with the money you are fortunate enough to have?

9)    What was the most peaceful/relaxing moment of your day?

10)    At what moment of your day was someone else dependent on your time and talents?

Perhaps write these down and start collecting varying answers day-to-day, and soon you will see that your life is full of things for which to be thankful.

The things you take for granted, someone else could be praying to have.

Cartalk

It is funny; one can call in with car questions; they’ve mastered the punch-line delivery and they know their stuff. On the rare occasion I remember to tune-in, I catch them on the radio, and I make up for my disloyal fandom by following them on Facebook.

 

Rumored to be the winner of NPR’s “Most Likely to be Canceled Show” for 25 years, straight, I’m talking about Cartalk - known as an interactive radio talk show where dynamic brother duo Tom and Ray Magliozzi - the voice and DNA of the show - discuss all that is vehicular and peculiar.

 

More recently I experienced my own version of car talk.

 

What do you get when one stages an event that sticks two introverts in a car, seatbelts them in (remember – click it, or ticket!) and sends them downtown?

 

Well; we encountered a few mechanical difficulties, that even extroverts would be inexperienced with; had some coughing that mimicked barking dogs; came to complete stops around cops; listened to some fist pumping music; outsmarted construction crews, but more importantly we had a breakthrough: We didn’t just small talk, “So how is work?” and we explored more than the weather and what we would be eating for supper.

 

We were introverts who spent a lot of time around people and on the ride to and fro we learned how important it is to surround one’s self with positive people. Because over and over I learn that sometimes my own company is like stale, moldy pizza. The all-American food gone bad; a total mood killer.

But, you know, these truths are always more enlightening when someone points it out while simultaneously a light bulb (or dashboard light) flashes above your head.

 

Ask anyone who has been anywhere. If they have lived a little, it doesn’t take long to learn a lot and this is something you learn fast: Whom you spend time with… You become.

  

Who are you hanging out with? Who have you made plans with this weekend? Tonight? Tomorrow? Heck, do you work commute with, work with or, even, with whom do you putt-putt golf? Because, that’s you*.

*Okay, by You, I mean me. I made plans tonight. I made plans this weekend. Heck, I have co-workers and a boss who give me questionable looks when I open my mouth and start pacing and practicing my lunges mid-day.

And this is not the “In-ten-years-version-you.” No. This is the live edition: unfiltered, streaming up-to-date you.

 

Now, what if those same people are asking those same questions? Are *you the type of person they want to hang around? Do they want to rub shoulders with you? Will that chip on your shoulders fall from yours to theirs?

 

Be a person worth becoming: Exercise kindness, sweetness, morality, ethics, courage, honesty, faithfulness, peacefulness and you will have many strengths. Give them your shoulders, lift them up you will create giants.

Absorb the Compliments

To this day, I still remember a class activity that affected my self-esteem and me. I never felt bad about myself and often received compliments from family and teachers. This class activity was a little different though. We each wrote our name at the top of a sheet of paper and began passing papers around the classroom. Everyone anonymously wrote a compliment on that person’s paper. The first thing I realized was that I had to compliment everyone in my class, even the kids who didn't like me or ones that I didn't talk with much. Finding and acknowledging positive traits about everyone was not as much of a challenge as I had anticipated. At the end of the activity, receiving a page full of compliments and reading through them, a grin grew across everyone’s face. It was a great activity; looking back I realize how practical and beneficial this mentality is, and should be continued on a daily basis, for a lifetime.

Receiving compliments is a challenge for many people. Approximately two thirds of compliments get rejected, credit gets passed on or they get ignored. If you gave someone a gift and when they opened it, immediately insulted it and told you to return it, how would that make you feel? Rejecting or re-insulting a compliment is much like that - Instead, we should be absorbing these feel good claims. Below are a few tips to help avoid the habit of rejecting compliments:

 

Do not:

 

Ignore it (e.g., changing the subject)

 

Refuse it (“yeah right”)

 

Feel obligated to return a compliment quickly (could come off as insincere)

 

Comeback with an insult to yourself  (“Oh, I wish I didn’t look so fat today”)

 

Seek more reassurance (“Are you sure?”)

 

 

Do:

 

Say thank you, with a smile (simple and sincere)

 

Elaborate how that makes you feel, if you feel comfortable (“Thank you for noticing! I am proud of it!”)

 

Believe it (many people forget this one)

 

Remember it (take a mental note)

 

Return a compliment later, or pay it forward (smiles and compliments are contagious)

 

Write it down (reference past compliments when you need a pick-me-up)

 

 

By following these simple rules, you are more likely to receive compliments, and sincere ones. Believe them. Embrace them. Build upon them.

 

Remembering someone complimenting a shirt, it will make you wear that shirt again, and this time with more confidence.

 

Remembering someone complimenting a presentation or project result, you will feel more confident speaking or performing that skill on the next project.

There is a difference between being confident and being cocky. I’m not saying to rub the compliments you receive in other’s faces, negatively. Reflect on compliments in private, and acknowledge your own personal strengths and gifts.