Decisions

This past weekend I finally read the book Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell which focuses on decisions and how we make them.   What resonated most for me were paying attention to our intuition (our gut feelings), narrowing our choices (we often have way too many these days), and paying attention to the lens we are looking through when making our decisions (are we really as open minded as we think we are)?

My October article for my newsletter also focused on decisions – here’s an exerpt – “Every decision we make could be the pivotal one that could change the course of our lives.  From the small decisions like what we have for breakfast or the clothes we buy to the big decisions like what career we pursue and  the partner we choose, and every decision in between, has an effect on our quality of life.  Making decisions, especially in this age of vast choices, is often a painful and challenging process.  We worry about the outcome and  are fearful of the unknown.  We wonder if this is the “best” choice  and often hold out for that “perfect” choice for so long, that we wind up staying exactly where we are, in limbo.  As many of you know, one example of a big decision in my life was my choice to move to North Carolina.  The initial decision to move was easy since my husband and I knew we wanted a better quality of life.  The next decision was where to move.  That took longer as we identified what “better quality of life” meant to us.  That decision was followed by many smaller decisions such as which places to visit, when to put our house up for sale, which realtor to use, when to tell our employers we were leaving, which specific community we wanted to live in, and the list goes on.   Was the process easy?  Not always.  Was it painful?  Sometimes it was.  So what kept us going?  Our desire was strong; we knew what we wanted and most importantly, why we wanted it!”

How do you make your best decisions?

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Stefanie Zizzo, Career and Life Coach, www.stefaniezizzo.com

Career and Life Balance

Yesterday I was sitting on the back deck at Aqueduct Conference Center in Chapel Hill.  If you have ever been there, you know how beautiful and serene the view is from that spot.   You see a large expanse of grass, an abundance of trees in the distance and a plethora of bushes with large purple flowers buzzing with bees right in front of me.

The reason I was there was that I had been invited to deliver a seminar on Personal and Professional Life Balance to gradute students from NC State.  My talk focused on the theme of Choice and the role it plays in creating balance in our lives.  Choice of what we do, how we do it, when and where we do it, who we are when we are doing it and the type of support we choose.

In preparation for this presentation, the students were asked to complete a Signature Strengths Quesionnaire (you can try it too, it’s free) that measures what matters most to each of us.  Knowing what matters most is a critical component in making the best choices.  I completed it as well.  One of my top 5 was “appreciation of beauty and excellence”.  So yesterday, when finished for the day, instead of rushing off to my next appointment, I decided to spend a few moments basking in the beauty on the back deck.   I then chose to take the longer but more beautiful route home on the backroads near Jordan Lake rather than the interstate. 

Those choices – taking those few moments of quiet and beauty were rejuvenating and truly balanced my day! 

Stefanie Zizzo, Career and Life Coach – www.stefaniezizzo.com

My beach vacation

I just returned from a relaxing 5 days at Wrightsville Beach with my husband Paul.  The weather could not have been better – sunny and 80 most every day.  What would a beach day be without one of my favorite pastimes – treasure hunting for shells and sea glass?   Our timing just so happened to be on the heels of a recent storm which turned up more shells than I may have ever seen!  My favorite find just seemed to have washed up on the shore just for me, just yards from where we were sitting on the beach.  I happened to look up from the James Patterson novel I was reading (I love a good mystery) and I noticed something large was right at the shoreline – so I jumped up and found a large perfect conch shell!!

Some other memorable moments this weekend were the great photo opportunities, time for watercolor painting and our favorite Sunday brunch!