It's a Start

I'm a whiner and I'm a complainer.
Poor me!
I need.... I want,,,,

The above statements are apt descriptions of me! Some people would say "Rayna, it's all about her" (First born, head of the clan). Some people would say, "Rayna, she's a Leo" (Loves attention). Some people would say, "Rayna, she needs to find God again" (To get her serenity)

These "some people" are right!

My last blog entry of a week ago was short, the serenity prayer and then the statements "I want serenity" and "I need serenity." I got some comments and even a phone call.... "Are you alright? You sound depressed." Yes and No. Part of the reason for my brief blog was that I just didn't know what to write anymore. Part of it was guttural cry. I knew something needed to change, because in the past few months, I had felt myself on downward spiral in my job and in my relationships with other people and God.

My sister & family were visiting last week and on Friday we finally got some time for just the two of us, by taking a walk around my neighborhood. She shared how her serenity is working for her. She may not have spoken these actual words or even realized that this is the impression that I got from our conversation.

My sister doesn't have an easy work job and she doesn't have a stress-free life. But she has found serenity in realizing that she can't change everything or everyone. She has found peace in knowing "the difference" in what she can change and what she can't. She is giving 110% percent energy to changing what she can help change and letting go of the rest. Letting go is not easy for her or for any of us, but she has done it so that she can have a peace-filled life. I want that. I want that level of serenity that my "baby sister" has found. That was major reason for my previous blog.

Work has been stressful, so having a few days off last week really helped. Then I spent two days in the office and on Wednesday, I and nineteen other managers and senior managers in our company went to a conference in Pensacola, Florida. Our Human Resources director had told us that it was a continued effort to increase our service excellence program which they started about 18 months ago. Her further assignment was for each of us to bring back five action plans for improvement. On Tuesday, when I emailed my staff about being gone to the conference and basically fore-warning them about my assignment, I got the immediate sense of what their reaction to the "five action plans" would be. "Oh boy, what's Rayna going to make us do differently now?"

Unbeknownst to we attendees (as this was the first conference of this type for this learning institute), it was a not a conference geared to what our staff can do to improve service excellence, it was what we managers and leaders of the company could do for our staff and therefore for our company.

It was one of those AHA! moments. It was there that I realized that the change had to occur within me! Change in my work life, change in my personal life, change in my relationships life. It was truly "all about me," but in a different way. I do need to change. I do want to change.

At the end of each day's conference we had to write "what I learned today, to take away from this conference." Beside the change in me versus changing my staff, I need to look at both sides of the story. I am quick to judge without hearing both sides of the story. I do not know my staff, I have not connected with them. I need to take time to be with my staff, not in fun ways necessarily, but to walk in their shoes. I need to see processes and procedures from different perspectives, from the staff and from our customers. Perception is reality. How the staff and customers perceive our ways of doing things at our business may be quite different from one another as well as potentially being different from how I perceive.

The changing of one's self is not easy. It was probably one of the first things I may have said or thought when I started this PES Project....that I was going to change. I did change. However, it is quite easy to fall into a mode of status quo. The minute a person does that or a business does that, you slip back into old habits, old ways of doing things. We have seen it in our company, I have seen it in myself. I am a leader in our company. I'm not the only leader, but I am still a leader. I have a responsibility to my company to help our employees make it the best company around in the service that we provide. A leader leads by example, not by directives. A leader is a role model.

I am a leader in my own life. I set the example and set the role that I want to model for today, tomorrow and for however many days I have in my future. Change does not happen overnight. However, if I don't wake up with the intent of taking that first step towards change, it will never happen at all.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference.