Keep Your Eye On The Prize

I have a dear friend who often speaks like a living self-help book. I usually drives me nuts but today some of it kind of hit home. Today's topics included setting goals. He told me to write down several of my goals and give them a week of actively working on them and if I accomplish even one I am allowed to count that as a success.

Professionally my life is very stressful. I am the queen juggler. At any moment of my morning I feel I have a least 4 balls in the air that need my immediate attention and 2 or more that I rocketed up really high to allow me some room to breath, but they are still there waiting to be caught.

I have private gaols set for myself that I hope to attain everyday and I am my own worst enemy. If I do not achieve all of my internal goals I can easily descend into depression and anger. My need to exceed the high expectations I have set for myself is very deeply ingrained in me. I was taught from an early age that average isn't good enough, above average wasn't good enough. I feel there is now reason to not complete every order, fully, correctly and in 8 hours or less. One thing I have learned in the past year of running the show is I need the people who work for me. Without them there is no way I can accomplish all of this. And believe I have tried to do it without them. There were no errors but I nearly killed myself in the effort. I began drinking heavily to cope with the stress and lack of sleep. I spent 50 to 60 hours a week at work, hurting the relationship with my son. Which led to more guilt and more drinking. I soon found that a month had past with hardly a day that wasn't spent hung over all morning and drunk all evening. Hell, some mornings I was still drunk and running on 4 or less hours of sleep. The other scary thing was losing 15 pound in 28 days from my liquid diet.

I snapped out of that, it took me coming to the complete edge and trying to jump off. Problem is I feel that level of stress creeping back. So I am taking Mr. Self-Help to heart. I set a goal to go on vacation in 2.5 weeks. I must trust and have faith in my crew that my world will not come crashing down while I am away. The big prize is there, now this evening I will plan out the intermediate steps to that prize. If I was able to walk into my kitchen mostly blind with only a candle and succeed, my crew , with more patience and guidance from me can navigate my hyper-organised kitchen of today. If I was able to take over this post from my former manager and learn the ins and outs in a few days, my assistant, with more patience and guidance from me, can come to understand the physics of not letting these hundred balls hit the ground.

So the goals for this week are privately and professionally are...

Trust, Faith, Patience and

Patience, Faith, Trust