Next Year Will Be Better...If YOU Are

If you had a crappy year this year, read on. If you had a great year this year, read on.

If you had a crappy year:

Next year will be full of exciting new opportunities.

Next year will be a year of learning, growing, and succeeding.

Next year will be overflowing with abundance.

Next year will be better.

But only if you are.

If you had a great year this year:

Next year will be even more full of exciting new opportunities.

Next year will be a year of even more learning, growing, and succeeding.

Next year will be overflowing with even more abundance.

Next year will be even more better (yes, I know the grammer is incorrect).

But only if you are.

How next year turns out for you is not up to your boss, your company, the economy, or Barak Obama. How next year turns out is entirely up to you. Are you prepared? Are you open? Are you excited? 

Your year will only be better next year if YOU are better. So, what are you doing right now to be a better YOU next year? 

- Are you making any new plans? 

- Are you learning anything new? 

- Are you creating any new relationships? 

- Reading any new books? 

- Attending any new classes? 

- Having lunch with any new people? 

- Getting a new haircut? 

- ANYTHING NEW?

New isn't always better, but better is always new. If you'd like to have a better 2012, you might just have to try some new things. Because there is one thing for certain: if you keep doing exactly what you're doing now, you'll keep getting exactly what you're getting right now.

I know a lot of you will be off over the next few weeks, so to those of you lucky enough or smart enough to have vacation left to burn, let me wish you a happy holiday.

For everyone else, I'll see you next week!

3 free videos from sparkspace

In Friday's post we announced a free 3-part video series about how to prepare for an amazing 2012.

 

I know things can get kind of crazy on Fridays and you might not have been able to read the post yet, but I wanted to encourage you to make time for these great videos I shot with nationally recognized speaker and author, Jason Barger.

 

They're each only about five minutes long, but they're packed with some great ideas and challenging thoughts to help you move toward a great new year at work. 

 

Click on the link below to get the first video. We're only going to keep the videos up for about a week, so I suggest checking it out right away.

 

http://www.sparkspace.com/video1.htm

 

When you get to that page, be sure to sign up for the next two videos. By the way, you're totally welcome to share the videos with anybody you wish (just do it soon because they're only up for a short time). 

 

Here's to an amazing 2012!

 

Mark Henson

chief imagination officer

sparkspace

How To Be Even More Amazing In 2012

Friday night is pizza night at Casa de Henson. I always enjoy swinging by the drive through at my local Donatos for two reasons: 1. I love the smell of pizza in my car, and 2. I love seeing how prepared they are for the inevitable Friday night rush. They have pizza boxes literally stacked floor to ceiling. 

In case you didn't know, pizza boxes are shipped and stored flat. The employees then have to pop them into the shape of a box. I've seen stores do this as the pizzas are made, and that's ok...if things are slow. But Friday night? Fuggeddaboutit. Way too crazy busy at most pizza joints. 

My local Donatos gets it. They understand that it's very wise to use their downtime earlier in the day or earlier in the week to get those boxes ready. Somebody somewhere in the organization said, "Hey, wouldn't it be easier to rock those pizzas out if we didn't have to stop and pop a box together every time?"

2012 is coming. It's going to be crazier and busier at work next year. You know it is. It ALWAYS is. When you're in the middle of the craziness, it's hard to stop and say "Hmmm, I wonder how I could get better at what I do." Instead, you usually think "Holy crap, why wasn't I more prepared?!"

I have a belief that everybody wants an even more amazing place to work next year. You want work to be fun, challenging, exciting, and rewarding. To achieve that, I think you also know that you'll have to be even more amazing, too.

You want to be more amazing, you just don't know how. And when you're "in the weeds" (i.e., slammin' busy & extra challenged), that's when you really need to be more amazing, but you have no time, energy, power, or control during those times to stop and work on yourself.

One of my collaboration partners is Jason Barger, author of Step Back From The Baggage Claim. Jason & I got to talking about the very dilemma I mentioned above. We had so many great ideas during that conversation that we quickly decided we had to figure out a way to share them with you.

So, we've put together a FREE 3-part series of short videos full of ideas and tips for how to prepare to be more amazing at work in 2012. Each video is only 5-10 minutes long. We encourage you to watch them all, share them, comment on them, and give yourself some time to think about the ideas and how you can apply them headed into the new year.

Click on the video to get started. If you can't see the video, here's the link: http://www.sparkspace.com/video1.htm

Consider these videos and the ideas they contain as an early Christmas present...to yourself.

See you next week.