Let it All Work Out

As the new year begins, many of us are making New Year's resolutions that we hope will improve our lives in the coming year. These resolutions could be getting more exercise, reading more, spending more time with family and friends, and for me, avoiding McDonald's dollar menus.

With that said, I thought I'd share a few New Year's resolution ideas for 2023 that we as creatives, designers, and content creators can use to assist us in growing professionally and personally.

Learn something new – The majority of us work in industries that constantly evolve and change. Learning something new helps us not only advance in our careers and keep up with a changing world, but we also learn new techniques and processes that make us better professionals. Besides improving our professional lives, learning something new can also help us improve our personal lives because it:

• Build confidence
• Keep us healthy
• Beat boredom
• Give us motivation
• Make us happier

Dennis Buttimer a life and wellness coach at Piedmont health said this about learning something new.

“As you learn new skills, you’ll discover more gifts about yourself and improve your confidence and sense of well-being.You can also positively affect others with your new skills.”

Share our knowledge – Each of us is a professional in our own fields, and we each bring our own unique combination of talents, knowledge, and experience to the table. With all of this amazing expertise, we should take advantage of additional opportunities to share it with our coworkers. When we share our knowledge with others, we are able to focus on others rather than ourselves.Being successful means looking for ways to help others, and if we can do that by sharing what we know with others, it benefits our teams and, eventually, ourselves.

Be a better listener – Having the ability to listen is one of the most important skills one can have in life, and it is something that you can always improve upon. Being a good listener means more than hearing someone out or responding reflexively and appropriately, it means paying attention to what they say. A good listener involves taking a more passive role in a discussion and actively interacting with the other person through our body language and follow-up inquiries. Even when they disagree, a good listener respects the person they are speaking to. When we are good listeners, we want to exit a discussion with the person we've spoken with feeling appreciated and understood.

Here are 3 steps we can take to become better listeners:

• Think about you want to Learn, Not just what you want to say
• Make sure you asks questions and give people enough time to answer them.
• Make sure those you have heard know you have heard them.

So, here's to a fantastic 2023 at USANA, and I hope everyone stays healthy and happy as we enter the new year.

This month’s newsletter is titled after the Lil Wayne song "Let it All Work Out", on his 2020 album "Tha Carter V".

JVD