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Appreciating the Culture

  • 02 January 2019
  • Posted by Marcella Bremer

Happy New Year! How was your past year? Many clients told me that this year was a wild ride and that so much happened at an incredibly fast pace. It's been a rollercoaster for many with highs and lows.

Appreciation

I tend to focus on the highs and I have so many things that I appreciate! Active appreciation is a core skill when you're looking to develop a (more) positive live, a positive work experience, and when you want to contribute to a positive culture.

Appreciation changes your vibe! People around you feel it and respond differently to you. But it's not just people around you. You, personally, will see more options and make things happen with positive actions. Just because appreciation upgrades your mood, your energy, your resourcefulness, and your results. What if you applied this at work?

5-minute Practice

Do you practice this enough? How about using the holiday season to count your blessings? Make it the focus of the last week(s) of December. Active appreciation helps you notice what goes well, and what you would like to amplify. It helps to prime your brain to see even more evidence of positive experiences and positive potential.

Take 5 minutes per day to appreciate the things, people, experiences, events that happened to you. Big or small. Acknowledge how much alive you are. The foods you love, the places you've been, the compliments received, the presents given, the love and attention, the achievements, the music that makes you dance - you get the idea. It doesn't have to focus on work experiences per se. But you might want to include positive work moments: your nice co-workers, your accomplishments, the praise you received, the satisfied customer, the helpful janitor.

What is emerging?

Next, active appreciation helps to develop 2019 into a wonderful new year.

  • If you want more of what you appreciate, how could you invite that into your year...?
  • What would be the most positive something that you'd like to encounter in the new year?
  • What positive action could you do at work when you get back in the office?

You might see that a brand new wish emerges from this practice: not an ordinary resolution, but an authentic focus that will energize you because it builds on what is already working well for you.

Let me know in the comments! I'd love to hear your examples. Let's make 2019 your best year yet at work. Let's uplift your organizational culture, too.

Wishing you a positive new year! While you're planning your year: how about joining the positive Culture Change Leadership Workshop on 20-22nd May, 2019? In this workshop, we'll practice active appreciation and positive leadership, and we'll work on developing a more positive culture at work (with the OCAI-tool). Take advantage of the Early Bird rate! We have a few seats left.

© Marcella Bremer, 2019. All rights reserved.

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