Like most of us, we spent our holiday season holed up in our house. We passed by neighbors walking our dog Cody, waving at them or chatting loudly since we were generally 6 feet away. Family and friend time was spent on Zoom until we fatigued out and checked out. Perhaps more than ever, we need our friends, and they need us

But what about that other friendship…the one we have with ourselves?

While we go to great effort to maintain our friendships, during this time, I hear from many of my clients that they are often times very tough on themselves.  High expectations have been set about getting work done, making sure the family is all okay and trying to take care of themselves with, often, without enough time or energy for much of the above.

How are you treating yourself during this time and what can you do to make sure that you are treating yourself with kindness and caring?

We have a long tradition of being tough on ourselves. My wife, who has been experimenting making sourdough bread has made just 2 loaves but holds high standards for herself that they should be better. I expect that I should be able to work and keep my level of concentration and focus going all day but usually admit that by 2 PM, I am feeling fatigued and ready to start shutting down but then I say” hey, there is more to do, keep it going!”

We have these habit of judging ourselves somewhat harshly and never giving ourselves the right amount of credit. There is a great cartoon that shows a dog fetching a stick and when he brings it back to his owner.  he mutters to himself “it’s always good dog this and good dog that but it is never great dog.”

Of course, positives are like Teflon and negatives are like Velcro

I’m thinking that maybe we can extend our dog metaphor to consider how we can be friendlier to ourselves by being more playful and making a choice in the morning to choose happiness like our dogs do. I’ve been experimenting with that theme as a meme on my computer monitor and it helps remind me to look on the bright side of things and to minimize my focus on negatives.

What kinds of things do you do to keep up your friendship with yourself?

Happenings

The Leadership Café 

Bruno Kurtic is the Founding VP of Strategy and Solutions for SumoLogic. A machine data software company that pioneers in continuous intelligence; a new category of software that enables organizations of all sizes to address data challenges and opportunities presented in digital transformation. Bruno leads strategy and solutions by developing machine-learning technology to address growing volumes of machine data across enterprise networks. 

In this episode, Bruno discusses how he found himself on the path of joining startup companies throughout his career and what the process is like when finding the next one. 

Mike Brady is the CEO of IMG Energy Solutions, a power generation solutions company. Founded in 2012, IMG has six natural gas-fire powered plants in operation and their first solar project in construction. 

In this episode, Mike discusses how his career as a “power guy” has took him to places such as General Electric and Sweden. As well as current projects happening for IMG, including one at the Pittsburgh International Airport. Continuing to bridge the gap in burning clean fossil fuel

ÓRichard Citrin, 2021