I decided to do the rest of my missions today. Why? To set myself up for success. Finishing up my weekly and setting up for the next week on a Sunday may makes more sense for my life. Saying that I’m going to do all that mid-week is setting myself up to fail. I’m just too busy during the week.

So here goes the rest of my missions for the week.

4. Write down three concrete things I’m good at  

• Making cheesecake. Sounds a little silly. But I think I make a pretty damn good cheesecake. Props to my Dad and Abby Mandel’s Cuisinart Classroom for teaching me the recipe and to all my friends and family who have eaten so many over the years while I experimented. I love to bake (although sometimes I wish I had a healthier hobby). The tradition in my family is that the birthday boy /girl gets to choose their birthday dessert. Many a cheesecake have been made to meet those requests. I love being able to provide a special treat for people and cheesecakes have been a way for me to do that.
• Training or coaching others.  Helping people learn things and supporting them as they become more successful is such a great feeling! I mostly find myself getting to do this in my job as a training and support lead. New employees are so exciting! Helping them learn and start to make connections. Seeing the light bulbs go off as they build confidence in their skills, it can totally make my day. Being a part of and contributing to someone’s experience as they learn is an honor I take seriously. As a result, I think I’ve grown to be quite good at it.
• Planning. I’m sure this sounds like a dreadfully boring thing to be good at to some people, but I dig it. Give me a project or trip to plan and I’m a happy camper. I’ve recently learned that I’m a “maximizer” (see http://gretchenrubin.com/happiness_project/2006/06/are_you_a_satis/ for more details about this or listen her podcast “Happier” http://gretchenrubin.com/podcast/).  When faced with a planning task, my goal is to make sure the best experience is had by all involved. This means considering all the options I can think of and planning for any possible pitfalls. This can drive some people nuts. But the other day when my boss said to me “you have a better understanding of the planning of this project than anyone else” I realized that this really is a skill to be proud of. I can use it to benefit those around me and that’s pretty great!

Moving on to my next mission…

5. Ask a friend what they like most about me.

So this one was a little hard for me. I kept thinking, is this even something I should do? Why should it matter what others see as good about me? But ultimately I decided, sometimes it’s good to try and look at yourself with someone else’s eyes. Eyes that don’t get hung up the negative things I see. So I bit the bullet and asked a couple of friends. I figured its a holiday weekend and getting a response might not be easy. A testament to my friends, they all responded right away. And I fell to mush reading what they had to say.  I wish I could just post verbatim what they said because it was so beautifully written. But it didn’t seem right to share with the public, so I’ll just keep it as a little treat for me.

The clear winner was “being a genuinely caring person”. Although one friend called me “superwoman” and that was pretty awesome. I sure am happy to know that my close friends see this in me. And it lines up pretty well with my earlier post The Right Attitude where I identified this as one of the things I like about myself. This turned out to be a pretty uplifting exercise. Maybe next time, however, I’ll ask what my friends like least about me. Then I’ll really have something to chew on.

Mission 6 for the week is to “Find an image that expresses who I am.”      

This was really hard. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an image that expresses who I am. I’m not sure such a thing exists. But this is what I came up with.

Sitting on the porch of my aunt’s house in northern California. Reading a book. Enjoying everything the surroundings had to offer. But this is a setting where I’m most content.  So there must be something in it that expresses who I am.  My “happy place” is lying in the little bed at the cabin, overlooking the lake, with a book. Drifting between reading and napping and watching the critters outside.

Now for my weekly mission : write a mantra and post it on my mirror. To be honest it hasn’t made it to my mirror yet. Picture forthcoming. .. “You’re doing better than you think you are”

I think this applies to so many things in my life. Not all, sometimes I probably am doing worse than I think I am. But in general, I know I’m harder on myself than I should be. I need to treat myself how I tell all those friends that they should treat and see themselves. I need to be my own friend. I’m no better or worse than they are. And I deserve the same acknowledgment, encouragement, and celebration that they do.

That was a lot to read. Thanks for hanging in there. This has been a great experience for me. And I hope that maybe one of you who’ve read these posts have decided to do your own Life Dailies. I think its going to be worth it 🙂