Lessons from the Water

How big is your reach?

Personally with friends and family.

Professionally with your immediate team of colleagues, folks you supervise.

What about for yourself?

I grew up as a competitive swimmer, not that I was super fast , but I loved the sport because each time I raced it challenged me to be better, go faster, to beat my last time. I wanted to beat last best time each time I dove in- to swim even just a few hundreths of a second faster than last time.

Now I swim just for exercise 4 times a week at 5:30 am. Although there are days where it's hard to get out of bed at 5 am, especially on those cold winter days living in Pennsylvania, I'm always SO glad I did when I'm done. It sets the tone and focus for my day. I feel as if I can do ANYTHING!

My daughter is also a competitive swimmer, and now at the college level. Whenever she is home, she will critique my strokes and give me tips to make my stroke more seamless thereby enabling me to go further faster, with less effort.

Although she's given me lots of tips that have helped and will save my shoulders, one in particular really stood out to me. She said when a swimmer is tired, they tend to shorten their stroke (mostly referring to freestyle or the crawl). They stop reaching, but in essence- are working harder to not go nearly as far as fast.

Where have you been shortening your reach?

When we are tired, we naturally tend to pull back, retreat, right? Well her teenage words of wisdom have stuck with me now for about 10 months- of course in the pool- but also in life. When we are at our wits end, are overloaded or just can't think clearly, our reach becomes very small, very short. We tend to see too many things at play - whether it be at work or at home- and we can't seem to get out of our own way.

However, when we have optimal energy and clear focus, we tend to "reach" and extend ourselves.

We have all been given amazing talents to share with this world. However, sometimes- these talents may not be needed anymore in a particular role or job, or perhaps a job or organizational circumstances have changed such that "our optimal reach" cannot be achieved.

So what do you do?

I'm a firm believer in that "we are all in fact self-employed." Companies grow and change and rightly so- to keep up with the market needs. So, why aren't you making sure you can always "reach further"?

Don't just settle.

Are you in a role where you can continuously "reach" and share your talents and strengths?

If not, it's time to do something about that.

You cannot grow and reach your potential in the status quo.

But, you can grow and reach if you're brave enough to make a change.

Perhaps you would benefit from a coach to help you clarify your strengths and be your guide to help bring out your best talents and coach you through tricky team situations? Or, perhaps you've been thinking about making a job or career change for a while, but you're too lost or too tired to figure out next steps?

I have helped thousands of senior and executive level professionals- either more clearly navigate their current positions in their organizations, or help them land new ones- to be able to extend their reach, using their talents, in a way that is not completely exhausting and overwhelming day in and day out.

What are you reaching for today? This week? This month?

I love meeting and speaking with smart people just like you. If you'd like to chat sometime, I leave a few openings in my calendar each week to help people who want to extend their reach.

Here is the link: https://letsmeet.io/julieshore/strategy-session

Don't let circumstances stop you from being your best self, and extending your reach.

Sure, life happens and things change that our out of our control. But do yourself a favor- and focus on the things you CAN control- enabling you to be your best self every day- and truly reach with ease.