Happy August! Each month we strive to provide you with a variety of helpful resources, tips, and practices to support your continued success, both personally and professionally. Because we work with a diverse demographic of clients, industries, and backgrounds, we aim to provide content equally as diverse. If a particular section doesn't resonate with you, that's okay! Our hope is that everyone can find at least one gold nugget per issue. 

Below, you will find information on this month's article from Crum Consulting, this month's development challenge, as well as general wellness reminders. We have a number of knowledge-forward articles available that explore a variety of professional and personal topics, all of which will challenge your current perspective, and push your continued growth. Each month, we aim to provide you with a new challenge to help facilitate your ongoing growth. These challenges will range in topics and applications, in an effort to focus on a variety of aspects of your life. If you are a recurring client with us, we will be following up on this month's challenge with you in session. If you don't currently have any sessions set up with us, and would like to discuss this challenge and others like it, please feel free to reach out to schedule a session with us! You can reply directly here if we have worked together in the past. If you are a new client, please click here to fill out a consultation form, and we will be in touch to schedule a session with you. We also provide new wellness reminders in the form of our stretch of the month, and wellness tip. Regardless of your background, these reminders will help improve your day to day health and wellness.

August Article: This month's article is an oldie but a goodie, and aligns with our challenge and wellness tip of the month: Honor Your Why. We've all experienced moments of doubt in our lives, whether it be big or small. We have doubted our abilities, strength, resolve, GRIT, or just our overall sense of self. If you too have found yourself experiencing moments of self-doubt, I challenge you to find and honor your why. If you have any questions surrounding this month's article, or would like to further explore opportunities, please feel free to reach out to schedule a session with us! You can reply directly here if we have worked together in the past. If you are a new client, please click here to fill out a consultation form, and we will be in touch to schedule a session with you.

August Challenge: I challenge you to simplify your life!
If you are interested in more content on these topics, we recommend reading our When Values are Clear, Decisions are Easy article.

→Professionally we can focus on saving energy and balancing projects to work more efficiently and prevent fatigue. Alternating between light and heavy tasks can help our body and mind stay focused throughout the day. Planning projects helps things go more smoothly when approaching deadlines. Consider revising the way you approach planning your days, catching up on the stack of paperwork looming on your desk, implementing email labels and folders to declutter your inbox, sourcing a task management software to help manage your workflows, and migrating your recurring tasks to your calendar for ease. A tip from our founder: “Restrict your active weekly goal list to no more than 10 items at a time. Any additional goals over the 10 allowance can go to an ongoing list. As you complete the tasks throughout the week, do not add to the list. When you set up the following week, reference your ongoing list, and prioritize your roll-over tasks from the previous week with your banked list of goals, to compile a new week of goals.”.
→Simplification at home can be as easy as scaling down our lifestyle; physical clutter, overscheduling, and finding balance in the family dynamic. Consider revising your house schedule, doing some spring cleaning, combing your house for donation opportunities, having a garage sale, implementing organizational components like bins or drawers, and having an open family discussion about what activities should be prioritized in what order vs. what activities are eating up too much time.
→We also must consider personal simplification by taking stock of our personal lives and connections. From time to time we will all encounter people in our lives that cause stress. It can be tough to break ties with them, but it’s worth it in the end. Life is too short to be held down by people who cause more problems than they are worth. Consider having a heart to heart with yourself regarding your personal network, and what each person brings to the table. Make a note of the emotional vampires, the time-suckers, the chronically negative, and the people that are not willing to help themselves. Then consider how much time you could give to yourself and others if you weren’t being drained by these stress-makers. 

Stretch of the month: High Lunge - this stretch can be practiced to help relieve indigestion and constipation. It can also help ease symptoms of sciatica. Click the (external) link to learn more, or simply google "high lunge"!

Wellness tip of the month: Limit the amount of active goals you focus on at one time. Making a list of your goals is a wonderful practice to keep you on track. However, as with anything, too much of any one thing can turn negative real quick. A good rule of thumb to follow when building your list of goals is to limit the active scope to 10 goals at a time. That's not to say that you can't have additional goals, but rather that you will only focus on a maximum of 10 at a time (the remainder of them being documented and stored out of sight until the active list has an opening). This method yields a number of benefits. For starters, keeping your list to a maximum of 10 items will ensure that it remains a productive tool, as opposed to something you dread, and inevitably, avoid; 10 items is a digestible number for day to day progressions. Have you ever had a tenacious moment, where you thought you could take on the entire world, and ended up with a page long list of goals? How many did you actually get through? Did you even look at that list again, or did the mere thought of it cause you massive anxiety? Well, you're not alone. Another benefit of this method is that it aids our ability to prioritize our tasks/goals with more ease. If you can only have a maximum of 10 goals at a time, you will likely choose those first 10 very carefully, with all of your priorities in mind. Additionally, as you build your list of 10 items, you will also prioritize those 10 line items based on your present scope, providing yet another level of control and ease. At the end of each week, you can restructure your list by reprioritizing your existing items, and bringing on new items from your running list to your active list to fill the holes of tasks you completed that week. This method is sustainable over the long-haul, and will give you a new perspective on what's truly most important in your world at any given time. Remember, less is more. 

"Our lives are frittered away with detail. Simplify, simplify." - Henry David Thoreau 

"One 'simplify' would have sufficed." - Ralph Waldo Emerson (in response)

Thank you for being a pivotal part of our journey here at Crum Consulting. We would be nothing without you, and your continued support. Please feel free to share our content with others to pay it forward. We relish in receiving feedback, so if you have any suggestions or if you'd like to share your opinion on any of the content we have provided here, please let us know! If you have any questions about anything we covered here, or if you'd like to explore potential opportunities with Crum Consulting, we are here for you! Reach out anytime!

Until we meet again, take care of yourself, and others. Thank you.