​Happy New Year

Did you make Resolutions this year? Have you already broken them? That is the running joke about Resolutions. We tell ourselves, “I am going to lose weight, get fit, get organized, plan a trip, visit relatives, and fill in the blank”.Be realistic with your Resolutions and more importantly your goals. A better…less offensive word is Intentions. Create some intentions for yourself.

I will share my intentions with you. Did you know that sharing your intentions, resolutions, and goals makes you more likely to achieve them? One of my intentions is to dance more. I took a Zumba class this morning. Another intention is to connect with friends, relatives, and travel more. My husband and I have a trip planned to Asheville in February and we will visit with one of my cousins on the way. Creating the intention and following through feels great.

How about you? What do you want to add or subtract in 2024? What boundaries do you need to create or enforce in your life? Healthy boundaries at work and your personal life are crucial to everyone’s well-being.

Resolutions,Intentions, Goals

• Write them down.
• Be specific. (For example: I will exercise 4 days: Mon. Wed., Fri. & Sat)
• Share them with a friend.
• Make a plan. What do you need to do to accomplish them? What obstacles are in your way? (For example: Spouse will cook dinner on the nights I exercise)
• Set a deadline.
• Put it in your calendar. Keep that appointment. Make yourself accountable.

Make 2024 a year where you say YES to life.
Adele Tusson-Gross
706-714-1314

From the U.S. Department of Labor Blog:
A New Year— A Great Time to Focus on Your Financial Future. Click the link to read. This blog post has very good information to review: the 3 stages of your work life

More than half of this year is over. Have you checked in on your 2016 goals? Are you making progress on your goals, have you decided to abandon them, or have you changed them? They don’t have to be life changing to make a positive impact on your life. I have added goals to my list and I’m making headway.

One of my goals is to contact a relative or old friend that I have not seen in a while. Progress: My son, Connor, and his friend, Paco, visited one of my dear friends in Pensacola Beach over their spring break. We spent several days with my friend, Sharla, who is fortunate to live on the beach. Here is a photo of her beautiful home. We had dinner with several old friends, while we were there. My family used to live in Gulf Breeze, Florida for 5 years.​

On Fathers’ Day weekend my cousin, Cassia, had an informal wedding reception for her sister, and my cousin, Darby. I have not seen these cousins in about 25 years. I am grateful I had the opportunity to spend time with them and my son met a few of his cousins for the first time….priceless.

These personal goals are meaningful to me and my family. Life is about connections and the relationships we share. It is so gratifying to achieve goals – big or small. I will share one other small goal that I achieved a few days ago. I have photos on my fireplace mantle in frames that I look at every day. Some of the photos were so old… one photo of me and my husband was taken in 2005…I look a lot older now. Anyway, I have wanted to replace these old photos with recent ones. I ordered prints online of our 2016 vacation to Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, Canada and replaced my old photos. It may seem trivial to you but it means the world to me. Here is one of the photos that I have displayed in my home.​

I hope I have motivated you to act on a small goal that you have. Many of my clients have pictures sitting on the floor that they intend to hang up but never seem to get around to hanging. Projects piled high or projects started but never quite finished, adding guilt to your psyche. Just do it!

What will you accomplish this month? I would love to hear from you. Please share some of your goals with me. Let me know if I have inspired you to complete a goal or project. Let me know what organizing tips you are interested in.
Please share this newsletter/blog/post with friends and like my facebook business page if you are on facebook. Thank you!!
​
Adele Tusson-Gross
Chief Executive Organizer

I attended my 6th NAPO Organizing Conference in May 2016.. It was held close to home this year in Atlanta. I attended several educational seminars and I will share great tips with my readers throughout the year. The Opening Keynote speaker, Scott Greenberg, explained “Don’t spend your life proving yourself spend it improving yourself.” I love that. The title of Greenberg’s presentation was The Third Factor: The Mindset for High Performance Leadership, it was very inspirational. Greenberg, shared his definition of  Leadership and Mindset.
Why do some people succeed while others struggle? Most of the time it boils down to three factors: The first is the “External.” This factor includes all of the outside issues that directly impact our endeavors. The economy, the competition, the weather, government regulation – all of these issues affect us, and they’re all out of our control (which makes them tempting to blame). Most people focus on the second factor, which is our work. That’s our operations, our strategy and that long list of things we do every day. It’s all the stuff that keeps us busy. It’s probably what you’ll be discussing most at your meeting. The belief is that if we work hard enough with the right blueprints for action, we’ll be successful. But plenty of people work hard and have little to show for it. Turns out there’s a third factor that’s less tangible, but the most important. It’s what really distinguishes high performers from everyone else. It’s the one thing that the best leaders, the best salespeople, the best athletes and all the most effective people have in common. That factor is mindset. Nothing determines how successful you’ll be more than the way you manage your thoughts and emotions. Skill is important, but ultimately mindset eclipses skill set. When you’re armed with both, the possibilities are limitless.
Greenberg, went on to tell us that most of us in the room, if not all of us, are Hoarders. What!!!! We are all Professional Organizers in the room. Head Trash defined as Cognitive Distortion all the awful things we tell ourselves about ourselves, that have very little merit. For example: I’m not worthy of a Promotion, I’m not as good as my Colleague, I don’t have enough Education or the right Education…(fill in the blank).  Our Mental Heckler hoarding our brains with clutter. We all need to declutter our brains of the negative Head Trash we tell ourselves.
Lastly, Greenberg told us his personal story which touched all of us. He had a college scholarship to NYU and was an aspiring Film Director. He had everything, or so he thought, going for him until he was diagnosed with cancer and had to drop out of NYU. He discovered through his tragedy a different line of work, Motivational Speaking, and he would not change a thing. He told us to have Gratitude for everything because “who knows what’s good or bad.”

Adele Gross
​Simple Solution Organizing