This was excellent. Today is my first day back in the office where I am a department head, program manager, and Red Cross instructor for my company. My young adult child just graduated last week from high school and simultaneously completed year one of college. With all the celebratory preparations, family flying in and out of town, plus major changes in contracts at work, sifting through the external noise and leading my department forward has been extremely challenging. Today I am assessing everything, top to bottom, trying to get everything back in workable order.
I've always had trouble delegating tasks, which obviously has led to unnecessary high stress for me. I've been trying to determine why this is so difficult for me to do. This recording, practiced during my lunch break after finishing my meal, gave me the first solid glimmer of insight on this matter in VERY long time. Quite simply, I am not living my values. I've tried listing them before, many times, but that seems to have been too active of a process. Allowing the questions to simply sink without expectation of a response did the trick. As a pebble might displace a leaf on the sandy river bottom, so the leaves which represent my actual values floated to the surface as the pebble touched bottom.
Biggest takeaway? I value self-sufficiency, independent thinking, right action, and loyalty/dedication, among other things. How am I to foster that in others if I do not afford them the opportunity to show where they stand in regards to these issues? Perhaps there has been little need for not delegating work all these years. I hired people because I trust them, yet I do not allow them to show me they are trustworthy because I am too controlling of exactly how the work is done when the need is not as great as I make it out to be.
For medical reasons, I already live in direct opposition to one of my values that rose up from the stream's bottom, and I will need to find a way to resolve that particular dichotomy. But THIS, here and now, I can work with. I intend to take a hard look at my assessment list and delegate tasks to my staff, rather than believe I must do it all. I hired people I believed I could trust, and while one is approaching her one year mark, the others have stood by me for nearly a decade and in some cases, more. It's well past time I gave them the opportunity on a regular basis to strut their stuff. A quick task delegation just now as I typed this elicited a huge genuine smile from one of my staff, and it felt equally as good to me.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing this with me and the world. I've bookmarked and downloaded this track and will be using it often, I believe. I've ready accomplished far more today than typical, and I've only delegated a few tasks. Having experienced this practice, I will try to let go of additional work to allow my staff to more fully invest themselves in the work and to relieve some of my own stress.
I feel amazing right now. Thank you again, so very much. I see the light in you. 🤲❤️🤲
