I have actually been working on B-School for 4 weeks now. (I started working on bonus materials when I registered the week prior to the B-School launch.) I am truly glad next week is an implementation week because I need a few days to sort out everything I have been doing and thinking. Overwhelm gets you nowhere. Right? My week 3 reflections are focused on the small victories I have experienced since starting B-School. I know my small victories will build on themselves and create a great tidal wave of awesomeness.

Week 3 Small Victories

My third on-time weekly reflection

When I was working through bonus material before B-School started, I chose completing B-School as my major B-School goal. One of the ways I said I would know I have achieved that goal is that I would write weekly reflections on Friday focusing on what I have learned, my general progress, and areas I want to focus on during the rest of B-School. I am keeping my reflection word. In reinforcing the value of reflection, and perhaps raising the stakes of my B-School commitment, I will also continue to comment after each lesson and chime in to FB group to deepen my understanding, and give back a bit of what I am being given.

Ideal Customer Avatar Interviews

I want to follow-up on what I had talked about last week. I have learned so much through the ICA (Ideal Customer Avatar) work. In pulling it all together several things jump out. My ICA has an educator’s heart and is at the top of her career. She strives for excellence even when the path is difficult. She is not afraid to challenge those around her (her bosses, students, and even family.) To lovingly challenge is part of her mission. Connection is her art. She has reached a point in her career, and life, where she struggles to be fed in the same way she feeds others. She seeks resources that are practical and spiritual, technical and theoretical, substantive and aspirational, and gentle and fierce. Balance for my ICA looks like the scales of justice, the winds of change, and the philosophy of care. She wants to read things that beautifully inform and meaningfully encourage. She wants her power to come from honesty with herself and others. She already uses each hour of her day, and wants to create more time to make the world better. She wants to expand her circle of people who understand her and see her. She understands gratitude is a verb, a muscle that can be stretched and strengthened.

Personal strengths

My personal strengths lessons were crazy hard, but really interesting. (Like I said in last week’s reflection, asking people about strengths requires enormous vulnerability. My monkey mind was filled with scenarios of silence, negativity, past failures, and not being picked for freshman cheerleader. Basically, a spiral of suck.) People view me as a storyteller. I am goal driven. I finish what I start. I breathe in enthusiasm and breathe out positivity. I took the Clifton Strengths Assessment and it said my top four strengths included: 1. connectedness, 2. communication, 3. includer, 4. positivity, and 5. belief. That all feels really good to hear.

Publication schedule

Sitting down and creating a publication schedule for what will appear on my blog between now and July 1 lifted a thousand pounds off of my shoulders. I have wanted a blog publication schedule for years and never actually sat down and did it before B-School. A cool conversation started between my publication schedule and my blog topic brainstorming work and I have worked in several of the most compelling topics from that list in to my schedule. I am actually excited to explore the topics I selected. Also, I included deadlines for my gratitude newsletter on my schedule. So now I have deadlines for when that has to happen. That helps. My gratitude newsletter has been languishing this quarter, and I have to see that through. Deadlines help me do that. (I am still working on fully using the new calendar I bought at the beginning of B-School. Writing it all down and sticking to what I write down is tricky in the ebb and flow of life! Next week I will be better.)

Balancing work and job

A new grant writing contract started this week, so I am figuring out how to maintain my b-school schedule and fulfill my grant writing duties. I know I can make it all happen. Several B-Schoolers have talked about getting or leaving jobs during the first three weeks of B-School. They have framed the comings and goings as opportunity (regardless if the opportunity was a door closing and a window opening, or simply a chance to meet financial obligations while in B-School). I hate the phrase work smarter not harder, because it has only been used in my experience by bosses who were not listening when I asked for help, or who wanted me to do something that made their lives easier and my life harder. So I will not say that in this context. Rather, I will say, “I Got This. All of This.”