It's mid-year recap time! What were the goals you had at the beginning of the year or your New Year resolutions? Now it is time for you to see how you are doing! How you need to adjust if there are significant changes that affect your progress.
As for me, in one sentense, my goals for this year is to have a more balanced work-life. Specifically, my top personal goals are: 1) Maintaining good health, 2) Effective management of personal finance and time to achieve life goals, 3) Finishing all Toastmaster Competent Communicator projects, and last but not least 4) Continuing to develop competency in musical venture by performing and posting 2 songs by the end of the year.
Maintaining Good Health
Health is important in living an active, productive, and happy life especially as you get older. I posted before in April and July of 2014 on the health issues. April, 2014 is about the benefits of exercise, which is a gateway to preventing many diseases, enhancing your look, and slowing down aging; July, 2014 post was about health and wealth with emphasis on oral health.
My health goal is to continue with exercise, have dental procedures that promote long-term oral health, individualize my diet plan through consultation with a Nutritionist. My nutritionist doctor who I consulted with at the end of last year analyzed my general health risk as an Asian female with slight body mass, thus facing higher probability of bone loss. As a result, I took precaution to prevent bone loss by taking greater dosage of calcium and vitamin D food supplements in addition to a bone loss prevention prescription medicine. I have focused more in doing strength and stress exercises, which promote bone strength. Although not a major concern anymore, I'm still continuing to take precaution in my diet to prevent my body from building up bad cholesterol and high level of Tyglyceride. I learned that these two are factors that cause heart attack and stroke. The reason why I can reign in these two health concerns is that I have switched to more vegetable, nuts, and fruits in my diet some time ago.
One thing that I'm still working on to improve my health is to have more sleep. Although according to experts, the ideal number of hours of sleep is eight hours, I have to find out for myself how many hours I actually need to stay mentally sharp. Working on finding and achieving the optimum number of hours will be my focus in the second half of the year. Often, a 15 minutes of power nap in the afternoon can be quite an effective midday booster to the brain.
Effective Management of Personal Finance
As a financial person and an economist, I know that wealth can be increased by maximizing income, minimizing costs, and managing expenditures and investments in such a way that can benefit from tax rules. Having a good financial and investment strategy can let your money work for you.
To maximize income, I work hard at my line of work, developing skills and knowledge that can be beneficial to current and future endeavors. I tried to maximize tax benefits by planning all my medical related activities to be scheduled and paid this year instead of spreading to another year. This is done so that I can benefit from deductible expenses that exceed 2% of Adjusted Gross Income (AGI). I make sure that I contribute to investments in 401K or deferred compensation program to the maximum amount allowed by the law, so that I don't have to pay taxes on that part of gross income now while I am in higher tax bracket. The contribution is a forced saving, and the income is deferred to the future when income falls to a lower level, thus equalize income taxes between now and the future. You too should have financial plan and strategy to reach your financial goals.
On the expense side, I will look at some expenditures that I might need in the past but do not need now. For example, subscription to magazines and additional insurance that I no longer need because the employer already provides me with the benefits. I will have to revisit some other costs that I might not need to make sure I pay only expenditures that have priority now, and provide benefits that I can actually enjoy.
Finishing Toastmasters Competent Communicator Projects
Developing skills in communication is important especially for a leader, and public speaking is one of those skills. Toastmasters Club is an organization that provides supportive environment and networking opportunities for me in both the local and regional levels. The chapter meetings that I attend are held close by my office, so it is convenient to attend. There are people with different areas of expertise and backgrounds that I can learn something new from through their cultures and experiences that they share. Even when I don't present the main speech for the day, I can still participate in impromptu short speech called "Table Topic", which sharpens my brain and helps me to think on my feet.
Presenting a speech requires that I know the topic well either through experience or through research on that particular topic. This works out well because in my line of work, I do a lot of reading which supplements my daily reading of scriptures for inspiration in the morning, and reading of business magazines to keep current with business news as well as future development in technology and business. The speech projects that I present at Toasmasters require me to utilize knowledge I gain through reading materials of financial nature from work, online articles on leadership and management I found from people I follow on Twitter. Together with my life-long experience, I don't run out of ideas for speech topics that interest my audience, but just need to write them down and prepare. There are ten projects, and I am now at project number seven, four more projects to go!
Stay On Course With My Musical Venture
I started my guitar and music in July last year, and was able to present two songs by last October. They were not the best, I know, but I needed to start somewhere. I need to get out of my comfort zone to do something like this that is challenging and satisfying at the same time. It has been challenging to me to find time to practice because of my current tight work and other life schedules. I felt like giving up many times because my fingers do not want to do want I told them to do, and I feel as if my brain is dead by the end of a busy work day. Thanks to the patience of my music professor and friend, David (Young Professor) Cowan, who not only teaches but also encourages me, I will practice and post two more songs before the end of this year. August will be the month that I will do "Can't Help Falling In Love" by Elvis Presley. After learning Elvis' style and rhythm, I will attempt my own version. I will write about romantic love as read from the scripture similar to commentary I wrote in October of last year for the song "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen.
Ok, I will stop here for now, and enjoy my little vacation in line with work-life balance goal of mine. I wish you success with your life goals, and hope you all have a great summer!!
Ok, I will stop here for now, and enjoy my little vacation in line with work-life balance goal of mine. I wish you success with your life goals, and hope you all have a great summer!!
Cinderella (My Car) and Me
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