This week is full of Gratefulness Challenge milestones. Three weeks have come and gone! I think it might be time to start counting down the days. Only 9 more to go!

1. Compromise: Today I felt like laying in bed all day eating cheese and watching youtube videos. I also had a lot to get done though and some of it was time sensitive. So I made a deal with myself. I allowed myself to lay around and do almost nothing for the day as long as I got a few key important tasks done that would set me up to be ready for tomorrow. They weren’t anything big. I just needed to prepare some food, answer a few emails, do a few errands and write this post… but they felt like gigantic tasks!

In all honesty the big tasks are waiting for me tomorrow. I really got nothing done at all today that was significant. It was a compromise with myself. You can have this time to yourself, Candice, but you have to be ready to work work work tomorrow morning! Lets see if I can keep up the other half of the bargain tomorrow.

Compromise is tough, but it is really necessary if you want to get anything done efficiently and without an excessive amount of tension. You can’t have it all. It’s impossible to make everyone happy all the time. So you can either focus your energy on constantly fighting to get everything to go your way, or you can pick your battles. I’m not always perfect at compromising, but I do my best to allow some wiggle room in my plans to accommodate others as well as my changing needs. Because, you  can plan and research as much as you want, but being prepared doesn’t mean you know it all.

2. Pinterest: I know it’s absolutely ridiculous but pinterest has really changed things for me. Especially to do with how I cook. I’ve always enjoyed trying new recipes and would search blogs for interesting finds. With pinterest though this has been so much easier to find new things to try. Especially when I am looking for something specific.

Recently I have been making some significant diet changes and am feeling great! What has also happened though is that my regular list of recipes has grown very small. Since I live alone I get bored with foods quite quickly. I’m the only eating them! I have found so many amazing new recipes through pinterest which fit with my current eating habits as well as lots of other great ideas. I love how easy it is to use as well as the overwhelming quantity of good stuff to look through. It has been really helpful in keeping me excited and creative in the kitchen as well as to help me stay on track with my new eating plan.

3. Professionalism: Our current society has a lot of wonderful things about it. We are more connected with the world than ever before. We have access to an overwhelming amount of information and resources 24/7. I am constantly astounded by what is possible now a days. What our constant interaction with one another has created though, which I don’t like, is a loss of professionalism. Far too many people write emails as if they are sending texts, share intimate details with the entire world and have no idea how to have a proper phone conversation or leave a voicemail. When is the last time you received a thank you card in the mail? I bet the person just tweeted a shout out to you for being awesome instead.

Now I’m not trying to say that any of these new technologies are bad. I recently had someone proposition me work over twitter. They saw me once at an event a few years ago and the only contact info they could find for me was my twitter account. That’s awesome! But when this individual sent me an email with details about the job it was polite and professional. They didn’t write it as if we were best friends, they wrote it as if we were potential business partners. I think people assume that if you’re friends on facebook, or twitter or follow each other’s blogs that you know one another. Perhaps these are the same people who’s posts are a little too much information for my liking. But here’s the thing, the online presence that someone has is not the real them, it is a version of them. This is especially true for anyone that has their own business or works in the public eye. Yes, they want to appear friendly, but that doesn’t mean you can talk to them like you would your closest friends. Especially if you’ve never actually met face to face.

I’m not trying to say that communications with strangers can’t be friendly, but calling them lady, dude, brother or bitch when you’ve never even met just isn’t in the realm of appropriate. Call me old school, but I think manners are important. So when I get an email that is written professionally (i.e. the words aren’t all abbreviated and they signed their name) or a thank you card in the mail or (and this one is REALLY exciting) someone actually leaves a message on my voicemail which includes their name, reason for calling and contact info, It makes me really happy. I’m not trying to scoff at the modern forms of communication. I mean I just wrote about my gratefulness for pinterest. I just think that to embrace the future of business we don’t need to abandon the strong foundation of the past. I’m grateful for those who join me in continuing to remain professional in their communications with the rest of the word both online and otherwise.