I think I need Quotidian Sandwiches

It’s time again for my beginning/end-of-the-week Feedback Sandwich*. They transform how I think about my weeks past and future. It’s like a pat on the back, wrapped around a wish. Totally magic. Please, join in and make yourself a sandwich in the comments! (Now including updates on the Challenges!)

Creating Challenges

I’m two weeks into those challenges I’ve taken on in anticipation of my 45th birthday in March. In last week’s Early Bird Sandwich, I recognized the value of doing the challenges first thing in the morning, or being sure to schedule them into my day. Well, I still recognize the value of it, but it still didn’t happen as much as I wanted! Oy.

The first piece of bread: Specific Good Stuff

I’m still excited by my challenges, even though they’re, well, more challenging than I expected. (I know, right? That’s why they call them challenges. Anyway.)

I’m especially thrilled by the feedback so far from the 45×45 coaching clients. On Facebook, Andrea said: “Highly recommended: Shannon is a super-genius!” And Margaret said: “I took Shannon Wilkinson up on her offer and it was so helpful! I’ll be back for more coaching, even when it’s not her birthday.”

You can still be one of the 45. It’s the perfect way to dip your toe in coaching with me without a big commitment of time or money. Plus, you’ll be helping me reach one of my challenges, and paying it forward with a Kiva loan.

On Saturday, I managed to remember it’s about the journey, when I was climbing Mt. Hood. We reached 11,050ish feet, but the summit is at 11,239. We were thwarted by ice walls in the Pearly Gates. While it’s always amazing to reach the summit, I’m glad I had the opportunity to challenge myself, spend time with a great climbing team, and see beautiful views all day long. We even ended up helping a fallen climber again. Luckily this time he wasn’t seriously hurt and was able to walk out under his own power.

Time for the meat in the middle

Okay, I have to face it. I have major resistance to daily routines and structure. Well, it’s not like I haven’t bumped into this before. I have less than 40 days to finish my challenges, and I’m starting to feel a little pinched. Because of the timing, and how I haven’t made time for them every day so far, I’ll pretty much have to do them every day from here on out.

How can I make this easy?

Maybe I need to play around with the words I’m using.

I could talk with my friend and amazing professional organizer Janine who’s absolutely genius when it comes to routines.

Boring Change! I could do a session of Boring Change, and let my unconscious mind work it out.

And for that final piece of bread

While I didn’t complete as many of my challenges last week as I wanted to, I did keep at it. Even when I was feeling down about missing days. I remembered that it’s not about never getting stuck again, and that’s something I’m always happy to remember.

Here’s the overview, thanks to Joe’s Goals:

* * *

*What’s this about a Sandwich?

Well, yes, I am hungry, but that’s not the kind of sandwich I’m talking about.

This time I’m talking about giving myself a Feedback Sandwich at the end of each week. Or major project. Or milestone. Or, well, you get the idea.

I first learned about this concept in my NLP Trainer’s Training. We were learning to train NLP practitioners, which included learning to give useful feedback. The basic format of the Feedback Sandwich is:

• Bread = Compliment, what the person did well, be specific!

• Meat = Suggestion for improvement

• Bread = Compliment, this time an overall positive assessment to take into the future.

This Sandwich comes with a warning.

For starters, it’s not necessary to create a Dagwoodian monolith of a feedback sandwich for it to be useful. It’s okay to keep it simple with a small, elegant tea sandwich. Also, I encourage carbo-loading in this case. More bread than fillings!

Another danger of the feedback sandwich is that you start getting programmed to know that criticism follows that first compliment. If I notice that I start to cringe whenever I try to give myself a compliment, I’ll probably look at another way of reviewing my week. Until then, I think with heartfelt review I’ll be just fine.

(If you’re in a position where you need to give feedback to others on a regular basis, you might want to skip the full carbo-lover’s sandwich and try this open-faced revised feedback method instead.)

What’s your feedback sandwich look like for the week?

Please share yours in the comments below, or on the Perception Studios Facebook page.