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Kathy Stoddard Torrey

~ Leadership Coach and Trainer

Kathy Stoddard Torrey

Monthly Archives: July 2017

Summer Fun: Challenging Fun

25 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Summer Fun, Uncategorized

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Tags

#assemblywanted, #challengingfun, #KathySays, #SummerFun

garden cart 550 px

A lot of what we do for fun includes a challenge – both doing and watching one. Think about a sports matchup: A group of people are yelling and having fun while watching other people trying to win.

There are lots of ways to have some fun by creating and achieving a goal. Finding new recipes and cooking them successfully is a challenge that many people like. Playing board games is also a challenge. Solving puzzles, visiting as many state parks as possible, and collecting coins are all fun challenges.

Libraries caught on to the fact that kids like a good challenge and instituted summer reading programs ages ago. For reading a certain number of books, you usually get a prize! If you, as an adult, are feeling left out of the book reading challenge, here is a link to a scratch-off poster of classic literature: https://www.popchartlab.com/collections/best-sellers/products/100-essential-novels-scratch-off-chart

I like building things. The picture above is a garden cart that I assembled; it took me most of one morning. I also love putting together furniture from IKEA! My son and I had a fun afternoon assembling a bed. My sister, on the other hand, can’t abide having to figure out the assembly directions.

The key is to find a challenge that resonates with you. It could be sewing a dress or refurbishing a car. You could prepare to run a marathon or to walk a mile. Collecting Pokemon with the app or as cards is a popular challenge for people of all ages.

There are two parts to creating a fun goal and achieving it. First is the process. If you enjoy the action, the doing is enjoyable. Then there is the satisfaction that you feel after accomplishing a goal that you worked hard to reach. For example, I enjoy unraveling the mystery of assembly directions, manually putting something together, and  admiring my handiwork. It’s a series of enjoyment.

The possibilities are limitless! Perhaps a perfect cannonball is in my future. For an adventurous bit of summer fun, pick a challenge and go for it!


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Summer Fun: One Full Day of Nothing but Fun

18 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Summer Fun, Uncategorized

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Tags

#reading, #relaxing, #rest, #SummerFun, #WeAllNeedaBreak

enjoy the day 550 px

I have to admit to feeling a little burnt out lately. I am low on motivation and having trouble focusing. I’m also mentally exhausted most of the time – everything seems overwhelming. Life is a drudge!

This is not my normal state, so I sat down to think about how to get myself back on track. In reviewing my days and life, I realized that I’ve been working every single day. Not the whole day, but I’ve done some work every day for months. Not good.

We humans need breaks. One study cited in The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal has stuck with me: The United States Army used gunnery crews for a study on productivity. One crew was instructed to shoot as many shells as possible over a three-day period. The second crew was told to take naps at intervals. The first day, the nonstop shooters outperformed the nappers. However, on the second day, the accuracy of the nonstop shooters got worse, and the nappers gained the lead for good.

We all need recovery time! I definitely need some recovery time. So, I decided to schedule a day of nothing but fun. I plan to do only things that I enjoy for one full day.

Of course, that requires some planning and preparation. I will need to get laundry done ahead of time, as well as any work projects. It will have to be a day with no meetings or networking events. I will not check email or get on the computer for anything that isn’t fun. Facebook, by the way, is not fun. It’s a distraction, but not fun in my book.

It’s more fun to think about what my summer fun day will include. First, there will be no alarms in the morning — definitely no alarm. I am an early riser, anyway, so that’s not a limiter on my day. The day will include a leisurely trip to my favorite nursery to pick out some plants. I won’t plant them that day, but I will enjoy browsing, learning, and picking out a few.

The day will also include reading something light and engaging. Maybe it will be a romance novel! I haven’t read anything with a Fabio-type manly man on the cover in years. Perhaps it would be a good idea to do that reading by a pool. There are some outdoor pools that I haven’t checked out.

Dinner will be at a restaurant with a friend or two. We will celebrate fun, friendship, and summer fun. Perhaps it will end with a movie and popcorn, either in a theater or at home.

Oh, I also want a foot massage! I could stop in at the place in the mall if I don’t want to make an appointment.

Half the fun is thinking about fun things to do! Maybe I won’t get them all done, but I absolutely won’t be doing any work.

Moments of rejuvenation each day are also important and something that I want to include more in my life. Dr. Richard Boyatzis found that if executives include a few moments of one renewal activity every day, they can avoid burnout. His study identified four categories of rejuvenating actions: hope, mindfulness, compassion, and fun.

Hope can include talking or thinking about the future in a positive way. Mindfulness can be paying attention to your breath for a minute or so. Compassion is just helping someone else in some way. The last one, fun, is what we are talking about.

My intention is to include fun in each day. I mean, what’s the point of living if we don’t get to have any fun at all? Even if it’s just 10 minutes of fun, I am going to make sure it’s in my day. I also intend to include days of nothing but fun more often. I am going to mark them on the calendar and make sure that nothing is scheduled on fun day.

What will you do on your fun day? If my kids were still small, I would include them. Who will you include? What won’t you do? Fun looks different for each of us; what does your fun look like?


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Summer Fun: Are We Having Fun Yet?

11 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Summer Fun, Uncategorized

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Tags

#AreWeThereYet?, #EnjoytheMoment, #MakingFun, #SummerFun

making fun 550 px

I am blessed. I realized at a very young age that I determine the answer to “Are we having fun yet?” What truly makes something fun is our own attitude about it. I’ve had some great role models along the way, but the idea of enjoying each moment and phase of life came from a book I read as a child.

The book is called It’s NICE to be LITTLE by John Stanley. It’s out of print, but you can watch me read it here: http://www.tapferconsulting.com/free-stuff/ It’s about all the great things that you can do when you are little. The last line is, “But never, never again will you have the fun you had when you were little.” So very true!

Life is a series of phases. We are little, we go to middle school, then high school. Some of us go to college, get jobs, get married, and maybe have children. As I grew up, I noticed many people lamenting the current phase and wishing for the next. That always seemed silly to me, and I think that I have It’s NICE to be LITTLE to thank for that.

I first became conscious of how different my attitude was from most everyone else’s in high school. Some of the other girls tried to act older and sniffed at immature high school activities. They didn’t look like they were having fun. I had a blast in high school! I played sports, acted in plays, and enjoyed learning. Of course, there was some heartbreak and drama – things also inherent in the high school experience. However, I never wished I was somewhere else. I knew that high school was a short and lovely time that would never happen again in my life.

I’ve tried to truly immerse myself in every phase I’ve been through. College was grand! I stayed out late, partied, and maintained a good GPA. I lived in dorms, where food was provided, with other young women. Hallelujah! My husband and I were married for six years before we had kids, and we did fun, silly, young people stuff. We lived in Germany, traveled, slept on trains, and explored ruins. It was a wonderful time.

Then we had children. The fun we had been having was no longer an option, but kids brought a different kind of fun. We played games, went to playgroup, read books, went to museums, looked for creatures under rocks, and played silly, made-up games. As they grew, fun looked different, but it was always fun. We went camping with Boy Scouts and watched movies. Conversations became more engaging. I thoroughly enjoyed raising my two sons, even though nurturing is not my forte. I love them and loved doing things with them.

There are also people who can make any event fun. My mom was one of those people. She lived with us for ten years, and she would jump in and join me on whatever harebrained scheme I was doing. If I volunteered to make the Cub Scout centerpieces out of pipe cleaners and tissue paper, she was at the table with me – and we laughed the whole time.

Mom could make anything fun. We never carried a heavy piece of furniture together when we didn’t have to put it down because we were laughing too hard to go on. We raced to get the fitted sheet on the bed so that we wouldn’t be the one who had to do the last hard corner. She sat on the floor and played “action figures” endlessly with the boys. She was fun to be around.

I have another friend named Mary who has the same quality. She can make anything fun, and we have done some questionable activities together. She always starts with, “I have something fun for us to do.” She could then follow up with, “We are going to find a big ol’ hog in a messy pig pen and give it a bath,” and she’d be right. No matter what scheme she proposed, it would always be fun because she is fun.

In the end, we make summer fun with our attitude and determination to make each moment as fun as possible. I, for one, think that sitting in cool grass and pulling weeds is fun. Learning is fun. Editing videos is fun. Anything with Mary is fun. The list goes on, and I haven’t even gotten to the really fun stuff.

The things to remember are:

  1. Be here now.
  2. Decide to have fun, no matter what you are doing.
  3. Find fun people.
  4. Be a fun person.

Nothing too hard. We can all answer yes to “Are we having fun yet?”


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Summer Fun: Silly Bravery

04 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Summer Fun, Uncategorized

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Tags

#bravery, #silly, #SummerFun, #trust, #vulnerability

grandma and grandpa Cowan

Full disclosure: These are my grandparents. Parents of the woman who used to open our back door and yell out to the neighborhood, “Kathy is a nu-ut!” Ah, family. Mom was a hoot!

Some of my best memories are of times when I was being silly. The really good ones are when someone else was being silly with me. When I was around 9, my father skipped from the car to the movie theater with me. It was an unusual and delightful event that has stuck with me for years.

When I was in high school, my best friend and I skipped through the halls together. Not very dignified, but it was a lot of fun – and it wasn’t really skipping. We were doing the skip/dance from The Wizard of Oz. It’s not an easy jig! You should try it sometime.

I skipped recently when a friend visited from California. One of her commitments from #52Dares was to skip in public. We linked arms and skipped from my front door to her car. (You can sign up at 52dares.com for a weekly email with some fun challenges. My friend Erin Dullea is the creator, and she is a genius at creating challenges that you want to do – like skipping.)

When my husband and I were first married, we did the upside-down face thing. You hang your head off the bed so that your face is upside-down. Then you frown and show your bottom teeth, and it looks like you are smiling! When the upside-down person talks, it is hilarious. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, search for “chin face” images online.) We did not have children at the time. No excuses – just silliness.

kst towel crown

Here is a picture of me with my children when they were small. I have no idea what we were doing, but I believe it might have had something to do with superheroes since I am wearing a cape. Although, that could be a towel crown and royal baby blanket robe. I will have to ask the boys, who are now men, if they remember. I have lots of fond memories of silly times with them.

The one thing that all of this silliness has in common is bravery. Most of the time, we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. In my mind, that leads to living small lives. We should skip if we want to and not worry about what other people think! There will always be naysayers and scowlers. I can tell you that we got a lot of “how childish” looks when we skipped through the halls of our high school – and we didn’t care!

Our hearts were light, and we were laughing. My friend and I would mess up our steps and have to start over. Sometimes we sang, “We’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz.” Just thinking about it makes me feel happy and light.

It also takes bravery because we make ourselves vulnerable when we are silly. We are opening ourselves up to potshots and disapproval. When we are silly, we trust. We build trust and strengthen relationships when we are silly with someone else, and they are silly with us.

Our first summer assignment is to be silly! I promise that upside-down faces is a guaranteed hit, but you can do whatever you choose. Grab someone’s hand and skip to create a fun memory that will last a lifetime.


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

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