Welcome to the 7th edition of your 2023 Weekly Winning Resource all about the word express. Express is a perfect word as we enter into the “love” week and celebrate Valentine’s Day. This holiday was obviously invented with couples in mind, but we want to encourage you to think beyond tradition and genuinely consider all those you love, including yourself. Women are really good at this as we’ve invented “Galentines” so we can celebrate with our friends for girls nights out. This is especially fun for those single ladies! It’s not as easy for the guys. Love is wonderful, but it can bring about all kinds of feelings. Love can make us angry, it can make us happy, sad, excited, anxious, and love can even make us hate. Love can also make it very difficult for us to express how we really feel deep inside. (On a side note, did you know hate is not the opposite of love? It’s actually a deep emotion that comes from love. You can’t hate something you’ve never cared about. Neutral is the opposite of love, when you have no emotion or feelings for something whatsoever.) To share your true feelings and opinions can be hard, but it is necessary if you are going to have meaningful relationships and live a fulfilled life.

Why can some people articulate so well while the rest of us feel like we fumble over every word we say. It can feel like these super communicators have some kind of special genetic makeup that we don’t, but rest assured, that’s not so. It’s just they have a little more experience, training, and certainly some skills we may not have. The goal then is to learn from them and apply the same techniques to our own lives and how we express ourselves. In our Weekly Winning Article, we look at seven key components of expressing yourself well. Check it out here:

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You have two challenges this week. One is relatively easy and the other will take a little courage and work, but the reward will be great!

The first challenge is to attend our Community Networking & Learning (CNL) this Thursday, February 16th 8:30-10AM CST. You can join in person at our I’ve Decided Community Room located at 3709 N Sterling Ave. Peoria, IL. 61615 directly behind Curves, or join virtually on Zoom. The link is: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82215146927 and the passcode is: 015935. Networking and sharing with like-minded people is a great opportunity to express yourself and grow!

The second challenge is to reach out to someone who’s been on your heart lately.  Maybe it’s a long lost friend or family member you haven’t spoken to in a while, maybe it’s someone you’re very close to, but you’ve had something you’ve wanted to share with them, or maybe it’s someone you’ve had a situation with that hasn’t been rectified. You can write them a letter, pick up the phone and call them, or plan an in person meeting. It doesn’t matter how you connect with them, but just be sure to share anything that you’ve been wanting to with them but haven’t. This challenge may feel a little difficult at first, but we believe it will be very rewarding if done with the right intentions and with love.