Robin Fischman

Make taking care of yourself a priority. Right now open your calendar and block time off your calendar every day to take care of yourself. What can you do for yourself 1 minute? Get up from your desk and stretch. Take 6 deep breaths breathing in to the count of 5 and out to the count of 5. What can you do for yourself in 5 minutes? Walk to the kitchen and drink a full glass of water. Grab a piece of fruit and eat it. Read a short poem or a few pages from your book. Put in your ear buds and listen to your favorite song, maybe even do a little dance. What can you do to take care of yourself in 15 minutes? Go outside and walk around the block. Finish the chapter in your book. Do a mini yoga routine. Close your eyes and meditate.

What about including recognition for non work related achievements? What would it look like for companies to recognize employees for hitting weight loss goals, or completing a mini marathon, or for completing an on-line program on how to plant a rooftop garden, or recognizing employees for their volunteer work? What an amazing way it would be to motivate employees to bring their full selves to work every day.

ERG's are a great way for employees to continue learning about new cultures. Taking on one step further, encouraging ERG's to invite guest speakers to company events to have conversations that help educate and foster conversations. For example inviting a Holocaust survivor to your company to share their story lets employees hear first hand what they experienced. It starts a conversation about what it means to be Jewish and allows employees to ask questions in a safe and open setting.

In a prior role leading the Talent Acquisition team for a growing agency, one of our teams struggled to build a diverse group of creative professionals. Our hiring managers relied on the same set of criteria they had always used to identify talent: top design schools and internships at top ad agencies. The difficult conversation we needed to have was that adding diversity to the team meant breaking away from these criteria to open the doors to talent from smaller local art schools, who might not have the resources to attend top design schools. It wasn't an easy conversation. Behaviors didn't change overnight, but by requiring managers to interview diverse slates of talent for each role, we were able to slowly increase the team's diversity.

Habits and routines can be creativity killers. Doing things the same way can block creativity Creativity is tied to fun and play. A few simple ways to encourage creativity are to try new things. Explore new foods, take a different route to work, move your desk to face a different direction, change seats at the dinner table or incorporate play into your day. Grab a magic marker and color. These are small ways to spark creativity.

Give more than you take. Shift your mindset from a "get" mentality to one of giving. Consider what your life would be like if in life you gave more than you took. If you lived your life contributing to others instead of focusing on what you can "get" out of the relationship. A networking event turns into an opportunity to make deep connections with people instead of looking at what you can get from them. Work meetings shift into contributions instead of focusing on what you need to get from the meeting. When we live this way we open ourselves up to a higher level of thinking. Gratitude, appreciation and abundance all have similar energies. When we open ourselves up to those higher energies we receive as much, or more, than we give.