beBetter 

Earlier this year (in a pre-COVID time of travel), I was casually walking down the airport terminal in Austin, TX, on my way to Gate 23 as I glance to my right and see Amy’s Ice Cream. Positive, disciplined thoughts are flooding my mind as I try to focus. “Don’t slow down, don’t look at the menu board, don’t look back.” Ice cream is one of my weaknesses and I need to stay disciplined so I can reach my weight loss goal.

Looking into the freezer, I’m excited to see my canister of homemade chocolate peanut butter bars are right on top — probably because I was standing at this exact place last night, too, while CeCe was in the back of the house. They taste better when I sneak a few as CeCe likes to “encourage” me to meet my weight goal.

We have all experienced those bad days when nothing goes right or we get bad news that seems to consume us and our day. Over the years, I have developed ways to reframe these moments that diminishes their effect on me and my team. Although no amount of reframing will make bad news good, there’s an opportunity for us to be at our best to deal with these bad moments or bad news.

A few weeks ago, I presented at the 2017 Southeastern Accounting Show hosted by the Georgia Society of CPA’s. Leaving, I found myself stunned by the lack of preparedness of our profession from a grassroots perspective. And I wondered—as we look into the mirror, are we spiraling towards irrelevancy because we are fooling ourselves?

Last summer, I wrote My Very Own Jerry Maguire Blog, a series that challenged the public accounting profession to evaluate how well we are performing as trusted advisors.  Fortunately, it did create some healthy conversations and reflections by lots of firms as well as HORNE. Reflecting on those conversations encouraged me to write a new series—Are We Really Choosing to Be Great?

This series is designed to evaluate us as individuals, as CPA firms and as a profession. Complacency is a cancer that is hard to see and even harder to eradicate. There’s so much opportunity and growth for our profession if we can generate more urgency (and education of future facts) to transform how we work and live. Are you creating the urgency to take action and meet the changes required by today’s technology transformation? 

Recently, I was checking into the DoubleTree Downtown in Austin, TX around 9 p.m. after a long day of travel.  Now, my self-discipline is always weak between 9 and 10 p.m. when I love to start snacking. This urge to snack is tripled when I am traveling. I start rationalizing that “I deserve this” and I must say it works 99% of the time. I am really good at convincing myself how much I deserve what I don’t need.