One of the things I like to do as I wrap up a year is reflect on the lessons learned and the ones that I want to carry with me into the new year.

I DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We talk about what we’re grateful for often, but there’s one gratitude exercise we do that takes the cake.

The goal isn’t to dim my light or be someone else; it’s to play up my amazing qualities. I just need to be more disciplined and intentional with how I use them.

I just left an incredible meeting with my team where we chose to do something you aren’t “supposed” to do in business: We lowered our financial goals for this quarter.

A couple months into the pandemic, I had a sobering moment with my fiancé, Spiros.

Suddenly, his chemistry brain clicked with my leadership brain: He doesn’t want to be the leader who slows things down for his team.

Our leadership team had our quarterly review last week, and together, we got to wrap up and celebrate the best quarter we’ve ever had.

I believe that it’s possible to make every single decision with intention, but few do. It requires knowing our values and operating from them.

For many years, my leadership journey looked like a constant search for consensus. It made other people happy, but for me, it was exhausting. I thought it was the right thing to do, but it actually hurt us.

So far, our bonus experiment is working better than any structure we’ve had. I thought I’d share how we approached this new system in case you too have struggled with how to best create rewarding, meaningful financial incentives.

One of the most common questions I get is, “When you see something that could be better but don’t have the power to fix it, what do you do?”

Recently, I’ve had a lot of time to reflect, and I’ve realized that I need someone on my team who can help me think through challenges and ideas in a low-pressure, low-stakes environment.

It used to be rare for me to slow down and appreciate the progress, but I’m grateful to my coach for helping me see the value of taking time to pause once a quarter for a review with my team.

Last week, I led one of the most important and uncomfortable conversations we’ve ever had as a team: What do we believe as an organization?

No matter what our relationship with feedback is, and no matter how much or how little we know about how to best deliver it, we can get better at accepting it and help others do the same.

There’s no overnight trick to building resilience; it truly is a muscle that we have to strengthen over time. But I’ve learned there are things we can do to develop resilience on a regular basis.

I think we need to use the pandemic as a chance to press the reset button harder than we’ve ever pressed it.