Agree or disagree with this statement: Learning never stops.

Hopefully you agree, because even if you’ve mastered something, you can always learn more, or work on learning something related to what it is that you’ve mastered.

I love soaking up as much information as I possibly can, especially related to the work I do, so I’m constantly reading articles, blog posts and books related to PR/marketing and social media. As much as I’ve learned thanks to all the reading I do, I started to realize that I may be doing a serious disservice to myself by only reading material related to my career.

As someone who helps clients with various online and social media initiatives, I’ve done my fair share of research and outreach to bloggers and social media enthusiasts (and let me tell you, when done right, it’s a tedious process!). So when I have the chance to be on the receiving end of fun opportunities, it’s a nice change up.

Thanks to a recommendation from my metro Detroit pal Bryan Willmert, I had the opportunity to test drive a 2012 Acura MDX from Suburban Acura as part of the Social Test Drive series. Bryan had previously participated in the test drive, and he was then able to recommend others who he thought would be interested.

I’ve been part of the Help a PR Pro Out (HAPPO) team for awhile now, and I get a ton of value from my involvement in the organization. I use social media every day for personal and professional reasons, so being part of an organization that helps connect job seekers and employers through social media has been very rewarding.

Arik Hanson, Minnesota PR pro and HAPPO co-founder, started a new initiative last year called The HAPPO Report, a weekly e-newsletter that’s sent to more than 250 PR pros/communicators across the Twin Cities. It includes relevant jobs, upcoming events, posts from the last week and a featured job seeker each week.

I’ve been noticing something in my life a lot more lately that has helped contribute to success. Once I started paying closer attention to this trend and noticing how it influences outcomes, I knew I needed to share it so others could hopefully replicate the process. I’ve noticed that when combining strategy with confidence, the chances of success increase dramatically. Will the result always be positive each and every time you combine strategy with confidence? More than likely not. But I’ve experienced successful results enough times to make me believe the chances of getting a win rather than a fail with this combo is highly likely.

It’s almost the end of the year, which means many people are thinking about how they can improve their lives in the coming year. The gym is always jam packed around this time of year, and people are talking and posting online about their goals and resolutions.

Last year, I wrote about what to keep in mind when setting New Year’s Resolutions, and I actually think setting resolutions and/or goals is better than doing nothing to improve whatever it is you need to work on in your life in the coming year. But this year, I’ve decided to change things up.

Christmas is my all-time favorite holiday. I always used to be a kid at heart around Christmastime who got unnecessarily excited about anything and everything related to the holiday.

But somewhere along the transition into serious adulthood, the chaos of prepping for the holidays while juggling everything else life throws my way during that time has somewhat darkened my Christmas spirit. I’m sure many others can attest to the fact that the stress factor seems to skyrocket during the holidays because it’s just that many more items added to the to-do list.

Anything You Want by Derek Sivers (founder of CD Baby) is the kind of book that fits perfectly with my life these days. You can read it in one sitting, and it will probably take you an hour tops.

But don’t let the small size fool you. It’s packed with powerful wisdom and advice that you can apply to both personal and professional aspects of your life. This sentence from the back of the book sums it up nicely:

Must reading for every person who is an entrepreneur, wants to be one, wants to understand one or cares even a little about what it means to be human.

I first learned about Scott Meyer when he and his brother, John Meyer, spoke at the 2011 FutureMidwest Conference in April about marketing across the digital divide. Then, Scott was on the west side of Michigan a few months ago and made his way over to Detroit to join the Tweetea crew for a great discussion. I’ve been a fan of Scott and his philosophy on improving business through digital literacy ever since.

A little background info for you…

Who doesn’t love a big win? I’m calling you out if you say you don’t! It’s hard not to love rewards for hard work. To add some context to the discussion, when I say big win, I’m referring to:

Landing a new client when you’ve worked long and hard on the proposal.
Overcoming a challenge you’ve been working to get past.
Achieving a goal.
Landing a new job or promotion that takes you to the next step in your career.
Completing your first half-marathon (or, if you’re like me, you aim for 5Ks and consider those a big win!).

The list goes on, but you get the point. Most people would consider those big wins.