Spring plans…Spinach and desert…

Spring plans…And hand pains

Here’s your annual Spring dermatitis alert. You know the drill … you school accounts (especially) complain that your hand dishwashing detergent is causing skin irritation and dermatitis. And of course they say that the Dawn they use at home doesn’t cause it.

And they’d be right – at least partially. That’s because none of the detergents they use either at work, or at home is the reason for those sore paws!

The reason likely lies in those flower beds they cleaned last weekend, or the gutters clogged with last fall’s leaves that they cleared. Either one is the almost certain cause of their complaints.

There’s nothing you can do to eliminate the minor skin abrasions that result from those Spring chores – and more importantly the molds and bacteria they allow to pass through the protective upper layer of epidermis, resulting in those red, painful hands.

What you can do is to head it off the pass by mentioning it to the kitchen manager so that when the complaints come up, she can tamp them down. Then their problem doesn’t become yours! Of course if you’re feeling especially nice you could drop off a big bottle of hand cream that they can use to lessen the pain.

Spinach and desert…Success and acting

“Half of success is showing up!”. While Woody Allen is often credited with coming up with that line, it might (or might not) have been he who first voiced that clearly obvious idea. But regardless of its’ originator, it deserves our consideration.

And once you get past its’ semi-comedic nature and really think about it, it’s simply brilliant in its simplicity.

For many folks it’s the core reason why they aren’t as successful as they’d like. The simple truth it that unless we move, show up and act nothing gets accomplished. If not, success doesn’t happen either. Yep, for any measure of even moderate success, first we’ve got to show up.

As kids that meant eating that spinach before we got desert. As responsible business people it means bellying up to those tasks we’d really like to avoid.

Putting them off for later won’t lessen our reluctance to address them anymore than letting that spinach get cold made it more palatable when we were kids.