Playground Chatter featuring Rita Moore, Director of Sales & Marketing at La Valencia Hotel
Welcome to Playground Chatter! Our new blog series, where we get to profile and chat with some of the best executives in town! Sure, we could ask about all their fancy business stuff but since we are fun monsters, we want to know how they spend their spare time on the playground of life!
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Your Name: Rita Moore
Your nickname? Dang, don’t have one – although I have been “affectionately” called many things from my team – mostly including a reference to my Lucy Ricardo moments or the multiple times I may have tripped, spilled or goofed.
What is your grown up job? Director of Sales & Marketing for La Valencia Hotel.
How can we find you?
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ritahorganmoore
Twitter: @ritamooreLaV
Instagram: ritamoorelav
Pinterest: Rita Moore www.pinterest.com/ritamoo/
For the La Valencia 🙂
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LaValenciaHotel
Twitter: @lavalenciahotel
Instagram: https://instagram.com/lavalenciahotel
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/lavalenciahotel/
Tell us where you spent your childhood years. Is there one year you remember most? I grew up in Wilmington, DE, no one year but just the summers which seemed always long and lazy. I lived next to a park and tennis courts and we bounced around the courts all day long, feeling so grown up and part of the crowd – my best friend and I, with our respective crushes on Bjorn Borg [me] and Jimmy Connors [ my girlfriend].
Favorite part of the playground to hang out in? Kick ball ally
Lunch pail, brown bag or did you buy lunch? Always the brown bag – envied the lunch buyers!
What would be your ideal recess today? I swing between me on a chaise lounge with a book or a blend of activities that challenge [ like a hard hike, spin class, bootcamp ] but still has moments in between motions to bond with friends. This happens all the time, steep wind-sucking climbs and then breathtaking beauty to share, killer spin but a song comes on we all get to sing, giggles on our mats as we grunt between ab crunches.
Does your company encourage recess for their employees? Absolutely, hospitality is built around a happy welcome – personal happiness in our staff carries through and touches our guests, definitely one of our human truths of connecting through shared stories.
If I deemed you Playground Monitor for the next 15 minutes, how would you rally your employees? What activity would everyone participate in? Laughter yoga – getting all differing staff to open their arms, stretch, break down any resistance to being silly and do a little laughter yoga.
What rules did you learn on the playground that you still utilize today? Rule #1, if you don’t try to do something you will always sit on the sideline and watch. You aren’t always invited to play, so you need to self invite and get in the game.
When does time disappear for you? Talk about your hobbies. I have often said that I need longer days – more time to work, more time to play, more time to laze…….the waking part of the 24 hour day just zips by me. My current loves are being at the beach with my yellow lab Elvis Costello, pure joy and totally in the moment. My week is always revolving around how I can fit a Bikram yoga class in or connect with my spin gals whom I adore. I am an ex pastry chef so any chance I get to bake for friends and family = joy. I have had a great time doing some hikes such as part of the Appalachian Trail with my sister, and rim to rim day hike of the Grand Canyon – as well as the great San Diego trails with friends. I really need to plan events that I can challenge myself and train for, I love the anticipation as much as the event. When “at rest”, the true love for me is the hobby of quiet time, being with my husband and sweet dog, and a book – that is the most wonderful feeling.
What is one area of your life where you need more recess? Travel 🙂 life is so full, I wish that I could stop and have a month to travel to faraway places……just need more time!
What is your authentic intention (that thing that you really, really want to do or accomplish?) What are you doing to get there? Hard to explain, my most expansive goal is to harness creative talents, ideas & thoughts and use that energy to leave a mark of who I am, my own personal legacies – with work success, or with a friend that I can be more open to, a team that I can mentor. Each day I write a sentence at the top of my to do list – “set my intentions”. This grounds me, my list needs to be the tasks of work I have promised to complete, connections I need to make, projects that are due or just inspire – but at the start of every day I need to set my intention to dive in with a fearless heart, no matter what the list. A few years ago when I needed to prepare for a professional challenge, instead of spending hours memorizing data I tripped across a TED talk with Shawn Achor on the Happiness Advantage. I immediately connected, bought the book and dove into what I knew all along – the power of positive thought /psychology. It dialed back my core knee jerk mantra of work harder work more hours to reach my goal, and pointed me in the direction of connect more, be more grateful, spend more time on social connections – it redirected my path and altered my course. Now my goal has flipped to being more present in practicing the Happiness Advantage, and what I find? It brings me more success……even when I don’t finish the list, I just get up the next day and do it again.
What can you do to design your life to better incorporate more recess? (Pinky Swear). The best way for me right now, is to continue to balance hours of work vs. work hours…………….finish work and treat my personal commitments as very important appointments. We live by our meeting schedules some days, I schedule my life happiness appointments – workout and yoga class schedules, dates with my loves , my friends…………you need to commit not to break appointments with yourself. We started the playground chat talking about the concept of time, how it disappears – to capture it with playtime, get it on the schedule as unbreakable. It’s fun!
