growing

7 Creative Strategies for New (or Frustrated) Readers

“I’m not much of a reader” may be high up there on the list of most commonly spoken phrases in the English language. So much so, in fact, that I do a double take when someone actually tells me they enjoy reading. Last week I blogged about some amazing benefits to becoming a reader, but…

8 Life-Changing Reasons to Start Reading

Now before you say “I’m not much of a reader” and keep scrolling down your feed, hear me out! I want to share a few reasons why I think you SHOULD* give it a shot. *Okay, I’m stretching the word “should” a little bit–I really can’t tell you I absolutely know that becoming a reader…

Slowly but surely

Life happens slowly. Painfully slowly. Today I feel like I’ll never have the things I want. And lots of voices tell me I should or could already have them, and make me feel even worse. (#socialmedia) But things take time and money and hard, hard work. And patience. And perspective. When I look back at…

Sometimes you’ve gotta feel

Sometimes you’ve gotta feel, gotta get emotional. At a seminar I attended last week, the speaker reminded us of a very real, very important fact of life, one that I know at least I forget a lot: You have to find inspiration. Like, inspiration with a capital I. Like deep emotional connection and feeling. He…

Life’s Not All a Concert

I’ve had a dream since childhood of performing piano in front of a crowd. I imagine playing so beautifully and masterfully that it captivates the listeners. What’s an impressive skill or feat you dream of? What would your big talent show moment look like? I daydream of being fluent in a bunch of languages, too.…

5 Life Things I’ve Gotten from Running

I’m a runner. Running makes me feel alive. I run often and I run hard and it makes me feel strong and accomplished and really, really, really happy. But I’m not an extremely talented runner. I used to jog a couple or a few miles at a time. If I could manage to make it…

Endless Options and the Hopelessness of Getting it Right

Schitt’s Creek . . . The Great British Baking Show . . . Peaky Blinders . . . El Camino . . . Surf’s Up . . . Ancient Aliens . . . Mary Poppins Returns . . . You’re going to watch Netflix. Easy decision. Which show? Not so easy. How much time, on…

Re-Reexamining: Is That REALLY What You Want?

Like most kids, I had a plethora of career plans by the time I was about 7. I was going to be a zookeeper, I was going to pilot a spaceship, I was going to be a cowboy, and I was going to be a detective (I even had my briefcase picked out–a plastic hot…

When in conflict: 1 question you HAVE to answer

Fight or flight. Adrenaline’s pumping. You’ve been pushed and you’re ready to push back. STOP! Remember to ask yourself one question! It’s a question we forget about all the time, but it’s what really matters to you in a conflict. We have a tendency to make knee jerk decisions before we stop and think. And…

7 Ways Meditating Has Helped Me

I love meditation. But I feel like that’s a strange sentence. It’s kind of like saying “I love sports.” There are a million different kinds of meditation: Body scan, mindfulness, mantra, loving kindness, transcendental, breathing, visualization, contemplative, affirmations, etc. Meditations ranges from the very scientific to the very spiritual, from the very basic to the…

How to Get Started Meditating

I don’t think I can overstate the role meditation has played in my life. It’s given me a lot of peace and hope. It’s honestly one of the healthiest things I do. But meditation has NOT been easy to get into. And it has NOT been easy to continue doing. Recently I wrote about 7…

Accept your pendulum

When we humans grow, we tend to resemble pendulums. If we were too this, we become, for a time, too that. And then we may become too this again, but a little less. And so the pendulum swings. It just happens. We cannot stop abruptly in the center, perfectly balanced, on the first go-round. Growth is messy. Your pendulum may…

Need Someone to Change? 5 Things to Know

When I was younger and knew everything, I was pretty sure I could change everybody’s minds by arguing with them using things like logic. When I was a little less young and naive, but still knew just about everything, I thought I could still kind of control people’s beliefs and actions by appealing to their…

12 Little Ways to Find Magic in 2019

“Kids think with their brains cracked wide open; becoming an adult, I’ve decided, is only a slow sewing shut.” – Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper Every winter the day comes when we box up the Christmas decorations and close the door on the last little reminders of the wonder that the holiday brings. It won’t…

3 Strengths You Had as a Kid

Staring up at giant sky-scrapers. Riding glass elevators. Feeling absolute awe and excitement. It’s one of my earliest memories. I don’t even remember what city it was. Maybe Chicago or Atlanta. But I always remember what it felt like to be a child. When I was a kid, I had a very big outlook on life.…

Urgent vs important

Can you imagine the feeling, finishing up a task, sitting back, and thinking to yourself, “Hmm… I literally have nothing left to do today!” That would be really weird, right??? Life just needs to slow down. Right? But I have a hundred things to do today. So much to catch up on. So much to…

When you’re absolutely sure, remember you’ve been sure before

I couldn’t stand Professor Bauman. I took a philosophy class from him where he constantly picked holes in his students deepest convictions and forced them to ask really difficult questions. I got his point–he wanted us to think carefully with open minds–but whenever one of us would ask him, “What do YOU believe?” he would…

Put the shampoo bottle down

Do you remember having to take naps as a kid? Being forced to just lay there in silence for hours! Okay, probably like 30 minutes, but it felt like eternity. Do you remember the sound that silence made after a while? Like a wave or white noise machine, that deafening, on-going whoosh type noise. Almost as if you…

8 Strategies for When You’re WAY TOO BUSY

Do you remember the busiest month of your life? A time where you over-committed yourself for a few weeks? Maybe it was a project at work, too many classes in school, a bunch of events–or a mixture of everything. A time when you felt like every day you just woke up, immediately hit the gas…

Living for more time

Time is a weird and inevitable thing. If we get to the end of our lives having spent the whole thing fighting time, we will have lost. If we spend our days wishing we were younger, refusing to accept changes, we will always be feeling hurt and scared and defeated. If our deepest need is…

6 Steps to Stay on Track When You’re Discouraged

I’ve been struggling with some personal things lately. Just some discouragements I’ve had to work through. Sometimes when you’re discouraged, it’s easy to lose sight of where you want to go–to doubt you’ll get there. And when you’re not fully expecting to get somewhere in the future, it’s not easy to discipline yourself to do…

“What Am I Doing With My Life???”

“I’m not happy with my career. I don’t feel satisfied at my job. Sure it’s a great job, I should feel lucky. But instead I’m just itching to get on with it. I’m good at my job, I’m proud of it, but is it really what I want to be doing? No!” Have you ever…

Do you need to do some scrubbing?

I’m going to have an embarrassing moment of honesty here and say I legit have had a really terrible grasp on American history for most of my life. To the point where I couldn’t tell you whether Martin Luther King Jr was an activist in the 1980s or the 1920s. Well actually, I had a…

Searching too hard: A Brahmin’s lesson about finding peace and happiness

I just finished reading a beautiful little book called Siddhartha. It’s a very colorful story about a man who crossed paths with the Buddha and lived a hundred other little adventures on his way to finding meaning, fulfillment, and peace in life. The book literally led to a few tears as I read on the airplane.…

Why Feeling Fake is GOOD

Change is uncomfortable. And if you don’t feel uncomfortable with yourself, you probably aren’t changing and growing. Here’s what I mean: Last weekend I got to participate in a workshop for couples that included discussion of conflict resolution. Everyone got to practice a specific formula that can help to de-escalate a situation and arrive at…

I Think, But I Don’t Know

I grew up very smart, confident, and passionate. I thought very deeply, came to the right conclusions, and cared so much about everyone in my life that I had to help them see my conclusions, too. I never genuinely considered I might be getting stuff wrong until I had a big enough crush on a…

5 Game-Changing Steps for Effective Conflict Resolution

Conflict. Here’s a topic for everybody! “I hate confrontation.” If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard this sentence. Or better yet, a dime for every conflict I’ve watched NOT happen because it’s too difficult. Conflict in itself isn’t bad. It can actually lead to all kinds of creative ideas, breakthroughs, growth, and…

If another human can…

I’d like to be a professional writer and public speaker who helps make the world a better place. BUT. I’m SCARED. I’m scared that I don’t have what it takes. So I often find myself giving up. I hold myself back. Out of fear. Do you ever find you’re not trying because you don’t want…

Rip the Band-Aid Off

My manager recently sat down with me and expressed concern that I just didn’t seem like myself lately. She said I hadn’t seemed as happy and carefree as usual over the last few weeks. And she was worried it might be rubbing off on others. Her concern was completely fair, and I think we got…

7 Reasons You Need to Try Impromptu Speaking

I was sweating. Biting my lip. Fidgeting with my hands and feet. Crossing and uncrossing my arms. I started breaking out in hives. Itching everywhere. Felt like I was going to pass out. Finally I started speaking. I managed to choke out some half-words. Tongue-tied. I started to panic. I stopped making eye-contact. Couldn’t handle…

The coming “new normal”

My friend Madonna pointed out this morning that as cities and states across America gradually start opening back up, each in their unique way, we are going to start seeing what the real new normal will look like. For a long time, many people are going to be living in heightened caution. Wearing masks, avoiding…