Tag: More

The paradox of traveling is that, when you don’t have a clear destination in mind, you can end up drowning in decision paralysis. Wandering is a hamster wheel if you don’t even know where you should put your body for the night. The choice of where, physically, to occupy space is a fundam...

“Just five more minutes,” you whisper, trapped in the siren call of another cat meme. The morning sun, with its relentless brightness, announces the new day. But you’re trapped in the snug cocoon of your blankets, smartphone glued to hand, while productivity taps impatiently on the...

Do you remember when you were 16 and you could read a 300-page book in a weekend? And you devoured the latest novels from Dean Knootz, Christopher Pike, or R.L. Stine. (I know I’m dating myself here with these authors.) Or how your favorite space to be is wandering throu...

What do you do when you disagree with your manager or someone senior? Do you voice your opinion, or do you choose to keep quiet? Speaking truth to power is a rare skill. Telling someone above you that they’re wrong requires courage and confidence. Holding your tongue and staying silent o...

Typing, analyzing reports, writing emails, attending meetings, lunch break, more meetings, responding to more emails, going back home. Tomorrow, it all starts again. And the day after tomorrow too. All these mechanical actions mixed with the uncertainty of not knowing how they connect to a future pl...

If you follow the latest developments on the workplace and workforce front, you will likely be inundated with survey findings that are reported in mainstream media, social media, posts, blogs, etc. As a practitioner in all things related to working life, I try to stay on top of what is meaningful, r...

When we step into leadership, our work extends far beyond the team we lead. The scope of our responsibility expands exponentially. Rather than manage the work or use our functional expertise, we have to work at the organizational layer. This means we have to give things away. In other words, we have...

One bite of a pasta piece, and I immediately know whether it is perfectly cooked. Al dente. The perfect texture for cooked pasta. The perfect combination. Tender, yet firm. I think of al dente pasta when I think of an assertive communication style. Assertiveness is about ma...

What helps start a hard meeting on a positive note? How do you encourage team members to think bigger? The answer: icebreakers. Or should I say, the answer is still icebreakers? Last year I wrote an article about the power of this misunderstood tool to impact group attitude...

Those who love art, love to talk about it. The artist’s biography and the circumstances under which a work was created, all this fascinates us. It gives us a sense of connection as if we could participate in a creative process that might otherwise remain unfathomable to us. Our understanding o...

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more lov...

The trick to decluttering is to divide and conquer. Attack the mess room by room, drawer by drawer. Start by arming yourself with containers designated for trash, recycling, put away, fix/mend, and donate. Take these with you as you travel through your home. Start in the bathroom. You know that draw...

My husband, daughter, her teenagers, and I went hiking over the Labor Day weekend. The kids spotted a steep incline studded with roots, and they were off like a herd of antelope, bounding higher. The rest of us tried to keep up, but I was the drag to their forward propulsion. The tread on my tenn...

I know, I know. Don’t teach granny to suck eggs! High-paid Democratic Party consultants have forgotten more about this stuff that I’ll ever learn, etc etc. But you guys, I think I could really be onto something. Take Social Security. Created in 1935 by FDR, Social Security i...

In the vast realm of animal communication, words are not necessary to express deep love. Animals, lacking the articulate language that characterizes humans, have mastered the subtle art of nonverbal communication, weaving emotional linguistic bonds that defy explanation. Caresses represent one of...