An interesting life is a character-based story, not a plot-based story. You’re the main character, so act like it. Yesterday I was coaching a new writing client, a young writer who had gotten feedback that her idea for a new book was boring because it wasn’t “unique and different” enough. Read more…
Someone else’s greater capability does not invalidate your own. Just because someone else is better at a thing, or knows more about a thing, or has an advanced degree in a thing, doesn’t mean you suck at that thing. Yet that’s how many of us feel all the time. An Read more…
Personal resilience is, I believe, one of the three top skills every person will need over the next decade. (My other top two are adaptability and the ability to discern truth.) Personal resilience, generally speaking, is the ability to persevere through adversity or to bounce back after a setback. Last Read more…
I’m writing for social impact professionals today, but this is relevant for everyone who cares about something, or who wants to improve the world even just a little bit. I spent 20 years as a social impact program manager and executive, on both the funding and the impact side. I Read more…
Nearly every high achiever thinks they’re not getting enough done. That’s because every time they accomplish something worthwhile, that success comes at the expense of some other worthwhile thing. When you have 15 important things to do and enough time to do just 13 of them, the two that get Read more…
On Saturday, I accompanied my parents as they planted fresh geraniums at the graves of relatives. As I walked among the headstones, some of which were over 200 years old, I contemplated Americans’ complicated relationship with death. Living people spend a lot of time, money, energy, and emotion doing things Read more…
Being a caregiver is a high-stakes job. If you don’t give it everything you’ve got, you might lose the one you’re caring for. If you do give it everything you’ve got, you might lose yourself. The statistics prove that. Allison Wyman and I talked about the solutions to that recently Read more…
Most executives would say that if you want to achieve results, you have to have a relentless, unyielding commitment to the outcome you want. Seems reasonable, right? Focus on your goal if you want to achieve your goal. But actually, the opposite is true. Focusing too much on the outcome Read more…
People think of catastrophizing and magical thinking as letting your imagination take control of your decision-making, either out of fear (catastrophizing) or toxic positivity (magical thinking). Often, however, catastrophizing and magical thinking stem from a failure of imagination. What gets people spiraling into irrational decision-making is an inability to think Read more…
Being a caring person can have its downsides. One cost of caring is compassion fatigue, and it can hit anyone—even those trained to avoid it. I and two of my co-authors of RELIT: How to Rekindle Yourself in the Darkness of Compassion Fatigue appeared on the In Sickness podcast recently. Read more…