Are there areas of your life you’re working to change? We needed new furniture. The set my husband and I had had for several years was in dire need of retirement. When guests would come over and sit on our couch or big, comfy chair, I worried they may not be able to get back […]

Recognizing Old Patterns The holiday season is upon us again. For some, that fact brings thoughts of delicious food, memorable songs, fond traditions, and amazing time with family. For others, not so much. In fact, according to a survey from Think Finance, forty-five percent of Americans would actually prefer to skip Christmas. There are probably […]

Recognizing Old Habits I raised a son who is an analyzer extraordinaire. When our family (eight adults and five young kids) decided to spend a week together in one house for a vacation we’d never forget, our son got to work finding the perfect house for our crew. He pored over the listings and finally […]

Effective Leadership Requires Many Skills, Including Self-Care Leadership is difficult. It involves a daily lineup of needed skills and responsibilities. Diplomacy, accountability, problem solving, decision making, delegating, goal setting, team building, innovative thinking… The list could go on for days. Effective leaders—the kind that leave a positive imprint on our professional slate—understand that consistently bringing […]

Be a Better Leader by Knowing Your Truth The truth. It’s what we expect from others, and yet, it’s often difficult to accept when we do receive it. Life teaches us that sometimes the truth hurts. And often when it does, that’s exactly what we need to create a new, better truth. What is a better […]

Qualities of Leadership A 45-minute break between client meetings typically means I head to the nearest coffee shop. Once inside I’ll cover my lap with a napkin for warmth from the frigid air-conditioned atmosphere of noisy espresso machines, people chatting and the clacking of laptop keyboards. On this day, though, I decided to practice the […]

Understanding I watched an acquaintance from afar for a few months. First, I noticed she’d been dropping out of activities she’d always been part of. Someone who had been a steady presence in my circle of activities vanished, and I wasn’t sure why. She is the dynamo I’d always seen taking charge of committees and […]

Born Introvert Being the seventh of eight children, there were many traditions well underway by the time I came along. One such tradition was the baby picture from Olan Mills we each had taken at around a year old. The six pictures before mine each showed a baby smiling from ear to ear. Mine? Not […]

The Hamster Wheel Wake up. Shower and get ready. Go to work. Do the work. Drive home. Make dinner. Clean up the mess. Go to bed. Repeat. And repeat again. And again and again and again. It’s the hamster wheel of life that we often don’t even realize we’re on. I remember running on that hamster […]

Networking. When you read the word, what comes to mind for you? Joy? Excitement? Eagerness? Anticipation? Or would you rather get a root canal than go to another networking event swarming with people focused on self-promotion and selling? I recently attended a networking luncheon with the intention of learning more about the topic being shared […]

Handling the Unexpected A man is called into his boss’s office where he is ceremoniously told his 17 years with the company are much appreciated, but his employment is coming to an end due to a reduction in force. A girl is called out of her 7th-grade science class so her mom can share the […]

Learning and Retaining Skills How old were you when you learned to ride a bike? Four, five, six, or seven-years-old? I think I was five or six when my older brother and sisters began working with me day after day after day. The process was simple: I’d get on the bike, and they’d run along […]

It’s a New Year As we turn the calendar page to a new year, many of us are motivated by the clean-slate feeling that a new year brings. We get caught up in how this year will be different than the last. We’ll eat healthier; go to the gym more frequently; learn new skills to […]

A Solemn Oath for a Girl On my honor, I will try: To serve God and my country, To help people at all times, And to live by the Girl Scout Law I remember reciting this pledge to kick off each Girl Scout meeting many years ago when I was learning to cook, sew, and […]

Your Most Prized Possession If someone were to ask you what is your most prized possession, what would your answer be? And is your answer today different than what it would have been earlier in life? As we move through the stages of life, we change, grow, and learn, and what’s important in one stage […]

Is time your friend? Leadership guru John Maxwell says: “Time management is an oxymoron. Time is beyond our control, and the clock keeps ticking regardless of how we lead our lives. Priority management is the answer to maximizing the time we have.” Last month we got the discussion rolling about how time actually CAN be […]

Time is Your Friend Imagine you are holding $86,400 right now. Quite a chunk of change, right? What if you could actually receive that chunk of change—$86,400—every day for the rest of your life with just one stipulation? You must use ALL of the money every single day. Would you jump at the challenge of […]

The Road to Greater Resilience I stood on my tiptoes and reached for the familiar black box, the box that had ‘lived’ in our laundry room cabinet for the past 20 years. The clippers inside the box were used countless times over those years to give my two sons their summer haircuts- the kind that […]

Doing for Others Bogey. Birdie. Eagle. Common words for any avid golfer to hear and say. I wish I could say that’s how I know those words, but I am not a skilled golfer. I did, however, grow up under one’s guidance. My dad, the father of eight children, stayed active (and maybe saved his […]

Be Kind to One Another It seemed to happen in slow motion, and yet I couldn’t find a reasonable solution in the moment. I was in a busy airport refilling my water bottle at the fountain. I heard a loud voice but couldn’t be sure whether it was coming from someone being loud and fun […]

Being Empowered What is it that makes you ‘tick’? What is your passion? What were you made to do?

Getting a Different, Better, Clearer ‘Lens’ When I think of my career, I often wonder if I should make the word plural. Is it still called a career when you have ‘shifted gears’ and worked in vastly different industries (more than once, by the way), or is that when you switch to describing your professional […]

Kindness Tap, tap, tap, tap… fingers tapping away on keyboards. Business calls happening all around: “We’ll need to meet on that later this week. Can you do Friday?” And what’s that smell? Ah, yes—the delectable smell of buttery soft pretzels. It was just a typical day at the airport while I waited for my flight […]

Accountability Sing along with me if you remember the classic song “Already Gone” by the Eagles: “So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains, and we never even know we have the key.” Who knew back when we were REALLY singing that song the utter truth of those simple words? We’ve […]

We All Need the Same Basic Things Having a ‘mixed bag’ of a career has been one of my greatest blessings in life. I taught eight-, nine-, and ten-year-olds for more than a decade and then spent the same amount of time with adults working in the legal industry in corporate America. I’m often asked […]