Empowered by Ease

I’m talking and writing a lot lately about the possibility of living your dream. But what I haven’t said much about is what that dream is.

I was speaking to someone recently who reminded me that many of the dreams we believe we want are things that society has taught us to want, …

Have you ever had your ideas dismissed, or discounted? I have. And so, probably, has anyone who has had a new or different or even risky-sounding idea.

When that happened to me, it was always from someone who didn’t think or dream like me. The interesting thing for me …

These days, we are constantly inundated with social media messages that make us feel like we’re less than, unable to deal with the world as it is. We get the message that we should be grateful if we have a job, even if it’s uninteresting. Because it’s safe.

As a result of this depressing and defeating messaging, many of us settle for less than we could have in our lives, …

I used to pride myself on being able to juggle a lot at once. It meant that I was busy all day and I loved it. It was a kind of high, being that busy.

But what it really did was wear me out. Because it isn’t really multitasking. …

Every time I see a quote on change, it reminds me how much change is about life, including our personal lives. The quote below from Robert Redford – so beautifully stated.

I recently watched Season 1 of a series …

Last week, a bunch of kids were playing on my street. A fight broke out. It ended quickly. But right after, one of the kids was left behind when all the other kids went off with the victor.

I can’t count the number of times I hear about a high school mean girl experience, where some outsider gets marginalized and humiliated.

On a more (or less) adult level, …

A big focus for me in my work is to help others reclaim their own sense of agency. Seth Godin recently published a short blog on how easy it is for us to give up our agency. As he pointed out, we work hard to have freedom of choice in our lives, then end up going along when our group – at work or socially, some cultural force in our lives – tells us to do something.

This is well studied. We all know it and all do it.  …

I often hear that what I say to another person may impact that person in a good or even a bad way, depending on where they’re at. But what I don’t often hear is that what I say to myself does the exact same thing.

If I’m not sure about what I’m about to do, …

I have at times been labelled an eternal optimist. I’ve thought of myself that way at times. In truth, the underlying thing that keeps me optimistic is my continued sense of purpose. The only time in my life that I had a boring job was before I turned 20. I can remember looking at the time every 5 minutes or less and vowing never to do that to myself again. I never did.

Viktor Frankl wrote that …

Emotions are never worth ignoring.

I’ll clarify. For some of us, there are 2 classes of emotions – those we automatically feel, and those we manufacture and intensify with the stories we tell ourselves. I’m very familiar with both.

The second class is definitely entertaining and can prolong feelings for a very long time, but they aren’t real beyond the story, and can be harmful.

For example, …

I passed a milestone a short while ago, one that I’d been working towards achieving for a number of years. Friends would ask how it changed me. My answer is – at first – that it didn’t change me, that I felt the same. Then I began to notice how I approach challenges differently, and wondered if that is part of the change. How, I ask, can achieving a designation change me that much? …

Have you ever wondered how empathy would work for someone who didn’t know how to truly have it? I read a post a while back that, to my mind, expressed this well. In it, the author suggested it was a matter of how you looked and what you said. For instance, adopting what you believe is a kind look on your face, and saying things that acknowledge how hard what that person is going through is.

That isn’t empathy. Empathy can’t be learned like that. …

I’ve been hearing lots of youtube commentators talk about how young men avoid getting possibly rejected by women by diving into video games and the like. The advice of the commentators is to try it anyway, and if they get a no, try something else.

It’s good advice, but young men are still preferring video games. …

This blog is about the problem of procrastination. Even though I’ve written about this topic many times, the harder things get for us, and the more unstable the world around us feels, the more many of us procrastinate. Things simply overtake us and we don’t know where to start. …

I work with people feeling wounded daily – it’s my job. I experience wounding in my own life. Who among us hasn’t experienced that.

It’s a human condition.  So much so that it bears repeating that the pain we feel from the mistakes we make – or others make – is an essential part of growing into maturity and into a fulfilling life.

Every time I fail in something I’m trying to accomplish, I remind myself …

Work is hard to find for many of us these days – costs are up and businesses aren’t hiring. The thing about harder times like these is that it can get you considering options you would never look at otherwise. And some of those options, if you’re like me, are ones I dream about but am too comfortable to try. I can get myself into a nice cozy lull with little effort: get up, have coffee, get dressed, get to working on things I am very familiar with, have dinner, get ready for bed, redo next day.

Then something happens that upturns all that comfort. …

The destructive nature of gossip came up once more last week in my close circle, so I thought it would be a good thing to talk about because I’m pretty sure it’s an issue belonging to most social circles.

Yes, I’ve heard ad infinitum how we are all social animals and that gossip isn’t necessarily bad. But think for a minute – what you are gossiping about is someone else’s to say. It isn’t about something you read or heard on the news, but something not given for public consumption about someone else.

Gossip is always about something privately obtained that belongs to someone else …

These are tough times for us all, and especially for the self-employed. Like many self-employed people, over the past half year, the methods you relied on to successfully market yourself has begun to fail. What now? You’ve probably tried many alternatives: new marketing platforms, free material, podcasts, interviews, social media, workshops, talks. You’re busy exploring all these ways and so far, nothing’s happened.

I’m not here to tell you I have the answer to this new problem so many of us have. What I do want to talk about though is hope and magic. …

I was browsing the internet the other day looking for hair product. I didn’t have an urgent need for it, but was distracting myself from a task I needed to do and didn’t really want to do. Eventually I saw something that caught my eye – or more likely eased my dissatisfaction – and bought it. That “product” turned out to be a scam. …

A lot of women I speak with feel they lack agency in their work life especially. I know about this issue because I’ve also felt it. I feel it when I am working with someone who is forceful and wants to control everything.

But even when this happens …

I came across an old article that mentioned mirrors and that got me thinking about how we so often see reflections of ourselves in others. And conversely, serve as reflections to others.

Think about for a second. …

Lots of people in my world are conflict-averse. That includes friends, colleagues and clients. And myself … often.

People dedicated to avoiding conflict will go to immense lengths to sidestep any possible conflict that looks like it might happen. They might verbally agree with someone even if they don’t agree on anything that person said. They might …

Rahm Emanuel – Chief of Staff during President Obama’s first term - admitted to the mistake the core executive made of letting the bankers off the hook who were central to the housing crash during that time. In an interview, he said if he could do that over again, he’d “slap them”. The decision of President Obama’s to let those bankers off the hook while many ordinary people suffered generated a long-lasting resentment and a sense of betrayal, and led to the formation of the Tea Party.  The Tea Party was the foundation of the MAGA movement.

What he said was, to me – the right answer. …

I’ve been thinking about the meaning of pain lately, especially emotional pain. The other day, I had asked for something, and was told that if I wanted this, I would need to do something I felt was demeaning. I felt the pain of embarrassment and rejection.

It was a relatively small thing, and yet it hurt, …

How do you begin your day? With a coffee? With family? With meditation? Or a walk?

I begin my day …

This is a story of someone dear to me who, because he decided not to allow fear of what others might think influence him, was able to shine in his chosen field. I know him personally, and have witnessed the changes he had to make for this to happen. It wasn’t easy for him.

As with so many people, he grew up in a family that was kind, but pretty authoritarian: …

I’m going to direct you to a blog Seth Godin wrote a few days ago. In it he discusses all the ways guests at your dinner party might have different food and entertainment priorities than you do. He talks in terms of empathy on your part.

The message I got from this is different. …

“Your emotional pain won’t last forever – but it will wait forever.” This quote from Anita Phillips gave me a chuckle. Not because it wasn’t true, but because it’s very true.  That doesn’t stop anyone from testing it out, though. Me included! …

I was reminded a few days ago about justice: how much I rely on it; how much many rely on it. Like so many others, my beginning years were difficult. I felt I had to work harder than others to achieve my goals. I sometimes lacked the kind of support that could have helped me avoid many of the mistakes I made.

I often felt hard done by …