Blog
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Why “Every Day is a New Day” is a dangerous attitude
This kind of advice can be dangerous stuff: Be professional – shrug it off! Don't let them see you sweat. Keep your game face on. Treat every day as a new day. For example, Anastasia, a teacher, told me, “I want what I do to make a difference every day! (But I'm afraid that I [...]Read more -
Is that pesky monkey on your back really yours?
A monkey on your back is a problem you have to solve or a task you have to do. Is your back bent under the weight of all the monkeys on your back? If so, you’ll benefit from building this spine-stiffening muscle: The ability to gracefully but firmly hand back errant monkeys. Even if you’re ultimately [...]Read more -
Afraid you’re not doing enough? Consider this
“There’s been a lot of big changes at work — everything’s blowing up at once. buIt's too much for me. I really, really, really need to cut down on my constant availability. But I feel guilty even thinking that, when everyone around me is so stressed, too! I feel like I'm not doing enough.” my [...]Read more -
What You Measure is What You Get: There’s Only One You
Are you holding yourself to an impossible standard? How do you set priorities among everything you do and want? What you measure is what you get, so be very careful what you measure. There’s Only One You Usually, the phrase “there’s only one you” is a tag line in great feel-good movies that remind us [...]Read more -
What Are You Modeling on this Take our Daughters and Sons to Work Day?
Overwork and Stress? or Commitment and Joy? On this Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day – what values will you be modeling for the kids? They say kids learn much more from how we behave than from what we tell them in words. What was my daughter learning from my behavior? “I don’t [...]Read more -
Spread too thin?
“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter spread over too much bread.” ─ Frodo, The Fellowship of the Rings, J. R. R Tolkien Here's a quick suggestion for relieving that uneasy, exhausted, spread-too-thin feeling. (Perhaps you even recognized the quote. Frodo was struggling to carry out a world-saving task that seemed far too big [...]Read more -
8 Ways Burnout is Overrated
Here’s 8 ways burnout is overrated by our work culture. I believe that buying into any of these myths simply sets us up to crash and burn. I used to believe pretty much all of them, and the resulting burnout was so bad, it put me right in the hospital. 1. “Status” as a hard [...]Read more -
Stretch Goals: Are You Pushing Yourself to Win… or to Fail?
When is the best time to take on one of your stretch goals? There’s a heckuva lot of encouragement out there to go for it, to take on one of your stretch goals, or, as is it is often phrased, to set and achieve your BHAG: your “Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal.” The Harvard Business Review [...]Read more -
Did Mom (or Dad) Blow a Fuse?
You know that sense of startlement, the one that comes from a sudden, illuminating new perspective on the life-lessons you absorbed as you grew up? As we lit our Christmas tree this year, I was startled by this new thought: did my mother suffer from burnout? I grew up in a wonderful old, leaky, creaky [...]Read more -
Holiday stress? Take the NO Out of Noel
Feeling some holiday stress? Is there too much NO in your Noel? As the holiday season gets into full swing, are you losing some of your zing? Whatever your reason for the season may be, whether Christmas or Kwanzaa, Hanukkhah or Yule… Are you becoming perhaps just a bit fatigued or cranky? Have you caught [...]Read more
