A few decades ago, while earning my PhD, I was working as an employee assistance counselor. One of the major railroads was in our client services group. And one day, a man comes into my office dressed in overalls, he pulls his newspaper from his back pocket and lays it on the desk as he sits down. 

He looked distraught.

Was he here for help with drugs or alcohol?

Was he here for his relationship that’d gone badly?

I’d pretty much heard it all. And I was eager to help.

After I asked him how I could help him, noting that he looked almost defeated and that I was there to help him, his gaze slid up from his shoes to meet my eyes.

“The department of transportation is changing their rules.”

“Oh, and that affects you?”

“Yes sir. I’m an engineer.”

“Of the big trains? That’s awesome.” I smiled, truly awe-struck. My thoughts fleeted - That’s a lot of...

Clarity of desire helps you get clarity of direction. It is SO important to have that, so that you can have clarity of expectations.

Then you can ask yourself:

• What do you expect?
• Do you expect it from others (e.g., family or team members)? 
• Do they know?
• What are you getting? 
• If it matches expectations, did you praise them (and/or yourself) for hitting the target you wanted?
• If it didn’t match expectations, do you know how to adjust?

You’ve got to get clear.

You’ve got to stay clear.

And you’ve got to communicate in a way that others are clear, as well.

Clarity really does count on all levels.

“I want a coffee” is a different statement from “I would like a small Americano with almond milk, please.”

You’ll get a warm beverage in both cases, one may be for you, the other may not.

Be direct.

Be kind.

People don't know what you're thinking. They may guess, but they'll...

My clients are really smart. On our VIP 1:1 calls, sometimes they’ll prompt a response from me that I’ll want to share here. Other times, they’ll thoughtfully reflect and make simple comments that are beautifully profound.

When one of my wise clients offered this statement, I was floored. She was so soft in her reflection. It wasn’t a violent push back against how horrible this person or that person is. It was a reflection about how she had leveled up and realized that there are certain people in your life that can almost physically suck your life-force from you.  She said, 

“Sometimes the people you’re related to aren’t really good for you.”

Just like a meal, there are people in your life who are and are not good for you. We hear a lot about “toxic” family members or workplaces. And I think, personally, that term is overused. That said, by definition, toxic means poisonous. 

None...

Running a business means making lots of choices. Heck, running your life means making lots of choices, too. 

We all face choices in our lives. That’s the biggest blessing that we, as humans, encounter. Out in nature, fish just do what fish do, possums just do what possums do, and sunflowers do what sunflowers do. They have most optimal paths for survival, but they’re not making huge choices in terms of planning their lives.

At some point a few years back, I made a deliberate choice to LIVE INTO EXCELLENCE. That doesn’t mean I’m out buying myself a Lear Jet (nor will I have my picture taken with one). To me, actually, that’s NOT excellence. That’s simply excess and maybe a bit of ego. Again, not excellence.

What it does mean is that I filter out the not excellent. I make choices to enhance my life and my business. As a business owner, I’ve committed to things that I’ve then realized weren’t in my or my...

Have you ever lashed out in anger and thought, “Wow, that is SO not me. Where did that come from? How did that happen?” As one of my readers, I know that those incidents are low for you. Really low. And yet, we humans get angry sometimes. 

I’m a huge believer in the good in people.

Certainly (almost) everyone has the capacity to lean towards doing good or not doing good. Yes, there are outliers, so I’m not talking sociopaths here. I’m talking about any of us, living our best lives and then something, or a series of somethings, hijacks our amygdala. 

The amygdala is an almond shaped group of neurons located in the temporal lobe of the brain that’s responsible for encoding/filtering memories and for processing emotions, mostly… FEAR!

You know the old fight-flight-freeze phenomenon? That’s triggered by whatever your amygdala has processed for you. Isn’t that nice of it?

How does the...

Sorry I’m late, let’s get started.

Sorry I, uh, have a little cough here. I’ve just gotten over a cold.

Hey, yeah, the reports didn’t get sent out to you, but uh, we can go over the material anyway.

No.

Thanks for your patience, there’s a lot to cover, let’s get started.

Period.

The other two statements don’t belong.

If you’re running the show, and you are – whether at home or in your department or as a solopreneur – it’s YOU right now. Show up.

When was the last time you heard someone being truly apologetic and you said to yourself, “Yeah, that’s the person I’m going to follow!”

We want leaders who can show up unapologetically unless they’ve made an egregious misstep and then we want the apology and correction. “I was wrong, this is the new direction we’re heading.” 

We want to know that the person in front of us believes...

My client recently gave me this quote from one of our sessions and I thought it was priceless: 

I spent more time thinking about doing something than the time it would take me to do it.

Can you relate? 

It’s funny, one of the first times I had to take strong disciplinary action with someone who worked for me (decades ago) was someone who was working on a presentation for the organization. He had been preparing for two weeks, then four, then six. 

He was getting ready to get ready and it caught him by surprise when I told him that I was disappointed with his ability to produce what was expected.

He was surprised because no one had ever told him they were disappointed in him. And yet, don’t we disappoint ourselves when we put things off? We decide that we don’t know enough yet and we explore just one more thing and one more thing.

We think about what we’re going to do.

It shows up on our to-do list.

And we put...

“I don’t dance.” It was an old story I had told myself to keep from feeling awkward. It was a wound from my high-school days (probably earlier) when I was teased about how ridiculous I looked. 

I’ve been on an amazing journey of letting go.

It’s been tough, because I grew up with the idea that “people were watching and what would they think, for goodness’ sake!”

I think most of us learned to “be good” because someone might judge us badly. And if we were judged badly, we wouldn’t fit in. We’d be ostracized. We’d be out in the cold, lonely and alone.

It’s not something we think about consciously. That’s the work: to make conscious the unconscious rules and scripts we’ve been living.

They’re all lies.

The lies of judgement, of being left out… It’s hard to reconcile that a lot of my life, I was hiding from being the authentic me. I mean, my...

There’s been a lot of drama in my life lately. An extraordinary amount. That doesn’t show up in how I engage with others, nor does it become a factor in how I discern what gets done and what doesn’t.

But my life didn’t used to be that way.

I used to rely on the drama. Life was overwhelming and if a friend or family member had a problem, then I – the good superhero martyr – would be the one to fix it.

And then, when I didn’t hit my goals, I’d have a perfectly good reason/excuse. And I’d demand that you understand. “You’ll have to excuse me, I’ve been dealing with…”

There were times I’d hold all that in, as if it were a hidden trump card to play at some time. All the better if someone else let out what kind of drama I was dealing with. Oh woe is me, my life is so hard.

The truth is two-fold:

1. You never really know what someone else is going through, so show some...

Success isn’t ever either/or, it’s always a balance and the balance is always shifting. Work/Life balance is a myth. And so is attaining success.

What most people don’t get is that the journey changes you. So when you work really hard and achieve the goals you set out to hit, sometimes you feel flat. Like, “what, that’s all there is?” 

That’s all there is because you’re more accomplished. So doing that thing that looked so hard a year or two ago is just part of who you are now.

Remember that when you’re starting that climb, taking on that new project, or pushing to reach some new goal.

Success is a DYNAMIC balance. It’s not static. It’s ever moving and, because you’re the one to give meaning to the things in your lives, the attainment of success is ever changing.

That’s a good thing.

You can look at what you’re really good at. Whether that’s...