Today I was inspired by…
Today I was inspired by…
A celebration of progress.
”I almost got second to last!” My daughter was thrilled and she let us know by singing this over and over. It took a moment for my brain to catch up. She was celebrating coming in last place – but “only by ONE second!” We signed our youngest daughter up for swim team because she [...]
Taking a dive.
In our family, we each make a bucket list of 10 things we want to do before summer kicks the bucket. On my daughter’s bucket list was diving off of the high dive. She had not yet crossed it off and came to me with this question. “When I think about diving off of the [...]
Inclusion.
I read a blog the other day that had a sole purpose of rallying the blog’s readers against another person. There was a dispute and the blogger shared how one party had been terribly wronged by the other. Part of me “gets this” – my undergraduate training was in rooting out the truth as a [...]
A champion of common miracles
My friend, Bob, has one of the most compassionate hearts I know. He’s a therapist and a writer. His core message is that what most of us ordinary people achieve on any ordinary day is indeed a miracle. I have seen him be a champion for a mother, a father, a farmer’s wife – pointing [...]
A memory
My girls were getting ready for their first overnight camp. When I told them that they were the same age that my younger sister and I were when we went off to our first camp, they begged for some stories. Memories came washing back from over 30 years ago. Story after story I shared with [...]
A mother’s priorities
She was all signed up for a business development seminar. Air fare booked. Hotel arranged. Then the date of her son’s middle school graduation changed. It fell right in the middle of her conference. The woman easily could have justified that her conference was booked first. After all, it was “only” a middle school graduation [...]
The high road
Someone connected to me on the internet surprised me with her drama. It seemed she was trying to draw imaginary lines in the sand to bolster her sense of being right. Opting for an easy jump to “I’m right” over entertaining the possibility that there were good intentions on the other side of her conclusion. [...]
Irony (part 2)
Irony (part 2, read part 1 here). The same morning I wrote my rant about reducing marketing noise, a team member sent out my weekly Start Strong newsletter with this headline: “Less than 24 hours left to take action…” Through my miscommunication, the newsletter email headline did not emphasize the essay on decision making tips [...]
Irony (part 1)
Well, first I was annoyed by it. Then…I used it as the foundation for a rich conversation with my team and lessons learned by all. I had just finished writing the following rant: I stopped by my inbox to a list of headlines that felt like they were yelling deadlines at me. Just a few [...]
My kindergarten sweetheart
I spent the whole school year when I was 5 years old dancing around and singing, “I’m going to marry Monte, I’m going to marry Monte.” I started doing it because I was crazy about that gentle hearted, dark haired, blue eyed boy. I kept doing it, in part, because it drove my brothers and [...]
