How do you plan your life? Not just the to-do list activities — pay bills, go to the grocery store, order Thanksgiving turkey — but the big stuff you value most? I’ve been in a variety of conversations lately about project management. For example: My husband, John, just finished a multi-month sprint to get about a dozen new pieces of…
Death has been close to me recently. Our neighbor died, my dad’s brother died, a business school classmate died. I am aware of our mortality but these various losses have brought that difficult truth front and center. In this already vulnerable state, I read Laurie Anderson’s farewell to Lou Reed in Rolling Stone. It seems every journalist and musician had…
This week we booked our next visit to New Orleans. We haven’t missed a Jazz Fest since Katrina, we’ve been for Halloween and Voodoo Fest and Fourth of July, but we’ve never experienced the one thing most people probably picture when they hear “New Orleans.” Since 2011, we’ve done three long stays in New Orleans and spent a month in…
My artist husband, John Tebeau, shows up as a guest star on my blog fairly often. But today, he’s the focus — specifically, an art show he has opening Thursday on a subject that’s near and dear to my heart. “You Want It, You Got It” focuses on the way your attitude and approach to life affects the quality of…
You know that saying about how when you assume, you make an ass out of “u” and me? I recently read an excellent blog post that drove that idea home — in language that’s pretty close to the cliché. (It’s also language more delicate readers might not enjoy. If that’s you, maybe skip this one? Perhaps you could look at some…
On her Super Soul Sundays series on OWN, Oprah Winfrey recently talked with author Steven Pressfield about finding your calling. Pressfield suggests four questions to help you find your calling: What are you more afraid of than anything else in the world? What would you do if you knew you were going to die in three months? What would you…
Entrepreneur magazine hosted a half-day workshop on selling professional services last week, anchored by Michael Port, author of “Book Yourself Solid.” I took away several helpful ideas and pointers so today’s Marketing Monday is some highlights: 1. There are certain people you are meant to serve. Your job is to find them and push away the people you are not…
Today’s post is really more of an invitation, an urging, a fervent pointing elsewhere. Thanks to our friend Lou Rosenfeld for posting the link on Facebook, I read and loved Bill Watterson’s “How to Find Happiness.” It’s beautifully written, with charming Calvin & Hobbes style illustrations by Gavin Aung Than, and Watterson quickly and simply gets across his view of…
Wanting to change the world is a lofty goal, but according to a recent post by Public Words, it comes down to some basic principles. In an article headlined, “How to Change the World – 5 Lessons from People Who Have,” the communications strategists boil it down to five characteristics. My very streamlined summary: 1. Take the plunge. No one…
When I talk with people about living life intentionally, one of the common objections I hear is that they don’t know where they want to go. People might know they’re dissatisfied with where they are but can’t yet see a vision of another way. They don’t know what their dream job is or they don’t know what they want in…
The world would be a lovely place if we were all kind and respectful and loving toward one another. Unfortunately, there are greedy people, bullies and manipulators among us, to name just a few of the difficult people we all have to encounter. How should we handle these people who make us feel less than great? A recent Deepak Chopra…
It can be tough to know what to say when someone close to you has lost a job or gotten a terrible diagnosis. When my mom died, I was taken aback by some of the things people said. They were trying to be supportive, to connect with me in my time of grief, but sometimes it just amplified the hurt…
I know it’s the dead of summer, so maybe Christmas cards are the furthest thing from your mind. Since I have a favor to ask, I want to give you time to think it over well ahead of that moment when you’re deciding whether you need 100 cards or if you could scale back to 50 and save a few…
John and I spent last weekend with friends in Newtown, Conn. They have a school-aged child. As they described learning about the terrible events at Sandy Hook Elementary, and how the loss of 26 lives to a gunman continues to play out in their small town, I tried in vain to imagine what their experience must have been like. Shortly…
If you don’t yet read Brain Pickings, the smartly wonderful guide to things you should check out online, here’s yet another endorsement to check it out. I spend a lot of time reading and blogging about happiness, but recently Maria Popova, the curator of Brain Pickings, turned me on to a happiness book I hadn’t heard of: The Antidote: Happiness…
This year at SXSW Interactive, I heard a speaker say something that made me want to leap up, throw my hands in the air and yell, “Amen!” He suggested that many new technologies, whether that’s smartphones, social media or the Internet itself, have been around long enough that we should no longer be infatuated with their gee-whiz factor and instead…
