Blog
Early exposure to chronic stress sets us on a collision course with all sorts of negative physical and mental health outcomes: It lowers our actual, physical stress tolerance, because the body’s stress response system gets overtaxed too soon and never gets a chance to recharge. It falsely heightens our perceived stress tolerance. If you developed […]
Accidental lies I’ve told in interview or promotion conversations: “I am passionate about continuing to grow my leadership in the nonprofit fundraising space.” “I am passionate about optimizing business processes and automating data flow.” “I am passionate about scaling Agile practices across the enterprise.” All of these statements were patently false. Total nonsense. (They’re also […]
Making life decisions got a lot easier once I got clear on my personal mission statement. It came to me out of the blue one day, and was startlingly different from the principles I’d been orienting my life around. What I had been making decisions based on were the unconscious drives to a) have an […]
I talk about trauma for a living. My partner is a first responder, who spends his days resuscitating people who have overdosed, tending gunshot wounds, and digging hoarders out of burning buildings. You’d think the mood at our home would be somber. It is anything but. We dance our as*es off at weddings, even totally […]
How many times have you been asked to do something, agreed – because you felt bad or obligated or too tired to fight it – and later regretted it? Maybe you felt resentful or irritated or exhausted or underappreciated afterward. How many times have you asked someone else to do something, only to have them […]
I’ve been hanging out recently with two types of people: 1) exhausted corporate workers whose jobs/lives feel like constant firefighting, and 2) actual firefighters. Based on my purely anecdotal observations, it seems like the latter group has a lower #burnout rate than the former. Which is insane. Here are some things I’ve learned about how […]
A year ago, I stepped away from a great job at a great company, with almost no notice and no other full-time employment lined up. I was doing complex, lucrative work with cool clients and a super supportive employer. So what happened? Answer #1: I’d been preparing to go full-time solopreneur for a while, and […]
“Make a different mistake.” This has been my mantra through dozens of critical decisions and moments of uncertainty over the last couple of years. Trusting myself hasn’t come easily. Years of gaslighting and unwinnable situations scrambled my signals and created paralyzing doubt around my choices. Reaching some mystical moment of perfect clarity was, most of […]
Something really powerful just happened. Like so many of us, I have struggled mightily with shame, self loathing, and a sense of brokenness. We all have different “parts” or facets of our personality that try to protect us from encountering those painful emotions in different ways. (The more trauma you’ve experienced, the more disjointed these […]
