Blog

Most of us were raised with a survival mindset.  The focus was on meeting basic physical needs, and setting ourselves up to continue meeting those needs successfully in the future. That requires a specific set of skills and beliefs. Optimizing for survival means: choosing safety, predictability, and agreeability over anything else there is little margin […]

I am a ravenous and unapologetic devourer of self-help books. The genre is often greeted with skepticism and eye-rolls. That is a shame, because I can attest from personal experience that many of its contents are profoundly life-changing. Here are a few that have been the most pivotal for me:  When Things Fall Apart by […]

I’ve been in therapy since 2015.  I’ve had a coach since 2018.  Both have been indispensable. In therapy I gained labels and language to understand my past experiences. I learned to identify my relational and emotional patterns, and released a lot of built up pain from the past. From receiving coaching, I saw there were […]

I realize this is heretical for a coach to say, but I have a bone to pick with “self care.” For a long time, I was dutifully checking all the “self care” boxes: eating healthily, going to therapy, taking walks, journaling, acupuncture, the whole nine yards.  I was also resentful the whole time.  I was […]

Imagine you’re sitting in a car, wanting to take a road trip to the destination of your dreams. But the following things are true: You’re sitting in the passenger seat You don’t know how a car works You don’t know where you want to end up You don’t know how to read road signs You […]

It was a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning and I was limping through the streets of Madrid. I had just rolled my ankle badly and heard a loud snap. I was miles away from the nearest metro station and over an hour from my homestay.  My foot was rapidly swelling to the size of a grapefruit […]

I remember the scene clearly: I was sitting on the floor of my walk-in closet with the door closed behind me, light off, staring at a candle, and suddenly starting to implode. This was my first ever attempt at meditating. (I’d read about the candle thing somewhere as an easy way to keep yourself focused. […]

Once, stuck in a crazy-making role early in my career, my best work friend and I invented a game I called the “margarita clock.” We sat down at our desks at 8 am sharp every morning, and we’d see how long we could make it before we felt the intense urge to drink a margarita […]

You don’t owe anyone your story. We are living in an unprecedented period that incentivizes hyper-personal, nonstop sharing about ourselves. Vulnerability, with its many benefits, is finally having its moment – and thank goodness for that. It also, though, creates pressure for some folks to feel like they have to disclose every painful detail of […]

My reflection for International Women’s Day: perfectionism and people-pleasing are the next battlefronts in the fight for gender equality. Our foremothers had to fight the most egregious and overt forms of sexism. That doesn’t mean it’s gone. The women of our generation face a subtler battle: fighting the internalized expectations that still hold us back […]