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What To Do When Your Brain Hijacks Your Day
Some days your brain hijacks the whole thing. That was today. A personal matter reached in, took the wheel, and drove off with the hours I’d meant to spend elsewhere. By the time I looked up, the day was mostly gone. Lost to total derailment. I want to be honest about it, because I think…
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We’ve Gotten Very Good at Naming Issues…
…but often at the expense of solving them. In the modern workplace, the vocabulary of problems has become almost as sophisticated as the work itself. We can diagnose almost anything now. Entire conferences are built around these phrases. Articles circulate. Panels debate them. Leaders repeat them in town halls. And yet, inside many organizations, the…
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When Grit isn’t the Best Response
For the better part of the last decade, grit has been elevated to almost heroic status in leadership and performance conversations. Much of that influence traces back to the work of Angela Duckworth and her widely read book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Duckworth’s central argument is simple and compelling: long-term success is…
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The Much Overlooked Discipline of Taking a Break
We talk a lot about discipline as if it only lives in grit, in late nights, in pushing past limits and proving something to the version of ourselves that keeps score. But there is another discipline, quieter and far less glamorous, that almost never makes the motivational posters. The discipline of stepping away. The discipline…
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When Love Becomes a Business Strategy
In 2002, long before empathy and authenticity became boardroom buzzwords, Tim Sanders wrote a small but subversive book called Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends. His thesis was radical for its time: Love is the selfless promotion of the growth of the other. He called people who practiced this…
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Finding Balance Between Empathy and Structure as You Lead
I LOVE Law & Order. Not just the courtroom drama or the signature dun dun, but the way every episode reveals what happens when systems and people collide — when order meets chaos, and justice depends on who’s leading the charge. It makes perfect sense that I’d be drawn to stories like this. I’ve built…
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When your Gift Becomes a Cage
Scott Clary, in his Saturday Strategy Sessions newsletter, asked a powerful question: What if the thing you’re best at is the thing that’s killing you? He used the example of Josh Waitzkin — chess prodigy, national champion, International Master, and the inspiration for Searching for Bobby Fischer. By all external measures, Josh was destined for…
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When What Worked Before Stops Working
So many women hit menopause and feel like their bodies have betrayed them. The old advice — eat less, move more — suddenly stops working. The scale creeps up, belly fat feels stubborn, and energy dips no matter what you try. This is not an indication that you’re failing at the diet, and lack willpower.…
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The Danger of Labeling too soon
What sparked this reflection was a graphic I saw: “7 Signs You’re Dealing with an Inauthentic Person.” The list was absolute: if someone shows these traits, they’re inauthentic. Full stop. I think this is misleading. Human behavior is more nuanced. When we latch onto a label too quickly, we risk being myopic — zooming in…
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