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Control: The Most Potent Addiction of All
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: The need for control can create a sense of security while gradually increasing dependence, limiting initiative and reinforcing the very conditions we’re trying to prevent. Recognizing the boundaries of our responsibility and influence allows us to make more appropriate decisions without assuming that every outcome must be…
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Don’t Make Fear the Organizing Principle of Your Life
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: Fear does not always look like fear; sometimes it looks remarkably like preparation, responsibility, control or good judgment. The question may not only be what decision we are making, but how much fear is influencing the choice. Fear does not always show up in a way we…
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Are You Incapable of Selling, or Is It This?
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: We are remarkably quick to turn repeated outcomes into identities: I can’t sell, I can’t lead, I’m not cut out for this. But before deciding what the result says about you, it may be worth diagnosing the conditions that produced it. Sometimes we turn repeated results into…
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When Our Expectations Become Someone Else’s Ceiling
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: What we assume people can do influences the opportunities we give them. Sometimes, the limits we see are the ones our own expectations have helped create. Walt Hunter was worried about his students. After nearly two decades of teaching, stories about declining reading habits, his own difficulty…
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What Could Possibly Come From a Dot?
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: We can overlook our abilities because they feel ordinary to us. Yayoi Kusama’s dots invite us to consider what we might develop from the things we take for granted about ourselves. I discovered Yayoi Kusama today. I was drawn in by a piece of art that someone…
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Decide, then Do
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: Many of us treat how we feel about a choice as evidence of whether we made the right one. But our feelings can come and go while we continue to act according to what we have already decided. Tomorrow morning, you probably won’t feel like engaging in…
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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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It’s OK to Play
There’s a lie many of us absorb early and carry quietly into adulthood: That seriousness equals depth.That productivity equals worth. And when life becomes heavy, play must step aside until things feel “better.” Grief dismantles that lie. Grief doesn’t ask you to become more disciplined or more efficient. It asks you to become more present.…
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Know Yourself Before it’s Impossibly Late
Most people believe they know themselves, and that confidence is rarely questioned. It feels reasonable to assume that living inside your own mind grants you privileged access to who you are, yet psychological research and lived experience both suggest otherwise. Self-knowledge is not a natural byproduct of adulthood. It is a discipline, and one that…
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You Must Make Room First…If You Want to Grow
I’ve come to understand that decluttering a home and pruning a plant are guided by the same underlying principle: growth doesn’t begin with adding more, it begins with removing what no longer supports life. This is something I’ve returned to many times over the years, not as a lifestyle philosophy or a reset ritual, but…
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