I’ve written about life-affirming things for the last eight weeks, so I’m about seven weeks overdue to talk about you and your pending demise. Humor me here for a bit, okay? (And nod with me that you know my Death Diatribes are actually all about living life like we mean it, right? Death as the...
Want to like your life even a little bit more than you do today — even 3.6% more? (Pretty much all of us are raising our hands right now.) I have 10 ways that have worked for me, and thankfully most of them don't involve hard liquor. In no particular order... 1. I swiftly abandon...
I think I know you well, friend. Let me guess: You like certainty. You like “to know.” You like clarity. You like it when things make sense. Am I like a 1-900 psychic or what? I nailed you, didn’t I? The problem with all those things you love to like is that you live in...
I hope you see things... Things that take your words and breath away with the dynamic duo of wonder and awe... like the first tulip of the year — insistent on pushing its way through wintry soil to live its brief but beautiful life above ground (kind of like you: beautiful and alive and totally...
You know about serendipity, right? That special type of luck, when misfortune turns out to be fortuitous? When the shit sandwich life serves you turns out to actually be a platter of cheese-covered nachos in disguise? Here’s the thing about stumbling upon good fortune: we usually trip over it, curse at it, turf it in...
We moved to freaking Palm Springs, California! (For a girl who grew up near wintery, snow-covered Toronto, and then moved to equally frosty Chicago for the last 15 years, this is kind of a big deal.) I want to tell you all about moving to paradise — not because I want to brag about it...
Holy crap! I did a TEDx talk! And I lived to tell the tale! I spent every waking hour over the last five months equal parts giddy with excitement and pee-my-pants nervous. You know how else I can describe this potent cocktail of feelings? UNDENIABLY ALIVE. It felt like I had taken a swig out...
I dare you to tell me you don’t like the idea of a life colored in with both absorbed enjoyment and meaning... a living-in-vivid-color kind of life where you sweep yourself off your feet with captivatingly engaging activities... a meaningful life that feels like your existence matters and has more than a pea-sized iota of...
The words we tell ourselves matter. You know this, I know this, and every coach worth the dough they paid to get certified knows this. I’m going to get all persnickety though and say it’s the verbs that usually matter the most. Verbs specify the action we want to commit to, rather than just musing...
Don’t you just love a chart that explains your feelings to you, in a way that feels more legit than reading your astrological chart? Like this one, that’s backed by real and actual science? If you’re feeling anxious, for example, it just might be because you’re overly challenged and woefully short on the skills to...
Rather counterintuitive in a world that favors comfort, convenience, and sheer and utter pleasure is the idea that humans deteriorate without challenges and adversity placed on our bodies and minds. (Deterioration, to be clear, is not what we’re looking for while we still have Mondays left to live.) The hedonic pursuit of happiness, characterized by...
I once spent an 18-month stint in my corporate career as a customer service expert (or at least I pretended very hard to be one and fortunately had fun trying). In that role I espoused the virtues of the Net Promoter Score — which is the gold standard in customer experience metrics and also a...