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The phrase, to come into your own, means to reach a stage of development or maturity where you achieve strength and confidence and social acceptance.  It’s when people finally recognize you as independent and capable, usually after much effort and time.  Notice the last part. After much effort and time.  Meaning, for those who wish to speed up the maturing process, you’re out of luck. Because you cannot rush…

The good news about most decisions is, they don’t have to be made perfectly.  Nor do they have to be made exhaustively.  Here’s why.  First of all, every truly important decision has a risk element. There’s no avoiding that. Think about it. How many of the decisions you make each day have absolutely correct answers? May as well just pull the trigger. Trust that the right decision is the…

Audiences love hinge movies. Those romantic and serendipitous stories where the protagonist’s entire fate is determined by whether or not she catches a certain train or meets a handsome stranger in the hallway.  You can almost hear the movie trailer voice over.  In a world where one small choice affects the trajectory of her entire career, one woman learns the true meaning of Christmas from an unexpected train of…

For us rebels, it’s in our blood to resist being what others expect us to be.  We don’t like taking what’s given to us. We react independently just to show that we won’t be ruled. We instinctively subvert obligations we find silly and boring. And we choose to do things as an expression of our identity and freedom.  It’s a tough way to live, but a damn good way…

Chronic anxiety can feel like you’re stuck in a swamp.  If you try to raise one leg out of the mud, the other one only sinks deeper. It’s like you’re stressing out trying to relax.  And that’s the beauty of medication. It puts you on dry land. It doesn’t solve your problem; it simply gives you a higher bottom from which to begin your healing process.  I will never…

Brooks wrote a brilliant book on the deeper values that should inform our lives.  His research found that a person of character is someone who has achieved a settled philosophy about fundamental things. They possess an impressive inner cohesion. Instead of leading fragmented, scattershot lives, they are integrated and grounded.  What he forgot to mention is, when you make yourself moral, when you become a person of great character, you isolate…

It’s tempting to go overboard in helping others do things that they need to do for themselves.  Nothing beats the satisfaction of being the caped crusader who swoops in and saves people from their problems. It makes us feel strong and important and useful.  But that’s not being a leader, that’s being codependent. One is a compulsion, the other is a privilege. And if we truly want to become…

Getting a good night’s sleep doesn’t make us boring people.  There’s nothing lame or uncool or weak about giving our body the respect and rest it deserves. After all, our bodies and minds and spirits produce real symptoms that demand dedicated attention, and each of us must do whatever is necessary to be restored to sanity.  Popova said it beautifully in her reflection on nine years of curating her inventory of…

Our journey out of compulsion into freedom is a fascinating one.  Because initially, whatever it is that we’re addicted to, eating, drinking, working, fucking, it’s done from a place of obsession. As a coping mechanism to avoid intimacy with our feelings. We have convinced ourselves that the behavior is about stopping the pain.  But in reality, it only creates more. And over time, that compulsion soon spins in a…

Here’s an unfortunate reality of business.  It doesn’t matter how much work we’ve done to not achieve something.  Any number multiplied by zero is still zero. You don’t get credit for cleaning up your own mess.  And so, if we diligently followed up six times with the prospect and they still haven’t called back, that certainly shows solid persistence, but ultimately, it doesn’t count. Because it didn’t put any…