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People spend far too much time making assumptions about what’s inside of us.  And in fact, many of them presume to know us better than ourselves. That’s why they try to enlighten us about who we are, what we should want and why we should want it.  It’s infuriating. Personally, it makes me feel defensive and controlled.  And that’s okay. My feelings are valid and normal for any person…

In the modern business landscape, most employees are rewarded for how much intellectual capital they bring to the table. Not how skilled they are at feeling their feelings.  And that’s okay. We can’t expect three centuries of postindustrial society to suddenly prioritize emotional intelligence over getting shit done.  With the exception of a handful of remarkable, progressive organizations, most of the corporations in the world will favor the head over…

Invalidation infuriates me.  It makes me feel small and worthless.  Anytime someone rejects my basic experience, saying or implying that my emotions are wrong, inappropriate or not okay, the eight year old version of myself shrinks to the size of a peanut.  Here are a few of my greatest hits from the invalidation catalogue.  When people dismiss, discount, diminish or deny my history.  When people criticize and shame me…

For many years, my ritual before delivering presentations was to spend ten minutes in the bathroom stall doing breathing exercises, listening to epic orchestral music, shadowboxing my imaginary opponent and running creative visualizations inside my head about my ideal outcome.  It was invigorating as hell. The centering sequence pumped me up for my show and helped created the necessary energy and momentum to operate at peak level.  Over time,…

I once heard an interview with a shrink who took an interesting approach to setting priorities during therapy sessions.  She would ask her patients this question.  On a scale of one to a hundred, how badly do you want to fix this problem?  And if the patient’s response was a low number, the doctor would respond by saying: Okay, well, let’s talk about something else until you get to…

If you’re feeling overwhelmed with ideas and dreams, worried that you simply must settle down, pick a lane and channel all of your creative energy into one particular project, hold on.  Because there’s no reason you can’t do everything. There’s no reason you can’t take on a number of different endeavors. And there’s no focus police that’s going to lock you up for diversifying your interests and doing more than one…

Who among us doesn’t want to be noticed, witnessed and seen?  The desire to break out of obscurity and be remembered is one of our fundamental human longings.  But the paradox about visibility is, it can actually work to our disadvantage. Because if we’re always there, nobody will have a chance to miss us. The goal is for us to become valuable in our presence, but also noticeable in our…

Our deepest fear isn’t that we will run out of money, but that we will run out of places to hide.  That we will have no choice but to hold the rawness of vulnerability in our hearts, expose our true selves to the world and be seen for who we really are. Having a low bank balance never sounded so good.  But the upside of this risk, it’s very…

Do your thing. Find your unique voice. Question the consensus reality. Navigate your own unconventional pathway. Rebel against the mindless, mainstream conventionality.  These are the modern messages of empowerment that we’re sold on a daily basis.  But what nobody warns us about is the expense of the moral horizon we choose to inhabit.  They don’t tell us that crafting a life that matches our vision of principled living comes with real…

We’re all guilty of not having a broad enough vision of what we are capable of.  And that’s okay. It’s not necessarily our fault. Grasping the full range of our capabilities is hard. There are so many layers of juicy, dripping potential have been buried and obscured by any number of forces outside our control.  And so, what we need is a crucible. A refining fire. A vessel in…