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Loving and forgiving and accepting and being kind to ourselves aren’t skills that we master overnight.  They strengthen through a continuous cycle of action and reflection. They’re developed and nurtured over time and with lots of practice.  And it all starts with awareness. Because the emotional edifice of loving ourselves cannot be built without a bedrock of intention upon which to hoist the first beam.  Demello said it best…

Disrupt came to town this week.  AirHelp, as an alumnus of the startup battlefield, had the privilege of returning to the conference to learn what’s new in the world of tech, connect with exciting companies and learn from inspiring speakers. Yesterday we looked at insights from day one, and here’s day two: 1. Most technologies spend ten years in development before they reach the human population. Fascinating perspective from…

Disrupt came to town this week. AirHelp, as an alumnus of the startup battlefield, had the privilege of returning to the conference to learn what’s new in the world of tech, connect with exciting companies and learn from inspiring speakers. Here are my takeaways from day one: 1. Protest is the act of telling the truth out loud in public. Brittany Packnett from Campaign Zero said this during her impassioned presentation on making change in…

When we experience pain, a few things happen inside of our bodies.  From a biological standpoint, we touch a hot stove, a nerve ending senses the stimulus, it sends the signal to the central nervous system, the pain center in the brain receives the message and then we yell a curse word as loud as we can.  But from an intellectual standpoint, something else happens. Once the pain registers,…

When there’s a blizzard, the enterprising neighborhood kids have a choice.  They can stand on the street corner all morning and wait for homeowners to pick them.  They can ring people’s doorbells, make a pitch for their shoveling services and try not to get rejected.  Or, they can study the weather reports all week, canvas the streets the night before the storm, give out their cell phone number to…

The ability to communicate clearly and intelligently and proactively and persuasively is the price of admission.  But the audacity to originate communication rituals that are integrated into the larger culture, that’s how real, sustainable communities is built.  And whether those rituals are performed within a workplace, family system, peer group, professional association or even a local yoga studio, they’re guaranteed to create a foundation of trust and meaning that…

If our dream is too small, we’ll become unconsciously locked into a single, narrow path and insulate ourselves from future opportunity and growth.  But if our dream is too big, we’ll become overwhelmed by option anxiety, vision ourselves into paralysis and get nowhere.  The secret, then, is crafting a dream that’s specific enough to feel like the destination is unique and personal and achievable, but broad enough to feel…

When it comes to the interpersonal realm, the best preventative medicine is to assume that you won’t be understood.  That your message won’t be received in the exact way that you want it to.  Which may sound pessimistic, but it’s really just realistic.  Because most people are terrible audience members. They’re too distracted, defensive, biased and judgmental. They’re not listening as much as they are waiting to talk.  And…

It’s tempting to expect existence to obey our wishes.  To demand that the universe fulfill its obligation to make us happy. And to feel deserving of a world that reliably conforms to our wishes and desires.  But in this naïve prioritizing of I wish above it is, we only set ourselves up for disappointment, disillusion and resentment. And we rob ourselves of any chance to establish a healthy relationship with reality.  On…

Many of us come from a family tradition where people are taught to do inner work. Where the journey into the infinite depths of our own interior is always viewed as a meaningful activity.  As a result, we often take for granted just how much reflection we really do. Not everybody has the time or temperament, and so it’s something worth being grateful for.  But although the mind is…