FOMO and Imposter Syndrome belong to the same insecurity family. If not twins, they’re at least figurative siblings. Both are based on and fueled by a scarcity mindset — the fear that there is only so much to go around. • FOMO, also known as Fear Of Missing Out, is the feeling that somewhere someone is having more fun, more success, greater relationship satisfaction — something BETTER than what you are experiencing at the moment. Consider FOMO as a light…..
Over a decade ago, I established a nonprofit that awarded cars to women in transition, based on my personal experience as a single mother on welfare. When my eldest daughter was 4 months old, since I didn’t have a car, a friend drove me back and forth to college, dropping me off at the burger joint across from campus two hours before classes started. I would take naps on the tables of the editorial offices of the college paper, juggling…..
“What do sad people have in common? It seems they have all built a shrine to the past and often go there and do a strange Wail and Worship. What is the beginning of Happiness? It is to stop being so religious like that.” — Hafiz Human behavior fascinates me. It’s probably what attracted me to advertising in the first place. Divining and then driving behavior is a never-ending, evolving symbiotic relationship. Whether advertising is arbiter or mirror of human behavior…..
One thing about resilience — and where I’m going with my next book is — owning your choices and actions allows you to change them. It’s a foundational ballast of resilience and happiness. Both occur at this intersection. You can’t bounce back without a firm floor. If you’re not honest about how you failed or you’re not honest about how you arrived at that loss, you’re not going to be able to create a firm foundation upon which to build……
There are so many entry points for me to talk about what International Women’s Day means to me. — As a former single mother on welfare, I could talk about the wage gap, inadequate child care resources, unequal opportunities at various places of work, the poverty trap built into the welfare system and the way it disincentivizes people from trying to better their circumstances. — As a woman who has experienced sexual harassment at work, in dating situations and while…..
Newsflash: everyone has writer’s block, not just authors whose livelihood depends on their capacity to churn out amazing poetry or prose. If you’ve ever written a memo, created a proposal, drafted a lesson plan or used the written word to communicate, then you’ve experienced writer’s block. I’m not sure what causes the syllabic logjam preventing thoughts from traveling from the brain through the fingers onto the page (or computer screen), but I have learned how to break it up. When…..
Many people have to wait a long time for something to happen. Tom Petty was right: The waiting is the hardest part. It’s easy to become impatient, especially when you cannot see any signs that anything is happening. It’s similar to the seed germinating within the earth. Although there may be millions of chemical reactions going on beneath the surface of the soil, from topside, the dirt you can see resembles a mute brown plane, keeping its own counsel. The…..
This photo is from a trip I took to Portland in August 2019. The hand is that of my youngest daughter. She and I were out on a walk, exploring her neighborhood. I thought that today, we could use it as a writing prompt. One of my tricks for breaking through writer’s block is to imagine different worlds within the various pictures I see streaming by in my Instagram timeline. It helps me to shift gears when I’m stuck in…..
Doing something new requires being willing to be bad at something until you become skilled at it. It requires humility and a willingness to fail forward. If you’ve paid attention to your life’s journey, chances are good you’ve experienced plenty of versions of yourself, and have been resurrected from the ashes of various trials and tribulations to get where (and be who) you are now. “It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is…..
My mom died on January 27, 2020. Grief is a strange experience. Grief is also NOT linear. Even though she has been gone for three years, there are still memories of her that appear at random times, popping to the top of my consciousness like errant butterflies flitting across a garden full of flowers waving in the breeze. That’s her in the picture—the brunette nestled next to her dad. She was the elder of two “oops babies” that arrived when…..