Every day, I log at least five miles of walking. In addition to helping with stress relief, I also mentally compose a lot of posts in my head during my daily constitutional. From this, as I sat down to peck out today’s post, two ideas kept filtering to the top of my consciousness: “To thine own self be true.” — Wm. Shakespeare from Hamlet and “I wanna tell you a little secret; being ‘The One’ is just like being in…..
Now that the temperature is beginning to drop into the 40s, I make sure to get at least five miles in during walks around my neighborhood while it’s still relatively warm. Winters in Chicago are usually pretty soul crushing and claustrophobic, but the pandemic has ratcheted my despair levels to eleven. During my walks, I encounter families, dogs, hipsters, teenagers and other people like me who enjoy stretching their legs for some exercise. There are those I encounter regularly, as…..
When I first moved to Chicago, I tried online dating. It had been an effective method of meeting people in years prior (generating a husband, who is now an ex), so I felt comfortable using the internet once again to search for my next boyfriend-potential-husband. The sheer population difference of a metro area the size of Chicago in comparison to where I had lived in Iowa meant that I had a chance to meet not only a larger number of…..
You’ve probably heard of the phrase, ‘the calm before the storm,’ but there’s a calm after the storm, too. There’s a lull in energy—a drop from the frenzy of the storm—followed by the slow, methodical sifting through the wreckage it caused. Going through the pieces that were broken and altered by the storm takes time. Deciding what to keep and what needs to be thrown away is an exercise in discernment. Once you’ve taken an inventory of what’s worth saving,…..
One of the founders stories I share within my book, Circuit Train Your Brain, is how I faced eviction not once, but twice within the first five years of my moving to Chicago in pursuit of scaling the nonprofit I had established. Part of my next book is unpacking how those experiences happened. Under-earning was one reason; my lack of focus was another. There are many other reasons, and I’m still sifting them out. During a particularly perilous time in…..
Pillow talk: this throw pillow cost $38. I know what you’re thinking: big whoop-dee-doo. You may have dropped thirty-eight bucks on a good port at dinner today. But when I was eking by on absolutely nothing as a nonprofit founder, my scarcity mindset thought that spending $38 for a silly pillow was a stupid and a frivolous expense. So I returned to Crate and Barrel multiple times, checking to see if it was still available, thinking to myself, “If it’s…..
A common mistake that creators make is to set their asking price for their services or skill at what they think the market will bear (usually asking too little). The paradox is that when you set your value, the market meets you. As a writer and artist, I’ve been conditioned to donate my gifts or discount my rates for as long as I can remember. • Part of it is because I can tap into the well of creativity and…..
I wonder how many people reading this watched the original television series MacGyver when it originally aired? Aside from being Selma and Patty Bouvier’s celluloid object of desire and the inspiration for SNL’s Will Forte creation MacGruber, this TV character is that rare proper noun that has been “verbed.” To MacGyver something is to bootstrap and/or apply a life hack that transforms something from nothing to save the day. If you are starting anything from scratch, be it a business,…..
Even if you are not particularly religious or attend a church, you are probably familiar with the scripture, ‘seek and ye shall find.’ What if you don’t know what you seek? Would you recognize the answer? From early childhood, I have been driven by the need to know the mysteries of the universe. Dogmatic conversations of a definitive truth aside, my specific religious teachings from childhood left me with the assumption that upon death, one would be privy to the…..
“How much longer will you go on letting your energy sleep? How much longer are you going to stay oblivious of the immensity of yourself?” — Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh The significance of this quote and its meaning really hit me between the eyes when I first read it. There are a couple of societal programming factors that contribute to my specific reaction: First of all, I was raised to feel as if “tooting my own horn” was boastful. Delivering results,…..