Photo Credit: Yemelia Nova
Husband and I have been married for 12 years as of next Sunday. Craziness. For those of you who know us, we are a super happy couple. Just the right combination of independence and codependency. He says he could do laundry if he had to. I don’t think he could. Likewise, I think I could get out of bed in the morning if he didn’t bring me coffee. I probably could, if I had to.
As nice as those things are, they don’t really matter. The flowers he forgets to buy me don’t matter. It doesn’t really matter when I schedule a board meeting on his birthday. The biscotti I lovingly make for him doesn’t matter. His endless support of my insane schedule doesn’t matter much either.
What matters is that we are both paying attention. We are not zoning out; endlessly numbing ourselves with life’s distractions and busy-ness and just going through the motions. Which is easy to do. It’s easy to get lost in all the stuff. Especially right now. Though let’s be real about the fact that this is not a new problem. It’s just a very heightened problem in this moment.
Mark and I have learnt that when we start failing as individuals, we start failing as a couple. It’s never the other way around. We struggle collectively when we struggle individually. When we stop working on ourselves. When we numb out and stop challenging ourselves to grow.
As part of the burn-out series, I was asked how we support our teams as we try to not burn out ourselves. It’s a question I get reasonably frequently. It’s an important consideration but it’s also a distraction. Just as I strengthen my marriage when I optimize myself, we help our teams when we help ourselves.
For years I tried to get Mark to do yoga. In vain. Nothing worked until I dedicated myself to my practice. He saw the change in me. He saw how happy, strong and grounded I was. That was the point he decided he wanted to start. As we show up and grow up we provide the space for others to decide the same. Or not. We can’t change other people, we can only change ourselves.
One of the most powerful questions we can ask ourselves when we are not getting what we need from others, whether loved ones or employed ones, is “what is my part in this?” It’s a hard question to ask and it’s an even harder one to answer. Where can you be stronger, where are you not paying attention?
It’s easy to make everything someone else’s problem. To have impact and influence, we need to make the problems ours. Own it.
CHANNELING CHANEL
Photo Credit: Chanel
The words and wisdom of Coco Chanel were once a rally-cry for me. She made me stand up taller, care more, want more and know that anything was possible.
While her brand feels totally out of step with today’s world, she was once a determined underdog with a vision. A woman who did a good job pretending she had it all under control. A woman who masked her insecurities with a good pair of shoes and her editing eye. There is wisdom lurking under her slightly judgmental and deeply-privileged perspective.
I have always followed Chanel’s rule of looking in the mirror and taking one thing off before I leave the house. As a total magpie (if it’s shiny I want it), I am prone to a desire to wear at least two outfits at once. Not only does that leave me looking like a Christmas Tree but I usually wind up feeling burdened by the heels or the necklace or the bag - the one thing too many. That tendency carries over to my to-do list. Exponentially.
In the universe of overwhelm we are our greatest enemy. We add but we don’t subtract. We don’t pause and look in the metaphorical mirror. We don’t even contemplate the option that less might be more.
We know we should lighten our load. Being in various degrees of lockdown for the past - however many months it has been - has given us time to clean out our literal closets. What remains for us is to edit what is hiding in plain sight.
Scope-creep is a term widely used in the contracting world that also applies to the burden we place on ourselves.. It means that the original parameters of the brief, or job, have been lost as countless new requirements have been added.
Scope-creep is problematic because it implies the original ask is no longer clear. For a contractor that usually means you are being overworked and underpaid. While I know that will resonate with you, it’s actually worse than that. We also lose something critical. We lose sight of who we want to be in the world. We get so busy getting the to-do’s done - we forget what it is all in service of. We lose ourselves.
I know. That should really hurt to read. Sorry but...not sorry.
Weekends have become weekdays, email and entertainment merge, personal has become business. And business is getting personal. Our living room is an office, our bedrooms are offices, our kitchen is an office. We have become chefs and daycare and teachers and cleaners and social workers.
We have added and we haven’t subtracted.
So your mantra this week is “do less”. Every morning you will say this, every day you will honor this, every evening you will assess this. It's a simple exercise. I intentionally want to start small. Once we gain awareness of what we are doing we have a much greater capacity to change our actions.
And it’s harder than it sounds. You will invent a million reasons to do the stuff that doesn’t matter. Watch yourself justify and rationalize. As you do, ask yourself “what is this in service to?” You, your future, your goals? Or are you feeding the busy-ness beast?
BURNT OUT
Photo Credit: Toast
I have long struggled with the concept of work-life balance. The notion of 'balance' in itself has always been a bit mystifying, elusive and incongruent with the reality of my squiggly life. Some days I struggle to even think about a walk around the block and my lunch consists of a cup of coffee. Other days, possibly out of desperation, I can barely bring myself to check email. My brain and body have temporarily quit on me as I reboot.
None of that has ever felt balanced.
Later in my career, I have what feels like the luxury of being able to protect my schedule. I guard a couple of days a week to fit in some yoga and prep food. So at the very least I can heat up something more nutritious than coffee. These are my “flexible” days, inspired by Paul Graham's concept of maker-time. I know with confidence each week that I have time to move key projects forward. And to literally move myself.
Without that space in my life, well, I would have no life.
I was recently asked about this topic by someone who needed guidance. By someone who was struggling to have a life. I found myself somewhat frozen in the spotlight of the question. I have never been intentional about prioritization. I err on the side of generosity and openness with my time. This has led me to places I never would have imagined. Literally. Like Antarctica speaking at a TedX. It’s also taken me down a lot of dead-ends and, I now appreciate, has in some cases wasted a lot of my time.
So how do we find balance?
We are all donkey-deep in this issue at the moment. Some of us are still WFH and juggling all manner of life-balls being thrown at us. For reals, it’s really hard to stay balanced while juggling. Others of us are back in the office (hello New Zealand peeps) and the struggle is now to implement the good stuff you were doing when you worked from home. It’s an easy slide back into the coffee-for-lunch realm. And we are all working with the added pressure of not really knowing how this will all conclude. How our jobs, business and even industry will change and evolve from this bizarre turn of (pandemic) events.
The next few posts will explore this topic. How do we optimize ourselves for growth in this moment without completely burning out? How do we, and can we even, set boundaries while staying open to new possibilities? My reflection is that this is more a matter of integration than balance. How can I integrate all the important component parts of my world so that I am kicking butt while not compromising my health, fitness, nutrition or my inbox. It’s a lofty goal...let’s see how we do.
WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS
PhotoCredit: Lemons
My beautiful, amazing, life-affirming, quite crazy (in all the right ways) friend had a deep awareness of the fragility of life. It’s profound to me that she was taken from this earth as young and suddenly as she was. It’s as if she knew, all along, her days were numbered.
I think about her daily. We didn’t live in the same country so her absence from this world feels abstract. It’s more like she just stopped texting. It’s more like we both got busy and stopped planning adventures. It doesn’t feel like she’s gone.
We are all living with pretty profound loss. Loss isn’t relative. Loss is personal. From jobs, to loved ones, to freedoms, to workplaces to summer holiday plans. What is real for you IS real. How do we support recovery from loss? How do we cope in this world that feels like endless grieving?
We can think about making lemonade with the lemons of life. I love to stay positive, it’s my Modus Operandi. But sometimes you just can’t. And sometimes you shouldn’t.
My friend would say “when life takes away your lemons, throw rocks at it.” She would say it with a hint of resignation to the lack of control she had in that moment. Whether it was a bad grade, a breakup, the ongoing renovations of her house that never seemed to be finished or her stupid friend living so stupidly far away.
Those were the easy things. She battled her way through a lot of hard stuff. A lot of stolen lemons.
I love her, I miss her, I am pissed off she is gone. We can all learn to live with our altered existences but it really doesn’t mean we have to like it. It’s ok to be angry. It’s ok to be hurt and it’s ok to be frustrated.
Feel the pain. Don’t pretend it’s not there. Stop for a moment when it bubbles up. We don't need to race through life like it doesn't hurt. This year has been intense and it’s likely to stay intense for a good while longer. Give yourself a break every now and then. Support your recovery. Support your sanity.
ENERGY
PhotoCredit: Waffle
My mother sent me a link to a ‘golden buzzer’ performance from America’s Got Talent. It was the typically addictive golden buzzer performance that never fails to melt my heart. It felt good to watch something so positive and full of hope.
I searched for the video this week thinking I might write about it. Thinking we could use a dose of hope and positivity. Wondering about it being a little too saccharine. A little too easy in a world that doesn’t feel so easy right now. As I searched, I found another video from AGT (I think that is what the insiders call it). Equally full of hope and positivity, it contained another ingredient. The most important ingredient.
As Simon Cowell later noted, and it’s palpable, there is an unmistakable energy from the minute W.A.F.F.L.E walk on stage. What they did on stage didn’t really matter. Although it’s easy to say that because what they did was excellent. But I kind of didn’t care. They were electric. Electric in that way people get when they are really clear about what is important to them. Electric in that way people get when they are determined about their path in life.
When you have that clarity, and alignment, you can fall or stumble and it doesn’t matter. You can get stuff wrong, and let’s face it we are all getting stuff wrong at the moment, and still be track to getting it right. Not that they stumbled - well not that I could see, they were moving around pretty darn quickly.
Such is the way of the entrepreneur, the student, the child, the athlete and the artist. Such is the way of the squiggler. Hopefully this is also the way we will choose as humans.
WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?
PhotoCredit: Heart
We rocked out to Tina Turner this weekend after Husband discovered a video of her performing River Deep Mountain High throughout her career. Watching her become an icon over the years, and decades, is a tribute to the resilience we are all capable of. No matter what is thrown our way - we can come back bigger and better. Just as she did.
It felt like a timely reminder and a timely moment to recognize the legend that is Tina Turner. And the legend of our own capability, come what may.
Today is a great day for us all to get back to basics. Put a record on and let your inner rockstar out. Even if just for the 3.45 minutes of this video. You know you want to!
START ALL OVER AGAIN
PhotoCredit: lucyflemingillustrations.com
This year started so well. I had a grand list of new things I was going to make happen in my life and at about 6 weeks into the year I was dialed in. Mid-February I went to New Zealand for work - well most of that trip was Sydney - and expected to be back in New Zealand in less than a month for my usual crammed start to the year. We were talking Covid, trips to some parts of the world seemed unlikely, but not down-under. Certainly not global lockdown.
I came back from that trip and life as I know it unravelled. Life as most of us know it unravelled. And I unravelled with it. Somehow cleaning and baking became more important than working on myself. Somehow cleaning and baking became working on myself. All my rules went out of the window - do the old rules even apply anymore? Life suddenly got a lot less complicated. All that was important was my daily yoga practice, baking (weird) and knowing what percentage of alcohol I should be spraying on everything.
And so I find myself at the start of May wondering what to do with my grand list? Wondering if I care about my list anymore? Wondering what I do care about anymore? Well, other than yoga, biscotti and disinfecting things.
2020 always felt like an important year. So many of the companies I work with had 2020 as a landmark for strategy initiatives. It’s like somehow we intuited that this numerologically beautiful year would be life changing. But not like this? No! When we envision change and evolution we anticipate things going gloriously to plan. Champions rising to peak performance. Award winning marketing campaigns stirring hearts and minds to action.
Real change is messy and awkward and uncomfortable. More puberty, less Cinderella. There are no fairy godmothers here. Well, I live in West Hollywood so to be fair there are a few fairy godmothers around - but they are all struggling with this too.
The World will find its new normal slowly and likely with some mistakes along the way. A few ill-advised outfit choices, a couple of bad grades and a lot of finding our limits. We can’t expect a linear progression of recovery; personally or for our economy. This is not a time to make a grand plan and adhere to it with precision like we know all we need to know. This is a time to experiment.
The biggest resistance to experimenting is usually that we fear failing. Especially failing publicly. No one wants to get it wrong. But do we know what’s right or wrong in this moment? There are plenty of businesses who were somewhat following the rules who are scrambling to survive right now. So if ever the rules didn’t apply it’s now.
When I realized there was some unravelling happening I decided to put a new filter on my life. After a pretty shitty end to 2019 I decided my word for 2020 was “magic”. 2019 taught me that even in the worst of times we can find beauty and alchemy. So I decided that everything I did would be in pursuit of finding magic. Some days I do this better than others. Some tasks better than others. It’s work, but that’s the whole point - I am choosing what I want to actively cultivate in my life.
Which (or should I say witch) is how I am thinking about my list and the next two-thirds of 2020. This is a great moment to choose a word for the rest of the year that will help you transform and evolve. Choose a word, change your word, create a mantra - whatever feels right to guide you and support your actions.
Experimentation is action with intention. By my squiggly logic, if everything you do is grounded in intention the outcome of your actions isn’t important. It’s kind of a way to failure proof yourself. So you’ve really got nothing to lose. See ... MAGIC <wink>.
TO BUY OR NOT TO BUY
PhotoCredit: Emily Baker Studio
Everything feels like a question at the moment. Are masks a good idea? Should I go to the Farmers Market? How much baking is too much baking? Should I cut my own bangs?
Maybe. Probably Not. The Sky Is The Limit. Absolutely Not!
The question I am really pondering is should I be buying #stuff? For my Level 4 lockdown friends the answer is easy, there are no non-essential deliveries. So that Yu Mei handbag you have been mulling has to wait.
In the US, we can still buy handbags. We can still buy a lot of stuff. But should we?
With a possible recession looming. With so many people out of work and hurting. What is the responsible thing to do?
What has become clear to me is that our consumer dollar has a massive amount of power and impact right now. We are literally making decisions about which businesses will still be here in six months. That’s worth thinking about. IMHO.
Personally, I am supporting small businesses who can still ship. A few of my favorites are below and a couple of them have given me amazing discount codes for you to use. So you can direct your #quarantineboredombudget in the right direction. Please let me know if there are others you love and I will curate a bigger list.
RachelGrantJackson: I can’t say enough good things about her oils or her yoga. I would be lost without her wisdom, outlook, breathwork and intelligence. She has kindly offered a 50% off discount for all yoga bundles and oils on her site - good through April 30, 2020. The code for the discount is Squiggly.
Sub_Urban Riot: You deserve to be uber-comfy. Sub_Urban Riot’s camo striped cambridge sweatpants are my everything. I have two pairs; I needed a backup. I am also obsessed with the Trinity Poppy Tee and the Chelsea Striped Tee. They have offered you a 40% discount using the code community - the code should be embedded in this link: https://www.suburbanriot.com/discount/community
PowellBookStore: I don’t have a discount code but as you purchase books to get you through this period PLEASE support an independent shop.
Any of the above are necessary items. Spend freely. Otherwise - if your purchase doesn't support small business or your pantry-prepping - maybe you hold off? Save some pennies where you can. Keep a list of what you didn’t buy and look at it again in 30 days. You will find you change your mind on 90% of your list.
Oh, and I will let you know as Yu Mei is shipping again. You can never have enough handbags.
SLIPPERY SLOPE
In law school we learnt about the dangers of the slippery slope. One wrong step, we were warned, was likely to threaten the bedrock of society.
The concept of the slippery slope applies broadly. At it's core is the concern is that one small action may unravel the thread of a much bigger action. Leniency regarding marijuana carried for personal use could lead to the legalization of marijuana. Valid. This is starting to happen. More extreme, that the legalization of marijuana will lead to the legalization of all drugs. Harder to see, but possible. And then there are all the unintended consequences!
The concern is that chipping away at the foundations makes the structure a little shaky. A little erosion can create a landslide.
I use the slippery slope argument in our house a lot. Largely directed at myself. The landslides I worry about are in the realm of over-indulgence and reduced productivity. Like a slice of pizza will lead to my undoing. I will become a binge-watching, pizza-eating sloth.
I think I have misappropriated the concept. I will not become a sloth. I value productivity and contribution too highly. I will inevitably self-correct out of a period of excessive pizza eating as I ultimately place a high value on health.
It is the values underneath our goals and actions that the slippery slope principle should be applied to. Not just the individual values but our values in balance with each other.
When we were in Italy we found the most incredible pizzeria. Pizzeria Mediterranea - pizza and a carafe of surprisingly drinkable wine for under 10 euro. What’s not to love? We went there everyday. For one week my value of happiness and fun was prioritized. When in Rome…
I don't believe there is erosion when you make a conscious decision based on your values. That becomes an action that is grounded in principle, it strengthens your foundations.
As I think about my goals for the year I am keeping my values in focus. Knowing that an imbalance is not erosion unless it becomes a fixed state to the detriment of my other values. I'm making pizza night as important as my writing goals, well almost. I'm letting my inbox get a little out of control to create space for projects I care about.
I'm leaving the slippery slope argument where it belongs, in legal jurisprudence.
RUN AT IT
Yesterday was a perfect Sunday. Coffee, farmers market, yoga, reading Patti Smith and a little life planning. Patti Smith’s new(ish) book ‘Year Of The Monkey’ is intoxicating. I forced myself to put it down - save a little for later. I am not sure what is harder; putting down a good book or saying no to a second helping of a delicious dessert.
I’ve been trying, rather in vain, to set my commitments for the new year. New Year’s Resolutions some might call them. I’ve been testing a few new techniques and re-hashing some old ones but I’m just not feeling it for 2020. So, as I often do when I am trying to force myself to do something, I put a Netflix movie on in the background.
TheSecretLifeOfPets2 seemed sufficiently brainless to accompany my task. It’s terrible and adorable - the perfect combination to distract me but not take me off task.
I was half paying attention - at best - for the entire movie. Yadda Yadda, antic there and antic here and happily ever after. Then the very last lines of the movie struck me out of nowhere. “You never know what life is going to throw at you and you have two choices: run from it or run at it.”
One of my dearest girlfriends used to say that sometimes you have to throw rocks at life. Sometimes you have to fight. Demand what you want. Sadly she lost that fight last year, suddenly, and nothing feels important enough in the wake of that. She would have liked Pets2, we had the same weird sense of humor. She would have liked the idea of running at life. Regardless of what it throws.
Resolutions can get complicated. Grandiose some might say. They can also get repetitive and they very often are redundant. Even small.
Life is so much bigger than a resolution. The beginning of a new year is a great time to ask yourself what you really want. What are you willing to be fearless about? What will you fight for?
So write that down. Make that your resolution. Commit even harder to that.
Run at life with all you have. Make 2020 about that. However it looks for you. I’ll see you at the finish line.
HAPPY
One of my favorite things to do each week is to pick the cover photo for this newsletter. I search a term that seems relevant to my message and then burrow deep into google images. This week I started by searching 'happy' which delivered a visual assault of yellow. Yellow smiley faces, yellow minions and random stock photos of people with outstretched arms.
Yellow is the color of happiness. Well, according to the internet and the odd clinical study.
I once asked someone how much yellow was too much yellow? At the time I had a yellow SUV and I wanted to know if yellow rain-boots was too much of a look. They convinced me it was. I still think I could have pulled it off.
As 2020 approaches I'm asking myself what I want from the 366 days that rapidly approach. Yes, it's a leap year people!
I'm asking myself what is important? And I realize I also need to investigate what isn't important.
I have always cared about happiness but happiness isn't always yellow. It can come in a lot of colors. It can look a lot of different ways.
Now I want the yellow rain-boots. I am not interested in playing it safe. We can get so focussed on our goals that we forget about what we can eliminate. What we want to do is just as important as what we don't want to do.
So Happy New Year. May you achieve all you desire and may you eliminate all you don't.
POWER MOVES
After years of doing yoga I still can’t step through from downward dog into a lunge. It’s not the simplest of moves but it’s pretty fundamental to any yoga practice. For the longest time I berated myself about it, mostly frustrated but also very judgmental of what I couldn’t do. And it’s not just on the yoga mat, it’s incredibly easy to let life become a constant audit of what you can’t do.
The topic of superpowers came up in a number of different contexts last week. It clearly had to be my topic this week. Superpowers are those things that you can do effortlessly; the things that come so easily they are almost a gift. The things you do better than most other people.
These are the things we don’t see so easily. We don’t audit our superpowers: we tend to neglect them and second guess them. We overlook our brilliance; it’s so much easier to focus on where we are failing or falling short.
Which is a little odd when you think about it. You would think our ego wouldn’t be able to help itself but crow about what we are awesome at. For some reason this doesn’t happen, we get far too busy cataloging all our failures. Cataloging the shortcomings.
What’s tricky about most superpowers is that we seemingly don’t have to work hard to achieve the result. It’s literally like we were bitten by a spider and woke up the next morning able to climb up walls. “I don’t know how I do it, I just can” is what we often tell ourselves. Which is bullshit. We can do it because we have spent years mastering the skill. We have 10,000 hours many times over.
We make the mistake of thinking that because it’s easy for us it must be easy for everyone. That’s a big mistake. We all need to know how to bust out our power moves. We need to know what makes us indispensable. And not place a limitation on it or judge what we are (or are not) good at.
And, for that matter, it’s also a mistake to not see other people’s superpowers. The most effective leadership and management is supporting people to be great at what they are great at. Expecting someone to be a rockstar when they are not musically inclined is an exercise in futility. Expecting someone to suddenly become a numbers person when they have no aptitude or training is unfair to them and ultimately unfair to you and your team. In sport they call that a hospital pass: literally setting someone up to fail.
See your superpowers and the superpowers of others. Celebrate them and spend less time worrying about your apparent weaknesses. Trust me. No one else is looking at what you can’t do.
THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME
When the book Eat Pray Love was released I was gifted the book by multiple people. Elizabeth Gilbert is now a celebrated author and Ted Talk-er but was then a new author, taking the world by storm. A number of people saw me in the book, maybe they saw that adventure was something I needed in my life. Maybe they saw that I was a gypsy soul in a business-person’s body. Maybe they saw the writer in me.
At the time, I was mildly offended. The story really didn’t resonate with me. Her writing didn’t resonate with me. I didn’t get the connection that others were so clearly seeing.
They were right. I was wrong. Almost a year to the day after it was published I had my own Eat Pray Love. She went around the world to find love; I went to Boulder, Colorado. Mark and I will celebrate 12 years of love, friendship and marriage this year. Our story would be called “This Is Not What I Ordered”. Falling head over heels with a sculptor from Texas with two grown boys was not something I expected to be on the menu.
Eat Pray Love is a love story wrapped in adventure. Elizabeth Gilbert travels to Bali, India and Italy on a journey of discovery. It is an undeniably beautiful story of finding your way to thrive after your world falls apart. It’s a story about how she learnt to be ok and, without getting to corny, about learning to love herself. I think that’s what my friends were trying to tell me.
In this lesser known Ted Talk, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about another kind of love. She talks about your happy place, your home, that thing you do that grounds you and the place where success and failure don’t exist.
At the peak of her success with Eat Pray Love she felt like the old failing diner waitress of her past. The diner waitress that suffered rejection after rejection for six years solid. I have noticed the same curious thing about success; it doesn’t feel that successful. It can feel like pressure, burden and expectation. Success and failure, Gilbert notes, both catapult you out of your comfort zone - they are both disorienting.
She needed a refuge; not so much a place to hide but a place to find balance. A place that you love more than your ego. Perhaps a place where your ego is silenced. Gilbert calls it finding 'Home'.
Home is that thing you love most. For my husband it’s making art. For me it’s working in or with companies, despite my gypsy soul. Home is that place where the noises go away. Where the volume on your inner dialogue is turned down. Where the labour is more important than the fruits it might bare.
We work so hard for the success and we work even harder to avoid failure. What I think Elizabeth Gilbert cracks open in this brief seven minutes of insight is a way to just work hard for the sake of the work. “Do what you love and you will never work a day in your life” as the saying goes. Maybe it should be ”love what you do and you can never fail”?
NAVIGATING THE FUSTERCLUCK
One of the biggest frustrations I get asked for help with is navigating office politics. It’s really not my area of expertise, I have always been a little too “call it like I see it”. My general advice is not to get sucked into a game you can’t win; like all politics, you can quickly end up in over your head.
Enter my old buddy Wegs. Full name Jim Wegerbauer but we are all invited to call him Wegs (rhymes with eggs). Wegs is a great human being. I met Wegs back in my Victors & Spoils days, he was vulnerable and transparent way before Brene Brown made that OK.
His new podcast is pure Wegs, I couldn’t get my headphones fast enough. He calls his podcast ‘snackable insights to help you navigate the topsy/turvy world of creativity’. While his experience is deep in adland it has so much relevance for anyone navigating the topsy/turvy world period.
Even better, he dedicates the first two episodes of Navigating the Fustercluck (how great is that title) to the tricky issue of Office Politics. My favorite nugget is his reference to a piece of George Bernard Shaw wisdom “never wrestle a pig in the mud, the pig likes it”. Wegs cautions about getting in the dirt with your office nemesis, commenting “you will just get dirty”.
There is so much wisdom jam-packed into this fabulous resource and the best part is that his content is mostly short. Wegs powers through topics from Happiness and Certainty to Office Politics and Collaboration, all in under 15 minutes.
LIKE VERSUS LOVE
WATCH THIS!
PLAY NICE
On a flight the other day a fellow passenger lumbered slowly in front of me. She was one of those people who elbow themselves to get on the plane first. Usually these ‘important’ people are frequent travelers and they are pretty swift about getting on the plane. They get on quickly, set themselves up, and get out of everyone’s way. So it’s usually not much of a big deal.
SO WRONG ITS RIGHT
As a dedicated follower of fashion it’s no surprise that Martin Margiela is one of my heroes. Sigh. He is known for pushing the fashion envelope time and time again. In turn, he started trend after trend. Cut up denim, Margiela. Bizarre show locations, Margiela. Recycling, Margiela. Tabi Shoes, Margiela. And, possibly the most influential, the oversized look. Yes, also Margiela.
TAKING TIME
My grandmother’s name was Joyce, a name she detested but a name that was very fitting. She was a grown up kid in most respects; and less grown-up, way more kid. Her favorite comment was “oh, pooh to that” which she would say to any convention she planned to summarily reject. “It’s too early for a drink”, “it’s too cold to sit outside” and my favorite “you will spoil the kids” were regularly dismissed with a glint in her eye and a clear defiance of ‘the rules’.
MORNING BREATH
Every day I see another blog about some perfect person's perfect morning routine. Cold plunges, meditation, journaling, gratitude diaries, no coffee (people really!), no food (intermittent fasters), and my yoga friends would add a few sun salutations into the mix. Dave Asprey, supreme life hacker, would no doubt add about 10 other things.