2020 gave us gifts (here’s what they are)

Change & Transitions, Inner Power, Passion & Purpose5 Comments

2020 gave us gifts. Here’s what they are.

I’m sitting here wrapping up work for the year, planning on taking a few weeks off for the holidays. I feel like before I go, I want to send you all a note about this year. This crazy, crazy year.

Like you, I started 2020 dreaming up big things for myself and others. And like you, I found myself stuttering and swerving as more and more fear and ridiculousness swung my way: COVID-19, the California wildfires and unprecedented number of hurricanes, the fight for BLM, and a near miss with the breakdown of democracy in the U.S. Unfathomable. It’s as if the Universe rolled up all it had and tossed it to us: “Take that, Americans. If you don’t learn from this, I don’t know what it’s gonna take.”

And learn we have.

I made the mistake of spending too much time on my phone last night—swipe swipe swipe

Change & Transitions, Health & Wellness, Jobs & Work6 Comments

I made the mistake of spending too much time on my phone last night—swipe swipe swipe

I sniffled into my pillow around 11 pm, miserable and thinking that we are all gonna die, starve, or be homeless. (Oh my god, I know, I know better.)

So I totally get your feeling of sliding between two crazy poles of fear and calm right now. It’s like an army has invaded our country, except it’s made of the people we love and the viruses they harbor. Now what? You can’t fight that with a missile.

How I’m turning a crazy time into a peaceful, productive, focused time

Change & Transitions, Health & Wellness, Jobs & Work5 Comments

How I’m turning a crazy time into a peaceful, productive, focused time.

I’m thinking a lot about this right now.

I’m seeing peers still lobbing emails about new programs they’re launching as if nothing in the world is going on. I’m seeing my local theaters assuring me that all the seats are wiped down. And I’m hearing that the stock market is just a wreck.

I am wondering what all this means, and how long it will last, and what each of us is going to do to weather it.

Because there is A LOT we can do. I am constantly reminding myself that it’s never about what’s happening around you. It’s about how YOU are happening to it. Here are a few things I’m doing right now:

Everything you hear from me is going to be insanely, freaking positive

Change & Transitions, Self-Love & Self-Trust38 Comments

You know how I’m handling this? 

By making everything you hear from me going forward be incredibly positive and proactive.

Yup, this is gonna be the one blog you will be looking forward to getting over the next few weeks or months.

Because, I’m thinking that’s what I need to hear, too, right now from someone, anyone!

What will make me feel calm? In control? Absolutely facing everything head on, and yet also optimistic and sure that I’m on the right track and doing the right things through this?

Is anybody in the news or government going to give me these kinds of feelings? I don’t think so. 

They are all busy falling off the end of the earth. So I’m going to make these feelings happen for me, and you too if you want it. Read on, friends.

What 2020 will give us in this new interesting era…

Change & Transitions, Health & Wellness, Jobs & Work7 Comments

I don’t forecast often, but I can’t help but think about how this virus will change us, as a culture.

What I see is that things that were “optional” are now becoming essential. Here’s are a few things I expect to see go big in 2020:

1. More work-from-home opportunities. Yeah, if you work in retail or manufacturing, you’ll still be driving to work. But I’ve managed a virtual team in my company for seven years. It is wonderful. Now a bunch of mainstream companies are going to offer more of it, too.

2. Netflix, Hulu, TV, podcasts and entertainment services in general are going to have to keep up with demand. Talkshows will record to empty audiences. But they will still reach your living room. Binge-watching is about to hit new levels.

I know you want to help someone to change. They aren’t going to. Now what?

Change & Transitions, Family, Love & Partnerships9 Comments

How can you make someone change? You can’t. Honestly, you can’t. But there is something you can do.

You know that feeling when someone you love keeps telling you to act different, be different? Spend your money differently, show up at work differently, show up in bed differently? You know how annoying that is? How you just want to smack them?

You wonder where they get off thinking that not only do they get total control over their own life, but now they think they get control over yours too? No way buddy. You get your life, I get mine.

Well they think this same way about you, so if you won’t change for them, they’re not going to change for you either. 

Now what? 

There’s actually a way to make some movement on this.

Sword of Damocles

Cancer, Change & Transitions, Healing, Self-Love & Self-Trust11 Comments

Caution: This is a morbid yet strangely happy post. It’s a weird post for me. It’s for all of you who are fogged out in the stressed-out  “just getting by” zone, and for those of you who are just depressed as all hell. I have words about this. Read on.

I just got my second clear MRI. No cancer.

MRIs suck. It’s not the needle in your arm, the cold medicine injected up your veins, the tight white sterile tube you’re sucked in, or the grinding, deafening  sounds that rip through your body. That’s all fine.

It’s the wondering what they see. And that you have to wait. And that those pains I have might go unexplained, which is better than if they DO get explained . . . as cancer.

I rose up high in relief for an evening after my doctor emailed me that they saw nothing. Year 3. You got more time, Sum.

Exposure, truth and braggarts

Change & Transitions, M.E. School, Manifesting, Passion & PurposeLeave a comment

ME: “How’s your business doing?”

THEM: “Great! I just did a TedX talk. Then I closed $800,000 in sales and found my soul mate. Then I met God and he sat me down for coffee and told me I was His favorite. Plus, I look super hot. And everyone loves me.”

ME: “Oh. Awesome for you.”

. . .

I go to events as part of my work where conversations like this abound. Lots of well-heeled, overly made-up and smartly dressed people get together to talk about how amazing they’re doing. And how they want to collaborate with you. And they want to know if you know so-and-so, because they know so-and-so and just left his private island (or mastermind or personal vacation home).

Yes, if I sound jealous, it’s because it’s meant to make you jealous. The whole thing is like a Facebook page in flesh: now you don’t just see photos of my awesome trips, best selfies, cutest pets and smarter kids, but I get to wave it around to you in person.

You know how you feel after your Facebook or Instagram binge?

Inside the mind of a personal-growth addict

Change & Transitions, M.E. School, Manifesting, Passion & PurposeLeave a comment

YOU:

  • Read countless blogs and attend a million webinars to try to figure out how to grow your business / fall in love / feel better about yourself / name your thing [ ].
  • Try one or two things from the most recent blog or webinar. They don’t work.
  • Wonder why they worked for someone else.
  • Think something is wrong with you.
  • Buy an online course. Maybe that will fix it.
  • Don’t finish it. Who has the time?
  • Are overwhelmed at work.
  • Actually I.D.G.A.F. about work. You’re on the hamster wheel of work.