I remember the day we added our puppy, Moose, to our family. He was eight pounds of puppy love. The exuberance, energy, and joy that that little bundle of fur invested in each day is a marvel. Puppies play all the time. At least, when they aren’t sleeping. Or eating
As parents, we recognize the importance of play for our kids. It is how they learn, have fun, blow off steam and develop skills.
As adults, we don’t play enough.
Read MoreThe company I founded and helped build was doing great. Growing every year and staying true to its core mission: we were empowering more than 500 local moms to build hyper-local media empires in their own communities and sharing content each and every week that genuinely made families’ lives better. Our advertisers, who were the clients who kept the lights on and the engine going, were happy.
Things were good. But they weren’t good enough.
Read MoreCompare and despair is not new. It wasn’t created by social media or Leave it to Beaver. In fact, the expression “keeping up with the Joneses” -- our impulse to want what our neighbor has -- came from a comic strip that debuted in 1913. And I suspect that the tendency began long, long before then, perhaps when Grog looked at Zog and realized he had more food and a warmer blanket. Now that’s not to say that social media hasn’t amplified our compare and despair culture.
Read MoreThe past few months have been hard. Uncertain, unsettling, confusing, and sometimes frightening. But they have also forced us to slow down and to take stock. To begin to realize what’s important and to have the time and space to begin to prioritize those priorities. We are walking more. We are talking more. We are cooking more.
This month, as we begin to emerge back into regular life, let’s savor more.
Last week, I created a word by accident: MORK. I sent a colleague an email in which I intended to say "is this something we should do or is it just creating more work?" But in my rush, I condensed those two words into MORK. She responded, "by mork, you mean 'more work'?"
Read MoreI don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little bit tired of being told that this is the perfect time to bond with my family and learn to speak Mandarin. My son is a college freshman who was just hitting his stride when he was ejected from the dorm that had become his home, the classes that were challenging him in all the right ways, the friends who were becoming his family, and the girlfriend he adored. My daughter is a high school freshman whose lacrosse season was obliterated, whose first summer job is on hold, and who misses her routine and her friends.
Read MoreBefore, and you all know what I mean by “before,” most of my days went like this: Wake up at 5:00. Flip coffee pot to “on.” Let dog out. Empty dishwasher. Sit for a 10-minute meditation. Move to the kitchen table, make an entry in my gratitude journal, read five pages of whatever book I am reading. Write 600 words. Text my dad. Make my daughter’s lunch for school, blend up a morning smoothie, wake the kids, and see them off. Work until 8:30, head to the gym. Go to the office, eat a protein bar, answer emails, and meet with my team. Eat lunch. Hop on the afternoon’s calls. Go home at 3:30 to get the kids off the bus. Head out for an afternoon walk. Make dinner. Help with homework. Answer more emails. Eat dinner, clean kitchen, walk dog, set up coffee for the next morning, shower, check social and go to bed.
Wake up. Repeat.
Read MoreAh, FOMO. The “Fear of Missing Out.” The nagging sense that everyone else is having more fun and doing more cool stuff than you are.
I don’t suffer from FOMO (well, not often, anyway) but I do suffer from FOMO’s next-of-kin … FONDE: “Fear of Not Doing Enough.”
Read MoreNormally, we encounter moments throughout our days that deliver little jolts of the four so-called “happiness hormones.” We arrive at our office and warmly greet a co-worker: thank you, oxytocin. We drop our kids at school and hear from their teachers how well they are doing: hello, serotonin. We complete a work task and check it off our list: ahh, dopamine. We go to the gym and work out with our usual 5:30 p.m. crew: bring on the endorphins. These days, we need to manufacture our own moments.
Read MoreIn Northern California, two little boys charge purposefully down the sidewalk in front of their mother. “We have 15 minutes left of PE,” mom Erin Stolle says. “And we’re getting it in with family walks.”
Read MoreIn my work with women, I remain shocked by the sheer number of times I hear women say “I’m not good at X.” Interestingly, it is not something you hear from men, though I suppose that’s a topic for another day. Anyway, every time you say “I’m not good at X” you are cutting yourself off from possibility. But there’s a simple way to begin to develop a growth mindset and it starts with the word “yet.”
Read MoreWe write about, talk about, and preach about big goals. Dream big. Live large. Seek happiness. Choose joy. Sometimes, that thinking can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to. Because the truth is that elevating your life comes as the result of a million small decisions, baby steps and modest actions.
So here’s a simple way to commit and move forward.
Read MoreOccasionally, fear is awesome. Occasionally, it keeps us from doing really, really stupid things. But more often, fear keeps us from doing really, really awesome things.
I was afraid to quit my lawyer job, move to the beach and start a business (what if the business failed which, by the way, the first business did, spectacularly). I was afraid to have a baby (I can’t even begin to list my becoming-a-mom fears). I was afraid to speak on stage in front of 500 people (because, well, public speaking). Oh, and I’m afraid to fly and afraid to grow old and don’t even get me started on my fear of death.
Read MoreI am not a nutritionist. Or a doctor. Or a chemist, biologist or diet expert. But I am a student of nutrition and, after decades of reading everything I can and tinkering with my own nutrition and wellness, I know what works for me. And I’ve learned that much of what works for me also works for others.
So here are my nine nutrition hacks. Nine things that work for me. They won’t all work for you. But some will.
Read MoreI love dark chocolate. And I believe, based on everything I've read, that dark chocolate is good for you. So usually, when I want a piece of dark chocolate, I eat a piece of dark chocolate.
But.
There is a downside. Here's what happened this past Friday.
Read MoreI suck at meditating. For years, I tried different ideas, everything from walking meditation to meditation classes to simply taking five slow, mindful breathes while sitting on the floor of my closet.
Nothing worked. I didn't have the time or money to go to meditation classes, walking meditations were really just walks and if I managed three breathes on my closet floor before either thinking "this is stupid" or noticing the pile of laundry in the corner, well, that was a miracle.
Read MoreJump higher.”
“Keep your feet closer together.”
“Turn the rope faster.”
This is just some of the advice I’ve been given over the five-plus years that I’ve struggled to master the “double-under,” a classic CrossFit move where a jump rope passes beneath your feet twice each time you jump. Jump high, spin fast.
Read More400 emails a day. 30 calls and meetings a week. Fires burning all the time. 134 things on my to-do list (yup, I just counted). I spend at least 75% of my time in reaction mode, working on other people’s priorities rather than my own. It is really, really hard to walk away feeling there is so much more to do and so much that requires response and attention and give myself the time and space to focus on the strategic parts of my business and my goals. In 2020, that has to change. And I have a plan.
Read MoreMy flight was delayed and I was killing time in the airport bookstore when I spotted a book that had been recommended by a friend. I pulled it off the shelf. It looked like a short read, something I could get through on my flight to California if I ever managed to get on the plane. Excited, I bought the book and began to read it while I continued to wait for the fog to lift and the plane to board. And it created a practice that has changed my life.
Read MoreMy daughter likes her bananas green. Once they turn yellow, she declares them mushy and inedible. My son and I both prefer our bananas fully ripe and yellow. This means that when we go to the grocery store, we are likely to buy two different bunches of bananas: one green and one yellow. Now here’s the tricky part: we have one large beautiful wooden fruit bowl that sits on our counter, typically filled with apples and bananas and oranges and, come summer, nectarines. But if we put both bunches of bananas next to each other in the fruit bowl, my daughter's green bananas quickly turn yellow.
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