After a long job-seeking rejection streak, one of organizational psychologist Robert Cialdini’s clients started asking one simple question at the beginning of a job interview which immediately ended his rejection streak. This person went on to get better jobs in his next three interviews by […]
I have bipolar. However, what I’m really having a harder time reconciling about myself is being one of those people with bad allergies. Honestly, I just finished coughing my way through the last 8 weeks because I wasn’t going to be a person with allergies […]
She fell a little too much in love with me so I had to dump her, but it could just as easily have been me falling in love with her. This story is about what it takes for us to do what we do. Oh […]
Personality has always seemed a solid thing to me, as part of the original package as our genes. After all, who we are certainly couldn’t be developed as haphazardly as a bad habit we pick up. And yet as Lao Tzu maps it out, there […]
I’ve been promising the steps of a self-leadership playbook for thousands upon thousands of words now, spanning across 7 long stories. In an act of unprecedented brevity, here they are in 4 numbers and 4 words: Anchor Identify Integrate Act Logically progressive. Beautifully efficient. And […]
I managed to lure a co-worker over to my house so she could lay on my kitchen floor for two hours and create this unbelievably beautiful piece of artwork called a mandala. (The funny thing about this arrangement was that Jen Boothroyd, the artist of […]
I’ve walked under the branches of this tree on my walk for the last 12 years, but it wasn’t until just a few days before the new year that I noticed the loop in that low-hanging one. The way it took that sudden bend up […]
When my daughter was in high-school she worked at Bagel Central, an iconic establishment in downtown Bangor. Laid back and sunny with floor to ceiling windows and wire baskets of bagels; racks of Danish, rugelach, muffins and cookies; and glass cases of endless desserts, spinach […]
I embarrassed myself in a meeting the other day having, once again, found the opportunity to brag about my sister who is a doctor in a high-level position at Mayo Clinic. (The Mayo Clinic.) I’m very proud of her. And I’m also clearly not above […]
Growing up I went by Liz, except for one day in 7th grade when I went by Lizard to Jeff Humphries. I was not a fan of his momentary nickname for me, but I was even less a fan of the period when I actually […]
There has been a misunderstanding. I thought the object was to be better, thinner, faster and richer. I see now I was confused. The object is to hold my seat so that I can know and be who I truly am.
Greg Pickle was the first kid I knew who had real life tragedy strike. We were in third grade when his mom crashed the car and killed his little sister and crippled him. He would forever after walk with a limp. And I would look […]
Be cool. 