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It’s so tempting to strive for that empty To Do list, to dream of those moments when you’ll have only a few items left on the list and then tick them off.
But those moments only come if you’ve got a certain kind of To Do list, one with concrete, discrete, easily quantifiable and achievable tasks, all of which you’re sure you will start and finish.
Read MoreThere’s a mesa behind our house where I go to run, think, recharge and listen. Recently, I looked down at my watch to find my pace a full minute faster than usual. “Wow, I’m getting so much faster and I don’t even feel like I’m trying that hard!” I thought.
Read MoreA few weeks ago, I accidentally left my iPhone in an Uber on a trip to Philadelphia. After frantically calling it a number of times, the kindhearted driver eventually picked up and offered to ship it back to New York. Once I had the assurance that I wouldn’t scrap together money for a new one, I settled into a new rhythm of daily life. Those few days without my phone, I felt more clear-headed, creative, and self-assured than normal.
Read More“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
-Bryan Stevenson, Founder of Equal Justice Initiative
Two years ago, after attending a talk by Bryan Stevenson, the Founder of Equal Justice Initiative,
(EJI), I raised my hand to become a penpal to one of their clients, a prisoner who had been tried and incarcerated as a youth.
Read MoreLast week my best friend at college, Maureen, gave me a call and said with spontaneity in her voice, “What’s up? Wanna go to Micanopy and visit some antique shops?” Hmm… There were a lot of things on my to do list. I’ve been to Micanopy many times before because I’ve interned in that small town. And, well… I really don’t like antique shops very much.
Read MoreI think I am finding that hearing “no” provides me an incredible moment to advance relationships.
This is a story with a happy ending…
I remember vividly in May of 2010 getting off the interstate on to a back road just about 20 minutes away from the tiny mountain oasis of Sundance, Utah where we were just about to host our second annual gathering of 30 dear friends to be offline for three days to work on our craft as investors.
I LOVE Sundance.
Read More“Did you check your eggs?”
Confession. There’s a part of me, buried way down deep, that sort of lives for this question. I usually keep my mouth shut. But then comes the admonishment . . .
Read MoreWhy Are You Cutting Stones?
I find myself sitting here thinking about Brinton and, as he laid out in his recent post, that room listening to a CEO “lay out his 100 year plan”, and how that naturally led him to a "set of guiding values wrapped up in the preservative of culture.”
Read MoreWe’re sometimes confounded by the big changes we want to make.
We get a glimpse of the person we hope to become, or a new behavior we hope to engage in, and nearly immediately find ourselves frustrated that we’ve not suddenly mastered that new set of actions. This isn’t how we change.
Read MoreThe time and space that my coach Jullien Gordon creates for me each week is such that most anything can happen.
And a couple weeks ago we explored Green Eggs and Ham the Dr. Suess classic ;) I wonder if Jullien years ago would have imagined a career built around such discussions.
Read MoreWhen I took my first job after college at Restore NYC, I was surprised to see that something happened on a semi-regular basis in our office; tears.
Read More“Can you give us $150 million dollars?”
Before we’d even exchanged business cards, this was the question from a young CFO of a hot pre-IPO tech company.
“Me personally?" I deadpanned. "No.”
“My company? Maybe.”
Read MoreJuly was a month of self-discovery and new experiences.
It was the first summer my kids were away while I stayed behind in NYC. I made a conscious decision to not feel anxious or sad. Instead, I was to focus on myself and spend July working on becoming…
…a better dancer.
Read MoreOn a run this past weekend, I turn the corner and see an old chocolate Labrador plodding its way down the street. It has a pronounced limp, it is moving slowly, it looks like maybe the walk is too much for it. It seems like it is suffering.
As I come up alongside the dog, I see something different.
Read MoreAs a member of the Community For Change it has become a regular practice for me to reflect on my own experiences in the realm of change, to better understand what I’m doing and learn from it. So, a couple of weeks ago when I was witnessing a meeting of a company with their top managers, the COO opened his talk with the question: “who of you knows what our mission statement is?” Nobody was able to reproduce the words the organization had so delicately formulated. The atmosphere in the room changed immediately: everyone felt they had failed and that they were doing a terrible job in making the company even more successful.
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