Category: Life & Living

“But here’s the deal, sweet stranger. You deserve to be the protagonist of your own wonderful, bizarre, terrifying little life. If you decide you are enough, you are enough. You don’t need to wait for some grand external validation of your worth before you offer your kindest heart to yourself.” – Kathy Brown Life is a never ending stream of challenges and discoveries. Our society runs rampant with judgmental and envious eyes just waiting for the opportunity to criticize who we are and what we do from one day to the next. But oftentimes the biggest offender behind those judgmental eyes, which so often look to criticize us, are none other than our own. You are enough. Three simple little words with such immense power - only if we’re brave…

Bill Bryson writes travel books. One notable title being A Walk in the Woods about his personal journey across the 2,100 mile Appalachian Trail to reconnect with his native country (and himself), while reinforcing the importance of conserving America’s great wilderness. The book was eventually turned into a movie starring Robert Redford (as Bryson) and Nick Nolte (as his old friend who decides to take the trek with him). Bred from what’s categorized as a travel book, one would assume the movie would lack any kind of inspiration or meaning the viewing audience might apply to their own lives. But this viewer discovered some profound themes which have been running through my head since the concluding credits began rolling. The film's opening shows Bryson frustrated with the current state of…

Many organizations today have adopted a notion that employees should assume positive intent when dealing with other teammates and superiors during meetings or while engaging in conversation (both oral and electronic). I’m a firm believer that yes, it is far more powerful and productive to think positively in life rather than focus on the negative conspiracy theories we often fabricate in our own heads due to a lack of legitimate data. But at the end of the day, the practice to assume positive intent does in fact have a downside. In reality, what organizations are doing is minimizing people’s feelings, thus allowing the offender to walk away with no blame or shame for their disrespect. We call that bullying. We’ve all heard the adage check your emotions at the door…

If you need to be convinced that our global society has a problem with material possessions, I turn to the following report. By the end of 2020, the combined weight of all human-made objects will far exceed all living things on Earth. Think about the reality of that statement for a minute and then ask yourself, why are we so obsessed with material possessions? The pandemic has allowed us to examine our lives and our priorities. For some, they are using this time wisely and making changes to better their post-pandemic existence, while others have no self-awareness and see nothing requiring any real change. One area I believe we all could use a little help (myself included) is the question of why are we so obsessed with material possessions. The accrual of more and…

“Your home is living space, not storage space.” ― Francine Jay As a young boy, there was an unmistakable difference between my grandmother’s house and my great-grandmothers. My grandmother’s house was a warm, comforting, welcoming place, which was soon realized by anyone walking through the front door. My great-grandmother’s, by contrast, was more like a museum filled with “collections” - where everything was there for you to see but not touch, let alone sit on! When my great-grandmother passed away, all the furnishings and decorations which she’d purchased over the years and treasured for decades were sold or discarded with little importance. What’s sad is that she never let anyone truly enjoy any of them - not even herself. It begs the question, if you and those around you can’t…