What’s holding you back in your life? This is a question I ask all my clients at some point in our work together. And it typically makes them pause. Stare blankly back at me, and shrug.

Lots of things. Nothing. My obligations. My boss. My husband. My low self-esteem.

These are common responses. And ultimately, they are all true.

And yet, they’re not.

For most of us, we fail to realize that each of these ‘obstacles’, each of these barriers is only true because we have decided they are. Let me put this another way.

Your perception of what’s holding you back is only real if you decide to allow it to be so.

Yes, your obstacles, your challenges, the things in your life that you think are ‘holding you back’…only exist because you’ve decided that they are the shackles keep you from achieving your goals.

Are they real? Sure.

Are they something you have to navigate and perhaps even conquer to get to where you want to go? Probably they...

I'm a sucker for juicy words, particularly  words that sum up a great thought in a simple and clever way. Oftentimes the best words, are not in our mother-tongue...enter Ganbatte!

Ganbatte is a Japanese word that essentially means "go for it"!

I've heard it tossed into conversations among my Japanese friends, peppering notices of big projects, promotions, life events, etc. When someone has something big going on, their friends tell them 'Ganbatte'! Go for it, do your best!

We don't really have an equivalent expression in English, certainly not one that punctuates news of an upcoming challenge with support and encouragement.

Wishing others to do their best has way of coming back to us tenfold.

As an employer or leader, this is particularly true. A key component of productive leadership is the sincere commitment to creating an atmosphere where your staff or organization can excel, innovate, shine, and succeed. That doesn't mean all leaders have to be touchy-feely, self-help...

Are there places in your life where you know that you are 'just going through the motions'?

You will never find your edge, you will just keep 'doing a good job'.

We want to bust through the boundary of 'good', and we can only do that by being intentional, by focusing, by being thoughtful.

When you are good, when you are confident, when you are a high functioning indiviudal who has enjoyed some modicum of success...there is also a high risk that you will become complacent. Whe you are 'so good' at doing what you do, there is also a signficant risk that you will become equally good at skating by. Maybe 'skating' for you, is someone else's stretch. Good for you. But that means you are leaving a lot on the table!

When you don't challenge yourself, you are shortchanging yourself and you are denying to world the real impact of your gifts and skills.

"Readiness happens in action, not in contemplation" -Brendon Burchard

The end of 2017 is fast approaching, and many of you have likely been working on budgets, year-end reports and other tracking information at work.  Indeed, it seems that everyone wants data, plans and analysis in the final hours of the calendar year, all aimed at setting the table for a productive and profitable new year.

But what are you doing to set yourself up for an impactful and meaningful 2018?

Just as a business tracks its annual outputs and progress, so too should you take some time to consider what you have accomplished, what you could do differently, what you didn’t quite get around to in this current year.

Thoughtful contemplation (not judgment) of your current state is invaluable in terms of thinking strategically about your priorities in the new year.

Imagine each year is a new mountain that you are setting out to climb. In the spirit of making sure you leave no stone (or opportunity) un-turned,  you load your proverbial backpack full of everything you...

I’m consistently amazed at how serious people are.

Or maybe I should say, at how ‘seriously they take themselves’ and their work.

Somehow humor and levity seem to have been sucked out of our homes and the workplace. The world seems to have an air of heaviness and thickness that permeates pretty much everything.

Those who can approach this ‘heaviness’ with a sense of humor and light stand out in the crowd.

Who doesn’t want to feel good? Who doesn’t enjoy a laugh? I’m not talking about being the class clown. I’m not talking about ill-placed and poorly times pranks. I’m talking about allowing yourself and those around you to enjoy the humor that is frankly everywhere in life.

The best way I have seen this manifest in the workplace is through self-deprecating humor. One of my favorite people that I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with is a man named John. John is an incredibly accomplished individual, a jack of all...

We are preparing for a Hurricane here in Florida. A big one. Now, I'm a mountain girl, and the whole concept of preparing for an act of God to potentially wipe you off the map is slightly intimidating to me. In fact it's absolutely terrifying! There is a pervasive feeling in the air, as ethereal and icky as a spiderweb that you accidentally stepped into, or an itch you can't scratch: Fear.

We don't typically get many opportunities to experience real 'fear' in our first world lives (thankfully). However, when we do, those experiences have a lot they can teach us (yes, I'm trying to shift my mind to think about Irma as a 'teaching moment', and not Armageddon!)

Because the thing about fear is; it really doesn't care if it stops you dead in your tracks, or if you plow on right through it.

Fear is just a state of mind where you allow your uncertainty to paralyze you. And the only one who can control your 'fear response' is you!

You can't typically change the circumstances around the...

We look to leaders to drive results, to set the tone for an organization's culture, to think strategically, and use high levels of discernment and judgment to ensure they are setting and maintaining the best possible path forward. Cultivating high performance habits, and demonstrating the discipline of leadership throughout one's career is no small feat. However,  even those high standards do not quite capture what we can, and should expect of our leaders. Nor do they capture the scope of what they should expect of themselves.

Leadership today does not exist in a vacuum. On the contrary, leaders need to understand situations and circumstances as holistic and integrated systems. Being a successful leader is more than increasing profits or achieving strategic outcomes. Being a leader in today's world means having an eye for the bigger prize, the larger impact; the way in which your leadership can impact society and humanity as a whole.

Leaders have an obligation not only to their...

 "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. 

The other is as though everything is a miracle."  - Albert Einstein

With the recent election, two very different and very distinctive world views have painfully taken their place upon the world stage. While there are clearly nuances on each side, it is the fundamental dichotomy that I find most fascinating. Is the world about hope and love? Or is it about pain and struggle? Is it a miracle? Or is it mundane and predictable?

While I acknowledge these are gross generalizations, they are useful for purposes of this discussion.

As Einstein so crisply states, 'there are only two ways to live your life'...one views the world through the rose-colored lens of possibility, of a god-touched potential that we have yet to fully explore and discover.

The other fixates on the drudgery of life that can bury us, defeat us, and snuff out our potential before we have yet to get started.

It is...

Whatever is happening TO you, is also happening FOR you.

Catchy, right? Sounds good. Seems likely to be true. And might explain so many of the things in our lives that don’t go as planned.

If the things that happen TO us, are in fact happening in order FOR us; to learn valuable lessons, flex unused emotional muscles, discover alternative narratives about ourselves, or just generally help us rediscover ourselves…then perhaps we can give ourselves a break, and not feel the need to ‘react’ in our moments of stress, hardship, or chaos.

In the world of business and policy, every action is boiled down into its relative ‘theory of change’. If this…then that. If I make this business decision, then I will ultimately reap increased profits. If we alter this practice, then our systems will function better.

So if we apply the theory of change to this rather enlightening concept, it would look something like this. If I am suffering right now, then I...

There are many parallels between organizational management, leadership principles and personal development themes and concepts. One commonality relates to the ways in which individuals and organizations gravitate towards ‘busy-ness’ as a standard for productivity and success.

Busy-ness relates to workload, schedules, capacity, quality, etc. This can be measured by how full your Outlook calendar looks, how many meetings you attend, how many projects you have undertaken, how many activities you are involved in, how many widgets you are making, etc.

On the human impact - end of the spectrum you can measure things like;  how little free time you have, how poor your eating habits have become (as a result of your busy-ness), how many personal or family commitments you miss, or how hard it is to fit exercise or self-care into your day.

Where do you spend your time?

How much do you have on your plate, and how successful are you at managing and navigating those things? And...