Personal Development

Episode 110: If That's Not Nice, I Don't Know What Is - Kurt Vonnegut

Right after reading an article by Stephen Moegling, I walked into our living room, took a deep, satisfied breath, and took in the scene: Our older son, 21, was on the floor, snuggling our giant chocolate lab mix in front of a beautiful fire in the wood stove. Then I thought to myself: “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

Episode 109: The Microwave Generation

Episode 109: The Microwave Generation

It was somewhere in the late 1970s when my father came home with a microwave oven. Definitely one of the first on our block and huge, my father proudly showed it to my mom as the "next great invention."

Episode 108: Real Change Requires the Right "Gear", Creating the Right Environment, and Celebrating Small Wins

I’ve been thinking a lot about motivation, habit, and successful, sustainable changes in both. On The Hidden Brain, an NPR radio show, I heard a researcher talking about the fact that successfully developing strong habits like everyday workouts and healthy eating isn’t a result of better self-control or motivation, it comes from developing the habits themselves.

Episode 107: Strategies to Take Action to Avoid Future Regrets

4 Simple Strategies to Take Action

1.)   Find Your Tribe – surround yourself with people who support and encourage you. Find a group of friends and peers that are doing things you want to be doing, people who will give you the hard truth about your dream and offer to help find solutions to obstacles. Make sure these are people you trust, and that you actually listen to their suggestions! You are unlikely to find support in people who have never done what you want to do, or who live with a low-risk, low-reward mentality, people who make fear-based decisions.

106: Resilience and Persistence are Two Different Things - We Need Both to Thrive

Russ Johns’ life changed dramatically after falling three stories to shatter his wrist and break his arm. He was a professional musician - a drummer - but that was no longer an option after two years of surgeries and physical therapy. He was lucky to have any use of his arm… he was lucky to be alive.

Episode 105: What Works in Distributed Teams: Stories of Growth & Learning

John O’Duinn, pronounced John Oh.Dinn, is an engineer, and he sees almost everything in his life as a system. That means that with every problem he experiences or obstacle he needs to address, he sees it not as a stand-alone issue, but as part of something bigger. He understands how to dig into a problem by seeing it from a larger perspective, that a solution must address the overall health of a system, not just one small part of it.

Episode 104: Truly Effective Leadership Begins with Self-Reflection

Rajkumari Neogy loved her job, but couldn’t shake the feeling of being excluded. As a leader in the organization, it was difficult to pinpoint where that feeling of dissatisfaction and exclusion was coming from because she had a great boss and an engaged team, but something just wasn’t right.