As you read this, pause for a second. You’re good, right? Your life is good, mostly? I mean if it stopped right now, look around at what you have, if your life stopped right now, you’d be okay. Wouldn’t you?

So many people I work with have such a shocked response to that. They swing from looking at all of the negatives and will talk about how life isn’t that good to talking about what is left undone. There’s so much that isn’t complete yet.

True, negatives are out there.

True, there’s a lot left undone. 

And if you could put your life on “pause” for a moment, just to take inventory, you’re okay, right? 

Those that want to push back have a point. Those that are able to pause for a moment, understand that it’s only a moment.

And this is the crux of living happily dissatisfied. 

If you paused your life right now, you’d have A LOT to be grateful for. A LOT....

Yesterday was my birthday. (Thank you… thank you…) That makes it my New Year. And, for you, tomorrow starts Q4 of 2020. The year is not over.  I know you are painfully aware of that. The good news is that you’ve found a pace that actually works for you. You found out that you’re resilient in ways you didn’t know you could or would be. And, you recognize that even with everything falling down around you, you’re strong and you still have choice.

That is the magic you bring to the world: your strength, your resilience, your courage to face another day of unknows. And that’s your story.  Unique and powerful.

You might be asking where the Happy New Year stuff comes in. Two places, actually!

First, I use birthdays to do a personal inventory. It’s my personal New Year. So I look back at what goals I had. I reflect on my journey over this year. I look at what I did and what I didn’t do. And I look at whether my...

How amazing is it to recognize how resilient you are!!! 

Look at how much you’ve gone through and gotten through in these past six months. We’ve all been giving great opportunities to live into a different way of life.  Certainly, it’s not without stress. It’s pressure that shows us who we can be.

You are resilient.

You have courage.

And there’s a bunch of “stuff” from your past that it’s time to unpack and let go of. If you look at how you’ve reacted or responded this year, you’ll notice that some things just got handled. Other things seemed like a struggle.

Old rules that were imposed from your youth seemed to have surfaced. “You can’t do that. What will other people think?” Anything echoing in your head that sounds like judgment is someone else’s voice. You need to assess whether it still serves you.

Leverage, don't live there. It was...

I’ve seen so many people hope and strive.

I’m allergic to those words. 

Hope is so important to have, and it doesn’t do much for you after the initial experience of it. 

Striving is like trying. I never want a surgeon to strive to do her best. I want to be assured that she’ll do her best. I don’t want my accountant to strive to do his best. I don’t want my friends to try to meet me at a certain time and location. Do it or be clear that you won’t.  

The same concept goes for chasing your dreams. 

Don’t get me wrong. I have BIG GOALS and ASPIRATIONS for myself. I spent a lot of time (and money) trying to get the right answer, put the next thing in place, planning, and looking frantically at where I needed to be. 

What I missed then, that – if you’re seeing me on social media these days – you’ll notice that I’m not chasing my dreams. I’m living them. I’m...

A couple of weeks ago, I took the center stage on an Amazon Prime TV series called SpeakUp! I’m in season two. It’s pretty exciting. It’s like a TED talk; made for TV. It’ll air next month. And, you’ll get a preview about my talk here!

The Power of Being Unreasonable focuses on the stories we’ve been told and what we’ve accepted from “influencers” or those in authority along the way. The voices in our heads, those not ours that stay with us, need to be challenged.

Along my personal journey, I was told everything from “you’re just not living into your potential” to “you’re just not good enough.” I had a teacher in high school laugh at me telling me that I’d never earn a PhD, that it was ridiculous, that I was ridiculous for thinking I could or I would.

But I did. Deep inside, I knew there was more. So I went on.

It’s important to look at where you’ve...

Is it lonely at the top? It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s a long-endured myth. 

No, leaders aren’t necessarily friends with their team members or line staff. They can be friendly without being friends. That doesn’t mean that they should isolate. Specifically, if you’re finding yourself lonely, alone, and frustrated, you’re doing it wrong.

Surrounding yourself with people who are also pushing to serve greatly acts to inspire and propel. When you seek coaching to get an outside perspective on your personal and professional processes (yes, both), you begin to excel past where you’ve been.

The language choices here are deliberate.

• Push.
• Serve Greatly.
• Excel.

The reason that leaders get burned out is that… they don’t actually lead.

That’s a surprising truth you may not have wanted to admit. You’re busy trying to run your organization, division, unit, section,...

In my #1 Best Selling Book, The Significance Factor, the reader gets to journey through an assessment of personal values, the way one leads, and what makes for success. 

The assessment of personal success is often a moving target.

What you thought would make you a success 20 years ago seems like such a meager objective now. We, therefore, need to look to our future. 

Think about a time that you wanted to be noticed for the work you did, the thoughts you had, or the thing you created. Getting a virtual parade and “likes” is great! It feels good. And, it’s a way to measure how far your message is moving. The thing is, for some, the “likes” become the objective. Influencers often seek likes as a measure of success.

For me, success can be measured not by what you’ve gained, but by what you’ve given. Not by how many likes you’ve gotten, but by how many lives you’ve lifted.

My aim is to move from...

Procrastination is your barometer of commitment.

The truth is that you have completed the things you truly believe in. 

There are things we don’t like to do. Those are tasks and the outcomes are more essential than the distaste of doing the things we don’t like. I don’t like getting into the muck and yuck of waste pipes, but you know what… if the outcome is that I have to run a snake/auger down an outside trap to open a line, that’s better than having yucky stuff bubble up through the plumbing. (Yucky stuff is the technical term, by the way.)

That example is to say that I’m more committed to the outcome than I am thwarted by the process.  And yet, there are things we don’t do. We tell ourselves that they’re too hard. We tell ourselves we’re scared of what might happen.

I’ve worked with some amazingly talented people over the past three and a half decades: some organizational leaders, some...

The Language Of Leadership is direct and uplifting. 

Organization development starts at the top.

“Well, that’s one ugly baby!”  

You would never say that. You may or may not think it, depending on your relationship to the baby or its parents. And again, you certainly wouldn’t blurt that out.

So what happens that personally affrontive language is leaked out across our organizations? In the three and a half decades that I’ve worked with leaders across countless organizations, I have heard thoughtless remarks too numerous to count:

“Are you stupid?”

“This report is the worst I’ve seen!”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Why can’t you just do your *&%$#!* job?”

“What ARE you wearing?”

“What WERE you thinking??”

Worse than hearing this in the workplace, people say this kind of stuff to their kids.

Reading this here, you may be...

So you’re sick of being shut in and you’re fed up with the rules that we’re having to abide by. You’re an introvert and still feel like you miss people? You’re an extrovert and want to Velcro yourself to someone, anyone, at the grocery store?

Can you imagine what would happen if, tomorrow for example, it was announced that we were all okay to get back out there? Go on, get back to your “normal” lives!  

There’d be pandemonium.

Most people have actually found things they like about their new schedule. We’ve been practicing this for four+ months now. Personally, I appreciate that I can be called to do a television segment and don’t have to get on an airplane to do it. My commute is 30 seconds to my home studio. (Google my name and at the top of the page, hit the “News” tab to see what’s up.)  I also like exercising at home more than I thought I would. Weird stuff; and there are...