How many times a day are you provoked, goaded, inflamed? Maybe you read a headline, overheard a conversation, or saw something on social media that REALLY got to you. Or perhaps you had a personal, direct interaction that you are still wrestling with, days later. Welcome to the Sea of Hyperarousal. Hyperarousal is a physical
I don’t live in the Middle East. I’m not a congresswoman working in American politics. I wasn’t at the school that suffered a mass shooting the other day. I’m not a pregnant woman in Texas, unable to get a legal abortion. But I read about it, and I cared about it. I’m also not a
It was July 2020. I was facilitating a Zoom call with a client, a team whom I’ve trusted and loved for many years. Our topic that day was the murder of George Floyd and how this affected us, and what plans we should make to address it. I’m a white woman (yes, we were all
Most of my coaching clients right now are worried. Wherever they work, they see scared, burned out and/or resentful people trying to hang in there. But it’s a VUCA* world—and rather than that world being temporary, it looks like it’s here to stay. At least for awhile. Humans aren’t wired for protracted VUCA conditions. Feeling
Recently I was coaching a client who is seriously considering not only a job change, but a career change too. She wanted to explore being a dance teacher or a child psychologist, but worried that “I’ve been an engineer all my life, I don’t know how to do anything else!” This led to a conversation
One of the most important things I learned in coaching school was the impact of a powerful question. A lazy or unimaginative question doesn’t spark much, but a powerful question can break open entirely new vistas of action and inquiry. It is one of my favorite parts of being a coach. When my clients are
We are haunted. Not by things that go bump in the night, but by the ghosts of people, places, and things that no longer exist, or no longer exist the way they did in the Before Times. A favorite restaurant closed, a previous home razed, streams of work and client relationships vanished. People moved away
It has come to my attention that I live for the future. Since I was a child, my focus was always on a goal, or an experience, or a reward situated in a time yet to come. That Future Thing was what motivated, beckoned, and teased me forward, out of my humdrum or challenging present
I’m one of those people who typically takes stock at the end of the year, looking back over my challenges and goals and seeing where I made progress—or where I stalled or even regressed. Usually I set intentions for the upcoming year, and try to greet the new year with some sort of hope, optimism
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s