I spent my weekend reading books on the transitions of midlife.
I look forward to discussing them in detail at Wiser by Choice this Friday — you’d be welcome to join us at no cost if you’re curious and would enjoy a deeper dive. There’s some very good stuff to chew on, even for those not in midlife.
Continue reading “Conflicting Narratives”“But what if we just want things to stay the same?”
I hear you, sister!
When things are in a constant state of flux, grief is a common and appropriate reaction. And it often shows up as frustration.
We don’t only grieve specific losses, such as the death of a loved one or the loss of a job, but change itself — its existence, its relentlessness — can elicit feelings of grief too.
Continue reading “The Grief of Change”As a strategic planning facilitator, whenever someone asks me if it’s possible, useful, or necessary to develop a strategic plan during times of volatility and uncertainty, I always say some variation of “yes.”
Except…
There are three scenarios where a new strategy may actually be unhelpful — or at least not your best investment of time. Maybe one of these applies to you right now?
Continue reading “When not to plan”When she was in kindergarten, one of our daughters brought a Styrofoam cup full of dirt home from school. She was growing a bean plant. The next morning when I came downstairs for breakfast, the seed that had been planted in the cup the day before was sitting bare on the kitchen counter, and my daughter was a puddle of tears. “It’s not working!”
Continue reading “The Fine Line between Dead and Dormant”One theme that has stayed with me from Minal Bopaiah’s book Equity is the pervasive, unhelpful and fundamentally untrue narrative of rugged individualism that implies that people who succeed did so courtesy of their own hard work and resourcefulness. It’s where the expression “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” comes from, and it denies the powerful role of systems, privilege, interpersonal relationships (and even luck) in how our lives unfold.
Continue reading “Group Bootstrapping”
