Sometimes a coin flip is all it takes to stop overthinking. Other times, doing the opposite of what we'd normally do can teach us something about ourselves. But neither trick gets us out of being responsible for the decisions we make.
Graduation season has a way of making you look backward. A reflection on career, identity, and the question of whether the path you chose still fits the person you've become.
The moment that sets us off is rarely the whole reason we react. Sometimes the green light, the careless text, or the slow checkout line is only the match. The real question is what we were already carrying when it landed.
What do you want your name to mean when someone recommends you without hesitation?
The hardest part of my cancer diagnosis wasn’t the treatment. It was letting go of arguing with reality.
Four letters can turn disciplined professionals into competitive eaters. Here is why free food changes our behavior, and what leaders can learn from it.
Experience teaches you to trust your judgment. The trouble starts when it teaches you to stop questioning it. A look at why careers stall — and why the most teachable people are usually the ones everyone still wants in the room.
Most leadership assessments are useful, but many stop at labels. The Judgment Index pushed further, showing me how I assign value, how quickly I move toward decisions, and where my strengths can unintentionally create friction.
A simple Facebook question about people who genuinely love their jobs drew sixty-six answers. The jobs were wildly different, but the reasons people loved them were surprisingly similar: the work mattered, they had become good at it, and they had stayed long enough to see the difference it made.
Busy people are often terrible at doing nothing. But the quiet spaces we keep filling may be exactly where the clearest thinking finally has room to happen.
A speaking invitation from Iowa PBS led me to binge-watch All Creatures Great and Small. I expected nostalgia. Instead, I found myself missing the version of me who spent fifteen years in mixed animal practice.
Basketball asks whether five people can solve a problem together. Wrestling asks whether you can. A look at what team sports and individual sports each teach about pressure, accountability, and the kind of competitor — and leader — you become.
A side business does not have to become an empire to be worth building. Sometimes the real value is the education it gives you: pricing, customers, cash flow, ownership, and the confidence that comes from creating something of your own.
A jumbo postcard at the kitchen table reminded me that direct mail is not dead. When the offer is clear, the audience is right, and the message is simple enough to make someone do the math, cardstock can still cut through the digital noise.
I once threw a golf club hard enough to injure my shoulder. The club was fine. My shoulder was not. Years later, that ridiculous moment still reminds me what golf teaches best: humility, patience, honesty, and what not to do when things go sideways.
Everybody wants change until it asks something of them personally. Real progress usually starts when someone is willing to absorb the first dose of inconvenience and go first.
A nagging running ache sent me to a specialty shoe store, where I discovered I’d been wearing the wrong size for thirty years. The bigger lesson had less to do with shoes and more to do with the old assumptions we forget to recheck.