Tiny Bites of Wagaliciousness

Is there something in your life that you long to do, if only… If only you could afford it, or if only your loved ones approved, or if only you were brave enough? It doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is that it lights up your imagination, and it feels exciting and maybe a little bit scary, too. What matters is that you want to do it. So do it. Don’t give yourself permission to do it “some day...

When you were a kid, did you know someone who loved things most people considered gross? There was a little boy who was friends with my brother, and this kid loved worms. He was so little he couldn’t even say the word properly – he called them “rums.” Whenever we were at the playground, he always ended up digging for worms. And whenever he found a worm, he’d hold it up, admire it, let it curl arou...

Murder mysteries in books and on screen are often solved when an eyewitness points at a person and cries, “That’s the murderer!!” Yet the number of convictions overturned once DNA evidence became available is staggering, and points to a truth about people, their brains, and what they say they see. A person’s own life experiences, level of self-confidence, the level of self-confidence of other witn...

Are you a reader? If so, you understand the delicious and diabolical power of words. Mom instilled in me the love of reading, and also the healthy respect for the power of words. Words can feel delicious to the person you’re talking to, or they can be so hurtful that the relationship can never be the same after careless words get thrown around. One night during a rough patch in my marriage, the wa...

Do you sometimes feel the urge to be creative? What do you do when those kinds of urges hit you? A friend and I painted rocks. OK, that sounds weirder than it was. There’s a women’s shelter that my friend volunteers for and they wanted to leave colorful rocks along the sidewalks near the shelter for the women and their children to find. They asked that the rocks contain some sort of motivational m...

I watched as a woman on stage told a story. The story was of her teenaged daughter, stretching her wings, rebelling against the rules her parents had made for her. In the story, the girl came crying to her mom one morning, confessing she’d done a bad thing: she was pregnant. After a long pause, the woman on stage told us what she told her daughter that morning: “a baby is never a bad thing.” At a...

The other day I was talking to a girlfriend and the name of a specific grocery store came up. I told her I hadn’t been in that store for years because of a problem that the manager badly mishandled. As the words came out of my mouth I heard how ridiculous I sounded, refusing to shop at an entire nation-wide chain of stores over one bad decision by one manager. Oops. Today’s Tiny Bite is about me,...

Are you the boss of you? I hope you can say “yes” to that, because when you learn to run your own life according to what feels right to you, that’s true freedom. Being the boss of you is very important, because that means you’re not allowing anyone else to be your boss. But what about those people who feel like they are the boss of everyone? Maybe you know someone like that – they run their own li...

Do you ever feel burned out at the end of your day? Do you know why you feel burned out? It’s probably not what you think. The mundane, day-to-day grind of a job you once were so excited about might be making you feel like you’re in the wrong job or the wrong career. Before you make a big decision, refocus. Take your focus away from the day-to-day grind of what you do. Focus on why you do it. Focu...

Do you have to give presentations? Do you have that “iceberg in the belly” feeling about making the presentation? Do you know why that is? It’s trust, or actually, it’s a lack of trust. In the past, maybe during show and tell in elementary school, you were heckled by someone. That behavior left a strong impression on you – one of not being able to trust that the audience will be on their best beha...

Did you know it’s OK for things to go wrong? It’s true – it’s when things go wrong that we learn what we’re made of, how we learn to do things better, and how we learn to take care of others and ourselves. We usually don’t like it much when things go wrong, and that’s a very human reaction. Before letting your anger or frustration or disappointment come out of your pores and out of your mouth, tak...

Have you suffered the loss of a loved one? Most of us have, and unless we die really early, all of us will. It’s gut-wrenching to lose someone you love – to know you’ll never get a call or text from them again, never get to hear their laugh or their wisdom, never get to watch them experience things you knew they longed to experience. Think about what I just said – you’re suffering the pain of loss...

Are you in a situation that’s not what you want it to be and you’re feeling stuck? Maybe it’s a friendship or relationship, or maybe it’s a job or career path, you’ve tried everything you know to do to make things feel better to you and be better for you and nothing’s working. That’s a horrible way to feel, and a common coping mechanism is to make it someone else’s fault, at least inside your mind...

Have you ever contemplated the word “wellbeing?” It gets tossed around a lot in headlines, news stories, self-help programs, and even in clickbait. Heck, it’s even part of the name of this podcast! Is wellbeing about the mind? Yes. Is wellbeing about the body? Yes. Is wellbeing about the soul? Yes. Wellbeing is so much about your mind, body, and soul that I named my other podcast for it and its fo...

What if I told you that procrastination is a good thing? Maybe not an entire lifestyle of it, but hear me out: when there’s something you know you need to do and yet you keep putting it off, maybe there’s a reason. At some level, you may know that you need more information before tackling that task. At some level, you may know that doing it correctly and well requires collaboration. At some level,...

Thích Nhất Hạnh was a Buddhist monk whose simple wisdom resonated – and still resonates – with people of all faiths, and of no professed faith. When asked to define the concept of enlightenment, his reply was simple and elegant: “Enlightenment for a wave is the moment it realizes it is water.” Many people think that enlightenment is an advanced, spiritual level that mere mortals can’t reach and th...

Want to know the secret of a great leader? They lead by example, not by explanation. They show how they want you to treat co-workers by the way they treat their own people. They show you how to handle an emergency by how they react in a not-optimal situation. They listen actively, value feedback, recognize, act on, and celebrate good ideas from other team members. They keep their door and their mi...

Do you know someone who likes to tell stories of the bad things that happened to them? A little bit of that kind of storytelling is normal, and too much of it is detrimental to mental well-being. We’ve all had bad things happen to us, and when they do, it can feel very personal. I was mugged, and I felt victimized and vulnerable. Again, it’s normal to feel like that for a while. To continue to foc...

How are you feeling today? I hope you said “great!” and if you’re not feeling great, this Tiny Bite is for you. Time is passing. Time is gliding along as time always does, and it is the one thing you can never get back. Time is like the water in a creek…it feels small and maybe not terribly significant, and it keeps moving. If you touch the water and then a moment later touch it again, you’ve touc...

Do you know who you are? Seriously – if you were going to hire someone like you, would you consider hiring yourself, or would you pass over yourself in favor of another candidate? Today I want you to think of your life as decades – zero to 9, 10 to 19, 20 to 29, and so on. Make a chart or a graph, and in each decade, list your major accomplishments. Did you win a lead role in the school play when...

How many opportunities have you seen in your life that you’ve taken advantage of and things worked well for you? And how many opportunities have you missed out on? That second question is harder, because we’re often not aware of the opportunities we miss. We’re not aware because we didn’t see them, and most of the time we missed them because we were time-traveling inside our head. When we’re brood...

Did you know the older you get, the more patience you’ll have? Think about you as a 10-year-old…what frustrated you? I remember peeling boiled eggs with Mom, and they just weren’t cooperating. The shell was sticking to the egg and every peeled egg was a misshapen, pock-marked, cracked mess. I was so upset – every time the shell took with it a chunk of egg white, I got madder. Mom laughed at me, as...

Are you looking for happiness? Good for you! Are you looking for joy? Fabulous! Are you looking for peace? That is so wonderful. Do you know why I’m happy that you’re looking for those things – happiness, joy, and peace? Because in life, what you focus on is what you see, and in the case of feelings, what you focus on is what you’re more likely to feel. Have you ever gotten up in the morning, stub...

Do you watch those reality shows about one person choosing from a bevy of others? Maybe it’s a bachelor, surrounded by eligible women vying for his attention and affection. They call those shows “reality” and yet they’re as contrived as they can possibly be, and they feed into and feature the worst human characteristics, not the best. Have you ever been in a situation where the object of your affe...

Tread lightly through the world, and into the next when the time comes. Aldous Huxley’s poem on the subject references how much easier it is to cope with life when you walk through it lightly, taking things as they come instead of railing against injustices and brooding over disappointments. Lightly – take life lightly. Remember to feel the feelings as they come to you, so you can easily release t...