Tiny Bites of Wagaliciousness

The hardest person in the world for you to love is you. Growing up, you internalized what you did wrong, what others said about you or to you about your wrongness, and you let those opinions shape how you feel about yourself. Consider these questions: What if those people were wrong? What if their opinions of you were wrong? What if they themselves had been belittled and verbally battered as child...

The idea of change often challenges beliefs we hold, and we don’t like to have our beliefs challenged. Think about a belief you’ve had for a long time – maybe it’s something common like “money doesn’t grow on trees.” I heard that a lot growing up – you too? That’s a belief that can keep you stuck in a poverty mentality because it defines you as someone who doesn’t believe in an abundant flow of mo...

Trust yourself. Trust your instincts, your intuition, your gut…whatever you call it, trust yourself. Learn to feel the tingle on the back of your neck that tells you something could be wrong. Learn to be quite for a moment or two instead of responding quickly and angrily to someone who’s just hurt you. Trust that little voice inside you that says you need more respect than you’re being shown in yo...

Does it feel like time is zooming by? Where is it going and why is it in such a hurry to get there? There’s a time-travel portal in your brain that allows you to go back to the past and fast-forward into what you think – or maybe fear – your future may be. When you’re time-traveling, though, you’re missing out on your actual life! When the brain is wallowing in pain from the past or worrying about...

Nothing is forever. Nothing. Does that make you sad? I hope not because when I say “nothing is forever” I mean the not-optimal things as well as the good ones. When you plant a rosebush, you’ll get roses. You won’t get them all the time, and when they’re on the bush, the roses won’t last very long. When you buy cut flowers, they won’t last very long either – maybe a week or so. And when something...

Do you know someone who loves to tell you all their troubles and woes? Tommy Lasorda said “80 percent of the people who hear your troubles don’t care and the other 20 percent are glad you’re having them.” While his numbers aren’t scientifically proven, it’s easy to grasp the sentiment, and it’s also alarming to grasp the sentiment. Most people who talk about their troubles all the time are venting...

Do you often feel overwhelmed? Those days where it feels like there’s not enough time and not enough of you to get everything done are stressful, tiring and just plain awful. Consider this, next time you have one of those days: you’re not making enough decisions. That feeling of being overwhelmed by stuff or tasks or the angst of people you care about is the feeling of having too much on your plat...

“Please be nicer to my friend.” Those were words that came out of my mouth during a conversation with someone whose husband is in hospice. For the past two months, she’s continued to try to juggle running her business, chairing an important committee, working to create a session at an upcoming conference, all while coordinating her husband’s care between the visiting hospice team and the staff at...

Do you work with a gossip? At some point nearly everyone will, and while that person is generally very entertaining, they’re also very dangerous. Maybe you’ve heard the saying, “if someone will gossip TO you, they’ll gossip ABOUT you” and that’s true. While some people gossip to inflict pain, most people gossip because they enjoy the attention it brings them, plus they get a sense of relief that i...

Do you have a friend or co-worker with … hmmmm … interesting ideas? The ideas could be about politics, the environment, or even about you – they’re ideas that differ from your beliefs on the same topic. Maybe you and your friend or co-worker have had conversations in the past and you realized that they are immovable in their beliefs, no matter what you say. This is very common, and is a very commo...

Think about yesterday – how did you feel as it started and how did you feel at the end of the day? If you started the day feeling great and ended the day feeling great, yay! More commonly, maybe you started the day feeling good and you rode a roller-coaster of emotions as the day progressed. Hopefully the day ended with you feeling good – maybe accomplished because you rode the roller-coaster well...

Have you ever been in a relationship with someone who is a great person except for one or two things? Because there’s no such thing as a perfect person, if you’re honest with yourself then the answer to that question is a resounding “yes.” Maybe you thought or hoped you could change those things, or maybe you knew that you could love that person in spite of the traits you saw as imperfections. Con...

Is there someone in your life that you consider too outspoken? Maybe you even avoid being around them because they make you uncomfortable? First – let’s check and be sure – you are a human being, correct? OK, then you probably think that person’s behavior is wrong and they should behave better. It’s human to think that anything outside of what we consider good and normal and appropriate is wrong,...

Do you even know how powerful you are? My guess is that you don’t – you go through your day doing what you want to do, need to do and have to do, or maybe some days doing nothing at all. You have the routines you usually follow, and you have people you interact with. Think about the people – how do they experience you? What do the learn from you? How do they feel when their interaction with you is...

When you were a child, riding in the back seat of the family car on a long trip, did you utter the words parents dread? “Are we there yet?” I grew up in the time before portable screens – no smart phones, no tablets, no DVD players mounted in the ceiling of the car, and my brothers and I found ourselves in the back seat on long drives often. Mom was good at giving us games to play to distract us a...

Think about the word “grace.” What does grace mean to you? It can be a woman’s name, it can be a prayer said before a meal, and it can be a calm, steady kindness in the midst of anger or turmoil. Let’s talk about that third meaning of “grace” – can you think of a time when someone shared their grace with you? I remember a time of being very angry when I believed I’d been wronged, and a friend list...

Have you noticed how many people go on the attack so quickly? Social media is rife with people taking great offense to something the author of the post didn’t mean as offensive. A skirmish of words ensues, with the attacker feeling righteously justified in demanding an apology, retraction, and even online retribution. It happens in real life, too – people hear or see something that offends them an...

"You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re with." The late Wayne Dyer said that, and it’s so true. If you are hard on yourself most of the time, if you focus on what you think is wrong with yourself much more than you do what’s right, then you may not like yourself very much. And when you don’t like yourself, it can be challenging to find a way to appreciate the unique and wonderful being...

You are successful. You are a rock star. You are amazing and getting more amazing every day! How does that make you feel – triumphant or like an imposter? Or maybe like I’m an idiot – that’s OK, too. I wanted to say those words to you today because they are true. You might not believe them today, and that’s OK. The point is, you have inside you everything it takes to be successful, to be a rock st...

Can you think of a time when you said or did something you wish you hadn’t? Unless you’re a sociopath, the answer to that is undoubtedly “yes.” I know I have – we’re human so we’re not going to get everything perfectly right one hundred percent of the time. Maybe you apologized later, or maybe you just moved on, hoping the memory of the words or deed would just fade away in the other person's mind...

Do you lead a team? It could be a team of family members, co-workers or a sports team – if you are a leader of people, have you noticed that when you show your emotions, they pay more attention to you? Many of us want to lead with words and process and logic, and those are good seasonings in the recipe. The main ingredient when dealing with teams is the emotional makeup of the team and the emotion...

Does your 14-year-old self still live inside you? In an interview, Billy Joel shared a story about having a picnic lunch with Paul McCartney, Jon Bon Jovi and Jimmy Fallon. That would be a pretty mind-blowing experience for most of us – can you think of a parallel in your life? Something that maybe you might have taken for granted and others would have loved to experience? Maybe you were a straigh...

We throw around the word “miracle” a lot. “It’ll be a miracle if I finish this on deadline!” “It’ll take a miracle for us to win the division.” “Getting to work on time in this traffic would be a miracle!” Just what is a miracle, anyway? Something so improbable that it defies the known laws of science would be a miracle. There are other things we call miracles, and they seem really miraculous, and...

Have you ever grieved a loss? It could be the loss of a pet, a partner, a job – whatever, it was a painful loss to you. Sleep would help you forget for a few blissful hours, and when you awoke, that big knot in your stomach came right back, right? Yep – been there. Most of your friends were probably very kind for a while, and if you’re like most of us, you had that one friend who was ready for you...

Can you be confident without evidence? When you have what feels like a great idea and you start taking the steps towards bringing that idea to fruition, how do you feel? If you’re like most people, pretty confident. After all, it feels like a great idea! It’s in this stage of development when you need to keep your idea to yourself, and that can be so hard because … it feels like a great idea! When...