Tiny Bites of Wagaliciousness

Change is scary. That’s not a news flash – most people have railed at change more than once in their lives, myself included. Change is the one constant in life, and our brains dislike it so much! Brains like patterns they have learned and can run, and change disrupts the pattern, making us a bit irritable until the brain can create a new pattern from the changed circumstances. Remember this t...

It’s good to be strong and resilient. You feel competent and purposeful when you’re being strong and resilient through a difficult job or difficult situation in your life. It’s good to be strong and resilient…right up until it isn’t. You might think that someone who believes in the power of wellbeing and happiness so strongly that she even put “happiness” in the company name will tell you to just...

Did someone cause you pain? It might have been emotional pain or physical pain, and it hurt. A lot. It’s tempting to want to get back at them, or to defend yourself or explain your side of the story to others. Tempting, and for your wellbeing, please resist the temptation. The desire for revenge is a deep-seated human desire that lights up the same place in our brains that being rewarded lights up...

Is there someone you have to deal with that you don’t like very much? No matter how hard you’ve tried, you just can’t seem to connect with them, or they’re loud and obnoxious, or maybe their personal hygiene is off-putting? It’s OK to not like someone, just as it’s OK for someone to not like you. You weren’t put on this earth to be liked by everyone, nor do you have to like everyone, though it’s b...

I have a potentially uncomfortable question for you: Whose approval do you crave? Is there someone in your life who purports to like you or love you and yet they rarely give you what you need? Maybe they’re a co-worker who withholds information you need in order to do your job well, or a friend who shrugs off your successes, or a partner or spouse who is emotionally distant? If you’re in any kind...

Who are you? More than your name, more than the role you play in the lives of others – who are YOU? Take five minutes to write down the things that come to mind for you – maybe words like playful, adventurous, smart and reliable come up for you. Use the five minutes to write down everything you can think of and then tuck the paper into your purse or pocket and get on with your day. Later, whe...

Do you notice when you’ve grown? No worries if you haven’t up until now – most people don’t. Sure, when you were a kid, you noticed that you outgrew clothes and shoes and beds, and that’s not the kind of growth I mean. The growth I’m talking about is emotional growth – the kind of growth that shows you that you’re more mature and have a higher emotional IQ. When something not optimal happens, do y...

Are you at the place in your life where it seems like time is just whizzing by? You blink your eyes and a week has passed, you wake up and half a year has gone by and when the next year arrives you wonder how on earth that happened? Many people, when this begins to happen to them, focus on the number of years they’ve been on the planet. They start feeling old and past their prime. If you are someo...

Is your daily life often filled with what feels like chaos? Maybe at your job there’s no such thing as a “routine” day. People in medical professions – veterinarians, doctors, dentists, nurses, EMTs – rarely have routine days, because what they do is predicated on the needs of their patients each day. Likewise for firefighters, police officers and people in the hospitality industry. When chaos thr...

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” at some point in your life. Have you examined it to find the essential truth in it? Let’s unpack it now. Chances are, you heard someone say it because they couldn’t see the beauty someone else was seeing. As a matter of fact, it was said to me when I was dating the man I was married to for 30 years. Was he handsome? No. Could...

What does “good service” mean to you? I heard a story of a man who, while painting a rowboat, plugged a hole that the boat’s owner forgot to mention. In so doing, he probably saved the lives of the owner’s children, who took the boat out the next day and didn’t drown due to that hole. The man who fixed the rowboat didn’t demand extra money for the extra service he performed – he just did what was...

Have you made a mistake today? If you answered “no” chances are it’s really early in the day for you! Seriously, part of being human is making mistakes. Mistakes are how we learn and grow, so they’re essential to our own personal development. Yes, mistakes are annoying and can be humiliating, and yes, they are necessary, so embrace them. Do you know someone who seems to make the same mistake over...

How do you react when someone you thought was your friend talks badly about you? Maybe you overhear the conversation, maybe you learn it from an unimpeachable source – you’re not just believing idle gossip, you KNOW that person said bad things about you when they thought you couldn’t hear, and then continued to act like your friend to your face? Most people – myself included, in younger years – ge...

Do you take and post selfies? Or maybe you’re on the other end of that spectrum – not only do you not share selfies on your social media, you sometimes find yourself questioning the depth of character of those who do share them. If you’re in that second category, how does it feel when that judgmental part of you rears it’s not-terribly-attractive head? You don’t mean to be judgey – it just crops u...

Do you want to spread more joy in the world and you don’t know how? Or maybe you want to feel more joy more often? You can do both by doing the same thing – take more pictures and videos and share them on your social media channels. People get joy from seeing others live life – that’s part of why television shows and movies are so popular. Every day, think of something fun or unusual or lovely tha...

Do you sometimes – maybe even more than “sometimes” – dwell on the past, what you wish hadn’t happened, how you wish you’d handled things differently, maybe even speculate about how your life would be different if your life didn’t include those past events? Most of us do, at some point in our lives, and yet it’s an exercise in futility at best and a pathway to stagnation and depression when taken...

Oh, the curse of the goal! Goals are a double-edged sword – many of us are raised to set a goal, reach for the goal, achieve the goal, and then set another goal. The good edge on that sword is that goals keep us motivated and moving forward. The not-so-good edge on that sword is sadly very common – the assumption that reaching the goal will finally make life what it’s supposed to be, or better som...

Do you live life or does life live you? If you spend your time waiting for someday or someone or something to happen, life is living you. Your body is going through the motions because that’s its job – you don’t even have to think about that. When you just go through the motions with it, you’re not truly living, you’re merely existing. Do you want to live life and you’re not sure how? All of your...

How often do you talk yourself out of doing something you would like to do – maybe even have dreamed of doing for a long time – because you think it’s impossible? When you do that, you gut your sense of self-worth, you gut your sense of confidence, and you gut your ability to achieve that dream because you’ve convinced yourself it’s impossible. Try this instead – think about a time when you were v...

Is someone in your life a narcissist? It could be a co-worker, a boss or even your significant other. Dealing with a narcissist is an interesting exercise in dodging and weaving and keeping your head down. In the beginning they’re charming and very adept at making you feel valuable and valued. As time goes on and they feel secure in your trust of them, glimmers of true colors start peeking through...

Do you find yourself stuck in meetings that go nowhere? Meetings can be wonderfully productive or woefully exasperating, and it’s the meeting leader who makes the difference. Productive meetings start before the meeting does – setting parameters, expectations and desired outcomes makes all the difference. When everyone knows, going into the meeting, what the goal of the meeting is, who is expected...

Did you ever wonder about why the lotus blossom appears in the artwork and spiritual symbolism of so many cultures? They are a water-loving flower that grows well in soil or ponds, and are most often seen as floating blossoms in murky water. Lotus flowers have long been used as a metaphor for life and spiritual journeys. They’ve appeared in artwork and spiritual manuscripts from ancient Greece, Eg...

Are you yearning for a romantic relationship? Do you crave the feeling of belonging that you associate with romantic love? Think about the word “belonging.” “Be.” “Longing.” I used the words “yearning” and “craving” purposefully – those feelings associated with a desire that’s missing fit perfectly with the word “belonging.” Longing, craving and yearning for something that’s missing feels bad. And...

Most of us have friends who once were very close and now aren’t nearly as important in our lives. Sometimes it’s physical distance that alters the relationship and more often it’s a distance of a completely different kind – emotional intelligence. Harvard Business School Online calls emotional intelligence the ability to understand and manage your own emotions, as well as recognize and influence t...

Are you familiar with the Big Bang Theory? No, not the old sitcom though that’s pretty good too…the theory that the universe began as a small, dense, hot piece of matter that exploded, setting into motion what is measurable today – the expansion continues as galaxies move away from each other and from our earth. That expansion is change, and everything is always changing, not just the stars in rel...