Tiny Bites of Wagaliciousness

Strength – there are so many different forms of mental strength, and my guess is that you have a lot of them living inside you. The strength to do one more thing when you’ve already put in a long day. The strength to smile when you really would rather cry or scream. The strength to share your hopes and dreams and fears. The strength to talk about what’s bothering you instead of bottling it up insi...

Do you make excuses for your looks or your behavior or your attitude? Can I help you stop doing that? Successful people don’t make excuses. Strong people don’t make excuses. Resilient people don’t make excuses. Life throws a lot of stuff at us a lot of the time, and we roll with it. When someone questions your looks or your behavior or your attitude, you do NOT owe them an explanation. As a matter...

Want to know one of the most powerful skills you can learn? How to stay calm, no matter what’s going on around you. When you’re calm, you can think clearly. When you’re calm, you can problem-solve. When you’re calm, you can help someone who’s hurting. When you’re calm, you can make great decisions. The first step to remaining calm is to take a breath. Don’t react. Take a breath. Take another one i...

It’s good to feel needed, right? It is good to feel needed – right up until it isn’t. When someone in your life crosses the line between healthy and unhealthy neediness, it can be a bit disconcerting. Suddenly the things you did for them because it felt good to help them don’t feel so good anymore. It might feel a little like coercion or like they feel you owe them those things you use to feel goo...

Are you having a tough day? Or maybe even a tough year? Life is a leisurely stroll most of the time, a mad dash at others, and sometimes it feels like life is a hike straight up a rocky mountainside. If your life is in the “rocky mountainside” phase at the moment, maybe try focusing on what’s positive about the steep hike. You’re developing more skills by handling new challenges. Perhaps there are...

Are you tethered by time? Gravity ties us to the earth, and for many people, time tethers us to a schedule. And the way the brain works, once you’ve done the schedule long enough – for some people it’s two weeks, for others it could be up to 8 months – the brain latches onto that schedule like it’s a new religion. We call it “creating a new habit” and in the brain it’s really creating a new patter...

Do you often feel like you’re here in this world to make a difference? Like you have a mission to complete? And do you sometimes feel like you don’t know what your mission is, and that you’re not making a difference? Think of one person who has made a positive difference in your life. For me, it was my 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Sharrett. I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of students she ha...

Who did you interact with yesterday? Seriously – think for a moment about who you talked to, even if it seemed inconsequential and fleeting. Co-workers and family members, probably – who else? Someone at a drive-through? The person ringing up your groceries? Clients, customers and the letter carrier who dropped off the latest junk mail collection? That lady on the walking trail, lost in thought, w...

Mom taught me a lesson that has served me well throughout my life – words can never be taken back. Never. You can apologize and explain and cry and do whatever you can think of to make the other person feel better after you say something hurtful, and you can never undo how your words made them feel. Some people are really good at weaponizing words – they get in those little digs meant to sound lik...

Remember those yearbook messages from your friends – “don’t ever change” is a pretty common one, and illustrates the naivete of young adults. Change is who I am. Change is who your high school best friend is. Change is who you are. You were you as a two-year-old…you were a different version of you, but still you, as a 10-year-old. You were you when you graduated high school and you as you tackled...

Are you dealing with BS at work? Yep, that sounds about right, because there’s always BS at work. Even in the workplaces with the best team dynamics, friction will occur. Great leaders understand the need to refocus the negative energy – great team members do, too. If you’re in the middle of a bit of workplace drama, try to mentally step back from the details. Try to focus on the shared missi...

Do you work with someone who is easily offended? Maybe they’re constantly talking about someone who triggers them, and uses that as their reason for being offended or angry? Does this person work for you or with you? Help them understand the difference between someone intentionally causing offence and this person feeling offended. A fun way to do this is to mirror their behavior back to them when...

What are you working for? What are you dreaming of? Are you working for a better tomorrow, and dreaming of someday? That’s very human – as a matter of fact, brain imaging shows that inside most peoples’ heads, there’s a lot of activity when they’re thinking about their goals, hopes and dreams. The brain imaging doesn’t tell the whole story, though – chemically, when thinking of goals, hopes and dr...

Did someone hurt you, disrespect you or otherwise do you wrong? That’s on them. Do you carry a grudge, tell the story of their bad behavior, or relive that story inside your head over and over? That’s on you. As long as you interact with other human beings, something is bound to bruise your feelings, make you mad or break your heart. Stuff happens. What you do with that stuff, and whether or not y...

Do you feel like you’re drowning in your job? Overloaded with responsibilities and ridiculously high expectations? I know someone who is amazing at what he does. He’s an amazing manager, an amazing client service person and an amazing juggler of the million responsibilities that come with his regional position. And he’s miserable, and is taking a salary and responsibility cut so he can have his li...

Is your to-do list a mile long today? Are you having trouble figuring out what to tackle first? The inability to decide where to place your focus just compounds the problem. Take a walk…seriously! Even if it’s just up and down a long hallway, the process of alternating arm swing and leg swing helps re-set your brain’s ability to process things easily. When you’re stuck in that feeling of overwhelm...

Human beings are our own worst enemies. Seriously! Someone offers us an opportunity – we hear about a job we’d love to have – and we start second-guessing our qualifications, abilities and worthiness. Today I watched a flock of crows working on a piece of bread, each trying to get a bite. Not one of those crows hung back, seemingly doubting itself. Each vied for position, hopped in when they could...

Have you heard the old saying, “Silence is golden?” There’s sooooo much truth to that. When someone says something that makes you feel defensive, be silent. When someone is rude to you, be silent. When someone is argumentative, be silent. If it’s tough not to open your mouth, think now of something you can say, over and over inside your head, to keep you from reacting. I like to remind myself “it’...

At the beginning of each day, what are your priorities? Let’s say it’s a work day – do you run through your important to-do’s for the day as your day begins? What’s on your list? Seriously – think about it right now – what’s on your typical daily priority list? Are you on that list? If so, yay! And if not, this Tiny Bite is for you. The things you accomplish each day are the things you make a prio...

Did you make a mistake yesterday? Welcome to the human race – we all do. Maybe yours was a bigger-than-average mistake – how did you feel? Did the voice inside your head chime in with their opinion? And if you’re thinking, “I don’t have a voice inside my head,” that’s the voice inside your head saying that! No one will talk to you as much in your life as that voice inside your head talks to you. M...

Prepare yourself – good things will happen to you today. Seriously – prepare yourself for the good things that will happen so you can enjoy them when they do. I met a woman as I was walking my dogs and she was walking hers. One of her dogs looked familiar, and when she told me where she adopted him from I remembered – he was an owner turn-in that I evaluated and groomed for the county animal...

Do you believe that everyone you meet can teach you something? I love going through my day wondering who I’ll meet and what I’ll learn. Sure, it sounds nerdy and weird to some people – leaving myself open to learning from others means that I’m paying attention to the people around me. I spent about an hour giving blood one day last week and the man who was vampiring my arm was so much fun to play...

People who have spent their lives learning things sometimes forget how to continue learning. It’s easy to hold on to what you believe, even when there’s evidence to the contrary. Neuroscience research illustrates how stubborn our grey matter can be at ignoring information that might disprove something you believe. A really good mental stance to take when you hear something that goes against what y...

Do you feel like you’re not strong enough? Like everyone else sails through their day untouched and the stumbling blocks litter your path? I remember feeling totally lost when I was downsized from a job. It was beyond sad – I felt like it was an indictment of my abilities, my talents and my very beingness. There were others downsized at the same time and it seemed to me that they were all handling...

Do you lead a team? Are you confident in your ability to be a good leader? Here’s a way to assess your leadership skills – how do things turn out that you delegate instead of doing yourself? If you end up feeling like you should have just done it yourself so it would have turned out better, oops…your leadership skills could use a bit of polishing up. No worries – it takes time to grow into a great...