Tiny Bites of Wagaliciousness

A friend has been waiting to hear about an application she submitted. It was taking a while…longer than she thought it should, and we were comparing prior experiences with this process. She was worried about so many layers of so many possibilities – reasons that maybe kinda could be coming into play that might be slowing down her application. My friend went deep into MSU – not the college or unive...

The other day a new person showed up in a mastermind group I’m part of. We meet once a week and many of us have been part of the mastermind for years. I don’t run the group and yet when a new person shows up, they might come to the conclusion that I do because of how I treat them. Dad was career military – we moved a lot, and I was the new girl in school every year or two. It’s an uncomfortable fe...

Do you enjoy the feeling of regret? OK, that’s kind of a dumb question, right? What is regret, anyway? Regrets are nearly always about the choice not taken. The simple version is we wish we’d gotten chocolate instead of vanilla ice cream. In everyone’s life there are more complex versions – words we’d like to take back, a bad career move, or a relationship we jettisoned and now, in hindsight,...

Have you ever faced the end of a pet’s life? If you’ve ever had a pet, chances are you have, and the more physical interaction you had with that pet, the more it hurt to watch their life slip away. And the anguish of making the loving decision to put an end to their suffering is pain some people never want to repeat. Pets are wonderful additions to our lives. They give us so many opportunities for...

Do you want a sure-fire way to lower your stress level while you build your leadership skills? Build creativity into each day. It doesn’t matter what kind of creativity, and yes, being more creative will help you be a better leader and also be less stressed. Creativity is just your playful nature coming out where you can see it, and when you allow yourself to be creative, you super-charge your pro...

Think about the person you like and admire most. It could be anyone in your life besides you – who do you hold in high esteem? Take a few minutes today to write down all the positive attributes you can come up with about that person. Write until you can’t think of even one more thing. Then, make a separate list of all the negative attributes they have. Compare the lists – I’m guessing that their p...

Have you ever heard the phrase, “wherever you go, there you are”? It may sound absurdly simple, yet it’s one of the most complex lessons we must learn, and there are a lot of people who never actually learn it. Maybe you’ve seen someone who keeps changing jobs – they’re excited about each new job at the beginning, yet within a few months they’re complaining about co-workers or their boss, and you’...

This morning a friend and I were talking about the clutter in our lives. She has lifetimes of paperwork, photographs, and ephemera from parents and grandparents to wade through, and I have lifetimes of collectable objects, and some paperwork and photographs, too. Does any of this sound like you, too? My friend and I talked about how giving things up can feel like losing the person who loved it or...

Do you ever feel like you’re having an argument with yourself and that you’re losing? You might not ever have thought of it that way, and that internal tug-of-war can show up in a lot of ways. There have been times in my life that I did something because I thought I was supposed to do it, not because I wanted to do it. Not only was there no joy in the doing of the thing, I often accidentally injur...

Have you ever lost something and been frantic to find it? You can’t, right? The harder you look, the more frantic you feel, and that makes you look even more furiously, tossing things out of the way as you desperately search for what’s missing. And then, chances are, you’ve said something that nearly every human has said, too: “Why is it always in the last place I look?” The smart-aleck answer is...

Can you manage your own disappointment? One of the toughest things for most people to do is to find a way to be OK with a non-optimal outcome. It seems like it should be easier for us, because non-optimal outcomes happen all the time. You walk across the room and stub your toe on the table leg. You park your car at the grocery store, come out after shopping and see that a shopping cart has dented...

Do you ever feel like the bit-player puppet in some bizarre show starring every other puppet but you? Does it feel like the puppeteer is letting the rest of the puppets have way more fun than you? Do you know where those feelings come from? They come from you comparing your life to the lives of others. Not only is this kind of comparison unfair to you, it’s unfair to the others, too. It’s unfair b...

Is there someone in your life who is irritating you? You have to deal with them, and maybe their communication skills don’t match yours? You keep trying to get answers and they keep giving you incomplete info or worse yet, no info at all? It is so easy to assume that they’re just blowing you off, or that they’re rude, or that they’re completely incompetent. How do those assumptions feel to you? No...

Do you have a tough time delegating? Most people do, because most people were praised for accomplishments made in childhood, which made us want to accomplish more so we could get more praise. Giving up a task can feel like giving up the opportunity for praise and most people don’t want to do that. Right up until the first time their leadership skills are praised because they delegated! Yep, it’s t...

Are you a fan of children’s books like I am? Hans Christian Anderson wrote fairy tales that weren’t originally intended for children, yet have turned into classic stories used to teach virtue and resilience. This quote from him is a wonderful reminder of just how much we take for granted on a daily basis: “The whole world is a series of miracles but we’re so used to seeing them that we call them o...

Quick…what are your first thoughts in the morning? Don’t laugh…I’m serious! I’m looking for your first thoughts about anything – it could be a groan and “just 5 more minutes” when the alarm goes off, it could be taking an extra minute under the covers to think about what’s on your plate that day, and it could be a feeling of excitement to get up and get going. For this coming week, focus on captur...

I saw a meme recently that mirrored something that just happened to me. The meme said, “the worst I ever wish on people is that they meet themselves in someone else.” What a gentle, loving way to dismiss the irritation, anger, or pain someone has just inflicted on you. I was dealing with someone who was disrespectful of my time not once, not twice, but three times in one week. The third time was o...

What’s your risk tolerance level? Loaded question, I know, and a tough one to answer because I didn’t give you any context. What’s at risk? If you’re like most people, you’ll take more risks in some areas of your life than others. I’m perfectly happy with a fairly high level of risk where investments are concerned, and not where my heart is concerned, apparently. Recently I was reflecting on the 8...

Remember when you were a child and you skinned your elbow? It hurt, you cried, and hopefully someone lovingly washed and bandaged your boo-boo. You noticed the boo-boo for a day or two, and then it was like it never happened – other things caught your attention and before you knew it, your elbow was as good as new. It can be like that with emotional boo-boos, too. Most of the time we feel the pain...

Do you feel stuck? Stuck in a profession you don’t love or in a job you don’t love or in a relationship you don’t love? In that feeling of stuckness is a big wad of indecision. Making a major life change is something many people don’t have the guts to do, yet feeling stuck is awful. Life is too short for you to dread each day, so today, examine what’s making you feel stuck. Try not to get cau...

Do you ever wish you were 10 or 20 or even 40 years younger? Do you ever feel like you should have been born a pirate or a princess or an inventor at the beginning of the industrial revolution? All these feelings are normal – humans love to ruminate about the past, putting themselves in it in an idyllic way that makes their current-day life pale by comparison. Who are you hurting when you do that,...

Do you believe you’ll be more physically fit when you can afford to join a gym? Do you believe you'll be able to drop that extra weight when you can afford to go to that naturopathic doctor? Do you believe you’ll finally write that book you’ve dreamed of writing when you quit your job and have more free time? What do you think is limiting   you right now? What is keeping you from reachin...

How do you feel about the mistakes you’ve made in your life? If you’re like me and are prone to blushing, thinking about mistakes can bring on that hot red embarrassment as if you’ve just made the mistake again. Mistakes are uncomfortable because they showcase us as fallible and flawed, but guess what? We are fallible and flawed because we’re human. An interviewer asked actress Jamie Lee Curtis th...

Remember being a child and thinking that the wisdom of the world lay inside the heads of grown-ups? Did you yearn to be wise like them? Did you dream of the day when suddenly you would realize you have wisdom, too? Do you know that you’ve always had wisdom? The only wise man isn’t the guru sitting atop a mountain in Tibet. The only wise woman isn’t a crone with abilities no one quite understands....

You’ve probably heard about how elite athletes use the power of their mind to train for events, right? Because our brains can’t tell the difference between what’s happening to our bodies or what we imagine is happening to them, in addition to skills, conditioning, and strength training, elite athletes also imagine themselves doing their sport, excelling at it, and winning. They build that imaginat...