Confidence Begins Before You Finish the First Sentence Speaking with confidence is often described as standing straight, making eye contact, breathing properly, and controlling your voice. All of those things matter, but they do not address one of the biggest reasons people become nervous: they simply do not know how to begin. You can know
Five Words That Can Help You Speak With Greater Confidence Read More »
The Man I Choose to Be There is a version of myself I work hard to maintain because peace means more to me now than proving how tough I can be. I have lived long enough to understand that every insult does not deserve an answer and every disagreement does not deserve my energy. People
The Strength of a Peaceful Protector Read More »
Burnout Does Not Always Look Like a Breakdown When people hear the word burnout, they often picture somebody reaching a dramatic breaking point where one morning they simply cannot keep going. Real burnout can be much quieter than that and may develop while a person still appears to be handling everything just fine. They keep
When Being Tired Becomes Something Deeper: Recognizing and Recovering From Burnout Read More »
Beyond “How Are You?” Most conversations begin with familiar questions like, “How are you?” or “How was your weekend?” There is nothing wrong with either question, but we have heard them so many times that the answers often come out before we even think. “I’m fine,” “It was good,” or “Can’t complain” can close a
The Art of Making People Feel Good When You Talk to Them Read More »
Nietzsche’s Heaviest Thought There is a question powerful enough to make a person look at an ordinary life differently in only a few seconds. In The Gay Science, published in 1882, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche introduced a thought experiment that became closely connected with his idea of eternal recurrence. Imagine a demon appearing during the
Would You Live This Day Again Forever? Read More »
The Two Piles Almost two thousand years ago, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus taught a simple lesson that still makes sense today: some things are within our control, and others are not. He understood this lesson from personal experience because he had once lived as an enslaved person in the Roman Empire. Many circumstances surrounding his
Caring About Something Does Not Mean You Have to Carry It Read More »
Two Ways of Experiencing the Same Moment The Participant and the Witness Whether we recognize it or not, we can experience the same moment from two different places within ourselves. One part of us is right there in the middle of whatever is happening. It feels the anger, disappointment, excitement, fear, embarrassment, joy, and confusion
Transformation Is Not Always About Inventing a New Identity A whole lot of modern self-development talk is built around the idea that we need to become somebody new. We are told to create a new identity, visualize a better future, repeat affirmations, and start acting like the life we want has already arrived. There can
Becoming Your Highest Self May Begin With Questioning Who You Are Not Read More »
The Words We Say Silently Most of us carry on a conversation inside our heads almost all day long, whether we realize how much we are doing it or not. We tell ourselves we are tired, worried, angry, overwhelmed, confident, prepared, afraid, or uncertain about whatever happens to be standing in front of us. Because
The Language Inside Your Head: Can Self-Talk Change How Your Body Responds? Read More »
The Mystery of the Voice Inside Our Heads Most of us carry on some kind of conversation inside our heads every day, whether we pay much attention to it or not. We replay conversations and think about what we should have said, question decisions we already made, and sometimes remember something embarrassing from twenty years