Just Say Glow

In his Wall Street Journal article “Want My Advice?  Um, Not Really”, Jeffrey Zaslow writes that times may really be changing when it comes to the under-35 generation figuring things out and seeking guidance.  How the world operates has changed so much from even 10 years ago, and continues to change at such a fast rate, that the historical condition of greater life experience leading to greater knowledge simply no longer applies in many cases.  In addition, with YouTube and other web sources, people can find their own answers with much less need to rely on mom, dad, teachers, or bosses.  And of course those sources apply no judgment nor preconceptions to the problem or the answer seeker!

Zaslow points out that it is simply true that many long standing tenets, such as the notion that owning a home is better than renting or that writing a great resume is the most important step to obtaining a job interview, are not true in today’s world as they used to be.

On the plus side, he points out that this “leveling of the relationships between old and young” means that kids feel more comfortable giving advice to parents.  As a mom who has already relied on her 7 year old to figure out parts of software applications, I like having this great resource for shortcut solutions to problems I don’t care to research myself! Read more…

What do you think makes someone a good leader?  I heard a quote lately that really made me think:  “A leader is someone with the ability and facility to make things that weren’t going to happen anyway… HAPPEN.”

I love the simplicity of this and the emphasis on action and results, untethered to innate qualities or developed skills.

I’ve been immersed lately in planning a leadership development retreat for a local philanthropy board on which I serve.  In the process I’ve done a lot of research and thinking about qualities and behaviors that are believed to characterize leaders.  Some of the ideas fit easily with commonly held beliefs.  For example, leaders are often those with great vision and a capacity for perseverance that lets them drive toward the unrealized vision in the face of obstacles or doubt. Read more…

The poet Antonio Machado wrote, “Travelers, there is no path, paths are made by walking.”

This powerful quote about the importance of each of us taking action opens an article about a book by Dr. John Izzo and Eric Klein called “Awakening Corporate Soul.”  The article shares the book’s teachings on practices that help people in a group or organization feel stimulated, fulfilled, and delivering their greatest performance.  While the authors were primarily advising companies on how to reignite commitment, any mother or board member can easily see the parallels when it comes to staying motivated and bringing one’s best to the task at hand.

To quote the article:  “The soul requires a sense of being in the world, of having a place and making a contribution,” write Klein and Izzo.  “[When human beings work only for pay or out of a sense of obligation] this manifests into a stagnant environment that [erodes] passion and cultivates attitudes of dissent.  The quest becomes: how does [an organization or a family] tackle worker fatigue and pessimism? Individuals must ask themselves when do they give more than their all; what inspires them to give 150%?”

In a family, the motivation is usually pretty clear.  For most of us, raising and caring for those we love and feel fiercely responsible for is an investment and commitment we don’t question.  But whether in regard to a family or a company, maintaining the energy and motivation to truly deliver our best does not happen automatically.  It takes attention and intention.  Repeatedly! Read more…

Are you ready to blow your mind?  I know some of us know and care a lot about physics and some of us don’t, but as human beings we all deal with what we think of as a past, present, and future.  Except science is really starting to show that there may be no such thing as an objective concrete past, discrete from what is observed or documented by an observer or participant.  Considered another way, maybe what you do going forward truly has the power and impact of changing what you know as your past.

In an amazing article called “Does the Past Exist Yet”, Dr. Robert Lanza explains some of how we fool ourselves about the past really being set in stone: Read more…

In a great blog called The Juggle, about the trade offs made to balance work and family, Michelle Gerdes writes about the recent incident with a Jet Blue flight attendant who blew up at a recalcitrant passenger trying to retrieve his luggage early and against airline rules.  After being hit in the head by the passenger’s suitcase, the attendant Steven Slater proceeded to curse the passenger out on the airplane PA then activated the emergency slide to make a getaway (after grabbing two bottles of beer from the airline cart!).  Apparently Mr. Slater was truly fed up and not going to take it any more!

As Michelle writes, “While Mr. Slater’s behavior certainly was extreme, I think we can all sympathize to some extent. I know I can.”

Whether dealing with colleagues at work or impossible children at home, we all face situations that push us to our limits of tolerance and skill.  Sometimes blowing off steam is a great way to get back to equilibrium.  Sometimes blowing off the whole situation and moving on is more what we need, as seems the case with Mr Slater! 

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“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

So says Antoine de Saint-Exupery.  And it got me thinking… so often we approach projects, events, relationships, life, as though our role is to be additive.  Like we add value by doing.  By “adding to” what is there.  To many of us, it feels harder and less natural to think about subtracting, eliminating, holding back.

In our work at Just Say Glow we talk about getting lit up by your life.  While that requires balancing obligations and desires, it seems like often what we desire gets closer to being achieved when we edit or delete things from life, especially the things that demand time and attention from us daily or frequently.  To take a very concrete example, consider your closet.  Is it easier to put together your perfect outfit when your shelves are jammed full of options and items, all competing for your attention?  Or amidst a sparse array of limited choices?  Do you feel more like the “perfect you” when you grab for the familiar, go-to items that you know exactly where they are and how they feel on your body?  Or to you does “perfection” involve a complex process of adding in elements? Read more…

In “The $2 Camisole:  How Cheap is Ruining Our Lives,” Mary Williams laments the downside of our cultural drive towards ever lower prices for goods.  She points out that no garment can possibly be produced for that tiny sum and that the market’s drive to ever-lower prices leaves behind many hidden costs from human to environmental.  Ms Williams also notes the decline in quality of today’s goods, with many purchases wearing out almost in a “disposable” fashion, and the incredible amount of waste created when an entire item gets thrown out because there is no savings in replacing a single part rather than the whole.

In Mary’s words:  “It’s not that I enjoy paying more, it’s just that shouldn’t some things — like sushi, stereo systems and brand-new clothes — be valued more?…  I’m no stranger to the allure of rock-bottom prices… I pay too much for housing, movie tickets and prescription medications. But paying too little for an umbrella that falls apart after one windy outing doesn’t mitigate that.” Read more…

A recent Wall Street Journal article by Rachel Dodes featured the unlikely subject of padded “booty boosting” underwear as a new trend for women.  The article suggests that the derriere has become the new frontier for boosting and shaping, especially as more “bootylicious” stars like Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian are celebrated for curvier silhouettes.  There are some downsides to the padded under layer:

“If you wear anything less than a really heavy denim with it, you can see where those oval-shaped things stick out,” says one wearer. She dubbed the situation “VBPL,” for “Visible Booty Pop Line,” riffing off the faux pas of VPL, “visible panty line.” Read more…

Together with Deepak Chopra, David Simon writes Agni, the newsletter for the Chopra Center for Well Being.  In a recent edition, he makes an eloquent plea with readers to take on the difficult challenge of making changes in areas of life that may not be working optimally.  David encourages us to get out of our minds and connected to our hearts.  He writes with a heartfelt and spiritual perspective: Read more…

Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos and author of the recently published book “Delivering Happiness,” wrote a post extolling Twitter as a force for life enhancement.  He notes that, besides twitter’s transparency encouraging him to truly live his values, he finds keeping Twitter followers up to date offers constant opportunities to re-frame or find humor in situations he historically might have found, well, more frustrating!  As Tony puts it:

I’ve found that almost every “bad” situation is actually an opportunity that can be entertaining to my followers on Twitter, which also forces myself to see things in a different light.
Read more…