Mindfulness Lesson on Ice
Today at the ice rink, the present moment collided with the past and the future. And I’m not talking about science fiction here. I received a lesson in mindfulness. For the first half hour of our family outing I skated slowly, holding hands and guiding each of my children as they found their balance and gained confidence. Then I handed my youngest off to my husband and did a few circuits solo. It was bliss to whizz around the ice, weaving in and out of teens, couples, and families in an arena echoing with laughter and barely recognizable classic rock. And that’s when it happened:...
Read MoreHow You Slice It
What are your priorities? Are you living them? There’s a group called NotMyPriorities.org that hands out postcards depicting a pie chart of the United States’ budget. The Pentagon’s slice is well over half the pie, with each of the other categories (education, health, environment, justice, housing, etc.) occupying just a tiny wedge. My older daughter picked up this postcard from a sidewalk protester and asked us about the chart. Next thing you know my husband had us all (including our preschooler) drawing our own pies and dividing them up as we saw fit. “Imagine...
Read MoreFind Abundance Through Sharing
These days, scarcity is everywhere. As the media tell us daily, jobs are scarce, money is tight, credit is hard to get, and hope for speedy recovery is in short supply. On top of the financial pinch, many of us feel caught in a perpetual time crunch — there never seem to be enough hours in a day. Everywhere you look seems constrained, diminished. One great way to create a feeling of abundance is to share. Example: last weekend our family hosted our annual holiday party. Each year we invite friends and acquaintances from all aspects of our lives, I bake hundreds of cookies and other...
Read MoreThe Stop Doing List
If you’re like me, you have a To Do list — whether the high-tech version on your smart phone or the low-tech kind written on a Post-It, or perhaps just maintained in your head. But do you have a Stop Doing list? Maybe you should. I got this idea from Jim Collin’s illuminating book, Good to Great — Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t. Part of what makes good companies great is not being overly diversified. The great companies he studied pursued a single “Hedgehog Concept” (being the best at one thing rather than being an also-ran at a...
Read MoreConfessions of a Mid-Life Mama
Mid-Life Crisis — the phrase conjures up the image of a forty-something man who suddenly feels his life slipping away from him, wonders if this is all there is, and reacts by getting himself a flashy new sportscar, or a maybe a hot young girlfriend. There’s no corresponding paradigm for the female mid-life crisis. Most of us are just too darned busy managing our families and careers. But the experience of looking at one’s life and longing for something more is not limited to men. Some suggest that the typical female mid-life crisis is fundamentally different from the...
Read MoreThe Four Bs of Balance
When my pals and I were in our twenties, I don’t remember worrying much about finding balance in our lives. We worked hard, played hard, stayed up late and damn the consequences. But now as a mid-career professionals, many of us with children, I find we are all talking about it, and I also hear it from my clients. We know that imbalance is inherently unstable and unsustainable, but it can be hard to envision a different way. So what is balance, and how can we achieve it? Stand on one foot and you’ll see that balance is not static. You wobble and waver. Even if you manage to stand...
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