Handling The Hard Stuff

Tag: Future

  • Don’t Expect Results for Work You Didn’t Do

    We like instant gratification. Our world is spinning faster and faster and social media is inundating us with instant kitchen transformations and hundred-pound weight loss results, without any of the process. You only see the highlights in everyone else’s life. Their process is no faster or better than yours, you just see the edited version.…

  • You May Not See the Progress

    Sometimes it’s hard, when you’re in the middle of the process, to see the actual progress you’re making. It may even be that you have no idea how the skills you’re learning will be useful in your hoped-for future. You may have to get creative to figure that out, but any new skill or piece…

  • Effort Makes Us Happy

    We are constantly fed “hacks” and “get rich quick” schemes and “pro tips” that will make us bajillions of dollars with zero effort and continue this passive income making us millionaires over night. Where will that get us though? Don’t get me wrong – if I had a million dollars overnight with no effort, I’d…

  • Pivoting

    Even the best laid plans can fall apart. No matter how thorough and well-researched you are in your planning, there are factors outside your control and sometimes those factors destroy your plans. Learning how to switch gears and figure out next steps from there can be the difference between success and failure in the long…

  • Enjoy the Sunshine

    I find it hard to be optimistic sometimes. The world is filled with terrible things, terrible news, terrible futures, terrible pasts, all the terrible all the time. But the world is filled with plenty of wonderful too. It is just as likely that good things will happen as bad things will happen. So why we…

  • You Can’t Think Your Way to Perfection

    We are overthinkers. We are planners. We anticipate problems and solve them before they happen. But there’s a limit. My dad likes to reference “the paralysis of analysis”. We overthink and plan and anticipate problems so much that we talk ourselves out of every move. At some point, we just have to risk it. We…

  • Are your Affairs in Order?

    **This is not legal advice. If you want legal advice consult an attorney that practices in your jurisdiction.** We see on television or in movies whenever there is a terminal diagnosis that people should “get their affairs in order”. But what does that mean? In the United States at least, it means be clear about…

  • Silence Speaks Volumes

    You don’t have to buy in to every fight. You don’t have to correct every person you disagree with. You don’t have to educate everyone that you see is wrong. You can just NOT. You can just refuse to engage. You can just continue to disagree and not make it the central feature of your…

  • Don’t Stare at Closed Doors

    When a door closes in life, let it close. Don’t slam it, don’t try to force it open, don’t belabor the door. Let it close. And go find an open door. We spend so much of our lives forcing relationships. Over the years I have had so many clients come to me wanting to fix…

  • There is No Normal

    One of the biggest lies we tell ourselves is “next week things will go back to normal.” What is normal? It seems like literally every day there is something that’s requiring our immediate attention or pulling us out of our default position. Things never get back to normal. Things evolve. We’ve recently started calling changes…