Handling The Hard Stuff

Tag: Future

  • Be Honest with Yourself

    This time of year we all seem to find ourselves reflecting on the year that’s ending and setting big goals for the year to come. I always have these ambitious plans that I’ll then end up ignoring or sabotaging somewhere along the way. Admitting the sabotage is the thing that gets me. We all have…

  • Behavior is a Language

    How often have you been frustrated because a child or a partner or a friend isn’t behaving in a way you think they should? They’ve ignored you or they’ve shown up belligerent, or they haven’t shown up at all? That person is telling you something with their language. We’ve all heard “If someone shows you…

  • Self-Sabotage

    So many of us have the best-laid plans and for various reasons we sabotage our own progress. I realized recently that part of the reason I self-sabotage is somewhere in the realm of anxiety and control. If I sabotage myself, then I know when it’s going to happen and it’s within my control. If I…

  • Use What You Have

    It’s so easy to daydream about things you’d buy or build or learn or get. And especially this time of year we are inundated with consumerism. We are shopping for others so we may as well buy ourselves a small treat or that thing we’d been eyeing for awhile. I am a huge culprit in…

  • Perspective

    It’s hard to get a sense of progress when we’re just trying to hang on day to day. Taking a step back and analyzing our lives is virtually impossible when we’re in the throes of it. I like to take a single data point and compare where things are every year on that day. For…

  • Take the Wins

    Do you ever find yourself in a situation where someone compliments you and you minimize or deflect it? I remember when I graduated from law school my aunt, a woman who had gone to business school at night while fighting breast cancer and raising two children under the age of five alone after divorcing an…

  • The Value of Placeholders

    Everything in life has a season. We are inundated with social media posts giving us the impression that everyone is living their best lives all the time forever. In reality, we’re all just trying to keep it all together. There is something to be said for temporary “settling” – a placeholder while you focus on…

  • You Deserve Respect

    I read a quote recently that just hit me hard. “Stop trying to prove you love someone by how much you can endure.” Oof. That resonated way too much with me. Moreso in my younger days, but even sometimes now, I have spent a lot of my life putting on a happy face and being…

  • Incremental Steps

    I get overwhelmed by a lot of “major life change” plans. And I get distracted and forget that I’m making “major life changes” a lot. This has happened with diets and exercise plans and investing strategies and a bunch of other things that I plan to change forever and just wind up going back to…

  • Low Hanging Fruit

    I find it really easy to get bogged down in the nitty gritty details of things. I want to learn the perfect caloric deficit to lose weight effectively. I want to know the exact amount I should be putting in my retirement to retire early. I pay attention to the minutia so much that I…