August 15, 2013

Coping with Indirect Communication

“Human relationships are rich and they’re messy and they’re demanding. And we clean them up with technology. Texting, email, posting, all of these things let us present the self as we want to be. We get to edit, and that means we get to delete, and that means we get to retouch, the face, the voice, the flesh, the body […]
April 18, 2013

Emotional Mindfulness: What Anger, Vulnerability & Despair Teach Us

Everyone gets caught in a whirlwind of contradictory feelings and wonders – how can so many potent emotions sit side by side within me?  It’s easy to get lost in anxiety, sadness or even despair, when times are hard. It’s not uncommon to feel a sense of vulnerability because of the limitations of our power to effect external change. The Popular TED […]
April 11, 2013

10 Quotes To Work By

The Road Ahead   Quotes can have a wonderful way of reminding you of what is deep and important in your life. I like to think of quotes as guiding principles – reflections of values – actively lived or lying dormant waiting to be rekindled. We put quotes on walls and desks for a reason. Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr […]
February 28, 2013

You Don’t Have to be Motivated or “Productive” Every Day

Somewhere along the line I absorbed the nearly universal belief that hard work is a defining value of a person’s worth.   Intellectually, I don’t buy into this meme – but emotionally I can feel its pull and weight for every hour “wasted” on “non-productive” work. Although the nature of work has changed dramatically since I was a child, the thinking […]
February 13, 2013

How is Your Workplace Limiting Your Emotional Freedom?

Note: In my last post, I Want to Know More About You, I referenced research that looked at the ways in which emotional repression is built into our social landscape, especially affecting men. So I decided to reprise the article below because the more I experience, the more emotional suppression I see in every type of workplace. It’s woven into […]
September 6, 2012

How are Today’s Workplaces Managing the Crisis of Mental Health?

I’m gobsmacked (as my British friends would say) after reading the recent Wall St Journal article, Managing Mental Health at Work. If you research the issue of mental health in the workplace you’ll turn up some alarming statistics and little in the way of hopeful solutions.  I’m not naïve, but honestly, I thought we’d be further along the evolutionary path […]
June 21, 2012

WORKING SCARED

“There is no data showing that anxious, fearful employees are more creative and productive, but there is data proving that employees in a threatening environment are less engaged, less loyal and for the most part miserable.”         Mary Prefontane This post is inspired by Bill Maher. Yes, that’s right, Bill Maher, the irreverent, super-sharp, potty mouthed host of […]
May 31, 2012

How Many Hours Do We Need to Work to Be “Productive?”

“Work is no longer a place; it’s a state of mind. It’s become less about when I turn off the office lights and more about when I turn off (at least mentally) the inbox.” Christa Carone, Chief Marketing Officer, Xerox Is the private life dead? When you hired me, did  you buy my evenings, weekends and holidays? Now that you can […]
March 15, 2012

How Emotion Shapes Decision Making

There is little disagreement that effective decision-making is one of the most important tasks we must master to achieve success in every part of life. If we were to take a survey in the average workplace to poll what people believed was most needed for effective decision-making, which of these do you think would top the list? Factual information? Risk […]