Is love conducive to our bottom-line goals? Perhaps when it is the goal itself but from my experience, love is the big disruptor that often interrupts our progress on the things we can measure. Continue reading Loving and Learning
The other day I landed on a blog post and as I scrolled down to add a comment, I saw that there were already 41 comments. That set me back on my heels. What else could I possibly add to the conversation? Funny how a number can spark self-doubt. It’s like joining a big group of people at a party that have already been talking … Continue reading The Art of the Comment
My kids have been clamoring for me to tell them stories at bedtime. They don’t want made up stories, they want real stories from my lives and their lives. Since they are seven years old and three years old, they are still early in their own stories so there isn’t a lot to mine there. But they love the stories about Simon the Bad Cat. … Continue reading The Archetypes of Story
What On Earth Are You Thinking? What is External Self-Awareness? Most people think about self-awareness the same way they do sex. They believe they’re great at it when, in reality, no-one knows where on God’s green earth the G spot is (or that there even is one). One of the major components for building self-awareness is understanding what other people honestly think about us (including our ability … Continue reading The Three Areas of Self-Awareness: What On Earth Are You Thinking?
After I wrote the post about my mother, The Choices We Make: My Mom The Spy, my friend Eric was over at my house and read it, so my seven-year-old daughter wanted to a turn to read it. She said liked the part “Instead of secret meetings at night, she was called to hold our hair when we threw up and calm our fears when … Continue reading Can I Tell You a Secret?
There’s a type of tree that’s planted all over Singapore. It’s known as the rain tree because of its iconic umbrella shape. Not only is it incredibly striking to look at, the sprawling canopy provides the perfect respite from the oppressive heat we experience here year-round. It’s planted extensively throughout Singapore for this reason. It has fast become one of my favourite trees. Not just … Continue reading Nurturing Our Roots
There’s a family joke that my mom is a CIA agent. Even now at 83-years- old, when we mention it, she just smiles and shrugs her shoulders, or says there is no point in denying it because we wouldn’t believe her. As with most jokes, there is a kernel of truth in it. My very smart and capable mom graduated from college in the early … Continue reading The Choices We Make: My Mom the Spy
So my kids have started doing this thing. Every evening before bath time – after we take their clothes off before they get into the tub – they run around the apartment like crazed feral wild cats. Screaming and laughing. Pure unadulterated joy. It got me thinking about the clothes we wear, metaphorically speaking. A kid doesn’t question why we walk around with clothes on … Continue reading The Joy of Running Around Naked
On the last morning I saw my beloved dad, he greeted me with a hearty “You look great.” His untimely death a short time later has permanently etched all the details of that breakfast into my treasure box of memories: the yellow walls of the Varsity Restaurant on NE 65th street, the booth in the open section, the jeans and sweater I was wearing, the … Continue reading Writing Last Lines That Count
This past Saturday night I was over having dinner at my friends’ Rachel and Karl’s house. As our kids happily played together, we talked about technology, philosophy, and their recent vacation to Mexico and I marveled at how much I enjoy their friendship. It started because their daughter and mine were in a preschool co-op class and we often worked in the classroom on the … Continue reading The Art and Science of Making Friends
After the podcast of Billy Osogo on Ubuntu, I decided to search how people around the world show kindness, whether it comes from caring tradition or generosity. This may inspire you to show kindness to yourself or someone else today. Common to many cultures in Sub Saharan Africa, this concept was made popular by South African leaders Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. This word … Continue reading 10 Caring Traditions from Around the World
How do you think of your teammates, coworkers, or those close to you? Do you see them as a few welcome acquaintances that you meet with a few times per week? Or are they something more, a necessary support group you can’t live without? In many areas of our lives, we may hear a term, but we aren’t always clear on what it means to … Continue reading Finding Your Tribe
I think every one of my dad’s sermons that I’ve heard or read opened with a bit of humor or personal story. It was his way of connecting – enticing the audience to want to listen and maybe even exhale a bit so they could take something deeper in. My dad was a Presbyterian pastor for 40 years. So he kept a well curated stack … Continue reading Tips on Love
The other night my brother, Jay, and I were out to dinner with his wife and another friend. Jay and I were sitting next to each other and my friend said it was funny to watch us with our synchronized big smiles, expressiveness, and gesticulating. We were talking about writing, something neither of us do professionally. My brother is a marketing guru and I’m an … Continue reading Is Being A Writer an Inherited Trait?
I’m riffing the title of this post from Jack Canfora’s Things I Think I’ve Learned So Far because Jack’s post is one of my favorites and I’m too tired from parenting to think of one of my own. And that matches with my experience of parenting – you have to take small favors and lifts when you can. Admittedly, I’m pretty early on into this … Continue reading Things About Parenting I Think I’ve Learned So Far
Recently I woke up early one morning knowing that I had to apologize to a friend. In my tiredness the night before, I had conflated my feelings about two different things going on in my life and unnecessarily laid it at my friend’s door. In my apology, I borrowed some wisdom from my father, “My dad always said it was better to eat crow early … Continue reading Podcast Episode 10: On Step 9, Apologies and Healing
It occurs to me that I’ve gone through something of a divorce over the past year or so. Only, it’s not been to a person but a place. Of course, there have been others. York for one. We had a few difficult years together. Then there was Oxford where I went to university. That was a nonstop party. And I’ve certainly sowed my wild oats. … Continue reading A Singapore Fling
More than 10 years after the fact, I can tell the story of my marriage/divorce with succinct clarity. I got married to my husband when I was 33-years-old. He had been married before and told me that he was divorced because wife #1 had a jealousy problem. In the marriage, I thought he just wanted a mindless side-kick to be with him for whatever HE … Continue reading Romancing the Stone
The other night my seven-year-old was being short-tempered with her younger brother and snippy with me. I asked her not to take out her mood on others and she replied “I don’t know what to do with the meanness!” Huh. Isn’t that a great question? I was raised in a household that believed “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Which … Continue reading What To Do With Our Inner Meanness
Hi everyone, I hope you all had an awesome week. I had a good but tiring one. The most prominent topic in my mind this week has been how much close relationships mean adaptation. My new and first cat reminded me this. Before I got him, I was thinking that he would come home and just hang out. I would just live as I did … Continue reading Adapt and Relate
