One of the first things Dr. Lester Stephens, the chair of my thesis committee, asked me to do was to take the walk across Jackson Street from LeConte Hall (where the History Department lives) to the Anthropology department in Baldwin Hall. Once there, I was to ask Dr. Charles Hudson, the leading anthropologist studying the […]
Appropriate Edge
In Yin Yoga, a common instruction is “Find an appropriate edge.” What this means – “Find a place where you can hang out. You are slightly uncomfortable, but you can sit with it a while.” Yin yoga has you stay in one pose for an extended period. It can be very uncomfortable. However, in this […]
Why We Downplay Our Strengths
I remain terrible at accepting complements. I remain terrible at valuing the things I have successfully done. My internal monologue often says “Well, yeah, but….” If I did it…it couldn’t be that big of a deal. Subtext: If I can do it, most anyone else can do it…better. Most of the smartest people I know […]
The Importance of Consonance
Society tells us a lot of things about what we should want in a career and what the possibilities are—which is weird because I’m pretty sure society knows very little about any of this. When it comes to careers, society is like your great uncle who traps you at holidays and goes on a 15-minute […]
Why Stability is Important
In the discussions around “digital transformation” and “innovation” and “agility” and our “VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world” – we forget that safety and security is a significant human need. Instead, the discussion centers around how we all need to be more innovative, agile, flexible, and better able to cope with chaos. I think […]
2 Models of Community Building
A couple of weeks back, I asked: “What we are paying attention to?” I wanted to take the opportunity to share 2 YouTube creators who are modeling what I would like to see more of in the world. Interestingly, these models are coming from the gamer community. Yes – the community known for hostility, GamerGate, […]
The Power of Groups
I ran into Barbara Sher’s work when I realized, midway through a Ph.D., that I wasn’t going to become a History Professor when I grew up. Rudderless and unsure what to do next, I found her book I Could Do Anything, If I Only Knew What It Was (affiliate link). That title pretty much summed […]
Accepting Positive Feedback
Much of the conversation around feedback centers around negative feedback. How to receive negative feedback without getting angry or beating yourself up. How to give negative feedback in ways that don’t trigger the receiver and allows the receiver to make positive change. However, many of us struggle to receive positive feedback. Especially those of us […]
Perfectionism as Addiction
Perfection develops as an adaptation or a survival strategy for a number of different reasons. The most common one is to compensate for a sense of inadequacy and not being good enough, and over functioning to meet external standards is one way to offset those feelings of inadequacy Deany Laliotis, LICSW in the National Institute […]
You Will Never Measure Up
You will never meet expectations. You will never get everything done. You will not be number one. Why not? Because you are now competing with over 7 billion other people. You are now measured against instantaneous satisfaction. You are now bombarded with opportunities and things that you MUST do in order to succeed. You are […]
