3/8/25 Note: This week I was hit by some kind of stomach bug which made it really hard for me to get to my computer to write a blog post about my third pillar of sustainability, connection. So, I decided to interrupt my scheduled blog post for one that I wrote a week ago that I planned on posting at […]
Leadership Step By Step – Exercise #13: Write Your Models for Leadership and Emotions
Essay #1: What is leadership? [I want to preface this essay by saying I’m not sure I 100% agree with everything I wrote. This is one that, the more I wrote, the more introspective I got and started to second guess myself, or wanted to add more. I feel like given enough time you could fill a book with all […]
My Second Pillar of Sustainability: Happiness
In my previous two posts, I described my three pillars to a meaningful life: health, happiness, and connection. They are 3 lenses that I use to evaluate everything I do in life and see whether it’s contributing positively to my life or not. Then I went into a bit more detail about how I use the lens of health. Now […]
My First Pillar of Sustainability: Health – How Living Healthy Creates Meaning While Also Positively Impacting The Planet
In my previous post, I described my three pillars to a meaningful life: health, happiness, and connection. They are 3 lenses that I use to evaluate everything I do in life and see whether it’s contributing positively to my life or not. Health is the first and most obvious one to understand why I include it. Why health is foundational […]
Leadership Step By Step – Exercise #12: Feedforward
Exercise 12 of Leadership Step By Step was “Feedforward”, an exercise developed by Marshall Goldsmith to ask for advice instead of asking someone to evaluate something you did in the past (AKA “feedback”). In short, the exercise asks you to pick something you want to improve at, ask for advice using a specific script, ask some clarifying questions if necessary […]
Leadership Step By Step – Exercise #11: Avoid Imposing Values
We’re at the halfway point of Leadership Step By Step’s exercises! This week’s exercise was to avoid imposing values on other people. What exactly does that entail? To start, avoid using the terms “good”, “bad”, “right”, and “wrong”, but with a stretch goal of also avoiding “should”, “appropriate”, “better”, and “worse”, among a few others. Not forever, but just for […]
My 3 Pillars of Sustainability – The Values I Focus On To Give My Life Meaning
As a blogger, podcast host, and attempted influencer, I spend a lot of time thinking about sustainability, but also how to recruit more people to the cause of living a life that is better for you and better for the planet. “Save the Planet” works great on people whose values are to help wildlife or preserve natural spaces (people like […]
Leadership Step By Step – Exercise #10: No, But, However
For the tenth exercise of Leadership Step By Step, I had a deceivingly simple task: do not start responses with the words “no”, “but”, or “however.” The goal of which was to become more self-aware of how you interact with people and specifically, whether you are communicating in a way that is detrimental to relationship-building. What does a good conversation […]
Blackout! Lessons Learned From a Night Without Electricity
January 26th, 2025 – 8:12pm: CRACK-BOOM! It was like lightning had just struck our house. All the lights go out as we’re dropped into darkness. My wife, step-mother, and daughter scream as both the baby and dog come running terrified. I go to the window to check how many of our neighbors are affected by the blackout. Total darkness. It’s […]
Leadership Step By Step – Exercise #9: Adopt a Challenging Belief
For the 9th exercise of Leadership Step By Step, I had to do the exact same thing as in Exercise 8 (feel an unwanted emotion, identify the unwanted belief, find a belief to replace it with), but now with a challenging belief. The trick is…I feel like the two beliefs I ended up trying to change for the last exercise […]