As I walked into his room, he was quiet for a moment, with raspy, heavy breathing, lying there on the bed. All of a sudden, he started reaching up to the ceiling as if to pick apples from a tree, one by one, and bring them to earth (or, in this case, his bed). Apple picking—that is what the Hospice nurse said he was doing. They say that at the end of life, many times, people will reach up and pull down something from thin air that they seem to be able to see. As I watched my friend seriously […]
Social Grace
Try Approving of Yourself
So the other night, I half-heartedly watched a thread of a conversation unfold on Facebook, and it reminded me of an odd habit that I am seeing in so many people these days, which is being unusually mean and harsh about themselves in a public setting for the sheer purpose to draw attention to themselves and have others heap undue praise on them to help settle them down. They post sad comments and then eagerly wait for their “friends” to reply to the post, proving that they have value and that the sad sack isn’t that bad, that mean, that […]
Two Things to Remember in Life
As I was preparing for this week’s show, I came across a quote that I had written down a while back, and it goes like this, “Two things to remember in life. Take care of your thoughts when you are alone, and take care of your words when you are with people.” And this is my theme for today. As a coach, I find that many good people struggle with the thoughts they have about themselves, their abilities, their intelligence, their body image, and their self-worth. And, although I usually don’t dive too deep with them on these issues, I […]
Encouragement in these hard times
A while back, when I decided to change the core concept for my show–from Speak Without Fear to Encouragement for Your Life – I felt it was more in line with my heart’s desire to be an encouragement to others. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am still a 100% believer that your ability to speak and be heard is your best avenue to climb the ladder for personal and professional success, and I will always encourage you to develop your speaking ability because it truly is the one thing you can do to change your life. However, as I […]
Change Your Life
For fun, this week, I used Google and asked, “How to change your life,” and lo and behold, you would not believe all the options that are just waiting for you and me to sign up and get going. Most of them had a multi-point plan for us to get going, and others just laid it on the line for what we should and shouldn’t be doing to change our lives. After I read through the multiple lists of options, I had to laugh because, although they all promised success in 429 easy steps, the fact is that none of […]
Leaving a Life Imprint
Recently, I was at the beach for a quick vacation, and as I was sitting on the shore soaking up the sun, I was fascinated just watching the waves come in and go out, a little closer to me each time, until I had to move my beach chair back from the water onto higher sand or be soaked in the saltwater swirling around me. I couldn’t help but wonder and watch the power of the water on the shifting sands and then how, within a few hours, all the work of little hands that built sand castles all around […]
The Emotion of Greed
This is the last part in my series on Emotions That Are Causing You Great Harm, and I am going to finish with one emotion that is as dangerous as the one I started with. If you remember, the first one was anger because anger is a cancer to your soul and does great damage to others. So, I want to talk about one more emotion that can wreck your life, and that is greed. And that’s my theme for today. Let me do a quick rundown on the emotions I’ve spoken about in this series. I started the series […]
Don’t Hold on to Grudges
I have been thinking about a few clients that I work with and have come to realize that there is one thing that seems to hold many of them back from being amazing rock star speakers. That one thing is an old hurt from someone in their past who is now irrelevant and who told them they were awful speakers and to keep quiet. Now, I don’t know what the teacher or another adult said, but to a young person, what they heard was, “Don’t open your mouth again.” And here we are years later, and the idea of speaking […]
Live in such a way that if anyone should speak badly of you no one would believe it
My friends send me email jokes and cartoons all the time; in fact, I had a few friends I had to ask to put me on the weekly list and not the daily emails. I have no idea what they do all day that allows them to surf the web and send their network 20-30 jokes and stories all day. A while back, I got this one: Live in such a way that if anyone should speak badly of you, no one would believe it. Wouldn’t that be great? What if you and I were so well known to be […]
