At every turn in life, we have a decision to make – to go or not go, to do or not do, to create this or that. A Harvard Business Review article states that the average adult makes 33,000-35,000 decisions each day. The majority of those are made by our subconscious mind. However, in order to be intentional with our actions and live a life by design rather than by default, we must...

Our lives are stories, and we are the main characters. Each of us lives in our own story, not often paying attention to the stories of others around us unless we feel their direct impact. Like ripples in a pond, there are smaller stories that expand to include more characters and details to create larger stories.

At the narrowest point of your life is your personal story…

There’s been a strong counter-culture lately of JOMO – the Joy of Missing Out – against the all-pervasive FOMO – Fear of Missing Out – propagated by social media. I will admit it can be hard for me as an extrovert to embrace the joy of missing out when all I want to do is everything! When we are inundated on social media with events, ideas for projects, pictures of friends doing fun, fascinating things, it can feel tough to slow down and tune in to our own inner joy. Yet that is what many of us need most right now.

If actions speak louder than words, then it would follow that the type of actions we take make a difference. I’ve been exploring what motivates my actions lately. In the past, I’ve primarily acted from a driven, achievement-oriented perspective. But over the past year, I’ve been opening myself up to allowing, receiving, and creating space instead of creating outcomes.

How do we create space? Isn’t that like creating nothing? Creating a void? I find it to be an act of clearing, removing, making room for the unknown to enter. Like removing rocks from a stream, when we remove obstacles in our lives, we can allow results to flow.

The concept of time kept surfacing in my life this past week – in an article I wrote for a client, in conversations with my kids, and in books I was reading. It feels as though it is begging to be written about. The fruit is ripe for the picking in my mind.

Why is it important to consider our relationship to time? How does this help us in our marketing or business strategy? You may have heard people say, “Time is your greatest asset.”

Belonging to a community is a need as old as humanity. In Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Love and Belonging sit right in the middle, just after Safety Needs. As soon as we feel safe and secure, we need community. For some, Love and Belonging can feel even more essential than or run parallel to Safety. Community provides connection, affiliations, and interpersonal relationships with others. It also creates the need for collaborative communication.

I recently attended an event with the amazing speaker and coach, Julie Jones, where she addressed the spell many of us fall under, thinking we are here to do things in this order: Do, Have, Be. But in fact, the most meaningful, satisfying and productive life is one in which we: Be. Do. Have. Being must come first. This is a productivity paradox. We assume that to be productive, we must do X,Y & Z. Yet, if we are not being true to ourselves first and honoring the state of being we are in, our productivity will be only a portion of what it could be. 

How many memories can a monsoon hold? When the clouds grow bigger than the sky itself and their bellies swell with rain, when the lighting cracks its brilliant whip and commands our attention, what stories are unleashed into the atmosphere?

Working in a variety of marketing roles over my career, I’ve heard a number of negative perspectives on what marketing is – and what it isn’t. I’ve heard business owners, employees and customers say things like, “Marketing is porn.” Or, “You have to sell your soul when you advertise yourself.” Or, “Marketing is just a bunch of formulas that assume humans are stupid.” Or, “I’m such a sucker for marketing.” But the reality is that marketing is what you make it, just like everything else in this wild life.

At this stage in my career, I run my own business writing, editing and creating content that helps my clients market themselves authentically. I choose to embrace a positive belief about marketing. It is an important way we share who we are and what our purpose is with others in order to effect change.

As I move through the world as a single person, often traveling alone, I am noticing more and more that no one is truly a stranger. Each day of this life it becomes more and more evident to me that we are all deeply connected. Take my recent experience in LaGuardia Airport, for example. A massive, sprawling, buzzing, international hub of families, businesspeople, and friends just trying to get from one place to another.

People are always seeking the newest fad to light them up. However, one of the biggest ways to light up your life and get moving is already within you. It’s called curiosity. We all have it, some with intensity and others with inhibition, but it’s there. The questions I want to address here are: how do you cultivate curiosity, and how can it change your life?

Last week I was given a wonderful opportunity to present to a group of realtors about strategic storytelling. I thoroughly enjoyed sharing my love and knowledge of storytelling to help them better reach their target audiences, fine-tune their intent, clarify their voice and understand the elements that make a good story. All of us appreciate a good story. It is as old as time, the desire to huddle around a campfire and listen to great storytellers invite us into an unseen world of the imagination. My favorite time of day when my kids were younger was reading them stories at bedtime. We still have storytime now, but much more sporadically, and I miss those nightly snuggles, laughing at silly phrases or illustrations and getting lost with my children in a good book.

My daughter and I each have a prayer plant. If you are unfamiliar with these beauties, I’d recommend you wander into your closest nursery and look for Calatheas (their scientific name) to get acquainted. What I find so magical about these plants is that they open and close at the beginning and end of each day. Having prayer plants in our house has opened me up to the living, moving energy that plants possess.

Any Battlestar Galactica fans out there? I am, no doubt. The 2004 remake of the TV show introduced me to the black hole of binge-watching. :) For any who don’t know, it’s a military science fiction TV series that tells the story of a small group of the only surviving humans defending their lives against the Cylons, androids they created who are determined to eliminate the human race. Take a breath; it’s not real…yet. Though current artificial intelligence (AI) in general, and Chat GPT in particular, is not at that level of intelligence (that we know of), I cannot help but feel my spidey senses tingling with the rapid increase in AI. 

During a recent dance class with Victor Quijada, founder of Rubberband, an innovative dance company based in Montreal, we explored movement through contact improvisation. In these exercises, dancers would partner up. One would be the instigator, and the other would be the receiver. The one who was instigating movement would touch the receiver, and that person had to move towards the contact. Victor shared with us the concept that, “Wherever there is contact, there is expansion.” I smiled. It resonated on a deep level for me, not just in dance, but also in business and connections with family and friends.

During a recent collaborative coaching call with a mentor, she showed the group pictures that represented different stages: seed, tree, spiral, growth. After jotting down a few words that came to mind upon looking at them, she asked us to write a small story for ourselves about what those images sparked in us. Here is what I wrote.

Back in 4th grade, my best friend and I memorized a monologue from Charlotte’s Web that we found utterly fascinating. It was all about the concept of nothing, which left us feeling both small and aware of the infinite possibilities that lay ahead of us. There is something deeply profound about contemplating nothing, doing nothing, even bringing the mind to a place of nothing, or emptiness. Nothing opens up space for anything to happen.

One of the key building blocks I am utilizing as I build Joyfull Communications is creative collaboration.  As John Donne’s infamous poem begins, “No [person] is an island entire of itself; every [person] is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...”  There is freedom in knowing we are not alone, in admitting we cannot do it all, and in turn, asking others for help.  Creatives often work alone, yet we are all connected in more ways than we realize.

My word for 2023 is “allow.” I’ve been thinking a lot about what this means, and why I chose it as my word, my purpose, for this year. It’s a difficult word for me to embrace, primarily because I identify with achieving, striving, working hard and producing results. While none of these are bad in and of themselves, I feel a turning within me, something directing me towards a more efficient, peaceful, receptive way of being. I find that work gets done more quickly, more creatively and more joyfully when I’m in a headspace of allowing versus one of striving. I see our culture beginning to make this shift as well. There is still a heavy emphasis on productivity and striving, however more and more people are realizing those efforts are worth nothing if they are done at the cost of one’s own health, well-being and peace.

I recently watched Mission: Joy, Finding Happiness in Troubled Times, a documentary on Netflix that bears witness to the incredible friendship between Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the 14th Dalai Lama. I laughed, cried and felt deeply moved by the meaning they each have cultivated, discovered and created, individually in their work, as well as in their friendship. It was evident that their life missions have been made even more meaningful because of the hardships they have endured. It is astounding how doing the hard work to overcome obstacles in our lives increases our work’s meaning, gives it focus, and ultimately, creates joy for ourselves and others.