I was working in Midtown on 9/11, and as I was walking back to my apartment amid sirens, smoke and the roar of fighter planes overhead—a strange thing happened. New Yorkers started talking to each other. We were all in shock, no one’s cell phone worked, and so we...

We hiked two miles and had just turned around toward our car when my friend saw it. She pointed to our left and there, about three football fields away, was a grizzly on its hind legs tracking us. She started to run and I quietly hissed that running would make us look...

“Help people use their mental erasers to forgive and forget what went wrong…Teach them to go from saboteur to cheerleader, remind them to be tolerant with their own mistakes, it’s how we learn and grow.” This reminder from my new Shortcuts to Success book is...

Most people are winners, some are disguised as losers. Don’t let their disguises fool you, is a reminder from my new book Shortcuts to Success. It’s so important because when we fall back on what we’ve constructed from past experience with people, we lose out on...

I have a reputation for getting lost anywhere, and I live up to my reputation often. I visited a friend in the hospital a few months ago and spent 10 to 15 minutes trying to find the right exit, in order to find the parking garage. My inabilities in this area are...

The small, inner me often looks at situations and has amazing ideas on things I’d like to say or do, but then as I think about them, they begin to seem childish and naïve and I keep quiet. I listened to that inner voice once when I was walking down Fifth Avenue, and...

When I was younger, I believed everyone’s opinion about what I could and couldn’t do and what I was and wasn’t capable of. It was exhausting, I was always carrying around the limitations others thought I possessed. As you can probably guess my self-esteem was pretty...

Others are usually watching us, not in a creepy way, but in order to gain inspiration by learning how we react to frustration, disappointment, annoyance, etc. Even if we think we’re in our own little silos, working from home, away from the world, our attitudes and...

Have you ever gotten in the way of your own success?  Years ago, when I lived in Manhattan, my NSA (National Speaker’s Association) chapter voted me their representative at a national speech contest. As I prepared for the speech my ego kept reminding me I had to...

There’s a silly bluegrass song called “Just Because” about a woman staying with a man, just because, he has lots of money. The song is fun to play, but the “Just Because” mentality is something I hear all the time in the business world. It goes like this: “I am not...

I took up the double bass because my guitar teacher told me to pick another instrument; my hands, he said, just weren’t configured to play a guitar. That was a disappointment, but I took up the double bass and loved it.  I have never been a very good musician, but...

In Betty White’s book If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won’t), she is quoted as saying “Everybody needs a passion. That’s what keeps life interesting. If you live without passion, you can go through life without leaving any footprints.” Kind of says it all, doesn’t...

Isn’t anticipation delicious? That feeling of excitement laced with the knowledge that something great is just about to happen. Children experience it the night before Christmas, while we adults often experience it right before a well-needed vacation or time off. What...

Ever wonder what stories you’re telling yourself? Look around at your reality, and like me, you’ll know your stories. We are our stories, whether they dwell on politics, the economy, kindness, positivity, or something else. All of us see what we expect to see, and...

My son and I were on a tour bus in Vienna, absolutely spell bound by the amazing beauty of the architecture and the history of this magical city. As we began the tour however, something incredibly strange happened, the driver/tour guide seemed intent on leaving...

Our European GPS was on, but useless. I had googled “hotels near me” and every place had no parking. It was raining and we were really tired, renting our car from the airport and driving to the small town of Pisa. Finally, a beautiful site came into view, a hotel with...

Just finished working in Austin, TX and the last night in town I went to a glorious dog park, just as the sun was setting and the first stars of the evening appeared. I watched a variety of dogs dash around among the legs of their owners, some timid, some...

I have a one-eyed male cat named Nala, and when a friend gave me a book called Nala’s World, about a Scottish man cycling the world with a cat named Nala, it intrigued me; I immediately got into their adventures. And I got caught up in the fact that he chose, actually...

When I was a teenager, I had a boyfriend who drove a car with a hole in the floor, right where my feet should go. I could watch the pavement as we drove; the car was that rickety. Makes me think of some of the world views I’ve driven around over the years, they’ve...

Steve Pemberton, author of A Chance in the World, uses an interesting metaphor for being the change we want to see happen at work, home and everywhere in between. He talks about becoming a human lighthouse. Referencing someone who made a difference in our lives, he...