You don’t get extra credit for suffering. For being stressed, exhausted, and frustrated because you do too much. You’re doing things other people could do. Even doing things you don’t do particularly well. You tell yourself there’s no choice. But there is. There’s always a way to redesign your role to play to your strengths.

I never thought of myself as irresponsible. It felt like I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders. After all, I was responsible for finding new business, making money, keeping employees busy and customers happy. Every day was an obstacle course. Prospects wouldn’t commit. Systems didn’t work. People didn’t perform. Customers changed their

I never liked the term “people pleaser” because it sounds like a weakness and I was glad I didn’t have it. But I’ve recently had a sobering realization.  I’m an approval seeker. And it’s the same thing, just a different name. I’ve enrolled my dog, Atlas, in a sport called Rally. Together we navigate a

Every day you choose who you’re going to be. You do it by interpreting the world around you and deciding who you are in relation to it. It’s almost instantaneous. A prospect avoids you. An employee lets you down. A contractor ghosts you. Notice how quickly we collapse what happened with the story we tell

I had the capability to make money before I had the capacity to keep it.  Money signified freedom to me, and owning a business made me feel important, so I was willing to do whatever I could to succeed.  I took risks, made mistakes, learned lessons, and kept going. In other words, I had the

Last week I wrote about how we don’t perceive reality as it is.  Plato took that idea much further 2,400 years ago. In his Allegory of the Cave, he tells the story of people who spend their lives facing a cave wall. The only source of light is a fire burning behind them. Others hold