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Your Story Matters: leading and living your creative best
Welcome—so glad you’re here. Do you, like me, want to work more creatively, lead lightly, be productive, and design the life you want to live? Are you curious about how storytelling can help you can engage others and shape meaning? If so, I hope you enjoy these posts and I look forward to hearing from you!
Seven keys to deep learning from The Octopus Teacher
I finally watched My Octopus Teacher, the much-celebrated Netflix documentary that chronicles the year film-maker Craig Foster spent swimming with a wild, common octopus in the kelp forests near Capetown, South Africa. Foster credits the octopus as a profound teacher,...
Find rhythm in a pause
I've been loving my spring walks athrough our woodlands. They help me to pause when I'm wound up or feel driven to keep going on a project. Pauses are key to rhythm and rhythm is key to life. I'm not quite ready to write about my forays into rhythm, so...
Playing as an ensemble
April is an exciting month for me as I get ready to watch the great performances that will be taking place over the next couple of months. The cast is in dress rehearsal. The previews are looking good. I've seen a couple of teasers from bit players out before...
Want more of Einstein’s brainpower?
Colossal intelligence that he was, Albert Einstein had a relatively small brain. It measured 1230 grams, on the smaller end of average. However, what he had that was unusual was an enormous corpus callosum, the bundle of nerve fibers that pass information...
Can we celebrate now?
Are you celebrating? It may be long overdue. Life without celebration is like hiking across a snowfield during a whiteout when the sky and the snow merge together and you can barely see your next step. Chilly and dangerous. Everything becomes a blur. Like the past...
Is it time to start returning?
It's time to start talking about APAD: Anticipatory Post-pandemic Apprehension Disorder. Unless it's just my issue. I was so excited to have my second COVID vaccination shot last week, I'm starting to feel like there's light at the end of the tunnel. I can see...
How to use anger to fuel your creativity
With a new year, new, very different, President and Vice President, vaccines rolling out, and spring on its way, I thought we'd be done with anger. Don't you wish? Rather than hope for the unlikely, I'm looking at how to make positive use of my anger, asking, "How can...
Zoom fatigue? It’s real and what to do
Many of us have been experiencing a chronic condition since early into the pandemic: Zoom fatigue. It's growing worse. Last November, Psychiatric Times published an article, "A Neuropsychological Exploration of Zoom Fatigue." Bottom line: it's real. 18 months...
Confessions of a judge-aholic.
The poet Rumi once wrote: "Out beyond right and wrong, there is a field. I'll meet you there." How I'd love to visit! I only wish he'd left directions. Hint: The kids in the video below found it. Me, I'm a judge-aholic.** I grew up with self-judgmentalism. A...
Celebrate Valentine’s Day with a fiercer love
I've been learning about a new face of love reading Valerie Kaur's See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love. Her writing is glorious. Who else could have successfully braided memoir with a manifesto? Memoir calls for personal vulnerability....
Let’s sing a new revolution
In Estonia, people sing. An Estonian woman I heard speak in an online singing class talked about Laulupidu, Estonia's choral song festival. Begun in 1869, it now draws 100,000 participants, including 30,000 singers. Wikimedia commons. Estonian Song Celebration. Photo...
If you need more time
Even though last week I wrote about seeding a new beginning, I've had trouble starting up again. The air feels fresher, yet still weighted. It's been hard to feel clever, creative, or wise. Time to surrender to what is. NOT YET I'm not quite ready to start up again....
Seeding a new beginning
"Stories are like seeds. It pays to know what you want to harvest from your garden so you can plant the right seeds." Mary Alive Arthur, story activist. Inauguration Day felt like the true start of the new year. With so much commentary–I'll let others address the...
Why not let life be complex?
This US Presidential Inauguration Day, a group of riders on white horses wearing white coats will ride into Washington, D.C. to assume power. At the same time, a group of black-coated riders on black horses will ride away. Peace will be restored and the world will be...
To tame a raging bull
It is rare that I consider aborting a blog I have almost completed. But how to keep writing, let alone think, when an army of rioters is storming the US Capitol? I saw photos of ninja-like warriors climbing over Capitol walls, upended offices, broken glass, and...
Let’s celebrate 24 new hours
When you rise tomorrow it will be a new year. Or perhaps, where you are, it already is. For many, the turn of the year to 2021 will be a relief. To the robins, squirrels, salmon, oak trees, granite and gray wolves, it’s business as usual. Life continues on. And while...
Your presence is a light
A friend shared a quote this week. It moved me so much I tracked it down, to Kent Nerburn in his book, Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace." It seemed a fitting way to celebrate this season of light. "We are not saints, we are not heroes. Our lives are...
Light up a bleak midwinter
"In the bleak midwinter" could be my theme song these days. I'm tired. The weather is glum. I've had enough election news. The phrase is the name of a favorite carol written by the English poet Christina Rossetti in the 1800s and set to music by Gustav Holst. In the...
When is dementia not a tragedy? (Hint: most of the time)
Earlier this year, I wrote about saying "yes/and" to dementia with a very cool approach that includes improv theatre. But last month, it wasn't cool at all to learn that a favorite cousin has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. That hit me hard. I was shocked and...
How loss can make us grateful
Thanksgiving was different this year. My husband and I ate alone for the first time in thirty-plus years. Of course, being the Martha Stewart look-alike that I am, I treated it like any other Thanksgiving. I meticulously cleaned the house, decorated with the requisite...
Your blog is an ongoing tonic for the soul, and a reminder of what’s possible.
Stephen SilhaWow! You keep writing the most pertinent, passionate, and clear articles I have the pleasure to read. Bravo!
Doug LipmanAs always, Sally, I am dazzled and inspired by the elegance, eloquence and relevance of your writing…
BIll Veltrop
Meet Sally
She’s an inspiring communicator, an original thinker, she weaves big ideas and practical examples together to help her clients take their next big step forward. She teaches leadership presence by modeling it.
She is visionary and practical, vulnerable and solid, accessible and real. A perpetual learner herself, she’s not afraid to take risks to develop the talents of her clients.
Engaging Presence
