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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!
To change our systems, remember the body
A post on racism by Resmaa Menakem jumped out at me last week, so much so that I had to immediately read his book, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. I’ve read a lot about trauma and somatics, (the body as we...
A champion for justice who deserves to be known
https://youtu.be/Rxt0tbsWQfU Last week was tough, for me, for many, filled with horrific images and the sadness that my country, the United States, is not living up to its ideals. While being confronted by the harsh realities of systemic discrimination,...
Saying yes to life, even then, even now
In these crazy times, as the world changes in unpredictable ways, where do we turn to find meaning? I don't mean the ultimate capital "M" Meaning, or "The Meaning of Life" a la Monty Python, but a meaning that sounds like a "Yes" within us and adds some purpose to...
Zoomed out? Time to Zoom back in.
Zoom's emerging as a technical hero of the pandemic. Millions of people are connecting in ways no one would have thought possible just three months ago. After bajillions of uses, however, a new expression is popping up: "Zoom fatigue." "There is a special kind of...
Time to think long haul
On the trail Some years ago, on a sunny day hike with a friend in Washington's Cascade Mountains, I started running out of steam. The trail through the cedars was beautiful, but the switchbacks up the mountain seemed endless. As two youngish men in jogging...
Find the heroes you need
The Netflix movie about Michelle Obama has just been released, and I cried watching the trailer. Like millions of others, I miss her presence in the White House. Watching the film's trailer made me realize how hungry I am, starved really, for true heroes with her...
Devotion will change your life
I watched a charming video this week, one of those lift-you-up-in-the-storm pieces, about a man, Stjepan Vokic, in Croatia, who has spent the past two decades taking care of a wounded stork. He fishes for her, builds nests, and cheers when her long time mate returns...
Honor Earth Day with delight for the small
I woke up early on Earth Day to the song of a white crown sparrow. It seemed fitting that to honor something as big as Earth Day, I needed to start small. Listening to birdsong is like stepping into a land of wonder, a foreign world that I never...
Pausing to let the heart expand
This week, the cherry tree began its two week run of glory, set against a backdrop of near perfect Seattle weather. The peony stalks started shooting towards the sky, in anticipation of their upcoming starring role in May's garden. This week, I was shaken by bad news...
In case of panic, try this.
Anxiety is hovering in the air, like a cloud that might let loose with a storm of bad news at any moment. How can you protect yourself if a torrent of anxiety threatens to fall? I experienced one last week, and I used some very simple steps described below to calm and...
Finding the art of the “new normal”
First of all, it's OK. Whatever you are feeling, or doing, it's OK Life today is not normal. How can we hope for normalcy when planetary normalcy has been disrupted? It takes courage, daily, to stand tall and say to ourselves, “This is the new normal.” Given the...
Stop demonizing when there’s so much to learn
My go-to default for almost anything, miserable or exciting, is learning. I would have rephrased Descartes or Hamlet or whomever to say, "If I can learn, I am and that is never a question." COVID-19 has opened the door to a slew of learning opportunities. Zoom is now...
Make your own heart sanitizer
You, like me, may be feeling overloaded by news of COVID-19. People are stocking up on hand sanitizers, (Hopefully not like the bloke in Tennessee who bought 17.700 bottles thinking to price gouge.) If you need any, why not make your own? It's just as good. (Recipe...
COVID-19 can teach us more than handwashing
This post is not another list of precautions about the coronavirus. You doubtless have them already. I won't deny the enormous cost of the outbreak, including the tragedy of lives lost, businesses grounded, families disrupted, events canceled, teaching curtailed, and...
“All shall be well again” (I hope)
Trust. It's not the easiest quality for me to find in these dystopian-feeling days. So I turned to a fourteenth-century mystic who somehow managed to find hers in the darkest of times. Julian of Norwich, an anonymous anchoress (recluse) lived during a time in which a...
How to sing our arms back open
Darkness makes the light stand out. When I was traveling in France after my mother's death, I sought out the prayer candles stored in the shadowy corners of village churches. Even though I'm not Catholic, I'd light a candle for Mom, letting it glow in the dark as I...
Why I won’t “manage” my rage
I ran into an artist friend of mine before a concert last weekend, a gracious, considerate, soft-spoken woman. In a brief "how are you?" we looked into each other's eyes and found a common answer: rage. In that instant, we dropped pretending that "It's OK," (we're...
3 steps for handling environmental stress, bird by bird
On Sept. 19, 2019, the New York Times published a devastating statistic about declines in the bird population across North America, citing research quoted in Science Magazine. Since 1971, numbers had been reduced by almost 30%. How can we deal with such an...
Finding more of enough
How do we know when we have found "enough?" That question propelled me to read prize-winning author Shauna Ahern's just-published memoir: Enough: Notes From a Woman Who Has Finally Found It. While Shauna is best known as "The Gluten-Free Girl," this book is a...
Eight tips to interview like a pro (and have more fun talking with people)
These ideas come from four years of interviewing a captivating group of guests on my Vital Presence podcast. If you're not recording interviews, adapt these ideas to when you're being interviewed (it never hurts to know what your interviewer is going through). Or, use...
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
