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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!
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...
An easy way to discover more delight, daily
How might your life be different if, every day, you tracked on delight? I stole this idea from a poet. One of my reading finds at the end of the year was The Book of Delights by poet Ross Gay. Gay challenged himself to identify and write about a delight each day for a...
Before you resolve, absolve (plus a gift for you)
I hope I'm not too late. I wanted to catch you before you make any...resolutions. Tonight, before the clock strikes twelve, whether you're in New York, India, or our soggy Northwest, you may be tempted, as you stand before a slightly soused group of friends, to...
Finding hidden madonnas everywhere
Next week, we enter a new decade. This week, as we move through the days between the years, it seems a good time to spend a few minutes exploring what is mysterious, beautiful or holy around us. A Christmas Story My Christmas was quiet this year, but on Christmas Eve,...
How to welcome back the light
Welcome to the season of light. Whatever your faith, the light, in the Northern Hemisphere, can shine in radiant contrast to the dark around us. But during this fly-by-get-ready-for-the-holidays time of the year, do we take time to appreciate both the light and the...
Before you give, learn to receive
Did your mother ever tell you, “To give is to receive?” She was partly right. What she forgot to add was, “To give with an open heart, you must be able to receive.” Giving and receiving belong together, like inhaling and exhaling. But giving typically gets more of our...
How to find Magic in the Ordinary
Last weekend, our furnace quit. That meant no heat and no hot water. We warmed the house by turning on our stove's gas burners. My husband chivalrously carted buckets of hot water from the kitchen to the bathroom so that I could take a bath (sacred evening ritual)...
Three crazy super-easy ways to add thanks to your life
Many of us in the United States are preparing for the November marathon known as Thanksgiving. While not as intensive as Christmas, it still involves (assuming you’ve invited people over): inviting guests, scanning recipes, cleaning the house, buying and...
Finding fiery hope
"Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act." Rebecca Solnit How do we join our hope and rage together? Isn't it time to join Greta Thunberg and rage about the insufficient...
Where in the cycle are you?
To everything (turn, turn, turn) There is a season (turn, turn, turn) And a time to every purpose, under heaven Pete Seeger (and Ecclesiastes) When I first arrived at our island home almost fourteen years ago, I started to garden like a madwoman. This was...
When life goes to the dogs
Sometimes the things we do that are crazy might be the most sane.
Put the hallow back in Halloween (plus five freaky facts)
Halloween is coming, that once a year fest of spooks, villains, princesses, and pumpkins–a merchandiser's dream. If we could ignore the overdose of commercialism, though, we might find, within the history of its Celtic predecessor, rituals that would help us move...
What if, sometimes, there is no reason?
Does everything happen for a reason?Even if you believe this to be so, would you say it to someone who's grappling for her life?I suggest not.Like most of us, I'd like to believe that my life is under control, I want to believe that if I do my best, life will work...
How to change your past without fudging the facts
Do you ever wish that you could go back to the past and tweak a few memories? The past can be changed. Not the facts, (an endangered species we need to vigorously protect), but the meanings and feelings that accompany them. What we focus on shapes our memories. When...
If fear knocks: 8 ways to survive an anxious day
Today I'm waiting for the outcome of a friend's surgery, and whether that's fear or anxiety, it's pretty hard to take because there's nothing I can do to influence the situation. Fear and anxiety have set in. Technically, they are different although I consider them...
Finding your true “yes” and your true “no”
One thing I have noticed in recent years is that my "no's" and my "yes's" have gotten stronger and clearer. Being able to listen to one's self and sense (and offer) a true "yes" and a true "no" may be one of the superpowers we can claim with age, even if gracefully...
Learning Tips from a 74-year-old Unicycle Rider
With so much to learn in life, I’m always on the lookout for new tips about learning. This week’s lesson came from an unlikely source, my friend Joan, a 74-year-old unicycle rider. We talked about how she has learned demanding, physical skills, even in her seventies....
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
