One thing I have been intentionally working on developing over the course of the last 3 or 4 years is the underrated skill of social awareness. It’s one of those things that I think most of us think and assume we’re totally fine at, but then something happens to you, someone says something to you in a way that makes it clear that they are not also working on their social awareness skills, and you…
Growing up and through most of college, Jana was one of the best, closest friends I had. We were inseparable. We ate onion bagels with cream cheese every weekend morning together after we had sleepovers in her water bed. We got our nails done together. We air sprayed our jeans, wore wrestling sneakers, and spiral permed our hair constantly. We tried to style our hair with an actual iron. Like, a clothing iron. After we…
My mother is going to kill me. I mean, she has never understood why I, a woman of Filipino descent, would ever put blonde highlights in my hair. So, when she sees how I went from above shoulder length hair to below nipple line length hair, my phone’s gonna’ blow up with her on the other end drilling me for questions on why I would ever do something like putting extensions in my…
From Joshua Medcalf’s book, Chop Wood Carry Water: “Many people love bamboo. They love the bamboo trees, and they love the bamboo wood, but very few people understand the process of growing bamboo. You dig up the soil and make sure it is good soil, and then you plant the bamboo seed. You then must faithfully water it every day. After three months, guess what starts to happen? Nothing! You see absolutely nothing happening. You…
There are few things harder in life to accept than criticism of your actions. I think the only thing that might trump that is feeling love for someone that does not love you back. But, that’s a topic for another post. Actually, that may be so hard that I don’t even want to go there. Like, ever. Hearing criticism is tough, though. It’s very easy to talk about “being open to crticism” and…
I just can’t stop thinking about the trip I took last weekend to Nashville with my best high school friends. I mean, most of us haven’t seen each other in 20+ years, at best we keep in touch over Facebook a couple of times a year with not much more than an image of a thumbs up of some random picture we’ve posted, and between the 7 of us, we have over 20…
While we were on the Cape for July, we visited a former member who recently downsized and is now living in a tiny home. I have always been impressed and slightly envious of people that live that level of a minimalist life, but know that it’s just not the right time for our family to make that sort of shift. I’m trying to be careful to not say that it’s “impossible”, because anything is possible. …
As a family, we’re very big on establishing a very short, simple list of core family values. If it came down to one and only most important, above all else, value and moto that dominates every day for us, it’s this: FAMILY FIRST. Always, always, always. Family comes first. Nothing else. Ever. We really love this one because it’s 100% straight forward. If you’re trying to make a decision about something, it…
In CrossFit, I feel like we do a lot of talking about hunting down our “weaknesses”. There’s a culture of people that, while they’re riddled with nerves when one of their “worst” movements shows up in the next day’s WOD, are eager to find those movements and spend enormous amounts of time working on improving them. They will hunt down any coach, member, or video that can help them figure out how to get better…and,…
Do you want to know the most amazing thing that happened to me yesterday? We were having dinner at Susan’s house last night when I asked Maya a question about something; I wish I could remember what it was, but my brain only retains things for a maximum of 12 hours, and that ran up 9 hours ago at the time I’m writing this. She leaned back in her chair, takes a deep breath,…