The pressure you’re putting on yourself isn’t helping you. It’s also not helping the people you seek to serve. What we need from you is to consider the problem from all angles with the time you have, make a decision, and act. There will always be time to reconsider the result of your decision from all angles, make a decision, and act again.Release the pressure.

Yes. Absolutely.Answer these questions:Would you let your best friend treat you like shit? Walk over you? Talk down to you? Make you feel less than a human?Would you overly criticize every little thing that your best friend does? What they wear? How they talk? How they walk? How they show up? How they think?Would you allow anybody to talk to you the way you talk to yourself?If the answers to the above are “no” you are well on your way. What’s next?Treat yourself better. Accept things as they are. Be able to say and mean, “I messed that up, and it’s okay. I’ll get 1% better next time”.Grant yourself grace. “I’m a work in progress. I know that. Nobody asks me to be perfect. They ask me to do my best. If I fail, great, now I know how to do better.“Love yourself. Practice what you preach. If you wouldn’t let anybody talk to you the way you talk to you, then stop talking to yourself that way.Easier said than than done, right?Yes, you’re right. Nothing worth believe in and doing ever is.In fact, we should be wary of anything that promises easy returns.What to do?Practice. Each day practice. Try to get 1% better.Be thoughtful about one more decision.Think one second longer before speaking in one conversation.Accept one more thing about yourself.Practice being a better you.You’ve got this.

The Music Director (MD) of a theater show is at the center of the noise - lots of noise.All at the same time, a MD is:Watching the stage;Cue’ing singers to make their entrance;Cutting off choruses;Listening for balance;Cue’ing musicians to enter;Cutting musicians off;Maintaining balance across the orchestra/band;Playing their own part;Listening for cues to start the next song,Listening for cues to finish the vamp;Making notes for future shows;Wondering if the sub that’s playing the keyboard 2 book ever took a lesson;Thinking who will play the keyboard 2 book after they fire the sub; andNot saying a word.The MD stays at the center of it all.She never gets too far ahead.She stays present, calm, and still.Waiting for the next cue.

People upset every day in some way. But what if it’s not the people that are upsetting us? What if it is only a perception? And what if a perception can be mindfully explained away?“Nowhere you can go is more peaceful - more free of interruptions - than your own soul.” - Marcus AureliusWhen the news, a person, a text, a post, a baby, or disruptive moviegoer, or your snoring partner upset you… and you feel like getting outlandishly frustrated - stop and go within. Ask yourself:What is it that’s making me upset? What is causing me to feel wronged?What if I could let it go? How much stronger might I be if I endure it?Can I describe how I might feel seeing myself stepping through this equanimity? How might I feel?Try to remind yourself to try that next time you feel wronged by someone.Consider enjoying the feeling of seeing yourself grow and be better than you were yesterday.

Helpless? Trying to figure out how to help? What if you could do more?Life invites us to be courageous enough to do what we can now. Not later, not halfhearted, but fully and now.What can you do now?If you’re in Hungary, use outdoor’sy skills to help refugees.Donate a resource - time, money, or skill.Become informed. Welcome all viewpoints and develop your own idea.Help someone across the road.Pick up the trash you see on the sidewalk while walking to your car.Listen to someone who’s feeling like an outcast.What if I don’t?Nothing… but also nothing you will receive, and nothing is how much growth you’ll have.Not everyone is cut out for a crusade. Everyone can do one small thing every day to help someone else.Do what you can now.

When people tell you “no, that can’t be, shouldn’t be, we tried and it won’t be done”, that’s when you ask, “well, what if?““What if” opens the door to a world of possibility.Possibility invites us to think about “How” we might make things better.How we make things better is “What” makes change happen.What if you refused to accept the status quo more often? How might that help you help others?

As much as I love Bobby Caldwell’s song, this isn’t about that. It’s about value investing, return on investment, and the story you tell yourself about your value. When you take a job, you give an employer time, skill, and knowledge so that you can help them be profitable. In exchange, you get a salary and other benefits - a dividend. But before you take the job you think to yourself, how will this job make money for me? When will it make money? What will my return on investment be like? Do I know the industry enough to feel comfortable this will succeed? Jump forward, now you’re in the job.You continue investing your time and skill and you receive the salary. But, you start to find the value of your investment is decreasing. Other people are investing the same as you, but they are receiving a much higher yield on cost than you. The value of your investment decreases. Do you stay, collect the dividends as and when they come, and hold the investment who’s value is decreasing? Or do you sell at a loss, learn, and move on? Perhaps you’re only holding the investment because you want the dividends and don’t care about the decreasing value of the stock? Perhaps you were waiting to see if things would change? Perhaps you’re afraid of what would happen if you sold? What would you do? And more importantly, what won’t you do?

What we did in the past is in the past. It’s over. It’s over the second you breathe your next breath. It’s over the moment your heart beats its next beat.What you did a moment ago is a lesson. You can do it again and do it better right now.The real challenge, for me, is giving myself space to forgive myself for the moments in the past. Where I have grown the most is when I have seen myself not repeat those mistakes and instead, embrace the hard work of doing the work of getting better.Forgive and learn from the past. Apply what you learned to the moment now.

Thousands of years ago Seneca wrote to Lucilius, and today I wrote to a reader like you, Steven.Steven, the reader, is in a career change at the moment and working on a business. He and I spent time working on his resume, career coaching, and strategies for taking his idea to market. Today, my insights to Steven were inspired by a letter that Seneca wrote to Lucilius - on crowds and advertising.Seneca wrote to Lucilius:“I should be glad to see you [doing your craft] if what you had to offer [the masses] was suitable for them: but the fact is, [the masses are not capable] of understanding you. You might come across [someone] here and there, but even they would need to be trained and developed by you to a point where they could grasp your teaching.  ‘For whose benefit, then, did [you] do all this work?’”  TLDR version of Seneca’s thoughts are:Your work won’t mean a thing if it doesn’t speak to those you seek to serve; andThose you seek to serve will likely not get you because,You haven’t spent enough time thinking about them, their worldview, and what it means for them to talk to someone like you.My question to Steven, and to you… especially if your work involves taking an idea to people with the hope they buy it:Can you translate your outcomes/what you offer into a language that someone will be capable of understanding?In the mind of the person you are seeking to serve, will what you offer change their worldview in a meaningful way?How did they perceive the world before you, and how will they perceive it with and after you?Hope that insight offers some usefulness.

What is happening now… in our world… we have been here before. In fact, much of what we experience each day is something that relates to, mimics, and repeats a previous experience.The stress and the anxiety can be a lot - it is real.What can you control? What can you do to help and be a positive force for others?How might we stick up for those being oppressed not only in our world, but in our jobs and in our communities? To reach out and say, “hey, this ain’t right, I’m with them.“Do what you can.That’s all anybody asks of you.