Barbara Brooks created Flamingo Strategies LLC to help clients stand up and stand out, through telling and sharing their stories of impact and purpose.
Hacking Away at Happiness is her blog.
Whether we make art, or simply notice how light lands on surface, what matters most is where we place our frame.
Visual cues—combined with our overdeveloped sense of certainty—may cause us to miss what’s most important.
Every nonprofit should have a sustainable strategy for capturing stories of generosity and impact.
These days ahead are known as the Days of Awe. Because it’s awesome to do the right thing. Maybe even all year long.
I thought I was a solopreneur, but that’s not true. I think I’m a peoplepreneur.
We go about our lives completely unaware of our moment-to-moment absorption of nature's power.
As a professional teller of stories of generosity and impact, my only job is to empathize with the teller's emotions.
The rule I live by—Always Be Opening—is my own. We do not have to fight over a finite number of good leads.
Having left full-time employment to consult and write, I get to bake the time pie. And I get to slice it up.
Like the Greek nymph Echo, who loved the sound of her own voice, a storyteller who merely self promotes is destined to be ignored.
My anxiety was palpable when I explained negative cash flow. But when we played Risk Bingo, everything that could go wrong, did.
But after the silence we fear and the silence we want, there’s the silence we need. It's the “noble” silence of peace between our ears.
Existentially speaking, aren’t we all planning around—and planning for—obsolescence. The question, then, is what do we do about it?
Like the wild dingo dog that snatched an innocent baby in the Australian outback, I wondered if a pink Flamingo beast has somehow made off with my kid.
Typically, contestants prepare and rehearse, but I put my name in the hat anyway. The theme of the night was “Tests,” and I was going in cold.
Downtime—because it's so utterly unfamiliar, can be excruciatingly uncomfortable. It can create stress. But it's also a great gift.
Improv—with its cardinal rule of YES, AND..."—provides the safest-possible stage. Then, if no one is judging, why is it so hard to go boldly into a scene?
I toggled back and forth, between the moment and the meta. Am I living? Or am I already writing a story in my head? But I also felt glorious moments of calm.
The Buddha said that we all are basically good. But we probably won’t believe that until we sit still and make friends with ourselves.
We win. We lose. We root for the underdog. And if we're lucky, we might even nail the landing.
