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.
Until now staying home, having patience, waiting out the danger, has felt both sad and necessary. But today, I’m feeling mad than sad.
Life is an improvisational art form. Interruptions are sources of wisdom, not counterproductive distractions. They prepare us for Adulthood II.
The desire to be heard—across vast physical and emotional distance—is what makes us human. I’m desperate for connection yet afraid to go out. So it’s time to hit the road.
In the past seven weeks, two of us survived the virus. One closed a business. A mother and a father have died. We decided to wing it and say a prayer.
Some people are making lemonade right now. Others are choking on the sour. But unless we ask, unless we listen, we don’t really know who’s who.
As word gets around, week by week, more faces and more flames will fill our screens—until the glow is so hot, so bright, so fierce, that we’re transfixed.
As a kid I was labeled overly sensitive. Since the coronavirus came into my life I cry every day. Here are three really good reasons why you might do it too.
Finding tranquility won’t be easy for my 19-year-old son. But there’s a rowing machine in the basement, and maybe he’ll learn to meditate.
People pay a lot of money to cloister themselves in isolation. Depending on how we look at things—staying home can be either a punishment or a gift.
In Almost Everything: Notes on Hope, Anne Lamott wrote: The opposite of faith is not doubt. It’s certainty. Now, there’s a Baja Aha!
LIVE at The Moth Story Slam: I proposed. I paid for the ring. I flushed my birth-control pills and moved into his apartment. What could go wrong?
There are no mistakes. Only happy accidents. As a novice painter, I enjoy that idea. But could the same also be true in the rest of our lives?
Whether our habit is to blow all our dough on Manolo Blaniks, or stuff it under a mattress, we really can improve our relationship with money.
Play allows us to germinate new ideas or see old ideas in a new light. It makes us more inquisitive, more attuned to novelty, more engaged.
I planned to give the shaman nothing to go on. Until Tom said: You’re not going there to play Stump the Shaman. You’re going there to learn.
Fear of missing out is a powerful thing. But once we put that aside, we can appreciate that we are on the right path. The only path.
It’s been six weeks since my accident, and I think I’m ready to stop counting. I’m ready to move on. But I’m not ready to forget what I’ve learned.
Painting with watercolor helped me heal. In my process, I saw a metaphor for how we create our lives. I saw hope for the New Year.
How can people like me—people like us—embrace essentialism without sacrificing the enthusiasm that is our power?
Even on the days we feel scared or bored or invisible, of this we can be certain: The best years of our lives lie just “over the hill” up ahead.
