My husband and I have a new entertainment: I read out loud to him from books about scientific subjects that I’ve checked out of the public library. We do this at the ends of meals mostly — I have always eaten much faster than he does — in my opinion because I grew [...]
I’ve always been fond of L. M. Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables. I think of her as a great contributor to the positive canon, not just in the Anne stories, which are full of humor and duty and compassion for the human condition. But also in the short stories that [...]
A friend of mine at work gave me this approach to feedback called Blossoming from a book by Bruce Wilkinson. She told me great things about using it with her children. When I can remember, I try to use it with mine — and I think it can be used with others — [...]
I’ve been rather absent from my blog recently dealing with the death of someone close to me. It’s quite remarkable how much energy it takes to mourn. Everything seems to move in slow motion.
This was a person I’d known my entire life. So I have a whole gamut of feelings, some [...]
We celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary on January 17. That has led me to think about what I’ve learned about marriage in slightly more than a quarter century.
My marriage is more important to me now than it was in the beginning. I think that’s because of the collected weight of so many shared [...]
I’m finding it relatively easy to remember the three qualities of appropriate negative feedback:
Specific to a situation
Not personal
Offers suggestions for improvement.
What about positive feedback? Certainly I find some positive feedback more appropriate and effective than others — both as a giver and a receiver. I’d like to propose a short list that is [...]
Every day I get numerous bursts of small pleasures from the Google desktop photo gadget that cycles through pictures on my computer showing a new one every 10 seconds or so. In the corner of my eye, the pictures appear. Many I ignore, but many give me a small rush.
I particularly like pictures [...]
One of my work partners used to say that we gee’d and haw’d pretty well together. But there was considerable friction while we figured out how. We had very different talents and very different ways of thinking about things. So there was a lot of letting go, of working on faith that the one [...]
When I went down to ride my exercise bicycle last night, I saw a magazine on the floor open to an article titled Coaching the Grief-Stricken. Since I’m a professional coach, I thought, Hmm, sounds interesting. When I leaned over to pick it up, I found it was in my son’s Sports [...]
In Energize Your Workplace, Jane Dutton writes about the importance of high-quality connections at work — where connections are the social exchanges that make up the day, from passing in the hall to greeting on the telephone to responding in a meeting. Every exchange can be energizing … or corrosive to the [...]
