Thought to Ponder from a Life on the Highwire
“My journey has always been the balance between chaos and order” –Philippe Petit A metaphor for life?
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Wisdom
Advice corner
Finding Beauty in Difficult Times
‘There are times when life seems little more than a matter of struggle and endurance, when difficulty and disappointment form a crust around the heart. Because it can be deeply hurt, the heart hardens. There are corners in every heart which are utterly devoid of illusion, places where we know and remember the nature of
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Nature-My Teacher
I want to pay better attention. I want to listen closer. I want to see more. My teacher resides indoors and outside, but also arrives via a book, This Is How A Robin Drinks (Essays on Urban Nature), by Joanna Brichetto. This magical book portrays all that nature offers to us if we can only
What skills do you need to be a better human?
This question arose after I read an interview with Simon Sinek. He intensely dislikes the term soft skills preferring instead the term human skills. This, he says, eliminates the idea of opposites and I would also suggest, the whiff of optional when juxtaposing the words soft and hard skills. Human skills are about becoming a
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Calculating the Correct Dosage
“The dose makes the poison” –Paracelsus (shortened version of his original maxim) This maxim beautifully encapsulates the ongoing dilemma of knowing the correct dosage of stress in our lives. Length of exposure can influence whether even small doses can be both beneficial or harmful. In this era of so-called personalized medicine, how often do we
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The Influence of Creativity on Burnout
Burnout shuts out hope or possibility. Creativity, on the other hand, seeks fresh perspectives, novelty and opportunity. A creative mindset is not easily accessed in the midst of burnout and we may resist what we see as irrelevant and foolish. Reading stories of people whose careers are built around imagination and innovation offers the realization
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Who Sits on your Board of Inspiration?
Our personal Board of Inspiration dramatically influences our perspective, our imagination, our enthusiasm and ultimately our life trajectory. This Board needs to be carefully curated and regularly updated. Like any Board complacency, dullness and predictability can set in. If we choose to spend our time with people who don’t inspire us, we miss out on
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Practicality vs. Soul (or vice versa): A False Dichotomy
The busyness of the day-to-day grinds from morning to night. Practicality and “reality” dominate and reign supreme. The tiny voice of the soul whispers, maybe falls silent. Have we created an artificial dichotomy, that ensures mutual destruction? Has a symbiotic relationship been severed, without us even realizing? Yet, we do realize. We sense a hollowness,
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Obsessively Reading Nature Writers
I used to find discussions of nature too dense and at times dull. I now devour these books as lyrical sources of wisdom, fascination and beauty. They implore me to pay attention and connect to my surroundings with a renewed sense of wonder. The writing grounds itself in reality and immediacy, countering the virtual and
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A House of Symmetry
I recently visited the Robie House in Chicago, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I experienced An architectural immersion in symmetry, coherence and beauty. This geometrically balanced space embodies the cornerstones of Wright’s architectural philosophy: simplicity, humanity, integrity and connection. “Organic Architecture is an architecture from within outward, in which entity is an ideal. (…). Organic
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