Here’s a little bit about my background and my writing
Hello! I am a full-time writer based in Burbank, California who loves business, self-improvement, and life hacking. And I’m a serial career hopper. I started out as a professional ballet dancer, then I moved to dancing on Broadway, then I became a television and film actress, then a university professor, then an academic dean, then a mom, and now a writer.
I have an undergraduate degree in English, a master’s degree in business, and a certification in personal training. I run marathons, I create companies, and I write.
I have a book that will be traditionally published by Rowman & Littlefield in December 2020 and two self-published books — one about dancing and one about self-improvement. I am a top writer in Productivity and Writing on Medium and my work has been featured…
Ugly rooms, nonverbal signs, and creating a virtual mindset
From body language to sustainability, meditation to how to structure virtual meetings — the writers of The Innovation brought it this week. As always, we would like to thank our brilliantly talented team of contributors for a fantastic week of ideas, wisdom, and inspiration.
This week, we would like to showcase the following seven articles. We encourage you to check them out and support our authors with highlights, claps, and comment love. Have a wonderful week!
How to Master the Grand Poobah of Personal Development: Self Discipline — Wendy S. Bradfield
Over the last two years, self-discipline has proved a steady means for my achievements. I’ve lost 44 pounds, earned another degree, adopted a vegan diet, quit drinking, started sleeping 8 hours nightly, tackled my depression, and launched a writing career — all while working a full-time job. I am content. …
Or, at least, my therapist says I’m not
Here’s one thing I have learned about myself in my decades of rotations around the sun. For me, accomplishment = worthy of love. I won’t go into the origin stories of the internal equations that govern my life, but this core belief (whether it’s true or not) has manifested itself as a relentless drive for success.
So, here I am. I have done many things in my life, checked them off, and immediately moved on to my next accomplishment. I have degrees, books, awards, stacks of successful careers, and a picture-perfect Norman Rockwell home life. Unfortunately, none of this has ever been enough. See, there is no rest when one of your core beliefs is that achievement earns you love. …
Hang in there, friends
These days, almost everything seems tedious. We all want to go back to living our lives, we want to go back to “normal”. Many of us are living in situations that are not sustainable — teaching our children in garages, waiting patiently to see aging loved ones, and striving to make ends meet as long as possible.
While the winter has definitely been long and dark, there is an end in sight and we can now see a light at the end of the seemingly endless tunnel. We will make it. …
Unless you do this afterward
Many of us have been there — the exclusive party or networking event where we are surrounded by people significantly cooler and more influential than ourselves. We loaded our pockets with business cards, rehearsed our elevator pitches, and put on our imaginary night-vision-esque networking goggles that list everyone’s credentials next to their not-as-important faces.
At the end of an evening of hardcore schmoozing, we arrive home with sore smile muscles and a stack of the embossed business cards of our new “friends.” Inevitably, the more ambitious of us begin emailing right away. “It was so great to meet you tonight at cool-ass-networking-party-number-458. As promised, here is the information about my new business/product/project. …
I went in expecting to save her. I left with a new hero.
I planned my trip for almost a year. I raised money by running the New York Marathon to pay for it. I scheduled almost everything else in my life around it that summer. I was going to go to Kibera, Kenya and I was going to make the world a little bit better.
I had signed up to travel to Kenya to teach the arts to kids in the slums of Kibera. I was going to bring the joy of dance, inspiration, and a kick-ball-change to these impoverished kids. …
Sometimes the best person to heed is yourself
Sometimes you know something in your bones. Your brain may try to convince you otherwise, but your heart remains undeterred. No matter how many naysayers there may be or obstacles there might be in your way, you know this. Whatever it is.
So did the lead character in the 2016 Disney film Moana. You would think that a children’s movie would advocate for young people to obey their parents, but this one does not.
When Moana’s father, the chief of the Polynesian island Motunui, forbids her to sail past their reef, she does not follow the rules. Because she knew something in her gut — she was meant to be a sea voyager. …
LinkedIn, positive mantras, and diplomatic mindsets
As always, thank you to our writers for sharing their exceptional work with The Innovation this week. We have chosen seven articles from this week’s submissions that we would like to highlight and celebrate. We encourage you to show our writers some highlight, clap, and comment love and we hope you have an inspired week.
Can We Learn to Be Happy at Difficult Times? — Begüm Erol
We’re born with pure consciousness like a blank page. But as we grow up we’re shaped by our surroundings and how people around us live their life: expanded or small.
This leaves us with lots of influences from others, good or bad. …
Cultivating success in the long-term
Jerry Seinfeld is well-known for not “breaking the chain.” He writes at least one joke per day. Always. Every day. He attributes a portion of his success to his ability to string together days, months, even years of consecutive days where he has written a joke.
One of Seinfeld’s protogés, Brad Issac says, “He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker. …
Tips from a therapist for responding to any exchange with wisdom and love
Most of us are pretty adept at dealing with our own emotions. We take a deep breath, we journal, we distract ourselves, or we speak our minds to another person. The difficult thing about our interactions with others is that we don’t have a lot of control over other people’s actions or emotions. When another person is angry or sad, we can’t just say, “Don’t be sad.” It doesn’t work that way.
To better understand how to interact with others who are expressing strong emotions, I interviewed Los Angeles-based licensed marriage and family psychotherapist Tracy Santomarco to try to gain some insight. First of all, Ms. …
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