Are you getting everything you can out of this life?
A self-less, feel-good blog about love, life, and work by career coach and existential adventurer, Cliff Flamer
We should all pause and smile when someone mentions a loved one that’s passed away.
In that moment, that loved one is alive again, as if they’ve stepped into the room with their signature style and voice, that smirk they always have, the particular cadence of their wor… Read more...
One of the great joys in life is being surprised by a loved one.
I don’t mean like a surprise party. I mean being surprised by learning something new about them, something that didn’t fit your idea of who they are.
Like when you find out about your partner had a childho… Read more...
Sometimes, gratitude isn’t so easy to come by.
If you’re having trouble finding it, here’s some advice: take a crappy vacation.
You don’t have to actually go anywhere; just plan it. Plan it in your head.
Where are you staying?
Are you inside or outside?
What ca… Read more...
I just read Catcher in the Rye again.
Funny how different you can see a book the second or third or fourth time you read it.
In high school, as a mixed-race-white-looking-class-individual-child-of-divorce-latchkey-kid, I saw Holden Caulfield as a hero: a justifiably disaffected, per… Read more...
I gain empathy for a person immediately after I get to know them. We all do. That’s how it works.
But why wait until then?
I went to a Latin Jazz/Funk show because I felt the need to move around after a particularly heavy week. We got there early to beat the crowd and get a g… Read more...
I was hard at work prepping for a school fundraiser at my house.
I had just finished calibrating the stereo and microphones. I still needed to set up the auxiliary A/V system (just in case), make blackberry rosemary syrup for the cocktails, trim back the ivy on the stoop, vacuum t… Read more...
Redemption only comes to those who are willing to gather the pain they’ve caused
and put it back inside their own body.
It is not a collaborative effort. It is not something to ask for. It is not found nestled neatly into words.
Relief from torment is in the ache.
Look nowhere … Read more...
Things are tough out there.
I’m seeing a lot of pain in people, doing more therapy than career coaching.
People are having the rug pulled out from under them, people who never thought they’d be the ones getting hit.
Layoffs to fix balance sheets.
Strikes to balance paych… Read more...
My daughter gave me a homework assignment before she fluttered off to Santa Cruz for a Girl Scout sleepover:
“I need to catch a fly for Biotech class.”
Easy enough.
Flies seem to find their way into our sunroom all the time. If one didn’t end lifeless on the window… Read more...
I’ve worked with a lot of managers and a lot of individual contributors so I know what each wants from the other.
I thought it necessary to share, particularly since what each group wants is often in opposition to the other, particularly when it comes to change.
Leaders prefe… Read more...