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
I sang a song for my daughter while she laid in her crib. It’s a sweet song about all kinds of people asking the listener to stop making fun of them. I really got into it and was bellowing out the chorus – “Don’t laugh at meeeeeeeeee…”
She start… Read more...
On the plane ride home from the east coast, I sat next to a guitarist in a pretty well-known jam band. He’s engaged to be married, has played all the big venues in the Bay Area, loves chocolate wafer cookies (“the most underrated snack”), always travels with his… Read more...
School drop-off was hard today. My little pre-schooler was having a mini panic attack on the way to the reading room. She did that jagged breathing and crying thing that kids do and she wouldn’t let go when I hugged her goodbye. I swear I could feel her anxiety passing out … Read more...
Raise your hand if you have too much on your plate.
Okay, time to delegate. The first step is figuring out what to unload. We all usually make it to this step and then get stuck. We know what we want to get rid of but we keep holding onto it and then perseverate on why we’re… Read more...
“I’m sorry.”
This is something you’ll never hear on a debate stage or in a board room. We’ve cast it out as a sign of weakness when, indeed, it’s the opposite.
People who apologize are showing they are courageous and intelligent because they̵… Read more...
With all the rain, I let my lawn get out of hand. It’s up to my hips. Some weeds are as thick as an index finger. There’s this vicious cycle that keeps me from mowing it: weekdays are hard because I have to work and then I want to relax. And my weekends, riddled with … Read more...
Oftentimes we have to see all other possibilities before we accept what we have.
It happens a lot. I will work with a client to generate alternative career ideas. We’ll talk for a few hours, we’ll do assessments to come up with lists of hundreds of job possibilities, W… Read more...
There is a metaphor people use to illustrate the non-stop action and exhilaration of starting up and running a venture: it’s like building a race car while you’re driving it down the freeway.
A client of mine one-upped this image and likened entrepreneurship to jumping… Read more...
I’ve yet to be invited to give a commencement speech to a graduating class… but if I did I’d give this advice, above all:
Set aside 4 hours a week that you will, under no circumstances, overwrite with some other activity, even work, even play, even your very favo… Read more...
I’m tired of fighting. I wish I didn’t have to fight.
I wish I could live in my little corner of the world and create love and books and resumes and be a dad and a husband and a neighbor and nothing else. I don’t want much but I’ve come to notice that so ma… Read more...