Are you getting everything you can out of this life?
An insightful, feel-good blog about work, life, and the elusive balance between the two, by career counselor, award-winning resume writer, and existential adventurer, Cliff Flamer
My friend, Paul, complimented me the other day. It was hot. I had my shirt off.
“Cliff, your body is looking GOOD!”
He said it just like that, too: big emphasis on the “good” part.
And it definitely sunk in because, after that, I started eating salads again a… Read more...
You may not realize this:
When I fight, I’m fighting for you.
When I shout Black Lives Matter, it’s not because I think Black Lives are more important than White ones. It’s because I believe most of the problems in this country, problems that negatively impact you… Read more...
My daughter is picking her high school – 2 good options – and she’s tormented by it.
We all are.
I’ve made a career out of helping people make decisions. I know the exercises, I have the tactics, the methods, the rubrics.
That doesn’t make the actual de… Read more...
The Elements of Happiness are obvious.
We all know what they are:
healthy food, rest, exercise, sobriety, nature, connection, work, love, fun, self-expression.
We have the map. If we just charge after these things and do them often, we have a greater chance of being Happy. It’… Read more...
When the ones after us come along and regard what we’ve created, it will be almost mythical, indeed legendary, the story we tell them.
We will say we were there. And they will know from the look in our eyes and the tiredness in our throats that we’re telling the truth.… Read more...
A man looked out his window and saw a woman in her yard, pulling her house apart. He noticed her doing this every day, sometimes just a single brick took all afternoon. She was using a spoon.
He couldn’t stay away for very long.
“Why are you destroying your house?”… Read more...
I see you:
Standing there with the sign
Walking for miles
Shouting ’til you’re hoarse
Reading books
Watching documentaries
Calling people out
Giving yourself up
Wondering, constantly wondering, what more can I do?
You’ve acquired a new anxie… Read more...
Riots are not the problem.
In Family Therapy, the person who acts out — the cheating husband, the depressed wife, the son who threw a brick through the neighbor’s car window — this person is not to be vilified, not to be punished. Quite the opposite, actually.
If … Read more...
A global pandemic is as big as it gets.
Bigger than a tectonic shift (an earthquake only affects a city or two).
Bigger than landing on the moon. (Only a few competing nations care about that.) Bigger than a political scandal, a stock market crash, and the fall of an empire.
The who… Read more...
A friend of mine said it and we both became small:
We are a species.
Yes, like a Songbird or a grove of great Oaks.
Homo Sapiens:
Upright, even-toothed descendants of the other species that didn’t make it, one of the most pervasive, diverse, and dominant species in existence, o… Read more...