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
When I was young and complaining about having nothing to do, my mom would tell me, “Hush up. Your Great Gramma Lena started bowling in her 80s.”
My youthful brain would think to myself: “What’s that got to do with anything?”
My mom, as if hearing my th… Read more...
I want to share a moment I often think of, but never openly talk about.
I can’t remember her face or her clothes, but I remember her voice and the delicate hand on my knee as I sat cross-legged next to her on my friend’s living room floor.
I was in my early 20s, employe… Read more...
Scene: Dusk. Me, outside washing my car in the driveway, which crosses completely across the sidewalk. A passerby approaches.
—–
THE WAY IT COULD HAVE GONE…
Passerby: Rude! I have a disability, you know.
Me: Easy, lady. I’m just washing my car.
Passerby: Well,… Read more...
One of my best friends from high school once pointed out how I like to think about my thoughts.
He’s right. I like to think about my memories too. And in both cases, I often misinterpret and misremember. I’m often wrong.
But, as it turns out, that’s not a bad thin… Read more...
We tend to strive for the other side of our achievements.
A clean in-box
An empty desk
The celebration after the speech
The exhale after the test
But then, we get there, to the other side, and after the euphoria subsides, we tend to resent the emptiness and crave the clutter again.
In… Read more...
I really hate this term.
I prefer a different phrase for something so inevitable that happens to all of us at the same point in our timelines.
Doesn’t it make sense that halfway through our lives we’re going to self-evaluate?
Just because we take the time to recognize th… Read more...
Ironically, it’s the absence of words on a page that makes people read the words.
It’s the white space between these lines that makes you want to read the next one.
Designers call this “visual rest.”
We could stand to do this more in conversation:
add
a
little
wh… Read more...
I founded my company on optimism. It’s who I am.
But even the BrightSide gets dark now and then.
And when it does, I try my best to welcome the darkness. It’s coming whether you want it to or not. There’s much to discover in the darkness.
But it’s not a place to spend a … Read more...
Ours is a species driven toward accomplishment. We often hinge good-feeling on getting things done, we push relaxation to come after something else. The beer tastes better after mowing the lawn. (Makes me want to mow the lawn lol).
This is a good way to live: a productive way to l… Read more...
“Hey, just checking in. How you doing?”
Man.
So few words, so much impact.
So much love around you in an instant.
Whether you’re good or not so good, you feel seen, remembered, and held.
And if you haven’t gotten one of these sweet sweet checkins in a while, th… Read more...