by Nancy Colasurdo on April 16, 2012
So when confusion or pain seems to tighten what is possible, when sadness or frustration shrinks your sense of well-being, when worry or fear agitates the peace right out of you, try lending your attention to the nearest thing … Watch how the one shell you brought back three years ago from the sea reveals itself, at last, as a face that is telling you how to continue. Give your full attention over to the nearest patch of life — to how an apple peels and juices — and after a while each thing attended will reveal yet another way back to the center.
–Mark Nepo in The Book of Awakening
by Nancy Colasurdo on April 13, 2012
One of my favorite things about training to be a life coach was the concentration on learning to be a better listener. It helped make me a stronger coach, but also interviewer and writer, not to mention how it has brought richness to my personal relationships. A recent personal trainer incident brought this all to mind.
Today’s Game Plan: How to Put Those Ears to Use in the Workplace
by Nancy Colasurdo on April 11, 2012
by Nancy Colasurdo on April 4, 2012
After attending Oprah’s Lifeclass with Tony Robbins at Radio City Music Hall on Monday night, I was particularly struck by a running theme that had begun the week before with Iyanla Vanzant — story. What’s the story you keep telling yourself is true? The one that’s so rote you blurt it out when you introduce yourself as if it’s part of your DNA?
Perhaps it’s time to change it.
Today’s Game Plan: Can You Divorce Your Story?
by Nancy Colasurdo on March 31, 2012
Being in the middle of all kinds of life situations that make me think and think some more the last six weeks or so, it felt kind of divine to do a pair of interviews for a column about care giving. Nurse Next Door co-Founder John DeHart and franchise partner Carol Lange were a delight to speak with, especially at a time when I am acutely aware of life’s fragility.
The latest Game Plan: Creating a Culture for Care Giving
by Nancy Colasurdo on March 28, 2012
It’s very gratifying to receive meaningful feedback like this and I feel compelled to share. These are in response to today’s Game Plan column – Is Your Mind Small, Average or Great? – and came to me via email:
Your average, small, or great mind article was great. Very well thought. It couldn’t have been said better. The Eleanor Roosevelt quote was excellent. Thank you for reminding me we are all human beings.
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Loved your coloumn,” Is Your Mind Small, Average or Great?” We need more of this kind of discourse in the public eye. Unfortunately, the media and the politicians keep attempting to focus our direction on the small. Becoming a better person requires us to constantly strive to improve from small. And we all need to work together to inspire and encourage one another in becoming those better humans. Thanks for trying to change the focus.
by Nancy Colasurdo on March 28, 2012
An Eleanor Roosevelt quote someone posted on Facebook captured my attention recently. Then a series of social media posts about Dick Cheney’s heart transplant made me uneasy. Merge the two and add in a recent Snooki moment at the laundromat and a column was born.
Today’s Game Plan: Is Your Mind Small, Average or Great?
by Nancy Colasurdo on March 23, 2012
I don’t often get personal in my Game Plan columns, but this week I learned a valuable lesson from a doctor visit regarding my injured knee and felt compelled to share. I write about fear a lot and it’s because I live a life — blessedly — where I find myself coming up against it pretty frequently.
Today’s Game Plan: Stalled in Fear, How to Move Off Life’s Sidelines
by Nancy Colasurdo on March 21, 2012
A little football-throwing incident sent me down a path and here’s what poured out. That’s the best way I can explain how this column came about. My mind went to the comments of Joseph Clementi — whose son, Tyler, was a Rutgers student who committed suicide — and how they touchingly focused on tolerance and speaking up.
Today’s Game Plan: Do You Speak Up Enough?
by Nancy Colasurdo on March 17, 2012
Other than the Irish friends I so treasure in my life, there is nothing that warms my heart from the land of green more than a bit of James Joyce. Some favorite quotes from Ulysses on this St. Patrick’s Day:
Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.
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The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant’s heart on the hillside. For them the earth is not an exploitable ground but the living mother.
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A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
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And I can’t resist one nod to romance, Joyce’s description of a woman’s scent:
It’s like a fine fine veil or web they have all over the skin, fine like what do you call it gossamer, and they’re always spinning it out of them, fine as anything, like rainbow colours without knowing it. Clings to everything she takes off.
