Everything

The Power of Your Language: 5 Tips for Talking to Children about Conflicts

by Carrie in Everything, Parents/Educators

When it comes to helping our children or students navigate conflict, our language is so important. Even when you’re not aware of it, children will often pick up on your energy and mirror it. A conflict can easily escalate or de-escalate based on the language a helping adult uses.

When you bring awareness to your language, learn and practice key communication skills, and intentionally choose language that empowers your child, you’ll completely transform the way your child experiences and navigates conflict.

Here are five tips to make your communication with children more positively impactful and empowering, even in the most difficult and painful moments.

Saying Yes to Your Pain

by Carrie in Breakups, Everything, Relationships, Transitions

This is an article for grownups—but it begins with a little story about children.

At the beginning of my first career, when I was a new teacher, I thought it was my job to fix the problems my students brought to me.

If I couldn’t solve the problem, I thought, it meant I was failing. Failing the kids, failing their parents, failing myself.

No pressure, right?!

Embracing the Green-Eyed Monster: How to Use Jealousy as a Diagnostic Tool

by Carrie in Breakups, Career Change and Fulfillment, Everything, Happiness, Relationships

If you are in a relationship, and jealous of that hilarious (and hot! Why does s/he have to be so hot!?) person your partner is talking to…

or if you are single, but feel jealous of those incredibly confident, gorgeous, and put-together people around you…

or if you feel like you’re going crazy with jealousy over someone your ex is dating…

or if you’re starting to think nasty thoughts about that rockstar at work who everyone just loves!…

First of all, that is totally, completely, absolutely normal.

Whether or not they show it outwardly, just about everyone feels jealous at one time or another.

But I know…it sucks.

6 Toxic Breakup Thoughts to Call Bullsh*t On

by Carrie in Breakups, Everything, Happiness, Relationships, Transitions

While your heart is aching, your head is racing.

During a breakup, the same old thoughts tend to run through our heads on a spin cycle.

These thoughts are totally normal and downright predictable in the wake of a breakup, but they can become toxic if they’re allowed to spin too long, and they deliver a relentless diet of guilt, sadness, and regret.

When I work with clients at “breakup ground zero,” I hear these thoughts emerge again and again. If your thoughts are holding you back from moving on, it’s time to stare them in the face and call them what they are: total BS.

Here are some of the most common and compelling toxic breakup thoughts, along with the reasons why it’s time to kick them to the curb.

Last Things First: One Quick Tip That Can Totally Transform Your Productivity (and Your Mood)

by Carrie in Everything, Happiness, Procrastination & Productivity

“Ugh!”

You know that feeling?

The feeling of having a task hanging over you all day? That one to-do that you keep bumping into in your brain—until you do it?

Maybe it’s that tricky email that you need to write…that phone call you’re nervous about making…that pesky errand you don’t want to run.

Now—approximately how many times throughout the day do you imagine doing that task, think, “Ugh!” and move on to something else…only to have it pop up again in your mind?

Taste What IS There: 3 Questions to Ask Yourself When All You’re Seeing Is Lack

by Carrie in Career Change and Fulfillment, Everything, Happiness, Relationships, Transitions

If you read my last post, you know that my success with my 30-day blogging challenge left me raring to go on the next one!

As I poured my morning coffee the day after completing my first challenge, an idea for my next challenge popped into my head: to drink my coffee and tea without sugar for the next 30 days.

The idea wasn’t to cut sugar out of my diet entirely.

Ohhhhh, no!

It was just that for months, I’d been thinking about wanting to cut back on this easy-to-overlook addition to my sugar intake. (This girl likes a LOT of sugar in her coffee.) When I’d tried to have less sugar before, I always wanted more—my regular amount—so I decided that a cold-turkey 30 days would be another approach that would, by removing all of the gray area, force-adjust me.

Plus, I wanted to see just how powerful a 30-day challenge could be. On the heels of my first 30-day success, I decided to go for it.

Little Steps, Big Changes: Reboot Your New Year’s Resolution with a 30-Day Challenge

by Carrie in Career Change and Fulfillment, Everything, Happiness, Procrastination & Productivity, Relationships, Transitions

Did you make big, audacious New Year’s Resolutions this year?

First, congratulations on taking the time to self-reflect and commit to a change!

Now—are you overwhelmed, disillusioned, or discouraged yet? If so, you’re in good company.

Mid-January is a time when that fresh resolve that This is the year! starts to flag for many people, as we jump back into all of the responsibilities and to-dos and habits that are still waiting right where we left them at then end of December.

Interview: From Software Programming to Public Policy

by Carrie in Career Change and Fulfillment, Everything, Happiness, Interview, Transitions

“You can quit your job and do something else…one is not as locked in as one thinks.”

Matt tells the story of the morning carpool ride that set him on the path to a total career change. “I got to work, and went up into my office, and sat down at my desk, and said, ‘So what am I doing?’”