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March 4th is THE Best Day of the Year

https://vimeo.com/394785832 March 4th – a day dedicated to working towards your goals! March 4th is the single best day of the year! It’s grammatically entertaining, it’s hopeful, and it’s a perfect time to reboot your year. I hope you’ll come celebrate it and march forth with me. ~Laura Related Posts Let’s Call it What it

Welcome & Happy Leap Day!

https://vimeo.com/394660249 Leap day only comes around every 4 years! Celebrate it! Hi and Happy Leap Day! Welcome to the the new site for A Life of Character. I’m excited about all that’s happening here – take a look around. The next big thing we’re up to is the March Forth Challenge – more to follow

Hearing and using negative feedback

Steps that can help you make the most of what you hear No one likes to hear that they are performing poorly. Being either praised or left alone is generally preferred over having someone describe our faults. While receiving critical or negative feedback can be a challenge and can sometimes know the wind out of

Choosing Communication Over Conflict

How to have—and move past—challenging conversations at work. “It’s not personal, it’s just business.” All business is a little personal – because people are the ones who conduct it. When you consider when most people spend more time with coworkers than they do with their families, it makes the quality of our interactions all the

Living Harmoniously With People Around You

Yup, it’s possible. Listen to the news for five minutes these days and it feels about as comfortable as getting a root canal. People are divided. Politics are messier than ever. There’s intensifying chatter about AI robots becoming sentient beings (Yikes!). Simple interactions have the tendency to go from debates to vitriolic insults in three

Mindfulness Matters

But we’re not just talking ohmmmmmm… Depending on the specifics you’re looking for, the human brain processes anywhere from 40 pieces (conscious processing) to 11 million pieces (unconscious processing) of information per second.* When you’re just trying to remember where you put your keys and make it to a meeting on time while finding your

The Grounding Ability of Character

It can be a surprising remedy for panic attacks of the spirit On a scale of one to ten, how often do you find yourself thinking the following? 1= 10% of the time—you rarely experience this 10 = 100% of the time—I’m having a panic attack right now! I am filled with anxiety and pain

Want to Live a Better Life? Be Present.

The gift of slowing down to be present and enjoy your life. Commuting isn’t my favorite thing, but I do it so infrequently that, now, it’s become more of a momentary respite from the day to day demands than a major haul from the ‘burbs to the city. So when I hopped on the train

Character = Enacted Values + Time

A summation of your thoughts and values, your character is your guide in every decision you make Truthfulness, wittiness, courage. These are three of Aristotle’s 12 virtues. I’m currently trying to write about character and put those qualities into motion for myself. From Thomas Aquinas, I’m mindful of prudence. Confucious, respect. I’m trying to use

Work-Life Balance Means Different Things to Different People

And you know what? That’s OK. Talking about “work-life balance” kind of feels like talking about a UFO. We are fairly certain it exists in some form. Maybe we’ve even gotten a glimpse of it a few times.  It’s simple in theory, but it turns out stepping away from work responsibilities to focus on other