Carrying these extra weights around as a leader is like carrying heavy rocks in your backpack. You can keep going, but your progress will be slowed, and you’ll probably be causing your body to work in a way that isn’t healthy.

I started seeing a functional medicine doctor in the fall of 2021 when symptoms of my Rheumatoid Arthritis started showing up. As part of my intake appointment, my doctor ran a ton of blood tests… it almost felt like I was doing a blood donation! One of the outlier results was my Cortisol level.

Last weekend, I went to New York City for the day to watch Wicked on Broadway. Though it was the second time seeing the show, I love how it takes a twist I wasn’t expecting. In addition to a great show and lots of laughs, I’m always struck by the song lyrics to Defying Gravity (a snippet is in the quote section).

It’s hard to believe the first half of 2024 has come and gone. We can choose to look at this milestone as a glass half empty or one that is half full.

I’m going for the half-full view because there are so many great things on the backside of the year for me, personally and professionally.

Recently, I spent several days in Sedona, AZ, participating in a business retreat with other women entrepreneurs. The event had planned working sessions but also plenty of free space for reflection, outdoor activities, and overall well-being time. Much of the content for the sessions was anchored in mindset because it can be the fastest accelerator to success or the fastest decelerator.

We spend a lot of time making decisions each day. Last year, I identified three words to guide me in my decision-making: joy, intentional, and brave. Each day, I wrote an affirmation about how I wanted each of those words to mean for me that day. Since it served me well in 2023, I’ve continued my new tradition.

I moved to northern Delaware in June 2002 to take a new role within Accenture. It was a brand new adventure for me professionally to step into an HR leadership role for an outsourcing delivery center because my prior roles were predominantly focused on consulting teams.

How often do you deal with evaluating what’s the best decision to make? If you’re like everyone I know, this is all day long.

Some of them are more inconsequential (in the grand scheme of things) - should I work out now or later and some are big ones/life-changing, like should I terminate this person or give them another chance?

We all have our personal challenges with the idea of control.

We either like to exercise a high level of control, which brings challenges, or we don't like the idea of control and let things/people be as they want to be, which also brings challenges.

Today is the first day of my vacation in 2024. I'm excited about what we'll experience, nervous that all may not go as smoothly as we have planned (but honestly, I've planned very little of this experience), and motivated to change my day-to-day dynamics in a way that allows me to rest, restore, reflect, and generate new ideas.