The HR Stuff Worth Knowing Before You Need It.

I read this social media post recently: “This morning I was working on something, and made an interesting metaphorical observation. The cutting discs used on a rotary tool are very brittle. You can break them with your fingers. However, mounted on a spindle and spun at thousands of RPM, those same fragile discs can cut…

“Boundaries” have become a buzzword these days, but I believe it’s because many of us have problems establishing and keeping them, which continues to cause problems in our personal and professional life. I usually comment on a single quote, but this time I’ll be pulling from several that flow with my thought process on the…

This statement caught my attention and expressed my thoughts very succinctly: Someone who drowns in 7 feet of water is just as dead as someone who drowns in 20 feet of water. Stop comparing traumas, stop belittling your or anyone else’s trauma because it wasn’t “as bad” as someone else’s. This isn’t a competition, we…

In the past several months, I’ve been in recovery, having had everything in my life metaphorically on fire. In these difficult times, I had been speaking with my counselor, when she told me, “Sometimes, you don’t know anything is wrong until everything is on fire.”– Heather Brummer This statement hit me hard as I recalled the…

Another Life Lesson coming your way: Drink lots of water I learned this from a continuing ed class – kids get to playing, enjoying themselves, forget to drink, and it causes chemical imbalances in the body, all the way to the brain level. They act out not (only) because they’re little terrors, but something is…

I recently was a guest on a podcast series with Ethan Nash of Nash Consulting, a business and management consulting group in consulting who do awesome work in equipping leaders, engaging employees, and improving organizations (you can see why I connect with them, right?). We had a blast talking about Personalities in the Workplace –…

This week’s life lesson is: When you hurt someone, say you’re sorry and give them a hug This lesson usually came after the sharing or biting incidents. We would sit both parties down, admonish who ever needed to be admonished, and then encourage this interaction. I was constantly surprised at how willing the kids were…

I have to say that this is one of my favorite life lessons: After lunch, change your pants and take a nap The ritual after lunch was changing diapers and getting everyone went down for a nap. My fellow teachers and I had perfected a routine from Ben, who fell asleep in his food, to…

Lately, I’ve been collecting fascinating and intriguing Japanese terms. When my husband and I were dating, we talked about our tsundoku habit (buying books and not reading them; letting books pile up unread on shelves or floors or nightstands). One of my colleagues is really jiving the ikagai philosophy (the concept that combines the terms “iki”, meaning…

Continuing on with Life Lessons from the Playground, this week, we are talking about: Look forward if you’re walking forward I always laughed at this one. We’d be walking down the hall and Isaac would inevitably have his head turned behind him with his body moving forward and bump into the other kids. Enter the…