coaching for clarity and courage
The New York times ran a really interesting article by a therapist last week. He argued that therapists (and, I would extrapolate, American culture) encourage people to turn their blame inwards. To focus on their own ability to keep up […]
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I’ve been coaching and mentoring international development people for a while now. I wrote one of the first international development blogs, Blood and Milk, and it brought a lot of people to me who had really interesting questions. It was […]
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Jean Mercer runs a blog called Childmyths. It is a quixotic, one-woman effort devoted to providing evidence-based data on child development. In her own words, “The blog focuses on parsing mistaken beliefs that can influence people’s decisions about childrearing– for […]
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1. We should talk about blood more. This WhyDev post just reminded me that the taboo on discussing menstruation is not merely silly and annoying; it actively harms girls. Some girls think that menstrual pain was a sign that they were […]
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Seriously, it is. The People of Color in European Art History blog is fighting racism using its curator’s skills – the ability to discuss art history and find historical artwork for display. It is almost single-handedly disproving the popular idea that […]
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Everyone who works in health systems knows that if you design your system around exceptional people, it won’t work. You can’t assume that people will be brave, wise, or unerring. You need to assume that people will be ordinary. Sometimes […]
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This, I suppose, falls into the category of something brave to do. Succeeding at it will certainly make you more brave. These are two super-simple scripts for negotiating salary when you are offered a job. This is 101-level stuff, for […]
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One constant of international development work is the report. So many reports, analyses, briefers, and reviews. And every one of those documents has to go through multiple rounds of comments and revisions. Early on, I noticed that sometimes the comments […]
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Ibtihaj Muhammad is the seventh-best fencer in the world. So, to be fair, maybe she is brave because she can just run you through with a sword if you annoy her. But someone did annoy her recently, and she handled […]
Read More »First, let me tell you that if you joined Peace Corps you are already incredibly brave. Moving to an unknown place to live in poverty just for the chance to help people. Brave as hell. For real. But maybe you […]
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If you’re like most of the people I know, you’re desperately worried and afraid. And you feel helpless. What the hell does any individual person do about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? I’ll start with what not to do. Stay off […]
I refuse to live in fear forever is the kind of thing you say when your life has been so comfortable you’ve never had to look at the world straight on In my own community I keep hearing people say, […]
A lot of American systems were one big shock away from disaster and this is that disaster 1. A lot of American systems were one big shock away from disaster and this is that disaster. Healthcare, but also public education, […]