My Dad has a rather wild imagination. When I was a kid, he used to make up bedtime stories to tell me - about a “fairy god leg” that floated around granting wishes.

Memorable. I’ll grant you that.

Memorable is what you want when you want to get a message to “stick”. So, when I was preparing a speech to present at a recent conference, I just couldn’t help myself. The topic was something that’s been a recent theme in my own life: uncertainty. My Dad and I had been talking about “going with the flow” - and that’s when he mentioned a dream he’d had.

I should have known better than to ask.

He dreamed about a juicy, perfectly browned, succulent pot roast - you know the kind that just flakes apart? So tender, you don’t even need to cut? Only he was the pot roast. And he was floating down a stream.

Yup.

And in the dream, when he struggled against the current - fought where it was trying to take him - you...

When I was a young television anchor working in a small market in Northern Michigan, a well known New York talent agency offered me “representation”.  And no, this is not a humble-brag, so keep reading… (I’ll also explain the picture above at the very end.)

I was actually pretty surprised. What were they doing trolling around tiny towns’ tv stations? “Looking for talent we can grow into larger markets” was the answer.

The thing was, I wasn’t interested. Not then, at least. I knew I still had skills to hone and frankly loved living in the area (if you haven’t been to Traverse City, Michigan, you are missing out on some of the most beautiful real estate in the United States).

So, I asked the agent “Why would I want to give a cut of my salary to someone who really can’t help me right now?”.

He had a ready answer: when it came time to renew my contract, he could negotiate a better deal than I would have...

The Dictionary.com definition of confidence is:

“1. full trust; belief in the powers, trustworthiness, or reliability of a person or thing:

We have every confidence in their ability to succeed.

2. belief in oneself and one's powers or abilities; self-confidence; self-reliance; assurance:

His lack of confidence defeated him.”

Note how the definition of confidence includes the danger of not having it: defeat in the face of challenge.

To be able to “go confidently in the direction of your dreams” as  Henry David Thoreau said, you need to have a clear idea of what makes you strong and the strength of mind to overcome internal and external obstacles that undermine confidence: your own fears and  insecurities and external criticism and challenges. 

Step One: Own Your Strength

When you can see and embrace your innate talents, and the skills you’ve learned - through life experience as well as what you’ve learned in the classroom - you...

Doubting our abilities can stop us in our tracks. We can all probably pinpoint a time when we've given up on something, out of fear, and ended up missing out. This can be especially debilitating for women.

Co-authors of the book, The Confidence Gap, The Science and Art of Self-Assurance – What Women Should Know, Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, revealed that  confidence struggles particularly damage women’s careers.

A chronic lack of confidence among women leads them continually to underestimate their abilities, fail to put themselves forward for promotion, and predict they won’t perform well when faced with challenges - far more so than their male counterparts.

In one example, a study by Hewlett-Packard found women only considered going for that promotion when they were 100% confident they fulfilled all job requirements. Men were happy to apply with only 60% of the requirements fulfilled.

Even the expected income of graduate students differed, with women...

We are wired to judge a book by its cover. First impressions stick.

A University of York study found that we sift through available information as quickly as .033 seconds of seeing another person’s face,  making on-the-spot evaluations of a mind-boggling range of really important things like their trustworthiness, status and attractiveness.

Think about the “swipe right” Tinder generation, and you know this makes sense. We may live in a selfie-saturated culture, but it’s based on human nature.

And changing first impressions takes real time and effort.

Most research shows you need to have 4-7 interactions for up to 40 minutes, in different contexts, to recalibrate what you think of another person - including giving a person another chance if he or she didn’t leave a positive impression at first glance.

That’s time and effort that many of us, from potential employers to potential mates, don’t often have to invest.

So, how do you make a...

 
Life in today's world is increasingly fragmented. We race from one thing to the next, hardly able to catch our breath, let alone allow ourselves time to really think about the big picture stuff: what we are doing, where we are going, and why we're running in the first place. 

Inevitably something starts to niggle. And that niggle gets harder to ignore.

In quiet moments, when we have a chance to stop all the busy-ness and let our mind wander, important messages can finally filter through.

We finally see what's floating around in that bubble over our heads: the unexpressed feeling, the secret dream we've never had the courage to give voice to and explore.

The chellenge is, most people don't have a clue where to start.

Sometimes we are forced into awareness: we get sick, get fired or have a relationship fall apart.  For those who don't get stuck in the almost inevitable shock or fear, this is an...

Screamed at, chased and threatened, I’ve been the target of anger, shock and rage - even an angry mob on occasion.

As a news reporter, you find yourself in some very volatile situations, some dangerous.  Situations that demand you summon your courage to defuse, before emotion gives way to physical reaction.

I was always able to carefully confront and de-escalate the frenzy and fury. But sometimes I’d leave shaking!

Today, I’m no longer a news reporter, and sometimes I wonder how I EVER ended up as one. As a child, I was shy to the extreme, and so afraid to speak up that I made an irresistible target for bullies.  I remember, at age 7, being circled by a group of boys taunting me and throwing things.  I stood there silent and frozen, terrified of direct confrontation.

How do you push past that paralyzing fear? Step by Baby Step.

My journey started with moving to new schools, on to new states and then, and then to new countries (from England to...

I remember about 10 years ago sitting in a hairdresser’s chair with foils sticking out around my head, looking as if I’d stuck my finger in an electric socket. 

My hairdresser had asked me about my career as a television anchor (oh so glamorous at that particular moment) wondering if I would always want to work in television. I remembered saying:

“No. I really want to help women reinvent: show them ways to get unstuck and move toward their dreams which they keep putting on the back burner. I want to help them get what they really want and deserve in their lives.”

At the time I said this, I was feeling pretty stuck myself. I was on a treadmill of doing nightly news that seemed increasingly superficial and seeing my family less and less often. I desperately needed to reinvent my life.

A half a world away, and what seems like a lifetime since that day at the hairdresser's, I finally realized that I'd reached...