Barbara Brooks created Flamingo Strategies LLC to help clients stand up and stand out, through telling and sharing their stories of impact and purpose.
Hacking Away at Happiness is her blog.
I want to hear laughter when I crack a joke. I want to hear silence on the line and know we both are thinking. If a friend is choking on tears, I want to hear that too.
Despite the dire nature of the holiday, I found tremendous comfort, again this year, in the familiarity of the prayers and songs of the season.
Once in a while I’m lonely or cranky or scared. But I am not hollow or barren or profitless. And neither are you! So let’s be aimless together.
I probably should have written less. But to paraphrase Mark Twain, I didn’t have time to write a short blog post, so I wrote a long one instead.
We have work to do, my friends. We need to act and talk and learn and fight—all at the same time. We need to talk and act and screw up and learn some more.
As roommates, we do our subsistence tasks quietly—without eclipsing what makes a life true. Right speech. Right action. Having fun. Being real.
Why not practice each day at being a little more imperfect. We could leave the bed unmade and admit we’re just fumbling in the dark.
Until now staying home, having patience, waiting out the danger, has felt both sad and necessary. But today, I’m feeling mad than sad.
Life is an improvisational art form. Interruptions are sources of wisdom, not counterproductive distractions. They prepare us for Adulthood II.
The desire to be heard—across vast physical and emotional distance—is what makes us human. I’m desperate for connection yet afraid to go out. So it’s time to hit the road.
In the past seven weeks, two of us survived the virus. One closed a business. A mother and a father have died. We decided to wing it and say a prayer.
Some people are making lemonade right now. Others are choking on the sour. But unless we ask, unless we listen, we don’t really know who’s who.
As word gets around, week by week, more faces and more flames will fill our screens—until the glow is so hot, so bright, so fierce, that we’re transfixed.
As a kid I was labeled overly sensitive. Since the coronavirus came into my life I cry every day. Here are three really good reasons why you might do it too.
Finding tranquility won’t be easy for my 19-year-old son. But there’s a rowing machine in the basement, and maybe he’ll learn to meditate.
People pay a lot of money to cloister themselves in isolation. Depending on how we look at things—staying home can be either a punishment or a gift.
In Almost Everything: Notes on Hope, Anne Lamott wrote: The opposite of faith is not doubt. It’s certainty. Now, there’s a Baja Aha!
LIVE at The Moth Story Slam: I proposed. I paid for the ring. I flushed my birth-control pills and moved into his apartment. What could go wrong?
There are no mistakes. Only happy accidents. As a novice painter, I enjoy that idea. But could the same also be true in the rest of our lives?
Whether our habit is to blow all our dough on Manolo Blaniks, or stuff it under a mattress, we really can improve our relationship with money.
