Tag: motivation

Ultra-Humanity

I heard a new broadcaster remark this week that it’s important right now that we “do not lose faith in humanity.” It was in reference to the 11 people that were gunned down at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. It brought me back to classrooms on college campuses, and how after our lock-down drills I would worry about the…

MONASTERY

3 months living with Benedictine and Trappist monks – what could go wrong? Years back, in the early-after 9/11 era, I lived with Roman Catholic monks at Benedictine and Trappist monasteries from Canada, to South Carolina, to Massachusetts, to California. I started off the journey with a few weeks at an Ashram in Pennsylvania and finished it at a Buddhist…

Mother’s Day: On Love & Loss

When I was younger, Mother’s Day and my birthday always blurred together with their being a few days apart. For my Bat Mitzvah, our Rabbi instructed me to write my haftorah speech about how my mother had impacted my life at that early age, and to pay reverence to all mothers. In retrospect, it was fitting, as my mother played…

Hustle, Hassle, and Positivity

If you are immersed in the daily hustle—a juggling act of being your best at work, home, and with your family—it’s likely that you have learned along the way to take a lot of deep breaths, laugh often, and continually reinvigorate your passion and purpose. When it comes to hustling, being on the right path is often what keeps you…

Priorities

Most of us tend to spend our days scrambling from one event to the next, be it work, meetings, or extracurricular events. We live in a time of slotting activities in and striving to accomplish our daily tasks. Although I attempt to let daily situations dictate my priories, whether it’s work, family, or play, often, the lines blur—is it more…

Hardwork, Hustle, and Grit

In life, we tend to see the finished product—a book, a presentation, a company that is successful, a car driving along on the road, runners crossing the finish line of a race. Unless it is your book, company, creation, or race, one rarely glimpses the effort or intensity of an endeavor. As a society, we are not privy to the…

On Being Great

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. – Mark Twain I’ve noticed a trend on social media these days in which some professionals regularly publicize how many followers they have, or promote their rankings, or note why they are…

Making College Years Count

(originally published in Huffington Post) Making College Years Count Years back, a college degree, which only a subset of society pursued, was the route to employment. If you obtained a bachelor’s degree, then you were almost guaranteed a job upon graduation, and that job was typically the stepping stone to one’s career. Times have changed. During the 2017-2018 school year,…

Brooklyn Girls

(originally appeared in Huffington Post)First, it was me and my mom. We were the original Brooklyn girls. From my earliest days, my mom was my partner when it came to navigating Brooklyn and its eccentricities. She had a no-nonsense and straightforward disposition that taught me that if you didn’t speak-up for yourself, then you risked living your life on someone…