When you stop doing the wrong things, you give the right things a chance to catch up with you.

I met a friend at a local coffee shop this morning.  She brought her work laptop along so she could show me some of her latest digital art designs.  As we chatted and scrolled through her artwork, the laptop suddenly started making an unhealthy buzzing noise, then the screen flickered on and off and finally cut off completely.  And as we both stared at one another in disbelief, the funky aroma of fried computer circuits filled our nostrils.

I quickly grabbed the laptop off the counter to inspect it and the problem instantly revealed itself.  The bottom of the laptop was [Read more…]

by Krista, creator of A Life in Progress

“I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.”
― S.E. Hinton

Most mornings I wake up drippy with gratitude and delight for this imperfect and beautiful life of mine. I can hardly believe how fortunate I am to connect with women around the world, have space to putter and read, a family to love, and opportunity to use my gifts to encourage and teach on a daily basis.

But not that long ago I lived stuck. Afraid to write, to try new things, to take a risk.

I was productive and busy, yet I wasn’t showing up fully to life nor doing my deepest work in the world. This was in large part because I [Read more…]

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
―Mae West

This morning a close neighborhood friend, Alison, passed away far too early.  While Angel and I have spent most of the day grieving, I’ve also spent this past hour thinking about the fact that our lives are often much shorter than we expect, and that we need to do some pretty darn hard things to maximize our very limited time.  Alison strongly believed in doing the hard yet necessary things in life—we talked about this topic on several occasions, and she never backed down from a challenge.  So today, I want to reflect on this with you.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you absolutely need to do hard things to be happy in the long run.  Because the hard things ultimately build you up and change your life.  They make the difference between [Read more…]

by Dr. Samantha Brody, author of Overcoming Overwhelm

“Be the type of person whose actions, words, and values always agree with one another.”
—Marc & Angel

I have been a fan of Marc & Angel and their work for ages.  In the summer of 2016 I found out they would be teaching a workshop in my hometown of Portland, Oregon at the World Domination Summit (a large-scale conference for creative types)… and I was too!  I would finally get to see them live.  But then when I went to get my ticket to their workshop it turned out that their workshop was scheduled not only on the same day as mine, but at the exact same time!  Thwarted!

So, when they invited me to present a workshop this year at Think Better, Live Better 2019, it was a big ol’ YES!  We talked through what topics would be the most helpful for the community and decided on [Read more…]

It’s one thing to say, “I want to get in shape in the next 12 months,” or “I’m going to write my first book in 2019!”  But it’s another thing entirely to actually achieve potentially life-changing goals like these.

The best way to actually achieve these kinds of goals, we’ve found, is to build small daily rituals that you’ll practice every single day (or at least every day you’re physically able to).

A small daily ritual is a practice you regard as special, an activity not to be taken lightly, that you prioritize and set apart from the rest of your routine.  It’s something you willingly surrender yourself to, not allowing yourself to reject the parts of it you dislike, but instead pushing forward and committing to the full experience for a short time each day.  And of course, the small bits of progress you make each day add up to something big, and ultimately change the trajectory of your life.

An example might be a 10-minute daily writing ritual, where you decide to [Read more…]