Margie’s Insights & Interviews
Welcome to Margie’s blog where she shares personal stories, interviews, tools and more for living bravely.
“Love Is As Love Does”: Spread a little this Valentines!
Real love is a verb. Poetic words of love are nice, but real love is about doing things that make others feel loved – it takes courage, it takes compassion, it requires generosity. So as you go about your day today, I invite you to think about what you could do differently to make those you interact with feel more valued, more appreciated, more acknowledged… more loved in some way, large or small.
Are you charting a course that inspires you? If not, why not? If not now, then when?
If you don’t know where you want to go, then it’s highly likely you will end up in a place you don’t want to be. Of course you can’t change your current circumstances overnight, but you can change your direction. It starts by deciding what you want, and just as importantly, what you don’t want.
Are you stuck in default mode? Why flexibility is so crucial in the game of life
We all have our default style and approach of getting things done, solving problems and adapting to new circumstances. Responding with flexibility and agility in our rapidly changing world requires an ongoing trade-off between your naturally preferred way of responding to a challenge and a way that isn’t as easy or comfortable. For every strength you possess, there’s an opposite strength or trait that balances it out. But if you always approach your problems and challenges in the same default way, you won’t always approach them in the best way.” Sometimes you will respond to them outright ineffectively. Agility and flexibility is the name of the game.
Wishing You A Wholehearted New Year!
Of course I also want you to have a happy year ahead also. But we human beings live along a spectrum of emotions as diverse as all the shades in a rainbow. To wish only to feel ‘happy’ would be to deprive us of the full human experience, living only on a very superficial level, and unable to infuse the tapestry of our lives with the contrasts of human experience that make it truly meaningful. – See more at: https://margiewarrell.com/?p=7812&preview=true#sthash.4yG4VKvn.dpuf
What Will You Focus On In 2014?
We live in an age of uber distraction. In fact I believe that after fear, it’s a lack of focus that gets in the way of people accomplishing what they are capable of over the course of a day, a week, a year or a whole lifetime. I mean, just imagine what you could do if you weren’t constantly distracted from the task at hand? A lot!!
Festive Family Feuds: Ten Ways To Stay Merry When Relatives Push Your Buttons
Relatives push our buttons because they created our buttons. So while you may love them, but you might not always like them, and expecting that you should always get along like the Waltons can set you up for extra anguish. What matters more than anything else is not how they behave, but how you respond. And while hurts and animosities can run very deep, if you’re willing to do the work, you can always learn to respond in constructive ways.
Feeling more frazzled than festive? Time to unplug & play!
While I realise you may have very different plans over the festive season, I hope you will also make time to stop all your busy-ness, turn off your gadgets and have some genuine ‘play time.’ It’s so easy to get so caught up in the seriousness of life that we forget to simply have fun. Yet unleashing our ‘inner child,’ letting our hair down and just having fun is such an important part of living well.
Q&A with Margie: Acting with courage in an increasingly busy & cautious world.
I was recently interviewed for an article in a magazine via email. I know my answers will be edited down to fit their word count but thought you might enjoy reading through this short Q&A about courage in an increasingly time-poor world. How do you define...
Nelson Mandela: His Life Was His Message
As the world mourns the passing of Nelson Mandela and honors the extraordinary legacy of his extraordinary life, the message that it shared – of courage, resilience, forgiveness and commitment to a cause bigger than oneself – has no less relevance for each of us today than it had during the height of the apartheid era.
Are Women More Emotionally Intelligent Than Men?
While research has found that women have an edge over men when it comes to expressing their emotions and perceiving the emotions in those around them, men are better at compartmentalizing emotions so an upset in one area doesn’t spill over into other areas. However, regardless of your gender or how well you have managed your emotions in the past, the good news is that you are never too old (or too young) to build your emotional intelligence. In fact, it’s one of the few things that actually improves with age!
Personal Responsibility: Time to look in the mirror?
We live in an era of entitlement, blame and finger pointing. Too few people are willing to take responsibility for the state of their lives, too many are happy to lay it at the feet of others. Only when you own your power to affect change, can you ever create the life you truly want. It begins by taking a good hard look in the mirror and owning how your choices have shaped your reality.
Avoiding a difficult conversation? 7 keys to speaking up about things that weigh you down
The quality of our relationships is built on the quality of the conversations we have in them. Too often though we play safe and avoid the possibility of an awkward conversation — too raw, too difficult, too sensitive, too risky, too uncomfortable, too much effort. As a result we stick with a status quo we aren’t really happy about. Sometimes for decades. And all because we’re afraid. But at what cost? Here are 7 keys to speaking up about the issues that are weighing you down and holding you back.
Embrace uncertainty. It lines your path to security.
Putting off changes and playing it safe doesn’t make you more secure, it makes you less so. Every worthwhile endeavour involves taking a plunge into an unknown and uncertain future. There is no guarantee that a change you will make or a chance you will take will result in the outcome that you want. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either delusional or lying. But one thing is guaranteed: not making changes, not taking chances and sticking with the status quo is not going to make you happier in the long term. More likely it will only make you less happy, and more frustrated or resentful, than you are right now.
Twenty years married. Keepin’ love alive over the long haul!
Marriage doesn’t have to be all hard work, but unless you are committed to working at your marriage, it’s unlikely to last the long haul (or at least be one you enjoy being in.) As I reflect on the last twenty years of married life, here are seven ways to help keep love alive and your marriage strong.
Holding a grudge? How to let it go (for your own sake!)
Holding a grudge can be self-satisfying, but it always hurts us far more than the person we’re holding it against. At risk of sounding like a preacher, you must learnt to forgive. Doing so isn’t about them; it’s about you. It’s about deciding that you no longer want to carry negative emotions from an event in your past forward in to your future. You’ll take the learning, but you’ll leave the resentment behind.
What’s Your Everest? Diana Nyad’s Message: NEVER GIVE UP
“I got three messages,” said Diana Nyad as she crawled out of the water in Key West after her epic swim from Cuba. “One is, we should never give up. Two is, you’re never too old to chase your dreams. Three is, it looks like a solitary sport, but it’s a team.” It’s a message that holds wisdom for us all, particularly those of us who often think we’re too old from pursuing dreams that seem audaciously big.
Need to toot your horn? Why self promotion isn’t conceited but crucial!
The old adage “It’s not what you know, but who you know” no longer holds true. Nowadays, it’s not what you know, nor who you know – it’s who knows what you know.” Tooting your horn is about strategically building your ‘personal brand’ to ensure that those who can help you accomplish more in your career, know not just who you are, but the value you have (and want) to contribute. Failing to toot your horn – with the right people, in the right way, and at the right time – doesn’t serve anyone.
What would you do if you were being courageous? The question that’s inspired my last 10 years
I realized this morning that I cannot let this month slip by without acknowledging the milestone that it represents. You see it was ten years ago, in August 2003, while I was living in Coppell (Dallas) Texas, when I officially began my second career and hung out the shingle out as an “executive life coach.”
It was a month before the phone rang. Two months before I had my first client.
BUSY-BUSY-BUSY… For the sake of what? Why there’s more to life than increasing its speed
I have to confess, I excel at going fast. I’m not so good at slowing down (except from exhaustion at day’s end). In fact, I find sitting still and being silent much harder than running around like a blue-ass fly. But as I have to remind myself time and time again, How does all my busy ‘doing’ undermine who I am ‘being’? If in my haste to pack as much as I can into a day I am not present to my gorgeous kids, or not really listening to my husband as he shares his day, then it comes back to the question “Busy for the sake of what?”
Lead From Within: 7 Acts Of Courage For Career Women
While speaking at a conference in Shanghai recently, I got to meet many women from around the globe. Smart women. Hard-working women. Women aspiring to do more, be more and lead more. Women who also sometimes doubt whether they can.
BUT HERE’S THE DEAL: We women cannot achieve what we’re capable of doing by staying safe in our comfort zone. The common thread that binds the most powerful women is their willingness to take risks, to speak up and to take action in the presence of doubt and uncertainty, rather than stick to a safer path.
