Month: July 2026

July 22, 2026

Re-Aim Your Strengths

Aim your strengths so they work for you!

Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash

I can often leverage my strengths to do well in the workplace, yet when things go wrong, I sometimes realize that I have overleveraged my strengths and gone to the shadow side. One of my top 5 strengths in the CliftonStrengths Assessment is Developer. The Developer theme helps me to manage direct reports effectively and invest in their growth. I can see where people have strong skills that will help the team and where they need to keep growing. The Developer’s strength also made me an effective educator in the classroom. When I did not pay attention to my shadow side, ‘Developer’ led me to make mistakes in my career when I leaned in too hard to the muscle I built in this area. At times, I overinvested in people who did not seem as invested in themselves.

July 2, 2026

Don’t Forget About the Joy in Parenting

Photo by Mieke Campbell on Unsplash

One of the essential pieces of parenting is joy.

One of the essential pieces of parenting that we often forget about is joy. Parents are at times overwhelmed with all the opinions, theories, research, and books that get hurled at us, and we forget about the joy of parenting. After all, what’s the point if we are not finding joy in interacting with and raising these future adults? 

I know there are hard times, times of chaos and messiness and stress. Sometimes, they are fast times, and sometimes they seem to last a long time. My children are now in their 20s, and I truly enjoy the adults they have become. My husband and I marvel at the fact that these are the same kids who sometimes drove us wild, and at the many doubts we had about them in the past. 

When we were raising our young kids, educators, therapists, and experts recommended a series of books with escalating titles: Raising Your Spirited Child, The Difficult Child, and finally The Explosive Child.