Wagaliciousness Begins Here!

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I don’t want to overwhelm you with this, but do you feel overwhelmed a lot? If I gave you an exhaustive list of what creates feelings of overwhelm in people, just reading the list could overwhelm you!

So…let’s not do that, shall we?

Feeling overwhelmed is very common. Each day brings with it a new set of potentially adverse events, missed timings, and piling on of responsibilities and tasks that anyone is at risk of overwhelm several times in the day. Everyone, especially those with anxiety or depression, can take a deep emotional dive when overwhelm hits.

Does it help you, even just a little bit, to know that it’s common, human, and normal to feel overwhelmed? Would it help you, even just a little bit, to know what’s happening in your brain that makes you feel so stuck? Because you’re not stuck, your brain is just blind to the possibilities at hand that can help tame the overwhelming feelings.

First, the amygdala fires up the “fight or flight” physiology, mea...

Responsibility. That word can cause feelings of dread, perseverance, or pride. It can make your heart sing or sink. It can make you feel very grown-up or like you want to ditch adulting forever. How can so many emotions be wrapped in one simple word?

The answer – because it’s not simple.

Responsibility could feel like doing a hard thing anyway.

Responsibility could feel like doing something others expect you to do or need you to do, whether you want to or not.

Responsibility could feel like owning up to your mistakes or shortcomings.

As children, many of us were taught that we must earn the right to be responsible for certain things. If I wanted to have a dog, I had to prove to my parents that I could be trusted to do assigned tasks without prompting and without too much whining. Not all the responsibilities of the dog fell to me, but a couple did. They were boring and sometimes annoying, yet those feelings paled in comparison to the fun and joy Pixie brought to our family.

As ad...

Do you love dogs? Yeah, me, too. We’re in good company – a third of the world’s households have at least one dog, and most people consider their dog (or dogs) to be part of the family.

That describes my family – we had a dog as soon as Mom thought my youngest brother was old enough to understand the difference between a stuffed toy dog and a real live one and behave accordingly.  One day Dad brought home a little black and tan ball of cuteness – big brown eyes, ears that aaaaaaalmost stood up, and a long tail that never stopped wagging. It was love at first sight, a love story that lasted nearly 16 years.

Pixie was an accident. Dad worked with a guy who had a Pekingese, and his next-door neighbors had a Chihuahua. Things happened and 63 days later there were 5 little oopsies looking for homes. Pixie landed in ours. Let’s just say Dad was a sucker for big brown eyes – Mom had them, too.

Whether or not you share your home and life with a dog (or two, or a few, or more) dogs have an im...

Have you ever listened to the radio?

Since it’s 2024, I need to tighten up that question a bit: have you ever listened to terrestrial radio on a device that was picking up the signal out of thin air? Today is National Radio Day, and today, terrestrial radio is getting kind of quaint as people choose satellite radio services, streaming music services, and apps designed to play any kind of radio - terrestrial included – anywhere you are, on whatever device you choose.

127 years ago, radio was born, and about 45 years ago, my career in terrestrial radio began. No one person is credited with the invention of radio – three inventors working independently followed and built upon the emerging science of wireless electricity and voila! A radio signal was first broadcast by Guglielmo Marconi in 1897 using discoveries made by Nicola Tesla and Heinrich Hertz.

Broadcast radio made the world feel smaller and more like a community. Two decades after the very first successful test-broadcast, stati...

How far left are you?

Wait…I’m not asking about your politics, I’m asking about your handedness. Today is all about being a leftie (not leftist) and what that means to you. If you’re right-handed, like 87% of Earth’s human residents, this newsletter is for you, too, because you’re farther left than you may know!

If you have a leftie in your family, or if you are a leftie, that’s genetics at work. There is a familial link for left-handers, and researchers think that they’ve identified the gene that makes it possible for a person to produce a left-handed child. Being a leftie is so rare that even if two left-handers meet, fall in love, and produce a boatload of children, 70 to 80 percent of their kids will be right-handed.

Famous left-handers include:

Leaders: Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama 

Innovators: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg

Business Heroes: David Rockefeller, Oprah Winfrey, and Steve Forbes

Geniuses: Aristotle, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Friedrich...

There’s a 40^th anniversary today that you might not know about. Have you ever been part of one of the “first Tuesday in August” neighborhood festivals? Maybe your neighborhood or town had a cookout, or a little parade? Chances are, police officers were everywhere at the festival.

Not only were they there, they were the guests of honor. The first Tuesday in August has been the National Night Out since 1984. What began as a way for neighborhood watch volunteers to share information and best practices with each other quickly turned into a celebration of community policing and became a way for people to see the human side of our often-misunderstood law enforcement officers.

Let’s face it, we have trust issues where police officers are concerned. The police. The FBI. The Secret Service. The Gestapo. The KGB. When you read those words, you don’t think of individuals, do you? It’s more likely that you think of an amorphous, powerful entity. You might hold strong opinions one way or the othe...

Do you have friends? Then today is your day! Today is the International Day of Friendship and this issue of the weekly newsletter explores the mysteries of our friendships.

There are two sides to friendship – the positives and the not-so-positives. Because every single person is human, we bring both sides of ourselves to all our friendships, and so do our friends. That means that each friendship has the potential to be a rollercoaster, with the size of the hills and valleys in the hands of both people. That’s what makes friendships so complicated!

Humans are hard-wired to form communities, and friends are the non-family community we create. Like family, friends can provide emotional support, validation, companionship, and strong pathways to happiness through shared experiences. Friends are often our sounding boards, exercise partners, and mastermind partners, helping each other create strength, growth, and resilience. Friends give us a sense of belonging, feedback and advice, and the...

Every four years, we Americans forget who we are. We forget that we have power. We forget how to use that power. We forget to be civil as we use our voices and our fingertips, and sadly, sometimes fists and other weapons, in our attempts to move hearts and minds to our way of thinking.

You can make a leadership decision and make your corner of the world more peaceful – will you step into your leadership role this political season? The more people who choose to gently, quietly lead, the more civil this season will be.

It’s easy to blame social media, broadcast media, political ads, and journalists for the negativity and belligerence of the narrative, but the truth is, since the inception of our country, elections have been contentious, political advertising has been negative, and conversations have degenerated into heated arguments when politics was the topic.

Where does leadership come into play? It comes from you, not to you. In these next 105 days, will you step up and lead your f...

Did you feel like I felt Saturday night – horrified, confused, uncertain, and helpless? No matter what your politics are, you have a heart that beats in your chest, you have family members you love and would do anything to keep safe, and if circumstances had been different, those killed and injured could have been your loved ones.

For all of us who feel unsteady in the wake of the violence, this issue of the newsletter has tools you can use to create a calmer inner atmosphere for yourself.

Arguably the worst part about being a bystander to a tragedy is the feeling of helplessness. In the absence of anything concrete to do, people tune in to news outlets and take to social media, airing their feelings, their theories, and finding supporters and detractors. We want to do something, yet everything feels random and uncontrollable.

Brains are interesting things – part of how we learn so rapidly as children is that the brain recognizes and stores patterns. As we have more experiences, the...

Welcome to the Dog Days of Summer. It’s the time of year when traffic is lighter, meetings are smaller, and life gets just a little bit slower for most people.

For much of my life, I thought the phrase came from the observation of how lazy and slow dogs became in the heat of summer. Maybe you thought that, too? Nope – the ancient Romans noticed that when Sirius and the sun were in close proximity, the weather became hotter and more humid. Sirius, aka the Dog Star, is the brightest star in Canis Major, or the Big Dog, constellation, hence the Dog Days of Summer.

How does your life shift in the summertime?

If you have school-aged children or grandchildren, chances are you spend a bit more time with them than you do in the rest of the year.

If you teach any kind of class, chances are your classes are smaller this time of year.

If you work in the hospitality industry or any medical field where there’s flexibility in the timing of treatments, your workload increases this time of year.