Wagaliciousness Begins Here!

Are you stuffed full of holidays like I am? In the span of six days, we’ve celebrated Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and now Giving Tuesday. It’s been an expensive, exhausting six days for a lot of people!

As the calendar rolls around to the end of another year, this time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve is filled with to-do’s – those you need to do, plus those that others need or want you to do. Especially when it comes to family gatherings, we put a lot of heavy expectations on ourselves. And the music doesn’t help, with holiday songs proclaiming that it’s the most wonderful time of the year, describing idyllic snow scenes, fireplaces, and true love, and of course we can’t forget the poignant longing in songs talking about missing loved ones at the holidays.

I’m not here to remind you of the extra stress you carry this time of year. Nope, as with every issue, this newsletter contains helpful information...

Maybe the Grinch had something to do with it. Or maybe it was the late Joan Rivers, a comedienne famous for her “Can we talk” question as she launched into pointed, comical griping about someone who was annoying her.

November 19^th – today – is Have a Bad Day Day. And the Voice of Wagaliciousness, the person who helps you keep your emotional balance while the world around you wobbles out of control, wants you to celebrate this with gusto.

I do want you to be prepared, in case someone tells you to have a bad day today. Please don’t punch them!

There’s a very positive reason for this negative-sounding holiday: we can’t all “have a nice day” every day. As a matter of fact, much as we’d like to, most of us don’t even string together an entire 24 hours without at least a little bit of badness in it. It’s a lovely goal to “have a nice day” every day, and the tools and coping skills that help you “have...

(disclaimer – this post is about process, not any party or political candidate)

It’s OK if you feel proud today. It’s OK if you feel disgusted today. It’s OK if you feel anxious today. It’s Election Day in the United States, and we’re anything but united.

I worked in radio for nearly 4 decades. I loved being a radio personality, loved working with news professionals who upheld standards of excellence that included using impartial languaging, no matter what their personal politics were, and especially loved the volume knob for the studio speakers during the political seasons. Turning the speakers down – way down! – during the political ads was how I stayed sane until each election season was over.

There have always been negative political ads. Why? Because it’s the wild west where lying is concerned, media outlets make a LOT of money on political advertising, and because negative political ads work.

Some negative...

Six seasons. One hundred eighty episodes. Syndicated in dozens of languages in countries worldwide. Almost 75 years since it debuted, the I Love Lucy show still attracts over 40,000,000 viewers each year.

How’s that for a silly half-hour sitcom?

Turns out, the sitcom created as a showcase for Lucille Ball and her then-husband, Desi Arnaz, was more than simply a showcase. It’s a deceptively simple, incredibly complex series of life lessons about humor, acceptance, perseverance, and trust. With comical storylines crafted around core values, along with four main characters who are instantly relatable and likable, the I Love Lucy show changed the landscape of television and of how people viewed relationships, friendships, and careers.

• Do you ever feel like no one understands you? That was a key piece of Ricky Ricardo’s life experience on the show.
• Do you ever feel like your dreams will never come true? That was a key piece of Lucy Ricardo’s life experience on...

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...

Today is Made in the USA Day, Thursday is Independence Day, and the short work week means most US workers have more freedom than normal this weekend – four days off instead of two. Today, let’s talk about freedom from a slightly different perspective – let’s talk about the freedom you either do or don’t allow yourself to feel.

• Have you ever come up against something that felt unfair to you, and you rebelled? That’s you, allowing your freedom.
• Have you ever been in a situation where you felt intimidated, maybe because of an authority figure? That’s you, disallowing your freedom.

America was formed because of those two different approaches to freedom. Ours is a country created through civil, then not-so-civil, disobedience. The words “free” and “freedom” crop up in our foundation documents eight times – four times in the Declaration of Independence, 3 in the Bill of Rights, and once in the Constitution. As a...

Tomorrow is May Day. It’s also Beltane, a holiday that you may not be familiar with unless you’re from County Limerick or County Wicklow in Ireland, where the Beltane tradition has been constant from the earliest writings in Irish literature. Beltane/May Day marks the midpoint between the spring and the summer solstice, a time where the earth starts producing food, flocks start producing babies, and the heavy summer work of providing for the community and putting up for the cold months of winter begins in earnest.

Humans have observed and celebrated the changing of the seasons throughout recorded history, and that continues today. The winter holidays are wrapped around the winter solstice. Easter, Passover, and Carnival occur near or on the spring solstice. Summer solstice in June is when school winds down and vacations ramp up, and the fall solstice is when vacation season winds down and school ramps back up. Toss in an election, a spooky holiday and a food-laden one,...

If I told you that there’s one thing that provides you with all the following benefits, would you rush right out and get it?

1. More active lifestyle
2. Lower blood pressure
3. Lower cholesterol
4. Significant decrease in heart disease/heart attack
5. Lower likelihood of depression
6. Lower anxiety levels
7. Lower BMI
8. Increased social interaction
9. Stronger immune system
10. Fewer allergies
11. Stronger bones

There are more benefits – I didn’t want to wear you out with the exhaustive list. As you look at that list of 11 benefits, how many of them would you like to achieve? You can get them all – get a pet. Oh, you already have one? Yay, you! Then you’re already reaping the mental and physical benefits of sharing your life with a living being who depends on you. If you’re not already a pet owner, this is an impressive list of benefits, and you should still be sure that your life can support a pet before you add one. They are completely dependent on you, which means...

This is the month many Americans dread. We know it’s coming…it comes every year. In the back of our minds, we know we should be more proactive…we should be more organized…we should be more responsible. And yet, here we are again, in April, with that sense of dread looming over us. April 15^th. It’s thirteen days until Tax Day 2024.

For tax accountants, the entire first quarter of each year is a zoo. That means not everyone procrastinates, though many do. The website Fast Company analyzed the most common days that workers call in sick, and it’s not shocking to learn that Monday wins handily and Tax Day is usually fairly high on the list.

Guess what day of the week Tax Day falls on this year? Yep. Monday. Oh, joy…a three-day weekend spent deciphering cryptic tax forms!

Deadlines and procrastination cause stress, and that stress is usually self-inflicted. Before you feel like I’m pointing fingers, know that if I am, they’re...

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, which can only mean one thing – today is Galentine’s Day! What? You’ve never heard of it? Read on…

Galentine’s Day became a thing in 2010, when an episode of the television series Parks and Recreation centered around the deputy director, Leslie Knope, throwing a Galentine’s Day celebration for her girlfriends. The party featured waffles, laughter, and an abundance of gift-giving, and suddenly women all over America and around the world were planning their own Galentine’s Day celebrations. A quick search of “Galentine’s Day” on your favorite search engine returns hundreds of branded gifts, games, clothing, accessories, party favors, spa package deals – well, you get the idea, right? You know that when we spend a bunch of time, energy, and money on it, Galentine’s Day is real. It’s a real celebration of just how important female friendships are.

In her documentary, Life is...