I recently celebrated Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Jewish High Holidays. Here, in the US, we go to services in more fancy-dancy clothes than I suspect the Israelis wear. Back in August, I said to Esther, “I have a great suit, but I’m not so sure about my shoes. I should wear my Merrells,
Many Rule Transformations in Just 24 Hours Read More »
Part of mental toughness is also having emotional resilience. It’s a different piece. Here’s how I like to explain it. Imagine you were a corporate travel agent back in the 1970s, 1980s, or even the 1990s. You were great at your job. You found the best fares. Your customers loved you. You did a great
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I’ve explained that flying is easy and walking is difficult. Well, driving is tough, too. Riding in a car is more difficult than driving, because when I drive I have my hands on the wheel. That feedback helps my proprioception (knowledge of where I am in space). And, it depends on where I drive. Here,
People often ask me: How do you fly? That’s because they think my ear is my problem. Nope. My ears don’t have a problem with flying. My middle ears change pressure just fine, thank you. Remember, it’s my inner ear that had the problem. Flying is easy, much easier than driving or walking. And, I’m
How Do You Travel? Read More »
When I tell people I ballroom dance and that I have vertigo, they are surprised. When Mark is with me, they look at him to see if I’m lying. I’m not lying. We adapt almost everything. Here are two examples. In waltz, there is a gorgeous step, called 3/8ths turns. The gentleman leads a left
In the past four weeks, I have clogged a toilet, broken my car’s windshield washers, broken a mammogram machine, and broken the fancy goggles that the vestibular therapist in Canada uses to look at my nystagmus. And last week, my computer went into constant kernel panics. A lesser person might say I was jinxed. I
Some choices are easy for me to make. Dinner, for example. If I’m making dinner for Mark and me, it’s easy. In the summer, it’s fish, steak, eggs or chicken and veggie or salad of some variety. In the winter, it’s the same protein with a winter veggie such as cauliflower or broccoli. (And, those
You need to have faith that you can make it through whatever is going on in your life. But you can’t afford to be blindly optimistic. (My original title for this post was “Blind optimism kills” and I thought that might be a little extreme.) Admiral Stockdale actually said this the best about his survival
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When I was in 10th grade, I struggled with my foreign language, French. We were translating The Sword of Roland, “L’Epee D’Roland.” I am pretty sure that when I spoke in class, it sounded like “Leh pee (!) deh roa-land.” The correct pronunciation would be “Leh peh deh roh-land.” My teacher that year told me
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The one person you can fool the most is yourself. At least, I can fool myself—a lot. Maybe you are smarter than I am! When I give my talks about creating an adaptable life, I talk about our old analog scale. I was a master at losing weight—on the scale. I could make that scale
The One Person You Can Fool Read More »