Retribution, Reaction and Response: Tamir Rice Meets Lizard Brain

I read Seth Godin's blog pretty much every day. Yes, amazingly enough, he posts each and every day. And that, in and of itself, impresses me. Most days, I find it worth reading. Some days it's truly illuminating. Other days it just gives me food for thought. And that's what happened today. In his post on Retribution, Seth highlights a comment by Zig Ziglar that caught my eye. Seth says: We can react or respond. … When we react to a medicine, that's a bad thing. When … [Read more...]

Overcoming Fear: A Personal Letter to Lizard Brain

Do you know that feeling of a sort of tickling in the pit of your stomach?  It's a feeling of excitement and anxiety combined. Those feelings are so close that that you can literally feel excited one minute and panicked the next. It doesn't take much to tip the balance. That's the way I'm feeling right now. A huge excitement that I'm on the verge of doing something big... and then with the next breath, a huge anxiety that maybe I won't succeed. Whew. One minute I … [Read more...]

Walk Yourself Right Out of Anxiety

Have you ever wake up feeling anxious? From the first moment you open your eyes, you sense that something's not right. You may not know why you are anxious or what it's about. You're just afloat with unwelcome angst. Your Lizard Brain's on high alert even though there's no specific threat. You can probably tell that I'm describing my state of mind today. You may wake up feeling anxious some days too. Here's my strategy for getting rid of the unwelcome … [Read more...]

Lizard Brain and the Courage to Ask for What You Want

Yesterday I asked a former colleague, who is also a friend of mine, for a favor... I was hoping he would feature my recent post on intentional conversations in his newsletter, a very popular publication with more than 10,000 subscribers. But before I could ask the favor, first I had to deal with a huge amount of inner resistance. In fact, I almost didn't ask at all. Why not? I was afraid he'd feel I was being pushy or inappropriately infringing on our … [Read more...]