I met the love of my life while I was married to the wrong man In writing honestly about how I met my second husband, Johnny Depp’s opening monologue from The Libertine comes to mind: “Allow me to be frank at the commencement. You will not like me. The gentlemen will be envious and the ladies will be repelled. You will not like me now, and you will like me a good deal less as we go on.” Maybe that’s my flair for the dramatics talking, but that’s sometimes how I feel when I’m about to tell someone the truth about how I met the love of my life — while I was still married to another ma ..read more

Relationships are like Oreos: they come in different varieties and flavors. But which ones feed your soul? Relationships are like Oreos: they come in different varieties and flavors. Sometimes we crave Oreo Thins, other times Double Stuf. We might want pumpkin spice ones around Halloween and peppermint bark ones for Christmas. At each stage in our lives, we seek out different kinds of relationships with different people. And every once in a while, we find ourselves in an entanglement that feels so right and effortless we actually have trouble believing reality. Here are a few indicators of th ..read more

It would make the world a better place. A lot of people out there still have no idea what poverty feels like. I do. My mom put us there. While there’s not much I can thank her for, it’s one thing that deserves a little gratitude. She made me a more empathetic person in the long run, even if that happened by accident. If there’s one story I need to share with the entire world, this is it. This is the one I wish millions of people would read. Here we go… Mental illness is expensive as hell. Right before my 14th birthday, my mom started acting stranger than usual. She’d always yell ..read more

How ‘The Cat Lady Effect’ nearly destroyed one of P&Gs biggest brands. One of P&G’s chemists was working on a new chemical at the lab. The vapor had spritzed on his clothes before heading home. When he walked through the door and hugged his wife, she said, “Did you quit smoking?” “No? Why do you ask?” he said. He’d stumbled onto an idea. He tested the chemical out on various, horrible smelling products — cat urine, oil stains, cigarette smells — proving the substance was remarkably effective at hiding stenches.¹ Proctor and Gamble’s management loved his pitch. They were certain of the ..read more

Learn to size a person up and you’ll go much further in life. Small acts reveal everything. They are ripples that live in harmony with a thousand larger decisions. You can learn all you need to know about a person by the things they do. When we learn to appreciate the power in small things, we learn to appreciate them in ourselves, and in that recognition, there is a virtue. There is change waiting to happen. Learn to size a person up quickly and you’ll go far in life. You’ll know who to learn from, who to keep around, and who to steer wide of. If you wince while reading any of thes ..read more

I met the love of my life while I was married to the wrong man In writing honestly about how I met my second husband, Johnny Depp’s opening monologue from The Libertine comes to mind: “Allow me to be frank at the commencement. You will not like me. The gentlemen will be envious and the ladies will be repelled. You will not like me now, and you will like me a good deal less as we go on.” Maybe that’s my flair for the dramatics talking, but that’s sometimes how I feel when I’m about to tell someone the truth about how I met the love of my life — while I was still married to another man ..read more

How to go from “Hello” to “Good morning” “Getting a date is the easy part,” Sam moaned. I wasn’t surprised. With his striking blue eyes and chiseled jaw packaged into 6 feet of pure muscle, I could definitely see dates coming easily to him. It also helped that Sam was outgoing, hilarious, and kind. “So what’s the problem?” I asked. “So, here’s how the last few dates have gone. I meet a girl, we like each other, we talk for hours. It’s fun and enjoyable. Then, it’s the end of the night and I feel like I’ve made another great friend and am no closer to finding a girlfriend. How do I make the co ..read more

These will make or break your productivity each day. When I graduated from college just over a year ago, I felt extremely stressed and overwhelmed by my future. While I did have a plan, it certainly wasn’t a conventional one. I graduated with a degree in electrical engineering, but I had a deep desire to pursue self-employment and build up my own business and brand. While in my final semester of college, I quietly began to build my online reselling business. Each morning, I put in a few hours of crucial work. I woke up at 4:30 AM many times to get my products photographed and listed before I ..read more

Unconventional advice fitness pros won’t tell you When planes began returning to base riddled with bullet holes during WWII, the US Army Air Forces (USAAF) knew it had a problem. How could they shore up the planes to better protect the crew? The brightest minds at the USAAF immediately began looking for ways to reinforce the damaged areas. They studied the areas riddled with bullet holes, particularly the wings and tail. That is until Abraham Wald, a statistician and mathematician, made a key observation — they were only looking at the damage on returning planes. They hadn’t fa ..read more

Stop buying these to save in big ways. I first started buying all my own groceries midway through college when I moved out of my dorm and off of the school’s meal plan. I could not have been more excited. There weren’t very many vegan options in the dining halls, so when I lived on campus, I had to supplement my required meal plan with my own groceries. This not only limited the types of foods I could eat (I had to buy mostly foods that were shelf stable since my dorm room only had a small mini fridge), but also increased my overall food expenses, since I was paying for an overpriced meal pla ..read more