At the top of the chairlift, looking out over the beautiful mountains in the Yuzawa area, white covered peaks, stunning against the blue of the sky, I told Karl that my intention for this second to last run (a wise woman once told me you never say it’s your last run down the mountain, lest you invite bad luck before you get to the bottom) was to have fun.  Looking back (and even at the time if I’m honest), it struck me as a strange thing to be saying. Who needs to set the intention to have fun when you’re out snowboarding, or on any kind of adventure with a friend?! I needed to at the ti ..read more

My Thursday evenings are free these days, when they actually weren’t supposed to be. The next cohort of the Keyaki men’s group that I co-lead and which would be held on Thursday evenings was scheduled to start a month ago, and it didn’t. The reason why it didn’t start isn’t complicated: we simply didn’t successfully enroll any men to sign up for it. My intention in sharing a bit more about this failure (man, it took me close to a minute to actually type that word!) is connected to my stand for sharing my experience in my work in all of it’s messiness. There are already plenty of people on soc ..read more

This is the familiar time when it all starts to go to shit. A couple of months earlier, in the liminal time between the end of winter and the true start of spring, there is so much possibility. The garden is a blank slate, soil prepped and turned, all open space and fertility. The kale and chard planted in the fall have miraculously survived under a meter of snow and we are enjoying their hardy nutrition at practically every meal. I’m not moonlighting at Home and Garden magazine, I’m just coming away from our garden plot and realizing what a metaphor it is for projects and plans. Things are a ..read more

You can only be working your way towards it or away from it. I suppose you could be in a holding pattern, but with the passing of time, the longer you are in that holding pattern, the more likely you are moving away from it. The ‘it’ I’m referring to here is the ability to utter, with no hesitancy or doubt, “There is no place that I’d rather be, and nothing I’d rather be doing.” That has been very alive for me lately. In fact, I’ve mentioned it that I’m experiencing it to the people I get supported by on multiple occasions recently, and have yet managed to say it without getting emotional, whi ..read more

Slow down, create space, and disconnect to reconnect. These will be the core themes as I host one of my leadership coaching clients for a personal retreat in Minakami in a couple of days. We'll start the slowing down right when he arrives at Jomokogen (soon to be renamed Minakami!) station from the very fast city of Tokyo, stepping off of the very fast bullet train, by spending some time at a nice spot in the station. I'll invite him to sit with the inquiry, "What did it take for you to get here today?". Slowing down to appreciate who he is choosing into being in a way that enabled him to crea ..read more

It happened again this morning. I was about to jump on a call with an executive in the US to interview him for a 360 leadership assessment for the COO of a very quickly growing and exciting startup. Then it hit me: here I am doing a new project internationally, part of a clear intention I set for my business over 18 months ago that is coming to fruition, and I hadn’t even celebrated getting that contract. In the work I do with leaders and other coaches, I have heard this come up a lot - “I’m not very good at celebrating my wins.” I actually had a session with a CEO just the other day - someone ..read more

Recently, the universe is very generous in providing opportunities to be in grief. I was reflecting a couple of weeks ago on how much my boys have been through in their short early & pre-teen lives. A grandfather who committed suicide when they could barely even understand what it meant for someone to die. Another grandfather who was gone less than six months after we learned he had cancer. A global pandemic. A war breaking out that has the potential to affect everyone on the planet. It is so much for them to be with compared to what I remember having to be with as a boy. And literally th ..read more

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/b49be3_c5d737066bf843c597ac8c84ea3670aa/720p/mp4/file.mp4 Last year I put together my first group coaching program. It was so thrilling to step into a new space and put together something that encompassed all the different ways I want to be working. And it was heartbreaking when I didn't end up getting any participants. But this ended up being a great lesson in 'beginner's mind' and starting again. Today I'm thrilled to be sharing one part of what has come out of starting again, the Keyaki men's group. This is a response to a calling I have been feeling for ov ..read more

It is a wonderful time of year to appreciate fire. Both in the literal sense of having the warmth of a fire to provide light and warmth in places where we are in the season of dark and cold, and also in the figurative sense of having transitioned from one calendar year to the next, and the internal fire that can ignite for making changes in our lives. For many, this time of year may be familiar in the way it seems to go every year, in that your fire for change burns bright and hot for the first days or weeks of the year, but then ‘mysteriously’ fizzles out, leaving soot and ash and more of the ..read more

It is a wonderful time of year to appreciate fire. Both in the literal sense of having the warmth of a fire to provide light and warmth in places where we are in the season of dark and cold, and also in the figurative sense of having transitioned from one calendar year to the next, and the internal fire that can ignite for making changes in our lives. For many, this time of year may be familiar in the way it seems to go every year, in that your fire for change burns bright and hot for the first days or weeks of the year, but then ‘mysteriously’ fizzles out, leaving soot and ash and more of the ..read more