Hey friends, I want to take this time to say thank you. 2020 has been a heck of a road. We’ve limped through this year, and while the majority of us have not arrived here unscathed – we’ve arrived – and that alone is cause for immense gratitude. Thank you from the bottom of my …

Choose enlargement over happiness. “Ask yourself of every dilemma, every choice, every relationship, every commitment, or every failure to commit: Does this choice diminish me, or enlarge me?” — James Hollis, in What Matters Most Most of us, most of the time, make decisions based on what makes us happy at the moment. What our …

Right now, that’s the best thing you can do. “Lots of people are feeling unproductive. But if you successfully infect zero people with the virus, seriously, you’ve been extremely productive.” — Doctor and journalist, James Hamblin Hanging out with my nurse friend, drinking red wine on her beautiful porch, is one of the many things …

A lesson learned from watching a creepy movie. A scene that made my skin crawl taught me how to boost my low self-esteem. In a super creepy movie, “When a stranger calls,” a woman keeps getting increasingly concerning calls. A man on the line asks, “Have you checked your children?” When the woman finally calls …

#2 — Find your voice. Her husband made all decisions in their company. She needed his input for every tiny detail. She spoke only inside her head, nodding to herself. She had no female friends. She showed little emotion beyond biting, cold indifference — unless pushed. Then, sometimes…came violent rage. She treated all her employees, …

Allow your feelings to guide your career path. I said no to an offer that paid twice what I was earning before. It was a hard decision. Listening to my feelings terrified me. I needed the money, but the job felt wrong. I knew it was wrong. I was supposed to sell products I didn’t …

I will never forget the time when a white colleague said to me, “When I look at you, I don’t see color. I don’t see you as a black person.” He was saying, “Race doesn’t matter to me. I am not a racist.” But I heard, “I am denying a big part of who you …

The sudden death of my dear friend taught me the fleetingness of life. I witnessed her car flipping over on the highway like a matchbox. She was 31. I can rage at the injustice and the cruelty of her death. But that won’t bring her back. We lose people we’re close to. Life has no …

May you have patience in dark times. I look out the window at the cobbled, cloudy streets of my hometown. It is a dark April in Addis Ababa, gloomy and grey, and it felt like that in my heart too. We don’t know how long our quarantine will continue. We despair when we are fighting …

Let this responsible man inspire us to love from a distance. He is showing love to his family from a distance. A walking distance at that. He is a father of two boys. He is a husband. He is a farmer who trades what he produces. He lives at the remote part of the city. …