my articles

A Seat at the Table

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In a world where demonizing and scapegoating are all too common, what role might an emerging process for criminal justice play? In this essay, I explore the overlap of my personal experience with something called Restorative Justice.

Earlier in my career, in an unfortunate series of events, I experienced going from being respected as a high-performing employee to being isolated like a criminal.

A key client of the company I worked for had become upset about our inadequate level of service and threatened to cut our contract with them. This meant that my employer would have been facing the decision of who to lay-off in order to balance lower income with staff wages. The client didn’t leave, but my company’s leaders were concerned, and understandably so. Read More

How Humans Become Monsters

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As our culture becomes more polarized, it becomes more tempting to label those who disagree with us as “monsters.” But what do we really mean when we say someone is being monstrous? And how willing are we to see our own monstrous tendencies?

To explore this, I’m going to go where monsters originally came from: the land of storytelling.

In the book The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, Christopher Booker lays out his theory that the core purpose of stories is to help humans learn to release the grip of an overactive ego.

Let’s look at how this is so in stories that adhere to this original purpose… Read More

Looking Where You Want to Go

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With all we find disagreeable in the world, it’s tempting to only push against what we DON’T want while forgetting what it is we DO want. Our efforts can become just about blaming others instead of focusing on what we want to create.

In this essay, I share some personal experiences about making a shift from focusing on what I don’t want to focusing on what I do want. These learnings are crucial for us all in this age of polarization.

When I first started snowboarding I was terrible. I used to live on the east coast where snow and ice are often the same thing. In other words, falling hurt—especially when I landed on my butt. I was so focused on avoiding going straight down the slopes because I’d pick up too much speed and lose control.

That’s where my attention went: avoid going straight down the hill. And yet it kept happening.

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