Have you ever felt like achieving success is a hidden mystery and that only certain people have the key?

Or perhaps you are wanting more relationship, health or business success and it feels so far out of reach?

The fact is success leaves clues and if you are ready to put on your best trench coat, dark glasses and detective hat, you can crack the code.

This happened recently as I was catching up with my long-time friend Pam. Our conversation touched on everything from travel to family and relationships to business.

When we landed on work she sighed and said “It’s been so long since I was successful, I’m not even sure it’s possible anymore.

“What?” I protested, as the “life-coaching” hair on the back of my neck stood up, “You are one of the smartest and most creative people I know. Of course, you can be successful.”

Just for the record, she was a highly regarded creative director at a prestigious advertising firm when...

When I ask the question “Do you think you are addicted to your emotions?” I usually get a very stressed and uncertain response. “I’m not sure, is that possible?

The answer is YES, and it is surprising how many of us are addicted to our default emotions and don’t even realize it.

Just to clarify, it’s not actually the emotion itself but the chemical release that comes with the emotion. Each emotion has a chemical reaction, and our brains respond by giving us the feeling of relief or a reward.  So, the more we experience that “chemical hit” the more we need or crave it just to get ourselves back to what feels “normal.”

It’s not that different from an addiction to sugar, alcohol, or drugs only this shows up in the form of anger, anxiety, sadness, victim thinking, blaming, guilt, shame, etc. Don’t’ get me wrong, all these emotions may be valid, and I am a huge believer in feeling your emotions and working...

 Last winter, my friend Gigi told me a funny story about the time she moved to Brooklyn in her early twenties.

She was living in Ithaca, a small town about four hours upstate, and she was all excited to try to make it as a singer with her band in New York. Two days before she moved, though, she realized something relatively important: she didn't have any moving boxes. (Sometimes these things slip our minds, don’t they?) She didn't want to buy any, since she imagined they were prohibitively expensive, and she was broke. So she asked her roommate, Chris, if he had any. 

"No," he said, "but let's go find some." 

They walked downtown and started asking around. One person they asked, a guitarist playing Beatles songs on a street corner, suggested they ask at the liquor store. There, the manager there gave them a few Heineken boxes. Then he gestured to the shipping store across the street.

"They sell boxes," he said. "You can get all you want there."

So they went...

In 2015, the engineer and “Smarter Every Day” founder Destin Sandlin discovered something surprising: he could no longer ride a bike. 

He’d grown up bicycling; he hadn’t had any injuries. Physically, he was capable of it. He just couldn’t ride it…because he’d accidentally “unlearned” how.

Destin had spent the year learning to ride something he called a “backwards bicycle” – a bike that had been re-engineered so that when you turn the handlebars to the right, the bike goes left. When he first started, he could ride his normal bike fine, and this bike was impossible. Physically, it’s not any more difficult than riding a regular bike.

Mentally, though? That’s a whole different matter. Basically, to ride the backwards bike, your brain has to rewire itself to understand that the handlebars work in the opposite way that you expect. Everyone who has tried it, many of whom are confidence that they can...

Recently, I tried for the millionth time to give up coffee. And for the millionth time, I failed miserably. But it was in failing that I realized something – my caffeine intake wasn’t the real issue. It was the symptom of a “tack” I was sitting on.

Wednesday of last week was Day 1 of my coffee cleanse. My alarm went off at 5:50am, and immediately, the thought of the day stretching out before me felt so daunting that I rolled over and hit snooze. Several times. For almost 45 minutes.

The rest of the day didn’t go much better. I got my kids off to school late. When I finally got to the office, my concentration was so off, I wasted a whole hour trying to sort through emails. I felt irritable and exhausted.

So I asked myself, what in my life is happening, that I need so much caffeine to get me through the day? Why do I rely on it so heavily?

The rest of that week, I dragged myself through my routine, succumbing to the corner café only twice. And it...

A lot of people wonder: can a life coach help with relationships?. When I get asked that, I have to smile - because so often that’s what people come to me about, that sometimes I feel like I’m a relationship coach rather than a life coach.

By now, I’ve had years of experience helping people find (and keep) love, not only because of my years as a life coach, but also because of my own experiences. Today, I’m married to the love of my life, the father of my children, my husband of almost 20 years. But before Stephen, there was Bob. And with Bob, I learned the hard way what makes a relationship grow and flourish - or fall apart.

How All the Best Love Stories Begin

When I was still in college, before I moved to LA to try my hand at acting, Bob and I met the old-fashioned way: he crashed into my friend’s car. 

I was riding with a friend on Route 200 - actually, we were on an exit ramp - when from out of nowhere, another car slammed into ours....

Impostor syndrome - the belief that you're a fraud - is one of the biggest productivity killers in our culture. Every day, it plagues millions of people with doubts and fears, keeping them from achieving their full potential. Especially in today's world of constant social media, where we're bombarded with images of other people's success, impostor syndrome robs people of their creativity and well-being, causing stress, burn-out, and poor performance.

When you suffer from Imposter Syndrome – whether it’s in your work, business, passion project, or even your relationships or health (yes, that’s real), you’re less likely to think creatively, problem-solve intelligently, and manage effectively.

Fortunately, there is a solution.

Are you ready? It’s simple:

Know your value.

Don’t freak out. I know what you’re thinking: How can I know my value when I don't feel like I’m enough?

Most people believe their value is so much “less”...

If you’ve never worked with a coach before, you might be wondering just what are some life coach basics. What is a life coach, anyway? What do they do, and what can I expect if I hire one? 

Those are all great questions, and that’s why today, I’d like to share with you 3 basic truths about working with a life coach.

1. You are always in control.

A life coach – a good one, anyway – will never make you feel uncomfortable, or do or say things you don’t want to do. They will never force you to answer a question, pressure you to take actions you don’t want to, or in any way make you feel threatened or pressured.

Why is that?

Because life coaching is built on the foundation that you are the master of your own life. You are in charge, 100% of the time.

In fact, it’s not holding that belief that often makes us need life coaches in the first place.

What the heck do I mean by that?

Let me tell you a quick story about one of my first...