Tag: #meaningfamine
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The Life That Survival Built
I was raised to be an overfunctioner. Rural settings, constant moves, and instability created a parentified child who grew into a hyper-empathetic, overfunctioning adult. In every relationship and every career setting, I showed up as the door prize…the unexpected dynamo who quietly won everyone over. “I just want to be a receptionist,” a partner teased me…
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The Intimacy We Forgot to Scale
You wanted to be seen. You wanted eyes on your craft, your creation, your expertise, the uniqueness of your concept. Everyone does. It’s the first hunger, the one that gets you to sketch out your idea on a napkin, share your original idea with peers, expand into public introductions/demonstrations, then proceed to launch. Many of…
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The Third Job Nobody Pays You For
You clocked out but nobody told your nervous system. The last team member has left the chat. The last patient has been seen. The final decision made. The team has gone home. By every external measure the workday is over. And then you walk through your front door into the night job that is harder…
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The Meaning Famine in Leadership
The demands were endless. They were unreasonable. They sounded like: “Do more with less support.”“Be faster with less resources.”“Figure it out with less communication.” While juggling competing priorities that were never actually reconciled, only relayed, you feel micromanaged and abandoned at the same time. Firehose in hand, prepared to put out the latest blaze, except…
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The Meaning Famine in Modern Medicine
A physician told me this week: “I have never had more data and felt less valued than I do right now. I mean, I don’t know if I can keep doing this.” That last line was spoken from such a deeply exhausted place that I felt myself leaning forward, my usual list of potential pivots…
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Behind The Curtain
It’s not the absence of people. You are surrounded by them. In fact, you often feel there are too many in the room, not too few. The waiting room is full. The inbox is full. The calendar is full. People need you at work, at home, in the group chat, on the board, in the…
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When Busy is Just Scared with a Better Mask
You cut the overhead. It made sense at the time. Actually, the numbers demanded it. The org chart got leaner. Positions were eliminated, the team shrank, the structure simplified. It was the responsible call. The leadership call. And then quietly, without announcement, the work that used to belong to other people became yours. You are…
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The Paralyzed Analyst—The Neverending Pause
You don’t want to look foolish as you feel the shockwaves of the latest numbers. You know it’s stupid to stop the digital campaign or disrupt the plan of care mid-stream, but you just can’t help but react. You desperately search for the reframe, the call to action, the shift. But here, procrastination is reframed as…
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Posting Into The Void
On the Meaning Famine and What’s Really Happening to Us Are you the person who listens to podcasts on the commute, during the run, while fixing dinner, or adjacent to your kid’s Babe Ruth game? Are you on YouTube at midnight and again first thing in the morning? Doom scrolling before you’ve even left your…