My grandmother and grandfather were both very strong headed and they would argue quite a bit. I remember watching one argument that went back and forth for a while until my grandmother finally said something that stopped the argument without ending it by winning or losing the argument. She said something like, “Well, okay,” and …
Continue reading “Things I Learned from My Grandmother (#3): Shrug it off”
Although my grandmother lived to be 100 years old, she always said that health is the most important thing, and that you don’t want to live to be 100 just to be 100 if you’re in poor health. I remember watching her take vitamins almost by the fistful and swallow several at once. And she …
Continue reading “Things I Learned from My Grandmother (#2): Health is the most important thing”
My grandmother passed away yesterday morning in her sleep at the age of 100. One thing I always admired about her was her desire and ability to keep learning. Several years ago, she needed some help with Microsoft Excel so I went over to her house to help her but when she told me the …
Continue reading “Things I Learned from My Grandmother (#1): Keep learning”
I vividly remember the day someone came to give a talk about retirement planning and 401(k)s at my first corporate job. He asked us, “Does anyone know what percentage of income the average American saved last year?” No one spoke. He answered: “Negative 1%.” The average American spent 101% of what they earned. That blew …
Continue reading “Things I Learned from My Mother (#5): Be good with money”
My mother is very sensitive. Not fragile, but sensitive. And she taught me to see that almost everyone else is sensitive too, even the people who don’t seem to be. It makes me think twice, then a 3rd and a 4th time before saying anything that might hurt someone’s feelings. You can apologize but you …
Continue reading “Things I Learned from My Mother (#4): People are sensitive”
My mother is very good at considering all the options. Almost too good. I remember times we would finally settle on where to have dinner after having a pretty lengthy discussion about it and then while we were on our way, my mother would say, “Oh, but we have a coupon for this other place …
Continue reading “Things I Learned from My Mother (#3): Consider the options”
My mother put up a shower curtain that had a map of the world on in so that my sister and I would be reminded that the small town where we grew up is not the center of the universe. It inspired me to travel so much that she eventually replaced the world map shower …
Continue reading “Things I Learned from My Mother (#2): You’re not the center of the universe”
When my younger sister was born, my mother bought me a set of markers and told me that they were from my baby sister, so that I would like her and we would get along. It worked. I like her and we get along. We got together with our extended family at every holiday throughout …
Continue reading “Things I Learned from My Mother (#1): The Importance of Family”
I just spent an extra hour putting my 2 year old to bed. Two traffic signs whose messages always seem relevant to me: EXPECT DELAYS BE PREPARED TO STOP
I’m working on a project and I started a spreadsheet to keep track of what I did each week, to make sure that I did something every week. I also committed to recording “Did nothing” if I didn’t do any work on the project. Then I thought, “Why a week? Why not a day?” So …
