My wife is very good at holding up the mirror to me and sometimes I don’t really like the result. I don’t mean the mirror we all use to fix ourselves up in the morning. It is that mirror that makes you look at your actions or reactions to situations or people. It is that mirror that makes you think twice before you speak words of hurt or disrespect. Not that I love to see this aging face in our bathroom mirror, but that is nothing compared to that mirror that makes me loo

Tomorrow, Feb. 17, is Random Acts of Kindness Day, a day to do something nice for someone else. As a parent, I am reminded of the time I nearly squelched my child’s desire to do something nice, albeit unintentional squelch, but a good lesson for me nonetheless to watch my words and get out of my head. I wrote about it in the book Chicken Soup for the Soul: Volunteering & Giving Back (2015). In short, on a family vacation, Number 2 ran back to the room to get the coins she c

It is officially February in Nebraska. What does that mean? Yes, six more weeks of winter, which, sucks and makes me not want to live here any more, but there is another event that happens in February. This is one that I look forward to every year. Valentine’ s Day? Well of course I enjoy spending quality time with the love of my life and professing my love to her through gifts and words of affirmation, but that isn’t it. My birthday? Nope that isn’t until June. The e

In doing some research for a project, I recently came across a term that intrigued me; a “wicked problem” is a social or culture problem that is difficult or impossible to solve -- poverty, sustainability, equality, health and wellness. In this sense wicked is not about evil, but more of the slang interpretation of “wicked hard to solve. “ I read articles in both the Harvard Business Review and Standard Social Innovation Review…before my husband walked in the room to ask for