Tamar Lechter Leadership coaching, llc

Every once in a while I like to sit back and revisit conversations I've had with clients. I think about connections between themes that come up, and I contemplate how those conversations have added to my own growth and insight about human beings. Recently I devoted some time to this kind of "client inventory," and I landed on the theme of creativity. It amazes me how often this theme comes up. Every once in a while, the theme lands front and center, with a client who describe

We've all had that moment of feeling stuck. Someone we know is hurting and we just don't know what to do. Reaching out to a close friend is easy, but what about an acquaintance? What about a casual friend who just lost a baby? A colleague who was diagnosed with cancer? These awful things happen and we often feel conflicted about the appropriateness of how to reach out and what to say. Often, we make assumptions about people's needs. We assume that they don't want to talk abou

I recently was listening to the podcast Hidden Brain. The host, Shankar Vedantam, was interviewing Eli Finkel, a social psychologist at Northwestern University, about the shifts in marriage over the years, and what marriage looks like today. Finkel talks about the change in expectations going into a marriage. What once may have been a partnership based on tending the farm, or raising children to support you, developed into partnerships of love, and then became an all-encompas

My six year old told me that her New Years resolution was to try more new things and be braver. I’m taking her lead by diving into vulnerability to share a personal story with you. For the last half of my 39th year I was living with a massive fibroid pressed up against my uterus, pressing in my kidneys, and wreaking havoc on all my systems. This particular fibroid was thirteen inches and pushed my belly out into a hard, round mound resembling a pregnancy about four months alo

Remember when you were young and you had a pretty good sense of the boxes you wanted to check off? Those big milestones? The ones most of your peers also shared? Graduate high school. Check. Get a degree. Check. Get a job. Check. Get married. Check. Have babies. Check. What's next? Retirement? Death? After we have children, our milestones often shift to their accomplishments. (Weaning, starting school, graduation, marrying them off, becoming a grandparent.) As parents, of cou

I'm not the first person to tell you that making your bed will lead to positive outcomes in your life. Your mother was probably the first to do that. I'm also not the first coach to recommend it to a client. We all know the benefits. You start the day with one accomplishment achieved. You have control over one small area of your life. You devote at least one part of your day to your own needs. Those are the reasons that I started making my bed on a daily basis. However, the r

Recently, I attended my 20th high school reunion. It was fun. More fun than I thought it would be. A flood of memories, countless hugs, and a lot of reminiscing made for a great night. There were a few awkward moments, though. People who I hadn't seen in 20 years triggered me in ways I wasn't expecting. Old feelings that had been bottled up came out, and I found myself reliving some intense feelings about things that were two decades old and not at all relevant to my life. Th

Lately I've had the same conversation over and over with friends. With all the tension in the news, the sad stories, the nonstop analysis and the limitless channels of information, how do we stop from falling apart? Many of us are finding ourselves glued to the TV, radio, newspaper and internet these days. We get anxious, upset, depressed, frustrated and angry. We carry those feelings with us throughout our day, as we work, parent, and try to engage in our community. And it's

I first kept a diary in elementary school. I would write, and then proceed to spill out my feelings about my friends at school, arguments with my parents and spying on my brother and his friends. It allowed me to be an observer of my own life and share feelings that I didn't feel comfortable expressing out loud. My next journaling experience wasn't until college, when I suddenly began pouring out song lyrics and novels over heartbreaks I endured. At that point in my life, wr