Nietzsche’s Lessons from my Daughter

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You may have no idea who Friedrich Nietzsche is but I bet you have heard the quote “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.” Friedrich Nietzsche , Twilight of the Idols  That line has echoed in a bajillion songs and has shown up in an equal number of movies. I first saw it in the beginning of Conan, the Barbarian – which was a fitting lead to the character of Conan. And surely, we go through our own trials and tribulations on a daily basis that help us adapt and overcome life’s challenges, and most of us , having faced our …

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Stacy Mizrahi Race for Hope

Giving Back

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In my early IT career, it was expected that a person just jump into whatever topic they were studying and learn through books and hands-on experience. Then, slightly later in my career, I stumbled into training. Training is a different type of learning device. In book study and hands-on training, you have the luxury of ignoring things. When you have to teach something, you are expected to know the subject matter. There is this extra pressure of knowing the thing you are instructing. But there is this other element – the idea that by teaching the subject, you get more …

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Stacy Mizrahi Ellicott City

Cutting Wasted Time Out of Your Day

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I was having a discussion the other day about my use of the Pomodoro Technique in pacing myself through daily work when the topic had shifted slightly into cutting out the “dead time” from your daily schedules. That dead time is the stuff we do daily that has absolutely no pragmatic use to our career, family or personal life. By reflecting on those three “umbrella” areas, you can usually determine whether the thing you are doing has any meaningful contribution. Understand, I’m not saying you should ONLY do meaningful things. Rather, I’m saying that if you feel that your time …

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Happiness Doesn’t Have Dollar Signs

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My trip down the FI path has taught me a lot about happiness. I find a lot of happiness walking in my garden. I can also find a lot of frustration ( looking at you hungry caterpillar). I run almost every day, that brings me a lot of happiness. I do yoga and finish with a smile. I have spend money on things that made me happy. I have the occasional dinner out with friends. And sure, the food was good. Ask me in two weeks what I ate. The “..with friends” part is what brought me the true happiness. …

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Stacy Mizrahi

Climb Mountains

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How do you climb mountains? That’s easy – one step at a time! The other day a mountain came and woke me up, in the form of a panic attack . Thankfully, I had enough training to beat the sucker down and not let it control me. Its taken years of practice, but I’m here to tell you that hard work does pay off. If you are suffering from anxiety issues and not doing anything about it, take control and go get help. Find a therapist, find a yoga instructor, find a meditation group. Find someone and get the process …

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Not Listening: A Good Way to Build Animosity and Start Fights

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I recently got wind of turmoil in my congregation, and without getting into details, it’s completely about lines of communication being severed and people stepping up their defensiveness in response. I can’ t tell you how many times I’ve seen this situation play out over my life. Group A has something to say, Group B counters with something, and then there is this escalation because neither side will compromise or be willing to accept that they can’t find common ground. In my situation, Group C (the congregation leadership) steps in to shut down the discussion (via a online forum) and …

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The Power of Planning

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If you talk to any given person about how they organize their day, you’ll hear an assortment of answers… sometimes form the same person. I use to fit into that group, a middle-aged person who never really had a solid system to organize my day. My sense of planning use to be a hodgepodge of mental notes, stuff scratched on whatever paper I had on hand and of course blotting words on calendars I rarely used. The result was the typical ADHD end result: a constant state of chaos under a veneer of “organization” followed by a wonderment at how …

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