Love This Life...

is about celebrating the moment and that we’re not guaranteed or owed another day….and how cool it is that what we hide can actually be the fuel towards our glory and that it’s not so bad being proven wrong.

Love This Life…

is about welcoming the blind turn and the possibility that there’s no such thing as coincidence and that empathy is incredibly sexy and that it’s never too late to pick up a guitar or a paintbrush or to man an amend or make a new friend.

Love This Life…

could be about rekindling a past flame or igniting a new one or shape-shifting from a dreamer into a doer or savoring the caress of a love long gone.

Love This Life…

means whatever it is you want it to mean because love this life is a celebration and your path.

Love This Life…

cuz it could go out any second.

You Rock.

Quotes to Live by

I recently went through piles of old pieces of paper, and found a list of quotes I’d collected from high school through college. To eliminate one less piece of paper, I’ve decided to hold them here.

“Dripping water on a rock wears a hole” - Barbara Slade

“Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever” - Napolean Bonaparte

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted” - Albert Einstein

“A life gets halfway around the world before truth has a chance to get its pants on” - Winston Churchill

“In the end, we will remember not the word of our enemies, but the silence of our friends” - MLK

“Whether you think you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right” - Henry Ford

“Do or do not. There is no try” - Yoda

“Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake” - Henry David Thoreau

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it” - Oscar Wilde

“A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems” - Paul Erdos

“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws” - Plato

“The power of accurate observatism is frequently called cynicism by those who don’t have it” - George Bernard Shaw

“Whenever I climb, I am followed by a dog called ‘Ego’” - Nietzshe

“Talent does what it can; genius does what it must” - Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

“I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter” - Winston Churchill

“When you do common things in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world” - George Washington Carver

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 way that won’t work” - Thomas Edison

“I’ve had a wonderful time, but this wasn’t it” - Groucho Marx

“We didn’t lose the game; we just ran out of time” - Vince Lombardi

“Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down” - Jimmy Durante

“Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street” - Elbert Hubbard

“There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life” - Frank Zappa

“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome” - Isaac Asimov

“It is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one’s doubts” - G.G. Burgin

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance” - O. Wilde

“Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens” - Jimi Hendrix

“I have often regretted my speech, never my silence” - Xenocrates

“If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough” - Mario Andretti

“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal” - H. Ford

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead” - Warren Zevon

“Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together” - Georg Lichtenberg

“While we are postponing, life speeds by” - Seneca

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win” - M. Gandhi

“Wit is educated insolence” - Aristotle

“The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows” - A. Onassis

“In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience” - W.B. Prescott

“Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names” - JFK

“The nice thing about egotists is that they don’t talk about other people” - Lucille S. Harper

“You can pretend to be serious, you can’t pretend to be witty” - Sacha Guitry

“There is no sincerer love than the love of food” - George Bernard Shaw

“When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I’ve never tried before” - Mae West

“Happiness is good health and a bad memory” - Ingrid Bergman

“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you” - Winnie the Poo

“It is not enough to say I have been there. A voyage is not just a journey, It’s period carved out of time, when the impossible can happen” - Unknown

“The ultimate adventure is to go beyond the point where one cannot go” - Bruce Chatwin

“We drive into the future using only our rear view mirror” - Marshall Mcluhan

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying “I will try again tomorrow’” - Mary Anne Radmacher

“Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye” - Helen Keller

“To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved” - George MacDonald

“The best mirror is an old friend” - Peter Nivio Zarlenga

“Strive to have friends, for life without friends is like life on a desert island…to find one real friend in a lifetime is good fortune; to keep him is a blessing” - Baltasar Gracian

“What would life be like if we had no courage to attempt anything?” - Van Gogh

“We’re never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy” - Walter Anderson

“It is not enough to take steps which may some day lead to a goal; each step must be itself a goal and a step likewise” - Goethe

“Don’t be afraid to take a big step if indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps” - David Lloyd George

“Wherever you go, go with all your heart” - Confucius

“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought” - Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi

“Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall” - Oliver Goldsmith

“The will to do, the soul to dare” - Sir Walter Scott

“It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to has tried and succeeded” - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion” - Hegel

“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: not going all the way, and not starting” - Buddha

“My sun sets to rise again” - Robert Browning

“The ghost of the mountain runs silently through the field in his pale white coat” - JoAnn Byrd

“Courage is being scared to death…and saddling up anyway” - John Wayne

Take A Leap Of Faith To Find The Career Of Your Dreams

** Article written for Six Degrees Society **

I'm going to be honest with you; I'm in no way an expert on this. Some days I actually feel like I'm 27 going on 17. But what I do have is experience; experience in my ever-changing pursuit of happiness, experience in getting up and going when it feels right, and most importantly, experience in failure and learning from it. All these experiences have set me up perfectly for where I am today. Is this what I envisioned 5 years ago? 10 years ago? Not at all!

But I learned years ago that if I wanted a certain life, no one was going to give that to me, I needed to pursue it myself (S/O to Dad for the pep talk). All I hope to do today is inspire you to reassess where your life is currently, and make sure it's a path to your greatest self. After all, we all deserve to wake up feeling inspired! 

This is a Story About a Girl Named Lucky....wait, what? 

Kidding, but I do feel pretty damn lucky these days. I went from a U.S Senator's Legislative Aide (think more Veep than House of Cards) to a NYC Merchandiser (my life at times feels like a mix of Devil Wears Prada meets Girls). I was a kid straight out of college researching health care policy to brief a Senator on legislation hitting the floor. Incredible opportunity? Yes. Did I want to do this for the rest of my life? Not quite. It took me 2.5 years, though, to finally come to terms with that.  Many a night I sat awake in bed, brain vs. heart duking it out. In the end, I had to go deeper and followed my gut. I know...right now you're thinking, Okay crazy, thanks for the talk. But bear with me.

Naturally, human beings have survived listening to this "gut feeling", so why does it seem we've stopped when it comes to our careers? Is it because we are continuously reminded that we've evolved to some superior species? That we're too intelligent and formalised to listen to something so simple as our inner thoughts? That FEAR of FAILURE in the eyes of whoever is watching? I know this is what I was thinking. How would my family of well educated, successful men and women look at me, going back to school for fashion?  It was a miserable fear that took a long time to eliminate from my mind, but once I did that (through a variety of methods), I was capable of seeing that my happiness would lead to my success.

Now I'm not telling you to go into work tomorrow and quit with ZERO plan because that's insane. But if you're nodding your head at any of this, then I want you to start listening to your body and your mind. Do you wake up and feel sick to go to work? Or rustle around in bed for hours flustered by your day (next level, are you crying after downing your last bottle of Pinot Grigio)? Has your health deteriorated, or do you find yourself speaking only about the negatives of your job to your friends and family? Again, if you're nodding your head, it's time to take that leap. I've been here a few times, to the deepest, darkest levels of work depression, and it reeaaallllyyy sucks and takes a huge impact on your life. But in the end, we need to put our big girl pants on and deal with our issues head on!

So start visualizing what it is you want most out of life and write it down. If you're not writing down your goals, you will be amazed at the difference it makes. I've started regularly writing every Sunday just to note my successes and failures for the week. However, the initial sit down is the biggest one. Over the years, I've compiled a list of questions to ask myself. Here are a few:

* What Did I Love As a Child & What Do I Love Now

* Who Inspires Me and Why

* What Am I Doing When I Feel My Best

* When I Look Back On My Career, What Do I Want to Say I've Accomplished

* What Is My Ideal Day

* What Do I Find Intolerable

* Ask Acquaintances What They Admire About Me

* What Are My Excuses to Not Achieving My Goals

Now if you answer these questions honestly, I promise you'll start feeling more inspired to find what's right for you. You may even find your clarity. From here, if you don't have your one, five, and 10 year goals written out, you need to do that, as well. Anything pushing you in a forward motion is the right push!

Then start brainstorming on those dream careers! Update that resume and LinkedIn. Start reaching out to people who have that job you dream about and ask for 15 minutes of their time. Even see if you can speak with Recruiters at companies you're interested in. Just slowly begin setting yourself up for that leap. No one likes to leap blindly into the night. Financially, what will it take for you to be ready? 5 months or 5 years? Is this a leap in the same city or a leap across country? When I moved from Washington, D.C. to go back to school in San Francisco, CA, I began setting myself up only three months in advance by simply talking with a family friend who had gone to fashion school. From San Francisco to New York City? Also three months...but that was definitely not on purpose. I had planned for a year. But 'ish happens! And I had to make it work. I immediately started reaching out to individuals living in NY, writing down pros and cons for my move (because deep down I knew I was insane), and obviously applying to jobs. Scarily enough, I was told to wait until I was in NY to begin applying  because no one wanted to talk to me from across the country. That's taking a leap of faith. And I did it. I sold all of my stuff, moved to a city where I knew no one, with no job, and enough money to pay for three months of rent. That was my timeline to getting my act together. Three months to get to NYC, three months to get a job. Pressure? I'd say so.

But in the end I knew this was something I deeply wanted, and I would make it work! I believed in myself and my abilities. Was I scared? Scared like hell. If I could explain the panic attacks I had in the weeks coming up to my move, you'd probably think twice about doing it yourself. But it was in those moments I knew what I was doing was the best thing for me. My first six months in NYC have been, without a doubt, the hardest thing I've ever done. But I've also grown and learned more than I ever thought imaginable. 

So the next time you catch yourself complaining about your job for the zillionth time, consider why it is you have nothing good to say about it. Perhaps it's time to reset and take life into your own hands. We need to stop blaming everyone else when we feel stuck, and take the initiative to figure out what it is we want out of life! Take that leap of faith, because chances are, your gut feeling is the right one.

Why Now, More Than Ever, You Should Give Back To Your Community

And How That Translates To Being an Effective Employee And Future Leader.

In a world consumed by selfies and "Treat Yo' Self" ing, it can be somewhat ironic when people proclaim their strong opinions via Social Media. 

"HOW CAN YOU NOT CARE ABOUT (insert daily rant)."

But to be perfectly honest, while I applaud that you have emotions about whatever current event is on the news and writing a novel about it on Facebook, what are you actually doing about it? Serious issues hit the media at a faster rate than ever before, and with our society's case of ADD, these issues come and go even faster.

Even worse, our inability to communicate with one another about these issues forces a far deeper problem; that with a rise in people simply communicating via Internet, we are incapable of communicating in person, and that will impact the way we represent ourselves, especially in the workforce.

On top of all of this, as technology drives us farther away, we're losing that sense of community that once upon a time people used to SURVIVE. Everyone hashtags their #TRIBES these days, but if we don't start helping our larger TRIBE, this country (and world) is set for a dark path.

So here is my goal for you: give back in some way at least once a month. That's a small contribution that anyone can easily attain. This can be anything from going to your local shelter (human or furry) to helping kids with their college transcripts, or maybe even just joining a board to begin having conversations about an issue in your community. Most importantly, just find the issue you're passionate about, and DIVE IN. Once a month or once a week, giving back is the connection we're all missing. I think most people today sit at home and wonder why the world is going to shit, and I truly believe it's the fact that our connections have deteriorated to a scary low.

Now how does giving back translate to your work ethic and future leader skills? Here's my personal inspiration:

My father is a successful cardiac surgeon. He invented a non-invasive stent so that doctors no longer need to open up your chest cavity. This used to be a somewhat risky procedure, and a lengthy one for you to spend in the hospital. With a stent, no major surgery and only a couple days in the hospital. You can imagine, this was a successful venture. But I always asked him,

"Why Wasn't Your Name On It? Why Don't You Talk About It More? You've Saved Thousands (maybe millions) of Lives, Yet No One's Even Heard Of You! Doesn't That Defeat The Purpose?! Don't people become doctors for the dollars??"

He always had the same amazing answer. "Honey, you don't do things to put your name on them or for the money. It's not who you are, it's what you do, and how you do it." Boom. Drop the mic, walk away. 

Now not all of us are in occupations where we can "easily" (and I use that in the most generic of ways) give back. But what would our world look like if we ALL thought this way? If we stopped spouting words about how we can change something, and went out and just DID IT.

This sort of TAKE CHARGE mentality is going to make you a stronger asset in the workplace. You'll come into the office more confident and ready to discuss your craft when you've spent the weekend giving back to something you're passionate about. You may even be able to figure out a way to combine those two things! Do I smell a business venture??

So stop talking about things you care about, and begin listening. Listen to your peers, listen to those who may not have a voice, and talk through actions. It's so silly, but Actions do speak louder than words, and when you've actually given your time to something, people will start listening to you too. That's how you make change, that's how you become an effective leader, and that's how our world will become a better place. #TakeCharge of your life. 

A Note to My Younger Self - 10 Years

I went to bed last night and it dawned on me. 10 years have gone by since I applied to college and was accepted to the University of Arizona. If I'd only known where I would be, how my life would change, would I have done anything differently? I decided last night, every 10 years I'll reflect. 

DEAR HAYLEY,

If someone told you today, March 14, 2007, that one day you'd live in New York working for a fashion house, I can close my eyes and see your response. Giggly, beaming, and saying, "Well that'd be amazing!" You wouldn't have the confidence or maturity level to pursue that life right now anyways, and that's okay. The experiences you'll have in the next 10 years will shape you, the good and bad, and prepare you for this adventure.

Dear Hayley, you're no longer the wound up, anal bitch too concerned about the judgements of your life and career. In fact, you'd hate yourself today somewhat. As much as I wish you were sometimes still there with me, especially these days, letting down some of those walls is going to be the best damn thing that ever happens to you in these 10 years. It's going to allow you to meet your greatest friends, I believe, in your lifetime. You're going to rebel against yourself, and realign with the little girl who wanted to save the world. You'll open up in college, express herself in D.C., and find yourself in the Bay. Even better to laugh at, dear Hayley, you're going to have tattoos, that thing you loathe oh so much. But as I know you, you're rolling your eyes at me right now, and that's fine. I know the outcome of this story.

Dear Hayley, you're going to have to learn patience, something that only comes with experience. The decisions you make, the ups and downs, will make you into a better person. So stop saying No and let YES be your guide to the future. You think you've got your whole life planned out, and only I wish you knew then the beauty of the journey. You'll learn soon enough.

Young Hayley, you will one day be the black sheep of the family, and if you knew that you'd be terrified. Your thoughts on failure in your family's eyes has controlled you; but it will crumble, along with your walls, slowly but surely. The lawyer you thought you'd be will end up being the last thing you ever want. The monetary success? Still there, but much more subdued as the reality of adulthood comes at full force. Sometimes, I wish I was as put together as you, but I wouldn't be who I am. You will be reminded time and time over that life is too short to sweat the small things. Know it's okay to fail, you have the strength within you to pick yourself back up and keep punching.

You're going to love, dear Hayley, and you're going to get hurt. That opening up we discussed? It's going to kick you right back in the face. You'll be stronger for it; it won't feel like it, ever, but you will. You're not one to believe in the "Three Love Concept", but it's lining up pretty accurately in your life. Your first love will always be in your life, and he will be closer to you now than you ever are in that ridiculous relationship you have. And let him be. Your second love will be everything you need in your 20s; it will be passionate ups and downs, dangerous, and then out of your life. You'll at times look back and wonder if it was just a dream because it never really settled. But it will bring life to you in a way you would never believe. He will teach you to stop taking yourself so seriously, and to enjoy the ride.

Finally, young self,  stay hungry in life as that's your greatest power. Your thirst for knowledge will pull you bi-coastal for a few years, but there will be a magnetic force that repeatedly comes back into your soul. New York is your future, and while you will deny it from this day forward, she'll call you. She'll know when you're ready, and as the "Third Love", she'll find you when you least expect it. Just breathe and let your experiences guide you.