Life was so much easier when I walked into the office and someone handed me a pink slip of paper that said, "While you were out..." Now I come back in and have to check email, voice mail and Facebook before I sit still for a conference call that drags...

I keep hearing about hopeless people, and I've got to tell you -- I hate that term hopeless. It suggests helplessness. It paints a picture where there is no way out and no recovery.

I prefer to think in terms of light and dark, rather than hopeful and hopeless. There...

For all of the people who keep waiting for things to get better -- stop.

Stop waiting. You're losing time, whether you are enjoying this moment or not. This is it. It is all you have, so wake up. Live.

I know people who have spent the past two years...

Life doesn't play out the easy way. It'll knock you around as much as you let it.

So if you ever remind yourself that life isn't fair, well, stop. Life is neither fair nor unfair. It just is. You get tripped up when you focus too intently on your own...

"What do you think of China?"

That's a hard question to answer, especially when the person asking it is the executive vice-president of a $4 billion retail chain, and when that person is clearly Chinese. But, Wilson Zhu, executive vice president of Michaels, wanted my impressions.

I muttered something --...

Last week, I returned from a speaking tour of Asia where American bravado met Chinese humility.

I am a leadership and motivation speaker who tells people to expect success, make decisions with confidence and to advertise their strengths and wins. That is the exact opposite of the Chinese way, which...

I've written about my mother many, many times. I used to hope her story would inspire and help others . Now I write about her because it is the only thing I know to do. I feel helpless, but I feel less alone when I know others are hearing about...

"There's your mother, Fawn," my best friend said as she pointed to a woman crumpled over in a wheelchair near the nurse's station.

"No, that's not my mother," I said.

"Yes, it is."

I walked over to the woman, certain it was not my mom. Her head and shoulders were...

I always say, "Make a plan for what you want to do with your life. It's the greatest piece of fiction you will ever write."

Truly. Life unfolds. You cannot force, command, direct, ordain, bully, manage or control it. You just can't. As soon as you think you have everything...

The seas didn't part when we got a new president. There wasn't a pot of gold on your doorstep when the stimulus package passed. And the turn of a calendar page did not cure all your economic ills.

If you caught yourself saying, "Thank God 2009 is over!" you may...

Last night, a distraught  friend lamented, "I had finally gotten to the point in life where things were supposed to get easy."

There is no point in life where things are supposed to get easy. I've said it a thousand times: "Just when you think it's going to get easy,...

I began my shoplifting career at age 3 —  on the very day my father opened his drugstore in Flint, Mich. It was Germer’s Drug Store, and since I was Fawn Germer, I figured everything there was mine. Dad nabbed me for stealing a piece of Bazooka bubble gum, and I...

She was 40, successful and had just been canned because her boss told her she had "an edge."

“Why do I scare the hell out of people?” she asked me. “People either love me or hate me. I am told I need to tone it down, not to push...

Work. Life. Balance. Work. Life. Balance. We’ve all heard those words so much it’s as if they have merged together into a simple little mantra which, if repeated enough we will manifest. "Work. Life. Balance." "Work. Life. Balance." "Work. Life. Balance."

Poof!

Look at her! See that career woman climb...

If I had ten dollars for every time someone has come up to me after an event and said, “I’ve always wanted to write a book,” I could be retired. I’m serious.

It is a sad refrain because, almost every time someone says it, I can tell that the book...

I was 17 years old and a guppy reporter for The Bradenton Herald when my editor sent me on my first assignment in the field.

“You’re going to interview Gloria Steinem,” she told me.

It was 1978 and the normally gruff woman boss I worked for was as strong...

If you want to completely overhaul your life, just follow these ten magic steps.

No, wait!

I keep seeing articles like that. You know, eight or nine or eleven tips that will completely transform you from loser to winner, from fat to thin, from poor to rich. Whatever.

If...

My mother has had Alzheimer's Disease for eight years. At least. She is 83 and living in a nursing home, fed through a stomach tube.

A few weeks ago, she was sleeping when I arrived for a visit. I nudged her awake, then climbed into bed to cuddle with her...

The past year has really done a number on us. Truly brilliant people are telling me that they feel like failures. They are worried about their finances and their futures. They are starting to define themselves by what has happened to them.

Several years ago, I quit my job to...

David Bailey hated it when people would tell him the day would come when he'd see his adversity as the best thing that ever happened to him.

"What an asinine, terrible thing to say," he says.

Months later, he tells this story without realizing that he keeps recounting all of...