It's been a while since I've written anything. I go through periods of time when I am too caught up in the daily work to sit and reflect. This is one of the great challenges of leadership and life in general today. We spend so much time running from task to task, project to project that we rarely take time to reflect on where we are going - we end up running in circles.

I started with a new client last week. She is a single mother of two young children as well as a busy executive. She works hard to hold both her personal and professional life together. When I asked her about time for herself she laughed....she said if she didn't laugh, she would cry. At the end of our first session I challenged her to find something small that she could do for herself between our sessions. Through our conversation she realized that in the busyness of her life she had aborted her spiritual practice. She committed to finding time for it in the coming week. When I checked in with her on Friday she reported that she had indeed turned off the TV 30 minutes early each night - after the kids went to bed - and sat quietly reflecting on the day and on what was important to her. The result of doing so was a better nights sleep which resulted in more energy during the day and feeling better about herself.

Sometimes we have to go back to the basics. When life gets busy we want to create elaborate plans for fixing what we think is broken when in fact, if we just step back and find the simple things which are relatively easy to do, the bigger things take care of themselves.