Incomia

If you’ve ever done something you regretted (and come on, who hasn’t?), you’re not alone. In fact, you are in the company of… hmmm…  let’s see… how many people are there on the planet? The reality is that we all do stupid or selfish things at times. I know I do. Like the time I forgot about the side mirrors on my car while reversing out of a parking lot. Or when I turned up for a Broadway show at 7 o’clock only to discover I’d booked a matinee. Or the time I dropped my kids at school on a teacher in-service day (my kids were not happy). And that’s just for starters. I’ve also made flippant comments that have caused offense and lacked the guts to confront an awkward issue only to pay a steep price down the line. I could go on, but you get the gist. It’s why I’ve thought so much about the importance of self-forgiveness—extending mercy to ourselves when we slip up, mess up and fail to live up to our own ideals. Of course, I am operating on the assumption that you’ve also made a f...

“I have always had a rather dark personality, a mixture of melancholy, pessimism and irony,” says Eric Wilson, an English professor at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Throughout his life, family and friends have implored him to cheer up. He was instructed to smile more and scowl less—and perhaps seek counseling. Friends asked, “Why can’t you just be in a better mood?” “Everyone assumed there was something wrong with me,” Wilson says. But what if happiness, cheerfulness and optimism are not your default state of existence? Should you work constantly to switch your natural emotional setting, as was suggested to Wilson? Or could melancholy be just as valuable as merriment? These are some of the questions he sought to answer when he wrote his best-selling book Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy . He’s not the only one who’s frustrated with what many see as America’s relentless push toward positivity and the treatment of happiness as a commodity. Not only...

Although National Donut Day may be a very close second, International Women’s Day holds a special place in my heart. It’s a rare 24 hours when women are praised for their ambition and determination, and are empowered to reach even further in the coming year. Sadly, this praise is not as commonplace as it should be in the 21st century. Women around the world are banned from going to school, paid less for their work, period-shamed and generally considered less capable, all because of one chromosomal difference. This utterly baffles me. I remember the first time I experienced this diminishing of women firsthand. I’d just briefed a conference room of men on a marketing initiative I’d spearheaded that had exceeded our goals. After I was done, as if my ambition needed to be placated, the VP of the company patted me on the head as he gestured for me to take a seat. I was in my early 20s at the time, fresh out of college and hungry to affect change in the world. I stared in disbelief as eve...

The first rule of being seen, heard and paid starts with understanding if you are being marginalized. For the sake of clarity, I’ll dispense with a few formalities right here. First of all, I’m not going to spend time proving to you that people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, women, people with disabilities and other minority groups of all stripes, whether they’re ethnic minorities, religious minorities, or just underrepresented in their field or workplace, suffer specific challenges when they go to work every day. Or that the challenges compound if their identities intersect with any of those labels, especially in a way they can’t or won’t consciously hide or minimize when they go to work. Those people bring with them a level of social baggage that they can’t leave behind or just sideline and hope they have a nice day at the office. Our majority counterparts—and yes, that means white, male, cisgender and heterosexual in most workplaces—don’t have to bring those same concer...

Simultaneously an invaluable tool and a hindrance to our day-to-day lives, technology has opened the door to remote work, staying in touch with friends and family with ease—and constantly checking our messages . During the pandemic, technology provided a lifeline. Zoom, Google Meet, Discord and other chat services allowed families and friends to communicate across long and prolonged distances and for school and work to continue. Virtual events also saw a rise in popularity, as they allowed audiences to attend without paying for travel or worrying about exposure to COVID-19. It wasn’t the ideal solution—and many would say it still isn’t—but it allowed for life to continue with some semblance of normalcy. Although instant communication was already a facet of life, it is not a stretch to imagine that the pandemic only exacerbated the effects, especially for remote workers. The loss of a formal workday means the removal of stringent work hours, and though working after-hours is no recent...

Research has shown Google searches for mental health-related terms like depression, anxiety, bipolar and OCD spike during the wintertime. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) leaves many people feeling more depressed during the cold and dark winter months. Plus, depression and anxiety peak for many people during the holiday season. If the winter months left you feeling anxious or depressed—or if you’re struggling with a condition like bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) or schizophrenia—and you’re interested in learning more about your experience, you’ve come to the right place. From memoirs to research-backed guides, these 11 books cover all things mental health: 1. First, We Make the Beast Beautiful A New Journey Through Anxiety By Sarah Wilson Around 40 million people in the U.S. have anxiety or an anxiety-related disorder, such as panic disorder or social anxiety disorder. Learning about the clinical symptoms of anxiety is one thing—reading Sarah Wilson’s c...

Investing is the single most effective way to get rich. By opening an investment account, you have access to the biggest money-making vehicle in the history of the world: the stock market.  But a lot of you believe you have to do some complex, fancy work to invest… or that you have to have a lot of money to make the most of investing.  This is not true: You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room to invest, you don’t have to be a millionaire, and you don’t have to follow the hottest takes and trends.  And remember this: you likely can’t beat average returns. In relationships and work, we want to be better than average. In investing, average is great.  So ignore the appeal of these flashy, alluring takes. Average might sound boring and unsexy, but choose being rich over being sexy. When it comes to investing, that means we just have to do this: Pick a low-cost index fund that tracks the S&P 500 Automate our investments  Let our money grow o...

Hi there, it’s Lisa Nichols here, founder and CEO of Motivating The Masses. Empowering leaders like you to serve and inspire in an even bigger way than you currently do. I’m here to share with you many things, but one of the things I want to focus on now is how do we, as leaders, as change agents, how do we open up to even more love in our life? Love from others and love from ourselves. While we’re creating change in the world, love is an important conversation. Experiencing love is an important necessity in our lives. For me, early in my career my love energy was focused on business, quite honestly. Focused first on raising my son and then focused on building this dream, the dream of touching others. I realized that I didn’t open up a space to find love, romantic love, and to prioritize it, but I realized that I wasn’t in that space because I was still learning how to forgive and fall in love with Lisa. Finding love, discovering love, uncovering love. I think love in a romantic way...

Quick: Think of a charismatic person. Are you picturing a famous actor? A religious leader? An all-black wearing, TED-Talking innovator? Chances are your answer is somewhere along those lines, and your eighth-grade English teacher didn’t come to mind. You know the one: soft-spoken and a bit frumpy, yet constantly mobbed by adoring students, even after she made them spend the weekend reading King Lear . OK, I’m describing my wonderful eighth-grade English teacher, Judy Jordan. But look back: Didn’t you have a teacher like that, too, or maybe a scoutmaster or a sports coach? And hasn’t your life been dotted with people who have that special “it” that makes others like them , trust them and want to be led by them? Despite popular notions, charisma doesn’t just come in one bold flavor. Nor is it some rare magic that only a few brilliant or beautiful people are born with. Instead, research suggests that charisma is as varied as ice cream. A 2018 study published in the Journal of Personali...