This picture was taken recently on the 4th anniversary of my husband’s death. The rough waves and dark sky parallels the emotions I was feeling the day my beautiful 46 year old husband died in my arms after a 23-month battle with esophageal cancer.

To see this man I loved with my whole heart slip away breath after breath was excruciating. Knowing how badly he wanted to stay. And then to have to call our 8 and 10-year-old daughters to come in to see us, them unaware that this would be the moment they would learn their Daddy had died.

I have also faced intense physical pain. So how can we befriend pain and use it as a tool to help us be our best in work and in life?

We all have so many things to do and so much responsibility. I reached a point earlier on in my life when I knew that something needed to shift for me. Doing it all was no longer an option. This led me to create a two-question filter system I use now whenever I am presented with a new work project or a social event. I have found this filter system works so well that I now share it with my clients and they are finding it beneficial too. The good part? It is so easy. It feels like common sense, yet pausing to ask yourself these two questions can completely change the way you work.

If you are running around the clock, it is time to look at your calendar. It doesn’t matter if you are a CEO or a student. If you are feeling flung through the day, you are not setting yourself up for success. It is no longer a badge of honour for leaders to talk about how busy they are. Busyness doesn’t equate to strong leadership. If you have got so many things to squeeze into your day and you are not sure how to do it, here are some tips for you!

am noticing a trend in the Executive Coaching work I do where leaders who are normally intensely focused on the next thing and always striving for more, have hit a lull.

There is nothing wrong with them. Their performance isn’t suffering, yet they aren’t feeling particularly inspired to go guns ablazing onto the next project or career move. And, this lack of goal-setting and intense desire to strive is feeling very weird for them. It is hard to put a finger on what’s ‘wrong,’ except they report just feeling “okay.” What has caused this feeling amongst many leaders?

This week, I gave a keynote speech for a corporation. I had a busy morning juggling a few things so got to the point where I realized I didn't have time to BOTH review my notes for this speech AND take a few minutes for me to ground myself, close my eyes and breathe deeply and visualize my connection with the audience. I had to choose one area to put my focus on for my prep for this speech.

I have learned some great lessons throughout my career about presentations. I was the former speechwriter for the CEO of General Motors, then became a VP of Communications and Business Development responsible for making regular presentations to clients and Boards. I have been a spokesperson for a variety of global and national brands. And, I have been interviewed for more than 5000 media interviews since the time I was 23 years old. Now I am a keynote speaker.

What Tips Can I Share With You to Make Your Talks More Impactful?

I have always been a believer that we can have it all in our lives. And for a while, it may seem that I did. A great husband, beautiful and healthy children, a fabulous job and I was feeling healthy and vibrant myself. Although ironically if you would have gone back in time and asked me if felt 100 percent fulfilled, I would have likely said no. I was continually striving for more, feeling anxiety inside as well as suffering from insomnia. I was driving myself way too hard and nothing was really ever good enough.

Then I learned life has a way of rearranging our best-laid plans. After I suffered a brain injury and then lost my husband to esophageal cancer, I really began to question what was possible after all. Can we really have it all?

In the earlier article ‘Welcome to Holland,’ Emily Perl Kingsley writes about when life doesn’t turn out like you expected it would. Does that concept resonate with you? I think many of us had ideals or hopes in our minds about how our lives/careers/relationships would be in the future, then life intervened and took us down another path.

Perl-Kingsley compares Italy to where we thought we were going in life, but instead, we ended up in Holland. For me, I was in Italy (as shown above in the Isle of Capri, Italy) with my late husband and our firstborn daughter, but also in terms of my life in many senses. I had an amazing husband, a great job, two beautiful healthy daughters, and lived in a nice community. What else could a person ask for? But life intervened…