2014 Blog Posts
The transition from campus living to a grown-up life-style requires many changes─clothes, makeup, and not least, one’s living space. The young and sometimes not-so-young can often find themselves surrounded by a bewildering and disparate array of hand-me-downs, orphan furniture left by departed roommates, and well-used campus gear. And that first apartment─shared or not, is usually, well, small. We asked Jolene Streiff, Founder of Designing Life, LLC, for her best tips on living small, and on decorating your first home.
In one of the most riveting scenes in the musical Les Miserables, Javert apologizes to Jean Valjean (disguised as Monsieur Madeleine, the mayor of the town) for doubting his identity. He informs the mayor that they have caught the escaped criminal, Jean Valjean, and that he is awaiting trial. The real Jean Valjean faces a morally pivotal point, as the song “Who am I?” articulates: “If I speak, I am condemned. If I stay silent, I am damned!” What should he do? The song continues, “Who am I? Can I condemn this man to slavery; pretend I do not feel his agony. This innocent who bears my face, who goes to judgment in my place…”
Many go about their daily lives trapped in what seems like a never-ending succession of actions. What should I do next? We often forget why we do these things in the first place. To lead rich, meaningful lives, we have to stop and ponder Jean Valjean’s fundamental question: Who am I? Self-identity is more than mere self-knowledge…
Self-doubt, self-acceptance, self-esteem, self-loathing—it is essential to have a good relationship with oneself in order to function well in life and to establish healthy relationships with others. But how does one develop self-esteem without going overboard and becoming an egoist? This is the question that is exhaustively explored in Michel Esparza’s book Self-Esteem without Selfishness, published in Spain in 2010, and recently made available in an excellent English translation by Devra Torres (Scepter Press, 2013).
This topic will be familiar to devotees of self-help books, but Esparaza’s solution is no quick fix.
Recently, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella enraged the public by saying that women should not ask for raises, but let faith dictate their compensation. Though controversial, his statement serves as a wake-up call to the community that women clearly do not enjoy the same rights as men and more needs to be done to promote gender equality in the workplace. A previous Carnegie Mellon study on graduates with a master’s degree shows that despite a growing number of women graduating from college, women still make on average 7.6% less than men, in part due to their fear of speaking up. As I have learned from the MHI mentoring program, effective communication, especially assertiveness, is key to developing a voice and building a successful and fulfilling career.
“Prediction is dangerous: but The Hobbit may well prove a classic.” So wrote C. S. Lewis in 1937 of his good friend J.R.R. Tolkien’s newly released book—and how right he was. Now, if you were to judge the merit of The Hobbit from the glimpses of the movie trailer you might have caught by an NYC subway entrance…
Starting out in my career has often meant completing "mundane tasks"—making copies, going on coffee runs, ordering lunches, etc. Normally people would rather pass these tasks off to someone else than do them themselves, but I've always been able to approach these tasks with a different view. I owe that mindset to a college professor who planted a seed in my head.
Nuria Chinchilla, a professor at the business school IESE in Barcelona, Spain, has been influential in promoting greater workplace flexibility in Spain and throughout Europe. During a recent trip to the US, she joined us at Murray Hill Institute for an Evening of Conversation and informal book signing. Alice Trimmer, of the MHI Board, interviewed her about her current work and her opinions on progress that has been made in helping women and all employees achieve more balanced lives.
Frozen, which won the Best Animated Feature film award at both the Oscar and Golden Globe, was certainly an enjoyable respite from the prolonged winter chill. In the movie, Elsa, princess of Arendelle, lives in fear and has isolated herself, trying to suppress her growing power to create ice and snow, which nearly killed her younger sister Anna. Yes, it is a movie for children. But adults should heed some of the messages the movie delivers, one of which is: that isolation is never a good response to threats or fear.