Uncorking a Story Michael Carlon

Olga Grushin was born in Moscow and moved to the United States at eighteen. Her new book, The Charmed Wife, has been characterized by CNN as “A modern take on the story of Cinderella, marriage, divorce and love that’s surprising, darkly comedic and enchanting.”

At some point in time, and I can’t pinpoint when exactly, I started to disregard the journey. My life became a game of what’s next, instead of focusing on what is. When I look back on my kids, I realize that I just couldn’t wait for them to get to the next stage of development from crawling, to walking, to talking, and the next thing I knew I blinked and was dropping them off at college. At some point, I stopped enjoying the journey.

Whether in business, or in personal relationships, at some point we will find that we have to reinvent ourselves in order to stay relevant with the changing times. All of these thoughts came to me on my morning run and I felt compelled to share them in this episode on reinvention (inspired by the man in black).

I was introduced to the work of Viktor Frankl as an undergraduate student studying psychology. His book, Man’s Search for Meaning, is divided into two parts; the first is a memoir of his experiences living in a concentration camp during World War II and the second details his theory of Logotherapy, which involves identifying a purpose in life to feel positive about and then immersively imagining that outcome.

Oftentimes, when he runs, Kevin is stopped by neighbors and people passing by because, let’s face it, it’s pretty unique to see someone running on the road barefoot. While this would annoy me to no end, he looks at it as an opportunity to change a moment for that other person in a positive way and I think that is a great sentiment to start the first episode of 2021 on.

I can’t think of a year wrought with more challenges than 2020. I certainly wouldn’t blame anyone for being resentful over the missed milestones including graduations, proms, or for having to delay major life events including weddings or even big trips that were planned. Here’s the thing, though, resentment is poisonous.