I was thinking about that viral Facebook reel again. The woman said something I agree with: hard work is not enough. She suggested learning three invaluable skills—communication, writing, and selling or marketing. I wanted to add a fourth: Be enterprising. Then I started wondering if that advice is still relevant in quite the same way….

I came across a viral Facebook reel recently telling people that hard work is not enough. I agree. The woman in the reel said there are three invaluable skills we should learn if we want to get ahead in life: speaking and communicating, writing, and selling or marketing. Again, I agree. But I have a…

Looking back, I can safely confirm that confidence is one hell of a course that couldn’t be taught in school. It’s a series of life’s missteps until you can separate healthy self-confidence from self-importance.

Not necessarily because we go somewhere specifically to serve. But because how we travel can either take from a place—or contribute something to it. You buy lunch from the little carinderia instead of a chain. You hire the local guide. You buy the tomatoes from the roadside vendor. You stay in the neighborhood rather than…

When you eat at a neighborhood batchoyan, buy bread from an old family bakery, pick up fresh batwan from a market vendor—or buy a small pile of tomatoes from somebody who grew them or carried them all the way to town—your money does something.

The good we can do—with what we already have. Could somebody use this? I have been thinking about that question lately. Maybe because I reached a stage in life when I had something I once desperately wanted: Time. A little too much of it, apparently. 😂 My sister regularly suggested that I might consider using…

Health is not the absence of sickness. Health is the presence of balance — in body, community, and spirit.