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Tag: Self-Leadership

When You Recognize the Pattern in Your Own Life

When behavioral patterns you understand professionally show up inside your own life, diagnosis is not the first task. Observation, investigation, boundaries, and agency are.

August 31, 2026
What They Hate in You Is Missing in Them. Maybe.

Jealousy may explain someone’s reaction. So might fear, resentment, misunderstanding, status threat, or something else entirely. The Cardinal Rule starts with behavior before motive.

August 21, 2026
When Another Person’s Story Stirs Your Own

Another person’s story can stir grief, memory, fear or longing without making them responsible for what it activated. A reflection and four-step practice for holding compassion and boundaries at the same time.

August 21, 2026
Field Notice: The Cardinal Chronicles Are Opening

The Cardinal Chronicles are opening: an eight-week field series using The Cardinal Rule™ to examine growth, conflict, evidence, systems, relationships, attention, and self-leadership in practice.

August 20, 2026
The Accountability Lesson We Keep Teaching Backward

If you want more accountability from the people around you, the first intervention may not belong to them. A leadership essay and five-question accountability audit on starting from within.

August 19, 2026
Run Anyway

You do not need company to begin. Sometimes the right people find you only after you are already in motion.

August 18, 2026
Smoked Meat Friends

Some relationships are like smoked meat: salty, satisfying, memorable—and best understood in small doses. Fun isn’t the same as nourishing.

August 18, 2026
One Piece at a Time

Attention has capacity. Pain, stress, grief, conflict, interruptions and decisions all consume it. Sometimes presence is simply process control: one piece at a time.

August 18, 2026
The First Reaction Is Not the Decision

Restraint is recognizing that the first reaction is one option, not an order. Character shows up in how we use our power when another person’s free will collides with ours.

August 18, 2026
Field Note: Curious Enough to Stay

A close encounter with a bald-faced hornet becomes a morning field note on curiosity, distance, observation, and choosing to learn before reacting.

August 15, 2026
You’re Why Your Mom Is Crazy

A funny, reflective essay about daughters, motherhood, mortality, self-leadership, and the strange privilege of letting our children watch us become people too.

August 14, 2026
When Do Men Get a Group?

A man at my conference lunch table leaned back, crossed his arms, and asked, “When do men get a group?” I had been ready for that question for most of my professional life. What happened next reminded me that…

August 14, 2026
You Don’t Have to Come in First to Walk Out a Winner

Winning is not always first place. Sometimes it is the work, the growth, the collaboration, and the scenic route that teaches us who we are.

August 14, 2026
Every Love Story Is Wonderful, But Ours Is My Favorite

Tomorrow is my grandparents’ anniversary. While preparing to write about winning, I found myself thinking about the love they built, the family they created, and the lessons that have continued unfolding long after they…

August 11, 2026
Just Because You Can

I had created a remarkably efficient operating system for overwhelming myself. I had proven, over and over again, that I could. That turned out to be very different from proving that I should.

August 11, 2026

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Slingshot Designs, LLC

Human-centered. Process-driven. Crafted with intention.

Artisan work, leadership development, and meaning-driven design rooted in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.

The Cardinal Rule™ • VoicePrint™ • Mitten Carving & Design™

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