Author: Laura Gassner Otting

  • Live Your Best Life

    Last week, I squirreled away in a sound booth the size of a bathroom stall for four hours a day, two days in a row.  Eric, an effortlessly cool, long-haired millennial whose current job titles include an athletic trainer, fitness competitor, metal guitarist, and, of course, sound technician, sat outside of the booth.  I was…

  • Slow Down to Speed Up

    I like to sit in the aisle when I fly.  It gives me the illusion of control.  Sure, I know right up in my cerebellum that if the plane goes down, it’s a fiery inferno for all of us — but still, the idea of having some control has always been my thing. Today I…

  • Answer Your Calling

    I am on a quest. It’s a full-on, can’t be stopped, no-holds-barred quest to get you to live your best life. But, I’m not going to tell you how to live your best life. That isn’t for me to say. What I am going to do, however, is demand that you ask more of yourself.…

  • Embrace the Edge of Incompetence

    We’re grown-ups.  We have jobs. Those jobs were earned because we demonstrated competence in a task.  That task is valued by the boss, and so the boss pays us. Seems logical so far, right? But here’s where it goes off the rails.  We learn to derive our value from the continued demonstration of competence.  And…

  • Four Words to Ban from Your Life

    There are four simple words that are ruining your life. Four simple words, seemingly meaningless when uttered as if they didn’t have the power to stop time and kill dreams. They are comfort coma-inducing as they innocently usher you down the path of procrastination justification. Four simple words: “I’ll be happy when…” Screw that. Why wait…

  • Passion Will Kick Your Ass

    Whenever I hear someone decry, “Tell me what you would do even if nobody paid you, and I’ll show you your passion,” I want to hurl. Ugh.  Your passion.  Praise your passion.  Live your passion.  Follow your passion. Stop it. Tell me what you would do even if you knew with 100% certainty that you…

  • Mentors of a Different Stripe

    This weekend I had the privilege of speaking to a room full of women of color, all in the first part of their careers. Each of them were trying to figure out how to marry their passions with their skills to become the leaders that they know deep inside they can be. I was the…

  • The Key to Personal Reinvention

    Grandma Moses didn’t pick up a paintbrush until she was 80 years old. Steve Martin became a dad for the very first time at 67. Madonna has reinvented herself every single decade. Even James Bond was trying to figure out how to be old in Skyfall. And, why is this? Because being the same is…

  • Focus on the Lesson, Not the Mistake

    A few weeks ago, I tried to do a good thing for someone that I had admired from afar for a long time.  We belong to a small, private community of authors and speakers. He reached out to the group with an emergency, and I, along with a few others, jumped at the chance to…

  • Do to Dream

    “Dream it, and then you can be it!” I’m calling bullshit. You know those sun-soaked, flaxen-haired, boho-chic girls in Instagram memes, the ones who blow dandelion petals into the air as they stare longingly, and yet purposefully, into the distance? This is precisely the kind of advice they give. And it’s terrible. Don’t believe me?  Then…