Author: Dawn Rowley

Moving to Florida, I’ve had to learn about many different species of plants, animals and insects that inhabit our environment. My latest adventure was with a plant known as mother-in-law tongue. I found the name humorous when I heard it, and after spending a good part of a day trying to eradicate the plant and its roots from my garden, I had much more time to think about its moniker. You’ve likely seen this plant in a container; at your doctor’s or dentist’s office, or you may even have one of them in your home. It’s a lovely, green, spikey plant; it grows easily without much care required and it is very good for indoor environments as a natural air purifier. My neighbor had one that outgrew its space, so…

On the way to the Seattle airport, I had a lucky draw with Saam, my Uber driver. Saam is from Somalia and has lived here for many years. Saam is industrious; he has ideas. He asked me a few questions, then paused, looked in the rearview mirror and asked me if there was something that I really liked. I shared with him that I enjoy wine. He proceeded, very animatedly, to tell me how I could begin a new business; dress up nicely, have a nice glass of wine, and share what I know about the wine in a video. “People want to know about wine. You know about wine. You share what you know. You make a business.” Within five minutes he had me connecting with wine salesmen, becoming…

Walking through LaGuardia recently with my snazzy new BenchStrength Coaching jacket, I was asked by the TSA security guard if I was “really a Benchstrength Coach.” Of course, my answer was yes, and then I said, “but it probably isn’t what you are thinking.” While waiting for my bag to exit the scanner, I told him I am a leadership coach, for executives, and he admitted he was trying to figure out how I became a weightlifting coach. I laughed and told him we focus on building leadership muscle. Not everyone knows there are professional coaches for leaders. We were influenced by our background in athletics when we picked our company name. The best teams don’t rely on a few stars; they have a deep bench that they develop to…

So much of our lives are on automatic pilot. From the moment you get out of bed in the morning, to the time you find yourself back in that same bed, there are hundreds of routines and habit patterns we repeat that help us get us through the day. Some of these habits we may be aware of, and others are so ingrained that we may not even realize that there is an opportunity for a conscious choice to do something different. Our habits are often the result of behaviors our brain interprets as required for our protection. It acts from information we have given it, either through actual experience or through stories we tell ourselves. In a habit-loop, when we encounter a stimulus, we have a conditioned, default response.…