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Beyond the Resume: Embracing the Whole Person in a Work-Life Integrated World

“Everyone has a story.”

There are differing thoughts on how much our personal and professional lives should be balanced. I have evolved through my career to firmly believe in “Work/life integration” vs. “Work/life balance.” The conversation and prevalence of integrating our work and personal lives have been more acutely discussed since the escalation of remote work resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic starting in 2020. In my life, work/life integration was the key to my survival. My son Ryan’s diagnosis of childhood cancer in 1996 demanded a personal commitment and an understanding from my employers and colleagues that is unthinkable in most professional environments. Yet, I was profoundly blessed to have the necessary professional support to survive personally and professionally.

A byproduct of the support I received was that In my leadership roles, I have always sought to understand that we all have stories and challenges in our lives that no one knows about. Caring about others and the macro-level demands they are facing in their lives is an intelligent business strategy, but more importantly, it is the right thing to do. We all are in this life together. In my in-person and social media interactions, I strive to understand the “complete person” regarding their interests, personality, and demands outside their professional roles. A resulting benefit is the building of more productive and genuine relationships. This is the world I want to live in.

As you will note in my blog posts, I fully embrace and share my life experiences. These experiences have shaped me into the person I am today, and they enhance my personal and professional lives.

Through my blog at BillTomoff (dot) com, I have written 71 blog posts from 2017 through July 1, 2024. I share personal and professional thoughts and am interested in helping others. The posts have been compiled in a PDF document, and then I collaborated with Claude AI to summarize “my story” based on my blog content. Anyone desiring to learn more about me could gain insight into my interests, expertise, and personal beliefs (i.e., let’s be kind to each other), and my style may resonate with others. These are the people I want in my tribe to engage and collaborate with!

#TwinzTalk Encouragement – Always be learning and do your best!

Below are my prompt and Claude AI’s [edited] response. Claude did an incredible job providing me with content to start working with. The summary shared is the essence of my life and beliefs, which I am dedicated to living and practicing for the rest of my life.

Prompt:

“Please read and review the attached PDF of blog posts. You are an expert ghostwriter, and I would like you to tell me what is important to the author based on his writing content. Take a deep breath and take your time responding.”

Response:

“Based on a thorough review of the blog posts, here are some key themes and values that appear to be important to the author, Bill Tomoff:

  1. Personal Growth and Continuous Learning: The author emphasizes personal development, lifelong learning, and consistent dedication to improving oneself. He regularly encourages reading, attending courses, and seeking new knowledge.
  2. Family: Family is a central priority for the author. Many posts reference his wife Terri, son Ryan, daughter Olivia, and twin brother Don. His family’s journey through his son’s cancer diagnosis and five-time cancer battles and treatment has profoundly shaped his worldview.
  3. Resilience and Post-Traumatic Growth: The author often discusses the concept of growing stronger through adversity, particularly with his son’s cancer experience. He believes in the possibility of emerging from difficult experiences as an improved, kinder, and more compassionate person.
  4. Kindness and Compassion: Treating others with gentleness and kindness is a recurring theme. The author frequently encourages readers to be tolerant, patient, and understanding of others, as everyone is fighting their own battles.
  5. Gratitude: The author emphasizes the importance of a grateful outlook on life, even during challenging times.
  6. Time Management and Prioritization: Many posts discuss the importance of using time wisely, focusing on what truly matters, and learning to say no to less important commitments.
  7. Stoicism: The author frequently references Stoic philosophy and its principles, which he strives to apply to challenges in his daily life.
  8. Helping Others: There’s a strong emphasis on using one’s skills and experiences to benefit others, whether through professional work, volunteering, or everyday interactions. “We rise by lifting others.”
  9. Technology and Innovation: The author and his twin are passionate about leveraging technology to enhance personal and professional effectiveness and create a greater possibility of making a more significant contribution to the world.
  10. Health and Self-Care: Physical health and mental well-being are recurring themes, with the author emphasizing the importance of self-care practices.
  11. Professional Excellence: The author does not prioritize career over family but values doing one’s best work and continually improving professional skills.
  12. Community and Connection: The author values and encourages participation in supportive online and in-person communities (social media and communities of practice).
  13. Writing and Reflection: Writing itself is an important practice for the author, serving as a tool for processing experiences and sharing insights.

These themes interweave throughout the blog posts, painting a picture of an individual deeply committed to personal growth, family, kindness, and positively impacting the world around him.”

Through sharing my story in my blog posts, I’ve realized that our personal and professional lives are intricately intertwined. All of our experiences can bring more value to our lives and others. The experiences that have shaped me have profoundly influenced my approach to work and life. Being open about these experiences will inspire a world where we see each other as individuals with meaningful lives beyond our professional roles. We can create more genuine connections by embracing kindness, continuous learning, and a willingness to help others. As we move forward, let’s remember that everyone has a story – and by taking the time to understand these stories, we can build a more compassionate and integrated world, both in and out of the workplace.

What is your story?

2024-03-13 – Bill Tomoff with Four Memoirs Written
April 15, 2023 Family in London Attending Tottenham Spurs EPL Game
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The Power of No: Reclaiming Your Time Through Intentional Decision-Making

Let’s empower ourselves by recognizing the critical importance of our choices with the time we are blessed with. In my blog post, Time Wealth: Prioritizing Mental Bandwidth in the Knowledge Economy, I discussed my time crisis and the resulting awareness that my choices of priorities were essential to surviving my son Ryan’s battles with childhood cancer and beyond.

Shortly after, a Daily Stoic email resonated deeply with the core of my message. The post, titled ‘Do You Dominate the Battlespace?‘ by Ryan Holiday, echoes the importance of our mental battlespace. He urges us to take control. He explains:

“All of these things are vying for what military strategists today would call “the battlespace.” Our mind is a contested bit of territory, with many people seeking to control what we call “the empire between your ears” – Why? Because your brain, your attention, is valuable. People want you to think about certain things and not think about certain things–because it’s good for business, because it makes you easier to control.”

“So you must dominate this battlespace. It is you who must assert yourself over yourself.”

“We too must grab the reins of our mind, set up boundaries against distraction, push away intrusive thoughts, tune out nonsense and noise. That’s what Stoicism is, as we wrote recently, it’s the gladiator stepping out into the arena of the mind, dominating the battlespace, controlling their own mind…because the alternative–letting the enemy dominate, letting your mind be controlled by someone or something else–is just unthinkable.”

This passage sums up well that our mind is under our control. Yet, too often, we give away our time by allowing our minds to be engaged in meaningless or dangerous activities. This is why we must be aware and establish boundaries to protect our mental well-being.

In addition to maintaining healthy boundaries around where we are willing to apply our precious time and minds, we must strive to continually learn and grow in ways that permit us to maximize the use of our time and mental bandwidth.

I have discovered several posts that resonate with the importance of managing our minds and being judicious about where we prioritize our time. Rajesh Setty is a favorite follow on my LinkedIn. This post, “One Approach to Cultivate a Beautiful Mind Garden,” was inspiring and thought-provoking. I encourage you to follow Rajesh and read his entire post, but consider this insight he shared:

“A beautiful garden has good plants and trees that bear fruits and flowers. It also lacks weeds that grow easily on their own. Removing weeds takes effort. If you don’t maintain the garden, weeds will grow, requiring more time to remove them. This means less time for nurturing the beautiful parts of the garden.

The same goes for the mind. Information doesn’t come with nutrition labels. When information enters your mind through news, ideas, conversations, projects, and work, there’s usually no filter. Your mind will use it’s previous capacity to process this unfiltered information even to determine the nature (good, bad, relevant, irrelevant etc.) of it. In the world where both people and machines are creating content at breathtaking speed, you can easily get carried away in one or the other content rabbit holes.

To make a beautiful garden of the mind, use the power of curation. In my life, I prioritize curation highly. I don’t watch news or read newspapers unless someone points out something relevant to the projects I am involved and something that’s within my sphere of influence. Occasionally, I let my mind wander by design to ensure that there is room for some surprise and serendipity.”

In addition to remaining aware and informed of our choices to prioritize our mind share, we should filter what we dedicate our time and energies to as best as possible. Here are a few steps to quickly help in assessing choices:

  1. Do I need to be involved? Eliminating unnecessary involvement of your energy is the number one time hack.
  2. If I need to be involved, how can I maximize my impact with the least mental energy and time commitment?
  3. Will my involvement allow me to grow and help others in the future? Note that having opinions, being judgemental, and expending energy toward gossip and mainstream news are time sucks, taking away from making a meaningful contribution to ourselves and others.
  4. Once I dedicate my time, am I prepared to make the best use of it, or am I doing something I love, like spending time with family and hobbies? Think of the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule.

A few additional resources that have resonated with me:

A Learning a Day blog shared two concepts that are worth understanding. For many decisions, we must be aware of the time we commit and contemplate, “What is the minimum viable information I need to get moving and get comfortable with a decision?“

Directional Answers and Precise Answers

“I use a simple rule of thumb for the difference between attempting to convert a directional answer into a precise answer—10x+ time investment.”

In our lives and with our #TwinzTalk initiative, Don and I have given ourselves a disproportionate advantage by seeking directional answers to get us moving forward. Technology testing and adoption have always started with a vision of the potential rather than a precise answer to the ultimate benefit. Seeking directional insight vs. [often unattainable] precision, we can reach more learning opportunities and possibilities to leverage technology.

Tanmay Vora Sketchnote – Move and the Way Appears

Satisficers and Maximizers

“Barry Schwartz’s research showed that people tend to fall into one of two groups when making decisions – he called these groups satisficers and maximizers. Maximizers desire the best possible result, while satisficers desire a result that is good enough to meet some criterion. That doesn’t necessarily mean satisficers settle for crap. Their criteria could be lofty – but, as long as it meets that criteria, they don’t care about it being the best.

Barry Schwartz argues that satisficers tend to be happier than maximizers as maximizers spend a lot of time and energy on many decisions that just don’t matter as much.”

Don and I both share the satisficer tendency. We have saved ourselves time and energy, while also being content with our decisions. Talk about a win-win!

Maximizing everything is time-consuming. The number of choices available to us is overwhelming. Settling on “good enough” is a gift we can give ourselves. If you have yet to see Barry Schwartz’s TED Talk, The Paradox of Choice, prioritize time to watch it. I guarantee a few laughs and several “aha” moments.

In today’s world, where information is everywhere and everything moves fast, managing what we think about and focus on is important. By understanding how valuable our time and attention are, setting clear limits on what we let in, and being careful about what we think, we can live a more focused life, get more done, and feel more satisfied. The secret is making smart choices on purpose. Our most valuable thing isn’t money or material possessions – it’s our limited time and brain power. If we focus on what’s really important and let go of the rest, we can build “time-wealth.” This means we have time to grow, do good things for the world, and live happier lives. We all have the power to control what goes on in our minds – so let’s make wise choices. 

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Personal Connection: How One Question Transformed an Advanced Excel and Generative AI Presentation

I have joined an initiative with Katy Dalgleish, Julie Rains, and my wife, Terri. We meet virtually once or twice weekly to discuss Seth’s lessons in “This is Strategy.”

While we quickly cover a lot of ground, and Seth’s messages deserve greater focus and discussion, I enjoy the process from the perspective that “we never know where thoughts/ideas will collide,” and a practical use application will surface.

During a drive to Ocean City, MD, for the Maryland Government Finance Officers Association (MDGFOA) conference, I was contemplating Seth’s video five, which highlighted “16 questions to begin” as we approach the work of strategy.

While Don and I find our personal development work very compelling, convincing others of the value of committing their time to investing in themselves is a huge obstacle. As Seth notes in video five, “They don’t know what you know. They don’t want what you want.” These two sentences sat with me while we were driving and talking about the presentation Don would share over three and one-half hours starting at 1:00 PM.

How could we modify the presentation to turn the attention of the attendees and emphasize our mission is to enhance their professional performance and ability to contribute exponentially?

June 26, 2024 | Don and Bill Tomoff at Maryland Government Finance Officers Association Conference

Within the 16 questions, the following five reminded me that answers to these questions might help inspire the attendees to dedicate themselves to embracing personal growth. With each question, I have added brief thoughts on how our work impacts those on the receiving side:

Am I changing someone’s status quo?

Learning and development do change someone’s status quo. Embracing the initiative of personal growth is a commitment and a change that many find difficult. It often involves discomfort and requires time prioritization involving tradeoffs we would rather not deal with. The easy answer is to avoid changing anything in our daily lives that is already working for us.

Why would anyone voluntarily choose to be part of this work?

If you ask anyone, “Would you like to improve your critical thinking, skill set, and ability to contribute more significantly?” Most people would respond with a resounding “YES!” Choosing this more challenging yet rewarding path of personal development will change your life as the daily effort compounds over time, and the gratifying reward of growth becomes a part of your daily life.

What will they tell their colleagues?

Don and I think the magic can begin when word of mouth spreads to colleagues. As we learn and experience the rewards of learning, helping others must become an individual practice. Avid learners love to help others by sharing their expertise. And when we teach, we learn more.

Who gains in status, affiliation and power by supporting this work?

When personal development is embraced, the enhanced talents are noticed in the long run. By their example, learners inspire others to learn and can be recognized for their contributing abilities. The learner reaches levels of performance that are noticed by others. As learners are noticed, their status, affiliation, and power will grow.

Will early support translate into more support later?

Early support and the possible success that others achieve can elevate word-of-mouth and create a snowball of support as even more learn about successes achieved because of an individual decision to invest in themselves. Witnessing the growth of others and the successes they reach is very gratifying for Don and me. 

We hoped to change the “vibe” of the presentation, so we started with a heartfelt question. This start was as if we were sitting down and sharing a sincere conversation, saying, “We are on your side, and we want to help you.”

“Before we get started, I would like everyone to take a minute and reflect on the following: “What are two or three of the most important things in your life? Not only professionally, but overall.”

Posing this question and the ensuing brief conversation about “What is important to YOU?” made the audience more curious and receptive.

The responses we have received were in line with our thoughts and included the following:

  • Family
  • Focusing on self-care
  • Enjoying hobbies
  • Making a difference
  • Feeling a greater purpose

“Our goal today? We want to help you reclaim your time to enable you to prioritize more time for the most important aspects of your life.”

Then, towards the end of the day, to wrap the session, Don reiterated:

“Remember, the overall theme of what we are doing today: We want to help you reclaim your time for the most important things in your life.”

The session and the audience engagement were inspiring. Had our last-minute modification to starting the presentation made a difference for the entire day? We believe so and plan to continue using and refining this change in future presentations!

During our debrief of the presentation, Don and I agreed that starting with the personal question, “What is most important to you?” changed the tone of the entire day. The attendees’ engagement during the session and one-on-one discussions afterward led us to conclude that we must build this momentum into the future!

To help evaluate and evolve the approach in the future, I collaborated with ChatGPT to assess our thoughts and then asked for suggestions for improvement. The response from ChatGPT has spurred our creativity. The prompt and response are provided below.

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Collaboration with ChatGPT

Prompt:

My twin Don and I are working on modifying the kickoff to our discussions about technology and gen AI adoption (e.g., ChatGPT) when making presentations. Focusing on the audience and asking them to consider what is most important in their lives is a way to increase interest and curiosity and ultimately encourage the adoption of our suggestions.

Please read the revision below and let us know your thoughts. You are an expert presenter who can inspire others to take action. Please take a deep breath and carefully think before you respond. This change is significant, and we want it to have the maximum effect on the success of our efforts.

“Before we get started, I would like everyone to take one minute and reflect on the following: “What are two or three of the most important things in your life? Not only professionally, but overall.”

Started the session with this question. Posing this question and the brief conversation about “What is important to YOU?” made the audience more curious and receptive.

Responses included:

  • Family
  • self-care
  • hobbies
  • greater purpose

“Our goal today? We want to help you reclaim your time to enable you to prioritize more time for the most important aspects in your life.”

to wrap the session:

“Remember, the overall theme of what we are doing today: We want to help you reclaim your time for the most important things in your life.”

Response:

Your revised approach for the kickoff of your technology and AI adoption discussions is well-crafted and focuses on what truly matters to the audience. Here’s a refined version to enhance clarity, engagement, and the impact of your presentation:

Opening:

“Before we get started, I’d like everyone to take a moment and reflect on this question: ‘What are the two or three most important things in your life, not just professionally, but overall?'”

Pause for reflection.

“Take a minute to think about it. What truly matters to you? Responses included:

  • Family
  • Self-care
  • Hobbies
  • Greater purpose

Starting our session with this question often makes everyone more curious and receptive.”

Transition:

“Our goal today is to help you reclaim time to prioritize what’s most important in your life.”

Wrap-up:

“Remember, the overall theme of what we are doing today is to help you reclaim your time for the most important things in your life.”

Thoughts and Suggestions:

1. Engagement: Starting with a reflective question is a great way to engage the audience and make the session personal. This strategy fosters a connection between the technology you’re discussing and the audience’s personal lives, making your message more relatable and compelling.

2. Clarity: By clearly listing typical responses, you guide the audience in their reflection and make it easier for them to relate.

3. Consistency: Repeating the theme of reclaiming time throughout your presentation reinforces your message and keeps the audience focused on the ultimate benefit of adopting the technology.

4. Empathy: Your approach shows empathy and understanding of the audience’s needs and values, which can increase their openness to your suggestions.

This refined structure ensures your presentation is engaging, clear, and impactful, helping you achieve your goal of fostering curiosity and adoption of your recommendations.

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The Diagnosis That Taught Our Family Everything: Childhood Cancer’s Lessons for Life and Love

“Your child has cancer.” My wife, Terri, and I heard these words on October 17, 1996. Our son, Ryan, at two years and two months old, was diagnosed with childhood cancer (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia). In an instant, our lives, and the lives of Ryan and our four-year-old daughter Olivia, were changed forever.

As I write this in June 2024, 27+ years later, Ryan is [closely monitored and] doing well today. He is a five-time cancer survivor – 3x childhood leukemia and 2x adult tongue cancer (secondary malignancies resulting from the extensive treatments he received through his wars with leukemia). In March 2021, Terri published her memoir The Focused Fight: A Childhood Cancer Journey from Mayhem to Miracles, detailing Ryan and our family’s journey through what often felt like impossible times.

Our heart breaks every time we hear of a family receiving the news that their child has cancer. A child and family stricken with cancer through no fault of their own. I pray no one reading this is facing a childhood cancer situation, yet we know bad things happen, and our lifelong mission is to be a gentle shoulder of support for others impacted as we have been. Maybe this helps one person, one family, piece together the swirling insanity that is happening in the center of their lives.

With this introduction, I will offer my list of “Life lessons learned from dealing with a childhood cancer diagnosis:“

October 1996 – Ryan and Bill Tomoff – Georgetown Hospital

Life is not fair.

  • If we are blessed to live long enough, realizing the randomness and unfairness of life events will strike us. There is tragedy and heartbreak happening all around us.

“Life breaks all of us, but some of us get stronger in the broken places.”—Ernest Hemingway.

Work is important. Family is EVERYTHING. Carpe Diem.

  • Treasure each day. Life contentment is in the small, everyday, ordinary moments. Recognize and embrace the “ordinary.”
  • Small things are not small things.

Keep your eye on the ball. Thank you, Abe Pollin.

  • Be determined and unapologetic in identifying and setting boundaries around your priorities. Learning to kindly yet firmly say “no” is imperative.

People need people.

  • You are not alone.
  • Thinking “I/we can handle this” is dangerous and not helpful. Seek, be open to, and be willing to ask for help. People want to help – accept their generosity and commit to “paying it forward” into the world one day.
  • The Postcard Project was a wonderful initiative that gave Ryan hope and inspiration as he endured treatments to get him to his life-saving bone marrow transplant on November 4, 2004.
  • Embrace communities of support. Special Love is our community of support that brings joy through their summer camps dedicated to children fighting cancer and their siblings.

Erica Neubert Campbell shared a quote included in The Focused Fight:

“In a tough situation, few people wake up every morning and say, “I’m going to be resilient today.” Most people under extreme stress wake up with heavy hearts but with a quiet voice that tells them never to give up. Resilience is listening to that small inner voice and finding people and organizations to help you slowly turn up the volume.”

September 1997 – Tomoff Family – Special Love Under 7 Weekend

Your environment matters.

  • Surround yourself with the best. Lift others up, and they will lift you up.

Self-care is imperative.

  • Self-care is not selfish. We cannot pour from an empty cup.

Kindness matters. Prioritize kindness to yourself and others.

  • Sometimes we cannot see a path forward, and are hanging on doing our best. Everyone, in some way, has these moments. “The next step,” a moment of kindness given or received, may propel you or someone else forward for the day.
  • Express appreciation and gratitude. Never default to “this person is just doing their job.” Everyone deserves to be seen.

“Don’t underestimate the power of a chocolate chip cookie.”—Terri Tomoff.

April 2022 – Terri Tomoff and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Don’t ask. Do.

  • Choose to take the initiative.
  • There are many moments in life where we can help meaningfully. In small ways and without permission, a difference can be made.

Everyone has unique gifts. Identify and nurture those gifts.

  • Ryan’s relentless fight and inspiration to the world.
  • Olivia and the gift of soccer to our family.

Trust and know that everyone has a story.

  • “Be gentle. Be kind – you have no idea what someone is going through.”—Bill Tomoff.

Post Traumatic Growth is possible.

We all endure suffering in our lives. David Brooks, in his book The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life, provides a compelling perspective on the meaning of suffering:

“Whether the valley is a personal one or a societal one or both, there’s a lot of suffering. You’re enduring a season of pain, a season of feeling lost. This can be a period of soul-crushing anguish, but it can also be one of the most precious seasons of your life.

John Keats said that we live in a mansion of many apartments. When we’re on the first mountain, we’re living in what Keats called the “thoughtless chamber.” This is the default chamber; we just unthinkingly absorb the values and ways of life that happen to be around us.

We want to stay in this chamber. It’s comfortable, and everybody nods at you with approval. In The Age of Anxiety, W. H. Auden wrote,

We would rather be ruined than changed

We would rather die in our dread

Than climb the cross of the moment

And let our illusions die.

Seasons of suffering kick us in the ass. They are the foghorns that blast us out of our complacency and warn us we are heading for the wrong life.

There’s nothing intrinsically noble about suffering. Sometimes grief is just grief, to be gotten through. Many bad things happen in life, and it’s a mistake to try to sentimentalize these moments away by saying that they must be happening to serve some higher good. But sometimes, when suffering can be connected to a larger narrative of change and redemption, we can suffer our way to wisdom. This is the kind of wisdom you can’t learn from books; you have to experience it yourself. Sometimes you experience your first taste of nobility in the way you respond to suffering.

The theologian Paul Tillich wrote that suffering upsets the normal patterns of life and reminds you that you are not who you thought you were. It smashes through the floor of what you thought was the basement of your soul and reveals a cavity below, and then it smashes through that floor and reveals a cavity below that.

Suffering teaches us gratitude. Normally we take love and friendship for granted. But in seasons of suffering we throw ourselves on others and appreciate the gifts that our loved ones offer. Suffering puts you in solidarity with others who suffer. It makes you more sympathetic to those who share this or some other sort of pain. In this way it tenderizes the heart.

Suffering calls for a response. None of us can avoid suffering, but we can all choose how we respond to it. And, interestingly, few people respond to suffering by seeking pleasure. Nobody says, I lost my child, therefore I should go out and party. They say, I lost my child, and therefore I am equipped to help others who have lost their child. People realize that shallow food won’t satisfy the deep hunger and fill the deep emptiness that suffering reveals. Only spiritual food will do that. Many people respond to pain by practicing generosity.

Finally, suffering shatters the illusion of self-sufficiency, which is an illusion that has to be shattered if any interdependent life is going to begin. Seasons of pain expose the falseness and vanity of most of our ambitions and illuminate the larger reality of living and dying, caring and being cared for. Pain helps us see the true size of our egotistical desires. Before they seemed gigantic and dominated the whole screen. After seasons of suffering, we see that the desires of the ego are very small desires, and certainly not the ones we should organize our lives around. Climbing out of the valley is not like recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they come out different. The poet Ted Hughes observed that the things that are the worst to undergo are often the best to remember, because at those low moments the protective shells are taken off, humility is achieved, a problem is clearly presented, and a call to service is clearly received.”

I hope that my perspective provides you an inspiration to move through whatever challenge you are dealing with or enduring. Take this journey of life one day at a time. Do your best. Be kind to yourself and others. Embrace and treasure the ordinary. Believe in better days. We got this.

2004 – Bill and Ryan Tomoff – Bald heads before Duke PBMT trip
June 2024 – Kelleys Island 5K – Ryan walks with Aunt Stephanie

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Time Wealth: Prioritizing Mental Bandwidth in the Knowledge Economy

Throughout my career and then in life challenges (son Ryan battles with childhood cancer and beyond), I learned to deeply understand my time and how I prioritized everything in my life as the most important variables within my control. Time is a nonrenewable asset, and I quickly understood that I had to own my decisions of where I choose to prioritize my energy.

Thanks to years-long encouragement from my wife, Terri, I made a [wise] decision to read more actively to help my learning and growth. Since 2012, reading for personal development has become a non-negotiable priority. The mission is to allocate my efforts to make a more meaningful contribution to the world daily. This starts with owning my decisions of where I focus my mental bandwidth.

Where I focus, these three words are front and center for me. Since I started reading the philosophy of Stoicism in 2019, and have read daily since January 1, 2020. As I noted in a March 2023 blog post, “In Pursuit of Inner Peace: My Stoic Transformation:”

“The Stoicism philosophy profoundly influences my perspective and “how” I handle myself and my emotions daily. Striving every day to develop my mind and embrace the only aspect of life we all control – our reasoned choice. Thoughts such as “it is not necessary to have an opinion, we should be strict with ourselves and forgiving of others (no judgment), and we control our response to any external event – we are harmed only if we believe we are harmed,” are thoughts I hold close to my heart and work to live in practice.”

Embracing my reasoned choice. My remaining life’s work will be to strive to use my mind for good – developing myself and helping others by utilizing my skills and talents. I can and must do better. The work must not stop.

A blog post by Morgan Housel, “Lazy Work, Good Work,” inspired my post here. When we can keep our mind disciplined to focus on learning and good, we can prioritize time for reflection and creativity.  Here is a sample of topics on my “do not do” list – activities I strive to eliminate or actively reduce by being aware of my behavior:

  • Gossip.
  • Expressing an unsolicited opinion.
  • Judgment.
  • Watching or engaging in conversation about mainstream news.
  • Involving myself in other people’s business.

The work regarding my do-not-do list is a never-ending process. I credit my reading of the Stoicism philosophy for helping me.

By reducing the above activities, I will replace my time (and mind) with:

  • Quality time with my family, friends, and communities of practice who inspire and lift me up.
  • Kindness to others and my world.
  • Encouraging others.
  • Helping others through micro-moves taking almost no effort. Social media engagement is an easy micro-move example.
  • Investing in improving myself (as the Optimist Creed states: “To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others.”).
  • Be more patient and calm. We all are doing our best to get through each day.

A key component of “investing in improving myself” is prioritizing building buffer/slack into my days and intentionally moving more slowly and thoughtfully through each day. Make space for time for reading and contemplation. Morgan Housel notes in his article [Bold emphasis is mine]:

“Here’s a problem we don’t think about enough: Even as more professions look like Rockefeller’s – thought jobs that require quiet time to think a problem through – we’re stuck in the old world where a good employee is expected to labor, visibly and without interruption.

The point is that productive work today does not look like productive work did for most of history. If your job was to pull a lever, you were only productive if you were pulling the lever. But if your job is to create a marketing campaign, you might be productive sitting quietly with your eyes closed, thinking about design. The problem is that too many workplaces expect their knowledge workers to pull the proverbial lever – today in Microsoft Office form – 40+ hours a week when they’d be better off doing things that look lazy but are actually productive. The result is that most people have thought jobs without being given much time to think, which is the equivalent of making a ditch-digger work without a shovel. Maybe this is why productivity growth is half of what it used to be.

If you anchor to the old world where good work meant physical action, it’s hard to wrap your head around the idea that the most productive use of a knowledge-worker’s time could be sitting on a couch thinking. But it’s so clear that it is. Good ideas rarely come in meetings, or even at your desk. They come to you in the shower. On a walk. On your commute, or hanging out on the weekend. I’m always amazed at the number of famous ideas that came to people in the bathtub. But tell your boss you require a mid-day soak, and the response is entirely predictable.”

Starting with yourself, embrace a gentler and kinder presence with the world. Slowing down and being more mindful as you move through your day will be rewarding and gratifying. While you may appear “lazy” and unproductive, the reality will be enhanced productivity through leveraging greater creativity and adaptability.

2019 – Bill T and Bill G encouraging “Good!”
France! Learning in Community with Karena de Souza
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Embrace Boring: Consistency and Unnoticed Discipline are the Keys to Compounding Growth

Summary – Collaboration with Claude AI

What is truly important to me is putting in the daily effort to refine my talents and develop my skills. The key to superior performance is quiet, steady dedication practiced for the long term when no one is watching.

I’ve learned many valuable life lessons through competitive sports participation. I credit competitive distance running with developing my willingness and ability to take the long view. My twin brother Don and I are obsessed with personal development and continual learning. We’ve pushed each other to invest time and money into our growth.

When my son Ryan was diagnosed with childhood cancer in 1996, my ability to tenaciously focus on core priorities was tested beyond imagination. My wife Terri’s memoir tells our family’s story of this challenging journey.

Over the years, I’ve pursued initiatives that exemplify my commitment to consistent effort and self-improvement. These include a daily planking streak with Don that has lasted 2,277 days so far, cofounding our #TwinzTalk initiative to share personal development tips, and dedicating myself to writing during the pandemic, completing four unpublished memoirs since June 2020.

I believe that to make a difference in the world, you must be different from the world. Dedicate yourself to improving and helping others through small, consistent efforts practiced long-term. Find a tribe to encourage and inspire you on the journey. With commitment and belief, the compounding impact of your focused dedication will amaze you. 

What matters most to you? Whatever it is, pursue it relentlessly, for that is the path to growth and fulfillment.

Full Original Writing

What is important to you? Is it important enough that you are willing to work on refining your talents and developing your skills every day? Every day, in incremental effort, where progress is not felt or noticed? Yet, the key to superior performance is the daily dedication performed quietly for the long term, done in the quiet of your life when no one is watching.

The best hack is to realize that there are no shortcuts to success and commit yourself to the steady drip, drip, drip effort to enable you to reach your best level of preparation. The process is a life-long adventure.

I believe that competitive sports participation teaches many lessons that carry forward into the game of life. I wrote about this in my April 2024 blog post titled “From Setback to Comeback: My High School Running Adversity to Overcoming and Growing for Life.”

The following Daily Stoic and Seth Godin blog posts resonated with me, and I hope you find them inspiring as well.

The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman meditation for June 8, “Brick by Boring Brick.”

“You must build up your life action by action and be content if each one achieves its goal as far as possible—and no one can keep you from this.”

–Marcus Aurelius

“If you follow The Process in your life—assembling the right actions in the right order, one right after another—you too will do well. Not only that, you will be better equipped to make quick work of the obstacles along that path.”

Seth Godin’s June 16, 2018, blog post, “The danger of not good enough,” reminds us that it is a trap to dismiss others or ourselves as “not good enough.” The more accurate sentiment should be “not good enough yet.” Seth’s closing sentence is a thought we should hold onto:

“It’s true that you’re not good enough yet. None of us are. But if you commit to trying hard enough and long enough, you’ll get better.”

If you commit to trying hard enough and long enough, you’ll get better. If you are committed to the deliberate and steady process of investing in yourself, you will progress.

“Today, I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow, I can do what others can’t.”

–Jerry Rice

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”

–Tim Notke

With a willingness to work hard (and smarter), you WILL exceed many more talented peers. You control your willingness to prepare. In matters of importance to you, be relentless in your dedication and daily focus.

The greatest attribute I have been blessed with and embraced throughout my adult life is a willingness to put forth consistent effort that is matched by few. My twin Don and I share this attribute and have pushed each other throughout our lives. Above, I mentioned competitive distance running as a prime contributor to developing my willingness and ability to take the long view throughout my life. Examples of deliberate focus and effort, as a lifestyle of investing in myself, include:

  • After graduating from college in 1981, I inherently knew that continual learning and development were imperative to my career and life success. Don and I have shared an obsession with personal development. We believe in investing personal time and money into learning. When portable computers were first available, I remember spending weekend nights in the office (Coopers & Lybrand public accounting in the early 1980s) tinkering around with VisiCalc spreadsheet software. This moment started a love of technology that Don and I have shared and leveraged throughout our lives. In our early to mid-twenties, we were alone in the office on a Saturday night while many of our peers indulged in more ordinary entertainment choices. With our dedication to competitive distance running (a serious endeavor until age 25) and professional personal development, we were comfortable on the less traveled road!
  • My dedication and preparation to find a better way to work became a career and life survival imperative when my son Ryan was diagnosed with childhood cancer on October 17, 1996, at the age of two years and two months. My ability to tenaciously focus on my core priorities was tested beyond anything I could have imagined. Terri Tomoff’s memoir The Focused Fight: A Childhood Cancer Journey: From Mayhem to Miracles, published in March 2021, tells Ryan and our family’s story.
July 2021 – The Focused Fight – Cleveland Reception
  • On March 25, 2018, Don and I started a 30-day planking challenge. What started as a unique challenge to help our physical conditioning has become a part of our lifestyle. As of June 18, 2024, we have done a daily plank for 2,277 days. On March 26, 2023, I wrote a blog post celebrating five years of continuous planking!
April 2018 – NYC Central Park Planking
  • On April 16, 2018, Don and I cofounded our #TwinzTalk initiative, where we share personal development encouragement and tips to help others in our network. Tip One was dedicated to highlighting our amazing friend, Rich Flanagan. Since then, we have shared almost 1,300 tips on LinkedIn, and we receive great joy and fulfillment from sharing our knowledge and expertise to help others.
  • On June 8, 2020, a few months after the COVID-19 Pandemic started spreading across the United States, Terri and I joined an online writing initiative called Writing in Community. While Terri dedicated her time to completing her memoir, The Focused Fight, I pursued writing my unpublished personal memoir, “Living Life…Off The Track.” I have now written four unpublished memoirs. Four years later, we consider ourselves writers and have met many inspiring, kind, and generous people who share the love of writing and being in a community of practice. On the other side of the pandemic, we believe our lives have been profoundly enhanced through our writing efforts and community relationships!
2024-03-13 – Bill Tomoff with Four Memoirs Written

“If you desire to make a difference in the world, you must be different from the world.”

–Elaine S. Dalton

What is important to you? Dedicate daily effort to improving yourself and then helping others. You will be amazed at the compounding impact of small efforts consistently performed over the long term. Find your tribe that will inspire and encourage you. You got this. Believe. 

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Unlocking the Secret to Contentment: The Foundational Role of Gratitude

Summary – Collaboration with ChatGPT

While reflecting and working on this post, I decided to collaborate with ChatGPT and ask for input on my assessment of the extreme potential that gratitude can bring to our lives. My prompt and [edited] response received were as follows:

Prompt:

I am writing a blog post about gratitude. The opening sentence is, “A lens of gratitude changes everything.”

I believe having a gratitude mindset is the foundational base for living a life of contentment and happiness. If we are grateful, we live life with a “gentler” outlook on life, and thus, we lean toward kindness to ourselves and interactions with others. This creates a rippling cycle of positivity that can change our life experience.

You are an expert psychologist. Would you agree with my assessment?

Response:

Bill T note: ChatGPT agreed with my assessment, and I asked for further insight and suggestions. The edited result is below.

A lens of gratitude changes everything.

I believe having a gratitude mindset is the foundational base for living a life of contentment and happiness. If we are grateful, we live life with a “gentler” outlook on life, and thus, we lean toward kindness to ourselves and interactions with others. This creates a rippling cycle of positivity that can change our life experience.

The Science of Gratitude

Research in positive psychology has consistently shown that practicing gratitude can significantly enhance well-being and satisfaction with life. Grateful individuals often experience positive emotions, relish good experiences, and enjoy better health and relationships. Gratitude shifts our focus from what we lack to what we have, fostering a sense of abundance and reducing stress and anxiety.

A Gentler Outlook

Gratitude encourages a gentler outlook by promoting self-compassion and acceptance. When we acknowledge and appreciate the good in our lives, we become more forgiving and understanding of our own imperfections and those of others. This gentleness nurtures our mental health and creates a foundation for lasting happiness.

Kindness and Positivity

Gratitude also inspires kindness. When we feel grateful, we are more likely to engage in prosocial behaviors, such as helping others and expressing appreciation. These acts of kindness benefit those around us and enhance our sense of joy and fulfillment. This creates a positive feedback loop: gratitude leads to kindness and reinforces gratitude, amplifying the benefits for everyone involved.

The Ripple Effect

The impact of gratitude extends beyond individual experiences. Positive emotions and behaviors can spread through our social networks, influencing friends, family, and strangers. This ripple effect creates an environment of collective well-being where gratitude can inspire widespread positivity and connection.

Practical Ways to Cultivate Gratitude

  1. Daily Reflection: Take a few moments each day to reflect on what you are grateful for. This can be done through journaling or simply pausing to appreciate the good things in your life.
  2. Express Appreciation: Make it a habit to express gratitude to others. A simple thank you, or a heartfelt note can go a long way in strengthening relationships and spreading positivity.
  3. Mindfulness Practice: Incorporate mindfulness into your daily routine. Mindfulness helps us stay present and aware, making it easier to notice and appreciate the small joys in life.
  4. Gratitude Rituals: Establish rituals that remind you to practice gratitude. This could be a gratitude jar where you write down things you’re thankful for or a gratitude walk where you focus on the beauty around you.

Encouragement

Embracing gratitude is a powerful choice that can transform your life. By fostering a mindset of appreciation, you cultivate a deeper sense of contentment and happiness. Remember, the journey of gratitude is ongoing, and every small step you take contributes to a more positive and fulfilling life. Start today, and watch as gratitude changes everything.

Full Original Writing

A lens of gratitude changes everything.

An aspect of my daily journaling includes prioritizing five minutes to reflect on my day and handwrite on an index card [at least] one comment in each of these areas:

  1. Win
  2. Gratitude
  3. Stress/Tension
  4. Help Others/Shine the Light
  5. Activity/Development

The process has helped me be more intentional and aware of how I conduct myself throughout the day. Here, I will reference five articles that have inspired me to encourage more gratitude.

In each article, thoughts resonated that remind me to strive to be gentler with myself and others and grateful for the gifts in my life. Throughout our days, we have many opportunities to “flip the perspective” and be grateful vs. frustrated or inconvenienced. Here are a few examples that we all can relate to:

  1. Moving along slowly in traffic other drivers take shortcuts and merge into the line you are waiting in. Remind yourself, “I am safely moving toward my destination and am helping others by allowing cars to merge into the line. I am grateful for a dependable car and the opportunity to help others, and I am confident others would give me the same kindness.“
  2. Waiting in a long line at the grocery store. Reflect, “I am grateful that my family has the resources to purchase the food we need and the systems in place that make it possible for us to have the incredible convenience of a grocery store where we have access to an abundance of food choices when many people in the world do not have this blessing.“
  3. Embrace the opportunity to contribute through simple micro-move actions such as picking up trash or safely returning a stray shopping cart to a corral. Consider, “I can help ease a path for others.
  4. When we think outside our individual needs and turn our focus toward others, gratitude for our ability to help is enhanced. When we help, the lens through which we view life evolves us into a gentler and kinder presence. We are simply more pleasant to be around.

I encourage you to read the full articles linked here and watch the YouTube video by Rajesh Setty. Below are a few excerpts that will inspire you to read further.

Bruce Kasanoff, in “Help This Person,” encourages us every time we encounter another person to think: help this person. Bruce notes:

“Nothing else can so quickly supercharge your career and improve the quality of your life. And, yes, being genuinely helpful is the most substantive “self-promotion” possible.”

“By first thinking help this person, you will change the ways that others perceive you. There is no faster or more effective way to change your interactions and relationships. You will be viewed as a positive, constructive, helpful, and dependable person. People will think you are more perceptive, attentive, and understanding.”

Be considerate and appreciative of everyone you encounter. When we lift the spirits of others, a potential ripple effect can occur, and we feel good as well!

The following post by Dave Kerpen inspired this reflection about gratitude. Linda Misencik, a longtime friend (married to “the best dentist in the country” until he retired in 2018), read this post and sent it to me. Speaking of gratitude, I am thrilled Linda thought to send the article to me!

In Dave’s post, “Gratitude is the Opposite of Entitlement,” he notes:

“When we are entitled, we think the world needs to go our way ‘just because’. When we are grateful, on the other hand, we appreciate the world around us no matter what, ‘just because’. I am grateful for so many things every day.”

This observation is incredible. When we believe events must go the way we want, that is an attitude of entitlement. Rather, understand that we don’t control external events. We control the reasoned choice of our mind (a critical aspect of Stoicism) and our response. When we embrace this understanding and are grateful for what we have, we move away from the perspective of entitlement.

The third and fourth posts to share are from Ryan Holiday‘s The Daily Stoic. I am a fan of Stoicism and look forward to the daily email (Monday through Friday) distribution. The two recent posts I encourage you to read:

“It Says Everything About You.” A few highlights that resonated:

“How we treat the little guy says a lot about us. How we treat the gate agent at the airline. How we treat the customer service representative. How we treat the waiter and the barista. This says a lot about us. Even when, perhaps especially when, they aren’t treating us well. Can we control our emotions? Can we contain our frustration? Can we remember that they are almost certainly having a hard time too? That no amount of yelling at someone making an hourly wage will make a plane appear or fix a stupid corporate policy?

We all have bad days…which means other people have bad days, too. We should strive to be patient. We should strive to understand.”

“We All Carry A Debt.“

“There is also a debt that we have to pay back. Our ancestors are not all Union men. We live on stolen land. Our museums are filled with looted goods. Our progress came at great expense to the environment and to other species. Who made that device you’re holding? Who made that T-shirt you’re wearing?”

“Our ancestors were wonderful and they were terrible. We, their descendants all over the world, are indebted to them for both. We have to pay forward the good they did. We have to make right the wrongs they did. We don’t control what they did—to borrow from the dichotomy of control at the center of Stoicism—but we control what we do now, here in our own times. Doing better is up to us. This is what the virtue of justice demands. It’s what decency and duty demands of us.”

Two additional posts to share are a blog from Seth Godin and a YouTube video from Rajesh Setty:

“What Does The World Owe Us?” Seth notes this question comes from a perspective of entitlement. He encourages us to turn this question around and ask ourselves, “What do I owe the world?“

“On the other hand, “what do I owe the world?” opens the door for endless opportunity. When lots of people ask this question, the contributions add up, the connections are solidified and better is possible.

The best part is that waiting for the world to get things just right is exhausting and frustrating, while taking responsibility for what we might be able to contribute or lead can be energizing and fun.”

Finally, I highly recommend watching this YouTube video from Rajesh Setty, Growing and Changing the World One Thank You at a Time.

A regular practice of gratitude will change your perspective on life. We can all participate in making our world a better place. Micro-moves of intentionally contributing to others and our world at large can make a difference in ways unimagined. Just believe. One person, one action at a time, matters.

Be the Light of the World – Kindness
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Be the Bigger Person: How Responding with Kindness Can Change Your Life

Summary – Collaboration with Claude AI

In this blog post, I reflect on the importance of being the bigger person when faced with perceived insults or mistreatment from others. Inspired by Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Dad meditation “Teach Them To Be Bigger,” I share the story of Jim Lawson, a young African American boy who, after being called a racial slur, was reminded by his mother that he was loved, intelligent, and destined for a good life. This lesson helped him realize that he was above the horrible things others said and did and that responding with kindness and love was what mattered most.

We all must embrace this lesson, and awareness of our emotions and pausing before responding can be tremendously advantageous. My personal journey, aided by my daily reading of Stoicism since January 1, 2020, has helped me in my quest for inner peace and to avoid allowing everyday inconveniences to stir me negatively.

I also reflect on the idea that we will encounter difficult people throughout life, but our control lies in our attitude and response. We should gladly accept the “taxes” of life, be grateful for what we have, and not retaliate when faced with challenges. Instead, be kind, keep moving forward, and set an example for others to be bigger, creating a gentler and kinder world.

Full Original Writing

When faced with an insult or mistreatment from another person, do you instinctively react in a similar manner, potentially escalating the situation? Or do you take a moment to reflect and choose a more measured response?

This blog post was inspired by my morning reading of the May 19 meditation of The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids. The meditation is titled “Teach Them To Be Bigger.“ I could locate Ryan Holiday’s blog post on this meditation he published before the book was released. Please read the full post, but here are a few parts that resonated [Bold emphasis is mine]:

“A ten-year-old Jim Lawson was walking down the street when, as he passed a car, a small child looked at him and called him the n-word. Stunned by the hate and the meanness of it, Lawson reached into the car and slapped the boy in the face.

When his mother found out about this, she was understandably worried. In the then-segregated and racist South, the actions of a young black boy could so easily lead to something terrible and tragic at the hands of awful and unaccountable adults. But more than that, she wanted her son not to be defined or changed by the hate of the world around him.

“What good did that do, Jimmy?” his mother asked him. “We all love you, Jimmy and God loves you,” his mother explained, “and we all believe in you and how good and intelligent you are. We have a good life and you are going to have a good life. With all that love, what harm does that stupid insult do? It’s nothing, Jimmy, it’s empty. Just ignorant words from an ignorant child who is gone from your life the moment it was said.””

“It helped him realize that he was above the horrible things that other people said and did, what mattered, as the Stoics would also say, was what he said and did. What mattered was responding with kindness and love. What mattered was knowing that he was good and that he was loved and nothing anyone else thought could change that.

Lawson’s parents gave him the gift of teaching him–after that understandable lapse–that he was bigger than the small people who lived around him. That he could be the bigger person and do bigger things.“

The encouragement is “Be the bigger person.” Do not allow an external situation to provoke you into regrettable behavior harmful to improving a situation. Though Ryan Holiday writes in The Daily Dad about teaching this to our children, the lesson is one we all must embrace intentionally and heed to the best of our abilities. Awareness of our emotions and pausing before responding will provide a tremendous advantage.

My personal journey is a lifetime work in progress, yet my reading of Stoicism (daily since January 1, 2020) has changed me profoundly, and for that, I am grateful. I find that my inner peace has improved, and I am fairly consistent at not allowing the inevitable inconveniences of everyday life to stir me negatively.

Along with the theme of responding to difficult situations, below are additional thoughts that I reflect upon often and inspire me to strive to bring my best calmness and patience to those difficult situations.

Throughout life, we will encounter people who are different from us and will not or may not behave as we would hope. Our control is in our attitude and response. Viktor Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning, expressed:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lie our growth and our freedom.”

In the Daily Stoic blog, Ryan Holiday encourages us in The Taxes of Life that everything we do has a toll attached to it:

“Taxes are an inevitable part of life. There is a cost to everything we do. As Seneca wrote to Lucilius, “All the things which cause complaint or dread are like the taxes of life—things from which, my dear Lucilius, you should never hope for exemption or seek escape.” Income taxes are not the only taxes you pay in life. They are just the financial form. Everything we do has a toll attached to it. Waiting around is a tax on traveling. Rumors and gossip are the taxes that come from acquiring a public persona. Disagreements and occasional frustration are taxes placed on even the happiest of relationships. Theft is a tax on abundance and having things that other people want. Stress and problems are tariffs that come attached to success. And on and on and on.

There’s no reason or time to be angry about any of this. Instead, we should be grateful. Because taxes—literal or figurative—are impossible without wealth. So, what are you going to focus on? That you owe something or that you are lucky enough to own something that can be taxed.”

Accept and gladly pay your taxes for the life you are blessed with.

When we encounter the inevitable “taxes” of difficult people, let’s not hurt ourselves by responding in kind or retaliating. Rather, we should be kind and move forward in our own way—no need to get even no need to have an escalation. Keep moving forward and bring goodness into the world. This helps us the best, and it may help the other person.

I don’t need to “prove my point” or be right. When at all possible (and it is possible a high percentage of the time), my handling of difficult people will be gentle and kind as I quickly move to separate from the situation.

We are not required to pass judgment and have an opinion. You don’t have to get upset. How about giving the benefit of the doubt and calmly thinking internally, “This moment is not about me. This person is doing the best that they can.” Even if I might be incorrect, the perspective serves me well and increases the likelihood of no further negative emotions and diffusion of an unfavorable situation.

Be bigger, and by example, lead others to be bigger. Wouldn’t that make our world a gentler and kinder place?

Nice Guys Finish First | Gary Vaynerchuk
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Ordinary Beauty, Extraordinary Wisdom: How Slowing Down and Paying Attention Can Enrich Your Life

Summary Overview – Collaboration with Claude.AI

In this blog post, I share how the writings of Wendy Coad, Seth Godin, and Rajesh Setty have inspired me to reflect on the importance of dedicating ourselves to what matters most, being intentional about how we spend our time, and slowing down the pace of life to make room for contemplation and creativity.

I discuss how my son Ryan’s cancer diagnosis in 1996 forced me to ruthlessly prioritize my time and energy. My top priorities became self-care, family, career, and managing healthcare coverage. By staying laser-focused, I and my family persevered through the immense challenges we faced. Over the past 27 years, we have emerged stronger, dedicated to personal growth and helping others.

The wisdom shared by Coad, Godin, and Setty resonated deeply with the lessons I learned through that difficult chapter. Coad’s example of honestly assessing her priorities and eliminating overcommitments, Godin’s warning about smartphones making us hurried and distracted, and Setty’s beautiful reframing of how Parkinson’s disease forced him to slow down and notice the richness of life – all of these perspectives reinforce my conviction about living more deliberately and savoring the wonder around me.

I encourage my readers to join me on this journey. Prioritize time for self-reflection, set boundaries to protect what matters most, and consciously choose to slow down. In doing so, we open ourselves to the “ordinary” beauty of life and opportunities for growth that are always available when we create the space to see them.

Full Original Writing

This post is inspired by Wendy Coad, Seth Godin, and Rajesh Setty. Thanks to their writing, I am inspired to write about the important work we should all dedicate ourselves to, prioritizing where we allocate our time, and the value of intentional effort to slow down the pace of our lives to allow time for contemplation and creativity. Slack/buffer built into our daily lives enhances the “ordinary” beauty in our lives and allows for a calmer internal state. Our days are not packed with back-to-back urgencies that allow no room for delays or unexpected occurrences.

Life will throw adversity into our path. Adversity is part of the human condition.

On October 17, 1996, my and my family’s life was turned upside down and changed forever when my son Ryan was diagnosed with childhood cancer at two years and two months old. I realized quickly that my priorities had to be narrowed, and the final list of my few critical priorities needed to be ruthlessly adhered to. My energies had to be laser-focused, and my willingness to say “NO” would become essential. I would not apologize for protecting my priorities and did not need to explain myself to anyone. I would do my best every day… with genuine intent and based on the knowledge I possessed. My, and my family’s, survival was at stake.

Writing this in May 2024, over 27 years later, I am eternally grateful that Ryan is a survivor and my family is intact and doing well. Fate has challenged us immensely, and we are standing tall today, forever changed in unimaginable ways. My wife Terri has beautified the world with her love of quilting and designing treasured t-shirt quilt keepsakes. She has written a memoir of Ryan’s experience (The Focused Fight: A Childhood Cancer Journey From Mayhem to Miracles, published in March 2021). Our daughter Olivia persevered and changed our lives through her love and commitment to soccer. She is now married to her husband Bo, and they are new parents to a beautiful baby boy, Bodie, born March 25, 2024! We believe in post-traumatic growth and are dedicated to helping others and making the world kinder and gentler.

At the time of Ryan’s diagnosis in 1996, I was scared and mentally wondered, “How do families survive this?” We were all in the biggest war of our lives. There was no instruction manual, and Ryan’s life was at stake. Terri and I dedicated ourselves to doing everything humanly possible for Ryan and Olivia, and we would attack this one day at a time. I had no thought of how I would be profoundly changed over the years. I am beyond grateful and feel I am a greater contributor to the world due to my experience. I am consumed with how to grow personally and leverage my growth to be more valuable for helping others.

My highest priorities identified in 1996 were sharpened by the urgency of moving forward through Ryan’s medical treatments and the stress our family endured as a result. The nonnegotiable priorities that I determined required my complete attention were:

  • Self-care: Focus on health and personal development. I needed to do my best to be my best for my family and my career and to be of value to others.
  • Family: My role as spouse, father, and caregiver. My family is the world to me.
  • Career: Bringing the best I could to my professional responsibilities. Continual development and finding ways to work more effectively were imperative. My twin brother Don was my “right hand” in helping me think differently and holding me accountable to make progress. I endured high stress about my ability to support the family financially and provide healthcare coverage to cover the financial exposure of Ryan’s medical care requirements.
  • Monitoring Healthcare Coverage: This aspect felt like a full-time job besides my other priorities. Likely, my love of personal finance was cemented through the stress of continual concern about healthcare coverage and the risk of bankruptcy.

Living my life with the clarity of my priorities allowed me to be relentless in setting boundaries of where I would permit my time to be allocated. As Mr. Pollin once encouraged me, “Bill, you need to keep your eye on the ball, and that ball will change…” My emphasis on the differing priorities has fluxed; thankfully, the core structure has provided a framework that enhanced my quality of life. I determined what was important in my life, and while bending (dancing) within the framework, I have stayed true to my core matters of importance.

During the years since Ryan’s diagnosis, I have embraced the times when greater freedom existed in my schedule. My priorities have often maxed out my capacity, and when an opportunity for a break would occur, I was diligent about taking time to relax. I refused to move on frantically to another activity. Protecting my time and sanity was a component of self-care that was extremely important to me.

Slowing down became a mission for me. I strive for my daily pace to be more deliberate and relaxed with reduced commitments to build a buffer in my day. When I can live this way, my ability to be my best self and help others is optimized.

Recent readings that inspired me were:

Wendy Coad, in a post from my community of practice (Purple.Space), shared about her evolving priorities and the activities she has chosen to eliminate from her schedule. It was refreshing to see Wendy’s honesty with herself, recognizing she cannot do everything. Too often, we think, “I can handle this,” and add a new obligation to our list of priorities. We make the mistake of over-committing and become overwhelmed with our to-dos. The willingness to pick the highest priorities and eliminate everything else is a massive strength for anyone to possess. The impact of Ryan’s diagnosis forced me to be brutally honest with myself, and I pared down my priorities practically overnight. The core list has been my guide since that day. Giving my best for my family was my guiding north star.

Seth Godin‘s blog On One Foot, discusses how “Smart phones can hobble us.” We hurry through our lives handling things on a small phone screen in short bursts. He says, “There could be a direct correlation between smartphone usage and underinformed mass behavior.” Seth even suggests that “opening up a laptop might count as slowing down a bit.” Slow down.

Rajesh Setty‘s LinkedIn post, encourages “Slowing down to witness wonder.” Rajesh is an inspiring, caring, and generous person I have met through social media. I look forward to the wisdom he consistently shares and encourage everyone to follow him on social media! In his post, he shares that his diagnosis of Parkinson’s forced him to slow down and ultimately develop his reframe: “Slowing down allowed me to observe more than most people who are too busy to notice.” I am sharing Rajesh’s full post below and encourage pausing and asking yourself, “How can I be more intentional about slowing down?”

“Slowing down to witness wonder

We live in a fast-paced world where everyone seems too busy to notice the richness around them. By “world around us/them,” I mean nature, people, and conversations happening right in front of us, not just online.

When you pay close attention, you’ll witness wonder. The world around you speaks and whispers in vivid colors, both through nature and people.

I noticed this because of a health situation, Parkinson’s, which forced me to slow down.

Over time, instead of complaining about slowing down, I began to appreciate the world’s richness. Everything seemed to be in slow motion, not by choice but by design. Slowing down allowed me to observe more than most people who are too busy to notice.

This higher fidelity observation was a gift that came with Parkinson’s. It sparked more ideas for me than ever before. That’s why I reframed Parkinson’s to (S)Parkinson’s.

Although I discovered this because of (S)Parkinson’s, you can choose to slow down and witness the wonder in the world around you without going through something like that. In fact, I wouldn’t wish my experience on anyone. But by choosing to slow down, you can truly appreciate the beauty around you.

PS: If you are curious to know more about my ongoing adventure with (S)Parkinson’s, here is more in my book UNSHAKEN (published by INKtalks).”

Rajesh notes that we all can choose to slow down and witness wonder in our world without going through a life-threatening experience. Please take his encouragement to heart, prioritize time to be with yourself, and contemplate actionable steps to move you towards a slower lifestyle. Join me on this life-enhancing journey!

December 2019 – Tomoff Family Vacation in Maui, Hawaii
July 2021 – The Focused Fight – Cleveland Reception
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The Gentle Way Forward: Nurturing Ease and Inner Peace in a Chaotic World

Summary Overview – Collaboration with Claude.AI

In my life, I strive to treat everyone with gentleness and kindness, as I believe we never truly know the struggles others face. This mindset has been deeply shaped by my family’s experience with my son Ryan’s childhood cancer journey, during which we were uplifted by the compassion and kindness of those around us. I am committed to honoring their love and support by bringing my best self forward daily to make a positive difference in the world.

Recently, I discovered Elisabet Lahti’s book “Gentle Power,” which resonates deeply with my belief in the underappreciated strength of gentleness. The book highlights the Finnish concept of “sisu,” which combines determination and inner fortitude with wisdom and heart. Lahti challenges the notion that gentleness is a weakness, presenting it as a powerful tool for leadership, empowerment, and personal growth.

As I read the book, I was struck by the transformative potential of embracing gentleness in all aspects of life. By responding with kindness and understanding, we can inspire others to do the same, creating a ripple effect of positivity. While gentleness may not always be the easiest path, I am convinced that it is the most rewarding one in the long run. I am excited to continue exploring the concept of gentle power and to incorporate its teachings into my daily life as I work to create a more compassionate and nurturing world around me.

Full Original Writing

“Be gentle. Be kind – you never know what someone is going through.”

Bill Tomoff, signing The Focused Fight

The quote above is one I use when autographing Terri Tomoff’s memoir, The Focused Fight: A Childhood Cancer Journey From Mayhem to Miracles, which is my guiding inspiration as I go through my daily life. A casual observer in my life has no idea what I and my family have endured through the years since my son Ryan’s childhood cancer diagnosis in 1996. I firmly believe everyone we encounter has a “story” and challenges we know nothing about. Embracing this mindset, I strive to extend gentleness and kindness in my countless daily interactions and pray that maybe I make a small difference that may lift the spirits of a fellow human being.

Thanks to a recent book discussion on Zoom with Emma Seppala about her book Sovereign, moderated by Emilia Elisabet Lahti, PhD, I discovered another inspiring book written by Elisabet, titled Gentle Power: A Revolution in How We Think, Lead, and Succeed Using the Finnish Art of Sisu.

“Sisu is a Finnish word for determination and inner fortitude in the face of extreme adversity. Gentle power is to apply sisu with wisdom and heart.”

–Elisabet Lahti, PhD, website

After I had completed Emma Seppala’s book, I was excited to follow her recommendation and start Elisabet’s book! As I write this, I am about one-third of the way through, yet I have noted that the content resonates deeply with my intention to live my days through gentleness and kindness. My dedication has been shaped by our family’s experience with family, friends, and strangers, who have selflessly brought compassion, gentleness, and kindness to our family during the difficult (seemingly impossible) days of Ryan’s cancer treatments. I am living my days in honor of those who have been at our side with unconditional love and concern – developing and bringing my best self forward to make a difference through how I present myself to the world.

Deep within my soul, I believe that gentleness and kindness are strengths vastly underappreciated. I am inspired to see the supporting research that Elisabet shares in her book! I will gladly take “the road less traveled.” Through my actions, I will encourage others and create a ripple of positivity in my world.

Below, I share a few excerpts from the book that resonate with me. I feel like the best is yet to come.

“What would you have? Your gentleness shall force more than your force move us to gentleness.”

-Shakespeare
Shakespeare quote gentleness vs force

Collaborating with ChatGPT, here is a further explanation of the quote’s meaning [Bold emphasis is mine]:

“This quote from William Shakespeare speaks to the power of gentleness over force in influencing others’ behavior. The suggestion is that gentleness and a soft approach can compel others to respond with the same kindness and softness, perhaps even more effectively than using force or aggression.

The underlying idea is that our emotions and behaviors can often inspire similar responses in those around us. One might inspire others to adopt a similar demeanor by choosing gentleness, creating a more harmonious interaction. This reflects a psychological concept known as “emotional contagion,” where people tend to “catch” the emotions of others around them. Thus, gentleness begets gentleness, proving itself a more potent tool for shaping the attitudes and actions of others than harshness or coercion.“

I am not naively suggesting that gentleness and kindness will always “win the moment.” Yet, coming from a genuine place of gentleness and kindness improves the possibility of preventing a contentious or challenging moment from escalating. It can improve the likelihood of a favorable resolution. In the long run, a lifestyle that strives to live with gentleness and kindness WILL be rewarding personally and for all involved. Using force may win the moment but most certainly degrades long-term relationships and effectiveness. If “winning” requires force, this is not how I want to live my life.

Further, regarding gentleness, Elisabet shares in her book about “Mistaking Gentleness for Weakness:”

“Most of us have been told a terrible lie our whole lives that anything soft, gentle, and supple (and feminine) is somehow inherently weak, unreliable, or of lesser value. This lie has caused untold suffering and has led to innumerable harmful decisions in politics and private organizations. For far too long, our culture has been overly infatuated with winning, competing, and making a profit, while gentleness and cooperation has been labeled inferior or fragile.

French philosopher André Comte-Sponville says that gentleness is “courage without violence, strength without harshness, love without anger” and also that “gentleness is gentleness only as long it owes nothing to fear.” 3 Our inability to assert boundaries, our struggles to lead people, and our reluctance to express opinions because we fear rejection is not gentleness but meekness. Gentleness is not about being passive or always accommodating others. Gentleness is a way of moving forward with a kind of dynamic grace. It’s about knowing when to push and when to pull back. It’s about succeeding not through force, but through empowerment.

Far too many of us have been dealing with an out-of-whack nervous system for years. We’ve been hardwired to overreact, overextend, and overwork. Adopting the gentle power style of encountering the world and moving through it isn’t so much about learning something new, but about unlearning these unhealthy ways of living. Gentle power is about finding accomplishment through nurturing a spirit of ease toward ourselves and others instead of achievement (no matter how glorious in the moment) and striving at the long-term cost of inner peace.

Comte-Sponville further describes gentleness as “a kind of peace, either real or desired . . . it can be pierced by anguish and suffering or brightened by joy and gratitude, but it is always devoid of hatred, harshness, and insensitivity.” Imagine if our experiences in leadership, social activism, politics, and families were devoid of harshness, force, and insensitivity. Imagine a relationship with yourself that’s completely free from judgment and blame. Socially, we’re told that this sort of treatment toward ourselves and others is soft and weak when it’s actually empowering, constructive, and energizing.”

Let’s ask ourselves daily, how can I present myself more gently and kindly to the world? I am excited to read more about Elisabet’s work on Gentle Power, inspired by hope and inspiration after reading the first one-third of the book!