Seven Virtues for Purpose, Performance, and Productivity The Back-to-School Mood Rose petals sprinkled over my neglected Zen Garden, sunflower fields turned brown, and you have started to turn on the lights in the morning again. When you get home from work, you don’t want to sit outside anymore as it is dark, but you might vaguely remember this feeling you had as a kid when you were playing hide and seek at this time of the year, and it was just a notch better because it got dark at dinner time. This August is a bit like the “Summer of ‘69”. Did you also feel like a Rockstar? Finally out again in the world, listening to “Rock’n’Roll Music” or “Jailhouse Rock.”  […]

Did you go to a party last night and ask Karen, the other Expat Spouse across from you, how she managed her transition to Switzerland? And did Karen say: “Just reinvent yourself!”. This is a dreadful sentence to tell any newbie in a new place.  This sentence is advice you often hear when you lose your work or are still looking for a new job in Switzerland.  You are a New York, London, Frankfurt, or Mumbai professional. You have a career stamped on yourself. Telling you to reinvent yourself is like saying, “Why don’t you just run a marathon after recovering from COVID-19.” People make it sound so simple; it makes you feel guilty and shameful because it seems to […]

You are Jason Bourne, you wake up in a hotel room in a Middle Eastern country. It’s too hot in your room. You sweat and you just woke up from a nightmare. You are not sure if this nightmare is a memory because you cannot remember who you are.  How will it be possible for you to connect with anyone? How will you trust others if you do not even know who you are? What if you have changed your identity so often that you cannot even clearly pronounce your name? This is a challenge and you are probably shaking your head. “This is a movie, it’s not real.”.  Yes, but there is a truth in this movie that is […]

This time I really wanted to get it right and stop buying “plastic stuff made in China” (because to be honest, these modern brushes always have a catch and then I throw them out in a rage). I also don’t like the vacuum cleaner. It smells. It’s loud. It takes away space. Speaking of space. What would a Jedi do to keep their spaceship or humble house clean? Probably deal with it through energy. Not sure. I’ve never seen Yoda clean or even go to the bathroom.  So, I bought a broom and a brush of wood. Very old-school. I only needed one rubber ring, but you never just order one rubber ring online and my weekend seemed too precious […]

Did you just have another day where you cleaned up your desk, wondered what you had achieved today, and got home to a stack of dishes, a pile of clothes, and a crying son? Did you spend last night driving your daughter to SCUBA class, squeezed in a conference call, and forgot that it was your mother’s birthday? Did you then at 11 PM sit down thinking “Why am I not moving on with my life?”Often we think we are too busy to do that right thing, the Ph.D. we wanted to start, the Master we wanted to finish, the weight loss program, and healthy nutrition we wanted to implement. We keep ourselves too busy to meet a new partner. […]