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Author: Erika Petrelli

Right Nows: How Are You Coping In The Face Of Tragedy?

Last month was the anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks. I’ve been thinking about it, obviously, and my experience living in New York City during that time.  In the last two months, Floridians have been recovering from Hurricane Irma, Puerto Rico is completely devastated from Irma, and Texans are trying to recover from Hurricane Harvey. Mexico is trying to deal with the afterm...

The Music of Life:  An Ode to the World

I was thinking recently about how two of my favorite sounds in the world are completely different. The first is the sound of birds singing and chirping—particularly the spring birds in the early morning. The second is the sound of an Indy race car as it speeds around the track. I love both of these sounds so much. Yet one is so gentle and the other is so strong. It seems like they should be in opp...

Commencement

On behalf of the BOOST Breakfast Club, congratulations to all the graduates across the nation in 2017! This post from @erikap is so beautiful and well written, we wanted to #repost this heartfelt message. We believe the message is universal. Enjoy! As spring has officially given way to summer and academics have been replaced by pools and bike rides, I’ve been thinking about commencement spee...

Foiled: Lesson Learned!

I went face-to-face this weekend with the single most evil thing in the face of parenting and humanity. The thing that makes you come face-to-face with your faults and imperfections, which reminds you that you are undeserving to even be taking up space in the room in which you are currently standing. The thing that tests you to your human limits. When I die, if I end up in hell, my particular leve...

Keep The Channel Open

I’ve been sitting in contemplation of this quote by dancer/choreographer Martha Graham for a few weeks now: “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not ha...

Finding Some Extraordinary In Your Ordinary

What does it mean to find the extraordinary within the ordinary? One of my favorite quotes is by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (author of The Little Prince, among others), where he says: “A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.” Are you someone who sees rock piles, or do you see cathedrals? To find the extrao...

Tending You

What does personal development have to do with professional development? I’ve had many people ask me some version of this question. In other words, why bother working on myself? I should spend my time working on my job skills, my staff, my responsibilities, my “stuff.” And, okay, I get that. Tending to others, as I’ve pointed out, gives me a purr for sure. But here’s ...

Magical Leadership

The past few weeks have been very fun and proud for me, as this baby of mine, this pet project, this seed of an idea that was planted more than three years ago, finally saw the sunlight. The interactive journal—the book born out of a weekly blog that I write—On Wings & Whimsy: Thoughts on Finding the Extraordinary Within the Ordinary—was published as the first product of The Leadership Program...

2017: I Am Here (with love)

Starlings In Winter, by Mary Oliver Chunky and noisy, but with stars in their black feathers, they spring from the telephone wire and instantly they are acrobats in the freezing wind. And now, in the theater of air, they swing over buildings, dipping and rising; they float like one stippled star that opens, becomes for a moment fragmented, then closes again; and you watch and you try but you simpl...

Being Right

My husband and his team put on amazing festivals, and one of them is called The Festival Of Machines. Sprawling over several acres of property, festival-goers can look at (and climb on) cement mixers, tractors, old time steam engines, old time fire engines, classic cars, race cars, army helicopters, and more. They can ride on a mars “rover” bike made by a competitive high school team, race each ot...

Hear the Whole Song

I’ve mentioned before my love of the band Mumford & Sons, and I have been delighted recently that my five-year old son has been similarly taken by them. The other day we were listening to “Roll Away Your Stone” and I was telling him how that was the first song of theirs I had ever heard, and recounted the first time I heard it.  He made me tell him the story twice, somehow as...

A Fresh Start to a New School Year

School starts for my kids in a week. One week from today! My daughter starts third grade and my son starts KINDERGARTEN, which just seems ridiculous. Time flies, they say. Time doesn’t fly—it rockets. It races. It’s relentless. It leaves me saying wait, Wait, WAIT!!! I can’t catch up with them growing older; I can’t catch up with life passing by; I can’t catch up with...