JANET FOREST, CPC

I’m the black sheep of my family in many ways, including the fact that my sisters and parents have all relocated to California, while I stubbornly remain on the east coast. Because I’m not often at family gatherings to update everyone on my life, my parents share news...

Let’s face it, our culture is not pre-wired for complex and difficult conversations. When conflict arises between two or more individuals, it's normal to feel some level of discomfort. Our instinct is to ease the discomfort by making the conflict go away, and there are...

The last couple months, I’ve been working my way through books that have been patiently waiting their turn on my bookshelf. They were adopted from thrift shops, rescued from the Take It Or Leave It and surrendered to me by friends. One of the volumes I’d been eyei...

I’ve been keeping up with the news and watching the flabbergasting impact Covid19 is having on our world. It’s turning our medical professionals into involuntary war doctors. People in Wisconsin were asked to make the difficult choice between their health and their rig...

For the last three years, I have started thinking differently about how I expend my time, money and social capital. In 2017, I had the great fortune to hit rock bottom. I was spinning my wheels on unsuccessful projects, down to my last bit of money, and attracting one...

How it started.

The first time I visited my therapist, it wasn’t because of a personal crisis or a major life change. I was halfway through my life coaching certification, and one area of the training is recognizing when someone’s challenges are beyond the scope of coac...

Once upon a time I was in a relationship for three years. The first half was great. The last half was a slow deterioration that in hindsight was much more drawn out and painful than it needed to be. Most of the heartache could have been avoided if only I had been willi...

Adventures in Asking…

My first real job, where I had any kind of authority, was for a small real estate firm that hired me to be its office manager. I was 25 years-old, and quickly learned I was not nearly as smart as I thought I was. Though my title suggested some semb...

I just finished Reinventing You by Dorie Clark, which I heard about through a sales and marketing class I took on Lynda.com. (If you haven't heard of Lynda.com, you're missing out! It offers tons of free online classes on everything from photoshop to statistics to mana...

In this January's Outside Your Comfort Zone newsletter, I challenged people to venture outside their comfort zone by practicing "showing up." I thought I would share some of my own experiences from when I lived in New York. To set the scene, I moved to New York City to...