I recently came across this inspirational TED Talk on fear and wanted to share it. Novelist Karen Thompson Walker compares fear with storytelling. 

"...that's really what fear is, if you think about it," Ms. Walker says. "It's a kind of unintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do. And fears and storytelling have the same components."

Viewing fear this way allows us to be the storytellers as well as the readers. As readers, how we interpret our fear, she says, "can have a profound effect on our lives."

Watch the talk below or read the transcript here.

Last month, Connect the Dots Coaching blogged about self-care strategies for busy professionals. Four women shared a combined 50 ways they perform self-care including eating three square meals a day, taking a long slow walk, saying the Serenity Prayer and cooking while tuning into jazz music. 

Today we revisit the topic of self-care, but this time, as people practice it on vacation, when out of a normal routine and away from the usual surroundings. So you're not near your church, your therapist or your support group. What do you do to stay calm, cool and collected and maintain the spiritual disciplines that you have worked so hard to maintain at home?

Here are a combined 40 tips submitted by five friends/colleagues for how to put into action self-care practices while on vacation.

Some people think self-care is about must-dos for physical health, like exercising and eating "well" to achieve and maintain a certain weight or sleeping enough in order to perform at an optimal level. Others think it's about getting pampered with manicures and spa treatments.

Connect the Dots Coaching asked four awesome professional women to share some of the things they do to care for themselves. The women's actions ran the gamut from singing to drinking green juice to bringing small pieces of joy to keep at work and they overlapped in areas like meditation, naps and exercise. 

Read on to learn how Dora Kravitz, the senior coordinator of professional development for the Gottesman Center at the American Museum of Natural History (1-14), Jennifer Hains, a psychotherapist and meditation teacher (15-24), Nancy Shapiro, a social worker and educational advocate (25-39), and Blair C., a director of business development (40-50), implement self-care in their lives.

"There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune." — Thomas Carlyle

You know how sometimes you feel like you are stuck in a bad mood and you want to get out of it, but you just can't? And maybe you even get frustrated because you know that it's up to you to change your mood. Well, here's a tool to use to nip that bad mood in the bud. Write a list of 10 fail-safe things you can do that have the ability to change the way you feel, such as watching a movie starring a specific comedian, getting a manicure or lighting a candle. Tuck the list away in your wallet or hang it by your bedside. Plan to read it and do one of the things on your list when life feels challenging.

"Just for today I will try to live through this day only, and not tackle all my problems at once. I can do something for 12 hours that would appall me if I felt that I had to keep it up for a lifetime." — Al-Anon Family Groups

Thinking about doing something for the rest of your life is overwhelming. Who could fathom not smoking a cigarette, exercising routinely or being in a tough spot for the rest of their lives? No one, of course. But if you keep in mind the adage that you can get through 24 hours doing almost anything, you are on the road to a smoke-free, exercise-filled life, as well as the ability to weather an emotional storm that would otherwise seem insurmountable. For the rest of your life you can't do anything, but a day at a time you can do anything, possibly even forever.