This is the final piece in a four-part series exploring romance scams from a personal, familial point of view. If you haven’t already read it already, you may want to start with part 1 below.

Making This up as I Go

How Did I Spot a Romance Scam Targeting My Mother? The Signs Anyone Can Learn

My mom’s connection with the imaginary man she would fall in love with, be robbed by, and break her heart began simply: he commented on one of her TikTok posts…

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7 months ago · 2 comments · Aden Nepom

One year ago, on February 24th I broke the illusion, and in doing so I broke her heart. She ended her online relationship.

On February 25th, we began the work of containing the damage, moving quickly together through calls, reports, passwords, and account changes. In the weeks that followed there were more discoveries, more triage, and the sobering realization that much of what had been sent — especially through CashApp and Bitcoin — would likely never be recovered.

Through it all my mother wrestled with the emotional fallout. She told me later that it was as if she’d had her heart broken twice, almost like enduring a breakup and a death at the same time.

Once the illusion was shattered, it was shattered completely. My mother understood reality with stunning clarity. It was as if her good sense had been held under ice. Now having been rescued from the mental prison of the scam, she could see the damage, and more importantly she could feel it.

Sometimes the Truth Hurts

Over the next several weeks, the scammer tried repeatedly to reestablish contact — new platforms, new messages, new attempts to reopen the door. Each time, my mother showed me. Each time, we blocked him again.

She shared with me how tempting it was to pretend the illusion hadn’t been undone and was surprised at how strong the draw was to return to the connection.

In fact many victims of these scams do.

During a romance scam, the attachment is real even if the person is not. The strong feelings of love and connection don’t evaporate the moment the truth appears.

Once the spell is broken it can feel like the world has gone dark. When shame fills the part of one’s heart that was previously filled by love, and the financial losses become concrete, the mind naturally seeks relief creating a very real danger that they’ll go running back.

Reality bites. Not everyone is Neo. Some people regret learning the truth.

This is why how you communicate with your loved one about the scam matters so much. If you belittle, blame, and argue you’ll activate their defenses, which can leave them feeling profoundly isolated and their brain will act protectively. This may mean retreating to the feelings the scammer showered them with or it could mean falling prey to something called re-fraud, where another scammer appears and promises to fix the problems of the previous scam only to further devastate the victim.

Communicating in a Way That Helps

I’d love to tell you that I was immediately successful the first time I talked with my mom about this. If you’ve read the other parts of this series… you know I wasn’t. I’d also love to tell you that I’m some kind of judgement free saint, who never felt angry or frustrated.

The truth is communicating around this scam was incredibly hard. It took patience, persistence… and oddly it took letting go at times. It felt like I was throwing spaghetti to see what would stick, wondering, “will this get through to my mom?” I happen to think my background in interpersonal communication and in improv didn’t give me the answers, it simply gave me more spaghetti to throw.

I’ve attempted to synthesize everything I learned the hard way into a few recommended principals and behaviors I highly recommend you adopt if you are facing this kind of challenge.

1. Steady Yourself First, Steady Yourself Often

In other words, breathe.

Before you try to pull someone out of a scam, you must control your own reactivity. If you lead with anger, you lose. You lose your influence with your loved one, and you lose your own ability to think flexibly and creatively.

Breath, calm, presence – these are the keys to making sure your brain is online. Bonus, when you are calm, your steadiness can help them steady themselves too.

I still remember how furious I felt when I realized my mother had lied to me and was actually sending money. Yelling “I told you so,” would have just left her feeling like she couldn’t talk to me. By calming myself, I was able to think more strategically. I suggested that perhaps they had both been scammed. That nuanced choice opened the door for more, enabling my mom to be receptive later when I presented her with real evidence.

When people feel threatened, they defend, or worse… they retreat. The last thing you want is for your loved one to run from you deeper into the scam.

If you want enough influence to bring the scam to a stop, you have to be the calmest person in the room.

2. Lower the Cost of Being Wrong

Romance scammers don’t just steal money, they attack the victim’s faith in themself.

Despite the generally accepted assumptions about the victims of these crimes, most people who fall prey aren’t actually idiots or fools. They’re successful business owners, wise investors, community builders and even experts in cyber security. My mother would never have described herself as lonely or naive. What she is, is loving and generous.

The more someone has invested emotionally and financially into a romance scam, the more humiliating it is to consider they’ve been manipulated.

Shaming them, even subtly, raises the psychological cost of admitting the truth.That’s why phrases like, “How could you fall for this?” or “I warned you, ” can be so destructive. If being wrong means being stupid, they’ll either fight to prove they’re right, or they’ll shut you out completely, allowing the scammer to reinforce the lies with more lies.

My mantra became: make it safe for her to discover the truth.

To show her it’s okay to be mistaken, sometimes I would use softer language. When I would bring up my concerns for example, I might use a phrase like “I could be wrong.” I also shared news stories as I came across them. Not to scare her, but to show her that scammers are sophisticated and that smart capable people get targeted. I made it clear: I don’t blame scam victims, I place the fault where it actually belongs, on the criminal.

3. Be on your loved ones side

When attempting to free your loved one from a romance scam, remember this: you are not fighting your loved one. You are helping them fight manipulation. You are their ally — and they need to feel that.

Scammers isolate. They plant the idea that concerned family members are jealous, controlling, or incapable of understanding the relationship. When you position yourself in direct opposition to it, you unintentionally confirm the scammer’s narrative. Suddenly, you are the threat — and the scammer becomes the safe place.

This may mean staying curious when you feel afraid. It may mean letting go of being right in the moment. It may mean asking gentle questions instead of making strong declarations. When you encounter resistance or defensiveness, back down quickly. Your goal isn’t to manipulate, to deceive or even to win.

Your goal is to keep the lines of communication open.

I would ask about him by name. How was he doing? Had she heard from him? When she gushed about how perfect he was, I told her I was happy she felt happy — and I meant it. I want my mother to feel loved and fulfilled.

I was careful to speak only what was true. I never validated the relationship. But I validated her experience of it.

Because I celebrated her joy, she kept talking to me. Because I didn’t mock the relationship, she shared the harder moments too — the inconsistencies, the strange requests, the things that didn’t quite add up.

That gave me room to be curious, “I read something online that sounds different from what he told you… what do you make of that?”

Curiosity lowers defenses. Accusations raise them.

There were friends my mom shut out at this time because their warnings came with too much force. If I had taken that approach, I would have lost access too.

4. Offer Evidence, Don’t Slam It Down

Evidence is persuasive, but it can be overwhelming too. Treat evidence like a spice, a little goes a long way. Too much evidence too fast can feel like an attack.

When I finally found the real identity behind the fake profile, I didn’t send a 12-paragraph argument. I sent my mom one link. One question. One gentle nudge.

Evidence works best when it invites curiosity instead of demanding surrender.

I know how hard it can be to be patient once you have concrete evidence of the truth, but remember that your goal is not to corner them into admitting that you were right and they were wrong. Your goal is to help them step toward clarity.

You don’t have the wait for the perfect time, after all the sooner you are able to successfully intervene the better! I’m just suggesting you follow their pace. Present enough evidence to make them go “hmm.” Let them react and then give them a little more.

Instead of telling them what you believe the evidence proves, ask for their interpretation, “What do you make of this?”
“Is this what he told you?”
“This seems different, why wouldn’t he just show you this?”

You won’t convince them by delivering a verdict. They’ll convince themselves as they wade through the stuff they cannot reconcile. Your job is to guide that process — gently — and make it possible for them to arrive at the truth without losing face.

If I had to boil all of this down into a single piece of advice it would be this: helping someone who’s been caught up in a romance scam often means playing a long game. You may not break through the first time. I didn’t. Or the second. Or the third.

Influence in these situations isn’t about winning an argument. It’s about remaining steady, dignified, aligned, and patient long enough for clarity to surface. It’s about showing them that even when they don’t trust your warnings and instincts, that you remain a safe, reliable, loving presence.

The illusion will crack eventually. You can help it crack sooner. When it does they’ll need a safe place to fall. If you’ve burned the relationship in the name of being right, they won’t come to you. Connection is influence, and influence requires access.

Your Damage Control Checklist

When truth finally prevails, do not wait. You have a short, fragile moment of clarity to take action. Use it! Below are the immediate steps to take if financial accounts or personal information have been compromised. Treat these as high priority.

Document Everything!

The more details you can capture while memories are fresh the better.

• Dates

• Messages

• Payment records

• Screenshots

• Write down any encounters you don’t have other records for

Capture as much as you can capture, and then block the scammer on any and all platforms where they may reach out.

Report the Crime

Keep copies of every report and case number. Financial institutions may request them.

• File a report with the FBI

• File a report with the FTC

• File a non-emergency report with your local police.

Secure Financial Accounts

• Change passwords

• Notify institutions and open new accounts if needed (your institutions will offer guidance)

• Update auto-payments

• Freeze your credit reports at all three credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax & TransUnion

Protect Identity

• Consider getting a PIN with the IRS

• Change password and file a report with ID.ME

• Contact your State tax agency to inquire about any necessary changes

• Put a fraud alert on your Social Security Number

This list can feel overwhelming. Feel free to print this off and use it as a checklist. It will help you to make sure you’ve covered all of your bases, and in my experience it feels great to check things off of lists!

Final reflections, AKA What I Wish I Knew Sooner

My dad used to say ‘being right is the booby prize’ and boy oh boy is that true. Being right about this scam suuuuucked. My mom and I both would have been happier had her romance been real.

Looking back, there are a few things I wish I had understood earlier.

First, concrete evidence matters more than pattern recognition. It wasn’t enough for me to recognize similarities to other scams. It wasn’t enough to point out inconsistencies in his stories — those were too easily explained away. What finally broke through was undeniable proof that he wasn’t who he claimed to be. If I could go back, gathering verifiable evidence would have remained my top priority from the beginning.

Second, I was operating on outdated assumptions about scams. They are no longer limited to clumsy email chains filled with spelling errors. In the age of AI, scammers are adaptive, responsive, and disturbingly persuasive. Staying informed isn’t optional anymore. If you haven’t looked recently, review the FTC’s current scam alerts and educate the people you love.

Third, I wish I had understood the permanence of moving money through cryptocurrency. Unlike credit cards or traditional bank transfers, Bitcoin transactions cannot be reversed once confirmed. That reality alone makes any request involving cryptocurrency an immediate red flag. Though my mother assures me this still would not have changed a thing, it still seems important. Make sure your loved ones know this.

Finally I’d like to wrap up this series with one final reminder:

Love and patience are your bridge to influence. Scammers isolate. They create secrecy and dependency. Do the opposite. Stay.

I’m deeply grateful that my mother gave me permission to share, even when it was painful. If sharing our experience helps one family intervene sooner, protect their finances, or preserve their relationship, then telling this story was worth it.

Read other pieces from this series:

Part 1: How Did I Spot a Romance Scam Targeting My Mother? The Signs Anyone Can Learn

Part 2: She Thought She Was Helping a Ukrainian Soldier - It Was a Scam

Part 3: The Face Was Real. The Story Was Not. How I Found the Truth Behind the Scam

Yesterday was Thanksgiving for many of you. My family celebrates today. Some might argue that this holiday has a questionable mythology… and that may be true. However, the role this holiday serves has become hugely important in my life. For me and my family, Thanksgiving serves as a day to pause and reflect on all we have to be thankful for. The very act of gratitude can be a transformational and so we do this no matter what. In some years this has been easy, and in others it has been a challenge, but I wanted to take a moment now to say Thank YOU!

This has been a fascinating year for my little family. If you’ve been reading my four part series (part four is still on the way) then you know we have been through some things. But amidst the downs, there have been some tremendous ups as well. For example we’ve just wrapped up a remarkable year of improv related travel where we traveled sometimes multiple times a month, performing and teaching in festivals as close as Bellingham, WA and as far away as the Netherlands.

This has impacted my ability to keep up with any kind of regular publishing cadence, but you (yes YOU!) have still stayed connected, and for that I am immensely grateful.

My list of Thank You’s this year include:

• My improv upbringing in Austin, TX. Even though my improv beginnings date back much further, I matured in Texas and I wish my friends at the Hideout Theatre, and Merlin Works Institute for Improvisation tremendous luck and blessings in their new chapters.

• My family who are loving, patient, adventurous and thoughtful humans

• My closest friends who have been there for me through the hardest conversations and who lift my spirits to soaring heights!

• And you who subscribe here. You motivate me to continue writing and remind me to share what I know and what I learn, as I continue to grow in service to making this messed up world a more joyful place, even when that means pausing to acknowledge that hard things happen.

As a thank you to you, I would like to invite you to a personal virtual coffee date together. We can spend our time simply having a nice chat, or if you have a specific question about something happening in your workplace dynamics, I’m happy to tackle that with you too. To take advantage of this offer, simply click here and grab a time in December or January.

Please note, that there are over 1,000 of you and limited space on the calendar so (thing 1) act quickly to grab a spot and (thing 2) if all spots are taken, but you are interested in connecting, send me a quick email and I will see what I can do!

Schedule your coffee talk!

I’m wishing you and your loved ones a fulfilling holiday season and may we all have a blessed New Year!

Thank you!

Victims of romance scams are first manipulated into believing they are in a real relationship prior to any money being exchanged. Then they are led to believe that the person they care about is in a dire situation with no relief in sight. Imagine if your spouse was in trouble, wouldn’t you move mountains to help them?

Naively, I thought that my mother would view a request for money as a red flag. What I failed to realize was that it would only be viewed as a red flag if she thought that a scammer was asking… and if my mom had believed it was a scammer to begin with, they wouldn’t have even interacted.

When mom finally broke and confessed that money was being exchanged, I realized that in order to convince her that she was dealing with a scammer, I would have to prove that she wasn’t dealing with a real person. I’m no private detective! How was I going to do it?

This four part series explores romance scams by sharing the story of how my mother was exploited, but more importantly what it took to stop the scammers in their tracks. You are reading part 3. Part 2 shares my mothers vulnerable story of being pulled in by a scammer. If you haven’t yet read part 1, which gives an overview of what these scams are, how they work, and how to spot if you or a loved one are in one…I suggest you start there. Here is the link to part one of this series.

The Breaking Point

I spend time with my mom every Wednesday. It’s something we started doing after she moved here in 2020 to be close to me, my husband and my step daughter. Our Wednesday hang out time includes going for walks, eating breakfast together, sometimes I help her with tasks or chores, but whatever activity we’re doing, we’re talking while we do it.

Because I had expressed concern about her online connection, my mom was careful not to share too much with me during our Wednesday chats, and eventually she stopped volunteering any information at all. I would ask how things were going, and she would just say, “really well, I’m so happy to have met this man.” She would also qualify her happiness by telling me that she didn’t know what the future held, and occasionally she expressed concern for his safety. She would always finish by reassuring me that she knew there was a reason they met, and that she now knew with confidence that he was a real person. No longer a threat — I should relax. Then we’d talk about something else like my travels, after all I was on the road a fair amount, and there were pictures to show and stories to tell.

It was at this time her health began to become a topic of conversation as well. She was having some strange symptoms, and pursuing answers.

By February, as I headed off to spend 10 days in Amsterdam teaching and performing in an impro festival, my mom’s talk was almost exclusively about how stressed she felt. How she had to be careful of her nervous system. I assumed she was worried about her soldier getting hurt in the war, but it never occurred to me that her increased stress wasn’t limited to war stuff and health stuff. The silent cause of stress behind it all, was the complicated money situation she found herself in, that she was keeping from me.

While I was away, her financial entanglement with the scammer grew beyond her capacity to keep quiet.

I returned from the Netherlands, and still jet lagged from my travels, met up with my mom to catch up. It was February 24th, a dreary Monday, two days ahead of our scheduled time (to make up for the time I had missed while out of the country). The rain was pouring outside, giving us a dramatic backdrop for the conversation that ensued.

My mother filled me in on what was happening with her health. It was scary. She was having issues with her speech, her tongue, her throat and her abdominal strength. Her doctor was testing for something called Myasthenia Gravis. It would still be six more months for us to learn that she was in the early stages of ALS.

But she was beyond stressed, panicked, agitated, and kept repeating that her nervous system couldn’t handle all of the stress of waiting for test results with “everything else” that was going on. As she talked, my heart sank with realization. I immediately knew that something had happened with her long distance connection…but I still didn’t know what.

“Did something happen with Vasylko?” I asked.

She didn’t want to tell me. She looked at me with big eyes as if she had been caught doing something bad. She was holding her breath.

I waited.

She inhaled, weighing her confession and finally told me that she and Vasylko had a plan to get him out of the Ukraine, but that she didn’t know if it would be in time. He had been moved to somewhere where the fighting was particularly dangerous, and she didn’t know if the Military Financial Department would be cooperative.

“The Military Financial department? What is that?” I asked.

She gave me a muddled summary that included partial information about a failed attempt to send money, a bank account and a credit advance. She showed me a bank account statement that her scammer had sent to her to prove that she would get her money back, but when I looked at it I could tell it was a fake. What she told me was incomplete but when I started to press for specifics she clammed up, telling me that she’d already said too much. That her health couldn’t take the stress, and that she would not tolerate any judgement from me about her soldier.

She’d been scammed. I knew it. I told her as much. She wasn’t ready to hear it and pushed back.

I was angry. She had sent money. She had either broken her promise to me, or she had lied in making that promise to begin with. I wanted to scream “you’re an idiot! You let him fool you,” – I hadn’t yet learned about how these scams work – but I held back my anger because I knew that berating and lecturing her would push her away. I needed my mom to keep sharing details with me, if I had any hope of stopping what was happening.

“I’m not saying Vasylko scammed you,” I pivoted, “but I am saying this sounds like a scam. Perhaps both of you are victims,” I suggested and hugged her, softly promising “We’ll figure it out together. I love you. This sounds like a lot.”

She cried. I hugged her harder.

Playing Detective

When I got home I told my husband that my worst fears were true. My mom was wrapped up in a scam. Money had been sent, and I didn’t have any clue how much.

The first order of business was clear. I had to convince my mom that the scammer was a scammer, and that their love was a lie. It was going to break her heart, but it had to be done. It was the only way I could prevent any further damage from happening.

I started scouring reddit, and searching the web for blog posts on how to break through the haze of scammer’s lies.

And finally I found a thread on reddit that suggested doing a reverse image lookup.

Months earlier, I had managed to connect with my mom’s scammer on TikTok, back when they were proving to me that my suspicions were wrong. I had tried to do a reverse image lookup at that time, but didn’t know what I was doing. I’d also done a search for the name the scammer was using and came up short. I didn’t have evidence that the scammer’s story was true or untrue and my mom had given reassurances, not to mention I was busy… so I trusted it would all be okay, and kind of gave up.

The early move of making that TikTok connection ended up being my saving grace, because I was still able to bring up the profile and download some photos, which I used to begin the search anew. Knowing that the name she’d been given brought up nothing useful, now I would focus my search for his face online… and I would not give up until I found him.

Google was no help. Neither was Bing. But I finally found a way to do it using the Russian-owned search engine Yandex.

After hours of obsessive sleuthing and reading online, I found him – not the scammer but the person the scammer was pretending to be. I hoped it was enough to convince my mother. I also knew that shattering what she thought was reality in order to reveal the truth was going to have to be done gently. I couldn’t come at her with frustration, anger or self-righteousness because that would push her deeper into the scammers web.

Breaking the Spell

I sent a single text that included the Ukrainian Wikipedia page for the real person and this message, “Have you seen this? Vasylchuk Vadym Vasylovich is an elected official in Kyiv”

The name I sent her was close to the one the scammer had used, but wasn’t the same. The history of the real person was similar to the story my mother had been told too, but it was different enough that I knew she would notice.

I saw she had read the message. Two minutes went by before she responded.

“Where did you find that? Yes honey, I’ve seen this”

Had she? I was on the fence. Was it time to feed her more evidence? Was I wrong? I wasn’t sure… I took the risk and shared the TikTok profile I had found for the real person.

“His name is Vasylko Boiany” was all she replied. She had noticed the name discrepancy… good!

I responded, “I believe that the account with that name, is using the images from the account of this public figure. The names are close, but they’re not the same. Mom. I love you. I know this is difficult.” I had taken her limited responses to mean that she was already connecting the dots, and included a link to the official Facebook Page of the elected official that her scammer was impersonating. The profile showed recent posts from Valentine’s day showcasing his wife. The scammer had claimed to be a widow. This person was not.

Four minutes went by. No reply.

I asked her to reconsider financial involvement and told her there was also a YouTube channel but withheld the link.

Ten more minutes went by with no reply from her. I worried I had blown it with too much too fast. My mother’s typical response time is immediate, and with an abundance of words. The read receipt followed by nothing spoke loudly.

“Please don’t be angry with me for looking” I texted meekly.

“I’m not angry,” she replied “I’m confused.”

I acknowledged that this must feel really confusing, and that’s when things shifted. The wool was lifting from her eyes. Now she wanted more information. She asked to see the YouTube channel. I commented that I noticed the names were different. She told me she was numb.

Over the next few hours there were a few more messages and a phone call between us.

She wanted to confront the scammer, hoping there might be an explanation. I didn’t think it was a good idea, but I now believe that her choice ended up being the nail needed to close the coffin for good. Instead of a human response filled with reaction and emotion, the first words back sounded like they came from a customer service bot. “Hold on. Thanks for this information. Will look into it right the way.”

The illusion was finally shattered.

There was emotional fallout of course. Imagine seeing the face of your person, but attached to a different name, history and voice. Having a the veil of a romance scam lifted is like realizing that you’ve been cheated on and grieving the death of a loved one at the same time. It can be far more painful than the worst of breakups. But, to her credit she almost instantly regained her mental clarity and was ready to spring into action.

The next few weeks were a blur: Police, FBI and FTC reports, visits to the bank, calls with her credit card company, and an exceedingly long checklist of actions we would need to take in order for my mom to effectively stop, block and recover from the scam and protect her identity.

Here’s how to use a Yandex reverse image search to uncover a scammer:

If you suspect that you may be involved in a romance scam, or have a loved one who may have fallen prey, a reverse image search can be a powerful way to get to the truth.

Here are steps you can use:

Step 1: You’re going to need an image and having several images is even better. You’ll need to have the images saved to your device. If you’re able to find images online via social profile for example here’s how you save the image.

• Right-click and choose “Save image as…” on desktop

• Long-press and choose the Save or Download option on mobile

If you have to be a spy and get your hands on your loved ones device, you may be able to take screen shots and email them or text them to yourself. This can be a risky choice for your relationship. Be prepared to explain yourself with love and patience.

Step 2: Open Yandex Images and upload your file

• Go to yandex.com/images

• Start a reverse image search by selecting the camera icon in the search bar.

• Choose “Upload a file” and pick the saved image, or paste the image URL into the URL box and submit. (If Yandex shows a face region selector, crop to the face. Cropping removes backgrounds and text that can confuse results.)

Step 3: Review Yandex’s results carefully by looking for pages that show the same photo (social profiles, stock-photo sites, blogs, forum posts).

• Check for the earliest visible source by looking at the date on the page or post. Earlier sources are more likely to reveal the original account.

• Open promising result pages in new tabs and inspect them.

• Note usernames, profile pages, account creation dates, contact info, and other photos on the same account.

• Check whether the image appears on stock-photo sites or image-hosting services (that would indicate it’s not a private person’s photo).

Additional tips:

• Higher quality images, will of course yield better results. If you can, use multiple crops of the same image, and search using several different pictures. You may also want to re-run searches to see if you get different results.

• Do your best to corroborate identity across multiple sources. Don’t just rely on a single match. Confirm the same name or username and additional photos or details across at least two independent sources.

• Yandex often returns Russian pages — use the browser translate feature to read them and find profile names or contact info.

• Save URLs, take screenshots (with timestamps if possible), and copy profile handles and page dates. You may need these for reporting.

• If you find an identity that is likely real, verify cautiously. You can look for consistent photos, public posts, a realistic friend or follower stats. Beware of fake pages that simply rehost images… there are a lot of them.

A quick personal note:

To those of you who have been reading and sharing this particular series, I thank you. Raising awareness about Romance Scams is important and difficult. The sheer number of you who have contacted me privately to share your own similar stories has served as further evidence for my mother and I that telling this story is absolutely worth doing. The more we can normalize shaming criminals instead of victims, the closer we get to stopping imposter scams in the future. I look forward to sharing the final installment of this series soon.

Read other articles in this series:

Since our family has come through this ordeal we have learned a lot, but two things in particular stand out. The first is that most victims of this particular kind of theft remain silent. People often feel ashamed of having been fooled by imposter scams in general, and romance scams in particular because our culture tends to wrongfully place blame on the shoulders of the victims. We believe that by talking about the problem of romance fraud and by sharing stories, we may help other victims recognize what is happening before it’s too late. It is to this purpose that my mother has bravely given me permission to share hers.

The second thing we’ve learned is that many families may recognize the problem and still fail to help their loved ones who are being victimized by romance scams because victims are manipulated into shutting out the voices of reason, logic and care. I was eventually able to get through my mom, preventing some of the worst possible outcomes partly because of my background in interpersonal communication and partly because of my training as an improviser.

This four part series explores romance scams by sharing the story of how my mother was exploited, but more importantly what it took to stop the scammers in their tracks. You are reading part 2. If you haven’t yet read part 1, which gives an overview of what these scams are, how they work, and how to spot if you or a loved one are in one, I suggest you start there. Click here to read Part One of this series.

This is My Mother’s Story

My mother has a small but participatory community of about 500 followers on Facebook, 700 followers on Instagram and 1600 followers on TikTok. She posts daily videos featuring herself and her adorable golden chiweenie Lily, that include uplifting music, words of encouragement, inspiration, and animal activism. A few of the people she has met online have become long distance friends, with whom she talks regularly about their pets, their health and their children and grandchildren. These relationships, and the videos she shares have added a sense of purpose and enrichment to her life.

My mom is not so naive as to think that every person who contacts her is a potential friend though, and this particular scammer was not the first to have attempted to rob her. In fact there was a close call where she almost fell for an imposter scam in 2021, but whoever it was luckily believed her when she said she had no money to share and left her alone. My mother thinks of herself as particularly vigilant because of this close call and truthfully she is. She gets comments from fake accounts almost daily and she has become quite adept at spotting them.

But this particular scammer slipped through her watchful guard.

One year ago in early October, she posted a short video of her dog. It was cute, highlighting the changing weather and Autumn colors. Like any of her TikTok posts, it got some likes, and a few comments, including a short observation from a stranger about how important pets are, or how cute dogs are in general… something innocuous but friendly.

In order to boost engagement, social media platforms like Facebook1 and TikTok2 encourage content creators to comment back, which is exactly what she did, by habit. By October 10th however, this short exchange in her comments would already start moving to more frequent communication via TikTok’s private messenger.

This scammer identified himself as a Ukrainian soldier and a former journalist. He said he was a father and a widow. My mom wasn’t looking for love, and would not have described herself as particularly lonely, but her heart went out to this person who said he had lost his wife. My mother has experienced that particularly painful kind of loss. She is also a professionally trained caregiver and there was something in the story he presented to her that appealed to that caring part of her heart.

For ease of storytelling I have chosen to refer to the scammer as an individual man even though the reality of these scams makes it more likely that my mother was dealing with more than one person3 over the duration of the ordeal.

This ‘soldier’ inquired about what part of the world she was in, which she shared. He told her where he was stationed and about the pressures of being in command over a handful of men. He also shared thoughts about the beauty and importance of life, and talked about a dog that had adopted his group even in a war zone. Over the next few days, they continued getting to know each other and before long she told me that she felt a “profound” connection with him and that his words resonated with her. Later we would realize that he had likely fed the words from her social media posts into an AI4 which then generated things to say that sounded, quite literally, just like her5.

Because of the familiarity of his words, she was quickly convinced that they were kindred spirits with shared values. When he would refer to her as his “Lovely Friend” she would feel that sentiment in her heart. She believed him when he told her she was the last thing he thought about before sleep.

It only took four days for her to develop feelings for him, despite their age difference, their geological distance and her belief that the terribleness of war would probably prevent them from ever meeting in person.

Less than two weeks from his first outreach, he suggested they move their conversation to a different messaging platform. She was hesitant, but he convinced her that this would be the only way for them to keep talking, as was in a war zone. He said another app would be easier and more secure, so she agreed. She didn’t want their communication to stop.

They used an app called Zangi6. Once everything was set up, the content of their interactions escalated steeply. Now they weren’t just connecting over shared interests, they could share deeply personal feelings, become more intimately connected, and share dreams, hopes and fears. He knew all of her schedule and habits, and she had what she thought was her sweet soldier’s patrol schedule memorized.

She called him her Ukrainian soldier when she’d talk about him, and before long, he became the first thing she thought of in the morning, and the last thing she would think about before sleep. She didn’t want to admit it, but she was falling in love. And the more she felt love towards her would be robber, the more she worried…which is exactly what he wanted from her.

He would talk about the difficulty of war, telling her that he wasn’t a killer but was being forced to do what he was doing. This unwilling soldier complained of not having enough food and said he worried about himself and his men freezing at night, claiming that the Ukrainian military was not providing for their needs.

She would wistfully wish for her circumstances to be different so she could help, and she told him that if she wasn’t living on her social security and an extremely tight budget, that she would. He would say “not to worry my love” and reassure her that he would never accept money from her even if she tried to send it.

When she would open up to me about their correspondence, her descriptions were dripping with red flags. After all, “I’m in the military and far away,” is one of the most common romance scams out there! But when I or other trusted friends would express our concerns, she would either dismiss them, get defensive, or tell us that she was ‘vigilant’ and would know if he was a scammer.

I was careful to tread lightly with my mother’s heart. I believed then, and still believe now, that the most important thing was to be a safe person for her to talk to, even if I couldn’t break through the ether state7 she seemed to be in. So when she would say “maybe I shouldn’t share these things with you,” I would immediately back off and tell her that as long as she was happy, I was happy.

Part of her must have wondered why so many caring voices were skeptical of her long distance love. To prove that our worries were silly, she would share our concerns with the scammer. Instead of responding to her with patience or reassurance, he would get angry with her for questioning his intent. He would accuse her of insulting him, and chide her for believing us over him, which would put her on the defensive… and then she would apologize to him and promise that she trusted him! And their ‘lovers spats’ as he referred to them, would end up tightening this scammer’s grip on her.

In mid-November on a walk in the park, my mother told me that she thought he was gaslighting her, and she was going to end things. I applauded that she was heeding her own warning signals, but I still worried. By now I was no longer suspicious that she was caught up with a scammer, I was convinced. It was clear that her emotions were being manipulated. I told her that I had always had her back, and that I always would… but I must’ve been too enthusiastic because by the end of the walk she was defending him again, and saying that she missed him too much to break it off.

I didn’t want to push her away, so again, I backed off and told her I would support her no matter what she chose. This time though I asked her to promise me that no matter what, she would never send money to him.

“What money do I even have to send?” she said.

‘Promise me.” I replied.

“I promise.” She smiled.

But my demand for a promise was too late. She’d already sent money.

Roughly one month after her first communication with this group of thieves masquerading as a person, she told him she would send him $50 – an amount she thought she could spare despite her tight budget.

In the weeks before he had reassured her that he’d never accept money from her. This time he told her how to send it.

Give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile.

Over the next three months, driven by the fear of losing what she believed to be a loving relationship, she parted with nearly $10,000 in the form of CashApp Bitcoin transfers and Apple and Amazon gift cards. Worse, she had given him all of her protected identifying information, including bank numbers, passwords, and her social security number so that she, as he told her, could gain access to his accounts… even opening a new joint bank account where he told her he would deposit money for her to pay herself back for everything she had sent.

In the beginning he fed her her own words.

When she had told him she worried for his safety, he fed her fear.

When she said she was worried about money, he fed her a fantasy about the future.

When she expressed any confusion or suspicion, he fed her lies and fake evidence.

By February she believed that she’d be able to buy his freedom from Ukrainian military service long enough to meet in person. He would be in her home! Once here, perhaps he could gain safe asylum in the US and stay. Not only was he going to pay her back for everything she had sent, but they were going to be together and then he would finally be able to take care of her. All worries of death and financial ruin would be a thing of the past.

I thought I had some sense of what was happening with my mother from the bits and bobs she shared with me. In actuality I had no clue until we finally put a stop to it at the end of February which I am eager to share in part 3.

If you or someone you know have been a victim

AARP offers some incredible free help and resources. You do not have to be a member.

If you or a loved one suspect a romance scam is at play, visit the AARP Fraud Watch Network or call their helpline directly at 1-877-908-3360. You may also decide that joining one of their support group meetings could be helpful. My mother found these groups to be invaluable in healing the emotional aftermath of realizing she had been a victim.

Visit AARP’s scams & fraud resources webpage for resources on all kinds of fraud and stay informed.

If you’ve been scammed please inform law enforcement right away. File a report with the federal trade commission here: http://reportfraud.ftc.gov and a report with the FBI here: http://ic3.gov

My mom’s connection with the imaginary man she would fall in love with, be robbed by, and break her heart began simply: he commented on one of her TikTok posts.

For those of us on the outside of the ‘relationship’ it was clear she had fallen for a scammer; an easy text book example in fact! For her, the manipulation was so complete that she came to trust the thief more than us at near lightning speed. Within a period of roughly four months, she would go into thousands of dollars in debt, jeopardizing her health, stability, our trust in her and her trust in herself.

This four part series shares the story of how my mother was exploited by a scam, and more importantly what it took to stop the scammers in their tracks. You are reading part 1.

Many families fail to get through to their loved ones who are victims of romance scams. I believe I was eventually able to get through to her because of my background in interpersonal communication and my training as an improviser. It wasn’t easy, but it was important. For those of you who suspect your loved one may be in trouble, I hope that this series will offer some help and some hope.

The first step in stopping a scam in it’s track, is recognizing it for what it is.

How Romance Scams Work

Today, October 3rd, is International Romance Scam Awareness & Prevention Day. So it seemed like this would be a good day to share a little bit of insight into the anatomy of romance scams. Knowledge is power, and understanding what happens inside of this particular form of fraud can help you break through to your loved one.

If you haven’t yet been scammed, the likelihood is exceedingly high that you know someone who has. According to Federal Trade Commission data anyone can be a target of an imposter scam and the numbers are surprising. In 2024 there were 880,653 reported cases of fraud amounting to a loss of over $308 billion dollars. Of those, 60,931 were cases of romance scam, amounting to an average total loss of $1.2 million dollars.1 Victims can lose as little as a few hundred, or they can lose everything including their house. How much a victim of a romance scam loses depends on how quickly reality is able to break through the carefully created veneer the scammer presents.

Here’s how it works. In a romance scam (sometimes people call these something else, like love scam, or dating scam), criminals pretend to build a relationship with their victim only to defraud their mark by stealing their money, setting them up to be a money mule… or both.2

Scammers reach out to make an initial connection most often on dating sites or via social media. They groom their targets through a combination of love bombing, frequent communication, and appealing to what matters most to their victims (even easier now with AI), while peppering in reasons to be worried or fearful about losing the connection, until they can tell that their victim is ready to part with their money.

How can a scammer tell if you are ready to part with your cash?

There are a few initial tests, things like getting you to move off of the platform where you met and onto a different messaging platform that is “more secure”. They’ll see if their explanations for discrepancies in their story (because you will challenge them) are accepted. They’ll notice if the stories they’re telling elicit the desired emotional response. When you’ve passed their litmus test, they’ll finally have you hypnotized into a perfectly balanced, never ending loop of fear and love and when you will willingly trust them over your own intuition, the warnings of family and friends, and the wisdom of bankers, retailers, and law enforcement…well, that’s when they’ve got ya.3

To protect yourself, FBI.gov offers the following suggestions for safeguarding yourself against imposters online.

Protect Yourself4

• Be careful what you post and make public online. Scammers can use details shared on social media and dating sites to better understand and target you.

• Research the person’s photo and profile using online searches to see if the image, name, or details have been used elsewhere.

• Go slowly and ask lots of questions.

• Beware if the individual seems too perfect or quickly asks you to leave a dating service or social media site to communicate directly.

• Beware if the individual attempts to isolate you from friends and family or requests inappropriate photos or financial information that could later be used to extort you.

• Beware if the individual promises to meet in person but then always comes up with an excuse why he or she can’t. If you haven’t met the person after a few months, for whatever reason, you have good reason to be suspicious.

• Never send money to anyone you have only communicated with online or by phone.

If your loved one is caught up in a scam

While I was suspicious very early into my mom’s experience with an online fraudster, it took me four months to gather the confirmation, evidence and skills needed to finally break through and put a stop to things. While it’s true that a significant amount of damage was done in that time, I am certain that it could have been much, much worse.

Over the next few weeks I will share her story, and the details of how I was able to help her finally end the scam. But I would be remiss if I didn’t end this post with a few tips for you on how to get through to those you care about.

Tip #1 - It’s important to keep trust and communication with your loved one open. This may mean you have to back off at times, or even pretend to believe that the scammer isn’t a scammer. If you push too hard to try and convince your loved one that they are being groomed and not courted, you run the risk of pushing them all the way away.

Tip #2 - Gather evidence. If you’re able to sneakily gain access to the social profile of the scammer, or at minimum grab a few screen shots from your loved ones devices, do it. This will allow you to use helpful tools like reverse lookup and more.

Tip #3 - Let your loved one know that you have suspicions, and point them to helpful resources like the ones shared in this post. But do it humbly.

Tip #4 - These kinds of scammers tend to target people they perceive to be lonely, so if you have a loved one who lives alone, is recently single, or doesn’t seem to have an active social circle, make a point to spend time with them regularly. Keeping loneliness at bay may not be a cure, but it certainly is medicine and at bare minimum it will help your loved one know that you care about them.

In summary

This is a pretty high-level look at how romance scams work, how to spot one and what to do when you do. Of course each person’s story will be different, which is why I want to share my families experience with you and yours.

Oops it’s been awhile: a confession

Just over a year ago I published an exciting update celebrating one year of publishing on Substack. Business was going great. I had exciting opportunities, I was motivated, interested and eager to be of service in my field. I’d begun writing a book, I had fulfilling work on the calendar, and exciting improv opportunities to boot!

Then it all unraveled, slowly at first, until my life was like a cartoon snowball… large tangled and seemingly out of control.

If this post was titled “Second Year Update on my Substack Activity” it would be one sentence long: I haven’t written anything in over a year.

Instead this post reads like a game of Fortunately/Unfortunately.

(If you like to get into the details of peoples personal lives keep reading! If you want to just get to the juicy takeaways, feel free to skip to the end…)

First, I was having tons of fun traveling for improv stuff, and delivering exciting client work. So I put writing on a back burner so I wouldn’t spread myself too thin.

Then, my husband and I left the theatre where we had been performing locally for the last decade. Their questionable ethics did not align with our values. Like any breakup, this took an emotional toll and I struggled to focus.

I knew I would get back to it before year’s end, when I planned to put out traditional holiday and New Years goal related content, but then I started having health stuff crop up, and in attending to that, I told myself writing would have to wait just a little longer. In the meantime, there was more fun ahead to enjoy… which I told myself would make for excellent future newsletter content.

But in early February, I had a few clients cancel abruptly as they anticipated the effects our new President might have on the economy and the types of programs that my clients were running.

My husband and I attended Impro Amsterdam and I was grateful. After two morale hits in a row, this had been exactly what I needed. I returned feeling upbeat, and inspired. But there were more surprises in store.

As I was sitting down to write my first post of the year… already toward the end of February, I discovered my mom was the victim of fraud (there will be a post about this in the future. I learned some really helpful things worth sharing through the experience). For the rest of that month and a significant part of March, trying to stop the scammer from further theft, and help my mother recover her identity and her financial losses became my full time job. Writing would have to wait.

I developed frozen shoulder. And sitting at the computer became physically painful. For those of you who have been through it, you know — pain is exhausting. So writing needed to wait for me to attend to physical therapy and my health overall.

Speaking of health, my mother began developing some truly scary health symptoms, and I was now accompanying her to medical appointments, and advocating for her to get to see a neurologist, while trying to manage her stress to prevent further damage…. meanwhile treading water with my own health and life balance.

I was exhausted, I was sad, I was frustrated, I was in pain… and I was worried about work taking a back burner while I spent more time on my health, and my mother’s increasing challenges.

But of course, I brushed those stress-ball feelings away because the cool improv-related travel opportunities were still rolling in! Since my last published post my I’ve traveled to nearly a dozen cities, and attended at least 9 festivals which include Emerald City Comic Con, the Bay Area Musical Improv Fest, and Impro Amsterdam (my husband and I have three more festivals lined up before the year is over too).

If the past year was a country song, I think it would go like this:

[chorus] 24/25 what a surprise, had no idea what was in store
Thought I couldn’t take it, 
so took a tiny break yeah, 
Then 2025 
...you broke me even more!

August through October
All is good, nothing's a bother
Doin' shows and feeling funny
Doing work and making money
busy, busy, opportunity galore

November, December
I can hardly remember
I said goodbye to my ol' improv home
I was tired, not retired, but took a break
to "plan for days ahead"

[Chorus]

More time off for teachin' High School, 
Miami Fest was super cool, 
Impro Amsterdam as happy as can be!
Get off the bike, get off the plane
the next part would be insane for me

Shoulder hurts I just can't sleep
My mama's scammed by a creep
My clients quit cuz they're scared of 47
Doctor, doctor what's the News? 
I'm becoming quite a sleuth

[Chorus]

[Take it to the bridge!] Frozen shoulder, writers block, 
Amsterdam, Rhode Island, 
Miami n' Chicago
Mama gets a scan of brain and spine
My short break got too long
But then it got much longer
25, when will the madness end?
 
[Chorus, everybody sing along!]

Is my hiatus over?

I sure hope so.

Just because I’m writing now, doesn’t mean life has calmed down or surrendered to my wishes. But I am at a stage of life where waiting for things to calm down might not be the right solution.

Fortunately my frozen shoulder does seem like it’s finally resolving, and my health worries seem to be well in hand now too. These are the main things I needed resolved to regain some focus and energy.

I’ll also share though that two weeks ago, my mother’s neurologist dealt us a devastating blow, and all my recent attention has been devoted to making sure she has a care team and that her needs are met. The care team is slowly forming, and my mother and I are navigating what it means to be balanced in these new circumstances. I may share more about what is happening later, but her permission would be required.

Before I close out this confessional, I’d like to share what this period of time has taught me.

Lessons from my unplanned hiatus

1. “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans” - Allen Saunders/John Lennon

2. The flexibility that serves me as an improviser was, and is, essential to surviving this particularly turbulent time period. I am so very grateful for my improvisers ethos. While I am not immune to feeling down, distraught, and beat up by life, my training in quick pivots and buoyancy are certainly a saving grace right now.

3. In order to move forward from my own bumpy road I’ve adopted the following short pep talk for myself:

   • I forgive myself for dropping the ball on certain projects while I juggled other obligations, health needs and burn out

   • I let go of the need to be perfect

   • I am excited for what the future holds and ready to receive inspiration, opportunity and miracles!

If you find this helpful feel free to steal this pep talk for yourself. Write it on a post it note and put it on your desk, convert it to a prayer and speak it to the universe, or simply read it here and breath.

Have you experienced burn out, or gone on an unplanned hiatus?

What did you do to break through, shake things up and redirect your focus? You can share your experience as a comment, or feel free to send me a message directly.

Here are some of the highlights from my first year out on my own!

A Leap of Faith

Last year, I began consolidating my efforts into more purposeful choices and I became choosier about where and how I wanted to spend my time. I started taking bigger risks as I embraced walking my talk (you’ve seen my TEDx Talk on taking risks, instead of playing it safe right?).

Maybe it was a consequence of finally allowing myself to fully emerge from the dramatic shifts of 2020. Maybe it was as simple as realizing that as time is passing I have a limited number of years to enjoy with a school-aged kid at home. Or maybe it was because I had been wanting to really stretch my wings and leap to adventure and challenge, to see if I could truly fly!

But after careful consideration and many discussions with my family and colleagues, I made a life-changing decision to leave the Portland based consulting group I had joined after moving back to Oregon, and go all-in on Art of Change, the speaking and training business that my best-selling author of a dad founded… and then passed into my control when he retired.

I didn’t make any grand announcements, no press release, no party. I just did it. Quietly. Which meant that nobody really clocked the change unless I told them. In retrospect, this was a mistake. Taking risks, can feel scary, it would have been brilliant to reach out to my network and ask you to celebrate with me, and maybe even cheer me on! Not announcing meant taking on all of the pressure of change largely on my own. Strength building to be sure, but I’m counting this as something I would do differently if I could go back. I’ve seen colleagues announce job transitions, becoming independent consultants, and more, and when I ask them about it, they tell me it’s great. Worst case, people celebrate! Best case, people feel motivated to explore possible work opportunities together.

Outcome: I learned a valuable lesson here… and you can learn from my experience! If you’re doing something BIG, and you don’t know how it’s going to go, it’s actually great to let people know you’re taking that leap. Some will show support, and support is a wonderful thing!

An Incredible Project

One of the best projects I worked on all year was with a major automotive manufacturer headquartered here in Portland. I created two train-the-trainer programs for Daimler Trucks North America’s DEIB program champions.

Their Challenge: Each year, a group of volunteers from inside all parts of the company facilitate conversations around topics related to equity, inclusion and belonging in the workplace. These volunteers needed to learn how to facilitate discussions in a way that saw the needs and issues of all of the people in the room, including those who have no interest in having these conversations to begin with.

What I did: I created two customized train the trainer programs.

Session 1: Facilitation Fundamentals, was designed to equip participants with tools (and practice in these tools) that would help them 1) manage their mindset, 2) set up clear expectations for discussion, behavior and desired outcomes 3) manage time and group participation in ways that would enhance their conversations.

Session 2: Facilitating Difficult Conversations, pulled communication tools from my Demystifying Difficult People and Reason in an Outraged World programs, to help the DEI Program champions create environments that foster curiosity, exploration and the ability for their participants to say hard things.

Outcome: These programs were a huge success. The feedback was great, and some of the discussions that we had in simply practicing the tools were enlightening in and of themselves. Often times in facilitating DEI related conversations the emphasis on ‘correct’ vs ‘incorrect’ thinking can be counterproductive to creating the desired outcome of a workplace of belonging. These champions were set up to facilitate discussions where people could actually experience being in a place of belonging, and ideas could be freely shared and explored by a whole group. We are already discussing running these trainings again for next years volunteer cohort!

A Fantastic Conference Experience

My favorite conference experience this year (and let me tell you, this was a super-tough choice) was giving the closing plenary for the California Child Support Directors Association Annual Training Conference & Expo.

The ask: I was asked to adapt my TEDx on taking risks and breaking mental routines in order to create positive change. They wanted the audience, who like many of you are facing massive operational changes, to leave the conference feeling inspired to do something new rather than forced to do something new. A BIG ASK!

What I did: Exactly what I was asked to do! I delivered a 1-hour keynote speech that is personal, relatable and interactive. This talk inspires and invites audience to risk doing new things in new ways in order to reach the peak of what is possible. And to acknowledge that just because something is familiar or comfortable does not mean that it’s good to continue.

Outcome: I thought it went great! But more importantly here is the feedback I received from the client as soon as I concluded my speech,

“I’ve been part of this conference for years. Your closing plenary speech was *exactly* what I wanted for this years conference. The tone, everything… perfect. Instead of shoving the idea of positive change down people’s throats, you gave a beautiful invitation. This was such a meaningful way to close today!” - CSDA’s Interim Director, Marcus Mitchell

What’s in store for this year?

I think that’s the million dollar question! I’ve just spent the last 6 weeks enjoying some much needed time with family and friends, pursuing artistic endeavors and allowing my brain and shoulders to relax. I’m renewed, I’m refreshed, and I am excited about what’s ahead!

This year I hope to have several exciting things to announce including a brand new signature keynote…. and maybe a book, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. Ultimately my favorite thing is delivering inspiring speeches, collaborating on custom workshops for your team’s interpersonal communication needs and helping to make this world a little sweeter one audience at a time. As long as I am doing this work, it’s already the best year ever.

Whatever happens this year, I’d love for YOU to be part of it.

I have room on my roster for more client work. If you know someone looking for an event speaker to help make their internal or external conference a success you can send them to my website or better yet connect us by email. And if you could use some training support to help your team improve their communication or collaboration, or address conflicting points of view more effectively, I would love to help with that too!

Book A FREE Discovery Call

Thank you for being part of my first year out on my own! Here’s to round two!

You spend a lot of time in meetings. You might be really good at running them too! Maybe you’ve even learned a few ice breakers to get people in the room feeling particularly present and ready to roll.

But listen, when the stakes are highest you need someone that isn’t you to facilitate your meeting. As someone who has been thanked by many clients for helping make their strategy session impactful, or for my invaluable ability to help keep things flowing, I promise you that a facilitator from outside your organization is worth every bit of your investment. Here's why:

1. You’ll avoid energy suck

2. You'll help everyone's input be heard fairly and efficiently.

3. You’ll ensure that you get to the decision points that matter most.

4. You’ll be able to participate in crucial conversations.

5. The objectives, outcomes, and who-owns-what will be crystal clear walking in and out of the room.

Let’s break these benefits down!

1. You’ll avoid energy suck. I don’t have to tell you what this is. We’ve all been there: a strategy session with a lot of opinionated stake holders, a “short” ideation session that has just entered hour 2 or a board meeting that has tipped too far into boring (but important) data driven updates. It doesn’t matter how crucial a conversation is, human beings have energy peeks and dips, and fortunately or unfortunately these dips are imprecise in their predictability.

   

   If you fail to manage the ebb and flow of human attention and interest… well, you lose people’s focus altogether! This makes reaching consensus, figuring out next steps or solidifying critical decisions super difficult!

   Facilitators don’t just facilitate content or manage time, we help modulate the energy in the room. When the energy is lackluster, we know how to bring it up. When the energy is heated, we know how to cool it down. It’s part of our job to know when to challenge you to press on, and to know when you really need a break.

   Great facilitators are experts at sensing the energy needs of the room so that instead of getting sucked into the ether, the energy stays in the critical decisions you are making.

2. You'll help everyone's input be heard fairly and efficiently. When it comes to meetings… particularly the hard but important ones like digging into your corporate values, you can predict how people are going to behave before you even get there. You know that there’s going to be at least one [shrug] “whatever you decide guys,” player, a few silent participants and a handful of overly loud, super-duper opinionated voices who disagree with each other (seemingly because they think they’re supposed to!).

   You know how important all of the perspectives in the room are to your conversation, or you wouldn’t have invited them, but trying to hear everyone and reach consensus can eat up precious time. On top of that it takes additional attention to notice who hasn’t offered up their voice yet, or to pick up the the overlap that could unite differing points of view.

   A truly skilled facilitator will know how to bring out the voices of your quieter contributors, and patience in your out-loud thinkers. We also have multiple experiences for sharing and thinking about tough questions that go well beyond group discussion so that time spent exploring is maximized in output rather than expenditure.

   

3. You’ll ensure that you get to the decision points that matter most. By the time you get people’s schedules aligned and have carved out the time to tackle your important but challenging decisions together, more often than not you end up with an agenda that is overly ambitious. The last thing you need is for the truly critical stuff to be pushed off as people go down the rabbit hole of a single topic that may not even be on the agenda in the first place!

   

   Experts in facilitation understand that while it may be necessary to address issues that arise unexpectedly in the course of a strategy session or planning meeting, it’s important to make timing choices when unexpected topics or deep dives into agenda items arise. This time management can be challenging as the person who created the agenda and brought people into the room, but for those of us who facilitate, it’s simply part of our job!

4. You’ll be able to participate in crucial conversations. This might be the most important reason to ask for external support. As a leader you know important questions to ask and you understand the big picture in a way other players at the table simply will not. Naturally you’ve gathered everyone because their input matters, but yours does too!

   Taking on the role of meeting facilitator comes at a high energy cost. Managing the room's focus, the agenda, and ensuring balanced participation between vocal participants and quieter ones can lead to burnout and exhaustion by the day's end, preventing you from fully leveraging all of your insights at the table.

   Your meeting attendees may contribute differently as well, yielding to you more while sacrificing their own valuable input. Why? Because they know that you are the key decision maker and the arbiter of when the meeting ends.

5. The objectives, outcomes, and who-owns-what will be crystal clear walking out of the room. A meeting is only as successful as its outcomes, and a strategy session only becomes effective with implementation.

   Have you ever been in a meeting, and felt clear on the decisions and responsibilities, only to discover later that you’re foggier on the details than you should be? So you go to check your notes, and that’s when you realize why you feel so fuzzy… it’s because your notes are incomplete.

   While the problem of clear notes can be solved by having a designated note taker in the room, an experienced facilitator will go even further by making sure that the outcomes are brought into sharp focus, primary tasks are made clear with dates attached, having heard a clear yes from the person responsible for carrying those tasks out.

Here’s the bottom line

Yes. You are capable of having many good meetings without expert facilitation. But when it comes to the truly high stakes conversations, smart leaders call on outside facilitation support for the reasons listed above and more!

…Now, how can you tell you’re actually working with an expert facilitator? I think that is where our discussion should start!

Leave a comment

For discussion:

1. Have you ever hired an outside facilitator that sucked? What were the early indicators you wish you had paid attention to that might have clued you in?

2. Have you ever hired an outside facilitator who was an amazing game changer? What were the early indicators that told you that you were in expert hands?

“On the one hand, this will be more money, and more opportunity for growth” she continued, “but on the down side, we will have to relocate,” she started listing, “I’m burned out on my current role, and it would be great to leave it in the past, but we just moved into our house that we love, and leaving it would be hard.”

The fatal flaw of listing Pros and Cons

We’ve all heard that listing pros and cons is the best way to evaluate a tough decision. But actually, this practice leaves most people feeling even more confused than before they begin.

In improv we have a game called fortunately/unfortunately in which the action of the players on stage is controlled by the forces of good and evil on the sidelines. By simply alternating a fortunate solution, with an unfortunate event the players are pushed and pulled by these forces for comedic effect until the circumstances become untenable. This is a great way to make comedy. Not a great way to make a decision!

Why?

Our brains are very creative and when we don’t have an answer we tend to invent one. Most of us also have a strong sense of fairness and a need for balance. So when you go back and forth between pros and cons, you’ll often end up with an even list of both and a list that never seems to end. Complicated by your own mental noise, the best decision will not emerge clearly, and when you inevitably ‘go with your gut,’ though you might try and credit the decision to your pros and cons list, it will have been an intuition based choice that could have been made without having gone to the trouble.

The good news is that the instinct to analyze pros and cons can actually be made extremely useful in a time efficient way! It just takes one minor tweak.

Here’s how to fix your pros/cons process

My dad taught me years ago, “Don’t do pros and cons. Do pros THEN cons.”

Separating and completing pros and cons lists individually is a game changer, a time saver, and has been a powerful decision making tool in my personal life, for my friends, and for my one-on-one clients.

Making a Pros, then Cons list (or a Cons, then Pros list) simply means you choose where to start and make an exhaustive list exclusive to one heading before making a list with an opposite heading.

The process breaks down like this:

1. Choose your starting list. Are you starting with Pros? Are you starting with Cons? Pick one, and only one.

2. Only work on your first list until it is complete and there is nothing else you can add to it.

3. On a new piece of paper (or page of your doc) Make your exhaustive contrasting list.

4. Compare your lists. Gain surprising insights!

Make sure when using this process you observe the following best practices

• Only when you’ve finished one list do you move to the next.

• Never make your lists side by side on the same piece of paper. Only after listing is fully completed, do you bring them together to compare them.

In my friend’s case she made a pros of staying list, then a pros list for accepting the out-of-state offer. Before she could even get to the cons her decision was clear without having to compare anything. Her pros of staying list had three items, and her pros list for the new opportunity had twenty.

Let me know if you try this technique!

I hope you find this tip useful! If you do try this technique, please let me know what decision you were evaluating, and how this technique helped!

For discussion:

What other decision making processes are you a fan of, and for what kinds of decisions do you utilize them?

Have you ever felt like you made the wrong choice? What did you do about it?

So here’s my humble confession that I’m terrible at predicting my own future choices, and a summary of what I hope will come of this decision now that it has been made (though I reserve the right to pull the plug at any point!).

If you’ve left Facebook and are considering returning, this essay is for you. This write up may also be of interest to those of you considering leaving…

Why return to facebook?

Less than a week before my 2 year anniversary of divorcing all things Meta, while overcome with a fever, I caved.

I've not been secretive about the fact that leaving facebook was a mixed bag. And similar to an addict in recovery, even though there were moments when I didn’t think about Facebook, and I got very used to not thinking of life in terms of things to post there, Facebook was ever present in my life. Nearly all of the people in my social circles would talk about it, would tell me how they’re using it, and would tell me about how moderate they were able to be. They talked about the features they enjoyed, and the stuff they were able to stay clear of, saying things like “I’m just there for the pictures of babies and kittens,” or “I just use the groups feature and stay off the feed.”

Even my husband who claims to hate it, is constantly on it because he “has to be” in order to coordinate the shows he produces.

Despite all of this I remained strong in my convictions for a time, however I still used other platforms regularly. Marco Polo, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn and Telegram all occupy my mental space. And truth be told, some of them bring out even worse behavior than the gross things I witnessed on Facebook that had inspired me to leave in the first place (I’m looking at you Twitter)!

So whilst sick with a fever and sad about ending 2023 without a celebration, I used the following justifications to pull the trigger on rejoining The social network.

1. I didn’t quit social media as a whole. I’m still participating. What difference does it really make being off of one platform, when I’m on so many?

2. Improv (an art form that is a hugely important part of my life!) is coordinated on Facebook: groups for shows, messenger for connecting with out of town theaters. I’ve had to rely on my husband as a middle man for these communications… which is basically using Facebook by proxy.

3. Craigslist is valueless. Trade of interesting used items happens on Facebook.

What am I hoping for?

Facebook was super fun in the early days. Catching up with old connections. Seeing what people have been up to, who they’ve become over the years. I also enjoyed sharing thoughts as they occurred to me in real time and getting virtual pats on the back just for showing up!

Things have changed significantly since then. For one thing I am of a certain age… and so is nearly everyone I know, which effects the type of communication happening on the platform.

The world has changed too. Generally speaking the overall population has come through the early part of this decade more hesitant to share online and more introverted overall. I’m not the only one fatigued by disagreement, politics and the economy. There are quite simply fewer people on the platform, and a significant percentage of those who are still there seem to fall in greater and greater numbers under the ‘lurker’ category.

Despite all of this I am hoping to utilize Facebook in the following ways.

1. Groups

2. Sharing the stuff I do and create

3. And to communicate with connections in distant locations who are not easy to reach in other ways.

Here’s what I’m hoping to avoid

1. Political content

2. Endless time-wasting scrolling

3. Substituting online interaction for in-person high-value connection time.

In Summary

I’m human too! Wanna follow me on Facebook to see how this second go-round turns out?

For discussion:

What’s your relationship with social media become?

Any insights you’d like to share about Facebook or another social network?

Have you quit and come back?

Leave a comment on this post, or send me a message. I love hearing your point of view!

I’m a huge fan of taking time out to evaluate ones current state of personal work and life, dreaming up an ideal future state for self, and then setting goals to help achieve the next few steps. But if you’ve been reading my essays for a while, than you may also recall that the proper time for doing that thought work doesn’t always align with specific date markers like the start of the new year.

In the US, our year switches from old to new during the coldest, darkest part of the year. While some of you may draw energy from setting goals, for others simply getting your head in the right place to be able to push through until Spring may be all you have capacity for.

This year instead of setting goals, I’ve noticed several of my friends and colleagues talking about the mantra they’re picking for 2024… and I LOVE IT!

What does choosing a mantra do for mindset?

I’ve written about how improvisers build flexibility and resilience, and mindset actually has a huge role to play in adopting an improvisers ethos.

Choosing a helpful mantra to help you face uncertainty with grace and ease can provide an excellent shortcut to wiring your brain for success. You can meditate with your mantra, or if meditating isn’t your thing, repeat your mantra to yourself silently any time, anywhere and and often you like!

In actuality, we're choosing mantra’s all of the time… we just do it unconsciously based on our biases, mental habits, mood, what we were just doing beforehand, and so on. Sometimes our mantra’s sound like “everybody sucks” or “I’m probably in for more of the same…”

But it’s important to understand just how surprisingly strong our minds are!

Our assumptions influence our behavior, which in turn influences our experience, which of course leads to deeper reinforcement of our assumptions… and around and around we go!

Rather than let our mindset choose us (and how we experience life as a result) we can use this pattern loop to choose our mental messaging, shift our mindset, and reverse engineer our brains!

By simply choosing a helpful mantra like “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it could be great!” we open up the possibility for better outcomes.

Pick your helpful mantra to kick off the new year!

Here is a short list of mantra’s. Choose one you like for 2024!

1. I have what it takes to achieve what I dream (including the capacity to learn!)

2. Something wonderful could happen at any moment

3. More joy. More fun. More making happy memories

4. I am blessed with abundance

5. I am resourceful

6. Notice what’s working, do more of that

7. I have a lot to offer my network this year

8. Balance. Balance. Balance.

If you don’t see one here that resonates with you, feel free to download this worksheet for free, and spend a little time coming up with something that inspires you!

1 Minute Mindset Reset Mantra

902KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Wishing you a VERY happy New Year!

From the bottom of my heart I wish you an amazing year ahead, and I offer you this blessing from my family to yours.

May your heart be filled with love
May your body be fueled with good health
May the Universe provide you with abundance
And may we all discover more that unites us than divides us and a deep capacity for forgiveness so that we may share an incredible future together

For discussion:

1. Are you a goal setter for New Year’s, or does this approach feel more realistic for you?

2. Do moments like NYE or your birthday typically feel like a reset to you, or simply a continuation?

3. What is your mantra for 2024?

While I know lots of people who LOVE a good team-building event, recently on LinkedIn I’ve seen an uptick in anti team-building chatter.

“Forced fun, is never fun"
"The only team building anyone needs, is shared focus on the work"
"Just let me do my job! Then let me go the f--k home”
"Why do they call it team building? They should call it a waste of precious time." 
"Here's an idea, how about instead of spending money on team building, you just give your team members that money as a bonus"

So yeah… let’s dig in!

What is the point of team building? How do you make the most of bringing your team together, and what are watch-outs for these kinds of events?

What is the point of team building?

In simplest terms, the point of team building is to improve overall communication, collaboration, and cohesion. When done well, investing in team building does pay off. When team members can communicate ideas and concerns effectively, collaborate on solutions to challenges, and feel motivated not just by their internal drivers but in how well they relate to each other… it’s good for the bottom line!

Have you ever been on a team, where trying to connect with eachother feels hard? Where people seem like they don’t care about responding to emails, texts or calls?

That dynamic isn’t great for business, but it is a great reason to invest in high-quality team building.

You know that thing where people seem frustrated and exhausted because there’s a lot of task overlap or role confusion… that’s another great reason to get the team together to sort a few things out.

Experienced a recent re-org, and your new team has a brand new mix of people, and need to get on the same page quickly? You guessed it: it’s a great time for team building!

Even if the work seems to be going smoothly, getting the team together to understand each others strengths and less obvious skills can help turn colleagues into resources for each other, contributing to an even deeper sense of belonging and a drive to do brilliant work for the organization.

Whether the experience is based in something fun like improv, or something challenging like a ropes course, Ultimately what successful team building does, is bring colleagues together in a way that either helps them build a shared sense of what (vision, direction, goals for the work), of how (clarity and trust), or why (purpose and values).

If you need to build all three of these areas with a team at once, this can be a great reason to hold a multi-day offsite.

Planning some team time? Here are 5 ways to make sure your team-building events are packed with value

As a long time improv professional and facilitator I can confidently tell you that while many activities can be used for team building, not all experiences are equal in value. In other words, just because you’ve played laser tag together, does not mean you’ve participated in a team-building event. In fact, when done wrong, your event can actually prove LinkedIn naysayers right or, even worse, drive a wedge in the team!

Amazing team-building results require planning, motivated participation and benefit from external thought partnership.

Here are 5 tips for getting the most out of your investment in team building.

1. Have clearly defined objectives and know what success looks like. What are you hoping will change in the way the team behaves with each other as a result of the time spent? How do you think your chosen experience or event will contribute to that outcome? Make sure to share your clear desired outcomes with the team prior to and at the beginning of the session, so they understand why this is happening, what the expectations are and how they will benefit from investing their energy, focus and time in the experience. Including outcomes that are important to the whole team will help everyone engage in the experience.

2. Don’t be afraid of fun. When people are smiling, laughing and enjoying what they are doing they tend to be more deeply engaged. Strategically employing fun (and sometimes down right silly) experiences can unlock a playful spirit and creative thinking. When there is a good balance between play and thoughtfulness people will find themselves more interested and more likely to remember the outcomes of the day.

3. Ask your team to help draw the connection between your chosen activity and their work objectives. Instead of telling your team how experiences relate to work, ask them what they’re noticing. Encourage them to do the mental work, discuss what they’re learning and how it connects to what they do.

4. Discuss what happens when the experience ends and you return back to work. What would you and the team like to do differently based on this time spent? What would the team like to do differently? What are long term hopes and dreams? What are immediate next steps?

5. Lean on the expertise of a facilitator. Experienced facilitators are skillful at holding multiple factors at once. This includes the 4 previous tips on this list. When I facilitate team-building sessions for my clients, I’m balancing your desired outcomes, time constraints, energy in the room, emerging knowledge and more, all of which frees you up to be a participant and fully focused on the connection and reflection needed to get the results you want. Maybe it goes without saying, but I’m saying it anyway: when you bring in someone who does this work professionally, you’ll have a more successful event, and an easier time connecting the dots from a team-building experience to your overall objectives.

Avoid team-building pitfalls that build resentment and frustration

If team time is so valuable, why are people complaining on LinkedIn?

Well, as I mentioned not all team building is created equal. And when done wrong the results can be damaging to your organization.

Here are a few things to watch out for:

1. Don’t use team building as a reward. This time of year brings year end celebrations, and new year kick-off events. While some companies will be dressed to the nines drinking wine and handing out bonus checks, there are always a handful of companies that will opt for “team building” to reward a hard year. While many activities used to build team skills are super fun, at the end of the day… it is still work! Reward your team with genuine appreciation, and (when appropriate and feasible) with financial benefits.

2. Avoid scheduling team events during people’s off hours. Even the most dedicated, joy-filled, cohesive team will need their personal time to rest, recuperate, spend time with friends and family and attend to other interests. Cutting into that important time sends the message that you do not care about them. This will erode engagement in your event and overall morale.

3. Do not ignore, brush off or otherwise dismiss the key outcomes from team building. Speaking of morale hits… if you fail to implement changes at work that were identified during your team building session, you’ll send the message that you think what you did was a waste of time, and the rest of the team will proceed accordingly.

4. Don’t go it alone. If you’re asking your team to invest their time and energy, then you should also invest in expert support.

5. Don’t try to do your facilitators job for them. Do the work upfront to hire someone you can trust. Then trust them to do what you hired them to do!

Wrapping things up…

I’m a huge believer in the value of team building when its done right. When you invest in skill building experiences that help your team bring out the best in each other it can not just make work to go more smoothly, but can help everyone to feel like they are exactly where they belong doing great work with people they enjoy working with!

If you or your colleagues are in need of professional support in this area, lets talk! I’d be thrilled to help you and your team achieve your goals in the coming year. Set up a time to explore what’s possible by clicking below.

Get Started

For discussion:

I’d love to hear your thoughts on what makes team building suck, or rock!

1. What’s the best team-building event you’ve ever attended?

2. What’s your team-building horror story (we’ve all got one!)

3. What would you add as a pro-tip for planning these kinds of events?

Meanwhile in another corner of the universe, Israel (a place I believe has every right to exist) has passed the three week mark since Hamas’s horrific murdering, raping, kidnapping rampage and we are now bearing witness to Israel’s brutal retaliation in Gaza (where the people also have every right to exist). My hopes and dreams for a peaceful outcome aren’t faring too well.

Life is filled with tension. Maybe you feel this like I do.

My inner monologue on any given day can end up sounding a lot like this, “I am sad. I am joyful. I am worried. I am grateful. I am scared. I am confident. I am human.”

Two things can be true at the same time.

If you’ve listened to the Changed Podcast ever, you know that one of my favorite observations about the nature of our human experience is that two things can be true at the same time. You can be happy about one thing and sad about another. You can be a terrible leader and still be in a position of management. You can mourn the loss of life on both sides of a war.

When you acknowledge that two things can be true at the same time, it is in the tension between these opposing forces that there is actually great potential for growth.

I’m not the only person to recognize this either. Brand marketers will tell you that one of the best ways to crystalize your brand image and messaging is to identify the important tension you want to keep. For an improv theatre that might be the tension between fun and excellence. For a product manufacturer the tension might be between luxury and affordability.

I’d love to hear from you what tension you think this newsletter communicates!

Despite the wisdom in tension, or the knowledge that there is more than one truth in any given moment, people will tell you to pick a side, to take a stand and that if you don’t, you’re doing it wrong (whatever it may be)!

Really, I suppose this is just another tension!

But let me reassure you that even when people tell you that silence is violence, or that you’re about to be on the wrong side of history or that valuing life means that you’re filled with hate, you are allowed to pause and evaluate (and in fact I think you should!), and if it makes sense to you, you can choose to hold multiple realities in your heart with love, patience and resolve.

Picking a side can be a trap you unwittingly fall into, but I believe that ultimately you’re smarter than that.

Here is why picking sides is a trap

People pick sides because, in grossly oversimplified terms, there is an evolutionary drive within us that screams “you’re either with me, or you’re against me!”

When people leap off of the cliff of declarative ‘us or them’ beliefs, they simultaneously need to know that they’re okay, that you’re okay, and that they’re okay for associating with you because without the support of other people we essentially wither and die. But the good news for people who take theses ideological leaps: there always seems to be a bunch of people willing to agree… loudly.

Here’s the problem: You hurt your important relationships and risk worsening a problem that might’ve had a simple solution by picking sides prematurely.

Even worse you can pick the wrong side.

We know that jumping to conclusions with incomplete data, can lead us to incorrect assumptions and beliefs. We also know that our brains are assumption reinforcing machines. Our beliefs deeply influence how we experience reality. So, what we lack in knowledge or context, we will substitute with loyalty to our social group (“if they say it’s important, that is good enough for me!”).

You are easier to walk down a path of dark consequences once you pick sides, because you become more prone to ignoring information that goes against your selected belief. Without pausing to get context or thinking through the whole problem, you leave yourself prone to manipulation by lazily deferring to emotion and reaction. Once you’re that far along, all your biased sources have to do is present you with a supposed fix, and you’ll assume it’s the only way.

It is because of this that people do truly horrible things. Angry mobs with pitchforks are born this way.

What’s the way out?

THINK!

The way out of the trap of picking sides is to put on your critical thinking hat! Listen to your spidey-senses!

Here are a couple of things to consider:

1. Loud doesn’t mean correct.

2. We all heard it growing up, we’re supposed to say no to peer pressure. “If you’re friends were leaping off a cliff, would you?” The answer should be no!!

3. Just because you’ve been told there are two sides to an issue, doesn’t mean that’s true. The way you frame a problem will yield different results! Ask yourself, how else might you slice up what you know to ask a different question than the one you’ve been presented with?

4. When someone seems super certain on their side, and is pressuring you to declare that you’re with them, It’s OK to observe out loud without an attitude. You might say something like “you seem like you have a lot of certainty here. How do you know?”

Here’s the bottom line:

Do not fall to the pressure to pick a side without fully understanding the problem… and even then you still don’t necessarily have to pick a side. To do so compromises not just the public point of view but it also can compromise inner reconciling of your own values.

When somebody says you have to pick a side, pause. Think. See if there might be another way to frame the problem, and remember that two things can be true at the same time.

For discussion:

1. Picked any sides lately? How did you know it was the right side?

2. Are you with me or against me? Agree with what I’ve written or have a different perspective to share? If you have another perspective, I would love to hear it!

It is hard to make sense of the horrible things people say and do. We receive news of acts of horror globally and it can feel like it’s happening in our own backyard. We witness people we care about say terrible things at home, at work and online, which can cause a crisis of trust… after all, how could anyone like or respect a person who talks like that??

I would be willing to bet that you’ve even caught yourself saying things in a way that may have seemed reasonable in the moment, only to realize that you’d actually gone completely off the rails based on the reaction of the person you were talking to.

It is natural human behavior to feel that if someone isn’t completely with us on something that they must be against us. However the reality of human experience and the nature of most conflict is far more complex than simply picking sides. You don’t have to dig deep to know that some things we agree on quickly and some things we won’t agree on… but even in cases where obvious agreement fails, relationships can be strengthened and differences can be resolved.

The starting point: make useful assumptions.

Useful Assumption #1: People have good reasons for their bad behavior

In contrast to what some people will do, which is dismiss motives as being driven by hatred or evil alone, perhaps the most useful assumption you can make is that people have good reasons for their bad choices. This is not to say that you will necessarily agree with their reasons. You are simply acknowledging for yourself that the person who says or does something you do not understand, could have a reason that in their mind that is compelling enough that the action or words which followed made perfect sense… to them.

What makes this a useful assumption?

Assuming that someone has good reasons behind their bad behavior opens up less obvious choices and gets you past the binary command of “pick a side.” Remember, what we believe about a person influences our experience of that person. Our brains are silly, little assumption-reinforcing machines. So, if we want to break free of a repeating pattern we need to unlock fresh choices.

Let’s look at some examples:

AT WORK:

What you notice: Every time you speak up at a meeting Bob cuts you off.

Here’s what doesn’t work—> making a limiting assumption: Bob doesn’t respect me.

Why is this limiting? You’re stuck with the binary choice of either trying to earn Bob’s respect or writing Bob off as an a-hole. Not to mention, you’re probably solving for the wrong problem which at best will lead to you looking like a manic idiot or at worst, you yourself become the a-hole.

Better—> make useful assumption #1: There is a reason Bob keeps cutting me off.

Why is this useful? First, it helps you tap into your curiosity. If there is a reason for Bob’s behavior with you, then it follows that you might be able to discover what that reason is… and then be able to do something with that information.

You might try noticing more of the context for Bob cutting you off. Is it really just you, or is happening to everyone? Is it during specific types of communication or all the time? Perhaps you learn that he’s cutting you off, after you cut someone else off. Maybe you even go to Bob and have the hard conversation. “Bob here’s what I’ve noticed…., but rather than assume anything about it, I thought maybe we could talk about what’s going on.”

The result could lead to turning Bob into your biggest cheerleader. Or maybe you discover that Bob really is doing it on purpose out of a place of hurt and resentment, which will give you the opportunity to resolve past conflict and become a more cohesive team.

POLITICS IN SOCIAL POSTS

What you notice: Patrice who you typically view positively is posting ill-informed, propaganda-fueled garbage.

Limiting assumption that doesn’t help: They’re not the great person I thought they were, (or worse) they’ve been brainwashed!

Why is this limiting? Because you’re left with the choice to either stay connected with someone horrible, abandon a connection that may have been good, or worse try and save them from their stupid selves so you can once again feel reassured about being connected to them (pro-tip this attitude is doomed to fail… feel free to try it and report back).

In other words you either lose a connection and feel bad, keep a connection and feel bad, or keep a connection and they feel bad about you: lose-lose-lose.

Better: useful assumption #1: There is a reason that Patrice is posting this content.

Why is this better than simply cutting ties? Because let’s be honest, cutting ties is the least energy intensive choice you can make. In some cases it may even be your best choice. BUT we’re talking about Patrice! In our example, this is a person you typically view favorably, and are happy to be connected with. I don’t know about you, but I value my connections—both deep friendships and happy acquaintances. In my view it is good to open yourself up to a few additional choices, leaving cutting ties as a last resort.

By assuming that Patrice has a good (by her estimation) reason to post content you don’t like this opens you up to learn something new. You may learn where Patrice began to form her opinion and why it matters to her. You may learn things you hadn’t previously considered, which could help give you a more informed perspective as well.

By approaching Patrice with curiosity about her reasoning, you build a bridge instead of burning one down and if you’re willing to cross that bridge to understand what Patrice cares about, there is a much stronger likelihood that Patrice will also cross back with you to understand where your perspective lives.

Your open discourse can serve to enrich you both as individuals while adding depth to your connection.

Here’s the Bottom Line:

Our brains are assumption factories. If you’re going to assume something, you might as well assume something useful. This goes beyond simply giving people the benefit of the doubt.

When we assume that people have good (from their perspective) reasons for the way they choose to behave, we open up more choices for ourselves in how we choose to respond to behaviors we encounter.

Having trouble getting there with someone you know? Feel free to leave a comment with your example, and lets see if I, or someone else in the Making This Up subscriber community can offer you some help and support!

Secrets as Inspiration

I am a cast member in a show called Portland Secrets, which is a direct descendant of a show born in Austin, TX at the Hideout Theatre called… you guessed it, Austin Secrets. We haven’t performed in 5 years, but we’re coming back this coming weekend, for one very special night!

In this show, we perform scenes inspired from real secrets that are submitted anonymously by people who may never see the show, or might be sitting in the audience that very night. Because the secrets can range from the charming “whenever I go through automatic doors, I secretly pretend to be a sorcerer” to the dark secrets of those who have survived trauma.

As performers we never really know what we’re going to get for our next secret, so to play in this show requires a couple of qualities beyond the usual improv playfulness. We must be willing to hold each secret with the honor and care that we would treat a friend who has just shared something with us. We’ve also got to be hyper flexible, because most secrets are best honored when we don’t reproduce things in a literal way, and instead take inspiration from the core of the secret. We’ve also got to be willing to bring our own human vulnerabilities to the stage.

In our last rehearsal there was a secret from a person who had experienced a trauma at a wedding, and had told no one. The scene we performed from this was simply three people talking about nothing important at a public event, each in a different emotional state. The message of the scene being simply, that you never know what is happening below the surface of small talk. The secret having already been shared with the audience was all that was needed to make a benign and maybe even boring scene seem rich with layers and depth of emotion.

There is a section of the show called Hidden Secrets in which only one cast member (along with the audience) is let in on a secret, and then must perform in a scene started by another player who has not seen the secret. Our director’s favorite example of this was from the first year of the show: one cast member was given the secret “I like to draw naked self portraits.” That cast member pulled out a chair sat down, and began miming doodling in a notebook. Another cast member (who did not know the secret) came skipping onto the stage, and said “Hi daddy!” causing the first player to quickly hide his imaginary notebook before replying “good morning sweetheart.” Lights came down, and the audience erupted in laughter.

Does everyone keep secrets?

I believe that having secrets, whether about our likes and dislikes, thoughts and actions, or about experiences we’ve had, is a universal human experience.

I used to tell people that I have no secrets and that I’m an open book. This is still true about me. I don’t keep secrets purposefully (unless they belong to someone else, in which case they’re not mine to tell). But in reality even I have secrets. There are things about me that people in my closest network may not even know simply because they’ve never bothered to ask. I bet this is true about you and the people you are connected to as well.

Perhaps the reason Portland Secrets is such a bonding experience leaving both audience and cast feeling elated and close, sometimes even euphoric, is because there is an emotional relief to knowing that we are not alone. Even our most horrible human experiences can be sources of creativity. Our fears are valid. Our silliness is welcome. There is a universality to our humanity and in opening up in this way we can laugh and we can cry… together.

I cannot express how tremendously excited I am to have this show return for one special night (and hopefully more in the near future).

Do you have a secret you’d like to get off your chest??

You can experience the relief that comes with sharing a secret in a way that is absolutely and completely anonymous, and help our show at the same time!

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When it comes to managing employees, keeping them happy and engaged with the work can feel daunting. The same rewards and values that motivate you may not be the same things that motivate them. The good news is that great leadership is more about getting out of the way then hand holding, and a few behavioral habits on your part, will go a long way toward fostering an environment where people want to succeed.

Here are 3 tips for managing well:

1. Give clear direction, and make yourself available for as many questions as show up.

   Sometimes when I’m working with clients who want to improve the morale of their team, prior to facilitating an event I’ll do some pre-workshop surveying to understand the current wants, needs and challenges of the teams members. The most common answer I hear is that people want clarity (either of their roles expectations, the project parameters, or the steps in a process).

   More than deadlines and numbers, your employees want to understand what is expected of them, and what success looks like. This is not the same as telling them how to execute the work (which will put you into micromanager territory). Instead it’s about communicating what you need from them, or what part of the process they own, clearly and concisely. Part of giving direction is asking if there are any questions, and answering them.

   Leave the door open for future questions as they arise, and where available and appropriate point them towards useful resources.

2. Check in to make sure they have what they need, and then get out of the way.

   Just because you’ve given clear direction, and said that you’re available to answer questions does not mean that all of your employees will feel like they’ve been set up for success. How many times have you been shown something in the past, and thought you had it, only to discover that a few days later you felt confused and frustrated? Not everyone will feel comfortable asking follow up questions, or asking for help… and even if they do, sometimes their inquiries show up at the worst times for you!

   The solution is for you to check in periodically and casually inquire about what is needed, by simply saying something like “how are things going with project x?” or “how are handoffs going with person y?” Sometimes your employees will present their challenges immediately and you’ll be able to offer support then and there.

   For others, they may worry about looking vulnerable. For them, it’s enough to say, “I’m stopping by to see what, if any, support I can offer. Do you have everything you need? Is there anything else I can provide?” And then address what, if anything, comes up. If no further help is requested, and the report is that everything is on track, acknowledge that success!

   Then get out of the way and let them work!

   

3. Demonstrate that they are valued. 

   For most people… maybe even all people, feeling valued is a powerful motivator. But how people feel valued will depend on the individual. So as a leader, you’ll need to get to know your people well enough to know what they like, what gets them excited and what they’ll want more of!

   Earlier this year I met a guy who manages a team of linemen. When asked about motivation and reward he said “All my guys want is a burger and a hat and to get out of their way.” How did he know? He asked them. How did he verify what they said? He tried it.

   In jobs were your employees are hired to think, asking them to think about something for you (in other words asking for their input and help on your own projects) can show them that you value their minds. In work where your folks are hired to be creative, praising the creativity they’ve demonstrated in their output and acknowledging that they’ve created something you wouldn’t and couldn’t have, can go a long way in motivating them to want to do more.

   My favorite shortcut for demonstrating that someone is valuable to me, is to notice when they’re doing something right, and then point that out and tell them to do more of it.

The bottom line:

If you want your employees to feel happy and engaged, find ways to help them feel that they understand what’s needed from them, how to get the support they need to succeed and that their efforts are making a positive impact on you and the work that you share.

For discussion:

1. What are your favorite ways to help your employees stay engaged and happy?

2. As an employee what helps you feel like you are valued?

3. If you were going to add tip #4, what would you add?

I was taught that the hard and challenging experiences in our lives are there to make the lovely and happy experiences seem even sweeter. I’ve also heard people say that the our personal tragedies may exist only to give us empathy for other people’s suffering. I don’t pretend to know why we have such varied and opposite experiences as love and loss, celebration and sorrow, abundance and scarcity, it’s simply enough that all of these experiences are part of the quilt that makes us human.

Over the weekend a member of my community passed away suddenly, the second loss of this kind for our group this month (and we’re only 2 weeks in). But it’s not just our community that is grieving. The News feels heavy right now. Maui swallowed in flames. A home exploding in Pennsylvania. Planes dropping out of the sky. Here at home, we’re also on fire watch, as dry, windy conditions join forces with temperatures as high as 105 (a steep difference from our standard 88).

Like some of you, I can be a real push through kind of person. Perhaps you’ve heard me quote my aunt in a few episodes of The Changed Podcast, “you can either get busy living or you get busy dying.” It turns out that she was merely quoting Shawshank Redemption as I learned only recently, but “life is for the living” has certainly influenced my need to keep my eye on the prize even in the toughest of times. But today, something else is needed. Today what I need is grace, patience, and breath.

If you’re like me, and in need of some grace, I offer to both of us a simple message to bring us through this moment’s heaviness.

Just tread water today…

If you are feeling tossed and turned by the tides of the moment. If you are feeling like you’re swimming backwards. If you are feeling like you want to sink, are afraid you’ll drown but simply aren’t ready to make bold moves; I offer you this poem I wrote while feeling overwhelmed.

Right now 
you can just keep treading, 
....and occasionally allow yourself to float. 

You are not a stone.
You will not sink today. 
You may not be an athlete ready to compete on the next lap either. 
Right now, it is enough to keep treading. 

Trust that soon, 
very soon....
Maybe tomorrow.
Maybe even today!
You’ll be ready. 
You will swim!

This week, following an amazingly fun rehearsal for Avenue PDX (an improvised Puppet Musical which opens in a few weeks at the Funhouse Lounge in Portland, OR), some of us cast members decided to grab a post-rehearsal beverage and do some catching up. As is often the case, talk turned to other projects, opportunities, and show-stories.

Over the weekend there had been a slew of auditions, and as folks compared notes, one person said “I had a really bad audition season.”

That’s when another person at the table chimed in, “Oh! Whenever I don’t get cast, I have two things I tell myself. Thing one, I’ll just tell myself it was because of my dancing. I’m not a trained dancer, but I am a trained singer and actor… so blaming my dancing can help it make sense. But the other thing I’ll say to myself is that I’m too tall! Which is truly out of my control as a tall person.”

A third person quickly joked “I just tell myself I’m toooo pretty. If they don’t give you a reason they rejected you, you get to make one up!”

This sparked a great conversation about handling rejection… something everybody has to deal with at some point in our lives.

How to internally handle rejection with poise and grace

From auditions, to job interviews to interview requests... there are plenty of opportunities to hear that you're not wanted. Sometimes you’re not a fit, sometimes the timing is off, and sometimes you simply fail to show up the way you know you’re capable.

Most of the time professional rejection comes with little to no explanation. Often you simply never hear from the interviewer, press contact or casting director. Even if you’re given the oh-so-generous form letter rejection, the most you’ll get is “we went with someone else.” It’s pretty rare that anyone gives you specific reasons why you don’t fit their criteria. That means that processing being told “you’re not a fit” really is up to you. Your mindset, and your self talk, when it comes to rejection, effects how quickly you can move on.

Now you might be thinking, “But Aden… you sound like a broken record with this whole mindset thing.”

You’re not wrong. But, losing out on an opportunity that you want could be for LOTS of different reasons. Which means you’re literally left with nothing to process but your attitude, filters and assumptions, and I know that some of you automatically jump to judgmental, unhelpful and negative mental choices. What I’m suggesting is that you can do what my friends do, and fill in the blank with something helpful instead of hurtful. Let’s face it — you are not going to be the perfect fit for every role or opportunity that comes into your awareness, and that’s OKAY!

Rather than waste time dwelling on why this opportunity is gone, most of the time you’ll benefit from moving on quickly. For that, I present a list of explanations that are as good as any for explaining why you were rejected.

1. I’m too famous

2. God (or Universe or Destiny… or whatever) wants me for another purpose

3. They recognized that they’re not ready for an amazing sparkle-pony like myself

4. I dodged a bullet on this one

5. Whew! Glad they rejected me, I wouldn’t want to work for someone who doesn’t recognize my brilliance!

6. I’m clearly too smart

7. There must be a glitch in the time-space continuum

8. The perfect fit is around the corner

Of course sometimes it may be worth it to you to reach out and ask for specific feedback to attempt to increase your odds for the next opportunity. But unless you really want to put in the work to change something based on a stranger’s opinion, most of the time you’re better off simply telling yourself something that helps you let go, so you can focus on finding opportunities that are actually a great fit for you.

As my Great-Great Aunt in Georgia used to say, “Honey-child, every pot has its lid.”

The bottom line is this:

Rejection happens. How quickly you move on from it is entirely up to you. If you’re going to fill in the blank on why someone has decided you’re not a fit, fill in the blank with something that helps you move on faster. Don’t waste your time beating yourself up.

And… if you need practice, you can always embark on a rejection journey to build the mental habit. My good friend Jason did this, and embarked on “The Year of 100 No’s.” He never made it to 100, because he was the perfect fit for one of the opportunities for which he interviewed…. (but he did get close, with more than 70 rejections).

For discussion:

I always like hearing your reactions to this stuff! Feel free to leave a comment on this post, or email your thoughts to me directly.

1. What’s the worst rejection you ever received? How did you handle it?

2. Are you a fan of asking the rejecting entity for feedback, or do you prefer to let it go?

3. What’s your favorite thing to tell yourself when you find out your not a fit for an opportunity?

Back This Stack

What are your goals for the rest of the year?

July 4th, we’re sitting down to dinner and my 10 year old step daughter strikes up a conversation about goal setting. “So, anybody have any goals for the upcoming year? I mean… the rest of the year?”

For her, goal setting has become synonymous with fireworks and there are displays on both New Year’s Eve and Independence Day. I’m not going to claim full responsibility for this development, but I’m not not saying I contributed to her understanding of when to set or evaluate goals either… after all, I probably set goals or at least evaluate how my goals are going quarterly.

She certainly brought a smile to my face with her choice of dinner topic.

I’m doing a deep dive into my goals, habits and desired outcomes for short term and long term right now!

I just spent 21 days in Europe eating different foods, moving my body more, free of my standard daily obligations and completely separated from my computer. Since habits are hardest to change when you’re in a well established pattern, coming off of a 3 week vacation like this, I see a huge opportunity to reevaluate the flow of my day to day right now, and everything is on the table.

Jet lag, vacation, hotel sleeping, restaurant dining and walking for extra miles each day are a complete pattern disruption for me… which means I have a brief window of opportunity to start a brand new routine for myself almost from scratch!

• Recovering from jet lag has given me the opportunity to choose a sleep schedule that feeds my natural patterns and maximizes my most productive brain time.

• Breaking my eating habits allows me to think about my past and future relationship with food.

• Going sight seeing on this trip forced me to troubleshoot how to move my body for miles each day, which has sped up the recovery from my broken foot earlier this year in ways I couldn’t have guessed. So what comes next?

Habits, chores, personal goals & professional goals… everything is up for grabs! For me, charting my path forward from this moment is invigorating and exciting!

There are lots of ways to set and evaluate goals

For this big reset I started by looking at my schedule (the rough draft version). When do I want to wake up? How do I want my days to start? What time do I need to sleep to make that happen? What do I *think* the focus will be for each day?

The nice thing about a rough draft schedule, is implementation can be immediate, because I’m treating my schedule like a bit of an experiment to see what feels best in my body, with my family and for my work.

Next step: a values evaluation process to better understand what I think matters most and how I can allow my values to feed a sense of purpose as I think about my goals.

Speaking of… goal setting comes next, or what my dad used to call ‘taking inventory to chart a course’. These are specific goals with dates attached. And vary from short term (bring back date night next week!) to longer term (best selling book by June 1st, 2026). Some of these goals may or may not come to fruition exactly the way that I dream them, but I know that failing to add them to my inventory or not putting dates against them, guarantees they’ll never happen.

By setting goals with deadlines I give myself a fighting chance! This is because I can then create a workback schedule for myself and manage my goals the same way I might manage a client project. If I don’t know where or how to start in, then a discovery phase becomes the first phase of my goal. (Bonus! Having a discovery phase satisfies some of my improv impulse to jump in without knowing while making room for me to know more soon).

Timing Matters

I like do a full break down like this a maximum of twice a year, and at minimum every 2 years. Doing a deep dive like this is a timing choice. It’s difficult to tackle all of the questions at once. So I spread this deep dive process out over the course of a week or two, spending 30 minutes to an hour daily until all of my questions get answered.

In mid-Autumn and in the Spring I sometimes do a much more truncated process of evaluating where I am on the path I charted, acknowledging whats working, and tweaking what isn’t working. Sometimes that includes dropping something that’s turned out to be a time and energy waster, letting go of a goal I thought I wanted but decided I don’t, or picking something back up I forgot I wanted to implement.

Keep in mind, I’m an entrepreneur, so I’m in charge of a big percentage of my schedule every day. As you are thinking about your own schedule, values and goals keep in mind that there are elements of your life that you can control, and others that you’ll simply make choices around. If a deep dive is too time intensive, and all you have time and energy for right now is a toe dip… you can always break this into bits! Start by evaluating what you want the start and end of your day to be, or maybe spend an hour on a weekend taking inventory of your long term dreams.

When is the BEST time to Inventory Your Values, Habits and Goals?

Look. I know that for some of you just reading this has you feeling inspired. You’re already thinking about when you can carve out the time to do the same. I trust that you’ll find the time, when the time is right!

For others, you’re looking at this going… OMG I’m having heart palpitations thinking about this level of planning, how about I just never ever do anything like this? To you I say, you do you! I’ve known relatively successful people who’ve never engaged in this kind of work. I’ve also met people who set goals only to abandon them.

I engage with myself this way because I know that if I don’t, the pace of life’s obligations, twists and turns, along with the rapid spin of my own ideas, can distract me from achieving things I say I want to accomplish. I also have a tendency to overcommit to doing lots of things that sound fun and exciting only to discover later that I’ve led myself down the garden path of overwhelm. Spending time on this helps me re-focus and re-engage with what matters, and helps me identify stuff I can let go of so that I don’t feel overburdened and overtired.

Regardless of your excitement level I can say with confidence that the time to engage in this type of deep thought work is not all of the time, nor is it when someone else tells you it should be happening.

Some people like doing this work close to their birthday, at the end of a fiscal year, or on January 1st, but for you that may not feel right.

Rather than tell you what day or season is best, here are my suggestions for timing cues to look for, that might represent a great place to jump into a process for setting yourself up for success.

1. When you find yourself with a couple of weeks of time that aren’t already booked solid

2. After a big vacation (Hey! Works for me!)

3. After a break-up or job loss

4. If you find yourself experiencing a dramatic life change of any kind (if its something intense, its good to prioritize grieving first)

5. When you get the sneaking suspicion that what you’re doing is no longer working for you and it’s time to try something else.

6. After you’ve celebrated achieving a huge goal you previously set for yourself, and have taken some time to rest and recuperate!

Do you do this?

Send me a note, or reply in the comments!

• Are you a person who likes doing this kind of thing or do you avoid it?

• If you enjoy taking inventory of your habits, values and goals, do you have a system you like or do you do it differently every time?

• What’s the most exciting thing you’ve achieved… and did it stem from a process like the one I’ve described, or something else?

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Hello Dear Reader!

Quick reminder: I’m on a much needed vacation for another week. While I’m gone, I’m sharing reposts of some of my greatest hits from the past.

The piece you’re about to read was one of the first things I ever shared on Substack.

At that point I had 30 subscribers. I now have more than 1200, which means you may have missed the original post. Despite the increased readership, this early piece remains one of my most shared essays to date.

In half of a year has anything changed?

Regarding social media… not much! The desire to share a little bit of everything with everybody all of the time (to borrow from Bo Burnham) is surprisingly strong.

During my vacation I’ve been sharing photos, videos, commentary and ‘seconds’ with my intimate network of friends and family via Marco Polo, and have been doing so at a rate of roughly 5-15 posts per day. More than I ever shared on Facebook.

So if you’re considering leaving Facebook, it’s worth noting that if you’re a regular participant, the rewiring of your brain does not revert back to pre-Facebook function the minute you click cancel.

For more of my observations on what happens when you leave Meta, click below to read the original piece (while my husband breathes a sigh of relief for my return to our vacation).