LifeNotes

LifeNotes

Moments of pause in the bustle of life. Enjoy our evolving collection of inspiring resources from Eileen Fisher, the Women Together team, and the teachers and colleagues we partner with.

Stop by for a short read, an engaging video, or a great quote — then tell us what you think!

Why We Can’t Do It Alone

A Q&A With Zainab Salbi

What happens when we hide the truth? We risk losing the very essence of who we are, says author and humanitarian Zainab Salbi. Growing up in Iraq as the daughter of Saddam Hussein’s personal pilot, ...

I Am Because You Are

Excerpt from Revolution from Within

By Gloria Steinem

How often are you in the company of people with whom you can be completely yourself? ...

A Women Together Community

Conversations, Connections, Change

Imagine a sanctuary in the midst of the digital world: a welcoming online space that exists solely for the purpose of exploring meaningful conversation. A place where you can come to connect deeply ...

Eileen Fisher on
Why We Need Each Other

Eileen Fisher started her company in 1984 with four simple shapes and a commitment to making women’s lives better. Over the years she has learned that collaboration is key to innovation—and no one thrives alone.

Self-Love Is Selfless

By Nina Purewal & Kate Petriw

When we take the time to love ourselves, and fill our own cup first, we become more patient with ourselves and others, less attached to outcomes, and more available for the beautiful ins and outs of our lives.

Your Comfort Zone vs. Your Heart’s Desire

Living in Integrity

by Kelley Kosow

Drawing on decades of experience as a life coach and teaching shadow work, Kelley Kosow knows a lot about what holds people back — and she’s written a book about how to change that. In this ...

What Causes Anxiety?

Eileen Fisher and Byron Katie Dive into the Question

Byron Katie’s work invites us to face our challenges and identify the thoughts that are behind them through a 4-question process called “The Work.” In this guided inquiry into anxiety, ...

Perfection is Not Possible

with Shauna Shapiro

“Perfection is not possible, but transformation is.” ...

The Healing Power of Movement

A Women Together Q&A with Zuleikha

Healing movement can have a profound impact. Your body already knows what science keeps on proving — that movement is medicine. Women Together sat down with transformational-movement teacher ...

A Writer’s Cure for Perfection

Most of us expect a lot of ourselves — at work, as a parent or spouse, with our creative projects. And we should. On the right day, expecting a lot can lead to accomplishing more than we might ...

Active Listening

A Tiny Practice for Teams, Groups & Families

with Eileen Fisher

It can be hard to ensure that everyone’s voice is heard in a group meeting or conversation — some people naturally speak up, others prefer to listen. Yet you want everyone’s perspective, ...

I Can’t Listen Right Now

Presence & Distraction in Conversation

with Anna Kawar

Distraction impacts all of us. How often do we say, “It’s actually not a good time to talk”? Probably not often enough. Instead, we show up with one ear in the conversation and one eye on the ...

Improve Your Speaking Voice

Wet-Dog Talking and Other Tiny Practices

Our voices carry emotion, energy, vitality, and joy — they are a unique and powerful part of our identity and say more about us than we might imagine. ...

We’re in This Together

An Excerpt from Radical Acceptance

There are times when we say the wrong thing in the wrong way at the wrong time — we lose our cool, we blame our mistakes on others, or we aren’t really hearing what the other person is saying. ...

Change Can Be Hard

A Tiny Practice for Self-Compassion

with Shauna Shapiro

Divorce. Illness. A death. Job loss. We all go through difficult times, times when it is even more important to practice self-compassion. ...

6 Ways to Be More Resilient

by Gabby Bernstein

Do you feel resilient? We all have moments of self-doubt, fear, anxiety and stress. Are you able to ride these moments smoothly without feeling ruffled? Gabby Bernstein shares her own experiences on the topic of resilience with the team at Women Together.

Morning Meditation

4 Things That Have Worked for Me

by Grace Welker

I met a young woman at a Women Together workshop and we had a good conversation about her desire to get back to a morning meditation practice. She said that she feels better when she meditates, yet ...

What It Means to “Lead Like a Woman”

A Q&A with Ivy Ross

We recently sat down with Google senior executive Ivy Rossto talk about the qualities of both "feminine" and "masculine" leadership. The ability to be an effective and impactful leader is inside each of us, accessible whenever we choose to reach for it . . .

EMOTIONAL TRIGGERS

Why Your Buttons Get Pushed & What You Can Do About It

Holidays. The news. Family. Work. Virtually anything can be a trigger. ...

Communicate in a Way People Can Hear

with Wendy Palmer

When we communicate skillfully, we are more effective overall. But how do we communicate skillfully? Women’s leadership skills building requires awareness, intention, and confidence. In ...

Excerpt from Freedom Is an Inside Job

by Zainab Salbi

How do we talk about difficult subjects, loaded topics, and sensitive personal matters in a way that connects rather than divides and polarizes? ...

Women, Voice & Personal Space

How to Be Heard

with Wendy Palmer

Have you ever had the experience of speaking but not being heard? The founder of Leadership Embodiment, Wendy Palmer, specializes in the ways we use our bodies and sense of personal space to become ...

Get Your Courage On

Negotiating Raises, Rates & Salaries

with the Women Together Team

Negotiating is not easy. And navigating financial conversations in a work setting takes courage — and studies indicate that women are often less likely to do so. We asked our team members to share ...

Courage, from a Yogic Perspective

inspired by Richard Faulds (Shobhan)

It takes a great deal of courage to embark on and stay with any path of growth and transformation. In a recent conversation with Kripalu Yoga practitioner, teacher, and author Richard Faulds ...

Three Things About Compassion You May Not Know

Often misunderstood as being “caring or soft” or “feeling what other people feel,” compassion is not an emotion — it’s a state of mind. Compassion allows us to understand where people are ...

Play for Team Brave

A Special Preview of Reshma Saujani’s New Book

“I believe so strongly that the way to change the global landscape for all women is by supporting and pushing one another in personal and meaningful ways.” ...

The Cost of Perfection

Why We Need to Teach Girls to Be Brave

Reshma Saujani’s Enlightening TED Talk

Have you ever not applied for a job because you weren’t 100% qualified, not raised your hand, not asked for a raise? In her TED talk, Reshma Saujani dispels rumors that women simply lack confidence.

Go-To Resources for Mindfulness

with the Women Together Team

Each of us on the Women Together team draws on different practices and approaches in keeping ourselves healthy and wise. We’re always sharing them with each other and felt inspired to also share ...

Mindfulness @ Work

with Laurence Magro & Tara Healey

Daily grind getting you down? Whether you’re facing an impossible work deadline, a difficult coworker, or simply feeling overwhelmed with too many tasks, practicing mindfulness can help. Mindfulness ...

Navigating Cancer

A Women Together Q&A with Gail Matthew

Despite all our best-laid plans, at some point in our lives most of us will face a loss, serious illness, or other crisis that could potentially hurl our lives into chaos. ...

Thriving from the Inside Out

One writer shares her experience with redefining what it means to flourish. ...

People and Moments That Shape Us

with the Women Together Team

So much of the deep, formative learning that happens for each of us throughout our lives happens outside conventional learning environments. It happens at home when we are children. It happens in our ...

What’s the Best Way to Learn Something New?

A Women Together Q&A with Wendy Palmer

Whether it’s a foreign language, a complex technology, or a new dance routine, staying up to speed in today’s world often means getting out of our comfort zone — and learning new things. ...

It’s the Season for a Good Book . . . or Two, or Three

with the Women Together Team

Summer reading is a joy. Whether you are traveling to distant lands or putting your feet up in your own living room for a much-needed staycation, you may be wondering what to read next. We asked ...

Self-Care Tools and Letting Ourselves Off the Hook

with Antoinette Klatzky

What do self-care tools look like when things are intense? We so often feel like we’re under a lot of pressure — from the demands of a particular time of year, from all the roles we take on ...

What’s Your Body Saying?

A Women Together Q&A

with Gina Barnett

LifeNotes sat down with communication expert and TED Talk speaking coach Gina Barnett to discuss what we gain from mastering our body’s language — and how to do it.

Saying Yes and Saying No

by Grace Welker

There are seven of us on the women’s leadership call this particular Wednesday in March. The topic this month is saying “yes” and “no.” Baby stuff, right? We are women who run organizations, ...

What Is Your Body Teaching You?

with the Women Together Team

At Women Together, we focus a lot on listening to our bodies — accessing the world of nonverbal wisdom that is so often ignored or considered unimportant. ...

Decision-Making

Give Your Body a Say

with Eileen Fisher

We make decisions every day all day. Most of them are easy, clear-cut, and hardly feel like decisions at all. Some, however, can take time. ...

Life After Overdrive

Overdrive works — it’s that boost that takes you across a finish line, the extra energy to meet a deadline, plan a memorable event, or tend to a sick family member. After overdrive, we downshift ...

What’s Right Right Now?

A Tiny Practice for Healthy Positivity

Positivity can be hard, especially when we’re struggling. This Tiny Practice can help us shed the mental habit of focusing on what’s not working and rewire us for healthy positivity. Have ...

TURNING A SETBACK INTO AN OPPORTUNITY

A Women Together Q&A with Amber Ryan

What happens when a dancer can’t dance anymore? We sat down with movement facilitator Amber Ryan to talk about a poignant turning point in her life and discuss why it is so important to move our ...

LIFE WITHOUT “SHOULD”

A Women Together Practice for Refreshing Possibilities

with Antoinette Klatzky

“I should have done this,” “I should do that,” “She should …” What happens when you take “should” out of your vocabulary? ...

GETTING EVERYTHING DONE

Never Going to Happen

by Tiffany Dufu

Pushed to the limits of her capacity to get everything done, Tiffany Dufu decides to take charge and apply her work skills to the question of managing a family of four. She creates a spreadsheet of ...

A Tiny Practice for Grounding

with Toni Bergins

“To be grounded, we have to feel the body.” —Toni Bergins ...

Paying Attention Changes Everything

with Eileen Fisher & Geneen Roth

What do we do when our attention gets “hooked” by something — an interesting article crosses our news feed, we remember the chocolate sitting in the drawer, a friend calls? It’s ...

Grounded, Grateful & Motivated

A Starting-Off Exercise

with Antoinette Klatzky and Sara Schley

Inspired by practices from the EILEEN FISHER company, this deepening exercise is a wonderful approach to starting your day, or your meetings, or your family dinners ...

Heavenly Bodies

From “This Messy Magnificent Life: A Field Guide”

Enjoy this sneak preview of the delightful new book, This Messy Magnificent Life: A Field Guide, from best-selling author Geneen Roth, a groundbreaking voice on women’s struggles with food, ...

Falling In Love with Our Bodies

A Guided Meditation

with Colleen Saidman Yee

Experience an engaging 8-minute meditation designed to bring you fully into your body and bring gentle attention to the emotions residing within ...

The World Needs Us

When we hear people talk about love, how often do we think about our primary relationship, the one with ourselves — the one at the heart of everything else? ...

The Lizard Push-up

A Tiny Practice for Energy and Presence

with Wendy Palmer

This simple little 1-second practice offers a go-to energizer that also creates more presence — a surefire way to ...

The One-Minute Pause

The beauty of a one-minute pause is it allows us to get quiet. This Tiny Practice is based on the “moment of silence” that begins many meetings at EILEEN FISHER Inc. This offers everyone a ...

The Yes and No of Setting Boundaries

A Tiny Practice for Self-Care

When we think about setting boundaries, we often focus on the “No” that we’re establishing in relation to others. Self-care specialist Jeanette Bronée flips that around to look at ...

Prioritizing Self-Care

Try This Tiny Practice

with Jeanette Bronée

Self-care is important for all of us. When life gets busy, we often overlook our own self-care. But there are simple ways to stay connected to our own needs. ...

A Tiny Practice for Countering Stress

Countering stress can be hard. We all experience the stress of modern living. And we know that it takes a toll on our health. How do we create a counterbalance? ...

Help for Creating New Habits

We’ve all been there: we start a new exercise routine, we step up at work, we shift the way we communicate with a family member — and then we fall back into our old ways. We forget or get ...

A Simple Way to Break a Bad Habit

A TED Talk by Judson Brewer

What if curiosity is the key to creating the changes you want? Psychiatrist and mindfulness thought leader Judson Brewer has studied bad habits — why we have them and ...

A Guided Meditation with Jack Kornfield

Give your body some TLC. This deeply nourishing 12-minute guided meditation with leading mindfulness teacher Jack Kornfield is designed to ...

Working with Our Cravings & Addictions

by Jeanette Bronée

Your grown daughter texts that she's getting divorced. You reach for the chocolate chip cookies. We all know a little something about cravings and addictions, especially …

The Power of Mindfulness

What You Practice Grows Stronger

with Shauna Shapiro

In this pioneering talk, Dr. Shauna Shapiro draws on modern neuroscience and ancient wisdom to demonstrate how mindfulness can help us make positive ...

The Untold Story of America’s Mindfulness Movement

Then, Now & the Future

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Daniel Goleman, Richard Davidson

Enjoy this video replay and discover the potential of mindfulness to create a more hopeful future ...

A Get-Started Journaling Exercise

by Jeanette Bronée

Habits are created because they support our daily life. Many tend only to think of their habits when they consider them “bad.” But habits can support us as well as harm us. Either way, habits ...

Insights on the Skill of Relating

Connection, like mindfulness, requires that we slow down, notice, and pay attention in order to actively cultivate presence — with ourselves and with the people we are engaging with. Everything flows …

Embodying More Confidence at Work

3 Things I Learned from Wendy Palmer

by Grace Welker

It’s a beautiful spring day, and the second day of the Grace Under Pressure: Leadership Embodiment workshop with Wendy Palmer. Wendy is a petite powerhouse of a woman with a bright smile, who is ...

The Anti-Slouch Practice for Presence & Confidence

What happens when you change your posture from the common slouch to a more upright position? In addition to its physical benefits, such as more energy and diminished back pain, improved posture can ...

Eileen Fisher’s Meditation Practice — and Advice

Curious about meditation? Eileen Fisher shares how she got started — at first “it was really hard” — and offers advice for those looking to begin meditating. ...

Shifting from Doing to Being

Mindfulness as a Radical Act

Mindfulness is something regular, ordinary folks can do. —Jon Kabat-Zinn

In this video, Jon Kabat-Zinn shares how mindfulness and meditation can move us beyond stress and anxiety …

From Fixing to Connecting

Insights on Working with Children

How do we get children to slow down? Anat Baniel has worked with children facing a variety of developmental challenges, using groundbreaking NeuroMovement® lessons to create radical change. …

Preparing for Important Conversations

A Go-To Practice for Success

Applying for a job? Getting, or giving, feedback? Making a presentation — or a request? This 10-minute guided practice gets you centered and ready. ...

9 Essentials for Waking Up Your Brain

Give Your Brain What It Needs to Thrive

What does your brain need to stay vibrant — and even create new cells and neural pathways? To continue to learn and grow and increase its capacities? Anat Baniel’s 9 Essentials are concrete, ...

Mindfulness and the Ups and Downs of Life

Eileen Fisher and Jon Kabat-Zinn

Turn towards what you most want to turn away from. —Jon Kabat-Zinn

Life has challenges — anxiety, pain, emotional waves — so what do we do? Put out the welcome mat, says Jon ...

The Secret of Health, Happiness — and Leadership

It is said that quality relationships are the single most important factor in longevity. As it turns out, the ability to relate effectively also has an enormous impact on leadership and business ...

Standing Up with Purpose

Eileen Fisher Says “Yes”

Aligning with our purpose on a regular basis makes it clearer what to say “yes” to and what to say “no” to. Eileen Fisher shares a story of how working with her purpose on a ...

Getting Unstuck

Dream Big and Rise to the Challenge

by LeeAnn Mallorie

What do you care about SO much that you’d be willing to get the heck out of your own way in order to do it? ...

Learning the Body’s Vocabulary

It Can Help You Make Better Decisions

Tami Simon, founder of Sounds True, shares insights on using the body’s messages as a guide for making decisions and accessing creative wisdom. ...

Getting Curious About the Enneagram System

We Each Have a Personality Type

A lot of us want to know what makes us act the way we do At a basic level, the Enneagram system is a unique approach to personality typing that helps us find out more about what makes us tick. ...

What’s the Secret to Health and Happiness?

Be Kind to Yourself, Scientists Say

“Treat yourself as you would a good friend,” says psychologist Kristin Neff, renowned for her pioneering research into the health benefits of self-compassion. ...

What Embodiment Means —

And Why It Matters

Enjoy a wonderful explanation of the various meanings of “embodiment” and learn how embodiment relates to mindfulness. ...

Loosen Up Your Body

Take a Minute™ with Zuleikha

Learn a simple practice to counter tightness in the body and access a total refresh — in just a minute! Brought to us by inspiring self-care specialist Zuleikha. ...

Embodiment Inquiries

Inspiration and Practices

Dive in and learn more about the key skills of embodiment: listening to our bodies, moving our bodies, and using our bodies to shape our experience. ...

Eileen on Purpose

Aligning with What Matters Most

The most consistent message from business and cultural leaders today? Purpose matters. Especially in times of uncertainty, remembering who we are and what we value creates …

Step Inside Yourself

Embodied Wisdom with Eileen Fisher & Women Together Faculty

It is so easy to get lost in our heads, giving away energy to worry and over-thinking—and missing out on our best, most sustainable source of renewal energy, creative …

Meditation Is Like Tuning an Instrument

with Jon Kabat-Zinn

One of the leading voices in the mindfulness movement, Jon Kabat-Zinn reminds of us the importance of taking some time to tune into ourselves every day. It may not be easy ...

What Makes You Tick?

Exploring the Enneagram System

How often do you stop in the midst of your busy life and reflect on who you are and what motivates you? If you’re like most people, you probably don’t do much more than faithfully recite ...

7 Tips from EILEEN FISHER, Inc.

The biggest change starts with the smallest act. Try these ideas from a company that knows a lot about caring for clothing and committing to sustainability. …

Why You Should Recycle Everything in Your Closet

I spend a lot of time thinking about clothes. Specifically, used clothes. Piles of them. Mountains of them. I work with the women who sort donated EILEEN FISHER clothing. We're often amazed by ...

The Shadow Effect — at Home and at Work

It’s 5:00 a.m. and your phone pings you awake, sounding the start of another work day with its unduly cheery chirps. If you had your way, you’d cozy back under the covers and enjoy a slow, ...

The Problem with Fear

with Katie Hendricks

Movement and relationship expert Katie Hendricks shares perspectives on fear, how it affects us, and what the alternative is. ...

Mindfulness and the Body

Can you hear what your body is saying?

Opening Up Exercise

A quick technique for improving your relationships.

Success in the Workplace vs. Success in Life

Who says you have to choose?

Business as a Movement

A Conversation with Eileen Fisher

Changing the world, one garment at a time.

She Wears It Well

Eileen Fisher weaves mindfulness and a whole lot more into her life — and into the workplace.

Fear, Shyness, and Introversion

What's the difference?

Eileen Fisher’s Bold New Path

Conscious Company chats with Eileen Fisher.

When Mindfulness Meets That Little Black Dress

by Grace Welker

Paring down may just be a question of perspective.

Success and the New American Dream

Maybe it's time for a refresh.

20 Seconds to Confidence

This practice immediately puts you into a powerful state of confident ease.

Waking Up the Mind-Body Connection

A Little Movement Goes a Long Way

with Eileen Fisher

“By paying more attention to what’s happening in my body …” ...

Happiness and Purpose in Life

Life can be so much more than going through the motions.

Stepping Into Myself

An Interview with Eileen Fisher 

Eileen Fisher shares her personal journey of getting more comfortable in her body.