Self-Help

Voice of WCLK’s “Morris Code” reveals secrets of surviving hard times

Date: February 25th, 2013, 3:41 pm

For Morris Baxter, the Great Recession hit six years before the rest of us. In 2002, he lost his six-figure salary record label job and all the perks: the prestige, the travel, the expense account, the corporate card and the national hip-hop record promotions. Bitter and negative, full of self-pity, he had to find a way to reboot his life.
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Posted in Atlanta, Inspiration, Michelle Hiskey, Reinvention, Saporta, Self-Help, Transformation | Tagged Ben Smith, clark atlanta university, Dennis Kimbro, depression, Energy Bus, Hip Hop, jazz, Malcolm Gladwell, Morris Baxter, Steely Dan, WCLK | 2 Comments

Atlanta memoirists risk writing truth about living relatives

Date: October 29th, 2012, 6:13 pm

Between family members, the truth is a delicate thing. That’s why memoirs are popular. We like reading about people who take the risk to bear witness to their intimate lives, because most of us will never go there, especially not in public.

This weekend, two Atlanta authors of new memoirs will speak locally about risking family relationships. Lynn Garson and Christal Presley overcame major emotional hurdles to confront and understand their family dysfunction.They crossed that emotional tightrope and stayed connected to the family members despite writing critically about them. Doing so changed them into healthier adults.
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Posted in Atlanta, Inspiration, Michelle Hiskey, Saporta, Self-Help | Tagged Atlanta, author, book, depression, Hiskey, memoir, PTSD, Saporta, suicide, Vietnam, writer | 6 Comments

Jeff Galloway: For health and success, schedule frequent breaks — and there’s an app for that

Date: September 10th, 2012, 9:09 am

Traffic alert: On Thursday at 7 pm, 16,000 people will run and walk 3.1 miles of closed streets in downtown Atlanta.

Jeff Galloway started this annual event — now called the Kaiser Permanente Corporate Run/Walk and Fitness Program — 30 years ago. Its growth paralleled that of Galloway’s path from elite runner to widely-traveled motivational speaker and corporate coach.

After the 1972 Olympics and winning the first Peachtree Road Races, Galloway’s reach and impact widened as he focused on the deceptively simple key to running and achieving any long-range goal.

Pacing.
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Posted in Atlanta, Inspiration, Michelle Hiskey, Self-Help, Self-improvement, Transformation | Tagged Atlanta, inspiration, Jeff Galloway, kaiser Permanente, Maria Saporta, Michelle Hiskey, running, transformation, Westminster | 6 Comments

While battling Vietnam scars, memoirist receives nearly $5,000 in city water fight

Date: May 21st, 2012, 11:00 am

While Christal Presley was uncovering her and her father’s scars from his service in Vietnam, she also ended up unearthing subterranean trouble familiar to other city of Atlanta homeowners:

Water meter problems.

Despite minimal water each month, and even in a city beset by the highest combined water and sewage bills in the country, Presley’s bills were about double her neighbors’.

To write her book and solve her water problems, she had to probe what for too long had seemed normal.

Answers came from questioning authorities – first her own father, and then the city of Atlanta. Continue reading →

Posted in Atlanta, Inspiration, Life Changes, Michelle Hiskey, Reinvention, Self-Help, Self-improvement, Transformation | Tagged Atlanta, Christal Presley, City of Atlanta, East Atlanta, life changes, Maria Saporta, memoir, Michelle Hiskey, PTSD, self-help, Thiry Days with My Father, Vietnam, watershed management | 3 Comments

Through writing and golf, Furman Bisher taught about life and death

Date: March 25th, 2012, 8:00 am

When Furman Bisher came into my life in 1986, I was fresh out of college, a whippersnapper sportswriter in awe of the legendary Atlanta Journal columnist. Aged 68, he seemed positively ancient.

Over the next quarter century, I studied the way he worked and wrote, and we became friends through our shared interest in golf – a sport that connects people of diverse ages and abilities.

When “the Bish” died a week ago, to me he was a young 93, because he changed my view of what it meant to grow old.

He did this by example — by living and writing the way he played golf.
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Posted in Atlanta, Golf, Inspiration, Life Changes, Michelle Hiskey, Saporta, Self-Help, Transformation | Tagged appreciation, Atlanta, Augusta National, death, Furman Bisher, Golf, Maria Saporta, Masters, Michelle Hiskey | 1 Comment

With the right bra, a woman’s self-esteem is up here

Date: February 13th, 2012, 7:37 am

Now is the bosom of advertising season, after the new Super Bowl commercials reveal what we “need” to feel really good about ourselves, and right before the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue arrives.

We women – and the men who love us — should attend to a basic way to uplift our bodies and spirits: A properly fitted bra.
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