Author Archives: Amy Rees Anderson

Don’t Pass Away In Silence…Share Your Story

If you haven’t heard the story of Mariane Pearl, you need to.  What an amazing woman!  I was able to meet her today when she spoke at the Women Moving Millions conference I am attending in New York.  Mariane is a French journalist and she is the widow of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal […]

An Ice Cream Coma and a Lesson Learned

I am in New York City this week to attend the Women Moving Millions Conference, a conference to bring together charities which focus on helping women succeed.  The conference was assembled to allow these charities to discuss best practices and share ideas of what things are the most effective to help women.  I am here […]

IF you can…

IF If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or […]

We Weren’t Meant To Do It Alone

So as many of you are aware, my 20 year old son is serving a 2 year mission for the LDS church in Mississippi right now.  Each week I get an email from him letting me know how things are going out in the field.  This week he sent an email that had an AMAZING […]

The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

Yesterday was my 42nd birthday, which means that today is the first day of the rest of my life!  And if you think about it, for every one of your reading this blog, today is the first day of the rest of your life as well – and you didn’t even have to have a […]

People Who Add To Your Fun Jar

Today was an exciting, whirlwind of a day.  First I attended my board meeting for the Governor’s Economic Development Board that I serve on for the State of Utah, and then I ran over to attend the Women’s Tech Awards where I was humbled to receive their Impact Award at a large luncheon.  Next I […]

Heroes are Ordinary People Who Do Extraordinary Things

September 11th is always a tough day to write my blog because there is so much emotion when I think back to that day in 2001.  I can remember exactly where I was standing when I saw the news station as it showed the tower that the first airplane had flown into, and I remember […]

CEO Perspective on Treating Employees Well (and other tips)

I was interviewed on Real Recognition Radio by Roy Saunderson and S. Max Brown and the episode aired earlier today.  During the interviewed we discussed questions such as:  Are there differences in the way men and women lead? What makes a great leader?  How important is communication in a company?  How to build a culture? How to […]

When In Doubt Just Add Glitter

You are probably reading the title of today’s blog and thinking – “What the heck is she talking about?  Just add glitter?”   Well for anyone who has ever done an arts and crafts project in life you know that when your craft isn’t turning out exactly the way you hoped you simply add a little […]

The Power of Words

Words are a powerful thing. Words can build and lift, comfort and calm, teach and inspire.  To the opposite, words can destroy and demolish, incite and enrage, berate and criticize, embarrass and demean.  It has been said that in an average day a person will speak somewhere between 10 and 20,000 words. Which means we […]

Live in Your Parade!

When is the last time you were in a parade?  Like actually in the parade itself?  Marching down the street smiling and waving at the crowds along the route as you enjoy the music of the marching band… For me it was today as I drove the homecoming royalty (which included my daughter) in the back […]

Just Take It One Day At A Time

Do you ever feel like you are suffocating at the very thought of trying to get everything done that you need to?  Yeah, I pretty much feel like that every day of my life I have decided.  And yeah, yeah, I know, try to delegate more and say yes to less and cut out the […]

Handsome Is As Handsome Does

I first read the saying “Handsome is as handsome does” in a book I was reading during my teenage years.  For some reason the phrase impacted me and stuck with me over the years.  It was a reminder that true beauty is something that emulates from the inside out… To prove this fact one can […]

Being The Best Isn’t About Knowing The Most (Forbes Article)

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” – Stephen Hawking When an individual believes they know all the answers, they shut themselves down from the possibility that there is more they might learn on a subject. They limit themselves from experiencing personal growth and gaining intelligence. They are […]

Brick to the Face Theory

So those of you up on the daily reading of my blog know I got hurt a few days ago when my face and a board met up at my new construction site.  The sweetest person sent me a really cute email to cheer me up and the story she shared in the email had […]

Why It’s So Hard To Trust

“People ask me why it’s so hard to trust people, and I ask them why it is so hard to keep a promise.” Nothing is as frustrating as putting your trust in people who then let you down. Trusting people in the first place is always scary.  But then after you take that leap and […]

It’s Just a Bad Day, Not a Bad Life

At least that is what I am telling myself tonight. Today was…well….not the best day.  I was over at our new home construction site meeting with plumbers, electricians, framers, etc doing a walk through when I turned right smack into a huge wood beam that was setup to temporarily hold up one of the walls.  […]

Get Your Sparkle On!

I have a great story to share with you today – it is a story that was shared with me tonight and it totally inspired me to want to GET MY SPARKLE ON!  Hopefully sharing it with you will inspire you to GET YOUR SPARKLE ON too! Going into this school year my daughter set a goal for herself […]

Just because its stormy now doesn’t mean you aren’t headed for sunshine

I am sitting in a chair wrapped up in a blanket and watching an amazing rainstorm through my window.  Lightning is shooting through the sky every few seconds followed by the constant cracking of thunder.  I have to say that there is something really magical about watching a storm like this.  Perhaps it’s the beauty […]

Sometimes You Just Need To Take a Time-Out in the “Happy Chair”

When my kids were little time-out at our house consisted of sending the kids to sit in the “happy chair” where they would have to stay until they were able to be happy again.  Our “happy chair” was a bright yellow chair with a sunshine and happy kids painted on it – all designed to […]

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

That is a fantastic Chinese Proverb I came across tonight that I had to share with all of you tonight because it is a perfect fit for what is on my mind. I have spent the last several weeks working on a landscaping design for our new home with our landscaper extraordinaire, Chip Galloway of […]

What Grade Would You Give Yourself?

School is back in session as is the focus in once again on trying to get good grades for this new semester.  As I thought about getting good grades it made me stop and think about the opportunity this could be for all of us adults, even if we aren’t in school any longer, to come up with […]

Remember All The Good

No matter what ups and downs we have experienced in our lives, there have always been a million blessings.  Sometimes we forget to acknowledge or even recognize those blessings because there are so many other things to easily get distracted by.  And when you have always had certain blessings in your life, it’s easy to take […]

5 Unique Recruiting Ideas That Paid Off Big Time (Forbes Article)

Attracting the best and the brightest people to join your company is the goal of any good leadership team, but finding those people requires serious creativity in your recruiting efforts. Typically the strongest talent out there is going to be gainfully employed somewhere else. So the challenge becomes finding the people who are not out […]

Appreciate Our Differences

The world would be a genuinely boring place if all of us were the exact same – if we liked the exact same things, wore the exact same clothes, liked the exact same music, played the exact same sport, had the same talents.   Don’t you agree? Yet we often spend time judging people precisely for […]

Spice Things Up!

Feeling bored with your daily job?  Tired of saying and doing the same thing day after day?  We all get that way at some point – feeling like life is stale and like we are stuck in the movie Groundhog Day where it starts to feel like each day is repeating itself over and over […]

Trust Your Gut!

Hindsight – how I wish we could have it on the front end of situations instead of going through hardships to figure out what you shoulda, woulda, coulda…but I guess then it wouldn’t be called hindsight 🙁  Today was a day when hindsight made it very clear what I shoulda done differently in a situation […]

Make Someone Happy

“Make Just One Someone Happy.  And You Will Be Happy To.” – Jimmy Durante.  I love that song btw.  If you haven’t listened to it in a while you totally should listen to it again. It’s fabulous. This last week I have been so grateful to all of my daughter’s dear friends who have come by […]

“You will never know your limits until you push yourself to them.”

The human spirit is an amazing thing.  It is capable of doing and becoming more than we ever recognize.  The fact is that we never really know our limits in life until we are pushed into them or until we push ourselves beyond what we are currently doing.  It is so easy to just do […]

There’s Nothing A Little Ice Cream Can’t Cure

Growing up at my house, the love of ice cream was an inherited trait.  The entire Rees family, from my father to his father to his father’s father and so on, the love of ice cream was passed from one generation to the next.  The fact was that if you didn’t love ice cream then […]