When people meet me, they expect me to have the kind of bravado that is portrayed by FBI agents on TV and in movies—confident with no signs of weakness or vulnerability. Nothing could be further from the truth! It’s true that the most successful agents I worked...
2020 was about staying alive. Everything else was fluff. This summed up an email I received from one of my readers. She still has her job but it feels like hell because so many of her friends lost their job. She’s healthy but that feels like crap, too, because she’s...
One of the first things my firearms instructor at the FBI Academy told me that the best shooters are those who can stomp out the noise—both external and internal distractions—so they can focus on the scene in front of them. All I needed to do was relax, breathe, and...
My grandmother was a tough old bird. She lived in a time and place where she needed to be resilient if she expected to survive tough winters on a Wyoming cattle ranch. If I moped around while doing chores she would yell, “Get the lead out of your ass and start...
There’s a lot of crap going on in the world and it’s tempting to throw tantrums and dissolve into a puddle of self-pity. It feels like the right thing to do because other people need to know how unfair life is, right? Like when we were in second grade and cried until...
It’s hard to make sense of the world right now; we’re in the middle of a pandemic, racial strife, and a political divide in America that looks more like Dante’s version of hell every day. We’re bombarded with social media, camera phones, and a 24/7 news cycle....
It’s no secret that we’re faced with a growing mental health crisis right now and many of us are experiencing incredible amounts of pain and suffering. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll reported that nearly half of Americans report the coronavirus crisis is harming...
As a female FBI agent, there weren’t always a lot of women in my office—or in the building, for that matter. The closest thing to a mentor I had was my male training agent, who viewed me as more of a burden than an opportunity. But it had been to my advantage to be...
FBI agents who investigate knotty and complex cases—such as terrorism, cybercrime, and counterintelligence—need to develop a strong mind if they want to be successful. Investigations like these don’t show up on an agent’s desk with directions on how to solve them....
Many of us know exactly what to do with the news reported in 2020 and we’re busy lining our bird cages with it so nature can take its course. We are slowly emerging from the Trump—Woke Progressives—Twitter trifecta that’s left us feeling depressed, anxious, and...
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