Ordinary Thinking Gets You an Ordinary Existence
Ordinary thinking is what passes most of the time for thinking i.e. “the action of using one’s mind to produce thoughts”. Ordinary thinking requires little to…
Triggers, Thoughts, Tendencies, and Themes
How much control do you have over your life? Your personality? Your thoughts? Whatever your answer, I assure you that a) you have more than…
The Provocative Power of Plateaus
Most of my life I’ve lived with mood swings. Bigger, wilder, and scarier in my youth, milder and moderated in my mature years, the benefit…
Your Personal Narrative: Friend or Foe?
Your Personal Narrative is your life story or more precisely, how you choose to interpret your life story: the story you tell yourself about yourself…
Making a Pact with Ulysses
Ulysses, the hero of the Greek legend “The Odyssey”, famously tied himself to his ship’s mast so as not to fall prey to the tempting…
Procrastination: Self Sabotage on Steroids
Of the many ways to avoid success, procrastination is one of the most effective. Procrastinators lie to themselves, telling themselves that they will have the…
Mental Contrasting: A Motivational Secret
We usually think of motivation as being about Desire or Want Power or Will Power and all those are or can be significant components. But…
The Games People Play: Trapped by Drama No More
To be able to “call” a mind game as it unfolds is the first step to being able to step outside the game and assume…
The Secret Key You Seek Is Hidden In Plain View
“Goal achievement is more about depth and strength and power of one’s desire than aught else. Laser intensity and long hours combined with openness to…
Are You Capable of Second Order Thinking?
First Order thinking is simplistic, short term, single move, single player, linear thinking i.e. the “thinking” level most stop at. Second Order thinking is much…
Epistemological Humility
Epistemic means anything dealing with knowledge. Epistemic humility is: 1) Accepting that there will always be many things about which we are ignorant and that’s natural…
Ruinous Empathy v. Radical Candor
Ruinous Empathy is when you care but are unwilling to be honest/frank. We say to ourselves that we want to “spare the other’s feelings”. In…
The Hard Thing About Milking Cows
The hard thing about milking cows is that they never stay milked. You gotta do it each and every day; no days off. Life and…
Before Tattoo on the Body, Tattoo in the Mind
Norman Vincent Peale relates a story in his book, ‘Power of the Plus Factor’: While in Hong Kong, I came upon a tattoo studio in…
Beware the Twin Scourges: “Destination Disease” and “Someone Sickness”
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their mind to be. The twin scourges are two ways you can choose to put…
The Teacher is Always There
There is a Zen saying to the effect, “That When the Student is Ready, the Teacher Will Appear.” There is much truth to the saying…
The Label Becomes the Experience
The words we choose to describe a situation powerfully frame our experience of that situation. Words can either sting or sooth. One can be happy…
TGGFTGNFTLT
“The Greatest Good For The Greatest Number For The Longest Time” The “greatest good, for the greatest number for the longest time” is the moral…
Finding My Best Self
Sometimes I lose my best self; find myself distracted and drifting off course. Usually it is because I get busy, then wake up to find…
The Hardest Thing
They say, “fish discover water last”. For example, we become so adapted that things disappear into the background and we lose awareness of them. Learning…
Sidestepping the Arrival Fallacy Trap
The Arrival Fallacy is when we finally achieve a desired goal; something we worked long and hard for and… Somehow, it is not all we…
How Well Do You Know You?
Write down three pivotal experiences in your life. Why were they pivotal? How have they impacted you? If not positive, how could they be re-framed? List…
Your Identity Drives Your Behavior
Who are you? How do you define yourself? How would you describe yourself? Do you like your answers? The words you choose, the associated mental…
The Simple Secret to Self-Control
When we see someone who seems to have it all together, who exhibits good habits and good self-control, we tend to attribute it to good…
One Bad Apple
Best of the Rest – I don’t often run others work but this is good: Imagine the case of someone supervising an exceptional team of…
Maybe it Wanted to Be Noticed
There is a children’s story, “There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon” about a little boy who finds a dragon on his bed. It’s small…