What Makes You You?
What makes you you? Different from everyone else? What are your unique skills, interests, and talents? Your fears, your hopes? Your strengths, your weaknesses? What…
Catch, Acknowledge, Release and Relax
We humans are capable of amazing feats, we are creative, and we can accomplish astounding things. Yet none of us can change the past; we…
Slip Slidin’ Away
Do you have a plan for your life? Goals for all your six major roles in life? – Career/Financial – Family/Personal – Physical/Health – Education/Mental…
How Great is Your Range?
How great is your range? Are you a generalist or a specialist? If you are a specialist (and the world needs both specialists and generalists),…
The Thief in Your Mind
There is a thief that lies waiting in all too many folks’ minds; a thief that will steal their peace of mind and rob them…
If Your Life is Your Message, What Are You Saying?
What legacy are you creating? Are you kind? Patient? Grateful? Considerate? Our close relationships speak volumes about our true selves; what does your conduct say…
The # 1 Emotional Parasite to Evict From Your Mind
Fear comes in many disguises, doubt being its most common mask. If our self-image rejects fear or doubt, then excessive “caution”, its close cousin, comes…
Are Your Stories Blinding You?
We tend to create stories about people and places. These stories come with expectations, scripts, and pre-conceptions based upon our past experiences, both specific to…
Putting the Safety on Your Triggers
Doing as well as we know is an ongoing challenge for us humans. We over-eat, sit when we should move, lose our cool, give in…
Default Mode v. Choice
What do you think about when you think about nothing? What do you do when you have nothing to do? What do you do when…
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…