The idea of achieving work-life balance never really squared with me. For those of us that spend the vast majority of our waking lives at work, the idea of trying to balance time between work and personal life seems like a losing proposition. Even when I can manage to “balance” my time– spending equal parts […]
“To get to where we need to go, we need better people.” I hear this lot. And sometimes it’s legitimate—certain skillsets or expertise are missing from the bench and need to be brought in. But often, those people that were so wonderfully talented when you hired them, are still quite wonderful–they just need the right […]
As human beings, we get very uncomfortable when our internal beliefs don’t match up with our external reality. When what we believe and what we see or do or experience don’t align, we consciously or unconsciously yearn to reconcile the discrepancy. There are several possible paths we might take to alleviate this cognitive dissonance and […]
Since our inception as a nation, the Pursuit of Happiness has been viewed as an unalienable right of all people. We all have a right to be happy. We all want to be happy. And yet, we’re often at a loss for how to go about cultivating more happiness in our lives. In his book Happier, […]
Have you ever been completely lit-up by a great speaker and then found yourself wondering why those brilliant ideas haven’t changed a thing that you’re doing in your life or your business? Maybe you’ve even made a bold declaration to change, calling upon all the determination you can muster and yet a few months later […]
The word Appreciation is a fascinating little word because it has four distinct meanings that all happen to relate to and support one another. To appreciate can mean: To be fully conscious of To hold in high regard To be grateful for To increase In order for what you appreciate, to appreciate you have to (1) open […]
There seems to be a natural human tendency to be preoccupied with what’s wrong. I think the intention is often good—let’s get to the heart of the problem so we can fix it. So we ask: What’s wrong with a situation? What’s wrong with this organization? With this child? With this country? But personal fulfillment, higher performance […]
On any given day, you’re going to feel a certain amount of negative emotions (disappointment, sadness, anger, anxiety) and a certain amount of positive emotions (joy, excitement, love, hope). Positive Psychologist, Barbara Fredrickson, calls this the Positivity Ratio. Most people go through life with a kind of 1:1 balanced ratio. When you ask them, ‘how’s […]
“We all have more potential than meets the unappreciative eye.”–Tal Ben-Shahar Think of your innate potential as a tiny little seed buried deep within. It needs light. It needs water. It needs nourishment in order to flourish. But before any of that can happen, it needs to be seen. Someone has to acknowledge that the […]
We have extraordinary levels of freedom to choose how we will live and how we will contribute to the flourishing of the system we all share. As my friend Raj Sisodia pointed out, we can be like the caterpillar—choosing to consume everything we see for our own gratification, paying no heed to any destruction left in our […]