[First Published – March 2015] Tell me what you know and I can begin to see the walls around you. Tell me where have you been and I can begin to understand who you are. Tell me who you are with and I can begin to see the patterns of your life. Tell me how you spend your time and I can begin to see how much you really care. I’ve told many what I knew and found that I knew little...
People commonly mistake suggestions and ideas as opportunities. Opportunities can’t be well defined until after they have been proven to actually be an opportunity that has benefited us in some way. Using the example of sculpting, let me explain what I mean. Sculpting is something I know little about other than what I see. A blob of clay that a sculptor molds into something beautiful using...
We are all different in many ways. We hear this all of the time. One of the more subtle differences between individuals is what they do with their knowledge. I find that people do one of four things with their knowledge: They store it and call on it in conversation simply to help someone understand something better. They use it in conversation to make themselves feel good by demonstrating that...
‘It’s easy” is one of the most misunderstood phrases that we regularly use. Most commonly used with either ideas or solutions, it implies that little effort is needed to get to a stated outcome. People can make things look easy when all we see is the last few steps of their journey. The athlete who astounds us by her skill never shows us the never ending hours of practice that...
I always have had a hard time with to do lists. Easy to fill. But hard to see what really needs to get done. What is busy work versus what would help me move forward in my life? It’s fun filling them out, for it feels like everything is now in front of you and is crystal clear. Frustrated by my lack of judgment with respect to what is really important, I started to write down one to do list...
So many times we have an idea of what we want to get done. Sometimes we even can identify the tools we need. But how will we change our routine to use the new tools to get things done? How will we structure our time to learn and use the new tools so that they bring us leverage? How must our focus change to gain leverage from the new tools we will use to get something new done? What is now...
There is hardly a more lonely and deceiving place to be when you feel entitled. When you expect things to go a certain way or people to decide a certain way simply because it’s you. Without realizing it, once you believe that you are entitled, all of your systems shut down. You tend to float through your days feeling that there are no consequences for whether you perform or not. All...
Fall brings cooler weather, more colors, and different routines to many of our lives. School starts, different youth activities begin, and the chance for many of us, in colder climates, to enjoy the outdoors begins to diminish. Beautiful summer plants begin to show their age. No different than we as humans. I have been fortunate to know well, many individuals who are older than I am. They have...