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Schwartz’s fascinating study on virtue found that in life, there is no such thing as an unmitigated good. There is no value or behavior that’s universally positive.  Take the overhyped word authenticity. It’s become the defining virtue to which we are all urged all aspire.  But there are some key questions worth asking.  What good is authenticity if everybody in you know thinks you’re a dick?  How noble is being in…

Jung named the shadow as the unconscious aspect of personality.  The emotion that the conscious ego does not identify in itself. In short, it’s our dark side.  What’s tricky is, while shadows are largely negative, there are times when positive aspects can actually harm us. Jung says they can act as a constantly thickening veil of illusion between the ego and the real world.  Hope, as an example, can be…

Emerson knew a thing or two about creative originality.  He wrote: The more truly we consult our own powers, the more different will our work exhibit from the work of any other. Each individual soul is in virtue of its being a power to translate the world into some particular language of its own.  Camus echoed a similar sentiment nearly a century later.  He observed: A time always comes…

Emerson’s nonlinear nature is best personified by the following passage from his famous essay: One does not interfere with life’s vast curves, prematurely forcing them into a circle of ellipse, but only that arc which one clearly sees, and perhaps at a later observation, a remote curve of the same orbit, and waits for a new opportunity, well assured that these observed arcs will consist of each other.  His words are…

Data driven organizations are trained to stop wondering what they think and start asking what they know.  To move away from hunches and instinct and closer to fact.  Which is a useful approach when it comes to technology. But when it comes to messy task of unraveling the riddle of human nature, things aren’t so binary.  During my stint as brand manager a tech startup, our entire staff of…

Brands love beating their chests.  Bragging about how their innovative products and services are filling people’s needs in a simple, useful way.  Which is fine, except when there is a profound disconnect between what the brand is proud to ship and what the customer is prepared to buy.  My first startup job was with an air passenger rights organization. We helped disrupted travelers get compensation from the airlines for…

The true addiction is not the substance, it’s the identity of the user.  That’s what we crave. That’s what we wake up scrambling to get our fix of. The person that the drug turns us into.  Workaholics, for example, are not only addicted to the adrenaline highs that come from the intensity of being busy, meeting deadlines and achieving results, but we’re also addicted to the persona of being…

Koontz writes in his book about seizing the night that each of us carry within us a divine spark, and if we choose to recognize it, our lives will have dignity, meaning and hope.  But what we must remember is, recognizing is only the first step.  Because if it’s true that each of us has a place within where we are eternally whole, where there is a gift so valuable that…

When we were young, we not only wanted everything, but we also assumed that it was ours.  And we not only thought we deserved it, but we were foolish enough to think that it would last.  God bless that sweet, guileless time of life. Before the world sunk its cruel jaws into us. Before daily existence carried us down the river of disappointment and shattered our dreams on the…

All of us will get shaken by repeated threats to our established way of doing things.  And all of us will have to deal with changes that we don’t like.  What sucks is, simplicity will be in short supply. No matter how hard we work to make quick order of a complicated world that is full of shades of grey, life will probably still feel unfair, stupid and confusing….