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The problem is not that life is insecure, the problem is that we expect it to feel secure.  And that foredooms us to bitterness and disappointment.  Here’s how it typically works.  The world falls short of our fantasy, other people fail to fulfill the assignments we mentally give them, and the future stubbornly refuses to unfold exactly as we expect it to.  Then we feel like a failure and start being…

You’re never alone in the world unless you want to be.  If you are lonely, it’s because you are not letting other people in. It’s because you are surrendering to your antisocial tendencies and isolating yourself from the world.  And maybe it comes from a place of stubbornness. You already convinced yourself that you are not a team player. Or maybe it’s rooted in an outdated identity narrative, because…

The most demanding type of execution is following through on a project, long after the mood has passed, long after you’ve run out of steam, and long after your inspiration reserves have been tapped out.  It sucks. You reach that dreaded point where you can’t even conceptualize how the hell you’re going to muster the momentum to catapult yourself out.  During preproduction of my animated folk rock opera, we…

Here’s something nobody tells you about building your body of work.  Everything after the first one is business.  It’s an unfortunate reality of the creative marketplace. The purity, naiveté and idealism with which you came out of the gate is quickly replaced by more practical concerns. Like strategy, monetization and scalability.  And not that your work is devoid of heart and soul, it’s just that after you’ve been around…

Your talent needs two things.  First, the right environment to take your talents on the ride they deserve. Meaning, the platform, venue, vehicle, organization or community through which you can make use of all of your gifts and create real value in the real world.  And second, the right mentality to bring yourself into the best shape for contribution. Meaning, the belief that you can make a difference. The courage to honor the…

A scary moment for any entrepreneur is when they discover the discrepancy between the labor intensity of their input and the dollar amount of their output.  In short, they’re working way too hard.  It feels like they can never fully break out of the ghetto. They can never quite rise above the middle market. Jason, my cartoonist friend, said it best.  You feel like a hippo in a hot…

Fear need not always be harmful to our lives.  We can have a healthy relationship with fear by approaching it as a continuum. A vehicle to get where want to go.  And so, from farm to table, so to speak, here’s how we engage with it.  We notice it, name it, greet it, accept it, thank it, love it, unravel it, share it, and lastly, channel it. Let’s unpack…

People can be foolish, heartless, annoying and toxic.  But since we can’t change others, we can only change our responses to them, the onus is on us to take the first step. Before reverting to cynicism and deeming that all people are blanks, we learn to start from a place compassion and curiosity.  Because every grating personality trait in another person has a long history behind it. Every emotional response…

It’s easier to land a job when you already have one.  This is not a cliché, it’s a clinically proven marketplace reality.  In a national survey of more than four thousand job seekers and human resources professionals worldwide, people with jobs have a better chance of being hired than unemployed job seekers.  It makes logical sense. They have social proof, confidence in their own abilities, greater negotiating power and, most importantly,…

Netflix once published an inspiring employee culture guide about freedom and responsibility.  There’s an entire chapter about setting the right context, rather than controlling people’s actions. According to their managers, high performance people will do better work if they understand the context and are turned loose to work within it.  Here’s the best passage:  When one of your talented employees does something dumb, don’t blame them. Instead, ask yourself what context…