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The first twelve years of my career were spent building a business that wasn’t designed to sustain me over the long term.  Which, at the time, was fine. When you’re single, in your twenties and filled to the brim with hungry youth juice, it’s not an issue.  But over time, priorities evolve. Grey hairs accumulate. Markets change. And into the second decade of my business, something occurred to me. …

Expecting to get what you want isn’t optimism, it’s immaturity.  That’s one of the worst pains of growing up and becoming an adult. Learning to face reality. Making friends with what is. And not allowing yourself to be seduced by childish thoughts about that reality, simply because they’re more comforting.  It reminds me of a compelling question from a book about interpersonal communication.  Can you name the stress that brings you…

As creative people, as thinkers and observers and reflectors and renderers of the world, it’s tempting to take an antisocial vantage point outside of society.  Because doing so makes us feel heroic. And special. Like we’re somehow being responsible to our artistic gifts by separating ourselves from the herd.  But there’s a very real difference between observing life, and being observant in a way that always keeps us just…

The most unexpected part of being in a committed relationship is, you’re forced to become fully acquainted with the most repulsive sides of yourself.  Sure, everybody can hide for a while, doing their nice little song and dance for the first few months or even the first few years.  But eventually, love pulls back the velvet curtain. And our relationship becomes this constant mirror, reflecting back to us all…

A friend of mine who is a youth development consultant has this great question he asks the students: How much of yourself, percentage wise, are you able to bring to this activity? It’s a powerful filter for kids to use in any endeavor they pursue. Because it challenges them to search for places where they don’t have to keep their intellect on hold or their personality in check.  Where…

Each of us has, in one way or another, been programmed to deny our own desires.  And if we have any intention of living authentic, integrated and fulfilling lives, we have to transform our relationship with our own needs.  In four separate areas. Accepting, assessing, expressing and applauding.  Each of which requires us to shift from one state of being to another.  First, there’s accepting.  Instead of shutting down…

Each of us aspires make ourselves proud.  And one of the central ways we accomplish that is by manifesting our values. By creating and living in a universe where our beliefs are successfully achieved.  The hard part is scaling this concept organizationally. Because when you have hundreds or even thousands of employees, possibly scattered across multiple offices, cities and even countries, your values can’t simply be words on a…

It’s true that each of us must figure out how we’d like to enforce our limits.  But the irony is, even boundaries need boundaries. Because if we get carried away building walls around ourselves, we end up in a janitor’s closet of our own making.  If we stubbornly draw too many lines around our lives, before we know it, the rising tides of alienation will carry us straight out…

Seligman, the pioneer of positive psychology, writes that our way of explaining events to ourselves determines how helpless we can become, or how energized we can become, when we encounter life’s everyday setbacks as well as its momentous defeats.  It’s certainly the smart mindset to have. Believing that the narrative isn’t done to us, rather, it’s something we choose, this is an essential part of being resilient.  The challenge,…

Here’s the arc of my social experiment.  It’s been nineteen years. Over six thousand days. And in the beginning of my adventure, wearing a nametag twenty four seven was just this quirky thing that I did.  It was pure. There was nothing behind it. No reason or motivation or strategy or objective.  But then, about two years into it, the nametag morphed into my business. And my brand. And my…