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There are some people who are talented in ways that we never even dared to dream.  Their special gifts rise from pools we cannot fathom and help this world achieve the impossible.  And it’s a beautiful thing. If only we could touch the hem of their garment, maybe some of their magic will rub off.  But on the other end of the genius spectrum, there are other people whose…

I was doing some research on corporate culture when I came came across an archive of old employee feedback forms.  One alumni team member offered future applicants the following warning.  Consider this job your basic training for the cruel, darkest side of the industry. It’s creatively crushing. Don’t expect your good ideas to go very far. In fact, expect a lot of bad ideas to pass for the everyday…

The benefit of hitting bottom is, it causes us to hold a new type of conversation with ourselves.  It forces us to recognize the festering of our own emotions. The disgust with whom we’ve become is what makes us say, okay we’re ready. This isn’t funny anymore. It’s time for a wholesale cleanup.  Rushdie, when reflecting on his recent bout of depression, joked that one of the great benefits…

Think about the last ingenious idea you had.  Inside the theater of your mind, it sounded interesting, useful and even profitable. But then, once you shared it with your team, people looked at you like your dog does. Tilted heads, vacant eyes and drooling jowls. Even as you heard the idea came out of your mouth, you couldn’t help but realize just how absurd it really was.  Why does this happen?…

It’s a great relief to look to nature for simplicity.  We can use it as a way to calm down during times of chaos and not further complicate our existing problems.  For example, how does the flower push its way up from the ground and through the crack in the concrete? Simple. Throw slow, gradual, persistent pressure that’s so small, it can’t even be measured. That’s the kind of…

When I was seventeen, my high school football team blew a fourteen point lead in the final few minutes of the championship game and wound up losing in a devastating upset.  Our head coach almost had a heart attack. The bus ride home was a quiet one. But before we slumbered into the locker room with our heads hung in shame, he said something we never forgot.  Don’t get…

Human beings are primed for immediate gratification, and if we don’t have to be patient, we won’t.  Which is unfortunate. Because despite our natural longing to do things quickly and instantly, the axiom of sustainability never changes.  Everything that lasts, starts out slow.  My publishing business took a few years to make sense, a few more years to make money, and even a few more years to make an…

Brown was right when he asserted than mankind’s evolutionary obligation was to use all the powers at its disposal.  Who doesn’t want to be alive in all their parts? Who doesn’t want to use everything they’ve ever learned? And who doesn’t want the opportunity to bring all of themselves to everything they do?  The challenge is, when it comes to the relationship we have with our own power, it’s complicated.  Some…

Joy isn’t the goal, but the experience we create for ourselves on the way to the goal.  But most of us invert that process. We obsess over the imagined details of some future event, at which point we will finally feel happy and complete and whole. Only then do we deserve joy.  This carrot on a stick approach can be highly motivating for some. The only problem is, it’s a pattern…

People are highly motivated by finding out that it’s not their fault.  We love looking for something external to blame for everything that’s wrong in our lives.  My mid to late twenties was a period of my life symptomized by bloating, abdominal pains and host of other gastrointestinal delights.  But of course, these issues had nothing to do with the fact that I was a workaholic codependent love addict trapped in…