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My mentor loves to tell the story about his first job right out of the army.  Honolulu’s military base had a job opening that was perfect for him. The opportunity was too good to pass up.  After a few weeks of interviewing, he got the job, relocated his family to the tropics and started a new life on the island.  What’s interesting is how he described the experience twenty…

We’re all addicted to a certain image of ourselves.  And that’s why we go to great lengths to preserve what we consider to be our identity.  Because it’s the racket we think we’re winning with. It’s the asset that got us where we are, and why give that up?  But the thing we forget is, each of us is a constantly evolving and unfolding process. There is no such…

Confucius famously said that when you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.  But for workaholics, it’s actually quite the opposite.  When you find a job you love, you work every day of your life.  And that’s the problem. It doesn’t feel like work. And so, the reasonable story you tell yourself is that it’s okay to work long hours because you love what you…

Something is admirable to me when I know that I couldn’t do it.  That’s how I feel when I see person with a lot of talent.  But additionally, something is also admirable to me when I know that I wouldn’t do it.  Because I see a person with a lack of fear. That’s not an insignificant thing. It’s a very different form of social currency than talent, one that…

I have a colleague who spent twenty years in the marketing department of a global telecommunications company.  Part of his job wad dealing with marketing agencies on a daily basis. And in many cases, he would watch his budget and business objectives take a back seat to that agency’s enthusiasm to make their mark creatively.  It’s no wonder he went on to start his own firm and land clients…

Altman’s book on living kindness reminds us that true generosity does not leave us feeling cheated, elated or superior, but joyful and alive in the giving moment.  That passage was especially painful for me to read. Because I’ve been guilty of misguided generosity on a several occasions.  Years ago, I gave a sizable amount of money to someone to use for a down payment on her house. All the while,…

Work is part of the way we evaluate ourselves.  It’s an essential symbol that confirms our place in the world.  And for many of us, it’s the primary medium through which we become a person.  It’s no surprise, then, that workaholism has become such a widespread phenomenon. Even though there is no generally accepted medical definition of this condition, it still affects millions of people around the world everyday. …

One of my favorite psychologists explained that people fall into the trap of believing that things are supposed to go well.  And so, when we make a mistake or a difficulty comes along, we assume that something must have gone horribly wrong. But it didn’t. It’s simply life doing what it does. And we need to accept the fact that, along with nine billion other people on the planet, we’re flawed…

If we say no to this, then nothing else will come along and we will go broke and die alone.  It’s classic scarcity mentality.  Buying into the belief that life is limited. Trying to hold onto everything as if it were ours and we owned it and without it we are nothing. Allowing ego and vanity to convince us that saying yes to every request means we’re somehow saving…

Sadness is an inherent part of the human condition.  Even if the modern happiness industrial complex is bent on eradicating melancholy, selling us shiny new technology to eliminate suffering in all its forms, the reality is, truly happy people are not somehow immune from feeling sadness. They actually embrace it.  Moore had a great phrase for this.  Shrouded in a cloud of melancholy.  What a perfectly poetic and visual reminder that sadness,…