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Improv comedy veterans know that the fun is always on the other side of a yes.  That’s where the most engaging, memorable and hilarious scenes and characters are born.  What’s fascinating is, in the business world, the opposite is true. Problems are always on the other side of a no.  I have a colleague who manages the call center at a company that produces charity marathons. His customer support…

The relieving part about change is, we don’t have to become different people, we just have to learn how to use what we have for good.  Especially if our condition or temperament or personal history is a liability that can work against us. Because once we understand that thing as an energy source that we’re obligated to do something with, the process of change moves from one of resistance and conversion…

Every standup is asked the same question.  Do people expect you to be funny all the time?  Which is probably infuriating for them, but it comes with the territory of being a comedian. If making people laugh is your profession, you’ve signed up for a series of choices and challenges, one of which is dealing with audience expectations.  Veteran performers actually have a name for it. It’s called the…

Every inner voice always starts as an outer voice.  It’s just that somewhere down the line, you started to internalize the message of devaluation. And after enough repetitions, you eventually accepted it as gospel.  Convincing yourself that, well, if this is the story everybody tells about me, then it must be the truth. Better not question it.  My therapist once said that the most telling question he asked each of his clients…

If we’re both trying to look good in front of each other, this won’t work.  If we’re both denying our vulnerability to maintain face, this won’t work.  If we’re both hiding behind the convincing facade of effectiveness, this won’t work.  If we’re both addicted to the image of ourselves as being fine, this won’t work.  Only when we finally break free of the constant pressure to perform can we…

Taleb’s research on randomness explores the concept of narrative fallacy, which is the tendency to turn complex realities into easily understandable narratives.  To weave explanations into our behaviors, create stories that help explain our personalities and superimpose patterns over our lives to reduce the dimensions of matters.  No wonder it’s called a fallacy.  Because our lives are rarely that simple and clean. They’re messy, complicated, multifaceted and lack the cinematic satisfaction of…

Obama’s legendary speech from his first campaign popularized the phrase, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.  Which wasn’t a new idea, per se. Those words had already been used in various poems, songs and books over the years.  But it was the context in which the president used that language which gave it so much gravity.  Years later, thinking back on that moment in history, that phrase still…

Yoruba tribesmen have a saying that as one approaches an elder’s status, once ceases to indulge in battles.  And not just because of their physical incapacity to run and hunt and fight and kill, but also because of their spiritual understanding that most battles are just a poison cocktail of ego, vanity and needless suffering.  That’s the fallacy of the human mind. Deliberately cling to our own suffering, we…

When confronted with a new task or project or challenge, our default response to find a way to make it a story about how we’ve never done this before.  How we’re not qualified or experienced or smart enough to execute.  But that’s a copout. An excuse not to face something big and scary and different.  The reality is, we’re always more prepared than we think we are. Everything we…

Rumi said that is not our task to seek love, but to seek and find all the barriers within ourselves that we have built against it.  The path is reverse engineered. That which we seek is discovered, rather than created, through a process of elimination.  For example, if we take all of the shameful and noxious parts of ourselves and stuff them in a bag and decide that they’re…