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Keep moving the story forward.  That’s the mantra for taking action, making progress and building momentum. I even wrote a book about it here. But the question is, what happens when we inadvertently move in the wrong direction? How do we reconcile the mistakes and missteps and setbacks that take us away from our goal?  I once spent an entire summer applying for more than twelve hundred jobs. I…

When something has been useful for us, it’s easy to be enthusiastic about it.  Like therapy or meditating or running marathons or getting up at the crack of dawn to start working.  But we cross the line when we attempt to build our identities over people. When we try to superimpose our own assumptions and beliefs and preferences onto others, assuming that what worked for us, will work for…

Expectation is a placebo.  It’s a story we tell ourselves. It’s a sugar pill, which is the medication prescribed more for the psychological benefit to the patient, than for any physiological effect. It works because if a substance is perceived as helpful, then it can actually heal.  And so, once that expectation is set, once we have a reason to buy into something occurring, we do what we can to…

Here’s a collection of the best advice I’ve never been given: Misread the risks. Never face the facts. Be wildly overconfident. Maintain an irrationally positive outlook on life. Convince yourself that the statistics don’t apply to you. Do your work with pervasive optimistic bias. Imagine a future in which the competition plays little part. Stubbornly reassert your grandiose vision in the face of mounting contradictory evidence. And believe against…

Artists know that their immediate impressions are not to be trusted. Only living with their creation over time will tell the real story.  When I was in the nascent stages of my latest film project, I frequently found myself underwhelmed, disappointed and even a little bored with my own idea.  And that bothered me. Because if my art didn’t inspire me, how could I expect it to inspire others? …

Maslow’s law of human behavior states that a satisfied need ceases to motivate.  When a person decides that they’re earning enough money, for example, money loses its power to motivate. Other desires well up inside the human heart. And unless that person diverts their attention to one of those higher level need, they won’t sustain momentum and drive.  Philippe’s book on creativity comes to mind. The tightrope walker write: There is…

Robertson’s revolutionary corporate management system, holacracy, empowers employees at all levels to sense dissonance in the present moment and see the potential for change.  And what’s fascinating about this system is, it replaces the language of problems with tensions. Brian reminds us that humans, after all, are wired to put off dealing with things that they perceive as problems to the last possible moment. And so, the use of negative language…

Ruskin, the great architect, painter, writer, social thinker and philanthropist, famously emphasized the connections between nature, art and society. According to his biography, more than any other public figure in the nineteenth century, he convinced the public that: Architecture was not an isolated science of compass and rule, but rather, a vital index of a nation’s values.  That single insight, that grandiose but sincere approach to creating art, always had…

Chronic vagueness makes it hard for us to move forward with our goals.  Especially if we’ve enlisted other people to help us.  Web developers and graphic designers and video editors and even tattoo artists go through this on a daily basis. Instead of clients being specific and clear and direct about what they want, they simply expect the service provider to read their minds and deliver everything perfectly up…

People who are great thinkers struggle with being in touch with their emotional life because their issues often get processed intellectually, and they bypass what they’re actually feeling.  They would rather know why they’re having an experience, rather than experience the experience itself. They would rather step back from their feelings, analyze them and plan their reaction to them, rather than simply allowing those feelings exist.  Freud explains that this intellectualization…