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Why does this always happen to me?
Psychologists tell us that transcendence is a form of attention control. It’s the capacity to see and think beyond the immediate stimuli. And it doesn’t necessarily mean ignoring the immediate present, so much as seeing it in the context of more substantial concerns. One way to accomplish this is to depersonalize. Like when a stranger says or does something that has a deeply negative impact on us. We remind ourselves that…
Relying on anyone other than me sounds like a terrible idea
Being strong and independent is useful. But extremes in anything accomplish nothing. When we carry our individuality too far, when we isolate and try to do everything alone all the time, it’s not only a terrible punishment we inflict on ourselves, but it’s also a slap in the face to the people who care about us. Satisfying as it may be to say to ourselves, wow, relying on anyone…
Must. Not. Stop. Seeing. How. High. You. Can. Fly.
When you’re an overly ambitious workaholic for whom career has become the only interest in your life, simple pleasures can seem tasteless. When your entire identity is focused on traveling around the world pushing the envelope of achievement, coming home can make you feel like a visitor in your own town. When there is an aching hole inside of you that even the most obsessive interest in work cannot…
Your inability to set limits on their control
How many people are able to successfully divert your time? The answer to this question is quite indicative of the strength of your boundaries. Because although everyone has people they answer to, whether it’s family, bosses, coworkers, or even the occasional loan shark, ultimately, your time is your own. You are the only person who truly values it. And depending on your discretionary use of that time, it’s either…
Is this moment just right, or is it going to kill me?
Some of us are neglecting to live the life that we have because we’re overly focused on the life we yearn for. We simply want things to be other than they are. And not that there is an inherent problem with wanting anything. The question is, at what point does our desire to attain hurt our ability to connect? Louie once made a beautiful distinction during an interview about jealousy, telling…
As a human being, not just a human resource
Our goal is to seek efficiency with things and not with people. So it’s important that we give each other full acknowledgement of the whole person, not just our roles. That means being brave enough to interact and connect with people holistically, actually engaging their full self, and not just the small part of the self that the company finds useful and important. My friend who runs an advertising…
Skilled at finding unfriendly forces to blame
Isn’t it amazing how it’s always the other person who’s being difficult? The disillusionment of love is always blamed on the other. We’re never the crazy ones. Psychologists researched an interesting phenomenon called the actor observer bias, where people tend to attribute their own behavior to their circumstances, but attribute other people’s behaviors to their dispositions. When somebody else does it, it’s their fault, but when you do it,…
Making an investment in our future peacefulness
It’s amazing, people will go to the end of the earth to protect their money, their possessions, their property and their loved ones. But when it comes to the assets of their time and attention, they’re about as protected as a screen door in a windstorm. That’s why so many people feel whipped back and forth wherever the force of life directs them. They have no boundaries. What’s more,…
It wasn’t your fault, you just didn’t know who you were
The basic tool for setting boundaries is acquiring more knowledge of self. That critical foundation of information goes a long way in setting limits on your physical, mental and emotional world. Just think back to all the times you were taken advantage of when you were young. It wasn’t your fault, you just didn’t know who you were. Happens to the best of us. But let’s consider the implications…
Why are we starving while he prints money?
There’s a fascinating term in public relations called advertising value equivalency. It supposedly measures the benefit to a brand a from the media coverage of a campaign. You simply take the size of the coverage gained and its placement, and then calculate what the equivalent amount of space, if paid for as advertising, would cost. Not surprisingly, there have been many criticisms about this metric over the years. Academics and…
