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Most of us don’t change until we have to.  But the best time to prepare for change is before we need to.  And so, why wait until things get visibly shaky? Better to habituate ourselves to the inevitable loss and uncertainty and fear that change brings. Better to train ourselves to make those small, effortless and irrelevant changes on the regular.  That way, when the big kahuna comes along,…

Most credit card companies are vigilant about watching for unusual activity.  Their algorithms constantly scan accounts and purchases, flagging any suspicious activity, and alert customers about any questionable transactions. Their computers know our spending habits better than we do.  If we’re suddenly buying a thousand dollar handbag, but the average charge on our card rarely exceeds a few hundred dollars, be ready for the notification.  We’ve noticed some unusual…

It’s true that the heaviest burden is having nothing to carry.  But that doesn’t mean there aren’t areas of our lives where a lighter touch might be called for. That doesn’t mean there isn’t some part of us that has been bursting to rid itself of all this psychic weight.  Here’s a scary thought experiment: Where in your life you feel most burdened by the weight of expectations? What…

Have you ever given up on ideas, projects and even beliefs just because of one asshole’s unsolicited judgment?  Sadly, it happens to the best of us. Instead of choosing how much weight we grant other people’s opinions, we collapse faster than a cheap soufflé.  This is one of the great joys of getting older.  Once you know exactly who you are, then you put exactly zero weight in other…

Reacher perfectly explains the notion of perspective in his latest adventure: It’s like being on a train, stopped next to another train in a busy railroad station. Your train begins to move. It picks up speed. And then all of a sudden, it’s not your train moving. It’s the other train. Your train was stationary all the time. Your frame of reference was wrong. You thought you train was…

How was your specialness insulted?  This is the issue underlying the majority of our suffering. We are terrified of not being unique and not standing out and not being congratulated on how remarkable we are.  Or maybe that’s just me.  Either way, one of the fastest ways to puncture our veil of specialness is with a physical ailment.  Years ago at a checkup with my urologist, the doctor told…

One of my mentors spent his second career building and moderating leadership forums with executives from hundreds of different organizations.  Arthur’s philosophy is, life’s journey happens one pebble at a time. Growth is continuous improvement in incremental moments.  One of the pebbles that always stuck out for me was about the opportunity cost of a career.  Meaning, what we give up to pursue our dreams of professional achievement.  During…

One time after a surgical procedure, the nurse handed me the standard set of patient discharge instructions.  It’s a packet of educational sheets that provide information to manage my own care.  Once the anesthesia finally wore off, I sat down and flipped through the folder. One passage in particular caught my attention: Being a good patient does not mean being a silent one. If you have questions about the pain…

The question is not whether we should receive credit, but rather: What is receiving credit going to give us that we do not already have?  The warm feeling of being safe? The proud sensation that we were right? The soothing relief that we didn’t fail?  Nonsense.  Turns out, once we actually tease out our own list of what we think our precious credit will buy us, we slowly discover…

When my grandmother turned eighty, we decided to move her into a senior living facility.  It was a tough transition. Edie naturally had a lot of sadness and apprehension about the move, as any person would.  Can you imagine assimilating into a new community at that stage of life? You’re out of practice making friends, feeling shy about being the new kid, and coming into a strange environment where…