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Some people are like cats.  They make you work for their affection.  You don’t have the right to just walk up and interact with them, they allow you to interact with them.  Because they don’t trust anything but their own eyes. And if you don’t wait for them to set the pace for contact, then they will consider your actions a threat display, run away, show disdain and spray…

On most days, it barely even occurs to me that I’m wearing a nametag.  It’s such a fixture at this point. Something that’s been such a part of me for so long, it doesn’t even stand out anymore.  Unless, of course, I find myself surrounded by a new group of people on a regular basis.  Like starting a new job or joining a new club or moving to a…

Surrendering is not the same thing as deserting.  Accepting our lack of control doesn’t diminish our passion for practicing. Quite the opposite, in fact. Because once we are willing to accept how not in control we actually are, we’re free.  Once we learn to trust the process and engage with the world without forcing it to bend to our will, we’ve won.  When my tech startup announced they were…

You don’t have to be one thing in life.  The goal is not to be yourself, but to be your many selves.  Even if those selves are not clean and likable and moral.  Hell, there are facets of my personality that are outright repulsive.  Like when my apathy and cynicism are at their peak and my faith in humanity disappears like a fart in the wind. Or when my…

Ellis, the pioneer of rational emotive behavior therapy, wrote a compelling book on overcoming resistance from patients in therapy.  One of his observations was that all humans have a sense of agency, a desire for control, or a sense of independence. And this basic and universal human motivation results in people feeling rewarded for reacting against the will and instructions of others.  Think about, for example, the last person…

We live in a culture of cortisol.  Everything is a manufactured emergency.  When psychologists recently found that our stress level was at the highest it’s been in ten years, nobody should have been surprised.  But contrary to popular conditioning, stress is not an achievement. It’s not a badge of honor, and it’s not something worth bragging about.  Truth is, we need to get better at planning, not get better…

Over the past twenty years, thousands of people from around the world have reached out to tell me that my nametag experiment has been featured as a case study in their business book, college course, company newsletters, training seminar, student project, trivia archive, teaching resource or documentary film.  My personal favorite was when my seminude picture wound up on one of those media roundups of the worst tattoos of…

Jaws was such a terrifying film because you barely ever saw the shark.  After all, what we don’t see is scarier than what we do. Spielberg knew this.  And so, he advertised the shark’s presence and attitude with the two most terrifying musical notes in history.  Dah dum.  Not surprisingly, the summer his movie was released, beach goers nationwide started seeing phantom sharks every time they waded into the…

Schein’s research on helping professions reminds us that not everyone who asks for help is actually seeking it, but help may be a convenient word for whatever is being sought.  Sometimes the person already defined the problem and worked out a solution, but still wants confirmation and affirmation.  Businesses ignore this fundamental human need on a daily basis.  In fact, one of the most common complaints on customer review…

Every organism must keep changing just to stay competitive.  If we are not ready to adapt and remake ourselves as we grow and as the environment changes, then world will evolve and leave us behind. Time waits for no man. Evolution has zero interest in our being happy.  The good news is, as humans, our greatest tool for survival is our ability to change.  Certainly, we fear change, but…