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The was a famous legislation passed in the seventies that provided enforcement for something called a satisfaction guarantee warranty.  After all, the customer is always right. This act stipulated that businesses would have to refund the full purchase price regardless of the reason for dissatisfaction.  Carlin famously named this the advertising lullaby, meaning, the whole purpose of marketing is to lull consumers to sleep. And it may have been…

The four most liberating words in any language are: Not my problem anymore.  Like the entrepreneur who sells his company, but still gets phone calls from old customers who have complaints about their products. Not my problem anymore.  Or the longtime board member who resigns from her volunteer role, but still gets emails about mundane issues that need voting on. Not my problem anymore.  What about the property owner…

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…