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You would think wearing a nametag everyday would lose its charm quickly.  But after nearly twenty years, this simply social experiment has only grown more fun and more meaningful.  Like when the barista actually makes eye contact and greets me by name with her real smile on her face.  Or when a stranger on the hiking trail says hello, pats me on the shoulder and continues walking up the…

Evangelizing is when we take something that worked for us and insist that it will work for someone else.  And the problem with this exchange is, our enthusiasm outmaneuvers our emotional intelligence. We fail to check in with the other person to see if they actually need any help in the first place, or if our help will even be useful to them.  Like when the random unemployed hipster…

How are you deepening your capacity to make yourself do things you don’t feel like doing?  If you can muster and master this one attribute, packing a discipline forged of steel, you will blow the ceiling off of anything even resembling a limitation.  Because let’s face it. Nobody ever feels like doing anything.  With the exception of having sex and eating lunch, the majority of adult life is doing…

The act of sacrifice simply changes the identity of our offering, it doesn’t inoculate us against failure and rejection.  Just because we dutifully slave away over something and deliver it to someone with confidence and care, that doesn’t necessarily guarantee a response. Nor does it push our names to the front of the line in their heart.  Truth is, we have limited control over how people perceive our intentions…

If you’re worried that with success will come an unpleasant array of new responsibilities and challenges, you’re right.  If you’re anxious that getting to the next level of anything means the heights of your actions will call upon the depths of your will, you’re right.  But. If you trust that the rising tide of life will lift all boats, including yours, you’re also right.  If you have faith that…

Every time we get sick, it’s the worst possible time.  Whether we have family visiting from out of town, a fourth round job interview or a big presentation for the entire management team, there is never a good time to feel bad.  And so, our job is to use the powers of creativity and acceptance and optimism to navigate the pain. To be sensitive to points in our life…

Empathy is what gives us another window into the experience of living.  It’s the bell of awareness that humbly reminds us that other people are just as important to themselves as we are to ours. And anytime anyone is unpleasant, the appropriate response is compassion.  As such, before we freak out and start silently name calling strangers inside of our anxious heads, we can make the empathetic leap by…

Hiring managers and human resources professionals are trained to ask commitment questions during job interviews.  It’s how they understand the applicant’s expectations for giving loyalty and cooperation to their organization. They want to make sure you’re not just headhunter bait who will leap to another job when an offer appears.  Which makes perfect sense. In a marketplace where employer turnover is high and talented employees are difficult to hang…

Each of us must to be very smart and intentional about our relationship to meaning.  After all, how we construe meaning dictates how we live our life. It’s the biggest thing there is. In an objective world where there are no moments of intrinsic significance which form a framework of meaning around any given experience, except the ones that we create, the onus is on us to make something…

The brain might be competent, but it still doesn’t understand context.  It has no idea which of our thoughts are appropriate, depraved, healthy or bizarre. It just churns them out. Tens of thousands of thoughts every single day until we die.  For that reason, it’s important not to judge ourselves for whatever weird movies our brain may be playing. Because those thoughts are not who we are. They are…