One of the exercises my leadership students like most is the Authentic Voice exercise. I’ve written about it at least four times here, including examples from great masters of speaking in their authentic voice, like Muhammad Ali and Robin Williams. Communications skills exercises, part 10: Your Authentic Voice Your authentic voice The great masters of speaking with authentic voices Communications skills exercises, part 10b: another example of voicing your self-talk[…] Keep reading →

If you read my blog you know that SIDCHA stands for self-imposed daily challenging healthy activity. I created the concept and write about it a lot. Considering its opposite helps illustrate their value and probably also reveals some problems in your life. The opposite of self-imposed is something others get you to do. The opposite of daily is irregularly. The opposite of challenging is easy. The opposite of healthy is[…] Keep reading →

An attendee at my Harvard talk wrote me about his starting a couple Sidchas. I asked him if I could share his experience because it illustrates how we grow when we challenge ourselves. Making a challenging daily habit stick not easy, but I find that knowing that others face the same obstacles and that overcoming them is just as hard for everyone else makes it easier. You’ll also see that[…] Keep reading →

I think you’ll like what I wrote about food to someone who wrote: I’ve been looking for something like this [to learn to cook, in balance with my work] in my life, but what’s a good place to start learning how to cook? I’m a young single dude in his 20s, and the most I can do is boil some pasta. I work from home so time is not really[…] Keep reading →

The people who run Connectorcon love connecting people and they’re good at it. Every person they’ve connected me to has been valuable to me. I’m not just talking: I drove back all night after my cousin’s wedding near Pittsburgh to attend their all-day event this past summer. December 12, from 10am to 6pm they’re hosting a conference to help people connect and learn to connect better. You apply through a[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on the Self-Imposed Daily Challenging Healthy Activity (SIDCHA). If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] A year and a half ago I spoke at Harvard on not dwelling on decisions (and at MIT a couple days later) with my friend’s non-profit, GiveGetWin, that[…] Keep reading →

A reader wrote about a successful use of a technique I wrote about in “Someone not returning your emails? Here’s a polite tactic that gets responses.” I thought I’d share for others, since we all face the challenge sometimes. Also because I find over and over that low-level instruction, even or rather especially on low-level details leads to high-level success. Schools don’t teach these details but they matter. Hey Joshua,[…] Keep reading →