I eat a lot of mixed nuts and peanut butter. As far as I know, they’re all healthy to someone without allergies. I eat a lot of them. I found a site that shows pictures of two hundred calories of various foods. I like and eat a lot of broccoli. Here’s two hundred calories of broccoli: Looks like an amount that would go a long way to filling me up.[…] Keep reading →

Do you believe you’d have more meaning, purpose, and drive if you could just find your passion? Do you look at people more successful than you and presume they succeeded more because they were lucky enough to find their passion and that if only you were so lucky to stumble on something to drive you, you’d also succeed? I propose a different perspective: that we create passions, not discover them.[…] Keep reading →

People blame others for shaming them. The media, which benefits from confrontation and conflict, amplifies their voice. The blame arises in various contexts—sex, size, etc. I think they make themselves sound like children. Someone can try to shame you but only you can allow yourself to feel it, for adults who have learned to manage their emotions, at least. Feeling shame when you don’t want it means your emotions are[…] Keep reading →

Yesterday I saw yet another of countless articles showing how the U.S. government’s strategy on drugs promotes drug use, crime, government spending that decreases quality of life, etc. You’ve read the article in many formats before. This one’s headline was “Federal Drug Sentencing Laws Bring High Cost, Low Return: Penalty increases enacted in 1980s and 1990s have not reduced drug use or recidivism.” Sound familiar? You probably responded, “Yeah, in[…] Keep reading →

Two quotes misunderstand and undervalue people, I contend: “You should get in touch with your masculine side.” “You should get in touch with your feminine side.” People say the first to women mainly, sometimes men, to imply they should learn to act more like mainstream views of men, like learning to fix things around the house, not sweating small things, and enjoying things like pizza and beer. People say the[…] Keep reading →

If you believe you’ll never make CEO, start a company, lose weight, or any other goal, no matter how much you change your behavior to achieve it, your belief will undermine that behavior. If you’re lucky, you may stumble into an experience that changes your beliefs, which may sustain your behavior, but I wouldn’t count on it. In general, if you change behavior but not the belief that motivated the[…] Keep reading →

A client who knows I’ve applied a lot from evolutionary psychology to leadership and self-awareness wrote: What’s your opinion of the theory that language serves primarily as persuasion? In its raw form, I’m currently telling you that you are an authority by asking a question. And that sentence might seem like it’s an authoritative statement, but instead it is clarifying my question, which in its clarification is a neediness to[…] Keep reading →

“Just do what I say.” “Do it now.” “John, do X. Sally, do Y. I’ll do Z. Then we’ll met and put everything together.” Wouldn’t leadership be easy if we could tell everyone what to do and they’d do it? It never seems to work like that, though, does it? Most people understand that problems come up. They don’t always realize that command-and-control leadership often discourages people from working with[…] Keep reading →

“You don’t understand me!” “I wish I’d never been born!” Who hasn’t yelled something like that at their parents? I’m sure I did. I argued with my parents like all kids. I’ve grown since then and don’t argue like that any more. I still disagree, I just try more to seek understanding, not to confront so adversarially. I was just in a line and overheard two workers argue. They weren’t[…] Keep reading →