I simplify complex or mysterious terms to make them easy to understand and act on. The professional and personal development fields seem to prefer click-bait titles—what sells over what works. Talk about failure and success is filled with clichés (“It’s the journey, not the destination,” “everything happens for a reason”) and grandstanding (“fail early and often,” “I failed many times before succeeding”) that I haven’t found helpful for someone facing[…] Keep reading →

Leading others begins with leading yourself. Part of my daily workouts is to stretch my hamstrings by sitting with my legs straight in front of me, like this: How do you feel about your abdomen when you crunch forward like this? Does it show fat that you prefer people not see? Do you look flabby? Do you avoid such positions for that reason? I noticed that my entire life I’ve[…] Keep reading →

If you earn $10 and then have to pay $3 to taxes, you net $7. Emotions don’t work that way. Many people think they do, which leads them to miss out some of the most interesting parts of life. Say you like a friend and they also annoy you. If you net out that you kind of like them you miss out that you have a complex relationship with them.[…] Keep reading →

“Nice guys finish last.” Alone, this thought has probably condemned many men and women to abandon being nice. Accurate or not, combined with another belief, that the alternative to being nice is to be a jerk, further condemns people to being jerks. Jerks—people with one type of poor relationship skills—even when materially successful, seem likely to face emptiness in intimacy, what many consider the most important parts of their lives.[…] Keep reading →

The more I cook from whole vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, and so on, the more skeptically I look at companies that prepare food. Restaurants and packaged foods are designed to entertain your mouth, not to sustain you. If the people behind them have to sacrifice your health for their profit, they’ll do it. Increasingly I see them as seeking profit at the expense of my health, since what makes the[…] Keep reading →

A reader wrote to ask about my August 2012 post, “Three things I learned from yoga” “With yoga you can use your body alone to create many emotions and learn how to handle them.” Have you written more about this? I can only see me creating fear, determination, calmness, anger and patience. These don’t count to many, so I wonder what other emotions could one create? I haven’t done yoga[…] Keep reading →

I have friend who is very charismatic. He makes up catch phrases and says them in a way people enjoy and associate with him. One of them, which he used as a greeting, was “Word word word.” As in, you’d be at a bar and he’d show up and greet everyone with a big “Word word word!” It didn’t mean much more than he felt friendly. At least as far[…] Keep reading →

A coaching client was in tears during a call not long ago. She lives in another time zone so the call was in the evening, after work. I took the call in my home. She called from hers. I felt for her, but my job was to coach her through the situation—to enable her to make herself feel better, resolve the cause, and know how to resolve similar future situations.[…] Keep reading →

I heard yet another person saying “I don’t have time for negative people. I’m a positive person. I can’t let them bring me down.” Oh, how perfect they sound! High and mighty! He blithely and ironically didn’t notice the negative start to what he said, “I don’t have time for…” Sometimes they’ll outright say so-and-so is a negative person. People who talk about others being negative are judging others by[…] Keep reading →