Welcome to my series on turning rejections into motivations. Click on the Table of Contents entries to the left to read the posts in the series. I’ve learned to view what many people call failure as experience and lack of failure as not experimenting enough. If you avoid failure absolutely, I would guess I would sound annoying to me. Not that I’m special in this way. The entrepreneurial community celebrates[…] Keep reading →

You’ve heard the advice that to inspire and motivate people, it helps to connect their task to a higher purpose, right? It seems to make sense. Martin Luther King motivated people to painful and degrading but effective tasks with calls to justice based on concepts of freedom and religion. Patton motivated people to risk their lives with appeals to saving the country. What if you have a team without such[…] Keep reading →

Do you know you want to improve something about your life but never seem able to? Do you find yourself always trying to understand your problems but never overcoming them? Or just saying you’re just this way and can’t do anything about it, even though you know other people who were like you learned to get past it? You probably have internal objections and blocks stopping you. External hurdles are[…] Keep reading →

A few years ago I posted a series on reasons I hear all the time that discourage would-be entrepreneurs from behaving entrepreneurially—starting business ventures, non-profits, or just projects they enjoy. This series helps you overcome the top ones I hear. I compiled them into easy-to-read series format. Click here and take a look at the series! To whet your appetite, the four discouraging myths in this series: You need a[…] Keep reading →

I don’t often find myself at a loss for words, but my mind was racing too fast to pick anything to come out. I looked out the cafe window at the people bundled in their coats, Spring still weeks away. In front of an agent I had recently started working with on the early draft of a few chapters the book I’d hurried to finish in the last few days[…] Keep reading →

How to make yourself look good all the time in two simple steps that always work Step 1: Make people around you look good. Step 2: Surround yourself with similar people.

Do you suffer in silence for anyone? Do you find it helps the relationship? It happens in business, but I’ll illustrate it with a classic case where two people suffer in silence for each other is a marriage where both parties think they work and contribute more to the relationship than the other. You can substitute a relationship between manager and report or among teammates if you prefer. Say one[…] Keep reading →