How do you handle feedback? Do you take it well? Do you know how to use it? If not, you may be throwing away great opportunities to improve yourself and your life. Many people don’t know how to take a compliment or having their weaknesses pointed out so they avoid feedback. As a coach in Columbia Business School‘s Program on Social Intelligence, I coach a lot of upcoming leaders who[…] Keep reading →

Some people look for problems; others look for solutions. The problem, to me, with people who look for problems is that they can get good at it. When you’re with them, you may find yourself surrounded by problems you never would have found otherwise. What I like about people who look for solutions is that they find them. When you are with them, you tend to enjoy yourself, unaware that[…] Keep reading →

Here’s another lesson from my stylist friend besides how fast even significant personal change can be, possibly obvious to people more stylish than me. He told me a major goal of how you dress is to polarize. At first polarizing sounded counterproductive. Polarizing in a discussion breaks down communication. Why would I want to polarize? Why would I want to repel people? He explained further. Many people dress to fit[…] Keep reading →

Myth: great personal change or development takes time. You have to understand where you are, your goals, and how to get from one place to the other. Myth: great personal change is hard. You have to overcome hurdles that take time, energy, and other resources. I believed those myths for a long time. I hear people counseling others with them all the time. Now it pains me to hear those[…] Keep reading →

Have you ever had someone suggest you calm down or take it easy? Nearly everyone has at some point. When it happens, I’d bet the person saying it was annoying. First let’s look at it from an awareness perspective, then what to do about it. Consider the situation. If they were suggesting you should calm down, you probably weren’t calm. Moreover you probably recently got un-calm. If they were talking[…] Keep reading →

An insult says more about the insulter than the insultee. People usually look like the insulter is saying something about the insultee. Usually not. An insult expresses the insulter’s emotions, directed at what brought them about. For example, if someone is insecure about their body and they see someone with a body they’d be insecure with, they might insult that person to try to feel more secure or deflect others[…] Keep reading →

Martha Graham, one of the great artists of the twentieth century — Picasso-level stature and influence in her field — entered my life late, in my 30s, when recording Julliard dancers for my art at Lincoln Center. They were perfect people to learn from, dancers actively learning her, describing a “Martha Graham revolution” I’d never heard of before. I’d feel bad about learning about her so late, but since then[…] Keep reading →

I’ve written about mindmaps recently and my upcoming creativity talk on April 10. I thought I’d share the draft mindmap I’ve prepared so far for the talk. Freemind lets me export to a flash-based mindmap that you can navigate. You can’t edit it or see how I edit it to see how fun, useful, and effective it is, but you can see the output. It’s an incomplete draft — too[…] Keep reading →

This morning put me on the receiving end of someone treating me well in what otherwise would have been a difficult situation, revealing why the advice from my first “How do you decrease stress?” post works so well for me. I mis-timed an appointment. I spoke to the guy I was meeting about ten minutes after it was supposed to have started and arrived twenty minutes after that. He was[…] Keep reading →