I’ve written before about the value of raising awareness of your self-talk and two exercises to raise it. The first is to write out your self-talk. The second, and harder, is to voice it. I still consider the first — writing your self-talk a few times a day every day for a week — one of the best, if not the best, self-awareness raising exercises I know of. I start[…] Keep reading →

(Working on a presentation, I had to rewrite a post from a couple months ago. It’s very similar to the original, but I thought there’d be value in posting a slightly different way of putting it. I hope that value is more important than the repetition). If you read this blog you know about the researchers who asked people who won huge lotteries and people who just had accidents leading[…] Keep reading →

I think it helps to look at the world from a different point of view sometimes. You see things differently. When I did yoga, sometimes my teacher would have us cross our arms left over right instead of right over left (or vice versa, depending on how you did it normally). If you’ve never done it, try it. I doubt it will make you suddenly enlightened, but it feels weird[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. 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.] Just the structure of yesterday’s charts teaches a lot about leadership. They emerged as main tools for communicating leadership ability and guiding improvement so even if you’re[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on Coaching Highlights from coaching Columbia Business School students. 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.] Before going into the details of looking at a 360-degree feedback report, I want to talk about the structure of the 360-degree feedback process and what it[…] Keep reading →

Following yesterday’s post on the Daily Show’s showing people saying they include and accept exclude and dismiss, here’s another on blaming and finger pointing, claiming others are doing it, not you. Watching the clip is funny, but I’m including it here because it gives us a chance to introspect. The point of this blog is to provide tools and insight to learn and grow, and I think this clip does[…] Keep reading →

I was inspired to write the past couple days of food-related posts by an article about the food store I grew up with in Philadelphia called Weaver’s Way, which my family called just “the co-op.” The store is a cooperative, meaning you have to be a co-owner to shop and you have to work a certain number of hours per year. When I was younger and lived in Philadelphia I[…] Keep reading →

I got this exercise from a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn, who writes on self-awareness, mindfulness, and meditation. I find it helped me understand a lot about how I perceive my world and how I can influence how I perceive it. I don’t know if he made it up or got it from somewhere. Anyway, all you need is three raisins and some free time. The Three Raisins exercise Preparation: get[…] Keep reading →

I’ll describe an effect across many spheres of human life, including, probably, yours. I’ll describe it in the realm of food, but it applies all over. Most people, when they don’t think much about it, like sweets and comfort food — not always that healthy. If you gave them, say, some broccoli rabe, even cooked to perfection — say just lightly fried in olive oil with a touch of lemon[…] Keep reading →