You may think you know your values. Until you test them, you probably don’t. Understanding their boundaries helps you understand them better. Testing them in controlled situations prepares you for surprises others aren’t prepared for. Preparation like that makes for effective leadership of yourself and others. If you never plan to reach any boundaries, you may not expect to benefit from examining them. But then if you never examine them,[…] Keep reading →

Have you forgotten you’re alive? Do you want to escape the world — the heat of everyday life? New York City is supposed to hit 103 F (39 C) today. Yesterday was that hot. People say it’s horrible. If you think the world is that horrible, go for a run in Central Park. You’ll feel alive. the heat won’t bother you so much afterward. You’ll remember we were born to[…] Keep reading →

Wrapping up this series on how to make your life successful using Johnny Depp’s example… Anyone can call any part of their life bad and feel sorry for themselves. Depp could have and he almost certainly would not have achieved the success he did nor gotten to do what he loves every day. Anyone can call something positive. Personally I don’t buy just calling something positive. I’m not a fan[…] Keep reading →

Here’s a view I find helpful, relevant to how Johnny Depp made useful something others would lament. Whether Depp used it or not, I don’t know. I don’t view things in life — jobs like telemarketing; tangible things like dogs, cats, and trees; intangible things like ideas; … whatever — as good, bad, positive, or negative. They just are what they are — jobs, dogs, cats, etc. Any value they[…] Keep reading →

Following up yesterday’s example of how one person created success out of what others might consider disaster or failure: Johnny Depp used telemarketing to transform a floundering music passion into one the top trajectories in acting today. To people in the rat race, who blindly accept other people’s values for themselves, resorting to telemarketing would suck. They’d probably say their lives were disasters and be depressed. People who didn’t blindly[…] Keep reading →

Everyone kid gets asked what they want to be when they grow up. Do you remember what you said? Did it happen? Somewhere in the mid-2000s, I remembered a vignette from my childhood for the first time in decades, which was someone asking that question of me and my response, which was to say I wanted to be an inventor. I didn’t remember it in the meantime because of what[…] Keep reading →

People misunderstand culture shock. They talk about it happening when they go to a new place, but that’s not when you really get culture shock. When you go to a new place you expect things to be different so differences don’t shock you that much. You get culture shock when you return after having been away and having adoped foreign standards without realizing it. Then what used to be normal[…] Keep reading →