Yesterday I wrote about how we often judge people implicitly without realizing — often a repellent behavior — and one class of implicitly judgmental language. The second class of implicitly judgmental language is when you make value judgments without realizing it. Here are a few examples: “People on the left say X. People on the right say Y. I’m not political about it, I’m practical and I look for a[…] Keep reading →

Do you like being judged? Nobody likes when someone else is self-righteous, holier-than-thou, or high-and-mighty to them. Would you be shocked to find you’re judging people — thereby repelling them — without realizing it? Would you want to do something about it? You probably avoid judgmental people. I’d bet it’s one of the major reasons you avoid the people you do. (Clients often mention their parents here. Even recognizing their[…] Keep reading →

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 →

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 →

A friend posted on another forum about “feeling weighted” about a few recent relationships in which women felt hurt afterward. Since he had asked for advice, I gave him some, copied below. Sorry it’s out of context, but that forum is private. Some background: this response came after a couple posts stating and clarifying the issues. Not everything resonated with him, but he said he found the two paragraphs preceding[…] Keep reading →

I’ll get back to my series on creativity soon. A post I put on one of my online communities seemed relevant here. If anyone here has comments, I’d value them. I just finished reading Making It All Work, David Allen‘s book after Getting Things Done. Then cleaned almost a meter of old books off my shelf that were dead weight. Feels great! I remember this community having some GTD aficionados.[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on creativity. 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.] When you have a problem to solve, the problem defines the solution. When the solution solves the problem we say the form followed the function. Such solutions can appear elegant, creative, obvious, or other[…] Keep reading →