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 →

Life has challenges. Successful people succeed anyway — not because they have easier lives, but for knowing how to handle challenges. They know how to use unexpected or undesired situations to improve their lives. Successful people make their lives great. You can too. In particular, you can learn from their successes. An interview of Johnny Depp on Inside the Actors Studio revealed some of how he succeeded. Depp is one of[…] Keep reading →

Someone I’m coaching wrote the following: I will be graduating from college in May, and I am trying to decide which two cities I should move to after graduation. I’ve been wanting to move to NYC ever since I first visited in high school and been going there ever since. On the other hand, everyone that I know tells me that I should move to LA instead and think I[…] Keep reading →

Yesterday I wrote about an alternative model for solving problems to the prevalent model that you need to find and solve their root causes to be effective. The alternative — the burning building model to solving problems — says that if you can think of something that will improve the situation, acting on it will help. If you’ve used the dandelion model for a long time, you may believe it[…] Keep reading →

Many people have a counterproductive yet common model for solving their problems. If you use it, you’re holding yourself back from a better life. There’s an alternative, however, which I’ll write about below too. The Dandelion Model I call it the “dandelion model” because it’s based on the idea that to get rid of a dandelion, you have to get to its roots. If you don’t, it will grow back.[…] Keep reading →

Two thoughts to follow up my post from two days ago: Where you get energy. First, after mentioning I was mystified by people who used the same excuses not to dance that I used to dance, I should mention that before my dancing friends got me to go dancing the first time, I would have used any excuse to avoid dancing too. I didn’t know how to dance and was[…] Keep reading →

Want to have more energy to do things? I’ll demonstrate how how much energy you have to do something rarely has to do with how much energy you have. When I used to go dancing every Friday night I would look forward to the excitement of seeing friends, listening to great music, dressing up, etc. The friends I went out with looked forward to it too. I was mystified by[…] Keep reading →