I liked Michael Pollan‘s Omnivore’s Dilemma, which people have suggested I read for years. I like his perspective on food and “food.” I don’t intend for the following to detract from his overall message, but his chapter 17, “The Ethics of Eating Animals,” makes a great example for leadership. Leadership means motivating others, which means changing their emotions. Few of us like when others motivate us with guilt or blame,[…] Keep reading →

For all my lessons learned, the Model, the Method, and so on, if we want to improve our lives, little works more effectively than Eat well Sleep well Exercise If you do nothing more than the above, you’ll at least have a stable baseline of neutral. Last I checked, no medicine works better than exercise at keeping yourself happy. This advice costs nothing, takes little extra time, and requires no[…] Keep reading →

Crunch time means you don’t have a lot of time, you have a lot to do, mistakes can cost a lot, people depend on you, and likely you depend on other people. People make mistakes. Also, sometimes you have to make decisions based on less information than you’d like. If people dwell on the mistakes or find out later that someone else could have made a better decision, they point[…] Keep reading →

How many times do we have to learn? Giving advice someone hasn’t asked for backfires. For that matter, giving advice to someone who asked for it tends to backfire. Why? Because when we give advice we imply we know the other person’s life better than they do. We appear to impose our values on them. We likely neglect that the other person is already doing something to improve their lives.[…] Keep reading →

Sometimes you recognize something you learned as a great life lesson. Sometimes what you thought was a great life lesson turns out not to be. How can you tell them apart? I’ve found that the more meaningful a life lesson, the more trivial it sounds when you explain it to someone else. For example, I went to North Korea and saw people living under different conditions than anyplace else, yet[…] Keep reading →

This isn’t a diet or fitness blog, but your body is a major part of you. I don’t see how you can live the life you want without achieving the body you want. Conversely, if you don’t have the body you want, I suggest you aren’t living according to your values: your body tells you what to change to create the lifestyle you want. This post is about emotions like[…] Keep reading →

I remember learning a great life lesson in managing intense emotions from a time I felt some of the deepest anxiety of my life. I also finished the project on time and on budget in the process. Two weeks from the deadline on a two-year project, I was coming to realize I didn’t see how I could complete it. People I told I could deliver had put themselves out for[…] Keep reading →