My apologies for missing the past few Thursdays! I wasn’t off relaxing at a spa or slacking off for the holidays, unfortunately I am helping my significant other, Walt, while he is on the road to recovery with multiple (five total) surgeries due to major complications with open heart surgery. Today is day 30 for him in the hospital and day 29 for me in a hotel across the street (it is a longer story of how we ended […]
Last week, I was remembering the very funny Gilda Radner and her late 1970’s SNL character, “Rosanne Roseannadanna.” I was in the high humidity of Florida and my hair grew as big as her character’s…This week, I came across this great quote, “I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and […]
Can you imagine receiving a ticket for speeding and actually thanking the police officer? Well, it happens to Elton Simmons in Los Angeles. Amazingly, he has given 25,000 tickets with no complaints. No complaints in twenty years, since 1992! He’s the guy sitting on his motorcycle aiming the radar gun at cars all day. I heard this great story on the CBS news and found it on line via the NY Daily News. It’s all in his approach. Elton Simmons stated that […]
In my prior corporate business roles I did a lot of negotiating. Both formal business negotiations with a contract for products and services and less formal negotiations of issues with peers, bosses and teams. In reality, a lot of what we all do comes down to negotiating well! We negotiate to decide what movie to watch or where to go to dinner. One of the most impactful skills for negotiating win/win agreements is to listen for understanding first, before […]
Sometimes you can shift into more thriving through a small shift in what you do. One of my favorite small shifts is having a “walking meeting.” Ask your team if they want to go for a walk around the building to talk as part or all of your meeting. Or if you are meeting a colleague, instead of meeting at a coffee place, meet at a local park and walk while you talk. This little shift will make a […]
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you wind up being governed by your inferiors.” – Plato How can you thrive and still participate in the political process, in the midst of all the political mudslinging? Here are some ideas: Mute the TV during those commercials (or skip them with your DVR or streaming) Even if it is aligned with your political beliefs, if it is negative or full of fear statements they can […]
Harvard Business Review Management Tip-of-the-day, “Out of Time? Give Some Away,” showed up in my in box this week and I loved reading that there was research done on how to be more “time affluent.” It turns out you can feel less pressured and more relaxed if you do something for someone else when you take a break versus mindless surfing of the web. I don’t think that surfing the web is always wasted; it does sometimes pop up […]
In my prior “Hearts and Minds” post I explained the importance of understanding the emotional motivations for change along with the logical. In John Haidt’s book,” The Happiness Hypothesis” and he uses the great metaphor of an elephant for our emotional mind and the rider as the logical mind. Chip and Dan Heath borrowed this metaphor from Haidt (with his permission) for their great book, “Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard.” I am referring to these resources […]
In my last post, “Epiphanies & Shifting Habits” I referred to John Haidt’s book “The Happiness Hypothesis.” I am going back to his book again because I had it top of mind with the memorials of the 9/11 tragedy this week. There is a whole chapter called “The Uses of Adversity” that is full of interesting research; he uses the term, “post traumatic growth” to describe people who grow and thrive more after a tragic event. Of course, […]
In his book, “The Happiness Hypothesis” Jonatahan Haidt explains the challenge with an epiphany that shifts your outlook or even changes your life. After the light bulb goes off, you are often right back in your prior habits three months later. In order to make lasting change you need to retrain your emotional mind and this takes prolonged practice over time to make the shift. This is also the challenge with news years resolutions or a short term diet; […]
