When I arrived home one evening, my son let me know he had received a gift from his piano teacher. The gift was one of those blocks you excavate to find a surprise toy inside. He showed me the brochure it came with, and it showed that the surprise toy could be one of six dragons, with one being “rare” and another being “super rare”. He of course couldn’t wait to dig out the toy to see what he was…
“Who are you?” asks the woman to the mysterious looking man approaching her as she was on her way home after working late, walking through the empty dark lobby of her office building. “It doesn’t matter”, he responds as he pulls a knife from behind him. In a panic, she looks around looking at her options to escape, then catches a glimpse of his face when the moonlight shines on it as he walks across a window while approaching her. …
“Our own relentless search for novelty and social status locks us into an iron cage of consumerism. Affluence has itself betrayed us.” – Tim Jackson We are wired to always want something new. It gives us a high, a shot of dopamine, when we acquire a new item or a new experience. This need has lead us to become the advanced civilization that we are. Where this gets us in trouble is that this need often conflicts with our financial…
You did it! You’ve made the decision to make a change in your life for your benefit or others’! For the sake of an example, let’s say you decided to start eating healthier. But then you find yourself in front of your favorite desert and a battle begins in your head. One voice tells you to not eat it; the other voice is trying to convince you to go ahead. Unfortunately that second voice is pretty damn convincing most of…
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” These of course are…
What is the most important word to you? What if I told you it was your name? Maybe this sounds egotistic to you, but think of how you feel when people call you by your name versus calling you without mentioning it. Most of us have heard about the importance of remembering someone’s name. You might have even looked up ways on how to remember it: repeat it to them as in, “Hi John, nice to meet you”; associate it…
Samuel was finally there! After so many years of planning and saving money he was ready to pull the trigger on starting his own business, opening up a gas station. Because he had a tight budget, he had to cut some corners. He even debated adding a restroom due to cost of plumbing, calculating if it was cheaper to just have a porta potty outside, but decided to go ahead with a small restroom with minimal cost invested in it. …
If someone told you that you had to paint the Mona Lisa the same way Leonardo da Vinci did above, what would be your initial response? Chances are it probably isn’t going to be “I’ll have it ready by next week”. Maybe you would feel overwhelmed by the task, not knowing where to even begin, and quickly dismiss it as “I can’t do that”. But what if you were told to paint just the top left square in the picture…
Once upon a time a psychology professor walked around on a stage while teaching stress management principles to an auditorium filled with students. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they’d be asked the typical “glass half empty or glass half full” question. Instead, with a smile on her face, the professor asked, “How heavy is this glass of water I’m holding?” Students shouted out answers ranging from eight ounces to a couple pounds. She replied, “From my perspective, the…
You meet up with someone you want to establish a good relationship with for business reasons. As you all are talking, politics somehow comes up in the conversation. He says something you clearly don’t agree with and so you contradict him, making your point clear. He in turns doesn’t agree with your comment, and continues by telling you how your view is wrong. After you disagree again, he gets aggravated and after giving you a quick handshake with a forced…