May 13, 2013

What’s your “in spite of” story?

Have you ever noticed how inspiring stories of triumphal defiance are? We love to cheer for the underdog who perseveres against all the odds and comes out on top. Yes, we love a good Rocky story. Especially when they ...

May 8, 2013

How to discover your own mastery

We have a love affair with specialization. We place a premium on those who’ve honed their skills and expertise to a such a fine degree that they show themselves to be extraordinary. The pursuit of excellence, whether in art, ...

May 6, 2013

Is your mastery a mystery?

“I don’t know what I’m good at.” I hear that comment a lot. I’ve often even thought it myself. There’s a lot of talk about mastery. It’s one of the three elements of intrinsic motivation that Daniel Pink describes ...

May 3, 2013

10 questions to ask when you’re stuck

If uncertainty were a publicly traded company, I’d be a wealthy man, for I’ve owned my share, sold some, and bought more. But I’ve never divested. I’m a long time shareholder in Uncertainty Corp. and I expect to be ...

May 1, 2013

Review: “Succeed” by Heidi Grant Halvorson

If you want to get something done, stop reading this post and read this book instead. Seriously. End of report. But you’re still reading this so you probably want to know why you should. Right? Well read on. ...

April 29, 2013

How I reached the end of my intelligence

How we view our capacity to grow greatly affects how we engage a challenge, be it a dream we aspire to achieve, or the next project we need to get done. As a third-year physics student in college, I ...

April 26, 2013

When anxiety flattens you

Here’s the 3-step formula for living: Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat. Forget any one of those and you’re pretty well sunk. Experience a job loss or health crisis and you feel pretty well sunk too. That punch in the ...

April 22, 2013

A prayer for the anxious

Anxiety affects us all at one time or another. In my previous post, Surviving the tsunami of a job loss, I described how anxiety suppresses our creative thinking about how we might respond. In this post and the next, ...

April 19, 2013

Surviving the tsunami of a job loss

You’ve just been hit with a tsunami. At least that how it seems now that you’ve been told that your “services are no longer needed.” Alternating between anger, discouragement, perplexion, and panic you ask: How could this have happened? ...

April 17, 2013

20-minute goals can save your life

Can 20-minute goals save your life? It did for Joe Simpson. Back in 1985, he and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, were the first to successfully ascend the west face of the Siula Grande peak in the Peruvian Andes. ...

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