Never Work A Day in Your Life

One of my mentors (Steve Chandler) offers a powerful distinction useful in just about every area of life: expectations vs. agreements. Most of us have expectations. Expectations about how life should go and how people should behave. Invariably, many of these expectations are not met. As a result we are disappointed, frustrated and upset. We…

“Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.” – John Wooden I’ve heard that you get what you expect. It’s true. Why? Because we decide what everything means. And these decisions determine what we do and don’t do, consciously or otherwise, all the time. If we…

“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought.” – Jonathan Swift This reminds me of an oft-quoted line: when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. Both are excellent reminders that our perceptions and ways of seeing things are habits (that…

Defeat never comes to any man until he admits it. – Josephus Daniels . . . when you give up. When you stop learning and trying. When you decide that (the illusion of) safety and stagnation is better than intelligent risks and action. Losing is not defeat. “Failure” is not defeat. Not-getting-what-you-want is not defeat….

People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things. – Sir Edmund Hilary Extraordinary is not something you achieve, or arrive at, or can even purchase. It’s something that you become. You become extraordinary by what you do. Or is it? *  *  * As Sir Edmund says, you do extraordinary things…

Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip. – Winston Churchill Sure, this quote is dripping with sarcasm and is both clever and funny, but it raises an important point (by way of absurdity . . . ): How tactful are you?…