When You Lose

It’s not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised. The mosquito is swatted. – Mary Flannery O’Connor It’s not enough to not be passive, one must have desire. It’s not enough to move, one must have a purpose. It’s not enough to be active, one must be…

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. – Robert Louis Stevenson Results are important, no doubt. But the measure of our lives, and their direction can’t always be discerned at the end of each day, or week, or month. I want you to be careful with my…

Change is a door that can only be opened from the inside. – Terry Neil Any change that doesn’t come from within, that isn’t freely chosen and authentic, is coerced, and will be resisted. Even if one successfully sustains a coerced change, some form/amount of misery will ensue. *  *  * Decide who you want…

“There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity.” – Tom Peters A mentor of mine once said that how you do one thing is how you do everything. While I don’t buy into that notion completely (only 99.999%), I do use the idea as a guiding principle — and it informs my…

I have long held humans are meaning-seeking and meaning-creating creatures. Language is our primary tool of meaning creation and transmission. The words we use create our lives, both individually and organizationally. If you work in an organization (of any sort, or size) the words that are chosen, and repeated, make a huge difference. Take a…

I received a message (included in its entirety below) from a mentor of mine that I wanted to share. The idea that we’d rather be ruined than change is real for so many people (they just don’t know it, consciously). What’s happening with so many people is that, by playing it safe, they are quietly…