Many years ago, I had attended a personal development type of seminar. The speaker asked the participants to go back in time and to imagine they were five years of age. The seminar leader’s instructions were as follows… “close your eyes… and now in your imagination go back to the time when you were five years of age… look down …
Inspirational author and speaker Stephen Covey once said, “Start with the end in mind.” So whenever a company wants to launch an ethics initiative, we use a simple exercise: “Look at your organization today – its managers, line employees, and customers – and list behaviors and attitudes you’d like to see more of and less of.” We use the same …
The best way to teach our children to succeed is to teach them to fail. After all, if getting everything you want on the first try is success, and everything else is failure, we all fail much more often than we succeed. People who learn how to grow from unsuccessful efforts succeed more often and at higher levels because they …
Yesterday I was talking with a friend who asked my opinion about something he was dealing with. As I shared my thoughts I realized that what I was saying was something that I, also, needed to hear! His situation and mine were different, but the solution was similar. I was surprised and pleased to listen to myself and pay attention …
There’s a song called “Thank God for Dirty Dishes” that makes the point that if you’re lucky to have enough food to make dirty dishes, you should be grateful. So instead of grousing about your property taxes, be thankful you own property. When you have to wait in line at the bank or are stuck in traffic, just be grateful …
On the 13th of January this year, I was high-jacked and put in the trunk of a car by four gun-wielding high-jackers here in Johannesburg, South Africa – for three hours! This was the worst experience imaginable, but strangely enough the longer it went on, the calmer and the calmer I got. You know, in the boot of that car, …
Mignon McLaughlin tells us, “People are made of flesh and blood and a miracle fiber called courage.” Courage comes in two forms: physical courage and moral courage. Physical courage is demonstrated by acts of bravery where personal harm is risked to protect others or preserve cherished principles. It’s the kind of courage that wins medals and monuments. Moral courage may …
Imagine this: the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti—Cite Soleil, to be exact. A slum of seemingly infinite size and unimaginable poverty. Dusty, litter-lined streets with scantily clad people aimlessly milling about. Children scampering in grimy clothes, perhaps a teeshirt or shorts, no diapers whatsoever, and shoes a rarity. The air is hot and muggy, with the scent of unidentifiable debris and …
We convince ourselves that life will be better after we get married, have a baby, then another. Then we’re frustrated that the kids aren’t old enough and we’ll be more content when they are. After that, we’re frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with. We’ll certainly be happy when they’re out of that stage. We tell ourselves that our …
I came home from work. There was a note on our apartment door, “Workers will be installing partitions on the balconies on July 21st and 22nd”. It was the 20th, but when I entered our apartment, there were two men on our balcony, putting the final touches on the new wall that separated our side of the balcony from our …
