success

Suspend Your Disbelief

I love poetry, and recently, I re-read the simple and yet profound poem by William Wordsworth ~ With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things. Do you see into the life of things? Or do you allow your mind to stop any exploration into things you know little to nothing about? The reason I ask is that I am curious to know if you are stuck in the pluff mud of life or if you are open to simply suspend your disbelief about the way […]

Difficult Roads Often Lead to Beautiful Destinations

My theme today is “Difficult Roads Often Lead to Beautiful Destinations.” Now, I know that today’s thought is probably the last thing on your mind when you’re slogging through hard times. I get it. We’ve all been there, but if you were truthful with yourself, you’d have to admit that, more often than not, when you do come through the storm and land on the other side, it’s usually never as bad as you thought or expected it to be. And if it was a miserable experience, you can count yourself lucky to have survived. The truth is that many […]

The beginning of wisdom is knowing which question to ask

What is the question that you would like an answer to? Is it a question about your life, your family, or your future? And is there someone who can answer those questions for you? I believe that deep inside, most of us pretty well know the answers to all of the questions that bubble up in our minds, and yet we choose not to answer those questions. We fear the answer we don’t like or want. We don’t want to admit that the answer may be something we don’t want to happen in our lives. Ah, questions! We are all […]

I Quit! Thanks for the Memories

Now, before you get too excited, I am not quitting my blog or podcast, but I am going to quit hanging onto memories that cause me regret. I love the quote by Mason Cooley, “Regret For Wasted Time Is More Wasted Time,” and, frankly, my time is limited, and I don’t need any more time-consuming sad memories, so this year I have quit hanging on to what I thought would happen in my life, and I’m moving forward…on to what else I can make happen for the rest of my amazing life. I saw a video put out by Strayer […]

Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude

A while back, I was flying to a speaking job, and as I left for the airport that morning, it was raining. I looked out the window while we were waiting to take off, and I could tell it was going to be a cold, wet, and rainy ride, in fact, that was the outlook for the entire week where I was heading to speak. Sitting on the plane determining what I was not going to be doing on this trip (since I don’t like to be out in rainy, cold weather), within a few minutes after we took off […]

Be sure you put your feet in the right place

You know, it is a fact of life that sometimes you fall–you just hope that you don’t fall into the water on a leadership training excursion. A few years ago, I was with some friends, and we were doing the typical leadership adventures of bonding with the other team members. Now, something you need to know about me is although I enjoy the outdoors, I have never liked the said “team-building programs.” It’s never been my ambition to fall backward in trust and hope (and prayer) that my teammates will catch me. I don’t have faith or fun on a […]

You’ve Got A (Toxic) Friend

Recently, a client of mine who wants to change the world was taken aback when I told him that he would do well to walk away from his “loser” friends. “How do you know my friends are losers?” he asked. I told him that with all of his community service, non-profit ventures, and summer trips helping others that he had been telling me about, he’d also said that he’d been doing all of this on his own. To me, this was a sign that he needed different friends. “Out of your massive buddy group,” I said, it’s obvious that most […]

Sometimes when you least expect it – you will win

Every once in a while, something happens that restores my faith in how the world works… Recently, I came upon a story of hope where the good guy (or gal, in this case) has a shot to win. Not to say the others in the race are not as worthy, because frankly, they are, but this story touched me, so I want to share it with you. I’m talking about the Oscar nomination for Best Original Song sung by Joni Eareckson Tada for the movie Alone Yet Not Alone. What makes this nomination so unusual is that both the movie […]

The one thing that you have

“The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live only as you can.” –Neil Gaiman I meet a lot of people in my work and travels, and as I have grown in my own life through so many life experiences, I have over time developed a 6th sense (as it were) to see past the façade of who many people want you to think they are, to the underneath of that person and their inside. Not the […]