I had the opportunity to observe two Great Blue Herons. One was standing in the middle of a swift flowing stream while the other stood safely on the bank. You can guess which one was catching all the fish–not the one standing on the bank. The same holds true for people. If you expect to…
View As Newsletter A professional golfer informed me that the biggest reason most golfers’ scores don’t improve much is that they tend to play with other golfers whose skill levels are roughly the same as their own. As a result, there’s no one to learn from, so there’s no growth or improvement. The same holds…
Human beings start out in life with absolutely no fear of failure. Take learning how to walk, for example. We repeatedly failed in our initial attempts, but we got back up and tried again with smiles on our faces. The same thing happened when we were learning how to ride a bike. Growing up, it…
I recently took a cab from the Conference Center on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin to the Austin airport. The cab driver turned out to be from Morocco and was very pleasant and chatty. When we arrived at the airport, he asked me if I wanted a blank receipt for the…
An article titled, “Tips to Receive the Best Raises,” which appeared in Career Builder.com, contains some solid advice for earning positive attention at work. This advice is so basic that it can help you succeed in any type of situation whether it’s work, a service organization, a club, a church or life in general. Here…
In a recent post on The HBR BLOG NETWORK / THE DAILY STAT, Andrew O’Connell referenced a study that looked at the benefits of interacting with cashiers. The post read, “If you buy your coffee quickly at Starbucks without saying much of anything, you’ll probably arrive at the office sooner, but if you stop to…
For the longest time it was thought that people donated to charity or did things to aid the less fortunate because of some unselfish concern for the welfare of others. On the other hand, an article which appeared in The Wall Street Journal concluded that doing things to benefit others is a very selfish act. The…
Study after study has shown that successful people possess high levels of self-confidence—a rock solid belief in their abilities. This confidence stems from the fact that they have very large “comfort zones.” The reason is that successful people, as they go through life, are constantly trying out new and different things—they’re continually expanding their comfort…
A subscriber sent in the following comment which reinforces last week’s Reminder: “When my husband passed, and I was getting out of the house again, the kind of greetings that undid me were ‘how are you doing?’ Or, ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ I was trying to keep it together and it just opened the…
We’ve all experienced those awkward moments when we want to greet someone who is going through a difficult time and we’re not sure what to say. Advice columnist Carolyn Hax shared some anonymous advice from one of her readers on this subject in The Arizona Republic. “A man in our office was dying. The last…