It’s not uncommon to hear people making excuses about why they didn’t take advantage of the opportunities that life sent their way. You’ll hear them say things like, “I could have done this or that….” Then come the excuses: “…but at the time my kids were little,” or “but we had just bought a new…
I came across an interesting quote made by a psychologist named Theodor Reik more than 50 years ago. “In order to be happy oneself, it is necessary to make at least one other person happy.” He went on to say, “The secret to human happiness is not in self-seeking, but in self-forgetting.” What Dr. Reik…
This has to be one of the strangest questions I’ve ever heard. It implies that you can only be one or the other–right or happy. In reality, you can be both pretty much all the time unless you’re being right is tied to your having to prove to someone else that they’re wrong. Now you’ve…
Like many professional athletes, most of us have fallen into an occasional slump where we’re not performing at our usual level of effectiveness. A slump usually takes the form of a lengthy drought between successes. And, like professional athletes, many of us try to break out of our slump by working harder and longer. What…
Last week I attended the most amazing memorial service ever. The deceased person’s name was Joe. I had only known him for a few years and right after I met him he was diagnosed with cancer. He underwent numerous rounds of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. He was unable to eat or drink and had to…
I just finished a fantastic book titled Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny. It’s a Murder Mystery set in and around Montreal. The main character is a Chief Inspector named Armand Gamache. In the book, Mr. Gamache mentions four sentences that lead to wisdom that were passed on to him by his mentor. They are so concise…
I fell into this trap recently when it appeared that things weren’t going well in certain aspects of my professional life and I began to stress out. When this happened, I lost track of the fact that I have a wonderful wife, a fantastic family, lots of great friends, a nice roof over my head…
The Arizona Republic recently published a feature article about Arizona Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema written by Rebekah L. Sanders. Ms. Sinema’s story is truly amazing. She was born in Tucson, AZ. When she was still a child, her parents divorced and her mother moved the family to Florida. For several years they were so poor that…
This past October 27, I posted a Reminder dealing with the fact that in the National Football League, the players typically hang out in the locker room and the head coach hangs out in his office. This sends a very clear message that the head coach is the boss and the players are the subordinates.…
A recent article by Kaila White, which appeared in The Arizona Republic, featured a very special dining hall cashier at the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University named Vicke Davis. According to the article, everyone knows her and loves her because she cares about the students who eat there. She knows their names, what…