I grew up on a remote Wyoming cattle ranch, learning how to navigate sagebrush, rattlesnakes, and corrals full of fresh cow pies. The best shoes for that rough environment were Red Wing lace-up high-top boots. They weren’t much of a fashion statement for a...
You wake up one morning to start your day, but instead of being grateful for the opportunities in life, you realize the spring in your step is gone. Worse, you’ve become apathetic about your work and bored with living in the same house, in the same neighborhood—hell,...
At the FBI Academy, new agents like myself spent five months role-playing, alternating between being the bad guy who needed to be arrested and the good guy whose job it was to take scum off the streets. The role-playing was meant to instill confidence in ourselves...
This article was first published on Forbes Business Council. I remember my dad scolding me for climbing into a corral full of horses. He warned me, “You could get kicked. Use your brains!” Despite knowing the danger, I still step into corrals to pet...
My first low point in life occurred after I graduated from college and found myself in a mindless job. I hated my life and wanted to change it, but how? At first, I thought it was depression, but what I was experiencing stirred something deep within my soul. It felt...
I’m not a natural athlete. This sad fact became evident at a very inconvenient time—my first day of new agent training at the FBI Academy. New agents are tested in physical fitness and required to accumulate certain points in different areas. I landed at the bottom in...
America’s infatuation with happiness goes back to our founding fathers and the U.S. Constitution, in which we are promised “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Somewhere in that fairy tale, reality stepped in and yanked off the bandaid that was supposed to...
Resilience is frequently defined as our ability to bounce back from hardship like rubber bands that pop back to our original shape after being stretched. Likewise, most solutions imply that inspirational quotes, hand-holding, and large doses of sympathy will help us...
Trauma is experienced in many different ways. Soldiers can experience it on the battlefield, healthcare workers in hospitals and emergency rooms, and law enforcement officers when they pull out a gun. You and I can experience it when we lose a job, get a divorce, lose...
One of my investigations in San Francisco targeted a foreign spy who hated the United States. I’ll call him Agent X. He worked for a hostile intelligence service headquartered in Asia. Silicon Valley was a hotbed of foreign spies trying to steal classified and...
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