High school was not easy for me. I never cared for the teenage wasteland parties. An exciting Friday night in my little Wyoming town was to drag main street and turn up the volume on our car radios. Girls got married, and guys got drunk. I wanted to be somewhere else....
I sat and listened to an elderly couple tell me how they’d been approached by a financial advisor who persuaded them to invest their life savings in a Ponzi scheme guaranteed to produce a 50% return on investment within 6 months. I was the FBI agent they contacted...
FBI agents who work undercover are given a series of psychological tests to determine their level of self-awareness. Self-awareness enables agents to predict their responses when confronted with unexpected situations that can accompany undercover work. The...
Both parents and teachers extol the virtue of good grades if you want to be successful in business and life. The premise goes something like this: good grades mean you’re smarter and will be offered better career opportunities. If you want to be successful in life,...
Before becoming an FBI agent, I thought I could become successful by simply working hard. It got me through school with good grades and into my first job as a fashion buyer. My thinking shifted, however, when I met my first FBI firearms instructor. He barked out...
Integrity is a word that we hear almost every day but we seldom take the time to think about it. Integrity is similar to ethics, honesty, and trustworthiness—they are a moral code of values that affect our behavior. Integrity is about doing the right thing in every...
When I was young, I was a competitive and scholastic student. My goal was to get an A in every class, both in high school and college. I’d drop a class if it looked as though I wouldn’t get an A. Ultimately, my statistics grade took me down a notch and taught me...
As a kid, I looked at many things as big scary goals. Our ranch house was located at the bottom of a canyon, cut deep into the earth over the years by the North Laramie River. Several times a year my Dad climbed the steep south mountain of the canyon to visit an...
In the FBI Academy, we trained how to run down and tackle individuals who resisted arrest. I was a lousy runner and came up at the rear of every race. The idea that I could run down or even catch up with a suspect produced snarky comments and rolled eyes from my...
Like many of you, I’ve had to learn how to overcome several obstacles in my life. One of the biggest obstacles hit me in the face while I was in the FBI Academy—I was stressed out because I found it difficult to pass the physical fitness requirements. Among the...
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