My grandmother was born on the kitchen table, was a crack shot with a gun, and had ammo on her Christmas list. She told me to “suck it up” when I complained about my teachers. I resented the fact that she didn’t take my part when I came home crying that Mrs. Archie...
Is it shallow to judge people by their appearance? I mean, aren’t we admonished not to judge a book by its cover, or make assumptions about people based on what we see on the outside—things like race, gender, or age. Sure, we can tell ourselves that we are people of...
Risks are messy for one simple reason: they involve our emotions. Life soon teaches us that controlling our emotions is like holding a tiger by the tail—hard and unpredictable. Not only are emotions unpredictable, but they’re also unreliable. Our heart is quite...
In the American Psychological Association’s annual survey on stress, people cited a lack of willpower as the number one barrier to following through with changes that would improve their lives. What they’re really saying is that they don’t have the self-control to...
Several years ago I faced a health scare that forced me to take a different look at how to get through challenges and setbacks. I was on a treadmill for my annual physical and the attending physician suddenly shouted for me to stop—immediately. He said the test was...
A few years back, I entered a 6-mile race called the Jingle Bell Run with some of my fellow FBI agents. Fueled by willpower, I tried desperately to keep up with them, but within the first few yards, they pulled away and left me behind. And then, as we entered the last...
Before. Hi-tech companies flew recent hires to Silicon Valley, the promised land of in-house gourmet cafeterias, gyms, Zumba classes, hair salons, and on-site laundry. Now. Employees look for a balance between a cool job with the conveniences of living according to...
Some of the first words on the pages of a typical self-help book are, “Follow your passion.” Once you start going down that hopeless rabbit hole, you’re likely to find yourself surrounded by lots of lost people who mumble to themselves as they sleepwalk through life....
This is not a time for us to panic. The media does that for us. Nor is it a time for blind optimism, either. That’s what Instagram is for. Somewhere in between is where normal people live. For folks like you and me, it’s a time for tough-love because it does no good...
We’ve all started over in a different environment, lost a job, or had a relationship fail. We grapple for a lifeline as we struggle to overcome these setbacks. We feel the tug of war between a cerebral brain that thinks its way through problems and an emotional limbic...
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