The purpose of powerful conversations is to influence people and change mindsets. As an FBI agent, I needed to persuade people that it was in their best interest to cooperate with an FBI investigation. You may need a powerful conversation to change the behavior of one...
The first thing I learned as an FBI agent was that I would need to be emotionally intelligent if I planned to live long enough to spend my retirement pension. Agents who are emotionally intelligent have the ability to read the emotions of others before a gun is drawn...
When I was 8, my brother and I had to share a horse for a few summer months while mine healed from a sprained ankle. One day that summer Dad announced that he needed to help a neighbor trail several hundred head of cattle over the weekend. I felt certain that, since I...
We’re in the middle of a “make everyone feel good” culture where it’s important everyone walks away a winner. The idea that everyone gets a blue ribbon because they showed up produces a mindset that doesn’t understand how to cope with risk. Success is handed to them...
How well do you know yourself? We plan for retirement and vacations, but we seldom plan for how we’ll become a better person, the person we want to be, not the one shaped by our circumstances. Most of us assume that we’ll get the gist of this whole...
The things that come closest to killing us are the things that make us grow. Damn, why do life’s best lessons need to come wrapped up in adversity? Our obstacles will not define us; we will be defined by how we overcame them. We’ve all experienced adversity in some...
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