The purpose of failure is to make you grow Exercise your imagination with me for a moment. Imagine you’re sitting on a piano bench, practicing your scales on an old upright piano. Beside you sits an old Russian piano master who intently watches your exercises. He holds a small ruler in his hand, and when you […]
In Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is lead by the Ghost of Christmas Future to a cemetery and forced to look upon his own gravestone. The inscription had only his name, and yet it was a symbol of terror and despair for Scrooge, the physical manifestation of a life misspent. Suppose for a […]
Option X: the answer that’s not on the test paper. The answer that isn’t obvious. One of history’s most prominent examples of Option X thinking is found in the legend of the Gordian Knot. The legend goes that an oracle in ancient Phrygia foretold that whoever was able to untie a certain intricate knot tied […]
The Power of Vision is the lens through which you view the possibilities of your journey. If your windshield is obstructed or blurry, then you’re going to have a hard time telling if you’re on the right path in life, or whether you are still even on the road at all. Hence you need to […]
In the 1996 movie Phenomenon, John Travolta plays George Malley, a simple, good-hearted car mechanic living in a small town in northern California. After attending his birthday celebration at a local tavern, George walks outside, looks up at the stars, and is hit with a blinding flash of light. Shortly afterward, George discovers he has […]
It’s time to take some occupational action! I walked into a little shop in an airport and asked the guy behind the counter how he was doing. He mumbled something about being as well as he could be, being stuck there. When I asked him where else he would like to be, he thought for […]
When my wife and I found out that Jerry Seinfeld was going to be performing about 45 minutes away from us in Athens, Georgia, my first thought was, “Why Athens, Georgia?” and my second thought was, “Great! Let’s go!” So, my wife got online and bought a couple of tickets. Shock Alert: They weren’t cheap. […]
Blinded by a Ignorance Not long ago, a second-year college student named Cathy told me that she wants to go to law school when she graduates. I asked her what type of law she wants to practice, and she replied that she wants to prosecute animal cruelty cases. I asked her if there is a […]
Have you ever heard the expression “Out of sight, out of mind”? It means if something leaves your visual range, you’re probably not going to think about it anymore. It’s human nature. We are instinctually and habitually visual creatures. When you think or hear the words “red wagon,” you don’t visualize the letters r-e-d-w-a-g-o-n in […]
Trying to live a successful life in this world can be like trying to compose a symphony in a battlefield. Imagine that all your life you’ve been crawling through a minefield of missed opportunities, bad decisions, and failed attempts. You are now lying wounded in the muddy foxhole of your present circumstances with the bombs […]
