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 […]
Archive | Encouragement
Option X Thinking
By Charles Marshall on July 6, 2016 in Change, Choice, Encouragement, Inspiration, Motivation, Personal Development, Success
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 […]
Some Kidding Aside – Power of Vision
By Charles Marshall on June 13, 2016 in Choice, Encouragement, Inspiration, Motivation, Personal Development, Vision
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 […]
Do You Buy Chairs? – The Power of Belief
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 […]
Some Kidding Aside – Take Occupational Action
By Charles Marshall on April 29, 2016 in Change, Choice, Encouragement, Inspiration, job change, Motivation, Personal Development, Success
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 […]
Blinded by Ignorance
By Charles Marshall on January 29, 2016 in Encouragement, Inspiration, Motivation, Uncategorized, Vision
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 […]
Some Kidding Aside – Tuning Your Vision
By Charles Marshall on July 6, 2015 in Encouragement, Inspiration, Motivation, Success, Uncategorized, Vision
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 […]
Some Kidding Aside – Blinded by the Immediate
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 […]
Some Kidding Aside – Why should I choose?
Toward the beginning of my speaking career, my main marketing method was telemarketing. Back in those days, I sat at my desk for hours each day making call after call in an attempt to drum up business. If you wanted to get someone’s attention in the days before the Internet, you had to pick up […]
Some Kidding Aside – What success is
I believe success can best be defined as the process of fulfilling one’s potential. It’s really the only definition for success that makes any sense. Since all of us come into the world with different external and internal gifts, the only fair way to evaluate one’s success is to measure one’s growth. By “external” gifts, […]