We are all creators. I played soccer for 20 years and when I think back to what it was I loved so much about the game, it was the creativity. It was the ability to create. Every time I got the ball I had a chance to create something – a move, a pass, a shot, a goal. Sometimes it was beautiful, sometimes it wasn’t, but it was all art. It was all an expression of who I was in that moment. In...
What the heck is a sleep coach? That was my first thought when my previous employer offered me an opportunity to connect with one of these specialized coaches. I’m a professional leadership coach myself and even I was skeptical about what exactly I could get out of a session with a sleep coach. But I was desperate. It had been two months since I had a decent night’s sleep and I’d found myself in...
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone” wrote the French philosopher Blaise Pascal back in the 17th century. According to Pascal, we fear the silence and we dread boredom. If at all possible, we would much rather fill our lives with distraction. We would rather do anything than get to know our true selves. Enter coronavirus, the...
I grew up with the most inspiring brother you could imagine. When I was a kid he used to put motivational messages up around my room. I remember waking up and seeing his handwriting on the ceiling above my bed: “Did you get better today?” I was 11 years old. I’d turn on my computer to see that he’d changed my desktop background: “Someone somewhere is working harder than you.” Who has a brother...
I spent the first 20 years of my life playing soccer, and the last 15 years playing sales. What do soccer and sales have to do with each other you might ask? It turns out quite a lot. At least that was my first impression when I made the decision to hang-up my cleats and pick-up the phone. On the first day of my first sales job I was put into a team with about 10 other teammates, given a target...
There are three levels of happiness. The first level is reached through pleasure. We eat, drink, or experience something that feels good and we’re rewarded with dopamine. This level of happiness is CHEMICAL. The second level is reached through narrative. We look at our job, our achievements (or perceived lack thereof), our family life…and we tell ourselves a story about it all. A story of...
Has our civilization advanced? We didn’t need gyms fifty thousand years ago because as hunters and gatherers we had a naturally active lifestyle. We didn’t need nutritionists fifty thousand years ago because everything we ate came from the earth. We didn’t need therapists fifty thousand years ago because we lived in nature, had ample free time, had few material possessions, and were always with...
A friend asked me how many books I’ve read this year. I said 3. He’s read 15. After our chat he sent me an article on how to increase reading speed so that you can consume more books faster. Consuming too much too fast leads to indigestion. I learned that when I was a toddler. It’s true in regard to what we put into our bodies and I think it’s true in regard to what we put into our minds. It is...
When you wake up with a toothache, you’re miserable. All you want is to NOT have a toothache. But when you wake up without a toothache, are you full of joy for not having a toothache? Probably not. When you have a toothache you’re a -10, and when you DON’T have a toothache, you’re just a 0. What a bad deal, huh? It’s like walking into a casino and playing a game that has no upside and...
My soccer coach used to run us to death. He’d have us sprinting up and down steep hills…carrying a teammate on our back. “What am I, a Navy SEAL?” I remember thinking to myself. When we finished we’d be exhausted. We’d put our hands on our knees and drop our gaze to the ground. Our coach didn’t like that. “Heads up! Heads up!” he would scream. I never understood why it was so important to...
If you want to become a great leader, study a great mother. Yesterday I asked one such great mother (my own), “What’s the role of a mother?” Without hesitation, she provided an answer: “To love, nurture, and protect.” Isn’t that the role of every leader? The expression of love will look different in a professional setting compared to a family setting, but it is still love that your people are...
Wherever you go, there you are. If you’re thinking that changing a job or a house or a location will have a lasting impact on your happiness then you might hear someone utter this platitude. I’d like to make a minor alteration to the saying: “Wherever you go, there your brain is.” The reason why changing your external circumstances rarely has the kind of impact you hope is because...
I was sitting on a curb down a narrow alley in Kolkata. I’d befriended a young local who lived in the slums and had asked him what his favorite food was. “Whatever I get, I eat.” The moment I heard his answer I realized just how privileged the question was. I had a lot to learn about the line between necessity and luxury. Choice, favorites, preferences. These are all luxuries. It also occurred to...
Life is a puzzle. This weekend I got to put this puzzle together with my 3-year old niece. It may only be a 9-piece puzzle but when you factor in that she wanted to break it up and put it back together again 27 times it turned out to be quite the project. What struck me most was how excited she was every time she found a piece that fit. What started as a confusing pile of pieces slowly began to...
I once stood under a freezing waterfall in the mountains of Japan. In the middle of winter. And believe it or not I wasn’t out there alone. There were others. This was a thing. It’s an ascetic practice called “takigyo” or “waterfall meditation” and it holds the purpose of purifying and strengthening one’s mind and body. Standing directly under the path of the heavy and unimaginably cold...
Rest In Peace. Rest. In peace. Isn’t that what we all want? To be able to rest…in peace? It’s ironic that these are the words we put on the graves of the dead. It’s as if our collective belief is that we can only reach this state when life is over. Instead of writing “Rest In Peace” on the graves of the dead I’d like to start writing it on the t-shirts of the living. I want people to know...
How many lives do you have? We’re told that we only have one life, and that we’d better make the most of it. As the story goes, we’re born and then we die. The time in between is our one life. But look a little closer. Are you sure that you’re born just once? Are you sure that you die just once? Put a photo of you at 5 years old next to a photo of you today. Are you that 5 year old? Do you still...
Up the ladder, down the ladder. Wherever you are in your professional life, it might be said that you are on some rung of the career ladder. The top and bottom rungs of that ladder may have been defined by you or, more likely, by society. But either way, you’re on a rung. Naturally, we all want to do what one wants to do when on a ladder: CLIMB! And so it is, perhaps quite naturally, that...
The coronavirus has brought extraordinary devastation to our external lives, but even more chaos to our inner lives. Anxiety, uncertainty, loss, fear. For you, the inner storm may just be heavy rain with some intermittent hail, maybe some thunder and lightning. But for many, the inner storm feels more like a tornado. So what should we do? Well, what does one do during a storm? One seeks shelter...
Questions can change the world. I was at a team dinner about a month ago when, out of the blue, a colleague turned to me and asked a question. “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” No context, no heads up, just a question. You can imagine my surprise as I looked up from my ravioli. It felt like someone had pulled the pin from a grenade and dropped it in my lap. What would you do if you...
