People will never behave the way we want them to, and if we stake our happiness or success on how everyone is treating us, we’re in trouble. Let me give you an example. Recently my 22-year-old bikini clad granddaughter Rachel and I explored one of central Florida’s...

Charles Bukowski asked, “Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?” It can be a scary question at times. It doesn’t have to mean we are in the wrong profession in life—although I’ve known many people who came to that conclusion after...

Last week my heart was broken; my wonderful cocker spaniel Grigio had to be euthanized. He was a 14-year-old goofy dog who zig zagged through life having fun, being silly and making lots of friends. He especially loved children since he had his own boy, and he wagged...

“By believing passionately in something that does not yet exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired,” said Nikos Kazantzakis. Which is great when we have the resources and tools to create that focus. But what about when we get...

I was speaking to a group of about 70 when I made the mistake of asking if anyone in the audience hadn’t heard of (whatever new concept I was teaching at the time), and no one raised a hand. I continued speaking and about ten minutes later, from the left side of the...

At one time I was upset with someone who worked for me, and I composed an articulate, lengthy email telling her what she had done wrong. I then sent the email to an old friend and asked her thoughts. She promptly replied back that if I wanted to really make matters...

In a class I’m currently teaching, a woman, now retired from the military, told me she wanted to be a pilot. Rules back then prohibited women from going to flight school. Thank goodness those rules have changed, but it made me think of how often we set up our own...

Lately I’ve stumbled into several large, messy setbacks, and because of the circumstances I’ve felt completely justified in missing some deadlines and deciding to revisit some of my goals. I even spent a small amount of time wallowing in self-pity. Then I read...

When I was a teenager, I used to have what was referred to back then as bunking parties. My friends brought blankets or sleeping bags and dumped them on my concrete basement floor. Then we played games, ate endlessly, and somewhere around midnight we would put on our...

Apparently I asked all the wrong questions. Is there air conditioning? Does the flap completely close to keep out bugs? Is it true that the men’s and women’s bathrooms here are partitioned only by vines? It was all very weird and different--sleeping in a teepee in...

I was working in Midtown on 9/11, and as I was walking back to my apartment amid sirens, smoke and the roar of fighter planes overhead—a strange thing happened. New Yorkers started talking to each other. We were all in shock, no one’s cell phone worked, and so we...

We hiked two miles and had just turned around toward our car when my friend saw it. She pointed to our left and there, about three football fields away, was a grizzly on its hind legs tracking us. She started to run and I quietly hissed that running would make us look...

“Help people use their mental erasers to forgive and forget what went wrong…Teach them to go from saboteur to cheerleader, remind them to be tolerant with their own mistakes, it’s how we learn and grow.” This reminder from my new Shortcuts to Success book is...

Most people are winners, some are disguised as losers. Don’t let their disguises fool you, is a reminder from my new book Shortcuts to Success. It’s so important because when we fall back on what we’ve constructed from past experience with people, we lose out on...

I have a reputation for getting lost anywhere, and I live up to my reputation often. I visited a friend in the hospital a few months ago and spent 10 to 15 minutes trying to find the right exit, in order to find the parking garage. My inabilities in this area are...

The small, inner me often looks at situations and has amazing ideas on things I’d like to say or do, but then as I think about them, they begin to seem childish and naïve and I keep quiet. I listened to that inner voice once when I was walking down Fifth Avenue, and...

When I was younger, I believed everyone’s opinion about what I could and couldn’t do and what I was and wasn’t capable of. It was exhausting, I was always carrying around the limitations others thought I possessed. As you can probably guess my self-esteem was pretty...

Others are usually watching us, not in a creepy way, but in order to gain inspiration by learning how we react to frustration, disappointment, annoyance, etc. Even if we think we’re in our own little silos, working from home, away from the world, our attitudes and...

Have you ever gotten in the way of your own success?  Years ago, when I lived in Manhattan, my NSA (National Speaker’s Association) chapter voted me their representative at a national speech contest. As I prepared for the speech my ego kept reminding me I had to...

There’s a silly bluegrass song called “Just Because” about a woman staying with a man, just because, he has lots of money. The song is fun to play, but the “Just Because” mentality is something I hear all the time in the business world. It goes like this: “I am not...