There are aspects of your life you do not control. You don’t control how others think or what they want. You don’t control how they treat you or how they respond to you. You don’t control the weather, or the news, or what the late-night hosts say on their shows. You probably don’t control the […]
Second place is the first loser. That’s what so many of us tell ourselves. We mean it as a kind of constructive self-shaming, if such a thing can be real, a way to prod ourselves to give everything we have when we compete with others. It’s not enough to finish second–we should only be satisfied […]
It’s hard to define success. It means something different to each of us: for some, it might be money; for others, power; for still others, fame or status. It might mean love, or well-adjusted children, or a day-to-day joy that life’s trials can’t overcome. If you’re religious, it might mean salvation, or bringing others to […]
Today is the best day of my life. Not because I expect something incredible to happen today, although I’m open to that possibility. Not because I think today will be significantly better than yesterday, although it certainly could be. Not even because I feel particularly good today, although I choose to feel good as often […]
This is the article I started to write on Monday. But that article turned into something else, and I went with it (that’s the kind of thing you get to do when you aren’t writing for an editor). A few people seemed to like it. What I meant to write was more instructional, less abstract. […]
We spend most of our days waiting for someone else to choose us. We raise our hand and wait patiently for the teacher to call us. We apply to schools and wait to see which one wants us. We apply for credit so we can buy things we can’t afford without it. We send our […]
Let’s make sure we have one thing straight before we start: thinking about courage accomplishes nothing. I’m reminded of a riddle I heard a year or so ago, one I often torture my teenage son with: Q: Four frogs are sitting on a log. Three decide to jump off. How many are left? A: Four. […]
Now that I’ve finished my series on Todd Henry’s everyday acts of bravery, I’m starting an even more ambitious series: each Sunday, I’ll post an article focused on how courage can improve a specific area of your life. By my count, there are 14 Sundays left in 2014. So for the rest of the year, […]
It’s Monday. The weekend is over; time to drag ourselves back to work. Or maybe not. A growing number of us get up full of energy on Monday morning, looking forward to whatever the week might bring and burning to get back to something we think is important and worth our time. Those are the […]
Martha’s Daily Inspiration. I don’t remember where I first learned about Martha Beck, but I get a daily message of inspiration from her. Yes, I receive a lot of inspirational messages daily and weekly. For me, a big part of maintaining a positive outlook is consuming positive messages. The Internet makes that easy. Unfortunately, it […]