Oprah and I have agreed on many things over the years; yet, imagine my surprise when I was reading her ‘What I Know for Sure’ column in this month’s magazine to find her expose on personal power. I quote: “The secret is alignment: when you know for sure that you’re on course, and doing exactly…

A friend of mine and I were talking the other day, and she commented how people simply wouldn’t return phone calls and we both said in unison: ‘that is just so rude.’ Frankly, that one small example of simply not calling people back has become more of a standard practice, than an exception. This got…

People have always created or looked for heroes to give us inspiration, support or even hope. Think about when we were growing up, who were our fictional heroes? Superman, Nancy Drew, Popeye, and even The Tortoise in Aesop’s fable The Tortoise and the Hare (maybe the Bugs Bunny version!). We learned early to identify characters…

The situation is this: Bob is an executive who doesn’t believe he is taken seriously by his new immediate manager (an SVP of a publicly traded company) and his manager’s associated leadership team. His boss disagrees with his ideas and approaches for the business, and questions his overall ability to ‘think strategically.’ He categorizes Bob as…

Bruno Bettelheim was a Holocaust survivor who achieved fame and fortune through his work as a child psychologist. The opening line in his book The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (Penguin Psychology) is: “If we hope to live not just from moment to moment, but in true consciousness of our…

I love a great “feel good” movie. Many of our wonderful feel good movies revolve around sports – Hoosiers, Rudy, The Rookie … we all have our favorites. Mine is about a horse (still athletic, just four not two legs). It was 1938 – a year of monumental hardship and challenges, not unlike 2009. People were…

No one likes a know-it-all. Yet, the world is full of folks who simply love to espouse their wisdom, opinions, and judgments trying to add value, show their smarts, pound their chests, exercise their control, cover their real insecurities (or just classic CYA), and in some cases just belittle the other person to make themselves…

Every year, if you are like me, we make a list of resolutions to concentrate and ‘align’ our intentions for the New Year. I am actually one of those characters who love making resolutions – and I post them front and center on my desk. They help me stay focused. And at the end of…

Over the past few weeks the number of people who have lost their jobs, filed bankruptcy, had their homes foreclosed upon, dipped severely into their retirement nest egg, etc. has grown to epidemic proportions. I have met with a least a dozen individuals and clients who are simply at a loss as to ‘what to…

As we come upon the Thanksgiving holiday, I struggled with what to share which may offer a new set of lenses through which to look at our lives, as so many face a Thanksgiving filled with loss. We are living in a time where the good in the world is often over-shadowed by a myriad…