What potentially meaningful thing are you avoiding right now? For me, it’s networking. Specifically, the proactive outreach required to open up new business opportunities. I’m naturally introverted, my schedule is already packed, and I certainly don’t get any dopamine hits from scraping through LinkedIn. I’ll admit, I even looked into using an AI agent to
The all-girls chorus sang first in our recent high school choir concert. Their voices were beautiful as they harmonized in unity. If you closed your eyes, you’d think they were angels. But seeing them made me think that they probably didn’t all view themselves as angels. Do you know what someone looks like when they
It’s been a tumultuous start to the year in geopolitics, tech, and capital markets. There’s no better time to think about how to improve ourselves so that we can improve the world around us. We can’t control much, but we can manage our attitude and determination to grow. Rather than addressing a specific area of
I would be a better version of myself if I were more consistent with some habits. Because of that, I’m joining millions of other humans this month in considering making a resolution for the year. James Clear, who is widely recognized as the author of the best book on habits, says the key with resolutions
Last weekend, my wife and I had a simple disagreement. It should have been resolved quickly because we generally communicate well with each other. This time we didn’t. Something about this particular disagreement … this particular situation … in this particular moment escalated. In retrospect, we should have seen it coming. Our only escalated conflict
When I went through marriage counseling, one of the biggest realizations I had was this: Criticism that contradicts my idealized self-image makes me very defensive. It’s sometimes referred to as an identity quake: a rocked self-image that can be disorienting and triggering. For example, part of my self-image is that I’m highly focused on others.
I loved my first job out of college developing and integrating corporate technology systems. Many days were spent either alone or with teams enabling business processes and getting systems to “talk to each other.” We learned to think in conditional (if-then) statements and Boolean logic (it’s this AND that, OR that NOT that). In other
Last week the Indiana Pacers were trailing the New York Knicks by 14 points with less than three minutes remaining in Game 1 of the NBA Eastern Conference finals. Then they did something no team that is losing by so many points with so little time remaining has done since the NBA started tracking play-by-play
Monks practice their faith with self-denial and dedicated simplicity. The original Christian monks lived in the Egyptian desert. One day, Abbot Macarius said to his fellow monks, “Brethren, flee.” Confused, one of the monks asked, “How can we fly further than this, seeing we are here in the desert?” Macarius placed his finger to his
Over the holidays, I observed many people on work calls during their “time off.” Family members and friends often watched and waited, or just went off on their own. One daughter mindlessly scrolled her phone while she waited for her dad to finish his call, pausing every five minutes to signal her impatience. A friend
Matt Norman is president of Norman & Associates, which offers Dale Carnegie Training in the North Central US. Dale Carnegie Training is a global organization ...READ MORE