Twenty years ago, I used to run daily around a lake near my house. One day, I saw a man rowing on the water. Because I had been a rower in college—and he was the only person I’d ever seen rowing on this particular lake—I told my wife Kari that night that I was going
I used to manage a product that provided transcripts and summaries of corporate earnings calls to investors. This was before AI, so the transcripts were produced by stenographers and the summaries were written by lawyers. The thinking was simple: Stenographers were trained to produce verbatim, sequential output, whereas the lawyers were trained to produce accurate,
We are swimming in ego-centric waters. Media, tech, education, sports, and the modern workplace generally set a glidepath toward “self.” This external pressure is reinforced by our own brain’s self-protective measures. The slide is often a slow and subtle bend inward toward our own appetites, agendas, and concerns. As C.S. Lewis wrote in The Screwtape
Recently, a friend—someone whose personality is much more direct and skeptical than mine—told me that a project I created was wrong and wouldn’t work. Because of his abrupt, borderline-rude delivery, I immediately shut down and distanced myself from him. My resentment had nothing to do with whether he was right. It was entirely about the
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
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
Leo flinched and shot up, his eyes darting wildly. “What was that? Oh no, not now.” As his colleague Maya calmly assessed the fallen supply rack, Leo fumbled for his phone and hit the button for maintenance, his face heating up in stress and irritation. With clipped, exasperated breaths, he began to explain the problem,
We were worried entering this summer that we didn’t have enough activity scheduled for our kids. And yet, it turned out to be one of the best summers for our family…in large part because it was so unscheduled. We ended up filling the unscheduled time with great spontaneity and connection. In a similar way, I
Imagine a flight where the pilot, instead of following standard procedures, decides to do things based on their mood. One day, they might be meticulous with their pre-flight checks, and the next, they might rush through them. Naturally, this unpredictable behavior would make the co-pilot and crew highly anxious! They wouldn’t know what to expect,
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.
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