I had often wondered why some people work hard to succeed and some people don’t want to work at all. Are we wired that way or are we listening to a tape that our parents and teachers planted inside our head from the time we were young through all the days of our life? We know it’s not a case of genetics because those are medical traits that are handed down from parents to their offspring. So, if it’s not …
On the face of it, Facebook’s suicide prevention plan seems like a good idea, if not an ambitious idea. There are a couple of things that I question, one of which is that its users can flag when they think a friend may be considering suicide and click on “Report Post” and the next time that person logs in, he will be told to contact the person who is concerned about him, enlist the help of another friend, or put …
About twenty-five years ago, one of my friends told me he wanted to quit his job because he didn’t trust his boss. He was in the kind of job where he had complete autonomy and didn’t really have too many occasions where he had to interact with his boss. I kept probing, trying to understand what trust had to do with what he was hired to do. In my estimation, he was at the top of his grade, top salary, …
The older I get, the more difficult I find it to be in the constant presence of people who are habitually negative. Considering the type of work I do, it’s often difficult to remove myself from their presence but sometimes it’s a matter of survival. We all have obstacles in our path; life isn’t perfect and we don’t live in a perfect world but most of us can find a little joy some of the time. It’s the people whose …
I came across an article written by a woman in upper management that really rocked my boat. She spoke about things I might have heard in former centuries, certainly not in this century. She said that men are larger, so if you’re sitting on a bus, the man takes up more space and that’s as it should be. He’s entitled to take up more space on the train or bus. If he earns more money than a woman for the …
Having designed leadership workshops for businesses, I’m always amazed at the bias toward leadership qualities. According to various studies, most of them agree that leaders are born, not made. If I really believed that, I’d just tell corporate America not to bother with leadership development workshops; just send out talent scouts to find those leaders and sign them up as fast as you can. But I don’t believe that. I truly believe that there are very few in power who …
We have all heard the bible verse that it is better to give than to receive but that may not necessarily be the case. In fact, this may be at the root of the breakdown of a relationship. More relationships have been ruined because one does all the giving and the other one does all the taking. In other words, it’s not a balanced relationship and this often causes resentment in both partners. This is one of the ways it …
I keep running across two conflicting sets of data concerning retirement funds. They talk about pensions, IRAs, Social Security, 401Ks, how much to save, how much to withdraw for their minimum distribution, their stock portfolio, and just about every type of plan for retirees to live comfortably after they can no longer work. And that’s fine if we’re talking about people retiring at 65 or 70. But, on the other hand, there are almost as many sets of data showing …
I realize that humor differs from locale to locale. What’s funny in the northern states may not elicit so much as a smile if you’re from the deep south. But one thing is sure. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t have a humorous thought that was funnier when he was thinking about it than when he was telling it. Sometimes you’re sitting there with a big grin on your face, remembering something that was so funny at the time, that …
We used to hear people talk about their affairs as if they just happened, not planned, not intentional, and not wanted. They might talk about being friends with someone and turning to them when things aren’t going well for them or when they are feeling depressed, and this other person was there to commiserate with them when they needed a shoulder to cry on, or they met online when they were bored and felt like confiding in someone they didn’t …