To Increase Your Power, Do One Simple Thing: Take Responsibility

Do you feel powerless?  Do you have problems you feel like you can’t overcome?  Well, you need to know this. No one is powerless. You always have a choice. Yes, you are powerful. You just don’t know it yet. And it starts with taking responsibility.  He survived the Holocaust by taking responsibility Victor Frankl survived…More

How I stay fit in my forties 

(Before I start, I should emphasis that what I share in this post is about how I stay fit. Some of what I do is a bit extreme and probably shouldn’t apply to you.)  Staying fit when you’re older can be harder than getting fit.  There are temptations and weird mind games we play with…More

Finding satisfaction

Satisfaction is elusive. Most days, I feel I could be better at work, more fit, or have more money. And, there is a benefit to that. I’m constantly trying to improve myself and the world around me. But there’s also a negative side to that mentality. It’s this: I’m rarely satisfied. The thirst is never…More

An overdue post and thought on dealing with uncertainty

It’s been too long since I last posted.   I could give you excuses like I’ve been writing a novel or a commercial property we own had some serious sewer line issues (raw sewage was seeping into the basement, and our tenants were texting me every other day), or that I’ve been busy with this, that,…More

The problem with avoidance

What are you avoiding today? Is it a conflict, a hard conversation you need to have, dealing with a work situation, disciplining your child consistently—that thing about yourself? You know what it is. It’s been bothering you—nagging, really. But you keep burying it. But like a zombie that won’t die and keeps crawling back out…More

The difference you can make

Being different is the difference that makes you stand out. See, many of us hate being different. It makes us feel alone, ostracized, alienated. I know. I remember being one of the few Asians in my elementary school class. And, yes, people made fun of me for being different. It hurt. I cried. But later,…More

Post-pandemic life

You can take us out of a pandemic, but it will be hard to take the pandemic out of us. Here’s what I mean. It’s true; the pandemic is almost over. With the vaccines and their delivery scaling, we can be confident that the pandemic will end shortly. The problem is that its scars are…More

Do more by managing this resource: energy

When it comes to productivity most of us think about time. It is important, but there is, I believe, another resource that is even more so. It’s this. Energy. I don’t mean that we are battery-operated, like a Tesla, no. But it’s not too far from that, in some sense. I mean, you can feel…More

Gain financial freedom by doing this

One of the hardest lessons to learn about investing is this: to win, you need to learn how to lose. These past several days the market has been going down, and I was tempted to sell. Maybe you were too. I get it; losing is scary. It’s tempting to sell your investments, especially your stocks,…More

How to overcome your fear of pain

Life isn’t about avoiding pain. It’s about knowing what’s worth living for despite the pain. To find that purpose that makes the pain irrelevant or less relevant is key to really living. Many of us get carried along in our lives without really knowing what we want in life. And, when that’s the case, we…More