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
Tag Archives: growth mindset
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
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
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
A secret to winning
We all want to win in our relationships, investments, love. But winning is often counterintuitive. And we can sum it up like this. To win, you must be willing to lose. You see, in relationships, we want to be right or argue our point or make people see our way, our hurts, our pain, our…More
Silence: hearing the sounds of the soul
Silence. It’s one of the best things for us. Even so, for many, it’s scary. So we surround ourselves with noise, TV going in the background or music streaming, podcasts playing, zoom meetings zooming. These days we have more noises than ever before. There are videos, shows, audiobooks, and on and on chattering in our…More
When I made one of the biggest bets in my life
Sometimes you need to abandon plan b and go all in. I recently read this 2013 article on Steve Job’s presentation of a lifetime. It was for the first iPhone. It was monumental, legendary, historic. Yet the article outlines all of the things that could have gone wrong (how the multitouch, making a call and…More
This is your bet of a lifetime
We’re all betting, but there’s more to winning. You see, how we spend our time, energy, and money requires us to decide how we want to allocate them. How much time and money do you spend on this or that, invest in the stock market, get together or not, buy expensive clothes, or not are…More
Gratitude is good, but contentment is better
Gratitude. It’s something we hear a lot about, especially this week. But, there is something that has a greater impact on our lives, like gratitude, but more richly. What is it? It’s contentment. You see, gratitude is something you do, an action. But contentment is a state of being. It’s not just an act; it’s…More
Patience: the secret to growth
Growth is a winding, circuitous, and weird path. It’s rarely a straight line. It doesn’t go the way we expect nor want it to go. Sometimes it even means going backward before we begin moving forward. And that’s not necessarily the problem. It’s this. The problem is we often expect our growth to progress linearly, and when…More
John Pa 